The liberals among the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world claim that they must stop being silent, because "the fear of speaking has become the mainstay of terrorism" * An Arab journalist admitted: most of the terrorists operating in the world today are Muslims
Haaretz, News and Walla
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A little more than three years have already passed since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, but the distress experienced by the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world does not diminish. Since that attack, extremist Muslims have committed additional crimes in the name of Islam, and non-Muslim armies have invaded Muslim countries in the name of the war on terror - a move that many see as a war against Islam itself.
Ordinary Muslims are forced to deal with harsh acts that are done in the name of their faith, and as a result, with the spectrum of opinion in the Muslim world, which presents radically opposing positions. A well-known Arab journalist, Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid from the "A-Sharq al-Awast" newspaper published in London, lamented the popular opinion in the world today but agreed with it: according to him, it is true that not all Muslims are terrorists, but most of the terrorists who operate in the world today They are Muslims. On the other hand, the spokesman of an Iraqi organization that supports the Jihad war, presented an opposite position: wherever you look, he wrote on the Internet, you will find one and only truth - the infidels destroy Muslims "in every way, in every country, and with burning hatred."
These two opposing positions also have completely different conclusions. Liberal Muslims argue that this is the moment when Muslims need to stand up and act. They must fight so that their faith is not stolen from under their noses, and becomes a tool for a clash between cultures. In their opinion, not only does the violence of an extreme Muslim minority harm sympathy for Muslims in conflict zones - such as Chechnya, Israel and Iraq - but it begins to threaten coexistence between Muslims and others, everywhere around the world.
On the other side of the spectrum of opinion, you can hear the supporters of Jihad, who claim that Islam is currently in such great danger that the war for its survival is not only a justifiable task, but even a noble one. According to them, the enemies of Islam are so evil that it is permissible to use all means to deter them. And the more brutal and shocking these measures are, the more effective they will be. In the end, Jihad supporters believe, Islam will only win if all foreign influences are expelled from all its territories.
The non-Muslim world has very little doubt about the winner of this battle of views. Three years ago it was only the Americans who asked, "Why do they hate us?" Indonesians, Spaniards, Turks, Australians, Nepalese, French, Italians, Russians and other nations are also asking this question today, whose citizens have fallen victim to jihadist "revenge". The puzzle that remains unsolved, then, is how long so many Muslims can ignore the extremists living within them.
The newspaper published the attack on the mosque in Nepal, without reporting why
Riots in Kathmandu following the killing of the kidnapped in Iraq (archive photo: Reuters) The leading newspaper in Egypt, the state-owned "Al-Ahram", recently provided a partial answer to this question. At the beginning of September, the newspaper reported, and saw fit to do so only in its internal pages, on the brutal massacre by terrorists in Iraq of 12 Nepali workers, claiming that the former "carried out God's judgment" against the "Buddhist invaders". A day later, "Al-Ahram" reported, this time on its front page, that demonstrators in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, attacked a mosque and damaged it - and did so without explaining why the demonstrators went berserk. This may only be an indication, but the omission of the details in "Al-Ahram" reflects a pattern of behavior in the Muslim world - playing on the feeling of Muslim victimhood.
There is nothing unusual about tipping the scales in your favor. It is hard to say, for example, that the American coverage of what is happening in Iraq is a model for a balanced review. The problem begins with the cumulative effect, which is achieved when the story of Muslim victimhood is repeated, when it is inflated in prayers in mosques and when it is exploited for short-term political gains. Too many governments in the Arab world have discovered how convenient it is to channel the resentment of the residents, and direct their frustration to events that take place far from home. This way the governments can neutralize claims for changes in government.
Seeing the world through the lens of the victim has become a habit. So much so, that some Arab commentators stated that the kidnapping and murder of foreign citizens in Iraq is done by American intelligence agents. The purpose of the agents, believes Jalal Davidar, editor of the popular Egyptian newspaper "Al-Akhbar", is to "show how barbaric the Arabs and Muslims are, and thus justify the war in Iraq and the war on terror."
Such conspiracies seem to reflect a need for a coherent plot, which would explain completely incoherent situations. The American occupation of Iraq, in the eyes of Muslims, must look as evil as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, or the Russian occupation of Chechnya. The resistance to these attacks must, therefore, be commended, no matter how ugly it may be.
"There is no proof of bin Laden's responsibility"
The increase in detainees in Iraq (archive photo: Reuters)
Rescuing children from school in Russia (archive photo: Reuters) The desire to paint the Muslim resistance in the colors of glory, leads prominent figures in the Muslim world to ambiguous statements. Yusuf Qaradawi, one of the most prominent preachers in the Muslim world, believes that Islam distinguishes between soldiers and civilians, but finds it difficult to apply this distinction in reality. According to him, killing prisoners can sometimes be justified, but mutilating their bodies is a sin. Adel al-Mawada, a Muslim extremist who serves as the deputy speaker of the parliament of Bahrain, recently declared that he personally condemns the attacks in New York and Washington, but cannot condemn Osama bin Laden, because "there is no proof" that he is responsible for them.
This blurring of borders becomes even more possible, if you take into account the way in which the war on terror is conducted. The fact that such a large number of organizations with a Muslim hue - ethnic, national or religious - have been placed under one umbrella, known as "terrorism", can perhaps be considered as "moral clarity". But at the same time, the blanket inclusion of Muslim organizations ignores the real frustration behind many of their motivations.
The scandals that broke out in the Abu Raaib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba undermined confidence in the existence of global recognition of human rights in any form. The conduct of the US in Iraq does not look good either: in the last few weeks, the television broadcasts have seen harsh images, including a bombed ambulance, a dead child coming out of a destroyed building, and the killing of an Arab journalist.
Advertisement Despite these grim images, the sheer evil of jihadi violence has begun to provoke strong opposition among an angry Muslim opposition. The recent terrorist events in the world, culminating in the deadly takeover of the school in the city of Baslan in Russia, have provoked a series of sharp condemnations in the Muslim world. The condemnations were not only directed against terrorism, but also against preachers and clerics, whose extreme interpretation of Islam supports this terrorism.
Why, wondered a former Kuwaiti minister on the pages of the newspaper "A-Sharq al-Awast", did we not receive a single fatwa (legal ruling) against bin Laden, while Muslims went out of their way to condemn the writer Salman Rushdie for writing a "tefle" novel? An editorial in the Egyptian weekly Rose Al-Youssef stated that Muslims must stop being silent. "Our fear of speaking out," it says, "has become a pillar of terrorism."
Yedan in the wake of September 11
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