ISLAM, TERROR AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

• First, a summary of the article.  The Islamic discussion of nuclear weapons is profoundly intertwined with a parallel discussion of suicide-bombing that is also taking place within the Muslim world.  Suicide bombing and nuclear weapons typically kill without discrimination, murdering soldiers or civilians, men or women or children.  The last two decades have seen a challenge to the Islamic tradition of warfare under law, a challenge driven by the attempt to justify suicide bombing despite its evident inconsistency with Islamic tradition.  The Qur’an is explicit that suicide is wrong:  “Do not kill yourselves; for surely God has been merciful to you.”  What has occurred in Islamic theology is that some imams are now classifying suicide bombers as martyrs and this is now the standard.  This rationalization permits the embracing of homicide bombers within Islam.  The problem for Islam is that women and children are being killed by homicide bombers and by the carnage of terrorist acts like 9/11, which flies in the face of Islamic law.  Many Islamic theologians condemned 9/11 as not jihad, but an unlawful use of violence.  But the situation in Israel has changed their minds.  As Feldman writes, “What happened, in other words, is that without the scholars paying too much attention to the question, the killing of Israeli women and children had become a kind of exception to the ordinary laws of jihad.  Opportunists like bin Laden then began to widen the loophole to include new victims.  With respect to the unauthorized nature of his offensive jihad, bin Laden asserted that in fact the attacks were defensive, since in his mind the US was occupying the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia—just as Israel was occupying the Muslim land of Palestine.”  So, as homicide bombers were martyrs for the cause, so were those of 9/11!  All of this has fed an extreme, and growing, Islamist anti-Americanism, which was first successfully done by Ayatollah Khomeini, who made “Death to America” not simply a political slogan but also a religious chant.  Anti-Americanism is not only a rallying cry; it is also a deep-seated principle of belief.  When you add this belief to the possibility of nations like Iran or terrorist organizations like al Qaeda possessing nuclear weapons, will not Islamic theology find room for the use of such weapons justifiable within Islamic theology?  If Islamic theology has found itself able to accommodate to suicide bombings and to 9/11, why do we believe it cannot accommodate itself to the use of offensive nuclear weapons?  We are very short-sighted if we believe that is not probable.  See Feldman’s article, “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age,” in the New York Times Magazine (29 October 2006), pp. 50-79.

• Second, a thought about Islamic law and terrorism.  Christianity has struggled with the value of human life and warfare for 2,000 years.  It is extremely difficult to affirm the innate value of human life because of the image of God concept, and also affirm the reality of warfare.  In war, we train men and women to kill God’s image bearers.  How do we reconcile this?  Over the centuries, theologians have argued that war is a condition of a fallen world and will always be so until Christ returns.  Further, the Scriptures do seem to validate self defense as a value.  Therefore, there is such a thing as a just war that permits Christians to be involved in defending themselves and their nation.  One of the key principles of the just war defense is noncombatant immunity.  Technology has enabled modern weapons to reduce the collateral damage of bombs and sophisticated weapons.  But women and children still die.  And when you add nuclear weapons, civilians die in large numbers.  Warfare demonstrates the incredible ethical tension there is with living in a fallen world.  We can never satisfactorily resolve this.  But I do know this:  Islam is justifying homicide bombers in Israel and the 9/11 terrorists as martyrs for their religion.  No one who is intellectually honest will ever agree with that proposition.  The tradition of Islamic law never has justified such things.  Neither has historic, biblical Christianity.  Sin has prostituted the sacredness of human life—and there is no better example of this perversion than what is now occurring within Islam.