Islam, Culture, and the Charlie Hebdo Affair by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz & Hussein Rashid & Massimo Pigliucci & John Teehan & Ozgur Koca & Michael Shermer & Lawrence Krauss & Varadaraja V. Raman & Frank Griffel & Ali Sina

Author:Stephen Suleyman Schwartz & Hussein Rashid & Massimo Pigliucci & John Teehan & Ozgur Koca & Michael Shermer & Lawrence Krauss & Varadaraja V. Raman & Frank Griffel & Ali Sina [Schwartz, Stephen Suleyman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smith and Franklin Academics Publishing Corporation, Ltd UK
Published: 2015-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

These ingrained problems, in some cases, instill a profound sense of pessimism and discontent in that a meaningful solution does not exist within the boundaries of the dominant global political and economic structure and, thus, one must step outside of it and resort to violence in order to offer some real change.

This sentiment is quite evident in the martyrdom videos where the perpetrator expresses him/herself in religious language and typically reads a passage from the Qur’an, but the bulk of his remarks revolve around political and economic grievances of Muslims around the globe. The perpetrator does not go from the text to the world but from the world to the text and finds, often after a selective reading, justification and compliment for the intended act of violence. This exegetical strategy might make the act a religious one in expression but, obviously, not in motivation.