IASPS - News Behind the News

November 12, 2001

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 hear 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.