Consider the following questions: Is a jihad to re-establish the caliphate and impose Shi’ria Law on the civilizations of the world a religious or political movement? Are conquering the land necessary to recreate the boundaries of “Biblical Israel,” blowing up the Mosque on the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding Herod’s Temple, and imposing the Mosaic Law on Israelite society religious or political goals? Is organizing a movement to use democratic means, law suits, and occasional acts of violence and intimidation in order to turn the United States into a theocracy run by Evangelical Christians a religious or political undertaking?   

        

        It seems obvious to me that in these, any many other examples (Hindu Nationalism, for example) religion and politics cannot be separated. Debating whether religious motivated terrorism is really politics or religion is to misunderstand the nature of these movements. Western academic culture, from which most scholars of terrorism, pundits, and policy makers come, is a culture of disciplinary specialization. This culture of disciplinary specialization is thus imposed on these movements. But they represent a very different ethos in which precisely these compartmentalizations are anathema.

  

        In addition, this mingling of religion and politics in religiously motivated terrorism, underscores another important dimension of this issue with which policy makers in the West have hardly begun to come to terms. Such political religiosity, violent or simply politically militant, reveals that large numbers of people around the world (and within American society) are convinced that God has given them the single master-plan for how societies should be organized and governed. Since these blueprints come from God, it is the true believers’ sacred duty to follow them to the letter and even to impose them on the societies in which they live. And since they are a divine mandate, these master-plans cannot be compromised. Liberal democracies, based on the value of individual rights and government by negotiation and compromise, have not yet to even begin to find a way to address these citizens and their convictions.

 

            This is another potential contribution of religion to terrorist actions: the idea that certain devotees possess a divine mandate for their societies and for the whole world. This comes through clearly in many of bin Laden’s statements. For example, bin Laden’s 2001 message to the Muslim youth: “The time has come when all the Muslims of the world, especially the youth, should unite and soar against the kufr [nonbeliever] and continue jihad till those forces are crushed to naught, all the anti-Islamic forces are wiped off the face of the earth and Islam takes over the whole world and all other false religions”. Bin Laden’s statements and those of other jihadists make clear that their goal is not simply defeating the west militarily or driving the “crusaders” from the Muslim holy lands. Their goal is nothing less than replacing secular governments with those that follow strict Muslim law throughout the Middle East and maybe even throughout the globe.  A mujihadeen in Pakistan described the goal of jihad by saying “Our mission is to invite all of humanity to Islam, to persuade the whole world to worship only Allah…Islam is not just a religion. It regulates every aspect of life, including politics. We would like to see implementation of divine laws here.”  In the same way, the ultra-orthodox parties in Israel seek to remove the current secular government and establish instead a government by strict orthodox law.

 

The same goal of replacing secular government with a strictly religious one is also articulated by the Christian Reconstructionist movement in the United States. Reconstructionism’s goal is turning the United States into a theocratic state governed by the imposition of "Biblical Law" on all US citizens. This would be the end of democracy, labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be confined to the home. Non-Christians would be deprived of citizenship. Reconstructionism seeks to make the laws found in the books of Moses the basis for transforming society into the Kingdom of God on earth.  The assumption is that the Bible is the ruling law for all areas of life — such as government, education, law, and the arts — an assumption shared by ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel in regards the Torah and Muslim jihadists in regards to the Koran.

 

These teachings are often taken up by Christian terrorists in the United States. Paul Hill, who killed a physician in Florida,  says directly that “My worldview is based on Reconstruction principles.” Hill wrote from prison “The primary function of government is to uphold the Moral Law with the sword,”. Hill makes it clear that his agenda goes beyond simply ending abortion, he looks forward to nothing less than the transformation of American society: “Sooner or later America will become a Christian nation. Only Christians will be elected to public office. No false worship allowed.”  Neal Horsely, another advocate of killing physicians who perform abortions and creator of the Nuremburg Files, has on his present website mainly pages devoted to calling for the overthrow of the present government and the establishment of a “Christian Commonwealth” based primarily on imposing the laws found in the Books of Moses on Americans.

Common to religious terrorists across many different religious traditions is a divine mission to impose religious law on the whole society and replace secular or hypocritical leaders with devout leaders. This is why religious terrorists reject the separation of church, synagogue, or mosque and the state. Their religion requires of them that all aspects of life — from laws governing capital crimes to women’s clothing and children’s discipline — be subject to religious control. And one of the most striking things is that the prominent issues in this divine mandate are exactly the same across all the traditions:  the “proper” roles of men and women, the regulation of sex, ending abortion and homosexuality. And not just for them in their personal lives but for whole societies, for their God-given mission demands that they bring all of society under theocratic control. This understanding of the divine mandate is shared by Christian Reconstructionists, Muslim jihadists, ultra-orthodox Jews, and groups like Aum Shinrikyo and the Hindu nationalist party as well. Whether such a divine mission can co-exist with liberal democracy may be the major religious and political debate of the twenty-first century.