Holy Orders: Opposition to Modern States (Beyond Beliefs: Religion‪)‬

No one who watched in horror as the towers of the World Trade Center crumbled into dust on September 11,2001, could doubt that the real target of the terrorist assault was US global power. Those involved in similar attacks and in similar groups have said much. Mahmood Abouhalima, one of the Al Qaeda-linked activists convicted for his role in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, told me in a prison interview that buildings such as these were chosen to dramatically demonstrate that "the government is the enemy." While the US government and its allies have been frequent targets of recent terrorist acts, religious leaders and groups are seldom targeted. An anomaly in this regard was the assault on the Shi'a shrine in the Iraqi city of Najaf on August 29, 2003, which "killed more than 80 people including the venerable Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al Hakim. The Al Qaeda activists who allegedly perpetrated this act were likely more incensed over the Ayatollah's implicit support for the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council than they were jealous of his popularity with Shi'a Muslims. Since the United Nations has also indirectly supported the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, it too has been subject to Osama bin Laden's rage. This may well be the reason why the UN office in Baghdad was the target of the devastating assault on August 19, 2003, which killed the distinguished UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Despite the seeming diversity of the targets, the object of most recent acts of religious terror is an old foe of religion: the secular state.