Searching for the boundaries of a human-desirable resistance

The issue of terror committed in the name of religion — and of ideology in the broader sense — remains as urgent as ever. Each time a jihadist attack occurs, social media grows more intense, filled with renewed waves of reaction and debate. Acts of violence carried out under ideological banners are often presented by their perpetrators as forms of resistance. Such events never leave people unmoved.

Yet we must ask: are the reasons and methods of this so-called resistance justifiable? Can it truly win lasting support, or should we expect — and cultivate — a peaceful counter-movement instead? I believe that self-coaching can help young people define the boundaries of what I call human-desirable resistance, and in doing so, protect themselves from the lure of extremism.

In this text, I aim to encourage young people to use self-coaching as a way to explore where those boundaries lie, and to discover how they can act within them to help build a better world. From the pacifist standpoint I adopt here, I set clear limits on armed or militaristic resistance. In other words, I argue for a decoupling of ideology from militarism, and for the cultivation of a resistance grounded in humanity and peace.

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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 conducted academic research on armed jihad and Western Muslim communities, and I have also written for broader audiences about these issues. For instance, I published two short reflections in response to a lecture by the influential Islamologist Tariq Ramadan (°1962), delivered in December 2015 at Bozar in Brussels. During that well-attended conference, I had the opportunity to engage this international opinion leader in a discussion about armed jihad.

Armed jihad, of course, is only one expression of the broader concept of jihad, which can represent many things—including, for example, loving commitment as a form of pacifist devotion. I will return to this important distinction below.

Which Muslims, then, turn to weapons? And are they acting within the Islamic tradition of jihad? For Ramadan, Islam distinguishes between a justified armed resistance—such as that of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—and a terrorist form of resistance, such as that of the so-called Islamic State (IS). In his view, the jihad model of the globally influential Muslim Brotherhood belongs to the very core of Islamic tradition, since it concerns the right of peoples to self-determination and self-defense.

In what follows, I reflect further—from my more recent insights—on several key ideas from my two December 2015 texts about the Bozar evening with Ramadan. These thoughts were written after the public discussions that followed that encounter. They explore what I call the boundaries of ideological resistance, and I relate them here to the experience of young people and their need for self-coaching.

This self-coaching begins when young people learn to recognize the visionary power within their own sense of resistance—the legitimate drive to stand up against injustice. At a deeper level, it helps those who are radicalizing to discover for themselves that there is a way out of armed struggle and the path of destruction, a path that serves no one. There is a way out of radicalization—through what I call the humane path, the humanly desirable way.

THE SINCERE VOICE OF RESISTANCE YOUTH

In the first part of this reflection, I will discuss some key ideas from my earlier text, Tariq Ramadan, European Islam and the Teachings of “Jihad as Armed Resistance” (05.12.2015), and elaborate on them from my current understanding of the topic. This new perspective is framed through the lens of self-coaching based on visionary power.

In that 2015 text, I took a critical look at Tariq Ramadan’s defense of what he considered a legitimate right, claimed by certain Muslims, to organize an “armed jihad resistance” — provided that it does not involve terrorist methods. Over the years, through observation and dialogue with religious pacifists, I have become convinced that there can be no such thing as a non-terrorist right to armed resistance that can be coherently justified within a religious framework.

If religion — or ideology more broadly — plays any role in armed resistance, it should only be as a moral reference point, not as a justifying authority. Militarization must remain the domain of non-ideological (secular) institutions such as the state and international law. The functioning of these institutions can, of course, be critically debated: what happens, for instance, when these agencies fail to protect human rights?

The scope of this text does not allow me to explore that question in detail. Instead, I focus on the principle that in order to counter radicalization, we must disconnect religion and ideology from armed resistance. This was already the pacifist position I argued for in my 2015 writings. I continue to plead for a radical distancing from all forms of armed resistance — whether rooted in Islamic tradition or in other ideological frameworks, terrorist or not.

This call is crucial, for I believe there is a persistent problem in the promotion of the idea of “armed jihad,” however it is interpreted. Such discourse contributes to the radicalization of young people within religious contexts. It is the contemporary form of an old phenomenon — the instrumentalization of violence through ideological radicalization.

To understand what makes some Muslim youth vulnerable to such propaganda, I have sought clues in the discontent I observed among young Muslims in my own Brussels context, particularly in the so-called radical stronghold of Molenbeek. We need no reminder that in recent years, several perpetrators of jihadist terrorism have emerged from this district.

The Maghrebi population of Molenbeek has been politicized for many reasons — ranging from conditions in their (former) countries of origin to their local marginalization and general stigmatization as “radical,” “lazy,” or “unintegrated.” Many Molenbeek Muslims closely follow events in the Muslim world — both through family networks in the Maghreb and via satellite television or, more recently, the internet.

To this overload of information about violence against Muslim populations worldwide, we must add the fragmentations of our own society, such as family breakdowns and social isolation. Over the past two decades, I have known many young men in Molenbeek who ended up on the streets; many lacked a strong or successful father figure. In the absence of such a father, give these adolescent boys a good “big brother” — whether biological or symbolic — and they often regain their balance.

On 21 November 2015, just days before Ramadan’s Bozar conference, I addressed this issue in an interview following the Paris attacks. The conversation aired on Euronews on 27 November 2015. The following excerpt was selected by the editorial board:

“What I have been experiencing for 20 years is that the young people — so to speak, from the ‘neighbourhood’ — are deeply affected when something global happens, such as Israeli attacks on Palestine. They are hurt, that’s one thing. But on top of that, they quickly feel targeted. There is this stigmatization. So they are in an agitated state at school. It’s a generation of young people who live online. They are radicalizing in Molenbeek, but they are not in Molenbeek. Their minds are already in Syria. They watch propaganda videos and already imagine themselves there. And you know — propaganda always shows the beautiful side.”

From my current understanding of radicalization, I now look at resistance youth as young people who possess a justified sense that something must be done against oppression. My question is: how do they cross the line between humanly desirable resistance and the path of militarization and terrorism?

Many experts agree that violent, religiously motivated youth often evolve from petty delinquency into terrorism. The reasons for radicalization are undoubtedly personal and complex. Yet, my work with vulnerable youth — including delinquents and ex-prisoners — has shown me that, except for true psychopaths, most of them are morally indignant about what is wrong in society, especially in their immediate surroundings.

These young people are not always aware of their legitimate desire for justice, largely because they have learned that their voices do not count in society. This is why we should encourage them to use self-coaching as a tool to test and strengthen their ethical sensitivity, turning it toward constructive action.

The visionary strength of these young people lies in their conviction that they have the right to be treated as equals.

As a first conclusion, I would therefore argue that in combating radicalization, self-coaching can be used to focus on the moral and social compassion of vulnerable youth.

This compassion is part of their visionary power. We must not allow their desire for a better world to be hijacked by those who manipulate it into terrorism or other forms of violence. The approach of self-coaching and visionary power can guide young people who have been led down the path of terror by pseudo-religious or ideological distortions — and help them rediscover the humane path that leads back to life.

NEED FOR A PACIFIST INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION AND IDEOLOGY

Because Tariq Ramadan asserts that Muslims are not pacifists, this underlines the urgent need for a pacifist interpretation of the Islamic tradition. Yet, by analogy, my reflections apply equally to other traditions that link religion or ideology with the supposed right to armed resistance.

Ramadan’s notion of jihad as the armed resistance of sovereign peoples leads me back to my own research, from which I have learned that the voices of Muslims who connect religion to pacifism are often silenced by dominant political-Islamic currents. Ramadan himself, during the Bozar conference and elsewhere, identified this current with the ideology of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement—without, however, claiming to be a member himself.

Muslim pacifists are radically opposed to the “militarist jihad Islam” of the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups, even when such movements do not necessarily engage in terrorism. They argue that young people are radicalized not only through their vulnerability but also through the active promotion of violent extremism by charismatic figures and organizations.

Among what I call resistance Muslims—those who oppose all forms of repression—there are certainly pacifists. Pacifism does not mean resignation in the face of injustice. Rather, it promotes its own form of resistance, which is also called jihad — a pacifist jihad. This understanding insists that one must always search for a path other than militarization. And if military means are ever required, they should be used not under a religious or ideological banner, but under that of international law, human rights, and global treaties.

What, then, might a pacifist interpretation of Islam look like? Everything depends on how the Islamic tradition — the Qur’an and the prophetic tradition — is interpreted, since outside interpretation, there is no living Islam.

According to Islamic pacifists, it is impossible today to find leaders who combine religious inspiration with the political and moral integrity necessary to model an ideal armed jihad of the kind once led by the Prophet Muhammad. “Precisely because the Prophet himself was, above all, a pacifist, this must also be our starting point today,” someone wrote during my online discussions after the Ramadan Bozar conference.

Other Muslims argued that taking up arms should always remain a last resort — as, they believe, the Prophet himself demonstrated. In their view, Muhammad always placed diplomacy before violence.

I regard this pacifism as a hermeneutical key to reading Islam’s foundational texts — just as a militaristic interpretation is another, opposing key. This reading-key approach centers on historical interpretation: which context of revelation is regarded as authentic or binding? Critics may portray the Prophet Muhammad as a bloodthirsty conqueror; believing Muslims, however, maintain that he used force only in legitimate self-defense.

I am inclined to conclude that whether people embrace a pacifist or a militarist interpretation of religion or ideology is largely determined by the dominant attitudes of their environment. Young people seldom transcend the moral frameworks their surroundings prescribe. They learn through socialization — within the family, the peer group, and society at large. Consequently, they internalize their community’s prevailing stance toward violence or peace in religion and ideology.

To break with such dominant patterns requires self-coaching, inner resistance, and the courage to seek out suppressed counter-traditions. This quest is driven by visionary power — both personal and collective. Because of their vulnerability, young people must be especially encouraged to develop this visionary power through self-coaching, so they can embody and advance a pacifist vision of coexistence.

— Thierry Limpens