Reason of the Fundamentalist

In many of the attacks perpetrated by Muslim terrorists, be it in Iraq or in Indonesia, a substantial number of the victims were fellow Muslims rather than infidels. I have heard many people wondering out loud at the apparent senselessness of the attacks even from the perspective of a jihad against the enemy of Islam. For if the terrorists really believe that they are waging a war on behalf of God (and I do think that in their own twisted way, these terrorists do sincerely believe they are doing the work of God), why still plan and execute their attacks in such a way that they end up killing equal or more of their own than the infidels?

As much as many people like to believe that these terrorists are psychopathic or just purely insane, the fact is, they are not. Their actions and behaviours have shown them to be purposeful and rational in their own context even if we find their rationality totally alien. So this means that these terrorists must be able to justify to themselves the blood of their fellow Muslims spilled in their Holy War. I think I can speculate on the reasoning that went through their heads and as it turned out, terrorists are probably not the only people in the world who are capable of such casual brutality.

In 1209 AD, 30,000 knights and foot soldiers from Northern Europe with the blessing of the Pope invaded Languedoc, Southern France. These soldiers like the Crusaders in Jerusalem wore the cross on their tunics and they were promised places in Heaven for their holy mission (sounds familiar? OK, nothing mentioned about having beautiful virgin wives in heaven, but the basic idea of ascending to heaven for killing other people is there). The mission was chillingly simple: wipe out the Cathars, a sect of Christianity in Languedoc, branded by the Church as heretics just as the Protestants were to be so condemned many years later. In one of the towns, 15,000 men, women and children were slaughtered (somewhat like a predecessor of the Rape of Nanking). When one of the officers asked the representative of the Pope how to distinguish the heretics from the believers, he supposedly reply "Kill them all. God will recognize his own."

So there you have it. One simple sweeping statement that can justify all atrocities even those done against your own. Little wonder that Blaise Pascal supposedly said that, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as they do it from religious conviction." The above historical incident also should be a reminder to Christian fundamentalists especially in places like America that anytime they feel like jumping to condemn Islam for being an evil religion, Christianity also did had a less than glorious past. The Crusaders of the Middle Ages, for example were a most dishonourable and bloodthirsty lot who raped and plundered their way from Europe all the way to Byzantine and Jerusalem to fight their holy war. In fact, if we are to make this whole saga into a movie free from Western cultural influence and prejudice, the Islamic Saracens would emerge as the good guys. Ironically, these barbarians under the great Saladin have shown more chivalry than the knights who WERE supposed to live by such a code. So much for the myth of the "knight in shining armour". It seemed many knights were simply Neandertals with big, metallic and shining toys whose only imaginative use of them was to skewer or crush the skulls of others.

But I digress... I think it does not take a lot of lateral thinking to come up with an alternative, kinder and happier maxim: "Save them all. God will judge them on His own." Is that so difficult to live by?