The western world is indeed at war with militant Islam in all its incarnations. Muslims, please don’t blame the west. It was the middle east which raised the already awful situation there to the level of war upon us. Few in Europe or the USA wanted it. Our civilization is founded upon Judaic-Christian ethics, enlightenment regard for the importance of the individual, and the dominance of English style law over individuals, institutions, and even governments. You call our interference with your culture a crusade but it has little to do with religion. Few of us are that serious about exporting our theology. But we did try to export the triad of our ethics, individual rights, and law. It seems very many of you did not want that. But If we no longer have any interest in exporting our religion we yet feel obligated to export this triad, not for our own benefit but for the millions that your mullahs and tribal leaders refuse to help to improve their own lot. You share with Hinduism a fatalist belief. Yes, the Koran demands charity to others of “the book.” But not to all others. They are slaves without human rights. Even your charity to other Muslims does not demand improving their lot in life with education. If they are born poor you are obligated to care for their basic needs, but no more. Worst of all to us, that seems OK to those of you who have something of the world’s goods.
So we are at war. Do not think because some westerners insist on peace at any cost that you have an advantage over us? There are many strands in Islam as in Christianity, some militant, others that stress peacefulness and kindness. We know this but you have given us no choice but to defend ourselves and we cannot do that with extreme care not to harm or offend the peacemakers either in the west or in Islam. Sometimes we agonize too much over stereotyping you and others. Thus for many years it has been popular to blame our government for interning Japanese Americans during WW II. This stereotyping was justified in war. Our more liberal writers constantly point to the patriotism of most Japanese Americans, some of whom volunteered for the American army and died fighting the Germans in Italy. What they don’t mention is that perhaps there was no sabotage by Japanese Americans because the potential saboteurs were in camps and therefore could not commit sabotage. Likewise I have no problem with keeping a closer eye on an Arab American than an Irish or Italian one. No one denies that some, however few, will commit mass murder here if able to do so. Some rights must be suspended in times of war. The problem for us will be how to keep this just a brief interlude of suspicion when there is no nation state to sign a peace with and return to normal. We must also accept as we did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that there is no absolute security no matter how much we allow restriction of our freedoms. We will take losses and must reject the call for security at any price. Moderation in all things, but yes for a time some targeted invasion of privacy by the government is necessary. Hell, marketers already do it.
These are the rules that militant Islam has forced upon the west. How can it be otherwise? That is up to you. Certainly most Arabs have some reasonable sympathy for The militants. Even though they would not themselves attack us neither will they turn against their “brothers” who you consider heroes for bringing retribution on the former colonial powers. But you will not advance your economies or the lives of your children by blaming the colonial powers of the last century for your miseries now. No matter how hurtful for you, to make progress anger and revenge must be laid aside. There are examples of this attitude of reconciliation working. Ireland and South Africa come to mind. I know that it is easier to follow the route of trouble makers who seek to promote themselves among you. They yell and blame the west for all your troubles beginning with settling the Jewish displaced persons of WW II upon your land. But all these are a fait accompli and no amount of complaining about past wrongs will reverse history. I ask: even if what they say be true how do they help advance your common man and woman? That is only done by cooperation and a willingness to refuse cover to murderers no matter how much you may agree with their anger at the west. Here in the United States we ourselves had to come to grips with the problem. For a hundred years after our civil war our negro citizens were denied the rights of citizenship in our southern states and discriminated against openly in the south and more subtly in the north. It was not until our southern voters turned against the reactionaries and haters among them that progress was made in both the political and economic sphere, not only for Negroes but also for whites because until then business was reluctantly to invest in the more racist and backward states. But it was peaceful civil rights leadership that brought change, not the ranting and threats of black militants.
Fact is, by today’s terms Muhammad was not a peaceful man because he would have had no concept of the horrors of worldwide war. The Arabs of his time were a warlike peoplet as were others. That was their culture just as it had been the culture of Vikings. Both supported themselves by raiding others and by hiring themselves out as mercenaries. That was how life was and had always been for them. Muhammad was a good man who stopped the Arab feuding among themselves and was intent on teaching them ethical monotheism. However his successors set upon a program of conquest. They justified it to themselves as spreading Islam among the unbelievers. The same can be said of the blood shed by Charlemagne in the west so I’m not charging them with anything that Christians weren’t also doing. That was the world in which they lived but it was all a long time ago. If Muslims insist that such behavior was a good thing then we in the west are necessarily their enemy. In war innocents will die. Many, many innocents. But we cannot just lie down and let these murderers kill our innocents to avoid killing yours.
Try to see our side. You say that crusaders attacked your land but ignore that the successors of Mohamed won these by attacking what had been Christian lands. You forget that by the time of the crusades you were killing any Christian who dared to make a pilgrimage to his holy sites. Surely you would justifiably call for jihad were westerners to prevent Muslims from visiting Mecca and Medina. Because I respect your prophet (peace be unto him indeed) I do not believe that were he alive today he would inflict a sixth century paradigm of conquest and slavery upon the world. Would Charlemagne? I don’t know. Perhaps not but perhaps like your jihadists he would cloak his own ambition with religion. What I can say is that our Jesus whom you claim to have been a major prophet would not. The evils of Christianity stem not from him, but as in Islam, from those who followed after him.
(Parenthetically, I understand why you consider the theological claims in the Christian scripture to be distortions. OK, understandable. I have some problems there too. But I see no reason why you do not adhere to the moral teachings of Jesus if you claim such high regard for him. Awhile back there was an incident where a Muslim woman was stoned for adultery. I refer you to an exact duplicate of her situation in the bible, that of another woman caught in adultery. She was to be stoned under the law of Moses but begged Jesus to help her. He simply spoke to the crowd saying: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and then began doodling in the sand. When he looked up again the crowd had dispersed. He then asked the woman “Is there no one to condemn you?'” “No, Lord,” she replied. and Jesus said “Neither shall I. Go in peace and sin no more.” This is purely a moral not a theological lesson yet you ignore it. There is no reason why anyone would have distorted it. [Pope Francis has taken it to heart.] )
Unfortunately, people can always find in holy scriptures justification for whatever they want to do. The world has changed since Muhammad’s time but not fundamentalist Islamists who pick and choose passages from the Koran rather than follow its spirit. Your Muslim neighbors in Nigeria enslave non Muslim children and the world rightly gets angry. They know that such behavior was glorified in years past. Musa, the Arab conqueror of Spain, allegedly sent thirty thousand virgins back to Arabia. These virgins were most likely children whose menfolk he’d killed. Since Arab women commonly married at age twelve these would have been children intended for brothels and harems where they would be sex objects and servants. Even today, non-Muslim girls travel at risk of being raped in Muslim lands, and the police do nothing. You don’t even punish rapists of unescorted Muslim women. You blame the women instead of demanding that your men behave as honorable Muslims should behave. I do not blame this on your prophet but on those who claim this element of your culture is justified by the Koran. Certainly Muhammad did not support sin and violence against women but always demanded charity toward women and orphans.. Moral behavior is what Muhammad demanded of his followers just as did Jesus. Have Christians also abused their scriptures? Yes, of course. But few today will use the bible to justify terror, brutality, selfishness, and sin. Most of us try to emulate the spirit of the gospels, not find words here and there to justify the crimes that we want to commit.
Of course I do not want war but it is up to Islam to control its extremists and prevent it. We cannot do that for you. The USA attacked Afghanistan to destroy the architects of 9/11. We stayed to help rebuild that country. A moment’s reflection will make it clear that the United States had nothing to gain by it. That was one of the few incidents in history when one nation has tried to help another without anything to gain. Iraq is more complicated. There is the matter of oil and it was our mistake to think that once Saddam was gone all Iraqis would play nice together.
I am not so naive as to think that our high tech weapons can win us a victory. They will only make money for the arms manufacturers without eliminating the present hatred that you have for the west. Our George Washington and Vietnam’s Ho Chi Ming will tell anyone who wants to listen that a people fighting for its own land will always win in the end. But the cost to you would be reinforcing those among us in the west who want to return to some sort of racial and religious exclusiveness here. That wouldn’t work even if it were a good thing, and it’s not. A lot of blood would be shed without either some sort of victory by anyone or a warm peace. What would result is tyranny in the name of security for both sides. Already Assad looks like a good ally to many in the west though earlier they’d wanted to remove him in the interest of democracy in Syria. Don’t you see that an Islamist victory would be as bad for the middle east as for the west?
