Islamic terrorism

Islamic terrorism, Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism are terrorist acts against civilians committed by violent Islamists who claim a religious motivation.

Quotes



 * I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.
 * Muhammad Ali, quoted in "Muhammad Ali Hits at Trump and 'Misguided Murderers' Sabotaging Islam", NBC, December 10, 2015.


 * [T]here is no such things as "Islamic terrorism," because terrorism differs from Islam. There's just terrorism, not Islamic terrorism. But the term "Islamic terrorism" has become widespread.
 * Bashar al-Assad, "If Sanctions Are Imposed on Syria, the Entire World Will Pay the Price", MEMRI (Dec. 2005)


 * The record clearly shows that jihadists see the run-up to an election and the months just afterward as an opportune time to act. Everyone remembers the Bin Laden video that was released days before the 2004 presidential election and the Madrid train-station bombings that occurred 72 hours before Spain’s national elections in March of that year. When the conservative government of José María Aznar mistakenly attributed the attacks to Basque separatists, the public punished his party, which was felt to be pretending that its unpopular support for the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. The socialists, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had been trailing in the polls, but after the government’s blunder, they thumped the conservatives by a five-point margin. Those are only the best-known jihadist interventions. Alongside them should be added the first bombing of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, a little more than a month after Bill Clinton took office, and the attack on the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, three weeks before that year’s Bush-Gore matchup. Last year, radicals attempted multiple car bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, three days after Gordon Brown’s June 27 installation as Britain’s prime minister. And let’s not forget the murder of Benazir Bhutto while she was campaigning in Pakistan or the September 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, which preceded the Australian elections by a month.
 * Daniel Benjamin, “Why Do Terrorists Love To Strike Around Elections?”, Brookings.edu, (October 22, 2008)


 * What makes elections and transitions so attractive to terrorists? After the October 2004 Bin Laden video was released, I wrote here about jihadists’ need to leave their fingerprints on big events. These are the seam moments, the points of inflection in history, and the terrorists want to demonstrate that they are central players in determining outcomes. They especially want to show their Muslim audience that they are having a powerful impact on the world stage and are the global actors they claim to be. Do they try to tilt events to help preferred candidates or parties? There isn’t much evidence to support that—and the terrorists seem to have some regard for the law of unintended consequences, so I don’t think they believe they can act with sufficient precision to ensure, for example, a victory for McCain or Obama.
 * Daniel Benjamin, “Why Do Terrorists Love To Strike Around Elections?”, Brookings.edu, (October 22, 2008)


 * The suffering of September the 11th was inflicted on people of many faiths and many nations. All of the victims, including Muslims, were killed with equal indifference and equal satisfaction by the terrorist leaders. The terrorists are violating the tenets of every religion, including the one they invoke. Last week the Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, the world's oldest Islamic institution of higher learning, declared that terrorism is a disease and that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians. The terrorists call their cause holy, yet they fund it with drug dealing. They encourage murder and suicide in the name of a great faith that forbids both. They dare to ask God's blessing as they set out to kill innocent men, women, and children. But the God of Isaac and Ishmael would never answer such a prayer. And a murderer is not a martyr; he is just a murderer.
 * George W. Bush, Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly, 10 November 2001
 * I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace. And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives aren’t religious people.
 * George W. Bush, Interview of the President by Al Arabiya, Oval Office, White House News, (October 4, 2007)


 * When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.


 * We should together challenge the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the extremists. The world is not conspiring against Islam; the security services aren’t behind terrorist attacks; our new Prevent duty for schools is not about criminalising or spying on Muslim children. This is paranoia in the extreme.
 * David Cameron, speech at, . (transcript by )


 * Ending your own life is not something the average person does. Everybody's assuming these are Islamic terrorists. Well, if so they've defiled their own religion. Islam does not permit suicide. It says you go to hell if you do something like this... We saw people in Northern Ireland, Catholics acting like savages and Protestants acting like savages... We have people who call themselves Muslims acting like savages. It's not because of their religion, it's because they're fools.
 * Tom Clancy, interview with Judy Woodruff (11 September 2001), CNN.


 * Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim Americans as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourists from entering our country hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. So does saying that we have to start special surveillance on our fellow Americans because of their religion. It's no coincidence that hate crimes against American Muslims and mosques have tripled after Paris and San Bernardino. That's wrong. And it's also dangerous. It plays right into the terrorists' hands. Still, as I have said before, none of us can close our eyes to the fact that we do face enemies who use their distorted version of Islam to justify slaughtering the innocent people. They'd take us all back to the Stone Age if they could, just as they have in parts of Iraq and Syria.
 * Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s remarks following the Orlando shooting, Washington Post, June 14, 2016


 * I know that the — that Saudi individuals have certainly funded other related terrorist groups over time and also exported a lot of Wahhabi radicalism by kicking out or sending out imams and teachers to set up schools and mosques to preach that particularly harsh brand of Islam. So the Saudis have a lot that they can do to both stop and then to help.
 * Hillary Clinton, speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (November 20, 2015)


 * By one measure at least, the world is getting less dangerous. There were 10% fewer deaths from terrorism in 2015 than the year before, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). It was still the second deadliest year on record though, with 29,376 people killed in terrorist attacks. Despite news coverage which often seems to suggest that terrorism is an ever-present threat all around the world, the reality is that a small number of countries suffer disproportionately. On the basis of the IEP’s definition of terrorism – illegal violence by non-state actors designed to intimidate or coerce others, or in pursuit of a political, economic, religious or social goal – more than 72% of terrorist deaths last year occurred in just five countries, and although there were 274 known groups that carried out terrorist attacks, just four of them (Islamic State / ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban and Al Qaeda) were responsible for 74% of all deaths.
 * Dominic Dudley, “The Ten Countries Most Affected By Terrorism”, Forbes, (Nov 18, 2016).


 * The root of Islamic terrorism is the fundamentalist application of the Quran and the life of Muhammad.
 * Mark A. Gabriel, "Journey Into the Mind of an Islamic Terrorist", page. 169.


 * People in Europe or the United States often ask blithely, where are the Muslims and Arabs speaking out against extremism and terrorism? It is deeply troubling to expect that all Muslims should apologize or take responsibility for a minuscule fraction of those who share their faith. Furthermore, the question ignores the devastating sacrifices of those who have been fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the question. Far too many progressive minds in the wider Middle East have been left to fend for themselves for decades, as they and their countries were bludgeoned to death by forces of darkness, forces, such as Zia in Pakistan, that most often served Western interests. The largest number of victims of jihadist violence are Muslims themselves within their own countries.
 * Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)


 * Terrorism cannot be born of religion. Terrorism is the product of corrupt minds, hardened hearts, and arrogant egos, and corruption, destruction, and arrogance are unknown to the heart attached to the divine.
 * Ali Gomaa, "Terrorism Has No Religion", The American Muslim (TAM).


 * What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even Hamas, want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want to stifle every freedom that decent and educated and secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet, judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way. This kind of confusion puts us all in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don't want to live peacefully in a secular pluralistic world because they are desperate to get to paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel; it's just that some of us haven't realized it yet.
 * Sam Harris, "Why Don't I Criticize Israel?" (27 July 2014), Sam Harris


 * The Islamic State's religious genealogy comes from 'Jihadi Salafism', a theological current that is very old in Islam that is quite literalist. [Followers are] extremely rigorous, and condemn other Muslims who don't share their theology. That gives them the hard edge when it comes to violence, because they can justify it theologically.
 * Bernard Haykel, Is Saudi Arabia to blame for Islamic State?, BBC


 * Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe.
 * Ed Husain, Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism: ISIS Atrocities Started With Saudi Support for Salafi Hate, New York Times, August 22, 2014


 * Salafi intolerance has led to the destruction of Islamic heritage in Mecca and Medina. If ISIS is detonating shrines, it learned to do so from the precedent set in 1925 by the House of Saud with the Wahhabi-inspired demolition of 1,400-year-old tombs in the Jannat Al Baqi cemetery in Medina. In the last two years, violent Salafis have carried out similar sectarian vandalism, blowing up shrines from Libya to Pakistan, from Mali to Iraq. Fighters from Hezbollah have even entered Syria to protect holy sites. Textbooks in Saudi Arabia’s schools and universities teach this brand of Islam. The University of Medina recruits students from around the world, trains them in the bigotry of Salafism and sends them to Muslim communities in places like the Balkans, Africa, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt, where these Saudi-trained hard-liners work to eradicate the local, harmonious forms of Islam. [...] Saudi Arabia created the monster that is Salafi terrorism. It cannot now outsource the slaying of this beast to the United Nations. It must address the theological and ideological roots of extremism at home, starting in Mecca and Medina. Reforming the home of Islam would be a giant step toward winning against extremism in this global battle of ideas.
 * Ed Husain, Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism: ISIS Atrocities Started With Saudi Support for Salafi Hate, New York Times, August 22, 2014


 * The killing of people, in any place and with any kind of weapons, including atomic bombs, long-range missiles, biological or chemical weapons, passenger or war planes, carried out by any organization, country or individuals is condemned. ... It makes no difference whether such massacres happen in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Qana, Sabra, Shatila, Deir Yassin, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq or in New York and Washington.
 * Ali Khamenei, quoted in "Ayatollah Khamenei Warns U.S. Against Attacking Afghan Civilians", Tehran Times, 18 September 2001.


 * Clearly Islam the religion is not the cause of terrorism. Islam, as I said, is a religion of peace. However through the centuries, deviations from the true teachings of Islam take place. And so Muslims kill despite the injunction of their religion against killing especially of innocent people.
 * Mahathir bin Mohamad, "Islam, Terrorism and Malaysia's Response", Asia Society, 4 February 2002.


 * It's Saudi Arabia and its network of charities and the like. The argument I make is that there is an undercurrent of terror and fanaticism that go hand in hand in the Afghanistan-Pakistan arc, and extend all the way to Uzbekistan. And you can see reflections of it in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Indonesia, in the Philippines. For instance, in one madrassa in Pakistan, I interviewed 70 Malaysian and Thai students who are being educated side by side with students who went on to the Afghan war and the like. These people return to their countries, and then we see the results in a short while. ... At best, they become hot-headed preachers in mosques that encourage fighting Christians in Nigeria or in Indonesia. And in a worst case, they actually recruit or participate in terror acts.
 * Vali Nasr, Madrassas - Analysis, PBS.


 * The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism; it is an important part of promoting peace [...] it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit, for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.
 * Barack Obama, A New Beginning, (June 2009)


 * In a huge embarrassment to the Saudi authorities, the Islamic State adopted official Saudi textbooks for its schools until the extremist group could publish its own books in 2015. Out of 12 works by Muslim scholars republished by the Islamic State, seven are by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century founder of the Saudi school of Islam.
 * Jacob Olidort, Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’, New York Times


 * How could I believe any Muslim could think to help his religion by doing an evil act...
 * Mohammed Omran, Australian Muslim Cleric Denies Bin Laden Acted Sept. 11 (July 2005) AP


 * A unilateral diktat and imposing one's own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals. Why do they support such people? They do this because they decide to use them as instruments along the way in achieving their goals but then burn their fingers and recoil. I never cease to be amazed by the way that our partners just keep stepping on the same rake, as we say here in Russia, that is to say, make the same mistake over and over. They once sponsored Islamic extremist movements to fight the Soviet Union. Those groups got their battle experience in Afghanistan and later gave birth to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The West if not supported, at least closed its eyes, and, I would say, gave information, political and financial support to international terrorists' invasion of Russia (we have not forgotten this) and the Central Asian region's countries. Only after horrific terrorist attacks were committed on US soil itself did the United States wake up to the common threat of terrorism. Let me remind you that we were the first country to support the American people back then, the first to react as friends and partners to the terrible tragedy of September 11.
 * Vladimir Putin, Remarks at the Final Plenary Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club's XI Session, delivered 24 October 2014, Sochi, The Russian Federation
 * Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts.
 * Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, quoted in "Cleric issues anti-terror fatwa", Al Jazeera, 2 May 2010.


 * Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers the attack against innocent human beings a grave sin; this is backed by the Qur'anic verse that reads: "Who so ever kills a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he has killed all mankind, and who so ever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind," (Al-Ma'idah:32).… I categorically go against a committed Muslim's embarking on such attacks.
 * Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "Qaradawi Condemns Attacks Against Civilians: Forbidden in Islam", Islam-online.net, September 13, 2001, as quoted in The Future of Islam (2010) by John Louis Esposito, p. 100.


 * A former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Adil al-Kalbani declared with regret in a television interview in January that the Islamic State leaders “draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles.” [...] There is a broad consensus that the Saudi ideological juggernaut has disrupted local Islamic traditions in dozens of countries — the result of lavish spending on religious outreach for half a century, estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.
 * Scott Shane, Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’, New York Times (August 25, 2016)


 * The next time you hear of a terror attack, no matter where it is, no matter what the circumstances, you will likely think to yourself, 'It's Muslims again.' And you will probably be right.
 * Fareed Zakaria, "Why They Hate Us" (9 April 2016), CNN