Searching for the boundaries of a human-desirable resistance

The subject of terror in the name of religion, and of ideology in the broad sense, remains topical. Whenever there are jihadist attacks, it is busier than usual on social media. Violent attacks in the name of an ideology, are often self-labeled as resistance. It does not leave people insensitive. Are the reasons and the means of this resistance justifiable? Is it able to get popular support or is a pacific counter-movement to be expected? I believe that self-coaching can help young people to set the boundaries of a human-desirable resistance and not to fall in the trap of extremism.

In the present text I want to encourage young people to apply selfcoaching on setting the boundaries of ideological resistance and on how to work within those boundaries for a better world. From the pacifist point of view that I use, I place these limits on armed, militarist resistance. In other words, I want to argue for the decoupling of a direct link between ideology and militarism, to the promotion of a human-desirable resistance.

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Talking about problems creates problems. Talking about solutions creates solutions.

Steve de Shazer (1940-2005), pioneer of solution-focused therapy

The topic of terrorism is well known to me. I have been able to conduct academic research on armed jihad and Western Muslims. I have also published about it with texts intended for a wider audience. For example, I wrote two short texts in response to a speech by the influential Islamologist Tariq Ramadan (° 1962) that was delivered in December 2015 in Bozar in Brussels. During that busy conference I was fortunate to be able to put this international opinion maker to the test about 'armed jihad'. The latter is just one form of "jihad" that can represent many things, such as: "loving commitment" as a form of pacifist zeal. I will return to this distinction below.

Which Muslims are reaching for weapons? Are they within the Islamic tradition of jihad? For Ramadan, in Islam there is a distinction between a justified armed resistance, such as that of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brothers, and a terrorist resistance, such as that of IS. For Ramadan, the 'jihad model' of the worldwide powerful Muslim Brothers is part of the core of the Islamic tradition because it concerns the self-determination of peoples in self-defense.

Below I further reflect from my latest insights on some key ideas from my two December 2015 texts about the Ramadan Bozar evening. These are thoughts I recorded after the discussions that followed in 2015 from this confrontation. They reflect the boundaries of ideological resistance. I relate this to the context of young people and their need for selfcoaching.

This selfcoaching consists of young people discovering the visionary power of their resistance, this is their legitimate drive to fight injustice. On a second level, radicalising youngsters will discover for themselves that there is a way out of the armed resistance and the path of destruction of human lives that benefits no one. Because there is a way out of radicalization. This is through the humane, through the humanly desirable way.

THE SINCERE VOICE OF RESISTANCE YOUTH

In a first part I would like to discuss some key ideas from my first 2015 text, Tariq Ramadan, European Islam and the teachings of ´jihad as armed resistance´ (05-12-2015), which I will further explain from my current understanding of this theme . This is an understanding that I place in the perspective of selfcoaching based on visionary power.

In my text I have taken a critical look at Tariq Ramadan's defense of the right that certain Muslims claim to organize an 'armed jihad resistance', but without the use of terrorist means. Over the years of observations and by entering into discussions with religious pacifists, I have become convinced that there is no such thing as a non-terrorist right to armed resistance that can be fleshed out by a religious framework. I believe that if religion, and ideology in general, has something to do with armed resistance, this is through the role of referrer. This is to make it clear that militarization should be left to non-ideological (secular) agencies state and / or international law. The role of these bodies can be critically debated. Like, what to do when these agencies fail to protect human rights?

In the context of the present text, I do not have the space to go into this theme in more detail. Therefore, I limit myself to introducing the idea that in order to combat radicalization we must make a disconnection between religion / ideology and armed resistance. This is a pacifist line for which I have called in my 2015 texts. I want to plead for that we radically take distance from this kind of armed resistance, whether within the Islamic tradition or on another ideological base, terrorist or not.

This call is crucial because in my opinion there is a problem with the promotion of the idea of an 'armed jihad', however the latter is interpreted. This promotion radicalizes young people within religion. It is the current version of an old use of violence in the context of ideological radicalization.

In order to understand what makes Muslim youth vulnerable to respond to the radical propaganda, I have looked for leads. I found it in the displeasure that exists among certain Muslim youths in my own Brussels, Belgian setting. More precisely, in the so-called radical Molenbeek stronghold. We should not be reminded that a number of terrorist jihadists have emerged from Molenbeek in recent years.

The Maghreb population of Molenbeek has been politicized for many reasons, ranging from the conditions in its (once) countries of origin to its local marginalization and its general stigmatization (as being so-called "Muslim radical", lazy, etc.). Molenbeek Muslims have been following the actualities of the Muslim countries in the world, of the Maghreb countries through the medium of their families there, and more largely via satellite TV and recently the internet.

To this politicization of an overload of information on violence against Muslim populations in the world we can add the other fragmentations of our society, such as divorces, etc. For example, a good number of the young men I have known in Molenbeek who have ended up on the street in the last twenty years, lack a (strong, "successful") father figure in their lives. In the absence of this father, give those adolescent youngsters a good 'big brother', family or not, and they will become quiet again. On 21-11-2015, a few days before Ramadan's Bozar conference, I gave away an interview about this issue, following the then recent Paris attacks, which was broadcast on Euronews on Friday, 27-11-2015. The following piece was selected by the Euronews editorial board:

“What I have been experiencing for 20 years is that the young people - so to speak from the 'neighborhood' - are touched when they are at school and there is a global problem, such as the Israeli attacks on Palestine. They are then hurt. That is one thing. On top of that, they quickly feel targeted. There is that stigmatization. So, they are in an agitated state at school. It is a generation of young people who are at home on the internet. They are radicalizing in Molenbeek, but they are not in Molenbeek. They already have their heads in Syria and they watch the propaganda videos and they already see themselves in Syria. They imagine they are there. And you know that propaganda is always beautiful. They always show the clean side.”

From my current understanding of the problem of radicalization, I look at resistance youth who have a justified feeling that something must be done against oppression. I wonder how these young people cross the border of what is humanly desirable, this is that of militarization and terrorism.

Many experts conclude that religiously violent youth have often evolved from unscrupulous delinquent to terrorist. The reasons for radicalization are also certain and firmly personal, as further stated by experts. But whatever the individual deeper grounds are, my experience with vulnerable young people from my work with delinquents and with ex-prisoners, teaches me that many, but with the exception of certainly the real psychopaths, are more than often morally indignant for what is going wrong in society and especially their environment.

These young people are not always fully aware of their legitimate desire for justice because they have learned that their voice in society does not count. We can therefore encourage them to use selfcoaching to test their ethical sensitivity in order to do something constructive with it. The visionary strength of these young people is their sense that they have the right to be treated as equals.

In other words, by way of a first partial conclusion, I can state that in order to combat radicalization, selfcoaching can be used to focus on the moral social compassion of vulnerable young people.

This compassion is part of the visionary power of these young people. Let us not allow their desire for a better world to be drowned out by people who manipulate them to see the only way out in terrorism or other forms of violence. This approach through selfcoaching and visionary power can help young people who take the path of terror through pseudo versions of religion or ideology.

NEED FOR A PACIFIST INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION AND IDEOLOGY

Because Tariq Ramadan states that Muslims are not pacifists, this shows the urgent need there is for a pacifist interpretation of the Islamic tradition. But by way of analogy, my considerations apply equally to other traditions that relate religion / ideology and the right to armed resistance.

Ramadan's idea of 'jihad as the armed resistance of sovereign peoples' brings me to my own research from which I learn that the voice of Muslims who link religion to pacifism is suppressed by dominant political-Islamic tendencies, the latter of which Ramadan also claims (among others in the Bozar Conference) is part of the ideology of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement (without that Ramadan claimed being himself a Muslim Brother). Muslim pacifists are radically opposed to the "militarist jihad Islam" of the Muslim Brothers and similar groups, even though the latter's armed resistance does not neccesarily take the proportions of terrorism. They believe that young people are not only radicalized because of their vulnerability, but also because of the promotion of violent extremism mostly by figures and groups with a certain charisma.

You will certainly find pacifists among 'resistance Muslims', or: Muslism who oppose all forms of repression. Pacifism does not resign to injustice. However, it promotes its own form of resistance, which is also called 'jihad' (a 'pacifist jihad'). This resistance thinks that there must always be a search for a path other than that of militarization. And if a military path has to be followed, then not under a religious or other ideological banner, but that of international laws and treaties, of human rights and international law.

A pacifist interpretation of Islam can look like what? Allow me to briefly explain how everything stands or falls with how the Islam tradition (Quran and prophetic tradition) is interpreted (because outside that interpretation there is no 'Islam'):

According to Islamic pacifists, today it is impossible to find leaders who have both religious-inspired and political-secular integrity to the extent that they can model the ideal armed jihad led by the Prophet Muhammad. “Precisely because the Prophet himself was above all a pacifist, this must be our starting point today as well,” said someone during my discussions on social media after the Ramadan Bozar conference. Other Muslims argued that taking up arms should always be a last option, as, according to them, the Prophet Muhammad himself demonstrated it. In their opinion, the Prophet Muhammad always put diplomacy first.

I call this pacifism a reading key to the Islamic foundation texts (Quran and tradition of the Prophet), just as a militaristic interpretation is one. The reading key approach is based on disputing about establishing the correct historical contexts. For example, critics indicate that the Prophet Muhammad was a bloodthirsty conqueror. Believing Muslims, on the other hand, maintain that he used violence only in legal self-defense.

I am inclined to conclude that if people adhere to either a pacifist or a violent interpretation of religion / ideology, this is largely determined by the position of the dominant environment in it. Young people do not easily go beyond the norms that are prescribed for them by their environment. They learn through socialization, in the family and the larger society, even though they revolve to some extent from within their peer group. So they adopt the prevailing relationships that their environment has with a violent or a pacifist way about religion / ideology. Breaking the dominant pattern requires selfcoaching, inner resistance and looking for a counter-tradition (which is often suppressed). This quest is prompted by the visionary power of the individual and the society. Because of their vulnerability, young people should be extra encouraged to develop the most of their visionary power through selfcoaching in order to deploy of a pacifist conception of living together.

by Thierry Limpens