Almost all terrorists are Muslims

Sunday, September 12, 2004

An extraordinary column in the pan-Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the Al-Arabiya news channel gives me hope that not all muslims are uncaring, death-loving hypocrites:

"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. . . .

"What a pathetic record. What an abominable `achievement.' 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.

"We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the sheiks who thought it ennobling to re-invent 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."

"When it is no longer astonishing to encounter such sentiments in the Muslim world, we will we know that the corner has been turned in the war against Islamist terror. "