The recent Belfast stabbing by the illegal Sudanese Muslim immigrant Hadi Alodid has put questions about violence in Islam back on the agenda. The mainstream media framed the anti-immigration riots that followed as extreme right, while the brutal deheading attempt is dismissed as an incident. Is Islam synonymous with violence, or is that a simplification of a religion that stands for peace, as Prince William famously stated in 2019?
By Paul Cliteur
“The Muslim community showed the world the true face of Islam as a religion of peace and understanding,” said the Prince of Wales (then the Duke of Cambridge) about Islam. He made these remarks during an official speech at the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on 26 April 2019, following the attacks on two mosques in New Zealand.
According to the Prince, the “true face” of Islam is that of a “religion of peace and understanding. “The context in which he presented his generalisation about Islam was the terrorist attack of 15 March 2019, in which a far-right terrorist murdered 51 mosque worshippers. In his speech, he mainly praised the way in which the affected Muslim community and New Zealand society had responded to that attack.
Of course, it was a gracious gesture on the part of Prince William. But were the words he used to encourage the Muslim community also true? Should he not rather have said: “You have shown a remarkable gesture of humanity”?
After all, what he was doing here is praising people for their humanity. Yet at the same time he smuggles in a judgement about the “true nature” of a religion, in this case the religion of Islam.
Terrorist actions motivated and legitimated by Islam
Prince William’s remarks are one-sided, because the world is also confronted with countless terrorist acts whose perpetrators invoke Islam.
When the Chechen jihadist Abdoullakh Anzorov beheaded the French teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October 2020 because Paty had shown cartoons of Muhammad during a lesson, he did so in the name of Islam.
When, on 7 January 2015, the Kouachi brothers massacred almost the entire editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of Muhammad, they invoked Islam.
When, on November 2, 2004, the Dutch writer and filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri. The Moroccan jihadist did so in the name of Islam.
When, on 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini called for the murder of the British writer Salman Rushdie because he had written a book satirising the early history of Islam, he likewise justified his call by reference to Islam.
Examples could be multiplied indefinitely.
What is the true face of Islam?
Who, then, shows us the “true face” of Islam? Is it the Muslim community in Christchurch, carrying out rescue efforts? Or is it the Kouachi brothers, Anzorov, Bouyeri and Khomeini who invoke Islam to justify their terrorist acts?
I do not think one can go further than saying that one may hope Prince William is right. Yet evidence to the contrary accumulates with every new attack committed by terrorists who explain how Islam inspired them.
In fact, Prince William is articulating what might be called the “official position” in governing circles: left-globalist governments express the hope that Islam will develop in a peaceful direction. But they do so in the wrong way. They speak in the language of amateur theologians who claim that Islam is already peaceful.
In other words, Islam does not need to change. Islam is already tolerant. One could say that such governments are “Islam-optimists”.
Islam-optimism is not the path we should take. We must recognise that alongside Islam there also exists a radical Islam, a jihadist Islam. That jihadist Islam must continue to be identified as a problem. Jihadist Islam is also responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in Europe today.
The Europol data
Recently, Europol (the collective police services of the European Union) published a report on terrorist attacks in 2024. The report also specified the ideological backgrounds of those attacks:
(Source: Europol, European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report)
These figures indicate that jihadism is by far the most important cause of terrorist attacks. Right-wing extremism was responsible for only one attack. We should also remember that the terrorist attack on which Prince William commented in 2019, a “far-right extremist attack”, is highly exceptional when compared with the vast number of jihadist attacks that occur not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world.
Jihadism worldwide
The French terrorism expert Florence Bergeaud-Blackler provides information in her book Le frérisme et ses réseaux, l’enquête (2023) on the number of Islamist or jihadist attacks worldwide between 1979 and 2021:
She writes:
“Entre 1979 et mai 2021, au moins 48 035 attentats islamistes ont eu lieu dans le monde, provoquant la mort de 210 138 personnes au moins” (Bergeaud-Blackler, Florence, Le frérisme et ses réseaux, l’enquête, Préface de Gilles Kepel, Odile Jacob, Paris 2023, p. 23).
Translated:
“Between 1979 and May 2021, at least 48,035 Islamist attacks took place worldwide, resulting in the deaths of at least 210,138 people.”
Thus, over a period of roughly forty years, approximately 50,000 Islamist attacks occurred.
Should we conclude from these figures that Prince William is simply fantasising when he speaks of the “true face of Islam” as a “religion of peace and understanding”?
That may be going too far, because one may still hope for a tolerant Islam or, as Bassam Tibi (a Syrian-born German political scientist and professor of international relations specialising in Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies) did, for a “European Islam”.
The late Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn expressed the hope that Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, would pass through the washing machine of the Enlightenment. That was a legitimate hope indeed. But it must actually happen. And Islam must be encouraged to move in that direction.
Such encouragement comes from what I call “Islam-realists”. An Islam-realist considers it possible that Islam will pass through the washing machine of the Enlightenment, but also recognises that this is necessary.
The Islam-optimist believes it is unnecessary because Islam, as it currently presents itself, is already entirely satisfactory.
The “Islam-pessimists”, by contrast, believe that Islam is incapable of change. Any hope of reform is futile. Islam is identical with terror. The “true nature” of Islam is not “peace and understanding” but perpetual war and oppression.
The true face of Islam is seen in the terrorist acts of Anzorov, the Kouachi brothers, Bouyeri, and Khomeini.
Of the three possible positions—Islam-optimism, Islam-pessimism, and Islam-realism—the last, Islam-realism, is the most desirable. Therefore, Islam must be criticised freely in the hope that it will develop in a positive, enlightened, more peaceful direction.
