What I expect from American Muslims

An insidious, monstrous criminal atrocity has been committed against our country. There's now little doubt that this barbaric act was committed by fanatical Muslims as part of a jihad against the 'Great Satan' America. In the aftermath, we are treated to platitudinous and largely unnecessary calls for Americans to exercise 'restraint' and not take out our anger against other Americans who happen to be of the same religious extraction as the maniacs who perpetrated this act. These calls for restraint could be made unnecessary if American Muslims would simply do the following...

Convene a very public, nationally televised 'town hall' meeting of Muslim clerics and high-ranking officials with in their communities around the country. Within this public forum, allow presenter after presenter to state unequivocably that they:

1. Decry the dastardly attack on the World Trade Centers in no uncertain terms.

2. Declare to be false and pernicious the notion that a murderous, suicidal death leads one's soul to heaven. State in no uncertain terms that this teaching is contrary to true Islam.

3. Renounce the use of terroist violence to achieve political ends, and call for ALL foreign governments to do the same.

4. State publicly that they support the right of the United States to wage war against those nations and groups which harbor and abet terrorism whether they be Muslim or otherwise.

5. Put forth a dire warning to the terrorist cells that may be in their midst that Muslim-Americans will not think twice about turning these perfidious scoundrels over to the US government.

6. Mention that any public celebration of these attacks by Muslim-Americans is a deplorable act which harms not only the Muslim community, but America as a whole.

What I don't want to hear in relation to this is one single word about:

1. How this would never have happened if the US didn't support Israel.

2. How our 'imperialist' oppression of Arab nations brought on this attack.

3. Any kind of justification for terrorist barbarism.

Individual statements along these lines have surfaced here and there, but until the Muslim community as a whole does this in a very public fashion, I will have to view them with some suspicion. The mere fact that we haven't seen more of these kinds of statements indicates to me (and I hope I'm wrong on this) that there is decent amount of clandestine approval of the attack within the Muslim-American community...

#173: "Reasoned discussion does not address emotional sensationalism and paranoia. Perhaps Ritalin or Prozac contains your answers."

The useful idiots (blind followers of glib, cynical opportunists) who only believe what they WANT TO BELIEVE aren't capable of engaging in "reasoned discussion"; they can't face "reality".

I hope you don't fall into one of those two catagories.

We'll find out. Do you agree with this terrorist expert's assessment of REALITY (whose commentary I'm posting below), or will you arrogantly prescribe your mind-altering, reality suspending medicine for him, too?

TERRORISM AND THE GLOBAL CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

By Louis Rene Beres - Freeman Center for Strategic Studies - 1 October 2001

Terrorism, to be sure, is America's overriding problem for the immediate future. But terrorism is not really our underlying problem. It is rather the palpably barbarous tactic of a methodically planned and determinedly apocalyptic war. Directed initially against Israel and the United States, this fevered attack will soon spread - perhaps uncontrollably - to large cities in Europe and possibly even to various parts of Asia.

This war is a sustained and forseeably catastrophic Arab/Islamic assault against the West,a civilizational struggle in which a resurgent medievalism now seeks to bring fear, paralysis and death to "unbelievers."

It goes without saying that an overwhelming number of Muslims throughout the world are uninvolved in this assault, or even tacitly opposed to it (few Muslims will oppose it openly), but many millions of others in many countries are already prepared to enter Paradise by becoming "martyrs." In the next several months, the preferred terrorism tactic in this war is likely to involve chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Our truest war is not against Osama Bin Laden or even the particular Arab/Islamic states that nurture and encourage his program for mass murder. Even if Bin Laden and every other identifiably major terrorist were apprehended and prosecuted in authoritative courts of justice, millions of others in the Arab/Islamic world would not cease their impassioned destruction of ____"infidels____."

These millions, like the monsters who destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon, would not intend to do evil. On the contrary, they would mete out death to innocents for the sake of a presumed divine expectation, prodding the killing of Israelis, Americans and Europeans with utter conviction and complete purity of heart.

Sanctified killers, these millions would generate an incessant search for more ___"Godless"___ victims. Though mired in blood, their search would be tranquil and self-assured, born of the knowledge that its perpetrators were neither evil nor infamous, but heroic and "sacrificial."

For those millions engaged in an Arab/Islamic war against the West, violence and the sacred are always inseparable. To understand the rationale and operation of current terrorism against the United States, including the September 11th attacks, it is first necessary to understand these conceptions of the sacred. Then, and only then, will it become clear that Arab/Islamic terror against the United States is, at its heart, a manifestation of religious worship known as "sacrifice."

This is the truest meaning of Arab/Islamic terrorism against our country. It is a form of sacred violence oriented toward the sacrifice of both enemies and martyrs. It is through the purposeful killing of Americans, any Americans, that the Holy Warrior embarked upon Jihad can buy himself free from the penalty of dying. It is only through such cowardly killing, and not through diplomacy, that ___"Allah's" will may be done___.

When America has understood that terrorism is only a tactic, and that it is a tactic related to Islamic sacrifice, it will be able to confront a particularly lethal enemy, one that already has within its capabilities the capacity to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of American men, women and children.

Until now, this is an understanding that has lent itself to insubstantial theorizing. Now, immediately, Arab/Islamic terrorism should be recognized, at least in part, as a bloody and sacred act of mediation between sacrificers and their deity.

America is now routinely characterized as a "cancer" in the Arab/Islamic world. A recent article from an Egyptian newspaper speaks of "the cancer, the malignant wound, in the body of Arabism, for which there is no cure but eradication." Such references are far more than a vile metaphor. They are profoundly theological descriptions of a despised enemy that must be excised, that is, "liquidated." Where this "liquidation" would be accomplished by self-sacrifice, possibly even terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, it would be life-affirming for the killers. Naturally, some Arab/Islamic governments and movements would deny such end-of-the-world thinking, but it operates nonetheless.

What is to be done? The truth of the terrorist threat to the United States is vastly more grotesque than what is commonly understood. We face suicidal mass killings with unconventional weapons in the future not because there exists a small number of pathological murderers, but because we are embroiled - however unwittingly - in an authentic clash of civilizations. While we all wish it weren't so, wishing will get us nowhere. Our only hope is to acknowledge the true source of our now existential danger, and proceed to fight the real war from there.~

LOUIS RENE BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is author of many books and articles dealing with terrorism and war. Professor Beres was recently appointed Academic Advisor for the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies.

TERRORISM AND THE GLOBAL CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

BTTT

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