Richard D. Connerney

The following viewpoint by Richard D. Connerney was written shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America. The attacks, which killed approximately three thousand people, were carried out by members of al-Qaeda, an Islamic terrorist organization. Connerney, then a visiting professor of religion at Iona College in New York, witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Center towers—an event that he says caused him to rethink Islam and its concept of jihad. He notes that Islam’s sacred writings can be interpreted to justify violence against nonbelievers, and that Islam for much of its history has been associated with such violence—including terrorism—more than have other religions. He attributes Islam’s propensity for violence to the fact that Islam originated in conjunction with a military empire and thus...