Posted on 10/14/2001 6:27:20 AM PDT by SlickWillard
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Sunday, October 14, 2001 |
'We're losing the war of ideas," an Arab-American acquaintance told me.
He meant the war to dissuade Arabs and other Muslims from public or private endorsement of Osama bin Laden's call for jihad against America. No matter how many U.S. officials deliver the message that we aren't warring on Islam, it doesn't seem to resonate with Egyptian, or Indonesian, or Pakistani masses.
State-supported Muslim clerics in Egypt or Saudi Arabia may dismiss bin Laden's acts as un-Islamic, but no prominent sheikh goes on al-Jazeera television to counter his call for jihad. No leading Islamic thinkers dial up the Mideast's equivalent of CNN and demand airtime to assail bin Laden's hijacking of Islamic symbols to justify mass murder.
This is terribly disturbing, because bin Laden is assaulting the Muslim faith with the same deadly accuracy as the terrorists did the World Trade Center.
In fact, the war for Muslim hearts and minds isn't ours to win, though we can certainly contribute to the fight. It must be waged within the community of Muslim believers, clerics, intellectuals, scholars. So far most Muslim moderates seem too fearful, or ambivalent, to take bin Laden on.
I've been given a host of explanations why:
One. The Islamic religion has no central authority or religious associations so each preacher in a mosque can say what he wants. But this doesn't explain why prominent Muslim scholars haven't been more vocal.
Two. Extremist groups like bin Laden's have always been marginal to Islam, so there's nothing to worry about. Yes, but such groups have had a powerful influence. Bin Laden appeals for the overthrow of Arab and other Muslim governments and their replacement by regimes of Taliban-like extremism. This should terrify moderate Arabs.
Three. The most popular explanation: Critics can't assault bin Laden's religious blasphemies because he cleverly intertwines them with attacks on U.S. political positions that are widely resented by Muslims. These include U.S. support for Israel, sanctions against Iraq that affect children, and U.S. "occupation" of Saudi Arabia by basing troops there. To this add the often-heard complaint that America supports undemocratic Arab regimes.
"The guy is hitting on all the issues the public cares about," says the University of Maryland's Shibley Telhami, one of the most thoughtful commentators on this issue. "They [the Arab moderates] have no answers. These ideas resonate - it's a message that promises to deliver change."
But whose fault is it that positive change has eluded Arab countries or that fabulous oil wealth has failed to produce progressive regimes? If the United States pulled out of Saudi Arabia and bin Laden took over, would this make the desert kingdom democratic? Would an end to Iraqi sanctions prevent Saddam Hussein from using poison gas against Muslims, as he did against Kurds and Iranians?
As for a Palestinian state - however desirable - will this reverse the reluctance of Arab regimes to relax authoritarian rule and fight corruption? True, the existence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process calmed much of the Mideast region during the 1990s, and created new hopes for economic prosperity. But a Palestinian state will emerge only if the region pushes back the forces of extremist Islam.
Bin Laden's appeal shows that far too many people want to blame their problems on a convenient American scapegoat.
The old ideologies are dead. Pan-Arab nationalism failed, as did the promise of socialism and communism that drew so many bright Arab intellectuals. So no one should be surprised at the appeal of a false prophet who offers yet another ideology, the promise of political Islam.
But the mix of politics and Islam has never succeeded in the modern era. It reached its apex in the Iranian revolution, but the mullahs failed to deliver economic prosperity. Young Iranians have demonstrated overwhelmingly that they want a more modern system.
If bin Laden's variant of political Islam were debated on its merits, its hollowness and immorality would be apparent. But this is a debate that we can only encourage. The real arguments must take place among Muslims themselves.
THat's cuz they like the attack on the US. Of course they distance themselves from OBL- they want to survive the next few years so that they can kill more Americans and get their virgins.
This is war.
This confirms my belief there is no such thing as a "moderate" Muslim. If these people believed what bin Laden is doing is destroying their religion thru hate and murder, they would sign up to rid the world of bin Laden and his henchmen.
They quietly approve of the jihad approach. They are the quiet collaborators.
I agree. Why are they in a country (USA) that allows freedom when their religion is opposed to freedom. America represents the very things that will conflict with what they believe and they are over here to 'practice' their religion?
Islam is a danger to the American way of life and a threat to our consitution.
Islam says that there is no other religion but its own and does not honor anyone that opposes that. Why are they in America? They do not believe the things that America stands for? Why should we allow them stay here and practice Islam which teaches that all ppl are inferior to the Muslims and their thinking.. It seems to me a slow, relentless form of terrorism right in the heart of America.
Osama ...... means roaring lion.
You need to brush up on your Islam, dude:
Medina Suras
The Chapter of Women
[Chapters from the Koran]
The Harvard Classics 1909–14But if there befalls you grace from God, he would say—as though there were no friendship between you and him—‘O would that I had been with thee to attain this mighty happiness!’ Let those then fight in God’s way who sell this life of the world for the next; and whoso fights in God’s way, then, be he killed or be he victorious, we will give him a mighty hire.
What ails you that ye do not fight in God’s way, and for the weak men and women and children, who say, ‘Lord, bring us out of this town 19 of oppressive folk, and make for us from Thee a patron, and make for us from Thee a help?’
Those who believe fight in the way of God; and those who disbelieve fight in the way of Tâghût; fight ye then against the friends of Satan, verily, Satan’s tricks are weak.
Do ye not see those to whom it is said, ‘Restrain your hands, and be steadfast in prayer and give alms;’ and when it is prescribed for them to fight then a band of them fear men, as though it were the fear of God or a still stronger fear, and they say, ‘O our Lord! why hast thou prescribed for us to fight, couldst thou not let us abide till our near appointed time?’ Say, ‘The enjoyment of this world is but slight, and the next is better for him who fears;’—but they shall not be wronged a straw.
... Why are ye two parties about the hypocrites, when God hath overturned them for what they earned? Do ye wish to guide those whom God hath led astray? Whoso God hath led astray ye shall not surely find for him a path. They would fain that ye misbelieve as they misbelieve, that ye might be alike; take ye not patrons from among them until they too flee in God’s way; but if they turn their backs, then seize them and kill them wheresoever ye find them, and take from them neither patron nor help,—save those who reach a people betwixt whom and you is an alliance—or who come to you while their bosoms prevent them from fighting you or fighting their own people. But had God pleased He would have given you dominion over them, and they would surely have fought you. But if they retire from you and do not fight you, and offer you peace,—then God hath given you no way against them.
Ye will find others who seek for quarter from you, and quarter from their own people; whenever they return to sedition they shall be overturned therein: but if they retire not from you, nor offer you peace, nor restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wheresoever ye find them;—over these we have made for you manifest power.
Good article.
I think it also hints at light at the end of the tunnel, especially in the above paragraph.
Arabs have tried and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed to find a path out of their continued social/political/economic/cultural failures. I think the support, and/or lack of vocal opposition to bin Laden and his thugs comes from a sense of, "if it works, what the the hell, we'll overlook the means."
But it also means that if we knock the stuffing out of al Qaeda and make them yet another failed movement, the support for that sort of evil will dry up very quickly and no more groups attempting to raise up Arab countries via terrorism will find any further support.
Then, as in the old saying, "men do the honorable thing once they have exhausted all other possibilities", the Arab world may find it has no other option than to bring their countries into the twenty-first century and the world community the right way -- by adopting the virtuous Western values (tolerance, reason, negotiation, peace, free speech, liberty, democracy, equality) that they have been resisting for so long.
"but if they turn their backs, then seize them and kill them wheresoever ye find them" is not a justification for defensive measures. Indeed, the Koran is not a religious document; it is a blueprint for murder.
You should read it, or at least enough of it to get a sense of where it's headed:
The Harvard Classics Translations of 1909-1914
nicely formatted by the folks at bartleby.comJ.M. Rodwell's 1957 Translationhttp://www.bartleby.com/45/5/
Project Gutenberg
(widely mirrored; these are FTP (not HTTP) mirrors at UNC-Chapel Hill's ibiblio.org)ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext01/koran10.txt (2000)ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02/koran10a.txt (2001)
Maulana Muhammad Ali's 1951 Translation (Second Edition)http://www.muslim.org/cont-islam.htm Rashad Khalifa's 2000 Translation (Second Edition)
http://www.submission.org/quran/
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