RE: [iwar] [fc:Who.says.it's.not.a.war.on.Islam?]

From: Leo, Ross (Ross.Leo@csoconline.com)
Date: 2001-10-09 12:55:24
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Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 14:55:24 -0500
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With all due respect for Islam, the esteemed author of this article is
completely incorrect in his interpretation of there being "a war on Islam".
It is a war against those who would kill for their own misguided political
agendas or other personal reasons and vendettas, and then falsely claim the
tenets of Islam as the guidance and mandate for doing so.

From the theological perspective, there has never been a need for Mankind to
defend a religion truly of God from anyone.  God does not need our help in
this, and nothing truly from Him requires our help, support, or defense.
These are things He can handle quite well on His own steam (thank you very
much); this despite our claiming otherwise, and always out of our own
ignorance and ego.  We reside here as His creation of Love, and I hardly
think He would direct anyone to kill or harm anyone else who was also His
creation of Love.  This is a Christian teaching, but Islam teaches likewise.

Osama bin Laden is like many other fanatics (I do not compare him to Hitler
or Stalin - they were truly in a class of their own).  All fanatics are
cursed with a single vision of everything, and with very few exceptions,
History has always shown such a single vision to be destructive and in fact
directly opposed to the very thing the fanatic claimed to want to achieve.
Mr. bin Laden and those of his stripe are no different then their
philosophical predecessors in this vein, and History will treat him and his
no differently than those who went before them.

From the political perspective, I cannot claim to know what OBL's ambitions
are.  The thing that is notable is his actions, when mixed with his words,
communicate a clean message that he deeply resents what he believes the
"West" has done to the Middle East.  The West is guilty of sins in that
region - ALL major western countries share this guilt, too, not just
America.  However, OBL would do well to note two particular points:  1) the
regimes that did such things are NOT the regimes currently in power, and the
current ones do not share the ambitions of the previous; and 2)  the western
powers often came at the invitation of those in power in that region.

In some way I think OBL is angry at Saudi Arabia for his outcast state - a
result stemming from his outspoken feelings on how the US was supporting a
despotic regime.  When you speaks against the King, it is his sovereign
right to kill you or exile you.  That is just the risk you take for speaking
your mind.  Seems to me he is paying the price for being outspoken against
the ruling powers' chosen methods.  His reaction thus far is that of a truly
sore loser.  It is also truly antithetical to his cause.

I truly believe at this point that if OBL can be isolated (not killed or
martyred) politically, he will isolate himself theologically.  He is
successfully doing that now, and left to his own path (as long as he is kept
from harming others), he will complete the job that he himself began -
starting as a cry in the wilderness, and ending with a whisper swallowed by
the winds.

You reap what you sow.

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cohen [mailto:fc@all.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 11:29
To: iwar@onelist.com
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Who.says.it's.not.a.war.on.Islam?]


[Note: This was taken off an Islamist chat board.]

Who says it's not a war on Islam? 10/8/2001, 7:42 pm

Who says it's not a war on Islam? by Abid Ullah Jan
(<a
href="mailto:abidjan2@psh.paknet.com.pk?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20[Fwd:%20"Who%20
says%20it's%20not%20a%20war%20on%20Islam?"]%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;3BC31289
.EC548FC1@speconsult.com">abidjan2@psh.paknet.com.pk</a>)

It is painful to watch old news-reels of Adolf Hitler and Benito
Mussolini making speeches and crowds cheering.  Mussolini's posturing
seems so transparent that one wonders how adults could have taken him
seriously.  With Hitler, what comes across is crude, passionate
intensity and the rapture of his audiences, sharing his feelings, with
minds turned off.  What is chilling is knowing how many tens of millions
of human beings lost their lives because of these almost musical-comedy
performances.  The seemingly shallow stuff can have deep roots as well
as deep consequences.  Few things today are more shallow than the
reasons most people have for supporting Bush and Blair war on
"terrorism" and accepting their claims that it is not a war on Islam. 
To understand if it is a war on Islam, we need to honestly and
impartially scan the horizon since 1990. 

Apart from the massive air strikes, commando raids and a prolonged
"dirty war" against Islamic movements, the police repression,
deportation, torture, censorship and death squads that we are certainly
going to face are certainly not planned after the September 11 attacks. 
The US "war on terror" is no more than translation to the physical
level, of the systematic approach that started with (1) introduction of
the rancid notion of "Islamic fundamentalism," (2) classification of
Islam; (3) equating "fundamentalism" with extremism and then terrorism;
(4) removal of governments, like Mr.  Erbakan in Turkey, for having
affiliations with Islam (5) support of governments' cracking down on
"Islamic extremists" such as Egyptian and Algerian regimes; (6)
development of agendas for government's like Musharraf; (6) initially
supporting the Taliban and then demonising them to show the world the
failure of Islam.  The coming physical horror is simply execution of the
judgments passed by the western intellectuals upon Islam in the past
decade or so. 

Just have a look at how the ground has been prepared for the coming
"dirty war." Musharraf came to "moderate" religious schools and take
Jihad related Quranic verses from school curricula in 2001.  However,
the Economist sensed "The Islamic Threat" way back in its March 13, 1993
edition whereby it declared: "It is the mightiest power in the
Levant...Governments tremble before it.  Arabs everywhere turn to it for
salvation from their various miseries.  This power is not Egypt, Iraq,
or indeed any nation, but the humble mosque." Mosques would probably be
the next targets after dealing with madrassa.  Similarly, since the
establishment of Israel, no one had talked about "fundamentalism," yet
Yitzhak Rabin suddenly started calling the world in December 1992, "to
devote its attention to the greater danger inherent in Islamic
fundamentalism.  [W]e stand on the line of fire against the danger of
fundamentalist Islam."

Mr.  Bush with a slip of tongue tells his mind in 2001 by describing the
US recent missions in the lands of Islam as "crusade." Peter Rodman,
senior editor of the National Review, however, saw in 1992 that the West
being challenged from the outside by a "militant, atavistic force driven
by a hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old
grievances against Christendom....the rage against us is too great..."
(May 11, 1992).  Charles Krauthammer summed up the expected resistance
by the Islamic civilisation to the hegemonic designs of the US in one
word: "Global Intifada," (Washington Post January 1, 1993).  He tried to
suggest that the world is now "facing a mood and a movement...a perhaps
irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our
Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide
expansion of both." The New York Times went one step ahead and confirmed
on January 21st, 1996: "The Red Menace Is Gone.  But Here's Islam." The
open war against it, however, had to be delayed until a perfect excuse
like the September 11 attacks. 

Intellectuals like Samuel P.  Huntington played a key role in making
Islam an enemy of choice.  He declared: "Islam is the only civilisation
which has put the survival of the West in doubt." Web page of the
Montclair State University in New Jersey reads: "The West today is
losing irretrievably its former global hegemony and is increasingly
challenged economically and culturally by East Asian and Islamic
civilisations." Irving Kristol, Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in
the Wall Street Journal, editorial August 2, 1996: "With the end of the
Cold War, what we really need is an obvious ideological and threatening
enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can unite us in opposition."

Bernard Lewis In his influential essay, "The Roots of Muslim Rage,"
writes: "Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the
otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim
masses" (Atlantic, September 99).  Islamic "fundamentalism," according
to Amos Perlmutter (Insight in the News, February 15, 1993), is "a
plague" which has infected the entire Islamic world and whose goal is to
topple secularist military regimes in Egypt, Syria and Algeria and
replace them with [unacceptable] Islamic states."

Daily Express, ran an article "Islam Is a Creed of Cruelty" on January
16, 1995, which concluded that the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism was
haunting Europe and the world power should enter into a holy alliance to
exorcise this spectre.  The underlying assumption has always been that
Islam is primitive, underdeveloped, retrograde, at best stuck in the
memory hole of a medieval splendour out of which it could not
disentangle itself without a radical transformation; and this could only
be based on Western, "rational", "progressive" values.  The long
proposed "holy alliance" is now in making. 

A above mentioned examples show that during the past 11-12 years
systematic efforts have been directed to relegated Islam from its
holistic perspective, encompassing all facets of human conduct and
behaviour to a mere set or rituals, something what the west has done to
Christianity itself.  According to Lt-Col Trinka of US Army, "[Muslims]
must work to fashion the shariah into a modern blue print for change."
In a similar vein, one of the CIA experts counselled that those Muslims
who do not believe that world of God is law, should be found and
supported.  "The Arab rulers," he thinks, "have to create a new identity
of [Muslim] seductively fusing Islam and the West."

This so-called expert added: "Though the Saudi rulers may be guilty of
ugly authoritarian behaviour and consistent stupidity in foreign
affairs, they are at least fervent hypocrites, and that [in] Middle East
Affairs, a fervent hypocrite is always safer than a fervent puritan." He
had the audacity to make such humiliating remark because there was truth
in it.  These are in fact general policy guidelines that we see in
operation during lifting of democracy related sanctions against Pakistan
and visit of the British Prime Minister who could not bear an
undemocratic government in Pakistan at any cost. 

Over the last decade the western propaganda successfully divided Muslim
into "Moderates," "Liberals" and "Fundamentalists" for whom there is no
basis or justification in Islam.  There has been no definition offered
even in the Western propaganda.  Salman Rushdie, however, lists in his
October 2, article in Washington Post what he believes fundamentalists
are against: "homosexuals, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing,
evolution theory, sex." He believes such "fundamentalists are tyrants,
not Muslims...yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are worth dying
for." He further argues, "kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches,
cutting-edge fashion, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love,"
should matter and "these will be our weapons." The moderates among us
should decide for themselves as to what kind of Islam allows kissing in
public places, bacon sandwiches, homosexuality, etc. 

Besides mass propaganda, efforts were underway to support Hosnie Mubarak
like regimes for their crackdown on Islamic opposition and remove
Erbakan like elected governments for exactly the same reasons for which
the US wants to support religious groups in China.  With false
propaganda, the Taliban have been demonised to the extent that even
majority of the Muslims who have never set a foot on the Afghan soil to
verify the grand lies, speak in the anti-Taliban, CNNised language.  The
US has established that a country can never be ruled with Islamic
principles.  Now the war is only left to be carried out by individual
Muslim countries by collecting information on its citizens as to who is
involved with the banned religious parties, who is the extremist, how to
arrest and try the fundamentalism and if necessary remove them from the
scene. 

Apart from the above-mentioned factors, the US, UK recent moves are part
of an undeclared war on Islam because:

1.  Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ed
Harriman reported on September 22, 2001 in the Guardian that attacks on
Afghanistan were planned before September 11.  The US planned the
attacks as soon as it considered it's demonising the Taliban project as
complete. 

2.  Islam is the only challenge to American hegemony with its claims to
be a complete code of life with panacea for ills in economic, political,
moral and spiritual systems, and thus only Islam can pose a threat to
the civilisation considered superior by the West. 

3.  The West reasons that the source of terrorism is not its terrorism
but Islamic teachings and history.  Naturally, the real campaign is
against the teachings of Islam from the original sources at Madrassa. 
Mustafa Kamal destroyed Islamic teachings 85 years ago in Turkey and
dried up the swamp.  We however are expected to follow the suit sooner
than later. 

4.  The US is planning to impose its brand of democracy or autocracy -
whichever may be suitable -- on Muslim countries by force.  The US put
forward many symbolic personalities over the years to undermine the
roots of Islam.  These advocates preach unconditional assimilation into,
support of, sympathy toward, and whole-hearted participation in the
social and political system espoused by the US. 

5.  Transmissions of BBC and CNN testify to the fact that it is a war on
Islam.  On their part they put forward unqualified individuals or groups
as representatives of Islam who may be unethical, deviants, or outright
heretics from the religion with no subjective measures being used to
ascertain the qualifications of such people.  Rushdie's recent article
in the Washington Post is an excellent example.  They present Islamic
Shariah as antiquated, irrelevant, authoritarian, unsophisticated, and
limited. 

6.  By making public statements like: Taliban are not the real Muslims,
the American leaders, like Karl Inderfurth, have long been creating a
nationalistic or ethnic view and approach to Islam, or more accurately,
creating a new religion that cannot truly be called Islam but rather has
some outward aspects of it.  It will certainly be one that would not
pose a challenge to the US domination or offer anything that will make
Islam seen as a viable alternative to the US uni-polar world. 

7.  The evidence suggests that it is the US government that has been
playing a leading role in the media crusade against Islam.  As early as
fall 1994, PBS aired a documentary by journalist Steve Emerson Titled
"Jihad in America." Evidence within the programme suggests that Emerson
has access to official government intelligence.  Some clips appear to be
from home videos confiscated from Muslims in FBI sweeps.  A decade of
this kind of programming has set the climate for a war on Islam. 

The facts do not change with the denials of Bush and Balir.  The
strength of Islam lies in the fact that despite having far less military
and economic power, the western war-makers do not have the courage to
declare it an open war on Islam.  They would certainly fail as long as
they want to cover their ulterior motives and undermine Islam under the
guise of looking for "infinite Justice." Ending terrorism through
eradicating its root causes may not take more than a few months. 
However, defeating Islam may cost them many generations before finally
realising that it was a wrong war. 

Concluded. 


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