Posted on 02/05/2003 6:04:27 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
In the first "Star Wars" film, Ben Kenobi, the old Jedi knight, tells young Luke Skywalker that Darth Vader had given himself over to the dark side of the Force, putting himself in service to the evil Galactic Empire. When seven other "sky walkers," our astronauts, died there were news dispatches about the immediate reaction in Baghdad. The responses reported tell us a lot about the Muslim mind.
"God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. God is avenging us," said a government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi. Noting that Israeli air force Col. Ilan Ramon was among the dead, a car mechanic, Mohammed Jaber al-Tamini, said, "Israel launched an aggression on us when it raided our nuclear reactor without any reason, now time has come and God has retaliated to their aggression."
In London, Abu Hamza al-Masri, a Muslim cleric wanted in Yemen on terror charges related to the bombing of the USS Cole, said that the shuttle's loss was "a sign from God", adding that it represented "a trinity of evil because it carried Americans, an Israeli and a Hindu." It is unwise to dismiss such rabid nonsense too quickly because it reflects a broad base of comparable thought among Muslims determined to harm the United States and other nations.
Let it be said that, among Muslims, there are those who are calling for reform and a re-examination of the old ways of thinking that have kept Muslims from instituting changes in education, in the way they treat women, and in the way they perceive the world. Nor is Islam the same everywhere in the world. In this analysis, the many shades of gray will fade against the necessary judgement of good and evil.
There are surely many good Muslims, but their voices are a tiny minority, vastly overwhelmed by the so-called "Arab street," a name applied to those Muslims for whom the strict interpretation of Wahhabism poses the threat to the Western world.
We know there is cause for fear and cause to destroy this form of Islam. IWahhabism is fostered and paid for by the Saudis. Their fixed goal is to impose this puritanical form of Islam on the world.)
Thus, standing against the voices of modernity is a huge psychological wall of resistance. It is to be found in the hundreds of thousands of mosques and madrasses that teach nothing more than the word of the Koran, a book held to be holy and immutable by Muslims. In Middle Eastern nations in particular, their most formative years are determined by the mastery of the Koran.
For the true believer, the Muslim's world is bounded by strict laws requiring their submission to the dictates of the Koran and the Hadith, the traditions based on interpretations of Mohammed's life and its meaning for the way life must be lived.
When there is any doubt of interpretation, a Muslim asks a local Koranic cleric.
Life is not lived outside of the Koran and, for those outside of Islam who have read it, the Koran in effect authorizes almost any act of barbarity done in the name of Allah. It draws its dictates from the seventh century world of desert tribes, constantly at war with one another, a world of slaves, concubines, and booty.
This is why educated Saudis and others could commandeer four commercial airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and attempt to do the same with either the Capitol Building or the White House. Nothing in their knowledge and experience of the modern world kept them from their "sacred" mission. Nothing short of extreme vigilance will deter others who share their beliefs.
Over and over again, Muslims are reassured that their pathetic position in the world will be reversed by the will of Allah. "Don't be sad, Allah is with us." When Europe is conquered, India will be next, and so on. A Sudanese Sheik, preaching in Khartoum, told his followers, "The Prophet said that the Muslims would take India, saying 'Allah saved two groups of my nation from the fire of Hell: one group that attack India and a second group that would be with Jesus the son of Mary (in the battle of Judgement Day)." To this day, India remains divided between its Hindu and Muslim populations and threatened by Muslim Pakistan, a nation carved out to be a homeland for the Muslims who fled India when it gained independence.
As Daniel Pipes, one of the leading authorities on Islam, has written, "While most Muslims are not Islamists, all Islamist terrorists are Muslims. Islamic terrorists do not appear spontaneously, but emerge from a milieu of religious sanction, intellectual justification, financial support and organizational planning."
That is why, despite official denials, we are engaged in a religious war and it frankly does not matter whether we wage it in Afghanistan or Iraq, Iran or Indonesia or here in America.
Everything about the American character and creed opposes the kind of scrutiny and actions that must be taken to protect our nation against the handful of Islamic fanatics capable of wholesale mass murder in the name of Allah. Everything about our culture resists having to make war far from our home to bring about an end to a Muslim mindset that justifies killing Americans because we are Americans.
It is this Muslim mindset that has made it impossible to achieve any kind of peace in Israel, a nation that rose from the ashes of the European Holocaust that deliberately killed six million Jews in the last century, gathering them in from the conquered nations of that continent for slaughter. For fifty-four years, the Israelis have striven to find a measure of peace with the Arabs within and beyond their borders. Now they wage their own war to secure their lives against an implacable enemy. Their enemy is our enemy.
This is the new Crusade. It is a war against the Dark Side of Islam, Wahhabism - a religion based on conquest by the sword or any other means.
(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center.)
Alan Caruba
Wake Up! Islam Is About More Than Hate Crimes
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: January 29, 2003; Author: Paul M. WeyrichHow the Saudis betrayed Islam (Book Review)
Source: Globebooks; Published: January 25, 2003; Author: Paul William RobertsLondon Muslim Cleric Urges Boys to Be Martyrs
Source: Fox News; Published: January 23, 2003, Author: APTHE KORAN AND THE KAFIR (Chapter 9) Islam In Action
Source: Knowislam.org ; Author: A. GHOSHFatwa: Coming to a Country Near You--Islamic death bounties ain't hard to find
Source: FrontPageMagazine.com; Published: December 6, 2002; Author: David HarsanyiAl-Qaeda's Global Jihad
Source:IDF; Published: December 3, 2002Why we are losing the war
Source: Guardian Unlimited; Published : December 1, 2002Islam - Green Wall Of Silence - III
Source: PakToday : Published: November 25, 2002; Author: Tashbh SayyedBlack Muslims Create 'Explosive Mix' in Terror War, Says Author
Source: CNSBNEWS.com; Published: November 14, 2002; Author: Marc MoranoOf course, the great majority of Muslims are peaceful -- so what?
Source: Jewish World Review; Published: November 5, 2002; Author: DENNIS PRAGERRamadan: A Month of Peace?
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: November 4, 2002; Author:| Alan CarubaThe Seamless Garment Of Hate: The Beltway Sniper Shootings And Islam/Nation of Islam
Source: Toogood Reports; Published:| November 1, 2002; Author: Nicholas StixBarbara Stanley: American Jihadist Terrorism - Conversion And Recruitment
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: October 28, 2002; Author: Barbara StanleyJihadis in the Hood: Race, Urban Islam and the War on Terror
Source: Middle East Report; Published: Fall 2002; Author: Hisham AidiThe Radical Islamic Mind (lengthy exposé from Christian perspective)
Source:Spiritual Counterfeits Project; Published: Sept 2002; Author: Aleesha KhanNaming The Evildoers: Militant Islam Reaches America
Source: New York Times BOOK REVIEW; Published:| September 29, 2002; Author: Judith MillerDEPRIVING THE ARABS OF THEIR PREY
Source: WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & Published: September 13, 2002; Author: Emanuel A. WinstonA Hatred Beyond Understanding
Source: Sierra Times; Published: September 9, 2002; Author: Alan CarubaSaving Islam from bin Laden [Christopher Hitchens]
Source:The Age (Melbourne); Published: September 5 2002; Author: Christopher HitchensMuslim leaders pledge to 'transform West': 'If Islamic state rises, we will be its army'
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: August 13, 2002; Author: Jon DoughertyWHAT went wrong with the Arab world?
Source: Economist; Published: July 10, 2002Today's Criminal Will Become Tomorrow's Islamic Terrorist
Source: CNSnews.com; Published: June 25, 2002; Author: C.T. RossiDavid Horowitz: Know The Enemy (And What He Believes)
Source: FrontPage magazine; Published: June 24, 2002; Author: David HorowitzFour Myths About Muslims
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: June 13, 2002; Author: C.T. RossiTrying To Find A `Moderate' Islam Is A Quixotic Quest
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: May 20, 2002; Author: C.T. RossiThe Islaming of Europe
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: May 20, 2002; Author: Alan CarubaWhy Islam Can't Join the Modern World
Source: FrontPageMagazine.com; Published: May 16, 2002; Author: Jamie GlazovIt's The Attitude, Stupid [re: Palestinians]
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: May 14, 2002; Author: Philip SafranReports of Moderate Islam's Existence Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: April 22, 2002; Author: C.T. RossiIt's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land {Steyn}
Source: National Post; Published: April 19 2002; Author: Mark SteynHOROWITZ: A MIDDLE EAST HISTORY PRIMER
Source: News and Opinion.com; Published; April 10, 2002; Author: David HorowitzArafat Must Go!
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: April 10, 2002; Author: Alan CarubaNetanyahu speaks before US Senators
Source: http://netanyahu.org/netspeacinse.html; Published: April 10, 2002; Author: Benjamin Netanyahu20 Suppressed Facts About Israel, Islam
Source: Koenig's International News; Published: April 9, 2002; Author: Jim BramlettThey Live to Die (Islam Martyrdom)
Source: Wall Street Journal; Published: April 7, 2002; Author: Reuel Marc GerechtMoral Fortitude Vs. Vacillation
Source: CNSNews.com ; Published: April 01, 2002; Author: Alan CarubaTerror's Homebase, All Over The Map -- Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
Source: Wall Street Journal-- Book Review; Published: | March 29, 2002; Author: Adrian KaratnyckyIslam Vs. The World
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 2, 2001; Author: Alan CarubaArab World Poverty -- Whose Fault?
Source: Capitalism Magazine; Published: 11/18/01; Author: Larry ElderWill the Real Islam Please Stand Up!
Source:Van Jenerette Editorial Comment, Various Publications;
Published: October 14, 2001; Author: Van JeneretteCivilization Envy
Source: National Review Online; Published: September 28, 2001; Author: Jonah GoldbergWhat We Are Up Against: Islamic Jihad Factories
Source: New York Times Magazine; Published: July 25, 2000; Author: Jeffrey Goldberg
"On 7 June 1981, Israel aircraft destroyed the Iraqi Osiraq nuclear reactor near Baghdad (Osiraq is the name given by the French supplier; the Iraqi government refers to it as the Tammuz 1 nuclear reactor). The attack represents the first and only time a nuclear power has attacked an adversary in the hope of destroying or delaying the adversary’s nuclear program. Israel argued that Iraq nuclear weapon development program represented a direct threat to Israeli security. Therefore, Israel justified the attack under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which permits force in self-defense."
================================
These people have serious "cause-and-effect" issues.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.