Posted on 03/14/2006 2:16:32 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
"Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.
That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.
Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the Los Angeles Times that he “was a serious student, shy but friendly.” One fellow student, Brian Copeland, “was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding “He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent.” The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if “totally a loner, introverted and into himself.”
In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Taheri-azar’s post-arrest remarks offer some clues.
· He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to “punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”
· He explained to a detective that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States[’] turn to be killed.”
· He said he acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
· He portrayed his actions as “an eye for an eye.”
· A police affidavit notes that “Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States Government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack.”
· He told a judge, “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.”
In brief, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It’s not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.
Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?
This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.
This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.
The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the “new antisemitism,” or “Islamophobia” is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of “Germanophobia” or anti-Communists of “Russophobia.” Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of “infidels.”
Ping
I think saying all muslims are part of a totalitarian movement and must be considered potential killers is the same as the feminazis saying all men are potential rapists.
There are some well-grounded reasons for mistrust though. Thousands of people marching through the streets shouting "Death to America" is one. Arson and murder over some cartoons is another.
That works for me. It's the most rational deduction.
Also out of the one billion or so out there, only ONE has come out and denounced the violence in a believable manner and now she's getting death threats from her peace-loving brethren.
I don't quite mean the following, but: given all that has transpired in my life by the hands of believing Muslims, it would seem to me that a violent Muslim IS a "normal-appearing Muslim"
Everything I have found about Islam, a Religion of Peace®? ( links, blogs, quips, quotes, astonishing and repugnant pictures ) is located here- click the Pic, and scroll backwards:
Does that "salute" remind you of the "followers of the broken cross?" It should...
...read my links- you won't like what you see.
Islam is at war with non-Muslims everywhere that it comes in contact with them. In the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in the Mideast, in Central Asia, in the Subcontinent, in Southeast Asia, in the East Indies, and all along the African Sahel. Islam preaches war with the West throughout its enclaves in Europe and the Americas and Islam's core tenets are utterly irredeemable by Western standards and utterly irreconcilable with Western values. The problem is not certain Muslims; the problem is Islam altogether as a system of thought. What distinguishes the terrorist Muslims from the rest is that the rest are those who simply go through the motions whereas the terrorists are those who actually enact its core teachings.
This is something that many of us seem to find it hard to accept, but he's absolutely right on this. Unless we bear this in mind, we will be unable to deal realistically with Muslims.
Sorry, but that would call for trashing all their books, all the teachings of their 'prophet' and starting from scratch. Ain't gonna happen.
"Arson and murder over some cartoons is another."
The cartoon jihad was the last straw for me. These people are not, NOT, to be trusted. Who can trust even one of them? Why should we trust any one?
I saw a Muslim women in the supermarket with her two young sons the other day. Nice looking kids, fooling around as boys will do, but not being badly behaved at all. I wanted to just go right up to her and say: Are you raising these boys to be suicide bombers? Do you want them to grow up and kill me?
And I wasn't even in a bad mood or anything.
Sorry Muslims, you've blown your chance, imho. I'll be giving each and every one of you the widest berth possible from here on out. No shopping in your stores, no benefit of the doubt, no respect for your death cult of a religion.
Ann Coulter was right.
I've been not friends but friendly with quite a few Muslims over the last 30 years and the thought that they are sleepers was never far from my mind. At first, I thought it was my own bias but after the events of the past decade, it's hard to tell.
I think that is a silly statement which demonstrates you haven't learned anything from Pipes' piece.
The countries where Mohammedanism prevails are full of religious associations, more or less wrapped in secrecy, which are also political. The oldest of them, the Kadriya, dates from the twelfth century, having been called into existence by the necessity of united counsels in order to make head against the Crusades. The name given to it was that of its founder, the Persian Sidi-abd-el-Kader-el-Djilani, who died at Bagdad in 1166. His disciples speak of him as "The Sultan of {Satan's] Saints".
One of the more recent associations, and a very aggressive one, is that of the Senoussiya, founded by an Algerian, Sheikh Senoussi (d. 1859). In contrast to the exclusive spirit of the other orders, this one has opened its doors to all of them, allowing them to keep their own names, doctrines, usages, and privileges. The rallying principle of this combination is hatred of Christians; it isolates them in anticipation of the uprising which, on the appointed day of the Lord, will drive them out of "the Land of Islam" (dar el Islam, as opposed to dar el harb. "Land of the Infidels", or literally, "Land of the Holy War"). Its motto is: "Turks and Christians, I will break them all with one blow".
Those affiliated to the confraternities are called khouans (brethren) in North Africa; dervishes (poor men) in Turkey and central Asia; fakirs (beggars) in India; mourids (disciples) in Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. Since the conquest of Algeria by the French (1830) the reaction has resulted in an immense development of confraternities in all Mohammedan countries.
Except among the wealthy and sceptical in the great cities, very few Mussulmans escape the infection of this movement, the total membership Estimated at 170,000,000. Leaving aside the excellent administrative and financial organization of the confraternities, we will here discuss only their religious side.
As is well known, at the call of the muezzins (Mullahs) every Mohammedan is bound to recite daily certain prayers at stated hours. The khouans are also bound to follow these prayers with others, peculiar to their association. Among the chief of these is a kind of litany called the dikr (repeated utterance), for which a chaplet is used.
Fundamentally, it is the same for all the orders, but with slight variations, by which the initiated are enabled to recognize each other easily. In general it contains the Mohammedan symbol or Credo: "There is no ilah but Allah" (La ilaha ill' Allah, literally, "No god except Allah"), which is repeated, say a hundred times. Other terse phrases or invocations are added, such as: "Allah sees me", "Allah pardon", part of a verse of the Koran, or names of the Divine attributes, as "O Living One" a hundred times, or simply the syllable Houa (Him).
When the recitation in chorus becomes accelerated, the syllables of La ilaha ill' Allah are gradually reduced to la hou, la ha, la hi, or even hou, ha, hi, or hou-hou. The phrase La ilaha, etc. must be repeated by the Kadriya one hundred sixty-five times after each of the five daily prayers; by the Kerzazya, five hundred times; for the Aissaoua, the daily total of repetitions is thirteen thousand and six hundred.
Many of the confraternities have mystical tendencies, and make it their object to attain, on certain days and during certain moments, a profound union with their god Allah. This union (ittisâl), which is described by the Persian and Hindu sufi of the ninth century, resembles the Nirvana of the Buddhists. It is the annihilation of the personality by the identification (djam or ittihâd) of the subject with Allah.
Sidi-abd-el-Kader-el-Djilani proclaimed that "happiness is in unconsciousness of existence". Sheikh Senoussi defined ecstasy as "the annihilation of a man's individuality in the divine essence" and Abd-el-Karim summed it up in two words, "unconsciousness and insensibility". Such teaching cannot shock Mussulmans, for they venerate madmen as saints, and believe that Allah dwells in empty brains, which explains why they allow demented persons a liberty which, to us, seems excessive.
Sometimes the initiated person endeavours to obtain union with the founder of his order, whom he regards as a superior emanation of the god-head and His all-powerful intermediary. In this way Refaya are made.
As to the method of arriving at this pseudo-ecstatic union: Sufism, which preceded the confraternities, and from which many of them are derived, was content to teach the moral method of renunciation-detachment carried as far as possible. This was the essence of primitive Sufism, which was simply a way (tariqâ), a method of sanctification, not a dogmatic system or an organization. The confraternities added special exercises. The Mussulman thinks there is a physical process which consists in the manner of reciting the dikr in common, and which takes effect especially on Friday, the weekly holy day of Islam.
There are various prescriptions as to how the breath should be held and its respiration prolonged. A more important detail is the exhausting bodily exercise which is enjoined to induce a kind of vertigo or hysterical intoxication, followed either by convulsions or by extreme weakness. Thus, among the Kadriya, the kouans give themselves up to a rhythmical and gradually accelerating swaying of the upper part of the body which superinduces congestion of the cerebro-spinal system. Under the double influence of this purely physical cause and the concentration of all the intellectual faculties upon the same idea, that of the majesty of Allah, the phenomena of religious hysteria are produced in many of the adepts.
The founder had prescribed that the faithful should confine their recitation to "ha, turning the head to the right, hou, turning the head to the left, hi, bowing it, and prolonging each sound as much as the breath permits. It is easy to imagine the effect that may be produced on the most soundly constituted temperament by the repetition of these syllables accompanied with violent movements of the head.
At the present time the Zaheriya go through the same movements with the formula, La ilaha ill' Allah, spoken in one breath, and sometimes as often as twenty-one times without a respiration. The Sarehourdiya, founded in the thirteenth century, repeat an indefinite number of times without interruption the phase La ilaha, etc., while raising the head from the navel to the right shoulder, and thus they fall into a dumb state of unconsciousness. The Zaheriya add the left shoulder. The Nakechabendiya sometimes help the process with opium and similar drugs. Among the Beioumiya the body is bent, at each invocation, down to the waist, while the arms are crossed; they are uncrossed while the body is raised again, and then the hands are clapped together at the level of the face.
Some confraternities deserve special mention for the intense nervous paroxysms attained by their members. First, among the Kheluoatiya, founded in the fourteen century, the members from time to time retire into deep solitude (whence their name, from kheluoa, retreat); thus separated from the world the disciple can communicate with others only by signs or in writing; he fasts from sunrise to sunset and takes only such nourishment as is strictly necessary. By the use of coffee, he reduces his sleep to two or three hours. He recites certain sacred words, such as Houa (Him), Qayyoum (Immutable), Haqq (truth), which have to be repeated from 10,000 to 30,000 times a day, according to the directions of the initiator. The upper eyelid is briskly pressed down on the lower, to produce a titillation of the organ of sight which acts on the optic nerve, and, through it, on the cerebral system. The word Qayyoum is recited, say, 20,000 times, while the disciple sways and bows the head, with closed eyes. The rapidity of repetition cannot exceed once in every second, and the duration of such a prayer is from five to six hours. Supposing that the candidate is given three names to repeat in this way, it must take him eighteen hours a day.
The teachers of the order compare the Kheluoa initiation to a deadly poison when taken in too large doses at first, and which can be assimilated by progressive use. All the members who make frequent retreats, even if the duration is not prolonged, are seriously affected in mind. Emaciated, haggard-eyed, they return to ordinary life still retaining the traces of their harsh trials. An extreme exaltation, then, is the characteristic of this order, and it, more than any other, may be regarded as the focus of an intense fanaticism.
Another very remarkable confraternity is that of the Aïssaoua, founded in the fifteenth century by Sidi-Mohammed-ben-Aïssa. The dikr takes the shape of raucous cries, to the cadence of a muffled music in rapid time. Inclinations of the body down to the hips, increasing in rapidity, accompany each of these cries, or circular movements of the head, which are also calculated to shake the nervous system. The nervous crises thus superinduced are soon expressed in cerebral intoxication and anæsthesia variously localized in different subjects. As these phenomena are progressively recognized by the practiced eye of the presiding sheikh, the khouans, at a given signal, pierce their hands, arms, and cheeks with darts. Others slash their throats, head, back or bellies with sabres. Some crush pieces of glass between their teeth, eat venomous creatures, or chew cactus leaves bristling with thorns. All, one after another, fall exhausted, into a torpor which a touch from the moqaddem (presiding initiator) transforms, in certain cases, into hypnosis.
In another confraternity, that of the Refaya, founded in the twelfth century by Refai, a nephew of Sidi-abd-el-Kader, most of the devotees faint when the hysterical intoxication intervenes; others "eat serpents or live coals, or roll themselves about in burning braziers. They accustom themselves, moreover, to casting themselves down on the points of darts, to piercing their arms and cheeks, and to being trodden under foot by their sheikh.
The howling and the whirling dervishes, who give public exhibitions at Constantinople and Cairo, belong to the Refaya. Their ceremony begins with shouting accompanied by oscillations and leaps keeping time to the beating of drums. "Forming a chain", writes Théophile Gautier, "they produce, from deep down in their chests, a hoarse and prolonged howling: Allah hou! which seems to have nothing of the human voice in it. The whole band, acting under a single impulse, springs forward, simultaneously, uttering a hoarse, muffled sound, like the growling of an angry menagerie, when the lions, tigers, panthers and hyenas think that their feeding-time is being delayed. Then, by degrees, the inspiration comes, their eyes shine like those of wild beasts in the depths of a cave; an epileptic froth comes at the corners of their mouths; their faces become distorted and livid, shining through the sweat; the whole line lies down and rises up under an invisible breath, like blades of wheat under a storm, and still, with every movement, that terrible Allah-hou is repeated with increasing energy. How can such bellowings be kept up for more than an hour without bursting the osseous frame of the breast and spilling the blood out of the broken vessels?" (Constantinople, xii).
The whirling dervishes, founded in the thirteenth century , are Mauolaniya, also called Mevlevis. "They waltz with arms extended, head inclined on the shoulder, eyes half-closed, mouth half-opened, like confident swimmers who are letting themselves be borne away on the stream of ecstasy. . . . Sometimes the h ead is thrown back, showing the whites of their eyes, and lips flecked with alight foam" (Constantinople, xi). At last they fall on their knees, exhausted, face to the earth, until the chief touches them, sometimes having to rub their arms and legs. No beholder, without previous information, would suspect the religious significance of their physical exercises of the howling and whirling dervishes, or that they constitute a process for arriving at union with Allah. In the orders which affect ecstasy, the khouan, on the contrary, is satisfied with the preposterous notion of using violent means to produce physiological effects which bring on intoxication to the point of unconsciousness. The brainwashing starts at a young age in madrassa's where the children are taught to recite the koran chanting endlessly. Who knows when these "nice quiet Muslims" are programed to "go off". At the beck and zall of the Imam I would suspect.
Those murderous freaks aren't going to do any such thing.
At some point, they feel sorry for themselves, persecuted both personally and as a religion...and of course, it's somebody else's fault -- the West, the Great Satan, Israel or all three. The clue seems to be that they feel excluded, alone, separate from society, denied what others have. That this is self-imposed paranoia doesn't matter. They look around, see progress, modernity, vast quantities of everything the Arab world lacks, and they erupt in rage. God (Allah), forbid they blame the obvious suspects: Islam, mullahs, Arab leaders. They tell themselves that 1.8 billion Arabs can't be wrong. Clearly, they are, and we should think of it as a cargo cult gone bad. (The plane that brings goodies from above.)
Things are going to get worse.
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