Muslim Traditionalism and Violence in the Middle East

摘要

In recent years, especially after the 9/11 attacks on America, Western academics and policy-makers have increasingly viewed Islam as an inherently violent religion and Muslims as terrorists. Several academic studies, though without much empirical evidence, have found that Islamic religion is more fundamentalist and more conflict-and violence-prone, both domestically and internationally. However, the reality is that most Muslim countries are not fundamentalist and most of them are also relatively free of violence. A large percentage of Muslims, approximately 600 million, live in Southeast Asia and China but evidence of violence, driven by fundamentalism, is either rare, or not of much concern. Similarly, hard data on religious conflicts, during 1-2008, reveals that it is not Islamic but Christian civilization that witnessed the bloodiest conflicts in history. Some 177 million people were killed in religious conflicts and political violence in Christian countries (excluding the erstwhile antithe-ist communist bloc), while for Islamic civilization the death toll was 31 million for the same period. Contrary to this reality, many Western leaders also see Islam as equivalent to violence and terrorism. Incumbent US President Donald Trump, for example, vilified Muslims as 'terrorists' during the 2016 presidential election campaigns and capitalised on Islamophobia4 as a winning strategy. Former President George W. Bush, in the run up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, branded the Muslim Iraqis 'Gog' and 'Magog',5 a Biblical reference to the enemies of God, to partially justify the invasion on religious grounds.