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Terror
in One Nation or Islam and Marxism:
Part I
By David Yerushalmi
There are two very dangerous myths
promulgated today by the Peace Processors in the US and
abroad that will spell tragedy for America and the
Western democracies in a way that will make September 11
look like a mild beginning. The first myth is that
Islam is a peaceful, tolerant religion that has been
captured and held hostage by the bin Ladens of the
world. The second myth is that one can explain the
contrary evidence before us daily, which is that average
Moslems identify passionately with bin Laden and the
murder and mayhem he inflicts on America,
not as products of Islam
at all. Rather, this myth continues, what
makes the horrifying Islam we see before us is the
corrupt and despotic regimes under
which Moslems live and
suffer intolerably.
It is these regimes, we are to believe,
which produce radical Islam as a kind of protest vote.
The problem with these two Peace
Process myths is they are false. Worse, they will cause
America to close its eyes to the facts. For example,
Anthrax, Small Pox, chemical poisoning, suicide bombers,
small nuclear devices. In order to "win the
war against terrorism," Americans must understand
who the enemy is. Part I examines the first
myth: that Islam is peaceful.
MYTH ONE: Islam at its core is a peaceful, tolerant
religion that has been captured and held hostage by the
bin Ladens of the world.
The problem with this myth is that it doesn't fit the
facts. Even in those Moslem nations where they are
not dancing in the streets in support of bin Laden's
murderous acts or violently protesting their
government's acquiesence to US attacks against the
Taliban, the vast majority of Islamic adherents led by
Arab nations support bin Laden's Jihad. This fact
has been reported explicitly and implicitly within
different contexts in the New York Times
("Rising Muslim Power in Africa Causes Unrest in
Nigeria and Elsewhere" [Nov. 1]), the Wall
Street Journal ("Al Qaeda's Balkan Links"
[Nov. 1]), the Washington Post ("Words
from Egypt" [Oct. 30] and "A Closer Look at
the Words of an Image Maker" [Oct. 28]) and just
about every other media outlet with overseas
correspondents, except Ted Turner's CNN and the rankly
pro-Arab BBC. These outlets effectively refuse to report
anything remotely negative about Islam (as they have
routinely reported nothing favorable of Israel).
If Islam is essentially peaceful, why are its adherents
so violent? In fact, if one were to survey acts of
terror over the past half century, one would find that
Islamic and various Marxist groups lead the list by far.
The media and Islamic apologists like to parrot the now
common line that "there are one billion Moslems and
the vast majority of them are not terrorists." This
is not on point. The vast majority of Americans are not
soldiers but that doesn't mean they aren't
overwhelmingly patriotic. As the news reports from
around the Islamic world have informed us, there is no
groundswell of anti-bin Ladenism, indeed just the
opposite. The fact that the average Moslem doesn't strap
a bomb to his back doesn't lessen his support of such
tactics. (At various times, over 70% of the Palestinians
respond to surveys that they strongly support suicide
bombers killings and maiming Jewish civilian men, women
and children. Nope. Not a thing wrong with it.)
While Ireland has seen its share of religious based
terror, we don't see Catholics or Protestants worldwide
forming terror cells or financing terror around the
globe. Yes, there have been terrorists associated
with Hindus, Buddhists, and even Jews, but these groups
have been small and invariably
isolated from mainstream leadership and
adherents. While Europe and Japan have spawned
more than a few terror groups, they have either been of
the Marxist variety or have melted away once their
anarchist leaders grew old, were imprisoned, or died.
Not so with the Islamic version. Generation after
generation -- whether Palestinian, Egyptian, Saudi
Arabian, Afghanistani, Phillipino, Lebanese,
Pakistani,
Nigerian, Sudanese, or Iranian -- Islam
breeds terror. And, it breeds terror without any
broad based censorship or excommunication by the
mainstream leadership, either political or intellectual,
or at the grass roots level. Why is that?
The answer is Islam, like Marxism, seeks the end of
political man or nation-states. And, in so far as
the West embodies, at least in its healthy form, the
best case for nation-states built upon principles of
freedom, Islam seeks its destruction. At its core, Islam
teaches and its adherents believe that man's salvation
is possible here and now. It is not possible as
the Jews teach, only with the coming of the divinely
ordained Messiah for which the Jews have waited
patiently for over two millennium; nor is it possible as
the Christians teach as a personal salvation in the
Kingdom of Heaven. Rather, it is possible to re-order
human existence through a universal Islamic state
demanding obedience to the Koran and Sharia, or Islamic
law. Heaven on Earth, here and now.
Sound familiar to the over-forty crowd? Is not
Islam's call for Utopia very similar to the Marxist
demand for a re-ordered universal human existence of
radical egalitarianism so often lauded by the liberal
establishment during the 60s and 70s? Just as
Marxism bred terror worldwide to achieve its goals,
Islam seeks the same end through the same means.
Just as political societies that fell prey to the song
of the Marxist muses found terror and tyranny were
soon to follow, so too the Iranians and Afghans found
the fruits of Islam to be something short of Heaven.
While it is true that there are many Muslims growing up
in the West and reforming their religion to
"fit" the liberal democratic mold, most
of the "one billion Moslems" live in the third
world fully committed to the dream of a united Islamic
brotherhood eliminating any distinctions among peoples
or nations. Liberal Islam is, for all practical
purposes, a very different religion from that practiced
by the vast majority of Moslems, and politically
speaking, is of no practical import. This is
especially so since liberal Moslems have in the main
remained silent or defensive about the terror of their
more devout cousins. The few outstanding reform
Islamic protests have been quite literally lone voices.
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