quote: 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."
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That one piece I had heard on NPR, the one about "Not all Muslims are terrorists but..." Great stuff and it really does need to come from someone who is in the thick of it and a follower of that faith. There was another bit in the NPR story where Abdel made a point that when the Irish were the baddest terrorists on the block (not that long ago, really) they were seen as Irish Terrorists, not Catholics. I know there is the Catholic and Protestant conflict and this WAS a part of it, but they were IRA...Irish terrorists who were not often referred to as "IRA, the Catholic Terrorists." If this were the case, would people have asked "Where is the Catholic outrage?" at any attack made by IRA members? Did they expect all people of Irish descent to step up and publicly decry the actions of a few Irish? I don't remember that happening. Not in a large, public light sort of way, either. Just rambling. Good stuff and well put about the state of Muslims and terrorism.
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If you narrow the definition of the word "terrorist" down to "anyone who thinks Allah demands the blood of Jews", then sure, all terrorists are Muslim.
Noone will ever convince me that terrorism is exclusive to those of the Islamic faith. As far as I'm concerned, it's an outright lie.
Edit: I'm not by any means saying that real Muslims believe that Allah demands the blood of Jews, either. Just for clarification.
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I understand what he is saying, and of course 'we' need to make sure that we castigate those who perpetrate terror, too, but I'm pretty sure that his analogy isn't completely 1 to 1 since, as far as I know, Catholic/Christian beliefs and doctrine weren't used to support doing the IRA's terrorism, and most Catholic priests were against the terrorism perpetrated by the IRA and weren't, in fact, exporting the Catholic/Christian doctrine to other countries as a motivator to terror.
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Well Christian teachings were used to inspire the Crusades and the Inquisition both of which used what might be called terror tactics.
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One of the large problems I have with Jeff Jacoby is he never puts things into any sort of context. Note the he provides several counter-examples to his own thesis... how much outpouring has there been from the non-islamic community? Probably, proportionately, about the same as from the Islamic community.
Jacoby demands higher from Muslims then from the rest of the world. This is in large part, I think, due to his bias against Arabs that derives from his stance on the israeli/palestinian conflict.
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nfl, what is your definition of terrorism? The crusades were a military operation. The Inquisition was state sponsored religious repression. If that falls within your definiton of terrorist, the Saddam Hussein was himself a terrorist and not merely someone who supported and rewarded terrorists.
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Spot on, Pooka. Not to mention they were several hundreds of years a go and it's a little late for condemnation.
Look, no one(I think) is saying that Islam, in and of itself, causes terrorism. What I and others are saying is that in the last several decades, terrorism has often been perpetrated based on its teachings and has been egged on by people who call themselves Muslims.
No one is holding Muslims to a 'higher' standard. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, such an idea is silly. If Christians or Jews or Americans or ocelots or sloths or whatever sponsored terrorism in the ways I've outlined above, then they should be held to the same standard. It does seem to be an unfortunate fact that none of these groups seem to be currently engaging in the level of terrorism that some groups of Muslims are.
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And if you think what I've said is true, then does it not stand to reason that one of the ways to halt the recruit of potential terrorists and make sure everyone understand that these yabos do *not* represent Islam is for leading Muslim clerics and Shahs to stand up and unequivically denounce terrorism?
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During the crusades knights would attack defenseless villagers to inspire fear. During the inquisition many terror tactics were used. It wasn't the guerrilla style terrorism that we know today, but the essence was their.
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How about Northern Ireland? How about the Oklahoma City bombing? How about the church burnings and such during the civil rights movement? How about Basque seperatist violence? How about the Tokyo subway gassing of a few years ago?
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For what it's worth, I looked for terrorist acts committed, and by whom, but have been unable to find anything in a short period of searching on this slow as molasses dial-up connection.
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I had a conversation with someone I know while we were discussing what we were majoring in. I said that I was drawn to the Middle Eastern Studies program a year ago, but now I'm not so sure about it.
She said "Good, because in ten years you won't be able to find a job. Think about it--20-30 years ago tons of people were studying Russian and expecting to work for the government with Soviet relations. Then the Iron Curtain fell and those jobs dissapeared. What will happen if the Middle East conflicts get resolved and then African rebels decide to bomb us in fifteen years?"
I think she might have had a point. The MidEast is a hotspot right now, just like the USSR was a hot spot a generation ago. Saying "All Russians are terrorists" then is just as effective as saying "All Muslims are terrorists" now.
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nfl, clowns frighten me. Does that make them terrorists? You still haven't given me a definition.
Look, last week there was a thread that highlighted a letter of outrage from a muslim- it may be the same letter in this article. I don't know what happened to the thread. I've searched for "terrorism" and "Catholic" under my own member number and don't see it.
What I said there was that of course there are terrorists that aren't muslim. Though the article mentioned"world terrorists" , maybe that's different from garden variety terrorist.
The definition of terrorism I gave was actions by a group not officially representing a nation, that target civilians in preference to military targets. I included in this actions taken by secret agencies, including our CIA or what have you. Such an act is definitely terrorist. When it comes to military selecting civilian targets or "brotherhoods" targeting military, it gets a little fuzzy. Like I do consider the bombing of the USS Cole a terrorist act.
I think your characterization of the crusades as military attacking unarmed villagers is somewhat naive. If that were the case, why did they succeed?
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I'm not sure that list is taking into account terrorist attacks all over the world for all nations. It looks like it's possibly concentrating predominantly on acts committed against Americans, Europeans, and Israelis with occasionaly forays into the rest of the world. But maybe it is complete. Would be nice to have something a little more informationally dense.
In any case, for what we're discussing--percentage of terrorist acts committed by 'Muslims' as compared to others--I'm not sure it will work very well. For one thing, we would have to tally everything by hand. For another, I'm not sure that all acts of terror sponsored by Arab groups in the Middle East are Muslim.
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Somewhere in that timeline (I admit it is incomplete, but the best one I found so far) - there is one segment that is a link to a graph of lives lost by region. It kind of surprised me.
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SM, I think you're going to have to work a little harder than that to show why what you're saying might be true. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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The important thing is that Islam does not advocate terrorism, any more than Christianity does. Terrorism is a relatively new concept, that is dependent upon a conceptual distinction between combatants and non-combatants. This distinction is of necessity modern, as in agrarian societies it was generally not possible to support a large class of professional combatants.
Many who live in the third world have a different sense of fair play than those who live in the first.
SarMup, most people go through several careers. I'm sure the Middle East is going to be relevant to last through at least your first one.
When my husband was at the Defense Language Institute in 1990, there were probably 20 Russian Linguists for each Arab Linguist. A lot of them went on to painting rocks red so no one would trip over them, because there was not a Russian assignment for them by the time they were done.
If you want to look ahead, I'd favor the chinese suggestion.
Go down to 1997 (sure takes awhile for that flash thing to work on my PC). There it says "Graphs: international attacks broken down by region" and that is a hyperlink.
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VERY interesting. If only we could see who was doing what.... Clicking on 'more' doesn't do anything for me.
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This just confirms the fact (well established already by the Rwanda massacres of the late '90s) that people never become outraged about the deaths of distant foreigners unless their lives are affected in some way.
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quote: Well Christian teachings were used to inspire the Crusades
I see that as a similar red herring as the WMD's of today. The real reason for the Crusades, imo, was in answer to the distress call made by Constantinople when the Arab hordes began the great invasion of the West. The "we'll retake the holy land for Christ!" thing was just PR to get the people all fired up. Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Destineer, the difference is that since the terrorists were Muslims you would normally expect innocent Muslims to try to assert their distance from the terrorists. American Muslims were doing this a whole lot after September 11th as were many Muslims abroad, for example Yasser Arafat donated blood to be sent to New York. Interestingly Saddam denied involvement, but said that Americans essentially had it coming.
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quote: This just confirms the fact (well established already by the Rwanda massacres of the late '90s) that people never become outraged about the deaths of distant foreigners unless their lives are affected in some way.
Your own example to support your argument is false. Many, many, many people expressed outrage over Rwanda.
Pat Robertson on CBN has been waging a campaign for many months for the US to involve itself in Sudan (mainly because, I think, many of the refugees and those being massacred are Christian?).
Within Jewish Society, you have the infamous example of the refuseniks and much of the Jewish 'left' who decries over extensions of power by Israel.
Can't speak for the South Americans.j
Here in America, many on this forum and many politicians expressed outrage over Abu Ghraib, or have spoken out against war in general, if not the Iraqi war specifically.
Conversely, many have supported the Iraqi occupation for reasons that it benefits the native Iraqis tremendously.
I think that while some people do behave as you say and don't care about 'foreigners', I think that if you look in most countries, you will find a significant dialogue as to whether an action is right or wrong, with people on both sides of the issue loudly proclaiming their side to be right.
The question of this thread is, where is this side in Muslim society/countries/cultures? Does it exist?
quote:I think she might have had a point. The MidEast is a hotspot right now, just like the USSR was a hot spot a generation ago.
I think she is right, but they will get more important before they go away. As our oil supply gets lower over the next few decades they will become very important. Of course eventually we will end up drilling more in the USA, and then the importance of the Middle East will decline. Once we have moved to other sources of energy, I see the Middle East becoming a non issue. Without oil money they will have a tough time getting the funds to make a splash in the world. It may very well be a region in turmoil, but their ability to project power outside their region will be limited.
As for China, it is hard to say what will happen to them. Right now they are on a cusp and could either continue to become a very powerful nation, or they could collapse. While their economy is growing, it runs the risk of burning out. Only time will tell if they can become more stable.
People talk about the economic power of China, and how we could not go to war with them because of the number of American companies that were involved over there...the same goes both ways. If the USA were to cut off all trade with China and prevent American businesses from being involved with China, our economy would be hurt very badly, theirs would collapse.
I think Japan has more long term stability, they also depend on the high spending of the USA, but their economy is not quite as volatile as China’s is. Also, it is less likely that Japan and the USA would ever have reason for a real split. Our societies are simply way to intertwined right now for any sort of split. Americans have a strong desire for Japanese products, and Japan has a strong desire for American money.
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