Islam and Islamic extremism are not one and the same. Here’s a primer on the differences

Since 9/11, I have given over 120 public lectures on Islam to help our local community understand the second biggest religion in the world. While I prefer to share the stories of billions of everyday Muslims who care for their families and communities each day, motivated by their genuine love for the Creator, audience questions tend to understandably focus on the tiny minority of Islamic extremists whose murderous ways light up our televisions at night. When we see images of Taliban taking over Afghanistan or ISIS targeting civilians, it is easy to be swayed to the notion that there is something fundamentally problematic with modern Islam itself.

We should remember, however, that the resurgence of Islamic extremism has more to do with political and sociological forces than spiritual ones. After studying the rise of religious extremism, I’ve come to the conclusion that extremism arises more often in response to perceptions of abandonment, disrespect and mistreatment in places of instability than a sudden rediscovery of piety. The reality is that nefarious leaders in Islamic lands harness the power of resentment in a population, cloak their rhetoric in a pious- sounding language that misrepresents Islam, and claim a mandate from God to fix their broken world. The most recent events in Afghanistan reveal this pattern and should provide a warning for the future.

The three major Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan have different origin stories, but all derive from moments in Afghani history where chaos and injustice ruled the day.

Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda’s roots are in the 1980s when foreign fighters known as the Mujahadeen who had gathered to expel the occupying Soviet Union began to see significant successes due in large part to American training, weapons and financial support. However, when the Soviets began their withdrawal, the American support for Afghanistan also departed, since it was no longer a central front in the Cold War. As American support dried up, one wealthy Saudi fighter, Osama bin Laden, turned his ire against America, propagating a message that America never really cared about Afghanistan but only wanted to exploit innocent Muslims so Americans would not have to die fighting the Soviets. At a retreat in a place they called “The Base” or Al-Qaeda in Arabic, they hatched a plan to punish America for both abandoning Afghanistan and for exploiting the Muslim world in the attempt to become the world’s sole superpower. The result was the attacks on 9/11 and dozens of other attacks on American interests around the world.

The Taliban

The Taliban’s roots are in the mid-1990s when Afghanistan predictably falls into a civil war after the collapse of the Soviet-backed government in 1992. The Pakistani government saw an opportunity to stabilize their neighboring county by providing support for one faction in the civil war, which shared tribal affinities with northern Pakistanis. After field testing various names, the “Taliban,” meaning simply “students” was chosen as the name for the new movement that could restore peace, fight corruption and return Afghanistan to traditional values.

After years of tribal warfare, countless atrocities committed on all sides, and a long history of political instability, many Afghans welcomed the prospect of stability under the Taliban — only to regret it later when such promises came with brutal and backwards social restrictions employed by the Taliban to retain power. To bolster internal support, the Taliban government blamed the lack of financial support from the international community for their failed state.

After being ousted by America in 2002 following the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban re-emerged as the most viable alternative to the corrupt American-backed Afghan government and the new foreign occupying force, the U.S. military. The Taliban’s plan was to outlast America and ride the anti-imperialist sentiment back into power. No longer just students from the Pakistani border region, the Taliban became an umbrella organization for carrying on the long tradition of forcing foreign occupiers out of Afghanistan. Now they desperately need international support if they want success in stabilizing Afghanistan, but while Al Qaeda is focused outward on America, the Taliban’s interests lie only within Afghanistan’s borders.

Isis

A third group, ISIS, arose in the mid-2000s when a splinter group of Al Qaeda members in Iraq and Syria began questioning the efficacy of the group’s master plan. Their focus was likewise on countering American imperialism in Iraq, but unlike Al-Qaeda, they also targeted moderate Muslims, whom they claimed enabled imperialism and stood in the way of creating a united Islamic State. Their initial success was due to the instability, corruption, and chaos of the Middle East after America began pulling troops out of Iraq. Likewise, ISIS’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-k, dedicates just as much energy attacking the Taliban and Al Qaeda as they do attacking American-aligned interests.

Each of these groups — Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS-K — emerged out of political instability and chaos in their homelands. The failed and broken states from which these groups arose were not solely the product of American imperialism, but are effects of a long history of political corruption and treacherous tribal alliances. Nevertheless, the dominant rhetoric within Afghanistan will blame America for its broken state and the conditions that lead to religious extremism—widespread perceptions of abandonment, disrespect, and mistreatment mixed with political and social instability—will likely fester.

The Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K will all call upon traditional religious language to make their case and try to sway the population to their side. They will couch their promises in competing divine mandates, each counterposed in different ways to the narrative America conveyed for nearly two decades. In doing so, they misuse their religion of Islam to meet their political goals. In their quest for power, the actions of these groups sully the good deeds and humble piety of countless Muslims around the globe who know the God of Peace from where Islam gets its name.

The pattern is predictable and sad, but it also means that despite our recent military withdrawal, we may not be able to ever completely leave Afghanistan behind. But in this uncertain phase of our involvement in Afghanistan, I hope everyday Americans will come to see that the alarming and murderous voices on the news do not represent the authentic beautiful ideals inherent to the religion they claim. We need to remember that the religion of Islam and Islamic extremism are not synonymous. Let’s not let the impiety of some define the character of the whole. I hope we can at least learn that lesson from nearly two decades in Afghanistan.

Contributing columnist Stephen Lloyd-Moffett is a professor of religious studies at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.