13/11.
This date means little to Americans, but Parisians have it scorched on their minds. On November 13, 2015, France experienced the deadliest terrorist attack on its mainland in French history. A series of coordinated strikes in Paris were designed to maximize casualties and chaos, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds more.
The horrors of this crime against human life continue to baffle me. The most chilling account I read of that night featured one of the victims’ posts on Facebook, via The Telegraph. “They have to storm the building quickly! They are killing everyone. One by one. First floor, quick!” Mr. Cazenoves urged. In a typical hostage crisis, neither party (the criminal abductors nor the police) wants innocent people to die, and authorities are sometimes amenable to meet criminal demands in order to preserve the lives of the innocent. But in this scenario, the attackers’ intention was purely to kill. A hasty storming of the building, which would normally have put the lives of the hostages at great risk, became the only way to save them.
130 brutally murdered. 352 Injured. Why?
We try to understand. We try to fathom how fellow human beings could do something so horrible. As people with individual backgrounds, distinct cultures, different theologies and unique worldviews, we each bring various sets of assumptions to the table. Yet nearly all of us (including the vast majority of Muslims) understand the Paris attacks as a grave tragedy and a moral evil.
Given this consensus, ISIS’ rationale can be very tricky to grasp. What are their aspirations? Why do they pursue them in ways nearly all others consider evil? If immigration policies and military annihilation are inherently insufficient to address the theological enemy of ISIS, then how do we understand ISIS’s theological motivations in order to address them?
This is a complex issue—one that I lack the expertise and experience to fully navigate. But if there is one thing that ISIS does not do, it is hide. ISIS wants everybody in the world to know what they are doing and why.
So ISIS tells us. Its statement regarding the Paris attacks is bursting at the seams with phrases that pronounce moral judgment on the West. Paris is titled “the capital of prostitution and obscenity,” while its people and the victims are referred to as “[the] enemy,” “hundreds of apostates [gathered] in a profligate prostitution party” and “the disbelievers.” ISIS also faults the French for being political enemies “against Islam,” likening President Hollande to the Crusaders of centuries before and testifying that the French had blasphemed the Islamic prophet Muhammad (a universally high offense to all Muslims).
In short, ISIS regards the French as immoral disbelievers who have religiously, politically and militarily wronged them. The fascinating part of this framing is that ISIS’s appeal is to righteousness and justice. While parts of ISIS’s statement frame the attacks as a military retaliation against France’s foreign policy, there is a strong sense in which ISIS perceives its violence as part of a morally justified war on evil and unbelief. Consider the sites that were attacked: a football stadium, a rock concert and a series of restaurants and bars. These are not embassies, military installations or political buildings. They are centers of sports, culture and art, which ISIS regards as immoral.
While I lived in Tanzania, I remember going with a friend to a local barbershop in our village to get a haircut. A 12” TV featured a radicalized Imam speaking, with the volume turned up full blast.
“Marekani ni ya Shetani!” America is of Satan.
“George Washington ni ya Shetani!” George Washington is of Satan.
“Manchester football team ni ya Shetani!” Manchester football team is of Satan.
As I remember these moments from my high school years, I remember how ready some were to make strong moral judgments.
As much as we (and the vast majority of Muslims) regard ISIS as being evil and operating amorally, the reality is that ISIS has its own rigorous sense of righteousness and wickedness. ISIS considers evil and disobedience to God a very serious matter that must be dealt with severely, often via the sword. But even the sword is insufficient. While the sword can kill man and the evil in him, the sword cannot separate the two; it cannot deliver man from evil.
In the Western world, we have tried to understand how we can eliminate evil from our society through mitigating the causal elements. For instance, it has long been suggested in popular circles and argued in observational studies that there is a direct correlation between poverty and crime rates. If this is true, it would be possible that crime could be reduced by alleviating poverty. But the presence of crime at each and every socio-economic level suggests that poverty (and other conditional factors) merely function as multipliers; they are not the root cause. If evil cannot be eliminated by properly controlling the conditions, then human beings have an inalienable propensity to do wrong.
Even while ISIS fighters strive for righteousness in their own eyes, the members of ISIS have no way to be certain of whether they will go to heaven or hell when they die (Surah 46:8-9). ISIS praises the idea of “[being] killed in the cause of Allah.” Killing others and themselves stems from a desire to please God and to be “[accepted] among the martyrs,” thus gaining eternal life. The sword symbolically cleanses here as well; I speculate that by committing suicide, the martyr offers a blood sacrifice of himself.
What ISIS seeks is righteousness and eternal life, yet the path they tread is by the sword, which leads to death but cannot conquer evil. These theological aspirations demand an answer—a true way to attain righteousness and abundant life, not one that is fleeting or of falsehood. The evil in our world demands a solution—a true way to be delivered from evil at the very core.
Addison Merryman is a Trinity junior. His column runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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