WE’RE NOT TERRORISTS. ARAB (MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS, et al) ARE NOT TERRORISTS. MUSLIMS (ARAB AND NON-ARAB) ARE NOT TERRORISTS.
How far do we, Arab/Muslims, have to go in flaunting our moderation? Would posting condolences, apologies and condemn banners solve the problem? But apologizing for what? For something we haven’t done? Is it a double act of auto-stigmatization and auto-justification?
Most of Arabs and Muslims have publicly condemned Bin Laden for his atrocities all the time. And those who did not either doesn’t feel like that they should do because they have nothing to do with it, or a small minority show support to Bin Laden and similar terrorists under the name of Islam. But does this mean that the world then should hold us Arab and Muslims responsible?
One of the many short comings which have arisen in the West is judging Arab and Islam by the conduct of a minority of its people. By doing this, segments of Western society have deliberately played off the desperate actions of many Arab and Muslims, and have given it the name of Islam. Such behavior is clearly not objective and seeks to distort the reality of Islam. For if such a thing was done - judge a religion by the conduct of minority its people - then we too could say that all Christianity is about, is child molesting and homosexuality (by using the many cases of child abuse and homosexuality by priests), whilst Hinduism was all about looting and breaking up mosques (by using the incident of the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodya, India in December 1992 by Hindu zealots).
Generalizing in such a manner is not seen as being objective, yet we find that the Western world is foremost in propagating this outlook on Arab and Islam. The very name Islam comes from the Arabic root word ’salama’ which means peace. Islam is a religion which is based upon achieving peace through the submission to the will of Allah. Thus, by this very simple linguistic definition, one can ascertain as to what the nature of this religion is. If such a religion is based on the notion of peace, then how is it that so many acts done by its adherents are contrary to peace? The answer is simple. Such actions, if not sanctioned by the religion, have no place with it. They are not Islamic and should not be thought of as Islamic. Nor they are of Arab culture and should not be thought of as Arab.
Again, as with the conspiracy theories which urgently needed to see 9/11 as the work of Mossad, and the utilitarian justification of the vanguard’s suspension of the ethical, the radical Islamists are an expression of the very Westernizing alienation they profess to defy. In a sense, it is as Meddeb reminds us: “Who are those who died while spreading death in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania? [...] They are the sons of our times, the pure products of the Americanization of the world.” (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Islam and its discontents - London, 2003)
In such a world of pseudo-religious reaction against the postmodern erosion of identity, it follows that if you are not “with us,” you are with the devil.
Hello world! Jihad is not terrorism. Arabs are not terrorists.
Jihadist! Isn’t this is the word the western media is using every time a terrorism act takes place? But wait. Do you know what the meaning of the word is? Do you know what the origin of the word is?
In the linguistic sense, the Arabic word “jihad” means struggling or striving and applies to any effort exerted by anyone. In this sense, a student struggles and strives to get an education and pass course work; an employee strives to fulfill his/her job and maintain good relations with his/her employer; a politician strives to maintain or increase his popularity with his constituents and so on. The term strives or struggle may be used for/by Muslims as well as non-Muslims; for example, Allah, says in the Qur’an:
“We have enjoined on people kindness to parents; but if they strive (Jahadaka) to make you ascribe partners with Me that of which you have no knowledge, then obey them not…” (The Holy Qur’an, 29:8; also see 31:15)
In the above two verses of the Qur’an, it is non-Muslim parents who strive (jahadaka) to convert their Muslim child back to their religion. In the West, “jihad” is generally translated as “holy war,” a usage the media has popularized. According to Islamic teachings, it is unholy to instigate or start war; however, some wars are inevitable and justifiable.
If we translate the words “holy war” back into Arabic, we find “harbun muqaddasa,” or for “the holy war,” “al-harbu al-muqaddasa.” We challenge any researcher or scholar to find the meaning of “jihad” as holy war in the Qur’an or authentic Hadith collections or in early Islamic literature. Unfortunately, some Muslim writers and translators of the Qur’an, the Hadith and other Islamic literature translate the term “jihad” as “holy war,” due to the influence of centuries-old Western propaganda.
This could be a reflection of the Christian use of the term “Holy War” to refer to the Crusades of a thousand years ago. However, the Arabic words for “war” are “harb” or “qital,” which are found in the Qur’an and Hadith.
It is far from desirable to simply quote, as an apparent show of understanding, scriptural support for this or that personal opinion we may have about a particular subject. Neither is it enough to use Qur’anic or Prophetic texts without adequate knowledge of the human situation and cultural milieu in which they were revealed and first applied, as well as the precedence of some verses over others based on order of revelation or abrogation.
In other words, context and circumstance of Qur’anic revelation and Hadith are crucial in coming to terms with Jihad. It is an error to judge Islam and Muslims in the light of the kind of “Jihad” that has fallen victim to ideological tendencies. The critic also has to be wary of the interpretation of “Jihad” which is projected, and sometimes imposed, by the selective “religious reformism” so rampant today. They ignore central aspects of Islam’s intellectual heritage, selectively repress important figures and disregard Islam’s impeccable history of adherence to the standards of law and justice in affairs of state.
On the other hand, traditional Muslim Sunnis intuit that al-Qaida is a Western invention, but one which cannot be defeated in a battleground where the logic is Western. This was one of the messages that emerged from the 2003 summit meeting of eight hundred Muslim scholars at Putrajaya - Malaysia. Al-Qaida is inauthentic: “it rejects the classical canons of Islamic law and theology, and issues fatwas that are neither formally nor in their habit of mind deducible from medieval exegesis.”
Yet despite the clear stand taken against the terrorists by “Arab World” and the “Muslim World”, the terrorists are still labeled by the media as “Islamic”. It seems that the Muslims cannot win. Even if they condemn terrorism in no uncertain terms, still acts of terrorism are attributed to Arab and Islam.
The temptation is strong for Arab’s and Muslims to give up and say: “Even if we condemn terrorism, we are still labeled as terrorists. We might as well not condemn it at all.” But to do this would be to fall into the media’s trap. The media must now be allowed to malign Arab and Islam by giving the impression that the religion condones senseless violence and cruelty against innocent civilians. However much the media seek to present Arab and Islam in this distorted way, the Arabs and Muslims must strive to present the true picture.
Last but not least, quoting Mark Glenn - Islamic Extremism May Save Western Civilization, 18 April 2003:
It would shock and probably offend most Americans to learn the truth that the reason they are here, their power, their affluence and position in the world is directly because of the Islamic religion and the Arab culture. That’s right, the very “ragheads” and “Hajis” (as Limbaugh, Liddy, and some of the others often call them) that the US is now fighting are directly responsible for the preeminence and power of not just the United States, but of the entire Western world in general.
[...]
What will gall Americans even more, especially those who call themselves Christian, is the idea that it may be the Arab and Muslim culture that will be not only the birthplace of Western Civilization, but the savior of it as well.
As evidenced by the nightly news right now, there is a war going on. Superficially, it is about things like “terrorism” and “freedom.” There are some who go a step further and blame oil and banking, not to mention “lebensraum” for Israel. And while all these things do play a part, some greater than others, the real war here is between two world views.
[...]
To the “New World,” and by default the New World Order, the Arab/Muslim world is backwards in its values. It prohibits abortion and birth control. They have large families, as opposed to the West, where the average family has only 2 children. It prohibits usury banking, to which the West credits its own economic superiority. Theirs is a “closed” society (read into this no sodomy, pornography, gay lifestyle, et al) Theirs is a “cruel” society (read into this-they do not have people on death row for 20 years) And finally, they will not play the game the way the market wants it played, meaning, they want a just price for their only real source of wealth, their oil, instead of giving it away to the West for a fraction of its worth. In other words, the picture that has just been painted here is, the Muslim world is now what the Christian world once was and should be.
One can already hear the roar coming out of the mouths of many who have not been thinking of this in a critical way, particularly those well-paid mouthpieces on TV and radio masquerading themselves as Christians. “The religion of Mohammed is better than the religion of Jesus Christ?!” No, rather, what is meant here is that the religion of Islam resembles Christianity more than does the Christianity of the West today, because the Christianity of the West today isn’t Christianity at all, but a watered-down amalgamation of New Ageism mixed with certain common spiritual attributes that, although called Christian, can be found in almost every known religion. Through decades of destructive influence and propaganda through media and academia, mainstream Christianity in the West has been reduced to one remaining commandment, vague and hard to pin-point which is “be nice.”
The fact of the matter is, putting aside all the other reasons surrounding this war that were enumerated at the beginning of this essay, what exists in the Middle East, or in The Old World, as some would call it, is a culture that is still devoted to principles concerning basic moral values, values that have not yet surrendered to the corrupting influence of Western media or Western money. Within the last 50 years, every culture has fallen before this corrupting power that seeks to enslave all men in such a way that the individual is reduced to the value of what he produces and what he consumes, and in pursuit of that method, the individuals behind this program have quietly but decisively removed every obstacle in their way, be it religion, culture, morals, tradition, or world view, through the methods of media, academia, and finance; that is, except the culture encapsulated in the Islamic/Arabic World.
By the description “Arabic/Islamic,” it should not be understood as solely a “Muslim” thing. The culture existing in the Arab world is held by both Christian and Muslim alike. There are millions of Christians, who have in essence the same culture with their Muslim counterparts in much the same way as most Americans, regardless of religion, have the same culture. It is those Christians and Muslims alike who reject these “modern” notions such as abortion, birth control, sodomy, pornography, usury banking, and “market value” of services and resources. They still view the family, the traditional family, with all its traditional roles, as the most important building block of their society, and they take very seriously anything that threatens it. They recognize the value of their children, and how dangerous the moral relativism of the West has become, threatening the stability of society directly. They recognize that if their children and society as a whole are subjected to ideas that promote moral decay for an extended period of time, what will eventually and unavoidably be produced is national decay.
If by some miracle the Arab/Muslim world is victorious against this onslaught, and the secular/atheistic influence of the NWO agenda is reduced to such a level as to allow the Christian West to regain its foothold where it once stood, it will be necessary to credit the religion of Islam and the Arab world for not buckling under in the face of extermination. And it will be we, the Christian West and Western Civilization, who will be the beneficiaries of “Islamic Extremism.”
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2005/07/13/arab-and-muslims-are-not-terrorists/
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