Observations

November 5, 2006

More on Muslim Terrorism

Filed under: Islam, Terrorism, Tolerance — jshott @ 10:19 pm

terrorists-masked.jpgA program on Fox News Channel this weekend focused on the radical Muslim element and its determined effort to convert or subjugate all non-Muslims, or kill everyone that won’t convert or be subjugated. Since those who don’t like Fox may go off on a tangent and assume that it was just another narrow-minded anti-Muslim rant, more than once during the show, and in the first minute or two, was a conspicuous comment to the effect that most Muslims do not indulge in terrorism or in the support of terrorism, and that the program was not about “peaceful or moderate” Muslims, just the radical element.

From the Fox News Channel Web page: “According to a shocking new documentary [by Wayne Kopping] called “Obsession,” the free world is still unprepared to face the unwavering commitment of those who have pledged their lives to our destruction. The film states that we suffer not so much from complacency, but from the naïve disbelief that we remain targets of thousands, perhaps millions of radical Muslims around the world.”

There are approximately 1.1 billion Muslims in the world. One interviewee stated that the radical element comprises 10 to 15 percent of the whole of Islam. Now 15 percent isn’t a large proportion, but 15 percent of 1.1 billion is a big bunch of people willing and eager to destroy western civilization in general and American society in particular, something short of 170 million thoroughly programmed, murderous, robotic fanatics.

There were several scenes of fanatical imams whipping their compliant flock into an anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Israel frenzy. There were a few scenes of children reciting jihad rhetoric with all the conviction of someone old enough to actually understand the words they were saying.

And that is the key to the problem: radical Muslim clergy are not just teaching jihad, not just training youth in the ways of intolerance and dominance, but thoroughly indoctrinating young Muslims from ages in the mid-single digits. And, yes, some of that is taking place inside the United States.

Interviews with Muslims who strongly oppose the hijacking of their religion by the fanatics tell us that our actions in the Middle East are notterrorist-child.jpg what promotes Muslim extremism, and points out that rampant anti-Western propaganda in the Arab media, school curricula and other indoctrination of Islamic youth has been going on since before the U.S. went into Afghanistan and Iraq. “Like Nazi Germany,” the FNC program summary says, “with whom radical Islamists had a deep affinity before and during World War II, … it may well be that today’s fascists are a far greater threat to the free world than the fascists of yesteryear.”

The scenes of fiery speeches—not just in the Middle East, but also in the streets of New York and London—that contain the threat that the West either convert to Islam and submit to the rule of a Taliban-like government or die, leave you with the idea that negotiation is not an option. How do you negotiate with a fanatic, who is someone who has excessive devotion to a cause, and are frequently obsessive or unbalanced?

If negotiation won’t work with terrorists—and it won’t—that doesn’t leave much wiggle room, does it? Will anything allow us to deprogram the fanatics, some of which have been “true believers” for decades, and started when they were children? The option is to wipe the terrorist threat from the face of the Earth by force, and that is a path most of us don’t really relish. But that seems the only way we can survive.

 

4 Comments »

  1. Yeah, people been claiming the big bad muslims are out to get us since the seventh century. It was fear mongering nonsense then, and it’s racist fear mongering nonsense now. Even worse, our real enemies like China are making out like bandits while the USA obsesses over Muslim boogeymen. Fear mongering sells. Fox is laughing all the way to the bank.

    JMO
    Doug

    Comment by unitedcats — November 5, 2006 @ 10:32 pm | Reply

  2. That’s an interesting perspective, Doug.

    Do you deny that Muslims were responsible for 9-11 and are actively bombing and plotting other attacks against Western culture?

    Comment by jshott — November 11, 2006 @ 8:46 am | Reply

  3. Do you deny that Christian armies are marching through Muslim nations? The terrorist attacks of a handful of Muslim extremists are terrible crimes, but are no more a threat to western civilization than the IRA or the Red Brigades. By treating this as a war we have given a handful of nuts undreamed legitimacy and made the problem far worse. Al-Qaeda has grown from 800 members before 911 to twelve thousand today, if that’s not proof that we’re doing something wrong, I don’t know what is. I agree that Islamic terrorism is a threat, I just disgree with how severe the threat is and how we should deal with it. Exaggerating foreign and internal threats has been a bulkwark of US politics since there was a US, I see the “terrorist” threat as more of the same. Our real enemies, the ones who actualy have power, are in Moscow and Peking and Tokyo and Berlin; and they are laughing all the way to the bank as we bankrupt ourselves crusading in the Middle East.

    JMO
    Doug

    Comment by unitedcats — November 11, 2006 @ 10:52 am | Reply

  4. Two things:

    First, thanks for your comments. Even though we disagree, dialog is a good thing. This blog is one I don’t use often right now, and I invite you to visit the other Observations where there is a more lively conversation.

    Second, I dispute your characterization of Christian armies marching through Muslim nations, as though it was Sherman marching through Georgia. Yes, coalition forces are present in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are not “Christian armies,” and they are not “marching through Muslim nations.”

    Al-Qaeda may have grown in membership since 9-11, or the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but I think the number of radical Muslims is a fairly constant 120,000,000, according to more than a couple of authorities on such things. These are not people angered by the U.S. presence in the Middle East, but fanatics bent on taking down Western culture and either converting non-Muslims, subjugating non-Muslims, or killing non-Muslims.

    Tokyo and Berlin are not threats of any kind, and in fact Tokyo depends heavily upon U.S. protection from China. Moscow and China aren’t going to challenge the U.S.

    I think the biggest mistake we can make is to underestimate the threat of Muslims fanatics.

    Comment by jshott — November 11, 2006 @ 1:40 pm | Reply


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