It is a mistake to confuse Islam with its followers. Michael Jansen explores Muslim terrorism's roots
The bombings in Britain and Egypt have prompted politicians and pundits to resurrect the term "militant Islam" to identify the ideology of the perpetrators. But Islam is not a violent ideology. It is the faith of 1.4 billion Muslims.
Only a few bands of Muslims are on the march. Their activities should not be characterised as "militant Islam" any more than the violence carried out by the IRA should be called "militant Catholicism".
The men who triggered the blasts in London and Sharm el-Shaikh are militant Muslims just as IRA volunteers are militants largely belonging to Catholicism. The motivation of both militant groups is nationalist rather than religious.
Muslim militants are fighting for an end to western intervention and occupation of Muslim lands just as the IRA has been fighting for the reunification of Ireland.
Their struggles are driven by the territorial imperative.
Militant Muslims, like IRA volunteers, are a small minority. Most Muslims are bitter and angry over western policies towards the Muslim world but very few take up arms or become suicide-bombers. Fewer still leave the countries in which they reside to carry out such operations. To speak of "militant Islam" demonises the faith and all its followers and risks alienating the pacific majority.
Militant Muslims are bound together by their political cause. They do not espouse a comprehensive ideology but adhere to two simple ideas. First, they believe that Muslims must return to the original principles and teachings of Islam in order to overcome weakness caused by abandonment of the faith.
This is a common theme for revivalists of all religions. Second, militant Muslims believe that Muslim lands and peoples must be liberated.
They contend that the use of violence is authorised by the Koranic prescription "Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you." But the Koran also warns: ". . . Begin not hostilities. God loveth not aggressors." The Koran also limits warfare: ". . . Fight them until persecution is no more . . . If they desist, then let there be no hostility except towards wrongdoers." (Surah II, verses 190 and 193).
The core ideas held by the militants were put forward by Jamal ed-Din Afghani (1839-97) and Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), who called on Muslims to unite against western imperialism, and by their disciple Rashid Rida (1865-1935), who argued that the backwardness of Muslim peoples had resulted from the corruption of Islam.
These ideas were adapted by the Pakistani scholar Abdul ala Maududi (1903-79) and by the Egyptian polemicist Sayyid Qutb (1903-66). Their teachings were translated into action by Abdullah Azzam (1941-89), a Palestinian who joined the struggle against the Soviet army in Afghanistan which, he believed, would become the base for the liberation of the Umma, the worldwide Muslim community.
Azzam, who studied at the Islamic University of al-Azhar in Cairo, became the teacher and mentor of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda.
Muslim peoples have been battling western invaders since the Crusades and western imperial incursions for 350 years.
However, when secular nationalists seized the initiative and secured independence, Muslim movements were sidelined - until it became clear that secular leaderships had become corrupt and had been co-opted by the west. This led to the re-emergence, at different times in different countries, of the Muslim alternative to secularism.
The unification of the Arabian peninsula under the House of Saud in 1927 was a seminal event in the development of the Muslim alternative to secularism.
The al-Sauds were closely allied to tribesmen belonging to the deeply conservative Wahhabi sect, which continues to dominate the religious life of the kingdom and its external policies. The al-Sauds also placed the monarchy under the protection of Britain, then of the US, combining domestic religiosity with external western orientation.
The discovery of oil in 1938 provided the Saudis and their Wahhabi allies with the funds to export their conservative brand of Islam. They financed religious revivalist movements, built mosques and schools and provided clerics and teachers to Muslim communities the world over, shaping the minds of millions of Muslims.
The next major milestone was the founding in 1928 of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which took up the struggle against the British in Egypt. After 1952, the brotherhood, backed by Saudi Arabia and the US, opposed the secular government headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser as well as his pan-Arab nationalist ideology.
The brotherhood gave birth to a whole range of militant Muslim groupings round the world which Arab and Muslim rulers have, on occasion, attempted to co-opt. But no regimes have successfully exploited the militants without serious risk.
The creation of Pakistan in 1947 was another milestone. Within the new entity there was tension between secularists, who wanted it to be a Muslim state, and religious traditionalists, including Maududi, who insisted that it should be an Islamic state.
The balance tipped in favour of the militants during the presidency of Zia ul-Haq in the 1970s, partly due to his policy of "Islamisation" and partly due to the influx into Pakistan of conservative tribal Afghans fleeing the Soviet-sponsored regime in Kabul.
The establishment of Israel in 1948/49 created a never-ending source of Muslim animus towards the west. Britain bore the brunt of animosity for "giving" Palestine, part of Dar al-Islam, to western Jews, but the US soon attracted even greater hostility by acting as Israel's sponsor, financier and armourer.
This intensified when Israel waged war on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967 and occupied Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, the third holiest city for Muslims. Backed by Arab governments, Palestinians mounted an armed resistance against the overwhelming might of the Israeli state, but very few non-Palestinian Muslims joined this struggle.
Arab satellite television coverage of the second intifada in 2000 brought the Palestinian fight for liberation and statehood into livingrooms, offices and cafés across the Muslim world, deepening resentment against Israel and its allies.
Muslim militants received their marching orders only when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979. This was the first war in which Muslims from many countries fought to free a Muslim country from secular foreign rule.
Pakistan became the base and provided training for Muslim warriors, Saudi Arabia financed the campaign, and the US provided equipment and logistical support. An entire generation of militants secured battlefield and command experience and established global networks. Maududi inspired Pakistanis to enlist in the ranks of the fighters while Azzam recruited Arabs.
When the war ended in 1989, its veterans stayed on in Afghanistan, returned to their homelands or fought in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. This expanded into a low-level transnational war of attrition against those who suppress Muslims and occupy Muslim lands.
The Muslim insurgency in secular Algeria, which began in 1991, was a direct consequence of the Afghan war.
The confrontation between Muslims and the West intensified when, in 1991, US and allied troops based in Saudi Arabia waged war on Iraq. Saudi militants, in particular, regarded the stationing of non- Muslim forces in Arabia as a violation of Islam's two most sacred shrines at Mecca and Medina.
Bin Laden, a Saudi who had fought in Afghanistan, created al-Qaeda to fight the US presence and punish the monarchy, which relied on US power to protect it. Bin Laden based al- Qaeda in Afghanistan and helped the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban to take power there. Saudi militants began attacking western and Saudi targets in the kingdom.
Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and New York and Washington in 2001.
The US responded by occupying Afghanistan and driving al-Qaeda members to take refuge in other countries, where they recruit, plot and carry out operations.
The 2003 US/British war on Iraq is energising the post-Afghan war generation of alienated Muslim youths who flock to Iraq to fight the intruders alongside the indigenous Iraqi resistance. Foreign veterans of the Iraq conflict are already mounting operations in their homelands.
They and other militants, emboldened by the ongoing conflict in Iraq, are likely to engage in transnational attacks anywhere if western powers do not change their policies towards the Muslim world.
Last autumn, the Pentagon's defence science board made a blunt pronouncement unpopular with western leaders. The board stated: "Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies."