Santiago Martínez Sánchez, Adjunct Professor of the department of Contemporary History of the University of Navarra.
Jihadism: more than the murder of freedom
The attack against 'Charlie Hebdo' has many possible interpretations and many angles of observation. My perspective here is to weave together Islam, jihad and the future scenario, without indulging (I hope) in history fiction, anachronism or vague or dismissive analysis.
Islam is a monotheistic religion that invokes God as Allah and Mohammed as its prophet. But it is not a monolithic religion: there is a division from the very beginning between a Shiite minority and a Sunni majority, which today makes up 80% of Muslims. They are two irreconcilable factions. Their main difference is due to political reasons (who should be the true successor of the Prophet) and not to radically different religious interpretations of the Koran. Sunnis and Shiites have imams, ulemas and ayatollahs. That is, religious authorities who interpret the Koran and the sunnas, or teachings of the Prophet, which were added later and commented on by that religious body. by that religious corporation of teachers or interpreters. But Sunnis and Shiites lack a supreme religious figure, a magisterium accepted and undisputed by all. Therefore, the Koran can be read or interpreted in very different ways. One of them is jihad or jihadism.
This Sunni vision of the Koran sees it as a perfect and pure whole which does not need to be modernized, but applied as it is, and which must be expanded through violence in a "holy" war justifying the excesses committed against the "infidels". Nor does jihad need any model to inspire it: not, of course, a West seen as a perfect example of moral decadence, which should be annihilated.
Jihad is a complex phenomenon, of a political-religious nature, which aims to establish in the Middle East (and wherever there are Islamic communities) a New Caliphate where religious law would be the Constitution of the State. The law would be inspired only by the Koran, the perfect and unique book to govern. As we see daily in the Syrian and Iraqi territory controlled by these fanatics, the jihadist state despises freedom, a constitutive human quality and, therefore, inalienable.
In the Western world (and now it is France's turn), this attack on the weekly is an attack on freedom of expression. But above all, it is a formidable challenge for plural and complex democracies where some 40 million Muslims live.It is because our European democracies have not succeeded in truly integrating part of the waves of immigrants of the Islamic religion that have been arriving for the last 30-40 years. We must not forget that the terrorists who have taken the lives of twelve compatriots are French. The attack is a push for governments to take Islamophobic measures to radicalize the European Muslim communities and make them join the jihad.
In the Middle East, the slaughter of Christian and animist religious minorities is an attack on religious freedom. And a settling of scores by the Sunni jihadists against the Shiites who rule in Iraq and the Alawites (another faction segregated from the common Islamic trunk) who previously controlled Syria. These attacks eliminate another pillar of peaceful and stable coexistence between citizens or states. The aim is to intimidate those who are different and to achieve religious uniformity where there would be neither freedom, nor even tolerance. Death, all of it. And, also, the intimidating knowledge dissemination of a cruel savagery so that we know what to expect. No sensible person can think that this (the attack, jihadism, what is happening in the Middle East) will pass without affecting us. With the failure of the American intervention in Iraq and the Arab Spring not yet having come to fruition, jihad would be an alternative for remaking the Muslim world, through a powerful State, which would prolong and aggravate the politico-religious problems of the Muslim world. And not through democracy or a strong civil society.
If the Islamic State triumphs in the Middle East, it will then be the embryo of new regional and world problems, because of its expansionist tendency. It is a parasite that will spread its "holy war" in the West, abusing the name of God, in order to radicalize Western governments and societies and thus pit democracies against Islamic minorities here, who are far from massively supporting the jihad.
I hope, of course, that they don't get it. But that will have a double toll. A negative one, because our freedom will be more guarded and watched over by our own governments, so that no one assassinates it. And another positive one, because it will generate a discussion to reconcile national security, freedom of expression and religious freedom, three essential aspects for social stability there and here, in the East and in the West. Let us hope that we succeed, because the challenge is not the exclusive task of the State, nor of some political elites that are nowadays ill-favored, but of all of us who are part of the unstable world that is now hurting because of the events in France and the Middle East.