Essays - Terrorism

Background

As I write this, American armed forces are bombing the Al-Qaeda/Taliban Islamic fundamentalist regime in retaliation for Osama Bin Laden's terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of those attacks, many asked: "what could have possibly inspired such an act?" Some felt that perhaps he did have a legitimate gripe, but even so, the question was asked: "Even if he has a point about Iraqi sanctions and Israeli war crimes, there are better ways to make it. How can he justify killing innocent people?"

To answer this question, we must go back in time. Thousands of years back, to a series of events which have been immortalized in the Bible: the Book of Exodus (remember: Osama Bin Laden is Islamic rather than Christian, but the events of the Old Testament are part of the belief structure of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Why the Book of Exodus? Because the Book of Exodus is where God himself became a terrorist.

Terrorism in Ancient Egypt

"And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders"- Exodus 3:20

Many of us know the story of Exodus. Countless books and films have been made about the subject, and it is a familiar one: the Israelites were a slave class in Egypt, and as a slave class, they were obviously oppressed and unhappy. At one point, it was even claimed that Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew children killed, but the midwives supposedly defied him without censure. It seems rather odd that a monarch would be so cruel as to issue such an order and then so disinterested as to ignore very widespread defiance of it (when Moses reached adulthood there were hundreds of thousands of other Hebrew men walking around, and I suspect that this aspect of the story was simply invented to make the Egyptians look bad (not that slavery isn't bad enough on its own, but the Israelites themselves were slave-owners, so they needed something worse to pin upon the Egyptians).

In any case, we know the story. Moses told Pharaoh to "let my people go", and when Pharaoh refused, God unleashed a series of host of horrible plagues upon Egypt's civilian population. He turned the rivers to blood and he killed all the fish¹. He sent hordes of frogs and insects to swarm over the land and consume its crops, and he killed all the livestock with plague². He instructed Moses to spread a fine dust into the air which would infect the people of Egypt with skin disease and cause terrible boils³. He sent devastating hailstorms which destroyed more drops⁴, and hordes of locusts which destroyed even more crops⁵. He covered the land in darkness for three days, forcing everyone to stay in their homes⁶. He made the Egyptian people take pity on the Israelites and give them "silver and gold"⁷, and then he repaid their kindness by killing their first-born sons⁸. After this last act of terror, the grieving Egyptians finally released the Israelites from slavery. I have always wondered why an omnipotent God couldn't have simply teleported the Hebrews to their new home rather than committing all these acts of violence, but apparently, he preferred it this way because he wanted to show off his destructive power⁹.

Moses and Osama Bin-Laden: Ideological Brothers?

Terrorism (noun): "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons" - American Heritage Dictionary

What is terrorism, if not the events of Exodus? Let us look at a comparison of Osama Bin Laden and Moses, both of whom claimed divine inspiration and assistance in their campaigns of terror:

Moses/God	Osama Bin-Laden/Allah
Upbringing: raised as a privileged Egyptian by wealthy adoptive parents with powerful connections.	Upbringing: raised as a member of Saudi Arabia's business elite, by a wealthy family with powerful business and political connections.
Grievances: Hebrews are oppressed and treated as a slave race by Egypt, the leading economic and military superpower at the time. Male Hebrew children were supposedly killed in large numbers around the time of Moses' birth.	Grievances: Arabs are oppressed and live in economic poverty despite their vast oil riches, except for those who prostitute themselves to American interests (the wealthy ruling families). Millions of Arabs in Palestine are oppressed and brutalized by an occupying army, and denied access to education. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children are being indirectly killed by American sanctions.
Warning: "Let my people go".	Warning: "America will not know peace until we see it in Palestine".
Terrorist act: poisoning the water supply (turning water to blood)	Not yet.
Terrorist act: destroying the food supply (killing all the fish and livestock, destroying all the crops)	Not yet, but Al-Qaeda operatives showed interest in crop dusters.
Terrorist act: disrupting transportation (trapping Egyptians in their homes through blanket of darkness outside)	Terrorist act: disrupting transportation (trapping Americans on the ground, through fear of air travel)
Terrorist act: biological agent (fine powder which causes boils)	Terrorist act: biological agent (anthrax spores, ie- a fine powder which causes skin lesions and in some cases, lung infections which can be fatal)
Terrorist act: slaughter of innocent children (all the first-borns)	Terrorist act: slaughter of innocent people (the civilian workers, police officers, firefighters, and bystanders in and around the World Trade Centre).
Enemies' kindness: the Egyptian people took pity on the Hebrews and gave them "silver and gold".	Enemies' kindness: the American people send humanitarian aid to the Afghans. Womens' groups in America have been trying to help brutally oppressed Afghan women for years.
Military actions: killing Pharaoh and his charioteers by causing the receded water of the Red Sea to return and drown them.	Military actions: attacking the USS Cole in Yemen, as well as US military barracks and government facilities elsewhere.
Turning on his own: killing 3000 Hebrews¹⁰ and forcing their children to drink contaminated water¹¹ after accusing them of betraying their faith by worshipping a golden calf.	Turning on his own: accusing Arab governments who co-operate with the Americans of betraying Islam and calling for violent overthrow of those governments.
Eventual fate: died in the desert.	Eventual fate: will die in the desert.

Conclusion

So who was Osama Bin-Laden's role model? From here, it looks an awful lot like Moses, one of the first arch-terrorists in recorded history. Both had legitimate grievances to air, and both thought that the proper way to air those grievances was by visiting pain, hardship, and death upon innocent civilians. Both thought that God was on their side (the same God!), both spared some of their hatred for any of their own people who step out of line, and both stepped away from privileged lives of wealth and power in order to do so.

So what's the moral of this story? The next time someone rhetorically asks about the source of Osama Bin Laden's evil, point him to the Bible. If fundamentalists believe in a God who is capable of terrorism, we should hardly be surprised when they deal with their problems by resorting to terrorism themselves! Indeed, we should count ourselves lucky that Christian fundamentalists have few real problems to complain about (hence their whining about non-issues such as their desire to turn public schools into Sunday schools), or we could be facing a lot more domestic terrorism, even worse than the usual abortion clinic bombings and shootings.

Footnotes

1Exodus 7:17.

2Exodus 8:1 to 9:6. Note that all of these things can happen naturally, and it is indeed possible that they happened in a brief period of time, rather fortuitously for the Hebrews. Nevertheless, a string of misfortune should not be taken as a miracle. In fact, I'm surprised that they didn't describe mud, stones, and frogs falling from the sky, since that has been observed as well (tornadoes suck up mud and frogs and other swamp material and have been known to dump them many miles away, although the frogs are already dead when they land)

3Exodus 9:8

4Exodus 9:22

5Exodus 10:4

6Exodus 10:22

7Exodus 11:2

8Exodus 11:5. Note that in realistic terms, it seems more likely that since the Hebrews were a slave class, they constituted most domestic labourers. Therefore, they would have been in an ideal position to commit a co-ordinated mass terrorist attack by poisoning, suffocating, or otherwise murdering their masters' children. Naturally, they would then describe this as an act of God, much as modern terrorists thank Allah for smiting their enemies.

9According to the text, he deliberately "hardened Pharoah's heart" so that he would refuse Moses' demands no matter the cost, "so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt". In other words, he made Pharoah refuse so that he would have an excuse to use the Egyptian people as a demonstration of his power.

10Exodus 32:28

11Exodus 32:20