9/11 was a defining moment for the West " and particularly for the US " in its relations with the Muslim world. In response to the attacks on New York and Washington, George Bush and the American administration launched their "war on terror'. When they failed to catch Osama bin Laden in his mountain stronghold in Afghanistan, they invaded and occupied Iraq, with the help of their only ally, Britain.

7/7 " the attacks on the underground and a bus in London on 7 July, 2005, has proved to be a similar defining moment for Britain, starting a heated debate and forcing the government and the public " and especially Muslims and Christians " to declare how they respond to the new phenomenon of terrorism directed against the West.

With all that has happened since 9/11, and especially the ongoing conflict in Iraq, it may seem that it's a bit late in the day to be asking how Christians and the West should have responded. Many feel that the West has already made several major mistakes. But if we can work out where we may have gone wrong, there should still be time to find more effective ways forward.

But do Christians, and should Christians have a distinctive approach to these questions? It could be argued that Christians in the West have a special role to play as interpreters, peace-makers and bridge-builders. They ought on the one hand to be able to interpret western society to Muslims - even if they are not totally in sympathy with it. On the other hand, because of the significant areas of common ground with Muslim beliefs (like the desire to see the kingdom of God come in the world), they ought to be able to interpret the Muslim mind and experience to westerners " once again, even when they are not totally in sympathy with it.

This lecture expresses the personal opinion of a Christian who is now living in the West but who has also lived for a number of years in the Islamic world and tried to engage seriously in the study of Islam. I will try to explain how and why I have come to adopt this approach, while recognising the diversity of views on the subject among Christians.

Clearing the ground

Three points need to be made by way of introduction. Firstly, we need to be cautious about the expression "Islamic terrorism'. It is an obvious fact that a number of people in recent years who happen to be Muslims have engaged in acts of terrorism, motivated by convictions that are firmly based on their Islamic beliefs. And since these Muslims who have turned to violence claim openly that they are acting in the name of Islam, there is some justification for describing these actions as "Islamic'. But since, as we shall soon see, the majority of Muslims seem to condemn these actions as totally un-Islamic, we ought to be careful about attaching the word "Islamic' in such a blanket way to every terrorist action carried out by Muslims. None of us would like to hear Muslims speaking about "Christian Terrorism in Northern Ireland'. Journalists have referred to Pakistan's nuclear weapons as "Islamic'. But they would never speak of America's nuclear weapons as "Christian' or to Israel's as "Jewish'. In what follows, therefore, I will deliberately avoid speaking of "Islamic terrorism'.

Secondly, if at any stage it seems as if I am showing too much sympathy for terrorist actions carried out by Muslims, I want to declare at the outset my condemnation of terrorism of every kind in the strongest possible terms. The killing of innocent people through calculated acts of violence is repugnant and abhorrent, and especially when it is carried out in the name of religion. What we have been witnessing in recent years is the emergence of a new style of terrorism whose primary purpose, in the words of Bernard Lewis of Princeton, is not to defeat or even to weaken the enemy militarily but to gain publicity and to inspire fear " a psychological victory' (  ). If, therefore, while trying to enter into the minds of terrorists and understand what they are so angry about, I suggest any sympathy with any of their grievances, I am not in any way condoning or justifying their murderous activities (      ). I take it for granted that a robust approach is required to the threat of terrorism in this or any other country. A firm stand against terrorism, however, needs to go hand in hand with serious reflection on the root cause of terrorism.

Thirdly, therefore, I believe we need to recognise that in many, if not most situations, terrorism is the angry and violent response of individuals or communities to violence that has been done to them. What has been done to them in the first place, however, is not often called "terrorism', largely because it is carried out not by individuals but by governments and their armies. Observers are often quick to condemn the terrorism, but slow to say anything critical about the actions or the situations to which the terrorists are responding. So, for example, we don't hesitate to speak about Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists. But we don't describe the helicopter gunship attack that killed Sheikh Yassin, an elderly disabled Hamas leader, on the steps of a mosque in Gaza with a rocket to the head as "terrorism'. We were appalled and horrified by what happened in Beslan in September 2004. But some commentators at the time saw this atrocity as a response to the brutalisation of Chechnya by the Russian army. Hizbullah was formed in Lebanon as a resistance movement in response to the Israeli invasion of 1982 and its continued occupation of southern Lebanon. Hamas was created in 1987 during the first Intifada in response to Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as an alternative to the more secular approach of Arafat and the PLO. They didn't resort to suicide bombings until after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, had killed 29 worshipers at the Mosque in Hebron in February '94. Terrorism, I suggest, is not the root of the problem; it is usually a reaction to a perceived injustice, and therefore needs to be seen as a symptom of other underlying problems.

Terrorist activities carried out by Muslims have to be understood within the context of the recent development of Islamism, which in turn has to be understood in the context of western involvement over many centuries in the Muslim world and especially in the Middle East. We need therefore to proceed in three stages. Firstly we ask: how and why did Islamism develop in the 20th Century, and why did some Islamists decide that violence and terrorism were sometimes justified? Secondly, how have Muslims generally responded to violence carried out by Muslims? And thirdly, how should Christians think about terrorism and violence of this kind that is carried out by Muslims?

Click here for a complete copy of Colin Chapman’s "Islamic Terrorism:
How should Christians and the West respond?