Posted on 09/01/2007 5:24:11 AM PDT by Clive
As another anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington approaches it can be said no other subject during this period has been discussed as widely as Islam and Muslims.
Yet much about both remains clouded.
The Muslim world is not a monolith, and Muslim understanding of their faith-tradition -- Islam -- in lacking a centre analogous to the Vatican, remains widely dispersed.
The differences among Muslims on how the Koran should be read and Islam practised reach back to the earliest years of Muslim history and have been the source of much internal conflict. These differences are compounded by the convulsions in varying degrees the Muslim world is experiencing presently from the effects of the fast moving global economy.
The internal conflicts among Muslims were of little concern to others until very recently. Since Sept. 11, 2001, understanding the Muslim world's internal map has become vital to the West for its own security interests.
Muslims ethnically are a diverse people, and Islam is no more an Arab religion than Christianity is a Jewish heresy. More than 80% of over one billion Muslims are non-Arabs, and most Muslims are located in south and southeast Asia.
Muslims in Indonesia, India, Turkey and Malaysia, for instance, are citizens of countries in varying degrees democratic and embracing of the modern world.
Muslims in India have shown how Islam is not less adaptive to democracy than Christianity and Judaism, and a recent delegation of senior Muslim religious leaders from India reciprocated the visit of Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger in a significant gesture by journeying to Israel.
Turkey was an ally of the West through the Cold War, fought alongside Americans in Korea, and is a strategic partner with Israel.
Abdurrahman Wahid, former democratically elected president of Indonesia and head of the world's largest Muslim organization -- Nahdatul Ulama -- is an outspoken friend of the West, Israel, Jews and Christians.
It is mostly the Arab world including Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where religious extremism and political tyranny in a volatile mix have reduced the greater Middle East into a political wasteland, and the internal quarrels of a broken civilization most acute here have spilled over into Europe and beyond.
Saudi Arabia is the Muslim world's heart of darkness, though the clout from oil-income gives the Saudis an undeserved influence among the majority Sunni Muslims.
Three decades of Saudi cult of Wahhabism -- considered until lately by most Muslims as bigotry and ignorance of desert nomads -- preached in mosques and religious schools across the Muslim world, including Muslim enclaves in the West, have taken its toll.
Saudi bigotry financed by oil-wealth has pushed a large segment of the Muslim population on a reverse course of violence and fanaticism directed against the modern world and Muslims who seek to be reconciled with it.
SAUDI BIGOTRY
The full effect of Saudi bigotry and Iranian Shiite fanaticism is on display in Iraq, the Muslim land most broken by tyranny. Here the quarrel between tyranny and freedom is fully unmasked.
The convulsions inside the Muslim world are no longer a local affair. And the world's awakening to the perils of Muslim quarrels has made many in the West aware that defeating Muslim extremism is as vital for their security as helping Muslims make the transition to the modern world.
Salim Mansur ping.
Radical Muslims will kill you, while moderate muslims sit back and watch it happen.
Pardon me noumenon if I misquoted, but I think I got the essence.
Excellent article. Thank you.
That’s an excellent comment from noumenon. Summarizes the situation perfectly. Thanks for posting it.
This war had broken out in the following way. It had always been the custom in Lilliput, as far back as history went, for people when breaking an egg at breakfast to do so at the big end. But it had happened, said the Chief Secretary, that the present King’s grandfather, when a boy, had once when breaking his egg in the usual way, severely cut his finger. Whereupon his father at once gave strict commands that in future all his subjects should break their egg at the small end.
This greatly angered the people, who thought that the King had no right to give such an order, and they refused to obey. As a consequence no less than six rebellions had taken place: thousands of the Lilliputians had had their heads cut off, or had been cast into prison, and thousands had fled for refuge to Blefuscu, rather than obey the hated order.
These “Big-endians,” as they were called, had been very well received at the Court of Blefuscu, and finally the Emperor of that country had taken upon himself to interfere in the affairs of Lilliput, thus bringing on war.
The Chief Secretary ended the talk by saying that the King, having great faith in Gulliver’s strength, and depending on the oath which he had sworn before being released, expected him now to help in defeating the Blefuscan fleet.
Sounds familiar, eh?
I trust none of them and none means none.
"The Bosnian conflict of 1992 to 1995 has been largely misrepresented in the West . . . until now. In Unholy Terror, John R. Schindler—professor of strategy at the Naval War College and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer—reappraises the war in Bosnia, illuminating its pivotal role in the development of radical Islamic terrorism."
"The long hidden truth is that Bosnia played the same role for al-Qa’ida in the 1990s that Afghanistan did in the 1980s, providing a battleground where mujahidin could learn to wage holy war. Schindler exposes how Osama bin Laden exploited the Bosnian conflict for his own ends and the disturbing level of support the U.S. government gave to the Bosnian mujahidin—just as had been done with the Afghan mujahidin. Repeating the mistakes of Afghanistan contributed to blowback of epic proportions: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (the mastermind of 9/11) and two of the 9/11 hijacker pilots were veterans of the Bosnian jihad."
"Unholy Terror is a compelling and meticulously researched step toward finally learning the lessons of Bosnia, which can only help in the continuing battle against Muslim extremists and their global jihad."
I disagree that it’s an excellent article, and here’s why.
We MUST understand it? Am I right?
Sorry. I don’t want to understand it. I only need to understand that cobras are deadly to give me enough sense that I don’t go and jump into a snake pit full of cobras. The incessant ME ME ME - UNDERSTAND ME - SEE ME - TOUCH ME - FEEL ME crap is not going to do a single thing to make them stop blowing themselves up on buses.
In fact I would argue that it emboldens them.
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There is no “innocent Islam”. The mothers of suicide bombers are complicit. Their neighbors are complicit. Their brothers and sisters, wives, their Holy men and political leaders.
They are ALL complicit.
Me understanding them isn’t gonna make them stop blowing up subways.
Only when they themselves understand that the only way to fit into a global civilization and have any credibility at all is to stop will they stop.
And I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
I didn’t realize that big-endian vs. little-endian went so far back beyond digital computers.
Spot on djf.
I don’t want to understand Islam either.
Be it through our genetic makeup or divine gift from our Creator, every person has been endowed with the instinct for self preservation and the protection of family. A part of that instinct is distrust of those who are recognized as being different, a stranger. A fundamental part of this is the inborn ability to profile and assign risk. This ability is as fundamental as the fight or flight response needed to stay alive. It is liberals, lawyers and an environment of political correctness that wants us to ignore what our Creator has told us to beware of.
You statement that you wouldn’t jump into a pit of cobras it a super analogy that I agree with.
Gee, I'm clear as a bell about these two things
Islam: moon god death cult that needs to be de-radicalized
Muslim: 99.9% are cowards and enablers
Did I miss something?
Well, as I have said on other threads:
RELIGION has to do with mans relationship to God
POLITICS has to do with mans relationship to other men and governments
ISLAM is a Political system MASQUERADING as a religion.
That’s what we truly need to understand.
I understand them all to well. You invade my space and I say, “Say hello to my little friend”....
That’s pretty much it. The corrollary, of course, is that there really are no ‘moderate’ sons of Mohammed.
Our leaders refusal to see Islam for what it is will be the death or enslavement of us all. Hard truth.
“Did I miss something?”
Nope. But I would add that the only thing these miscreants understand is force. We need to “talk” in that language in spades!
I distrust every single one of them.
This is where the article lost me.
Muslims of all stripes failed to denounce IN A VERY PUBLIC WAY all acts of terrorism and remain complicit to this day.
I'm left to conclude all muslims are an immediate or future threat to my family and way of life.
It would also appear we are in a very dangerous holding pattern. They are going to strike us again. When they do, what happens next? Will we continue to call them a religion of peace or will we finally accurately reclassify muslims as a death cult chartered by the Koran which is very specific about separating all non-believers heads from their bodies.
Is it time to ban Islam from the US, raise all mosques and uninstall the footbaths?
Right!! There isn't a single Islamic country that allows freedom of religion. Convert from Islam, and you die. There's the monolith.
I absolutely disagree with you. Not gonna debate you though. I’ll just keep posting my view. Most of the world’s Muslims are peaceful and harbor no extraordinary ill will toward the US. Most American Muslims are good Americans who have been assimilating here for over a hundred years.
I take direct aim at the radicals. Kill ‘em all. But I reject the irrational fear mongering aimed at most Muslims.
How many hundreds or thousands of American Muslims are now serving in our armed forces? How many are fighting now in Iraq or Afghanistan?
Are they your enemy too?
(You needn’t answer. It’s a rhetorical question. I think I already know how you and some of the other posters here would answer.)
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