sunny

psst... it's now all round the sane world.

alifred23

thank you for your useless contribution

richard dell

Counter these arguments, if you can, from a writer of somewhat more substantial
credentials.

http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=9232
Since Sept. 11, I have been told repeatedly by the press and politicians that
Islam is a religion of peace but what I see in the news belies these assurances.
I would like to be convinced that the evidence before my eyes is an aberration,
a distortion of the faith by a few fanatics. But sadly a candid assessment of
reality leads me to an opposite conclusion: that a significant segment of the
Muslim world wishes me, my values and my society harm and is prepared to
undertake or condone violent means to achieve this.

Perhaps I have misperceived the good intentions of Islam, and if so, I welcome
the occasion to be reassured. We have heard a great deal recently about why
Islam hates America, but we have not heard why so many Americans mistrust
Islam - at least the face of it that we've seen since Sept. 11- and for many,
well before. As someone brought up with the givens of respect for all faiths,
enthusiasm for pluralism and appreciation for the diversity of all ethnic
groups, I find this gnawing Islamophobia at odds with my basic beliefs, but part
of the problem is that I do not see them reciprocated by Islam. I find myself
increasingly agreeing with the Holocaust survivor who observed: "If someone says
they're going to kill you, believe them.''

And I have to wonder why the support of Muslim intellectuals, clerics and laymen
is so tepid on behalf of our war against terror in Afghanistan, so qualified
about depriving Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction and so
compromised in their splitting hairs over wrongful terrorism at the World Trade
Center and "rightful" terrorism in Israel. I ask myself what other religion
would not outright condemn the mass murder of innocent civilians in malls,
buses, and restaurants, a slaughter aimed at inflicting the greatest amount of
pain, death and injury on its victims. Imagine if the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the
Archbishop of Canterbury or the American Board of Rabbis were to rationalize the
deliberate massacre of innocent people. They would be decried as moral lepers.
This, of course, is unimaginable, except in Islam, where such abominable acts
are rationalized as religiously justified. What I find offensive is the air of
moral superiority from people who blow up embassies, public buildings, shopping
centers, cafes, barracks, and ships. What I find repugnant is the air of
grievance from zealots who have given innocents so much to grieve for. So to
those intellectuals in Cairo who are concerned about Islamophobia, yes, Islam
does have an image problem, based not on the fantasies of the West but the
horrendous reality of the acts committed in Islam's name - which no political
agenda or religious millennialism can justify. The problem, I would suggest, is
not with the West's perception, which is all too accurate, but with the behavior
of Islamicists. And until a growing number of, until now quite silent, Muslims
address this problem, it will continue. Here then are my own reasons for finding
it difficult to overcome a growing Islamophobia. I look forward to the day when
an enlightened Muslim majority can allay my concerns. But until they do, my
Islamic problem - I doubt I am alone - and, more importantly, their Islamic
problem won't go away.

My greatest concern with the militant face of Islam is the deliberate failure of
Muslim leaders to distinguish between ends and means. Whatever the goal - a
Palestinian state, a Muslim Kashmir - a test of someone's allegiance to the
principles of tolerance, civility and decency is where they come down on the
means to achieve it. Terror - that is, the deliberate targeting of innocent
civilians to achieve political goals, is a priori ruled out. A "yes, but,'' is
unacceptable. Political goals must be achieved through political means,
negotiation and moral suasion, not through violence, much less violence directed
at innocents. There are no mitigating cir***stances for terrorism among
civilized people. Distorting the meaning of terrorism to turn it on its head and
blame the target is an evasion that no longer fools anyone. The dodge of
equivalence is also wearing thin. When I read about Palestinians celebrating the
deaths of Jews, most just embarking on their lives, in the latest rash of
suicide bombings in a ritual that has now become a norm for that society - which
is in keeping with Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attack of Sept. 11
despite Arafat's attempts to squelch reports of them - I must ask myself what
kind of culture it is that experiences the deliberate murder of young people or
the incineration of 3,500 human beings as a cause for joy? One of the relatives
of a suicide bomber was a schoolteacher who evinced pride in the killer's
actions. What does this man teach his students? How poisoned by hatred can such
people be that they can find pleasure in such murderous havoc? Is any cause
worth such evil and do they really think theirs will be advanced by these
tactics, or if not, then do they console themselves with blind vengeance? What
kind of culture abets such monstrosity? Images like these fill the mind, and not
only at the World Trade Center or in Israel. I think of the Christian survivors
huddled in a Pakistani village after a gang of Muslim murderers invaded the
church during a service and slaughtered most of the worshipers "in revenge" for
the U.S. attack on the Taliban, as if the poor victims had anything to do with
the American offensive. I think of the gruesome aftermath of a recent Muslim
terrorist bombing in Kashmir that killed 30 people. Perhaps worst of all, I
envision the anguished face of a little Filipino girl of about five or six,
roped together with a group of other hostages, being herded to an unknown fate
by Muslim terrorists during an uprising in the Philippines. What could the young
armed Islamic terrorist, prodding his victims onward, be thinking? Is this what
Allah requires of him? Will he be rewarded in heaven for this act? Is the prize
of 70 virgins worth the terror on this little girl's face? I have yet to hear
voices that represent a significant body of Islam condemn such heinous acts
perpetrated on its behalf. What I hear instead are evasions, qualifications,
rationales. When confronted with the overwhelming do***ented slaughter and
enslavement of black Christians and animists by Muslim rulers in the Sudan where
more than a million people have been killed in the last 20 years, a Saudi
official blandly dismissed it as untrue. End of discussion. While Muslim
apologists from their bully pulpit at Al Jazeera flog the great Satan of the
U.S. and the little Satan of Israel as a global menace, it seems to me that
wherever terror abounds in the world, well beyond the reach of Americans and
Jews, it is Islam - or its worst adherents - that present a much realer global
menace than any of its projected enemies. The fact is that there are currently
40 armed conflicts going on in the world and all but two involve Islam. Who is
the menace?

Islamism is the most serious totalitarian threat to challenge the world since
the fall of Communism. Like communism, its cadres form an internationale of
dedicated adherents with a global support group of fellow travelers supplying
money, logistics, propaganda and muscle. It is fanatic, intolerant of dissent
and contemptuous of the very societies whose principles it uses to undermine
them. Unlike Communism, it does not have a single headquarters but is a
supranational movement, taking advantage of various host entities as the
occasion warrants. Its chief venue of organization is not the union hall but the
mosque. Just as Communists infiltrated unions in the '20s and '30s in an attempt
to take over organized labor, the Islamists, with financial and logistical help
from their Saudi backers, have taken control of mosques throughout the West and
elsewhere, as well as seized control of education from the Middle East to
Pakistan.

What people in the West are just beginning to understand is that there is an
intimate relationship between the political, the religious and the cultural in
Islam. The mosque is not only the prayer house. It is also a political seat. The
imam preaching to the faithful can offer a homily not only on the Koran but
exhort his listeners to political action - often violent. It is no accident that
crowds stirred up by Muslim preachers have gone on rampages, that some of the
most hate-filled anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Semitic venom has been
preached from the pulpits - including those in Europe and the U.S.A.. Muslim
"charity" may just as soon give a portion of its funds to weapons for Al Qaeda
as for a hospital. The denial of where the money goes is disingenuous.

Americans presume that our religion does not conflict with our obligations as
citizens but, as with Communism, this is not the presumption of Islamism, whose
adherents are obedient to a higher loyalty which is inimical to our national
interests. To the extent that Islam is a private religion in which man struggles
on a spiritual quest to follow the ways of God, it is a great and beautiful
faith. But when it becomes political and strident, it can become dangerous,
subversive and threatening and, in this public, ideological mode, it cannot hide
behind the skirts of religious tolerance.

The critical difference between Communism and Islam in the West - at least at
this stage, is that while the labor movement and the moderate Left eventually
united to speak out unequivocally against the Communists, expose their lies and
ultimately defeat them, we have yet to see the Muslim Orwell emerge who will
stand up to the Islamists. By way of excuse, we are told that clerics fear
assassination or losing their power base or being seen as appeasers of the West.
But principled men of all faiths have always been willing to run risks to bear
witness against evil and we should expect no less from Muslim spiritual leaders.
A more likely explanation is that too many of them sympathize with the methods
of the terrorists. If the Muslim clerisy lacks the moral strength to confront
terror perhaps it must come from the secular ranks. But here too, we find a
void. If only a small minority of Muslims support Al Qaeda than why doesn't the
moral majority issue a round denunciation of terrorism - all terrorism - in
unequivocal terms.

The Muslim community has been quite vocal in asserting its civil rights but
strangely quiet in supporting the U.S. war effort against a regime that we now
see suppressed fellow Muslims. Why? When it comes to standing up for America
against a remorseless foe, the Muslim leadership - so vociferous in asserting
Palestinian rights - seems to have lost its voice. It may be that in recent
years the Islamists have seized the reins of Muslim organizations in this
country, achieving what the Communists never succeeded in doing. Currently it
appears that they have taken over a good chunk of the mosques, they have
commandeered too many of the Muslim student organizations and they have
virtually silenced any serious opposition from within the Muslim community.
Muslims must ask themselves why is it that they complain (validly) about
American support of non-democratic states in Egypt and Saudi Arabia but are
silent about non-democratic states in Iraq, Syria and Libya or Syrian occupation
of Lebanon. Why do we hear nothing from the American Muslim community about
support for the democratic movement in Iran which, despite the oppression of the
mullahs, has the support of three-quarters of the nation's voters?

In Europe, there is a virtual hatred of the West preached in mosques from London
to Cologne. Why, as an American, a Jew, a Westerner, should I find this
reassuring? And why should I be welcoming to the people who preach it, who
clearly seek my own physical destruction as well as that of everything I stand
for? Must I convert to Islam and have my wife and daughter don chadors in order
to appease them? Until I see a widespread movement among American (and hopefully
other) Muslims to unequivocally reject the tenets of Islamism - which means ALL
forms of violence, no excuse, no justification, no extenuating cir***stances, I
will mistrust their motives and their disclaimers. At this point, one must
choose sides, and qualifications for terror and rationales for murder is
choosing the wrong one.

When Imam Abdul Omar Rahman issues a fatwa saying that it is the duty of every
Muslim to re-conquer every meter of Islamic land lost to the infidel, he is
unfortunately well within the tradition of Islam where Muhammad's last words on
jihad were that struggle against the infidel was permanent and truce was
temporary for tactical reasons. That a "truce'' can last for a long time does
not reassure me. What does it say about negotiations for a Palestinian state? If
all of the Holy Land is an Arab trust for Islam then Muslims are, sooner or
later, obligated to destroy the Jewish state and, if so, why should Israel make
any concessions? We are not talking about rearranging the borders of Hungary and
Romania, or carving a new state out of a neighboring one with appropriate
political arrangements; we are talking about a religious obligation to
annihilate another nation with the probability that most of its five million
inhabitants would be butchered in a new Holocaust - which also has a precedent
in the expulsion and despoliation of the Jewish tribes from the Hijaz in
Muhammed's time. Are American Muslims ready to sign aboard for this? What are
the implications of their exhortations for "fairness'' in the Middle East. What
is "even-handed'' about vitiating Israel's strength until it is vulnerable to
overwhelming Arab numbers? And why in the world should Israel - after Yasser
Arafat at Camp David rejected its offer of 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza
and control of Arab Jerusalem as well as Muslim holy sites - now permit in
Jerusalem a regime in thrall to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, pledged to Israel's
destruction?

Muslims in the West - and, for that matter, everywhere - will have to decide
whether the holy obligation to reclaim Islamic land applies to Andalusia
(al-Andaluz) and much else of Spain, France up to Tours, large chunks of Sicily
and the Balkans to the gates of Vienna. And they must ask themselves, is the
decision not to do so (if they so decide) arrived at because it is impracticable
or immoral? The difference is critical. Such revanchist schemes may seem like
madness but no less so than flying two airplanes into the World Trade Center.
Chillingly Muslim extremists have already openly discussed a takeover of
America. The fact that they are living a fantasy does not gainsay that some of
them, with a net of supporters, are prepared to use violent means to advance
their millennial aims.

There is certainly enough intolerance to go around in many religions. Judaism
has its zealots, but they are marginalized in the West and are not the driving
force in Israel, much less running the country which is still overwhelmingly
secular and democratic. When Baruch Goldstein kills 29 Arabs in a mosque he is
reviled by most of the Jewish community, not cheered as are the suicide bombers
by the Arab street. At a West Bank university, Palestinian students set up an
exhibition devoted to the grisly fruits of terror bombings, presenting
"displays" of severed limbs and spattered Jewish blood. This could not have been
done without the collusion of the Palestinian Authority. It is in keeping with
its fostering suicide-bomber summer camps for children and using terror as a
political tool. What kind of government can allow such things, and how can it
possibly be considered a serious partner for peace? How can it be trusted to
keep any peace?

Christianity fought almost two centuries of religious wars before an exhausted
Europe was finally ready for tolerance. Islam has experienced schism, faction
and sects but not a true Reformation. Worse still, it missed out on a Radical
Enlightenment, withdrawing to tradition, piety and obscurantism at the very mome
nt that the West was flowering with the political, commercial, social and
technological benefits of both the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Little
wonder then that Islam lost the ensuing footrace for supremacy. Since then,
Islam has coveted the wealth and power of the West without being willing to
accept the pluralism, tolerance, critical mindset and democracy that has made it
possible. Arab states complain of being exploited by the West but refuse to
accept their own cultural responsibility in falling behind. Asian states also
endured colonial rule. But in Asia, nations from India to South Korea to Taiwan
have all managed to achieve democracy and a degree of prosperity while Arab
states still wallow in corruption, poverty and tyranny. Blaming their failures
on the West, or on the existence of Israel, is a lame excuse that has gotten
ever-fewer buyers and, in any case, won't solve the problems of the people who
live in these countries.

All monotheistic religions to some degree believe in the uniqueness of their own
revelation, without which the foundation of faith that supports their belief
would crumble. But in the modern world, most of the great religions have
preached tolerance and the possibility that God may manifest His design to
different faiths in different ways. The exception is Islam. Listen to the
exhortations of Muslim preachers and their lay followers - who are forthright in
asserting their beliefs - and we hear repeatedly the mantra that Islam is God's
final revelation, His last word to mankind. We are all inherently Muslims even
if we don't know it and it is for our own salvation that this discovery of our
innate Muslimhood should be brought out. Infidels must be humbled. Friendship
with them is forbidden. Like Communism, Islam offers its adherents an entire
social fabric, a complete meaning for the world, man's place in it and human
destiny. It is comforting and inclusive to its adherents. But to those outside
its circle, it appears unf****ving, contemptuous at best, intolerant at worst. F
or a Westerner to convert to Islam is a matter of private choice. For a Muslim
to convert to another faith is a capital crime in nations ruled by strict
Sharia. Think only of the aid workers in Afghanistan who were imprisoned and
faced death before being rescued from the Taliban. And the local Afghans who may
have been receptive to Christian teaching would have also faced a grim fate. No
one would think twice about establishing a mosque in Rome, but imagine what
would happen if someone attempted to build a church in Saudi Arabia. The idea of
land being holy, starting with the Hijaz, moving to Jerusalem and then extending
out to any territory that was once Muslim land, explains the impetus driving the
attempts to re-conquer places like Kashmir and Chechnya, not as national quests
but as sacred duties.

What is hard for us in the West to grasp is that after three centuries of
imperial, national colonial, class, ethnic and cold wars - all fought for
material goals after the worldwide triumph of secularism - we are now in a
religious war, a throwback that the world has not seen on a global basis since
the 17th century. It is a religious war that is intertwined with politics and
masked by the appurtenances of modernity but at its heart, it is driven by an
atavistic belief in a struggle to conquer an infidel culture that has humiliated
Islam - the one true faith - for too long. And if you are armed with the only
truth, then it is indeed your obligation to bring it to everyone else, by words
if possible, by the sword if necessary. Anyone who opposes you, must be doing
the devil's work and is therefore fair game for destruction. It is no accident
that America is called "The Great Satan," because that is exactly the way the
mullahs perceive us. We are not an imperial overlord, or an economic oppressor;
we are a demonic force for evil, that must be opposed with any means at hand.
This sense of America as the wicked "other" is driven by religious conviction,
which is what inspires the dedication of the Islamists and doubtless flutters
the hearts of other Muslims who may be too timid to take up arms but feel a glow
in contributing to their purchase. I find it hard to believe the disclaimers of
many of the imams that President Bush trotted up to the national dais, who
represented groups that themselves were supporting and apologizing for terrorist
groups until Sept. 11.

Because America separates church and state, we assume conversely that all faiths
do the same. But in Islam, the political and the religious are one, tied
together in a single smooth tapestry. One explains the other, one justifies the
other. Muhammed was not only a religious leader but a political one. He sought
and held power. In America, people are free to believe, or not, as they choose.
We encourage religious diversity and respect political dissent. To the extent
that a religious institution exists as a place for an individual to make a
private profession of faith, it is protected by the Bill of Rights. But when a
mosque through its imam becomes an adjunct to a terror plot, as was the case
with the first bombing of the World Trade Center, it is no longer a sanctuary.
When it is the source of exhortations to commit mayhem, it forfeits the rights
to be treated like one. Not that clerics of all faith don't discuss public
issues from the pulpit, but in Islam it is intrinsic and, given the rise of
Islamicist proselytizing, an ideology that is inimical not only to the security
of the West, but to its very idea. I am not sure that it is possible for Islam
to extract the political from the spiritual, but until there is some separation
of church and state, public and private, zealotry and tolerance, I fear that the
mosque will be seen by most Americans like myself as a source of subversion and
separation, a barrier that prevents the full integration of Muslims into Western
society. It will be up to them to find a way to embrace both the duties of the
heart and that of the citizen. Until they do, my Islamic problem and, more
importantly, their Islamic problem, won't go away.

Jack Schwartz is a longtime New York newspaper editor.

logos

After the bomb of Najaf, the virus of Islamophobia is aggressing also
many muslims!

Logos

ray hardy

<snipped for brevity only> That was an excellent read - I'm more than sure
that it made sense to the majority of readers - but for reasons that have
been articulated in the article itself - it's not allowed to sink in to the
Muslim mind - I tend to think that 'Islam' is pepetuated by what one would
call 'mass hypnosis' we have evidence of this in the many rituals that they
feel absolutely obligated to perform, and if they are not performed then (in
their mind) the whole edifice (of Islam) would crumble to dust. The Islamic
religion does not rest on faith but only of rituals. Which just about sums
up.