This past week marked 10 years since the attack at the Bataclan Concert Hall in Paris. Many today never heard of it or realized how appalling present chants in that very venue of “Free Palestine” were to those who did remember, or the ones who survived.
It was jihad. Holy War. What a misnomer. Terrorism is anything but holy.
And to be clear, terrorists are Not My People, as we wind down our series of My People/Not My People.
If you want a mental refresher, this individual was still following the developments regarding prosecution and the French government’s role in keeping it out of the headlines; and host and author Jack Posobiec publicly recalled it to international memory.
A so-called “holy war” is fought by men for the sake of their god. In Islamic jihad, for example, it is a religious duty for a certain faction of Islamists within Islam. To them, eradication …annihilation … of the Jews is one sign “the Hour” is upon the world: “The Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them…” — Sahih Muslim 2922.
Promptly after Bataclan, ISIS released a statement calling the attacks “blessed strikes” on the “crusader nation” of France and viewed it as part of a holy war (jihad) against the West. In all, 130 innocents were killed, 494+ were injured, many critically, and the genuine barbarism of the killings went widely under-reported.
There is no moral equivalence of terrorists and victims.
Not at the Bataclan.
Not at the World Trade Centers.
Not on October 7, 2023, at the Nova Music Festival in the southern Negev in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 hostages were taken.
Innocent civilians all.
In all three of those cases, innocent third parties
who never knew what was coming were slaughtered.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, a longtime Divinity School professor and theological scholar at the University of Chicago wrote about the Just War. In the memorial on her life from University of Chicago Magazine,
As Elshtain wrote in her book (emphasis added),
“although just-war tradition never regards armed conflict as ‘desirable, or as any kind of social ‘good,’ it nevertheless ‘acknowledges that it may be better than the alternative.”’
‘Just War Against Terror‘ enumerated the complex criteria to determine whether force is justified and to keep its use within necessary limits: a war must prevent harm to innocents and be openly declared by a legitimate authority. It must be a response to unjust aggression against one’s own people or an innocent third party. It must be the last resort after all other options are exhausted. It must be embarked upon only with a reasonable chance of success and conducted in a fashion that protects noncombatants.
It’s time that we stop pretending that there is moral equivalence
between terrorists and their victims. Can we all at least agree on that?
Questions for further thought:
Islamic adherents present a polarity: from “mostly peaceful” to engaging in extremist terrorism—all using the Quran to justify their actions…including those whose mission is to annihilate Jews.
How often does the Muslim “peaceful majority” condemn the extremist elements from among their number committing atrocities like October 7th or the Bataclan concert hall attack? Why is there not widespread, uniform international outcry from “peaceful majority” Muslims? Are they afraid of their fringe, fearing wider reprisal, are they in secret handshake agreement, etc.?
Violent jihad with rewards for martyrdom undergird Islam’s “holy war.” As Islamism grows in formerly Christian nations like the UK and France, what is happening regarding violence?
Islam is not the only religion to have engaged in a “holy war”—history shows that.
To our shame, a holy war initiated by Pope Urban II and elite military-affiliated Catholics (known as the Crusades–10th to 13th centuries), was similarly condemned–at the time–as unchristian only by a handful within Christianity. Why do people not speak up about atrocities? Did they not know, did they fall prey to propaganda at the time, did they turn a blind eye to the unthinkable, etc.?
Eventually, Catholicism’s conquest was abandoned entirely in favor of evangelistic missions. What is the end goal of missions versus a “holy war”? What means are used to justify each’s ends?
Which religion(s) still use the concept of “holy war” to justify adherents’ actions?
According to the Just War theory outlined above, could Israel’s actions post-October 7th be considered Just?