Posted on 09/08/2004 5:58:48 PM PDT by neverdem
BEIRUT, Sept 8 — The brutal school siege in Russia, with hundreds of children dead and wounded, has sparked an unusual round of self-criticism and introspection in the Muslim and Arab world.
"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched Al-Arabiya satellite television station wrote in one of the most striking of these commentaries.
Writing in the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Mr. Rashed said it was "shameful and degrading" that not only were the Beslan hijackers Muslims, but also the murderers of Nepalese workers in Iraq, the attackers of residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar, Saudi Arabia, the women believed to have blown up two Russian airplanes last week and Osama bin Laden himself.
"The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim," he wrote. "What a pathetic record. What an abominable `achievement.' Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?"
Mr. Rashed, like several other commentators, singled out Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a senior Egyptian cleric living in Qatar who broadcasts an influential program on Al Jazeera television and who has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for the killing of American and foreign "occupiers" in Iraq, military and civilian.
"Let us contemplate the incident of this religious Sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians," he wrote. "How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?"
Mr. Rashed recalled that in the past, leftists and nationalists in the Arab world were considered a "menace" for their adoption of violence, and the mosque was a "haven" of "peace and reconciliation" by contrast.
"Then came the Neo-Muslims," he said. "An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry."
A columnist for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyassa, Faisal al-Qina'I, also took aim at Sheikh Qaradawi. "It is saddening," he wrote, "to read and hear from those who are supposed to be Muslim clerics, like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others of his kind, that instead of defending true Islam they encourage these cruel actions and permit decapitation, hostage-taking and murder."
In Jordan, a group of Muslim religious figures, meeting with the religious affairs minister, Ahmed Heleil, issued a statement today saying the seizing of the school and subsequent massacre was dedicated to distorting the pure image of Islam.
"This terrorist act contradicts the principles of our true Muslim religion and its noble values," the statement said.
Writing in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, a columnist, Bater Wardam, noted a propensity in the Arab world to "place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists and the American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case."
"They came from our midst," he wrote of those who had kidnapped and murdered civilians in Iraq, blown up commuter trains in Spain, turned airliners into bombs and shot the children in Ossetia.
"They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils and call for the defense of Islamic causes. Therefore we must all raise our voices, disown them and oppose all these crimes."
In Beirut, Rami G. Khouri wrote in the Daily Star that while most Arabs "identified strongly and willingly" with armed Palestinian or Lebanese guerrillas fighting Israeli occupation, "all of us today are dehumanized and brutalized by the images of Arabs kidnapping and beheading foreign hostages."
Calling for a global strategy to reduce terror, he traced what he called "this ugly trek" in the Arab world to "the home-grown sense of indignity, humiliation, denial and degradation that has increasingly plagued many of our young men and women."
A Palestinian columnist, Hassan al-Batal, wrote in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Ayyam that the "day of horror in the school" should be designated an international day for the condemnation of terrorism. "There are no mitigating circumstances for the inhuman horror and the height of barbarism" at the school, he wrote.
In Egypt, the semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram called the events "an ugly crime against humanity."
In Saudi Arabia, newspapers tightly controlled by the government — which finds itself under attack from Islamic fundamentalists — were even more scathing.
Under the headline "Butchers in the Name of Allah," a columnist in the government daily Okaz, Khaled Hamed al-Suleiman, wrote that "the propagandists of Jihad succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam.
"They turned today's Islam into something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians and exploding people. They have fixed the image of Muslims in the eyes of the world as barbarians and savages who are not good for anything except slaughtering people," he wrote, adding:
"The time has come for Muslims to be the first to come out against those interested in abducting Islam in the same way they abducted innocent children. This is the true Jihad these days and this is our obligation, as believing Muslims, towards our monotheistic religion."
So They Debate Child Killing ..???????????
F U
Achmed
This is how it has to change.
The "arab world" must be thick between the ears, not to have questioned the actions of Muslim radical Terrorist before this.
You can turn all the clerics and other bad guys over to us for starters....and when we're finished, we'll give them to the Russians.
The New York times gets it wrong every single time!
These are the same middle-eastern Arabs that have celebrated non-stop every time Israel's children, mothers and grandmothers have been targeted. They party in the streets when Israel's kids get hit, they partied in the streets when we got hit.
Stop the terrorism Islamo Facists. Just stop killing the children and their parents. If you want to re-enter the human race, walk the walk.
No, the Arab world is not thick headed. They are Islamists. That should say it all. The free-world should and must rise up and confront them without mercy, otherwise it will continue unabated.
I think they see the storm clouds on the horizon if they don't change. There is nothing that says we HAVE to strike surgically. We can lay waste to vast areas much more easily than fighting a PC war, and it will be their children who will die, not ours.
They're not questioning a thing. They're shaking in their boots because they know Russia doesn't play by PC rules.
If they were questioning something, they'd question the targeting of children anywhere, even in Israel.
This is nothiing but propaganda for public consumption, and the New York Times is just slimey enough to help out gleefully for free.
I would say that the NY Times is only worth using as toilet paper, but I wouldn't want to insult toilet paper.
A few may finally be getting the message that their very survival is dependant upon their "policing their own" to some extent.
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Just remember why there are no Arabs on the Enterprise (Star Trek).
Duh.
Not to mention the fact that they are looking at a potential U.S.-Russian alliance. And we know what happened to fascists the last time these two countries got together!
Anyone have any examples of the "pure image of Islam"? Anyone?
{crickets chirping}
Yeah...me neither.
Make that the United States, Russia and Israel...
Suddenly the picture comes into focus hugh. I hope Bush plays this for all it's worth with Russia.
I'd develop a whole new policy with regard to foreign relations including commerce, terrorism and enhanced mutual respect to keep Russia plugged in to this reality.
I'm sure it doesn't escape many people's attention, that this is an excellent answer to China's adolescence.
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