According to The New York Times, when the terrorists took over
the Russian elementary school, they shouted "Allahu akbar" ("Allah
is the greatest").
Does this surprise you, dear reader? Does it shock you that the
people who deliberately attacked a school and then systematically
shot and blew up little children did so in the name of Islam?
Unfortunately, the question is rhetorical. Having targeted little
children for death, there is no atrocity, no barbarity, no act of
evil that the human race cannot imagine fanatical Muslims
committing.
We have already become almost inured to:
The slaughtering of innocent human beings as if they were animals
while chanting Muslim prayers.
The reintroduction of black slavery and genocide against
blacks.
The murder of daughters and sisters for imagined or real sexual
behavior.
The stoning of women accused of adultery.
The burning of Hindu temples and Christian churches, and the
destruction of among the greatest Buddhist sculptures.
The ban on women driving cars or learning to read.
The idolization of young men who blow themselves up while murdering
and maiming innocent non-Muslims and the theology of sexual
rewards in heaven for doing so.
These are some of the atrocities being committed by Muslims in
different parts of the world today. It is, of course, only a
minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only
Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren't even
among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren't
and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in
1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated
its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren't despite the
destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have
murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with
China.
With the psychopathic cruelty at a Russian elementary school, have
we reached the point where people of goodwill can ask serious
questions about Muslims and Islam? Or are any challenging questions
still to be dismissed as "Muslim bashing" or, even more absurdly,
"racist," as if religion were a race? but it is equallycertain, and
exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. The
hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were
Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the
Nepalese
chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape
and
murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to
be their
victims. Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in
Riyadh
and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners
last week
were also Muslims.
Bin Laden is a Muslim. 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 islam, it's society and its culture?
These
images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and
degrading.
But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let
us
acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to
justify
them with sound and fury signifying nothing.
For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the
seriousness of our
sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We
should
then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they
are the
sour grapes of a deformed culture.
listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Sheikh - the Qatar-based
radical
Egyptian cleric - and hear him recite his "fatwa" about the
religious
permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us
contemplate
the incident of this religious Sheikh allowing, nay even calling
for, the
murder of civilians.
This ailing Sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying
in
"infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent
civilians.
How could this Sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg,
who was
slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers
in that
ravished country? How can we believe islam as a peaceful religion
when he tells us that Islam is the
religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion
of blood
and slaughter?
In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with
nationalist or
Leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of
their
adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement
in
murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.We can't call those
who take schoolchildren as hostages peacuful islam. Peacul and
benign islam is a contradiction. We must not tolerate in our midst
those who abduct journalists, murder civilians,
explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever
the
sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. 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 hope to
have a peacul universe unless we accecpt the fact that islam is
about terror and terror only.To do otherwise is to delude
ourselves. One day, just like the passengers in e madrid blast, we
might find out loved ones killed just because we happen to support
our goverment.