By DR. REZA ASLAN
The violent extremists who are slaughtering and beheading countless innocent individuals believe that they are carrying out a liturgical act in which they cast their victims as sacrificial lambs, regardless of race, religion, or nationality. They frame these acts in cosmic terms, as a battle for the sake of God. Although no religion is inherently violent or peaceful, these vicious men read the Qur’an and assure themselves that it is not innocents they are sacrificing but the allies of Satan, the brothers of the Devil. However wrong they are, some of these men and women may firmly believe that they are acting in the service of God. They believe they are engaged in a metaphysical conflict, not between armies or nations, but between the angels of light and the demons of darkness. They are fighting a cosmic war, not against the American or Western imperium, but against the eternal forces of evil.
A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens. Faith is a key value in the idea of cosmic war because the participants see themselves as soldiers sanctioned by God. In its simplest expression, cosmic war refers to the belief that God is actively engaged in human conflicts on behalf of one side against the other. The ultimate goal of a cosmic war is not to defeat an earthy force but to vanquish evil itself, which ensures that a cosmic war remains an absolute, eternal, unending, and ultimately unwinnable conflict. Thus, “cosmic warriors†like Daesh are fighting a war of the imagination in which they are seeking to bring about a global transformation.
Today, this global transformation has taken the form of jihadism, a global jihad movement that seeks to right the injustices against Muslims resulting from colonialism. Groups like Daesh, and al-Qaeda before them, view the injustice towards Muslims as a centuries-long war waged by the “Crusaders†against Islam. Although the belief in a cosmic war is used to mobilize and unite extremist groups under a shared set of grievances, they fail to provide a substantive plan to address these grievances outside of violence and terror.
Violent extremists view the United States through the historical lens of the Crusades, wherein Americans are the embodiment of the Christian crusaders. This is a view that has only been exacerbated by U.S. politicians who demonize all of Islam in the name of fighting terrorism. On both sides, the “war on terror†has come to be seen through the lens of a cosmic war and an “us versus them†way of thinking.
For extremist groups like Daesh and al-Qaeda, the Crusades are not so much a historical event as they are an ideological construct—an enduring narrative whose final chapter is only now being written in today’s battlefields, except it is no longer Europe but America that has “taken up the cross†in the eternal cosmic battle between Christianity and Islam. The brazen use of Christian rhetoric in support of war is a legacy of the Crusades, which not only solidified the notion that physical combat against “the enemies of Christ†could be a valid expression of Christian faith but altered the very language of Christianity. The consequence of this has been the extremist call to arms for Muslims everywhere to awake from their slumber, to embrace Islam’s own tradition of cosmic war, and to take the battle directly to the enemies of God.
But this cosmic mind-set is not limited to one faith or one movement. The Hebrew Bible contains sections, such as the Book of Joshua or Numbers chapter 31, that present total warfare against non-Israelite peoples as Divinely sanctioned warfare against idolaters, with military victory understood as triumphant glorification of the one true God. This concept of cosmic war not only provided the motivation for the Crusades, but is a foundation of the extreme right wing modern-day Christian evangelical movement. The extreme right wing evangelicals remain steadfast in their cosmic mind-set against the Muslim world due to their belief that Jews must be in possession of Israel and the Temple in Jerusalem in order to usher in the return of the Messiah. To these evangelicals, Islam is a cosmic enemy that seeks to destroy the state of Israel and overthrow Judeo-Christian civilization—the very foundation of our Western civilization.
In contrast, there is no such thing as blanket cosmic war against Christianity or Judaism in the Qur’an. The Qur’an refers to Christians—and Jews—as “Ahl al-Kitab†or “People of the Book†and have historically been allies of the Muslim world. In fact, when the Prophet Muhammad was forced to flee Mecca, his community of followers was granted protection by the Christian King of Abyssinia. Moreover, the Qur’an’s reverence of Jesus and his faith supports coexistence between Muslims and Christians, further indicating that a cosmic war is not the will of God. The Qur’an states: “Say (O Muslims): We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered†(2:136).
Daesh, however, has expanded their cosmic war mind-set beyond the Christian West. They have turned their attention to their fellow Muslims by invoking the Islamic concept of “Al-Wala’ wal Bara’†or “loyalty and disavowal.†This duality divides all of creation into the “believers,†with whom Daesh identify, and the “unbelievers,†whom they define as any Muslim who does not agree with their ways. This is evident in the following quote, taken from a speech made by Daesh’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:
“O Ummah of Islam, indeed the world today has been divided into two camps and two trenches, with no third camp present: The camp of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy—the camp of the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the camp of the jews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and religions of kufr, all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the jews.â€
The quote above shows their distorted understanding of this term and further instills the “us versus them†mind-set by designating any Muslim who does not adhere to Daesh ideology as a non-believer, with no middle ground from which to choose. Seeing themselves as the only “true†believers, Daesh is abusing the Islamic concept of takfir to justify the slaughter of their fellow Muslim brothers and sisters. This practice continues with fervor, regardless of the countless Muslim clerics who are issuing fatwas against this practice, stating that it is a misappropriation of God’s judgment and that in Islam “there is no [such thing as] takfir.â€
These Muslim cosmic warriors legitimize their attacks against both military and civilian targets, against both Muslims and non-Muslims, by dividing the world into two separate camps: one of faith and one of infidelity. Their jihad is not a defensive struggle against an occupying power but an eternal cosmic war that transcends all earthly ambitions. We must reject the religiously polarizing rhetoric of our leaders and of our enemies, focus on the material matters at stake, and seek to address the earthly issues that always lie behind the cosmic impulse.
