Is Israel the Cause of Jihad?

Originally published under the title, “Eliminate Israel, Eliminate Islamic Terrorism.” This piece has been edited from the original with the author’s permission.

Islamists say “we hate you because you are unbelievers,” no matter what “grievances” they claim to have against Israel.

The plague of Islamic terrorism is based on “grievances” against Israel—so says Al Azhar, the world’s most prestigious Isalmic university that co-hosted Barack Obama’s 2009 “A New Beginning” speech. During a recently televised Egyptian interview, Ahmed Al Tayeb—Al Azhar’s grand imam, once named the “most influential Muslim in the world"—said:

I have noticed that they are always telling us that terrorism is “Islamic.” All those mouthpieces that croak—out of ignorance or because they were told to—that the Al-Azhar curricula are the cause of terrorism never talk about Israel, about Israel’s prisons, about the genocides perpetrated by the Zionist entity state.... If not for the abuse of the region by means of the Zionist entity, there would never have been any problem. The Middle East and the region would have progressed, and the Arab individual would have been like any other person in the world, enjoying a good life, or at least enjoying the right to live in peace.

There’s certainly much to comment on here. First, Al Azhar has in fact been exposed time and time again teaching the same “anti-infidel” and supremacist doctrines that groups like the Islamic State rely on. After being asked why Al Azhar, which is in the habit of denouncing secular thinkers as un-Islamic, refuses to denounce the Islamic State as un-Islamic, Sheikh Nasr, a scholar of Islamic law and graduate of Al Azhar, said:

[Al Azhar] can’t [condemn the Islamic State as un-Islamic]. The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar’s programs. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world [to establish it]. Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate. Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like [the prohibition on Christians] building churches, etc. Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya (extracting tribute from religious minorities). Al Azhar teaches stoning people (is an appropriate punishment for violations of Sharia). So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?

But what of Tayeb’s other point, that because Israel “abuses” Palestinians (meaning fellow Muslims), aggrieved Muslims around the world have had no choice but to turn to jihad/terrorism? This, of course, is another rehashing of the “Muslim grievance” myth popularized by al-Qaeda post 9/11. Back in 2009, Bin Laden said:

You [Americans] should ask yourselves whether your security, your blood, your sons, your money, your jobs, your homes, your economy, and your reputation are more dear to you than the security and economy of the Israelis.... Let me say that we have declared many times, over more than two and a half decades, that the reason for our conflict with you is your support for your Israeli allies, who are occupying our land of Palestine [emphasis added].

Needless to say, this message was (and continues to be) swallowed hook line and sinker by many Western analysts—even as bin Laden was stressing to fellow Muslims (in Arabic) the “real reason for our conflict":

Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue — one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice — and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: [1] either willing submission [conversion]; [2] or payment of the jizya, through physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; [3] or the sword — for it is not right to let [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die [The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 42].

Of late, more emboldened jihadis have dropped the façade that Zionism lies at the heart of the conflict. In an article unambiguously titled, “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You,” the Islamic State confessed that “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers.” As for any and all political “grievances,” these are “secondary” reasons for the jihad:

What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary [...] The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay (the) jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you [emphasis added].

If Israel had nothing to do with all this history—it did not even exist—are we really to believe that grievances against it are responsible for Al Azhar still teaching, and Muslims still upholding, the same doctrines that caused them to terrorize all non-Muslims for centuries?

From IS’s and other Islamists’ perspective, then, this threefold choice—conversion, subjugation/jizya, or the sword—is the ultimate source of conflict between Islam and everyone else... Nor is Islamic supremacism confined to modern jihadis—history makes an equally ironclad case. As I document in my forthcoming book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, Muslims, through countless jihads, invaded and eventually conquered some ¾ of all Christian lands; the scale of destruction and atrocities accompanying these jihads make Islamic State atrocities seem like child’s play.

No, this is yet another case of Islamist apologists trying to kill two birds with one stone: portraying—and thus exonerating—Islamic terrorism as inevitable, grievance-based reactions to Israel, which deserves all blame. In reality, the ultimate “grievance” Islamists have against all non-Muslims is just that—that they are non-Muslim, inferior infidels that must be subjugated one way or the other.

Raymond Ibrahim is a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Islam Israel & Zionism

Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim, a specialist in Islamic history and doctrine, is the author of Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam (2022); Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (2018); Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013); and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). He has appeared on C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and PBS and has been published by the New York Times Syndicate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Weekly Standard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst. Formerly an Arabic linguist at the Library of Congress, Ibrahim guest lectures at universities, briefs governmental agencies, and testifies before Congress. He has been a visiting fellow/scholar at a variety of Institutes—from the Hoover Institution to the National Intelligence University—and is the Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum and the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.