Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Terrorism in One's Nature?

Dr Sentamu accused the BBC of being scared of Muslim extremists. He told an interviewer:

They can do to us what they dare not do to the Muslims. We are fair game because they can get away with it. We don't go down there and say, 'We are going to bomb your place.' That is not in our nature.
MPACUK has picked up on this sentence and asks, "is it in my nature as a Muslim to be a bomber?"

Of course, they do not ask it as a form of introspection, rather as a rhetorical question. They accuse the Archbishop of adding one more slander to the pile. However, perhaps the Archbishop is correct.

When he said "our nature" he presumably meant "our religion" rather than something biological; and it does appear that violence is indeed existent within the Islamic faith. If there was no element of violence within Islam, how could so many Muslims act violently in its name? There must, surely, be something there for the radicals to latch on to?

So, is it in their nature? No more than anyone else's. Is it in their religion? It must be there somewhere.