The present dilemma is caused by both a lack of understanding of Islam and Muslims in the Western World and an inappropriate res¬ponse by some Muslims to what is perceived to be injustice inflicted on them throughout the world. The violent behaviour of some Muslims is not because of, but in spite of, Islam and ignorance of what Islam is. There are many complex historical and current reasons for the present predicament. I will explore both sides of the coin.

Firstly, centuries old propaganda against Islam in Europe etched a deep canyon of misunderstanding between Islam and the Western World. With the purpose of drumming up support for the Crusades, a campaign of misinformation was started in Europe. Count Henri de Castri, an orientalist of the 19th Century, mentions the practice of hired storytellers, who travelled Europe spreading negative and false information about Islam and Muslims. The European fascination with the private lives of Muslims led them to fantasise about the "harem" with erotic stories and pictures, when "harem" was simply the home of the Sultan where his family resided.

Many Muslims often view the modern media taking on the same role, especially when generalisations are made with expressions such as "Muslim terrorist", linking the violent actions of some individuals with Islam. Professor Terence Lovat of Newcastle University observed "in one national daily soon after '9/11', I counted the phrase 'Islamic terrorism' or 'Islamic terrorists' twenty-six times in the first 4 pages, with the word 'terrorism' on its own not appearing once." When Muslims don't see the use of expressions such as "Christian terrorists" in Ireland or "Jewish terrorists" in Palestine, they get the impression that the media is biased and working against them. This compounds the mistrust and the incorrect image people already associate with Islam and Muslims through centuries of misinformation.

The second major cause is the European colonisation of the Muslim world and the devastation it has inflicted on Muslims up to the present. This was the third major catastrophe to hit the Muslim world since the Crusades (1095–1453) and the Mongol invasion of 1258. This time round the catastrophe was not only a military one but also affected the political, cultural, economic and religious domains, resulting in the complete collapse of Islamic Civilisation.

Coinciding with the European revival and the Industrial Revolution, the power and prosperity of the Muslim world took a sharp downturn. Following the fall of the Safavid Empire in 1736, the Mughal Empire was abolished in 1857, when Britain declared India a colony. The Ottoman Empire came to an abrupt end in 1923 after heavy losses in World War I. Islamic civilisation was finally conquered after more than a thousand years of Muslim world domination. Turkey was the only free Muslim nation. It was only recognised on condition that it applied a sweeping program of secularism.

There was a greater calamity that attacked the core of religion itself. The materialistic philosophy and its challenging assertions about faith, which again originated in Western Europe, was now threatening Islam after delivering a devastating blow to Christianity. In the West, all of a sudden, everything was thought to be explained by science. Charles Darwin with his Theory of Evolution explained biological life on earth. Durkheim extended the evolutionary concepts of natural selection to social life and society while Freud tied everything in human behaviour to sexual impulses. Finally, the ironic proclamation of Friedrich Nietzsche, "God is dead", was taken literally and accepted by the majority of intellectuals.

Although the damage done to Islam by materialistic philosophy was much less than that done to other religions such as say Christianity, nevertheless, a minority population, who either became atheists or distant to religion, spawned in the Muslim world. This is an important fact because Muslim societies in the 20th century are characterised by an intellectual, religious and political struggle between the religious majority and a minority elite who hold power and are alien to people and their religion. This polarisation of life deepened the problem of social and political fragmentation in Muslim societies.

After World War II, Muslims started to gain their freedom and small states with borders drawn by "Winners" emerged on the scene. Churchill said he drew the borders of Jordan in one afternoon. There was no educational, political and economic development during the almost 50 years of Western rule over almost the whole Muslim world. The new leadership in these countries turned out to be oppressive secular regimes or dictatorships or kingdoms. The power lay in the hands of elites, military generals or religious or secular extremists who did not represent the majority. In order to perpetuate their power, their rule was characterised by suppression of dissent, elimination of critics, annihilation of independent social and administrative institutions and prevention of religious education. The predicament of this political cycle continues to this day.

What circumstances gave rise to these regimes and how do they seem to persevere regardless of their obvious failure? The reasons are many. "Suffice to say that the euphoria of Independence; the aura surrounding the 'founding fathers' of the nation; the intoxicating appeal of nationalism; the relative weakness of countervailing social and political forces at the time of Independence; certain deeply ingrained cultural attitudes about authority; and the centralising tendencies of the ideology of development and the development itself have all conspired to reinforce the power of the ruling class. To this we should add the role of imperialism in perpetuating authoritarianism within the nation state." ^[29]

The British government signed the Hussain-McMahon treaty (1915) with the Shareef Hussain of Mecca "as representative of the Arab peoples", promising Arab people self-rule over the Middle East, including Palestine. However, in 1917 the same British government pledged itself to "the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people" with the famous Balfour Declaration. Arabs felt cheated when the state of Israel was finally established. For them, it symbolised the great indignity inflicted on the Muslim world and the double standards of the "West".^[30] In this heated political climate, the majority of the Muslim population was not given a chance to govern themselves, resulting in dissension not only towards the ruling elite but also towards the West and giving rise to an "Islamic Resurgence".

In the religious sphere, the struggle has been no different. After a short period of shock and being caught unprepared for the new challenges, Muslims very quickly realised that Islam was in danger as it has never been before in history. Many Muslims felt a sense of responsibility to do something about it. Almost simultaneously and spontaneously, religiously sensitive Muslims all around the Muslim world embarked on the task of defending and reviving Islam within Muslim societies. Spiritual leaders such as Hassan al-Banna in Egypt, Muhammad Iqbal in Pakistan, Said Nursi in Turkey and many others in almost every Muslim country spontaneously emerged to lead this revival.

The revival movements aimed to strengthen faith and to emphasise Muslim identity through the reflection of Islamic practice in personal and social life. Mosque attendance and the number of fasting people grew many times over. With the aid of mass transportation, people making the Pilgrimage numbered millions every year, a development that was unprecedented in Muslim history. Islamic resources, schools and associations grew exponentially. As a result, Islam once again proliferated.

Among religious movements of the time, the impact of Said Nursi (1876 –1960) on Muslim thought has been significant and it represents a good example of non-violent methodology that delivered success. For Nursi, the problem facing the Muslim world lay deep beyond current events. The root cause was the collective attack of materialistic philosophy and its atheistic assertions, which were causing people to have doubts and leave religion altogether. Lack of faith, in turn, was driving people to vices that were threatening the very fabric of society. According to Nursi, the remedy was to reconcile science and religion and therefore protect and strengthen the faith of people. Consequently, all people of religion, including Christians, should combine their efforts to repel the atheistic tides sweeping across the world. Nursi said that it was futile to have a political struggle, since it was not the root cause nor was it effective. All efforts had to be exerted in an intellectual struggle. He proposed that solving the problems of the Muslim world would have to start with education that combined religious sciences and material sciences so that wisdom could prevail rather than religious bigotry or atheism. This proposal was largely put into practice by M. Fethullah Gulen (b. 1938).

Corrupt and despotic regimes and the failure of existing governments to solve deep social, economic and political problems, despite decades of opportunity coupled with a revival in Muslim identity, led Muslim activists and the masses to take their chance at politics, being confident of popular support. People started to call for the creation of an "Islamic state". The tendency gained momentum when the Iranian revolution (1978 –79) successfully overthrew the monarchy in Iran. These were some of the circumstances that prepared the way to the rise of fundementalism^[31] and terrorism.

Although we are led to believe that fundementalist aberrations are confined to Islam, this is not the case. Fundamentalism is an extreme form of religious response to secularism and it can be seen in many religious traditions. Karen Armstrong says, "Fundamentalism is a global fact and has surfaced in every major faith in response to the problems of our modernity. There is fundamentalist Judaism, fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Hinduism, fundmentalist Buddhism, fundamentalist Sikhism and even fundamentalist Confucianism. This type of faith surfaced in the Christian world in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century."^[32] One example is the famous Scopes Trial in Tennessee in 1925, when Protestant Christians violently opposed the teaching of evolution theory in schools. According to Karen Armstrong, the fundamentalist phenomenon has two common chracteristics irrespective of where it comes from:

1. It expresses a deep disappointment with the negative outcomes of modern life. Fundamentalism becomes the "litmus test" to indicate a polarisation between those who enjoy the life brought about by secularism and those who dread its existence. Secularism here means to confine religion to the sphere of personal life and remove it from society and, as an extension, from politics.

2. There is a real fear that the secular establishment is out there to wipe out religion. In an instinct of survival, fundamentalists feel that they are cornered and there is no where to go except to fight their way out.

Certainly in the Muslim experience, the fight for survival has been real. The coercive and sometimes militaristic secular practices have left a great mark on Muslim consciousness. In almost all Muslim countries thousands of people were rounded up and killed in the name of progress and modernisation. Even a simple practising Muslim is seen as a threat by the secular elite, which makes sure they don't end up in an influential place in society. For example, Said Nursi, an advocate of non-violence, was exiled and placed under house arrest for writing theological books. Although the great majority of Muslims neither practised violence nor condoned it, it was inevitable that a certain minority would distort religious tradition and highlight defensive mechanisms existing in its teachings to justify aggressive behaviour. Certain minority Muslim groups resorted to violence out of desperation and deep disappointment. Some individuals, such as Osama bin Laden, took the response to the level of terrorism. There is also a lot of evidence that Muslims were set up and dragged into violence by the same forces that opposed them in the first place, with the hope that Muslims would be discredited. The events of Algeria in the 1990s could be given as an example.

The misunderstanding between Islam and the general non-Muslim world is deep. This is partly due to the centuries old spread of misinformation, lack of dialogue and partly due to the violent behaviour of some marginal Muslims, whose actions are unwittingly generalised to represent all Muslims by the media. Muslims had a raw deal for so long, both within their countries and by the intervention of external forces that it has inevitably caused a minority group of Muslims to take up arms.

[29] Chandra M., "Civil Society in the Muslim World", In Islamic Education Vol. 7, Issue 10.

[30] Lang J., Struggling to Surrender, 1998, Amana Publications, pp. 219–220.

[31] I should point out that Muslims in general are offended when they are classified as fundamentalists. The term "fundamentalism" was coined by Western sources to define an extreme response given by a group of people to a rapidly changing world. For the lack of a better word, it is used in line with extreme form of behaviour displayed by some Muslims.

[32] Armstrong, Karen, Islam. A Short History, 2001, p. 140.