Take religion seriously to defeat fanatics - The Centre for Independent Studies
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Take religion seriously to defeat fanatics

terrorists terrorism iraqi insurgentsHow long before Aussies are faced with a deadly attack on the scale of Westminster or Manchester or Borough Markets? Apart from the Lindt cafe siege, we have so far seen nothing like them.

It would be naive to assume Australia , free for so long from political and religious terrorism, can avoid deadly Islamist attacks on a much larger scale than before.
Knives and a van or car are all that’s needed to wreak havoc and terror in a busy city. With such “weapons” so readily available, police face a huge challenge in trying to intercept potential killers.

But this is no ordinary, politically motivated terrorism. There are no objectives the jihadists seek to achieve, nor are they protesting about social grievances. Forget negotiating politics with them.

Many of our politicians think it’s simply a matter of working to stamp out extremist Islamist ideology. But what does getting tough on extremism really amount to?
So-called de-radicalisation programs — which attempt to identify a “troubled” individual with a “problem” and turn them into a good citizen — have only a limited impact.

But as Islamism expert Clive Kessler warns, we are not dealing with a series of individual problems. Kessler says we are faced with “a deeply grounded and historically complex social phenomenon”.

That phenomenon is religion — something many in our secular society refuse to take seriously, insisting it is a private matter for the individual.

What has to change is how we think about religion.

Too often, Western liberals have assumed that if a religious person must choose between pursuing religious ideals and political ideals, they will choose the political — and always endorse secular norms.

But believers often place the highest stakes on obeying their God’s law — even when the religious and the political come into conflict.

When that happens, it should not be a surprise to find religious demands almost always take precedence over political ones. Young Muslims who find in radical Islam an entire framework of meaning, truly believe they will go to heaven, and that committing “vengeance in the name Allah” is more important than anything else.

Secular liberals refuse to take such beliefs seriously because they have long since lost the ability to distinguish between the sacred and the secular. Their response is to denounce all religion.

But simply denouncing religion — especially extremist Islam — will not work, even though religion may at times make unreasonable or even outrageous claims.

And calls for debate about Islamic doctrine are invariably denounced as “Islamophobic” — a catch-all trick that effectively turns all Muslims into victims and shuts down all discussion.

When a religion has attracted faithful followers who commit themselves to its precepts, it is not enough to say they are all hopelessly misguided . What committed believer will agree with that? Instead, unreasonable religious claims must be challenged on religious grounds. The freedom to discuss religion openly, engaging support of community leaders , is also essential.

Confronting religious violence requires an unfailing commitment to defending the principles of an open, liberal society. But we must learn to take religion seriously — just as believers do already.

Peter Kurti is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and author of the research paper Terror In The Name of God: Confronting Acts Of Religious Violence In A Liberal Society released this week.