A religion of peace vs. apologists for terrorism

Friday, July 15, 2005

The mainstream media are finally beggining to get it...


Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims. The war on terror will never end unless moderate Muslims all over the world confront it

Harvey Enchin

Vancouver Sun


July 15, 2005


Hours after the terror attacks on the London subway and a bus last week, the Canadian Islamic Congress issued a brief statement that condemned the bombing.

It offered no condolences, expressed no grief, displayed no shock; it was instead a directive to the public not to blame Islam.

"We hope Canadian Muslims are not found guilty by association," said its national president, Mohamed Elmasry.

Criticism forced him to subsequently toss in some disingenuous sympathy, but he'd shown his true colours. That Elmasry should be speaking as the head of any Islamic organization is an affront to what its followers call a religion of peace.

Last year, he suggested all Israelis over the age of 18 should be murdered, arguing that because Israel has a civilian army they are legitimate targets for Palestinian suicide bombers. There were calls for his resignation, which Muslim leaders refused. Later, on a CBC radio program, he defended Islamic terrorism, saying the colonial powers committed worse atrocities and deserved what they got.

Earlier this year, Elmasry defended the Syrian occupation of Lebanon as a peacekeeping mission and described Iraq under Saddam Hussein as some sort of paradise with full employment, a stable public service infrastructure, and one of the leading Middle East states in administration, education and health care before the intervention of the international coalition plunged it into chaos.

No mention of the gassing of the Kurds, the torture chambers and rape rooms, the attack on Kuwait, war with Iran or the Scud missiles fired at Israel.

As long as apologists for terrorism like Elmasry are allowed to be spokesmen for Islam, all Muslims are vulnerable to being found guilty by association.

This need not be the case. Zijad Delich, the imam at the Jami'a Mosque in Richmond, sounded the right note last week, urging that the "criminals" who carried out the London terror attack be brought to justice. Similar sentiments were heard from the Canadian Council on American-Islamic relations and several Muslim groups in Britain.

Unfortunately, many of the condemnations of the bombing were perfunctory and fell far short of a call to arms in the war on terrorism.

Shortly after the bombing, Internet chat rooms run by British Muslims were flooded with congratulatory messages, hailing their victory over the infidels. The Christian Science Monitor reported a Muslim watchmaker in northeast London saying, "We don't need to fight. We are taking over. England does not belong to the English people, it belongs to God."

In a seemingly unrelated event, The Jordan Times reported that last week's International Islamic Conference had issued statements limiting who can issue fatwas and forbidding the declaration of any Muslim as an apostate, representing a landmark in Muslim history "even as the West is running an anti-Muslim campaign that was nurtured by Israel during the 1990s . . . ."

While the statement is welcome, given that terror groups use the term "apostate" to stigmatize other moderate Muslims and set them up for murder, the official state-run Jordanian newspaper added a ludicrous libel, unable to contain its hatred for the West in general and Israel in particular.

The widespread delusion that the West, under the influence of Jews, is somehow responsible for the Islamic world's decline and decay is reinforced daily in the news media, music videos, television programs and school textbooks throughout the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Sermons from mosques around the world preach to the faithful that Islam is the one and only true religion, that Allah will eventually humiliate the Jews and "crusaders" and make them subservient to the followers of Mohammed, as they were during Islamic rule in southern Europe from the 8th to the 11th century.

They are taught that Islam is not only a religion but a universal ideology, a complete legal system and an infallible guide that will provide solutions to all problems of human life. In this theology, there is no pluralism, no accommodation, no mercy for the infidels.

The war on terror will never end unless moderate Muslims all over the world confront it.

British intelligence estimates that 3,000 British Muslims have passed through al-Qaida training camps out of a total Muslim population in England of two million. That's a high ratio of potential killers. Their sympathies must be well-known to their families, friends and leaders of the mosques they attend, where they are more than likely fed a steady diet of Saudi-style Wahhabism, a cult that asserts all other religions are false and exhorts its adherents to kill non-believers as their religious duty.

What is obvious is that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Iraq, where the U.S. and its allies ousted a repressive regime and have invested billions of dollars to rebuild the country while putting their citizens' lives at risk to establish democracy.

Nor has it anything to with the Palestinians to whom the G-8 leaders have committed another $3 billion US to help establish an independent state even though the Palestinian Authority has done nothing to dismantle its vast terrorist network as it is obliged to do under the "road map."

Neither can Islamic terrorism be linked to the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where the U.S. liberated a people from tyranny, giving them the right for the first time to choose their government; or to the West's encouragement of the fledgling human rights movement in the Muslim world, where the concept has been unknown.

No, the terrorists despise the West because it is there, because its principles of religious freedom, democracy and equality are anathema to them.

So moderate Muslim leaders have to do more than grudgingly concede that blowing up innocent people on a subway train is bad. They have to rout out the evil in their midst.

Imams who preach hatred should be fired. Islamic schools that teach Jews are descendants of apes and pigs should be shut down. Videos, films and TV shows that extol the virtues of martyrdom should be banned.

They must tell Muslims that terrorism has no justification and that al-Qaida and its offshoots are criminal, not Islamic, organizations. So too they must acknowledge are Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade -- killers and criminals all, whether they attack a transit system in London, bomb a nightclub in Bali, destroy a train in Madrid, crash planes in New York or set off explosives in a crowded restaurant in Tel Aviv.

Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims. There is no place in civil society for an ideology that celebrates mass murder or deems suicide bombing a sacred act.

Moderate Muslim leaders must take aggressive steps to ensure that Islam proves to be what they keep telling everybody it is -- a religion of tolerance and peace.