Driving Muslims Into Islamist Arms
NY Times: And Now, Islamism Trumps Arabism
“The losers are going to be the Arab regimes, U.S.A. and Israel,” said Dr. Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “The secular resistance movements are gone. Now there are the Islamists coming in. So the new nationalism is going to be religious nationalism, and one of the main reasons is dignity. People want their dignity back.”
The Toronto Star: The Muslim malaise
One of the strangest aspects of the post-9/11 world is that, despite all the talk about Muslim terrorism, there is hardly any exploration of the complex causes of Muslim rage. Muslims are in a state of crisis, but their most daunting problems are not religious. They are geopolitical, economic and social — problems that have caused widespread Muslim despair and, in some cases, militancy, both of which are expressed in the religious terminology that Muslim masses relate to.
[…] While the past casts a long shadow over Muslims, it is the present that haunts them. Hundreds of millions live in zones of conflict, precisely in the areas of European and American meddling, past and present — U.S.-occupied Iraq, U.S.-controlled Afghanistan, the Israeli Occupied Territories, and Kashmir, the disputed Muslim state on the border of India and Pakistan in the foothills of the Himalayas. Only the Russian war on Muslim Chechnya is not related to the history of Western machinations, but even that has had the tacit support of the Bush administration. These conflicts, along with the economic sanctions on Iraq, have killed an estimated 1.3 million Muslims in the last 15 years alone. Why are we surprised that Muslims are up in arms?
The Daily Show: Reza Aslan Interview
Muslims problems are caused by muslims alone.
Imperialism and colonialism have existed ever since the population of the earth was over 100. Everyone has tasted some. Only the muslims can’t seem to get over the taste.
Load of trash!
Why are’nt we trying to understand the terrorists?! Because they are trying to kill us. Yes Muslims are in a state of crisis, their religion is being hijacked by radical murderers and they dont have the courage to defend themselves! This is not the US’s fault. We didn’t Hijack a plane to Entebee, Massacre Olympians in Munich, Blow up any number of buildings around the world and use our children as suicide bombers to kill babies. (see timeline of Arab Terror here http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0212088/tertime.htm)
This retarded notion that maybe if we can better understand these people we will end their terror is ludicrous.
The final paragraph is most troubling and depics the liberal notion that the US & Israel is to blame for all evil in the world. Let’s get this straight: these animals un-provoked, hijacked and flew airplanes into buildings and killed thousands of innocent human beings. We must respond and eliminate this threat.
If this ridiculous notion would have been around 50 yrs ago y’all would be saying “lets try to understand Adolph” the Jews are screwing up his country, and the aryans are the supreme race . . . “
About three years ago, Bob Meeropol spoke at my synagogue. He is the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In response to a question, he said that yes, Truman dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to instill fear in the world, yes, his parents were judicially murdered to instill fear in the US population.
He also added that had the Berlin Wall not fallen, Muslims would not have become the never-ending enemy, because the commies would still own that title.
Um, that quotation includes an accusation that the fighting in the Israeli occupied territories has contributed to the 1.3 million dead Muslims who have been killed by Western “machinations” over the past 15 years. There are approximately 4500 -5000 Palestinians who have been killed by Israel in the past 15 years and over half of those are actual terrorists and militants while all of them are victims of a conflict against Israel where Israel, despite trying, has not been able to achieve peace or end of conflict with them. Is that what we’re supposed to be more understanding about?
I certainly cherish the opinions of the son of the people who gave Stalin the atomic bomb, especially concerning the innocence or guilt of his parents.
Before the current “Intifada” which started what, 5 years ago, 95 % of the Arabs in the West Bank lived in areas under the total control of the Palestinian Authority. The per-capita income of the Arabs living in the West Bank was the highest it had ever been since 1948 (remember Israel controlled this area only from 1967).
Bottom-line: Barak offered the “Palestinians” total control of 97% of the West Bank & Gazza, control over all of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The “deal breaker” was Arafat’s inability to agree to publicly state that the “Palestinian-Israel conflict was at its end and that Palestinians would not make any further demands.
Despite the fact that there was no occupation; that their economic prospects were the brightest they’ve been since the beginning of the 20th century; that the Israeli government was offering almost everything (including reparations for refugees) – the Palestinian Authority started a war against Israel.
Why? Because none of these factors were relevant. All that was relevant was that an non-Arab country existed within the boundaries of Dar Umma (the Arab Lands).
Europe survived two conflicts that cost the lives of over 120 million people; destroyed entire countries; created over 35 million refugees, 20 million of which never returned to their native land -yet Europe rebuilt physically and culturally. Muslim’s (especially Arabs) have a problem because they are taught intolerance from their mother’s milk. In a “global village” that in getting increasingly smaller with each technological advance (radio, TV, travel, Internet …) the limits of their intolerance has been tested and the chaos we see from the Philipines to South America and the Twin Towers is the result.
“Muslims are in a state of crisis, but their most daunting problems are not religious. They are geopolitical, economic and social — problems that have caused widespread Muslim despair and, in some cases, militancy, both of which are expressed in the religious terminology that Muslim masses relate to.”
Economics does not explain terrorism. The poorest countries in the world have little or no terrorist activity. These people are terrorists because they subscribe to an fascistic, fantasy, ideology.
“These conflicts, along with the economic sanctions on Iraq, have killed an estimated 1.3 million Muslims in the last 15 years alone.”
Please. This isn’t about Israel or the U.S. Most of them–the vast majority–have been killed by other Muslims. And this propensity for violence didn’t start with colonization by the West, it is part of the internal dynamics of Islamic imperialism.
As during the Cold War we confront an ideological foe with imperial aspirations and one committed to our elimination. But, in agreement with historian Efraim Karsh, I do not view the contemporary struggle with the Islamists as a “Clash of Civilizations.†At the moment, it is more a clash within Islamic civilization, we are on the periphery, but that could change. As Karsh writes:
“World history has rarely, if ever, seen a mighty clash of civilizations. Conflicts and wars among members of the same civilization have been far more common, and far more intense, than those between members of rival civilizations. Even in Islam, where Muhammad specifically and categorically forbade fighting among the believers, it took a mere twenty-four years after the Prophet’s death for the head of the universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, to be murdered by political rivals. This opened the floodgates to incessant infighting within the House of Islam, which has not ceased to date and has exacted far more numerous casualties than conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims.â€
(Efraim Karsh. Islamic Imperialism: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, p. 232-233)
There are over a billion Muslims. If Islam were effective in converting rational people into terrorists, wouldn’t you expect there to be more than 20 or so terrorists in London? How many Muslims are there in the United States — more than ten million? So, as a life philosophy, it is so convincing, so persuasive in making its members commit acts of violence, that as much as 1 per million have been found to commit hate crimes in the US. Wow. Big problem. I think if you looked at what Muslims are actually up to in the US, you would probably find that they are some of the best-behaved.
Btw. “These conflicts, along with the economic sanctions on Iraq, have killed an estimated 1.3 million Muslims in the last 15 years alone. Why are we surprised that Muslims are up in arms?”
I don’t think people really are that surprised.
“About three years ago, Bob Meeropol spoke at my synagogue. He is the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In response to a question, he said that yes, Truman dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to instill fear in the world, yes, his parents were judicially murdered to instill fear in the US population.”
Yes, and there are people still struggling to prove Alger Hiss’ “innocence” as well. Many of them “know” Hiss was innocent. Never mind the Venona cables and other documents in the Soviet Archives, etc. etc. etc. My point: never trust a Communist, ever.
In Meerpol’s memoir, “An Execution in the Family,” does he blame the CP USA for all the ills his family experienced. No, of course not.
Ronald Radosh writes to Meerpol:
“Why can’t you admit that the Venona decrypts conclusively prove that American Communists were indeed agents of a foreign power? The same decrypts show that your father put together a network of seven primary sources and two active liaison-couriers, as well as three others who carried out support work. All of these people were recruited, as was your father, from the ranks of the American Communist Party. Your father stole top secret military data, including the proximity fuse that years later the Soviets used to shoot down Major Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 plane. Klehr and Haynes refer to the fuse as “one of the most innovative advances of American military technology,†for which Moscow awarded your father a $1,000 bonus in March 1945.”
Your contention that your father’s espionage for one of the bloodiest tyrants in history is understandable because he had bad eyesight and could not enter the U.S. Army, is sad, even desperate. I could understand if, like Feklisov, you argued that your parents were committed Communists who put their ideals into practice by stealing the military secrets of the imperialists to help their Soviet comrades. I would find that a rather poor excuse, but at least one that is honest. But instead, you continue to assert that the agencies that released the new evidence regularly practice “disinformation,†and are thus intent on creating “false leads to show my parents’ guilt.†In this way, instead of exculpating your parents’ crimes against their country, you continue them.
In the end the truth remains that your parents were traitors who betrayed their country and their sons for an illusion. They acted with courage, but for a cause that was corrupt. By recognizing this you would restore their humanity, and perhaps heal the wound you obviously still feel. Instead, you have chosen to continue the charade, pretending that their cause was noble and that they were heroes of an American “resistance.†Resistance to what?”