{"id":47298,"date":"2014-09-15T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47298"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:36","slug":"i-understand-why-westerners-are-joining-jihadi-movements-like-isis-i-was-almost-one-of-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/i-understand-why-westerners-are-joining-jihadi-movements-like-isis-i-was-almost-one-of-them\/","title":{"rendered":"I understand why Westerners are joining jihadi movements like ISIS. I was almost one of them."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Islamic State just released a\u00a0gruesome new beheading video<\/a>, again helmed by a western-bred Jihadist. As often happens, I received messages asking for explanation.<\/p>\n

You see, I\u2019m the jihadi who never was.<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, I ditched my Catholic high school in upstate New York to study at a Saudi-funded madrassa in Pakistan.\u00a0A fresh convert, I jumped at the chance to live at a mosque and study Qur\u2019an all day.<\/p>\n

This was in the mid-1990s, during an escalation of the Chechen resistance against Russian rule. After class, we\u2019d turn on the television and watch feeds of destruction and suffering. The videos were upsetting. So upsetting that soon I found myself thinking about abandoning my religious education to pick up a gun and fight for Chechen freedom.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a verse I\u2019d read in our Qur\u2019an study circles that made me want to fight, but rather my American values. I had grown up in the Reagan \u201980s. I learned from\u00a0G.I. Joe\u00a0cartoons to (in the words of the\u00a0theme song)\u00a0\u201cfight for freedom, wherever there\u2019s trouble.\u201d I assumed that individuals had the right \u2014 and the duty \u2014 to intervene anywhere on the planet where they perceived threats to freedom, justice and equality.<\/p>\n

For me, wanting to go to Chechnya wasn\u2019t reducible to my \u201cMuslim rage\u201d or \u201chatred for the West.\u201d This may be hard to believe, but I thought about the war in terms of compassion. Like so many Americans moved by their love of country to serve in the armed forces, I yearned to fight oppression and protect the safety and dignity of others. I believed that this world was in bad shape. I placed my faith in somewhat magical solutions claiming that the world could be fixed by a renewal of authentic Islam and a truly Islamic system of government.\u00a0But I\u00a0also\u00a0believed that working toward justice was more valuable than my own life.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I decided to stay in Islamabad. And the people who eventually convinced me not to fight weren\u2019t the kinds of Muslims propped up in the media as liberal, West-friendly reformers. They were deeply conservative; some would call them \u201cintolerant.\u201d In the same learning environment in which I was told that my non-Muslim mother would burn in eternal hellfire, I was also told that I could achieve more good in the world as a scholar than as a soldier, and that I should strive to be more than a body in a ditch. These traditionalists reminded me of Muhammad\u2019s statement that the ink of scholars was holier than the blood of martyrs.<\/p>\n

The media often draw a clear line between our imagined categories of \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d Muslims. My brothers in Pakistan would have made that division much more complicated than some could imagine.These men whom I perceived as superheroes of piety, speaking to me as the authorized voice of the tradition itself, said that violence was not the best that I could offer.<\/p>\n

Some kids in my situation seem to have received different advice.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to assume that religious people, particularly Muslims, simply do things because their religions tell them to. But when I think about my impulse at age 17 to run away and become a fighter for the Chechen rebels, I consider more than religious factors. My imagined scenario of liberating Chechnya and turning it into an Islamic state was a purely American fantasy, grounded in American ideals and values. Whenever I hear of an American who flies across the globe to throw himself into freedom struggles that are not his own, I think,\u00a0What a very, very American thing to do.<\/em><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the problem. We are raised to love violence and view military conquest as a benevolent act. The American kid who wants to intervene in another nation\u2019s civil war owes his worldview as much to American exceptionalism as to jihadist interpretations of scripture. I grew up in a country that glorifies military sacrifice and feels entitled to rebuild other societies according to its own vision. I internalized these values before ever thinking about religion. Before I even knew what a Muslim was, let alone concepts such as \u201cjihad\u201d or an \u201cIslamic state,\u201d my American life had taught me that that\u2019s what brave men do.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Michael Muhammad Knight is the author of 9 books, including<\/em> Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing.\u200b<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are raised to love violence and view military conquest as a benevolent act. The American kid who wants to intervene in another nation\u2019s civil war owes his worldview as much to American exceptionalism as to jihadist interpretations of scripture. I grew up in a country that glorifies military sacrifice and feels entitled to rebuild other societies according to its own vision. Before I even knew what a Muslim was, let alone concepts such as \u201cjihad\u201d or an \u201cIslamic state,\u201d my American life had taught me that that\u2019s what brave men do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}