KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Islamist terrorist groups’ stated beliefs matter. Their religious and ideological goals must be taken seriously to understand their actions.
- “Anti-colonial” framing can obscure extremist objectives. Recasting these movements as resistance groups downplays their antisemitism and hostility toward Israel.
- Canadians may underestimate religious motivations. Increasingly secular societies can struggle to understand how extremist beliefs motivate violence and glorify martyrdom.
- Remembering September 11 requires understanding the ideology behind it. Canadians and the media should examine what Islamic movements openly advocate, alongside the violence they commit.
Before the Al Qaida terrorist group launched the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, its leader Osama bin Laden made no secret as to his motivations, releasing a statement to a Pakistani newspaper stating that “as long as I am alive, there will be no rest for the enemies of Islam.”
The following year, bin Laden released his “Letter to America,” and beyond repeating a litany of complaints against the West, including calling AIDS a “Satanic American invention” and accusing the Jews of controlling the United States, he also encouraged Americans to convert to Islam.
The ideology of Al Qaida, as with other Islamist terrorist groups and organizations, is unapologetically Islamic in nature, and sees its goal, not simply to fight the perceived injustices against the Islamic world, but to create an Islamic super-state and spread its extremist messages.
Rebranding Bin Laden as an Anti-Colonial Voice Obscures His Extremism
While bin Laden’s 2002 letter largely fell into oblivion for some 20 years, in 2023, it gained prominence again, particularly on TikTok.
The letter found not just prominence, but support from those who resonated with bin Laden’s ramblings against homosexuals, Jews, the United States, and anyone else he found problematic.
As scholar Paul Marshall, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, noted, the letter has gained traction “especially from those now trying to re-interpret him in their own truncated image as a representative of anti-colonialism.”
Israel’s Islamist Enemies Must Be Understood Through Their Own Stated Goals
The radical Islamist ideology of bin Laden – and other groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and above all, the Islamic Republic of Iran – are now often inverted, with their overtly religious worldview being redrawn by ‘anti-colonial’ commentators in the West, claiming that, for instance, “Palestinian violence is properly understood as anti-colonial in nature,” despite the explicit insistence by Palestinian terrorists that their goal is not simply the destruction of Israel, but its replacement with an Islamic State-style caliphate governed by Islamic law.
The insistence on the part of some leftist commentators that radical Islamic movements are not, in fact, driven primarily by radical Islamic ideology is perhaps a textbook example of ethnocentrism. But it is not difficult to explain why so many in the West fail to understand the religious motivations of Islamist terrorist movements.
In Canada, recent surveys show that a record low proportion of Canadians – only 10 percent – attend religious weekly services. Against that backdrop, it may be inconceivable for millions of Canadians to truly comprehend that there are huge numbers of individuals who willingly embrace an Islamist ideology that produces scenes such as a Palestinian mother telling her son “not to return except as a shahid,” or to die as a martyr, or another who – at the funeral of her 16 year-old son who was killed fighting Israeli soldiers – said that “this is the first time I see joy in my heart.”
The ongoing threat of radical Islamist ideology is not limited to simply terrorism, but represents an ongoing ideological war, as well, with think tanks chronicling the ongoing attempts by Muslim Brotherhood-inspired groups to gain major influence in Canada and the United States.
Twenty-Five Years After September 11, Canadians Must Take Islamist Threats Seriously
As the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the lesson should be clear: Canadians cannot effectively confront an ideology that we refuse to understand. Twenty-five years after Osama bin Laden launched the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, Canadians must reject the temptation to explain away the religious ideology of the Islamist movements whose words and actions make their ideology unmistakable.
If September 11 is to remain more than just another date on the calendar, Canadians (and our news media) should remember not only what radical Islamist movements have done, but what they have told us they believe, and above all, to take them seriously.
