Beyond the Karak Church attack

By Hicham Bou Nassif |Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College-California

Just days after Christians were killed inside a church in Karak, the killing of dozens of Ethiopian Christians in the predominantly Muslim Oromia region once again brought to the forefront a scene that has become all too familiar in the Islamic world: religious violence. Was the Syrian worker who killed Father Samir Daou in Byblos driven by jihadist inclinations, in addition to his desire to steal? I do not know. What cannot be denied, however, is that the cycle of religious violence targeting Christian minorities in the region continues unabated. And, in it happens in a pattern that is impossible to overlook. From the bombing of Mar Elias Church in Syria in 2025, to the attack on the Church of Saint Mary in Turkey in 2024, and the massacres in Pakistan’s Punjab in the summer of 2023, when dozens of churches were burned following accusations that two individuals had insulted the Quran, to the recurring reports from Nigeria of churches being burned and priests and worshippers being killed. These are merely a few examples from recent years, the record of attacks is far longer.

Drawing a distinction between “ordinary” religious discrimination, meaning the daily and systematic discrimination against religious minorities in the Islamic world, and jihadist violence targeting these minorities is hypocritical. When Muslim societies establish Islam as the state religion in countries where Christians live, make Sharia the source of legislation, allow Muslim men to marry “Christian” women while prohibiting the reverse, and impose the label “Nazarenes” on Christians—contrary to the name they use for themselves—they pave the way for violence that ultimately culminates in the bombing of churches and the killing of innocent people. Religious discrimination begins with discrimination and ends, sooner or later, in jihadist violence. By extension, the conservative backlash against reconsidering the religious foundations upon which such discrimination rests is, objectively speaking, complicit in the intellectual environment that enables Islamists to justify their crimes.

The first reaction of former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora following the Karak attack was to rush to declare that “terrorism has no religion.” This kind of response needs to be reconsidered, lest it become an obstacle preventing Muslims from reflecting on the Quranic verses, hadiths, and religious and political heritage that may form the ideological background to jihadist violence. It is unhealthy that every time jihadist Muslims kill in the name of religion, non-jihadist Muslims rush to bury any attempt to reinterpret religion in a way that strips jihadists of the pretexts they rely on. In theory, the relationship between jihadist and non-jihadist Muslims should be confrontational. In practice, however, what is unfolding between jihadists and the “terrorism has no religion” camp looks like a division of roles.

Religion, any religion, is what its followers interpret it to be. If a Muslim reads verse 29 of Surat At-Tawbah: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled.” and decides to take the command to fight literally, responding by telling him that “terrorism has no religion” will achieve little. If terrorists draw inspiration from verses such as: “Indeed, those who disbelieve from the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the Fire of Hell, to stay there forever. They are the worst of ˹all˺ beings.” (Surat Al-Bayyinah, verse 6), or hadiths such as: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Hadith No. 2922), then addressing this issue requires far more than repeating the phrase “terrorism has no religion.”

It is true that not all Muslims are extremists. But it is equally true that some of the world’s most prominent terrorist organizations embrace extremist Islamist ideologies, including Hezbollah, Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and others. There is no dispute over the first part of this equation. The second, however, cannot be addressed through recycled clichés and intellectual laziness that serve no one.

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watan on 2 November 2026. The original can be found here.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.