How Sacred Ignorance Creates Islamic Extremism

While all religions maintain some form of relationship with politics, Islam possesses a truly unique bond with the political sphere due to its historical singularity, the context of its emergence, and the factors behind its expansion. This is a causal relationship that makes politics inseparable from the very existence of Islam, whether in its presence or its absence. To separate Islam from politics would be to sever it from its raison d’être and the conditions required for its survival. Consequently, the phrase “political Islam,” which we frequently repeat today like a mantra, is a superfluous tautology, for it merely states the obvious. It is much like saying “a three-sided triangle” instead of simply “a triangle”: by definition, a triangle must have three sides; it is inherent to its nature, just as politics is inherent to the definition of Islam.

This is precisely where the error lies for certain non-Muslim Western nations, such as France. These countries believed that providing the Muslim minority with the necessary conditions to practice their faith—through the construction of mosques, respect for rituals, and the recognition of religious holidays—would be sufficient to ensure that its members complied with national laws and integrated into the social fabric, just like other religious minorities such as Jews or Buddhists. For these other groups, there is no distinction regarding state allegiance or respect for the law between their members and the indigenous Christian population, who have their churches and practice their faith while respecting the beliefs of non-Christians. This misunderstanding stems from a conception of Islam as merely a religion intended to govern the relationship between the believer and their Creator, expressed through a set of practices of faith and devotion. What this reductionist and flawed vision fails to grasp is the most crucial dimension of Islam: its political aspect. This dimension makes Islam a religion that exhorts the believer, as a core tenet of their faith, to spread the religion as widely as possible to form a Muslim community. The ultimate objective is to establish a state that governs in the name of Islam, using its political authority to subject the whole of society to Islamic precepts.

According to traditional Islamic narrative, Islam emerged through the efforts of a group of believers seeking to bring others into their community, before establishing a political authority that served as the nucleus of an Islamic state that would ultimately use force to impose the faith. The nature and circumstances of this genesis became an integral part of Islam itself, transformed by traditional narrative into a “sacred ignorance” that guides Muslim behavior and defines their perception of the “true Muslim” and, above all, the non-Muslim. I use the term “sacred ignorance” here not in the precise sense defined by Olivier Roy in his 2008 book Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways, but in its literal sense—though one close to Roy’s thesis, which demonstrated how religions have detached from their cultural roots, making it difficult to understand them and explain their evolution due to this apparent autonomy. By “sacred ignorance,” I mean literally that collection of narratives, myths, legends, representations, invented facts, and biased interpretations of real events concerning Islam and Muslims. This body of work, whose accuracy cannot be verified by any epistemological evidence, was recorded more than two centuries after the advent of Islam as a heritage that now serves as the “scientific” source from which Muslims derive their knowledge of their religion. Because it is impossible to prove the truth and reality of the cognitive elements within this supposedly “scientific” source, it remains a source of misconception, grounded in ignorance rather than science. However, because it forms the foundation of knowledge about Islam, this ignorance becomes “sacred,” as its “truths” are religious in nature. As such, they are perceived as absolute and immutable; questioning or challenging them is deemed impossible, as doing so would be tantamount to challenging Islam itself. It is in this way that these truths assume a sacred character for the Muslims who adhere to them.

The core component of this “sacred ignorance” lies in the narrative surrounding the genesis and expansion of Islam—specifically the jihad waged by the Prophet and his companions against “unbelievers” who refused to convert, the armed struggle against them, their execution, and the conquest of their lands to spread the faith. Under the influence of this ignorance—which centers on the nature and conditions of Islam’s emergence as frozen in the religious narrative since the third century of the Hegira—the individual constantly strives to replicate this foundational model and pursue further “conquests.” Taking the Prophet and his companions as their exemplars, they view non-Muslims as infidels who must be fought until they embrace Islam, scrupulously mimicking the actions of the early Muslims as sanctified by this ignorance. This bellicose and jihadist vision of sacred ignorance takes hold of many and dictates how they must “religiously” behave toward non-Muslim countries. The terrorist attacks witnessed in France in recent years, as well as in other European nations like Spain, Great Britain, and more recently Austria, represent the practical application of this sacred ignorance focused on the jihad against non-Muslims purportedly led by the Prophet and his companions. The perpetrators of these acts are merely imitating these founding models by practicing jihad as it was allegedly carried out and prescribed for every Muslim according to the dogmas of this sacred ignorance. In their eyes, could there be any better example to follow than that of the Prophet and his companions? Consequently, many Muslims residing in Europe, for instance, make no effort to integrate into the Western societies that have welcomed them; instead, they aspire to subsume those societies into their own version of Islam and doctrine, even if it requires resorting to “jihad” to achieve it. Sacred ignorance thus produces extremist Muslims, and even terrorists, who are convinced—by a kind of Islamist narcissism rooted in this very ignorance—that they alone possess the truth and the authentic faith. To them, followers of other faiths are misguided and lost, representing a threat to their “pure faith” that must be defended through jihad against the enemies of God and His Messenger. One manifestation of this Islamist narcissism is the categorical rejection of freedom of conscience—the very principle that allows any individual to choose their religion or renounce it as they wish. Simultaneously, they celebrate a Christian who abjures their faith to embrace Islam in the name of this same principle. In contrast, a Muslim who leaves Islam to convert to Christianity, exercising their freedom of conscience exactly like the Christian convert, is condemned to death by these radicals. Yet, it is precisely the exercise of this freedom that has enabled non-Muslims to embrace Islam and practice a form of “apostasy” that Muslims celebrate when it originates from others. If Western Christian societies still condemned apostates to the death penalty, as was the case during the era of the Inquisition, not a single one of their members would have been able to convert to Islam. What we see here is a case of blatant Islamist narcissism: these individuals accept the benefits Islam derives from freedom of conscience when it is exercised by the faithful of other religions, yet they refuse to grant that same freedom to Muslims. Their justification for this glaring contradiction is already at hand, instilled by sacred ignorance: other religions are viewed as falsified and corrupt, rendering apostasy from them legitimate, unlike Islam, which is held to be the only true faith. They thus proceed via a circular argument, defending their narcissism through narcissism itself.

The objection that the Quran recognizes the “People of the Book”—Jews and Christians—is entirely beside the point here. Why? Because Islam, as it is understood and practiced by these extremist fringes—and which specifically shapes their perspective on the non-Muslim “other”—does not rely on the Quran as such. Instead, it is based on what I have defined as “sacred ignorance.” While this ignorance draws certain elements from the Quranic text, it does so exclusively through the prism of the Islamic narrative that constitutes the very foundation of this ignorance. Consequently, the driving force for those who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam, whether in the West or in Muslim countries such as Morocco, is not the Quran—a text about which they generally know nothing and which some cannot even read in Arabic. Their true engine is this sacred ignorance forged by traditional storytelling. If they are convinced that by perpetrating these horrors they are applying Quranic prescriptions, it is because they are certain that their representations of religion, inherited from this sacred ignorance, coincide with the imperatives of jihad as they imagine it was practiced by the Prophet and his companions according to the dogmas of this collective imagination.

As for the perception of the caricatures in the French weekly “Charlie Hebdo” as an insult to the Prophet and an aggression against Islam—justifying an armed defense of his dignity and the sanctity of the faith—this stems directly from the teachings of sacred ignorance, which terrorists have established as their sole point of reference. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that these drawings act, in the eyes of extremists as well as many other Muslims, as a resounding confirmation of the theses of sacred ignorance: the notion of enemies lurking in the shadows, plotting tirelessly to annihilate Islam. This vision then imposes, according to their logic, a recourse to jihad to neutralize and eliminate them, in order to ensure the favor of God and His Messenger.

Ultimately, the “true” Islam embraced by many believers—and particularly the most radical—is not an Islam focused on piety, ethics, or regulated social relations. It is a political Islam, a product of “sacred ignorance,” which is itself generated by traditional Islamic narratives. The defining characteristic of this political Islam is that it is not defined by the spiritual link between the believer and their Creator, but by a conflictual relationship with the “Other”—those who are different, the non-Muslims. This results in a conviction, anchored in sacred ignorance, that a Muslim’s faith remains incomplete unless they engage in “conquests.” These conquests aim to either subject the infidel to their religion or erase them from the world, mirroring what the Prophet and his companions supposedly achieved according to this same narrative. Thus, even while living in the 21st century, the radical draws from this sacred ignorance a vision in which they relive the birth of Islam as a timeless process, marked by a succession of conquests, wars, and the beheading of the enemies of the faith. This ideological framework explains the assassination of the French teacher on October 16, 2020. The perpetrator beheaded the instructor—who had shown caricatures during a lesson on freedom of expression—because this barbaric act is viewed as an essential component of sacred ignorance. This mindset convinced the terrorist that he was acting out of prophetic mimicry, scrupulously following the models established by this sacred ignorance, as we have demonstrated.

What is the solution to eradicating terrorism committed in the name of Islam? If the various solutions proposed and implemented over the last thirty years have failed to yield results, it is because they do not address the essence of the problem: the persistent production and reproduction of “sacred ignorance,” with all its jihadist connotations and aspirations for martial conquest. This is what has allowed this sacred ignorance to occupy the position of an active and influential “subject”—the very prism through which we conceptualize, understand, and practice Islam. It inspires and dictates the behavior and stance of the extremist Muslim toward others, whether those others are non-Muslims or fellow Muslims whose understanding of the faith differs from the one the extremist claims to defend. The solution begins, therefore, with shifting this sacred ignorance from the status of a “subject” to that of an “object” of study: an element to be reflected upon rather than a framework to reflect through. This is achieved by studying—and subsequently teaching—this sacred ignorance, analyzing it as a subject for dissection and deconstruction. The goal is to demonstrate that it is an imaginary construct, forged by the biographers of the Sira (prophetic biography) and the authors of hadiths more than two centuries after the death of the Prophet. While it may assume a sacred character that mirrors the sanctity of true Islam, this is solely because caliphs and sultans found it to be fertile ground for consolidating their power and despotism. Consequently, they worked to produce, reproduce, and disseminate it, ensuring it was taught and instilled as if it were the authentic Islam to which every Muslim must believe and conform. Believers were encouraged to emulate, in particular, figures and heroes presented as paragons of jihad against “infidels” and “heretics” for the purpose of exalting the word of God. In this way, sacred ignorance was transformed into “sacred truths,” which are continually reproduced and applied according to a martial and bellicose logic. Treating this sacred ignorance as an object simply means dissecting, deconstructing, and analyzing it, as I have noted, in order to return it to its original historical and human components. Therefore, truly drying up the sources of religious terrorism requires drying up sacred ignorance itself—this prolific source of violence committed in the name of Islam—by making it, I repeat, the object of this dissection, analysis, and deconstruction.

Enlightened thinkers and intellectuals, alongside progressive religious authorities, can play a pivotal role in shifting “sacred ignorance” from being a lived reality for the believer to becoming an object of scrutiny—recognizing it as a human and political construct. However, this crucial mission depends entirely on the state’s guarantee of freedom of thought and expression. It is imperative that sacred ignorance is treated as a legitimate subject for research, study, dissection, and deconstruction. Through the lens of knowledge, it must be demonstrated that this ignorance is built upon imaginary facts and elements invented by hagiographers and fabricators of hadiths. As I have previously noted, these inventions were specifically designed to serve the political interests of caliphs and sultans, rather than representing the core tenets of the faith.

Christianity provides a compelling historical example of how freedom of thought and expression is an indispensable condition for correcting misconceptions and even deeply rooted erroneous beliefs. The Christian “sacred ignorance,” forged by followers centuries after the death of Christ—according to Christian doctrine—proved to be far more devastating than its Islamic counterpart. It transformed Christianity into one of the most intolerant religions in human history toward “the Other,” whether that person was Muslim, Jewish, or even a fellow Christian. In those times, a Christian could be swiftly branded a heretic and handed over to the tribunals of the Inquisition, which remain an indelible stain on the history of the faith. However, with the rise of freedom of thought and expression, particularly from the 18th century onward—though the early seeds were planted during the 15th-century Renaissance—this sacred ignorance, and the version of Christianity it had shaped, were subjected to a rigorous critical autopsy. This intellectual movement went as far as the desacralization of religion and even questioned the historical existence of Christ, with some scholars presenting him as a figure invented by sacred ignorance. These critics were not demonized, assaulted, or prosecuted, as their opinions were expressed within the framework of freedom of thought protected by law. The same protection applied to the numerous caricatures mocking Christ and the Virgin Mary that appeared decades before the controversial drawings of the Prophet. This freedom to critique Christian worship had a positive, reforming impact: it allowed Christianity to evolve from an extremist, regressive, hostile, and bellicose faith into a religion characterized by charity and mercy. Crucially, these values became lived through actual practice and deeds, rather than being reduced to theoretical principles or empty declarations of intent, as is frequently seen in contemporary Islamic discourse.

This freedom to criticize Christianity—its figures, its texts, its heritage, and its history—did not weaken the religion itself, despite the fears of those who today refuse to grant such freedom regarding Islam. As evidence, more than two billion Christians continue to practice their faith globally. Therefore, if such freedom were applied to Islam, it would not weaken the religion, but rather the “sacred ignorance” that currently surrounds it. Furthermore, the objective of criticizing Christianity was not to eliminate all superstitious or irrational aspects of the faith, as these elements remain very much present in Christian beliefs today. Instead, the goal was to protect and elevate freedom of thought and expression as a fundamental “sacred” value in its own right, within the framework of legal responsibility. This freedom is the essential prerequisite for all creativity, intellectual renewal, societal progress, and development. It is also important to note that a state does not need to be constitutionally secular for religious criticism to be possible. On a practical level, the United States is no more secular than Morocco—even if their constitutional structures differ—yet the freedom to criticize religion is exercised there as robustly as it is in France. This demonstrates that such freedom does not target religions specifically; rather, the critique of faith is simply an integral part of exercising a fundamental human right.

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