Why are they so angry?

We hear from many quarters that the boys who were suicide bombers in England were angry about Great Britain’s (and others’) presence in Iraq and that they had no choice but to commit suicide and kill their fellow citizens, in order to push the British Government to withdraw from Iraq.

From my perspective and personal experience of radical Islam, they acted as suicide bombers because of their own spiritual imprisonment – a result of their beliefs that gave them no choice but to commit this act, regardless of world events happening around them. If they were free in spirit they would not do things like killing  fellow citizens, which is exactly the thing they accuse others of doing.

Let us go back a few years. Why did angry radical Muslims choose to live and not use suicide bombing to kill any of Saddam’s people, when Saddam killed thousands of Kurds and invaded Kuwait and Iran caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Muslims? How can they now argue that they had no choice except death because of Iraq and Afghanistan are occupied by Westerners?  What does this mean?  Are Muslims who die under cruel Islamic regimes different in the minds of these suicide bombers from  Muslims who die under non-Islamic regimes?  Are not all Muslim lives equally valuable? What makes these radical Muslims capriciously hostile to the West?

They justify their actions in accordance with their beliefs about a country’s ruler. For them, authoritarian Muslim rulers, who actively oppose Israel and the West, are simply better than the leaders of democratic non-Muslim nations.  This discrimination has its root in the centre of their beliefs and values. Unjust actions perpetrated by one Muslim nation against another are seen as ‘ethical’ in their value system, but any conflict between a Muslim nation and a non-Muslim nation is abhorrent, regardless of the issues involved.

While I was a radical Muslim, I remember that I never cared for the rights of people in Christian Cyprus, but cried for the Muslims in Islamic Cyprus; I praised the invasions of Muhammad and his followers that brought about the spread of Islam, but I hated the crusaders who aimed to release their own religious site from the occupancy of Muslims.  My faith was based on a capricious god who had a dualistic belief; the act of sacrificing one's life to kill others is good when it is done against non-Muslim nations but bad when the conflict is between two Muslim nations.

When Jesus is in my life, my moral and ethical values do not change with the wind.  Instead, I have a solid, holy, just, free and peaceful foundation and my political, social, moral and ethical values are not relative and always changing.  As the Gospel of Christ says, “…if the root is holy so are the branches” (Rom.11:16). 

We praise Jesus who through His grace has planted a holy root in our lives that grows branches having the same nature.  Nothing could change the heart of a hostile Muslim except Jesus.  In the same way, if we introduce radical Muslims to Jesus, Jesus will transform them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and they will be able to share in this holiness together with us (Acts 26:18).  Their major problem is not political or social issues, as if through only political and social reforms we might help them to avoid upset and discrimination in this world. Their problem is fundamentally spiritual and they need a sound, true and holy belief to change their hearts.