President Donald J. Trump wants to unite the world against what he calls “Radical Islamic Terrorism”, but by his own admission, he has yet to figure out “what the hell is going” when it comes to why such violence is occurring. He doesn’t exactly possess a sophisticated understanding of the political, social, psychological and ideological factors behind contemporary terrorism. Of course, this has not prevented him or other Islamophobic allies from rallying around a common agenda of attributing violence to the faith itself and promoting discrimination of Muslims.  Last month, the Washington Post published an article entitled “Trump’s coming war against Islam”, outlining the central dogma of Stephen Bannon, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, and other Trump’s appointees  – that Islam itself is an enemy to western Judaeo-Christian civilization, and the cause of terrorism.

The notion of countering radicalism and religious violence is frequently used as the pretext for targeting Muslims and directing venomous attacks at their faith identity, Islam. But what seems to be missing is any intellectual discourse which factually examines the causes of violent movements, including modern religious violence, and analyzes how these ideologies develop. In an effort to rectify the contemporary discourse and educate on the subject, the Yaqeen Institute recently published a comprehensive review entitled, “Forever on Trial – Islam and the charge of violence“. This study explores the complex factors underlying ideological violence, the manipulation of religious terms and texts by radical groups, and provides an evidence-based demonstration of Islam’s clear denunciation of violence.

Is Islam itself the cause of religious violence, or do terrorists opportunistically exploit religion to service their own agenda? The first point worth noting is that violence can be and has been perpetrated on the basis of numerous creeds and ideologies. It is not the religious or secular content of an ideology that spawns violence, but rather it is the infusion of xenophobic ideas which terrorists use to dehumanize the outsider and permit atrocities against their victims.

Although the same five-letter word ‘Islam’ is used by both the terrorists and the global faith community of 1.6 billion Muslims, that doesn’t mean they are referring to the same thing. By insisting on using the label ‘Islam’ for terrorists, media pundits and politicians insist on lumping criminals together with one fifth of the world’s population. However, terrorists reject the aforementioned ethical values of the Islamic faith, of compassion and justice. They have taken the vocabulary of Islam but redefined the words ‘Jihad’, ‘Shari’ah’, etc, in order to construct a totalitarian ideology of xenophobia and dehumanization.

The word ‘Shari’ah’ actually refers to a path towards God which has five aims – the preservation of faith, life, intellect, family and property and the word ‘Jihad’ refers to an effort exerted for the sake of coming closer to God and caring for His creation; physical force is only permitted for the sake of repelling oppression or aggression on the part of others. All of this goes to show why the popular suggestion to interrogate Muslims on their support for terms like ‘Shari’ah’ and ‘Jihad’ makes absolutely no sense – it assumes and legitimizes the definitions assigned to these terms by criminals and terrorists.

Can education and facts correct virulent hatred and ignorance? It may be too much to hope for, particularly in an era of ‘post-truth politics’ and alternative facts where people would much rather be surrounded by myths that reinforce their opinions than truths that challenge their bigotry.