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April 11, 2006

Call It 'Mis-Islamic Terrorism'

According to a Reuters news story, "The European Union is reviewing the language it uses to describe terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam. "Certainly 'Islamic terrorism' is something we will not use", an EU official is reported to have said, "we talk about 'terrorists who abusively invoke Islam'."

That's a fair approach. Terrorists — those who attack civilian targets — certainly misuse Islam for their political causes. Islam has the tradition of a just war, to be sure, but never allows violence against noncombatants. As I have explained in my previous writings, (see, Terror's Roots Not in Islam, Still Standing For Islam - and Against Terrorism, and Bolshevism in a Headdress) what the term "Islamic terrorism" suggests — that Islam is the root of the terrorisms at hand — is massively wrong.

So, since we need better term, consider "mis-Islamic terrorism." Its semantics would acknowledge the fact that what Al Qaeda and its ilk are doing has something to do with Islam, but in a distorted way. And the cure would be to save Islam from this distortion and define it as what it really is: A path to God and a call for peace.

Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:20 PM | Comments (8)