When Religion Kills: How Extremists Justify Violence Through Faith 9781626378674

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WHEN RELIGION KILLS

WHEN RELIGION

KILLS

How Extremists Justify Violence Through Faith

Phil Gurski

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2020 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com

and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB

 2020 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloguing-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-62637-848-3

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

5 4 3 2 1

Contents

1 Religion as a Springboard for Violence

1

2 Buddhist Extremism

15

4 Hindu Extremism

77

3 Christian Extremism

43

5 Islamic Extremism

97

6 Jewish Extremism

117

7 Sikh Extremism

133

Bibliography Index About the Book

153 177 181

8 When Religion Kills

147

v

1 Religion as a Springboard for Violence

I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol. —US Lieutenant-General William G. Boykin1

Religious extremism takes many forms around the world and no religion is immune from it. That is the lesson of history and, sadly, modern history as well. —Australian prime minister Scott Morrison in the wake of the November 2018 Islamic extremist terrorist attack in Melbourne2

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. (“Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”) —attributed to the Cistercian monk Arnaud Amalric during the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in 1209

For more than twenty years I have been thinking and writing about terrorism, specifically Islamist extremism. I have studied veteran scholars and new ones, dead terrorists and those still carrying out violence, and a lot of the propaganda—there is far too much for any one person to wade through—to understand what drives terrorism. I worked as a strategic analyst for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service on investigations of citizens who planned acts of terrorism in my country, 1

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When Religion Kills

or who traveled abroad to do so, or who chattered in language consistent with violent extremism. I used to ask myself: Do they really believe that Allah approves when they behead people or shoot them? Do they further believe that Allah not only likes these acts but demands them? When it comes down to it, are these terrorists really Muslims? At the same time, I kept wondering: Is Islam the only faith that produces terrorists? Is there something intrinsic to Islam that does so? Is US conservative author Ann Coulter correct when she says that “not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”? I knew intuitively that Coulter was categorically wrong in her assertion, in part because we were seeing other forms of terrorism that clearly had nothing to do with Islam or Muslims. What I did not know was to what extent other faiths use religion to justify murder. Hence my journey to find out, the culmination of which is the book you are now reading.

A Religious “Wave” of Terrorism? I have long admired the scholarly work of David Rapoport, a political scientist who specializes in studying terrorism. In fact, many consider him one of the founders of this field. I was honored to have met him when we each presented research at a conference in Colorado Springs several years ago. Rapoport is perhaps best known for his definitive work on the “wave theory” of terrorism.3 He hypothesized that if one looks at terrorist movements since the late nineteenth century—terrorism that existed before then was seldom called terrorism—one is struck by four large trends. These trends can be generalized to motivations behind terrorist activity across groups and nations. Rapoport categorized these waves as anarchist, anticolonialist, New Left, and religious. Although a deep discussion of each wave is well beyond the scope of this book, it is worth becoming familiar with this work. In Rapoport’s analysis, each wave endured for at least a generation or two, after which it ceded primacy to the next wave. It did not disappear, however. For example, despite their waning after World War I, anarchist groups exist today—the Black Bloc is a good current example. For the purposes of this book, Rapoport’s comments on the religious wave are of interest. This wave is also the most recent from a historical perspective. Here are his main points in this regard:

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• “No one knows if the current campaign will be more successful than its predecessors.” • “Islam is at the heart of the wave.” • “Suicide bombing . . . was the most deadly tactical innovation.” • “The fourth wave may last longer than its predecessors.”4

Although this current wave is widely seen as having begun with Islamist extremism in 1979, it is far from limited to one faith and is in fact distributed, albeit perhaps not evenly, across many religions. Rapoport was prescient when he asked whether religious terrorism would outlast earlier waves of violent extremism. At the time I wrote this book, there was no end in sight to groups and individuals using religion as an excuse to kill. In other words, Rapo-port’s supposed expiration date of religious terrorism has already been surpassed.

When You Are Convinced God Is on Your Side Lieutenant-General William G. Boykin (retired) spent more than thirty-five years in the US military and served as undersecretary of the US Department of Defense for former president George W. Bush. During his military career, Boykin took part in operations such as the failed 1980 attempt to rescue US hostages in Iran and the disastrous 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which eighteen US troops lost their lives. Boykin is also an evangelical Christian who brought his faith into his time in uniform. He has been quoted as saying, for example: • “The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”5 • “They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation.”6 • “George [W.] Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.”7

The general was clearly not reluctant to wear his religious convictions on his sleeve, even if they elicited criticism at times. In this he is not alone: many Americans, including those who occupy positions of high authority, regularly invoke God. US presidents often end their speeches with “God bless America,” for example.

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When Religion Kills

Canadians, in contrast, generally do not follow this practice. In fact, when former prime minister Stephen Harper began to say “God bless Canada” after he spoke, some citizens found it disconcerting, if not “un-Canadian.” To simultaneously believe God is on one’s side and serve in a fighting force that kills others is common. As the old saying goes, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Many soldiers on all sides hold the conviction that God is watching over them as they engage in lethal actions. History reveals countless examples of warfare in which one party, if not both, invoked God for protection and victory. For example, in the late eleventh century CE, Pope Urban II, at the Council of Clermont in France, launched the first Crusade with the phrase Deus le volt (“God wills it,” in vulgar Latin/proto French). As a result, masses of people were slaughtered by both Christians and Muslims in the service of God. I want to set the stage for the rest of this book by returning to General Boykin. The US military leader expressed the belief, when facing an Islamist extremist in Somalia, that the God in whom the general had placed his trust was superior to the one in whom his enemy had. Going further, the general called his opponent’s deity an “idol.” In doing so, he made the claim that his foe was worshipping a God that could not therefore provide protection. The denigration of idols is not just a recent phenomenon. Many religious leaders of many faiths have emerged and claimed to rid the world of the “false gods” people had previously worshipped (e.g., Jesus’ clearing of the temple, Muhammad’s cleansing of the Kaaba, Hindu extremists’ destruction of a mosque in India, etc.). That day in Somalia, General Boykin’s words were all too similar to those of violent religious extremists in the past and today. They tout their acts of violence as deeds performed out of duty to a deity. Some even say violence is mandated by their god. Even if terrorists do not always discriminate whom they target for killing, they often single out members of other faiths for destruction and resort to religious texts to justify their actions, implying their God is better than our God. Here, I draw a parallel between the language Boykin opted to use in Somalia with that employed by existing terrorist groups. I also show over the next six chapters many similarities across the world’s six major religious systems when it comes to their justification of violence “in the name of God.”

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5

What Does Terrorism Mean? Few terms are as contested as terrorism. Political scientist Alex Schmid has noted the difficulty in pinning down one accepted definition that fits a “universal legal” need.8 To cite the example that has guided me over my professional career, the Canadian Criminal Code does not even attempt to delineate terrorism but settles on terrorist activity as follows: a terrorist activity is an act or omission that is committed in or outside Canada in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause [emphasis added], and in whole or in part with the intention of intimidating the public, or a segment of the public, with regard to its security, including its economic security, or compelling a person, a government or a domestic or an international organization to do or to refrain from doing any act, whether the public or the person, government or organization is inside or outside Canada, and that intentionally causes death or serious bodily harm to a person by the use of violence, endangers a person’s life, causes a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or any segment of the public, causes substantial property damage, whether to public or private property, or causes serious interference with or serious disruption of an essential service, facility or system.

In the United States, the Code of Federal Regulations defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” In the United Kingdom, the Terrorism Act of 2000 states that it is an act or threat of an act “designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.” Finally, the United Nations defines terrorism as: criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, [with] the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to

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abstain from doing any act, which constitute offences within the scope of and as defined in the international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism, are under no circumstances justifiable by considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar nature.

It is thus clear that different nations and organizations have elected to highlight different aspects of terrorism. This lack of consensus complicates international cooperation and could even interfere in extradition requests. The large number of definitions also complicates academic work on this subject. Adding to the complexity, some believe that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” In this book, I conflate the terms terrorism and violent extremism. I do not limit the discussion to nonstate actors but use a broad brush to include any group or individual who engages in a serious act of violence motivated primarily by some kind of underlying ideology—be that political or religious. In many cases, the use of violence inspired at least in part by some form of religious conviction can have government sanction at the highest level. To underscore the thesis of this book, I focus on those groups and individuals who subscribe to an ideology with a significant religious overtone. I include groups and individuals who foster religious hatred and intolerance but do not necessarily participate in acts of physical violence. I fully recognize that not all hate and intolerance lead to acts of terrorism, but the phenomena are nevertheless related. Terrorism is simply, in some ways, the most extreme manifestation of hatred toward those others that a group or individual seeks to intimidate, frighten, injure, or kill. It is worth examining those who spread these messages because they are consistent with the messages spread by those whom most people would likely categorize as terrorists. I am not interested in the debate surrounding free speech. The United States is an outlier in this regard, holding the first amendment of its Constitution sacrosanct when it comes to all modes of speech, no matter how objectionable. Of course when the government seeks to regulate some types of speech, accusations of censorship arise. (It boils down to who gets to decide what is hate and what is not, and on what criteria.) Nevertheless, most countries, including Canada, have hate speech laws and prosecute those who engage in it. This form of messaging is thus fair game in my quest to understand the scope of religious extremism.

Religion as a Springboard for Violence

7

Religion Versus Religiosity Versus Identity This brings me to the next question: What is religion? I am not a scholar of religion. Hence, I claim no expertise in world religions. However, this is not a book on religion, and is not written from the perspectives of religious theory, history, or other angles. It is a book on terrorism, and I have more than three decades of experience in security intelligence for the Canadian government, working specifically on religious-based terrorism.9 Any group that regularly expresses its “mission” in religious terms is subject to analysis in this book. I am agnostic on the difference between “normative” and “aberrant” religious beliefs because these have been subject to change over the centuries and are, to some extent, dependent on individual interpretation. Many would argue that a pope, a council, a group of wise elders, an imam, a rabbi, or a spiritual leader of some kind determines what is normative and what is not. For many adherents, these people decide what is “gospel” (i.e., the one true interpretation of their faith). For the purposes of my book, I default to what particular individuals say is central to their belief system, and I do not get into an argument about whether what they maintain is true, normative, realistic, or otherwise. I avail myself of the words they utter or post online, attempting to use verified and validated statements by actual terrorists, not relying on the accuracy of everything posted on the internet, and take them at face value without overlaying my judgment. When I speak of normative religion, what exactly do I mean? What is “normative Christianity”: Catholicism, Protestantism, Evangelical? In Judaism, is ultra-Orthodox more normative than Reformed? Are the Sunni more normative Muslims than the Shia, the Sufi, or the Ahmadi? Furthermore, does normativism not change over time? I was raised Catholic, and I have memories of Latin masses, the priest turning his back to the congregation, and other practices that are no longer predominant. For example, in my church women had to wear head coverings, and all had to receive Holy Communion by having the priest place the host on their tongues. Was the Catholic faith of my youth more normative than that of today? Who decides? I will leave those debates to religious scholars and experts. Readers should not draw the conclusion that, by emphasizing the use of religion to justify violence, I opine that this is a fundamental property of faith. History has clearly shown that religious belief can be used for good or evil. Many wonderful acts have been carried out

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When Religion Kills

by those who sincerely believed they were motivated by, or consistent with, sacred scripture or tenets. At the same time, it is obvious others have perpetrated heinous acts of violence and cited that same scripture as justification. I do not address whether a violent extremist actor is bent on destruction for predominantly religious reasons or otherwise, or whether that person’s religious identity is primary, although in each chapter I have a section on whether the violence discussed is best seen as religious or motivated by another set of factors. When it comes to how people choose to identify themselves, I could argue that this is variable and changes with circumstances. People have multiple “identities,” appropriate in certain instances; no one identity is sufficient. Most alter how to present themselves given those circumstances. If someone were to ask me, “Who is Phil Gurski?” I could answer—truthfully—along any and all of the following lines:

• I am a Canadian of Eastern European heritage (but seldom consider myself Polish and/or Ukrainian—no slight intended to my ancestors—because I am third-generation Canadian). • I am a male heterosexual. • I have been married for thirty-plus years, and I am a husband, a father, a grandfather, a brother, and a brother-in-law. • I am a linguist, a former intelligence analyst, the owner of my own consulting company (Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting), the director of security at the SecDev Group, and a retired civil servant. • I am an average goalie in pickup ice hockey, although many would say “average” is an exaggeration!

Which “identity” I choose to present at any given time is linked to my situation at that time. I would be quite surprised if most other people conducted themselves differently. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama noted, “Citizens of modern societies have multiple identities, ones that are shaped by social interactions. People have identities defined by their race, gender, workplace, education, affinities, and nation.”10 When it comes to terrorist individuals and groups, I have read arguments that Islamist extremist groups, for example, are not really religious organizations but better described as “criminal,” “ethnonational,” “regional,” or some such name. Again, I do not delve into

Religion as a Springboard for Violence

9

these arguments. The sole criterion for this discussion is the fact that a group of this nature regularly uses religious language and/or imagery to justify what it does and to call others to join it. Furthermore, some groups are on government terrorist lists used to justify official actions such as bringing criminal charges, extraditing them, not allowing them on public transportation, and the like. There is a process behind the decision to list a particular group (and I was part of that process in Canada at one time), but groups come and go.11 In my book, I will not limit the discussion to terrorist groups listed by any one nation but rather examine any individual or organization that regularly uses religious terms to justify violence. The question of the roles of religion and identity creation in terrorist activity is hard to resolve. In each chapter I attempt to determine how Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, or Sikh this form of terrorism is, as opposed to it being inspired by feelings of nationalism, ethnocentrism, patriotism, and so forth. In addition, some of the actors I describe in this book are not terrorists and do not belong to well-known violent extremist groups. Some are average citizens, and others are politicians. I do not make a real distinction between them; anyone calling for violence against another person or group and using religious language or symbols to do so is worthy of inclusion. This call to violent action can be implicit or explicit. It is important to underscore again that this is a book on religious extremism. As a career terrorism analyst, I do feel qualified to contribute to the debate on the relevance of ideology, religious or not, to terrorism.

What About Blasphemy? Is It Tied to Terrorism? Blasphemy has no doubt led to acts of extreme violence. After all, when an individual or a group calls for or carries out the murder of another individual or group because the former accuses the latter of speaking or acting counter to religious beliefs, the concept of blasphemy is in force. Many religious systems punish those who contravene what designated authorities have decided is “universal truth.” The Catholic Church once burned alleged blasphemers at the stake. Islamic scholars call for death for those who “slander” the prophet Muhammad. A recent case in Pakistan of a Christian woman accused of insulting Muhammad underscores that this continues in modern

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When Religion Kills

Islamic societies (but in this instance the woman was acquitted after having spent eight years in prison).12 In Jewish law, the penalty for blaspheming God is death. Blasphemy in Hinduism is one of the five great sins that lead the blasphemer to hell. Those who level charges of blasphemy are convinced they are practicing the normative version of their faith. In other words, “mainstream” individuals and groups who supposedly act in concert with the fundamental tenets of their religion call for the punishment by death of those who challenge the norm. When it comes to blasphemy, violence is justified by the “normative” faction, but in general people tend to associate religious extremism with non-normative actors. Curious indeed!

Why Language Matters The words people choose make a significant difference in the message they try to convey as well as the mind-set that underlies their feelings. For instance, Canada has lately faced a small immigration crisis because people seek to enter from the United States out of fear that the Trump administration will take steps to deport them to their home countries, many of which are in violent conflict. Despite the so-called Safe Third Country agreement between the United States and Canada, whereby a prospective refugee cannot make a claim of asylum if she or he currently lives in a “safe” country, the Canadian government is struggling with the tens of thousands seeking to cross the border. Because they are doing so at unofficial border spots, that is, without a Canada Border Services Agency presence, they are being treated differently. Some Canadians have called these border interlopers irregular; others, illegal. There is a difference between the two terms. The first suggests that although potential immigrants are not abiding by the rules, they nevertheless have a right to have their cases heard. The second implies the opposite: because they are deemed outside the law, they should have no such right. Each term belies the nature of the politics of its users. When people use words such as vermin, cockroaches, and infestation in referring to others, they not only dehumanize people but also incite violence against them. These were precisely the terms used to describe Japanese Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack.

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Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were subsequently stripped of their property and interned in concentration camps. In Rwanda in 1994, when these words were applied to Tutsis, up to 1 million of them were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors. In this book I examine the words violent extremists use to denigrate the people they perceive as undesirable, whom they attack. My aim is to detect commonalities across various religious extremists as well as to identify parallels with historical examples.

Structure of the Book In this book, my chapters follow the same format. After a brief introduction to the faith in question, I look at which terrorist groups and actors use violence in the name of that faith, some of the major violent incidents in which they have participated, the specifically religious propaganda they have deployed, and the primary victims of their killing campaigns. In the last section of each chapter, if applicable, I narrow the focus to how terrorist groups identify members of other religions—whom they see as “unbelievers,” naturally— as legitimate targets of their divinely inspired wrath. I also look at instances in which religiously inspired extremist groups target members of their own faith, albeit ones the extremists believe are not practicing it correctly. In each chapter I also feature efforts by religious actors to counter extremist ideology and terrorism promoted by the members of their faith (however, in some cases, I could find little information regarding such initiatives in readily accessible, open sources). At the end of each chapter, I discuss how “religious” the violence just examined really is (i.e., is it more likely ethnonationalist or otherwise motivated?). I sometimes include religious actors who perpetrate violence against not necessarily religious targets. Terrorists do not always carefully plan their actions so that their victims are exclusively members of other religious faiths. Nevertheless, in light of all too many religiously motivated terrorist acts around the world, I focus on those in which members of the “wrong” religion are attacked. I discuss terrorists who belong to six of the world’s major religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism. The fairest way to do so seemed to be to list them alphabetically.

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When Religion Kills

I treat this subject as if I were still an intelligence analyst with the Canadian government. This means I hew to no theoretical background, I perform no literature review, I do not test a hypothesis, and I do not compare rival approaches. In intelligence, one gathers data, assesses the accuracy of the data, determines what those data indicate, and packages it so that readers can understand the issues. Think of this book as a long intelligence assessment (even though in the real world no one would ever write an intelligence assessment for busy officials longer than two pages. I am, however, a former intelligence analyst and, hence, not bound by the strictures of my former profession). I also want to underscore that the phenomena discussed here are current. Enough books examine the “religious wars” of the past, and mine does not add to that literature. I consider only religious extremist groups active after 9/11 (with the exception of one group in Chapter 2, on Buddhist extremism). I discuss historical figures or anecdotes for illustrative or explanatory purposes only. The violent incidents I discuss happened quite recently, many within the previous few years. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a religious person, but I am not antireligion either. I am merely a curious person who asked a simple question: To what extent do some of the world’s faithful employ their spiritual beliefs to bring violence down on the heads of others? Let us then begin, then, with an apparent contradiction— Buddhist terrorism.

Notes 1. BBC News, “U.S. Is ‘Battling Satan’ Says General.” 2. David Wroe, “Bourke Street Attack: Scott Morrison Demands Muslim Leaders Call This Out for What It Is.” 3. David Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism.” 4. David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terror.” 5. Baptist Press, “General Who Voiced His Faith Cleared on Major Accusations.” 6. Mother Jones, “Christian Soldier.” 7. Steven Waldman, “Heaven Sent: Did God Endorse George Bush?” 8. A. P. Schmid, ed., Handbook of Terrorism Research, 86–87. 9. For more on my research, see, for example, Phil Gurski, The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda–Inspired Terrorism and Radicalization in the West; Gurski, Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Western and Inter-

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national Security; Gurski, The Lesser Jihads: Bringing the Islamist Extremist Fight to the World; and Gurski, An End to the “War on Terrorism.” 10. Francis Fukuyama, “Against Identity Politics.” 11. The Marxist cult–like People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI, or the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organization), is one such group. It was once listed by several countries as a terrorist organization after several attacks in Iran in the 1980s and 1990s, but it has been “delisted” by some of those countries, probably for political reasons. 12. Sasha Ingber, “Pakistan Supreme Court Upholds Christian Woman’s Blasphemy Acquittal.”

2 Buddhist Extremism

Rakhine Buddhist[s] killing Muslims, it’s just one out of a hundred. . . . The difference between Rakhine and Muslim is that Rakhine Buddhists are kind and feel for others. —Taw Kin Ten Ji, a fifty-two-year-old resident of Myanmar village of Inn Din1 If you meet the Buddha, kill him. —attributed to Linji Yixuan, ninth-century Zen master

If ever there was an apparent oxymoron, it is Buddhist extremism. The Dalai Lama’s faith might be many things to many people, but surely it is not extremist. We normally associate Buddhism with men in robes, prayer wheels, mantras, and a profoundly peaceful existence. Yet Buddhists have engaged in terribly violent campaigns against those of other faiths. At times this violence has been inspired, led, or actually carried out by senior religious leaders. People in the West have a certain picture of these pious believers, but it is not always accurate. I find it interesting that one ninth-century master of Zen Buddhism actually said, “If you meet the Buddha, kill him.” This religious teacher exhorted followers to violence to emphasize that Buddhists “must motivate themselves and rely on their own efforts, not on a charismatic leader.”2 15

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Buddhism There are countless books on Buddhism, and it is not my intent here to replicate any of them. To put Buddhist extremists into context, however, I highlight some of the major tenets of the faith to see how extremists use them to justify violence. Buddhism stems from the life of Siddhata Gotama (also spelled Siddhartha Gautama), who lived from 563 to 483 BCE in the region that became India and Nepal. The stories of his life vary, although Buddhists commonly believe he was born into a royal family, eventually embraced an ascetic lifestyle, and then discovered the Middle Way (i.e., neither extreme indulgence nor extreme self-deprivation). The story goes that he attained “enlightenment” at the age of thirtyfive after forty-nine days of meditation and was henceforth called the Buddha, meaning the “Awakened One.” Buddhism teaches that humans cling to dukkha (mundane, or impermanent, things) that do not satisfy us in the end. Our inability to cease craving material comforts condemns us to a never-ending cycle (samsara) of rebirths in which suffering of life continues. We can break the cycle by attaining nirvana, or enlightenment, whereby the pain of learning lessons, and thus the reincarnations, cease. One achieves this by following the “eightfold path”—that is, by practicing self-discipline, meditation, and mindfulness. The popular image of Buddhists, then, is of peaceful practitioners of self-sacrifice and introspection. The idea of killing people in the name of this religion, the quote of the ninth-century leader cited above notwithstanding, strikes most people as incongruous with the fundamental beliefs of the faith.

Where Is Buddhism Practiced? Although, like most religions, practitioners of Buddhism live all over the world, the most concentrated populations are in seven nations. According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 500 million Buddhists.3 Table 2.1 shows the concentration of Buddhists in several Asian countries. Buddhism is practiced by a majority of citizens in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, ranging from a high of 97 percent in Cambodia to a low of 16 percent in Vietnam. Japan’s Buddhist

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Table 2.1 Largest Buddhist Populations Country

China Thailand Japan Myanmar (Burma) Sri Lanka Vietnam Cambodia

Number of Adherents 245 64 45–84 38 14 14 13

million million million million million million million

Percentage of Population 16 93 36–67 80 69 16 97

population is challenging to measure, and therefore I do not analyze it in this chapter. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is interesting because although 15–20 percent of Chinese citizens purport to follow Buddhism, there is uncertainty regarding its legality there.4 Regarding Buddhist extremism, China is also an outlier. I was unable to find any significant incidence of terrorism associated with that faith in China (or Cambodia for that matter). Milton Osborne, of the Australian Lowy Institute, noted that although there was an uptick in Buddhist political activism a few years ago, there was no expression of violent extremism.5 China has a serious issue with Islamist extremism, in part a response to brutal government crackdowns on the practice of Islam in the northwest region of Xianjiang Province, but no similar issue among the country’s Buddhists. As for Vietnam, Buddhist monks have participated in serious acts of violence; one need look no further than the self-immolation during the Vietnam War. Because these acts were not directed at other people, I do not analyze them in this book. Thus I examine Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka.

Buddhist Extremism in Myanmar (Burma) Background

Beginning in 2016, a humanitarian catastrophe of biblical proportions occurred when hundreds of thousands (perhaps more than a million) Rohingya Muslims were forced to flee the northwestern Myanmar state of Rakhine following the Burmese army’s systematic campaign of rape and murder in an attempt at “ethnic cleansing.”6

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Many fled to Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands are still living in inhumane conditions in refugee camps near the Bangladeshi city of Cox’s Bazar. Others took makeshift boats south to Thailand and Malaysia. Many drowned at sea, others were placed in what can only be called prison-like conditions, and some were able to make their way to land and enter the irregular economy. The government of Myanmar has made several disparate claims regarding the Rohingya. It has stated that they do not really belong in the country because they are recent economic migrants from Bangladesh and hence should just go home (when in fact the Rohingya have had a presence in Burma for centuries). According to one Myanmar immigration officer, “Bengalis [many officials use the term “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya] are not from our country because they have different blood, skin color and language from us. We have no Rohingya here.”7 The refusal to refer to the Rohingya by their chosen name is not restricted to government officials and extremist actors in Myanmar. As talks on repatriating hundreds of thousands of refugees from Bangladesh back to Myanmar continued in late 2018, even Bangladeshi authorities resorted to listing them as “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals.” In response, refugees in camps in Bangladesh demanded that their ethnicity be recognized as Rohingya.8 The Myanmar government has also said that its army acted in response to violence perpetrated by Rohingya extremists. There is indeed a Rohingya Muslim extremist group, the Arakan (another name for Rakhine) Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which attacked Burmese army outposts on several occasions beginning in 2016. Most observers perceive these attacks as retaliatory to government atrocities against the Rohingya, which date back to the 1990s. They are not supporting a terrorist group but instead trying to get the sequence of events correct. The conflict between the armed forces of Myanmar and the Rohingya has a context of similar, long-standing tension in that nation. Myanmar officially recognizes 135 ethnic groups—the Rohingya are an exception.9 The Bamar (Burmese) ethnic group constitutes the majority in the country. To cite but one historical conflict, the largely Christian Karen ethnic group had been battling the Burmese government since its independence from Britain in 1947. The Karens accused the army of practicing genocide and formed the Karen National Union to protect themselves. Upward of 100,000 Karens have more recently fled

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across the border to Thailand, where they live in refugee camps.10 The government of Myanmar has been under international pressure to end the long-standing conflict with the Karens. Extremist Actors

Buddhists have participated in antigovernment action in Myanmar in the past. In the mid-2000s, they partook in peaceful demonstrations against the military junta then ruling the country. These protests became known as the “Saffron Revolution.” 11 The junta reacted violently, kicking, beating, forcibly disrobing, and incarcerating Buddhist monks. Those protests did not call for or engage in violent action; some of today’s monks employ a completely different set of tactics. In the Rohingya crisis, however, one name stands out: the monk Ashin U Wirathu, known as the “Buddhist Bin Laden.” He has been calling on Burmese Buddhists and other citizens of Myanmar to “stand up” against the country’s Muslims, labeling them a “threat not just to Buddhism but to the [Burmese] people and the country.”12 U Wirathu was born in 1968 and became a Buddhist monk at the age of fourteen. In 2001 he became involved in the 969 movement, the leaders of which claim they are behind a “non-violent response to a Buddhist society under strain from ‘foreign elements.’”13 U Wirathu is also the head of the Ma Ba Tha Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion. 14 He received a twenty-five-year sentence in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim hatred but was released seven years later under a general amnesty. He has thousands of Facebook followers, and his sermons have been viewed tens of thousands of times on YouTube.15 Ma Ba Tha was founded in 2013 and was instrumental in backing four religious racial laws that focused on implementing population control methods: forbidding polygamy and restricting religious conversion and interfaith marriage. All of these rules were rightly perceived as anti-Islamic in nature. Some of U Wirathu’s most “noteworthy” quotes with respect to Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims are: • “I am defending my loved one, like you would defend your loved one. I am only warning people about Muslims. Consider it like if you had a dog that would bark at strangers coming to your house—it is to warn you. I am like that dog. I bark.”16

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• “It only takes one terrorist to be amongst them. Look at what has happened in the west. I do not want that to happen in my country. All I am doing is warning people to beware.”17 • (On allegations that Rohingya women were being raped) “Impossible. Their bodies are too disgusting.”18 • (On the use of economic sanctions against the Rohingya) “I don’t know how you tame a wild elephant in your country, but here the first thing you do is take away all their food and water. Then when the elephant is starving and weak, you give him a little bit of water and teach him one word. Then you give him a little bit of food and teach him some more. That’s how we tame the elephants here.”19 • “Women should not get married to Islamic men. If one Buddhist woman gets married to an Islamic man, it’s not just one less Buddhist [because Islam requires her to convert], but they will have one more and they will have lots of children, so the population balance can change quickly.”20 • “We are being raped in every town, being sexually harassed in every town, being ganged up on and bullied in every town.”21 • “In every town, there is a crude and savage Muslim majority.” • “The population explosion of Burma’s Muslims could mean only one thing: they will capture our country in the end.” • “Once we [have] won this battle, we will move on to other Muslim targets.” • (In response to a UN request that the Rohingya be given citizenship) “This bitch [UN Human Rights rapporteur on Myanmar Yanhee Lee] learned nothing about the protection of religion bill. She said the bill is against human rights because of what those big-mouthed bitches presented to her. Is she a good woman? Do not think yourself a gentle person just because you sit on the UN. For our country you are a prostitute. If you feel any sympathy for them [the Rohingya], you can give your own ass to Kalars [Rohingya]. Do not try to sell out our Arakan state! Arakan state is our fortress and defence line. Arakan is our gate! Do not try to enter and break our gate! If you do, we will fight back and attack you.”22

U Wirathu has also called Rohingya Muslims “mad dogs” and “troublemakers” and advised Buddhist women that it “would be better to marry a dog than a Muslim.”23 Another 969 member said, “They get

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21

money from Muslim countries, and they want to conquer us and destroy Buddhism. They are foreigners, they should feel lucky we treat them well as guests.”24 The editor in chief of Burmese newspaper Aung Zay Yatu stated in September 2017, “We’re not oppressing Muslims, and we recognize their existence. But we don’t want Muslims to swallow our country. . . . They will not finish with attacking just Rakhine. They will also invade Chin State or Irrawaddy region. . . . Then this country will be a Muslim country. It is such a shame for us that the land we inherited from our former generations will be lost in our time.”25 In an effort to tackle the vitriol of U Wirathu and his followers, like-minded Buddhists, Facebook has removed his accounts and banned him. The company has labeled him a “hate figure” and Ma Ba Tha a “hate organization.” Facebook has long been under pressure to take action against those using its platform to spread hate and advocate violence. Many people see this as a free speech issue, however, demanding to know how Facebook has the right to censor membership.26 Despite the Burmese government banning public appearances by U Wirathu, the firebrand monk delivered a speech in October 2018 to a promilitary gathering in Yangon. Among his statements were: • (On the International Criminal Court’s investigation of the Burmese army for genocide against the Rohingya) “The day when the ICC comes here . . . is the day that Wirathu holds a gun.” • “Don’t lie to the world saying that Bengalis are Rohingya because you want to promote Islamisation in Myanmar.” • “Don’t destroy our country by creating a fake ethnic group.”27

In 2017 the Myanmar government also banned Ma Ba Tha, which had renamed itself the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation. Supporters nevertheless vowed to continue the group’s activities, and a spokesperson stated, “This matter is very important. This is a duty of every responsible person in this country. Every country has rights to protect the religion its people believe. This right begins at birth. So, when people who protect the nation and religion are banned, it’s like telling us to leave our country.” The organization called upon Buddhist monks to take part in “efforts to protect country and religion” and demanded the government ensure that no Muslim terrorists were allowed to re-enter along with repatriated Rohingya.28 In July 2018 the

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When Religion Kills

government religious authority called the organization “illegal” and told it to disband and cease advertising in Myanmar. Most branches complied, but several branches in Mandalay and Kayin refused and warned that they would not stop any ensuing “unrest.”29 Following the violence, the Burmese army and its supporters have taken action to remove any trace of Rohingya and make it difficult for them to return. For instance, in one village a new school and Buddhist pagoda were built in what had been the Muslim quarter. In addition, the government provided remaining Buddhist residents new homes.30 Despite Bangladeshi and international efforts to facilitate the return of the Rohingya to their homeland, those efforts were largely unsuccessful at the time of this writing. Furthermore, Buddhist extremists would probably oppose a large repatriation effort, possibly with violence. Hundreds of hardline Buddhists, including monks, protested plans to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar in late October 2017.31 On November 25, 2018, Buddhist monks led a protest in Rakhine against the return of the Rohingya, whom they referred to as “runaway refugees.” One spokesperson stated, “There will be no benefits to us or our country if we accept the Bengalis.”32 Canadian political commentator Gwynne Dyer has written that “rabble-rousing Buddhist monks advance their careers by preaching fear and hatred” of the Rohingya.33 The Burmese army has also been involved for years in crafting fake Facebook pages to raise ire against the Rohingya.34 Hundreds of military personnel created troll accounts and news/celebrity pages in which they made incendiary anti-Rohingya comments and were able to take advantage of Facebook’s popularity in Myanmar. Lurid photos, fake news, and inflammatory messages were posted, including ones claiming that Rohingya were launching “jihad attacks,” that Islam was a global threat to Buddhism, and that a Buddhist woman was raped by a Muslim man (a false story). Although Facebook declared that it had removed the accounts of the senior staff of the Myanmar military, those belonging to junior cadres remained. Violence against the Rohingya might not be the exclusive purview of extremist Buddhists in Myanmar. Zoltan Barany, although acknowledging that “influential extremist Buddhist monks” are the military’s political allies, wrote that the “vast majority” of Burmese approve of the anti-Rohingya campaign. Among those are supporters of the National League for Democracy, the party of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto head of state. Barany speculated that this widespread approval goes a long way toward

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23

explaining why Suu Kyi has not condemned the genocide against the Rohingya (she even called the sexual crimes against Rohingya women “fake rape”). For her to openly condemn the military would be political suicide and “only strengthen the army’s public support.”35 Extremist monks have not limited their violent actions to the country’s Muslim population. On Christmas Eve of 2018, a group of forty men led by three Buddhist monks injured two ethnic Chin Christians while attempting to disrupt preparations for a Christmas Day event. The small Christian community in Rakhine state’s Ann Township was attempting to erect a small pavilion outside the village when the mob ordered them to stop. A fight broke out, and a vicar suffered head wounds and had to be treated at the hospital. The Buddhist extremists apparently did not want to allow a Christmas Day ceremony because there had never been such an event before.36 Is U Wirathu Citing Authentic Buddhist Tenets?

Most adherents of Buddhism believe that the use of violence harms not only the victim but also the perpetrator. Buddhists are encouraged to practice ahimsa, or causing no harm to other living beings. Furthermore, violence, or even violent thoughts, are seen as obstacles to nirvana. The eponymous founder of Buddhism was a pacifist. As with other religions, however, Buddhism allows for selfdefense—even the Dalai Lama believes in limited action in this regard. He has said, “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”37 In addition, Buddhism is similar to other faiths in that it creates a sense of community among believers and hence a strong tendency to protect oneself and one’s community when there is a significant threat. Monks such as U Wirathu have succeeded in engendering a fundamental sense of existential threat to Myanmar’s Buddhists. He cites Muslim birthrates to “prove” that the Rohingya will “take over” someday, to the obvious detriment of the country’s majority Buddhists.38 This prediction is illfounded—there are approximately 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar out of a total population of 55 million—but this is irrelevant. The extremist monk need only use his position of authority and his fearmongering to convince his followers of the clear and present danger posed by Myanmar’s Muslims. If people perceive a serious threat, they can see the use of violence as self-defense, even if they themselves do not normally partake of it.

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When Religion Kills

As long as U Wirathu is allowed to deliver speeches he will continue to demonize Myanmar’s Muslims. The government has been inconsistent in this regard: banning and reinstating him on several occasions. Even though the government has in place a long-standing ban, the monk’s previous words will live online indefinitely, encouraging followers to engage in violence. At least one Islamic extremist leader is exacerbating the sentiment against Muslims in Myanmar. Well-known terrorist Abu Bakar Bashir delivered a speech outside the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta on May 3, 2013, in which he called for a jihad against the Myanmar government for its treatment of that country’s Muslim minority. He stated, “All this is our fault if we don’t wage jihad. . . . If Muslims are the minority they are the target of the massacre. . . . Buddhism is about love? That’s nonsense. Here we have proof that Buddhists are slaughtering Muslims.” Richard Horsey, a consultant for the Myanmar Peace Center, stated that tensions between Buddhist and Muslim communities have existed since colonial times, but both the modernization of Burmese society and increased freedoms have been used by some groups, such as the 969 movement, to spread virulent anti-Muslim messages. Some Buddhists fear that they might lose their central place in the moral and social life of the country. They also fear secularization and the military regime’s control over the Buddhist community, which is now manifesting itself in anti-Muslim sentiment. There is also Buddhist on Buddhist violence in Myanmar. The self-styled Arakan Army (AA)—no relation to the Muslim ARSA, described above—wants more autonomy from the central government in Naypyidaw. It has been active since 2009 and is believed to have 2,500 fighters.39 On January 4, 2019, the AA launched predawn raids on four police posts in Rakhine, killing seven officers and taking fourteen as “prisoners of war.”40 The AA has trained in the past with the Kachin Independence Army, one of several indigenous insurgent groups fighting the central government.

Buddhist Extremism in Thailand Background

When one visits Thailand, it appears to be a predominantly Buddhist country. In Bangkok alone, one can visit spectacular Buddhist tem-

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25

ples, ornate carvings of the Buddha (including a forty-six-meter reclining Buddha in the Wat Pho), and richly carved prang (towers— actually Hindu in origin but adopted by Thai Buddhists). Thailand is a monarchy, and the king’s other titles include Adherent of Buddhism and Upholder of religions. The state does not take any insult, intended or not, against the king lightly. Lese-majeste laws are strictly enforced, and many people have been incarcerated based on accusations of slandering the king, although some see the enforcement of these laws as clamping down on free speech. The king’s Buddhism is of particular interest here because not all Thais are Buddhists (some 64 million Thais subscribe to the faith, representing 93 percent of the total population). A small Muslim minority is concentrated in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Pattani. There, adherents of Islam constitute upward of 80 percent of the population. The area was historically part of the Pattani Sultanate in what is Malaysia today. A low-level insurgency has existed in southern Thailand for decades, and at least 6,500 people have been killed, most of them civilians. The conflict has received little attention in the West, even when a bomb exploded in a Hindu shrine in central Bangkok, killing twenty people and wounding more than a hundred. Many perpetrators were blamed for the attack, and two Chinese Uyghurs were eventually arrested. Southern Muslim militants were exonerated rather quickly of any involvement. Thai Buddhist Extremist Response to the Southern Conflict

Phra Apichart Punnajanto was a Buddhist monk at the popular Marble Temple in Bangkok. He became increasingly angry about the deaths of Buddhist monks in southern Thailand—some twenty or so—and saw these murders as religious extremist attacks. He has called on his large following on Facebook (although Thai authorities have attempted to shut down his account) to burn down one mosque for every Buddhist leader killed. He also posted gruesome photos purporting to show the corpses of other Buddhists hacked to death or shot by Muslim militants.41 Apichart Punnajanto has repeatedly called for violence: • “What I want to do is to make Buddhists who are still sleeping and think things are beautiful, I want to make them aware of what’s

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•

• • •

going on. Muslims aren’t trying to invade just the three [southern] provinces; they are trying to occupy the whole country.”42 “The next plan is preparing the fuel to put in the bottle to make a burning bomb. Not only my own, but Buddhists from the whole nation are going to do it as well. It’s to throw somewhere; nobody knows where. I’m just waiting for the time when a monk dies. Right now, I just keep distributing my ideology on social media.”43 “If a Buddhist monk dies from a gun wound, or from an explosion in the south at the hands of Malayu bandits, a mosque should be burned, starting from the northern part of Thailand southwards.”44 “If Buddhists’ patience runs out, be prepared to be blasted until nothing is left. We will give them the same conditions as the Rohingya in Myanmar.”45 “I was stressed before, when monks got killed and injured. Now it’s past that point—no stress, just revenge. This is why I said those things about burning the mosques: because I want revenge.”46

Apichart Punnajanto admits that he is a fan of Myanmar’s U Wirathu and that he sees Islam as an existential threat to Thailand. It is clear that he is not alone. There is growing anti-Muslim sentiment among some Buddhist monks who look to Buddhist extremist religious leaders in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka and their actions against Muslims. In addition, there has been a movement to enshrine Buddhism as the official religion of Thailand. Some analysts see this as an attempt to “return to imagined earlier certainties and unities, and to reify and reinforce the existence of a ‘Thai-ness’ that now seems increasingly elusive.”47

Buddhist Extremism in Sri Lanka Background

When people hear the terms violent extremism and Sri Lanka, they often think of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, known as the Tamil Tigers) and the three-decade civil war in Sri Lanka. The LTTE sought to eke out an independent homeland for the Tamils in Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern regions and used violence (i.e., terrorism)

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27

to achieve their goals. The war was a direct consequence of discriminatory laws passed by the majority Sinhalese upon the transition of the British colony of Ceylon to the independent nation of Sri Lanka. Before hostilities ended in 2009, likely more than 100,000 people were killed and upward of 800,000 displaced at the height of the war in 2001. The LTTE, listed by several countries as a terrorist group, relied heavily on financing from the large international Tamil diaspora. The LTTE was infamous for its female suicide bombers and succeeded in assassinating Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, probably as punishment for the deployment of Indian peacekeeping forces on the island from 1987 to 1990. Indian intelligence had been sending arms to the LTTE before the arrival of the peacekeepers. Despite the fact that the Tamils were Hindu and the Sinhalese Buddhist, the Sri Lankan civil war never acquired an overtly religious mantle (at least not on the Tamil side; some Buddhist monks lent religious legitimacy to the war as a way to consolidate the whole island for the Sinhalese Buddhist majority).48 The Sri Lankan constitution also allows freedom of worship but accords primacy to Buddhism. When constitutional changes were being considered, radical monks threatened “consequences,” and the government caved to the demands and stated that Buddhism would retain its “foremost position.” Opponents believed that the government was seeking to appease Western nations and to dilute the influence of Buddhism in the country.49 Ultranationalist Buddhist fervor reigns in Sri Lanka. The country is proudly Buddhist and has long paraded its faith through the history known as the Mahavamsa. Buddhism is said to have arrived on the island in the sixth century BCE, and the Buddha himself allegedly praised Prince Vijaya’s establishment of the faith. The conflict between Sri Lankan Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus often included the Buddhists’ accusation that the Hindus were newcomers; the same denigration has also been applied to Sri Lanka’s Muslims. This nationalism took a more worrisome turn when the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) Party was formed in 2004. Buddhist monks are generally apolitical, but the JHU was interested in Buddhist revival and wanted to show its support for the government against the LTTE. In time, the JHU was seen by some as too timid, and hence the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS; the Army of Buddhist Power) was created in 2012. The party has become a powerful force in the country and is behind a campaign to engage in revisionist history in which Sri Lanka’s Buddhists play a dominant role, unsurprisingly. For example, the

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When Religion Kills

party compared its victory over the Tamil Tigers to a historical event in which a Sinhalese king conquered a Tamil chief. A New Target: Muslims

There is a substantial Muslim minority in Sri Lanka; they make up approximately 10 percent of the total population. After Arab traders arrived on the island in the eighth century, their population was bolstered by Malays encouraged to emigrate by British and Dutch colonial administrations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as later immigration from India and Pakistan. As a minority, the country’s Muslims catered both to the majority Sinhalese and to their linguistic cousins, the ethnic Tamils. After the civil war, the BBS has focused its hatred on the Muslim minority. Some analysts believe extremists are shifting “lingering hostility against the Tamils onto Muslims, many of whom speak Tamil.”50 The BBS reviles the country’s Muslims, whom it accused of undermining Sri Lanka’s Buddhist heritage and “breeding like pigs.” A senior BBS monk urged Sinhalese Buddhists to “protect the nation and not let other races or religions take over” and to have five to six children apiece to increase the Sinhalese Buddhist population.51 One BBS pamphlet stated: Do not sell your land and businesses to the Muslims. They are able to buy things for higher prices because of the money they get from their mosque and the Middle East for the breeding of their kind. You and I will die soon, but it is our sacred duty to save this sacred land for the future generations. . . . We don’t need multicultural, multi-religious ideas. There has to be one Sinhala Buddhist country in the world. This is that country.”52

Other accusations leveled at Muslims include that exam results at college are distorted to favor Muslims, that calves are slaughtered (this is illegal in the capital, Colombo), or that meat is being improperly stored. Even the certification of meat as halal, seen as a way for Muslims to earn revenue, is being challenged. Spreading this “fake news” is intended to demonize Sri Lanka’s Muslims and justify violent action against them. According to Samanth Subramanian in This Divided Island: Life, Death, and the Sri Lankan War, Muslim butchers were forced to close and halal meat certifications were banned. A clothing store

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29

in Colombo was vandalized. Pigs were painted on the walls of mosques, and some called for prayer sites to be closed, especially those built too close to Buddhist temples. Following a BBS march through Aluthgama in June 2014, more shops were vandalized and three people were killed (more than seventy were wounded).53 Buddhist extremists are also harassing Tamil Buddhists.54 Another violent incident was the destruction of a Muslim dargah (shrine), in the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage city of Anuradhapura in September 2011. Assailants on motorcycles had damaged some tiles the previous June, and three months later Buddhist monks led a crowd to demolish the building, waving Buddhist flags and even burning a green (Muslim) banner. One monk justified the act by saying that the shrine had been built on land given to Buddhists 2,000 years previously.55 The government response to the violence was not as harsh as it could have been: former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa would not outright sanction the perpetrators, merely noting that their actions were “not consistent with public opinion.”56 The BBS has also gone after halal markings on food, claiming that the practice is an attempt to introduce Sharia law in Sri Lanka. The head of the BBS, Galagoda Atte Gnanasara, has also asked the Sri Lankan government to investigate whether “Islamic funds” are being used to finance terrorism.57 In June 2016 the BBS threatened to launch new anti-Muslim riots similar to those in Aluthgama in 2014. The police response to this threat was underwhelming.58 In 2015 a Sri Lankan Muslim organization asked police to investigate a DVD in which Gnanasara claimed Muslims were planning a major military attack on Sri Lanka with the support of international terrorists, hoarding suicide jackets, and harboring terrorists in a private residence.59 Following a series of attacks on Muslims in late 2017, Sri Lankan police arrested nineteen Buddhist extremists, among whom were people spreading false messages on social media. Some of these were messages that Muslims were forcing Buddhists to convert to Islam and vandalizing Buddhist archaeological sites. One of those arrested, a woman, claimed Muslims were planning to attack a Buddhist temple. Extremists have been particularly angry at Rohingya Muslim asylum seekers.60 Sri Lankan authorities began to take the Buddhist extremist threat more seriously in late 2018. On August 8, 2018, a court sentenced Gnanasara to nineteen years of “rigorous imprisonment,” to be

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When Religion Kills

completed in six years.61 The conviction was based on contempt of court in a case in which Gnanasara threatened the wife of a missing journalist. In March 2018 the Sri Lankan government announced a state of emergency following clashes between Muslims and Buddhists in the state of Kandy. The Buddhists were apparently responding to the mob killing of a Sinhalese man and proceeded to badly damage ten mosques, seventy-five shops, and thirty-two houses that belonged to the Muslim minority community.62 Those who speak out against Buddhist extremism, even if they themselves are Buddhist, can pay a heavy price. Watareka Vijitha Thero, a monk who challenged the BBS’s Islamic fearmongering, was kidnapped, stripped, beaten, and left by the side of the road near Colombo. When he went to the police, he was charged with “selfinflicted violence” and sentenced to twelve days in prison.63 On other occasions, the police look the other way when the BBS incites riots, and they fail to fully investigate acts of violence. Another leading Buddhist extremist is Amith Weerasinghe, head of the Mahason Balakaya, a hardline political party. The group has published videos full of hate speech directed at Muslims and threatened anyone who tries to defend Muslims or prosecute its adherents, including judges.64 Several of those videos have been removed by platforms such as YouTube. Weerasinghe was arrested in June 2018 for his role in instigating much of the violence against Muslims. He is also known to have ties to BBS. Other Buddhist expressions of prejudice against Muslims include:

• “This town has come to belong only to the Muslims. We should have started to address this a long time ago.”65 • “This is not the time to attack because we are not ready.”66 • “In this country we still have a Sinhala police; we still have a Sinhala army. After today if a single Marakkalaya [a derogatory Sinhalese term for a Muslim] or some other paraya [alien] touches a single Sinhalese . . . it will be their end.”67 • “On Fridays to go to the mosque, they close their shops for two hours. They switch off the lights and the air conditioning. Like broiler chickens in a coop, our boys and girls [non-Muslim workers] are left inside while they go to pray—they will go to hell for this.”68 • “Harems are being created. Are we to sit back and allow this to happen?”69

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31

• “Only monks can save this race.” (Gnanasara)70 • “Like Pope for Christians, he is considered as the leader for all Buddhists by the West. But we don’t accept him as the leader of the Buddhists. We see Dalai Lama is also a victim of the Muslim extremism.”71 • “If any Muslim were to lay a hand on any Buddhist, let alone a monk, that would be ‘the end of all of them.’”72 • “Kill all the Muslims. Don’t even save an infant.”73

In an October 2016 paper for the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri claimed that Buddhist extremists act with near total impunity.74 As he stated, “The confidence with which they displayed their violent behaviour in public spaces was remarkable. They grossly violated the law even in the presence of the police, who took no action. . . . They fully exploited the public respect for the robe and the authority that was commanded by those who wore it.” The Sri Lankan government might be fueling anti-Muslim sentiment by implying that foreign Islamic extremist groups could be encouraging the country’s Muslims to identify more with the “global Islamic community” than with their own nation, thus inhibiting integration. At a 2013 seminar, then defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa stated that “Muslim fundamentalism is spreading all over the world,” that “extremist elements” had been found trying to get to the island nation, and that “Muslim extremism in Sri Lanka is a cause for concern.”75 In the wake of Buddhist extremist attacks on Muslims, National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), an Islamic extremist group, was created in 2014. This group is believed to have been behind the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks across Sri Lanka, possibly with outside assistance (the Islamic State, otherwise known as IS, claimed that its “soldiers” were responsible for the carnage). Following these attacks, some Buddhists began to fear that they would be next, leading to reluctance to visit temples. In May 2019 one monk stated that the Sri Lankan intelligence service had told him the “next attack” would target a Buddhist temple. The tense atmosphere in Sri Lanka was boosting the position of Buddhist extremists in the opinion of one analyst: “The ordinary Buddhists are made to feel that they are under threat. This is the way Buddhist extremists can remain relevant. What we are seeing is the creation of a fear psychosis among the Buddhists. The end result will be a militarised society.”76

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Anti-Christian Extremism

According to the US Department of State, Buddhist extremists also harassed Sri Lankan Christians in 2017. Its annual report noted, Nondenominational Christian churches (often referred to as “evangelical” or “free groups”) continued to report physical attacks and harassment by police and local government officials whom they said often sided with the religious majority in a given community. Local authorities sometimes demanded the Christian groups stop worship activities or relocate their places of worship outside the local jurisdiction, ostensibly to maintain community peace.77

On July 11, 2017, Buddhists broke into a church in the eastern province while the pastor was conducting a prayer meeting, assaulted him, and dragged him outside. When the pastor contacted the police, he was told that his church had been accused of proselytizing, and the police were instructed to take action against him.78 A month earlier, Buddhist monks threatened a Christian pastor about converting local people to Christianity and asked him to leave the village.79 On Palm Sunday in 2019, a mob gathered at a Methodist building in Anuradhapura, bombarding the building with stones and firecrackers and trapping worshipers inside.80 How Significant Is This Violence in Sri Lanka?

In March 2014 the Sri Lankan minister of justice and leader of the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress submitted a fifty-page report to the UN high commissioner for human rights that noted that 241 anti-Muslim and 61 anti-Christian attacks had been documented in 2013, of which 51 and 15, respectively, were described as violent. During that same time frame, there were no significant attacks against either Buddhists or Hindus. More than one-third of the incidents were blamed on “social political movements or politicians.” The report accused law enforcement agencies and officials of being “dormant” in ignoring the attacks and protecting only certain Sri Lankan citizens.81 How “Buddhist” Is This Form of Extremism in Sri Lanka?

There is a Sri Lankan story about a battle between a Buddhist king and a Hindu-Tamil army in the second century BCE. When the king

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33

expressed remorse over the death toll and asked senior monks for advice, they told him not to worry because he had caused the deaths of only one and a half persons—one who had just converted to Buddhism and another who had been a Buddhist lay follower. All the rest had just been “unbelievers and men of evil life, not more to be esteemed than beasts.” 82 The justification of violence in the name of religion has a long history. Buddhist leaders who have incited acts of violence have been forced to disrobe because that is considered one of the offenses for which monks are forced out of the temple. This has caused extremists to disguise their words as defense of the faith and call for “proBuddhist affirmative action” at mass rallies. The recent surge in anti-Muslim violence promoted by Buddhist extremist leaders could be an outgrowth of the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Now that the LTTE terrorists have been defeated, these Buddhist leaders might be confident that Buddhism has prevailed over the Tamil Hindus and have now turned their attention to the country’s minority population of Muslims. They portray Muslims as relative newcomers who do not belong in Sri Lanka and who pose a threat to the majority population, in part because of their “high birthrate.” They have also made allegations that Muslims are putting sterilization medicine in food for Buddhists. The relative economic success of parts of the Sri Lankan Muslim community might also have given rise to jealousy, especially in light of the hardships the general Buddhist population faced during the war. Buddhist extremists have also taken advantage of worldwide Islamist extremism and terrorism to suggest that Sri Lanka’s Muslims are cut from the same cloth. In the minds of some, defending the nation from “foreign elements” justifies any action, including violence. Matthew Isaacs hypothesizes: In Sri Lanka, the dismantling of the Buddhist hierarchy coupled with a shortage of material resources encouraged many monks to embrace radicalism. Variation in this behavior can even be seen at the local level. Monks from historically wealthy temples tend to support a more traditional interpretation of Buddhism, while monks from historically poor temples tend to embrace a more radical message. The effect of this resource competition has been a general increase in both the radicalism and political activism advocated by monks. Especially since the 1970s, a growing number of monks have endorsed radical ethnic politics as a means of self-promotion.

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It was during this period that a series of influential monks began to preach against religious minorities.”83

At a 2014 panel at the School of Public Policy of the Central European University, several contributors explained the uptick in anti-Muslim violence in both Sri Lanka and Myanmar.84 A senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, Alan Keenan, noted that Sri Lanka witnessed the “consolidation of an ethnically Sinhalese, Buddhist triumphalism throughout society” and added that “the hope for a peace dividend has not come to fruition . . . with the victory instead giving rise to a new phenomenon of Singhalese Buddhist nationalist violence targeting not just Tamils, but Muslims in general.” The roots of this phenomenon lie in mistrust of the Muslim community built up during the war, currently being cultivated by groups such as the BBS that have been leading a campaign of hate speech and violence against Muslims, with the apparent support and patronage of the government, allegedly in response to rising Muslim extremism, which simply does not exist in Sri Lanka. In a 2013 article in The World Today, Charu Lata Hogg wrote that the end of the civil war created “space for new social fissures” and that “with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers and the subsequent political subjugation of the Tamil community, a dominant section of the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community in Sri Lanka stood in danger of losing the unity it had sustained by building its identity in opposition to a smaller, ethnic group.”85 Sri Lankan Muslims, unfortunately, became that weaker group of “others.”

How “Buddhist” Is This Form of Extremism Overall? There is no doubt that Buddhist religious leaders have been at the forefront of opposition movements in recent history. Protests tended to be peaceful in nature and remained so even in the face of violent repressive action by states. One of the most iconic photos of the twentieth century was the body of a Vietnamese monk engulfed in flames in Saigon in 1963 as a statement against both the South Vietnamese government and its treatment of Buddhists. Whether any of this can be traced to Buddhism is far from clear. Those advocating—and taking part in—violence probably see themselves as devout Buddhists, and their perception is not at issue.

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Whether their actions are consistent with Buddhist teachings is quite another matter. Little in Buddhist scripture condones violence. In fact, the faith teaches that those who use violence will have those acts revisited upon them (karma). Thus, extremist violence associated with Buddhist religious actors is likely motivated not by faith but by other factors (nationalism, prejudice, a sense of urgency, fear of the “other,” etc.). The leading scholar on the relationship between Buddhism and violence is Michael Jerryson. In a number of recent books (If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence; Buddhist Fury, Buddhist Warfare—written with Mark Juergensmeyer), Jerryson has shown that violence has been part of Buddhists’ lives since early days. He has cited sutras (scriptures) that condone warfare under certain conditions, such as texts that legally sanctioned warfare in Tibet and Mongolia and even promoted patriotic support for violence in Korea and Japan. Jerryson has sought to challenge the “social imaginary that holds Buddhist traditions to be pacifist and exotic,” noting that as human institutions, they are not immune from the problems humans face (and create).86 In 2019, Amresh Gunasingham wrote, The notion that Buddhism is under siege and in danger of being wiped out resonates with the Sinhalese and Bamar Buddhist majorities in both countries. Religious justification for the abovementioned rhetoric is derived from distorted interpretations of Theravada Buddhism scriptures, which elevate the preservation and defence of Buddhism (the sasana) above other traditional Buddhist values such as peace and compassion.”87

The Case of Aum Shinrikyo On March 20, 1995, millions of commuters in Tokyo flooded into the metro system, much as they did every other day, except that this day would prove different—and horrific. Someone—or some group—had left five bags of a highly toxic substance on three railway lines: sarin gas, a lethal poison developed by the Nazis. The bags began to leak, and the results were immediate. People began to choke and vomit. Some went blind and became paralyzed. In all, thirteen commuters died and more than 5,800 were injured. This was a massive terrorist attack. Authorities later learned that the perpetrators belonged to an

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obscure religious “cult” (also known as “new religious movement”) called Aum Shinrikyo (“supreme truth”) led by Shoko Asahara, who blended Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and who believed himself to be both Christ and the first “enlightened one” since the Buddha. The group was a cult in the classic sense: a strong, domineering leader whose followers worshipped him and even paid large amounts of money for his hair, blood, and even bathwater. Aum, as it was known, had been around since the early 1980s (it gained official religious status in 1989) and attracted students at elite Japanese universities. It morphed into a doomsday cult, convinced that the world was descending into World War III and that only its members would survive. Following the March 1995 attacks, Aum made several failed attempts to release hydrogen cyanide in various train stations. Police raided the cult’s headquarters and discovered chemicals to produce enough sarin gas to kill up to 4 million people. Asahara and six other members were executed on July 6, 2018. So what was Aum, and in what kind of violent extremism did it engage? How do we label a man who combined elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, and apocalyptic thinking and who saw himself simultaneously as Christ and a Buddha? Complicating matters, he created a cult following in the mold of Jim Jones and David Koresh. Although there is no question Asahara and Aum were not a normative example of any one religion, it is equally clear that the group was a religious extremist one. It used religious precepts to justify its decision to manufacture and deploy a chemical weapon of mass destruction. It concocted an end-of-time scenario, typically a religious concept. It is beyond the scope of this book to delve into the nature of cults; there are many good books on this subject. Some cults are religious in their ideas and structures. Some are mostly harmless (e.g., the Hare Krishnas and the cult of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon), whereas others engage in violence on a significant scale (e.g., Jonestown, Waco, and Tokyo). It is probable that Aum is both a cult and a violent religious extremist movement.

Efforts to Counter Buddhist Extremism To the credit of the majoritarian, “normative,” religious, monastic hierarchy, it has taken some steps to undermine and even censure the small number of extremists within its midst. A few examples follow:

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• In March 2017 Myanmar’s highest Buddhist authority, which includes forty-seven of the country’s most senior monks, imposed a one-year ban on U Wirathu’s preaching sermons, warning that a breach of this order would lead to legal action. The ban was intended to stop the “Buddhist Bin Laden” from spreading hate speech and “taking political sides” to inflame tensions. 88 The ban was duly lifted a year later, and U Wirathu denied that his anti-Muslim rhetoric had anything to do with violence in Rakhine.89 As an aside, Facebook removed U Wirathu’s account in February 2018 “for violating community standards.”90 • Supporters of a Sri Lankan intellectual movement known as Jathika Chinthanaya created a website on which they argued that the extremist BBS and its aggressive behavior toward Muslim and Christian minorities has little to do with authentic Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism.91 • Sri Lankan writer Mahinda Pathirana posted on yuthukama .com that BBS was “having a negative impact on the image of the Sinhala-Buddhist. . . . The monks and laymen who founded these organizations are opportunists and promote an agenda that paints Sinhala Buddhists as racists before the world.” Pathirana further warned Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist forces to be vigilant about this danger.92 • At a 2014 workshop organized in part by the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), the secretary general of Sarvodaya, a Sri Lankan Buddhist organization involved in many interreligious councils to seek responses to Buddhist-Muslim violence, noted that “religion has been captured, taken over,” adding, “If we prepare the religions and religious leaders first to look at their own religions before they have interfaith dialogues, we can have a very big impact.”93 • In 2016 a group of Thai Muslims filed a court complaint in Thailand against the administrators of a Facebook page that spread anti-Islamic propaganda. The group, Muslims Love Peace, filed the suit after a post claiming that Thai Muslims had “wormed their way into the Ministry of Education and forced Buddhist students to learn about Islam.” The lawyer representing the group stated, “Even if the court doesn’t want to touch the case, it shows people what he’s doing is illegal. It sends a message to people who follow the extremists that it’s wrong.”94

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• A Buddhist monk, Nelligala Dhammaratne, stopped a Buddhist mob from continuing to attack Muslims in early 2018, admonished them, and encouraged them to disperse. His heroic actions were offset, however, by his conviction that anti-Islamic myths spread on Facebook were true, such as that Muslim shop owners placed chemicals in bras to sterilize Buddhist women, Muslim doctors sterilized Buddhist patients without their knowledge, and Muslims in government were secret extremists.95 • Amresh Gunasingham noted in March 2019, “The majority Buddhist communities and clergy in both Sri Lanka and Myanmar are not monolithic, and many have criticised the actions of a fringe minority of extremists. There are several examples, both on social media and on the streets, of public sermons and demonstrations by those championing peaceful coexistence and an end to violence.”96

Conclusions In each of the cases examined in this chapter, a small extremist part of the Buddhist majority has carried out acts of violence against members of the minority Muslim community (and at times against Christians). These acts have been inspired, and at times led, by Buddhist monks who have spread hatred about the Muslims who share their country. Muslims have been called outsiders who do not belong in nations where the majority adheres to Buddhism. Some of the violence has ensued from rumors, shared via social media, that strain credulity: for example, that Muslims are putting contraceptives in the food they sell to Buddhists. After these falsehoods are disseminated, mob violence often follows. Police are often unable, or in some cases unwilling, to interfere, and on occasions they blame the victims for their suffering. I did not find much sacred text justification for this form of Buddhist extremism. Not being able to speak Thai, Sinhalese, or Burmese undoubtedly hampered my research efforts. Those with these linguistic abilities could provide a useful corollary to my analysis. Despite the lack of overt religious canonical evidence, the violent extremism in these three nations is inextricably tied to Buddhism. Many in these countries oppose the acts committed by the extremist minority in the name of its faith, but the dominance of so

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many Buddhist monks and religious leaders in terrorism leaves little alternative but to conclude that they truly believe their faith sanctions this kind of violence.

Notes 1. Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), “‘No Genocide Happened Here’: 1 Year After Rohingya Exodus, Only Handful Have Returned.” 2. Karen Armstrong, Buddha, xi. 3. Pew Research Center, “Size and Projected Growth of Major Religious Groups.” 4. Yang Siqi, “Life in Purgatory: Buddhism Is Growing in China but Lies in Legal Limbo.” 5. Milton Osborne, “Buddhist Monks and Political Activism in Cambodia.” 6. For a disturbing account of the rapes of Rohingya women by Burmese soldiers, see Kristen Gelineau, “Silent Pain: Babies of Rohingya Rape Survivors Silently Emerge.” 7. Hannah Beech, “Myanmar Official Line: Rohingya Are Returning, but Cracks in That Story Abound.” 8. Reuters, “Bangladesh Faces Refugee Anger over Term ‘Rohingya.’” 9. Lowy Institute, “Buddhist Monks and Political Activism in Cambodia.” 10. BBC News, “Who Are Burma’s Karen Rebels?” 11. Burma Campaign UK, “2007 Uprising in Burma.” 12. Fiona MacGregor, “Burma’s ‘Bin Laden of Buddhism.’” 13. Alex Bookbinder, “969: The Strange Numerological Basis for Burma’s Religious Violence.” 14. Marella Oppenheim, “It Only Takes One Terrorist: The Buddhist Monk Who Reviles Myanmar’s Muslims.” 15. Kate Hodal, “Buddhist Monk Uses Racism and Rumours to Spread Hatred in Burma.” 16. Hodal, “Buddhist Monk Uses Racism.” 17. Hodal, “Buddhist Monk Uses Racism.” 18. Hodal, “Buddhist Monk Uses Racism.” 19. MacGregor, “Burma’s ‘Bin Laden of Buddhism.’” 20. MacGregor, “Burma’s ‘Bin Laden of Buddhism.’” 21. Hodal, “Buddhist Monk Uses Racism.” 22. Htun Aung Gyaw, “How Religion Is Being Used to Win Power in Myanmar.” 23. MacGregor, “Burma’s ‘Bin Laden of Buddhism’”; Joe Freeman, “Can Anyone Stop Burma’s Hardline Buddhist Monks?” 24. Bookbinder, “969.” 25. Freeman, “Can Anyone Stop Burma’s Hardline Buddhist Monks?” 26. Lee Short, “Facebook Tries to Silence Myanmar’s Hateful Monks.” 27. Daily Sun (Bangladesh), “Rohingya Crisis: Myanmar Monk Hits Back Against UN, International Community.”

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28. Aung Kyaw Min, “Nationalist Supporters Say They Will Protect Buddha Dhamma Parahita.” 29. Aung Kyaw Min, “Ultranationalists Warn of Trouble After Sign Ban.” 30. Beech, “Myanmar Official Line.” 31. Adam Arnold, “Hundreds of Buddhists in Myanmar Protest Against Rohingya Return.” 32. Agence France Presse, “Rakhine Monks Rally Opposing Rohingya Return.” 33. Gwynne Dyer, “The Reluctant Rohingyas,” 4. 34. Paul Mozur, “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, with Posts from Myanmar’s Military.” 35. Zoltan Barany, “Where Myanmar Went Wrong,” 141–154. 36. Moe Myint, “Christians, Buddhists Brawl in Southern Rakhine on Christmas Eve.” 37. Hal Bernton, “Dalai Lama Urges Students to Shape World.” 38. Paul Vrieze, “Indonesian Groups Call for Jihad Against Burma, to Dismay of Burmese Muslims.” 39. Nan Lwin Hnin Pwint, “I Want to Stress We Are Not the Enemy.” 40. TRT World, “Buddhist Militia Kill Seven Myanmar Police in Rakhine Attacks.” 41. Abby Seiff and Rin Jirenuwat, “A Thai Monk Is Using Social Media to Preach Violence Against Muslims.” 42. Seiff and Jirenuwat, “Thai Monk Is Using Social Media to Preach Violence.” 43. Seiff and Jirenuwat, “Thai Monk Is Using Social Media to Preach Violence.” 44. Thailand News, “Monk Calls on Govt to Burn 1 Mosque for 1 Dead Buddhist Monk.” 45. Sanitsuda Ekachai, “Stop the Racist Monk Before It’s Too Late.” 46. Seiff and Jirenuwat, “Thai Monk Is Using Social Media to Preach Violence.” 47. Hutt, “Thai Nationalism and the Rise of Buddhist Extremism.” 48. Rohini Mohan, “Sri Lanka’s Violent Buddhists.” 49. Wire, “Buddhism to Remain Paramount in Changed Sri Lankan Constitution, Says Prime Minister.” 50. Economist, “Anti-Muslim Riots in Sri Lanka Signal a New Social Fissure.” 51. Colombo Gazette, “BBS Insists Lanka Not Multiracial.” 52. Samanth Subramanian, This Divided Island, 226. 53. Dharisha Bastians and Gardiner Harris, “Buddhist-Muslim Unrest Boils Over in Sri Lanka.” 54. Frances Bulathsinghala, “War Over, Conflict On.” 55. Charles Haviland, “Sri Lankan Buddhist Monks Destroy Muslim Shrine.” 56. Jeff Kingston, “Culture of Fear Lingers in War-Traumatized Sri Lanka.” 57. Gamini Karunasena and Wasantha Rupasinghe, “Sri Lankan Buddhist Chauvinists Provoke Violence Against Muslims.”

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58. Munza Mushtaq, “Anti-Muslim Sentiment Foils Sri Lanka’s Bid to Tap Into Global Halal Market.” 59. Colombo Telegraph, “BBS Gnasara’s Suicide Jackets Claim: Muslim Council Goes to Police Commission.” 60. New Age, “Lanka Nabs 19 After Buddhist, Muslim Clash.” 61. Colombo Gazette, “Gnanasara Thero Found Guilty and Sentenced to Jail.” 62. Business Standard, “Sri Lanka Declares Emergency, Buddhists Burn Muslim Shops.” 63. Mohan, “Sri Lanka’s Violent Buddhists.” 64. Lanka News, “Mahason Balakaya—Who?” 65. Zaheena Rasheed, “In Sri Lanka Hate Speech and Impunity Fuel Anti-Muslim Violence.” 66. Colombo Telegraph, “Exclusive: Mahason Balakaya Leader Caught on Video Plotting Anti-Muslim Attacks with BBS Gnanasara.” 67. Tisaranee Gunasekara, “Horror in Aluthgama: Their Crime, Our Shame.” 68. Colombo Telegraph, “Video Evidence: BBS Encourages Violence Against Muslim-Owned Fashion Bug.” 69. Colombo Telegraph, “Video Evidence.” 70. BBC News, “Sri Lanka Hardline Group Calls for Halal Boycott.” 71. Al Jazeera, “Sri Lanka Hardline Monk Denounces Dalai Lama.” 72. Tim Hume, “‘Fascists’ in Saffron Robes? The Rise of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist Ultra-Nationalists.” 73. Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, “Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match.” 74. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, “New Buddhist Extremism and the Challenges to Ethno-Religious Coexistence in Sri Lanka.” 75. Colombo Page, “Muslim Allies of Sri Lankan Government React to Defense Secretary’s Comments on Muslim Extremism.” 76. Amal Jayasinghe and Alexandre Marchand, “Suicide Bombers Fuel Fears Among Sri Lanka’s Majority Buddhists.” 77. US Department of State, “Religious Freedom Report for 2015.” 78. US Department of State, “Religious Freedom Report for 2015.” 79. US Department of State, “Religious Freedom Report for 2015.” 80. Hannah Beech, Dharisha Bastians, and Kai Schultz, “Religious Minorities Across Asia Suffer amid Surge in Sectarian Politics.” 81. Gihan Nicholas, “Hakeem’s ‘Damning’ Report.” 82. Peter Lehr, “Militant Buddhism Is on the March in Southeast Asia— Where Did It Come From?” 83. Matthew Isaacs, “Why Are Buddhist Monks Promoting Violence in Sri Lanka?” 84. Central European University, School of Public Policy, “What Is Causing Buddhist Violence Against Muslims?” 85. Charu Lata Hogg, “When Buddhists Turn Nasty.” 86. David B. Gray, “The Violent Face of Buddhism: A Review of Buddhist Warfare.” 87. Amresh Gunasingham, “Buddhist Extremism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar: An Examination.”

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88. Deutsche Welle, “Hate Speech Myanmar Monk Banned from Preaching by Buddhist Council.” 89. Shoon Naing, “Myanmar Monk Returns to Preaching after Ban, Denies Fueling Rakhine Violence.” 90. Laignee Barron, “Nationalist Monk Known as the ‘Burmese Bin Laden’ Has Been Stopped from Spreading Hate on Facebook.” 91. Dewasiri, “New Buddhist Extremism,” 30. 92. Dewasiri, “New Buddhist Extremism,” 32. 93. USIP, “Religious Leaders Countering Violent Extremism: How Policy Changes Can Help.” 94. Abby Seiff, “Thai Muslims Seek Legal Fight Against Buddhist Extremism.” 95. Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “Tracing Facebook’s Harms in Sri Lanka,” A2. 96. Gunasingham, “Buddhist Extremism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar,” 5.

3 Christian Extremism

We are engaged in a struggle to the death between the people of the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of Satan. —Gordon Kahl, a self-styled Christian patriot who murdered a deputy US marshal

In the past, Christians have resorted to violence against innumerable individuals and nations, both Christian and non-Christian. But a few historical examples include the Crusades (against Muslims), the Catholic wars in Europe (against Protestants), the pogroms (against Jews), and colonization involving genocide (of so-called nonbelievers and indigenous peoples). However, are there examples of modern Christian extremism? The answer is definitely yes, even if the “Christianness” of those turning to violence is more implicit than explicit.

A Brief Overview of Christianity The origins of Christianity lie in the acts and words of a Jewish prophet, Jesus Christ, born under Roman occupation in what later became Palestine and Israel. He took up preaching in his homeland, proclaiming the “good news” of a creed built on the Judaism of his ancestors, which he took further. He and his disciples spread messages of love and tolerance as well as a position against violence. 43

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“Do unto others as you wish they would do unto you” and “Love your enemy” are just two of the lessons of peace Jesus Christ taught his followers. According to his followers, Jesus is the son of God. The Jewish religious leaders saw their worship of him as blasphemy. Because of this and because he threatened their long-standing power, they betrayed him to the ruling Romans, who tortured and crucified him, a common death penalty in those days. However, as the Christians believe, three days after his death on the cross he was resurrected, came back to lead his disciples, and ascended into heaven. The small coterie of Jesus’ followers were persecuted by Romans and Jews until Emperor Constantine became the first Christian leader of the Romans. Christianity became the empire’s official religion under Theodosius I in 380 CE. The Christian church, in its 2,000 years, has experienced persecution, official status, the great schism of 1074, the Reformation, growth worldwide through colonialism and missionary movements, and late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century marginalism in many countries as the faith has lost many adherents (although it grew in some nations). The religion has inspired remarkable works of art and horrific violence in Christ’s name. Christian leaders have not hesitated to use their faith as justification to launch wars. Pope Urban II initiated the First Crusade with the words Deus le volt (“God wills it”). Christians have justified killing nonbelievers and believers (albeit of the “wrong” kind of Christianity) alike, clearly contrary to the messages of Jesus Christ. In modern times, there is no shortage of Christians who call for violence or frame that violence as a Christian mandate. The targets of Christian extremism range from Muslims to Jews to other undesirables (often immigrants), along with other Christians on occasion. To understand how Christian extremism leads to violence, one has to examine its followers known as the right wing or far right.

Right-Wing Extremism Before discussing Christian extremism, I look at the larger phenomenon of right-wing extremism. In recent years there has been a lot of attention, especially in Western media, to right-wing extremism (also known as far-right extremism). Media and scholars cite many

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facts about the rise in this form of violence, with some making dire predictions that it poses a greater threat than Islamic extremism, which I discuss in Chapter 6. Some analysts warn that Western obsession with groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have blinded us to a more perilous group. It does seem true that right-wing and hate groups have become more active in the West in recent years. Think tanks such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have documented a rise in hate crimes that seemed to coincide with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and has continued under President Trump.1 I must emphasize, however, that the phenomenon long predates either of those US leaders, and it is a trend not only in the United States but in many European countries. A great deal has been written on right-wing extremism, and the reader has a rich literature she or he can access to learn more. However, for our purposes, suffice it to say that right-wing groups tend to share most, if not all, of the following characteristics:

• A belief in a better era in the past and a desire to return to it (e.g., “Make America Great Again”) • A belief in a “purer” past that has become “tainted” today • A belief in racial conformity (i.e., a need to keep a society white—often termed white supremacy) • A belief that high immigration rates are deleterious to the society described above, with a particular angst over Muslim immigration; this fear is also framed as a campaign by nonwhite immigrants to “replace” white (and by extension Christian) people • A high degree of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia • A belief in sexual heterogeneity, that is, against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Although I do not feature anti-LGBT violence in this chapter, one quote is illustrative. In a crackdown on the LGBT community in Poland, the head of the powerful Law and Justice Party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, told his party convention in March 2017, “It comes down to, as we know today, sexualization of children from the earliest childhood. . . . We need to fight this. We need to defend the Polish family. We need to defend it furiously because it’s a threat to civilization, not just for Poland but for the entire Europe, for the entire civilization that is based on Christianity.”2

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There are certainly more aspects to this belief system than those I just listed. I can also divide right-wing extremists into subtypes, acknowledging that these have overlapping characteristics:

• Racist extremists focus on racial purity (predominantly white, although African American and other right-wing extremists of color exist) • Neo-Nazi extremists follow the ideology of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany during World War II and also focus on racial and ethnic purity (i.e., the Aryan race), promoting violent anti-Semitism • Sovereign citizen extremists refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the state • Anti-immigrant and xenophobic extremists feel threatened by and want to rid their countries of immigrants who practice different faiths and cultures (known as foreign elements) • Neofascist extremists are anticommunist, anti-Marxist, antisocialist, and ultranationalist • Anti-abortion extremists call themselves pro-life because they believe human life begins at conception, and those who provide abortion services must be stopped, by killing them if necessary

The Links Between Christianity and the Far Right Right-wing groups tend to be Christian when religion plays a role in their ideology (not all extremist groups have a religious profile). Far-right Christian groups believe the countries in which they live are by definition Christian nations and should remain so. Generally in these nations a majority of citizens identify as Christian. However, in some of these countries, as formal Christian practices, such as church attendance, drop, some devout Christians feel threatened by their potential loss of majority status and by the growth of nonChristian faith communities. Here it is worth differentiating nations of the Western world. In Europe (the “Old World”), where Christianity grew rapidly after the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Catholic Church (and later the advent of Protestantism), the religion spread across the continent as kingdoms and later nation-states developed. The people

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of these lands practiced cuius regio eius religio (“whose realm his religion”); the faith of the ruler became the faith of the ruled. This was before universal human rights and freedom of religion came about with the French and American revolutions. It was a time of low levels of education and literacy; hence, it made sense that the faith of the monarch was the de facto state religion. In the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand (the “New World”), by contrast, colonization by England, Spain, the Netherlands, and France brought rulers and religion to lands already inhabited for millennia by peoples who governed themselves and worshipped in their own ways. The newcomers not only brought Christianity but saw these lands as excellent places to spread the Word, Christianity being a missionary creed. The spiritual practices of the existing nations were ignored or seen as heathen, false faiths. The original immigrants of the Christian church imposed their beliefs, often by force, on the first Americans and aboriginal Australians and New Zealanders. Thus, right-wing extremists’ yearning to return to a past in which Christianity represented the “original” faith of the New World is based on historical fiction. The Christian aspect of right-wing extremism is an integral part of the ethos of some modern movements. The conviction that Christianity is superior to other systems of belief, especially those such as Judaism and Islam, seen as unwanted latecomers to these societies, is also extended to the notion of race. Colonization of the New World brought with it the institution of slavery. This abhorrent practice was not invented in the West; it has existed in societies across the globe and throughout history. Yet the abduction of people in Africa and elsewhere and the sale of them as slaves in the New World was justified as “God’s plan” based on a theory of racial inequality (i.e., white/Christian races were superior to black or brown/non-Christian ones). The fact that many African Americans are now also Christian, the result of centuries of conversion (in many cases by force), has not eliminated the view that white/Christian people are higher in God’s hierarchy. It is not possible for me to provide an exhaustive list of rightwing extremist groups and their identification with Christianity because Christian extremism is only one of the six faith-based justifications of violence I discuss in this book. However, the following examples show how some right-wing extremist groups entwine Christianity with their political identities:

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• Extremists known as Phineas priests believe they have been called to be “God’s Holy Warriors” for the white race. The epithet is derived from the biblical story of Phineas, which adherents interpret as justifying the killing of interracial couples. Followers have advocated violence against homosexuals, mixed-race couples, and abortion providers, along with their own martyrdom in committing it.3 • Many members of right-wing “militia” movements believe that “the Christian faith was the anchor of the founding fathers of these United States,” and “people of faith, Christians in particular, recognize that God is the source of all things, and that Rights come from God alone.” Thus, they argue that the US Constitution was “divinely inspired.”4 • Apocalyptic right-wing extremist movements cite the Bible regarding the “end times” and base their belief system on “the testimony of Jesus.”5 • Sovereign citizens, sometimes also known as Freemen on the Land, reject the authority of the state and refuse to abide by its rules (e.g., they will not pay taxes or obtain driver’s licenses). They see their right to autonomy as inspired and sanctioned by God. • The Knights Templar International describes itself as a “Christian Organization and as such we reject all forms of racism as anti-Biblical and reject all forms of political hatred no matter from what end of the political spectrum it comes from . . . and firmly believe[s] in the dignity and humanity of all people regardless of colour, creed, ethnicity or political persuasion.” Yet, the group’s website states that the world faces threats from “radical Islam, liberalism, political corruption, cultural Marxism and anti-Christian bigotry.”6 In November 2018, a thirtyseven-year-old British man who shared the group’s posts pleaded guilty to five counts of building explosive devices. He had made several anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments online prior to his arrest.7 • In 2017 the SPLC listed eleven “radical traditional Catholic hate groups” that “subscribe to an ideology that is rejected by the Vatican and some 70 million mainstream American Catholics . . . (and) routinely pillory Jews as ‘the perpetual enemy of Christ.’”8 • Maxime Fiset, a self-confessed “former” neo-Nazi, created a hate group in Quebec called the Fédération des Québécois de

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Souche (FQS; loosely translated as Federation of Original Quebecers), which has praised the provincial government for passing a new anti-immigration law. Members of the FQS believe that “Quebec should prioritize European and Christian immigration to preserve Quebec identity.”9

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama, writing in Foreign Affairs in 2018, summed up the belief systems of right-wing extremists: “The religious right tells a similar story: ‘You are a member of a great community of believers that has been betrayed by nonbelievers; this betrayal has led to your impoverishment and is a crime against God.’”10 In some instances the Christianity of far-right individuals and groups is perhaps more implicit than explicit. Their violence often targets members of non-Christian groups (e.g., Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, etc.). Even if the language right-wing extremists use to call for or justify attacks is not overtly Christian, it may be the underlying driver of violence because these individuals and groups see “their” way of life—white, Christian, and “European” or “American”—as threatened by recent interlopers who belong to none of those categories. In order to preserve “society,” these immigrants must leave. The dominant faith of the proponents of “pure” societies is Christianity, even if they do not overtly refer to it, because Christianity is by default part of their identification.

The Use of Christian Symbols by Extremist Groups There are some obvious examples of Christian imagery, such as the cross. Because Jesus Christ was crucified, the cross has become Christians’ most popular symbol. Adherents wear it on chains around their necks, priests use it to bless people, and supplicants use the sign of the cross to mark the beginning and end of their prayers. Followers of Christ transformed this instrument of death into one of life. Given many Christians’ conviction that their faith is somehow superior to those of others, especially immigrants, seen as latecomers, extremist individuals and groups have incorporated the cross into their badges and insignia:

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• Stormfront uses the Celtic cross, presenting the Nordic god Odin as white power • Neo-Nazis use the Iron Cross because it was a symbol of Nazi Germany • The Spanish Defense League features a kneeling crusader on its Facebook page11 • Anti-ISIS fighters fly the Templar flag in Syria12

Anti-Muslim Violence Right-wing extremist groups are known to target specific communities with their hatred and violence. For instance, they tend to be virulently homophobic and are known to persecute LGBT individuals, as the Nazis did by branding them with pink triangles and beating and killing them. Two groups that merit special attention for being targeted as religious communities are Muslims and Jews. In the following sections, I will discuss each separately. Anti-Muslim hatred is an old phenomenon that has resurged in recent years. The rise of Islam in the seventh century CE and the rapid Muslim conquest of much of Asia, North Africa, and even parts of Europe within 100 years of the death of Muhammad was monumental. Large parts of the world where Christianity had ruled supreme, or at least enjoyed a long historical presence, were invaded by Muslim armies. Although Islamic leaders recognized both Jews and Christians as Ahl al-Kitab (“people of the book”) in deference to their common scriptural heritage from the Torah to the New Testament to the Quran, populations conquered by Muslim overlords had restrictions placed on them. Jewish and Christian services were tolerated, but conversions were not (i.e., no new members of the faiths were allowed). Jews and Christians had to pay jizya (tax) for the privilege of worshipping. Any other faith was ruled out, and its members had to convert to Islam. Particularly upsetting to the Christians was the Muslim seizure of Jerusalem in the 630s. Although the Islamic leaders still gave pilgrims access to the Holy Land, following a number of power struggles, by the end of the eleventh century CE, Pope Urban II issued his famous call for a crusade to protect pilgrims and Christians from the East. Hence, the first of many long wars between Christian and Muslim armies ensued.

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There are many good books on the Crusades, and I do not develop the topic here, except to note that, in the wake of higher levels of Muslim immigration to the West beginning in the 1960s, talk of a new “crusade” (albeit from East to West) began to gain currency. Christians began to see Muslim immigration as a threat and made allusions to the sieges of Vienna that ended in 1683. Muslim immigrants were perceived as averse to integration into Western society. Words such as Islamicization and Eurabia began to surface. Right-wing groups called for Muslims not to be allowed to settle in the West, or for those already living there to be deported. Because several European countries had developed post–World War II Gastarbeiter (“guest worker”) programs, bringing Muslims as muchneeded labor (with the assumption they would return home one day; most did not), this could involve removing generations of families. In recent years, right-wing extremists have planned and carried out violent attacks against Muslims in the West. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 clearly contributed to the anti-Islam sentiment because Christian extremists saw these as an attempt to bring the West to its knees. Some warn of “stealth jihad,” a campaign to implant Islam in the West and eventually take over Western society. Here are a few examples:

• In April 2018 three right-wing militiamen from rural Kansas were found guilty in a 2016 plot to slaughter Muslim refugees living in an apartment complex in Garden City.13 • In June 2017 Darren Osborne ran over worshippers outside a mosque in London, killing one and wounding twelve. The attack was apparently in retribution for an Islamic extremist attack on Westminster Bridge two weeks earlier. • German authorities have suggested that as many as 849 people, many of them Muslims, have been killed by right-wing extremists in that country since 1990.14 • In 2018 a group known as Operational Forces Action planned to kill Muslims in France to “defend France’s identity.”15 • The leader of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz Party has portrayed himself as the savior of Hungary’s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe and stated his government would make it harder for Muslim refugees to enter the country, despite the freedom of movement under Schengen.16 In a similar vein,

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the leader of the anti-immigrant Lega Party in Italy, Matteo Salvini, has proposed placing a crucifix in all public places in Italy to “reinforce Italy’s traditions.”17 • In the wake of the attacks by Islamist extremists on Catholic churches in Sri Lanka on April 21, 2019, the country’s Muslims live in fear of retaliatory action by Christians. There were reports of gangs of young Christian men moving from house to house, smashing windows, breaking down doors, dragging people into the streets, punching them in the face, and then threatening to kill them, although no deaths have been reported.18

Anti-Jewish Violence

Whether it was the slaughter of Jewish communities across Europe by Christian armies during the First Crusade (and the killing of thousands within Jerusalem after it was “liberated”), pogroms in Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, it is clear that Jews have been targeted in many campaigns of violence throughout history. Some Christians have targeted Jews as the “killers” of Jesus Christ (Jewish leaders influenced Roman authorities to arrest, torture, and crucify him) or were angry about or jealous of the prosperity and success stereotypically associated with the Jewish community. AntiSemitism has also derived from conspiracy theories such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated Russian manifesto from the early twentieth century that described a plan by Jews to attain world domination. It is not hard to find direct, specifically anti-Semitic hate speech from right-wing extremist individuals and groups: • In October 2018 a right-wing extremist named Robert Bowers killed eleven worshippers in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On his Gab feed he had posted: “jews are the children of satan. (john 8:44)—the lord jesus christ is come in the flesh.”19 • According to German authorities, of 522 recorded anti-Semitic crimes committed there in 2017, 479 were carried out by neoNazis.20 • At the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, slogans such as “Jews will not replace us,” “Blood and soil” (a Nazi reference), and “This city is run by Jewish communists” were heard.21

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• A neo-Nazi march in the Norwegian city of Kristiansand in summer 2017 called for crushing the “gay lobby” run by “Jewish cultural Marxists.”22 • During the 2017 commemoration of Poland’s national day, 60,000 neo-Nazi demonstrators marched under slogans such as “We want God” and “Pure Poland, white Poland.” One demonstrator said he wanted to “remove Jewry from power.”23 • During a series of demonstrations in eastern Germany in summer 2018, neo-Nazis in Chemnitz allegedly staged a vicious attack on a local Jewish restaurant, shouting “Get out of Germany you Jewish pig.”24 • A former white supremacist, Tim Zaal, considered himself a patriot fighting against a Jewish conspiracy to commit “genocide” on the white race.25 • The Church of the Creator, a US hate group founded in the early 1970s, stated, “We gird for total war against the Jews and the rest of the goddamned mud races of the world—politically, militantly, financially, morally and religiously. In fact, we regard it as the heart of our religious creed, and as the most sacred credo of all. We regard it as a holy war to the finish—a racial holy war. Rahowa! [sic; RaHoWa is the acronym for Racial Holy War, also spelled RAHOWA] is INEVITABLE. . . . No longer can the mud races and the White Race live on the same planet.”26 • In 2012 the leader of the Hungarian far-right political party Jobbik called for the state to “draw up a list of Jews who pose a national security risk.”27

Some have argued that anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish violence have much in common. In many cases the “enemies” far-right terrorists list in their manifestos or propaganda include both Muslims and Jews (both originally Semitic peoples). As Mehdi Hasan and Jonathan Freedland wrote in April 2019 in The Intercept: “This is how our haters see us: Jews and Muslims connected in a joint enterprise to effect a ‘white genocide.’ It is an unhinged and racist conspiracy theory—and it has both of our communities in its murderous sights.”28 According to a 2018 Pew Research Center poll, Self-described Christians in Western Europe are more likely than religiously unaffiliated adults to hold negative views toward immigrants and religious minorities. They’re also more inclined to

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express nationalist attitudes. . . . Christian identity has become a kind of cultural marker for some Europeans—a way of differentiating themselves from newcomers and minorities—even if they are not particularly religious . . . attitudes toward Jews and Muslims are highly correlated with each other. People who express negative opinions about Muslims are more likely than others to also express negative views of Jews. People who say they are unwilling to accept Muslims as members of their family are also more likely than others to say they are unwilling to accept Jews in their family.29

Anti-Sikh Violence

Sikhs’ skin color and dress indicates to anti-immigrant extremists that they are “foreign elements” despite how long they have lived in the West. The most extreme acts of violence perpetrated against Sikhs in the United States by right-wing actors are usually “mistaken hate crimes,” as CNN has called them.30 Those who beat or kill Sikhs often confuse them for Muslims, and in the post-9/11 fear of Muslim immigration and Islamic extremism, this phenomenon had a small uptick:

• In 2010 two men assaulted a Sikh cab driver in California, breaking the orbital bone around his eye and fracturing a bone in his spinal column. The perpetrators, one of whom was eventually convicted of a hate crime, tauntingly called the victim “Osama bin Laden” as they punched him.31 • In 2012 a man attacked a Sikh taxi driver in Washington, hospitalizing him with serious kidney injuries after he stomped on the defenseless victim. The assailant yelled “Motherfucker, what are you doing here? Why did you come to my country?” and told police that he had attacked his victim “because he was a towel-head.”32 • In 2017 drunk men battered a Sikh New York cabbie, shouting “Ali Baba, fuck you!”33 • The most serious attack was in 2012, when a US army veteran who often spoke of RAHOWA shot ten people (killing four) in a Sikh gurdwara (temple) in Wisconsin.34

Anti-Abortion Violence

To Christians and members of most faiths, life is sacred, a gift from God. As such it is inviolable and must be protected from birth to nat-

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ural death. This belief explains why many Christians oppose assisted suicide or any other medical decision to facilitate the deaths of those with terminal diseases or suffering from unbearable pain. Many Christians also vehemently reject abortion as the taking of an innocent life (some go as far as to condemn all forms of birth control, preferring to leave the decision whether to initiate life in “God’s hands”). Opposition to abortion has, on occasion, led extremists to bomb abortion facilities and murder medical staff who provide contraception and abortion along with other women’s health-care services, such as screening for breast cancer. The Army of God, for example, advocates violence as an acceptable way to end abortion. Its manual states that the Army of God “is a real Army, and God is the General and Commander-in-Chief. The soldiers, however, do not usually communicate with one another. Very few have ever met each other. And when they do, each is usually unaware of the other’s soldier status. That is why the Feds will never stop this Army. Never. And we have not yet even begun to fight.”35 There have been many attacks against doctors and clinics perceived to perform abortions in a number of countries: • In November 2015 Robert L. Dear opened fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three and wounding several others. The extremist expressed that he was “happy” with this act as he “will be met in Heaven by aborted fetuses wanting to thank him for saving unborn babies.”36 • In November 2017 US federal authorities charged three men for the attempted bombing of an abortion clinic in Champaign, Illinois.37 • Abortion advocates in the United States expressed concern in November 2018 over the “uptick” in threats of violence, linking it to the increasingly divided political rhetoric fostered by the Trump administration and the possibility the Trump Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (1973), which has emboldened pro-lifers.38

The Case of Anders Breivik On July 22, 2011, a bomb exploded on a street in Oslo, Norway, near several government buildings, killing eight people. A few hours later, a man traveled to the island of Utoya, where the Workers Youth League

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was holding a summer camp, and opened fire, killing sixty-nine people. Between the two incidents more than three hundred people were injured. The man behind both attacks was Anders Behring Breivik, a selfconfessed Odinist (white power proponent). On the day of his massacres, he distributed a manuscript of over 1,500 pages, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick. The screed blames many of Europe’s ills on feminists, Marxists, “enviro-communists” (a hybrid environmental-Marxist ideology), and Muslims and calls for the deportation of the latter from the European continent. Breivik claimed his terrorist acts were to draw attention to his “manifesto.” Scholars of terrorism have debated what to label Breivik’s brand of extremist violence: religious, far right, ultranationalist, or another moniker. He claimed to be a Knight Templar and a “modern-day crusader.” The Knights Templar, also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple, was a Catholic military order active from its recognition by Pope Innocent II in 1139 until its dissolution under Pope Clement in 1312. With signature white tunics emblazoned with a red cross, the Knights Templar was a formidable fighting force during the Crusades, ostensibly as protection for religious pilgrims. The group’s rapid descent from power in the fourteenth century has led to many rumors and conspiracy theories. That Breivik considered himself a modern-day Knight Templar and crusader does not make him a religious extremist per se. However, there are countless references to religion in his manifesto as well as a few biblical excerpts near the end. It is important to point out two things about Breivik’s work: 1. He cites many other people in his text; thus, it is not all his own analysis. 2. The 1,500-page document covers a broad swath of topics, and it is impossible for me to do it justice in this chapter. Nevertheless, in many instances Breivik uses and misuses Christian imagery and history to justify violence to preserve what he sees as the “real” Europe.

Among Breivik’s religious concerns are:

• He was convinced Europe was, at a minimum, blind to the Islamicization of the continent or that governments were actually in favor of it.

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• He warned of a pervasive Eurabia project and that the European Union (EU) “treats Islam as a traditional, European religion on par with Christianity and Judaism,” with a view to “instilling in children a proper dose of ‘Eurabian indoctrination.’” • He described multiculturalism as a “medieval” ideology that would take Europe back to pre-Enlightenment days. • He said European countries are “Islamicizing,” and Muslims will not stop until they become 100 percent of each nation’s population. • He claimed armed warfare is the only solution because it has become “meaningless” to participate in the democratic process under the current conditions and the strength of the multicultural lobby. • He self-identified as a Christian, describing Christianity as his “cultural, social, identity and moral platform.” To strengthen the Christian nature of Europe, he said, it was important to ensure that a “sustainable and traditional version of Christendom is propagated.” • According to him, “European Christendom and the cross will be the symbol in which every cultural conservative can unite under in our common defence. It should serve as the uniting symbol for all Europeans.”

Toward the end of his manifesto Breivik notes that, contrary to the view of many Christians, self-defense is both a right and a duty for Christians. He goes on to cite several Old and New Testament passages to support his views, including:

• “‘Each of you strap on your sword!’ So they did, and David strapped his on as well. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed with the supplies.” (Samuel 25:13) • “God chose new leaders when war came to the city gates, but not a shield or spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel.” (Judges 5:8) • “Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.” (Psalms 144:1–2) • “He said to them, ‘But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’” (Luke 22:36) • “For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.” (1 Corinthians 4:20)

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Breivik saw Europe as weakened by immigration, Islam, environmentalism, and Marxism and believed that the only recourse was to launch a revolution. He wrote that God would anoint, protect, and go before those who fought in his name. He added: “Each Christian must now make their own personal decision on all of this. You can either choose to learn how to rise up in the power of your Lord and Saviour and learn how to become a true warrior in the Lord, or you can continue to keep your head in the sand and oppressor after oppressor keep beating you down. The choice is yours.” It is noteworthy that he elected to attack the Norwegian government—through his bombing of a district in Oslo where several ministries were located—and a youth retreat. He railed against Muslims and Eurabia throughout his manifesto, and yet his targets were not obviously connected to his anger and hatred. In a statement Breivik read before his trial in 2012, he said that he should have been treated as a hero for his “pre-emptive attack against traitors.” He claimed that “they [members of the Norwegian government] are committing, or planning to commit, cultural destruction, including deconstruction of the Norwegian ethnic group and deconstruction of Norwegian culture. This is the same as ethnic cleansing.”39 Despite Breivik’s lack of affiliation with a specific Christian church, it is appropriate to categorize him as a violent Christian extremist. His convictions about the “Islamicization” of Europe, the advent of “Eurabia” and the increased influence of leftists and liberals over conservatives led to his call for action, in the form of his manifesto and his terrorist acts. He wanted Europe to return to a glorified Christian past.

The Christchurch Terrorist Attacks On March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white nationalist, entered two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, with several firearms and killed fifty people, wounding another fifty. It was the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history. Tarrant livestreamed his attack on the internet. As in the case of Breivik, much is known about Tarrant’s motivation because of a seventy-four-page manifesto he posted online. The document contains complaints against immigration, anti-Muslim sentiment, and so forth. He titled the manifesto “The Great Replace-

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ment,” an idea he borrowed from French writer Renaud Camus in his 2012 book, Le Grand Remplacement. The book is about the belief that the white, Christian, European population is steadily being replaced by immigrants from non-Christian areas (North and SubSaharan Africa as well as the Middle East and Asia; there is strong anti-Muslim sentiment as well). A full discussion of the Christchurch manifesto is not necessary here, but the sections in which Tarrant justifies his violence using Christian motifs are of interest:

• To take revenge for the enslavement of millions of Europeans taken from their lands by the Islamic slavers; • To drive a wedge between the nations of NATO that are European and the Turks that also make a part of the NATO forces, thereby turning NATO once more into a united European army and pushing the [sic] Turkey once more back to the true position of a foreign, enemy force [Turkey is the only predominantly Muslim member of NATO] • [To] ensure that never again can such a situation as the US involvement in Kosovo ever occur again (where US/NATO forces fought beside Muslims and slaughtered Christian Europeans attempting to remove these Islamic occupiers from Europe) • [In reference to a terrorist attack in Stockholm in 2017 in which a young girl was killed] I could no longer ignore the attacks. They were attacks on my people, attacks on my culture, attacks on my faith and attacks on my soul. They would not be ignored • [In reference to a French cemetery] Simple, white, wooden crosses stretching from the fields beside the roadway, seemingly without end, into the horizon. Their number uncountable, the representation of their loss unfathomable. I pulled my rental car over, and sat, staring at these crosses and contemplating how it was that despite these men and women’s sacrifice, despite their bravery, we had still fallen so far. I broke into tears, sobbing alone in the car, staring at the crosses, at the forgotten dead; • I did contact the reborn Knights Templar for a blessing in support of the attack, which was given; • But after visiting the mosques in Christchurch and Linwood and seeing the desecration of the church that had been converted to a mosque in Ashburton, my plans changed.

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• Islamic nations in particular have high birthrates, regardless of race or ethnicity, and in this there was an anti-islamic [sic] motivation to the attacks, as well as a want for revenge against islam [sic] for the 1300 years of war and devastation that it has brought upon the people of the West and other peoples of the world. • No, the attack was not an attack on diversity, but an attack in the name of diversity. To ensure diverse peoples remain diverse, separate, unique, undiluted in [sic] unrestrained in cultural or ethnic expression and autonomy. To ensure that the peoples of the world remain true to their traditions and faiths and do not become watered down and corrupted by the influence of outsiders; • A jew [sic] living in israel [sic] is no enemy of mine, so long as they do not seek to subvert or harm my people. • Religion? What remains? Empty churches and full shopping centers? Drive through confessionals and no fault divorce? Any religious ideal that stood between the wealthy and wealth generation was downplayed, sidelined and quietly dismantled. All so that they could line their pockets without complaints or objections; • The people worthy of glory, the people blessed by God Our Lord, moan and fall under the weight of these outrages and most shameful humiliations. The race of the elect suffers outrageous persecutions, and the impious race of the Saracens respects neither the virgins of the Lord nor the colleges of priests. They run over the weak and the elderly, they seize the children from their mothers so that they might forget, among the barbarians, the name of God. That perverse nation profanes the hospices. . . . The temple of the Lord is treated like a criminal and the ornaments of the sanctuary are robbed. • We are disgraced, sons and brothers, who live in these days of calamities! Can we look at the world in this century reproved by Heaven to witness the desolation of the Holy City and remain in peace while it is so oppressed? Is it not preferable to die in war rather than suffer any longer so horrible a spectacle? Let us all weep for our faults that raise the divine ire, yes, let us weep. . . . But let not our tears be like the seed thrown into the sand. Let the fire of our repentance raise up the Holy War and the love of our brethren lead us into combat. Let our lives be stronger than death to fight against the enemies of the Christian people. • [In reference to the pope who launched the First Crusade] Ask yourself, what would Pope Urban II do?

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• The Hagia Sophia will be free of minarets and Constantinople will be rightfully Christian owned once more.

These excerpts should make clear that the Christchurch terrorist did see his actions as explicitly anti-Islamic and implicitly Christian. He believed action was required to stop this “invasion” and prevent the eventual “replacement” of Western Christendom by Muslims (in part because of their higher birthrate). One episode following the attacks was minor, but interesting. A rugby team in Christchurch debated whether to drop its imagery of sword-bearing knights on horseback and change its name from the Crusaders. Team officials argued that the name was no longer “tenable” because of its association with religious war; the franchise’s symbolism was “offensive to some in the community due to its association with the religious Crusades between Christians and Muslims.” Others were opposed to the change in part because of the team tradition surrounding the name.40

The Poway Synagogue Shootings On April 27, 2019, John T. Earnest, a nineteen-year-old, entered a synagogue in Poway, California, and opened fire, killing one woman and wounding three other people, including a rabbi. The FBI had received a tip about a manifesto written by the shooter minutes before his spree, albeit too late to prevent it.41 The manifesto contains similar racist and anti-Semitic aspects to those of Breivik and Tarrant. In it Earnest claimed to be a Christian and argued that Christianity does not call upon its members to “love their enemies.” He justified his violence as self-defense against the “genocidal Jews.” Among the texts he cited are the following biblical verses: • “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” (Matthew 27:24–25) • “I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen

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with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. . . . Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” (John 8:37–45) • “For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins away: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” (1 Thessalonians 2:14–16) He also included this passage toward the end of his manifesto:

To my brothers in Christ of all races. Be strong. Although the Jew who is inspired by demons and Satan will attempt to corrupt your soul with the sin and perversion he spews—remember that you are secure in Christ. Turn away from your sin. Not because it is required for your salvation—for nobody save Christ can merit heaven based on his own works—but rather out of gratitude for the gift of salvation that your God has given you. Always remember that it is God that is keeping you alive and in faith. All sin stems from the arrogant belief that one does not need God. Satan was so prideful that he actually truly believed (that he, a created being) could overthrow the Ancient of Days—the Creator of all in existence. Satan inspired this rebellion among humanity. Christ alone is the only source of life. Know that you are saved in Christ and nothing—not death, nor torture, nor sin—can steal your soul away from God.

Despite his unorthodox use of the Bible and a combination of religious and nonreligious imagery, it is clear the terrorist believed he was acting in the name of the Christian God to punish Jews for their alleged sins against Christians. Earnest’s violence led to some soul searching within the Presbyterian community to which he belonged. Although Christian lead-

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ers from many different interpretations of Christianity condemned his violence as “antithetical” to the faith, others called for some reflection. Some noted that just as all Muslims were constantly asked to explain why some Muslims carry out terrorist acts, they could be put in the same position when the terrorist claimed to be a faithful Christian. As one Washington, DC, pastor noted, “You actually hear a frighteningly clear articulation of Christian theology in certain sentences and paragraphs. He has, in some ways, been well taught in the church.”42 Some Christian faiths, including Presbyterianism, believe in “replacement theology,” which says that the Christians have replaced the Jewish people in God’s biblical promises to Israel. According to a US historian, Earnest was “operating in this very strict Reformed theology. . . . In replacement theology, all the promises to Israel in the Old Testament now apply to the church, so there’s no particular end-times reason to not be anti-Semitic. The Jews are no longer God’s chosen people. . . . If you believe in this replacement theology, that’s not an incentive to go kill Jews, but it does mean Jews are not as important anymore in God’s plan.”43 Earnest’s pastor added, “We can’t pretend as though we didn’t have some responsibility for him—he was radicalized into white nationalism from within the very midst of our church.”44 As another evangelical pastor stated, “We should recognize that somebody could grow up in an evangelical church, whose father was a leader, and could somehow conflate the teachings of Christianity and white nationalism. We should be very concerned about that.”45

Christian Extremism in the Balkans Of all the events that came out of the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the civil war in the Balkans is one of the most tragic. A country held together under the Tito dictatorship for decades despite religious and linguistic divisions broke up catastrophically. In the creation of the now independent states of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia there were human rights abuses on a massive scale. Some of these abuses were perpetrated by actors who sought to carve out religious territories, such as the hate crimes committed by Christian Serbs and Croats against the region’s Muslims. From mass rapes to massacres of large swaths of the male Muslim population, Christian

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extremists sought to “ethnically cleanse” the region of anyone of the Islamic faith, a community that had lived there for centuries. In July 1995 more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by the Bosnian Serbian army of Republika Srpska, under the command of Ratko Mladic. On the first day of the carnage, Mladic reportedly stated, “We give this town to the Serb nation. . . . The time has come to take revenge on the Muslims.”46 Political leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic (found guilty by the International Criminal Court in 2019 of war crimes) regularly spoke of “avenging medieval losses to Muslim invaders.”47 This hateful rhetoric continues in Kosovo, the site of conflict between the majority ethnic Albanian Muslim population and a Serb Christian enclave in the northern part of the country. A millionaire associated with the Knights Templar International, Jim Dowson, sought in early 2018 to foment a “clash of civilizations” by ferrying weapons and providing information warfare training. The Facebook pages of the Knights Templar claim that Europe’s downfall is imminent and a war between Christians and Muslims unavoidable.48 It is true that Islamic extremist activity, including some inspired by the Islamic State, has increased in Kosovo in recent years. Overall, the Balkans is seen as a flashpoint for many in farright extremist movements. The Christchurch terrorist made several references to the region, even playing an anti-Muslim Serbian song during his recording of the massacre. As Yiannis Baboulias wrote in Foreign Policy in April 2019: “Across the West, today’s far-right imagines the Balkans—still home to the largest Muslim population outside Asia and Africa—as a central battleground. In their vocabulary, ‘Turks’ serves as a shorthand for a regional Muslim menace, and refugees are understood as invaders whose aim is to bring down ‘Judeo-Christian civilization.’”49 In March 2019 a Bosniak who returned to Republika Srpska was forced by a Serb man to beg forgiveness from the Serbs. The perpetrator demanded: “Now, say aloud that you ask the Bosnian Serbs for forgiveness and say that you respect Republika Srpska and [Bosnian Serb political leader] Milorad Dodik.” The incident was not classified as a hate crime despite its overt religious and ethnic tones.50 Also in March 2019, members of the Ravna Gora Movement (a Serb nationalist group better known as the Chetniks) held a rally in the Republika Srpska town of Visegrad. The Chetnik supporters wore black uniforms at the event and reportedly sang “ethnically provoca-

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tive songs.” Western diplomats in Sarajevo expressed concern about this alleged incitement of religious and ethnic hatred.

The Identitarian Movement Another term gaining popularity in describing right-wing extremism is identitarian. The epithet refers to a movement active in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand based on the French Nouvelle Droite Génération Identitaire. The idea is that Western societies are “decaying” because of the usual “evils”: third-world immigration into first-world countries and the resulting changes in size of ethnic populations. The Canadian version of this ideology has been expressed on the website of ID Canada: ID Canada was created as a response to Canada’s decaying identity, increased third-world immigration and the prevalence of antiEuropean sentiments in this country. We refuse to re-write history and pretend like this nation existed before European colonization. Canada is not a “Nation of immigrants.” The dominion of Canada was formed by Europeans. Canada is a country of explorers, settlers, and nation builders. We refuse to disrespect our ancestors and those who sacrificed everything to build this beautiful country only to protect the decaying ideals of political correctness and “diversity.” Canada is a nation of European values, traditions, customs and culture. Canada was never meant to be a melting pot of third-world migration. Diversity is in fact, our greatest weakness. The current path that we are on is a society void of any identity or uniqueness.51

I assume that “European values, traditions, customs and culture” are implicitly Christian. Identitarians associate immigration and the changes it brings to the ethnic fabric of Western societies with the replacement of the “original” (Christian) culture with a foreign one (often implicitly, or on occasion explicitly, Muslim). Identitarians believe that they face an existential threat from immigration. These groups might not overtly call for violence to meet this threat, although adherents often engage in military or paramilitary training camps. After the Christchurch massacre, reporters uncovered links between the shooter and a significant Austrian figure (an “ex” neo-Nazi) in the movement.52

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Christian-on-Christian Violence: Ukraine and Uganda

I grew up in the central Canadian city of London, so called, as you might guess, after its namesake in England. I attended a Catholic elementary school not far from my home. My province of residence, Ontario, had an anachronistic policy on Catholic education that dated back to the late eighteenth century. Catholics were the only faith group that received full funding for their schools. Jews and other religious sects did not. My school system was called separate. The other system was called public. The two rarely interacted when I was young. The school I attended, Pius X, was located right beside a public school, Prince Robert. The two properties were divided only by a hydro field. On rare occasions we would engage Prince Robert in a baseball game. These were spur of the moment pick-up games made easy by the proximity of the schools. But to us, these were not just baseball games. They were wars. We saw the Prince Robert kids as the enemy, for no other reason than that they attended a different kind of school. You see, we kids didn’t use the term public school; we called it “pagan school.” Suffice it to say that the infrequent interschool contests had a lot of bad blood associated with them. The preceding example might strike the reader as silly, but the animus between rival Christian sects is anything but. The history of violence between Christians is, alas, a long one. If one picks up any book on European wars in the second millennium CE, one finds constant references to this particular Christian sect at war with that particular Christian sect. In a more modern context, the Troubles, as the conflict in Northern Ireland was euphemized by the local population, pitted Catholics against Protestants, even if larger nationalist and historical issues were also at play. Although intra-Christian conflict might not be as prevalent as it was centuries ago, it does still rear its ugly head once in a while. A recent example occurred in eastern Ukraine. In 2014 Russia undertook two military campaigns in Ukraine that resulted in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula (which had once belonged to Russia but was ceded to Ukraine) and the occupation of the eastern Donbass region, which led to the self-proclaimed establishment of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The fighting continues to this day.

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Religion in the area is complicated. Most Russians belong to the Orthodox Church; Ukrainians are also overwhelmingly Orthodox, but with a twist. There are also two Orthodox patriarchates, one loyal to Moscow and one loyal to Kyiv (Ukraine’s capital). The Kyiv followers vastly outnumber the Moscow followers. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine became even more prone to possible violence when the Istanbul-based “first among equals” patriarch Bartholomew I ruled that the central Orthodox authority, not Russia, would remain the governing jurisdiction. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko declared, “This is a great victory of the God-loving Ukrainian people over the Moscow demons; the victory of good over evil; the victory of light over darkness.”53 For its part, the Kremlin announced in October 2018 that it would “protect the interests of the faithful in Ukraine if this split leads to violence.”54 In late November 2018 the Ukrainian intelligence service announced it had searched the home of Father Pavlo, the head of Kyiv’s largest and oldest monastery, which is part of the Russian (not Ukrainian) Orthodox Church, on suspicion that he was “inciting hatred.”55 At the same time, a growing movement within Russia pines for the “glory” of the Soviet Union. This nostalgia causes Russians to reject ties with the West and seek a renewed Russian hegemony in the region. From this perspective, Ukraine’s relatively new independence rankles many. The Russian Orthodox Army (ROA) is an extremist group founded in 2014 in Donbass. According to the US Department of State, the ROA and other religious actors in eastern Ukraine “have kidnapped, beaten, and threatened Protestants, Catholics, and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate.”56 A Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest seized by the group was subjected to mock executions.57 The ROA looks to Moscow for direction as it fights what it calls the “fascist” government in Kyiv.58 In Uganda, the self-styled Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing the local population for decades. Known for its barbaric practices, which include murder, mutilation, sexual slavery, and the forced induction of child soldiers, the LRA has its roots in the ethnic conflict that followed Uganda’s independence from Great Britain in 1962. Alice Lakwena, an early leader of the northern Acholi group, resentful of President Yoweri Museveni’s domination of the southern half of the country, said she was inspired by the Holy Spirit and instructed her “troops” to carry only sticks and stones and cover their bodies with nut oil, which would protect them from bullets. The

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LRA’s current leader, Joseph Kony, claimed that a cross drawn in that same oil would offer the same protection. Although the LRA’s ideology is nebulous at best, the group seeks to govern Uganda according to the Ten Commandments. A Ugandan researcher said the LRA “has used the Bible to justify their violent actions,” especially the verses open to the interpretation that they sanction violence.59 On December 26, 2008, LRA fighters attacked a Catholic church in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), hacking to death forty-five people, mostly women and children.60 In September 2009 the LRA crucified six people in southern Sudan.61 The LRA was listed as a terrorist entity by the US State Department, though it is no longer seen as active.

Pre-Christian Extremist Violence? A great deal has been written about the ideology underpinning the Nazi movement and its rise to power in 1930s Germany. Despite the fall of the Third Reich, the hate and violence associated with Nazism has not disappeared. Groups known as neo-Nazis are still operating and, in fact, are growing in some parts of the world. One aspect of this ideology is relevant for my purposes. The Nazi leaders sought to create the “ideal” man and woman based on their notion of “Aryan supremacy.” Part of this ideology, especially in the Scandinavian countries occupied by Hitler’s forces, was the notion of a “noble northern spirit,” driven in part by the history of the Vikings and their warrior culture. This view of history also took into account the contribution made by the pagan gods the Vikings worshipped at the time—Odin, Thor, and Freyja, among others. Although scholars normally do not see Nordic religion as a modern faith many people still follow, some right-wing extremist groups have woven in the symbols and culture of the older religion. One such right-wing movement that has embraced Odinism, and perhaps the best-known example of that ideology, is the Soldiers of Odin (SOO). The SOO was founded in Finland in 2015. The organization denies that it is racist or neo-Nazi, but it has close ties to the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), which is both. The SOO might have only six hundred or so members in Finland, but it also has branches in Norway, Sweden, Australia, and Canada (in Canada they are also known as the Canadian Infidels).62 According to the US Anti-Defamation League

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(ADL), “An examination of the members and supporters of Soldiers of Odin USA leaves no room for doubt: though not all such adherents of the group are white supremacists or bigots, so many of them clearly are that the Soldiers of Odin can easily be considered a hate group. But they are also more than that, in that they represent a diverse coalition of right-wing extremists ranging from antigovernment extremists to white supremacists, coming together for the purpose of expressing hostility towards refugees and Muslims in general.”63 I could not find record of any violent incidents involving the SOO. The group’s chapters organize “patrols” in major cities and see themselves as “vigilantes” who supplement the work of police forces. SOO members look for criminal acts committed by “migrants,” a sector of society they feel is disproportionately responsible for violent criminal acts. Of most concern to date is the fact that the SOO is clearly neo-Nazi in its ideology, consists of many individuals with violent criminal backgrounds, and believes that the governments of their countries are not taking care of migrant-driven crime. The potential, then, for future SOO violence is high. How religious is the SOO? So far it seems the best answer is “minimally.” It is challenging to see how an organization that features the gods of a long-dead faith can be called religious. In the case of the SOO, the reference to Odin and other Norse deities is probably better framed in terms of racial purity and warrior culture rather than as a religiously inspired ideology.

Christian Left-Wing Extremism This chapter has focused thus far on the links between right-wing extremist groups and Christianity. What, then, of far-left groups? People normally think of environmental and animal rights organizations as left of center on the political spectrum, although the recent rise of Antifa, with its propensity to use violence against violent right-wing extremist groups, has caused some concern among governments and security agencies. Anarchist groups such as Black Bloc are also seen as leftist by some scholars. Is there anything Christian about the far left? It is hard to say whether Christianity plays an important role in any far-left extremist groups. Although some see a religious aspect to pro-environmentalism (i.e., God intended humans to be responsible

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stewards of this planet), there is no single group that uses religious scripture or imagery in a representative way. The Animal Liberation Front does provide a website that contains “religious” material, though it does not appear to be central to the group’s philosophy.64 This should not imply, of course, that devout Christians are not, or cannot be, members of such organizations.

What Does Christianity Say About Violence? One phrase in Christianity that speaks volumes about how this faith views violence is “Turn the other cheek.” Jesus Christ made this comment in direct contrast to the prevailing Jewish tenet of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” On the surface, then, it appears that Christians should reject violence as a matter of principle. In contrast, however, the “just war” theory was first expressed by Saint Augustine and later by Saint Thomas Aquinas. These Christian scholars argued that evil at times can only be confronted through violent means and that always choosing peaceful methods might in fact be the greater sin. Self-defense, or defense of a community, if authorized by a legitimate body, is thus acceptable and even necessary. Just war theory provides rationales for when to go to war (jus ad bellum) as well as for behavior while at war (jus in bello). This argument was required to deal with the apparent paradox of the sanctity of life versus the duty states have to defend their citizens. Aquinas argued that war can be sanctioned only by a legitimate authority and that the underlying decision must be for “good” and not for personal (or state) gain. The violence discussed in this book is not war as people usually understand it but rather acts planned and carried out by substate actors. In this sense, it is not subject to just war precepts. Still, Christianity dictates that individuals are permitted to use violence only where this prevents greater harm from occurring. It would be difficult to posit that the acts perpetrated by the individuals and groups I discussed in this chapter would be necessary to waylay greater harm.

How Christian Is This Form of Extremism? In March 2018 John Carothers burned a black man to death in central Tennessee. In a letter explaining his actions, he wrote, “My name is

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John Carothers and I believe the Bible is about white people and for white people. I am in the Rutherford County Jail for burning a black man. I set him on fire with lighter fluid poured on his head.”65 According to the SPLC, “White supremacists believe mainstream religions, including Christian denominations and their institutions, have fallen astray from God and are under the control and influence of Satan. As a result, white supremacists interpret scriptures and spiritual parables through the lens of racial discrimination and hate. In this way, they can justify their beliefs (which are vile and deplorable) as good, moral, and responsible.”66 Many right-wing extremists believe that Western societies were originally Christian in nature and have become “polluted” by waves of immigration from parts of the world dominated by non-Christian faiths (e.g., Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism). Hence they desire to “return to basics” by removing nonChristian populations or carrying out acts of violence against them to terrorize them into leaving. There is also the significant influence of end-of-time believers, who predict the second coming of Christ, along with those known as “millennialists.” The extremist Branch Davidians, raided by the US government at their compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, were particularly adept at weaving these themes into their narratives. Charismatic leaders of right-wing groups often portray themselves as divinely inspired, or in some cases, actual messengers of God (the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, saw himself as a prophet). From this viewpoint, the Bible is directed at white Christians, a bad interpretation of a message originally intended for the ethnically Semitic Jews and later for all people (Christian evangelical missions stem from the biblical requirement to “make disciples of all nations”). Christian extremists ignore the overarching message preached by Jesus Christ, to love one’s neighbor, and yet they advocate and use violence in response to a changing world in which they see themselves as threatened by the immigration and higher birthrates of people from non-Christian majority areas of the world. Therefore, this form of violent extremism has little to do with the primary teachings of Christianity. This does not prevent actors from seeing themselves primarily as Christian, protecting the long-term interests of members of their faith. However, unlike the extremist Buddhist monks, Christian preachers do not appear to play as central a role in calling for violence. There are exceptions to the lack of Christian church leadership in violent right-wing extremism. Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro

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Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who died in 2014, long railed against homosexuality with his signature slogan: “God hates fags.” The SPLC described Phelps and his followers, including many of his family members, as a hate group, although it is not possible to tie any specific act of violence to the group’s teachings. They are mostly known for attending the funerals of known LGBT people, such as Matthew Shepard, killed in a hate crime in Wyoming in 1998, and drowning out the eulogies with their shouts of “God hates fags.” In contrast, in 2015 a white Christian minister from Tennessee, Robert Doggart, planned to attack the Muslim community of Islamberg, two hours north of New York City. After losing a congressional race in 2014, he began to plan his attack. Doggart believed that Muslims were initiating a religious war against “all non-Muslim sects.” Doggart’s followers were convinced by right-wing news, much of it on Fox, reporting that the town was a “terrorist training camp” and had become a “jihadi no-go zone.” Doggart appealed on Facebook for volunteers to attack Islamberg under the banner “America needs God.” He said the “patriots” would carry firearms and a machete to “cut them down,” adding, “It has to be done.” The FBI began to investigate Doggart in March 2015 and foiled his plot on April 15 by arresting him (no one else was arrested).67 Doggart was found guilty in February 2017 of solicitation to commit arson and destroy religious property (but not on terrorism charges) and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Efforts to Counter Christian Extremism

The acts of right-wing and far-right extremist groups have been largely overlooked from the Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) or Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) perspective of the intelligence community. This oversight has extended, at least in the United States, to the highest levels of the government, for a variety of reasons. Most recently, the Trump administration has taken great pains to downplay the threats of violence from these groups, going as far as to refocus counterterrorism efforts, including PVE and CVE, away from all forms of violent extremism and toward only “radical Islamic terrorism.”68 This shift flies in the face of statistics that clearly show many more Americans have been killed by right-wing extremist groups, including Christian extremists, than by Islamic extremists.

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Despite this refusal to acknowledge reality, grassroots efforts are ongoing in the United States and other nations to counter this form of religious extremism (as well as other right-wing movements that might be less religiously focused):

• Life After Hate, a US-based group founded by former extremists, seeks to contribute to a national strategy to counteract violence committed for ideological or religious reasons.69 • The Catholic archbishop of Abuja (Nigeria) stated in 2015, “The genuine role of religious leaders in the state is to positively promote spiritual values and virtues like justice, honesty, solidarity, modesty, care of the weak and the poor and similar concerns. . . . In many instances, religion has been co-opted into battles for other agendas of violence. Here we have cases of the abuse and misuse of religion. Religious leaders need to consistently liberate religion from such misuse.”70 • In a 2017 visit to Cairo, Pope Francis called on Muslim leaders to reject extremist violence in God’s name and preach messages of tolerance. He stated, “We have an obligation to denounce violations of human dignity and human rights, to expose attempts to justify every form of hatred in the name of religion, and to condemn these attempts as idolatrous caricatures of God. . . . Let us say once more a firm and clear “No!” to every form of violence, vengeance and hatred carried out in the name of religion or in the name of God.”71 • Civic and religious leaders banded together in Kokomo, Indiana, to peacefully protest a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rally in their city in 2009, during which one KKK speaker proclaimed, “White is the color of ‘the big boss man’” (probably a reference to God).72 • In 2014 the United States Institute for Peace hosted a workshop in New York and Washington, DC, called the Religious Actors Combating Radicalization and Violent Extremism Symposium.73

Conclusions Acts of violence carried out by right-wing extremist groups tend to focus on a number of targeted populations: Muslims, immigrants, Jews, racial minorities, and LGBT people. Members of the far right perceive that their ideal way of life is currently threatened by a combination of increased immigration from majority non-Christian countries and lower

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birthrates in many Western predominantly white, Christian countries. This fear has led to calls to close the borders to newcomers. The frustration resulting from a perceived loss of demographic and thus political power has led a small number of extremists to embrace violence. Quite a few of these individuals and groups see Nazism, a movement defeated and reviled after World War II for its Holocaust against Jews as well as other minority groups (such as Romani people and LGBT people), as worthy of embracing. Violent actions by these extremists are rejected by the majoritarian mainstream Christian churches. Nevertheless, at a time when many Christian churches are losing members (although some are growing in some countries), for a number of individuals who might already harbor violent tendencies, addressing these challenges by hearkening back to a Christian-dominant past could be appealing. The lesson to draw here is that even a set of Christian denominations that call for peace and love can still be warped to justify or even mandate the use of violence against perceived enemies. Again, it is not imperative that the Christian beliefs used to inspire violence be normative. Demagogues know which buttons to push to recruit their followers. If using religion gets people to do what violent extremists want, they will bend religion to their will.

Notes

1. Trevor Hughes, “Number of White, Black Hate Groups Surge Under Trump, Extremist-Tracking Organization Says.” 2. Marc Santora, “Poland’s Populists Pick a New Top Enemy: Gay People.” 3. Daryl Johnson, “Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion.” 4. Johnson, “Holy Hate.” 5. Johnson, “Holy Hate.” 6. https://knightstemplarinternational.com/ethos/, accessed November 6, 2018. 7. Lizzie Dearden, “Man Who Built Bombs at Bristol Home after Spewing Anti-Muslim Hate Escapes Terror Charge.” 8. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Radical Traditional Catholicism.” 9. Christopher Curtis, “FQS Is a ‘Hate Group’ with Ties to Neo-Nazis, Says Founder.” 10. Francis Fukuyama, “Against Identity Politics.” 11. Ariel Koch, “The New Crusaders: Contemporary Extreme Right Symbolism and Rhetoric.” 12. Koch, “The New Crusaders.” 13. Ryan J. Reilly and Christopher Mathias, “Right-Wing Extremists Guilty in Terror Plot Against Muslim Refugees.”

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14. Rick Noack, “In Germany, Anti-Muslim Extremists May Pose as Big a Threat as Islamist Militants.” 15. Adam Nossiter and Aurelien Breeden, “Shadowy Cell in France Plotted to Kill Muslim Civilians, Authorities Say.” 16. Samuel Osborne, “Viktor Orban’s Right-Wing Hungarian Government Announces Plan to Stop People Helping Refugees and Migrants.” 17. Alexander Stille, “The Man Who Dragged Italy to the Right,” 30. 18. Jeffrey Gettleman and Dharisha Bastians, “Sri Lanka’s Muslims Face an Angry Backlash After Easter Sunday Attacks.” 19. Jessica Kwong, “Who Is Robert Bowers? Suspect Identified in Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting.” 20. Leonid Bershidsky, “Germany Has a New Anti-Semitism Problem.” 21. Emma Green, “Why the Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed with Jews.” 22. Sindre Bangstad, “Scandinavian Nazis on the March Again.” 23. Matthew Taylor, “White Europe: 60,000 Nationalists March on Poland’s Independence Day.” 24. Deutsche Welle, “Jewish Restaurant Attacked During Chemnitz Protests: Report.” 25. Peter Byrne, “On the Origins of White Nationalism,” 34–39. 26. Southern Poverty Law Center report, “Creativity Movement.” 27. Euractiv, “Hungarian Far-Right Leader Requests Lists of Jews.” 28. Mehdi Hasan and Jonathan Freedland, “Muslims and Jews Face a Common Threat from White Supremacists: We Must Fight It Together.” 29. Pew Research Center, “Q&A: Measuring Attitudes Toward Muslims and Jews in Western Europe.” 30. Manveena Suri and Huizhong Wu, “Sikhs: Religious Minority Target of Hate Crimes.” 31. A. C. Thompson, “For More Than a Century, Sikhs in the US Have Faced Suspicion and Violence.” 32. Thompson, “For More Than a Century.” 33. Thompson, “For More Than a Century.” 34. CNN, “Police Identify Army Veteran as Wisconsin Temple Shooting Gunman.” 35. National Abortion Foundation, “Anti-Abortion Extremists.” 36. Trevor Hughes, “Planned Parenthood Shooter ‘Happy’ with His Attack.” 37. New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, “AntiAbortion Extremists.” 38. Sarah MacCammon, “Clinics That Provide Abortions Anxious After an Uptick in Threats of Violence.” 39. Siste No, “Total Mangel Pa Respekt.” 40. Francesca Paris, “After Mosque Shootings a Rebranding Debate over Christchurch’s Rugby Crusaders.” 41. Los Angeles Times, “Poway Synagogue Suspect Charged with Murder and Hate Crime Allegations.” 42. Julie Zauzmer, “The Alleged Synagogue Shooter Was a Churchgoer Who Talked Christian Theology, Raising Tough Questions for Evangelical Pastors.” 43. Zauzmer, “Alleged Synagogue Shooter Was a Churchgoer.”

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44. Zauzmer, “Alleged Synagogue Shooter Was a Churchgoer.” 45. Zauzmer, “Alleged Synagogue Shooter Was a Churchgoer.” 46. Counter Extremism Project, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: Extremism and Counter-Extremism.” 47. Edin Hajdarpasic, “How a Serbian War Criminal Became an Icon of White Nationalism.” 48. Cristina Maza, “Pro-Trump Christian Extremist Prepares Serb Nationalists for New War with Muslims, Reports Reveal.” 49. Yiannis Baboulias, “The Balkans Are the World Capital of Islamophobia.” 50. Mladen Lakic, “Hate Crimes in Bosnia: Under-Reported and Rarely Prosecuted.” 51. ID Canada, https://www.id-canada.ca/. 52. Frank Jordans, “Austrian Activist’s Home Searched over ‘Ties’ to Christchurch Mosque Shooting Suspect.” 53. Economist, “Moscow Rages as an Independent Church Becomes More Likely.” 54. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Amid Church Rift, Kremlin Vows to ‘Protect Interests’ of Faithful in Ukraine.” 55. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Russian Orthodox Cleric in Kyiv Accused of ‘Inciting Hatred.’” 56. US Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report for 2014. 57. Daniel Wiser, “Russia Targets Christians, Religious Minorities in Ukraine.” 58. NBC News, “Meet the Russian Orthodox Army, Ukrainian Separatists’ Shock Troops.” 59. Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala, “The Use of Violent Biblical Texts by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda.” 60. BBC News, “Ugandan LRA in Church Massacre.” 61. Simon Caldwell, “Sudan: Christians Are ‘Crucified’ in Guerrilla Raids.” 62. Kathleen Harris, “Facebook Bans Faith Goldy and ‘Dangerous’ AltRight Groups.” 63. Anti-Defamation League, “Soldiers of Odin USA.” 64. Animal Liberation Front, “Religion for Animal Rights Activists.” 65. Brett Barroquere, “Tennessee Man Charged with Murder for Burning Black Man to Death, Then Using Bible to Justify Act.” 66. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Hate in God’s Name.” 67. Aeon, “When Does US News Ignore a Terror Plot? When the Target Is Called Islamberg.” 68. Janet Reitman, “State of Denial,” 49. 69. Life After Hate, https://www.lifeafterhate.org/. 70. Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, “Role of Religious Leaders in Addressing Violent Extremism.” 71. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Pope Francis Denounces Religious Extremism, Calls for Tolerance During Egypt Visit.” 72. Not in Our Town, “Countering the Klan.” 73. United States Institute of Peace, “Is There a Role for Religious Actors in Countering Radicalization and Violent Extremism? Voices from the Trenches.”

4 Hindu Extremism

The patience of Hindus is coming to an end, I do not know what will happen if they lose patience. —Indian Union minister Giriraj Singh, regarding delays in construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a Muslim mosque1

Hinduism is the faith of more than 1 billion people in the world, making it the third largest religion after Christianity and Islam. Practiced primarily in India and Nepal, where Hindus constitute more than three-quarters of the local populations, it is also found in countries with large Indian diasporas, such as Fiji and Guyana. Originating during the Vedic period in approximately 500 BCE in what became India, Hinduism is a religion of ritual, pilgrimages, and wide openness to differences of belief. Followers can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, or even atheistic. There is no priesthood, no hierarchical body of authority, no one holy book, and no prophets, making this creed different than the others discussed in this book. In Hinduism there are four purusarthas, or goals, in life. These are: dharma (ethics or duties), artha (prosperity or work), kama (desires or passions), and moksha (liberation or salvation). Associated with moksha is the belief in samsara (the cycle of rebirth) and karma (the principle of cause and effect, whereby one’s actions influence one’s future). 77

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The Rise of Hindu Extremism in India Hindu extremism is sometimes referred to as “saffron terror,” a term that refers to the color associated with several nationalist parties and organizations in India.2 It is difficult to speak of Hindu violent extremism without talking about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Dating back to the last days of the British Raj, the RSS was founded as a Hindu nationalist organization, the goal of which was to build a Hindu nation through close adherence to religious discipline. The RSS’s history of violence is a long one; thus it is banned by numerous governments. A former RSS member assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. With other groups, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; India’s current governing party), RSS stormed the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, a place Hindus see as the birthplace of the god Rama. The subsequent violence between Hindus and Muslims led to the deaths of thousands. The demands to build a temple devoted to the warriorGod Lord Ram on the site of the former temple continue today.3 The RSS claims to be a peaceful, pan-India organization that seeks the prosperity of all. Nevertheless, its continued association with acts of violence has led some to call it fascist. Leaders of the RSS had direct links to Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany.4 In some ways the RSS, which is a Hindu purist organization, has some similarity with the Nazi goal of a pure “Aryan race.” Earlier comments by RSS leaders illustrate their philosophy and undermine their professed dedication to peace. In We, or Our Nation Defined, the RSS’s second leader, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, wrote: There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. . . . That is the only sound view on the minorities problem. That is the only logical and correct solution. That alone keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed. . . . The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s rights.”5

Hindu violence in India has largely targeted the country’s Muslim community of late. I could speculate that this focus is some kind

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of payback for the centuries of Muslim rule under the Mughals. It could just as well be similar to anti-Islamic violence already discussed in the chapters on Buddhist and Christian extremism. Nevertheless, other groups have also been the victims of Hindu nationalist hate and violence. The RSS has launched attacks on India’s Christian community, and one organization that monitors anti-Christian persecution worldwide ranks India “15th worst” in this regard.6 The long record of attacks includes incidents in which extremists beat Christians for singing carols, threatened schools that celebrated Christmas, and even assassinated missionaries.7 After Indira Gandhi’s government stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 to remove an extremist Sikh leader and his followers, Hindu “thugs” massacred Sikhs (the English word thug is in fact derived from Hindi). According to a Time magazine account, in the days after the military raid, “frenzied mobs of young Hindu thugs, thirsting for revenge, burned Sikh-owned stores to the ground, dragged Sikhs out of their homes, cars and trains, then clubbed them to death or set them aflame before raging off in search of other victims.”8 The mobs were allegedly urged on by the Indian army. The RSS continues to disavow any responsibility for the violence, insisting it was on the shoulders of Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party. Hindu women have been targeted by Hindu extremists as well. In 1991 the Indian Supreme Court overturned a ban on women of childbearing age from praying at the Sabarimala Temple in the southern state of Kerala. In response, extremists have set fire to vehicles, pummeled police, and attacked women trying to visit the holy site. In October 2018 none of the women who attempted to make the journey to the temple succeeded in the face of harassment by opponents.9 Hindu extremism aimed at Muslims in India falls into four broad categories: “cow vigilantes,” attempts to counter what Hindus call “love jihad,” the unsettled situation in Kashmir, and the controversy over citizenship in the eastern Indian state of Assam. There is also what I am calling “general Islamophobia.” I will discuss each in turn.

“Cow Vigilantes” Devout Hindus do not consume meat. This is, of course, their prerogative, and few resort to violence to make their point or to impose their beliefs on others.

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Some Hindu extremists, however, are quite violent toward those who violate the meat ban. (But why would they, as the latter are not Hindu?) In India, much of the cattle trade is run by Muslims because Hindus would not be associated with a trade that results in the slaughter of an animal they consider sacred. Several states have tried to enact “cow protection laws” despite the fact that eating meat is not illegal in India (although it is banned in twenty-one of twenty-nine states).10 Although politicians claim that these laws are aimed at “illegal” slaughterhouses, the rhetoric has led to attacks by gau rakshaks (“cow vigilantes”) on Indian Muslims. Mohan Bhagwat, the current leader of the RSS, has called for a nationwide ban on the slaughter of cows. A second RSS official called for the hanging of those who kill cows, and a third wants to make vegetarianism compulsory in his town. 11 The controversy over the production of meat has led to a significant drop in beef exports by India, once the largest exporter in the world. 12 Those suffering economic job losses are disproportionately Muslim. There have been many attacks on people accused by Hindus of “illegally” slaughtering cows or even transporting them for slaughter:

• In July 2018 twenty-eight-year-old Rakbar Khan died after being beaten by villagers who suspected he and a friend (who escaped) were smuggling cows. Police appeared more concerned about the welfare of the cow and delayed the transport of Khan to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.13 • In August 2018 a mob beat and killed a twenty-year-old man accused of stealing a buffalo in Uttar Pradesh.14 • In November 2017 a fifty-five-year-old farmer was stomped on and had his head slammed into concrete by a mob that found two cows and two calves in the back of a truck he was driving. The murder was caught on a cell-phone video.15 • In June 2018 a forty-five-year-old man was killed and his sixty-five-year-old friend injured by a mob from a neighboring village in Uttar Pradesh. One of the assailants said, “He is a butcher . . . someone ask him why he was trying to slaughter a calf.”16 • In July 2017 Bhurra Qureshi was stopped at a checkpoint and beaten with batons by police demanding a bribe to let him continue to a meat-processing plant.17

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Extremist mobs have not limited their hate to Muslims. In early December 2018 a police inspector was beaten by Hindu extremists after cow carcasses were discovered in a field. The mob had delivered the carcasses to a local police station, where the violence broke out. It was probably not a coincidence that the incident occurred shortly after the end of a three-day Muslim gathering of hundreds of thousands in the region, to which local law enforcement was forced to deploy officers to prevent the harassment of Muslims.18 The RSS response to these mob killings? “If Muslims stopped eating beef, the lynchings would stop.”19 For Hindu extremists, the life of a cow clearly outweighs that of an Indian Muslim. As for Indian police officers, on many occasions they either turn a blind eye to the violence or actually facilitate it by staffing roadblocks in villages to catch cow “smugglers.” Calls for violence are not limited to men—a female Hindu religious leader, Sadhvi Saraswati, has exhorted Hindus to slaughter those who kill cows.20

The Attempt to Counter “Love Jihad” The world has certainly come to know the word jihad in recent years. An Arabic term that means “struggle,” or “effort,” it has been transformed into a synonym for terrorism. It is safe to say that for many, jihad means violence. A recent twist on the concept of jihad has emerged in India, among other places. It is the term love jihad (also known as Romeo jihad), the belief that Muslim men seek to convert non-Muslims to Islam through love (real or feigned) or marriage. There is little to this conspiracy theory, which might have its origins in the split between India and Pakistan in 1947. For the record, it is not only Hindus who complain about love jihad—Indian Christians and Sikhs also accuse Muslims of the practice. My focus will remain on Hindu extremists. Although there are organizations such as the Love Commandos that try to intervene in cases of arranged marriages, an issue in India, some also see any romance between a Muslim and a Hindu as something to prevent (this is of course not unusual: many “religious” people do not want their children to marry outside their faith). On occasion, however, violence is the result: • In December 2017 Shambhu Lal Raigar killed an older Muslim man with an iron pickax and later doused the body with

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kerosene and burned it. The murderer’s nephew filmed the attack and posted it online, and the assailant bragged that he had killed his victim to “protect his Hindu community from Muslim jihadists.” Raigar claimed that the Muslim, who was married with three children, was “roaming around” with a Hindu girl. In a video in which he appeared in front of a statue of a Hindu god, he stated, “It may be good or bad, but I’ve done it. If I have to die, then why not kill and die?”21 • In July 2018 a twenty-five-year-old Muslim man was assaulted by a group of Hindu activists at a court in Ghaziabad, where he had gone to marry a Hindu woman.22 • A twenty-one-year-old Muslim college student and his Hindu girlfriend learned in April 2017 that they were both on a “hit list” published on a Facebook page. The posting that accompanied a list of 100 interreligious couples urged “all Hindu lions to find and hunt down all the men mentioned here.”23

Some Indian politicians have used the fiction of “love jihad” to polarize communities and gain votes. According to a September 2017 story in the Economist, one populist Hindu organization’s helpline claims to have “rescued” 8,500 girls from “love jihad.” 24 The website Struggle for Hindu Existence carries endless titillating stories about Muslim youths luring Hindu maidens into wickedness. Courts have annulled marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men on the grounds that the former not only disobeyed their parents’ wishes but had been “lured” into a potentially “dangerous” liaison with a Muslim. Hindu nationalists have also registered their opposition to marriages between Hindus and Christians. In an incident that went viral on Indian social media, a female member of the BJP slapped a younger Hindu woman and shrilly cried, “Have you no shame?” because the latter was seen sitting in a teahouse with a Muslim man. Making matters worse, Indian police officers, who should be expected to protect citizens from violence, have on occasion attacked Hindu women who engage in relationships with Muslim men. In late September 2018 a video emerged of three police officers confronting a woman while a female constable “thrashed” her as another yelled, “You prefer Muslims when there are so many Hindus around.” The couple had been reported to the police by Hindu extremist organization Vishwa Hindu Parisad (VHP). The leader of the VHP stated,

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“People can’t be allowed to do anything in society even if the apex court allows adults to choose their partners.”25 Even when it does not result in violence, Hindu nationalist belief in the myth of “love jihad” constitutes racism at best and extremism at worst.

Kashmir India was born out of the ashes of the former British Raj in 1947. Once the “jewel of the Crown,” India became an independent nation on August 15 of that year. The celebration was complicated, however, by the fact that the British colony was divided into two (later three) separate nations, largely along sectarian lines. India was a predominantly Hindu country, whereas Pakistan (both West and East; the latter became the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971) was largely Muslim. As noted, the area was originally majoritarian Hindu before the advent of the Mughal Empire, ruled in accordance with Islamic precepts. One area that remains disputed to this day is Kashmir, to the east of Pakistan and the northwest of India. India controls the territory known as Jammu and Kashmir, whereas Pakistan has administrative divisions known as Azad Kashmir (“Free” Kashmir) and Gilgit Baltistan (there is also a small part claimed by China, but this is irrelevant to my discussion). To say that the Kashmiri region is a violent one is an understatement. The vast majority of residents, even in the parts overseen by India, are Muslim. Pakistan views the region as its own, and a number of terrorist groups, some of which have unofficial Pakistani government or security services backing, have been carrying out attacks for decades. In 2017 alone, there was a 166 percent increase in civilian casualties in Jammu and Kashmir over the previous year.26 Indian military and security forces are clearly justified in confronting this terrorist scourge. Yet, from a Hindu nationalist-extremist perspective, the situation in Kashmir represents another opportunity to exert Hindu influence and carry out violence. The RSS is challenging Article 35a of the Indian constitution, which grants Kashmir “special status,” and its actions represent an “assault” on the Muslim character of the region, which will significantly alter the demographic makeup of the territory.27

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At times Hindu violence against Muslims is particularly horrific. In April 2018 four Indian police officers and a retired civil servant were accused in the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl.28 There is evidence that the crime was intended to “breed fear and terror” within the girl’s Muslim community. In August 2013 Hindus threw stones at Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan in the southern part of Jammu. Intercommunitarian violence rose after a Hindu police officer had been accused of murdering dozens of Muslims in “encounter killings.”29 Although not violent in nature, an October 2015 incident in Indianheld Kashmir illustrated the ideology of Hindu extremists. An independent lawmaker, Engineer Rashid, had ink thrown on him by members of the Shiv Sena, a Hindu extremist group. The victim expressed his concern over the event, noting that although Hindus speak of the “Talibanization” of Pakistan, “80,000 people have died in Kashmir.”30 To Hindu nationalists, the Kashmir region always has been and always will be part of India. They will broker no negotiation with Muslim Pakistan over the disputed area. The presence of dangerous Islamic terrorist groups merits a response by security and military forces, although the latter have on occasion killed civilians marching in favor of independence.

The 2018–2019 Assam Crisis Assam is a state in northeastern India abutting Bangladesh. The region was beset by violence in the 1970s and 1980s after the creation of Bangladesh (formerly known as East Pakistan), when Assamese-speaking Hindus feared they would be swamped by Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims caught up in the paroxysm of the creation of the new Bangladeshi state. There have been calls to remove “latecomers” (i.e., anyone who arrived in Assam after 1971)—and to have the state inhabited only by pukka (“genuine”) residents (i.e., Hindus). In late July 2018 a draft national register suggested that 4 million out of Assam’s 33 million people—mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims—cannot prove that they are original inhabitants and are hence subject to statelessness and possible expulsion.31 There have been allegations that the ruling party, BJP, has influenced the register to appease its Hindu nationalist base, and the chief

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minister of the neighboring West Bengal state has warned of a civil war, a “bloodbath.”32 During the 2016 national election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to act against “illegal” immigration into Assam from Bangladesh.33 A BJP party member in southern India declared that those who do not leave should be shot: “If these Rohingyas and Bangladeshi illegal immigrants do not leave India respectfully, then they should be shot and eliminated. Only then will our country be safe.”34 In the expectation of possible further violence, the Indian army was placed on standby and 40,000 state police and paramilitary forces were deployed in Assam.35 One analyst has accused the BJP of fostering xenophobia in the state.36 In September 2018 Amit Shah, president of the BJP, told a political rally in Delhi that Bangladeshis in Assam “are like termites and they are eating the food that should go to our poor and they are taking our jobs. They carry out blasts in our country and so many of our people die. . . . I want to assure you that if we come to power in 2019, we will find each and every one and send them away. Action against them should not worry any patriot.”37 The use of a word such as termite to describe Bangladeshi Muslims is too reminiscent of earlier defamatory language like cockroaches and rats to refer to unwanted populations. That the president of India’s ruling political party made these comments should be of great concern. Party members and Hindu extremists could see this language as sanctioning violence against Muslims in Assam. Not to be outdone, that same month BJP general secretary Ram Madhav stated, “The NRC [National Register of Citizens] will ensure the detection of all illegal immigrants. The next step will be delete—means deletion of names of illegal immigrants from voters list and deprive them from all government benefits. The next stage will be deportation.”38 In January 2019 the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Congress) passed a law that will grant citizenship to certain religious groups (Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs) but not Muslims.39 Those to be given status have emigrated from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and have resided in India for at least six years. The move led to protests in Assam, and Muslims see this as a crass attempt by the Modi government to curry favor with Hindu nationalists ahead of upcoming elections. Hindu extremists are not the only perpetrators of violence against Assam’s Muslims. The Bodo people, believed to be the

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region’s original inhabitants, have also protested against the presence of Muslims, whom they see as Bangladeshi interlopers. In 2014 suspected Bodo “militants” killed eleven Muslims in Assam, including two women. Even at that time the BJP was a significant contributor to anti-Muslim sentiment in Assam.40

“General” Islamophobia and Violence Violence by Hindu extremists in India is not limited to the issues I just discussed. It is much more generalized and prominent:

• In January 2018 dozens of men on motorbikes approached a gathering of Muslims celebrating Republic Day, and after tempers flared, a riot ensued in which hundreds were injured and one killed. Hindus allegedly shouted at the Muslims to “go back to Pakistan.” They also yelled, “If you want to live in Hindustan, you must chant ‘Hail Sita and Ram’” [the names of two Hindu gods].41 • A Hyderabad judge found five men accused of carrying out a terrorist attack on a mosque in 2007 not guilty because the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) had failed to establish the role the men—one of whom was a monk and a former RSS member—played in the incident in which nine people were killed and more than fifty injured. The BJP seized on the April 2018 decision to state that there is no such thing as “saffron terror.”42 • In July 2018 a UK-educated information technology worker was killed and two others badly beaten by a lynch mob who suspected the men were “child snatchers.” Police officers were unable to stop the attack, and several of them were also wounded. An elder in the village where the men were beaten asked, “Did you see the Qatari’s face? His big beard? He looked like a terrorist.” There have allegedly been thirty deaths from seventy lynchings in India since 2017.43 • In April 2018 in neighboring Sri Lanka, 150 men protested outside a school where five teachers wore the all-encompassing Muslim abaya. Four of the men tried to attack a teacher with sticks as others chanted “wearing the abaya destroys Hindu culture.” Of note, the Siva Senai, a Hindu nationalist organization, formed in the north of the country in 2016. Its self-appointed charge is to protect Hinduism from “threats” from other faiths and protest the

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“Islamic slaughter of cows.” Members accuse Muslims of “taking over” Hindu lands, in part through a higher birthrate.44 • In November 2017 three Muslim men on a train were first heckled, then beaten with rods, for “wearing handkerchiefs on their heads.” Similar beatings aboard trains have led to deaths.45 • A film about a possible mythic fourteenth-century Hindu queen led to riots and threats of violence from Hindu extremists who say the lead actress “disrespects” the legendary ruler. Other complaints surrounding the film, called Padmaavat, include that the queen’s clothes are too “skimpy,” that a dream sequence between her and the Muslim invader is inappropriate, that the story has been twisted, and that Padmavati’s heroism has been cheapened. Three hundred Hindu women threatened to kill themselves over the film, and a BJP official offered a bounty to anyone who would kill the film’s star and director.46 • A large cohort of young Hindu men is spending a great deal of time on Hindu-pride-focused WhatsApp groups and alternatehistory websites that recount the glories of India’s ancient civilization before the Muslim and Western “invasions.” Some attend camps organized by the nationalist Hindu World Congress, where they are taught to defend cows, protect the modesty of women, and prevent conversion to other faiths. One man reported that he had “been taught to not hit the head and chest—that can be fatal. We beat them in such a way so they get these serious, silent injuries—on the backs, on the legs— so they do not die. Otherwise, there will be a case against us.” In the event of a death, a Hindu monk has stated not to “worry” because the perpetrators will not be held accountable by authorities. Extremists say they are willing to kill for their faith if necessary.47 • In July 2018 the BJP minister of Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha, placed garlands of marigolds around the necks of eight men who were part of a lynch mob that killed a Muslim man and who were later convicted of murder. The minister’s stunt was widely seen as a good political move that would win him support.48 • Devotees of a temple in southern India, Sabarimala, believe that women of childbearing age should not be allowed to visit because the shrine’s deity, Lord Ayyappa, is celibate. Following an Indian Supreme Court decision that struck down the ban on female visitors, women who attempted the journey were

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verbally attacked, and police officers sent to protect them were pummeled and their vehicles set on fire.49 • According to one report, Muslims constitute 76 percent of hate crime victims in India over the previous decade, and 90 percent of those attacks have been perpetrated since Modi came to power in 2014.50

These examples demonstrate that Hindu violence in India is widespread and not necessarily a consequence of specific “crimes” (conversion, love, or meat processing) committed by Indian Muslims. It is also not confined to any one geographical area of the country and, as news reports suggest, is on the rise. What then, is the government doing about it?

Anti-Christian Violence Although India’s Muslims have borne the brunt of Hindu extremist violence, the country’s Christians have also been the target of some violent incidents. For some nationalists, Christianity might evoke memories of the faith of the former British colonizers and hence constitute a focus for their anger. Christians constitute a mere 2 percent of India’s population and are thus a small community (although there are some 30 million of them). The Modi government has not been kind to its Christian compatriots: as part of a broader crackdown on thousands of foreign-funded organizations, a major Christian charity named Compassion International was forced to shutter its operations in 2017 amid claims that it was “masterminding” religious conversions (an allegation often made of India’s Muslims as well).51 Violent incidents include:

• In 2017 Christmas carolers were assaulted by Hindus in Madhya Pradesh. When priests went to the police to register a complaint, they were detained by authorities and their vehicle was set afire.52 • Hindus sent letters to schools in northern India warning of “repercussions” if they chose to commemorate Christmas.53 • In a late 2018 report, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a global Christian rights group, claimed that in the first ten months of that year there were 219 incidents of targeted violence against Christians by Hindu groups, 192 of which were mob attacks in the

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form of threats and intimidation. Women and children suffered the most, with 160 women and 139 children reported injured.54

The Role of the Modi Government in Hindu Extremism Modi was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and has been the prime minister of India since 2014. His BJP party is part of what is known as the sangh parivar, a host of Hindu nationalist groups all tied to the RSS. The BJP’s recent electoral success has given rise to a much more robust—and dangerous— form of Hindu nationalism. Modi has on occasion called for a crackdown on cow vigilantes and others responsible for anti-Muslim violence. It is hard to take these pleas seriously in light of the many calls by BJP members, some of which have been cited above, for more violence. Simply put, the BJP and its RSS ideological cousin are Hindu nationalists and extremists who resort to violence. One party official admitted to a Nepalese reporter that the party wants to unite Hindus by making them feel like victims, and another confessed to wanting antiMuslim polarization.55 Some Hindu extremists have attained the highest levels of power in parts of India and have acted to impose their narrow religious views on the wider public. A good example was the renaming of the city of Allahabad to Prayagraj. The chief minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, described as “a priest who has been accused of inciting violence against India’s Muslim minority,” seems intent on removing all traces of the Mughal Empire in the state. The new city name makes reference to the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, a site where a large Hindu festival takes place every January. Along with the names of several airports in Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath also had the name of a railway station in Mughalsarai Junction changed to that of a Hindu ideologue.56 In the eyes of some, Modi is akin to other extreme populists such as US president Donald Trump, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte. These men are in search of a former national greatness (“Make America Great Again”) and have embraced extremist elements to help achieve that goal. In India’s case, the aim is a return

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to “Hindu roots,” and anyone in the way has to realize that India is first and foremost a Hindu nation. In an interesting twist during the 2019 Indian elections, Modi lashed out at the opposition for using the term “Hindu terror.” Appealing to Hindu voters in the state of Maharashtra, the prime minister lambasted the Congress Party candidate for allegedly coining the term, adding “Congress and NCP can stoop to lowest level for the sake of votebank politics. The Congress attempted to defame the core of Indians by using the term ‘Hindu terror.’” Modi went on to say that the Congress Party had “insulted Hindus in front of the world. Weren’t you hurt when you heard the word ‘Hindu terror’? How can a community known for peace, brotherhood and harmony be linked with terrorism? In the thousand years of history, not a single incident shows an act of Hindu terrorism. Even the British historians could never find it.”57 During the 2019 election campaign, the BJP courting of Hindu nationalists—and extremists—led to an “us-versus-them philosophy in a country already riven by dangerous divisions.”58 Following the 2014 election the government began to rewrite history texts, excising parts on Muslim rulers, changing the names of sites from their Muslim versions to Hindu ones, and increasingly taking over and recasting historical sites. That effort was strengthened so much in 2019 that the “consensus among Indian activists and liberal political analysts (was) that their society, under Mr. Modi, has become more toxically divided between Hindus and Muslims.”59 As a result of this endorsement of Hindu extremist positions, average Indian Muslims are feeling threatened. “I could be lynched right now and nobody would do anything about it,” said Abdul Adnan, a Muslim who sells drill bits. “My government doesn’t even consider me Indian. How can that be when my ancestors have lived here hundreds of years?”60 Echoing messages heard elsewhere around the world of the dangers posed by “outsiders,” Hindu nationalists have framed the “threat” posed by India’s Muslim minority by raising the specter of increased Muslim population, including the entrance of “infiltrators” from Bangladesh, in the form of illegal migration.61 During Modi’s government a number of large statues, all representing Hindu politicians or gods, have been erected across India. According to one analyst, “for many Muslims and other religious minorities, then, these hulking public monuments of Hindu icons send an ominous message about their status in society.”62

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Modi and members of his government are playing a scary game. Although they realize the power of the appeal of Hindu nationalism and can probably rely on electoral successes in a Hindu majority country, they must also realize that violence can get out of hand. In India local politicians and strongmen have always wielded enormous power. If the central government cannot—or will not—rein in those in the states and villages who openly sponsor or urge acts of violence against minorities, does it not risk losing control? In light of official sanction of Hindu extremism, it is difficult to come up with any serious effort to counter the violence. Hindu leaders and political authorities occasionally issue statements calling for a decrease in violence, but these are heavily outweighed by those who support it. In an op-ed in the National Review in February 2018, George J. Marlin wrote: “The time has come for the U.S. and other Western nations to use their ties to India to apply some pressure on the Modi government. India must commit to taking concrete measures to rein in Hindu fanaticism and intolerance. It must guarantee and protect the human rights of all religious minorities, especially India’s Christian and Muslim dalits. This stain on Indian democracy must be removed.”63

How Hindu Is This Form of Extremism? In November 2017 the head of a group linked to the RSS in the southwestern Indian state of Maharashtra stated, “Everyone in this world is born Hindu. They are turned into Muslims when they are circumcised and Christians when they are baptized.” He was speaking in the aftermath of successful “rescues” of cows from Muslims by devout Hindus. It is difficult not to see a strong Hindu element to much of the violence described in this chapter. Yes, there is clearly an important nationalist edge to lynchings and beatings, but when Hindu gods are cited by rioters and mosques are razed by extremists demanding the rebuilding of a temple to the god Rama, it is impossible not to see this through the lens of religion. There are extremist pages on Facebook called Save Hinduism, Save the World, and Rearming Hinduism, as if proponents are girding themselves for some kind of holy war. As a former Indian army officer stated, “There is a profoundly disquieting myth about Hinduism

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which has been put about by its adherents so often and so successfully that it is in danger of crystallizing into a truth—that of its essentially ‘pluralistic’ and ‘tolerant’ traditions.”64 The prejudice and violence against Muslims and Christians is an open secret. Hindu extremists refuse to accept anything that strays from their narrow interpretation of the faith, and their abiding mantra appears to be Hindu Khatre mein hay (“Hindus are in danger”). Audrey Truschke, author of Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King, wrote in History Today in August 2017, “In India, history is a matter of vibrant public debate, especially in the current political climate, in which Hindu nationalists seek to rewrite the past and are increasingly enforcing their will through extrajudicial violence.”65 Whether they are renaming towns and cities or denigrating Muslim contributions to Indian history, it is clear that for some Hindu extremists any reference to Islam or Muslims is unwanted. When religious groups can portray their adherents as being in “danger”—(one op-ed writer went so far as to say that Hindus are “discriminated against,” a ludicrous belief)66—they are in a much better position to call for extreme acts to defend those groups. This is clearly happening in India. Given the lack of hierarchy in Hinduism, unlike in Islam or Christianity, the job of issuing the call to arms falls to laypersons. At this point in Indian history, that call is issued frequently by members of the BJP, up to and including senior ministers. Is there a sliver of hope on the horizon? In late September 2018 the leader of the RSS delivered a speech in which he appeared to call for a move away from some of the more extreme positions of the organization.67 Some analysts see this as a ruse, however, aimed at securing support from other segments of the Indian population. Time will tell if the RSS has truly changed. In contrast, a September 2018 article in the Economist provided a much less sanguine analysis. In reporting on a Hindu extremist riot against an annual gathering of out-of-caste Dalits (the so-called untouchables), the journal noted that Hindus have a long list of “bogeys”: “violent Maoists, human-rights groups, Christian missionaries, Muslim Kashmiri separatists, the opposition Congress party, Western academics, Dalit activists, China and academic institutions abhorred as ‘anti-national’ by the Indian right.”68 Although not all of these are religious targets, there are enough to suggest that Hindu violent extremism will continue for some time.

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Conclusions India was born in a maelstrom of violence. Partition, as it was named, between India and Pakistan led to the deaths of anywhere between several hundred thousand and 2 million people. Modern-day India might indeed be the world’s largest democracy, but violence remains a fact of life. Economic inequality is dire, and the wretched caste system still dominates in some places. Outstanding territorial issues such as those in Kashmir promise yet more violence in the future. Hindus constitute the majority of Indians, but there are large Christian and Muslim populations. In fact, the Muslim part of India would constitute the world’s third largest Islamic nation if it were a separate polity (only Indonesia and Pakistan have bigger concentrations). India was a Muslim state for three and a half centuries beginning in the sixteenth century, and architectural wonders such as the Taj Mahal speak to that heritage (interestingly, Hindu nationalists try to downplay the magnificence of the Taj Mahal). Hindu nationalism is not a recent phenomenon. Hindus fought against the Mughal Muslims and the Raj’s Christian rulers. Indian independence cost much blood. Hindus could thus be excused for their fear of a return to servitude (as remote as that possibility might be), and to an extent the campaign of violence against Indian Muslims in particular can be interpreted in this light. The desire by some to erase any vestige of the Muslim rule over India has extended to attempts to change place names where the current version sounds “too Muslim.” As Indian journalist Amrit Dhillon reported in an op-ed in the Globe and Mail in late 2018, “The current government . . . [has been] busy renaming towns to remove any names that sound even remotely Muslim and replacing them with Hindu ones. . . . The federal government has given consent to the renaming of at least 25 towns and villages in the past year.”69 This erasure of the Muslim influence on Indian history has even become an educational issue. New textbooks in Rajasthan state, governed by the BJP, clearly promote that party’s ideology. Texts now state that Vedic myths are real, glorify ancient and medieval Hindu rulers, label Muslim rule as five centuries of “struggle,” and praise Prime Minister Modi’s policies. One writer describes this change as a combination of Hindu triumphalism and Islamophobia.70 One tenth-grade teacher in Gujarat actually told a class that the “lack of pan-Hindu sentiment permitted violent and immoral Muslims to defile the country.”71

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The Modi and subsequent governments have to rein in the wanton slaughter of minority Indians. It is one thing to be proud Hindus; it is quite another to demand the expulsion of those who do not see things the way you do.

Notes 1. Hindu, “Ayodhya: We Want Law to Build Temple, Can’t Wait Eternally for Court Verdict, Says VHP.” 2. Note that some also refer to Buddhist extremism as “saffron terror” because of the color of the Buddhist monks’ robes. Hence, the term is confusing. 3. Reuters, “Thousands of Hindus Gather at Site of 1992 Religious Riot.” See also Conversation, “Ayodhya: The History of a 500-Year-Old Land Dispute Between Hindus and Muslims in India.” 4. Palash Ghosh, “Hindu Nationalist’s Links to Nazism and Fascism.” 5. Ghosh, “Hindu Nationalist’s Links to Nazism and Fascism.” 6. Gurpreet Singh, “Christians Under Constant Attack in Modi’s India.” 7. Singh, “Christians Under Constant Attack in Modi’s India.” 8. Simran Jeet Singh, “It’s Time India Accepted Responsibility for Its 1984 Sikh Genocide.” 9. Kai Schultz, “Over 2,000 Arrests as Mob Hinders Women at Temple,” A8. 10. Annie Gowen, “Indian Politicians Rush to Limit Booze and Beef in ‘Ban Mania.’” 11. Gowen, “Indian Politicians Rush to Limit Booze and Beef in ‘Ban Mania.’” 12. Annie Gowen, “Cows Are Sacred to India’s Hindu Majority. For Muslims Who Trade Cattle, That Means Growing Trouble.” 13. Sanya Nayeem, “India Lynching Victim in Alwar Died of Shock and Internal Bleeding: Report.” 14. Hindustan Times, “UP Dies After Being Thrashed by Mob for Allegedly Stealing Buffaloes.” 15. Zeba Siddiqui, Krishna N. Das, Tommy Wilkes, and Tom Lasseter, “Emboldened by Modi’s Ascent, India’s Cow Vigilantes Deny Muslims Their Livelihood.” 16. Alok Pandey, “Man Beaten to Death in UP Allegedly over Cow Slaughter Rumours.” 17. Gowen, “Cows Are Sacred to India’s Hindu Majority.” 18. Piyush Rai, “Mob Violence in Bulandshahr over Alleged Cow Slaughter, Cow Among Two Killed.” 19. Swati Chaturvedi, “Cow Terrorists Bay for Muslim Blood: A Story of Lynching in India.” 20. SOS Kashmir, “Hindu Extremist Calls for Beheadings and Murder.” 21. Jeffrey Gettleman and Suhasini Raj, “His Defense of Hindus Was to Kill a Muslim and Post a Video.”

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22. Alok Pandey, “Muslim Man Wanted to Marry Hindu Woman, Beaten by Mob at Ghaziabad Court.” 23. Annie Gowen, “A Muslim and a Hindu Thought They Could Be a Couple. Then Came the ‘Love Jihad’ Hit List.” 24. Economist, “India Is Working Itself into a Frenzy over Mixed Marriages.” 25. Al Jazeera, “India: Cop on Video Thrashes Woman for Relations with Muslim Man.” 26. Economic Times, “J&K Saw a 166% Increase in Civilian Casualties in 2017: Home Ministry Report.” 27. Deutsche Welle, “Hindu Extremists Challenge Kashmir’s ‘Special Status.’” 28. Eurasian Times, “Brutal Gang Rape and Killing Unmasks Hindu Extremism in Jammu and Kashmir.” 29. Dean Nelson, “Kashmir: Violence Escalates Between Hindus and Muslims.” 30. Express Tribune, “Members of Hindu Extremist Group Throw Ink on Indian Kashmir Lawmaker.” 31. Economist, “We Are Assamese If You Please,” 34. 32. Economist, “We Are Assamese If You Please.” 33. Dhaka Tribune, “India Vows Justice as Many Muslims Fear Being Left Off Citizen List.” 34. Hindustan Times, “India Will Be Safe If Illegal Rohingyas and Bangladeshis Are Shot: Hyderabad BJP MLA.” 35. Rahul Bedi, “India Declares 4 Million ‘Stateless,’” NP2. 36. Syed Badrul Ahsan, “Beleaguered Bangladesh and Big Neighbour Trouble.” 37. Independent (Bangladesh), “Amit Shah’s ‘Termite’ Remark on Immigrants Unwanted Says Bangladesh.” 38. Hindustan Times, “BJP’s Ram Madhav Says Those Excluded from Assam’s Citizens’ List to Be Deported.” 39. Independent, “Lok Sabha Passes Contentious Bill That Excludes Muslims.” 40. Biswajyoti Das, “Eleven Muslims Killed in Sectarian Violence in Assam.” 41. Suhasini Raj and Kai Schultz, “After a Religious Clash in India, Rumors Create a False ‘Martyr,’” A6. 42. Sunetra Choudhury, “In Mecca Masjid Blast Case, Judge Who Acquitted All 5 Accused Resigns.” 43. NDTV, “‘He Looked Like a Terrorist’: The Horror Story of the Karnataka Mob Attack.” 44. Lisa Fuller, “Hindu Group Protests Against Muslim Teachers Wearing Abaya.” 45. Sandeep Rai, “Three Muslim Men Thrashed on Train Near Baghpat.” 46. Jeffrey Gettleman, Suhasini Raj, and Hari Kumar, “India Braces for Opening of Film That Has Hindu Extremists Enraged.” 47. Annie Gowen, “‘We Don’t Have Any Fear’: India’s Angry Young Men and Its Lynch Mob Crisis.”

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48. Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar, “Seduced by Hate, Indian Politician Embraces a Lynch Mob.” 49. Kai Schultz, “Angry Mobs at Indian Temple Ignore Orders to Admit Women,” A4. 50. Rana Ayyub, “Modi’s India Is a Living Nightmare for Muslims.” 51. Hannah Beech, Dharisha Bastians, and Kai Schultz, “Religious Minorities Across Asia Suffer amid Surge in Sectarian Politics.” 52. Beech, Bastians, and Schultz, “Religious Minorities Across Asia Suffer.” 53. Beech, Bastians, and Schultz, “Religious Minorities Across Asia Suffer.” 54. UCA News, “Religious Minorities in India Attacked with Impunity.” 55. Max Rodenbeck, “A Mighty Wind,” 6. 56. Al Jazeera, “India’s BJP Changes Muslim Name of Allahabad to Prayagraj.” 57. Alok Deshpande, “Congress Disrespected Hindus by Saying ‘Hindu Terror’ Says Modi at First Poll Rally in Maharashtra.” 58. Jeffrey Gettleman, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj, and Hari Kumar, “Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge Has Further Divided India.” 59. Gettleman, Schultz, Raj, and Kumar, “Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge.” 60. Gettleman, Schultz, Raj, and Kumar, “Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge.” 61. Hartosh Singh Bal, “Modi’s Campaign of Fear and Prejudice.” 62. Indulata Prasad, “Why Giant Statues of Hindu Gods and Leaders Are Making Muslims in India Nervous.” 63. George J. Marlin, “The U.S. Should Pressure India to Curb Hindu Extremism.” 64. Taimur Khan, “Rising Tides of Intolerance and Hindu Extremism in India.” 65. Audrey Truschke, “Censoring Indian History,” 16. 66. N. S. Venkataraman, “Is Hindu Religion Discriminated Against in India?” 67. Ravi Menon, “Is India’s RSS Losing Its Ideology?” 68. Economist, “Politics and the Law in India: Conspiracy Theories,” 41. 69. Amrit Dhillon, “Sikhs for Justice Seek Referendum—and a New Reputation.” 70. Alex Traub, “India’s Dangerous New Curriculum,” 41. 71. Traub, “India’s Dangerous New Curriculum,” 42.

5 Islamic Extremism

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. —Hadith attributed to the prophet Muhammad

Islamic extremism has been covered so extensively over the past two decades that the history of Islamic terrorism is unnecessary here. However, it is an incontrovertible fact that religiously motivated acts of terrorism carried out by Muslims supersede the numbers of those carried out by other religious actors by several orders of magnitude. As an illustration of this one needs only to consult the 2017 US State Department’s “Country Report on Terrorism,” published in September 2018. 1 The whole report is worth reading, but a few statistics stand out. Although terrorist attacks were documented in 100 countries in 2017, 59 percent of attacks took place in only 5 nations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, and Iraq. Furthermore, 70 percent of all deaths attributed to terrorism were found in 5 nations: Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, and Iraq. The vast majority of these incidents were perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.

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Terminology The term Islamic terrorism has lately elicited criticism from many. Most Muslims decry the use of the phrase, which they feel is inaccurate because, as some say, “There is nothing Islamic about this kind of violence.” Some people, including many scholars, have substituted the term Islamist terrorism, drawing a distinction between Islam and Islamism—the latter is a political ideology infused with Islamic precepts. In my professional life I tended to use Islamist extremism. For the purpose of this chapter, however, I use the term Islamic extremism for two reasons. The first is linguistic consistency. I describe all the other forms of religious extremism using the adjective form (Buddhist, Jewish, etc.), so it would seem odd to treat Islamic differently. Second, it might be true that most Muslims see little of the “real” Islam in the heinous terrorist acts of a group such as Al Qaeda, but that is probably also true of Buddhists in Sri Lanka or Hindus in India when they see acts of violence carried out in the name of their religions. At the risk, therefore, of offending some Muslims, here I use the term Islamic extremism.

Islam Islam is the world’s second-largest monotheistic faith after Christianity. Following its founding on the Arabian Peninsula in the early seventh century CE, it spread beyond the Middle East, Asia, and Africa to become truly a world religion. There are approximately 1.8 billion adherents, representing one-quarter of the earth’s population. The primordial figure in Islam is the prophet Muhammad (571– 632 CE), an Arab who traveled extensively in the Levant and encountered both Jewish and Christian teachings. Starting in 610 CE, he began to receive a series of “revelations” from Allah (God). These revelations became the Quran (the Muslim holy book), and together with the sayings and practices of Muhammad (the Hadiths), these two texts are the primary sources of doctrine in Islam. Following Muhammad’s death in 632, the nascent Islamic community split into two main groups because of differences over his succession, and this division exists today between the Sunnis (90 percent of Muslims) and the Shia. Islam cites five “pillars” that underscore the faith:

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• The Shahada (“profession of faith”): La allah ila Allah (“There is no God but Allah”) • Sawm (“fasting”) • Zakat (“charity”) • Hajj (“pilgrimage to Mecca once in one’s lifetime”) • Salah (“five sets of daily prayers”)

Terrorists often cite a sixth pillar—jihad (“fighting”).

What Is Jihad? Perhaps no term is more controversial, and yet more central to the study of terrorism, than jihad. This word has entered the general Western vocabulary, often with the meaning of “holy war” or “terrorism.” Islamic extremist groups use it all the time, and some even incorporate it into their titles (e.g., the Islamic Jihad Group in Palestine and the Islamic Jihad Union in Uzbekistan). I cannot reproduce the vast literature on jihad here. Jihad has many different meanings, ranging from “personal struggle to improve one’s nature” to “warfare.”2 My intent here is to describe how Islamic extremists use the term. To do that, it is sufficient for the purposes of this book to examine what are arguably the two most important extremist works of the twentieth century: In Defense of the Muslim Lands, by Abdallah Azzam, and The Forgotten Obligation, by Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj. These writings have not only influenced Islamic extremists around the world, but they also contain most of the information necessary to understand the extremist view of jihad. In the following sections I summarize the main points of both works. In Defense of the Muslim Lands

Azzam, a Palestinian, was instrumental in the early days of the fight against the Soviets after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. In a way, he became the spiritual founder of Al Qaeda. Among his many writings is a short but influential tract, In Defense of the Muslim Lands. The tract’s subtitle, The First Obligation After Iman (iman is Arabic for “faith”), is an indication of the importance Azzam placed on jihad. He noted that Islam had been victorious historically, but today’s Muslims appear to have forgotten the importance of jihad.

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According to him, because of this neglect, today’s Muslims have become “like the rubbish of the flood waters.”3 Azzam differentiates between offensive and defensive jihad. The former is a fard kifayah (“collective obligation”) and occurs when the kuffar (“infidels”) are not gathering to fight Muslims. Under these conditions, it is sufficient to send an army at least once a year to “terrorize the enemies of Allah.”4 All Muslims must assist those that fight. Defensive jihad is, on the other hand, a fard ayn (“individual obligation”) and arises when: • The kuffar enter a Muslim land. • An imam calls upon Muslims to fight. • The kuffar capture and imprison a group of Muslims.

Azzam cites a number of passages in the Quran, along with Islamic scholars, to support his views. He emphasizes that if a Muslim land is invaded, the obligation of fard ayn negates the need for a wife to ask a husband’s permission to fight, or for a child to ask a parent, or a debtor his creditor. According to Azzam, it is unconscionable that Muslims are failing to obey the call to jihad in Afghanistan, Palestine, the Philippines, Kashmir, and other conflict zones. He prioritizes Palestine over Afghanistan and discusses the merits of both jihads. He notes that an amir (“leader”) is not necessary for jihad to be obligatory and that all must at least perform jihad with their wealth (i.e., finance mujahideen, or “guerrilla fighters”). The Forgotten Obligation (Also Known as The Absent Obligation)

Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj was an Egyptian extremist executed in 1982 for his role in coordinating the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (seen as a traitor for his agreement to sign a peace accord with Israel). In his book The Forgotten Obligation, Faraj said those who do not go forth in jihad will be punished by Allah, and it is imperative that all Muslims abide by what Allah has ordained. Faraj believed jihad fi sabil Allah (“in the cause of Allah”) has been neglected by current Islamic scholars (thus the title of his book; Faraj extended that accusation to most modern Muslims). He argued that Muslims must work to establish a true Islamic state because

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there was no such contemporary state. According to him, modern rulers had abandoned Islam and had been influenced by non-Muslim colonizers. He used the thirteenth-century conflict between the Muslims and Mongols as an example of how true believers must rise up against their infidel overlords. Faraj cited a Quranic verse used regularly by extremists: “Fighting [i.e., jihad] is prescribed upon you but you dislike it.” He advocated that fighting the “near enemy” (i.e., rulers seen as apostates) must take place before taking the battle to the “far enemy” (i.e., the West) and rejected the notion that jihad is defensive only. According to Faraj, those who believe jihad is divided into stages (i.e., that the struggle with oneself against sin must be accomplished before fighting the enemy) are cowards. He argued that scholars who advise that the “greater jihad” is more important than the “lesser jihad” have diverted Muslims from their true calling. He also contended that the term suicide operations is inaccurate because those who die in jihad offer their lives to the cause of Allah to bring benefit and protection to Muslims. Based on these texts, jihad—clearly an Islamic religious construct—holds a place of primacy for Islamic terrorists. Azzam and Faraj are but two scholars who devoted much time to explaining both the meaning of jihad and its purported obligation.

A Plethora of Religious Targets Many Islamic extremists adhere to an austere and intolerant form of Salafist Islam. Another oft-heard term is Wahhabism; Wahhabi Islam is a branch of Salafist Islam that began in the mid-1700s in what is now northern Saudi Arabia. Salafism is an interpretation of Islam that hearkens back to the beginnings of the faith in the seventh century CE (but was revived in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries). It maintains that the only true Islam is the practices of the prophet Muhammad and the first three generations of Muslims. Any other interpretation or practice is dismissed as bida’a (“innovation”) and constitutes a deviation from the one authentic path. In the minds of some Islamic extremists, these other versions of Islam are not only haram (“forbidden”) but must be eliminated. To this end, people practicing variations must be killed. In jihadi literature, the Islamic sects most often cited for destruction are the Shia, the Sufi, and the

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Ahmadis, although a great number of Sunnis (even though Salafism is Sunni in origin) are also killed. I will examine each separately. In a later section I will discuss adherents to other faiths targeted by Islamic extremists.

Anti-Shiism Shia Muslims constitute approximately one-tenth of the world’s Muslims, although they are the majority in several countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain. They generally derive their inspiration and notions of leadership from the fourth caliph (successor to the prophet Muhammad), Ali, and participate in some practices and rituals that differ from those of the majority Sunnis, although they believe in the same primary sources (the Quran and Hadiths) all Muslims do. The original rift occurred over the successor to the prophet Muhammad upon his death: the Sunnis were in favor of electing the best man from among the community, whereas Ali’s family and supporters wanted a blood relative to take leadership. The word Shia derives from the Shiat Ali (“the partisans of Ali”). In the end, Abu Bakr received the nod as the first caliph. To the extremists, the Shia are the rafidha (“those who have rejected Islam”). Jihadis see the Shia as imposters, who cannot rule over other Muslims. Jihadi literature is rife with calls to kill the Shia:

• A Malaysian Sunni cleric claimed in January 2018 that Shiites pose a “national security threat” and that “action” should be taken against them.5 • In a July 2016 video, Islamic State (IS) accused the West of “mobilizing” the rafidha and called upon God to curse the Shia.6 • In June 2015, an IS spokesperson noted that the rafidha had shown their “true face” and that their enmity toward Islam was greater than that of the “crusaders” (Westerners).7 • Former IS spokesperson Abu Muhammad al Adnani warned the rafidha (and others) in January 2015 that they would “die in their rage” and that the mujahideen would be a “thorn in your eyes, a choking pain in your throats, a spear in your chests, and a rage burning in your hearts.”8 • In April 2016, IS published “Our Battle with the Rafidha Continues Until There Is No More Sedition.”9 Fitna (“sedition”) is

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an important concept in Islam, meaning that Muslims should avoid intra-Islamic tension and division; Islamic extremists seek to end it through violence.

Among the groups of Shia Muslims the Islamic extremists target are the Hazaras in Afghanistan, Iranians in general, the Shia in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Assad regime in Syria. Some of the most recent Islamic terrorist attacks on Shia communities include:

• In May 2018 terrorists attacked a Shia mosque in Cape Town, South Africa, killing one worshipper and injuring two others.10 • IS claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack on a Shia cultural center in Kabul that killed at least forty-one people and wounded thirty in December 2017.11 • In January 2017 a suicide bomber targeted a predominantly Shia section of Baghdad, killing eleven people and wounding twenty-two.12 • IS in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for an August 2018 suicide bomber who killed forty-seven Hazara students at a preparatory school in Kabul. Another sixty-seven people were wounded.13

Anti-Sufism The Sufis are best known in the West for their spirituality, music, and dancing. Some see Sufism as the “mystical” sect of Islam. Sufis are ascetics and live in a number of tariqat (“orders”). To the Islamic extremists, however, the Sufis are murtaddin (“apostates”). Extremists do not allow music or dancing and are highly critical of any manifestation of either. Although Sufis do not feature frequently in jihadi literature, here are a few examples of the ways in which jihadis view them: • In an August 2016 statement, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed that the founder of that movement, Hassan al Banna, had pulled Egyptian youth from the “deviant Sufi workshops” and organized them into jihadi battalions.14

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• In a March 2016 video, Russian members of IS claimed that Russian state-appointed preachers and Sufism were “diseases” plaguing the Muslims of the region.15 • In April 2016, IS referred to the Sufis as “polytheists”; to Islamic extremists shirk (“polytheism”) is punishable by death.16 Recent attacks against Sufi Muslims include:

• On November 26, 2018, Al Shabaab terrorists stormed a Sufi shrine in Somalia and killed twenty people, including the shrine’s imam.17 The terrorist group claimed that it had targeted the cleric because he had blasphemed when he called himself a “prophet.” • In November 2017 terrorists, probably from IS in the Sinai, attacked a mosque frequented by Sufis in Cairo, killing more than three hundred people.18 • In late 2017 Islamic extremists attacked two Sufi mosques in Tripoli, Libya.19 • In April 2016 a Sufi professor was hacked to death by suspected Islamic extremists in northern Bangladesh.20 • In the wake of the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, National Thowheeth Jama’ath, the group believed by government authorities to be behind the violence, threatened to attack Sufi shrines.21

Anti-Ahmadi Hatred The Ahmadis belong to a nineteenth-century sect of Islam that arose in the Punjab region of British India. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the mujaddid (“renewer”), who would fulfill Islamic prophecies of global triumph. In essence he was a mahdi (“Messiah-like figure”). Islam teaches that the prophet Muhammad was the last prophet, the “seal” of prophecy; that is, the final one in a line of prophets (that go back to Adam and through Noah, Abraham, and Moses up to Jesus). None are allowed to succeed Muhammad, and any person who claims to be such a prophet is an apostate. Many in mainstream Islam reject the Ahmadis and Islamic extremists want to kill them for their apostasy. As with the Shia, extremists refer to Ahmadis with a derogatory term—the Qadiani (named after the town in India where Ahmad was born). Some examples of anti-Ahmadi hatred include:

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• In June 2014 members of a jihadi online forum accused Pakistan of supporting the Qadiani and wondered why they were not being punished for their actions.22 • In a December 2011 video, members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan criticized the Pakistani army for calling a dead Ahmadi soldier a “martyr” despite the government’s pronouncement that the Ahmadis were un-Islamic.23 • Leaflets found at a south London mosque in 2016 called for the killing of Ahmadis. They included the line, “Those who refuse to convert to mainstream Islam within three days should face a ‘capital sentence’—or death penalty.”24

Ahmadi Muslims have died in several violent acts perpetrated by Islamic extremists:

• Terrorists armed with bombs and guns attacked two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, Pakistan, in May 2010, killing close to one hundred worshippers25 • In claiming responsibility for an attack on an Ahmadi mosque in Bangladesh in December 2015, IS wrote that the “martyr” had exploded his suicide vest in a crowd of “polytheists”26 • Six Ahmadis were killed in a series of attacks in Pakistan in 201627

Not only Islamic extremist groups demonstrate an intolerance for Ahmadi Muslims. In September 2018 the government of Pakistan cancelled plans to appoint an internationally recognized economist to its Economic Advisory Council because he was an Ahmadi. In Pakistan it is illegal for Ahmadis to call themselves Muslim or use any Islamic symbols in their religious practices.28 Because these differences in belief are nonnegotiable to Islamic extremist groups, they target all Muslims who do not share their narrow interpretation of Islam.

Anti-Sikh Violence Islamic extremists have a long history of attacking Sikhs, whom they view as infidels. The Taliban forced Sikhs (and Hindus) in Afghanistan to wear a yellow patch to identify themselves in public, reminiscent of

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Nazi Germany’s imposition of the yellow star on Jews. Of the approximately 220,000 Sikhs that lived in Kabul in 1992, only 200 remain.29 Among the attacks on Sikhs were:

• In 2016 in Kabul an Islamic extremist placed a knife at a shopkeeper’s throat and ordered him to convert to Islam or he would be killed (fortunately bystanders saved the shopkeeper).30 • Protesters in Afghanistan have interrupted Sikh funeral processions (Sikhs cremate their dead, a practice forbidden in Islam) by throwing stones and shouting insults, forcing the Sikh community to request police protection so they can mourn in peace.31 • A grenade was thrown at the Nirankari Bhawan prayer hall in Amritsar on November 18, 2018, killing three people and wounding at least fifteen. Police believe the Islamic terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM) was behind the attack.32

Denying Other Religions Islamic extremists not only hate a lot of other Muslims—who constitute the vast majority of their victims—but also they hate nonMuslims. This is not consistent with normative Islam. One Quranic verse states, “There is no compulsion in religion.” History is full of examples in which members of other faiths, especially the Ahl alKitab (“people of the book”—in recognition of the prophetic tradition common to all three faiths), including Jews and Christians, lived together, albeit with some restrictions in Muslim-dominant regions. To an Islamic extremist, this harmony of difference is impossible. According to them, Jews and Christians have three choices: convert to Islam, pay the jizya (tax for the privilege of worshipping their own God), or die. All others must convert or die. The list of members of non-Islamic faiths the Islamic extremists see as enemies is long, as with the record of atrocities: • On Easter Sunday in 2019, Islamic extremists (possibly tied to IS) attacked Catholic churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, killing more than 250 people. • In November 2018 terrorists from IS in the Sinai attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christian pilgrims in central Egypt, killing at least seven.33

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• In September 2018 a Muslim mob in Minya, Egypt, attacked and ransacked Coptic Christian homes, leaving two men wounded.34 • In February 2015 IS beheaded twenty-one Coptic Christian migrant workers in Libya on a beach on the Mediterranean, claiming Christians had kidnapped Muslim women in Egypt. • In April 2002 Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for an attack on a Jewish synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, in which twenty-one people, mostly German tourists, were killed. • Several attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh have targeted Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus. • IS has murdered Yazidi men and enslaved and raped Yazidi women. • A study by the Global Fatwa Index in 2018 noted that “100 per cent” of IS fatwas calling for the death of Christians and the destruction of churches led to violent action.35

Islamic extremist groups have also destroyed priceless world heritage sites and religious artifacts they view as idolatrous. Among the most infamous acts of destruction are: • The March 2001 dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas, 1,700year-old statues in Afghanistan • The destruction of the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, by IS in 2016 • The burning of ancient Islamic texts in Timbuktu, Mali • The ransacking of museums of antiquities in Iraq

Islamic extremists, in their propaganda, often justify targeting non-Muslims:

• In September 2016, IS in Somalia threatened to attack Christian churches and kill those who did not convert to Islam.36 • While claiming responsibility for an attack on Tunisian soldiers in August 2016, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) called on Muslims to join in jihad and asked Allah to “get the Jews, the Christians and their apostate agents.”37 • In August 2016 the Khorasan Province of IS promised to attack the “disbelievers” and to “take revenge against the apostates, the Jews, and the Christians on behalf of every prisoner, sister, elder, and child.”38

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• In an August 2016 video IS listed the enemies of Allah as “Christians, Jews and atheists.”39 • In October 2015 the Algerian Province of IS came up with its own list of the enemies of Islam: Christians, Jews, Magians (Zoroastrians), and Buddhists.40 • The Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria announced in 2016 that it would target Western charity organizations because they were “strongly seeking to Christianize society.”41 • Following the October 2018 Pakistani Supreme Court rejection of a lower court’s verdict of blasphemy on a Christian woman nine years previously, Islamic extremists threatened the lives of the prime minister, the chief justice, and the army chief. A poll indicated that 10 million Pakistanis would be willing to kill the woman themselves over her supposed insults of the prophet Muhammad.42 • In January 2011 a jihadist, responding to an online call for the killing of a Greek Orthodox priest for maligning Islam, noted, “In the past Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire and Allah willing it will return to be a Muslim land again.”43 • In July 2016 while calling for attacks in India to avenge the death of Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani, jihadis also called for attacks against the “cow-worshipping” Hindus, who had advocated a “non-jihadi” path of taghut (“idolatry”) and democracy.44

Saving Islam from Non-Islamic Rulers Islamic extremists not only consider themselves as the only true Muslims and show little compunction about killing other Muslims, they also view the rulers of many Muslim majority nations as illegitimate. This so-called illegitimacy can stem from several factors: • The ruler or ruling family comes from the wrong Muslim sect • The government is too closely tied to the West • The nation allows activity the jihadists see as un-Islamic (alcohol sales, respect for gay rights, women’s rights) • The ruling system is democratic • The country has relations with Israel

The most common term used by extremist groups to describe the leader of an “outlaw” regime is taghut (plural tawaghit). This Ara-

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bic term comes from the root meaning “to step over, cross the limits.” In classical Islamic theology, it referred to those who worshipped idols. Jihadists also use it for “tyrants,” who do not rule in keeping with Islamic law. The jihadists, of course, decide who fits that bill. References to tawaghit are rife in jihadi literature:

• On July 24, 2016, IS called for the killing of taghut Pierre Vogel, a German convert preacher, whom the group had labeled an apostate.45 • In June 2016 the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan claimed that it sought to free oppressed Muslims from the rule of the taghut Uzbek president Islam Karimov.46 • In October 2015 the media arm of IS issued a statement about the world financial system and made a common reference to the role of the taghut Saudi regime.47

The Recovery of Former Muslim Lands In the seventh and eighth centuries, the Muslim expansion began with a tiny group of adherents to a new monotheistic faith heavily influenced by its two predecessors (Judaism and Christianity). Islam saw itself as a more pure form of worship of a single deity and the culmination of God’s plan for humanity. Muslims first conquered the Arabian Peninsula, then struck out in all directions. They moved east as far as the region that became India and Afghanistan, north to the Holy Land, and west across northern Africa and into Spain. They occupied the Iberian Peninsula beginning in 714 AD, and Muslim advance into what we now call Europe was only halted by the Battle of Tours (also known as the Battle of Poitiers and fought somewhere in north-central France), when Charles Martel (the “Hammer”) saved Christendom from the Muslim onslaught (large parts of Spain would remain Muslim territory until 1492). Other Muslim military campaigns moved into the Balkans and Greece. Vienna was threatened as late as 1684, and Malta was under siege on many occasions. None of these areas is predominantly Islamic today, although Muslim minorities are present in various percentages in several of them. To the Islamic extremists, however, the maxim is “Once a Muslim land, always a Muslim land.” They do not recognize the

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forfeiture of Muslim territory to the infidels and see it as their task to regain these lost lands. Jihadists still use the term Al-Andalus (Andalusia) to refer to Spain because it was the name of the Muslim province in southern Spain until the Reconquista. Islamic extremists express the desire to bring territory back to the bosom of Islam in their propaganda: • In an IS video on the caliphate on September 6, 2016, the terrorist group noted that it was fighting to reestablish Muslim dominion over a number of areas, including Al-Andalus.48 • In a May 2013 As-Sahab (the media arm of Al Qaeda) video, an Islamic scholar noted that India had been proudly Muslim until the arrival of the British, who handed power to Hindus and Sikhs—former “slaves” of Muslims.49 • In September 2016 Nashir Media Foundation, supportive of IS, predicted that Palestine would be “liberated” from the “impure” Jews.50

How Islamic Is This Form of Extremism? Khayralah Mezadivan is an eighteen-year-old Iraqi currently serving a nine-month sentence in a prison in the Kurdish city of Irbil for his “involvement” with IS. He does not know how many Shia Arabs he killed for the terrorist group because “nobody kept score.” When asked why he became one of IS’ “lion cubs” at the tender age of fourteen, he cited lack of work, water, and electricity as well as threatened punishments if he declined. I am most interested, however, in this statement: “I liked the way they explained the Quran. . . . We were going to heaven, where we’d get women and even be friends with the Prophet Mohammed.”51 Of all the religions I discuss in this book, Islamic extremists are by far the most prolific users of sacred texts to justify the use of violence. To them, violence is jihad, and they believe—and often state—that jihad is a fard ayn (“individual obligation”). Furthermore, Islamic terrorist individuals and groups use a wide range of religious material both from the Quran and Hadiths to demonstrate that the use of violence is divinely decreed. Some recent messages and statements by Islamist extremist groups contain such religious justification:

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• “But Allah has preferred the mujahideen over those who remain [behind] with a great reward by degrees from Him and forgiveness and mercy. And Allah is ever Forgiving and Merciful.” (Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham)52 • “Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight you but do not transgress.” (Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent)53 • “He who fights so that Allah’s word [i.e., Islam] should be superior, fights in Allah’s cause.” (Hadith cited by pro-IS Kashmiri group)54 • “To those against whom war is made, permission is given [to fight], because they are wronged; and verily, Allah is Most Powerful for their aid.” (Taliban)55

Using one Islamic extremist source, it is possible to find the following references to Quranic and Hadith justification or mandate for jihad. These examples are drawn from Inspire (volume 4), a magazine produced by the terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The issue dates from 2010.56

• “Indeed, Allah defends those who have believed. Indeed, Allah does not like everyone treacherous and ungrateful. Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory.” (no. 22: 38–39) • “So let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory.” (no. 4: 74) • “And fight against the disbelievers collectively as they fight against you collectively.” (no. 9: 36) • “O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness.” (no. 9: 123) • “I was instructed to fight the people until they say: ‘There is no one worthy of worship but Allah.’” (Hadith) • “And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.” (no. 9: 5) • “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the cause of tāghūt. So fight against the allies of Satan. Indeed, the plot of Satan has ever been weak.” (no. 4: 76) • “Whoever changes his religion should be killed.” (Hadith)

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• “I have been instructed to fight the people until they say there is no one worthy of worship but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, establish Salah and pay zakah.” (Hadith) • “March forth whether you are light or heavy.” (no. 9: 41) • “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts [i.e., desires] of a believing people.” (no. 9: 14) • “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy.” (no. 8: 60) • “O Prophet, fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.” (no. 9: 73) • “And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion [i.e., worship], all of it, is for Allah. And if they cease—then indeed, Allah is Seeing of what they do.” (no. 8: 39)

Again, these were drawn from one issue of one propaganda publication of one terrorist group. In my experience, it is highly representative of Islamic extremist material.

Countering Islamic Extremism Despite the oft-repeated conviction that Islamic extremism has “nothing to do with Islam,” this is demonstrably false. Islamic extremists freely use Islamic sacred texts to justify their violent actions, more so than any other religious extremist actors. Pretending that Islam is not an integral part of this form of violence is intellectually bankrupt and analytically indefensible. Despite this attempt to distance these terrorists from the tenets of Islam, many Muslim religious leaders have attempted to counter this form of violence. There are far too many examples to cite, but here are a few: • During his acceptance speech for the 2018 Templeton Prize, Jordan’s King Abdullah noted, “We are working, on every continent, to defend Islam from the minority who abuse our religion.”57 • Following riots spearheaded by Islamic extremists in the wake of the Pakistani Supreme Court decision to release a Christian

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woman accused of blasphemy, Pakistan’s information and broadcasting minister called on religious leaders to “prevent the war between ideologies from falling into the hands of those who are doing no service to our religion. . . . Some people are doing politics under the garb of religion.” The minister further called on religious leaders to become part of the government’s efforts to spread peaceful messages.58 • Hedieh Mirahmadi is president of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE), of which the mission is to enhance communication and understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and to strengthen moderate Muslim institutions worldwide to mitigate social and political conflict. She has also led several innovative programs to explore counterextremism initiatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan.59 • The Saudi government is but one example of a Muslim majority national body that has created programs in which religious scholars deconstruct and counter the religious narratives used by Islamic terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Conclusions Islamic extremists see themselves not only as Muslims but as the most representative Muslims, men and women risking their lives to protect Islam from its enemies and striving to spread the message of Allah around the world. To date, Islam is the most widely cited faith in the support of extremist violence. Whether that is normative is a separate issue. The number of individuals and groups who espouse Islamic extremist beliefs is showing no signs of abating, despite the “defeat” of IS and the continued US military presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere, along with that of other nations’ troops, for almost two decades. Deaths and destruction caused by Islamic terrorists occur on a daily basis in a wide variety of countries around the world. Never in history have we witnessed the scale of terrorism as that perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Terrorist movements come and go, and yet the jihadist carnage continues to develop. This fact should be further analyzed to determine why Islamic terrorists do not follow previous trends.

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Notes 1. US Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2017. 2. For a good summary of the multiple meanings of jihad, see Adam Silverman, “Just War, Jihad, and Terrorism.” 3. Abdallah Azzam, In Defense of the Muslim Lands, 5. 4. Azzam, In Defense of the Muslim Lands, 4. 5. David Hutt, “No Safe Place for SE Asia’s Shia Muslims.” 6. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Video Condemns New Syrian Army and Leader, Warns Coalition Forces from Entering IS Territory.” 7. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Spokesman Calls for Attacks During Ramadan, Offers Repentance Deals to Iraqi Tribes in New Speech.” 8. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Spokesman Renews Calls for Lone Wolf Attacks in the West.” 9. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Reports on Circumstances of Shabaab Defector’s Assassination, Engaging Shi’ites in War of Attrition in Al-Naba Newspaper.” 10. Kerushun Pillay, “One Dead, Two Critical After Attack at Verulam Mosque.” 11. Lizzie Dearden, “Kabul Suicide Bombing: ISIS Claims Responsibility for Terrorist Attack on Shia Cultural Center Killing 41.” 12. Associated Press, “Multiple Attacks in Baghdad Kill at Least 27.” 13. Ahmed Mengli and F. Brinley Bruton, “Afghanistan Bombing: Attack Kills 48 Hazara College Hopefuls in Kabul.” 14. SITE Intelligence Group, “Zawahiri Draws Lessons from Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Urges Muslims to Adhere to Islamic Principles.” 15. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS’ Al Hayat Media Video Incites Fighters, Lone Wolves in Caucasus to Attack Russians to Preoccupy from Syrian Airstrikes.” 16. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Reports on Circumstances of Shabaab Defector’s Assassination.” 17. Garowe Online, “Somalia: Al Shabaab Storms Sufi Shrine, Kills Cleric, 20 Others.” 18. Alex Ward, “The Terrorist Attack Against Sufi Muslims in Egypt, Explained.” 19. Human Rights Watch, “Libya: New Wave of Attacks Against Sufi Sites.” 20. BBC News, “Bangladesh: Sufi Muslim Murdered by Suspected Extremists.” 21. Austin Ramzy, “Sri Lanka Is Rattled by New Threats as Officials Argue over Responsibility. 22. SITE Intelligence Group, “Forum Members Note Lack of Security for Pakistani Political Party Sites.” 23. SITE Intelligence Group, “TTP Video Focuses on Attacks Against the Pakistani Army.” 24. Sajid Iqbal and Noel Titheradge, “‘Kill Ahmadis’ Leaflets Found in London Mosque.” 25. CNN, “Death Toll Rises to 98 After Lahore Attacks.”

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26. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Claims Suicide Bombing at Ahmadi Mosque in Bangladesh.” 27. Asad Hashim, “Three Ahmadis Sentenced to Death for Blasphemy.” 28. Hindu, “Imran Khan Govt Succumbs to Islamist Pressure, Cancels Appointment of Ahmadi Economist.” 29. Hamid Shalizi, “Afghanistan’s Dwindling Sikh, Hindu Communities Flee New Abuses.” 30. Shalizi, “Afghanistan’s Dwindling Sikh, Hindu Communities Flee New Abuses.” 31. Danielle Moylan, “Inside the Little-Known Kitchen of Afghanistan’s Sikhs.” 32. NDTV, “3 Dead, 15 Injured in Terror Attack at Prayer Hall in Amritsar, Say Cops.” 33. Agence France Presse, “Seven Coptic Christians Killed by ISIL in Egypt Bus Attack.” 34. Harvey Gavin, “Christianity Crackdown: Violent Mob Ransacks and Loots Home Church in Egypt: Two Stabbed.” 35. Waleed Abdul-Rahman, “Egypt: ISIS Religious Edicts Provoke Killing Christians.” 36. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Fighters in Somalia Call Muslims to Pledge to Baghdadi, Threaten to Attack Enemies, Churches, Parliaments.” 37. SITE Intelligence Group, “AQIM Issues Separate Message on Mount Semmama Attack, Claims Six Tunisian Soldiers Killed at Least.” 38. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS’ Khorasan Province Video Shows Clashes in Nangarhar, Executions by Gunshot and Beheading of Policemen and Militia.” 39. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS Video Incites Muslims in West to Kill Civilians to Avenge Airstrike Victims.” 40. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS’ Algeria Province Releases Audio Promoting Group, Predicting Russian Failure in Syria.” 41. Philip Obaji Jr., “ISIS Is Alive in Africa. Its Specialty: Murdering Women Who Are Trying to Save Lives.” 42. National Post, “Canada in Talks to Offer Asylum to Christian,” NP4. 43. SITE Intelligence Group, “Jihadists Call for Action Against Greek Orthodox Priest.” 44. SITE Intelligence Group, “Jihadis Distribute Call for ‘Decentralized’ Attacks in India.” 45. SITE Intelligence Group, “German Pro-IS Telegram Channel Incites Muslims to Kill Pierre Vogel.” 46. SITE Intelligence Group, “IMU Rejects Pledge by Leader to IS, Claims Its Group Continues to Exist.” 47. SITE Intelligence Group, “IS’ Al Hayat Media Center Releases Abridged Video on Gold Dinar.” 48. SITE Intelligence Group, “Children Express Desire for Martyrdom in IS Video Comparing Education in ‘Caliphate’ to Arab Countries.” 49. SITE Intelligence Group, “As-Sahab Series Promotes Sharia on Indian Subcontinent.”

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50. SITE Intelligence Group, “Pro-IS Group Publishes Article Inciting Lone-Wolf Attacks in America, Raise Black Banner over the Pentagon.” 51. Deutsche Welle, “‘Islamic State’ Youth Fighters Keep the Faith in Prison.” 52. SITE Intelligence Group, “German Fighters Urge Muslims in West to Come to Syria, Donate Money in Video.” 53. SITE Intelligence Group, “AQIS Fighter Urges Muslims of Chittagong (Bangladesh) to Fight in Myanmar to help Rohingya Brethren.” 54. SITE Intelligence Group, https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/Statements /is-urdu-exclusive-rumiyah-10-article-calls-on-kashmiri-muslims-to-pledge -to-group-rise-up-and-kill-non-believers.html, accessed September 5, 2018. 55. SITE Intelligence Group, “Afghan Taliban Reiterates That Trump Strategy for War in Afghanistan Will Only Fuel Jihad.” 56. https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/inspire-magazine-4.pdf. 57. Jordan Times, “We Fighting Terrorism in Defence of True Islam— King.” 58. International News (Pakistan), “Fawad Calls on Religious Leadership to Fight Ideological War with Logic, Arguments.” 59. Washington Institute, Hedieh Mirahmadi biography.

6 Jewish Extremism

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. —Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! —Psalm 137:8–9, New Revised Standard Version Bible

Whether it was the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Christian slaughters of Jews during the Crusades, the pogroms of the nineteenth century, the Holocaust, or modern-day Islamic and white supremacist hate crimes, millions of Jews have been killed over the centuries just for being Jewish. At the same time, there are Jewish extremist movements and Jewish terrorist organizations; Jews are as capable of carrying out acts of violence as members of the other faiths I discuss here.

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Judaism

Judaism is one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions and serves as the base for Christianity and Islam. Approximately 3,500 years old, it began in what is now the Middle East, though modernday Israel is the current ideological and spiritual center for the Jews. Founded by Moses, Jewish history nevertheless stretches back to Abraham. The Torah (known by Christians as the Old Testament), is the account of the Jewish people’s relationship with God, with whom they believe they have a covenant. Several other primary texts outline the faith’s practices and traditions. Judaism is the world’s tenth-largest religion, with approximately 15 million adherents. The United States and Israel house two-thirds of the total; Canada, France, and the United Kingdom round out the top five populations. These numbers are fluid because Judaism is both a religion and a culture. Some believe only an unbroken matrilineal line qualifies one as a Jew.1 Jews believe that God appointed them his “chosen people” and demanded that they keep his laws in exchange for his favor. They also hold that God wanted them to set an ethical, holy, and moral example for the world. Religious Jews try to bring holiness into everything they do, by acting in a way that praises God and honoring everything God has done. For devout Jews, their lives become acts of worship.2 Among the attributes Jews assign to God are: • • • •

He is one, indivisible He is transcendent, above all earthly things He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and exists outside time He punishes the bad, rewards the good, and forgives those contrite about their sins

The tenets of Judaism are such a part of Western society that they have become known as the Judeo-Christian way of life. Jesus Christ was born a Jew, and Christianity would not be whole without its Jewish foundation. Similarly, the Muslim Quran, Allah’s (God’s) revelations to humans through the prophet Muhammad, is full of images and stories from the Torah. Within modern Judaism there are multiple schools of thought, ranging from intolerant ultra-Orthodox Jews, or haredim (“those who fear God”) to the reformed Jews. Relations among the groups can be acrimonious, and violence has sometimes broken out, because the Orthodox dictated, at least in Israel, who is a Jew and who is not.

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The Concept of Amalekites and Other Enemies of the Jews

The Amalekites were a people living in what has come to be known as the Holy Land (i.e., the territory in and around the modern Levant). They were one of many tribes the Jews encountered on their trek to Israel following their liberation from slavery in Egypt. According to biblical sources, the Amalekites, who do not appear anywhere else in historical or archaeological works, betrayed the Jews, and God damned them for their actions. The two Torah verses most relevant to my study are Exodus 17:14 (“Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven”) and Deuteronomy 25:17–19 (“Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”). What does ancient history have to do with contemporary Jewish extremism? A prominent Israeli mystic rabbi, Nir Ben Artzi, stated in August 2018 that the Islamic terrorist group Hamas is the “seed of Amalek” (the eponymous founder of the tribe who betrayed the Jews).3 Another rabbi who specializes in apocalyptic teachings, Pinchas Winston, went further when he said: Amalek wants life to be forfeit. Liberalism is the focus of Amalek today. This is why they will say that abortion and homosexuality, actions that detract from life, are moral imperatives. It is not a coincidence that liberals are atheists. Liberalism is what happens when you take God and meaning out of life. Ultimately, liberalism is idolatry. It is making God in the image of man, making man the ultimate authority, freeing him to do what he wants. The Golden calf is the liberal movement in action. They made a god, imbued him with powers, so that under his rule, they could do what they want.4

Still another rabbi, Yosef Berger of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, had this to say about the Amalekites: We see this happening today. Iran is willing to destroy their economy, they are willing to destroy their own country, just to convince the other Arab nations to attack Israel. Erdogan is the same way. His economy is crashing, but he doesn’t care. Hamas is clearly this

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way. They want the IDF to attack, as long as it means bad for Israel. Anyone who acts this way today is from the seed of Amalek. The commandment isn’t to conquer Amalek. It is to wipe him out from the world because as long as there is a memory of Amalek in the world, the Moshiach [Messiah] cannot come. The evil that Amalek planted is still in the world, and every person has to ask himself if he has taken on these traits. God promised that Amalek will be wiped out. Whoever goes in the ways of Amalek will most certainly be wiped out.5

Why does any of this matter in the twenty-first century? Some Jews are quick to label anyone whose views or actions are perceived as against the interests of Israel as an Amalekite. One columnist writing in the Jerusalem Post in 2017 opined that those behind the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign created to punish Israel for its actions in the Occupied Territories had morphed into a racist movement against Israel and the Jewish people and had thus become another Amalek, “one to attack Israel not militarily but economically.”6 In 1995 then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir, while the Israeli leader and his wife were on their way to a peace rally. Rabin had been pivotal in the signing of a peace treaty with the Palestinians, which many Jews saw as treason. Within Jewish law is a concept known as din rodef that gives a Jew religious license to kill another Jew who poses a threat to Judaism and/or Israel. In 2004 a prominent rabbi claimed that anyone prepared to give away any part of Israel was subject to din rodef.7 The use of old biblical concepts to frame and name the enemies of Judaism puts this form of violence squarely in the realm of religion. Because the Torah is viewed as the word and command of God, it must be obeyed. Some religious leaders are quick to label those whose policies they perceive as inimical to their faith as enemies deserving death.

The Creation of Israel and the Role Extremism Played The state of Israel was born in a maelstrom of violence. Shortly after the creation of the modern state in 1948, Israel faced an immediate invasion from angry Arab neighbors. Major wars were fought in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and the state of Israel has been on a military

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footing since day one. The fact that many Arab states and Iran regularly call for the destruction of Israel explains Israel’s stance. Before the emergence of Israel, however, terrorism perpetrated by Jewish extremists played a role in the country’s achievement of statehood. The land where Israel and Palestine currently exist was granted to the United Kingdom, after World War I ended the Ottoman Empire, to administer as the Palestinian mandate. A group called the Irgun, founded by Haganah (“defense”) commanders in 1931 (and known in English as the National Military Organization of the Land of Israel), became active in the British Palestinian mandate up to 1948. Irgun was based on a belief known as “revisionist Zionism” that called for a pure Jewish Israel and the use of armed force to keep others (i.e., Arabs) out of it. The group was vehemently against the British occupation of Israel. Many people viewed Irgun as a terrorist organization, and it did carry out violent extremist attacks, including two massive ones:

• On July 22, 1946, a bomb exploded at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British mandate forces, killing ninety-one people and wounding forty-six. The attack was a response to an earlier British raid on offices of the Jewish insurgency. One of the leaders of the Irgun was Menachem Begin, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1977. • On April 9, 1948, the Irgun raided a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, and massacred more than one hundred men, women, and children.

Irgun recalls the famous aphorism “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Those who see the group as a legitimate opposition force to the British mandate officials would label its members brave men and women fighting for an independent homeland. Others would see their actions as classic terrorism: serious violence against civilians motivated by religion or ideology.

Is Zionism an Extremist Movement? Zionism was originally a nineteenth-century movement that began in Europe; its goal was the creation of a homeland for the world’s Jews. After the Holocaust of World War II, the question of where Jews

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could live safely took on a renewed focus and urgency. Several ideas were floated, including land in Africa and Argentina, but given the Jews’ historical, cultural, and religious ties to the Holy Land, there was a push to have that area serve, once again, as their safe haven. Modern Zionism sprang out of Central and Eastern European Jewish communities after anti-Semitic pogroms came with the nineteenth-century rise in nationalism. It is based, in part, on the conviction that God entered a covenant with the Jewish people and granted them the land the state of Israel currently occupies (although the boundaries of that territory are still under great dispute). Jews refer to migration to Israel as aliyah (“ascent”; i.e., “moving up,” spiritually, to the Holy Land). Three other events contributed to the development of modern Zionism. First, in the midst of World War I, British diplomat Mark Sykes and French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot brokered the agreement (named after them) that partitioned the Middle East after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (which did indeed founder after the war, albeit not officially until 1924). The Sykes-Picot agreement provided for territories to be controlled by the United Kingdom and France: the former was granted authority over what is now Jordan, southern Iraq, and Palestine, whereas the latter received the rest of Iraq along with Syria and Lebanon. The Palestinian mandate proved a challenge for Great Britain. Second, Jews began a significant migration to Palestine, considerably altering the demographic makeup of the region. Five “official” aliyahs took place between 1882 and 1948, plus a sixth “illegal aliyah” from 1933 to 1948, during which time the United Kingdom had implemented quotas on Jewish migration to Palestine, and more than half a million Jews—mostly from Europe—travelled to their new home. Not surprisingly, the original Palestinian inhabitants, both Christian and Muslim, were not in favor of this mass migration, and tension among the religious and ethnic groups led to violence that has continued into the present day. Third was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine (not long before the end of World War I). Zionists had demanded that the decree establish “the” homeland for the Jews but settled for a bicommunal plan. The British hoped that a pro-British (and grateful) Jewish community would help Britain secure its interests in Egypt (primarily the Suez Canal) and India.

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Some view Zionism as an extremist ideology because at a minimum it is exclusionary; certain strains believe Israel is solely meant for Jews, and others must either bow down to Jewish authority or leave. The UN General Assembly passed resolution 3379, labelling Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” Some compared it to white apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Supporters of Israel dismissed this as the United Nations and other international bodies ganging up on Israel. Before I turn to the role ultra-Orthodox religious leaders play in Jewish extremism, I briefly examine the relationship between Zionists and Christian fundamentalists. Christian extremists hold to a literalist reading of the Bible and often obsess about the end times (the apocalypse) and the “rapture” of “true” believers to heaven. One of the signs of its approach is the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, which was apparently achieved with the creation of Israel. The narrative also states that Jesus will return to defeat evil, but the Jews must eventually convert to Christianity. Those who do not will burn in hell forever. Christian fundamentalists, especially in the United States, are often fervent supporters of Israel, and the Israeli government is usually keen to find backing. This is an odd alliance. In essence a major fan of the Jewish state can be found among people who ultimately wish for the annihilation of all Jews, either through conversion or eternal damnation, and Israeli leaders apparently accept this.

How the Haredim View Other Jews Judaism is sometimes divided into different groups depending on how conservative or dogmatic their members are. The three most common distinctions are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, all of which have their own views on Jewish law, rabbinic tradition, and Israel. For the purposes of this chapter I will narrow my focus to the Orthodox interpretation of Judaism, including the so-called ultraOrthodox. These believers are often referred to as the haredim (“those who fear God”). Although an exhaustive discussion on the origins and practices of Orthodox Judaism is well beyond the scope of this book, suffice it to say that most Orthodox Jews are quite conservative in dress and practice. Modesty in dress—for both males and females—as well as long beards on men—is perhaps the stereotype in the minds of many.

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For some Orthodox Jews, complete gender separation in public spaces, is required, similar to the views of many Islamic Salafist groups. Most haredim do not support Israeli statehood, which they judge to be premature. This has not stopped them from enjoying its benefits, however. Many Orthodox men do not work, preferring to study in yeshivas (“religious schools”) and do not perform the mandatory military service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The haredim were exempted from military service by Israel’s first prime minister, David ben Gurion (there were just a few hundred at the time), on the pretext that yeshivas should be bolstered. Given the Orthodox custom of having large families, the number of haredim who get a pass from military service is now into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. In September 2017 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled these exemptions unconstitutional, and some haredim have indeed performed military duties.8 Some actions by the conservative, Orthodox community constitute intolerance at best and extremist hate at worst. The images of females are often blacked out or defaced. Girls and women have been told to get to the “back of the bus.” Female students at schools have been harassed. When a local Israeli business attempted to create an ad booklet with modest images of families and men and women, the community boycotted it and harassed and physically assaulted those who attempted to deliver it.9 Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe in the sacredness of the Sabbath, which lasts from sundown on Friday until sunset on Saturday. No work is to be performed during that time. Jewish extremists have forced their views on others, stopping construction work from taking place in Israel on the Sabbath. Some have also taken to throwing soiled diapers at those who do not abide by their rules. Israeli women who do not abide by ultra-Orthodox concepts of modesty have also been attacked. Some have been pepper-sprayed, spat upon, and called “whores.” Even soldiers have been set upon and beaten for “daring” to be seen in public in uniform. In some sects, men are seen as the only ones qualified to lead.10 There is no other way to interpret these attitudes and actions than as extremism, and they are normally aimed at other Jews whose interpretation of the faith is seen as inadequate.

Jewish Extremist Acts

There are several different types of Zionism, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that Zionist extrem-

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ists have carried out acts of terrorism within Israel, primarily in the West Bank, or Occupied Territory. In February 1994 an American-Israeli extremist, Baruch Goldstein, who had openly demonstrated his hatred by refusing to treat Arab patients, entered a mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron (West Bank) and opened fire, killing twenty-nine Muslims at prayer and wounding another 125. Others at the mosque beat Goldstein to death. His grave later became a shrine for Jewish extremists, who had these words inscribed on his tomb: “He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land.” More recent acts of terrorism perpetrated by Jewish extremists include: • In October 2018 stone-wielding West Bank extremists caused a car carrying a man and his wife to crash, killing the woman.11 • In the first four months of 2018 the Israeli Security Service Shin Bet documented thirteen instances of “price tag” attacks, compared with eight in all of 2017. Price tag attacks are defined as “vandalism and other hate crimes carried out by Jewish ultra-nationalists ostensibly in retaliation for Palestinian violence or government policies perceived as hostile to the settler movement. Mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups, and even Israeli military bases have been targeted by nationalist vandals in recent years.”12 • In April 2018 a court in Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv, indicted a thirty-three-year-old man on charges of incitement to violence, racism, and support of a terrorist group. Zohar Zuaretz posted several messages on social media calling for attacks on Arabs and even wrote of a “rosy dream” in which he decapitated Muslim babies.13 • In February 2018 the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the convictions of three Jewish extremists who beat and burned alive a West Bank teenager in July 2014. The attack was described as “strategic,” and a judge noted that the perpetrators had “emerged from a dark tunnel of racism, ignorance and hate.”14 • In 2015 Jewish terrorists firebombed a Palestinian home in the West Bank, killing three, including a toddler named Ali. At the trial of the perpetrators, supporters of the terrorists chanted: “Where is Ali? Ali’s dead,” and “Ali’s on the grill.”15 • Jewish extremism is not directed solely at people. On several occasions haredim have interrupted and even become violent at

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archaeological digs, claiming that the operations are desecrating sacred burial sites. One such incident occurred in Jerusalem in August 2014.16 • On April 15, 2019, a mob of fifty settlers attacked a Palestinian town in the West Bank where they vandalized property and threw stones at residents.17

Many of the terrorists who carry out attacks in Israel are actually American Jews who emigrated to Israel. Some were members of the extremist Kach and Kahane Chai Parties, listed as terrorist groups in many Western countries including Canada and the United States. There was also the Jewish Defense League (JDL), described by senior Carnegie fellow Zach Dorfman as “one of the most prolific U.S.based terrorist groups of the 1970s and 1980s.”18 The West Bank features disproportionately in Jewish terrorist attacks for a simple reason: the land is considered part of greater Israel and the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, promised to the Jews by God. The reasoning goes that if God gifted them to the Jews, these territories cannot be seen as “occupied.” The world calls the West Bank “occupied territory” that must be resolved through talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Jewish extremists believe that these attacks will intimidate the region’s non-Jewish residents into leaving, thus obviating the need for peace talks. Research in Israel shows that in 2018 acts of violence by Jewish extremists increased by 50 percent over similar acts the previous year. In addition, attacks by “right-wing extremists” on security forces tripled during the same period. Most of the incidents occurred in a settlement known as Yitzhar and a few surrounding “outposts.” Officials are concerned that support from extremist adults is causing extremist youth to feel “invincible.” Shin Bet is worried that extremism will continue to rise in 2019 as settlement leaders and rabbis either ignore acts of violence or condone them.19 One of the main agencies responsible for investigating Jewish extremism in Israel, in addition to the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet, is the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It has used many of the same techniques deployed against Palestinian terrorists: radar and observation systems. The IDF is particularly concerned about the aforementioned “price tag” attacks. In January 2019 the IDF detected a surge in such violence, consisting largely of arson attacks, in Palestinian areas not traditionally associated with this form of terrorism.20

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The Role of the Netanyahu Government in Promoting Extremism The government can play a role in religious extremism, at the very least by not preventing it. For example, as I mentioned in Chapter 4, on Hindu extremism, Indian prime minister Modi uses nationalism as a way to promote Hindu superiority, and as a consequence Hindu extremists have carried out acts of violence against non-Hindu Indians. Is the same thing happening in Israel? Prime Minister Netanyahu has long supported increased settlement in the West Bank, an area the rest of the world views as occupied (i.e., seized in Israeli military action). During the April 2019 election campaign he promised to annex parts of the West Bank to gain favor with far-right Jewish parties. Netanyahu’s Likud Party did not win an outright majority and had to enter into a coalition with several smaller parties, including the Union of Right Wing Parties. One of the members of this union is Otzma Yehudit, a racist party with links to terrorism that Dorfman called “the newest face of the old Kach party.”21 Dorfman also referred to the Kahanists as the “Jewish Hamas” (comparing it to a Palestinian Islamic extremist organization). Also at Carnegie, Dahlia Scheindlin wrote in the aftermath of the elections, “Citizens who voted for the opposition now lament that Israel is hurtling down a far-right path of extremism, in the form of expansionist policies in the West Bank and racist policies at home, while chipping away at the pillars of Israel’s democratic structure. For them, nationalist Jewish triumphalism and illiberal, democratic backsliding is wreaking havoc on society, but the right-wing majority is an unstoppable juggernaut” (although she also argued that the situation is not as dire as some in Israel fear).22

What Does Judaism Say About Violence? In Judaism, violence and war to promote justice are not always seen as wrong. On occasion war can be ethically justified, and sometimes it is morally acceptable to kill in self-defense. Jewish law permits only combatants to be killed in war: civilians are seen as innocent and not party to war and hence must be given every opportunity to leave the field of combat before the war commences.

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Despite many passages in the Old Testament indicating God clearly approves of war (e.g., God is seen as a warrior who leads the Jews in war), many verses also call for peace (e.g., Isaiah 2, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”). The Talmud states that any person (i.e., a Jew or a non-Jew) is permitted to kill “a pursuer” to save his own life. Rabbis have historically categorized war into three classes: obligatory (wars God commanded Jews to fight, e.g., against the Canaanites and the Amalekites), defensive (also obligatory) and optional (undertaken when no other outcome is possible). Before war is declared, there must be every attempt to make peace (Deuteronomy 20:10, “When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace”). However, the text in Deuteronomy continues: If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

It is hard to argue that the sacred texts of Judaism do not condone violence.

How Jewish Is This Form of Violence? The haredim are intolerant and hateful toward anyone whose views are different than theirs or who try to impinge on their ways of life. In this way they are akin to Hindu and Islamic extremists who brook no alternative views. The perpetrators of most of the violent incidents

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in Israel and the Occupied Territories have been Orthodox or ultraOrthodox Jews. Orthodox Jews define themselves primarily through Judaism, and everything they do is in keeping with their interpretation of the faith; this would include their acts of violence. Many years ago another intelligence analyst told me that if someone inserts God into a dispute, either one side or both, the dispute is irresolvable. When one party is convinced of God’s support or demand for action, rational arguments are useless. The haredim believe they are the epitome of Judaism and are not interested in theological debate that differs from this position. They want full ownership of the land of Israel. If violence is required to achieve this goal, so be it.

Countering Jewish Extremism Although the haredim population in Israel is growing as a percentage of the population, it is still small. This implies that a majority of Jews do not support the hate and violence. Whether this leads to taking active steps to counter it is another matter. Some examples of individuals and agencies that seek to counter this brand of violence follow:

• Founded in 1987, the Adam Institute is an Israeli nonprofit, educational organization that works to create a culture of peace, mutual respect, tolerance, and coexistence across religious, ethnic, and national groups in Israeli society and the region.23 • The Democratic Institute is a nongovernmental agency that works to promote a democratic culture in Israel. Its activities took on new urgency following the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. One of its mottos is “Israel should aspire to be a liberal democratic state based on the values of equality and compassion for the well-being of all its inhabitants.”24 • Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has noted that “religious extremism festers when decent laypeople are cowed into submission by fanatics whom they falsely believe to be more religious than them.” He added, “The Jewish community must be judged by the same standard, and Rabbis of every stripe must condemn this abuse as sickening and contrary to the core of Judaism.”25 • In a 2018 op-ed in ynetnews, Aviad Mandelboim noted, “Any reasonable person understands that the fringe elements that

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carry out terror acts should be condemned and denounced, and no less than those who support and encourage them.”26 • Also in 2018 Zionist Union chair Avi Gabbay told a conference in Jerusalem, “Rabbis remained silent when the prime minister and [his] ministers incite against half the Jewish people, and label them as being traitors and enemies. . . . Israeli society needs healing and a repair of its fractures, not more incitement, division and hatred.”27

Conclusions Jews are the victims of terrorism far more often than they are the perpetrators. Nothing I write should be interpreted as going against this reality. At the same time, however, a small number of Orthodox Jews have carried out heinous acts of violence against Muslims and Arabs. A larger number have spat upon or thrown rocks or soiled diapers at Israelis and government security officials who get in their way or try to impose societal norms (such as mandatory military service) on them. This issue is bound to get worse. The haredim tend to have large families and constitute an ever larger percentage of the population of Israel. This will give them more clout in the Knesset. On occasion, small political parties that reflect haredim positions have had disproportionate influence on policies. In addition, successive Israeli governments have encouraged migration—both legal and illegal—to the West Bank, ensuring that conflicts between intolerant haredim and Palestinians will continue.

Notes 1. Pew Research Center, “Global Religious Landscape: Jew.” 2. BBC, “Religions: Judaism—Beliefs.” 3. Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, “Rabbis Weigh In: Who Is Amalek Today?” 4. Berkowitz, “Rabbis Weigh In.” 5. Berkowitz, “Rabbis Weigh In.” 6. Brenda Katten, “Here and There: Amalek Yesterday and Today.” 7. Nadav Shragai, “Top Rabbi: Din Rodef on Anyone Ceding Land.” 8. Isabel Kerschner, “Israel’s Military Exemption for Ultra-Orthodox Is Ruled Unconstitutional.”

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9. Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, “Haredi Extremism, Alive and Growing.” 10. David M. Halbfinger, “In Israel, Toppling the Ultra-Orthodoxy,” A11. 11. Times of Israel, “US Envoy Calls Rock Attack That Killed Palestinian Woman ‘Reprehensible.’” 12. Jacob Magid, “Shin Bet: Sharp Rise in Settler Youth ‘Price Tag’ Attacks Against Palestinians.” 13. Michael Bachner and Jacob Magid, “Terror Charges Filed Against Israeli Who Dreamed of ‘Decapitating’ Arab Babies.” 14. Michael Bachner, “Court Upholds Sentences of Israelis Who Murdered Palestinian Teen.” 15. Magid, “Jewish Extremists Taunt ‘Ali’s on the Grill’ at Slain Toddlers Relatives.” 16. Daniel K. Eisenbud, “Haredi Protesters Clash with Police, Say Jerusalem Archaeological Dig Disturbs Jewish Burial Sites.” 17. Marcy Oster, “Settlers Reportedly Attack Property and Residents of Palestinian Village.” 18. Zach Dorfman, “Netanyahu’s Far Right Partners Were Birthed by U.S. Terrorists.” 19. Yoav Limor, “Incidents of Jewish Terrorism, Attacks on Security Forces Spike in 2018.” 20. Yoav Zitun, “Israel Deploys Same Methods Used on Palestinians on Jewish Terror Crackdown.” 21. Dorfman, “Netanyahu’s Far Right Partners Were Birthed by U.S. Terrorists.” 22. Dahlia Scheindlin, “Israel’s Election Could Have Been Worse.” 23. Adam Institute, “About Us.” 24. Democratic Institute, “About Us.” 25. Shmuley Boteach, “Religious Extremists in Israel and How the Mainstream Must Combat It.” 26. Aviad Mandelboim, “The New Era of Jewish Terror.” 27. Jeremy Sharon, “Gabbay Lambasts National Religious Rabbis for Extremism.”

7 Sikh Extremism

The use of violent methods for the sake of righteousness, as a matter of last resort, is one of the established doctrines of the Sikhs. The right of rebellion against the ruler inevitably leads to the permitting of the use of force.1

As a retired intelligence analyst for the Canadian government, I cannot ignore the reality of Sikh extremism because it affected me professionally and my country even more widely than the types of violent movements I have discussed thus far. On July 23, 1985, an Air India flight that had originated in Vancouver (with stops in Toronto and Montreal) the day earlier disappeared from radar off the west coast of Ireland. It later was learned that a bomb had brought the plane down and as a result all 329 passengers and crew were killed. It was the largest single lethal terrorist attack in history prior to 9/11, and it was the work of Canadian Sikh extremists. Subsequent investigations discovered that a violent Sikh group, the Babbar Khalsa International, whose goal is the creation of an independent Sikh nation known as Khalistan, was behind the bombing. The same cell was responsible for another bombing on the same day: two baggage handlers in Japan’s Narita Airport died when a bomb intended for another flight went off prematurely. Some took the Royal Canadian 133

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Mounted Police (RCMP) to task regarding security. Others blamed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), where I worked, which had just celebrated its first birthday mere days before the attack. Inquiries were held and a multivolume report was produced assigning responsibility, identifying errors, and recommending changes. Intelligence and law enforcement officers are paid to stop these attacks. Thus, despite the intricacies of the investigation, the painful transition from the RCMP Security Service to an all-civilian intelligence agency, the newness of CSIS, and other challenges, we all felt personally responsible to one degree or another. One of my friends was a child back in 1985, and to hear him tell the story of how he had to identify the body of his mother is hard to endure. All these years later I cannot let go of the fact that an intelligence failure—for that is what it was—led to significant loss of life. Canadian government and security officials have justifiably asked whether a resurgence in Sikh extremism from within the Canadian Sikh diaspora is possible. In keeping with the current focus of this book on religious extremism, however, and analyzing just how “religious” it is, I will eschew a long historical review of Sikh extremism because others have covered that ground adequately. In the next section I contextualize the discussion.

Sikhism Sikhism is by far the youngest of the religions I examine in this book. It is the faith of approximately 20–25 million people, primarily in the Punjab region of India, although there are significant Sikh diasporas in the West (e.g., Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom). Sikh means “disciple” or “learner.” The faith developed out of Hinduism but was crucially tied to Islamic persecution under the Mughal Empire, which ruled India for three and a half centuries beginning in 1526. Sikhism places great emphasis on one’s internal spiritual condition and performance of good deeds rather than mere adherence to ritual. Sikh leaders are called gurus (the founder and first one, Guru Nanak, lived from 1469 to 1539), and a Sikh place of worship is a gurdwara. People often associate several characteristics with Sikhism. One set consists of prohibited practices: cutting one’s hair (instead they

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engage in kesh, or the practice of letting one’s hair grow naturally, hence wearing turbans); using alcohol, drugs, or tobacco; and consuming meat. Second is the wearing of symbolic items: the kara (steel bracelet) and the kirpan (knife or sword). The kirpan in particular has led to controversy in Western societies (including Canada) when young men were asked to remove it in public places such as schools because it was considered a weapon.

Is Sikhism a “Warrior Cult”? In his 2000 book Terror in the Mind of God, Mark Juergensmeyer included a short chapter on Sikh extremism, “The Sword of Sikhism.” The word sword certainly suggests that at least in the minds of some there is an aspect of Sikhism—or perhaps several aspects— that appear militant or violent in nature. There are even discussion fora on the internet that discuss whether the creators of Star Trek based the warlike Klingons on Sikhs (and one of the most notorious villains in Star Trek, Khan Noonien Singh, played by the actor Ricardo Montalbán, was Sikh). It is not hard to see how the stereotype of Sikhs as warriors has been made. However, do Sikhs themselves cultivate a warrior image? In a way, yes. When Sikhism was a relatively new religion, Sikhs had to fight for their rights against enemies such as the Mughal Empire Muslims. In fact, the first Sikh “martyr,” the faith’s fifth guru, was tortured to death in 1606 by the Mughals, who saw Sikhs as a threat to Islam in India. The culmination of the Sikh struggle for religious freedom led to the establishment of the Khalsa (Punjabi for “pure”) in 1699 under the tenth and last guru, Gobind Singh. The Khalsa was a cadre of specially initiated and trained Sikh warriors, although the term is also used to describe anyone—male or female—who belongs to a Sikh community. The term was incorporated into the name of a terrorist group— Babbar Khalsa. The goals of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), created in 1978, are to usher in the creation of an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan. BKI has used kidnappings, assassinations, and other forms of violence toward this end. As noted, members of BKI were responsible for the 1985 Air India terrorist attack. In October 2018 the US National Strategy for Counter Terrorism named BKI a threat to the United States, noting:

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Babbar Khalsa International seeks, through violent means, to establish its own independent state in India and is responsible for significant terrorist attacks in India and elsewhere that have claimed the lives of innocent civilians. Such groups may avoid or deprioritize targeting United States interests for now to avoid detracting from their core goals but frequently conduct assassinations and bombings against major economic, political, and social targets, heightening the risk to United States personnel and interests overseas.2

Sikhs see the Khalsa image as a legitimate expression of selfdefense that stemmed from their persecution under the Mughals. As one Canadian Sikh expressed it, “So Guru Gobind Singh basically said we have to stand up for our rights, stand up for the rights of others, and said anybody has the freedom to practise their religion in any way they want. . . . We’re not going to hide ourselves. A lot of people back in the day—in order to stay kind of assimilated—hid their identity . . . so they wouldn’t be oppressed.”3 In May 2018 Moninder Singh, one of the founders of a Sikh youth group called the Sikh Liberation Front (SLF), claimed that in “Khalsa tradition, use of force is justified as a last resort.” The SLF logo features a hawk grasping an AK-47 assault rifle. Singh, who lives in Vancouver, stated, “We chose that because we felt it was reflective of the Khalsa tradition and the tradition of suppressed people across the world.” He added, “Groups like SLF are to promote the idea of sovereignty, and the use of the AK-47 is for a form of resistance as a last resort as mandated by our Guru Sahibans. Just like many countries have various weapons on their national flags, so too is ours a reminder that we must resist oppression and tyranny by any means necessary.”4 In light of this viewpoint, it should not be dismissed as racist or ignorant to refer to Sikhs’ warrior tradition. Members of the faith have a legitimate claim to having been persecuted historically and to having suffered racist attacks in modern times, and yet a portion of the community has elected to respond with violence both as a reaction to the treatment it has suffered and to potentially force the Indian state to grant territory for an independent homeland.

What Is Khalistan, and What Role Does It Play in Extremism? Khalistan is a Punjabi word meaning “land of the pure,” and it is a proposed name for an independent homeland for the Sikhs. In theory,

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this new country would comprise the Indian state of Punjab but also other sections of India and parts of Pakistan (not surprisingly, neither India nor Pakistan seem too keen on the idea). It was first proposed publicly in 1971, when Jagjit Singh Chauhan placed an advertisement in the New York Times proclaiming its existence and collected millions of dollars toward achieving statehood.5 Chauhan became the self-styled “president” of Khalistan, created a cabinet, produced money and stamps, and even opened embassies in Europe. In the 1980s the Khalistan movement became more militant and violent. Estimates are that more than 20,000 people, including 2,000 Indian security forces, died during that period.6 The culminating act of this violence was the occupation (and later siege by the Indian army) of the Golden Temple in Amritsar from 1982 to 1984 under the leadership of Sikh terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in the battle over the temple. The reaction in turn led to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, and the Air India bombing. The BKI is not the only Sikh extremist organization that has embraced violence in its campaign for a homeland. Among the others are: • The International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) • The Khalistan Commando Force • The All India Sikh Students Federation • The Khalistan Liberation Army (KLA) • The Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF)

The violence associated with the struggle to create Khalistan has decreased since the 1980s. Some believe that the Sikh attachment to this goal has ebbed, or at least any desire to use violence to achieve it has. According to Indian sources, however, the previous few years have seen an alarming spike in violence tied to Sikh extremists. The following table summarizes this rise (see Table 7.1).7 Indian officials believed these incidents underlay a “concerted fresh effort” to renew terrorist violence in Punjab, and this was the most significant such development since the apparent demise of the Khalistan movement in the mid-1990s.8 Senior police officers in Punjab maintain that the new resurgence of pro-Khalistani sympathizers is, at least to some extent, a backlash to the activities of Hindu extremist parties such as the RSS. The desire for an independent Khalistan remains a heartfelt goal for many in the worldwide

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Table 7.1 Sikh Extremists in India Year

2015 2016 2017

Terrorists Arrested/Killed 12 18 23

Weapons Seized 4 12 25

Grenades Seized 6 NA 5

Ammunition Rounds Seized 1,003 622 663

Sikh community. A pro-Khalistan website states that the “demand for Khalistan and Sikhs resorting to armed resistance to achieve their objective is not anti-Sikh. Rather, it is a religious duty and an obligation according to Sikh injunctions.”9

The Role of Gurdwaras in Spreading Extremism

As noted earlier, gurdwaras are Sikh places of worship. Asking whether these communities are key to the spread of extremist ideas— and inspiration for violent acts—might strike some as sacrilegious (the same could be said for the role of mosques in Islamic extremism). However, as an intelligence analyst in the early to mid-1980s, when a dangerous surge in Sikh extremist activity occurred in Canada, the following question was often asked: Where was this extremism propagated? Remember that there was no internet in those days. Messaging and exhortations could be spread on audio media such as cassette tapes, but they could also be delivered in person. Leaders—or radicalizers as intelligence agents called them—would seek out audiences to preach to and to encourage to take up arms for the cause. Where would the best places be to convey these messages? Gurdwaras are both religious and community centers. Some do not hesitate to celebrate the deeds of known terrorists. Decades after the Air India bombing, a gurdwara in the British Columbia city of Surrey (near Vancouver) still displayed photos of the 1985 Air India terrorist attack. The president of that gurdwara stated: “The media want us to say [alleged Air India terrorist Talwinder Singh] Parmar is a terrorist and not to put his picture up. But without a conviction, we do not believe he was a terrorist.”10 Gurdwaras have also witnessed violent outbursts by Sikh extremists who oppose any dilution in the “purity” of their faith. In Septem-

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ber 2016 members of Sikh Youth UK interrupted a marriage ceremony at a gurdwara in Leamington because a Sikh woman was marrying a Hindu man. The temple’s trustees called the attackers “fanatical extremists.” The perpetrators counterclaimed that their actions were peaceful and merely an attempt to protest the participation of a non-Sikh in a religious ceremony. One UK academic stated that he had seen a rise in “Sikh essentialism” among some youth groups.11 A government investigation in the United Kingdom found that extremist material had been distributed at a gurdwara in Coventry. A trustee at the temple maintained that men with guns had threatened violence—up to and including killing board members—and that pamphlets commemorating the 1984 Golden Temple siege were on hand. Another gurdwara employee denied the allegations, dismissing them as “issues” stemming from an unspecified dispute between gurdwara committee members and other Sikh attendees.12 For some diaspora Sikhs, the hatred for the Indian government regarding its actions in 1984 as well as concern over it possibly spying on Sikhs justifies denying government officials access to gurdwaras. An Indian consul in Toronto was not allowed to attend a commemoration for a noted community member in 2017, and several gurdwaras joined a ban against any Indian carrying out official duties. Although there is concern over Indian “interference” in Sikh matters, one Canadian academic sees a link with “the secessionist upsurge” tied to the Khalistan movement.13 As many as ninety-six gurdwaras in the United States and sixteen in Canada have participated in the ban, which supporters say is a response to “growing [police] harassment of Sikh activists in Punjab” as well as “constant attacks” condoned by the BJP government.14

Recent Violent Acts by Sikh Extremists Although readers might associate Sikh extremist violence with the 1984 Golden Temple siege and the lead-up to the raid by Indian forces, as well as the subsequent assassination of Gandhi and the Air India bombing, attacks have not ceased entirely. From 2016 to 2017, members of the KLF and other extremists were accused of the following attacks: • Three people were killed and sixteen injured in a bombing in Amritsar in November 2018 that police tied to the KLF.15

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• Pro-Khalistani activist Jagtar Singh Johal, a resident of Scotland, was arrested in November 2017 on suspicion of involvement in the killings of right-wing Hindu leaders and others. Johal, who ran a Facebook page called Never Forget 1984, was on the radar of Indian intelligence for some time before his arrest.16 His incarceration has led to calls for release by supporters in the Sikh diaspora. • On January 18, 2016, two men on a motorcycle, believed to be Sikh extremists, shot and wounded RSS leader Naresh Kumar.17 • One month later, two other men on a motorcycle shot and wounded a Shiv Sena in Jalandhar.18 • In April 2016 another Shiv Sena leader was shot dead in an attack for which the pro-Khalistan Sikh extremist group Dashmesh Regiment claimed responsibility.19 • The Dashmesh Regiment also claimed responsibility for killing an RSS official in Chandigarh in August 2016.20 • Indian intelligence agencies claimed in December 2017 that Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was working with the KLF and other Sikh extremists to carry out attacks in Punjab and stoke intercommunal unrest.21 There have also been allegations that the Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has formed alliances with ISYF extremists (ostensibly because the two have a common enemy: India).22

Sikh Extremism in Canada Sikh extremists in Canada are important to discuss because the Air India bombing was the single largest terrorist attack prior to 9/11. Despite the passage of almost three and a half decades, analysts in Canada wonder whether Sikh terrorism is still a risk. The Sikh diaspora in Canada is the largest in the world at almost half a million members. Migration to Canada began in the late nineteenth century, and early immigrants often faced overt discrimination because of their skin color and religious practices. One of Canada’s least proud moments happened when the Komagata Maru, a Japanese vessel, sought to dock in Vancouver in 1914. Most of the passengers were Sikh, looking for a new life in Canada. The government at the time refused entry, alleging that the passengers were Indian nationalists intent on sowing “disorder.” When the ship returned to

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India, British forces fired on the vessel, which they said carried “agitators,” and nineteen people were killed. Sikhs in Canada live primarily in the provinces of British Columbia (BC) and Ontario, and Sikh extremism has particularly flourished in BC. The Air India terrorists plotted from BC, and other attacks and assassinations occurred there in the 1980s. Interestingly, the 2017 Canadian government public report on the terrorist threat to the country made no mention of Sikh terrorism.23 My sources within the intelligence community are not so sanguine. The specter of Sikh extremism is still powerful in Canada. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an official visit to India in 2018, one person on a guest list for a dinner was Jaspal Atwal. Atwal is a Canadian Sikh convicted of trying to assassinate a visiting Indian politician to Canada in 1986. Although the invitation was quickly rescinded by the Trudeau government, when news of it went public, the reaction was swift and brutal. Mainstream (and not so mainstream) Canadian media accused the government of being “soft on terrorism” and insulting the memory of the victims of Air India. Associations between Canadian Sikhs and terrorism are never far away. When the New Democratic Party (NDP) elected Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh Canadian, as its leader, the new head was asked by a veteran Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporter to denounce Sikh terrorism. Singh’s response was that he did not know who was responsible for the Air India bombing. Although some accused the reporter of asking an inappropriate, if not racist, question (would a reporter ask a white politician to denounce skinheads?) others were concerned that a national leader could not distance himself from an obvious act of terrorism for fear of alienating voters in the diaspora. An organization called Sikhs for Justice plans to hold a referendum in major Canadian cities in 2020 to call for Punjab’s independence from India. The group intends to use the results of the vote to gauge whether there is an appetite for Khalistani separation before presenting a resolution on the matter to the United Nations.24 In late 2018 Public Safety Canada, the ministry responsible for CSIS, the RCMP, and other security agencies, published its annual public report on the terrorist threat to Canada.25 In it was a section on Sikh extremism: Some individuals in Canada continue to support Sikh (Khalistani) extremist ideologies and movements. This political movement aims

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to create an independent homeland for Sikhs called Khalistan, in India. Violent activities in support of an independent Sikh homeland have fallen since their height during the 1982–1993 period when individuals and groups conducted numerous terrorist attacks. The 1985 Air India bombing by Khalistani terrorists, which killed 331 people, remains the deadliest terrorist plot ever launched in Canada. While attacks around the world in support of this movement have declined, support for the extreme ideologies of such groups remains. For example, in Canada, two key Sikh organizations, Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation, have been identified as being associated with terrorism and remain listed terrorist entities under the Criminal Code.

Reaction from Canadian Sikhs was swift and harsh. They accused the government of “capitulating” to the Indian government and maligning Canadian Sikhs with “baseless” allegations of violent intent.26 As an example of alleged Indian exaggeration of the threat, New York– based Sikhs for Justice stated that an Indian claim that Hardeep Nijjar was running a terror camp east of Vancouver was nothing more than an attempt by the Modi government to “discredit the push for Sikh self-determination.”27 Some advocates demanded that the portion of the 2018 report that mentioned Sikh extremism be excised.28 As a result of this pressure, and in light of the 2019 election where ridings (electoral districts in Canada) with large Sikh populations could play a role in a tight race, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale stated that future reports would not refer to religion but rather ideology and had the current text altered as follows (note the removal of the term “Sikh extremism”): Some individuals in Canada continue to support violent means to establish an independent state within India. These violent activities have fallen since their height during the 1982–1993 period when individuals and groups conducted numerous terrorist attacks. The 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 331 people, remains the deadliest terrorist plot ever launched in Canada. While attacks around the world in support of this movement have declined, support for the extreme ideologies of such groups remains. For example, in Canada, two organizations, Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation, have been identified as being associated with terrorism and remain listed terrorist entities under the Criminal Code.

Despite this odd decision by the Canadian government, sensitive to Sikh voting patterns, the same government announced a few days later

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that it had added three Canadian Sikhs to the country’s “no-fly list” under the Secure Air Travel Act. Under this legislation the government can list a person it has reasonable grounds to believe poses a threat to an aircraft or will use that means to travel to commit an act of terrorism elsewhere.29 The bottom line is that Sikh extremism remains a threat in Canada, as it does elsewhere. The goals for which Sikh terrorists have fought have not been fulfilled. It is almost inevitable that a small number will choose to use violence to press for their desires. I should emphasize that support for Sikh extremist causes is not limited to the diaspora in Canada. In September 2018, members of the West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism Unit raided UK properties tied to Sikh activists in Birmingham and Coventry and seized material tied to “extremist activity in India and money laundering.” That region of the United Kingdom has been a “nerve center” for Sikh extremism since the early 1980s.30

How Religious Is This Extremism? The question of whether Sikh extremism is religious or nationalist in nature is difficult to answer. There are clear ties between Sikh religious symbols and the use of violence. At the same time, the push for an independent homeland—Khalistan—is a nationalist urge (I am not aware of any call for Khalistan within Sikh religious texts). The fact that Sikh extremists have chosen to use gurdwaras—religious and community centers—to spread pro-Khalistani messages lends weight to the religious side of the debate. We are left with the gnawing question of identity. Do Sikhs see themselves primarily as a nation or a faith group or both? Is there a distinction? What role does the “warrior mentality” play in all this? What is more important, the freedom to practice one’s religion or the establishment of a Sikh homeland? Until we can make these determinations, it will be impossible to decide.

Countering Sikh Extremism Sikh extremism is far from its heyday but has not disappeared. The issue of Khalistan still resonates and will likely always pose a challenge, especially within Indian society.

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Indian prime minister Modi made a point of telling Canadian prime minister Trudeau that joint action was required to counter Sikh extremism. India has long accused successive Canadian governments of being “soft” on this brand of terrorism. During Trudeau’s early 2018 official visit to India, he and Modi signed a framework document, “Cooperation Between India and Canada on Countering Terrorism.” This marked the first time Canada has agreed to include Sikh terrorism in a joint agreement with India.31 In light of Modi’s tolerance of Hindu extremism in India, it seems slightly ironic that he wants help to crack down on Sikh extremism. I was unable to readily locate any concerted effort by mainstream Sikh leaders to counter the extremist views of the minority. An inability to read Punjabi might have hampered my efforts.

Conclusions

The vast majority of Sikhs might deplore the violence of terrorist groups in the past and might not want to support such groups, financially or otherwise. Still, Sikhs have suffered greatly over the centuries for their faith, and continued discrimination by Hindu extremists could convince more Sikhs to back those who stand up for their rights, even if they do so through extremist violence. Sikhism was born out of violence from the Mughal Muslim rulers and is subject today to the Hindu violence tolerated by India’s Modi government. Modern Islamic extremists have also targeted Sikhs in their campaign to kill “infidels.” Because of the historical oppression of Sikhs, the majority of the victims of Sikh terrorism are Indian Hindus. Whether continued attacks by Islamic extremists on Sikh populations will lead to retaliatory action against Muslims remains to be seen. To date, Hindu extremists seem to enjoy a monopoly on anti-Muslim discrimination and violence. Any change in this trend warrants observation.

Notes 1. Both quotes are derived from the Sikh Freedom (Voice of Khalistan) website. 2. Scandinavia Times, “US Mentions Babbar Khalsa, LeT, TTP as Threat.”

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3. Charlie Smith, “Modern Sikhs Explain Why They Dress Like Traditional Warriors During Vaisakhi Celebrations.” 4. Anirudh Bhattacharyya, “Khalsa Tradition Justifies Use of Force, Says Sikh Liberation Force Founder.” 5. Haresh Pandya, “Jagjit Singh Chauhan, Sikh Militant Leader in India, Dies at 80.” 6. Pandya, “Jagjit Singh Chauhan.” 7. Based on Asit Jolly, “How Punjab Is Threatened by Revival of Khalistan Movement, Considered Defeated in 1990s.” 8. Jolly, “How Punjab Is Threatened by Revival of Khalistan Movement.” 9. Sikh Freedom home page. 10. Robert Matas, “Temple Defends Celebration of Parmar.” 11. Matthew Taylor, “Protest at Sikh Temple Was Attempt by Youth Group to ‘Reclaim Religion.’” 12. Simon Gilbert, “Religious Leader Says Claims of Extremism at Sikh Temple in Coventry ‘Exaggerated.’” 13. Anirudh Bhattacharyya, “As Canadian Gurdwaras Ban Indian Diplomats, Fears of a New Sikh Uprising Emerge.” 14. Gurpreet Singh, “Indian State Apologists Must Stop Twisting Facts About Sikh Temple Bans in North America.” 15. Punjab Update, “Punjab Police Crack Amritsar Grenade Attack Case with Arrest of Main Perpetrator.” 16. Ravinder Vasudeva, “Targeted Killings in Punjab: UK Resident Johal Was on Police Radar for a Year.” 17. Hindustan Times, “Unidentified Men Fire Shots at RSS Shakha in Ludhiana.” 18. Times of India, “Third Shiv Sena Leader Shot at in Jalandhar.” 19. Times of India, “Shiv Sena Leader Shot Dead by Two MotorcycleBorne Youth.” 20. Deccan Chronicle, “Little Known Sikh Outfit Claims to Have Killed Senior RSS Leader Gagneja.” 21. Neeraj Chauhan, “ISI, Khalistani Group Plotted Killings of RSS Men in Punjab.” 22. Mukhtar A. Khan, “India’s Sikh Militants Forming Ties with Lashkare-Taiba and Pakistani Intelligence.” 23. Canada Department of Public Safety, “2017 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada.” 24. Rahul Kalvapalle, “Sikh Group Plans to Hold Khalistan Referendum Polling in Canadian Cities in 2020.” 25. Canada Department of Public Safety, “2018 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada.” 26. Douglas Quan, “Sikh Extremism Claim Provokes Backlash,” National Post, NP3. 27. Sunny Dhillon, “Sikhs for Justice Seek Referendum—and a New Reputation,” A15.

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28. Canadian Press, “Language on Sikh Extremism in Report Will Be Reviewed, Goodale Says.” 29. Tom Blackwell, “Sikh-Canadian Activists Placed on No-Fly List After Trudeau’s India Visit: Critics Say Aim Was to Appease Indian Government.” 30. Amardeep Bassey, “Anti-Terror Police Raid British Sikh Separatists over ‘Extremist Activity.’” 31. Sachin Parashar, “In a First, Canada Calls for Action Against Sikh Terror Groups in Joint Document with India.”

8 When Religion Kills

I’m right, you’re wrong: go to hell. —Bernard Lewis1

It should be obvious by now that intolerance for difference, hatred, and in the direst of cases violence, affect the world’s religions. There have been enough wars, conflicts, and campaigns of brutality throughout history that the juxtaposition of belief and butchery is beyond doubt. Even faiths many of us would normally associate with contemplation and peace, such as Buddhism, are not immune from immense cruelty. Whether violence is an inherent part of any religion or is in fact deeply-rooted in sacred texts is a topic beyond the scope of this book. A mere cursory glance at the scriptures of a particular creed certainly uncovers verses that appear, at least on the surface, to support, explain, justify, condone, or even mandate the use of violence against others who profess a different belief system. “True” believers maintain that such verses are blatantly taken out of context and that the “real” meaning of the texts demands a deeper understanding of faith, context, history, and interpretation obtained only through thorough exegesis of scripture. The problem with such an argument is that few people have either the training or, frankly, the interest in learning how to perform exegesis. Religious scholars and experts are few and far between 147

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within any given faith community, and the majority of believers appear satisfied with either a surface understanding or with having more profound truths “revealed” to them by others. Not surprisingly, when those “others” are charismatic leaders who put their own spin on religion, followers can be convinced that violence is indeed an justifiable part of their faith. In this book I have cited any number of such charismatic leaders who use faith to make their cases and recruit others to their causes. On a disturbing number of occasions these leaders are themselves respected religious men and women: Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar; Christian ministers in the United States; Hindu leaders in India; Jewish rabbis in Israel; Islamic sheikhs across much of the Muslim world; and Sikh gurus in the East and West, to name but a few. I thus return to one of the questions I raised at the beginning of the book: Is the call for violence within a particular faith normative? Much as before, I prefer not to weigh in on what is and what is not normative. It strikes me, however, that when otherwise revered religious spokespeople are often in the lead of those calling for violence against X—whether X is another religious community or perceived outcasts of their own religious communities—that lends some credibility and gravitas to such appeals. In any event, the phenomenon of religious violence shows little signs of abating. Because it is often connected to other issues—historical, cultural, socioeconomic, and so forth—and solutions to those issues are not often on the horizon, the world will likely see more violence that has a religious hue. More explicitly:

• Buddhist extremist monks in Myanmar do not appear cowed by temporary bans on their social media accounts. • An increasingly violent far-right, white supremacist movement in the United States and Europe considers itself the protector of Christianity from the hordes of pagan immigrants, and the realization that its share of the church “market” is plummeting will lead to more calls for extreme actions to maintain its historic status. • Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim hatred is on the rise in India and has government backing. • Islamic extremists are still a dangerous threat in dozens of countries across Asia, Africa, and Europe (and to a lesser extent

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in North America and Australia) despite the fact these countries have been “at war” with them for almost two decades. • The growth in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population with no interest in negotiations, together with a conservative, intolerant rabbinate that sees all the lands of Israel and Palestine as a promise from God, do not bode well for the future. The IsraelPalestine problem seems intractable. • Sikhs keen to create a homeland in India are no closer to their goal today than at the height of extremist acts thirty-five years ago, and it is probable a new generation will embrace violence to achieve this end.

The safe bet is that more violence will be carried out by those that do so, at least in part, for religious rationales. What makes this prognosis more interesting is that, at least from a layperson’s perspective, many parts of the world are becoming more secular and less religious (there are, of course, exceptions to this trend). Perhaps resorting to violence is a form of desperation at the recognition that faith is not as important to people as it once was. In an increasingly cosmopolitan and borderless world, people of disparate backgrounds (linguistic, cultural, religious) live together, hence challenging former monopolies (linguistic, cultural, religious), and lashing out in extreme ways is one response to that loss of power. Or perhaps it can be attributed to the inherent human distrust of the Other. I will let more experienced scholars discuss that possibility.

Is Islamic Extremism an Outlier? I have attempted to answer the question posed by Ann Coulter with which I opened this book: Are all terrorists Muslim? The response should be obvious: no. There are ample examples of individuals and groups that use religion to call for and justify violence. Those who engage in violence for completely or quasireligious reasons come from all major religions. Still it is evident that no other religious extremist movement uses sacred texts to the extent that Islamic terrorists do. Groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and Al Qaeda always use excerpts from scripture in their statements, claims of responsibility for attacks, and incitement to carry out more attacks. I could not find any comparable

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analogy among the other five major religions discussed in this book. Why? All religions have their violent sides—one only has to read the Old Testament to find references to rape and infanticide galore. Yet, Jewish and Christian extremists do not avail themselves of these verses like Muslim extremists do. Critics of Islam would say it is because Islam inherently advocates violence. Such analysis is fraught with challenges because the vast majority of ayats (verses of the Quran) and Hadiths are not, in fact, violent in character. Why jihadis see the need to populate their works with this overtly violent religious material is an open question. Another consideration is that of distribution. Sikh extremism is relegated (more or less) to India (with support at times from diasporas in North America and Europe). The same goes for Hindu extremism. Jewish extremism is an Israeli/Palestine problem (again with help from the diaspora). Buddhist extremism is a little broader in that it encompasses three nations: Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Christian extremists are almost exclusively a Western scourge. Islamic extremism, in contrast, sows violence on all continents save Antarctica. There are regular reports of attacks in east Asia, southeast Asia, Australia, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America (and rarely in South America). To the rejoinder that Islam is a worldwide faith, I would simply state: so is Christianity, and Christian extremism is not nearly as widely distributed. All in all, as of the time of this writing, Islamic extremism remains the single greatest source of religious violence. Whether it will be superseded—some analysts claim that right-wing extremism is already surpassing it in the United States, (although not all rightwing terrorism is inherently Christian)—remains to be seen.

How Important Is Religious Extremism? I have now come full circle. I began with David Rapoport’s “wave theory” of terrorism and the suggestion that the current wave (number four: religious extremism) might last longer than the previous three. Everything we have examined in this book supports Rapoport’s prediction. At the same time, a problem as serious as religious terrorism requires a multifaceted response at many levels (people often raise the

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roles of religious leaders and communities, civil society, security and law enforcement agencies, governments, etc.). Still, it does not present an existential threat to modern society (save, perhaps, in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq). Given the religious characteristics of extremism, however, normative religious actors, despite the difficulty in defining such, must be involved. The best people to understand and refute the religious messaging terrorists use are leaders well versed in those faiths. It strikes me as unlikely that governments, unless they are equally religious in composition, are the best actors to do that. As the old saying goes, it is best to fight fire with fire. In the end, how does anyone convince someone that his or her conviction that “God wants me to do this” is wrong? Can religious leaders of any kind (monks, ministers, imams, gurus) really “exorcize” these beliefs? Religion is, after all, a personal experience, subject to personal sentiments, normativism notwithstanding. All faiths have divisions and sects; religious extremists are generally effective at maintaining their adherence to their particular interpretation and consider violence to protect and/or promote their interpretation as feasible or even mandatory. It is thus a good question whether the “deradicalization” of religious extremists is even possible. This has not prevented the creation and execution of such efforts in many different faiths (the Saudi Mohammed bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Advice is one such initiative). Yet, the overarching challenge is how to determine that these programs achieve their goal (i.e., the abandonment of violent religious notions). How to read minds remains a daunting issue. Faith is a personal matter. It is a tremendous force for good. It can also be used for evil. What, then, of the future of religious violent extremism? For countless people from many religions, it is sufficient to declare that they “take it on faith” that something is right or true. Alas, we can “take it on faith” that religious violence will continue.

Notes 1. Atlantic, “I’m Right, You’re Wrong, Go to Hell: Religions and the Meeting of Civilization.”

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Index

Adam Institute, 129 Adnani, Abu Muhammad Al, 102 Ahmadis, 104–105 Air India, 133,135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142 Al Qaeda (AQ), 98, 103, 106, 107, 149; As-Sahab video arm, 110. See also Islamic State Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), 111 Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), 107 Al Shabaab (AS), 104 Aliyah, 122 All-India Sikh Students Federation, 137 Amalekites, 119–120, 128 Amir, Yigal, 120 Anti-abortion activists, 54–55 Anti-Ahmadi violence, 104–105 Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 68–69 Anti-Semitism: 52–54; in Germany, 52, 53; in Hungary, 53; in Norway, 53; in US, 52, 53 Anti-Shiism, 102–103 Anti-Sikh violence, 54 Anti-Sufism, 103–104 Apocalyptic views, 48, 123 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 70 Apostasy, 103, 104

Arakan Army (AA), 24 Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), 18 Army of God, 55 Aryanism, 68 Asahara, Shoko, 36 Assam State (India), 84–86 Atwal, Jaspal, 141 Aum Shinrikyo, 35–36 Aung San Suu Kyi, 22 Azzam, Abdallah, 99–100

Babbar Khalsa Internatiional (BKI), 133, 135, 142 Babri mosque, 78 Balfour Declaration, 122 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 139 Bida’a, 101 Blasphemy, 9, 10, 108 Black Bloc, 69 Black Hawk Down, 3 Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), 27–30, 37 Bowers, Robert, 52 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), 120 Boykin, US Lieutenant-General William, 1, 3, 4 Branch Davidians, 71

177

178

Index

Breivik, Anders, 55–58, 61; 2011; manifesto, 56–58; terrorist attacks, 55–56 Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation. See Ma Ba Tha Buddhism: extremism in Myanmar, 17– 24; outline, 16; where practiced, 16–17

Camus, Renaud, 59 Canaanites, 127 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), 134, 141 Carothers, John, 70 Cave of the Patriarchs, 125 Chetniks, 64 Christchurch terrorist attacks, 58–61, 65 Christian extremism, Balkans, 63–65 Christianity: overview, 43–44 Church of the Creator, 53 Coulter, Ann, 2, 149 Countering violent extremism (CVE), 72 “Cow vigilantes,” 79–81 Crimea, 66 Crusade, 4, 50–51, 52, 56, 60

Dalits, 91, 92 Dashmesh Regiment, 140 Dawkins, Richard, 117 Dear, Robert L., 55 Dehumanization, 10, 11 Deir Yassin, 121 Democratic Institute, 129 Dewsiri, Nirmal Ranjith, 31 Deus le volt, 4 Din rodef, 120 Doggart, Robert, 72 Donetsk People’s Republic, 66 Dowson, Jim, 64 Earnest, John T., 61–63 Eurabia, 51, 57, 58

Faraj, Muhammad abd-al Salam, 99–101 Fard ayn, 100, 110 Fard kifayah, 100 Fatwa, 107 Fédération des Québecois de Souche (FQS), 48–49 Fitna, 103

Forgotten Obligation, The, 100–101 Freemen on the Land. See Sovereign citizens Fukuyama, Francis, 8, 49

Galagoda Atte Gnanasara, 29 Goldstein, Baruch, 125 Grand Remplacement, 59 Golden Temple (Amritsar), 79, 137, 139 Great Replacement. See Grand Remplacement Gunasingham, Amresh, 35 Gurdwara, 134, 138–139, 143 Guru, 134, 150

Hadiths, 97, 98, 102, 111–112, 150 Haganah, 121 Hagia Sophia, 61 Haredim, 118, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 130 Haredi. See Haredim Hazara Muslims, 103 Hinduism, overview, 77 Hogg, Charu Lata, 34 Holocaust, 52 Houthis, 103

Identitarian Movement, 65 In Defense of the Muslim Lands, 99–100 Inspire magazine, 111 International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), 137, 140, 142 Irgun, 121 Isaacs, Matthew, 33–34 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, 109 Islamic State (IS), 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 113, 149; Algerian Province, 108; IS Khorasan Province, 107; Sinai, 106 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). See Islamic State Israeli Defense Forces, 124, 126 Israeli Security Service. See Shin Bet

Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM), 106 Jathika Chinthanaya, 37 Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), 27 Jerryson, Michael, 35

Index Jewish Defense League (JDL), 126 Jihad, 99–101 Jizya, 106 Juergensmeyer, Mark, 135 Jus ad bellum. See Just war theory Jus in bello. See Just war theory Just war theory, 70

Kach, 126, 127 Kahane Chai, 126, 127 Karadzic, Radovan, 64 Kashmir, 83–84 Keenan, Alan, 34 Khalistan, 133, 136–138, 139, 141, 143 Khalistan Commando Force, 137 Khalistan Liberation Army (KLA), 137 Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), 137,139, 140 Khalsa, 135, 136 Kirpan, 135 Kony, Joseph, 68 Koresh, David, 71 Knights Templar International, 48, 64, Breivik and, 56; flag, 50; Tarrant and, 59 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 73 Kuffar, 100

Lakwena, Alice, 67 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), 140 Lewis, Bernard, 147 LGBT violence, anti, 45, 50 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 26–27 Life After Hate, 73 Likud, 127 Lord God Ram, 78 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 67–68 “Love jihad,” 81–83 Luhansk People’s Republic, 66

Ma Ba Tha, 19, 21 Mahason Balakaya, 30 Milosevic, Slobodan, 64 Modi, Narendra, 85, 89–91, 93–94, 142, 143 Mughal Empire, 89, 93, 144 Murtaddin, 103 Muslims Love Peace, 37

179

Myanmar: Buddhist extremism in, 17– 24; anti-Christian, 23

Nashir Media Foundation (ISISrelated), 110 National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), 31, 104 Netanyahu, Binyamin, 127 Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), 68 Normative religion, 7, 36 Nouvelle Droite Génération Identitaire. See Identitarian Movement

Odinism, 56 Operational Forces Action, 51 Order of Solomon’s Temple. See Knights Templar Orthodox Church, 67 Osborne, Darren, 51

Pathirana, Mahinda, 37 Phelps, Fred, 71 Phineas Priests, 48 Phra Apichart Punnajanto, 25–26 Pogrom, 52 Pope Urban II, 4, 50, 60 Poway Synagogue attack, 61–63 Preventing violent extremism (PVE), 72141, 142 Public Safety Canada, 141

Qadiani, 104–105 Quran, 98, 102, 106, 111–112,118, 150

Rabin, Yitzhak, 121, 129 Rafidha, 102 RAHOWA (racial holy war), 53, 54 Rakhine state (Myanmar), 17–18, 21–22 Rapoport, David, 2, 3, 150 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 78, 79, 80, 83, 86, 91, 92, 140 Ravna Gora. See Chetniks Rearming Hinduism, 91 Republika Srpska, 64 Rohingya Muslims, 17–24, 85 “Romeo jihad.” See “Love jihad” Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), 133–134, 141 Russian Orthodox Army (ROA), 67

180

Index

Saffron Revolution: in Myanmar, 19; in India, 78 Salafism, 101 Save Hinduism, Save the World, 91 Schmid, Alex, 5 Shin Bet, 125, 126 Shirk, 104 Shiv Sena, 84, 140 Sikh Liberation Front (SLF), 136 Sikhs for Justice, 141, 142 Singh, Jagmeet, 141 Soldiers of Odin (SOO), 68–69 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 45, 48, 71, 72 Sovereign Citizens (a.k.a Freemen on the Land), 48 Spanish Defense League, 50 Stormfront, 51 Sri Lanka, anti-Christian Buddhist extremism, 32 Sykes-Picot agreement, 122

Taghut, 108–110 Taliban, 105, 111 Tarrant, Brenton, 58–61

Tehrik-e-Taliban, 105 Terrorism, definition of, 5, 6 Thailand: Buddhist extremism in, 24– 26 Torah, 118 Trudeau, Justin, 141

U Wirathu, 19–21, 23–24, 26, 37 “Unite the Right,” 52

Vishwa Hindu Parisad (VHP), 82

Wahhabism, 101 Weerasinghe, Amith, 30 Westboro Baptist Church, 71–72 World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE), 113

Yeshiva, 124

Zaal, Tim, 53 Zawahiri, Ayman al, 103 Zionism, 121–123 Zionist Union, 130

About the Book

Christian fundamentalists. Hindu nationalists. Islamic jihadists. Buddhist militants. Jewish extremists. Members of these and other religious groups have committed horrific acts of terrorist violence in recent decades. How is this possible? How do individuals use their religious beliefs to justify such actions? How do they manipulate the language and symbols of their faith to motivate others to commit violence in the name of the divine? Phil Gurski addresses these essential questions as he explores violent extremism across a broad range of the world’s major religions.

Phil Gurski, president and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, served previously as a senior strategic analyst in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

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