A Wake-up Call for Muslims

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Coming to Terms: Muslims must confront their terrorists ...
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12:09 AM CDT on Thursday, September 9, 2004



The world crossed a Rubicon last week in Beslan. The torture and massacre of children by Muslim terrorists are forcing a number of people to come to terms with an agonizing truth. The prominent Arab Muslim journalist Abdel Rahman al-Rashed said it bluntest and best: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims."

Mr. al-Rashed made his agonizing observation in a column published Saturday in the London-based Arab-language newspaper Al Sharq al-Awsat (and reprinted today on our Viewpoints page). His was a courageous cri de coeur by a Muslim believer who says out loud what many non-Muslims have been thinking for some time as they see over and over again Muslims perpetrating acts of terror, and quite often doing so in the name of Islam.

One often hears that this or that political factor justifies Islamic outrage. But nothing in heaven or on earth justifies targeting children. Besides, many populations suffer greatly from the political situation under which they live – think of Tibetans or Palestinian Christians – without turning into mass-murdering religious fanatics. Why?

In 1993, the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington caused a firestorm by pointing out "Islam's bloody borders," citing overwhelming quantitative evidence showing that Islamic populations are far more involved in violent conflicts with their neighbors than any other group. Wrote Dr. Huntington: "Muslim bellicosity and violence are late-20th-century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims can deny."

There was, and has been, furious denial, and not only from Muslims. It has been considered taboo of late in right-thinking Western circles to notice the role the Islamic faith plays in driving terrorism. But the Beslan atrocity seems to have been a watershed event. Let us hope so.

And let us hope that the millions of decent Muslims here and abroad share Mr. al-Rashed's disgust and outrage and that they resolve to stand up, speak out and fight hard to purge their faith of suicide bombers, cutthroats and child killers. "Islam is a religion of peace," we keep hearing. If an increasingly skeptical world is supposed to believe that, Muslims of good will must quit blaming others for their travails and take their religion back.

[kg_veteran]

Where is the Muslim outrage?
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | September 9, 2004
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THEY ARE still burying the victims of the latest atrocity committed, some believe, in the name of Islam -- the slaughter of hundreds of children, teachers, and parents in an elementary school in Beslan, Russia. And from Muslims the world over, as usual, has come mostly silence.

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There have been no public demonstrations by Muslims anxious to make it clear how outraged they are that anyone could commit such unspeakable deeds for their version of Islam. There has been no anguished outcry by Islam's leading imams and sheiks. Prominent Muslim organizations in the West have not called press conferences to express their disgust. Once again the world has witnessed a savage episode of Islamist terror, and once again it strains to hear a convincing rejection of the terrorists from those who should care most about Islam's reputation.

That is not to say there has been no criticism at all. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to assure him that "this terrorist act . . . goes against religious teachings and violates human and moral values." Syria's official news agency decried the massacre as "a terrorist, cowardly action." Sheik Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi of Al-Azhar University in Cairo lambasted the murderers for "taking Islam as cover" and said that "those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims."

But these are boilerplate denunciations, practically meaningless -- particularly when they come from sources that sustain Islamist fanaticism (Saudi Arabia), shelter and support terrorists (Syria), or defend suicide bombers as praiseworthy "martyrs" (Tantawi). They condemn no terrorists or terror organizations by name. They offer no help in destroying the infrastructure that recruits, funds, and trains them. And they contain no hint that the global scourge of Islamofascist jihad is a cancer eating away at the Muslim world.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which issues dozens of press releases every month, had nothing to say about the bloodbath in Russia until I requested a comment. The statement CAIR then issued doesn't even acknowledge that the killers were Muslim:

"No words can describe the horror and grief generated by the deaths of so many innocent people at the hands of those who dishonor the cause they espouse. We offer sincere condolences to the families of the victims and call for a swift resolution to the conflict in that troubled region." At least CAIR went through the motions of condemning the butchery. Other voices preached a different message altogether.

Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain, announced that the bloodshed in Beslan "is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims." In London, Islamist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed told the Daily Telegraph: "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq."

Fortunately, a few Muslim commentators have denounced the evil being done in the name of Islam, and have done so courageously and unambiguously. (The Middle East Media Research Institute has compiled their reactions at www.memri.org.) One in particular stands out: an extraordinary column in the pan-Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the manager of the Al-Arabiya news channel.

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists," he begins, "but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

"The hostage-takers of the children in Beslan were Muslims. The hostage-takers and murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. . . . The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses, and buildings all over the world were Muslim. . . . Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies, and our culture?. . .

"We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us. . . . They are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image. We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly implemented by Muslim men and women." When it is no longer astonishing to encounter such sentiments in the Muslim world, we will know that the corner has been turned in the war against Islamist terror. Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

[madape]

Moderate muslims have been hitting the snooze bar on this wakeup call for oh... about 30 years now.

[Mavdog]

Here's the piece.
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Abdel Rahman al-Rashed: A Wake-up Call for Muslims

An Arab journalist challenges Islamic terror
12:01 AM CDT on Thursday, September 9, 2004
By ABDEL RAHMAN al-RASHED

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Osama bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement." Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

These images, when put together or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.

For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realize the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the sheikh – the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric – and hear him recite his fatwa about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians.

This ailing sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent civilians.

How could this sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg, who was slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers in that ravished country? How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?

In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with nationalist or leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of their adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement in murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.

At that time, the mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life.

Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.


Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel. This article first appeared in the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.