It seems from the comments about Zarqawi’s declaration that the writers had either not read or understood it., and contrasted it with civilian casualties from coalition air strikes or other military action, which they considered justifiable.  However, Zarqawi is using a similar justification.  He declared that previously he had called off attacks on the “enemy” because of the risk of harming innocents, but now he had permission from some scholars that he could launch attacks on the “enemy” even if it resulted in some incidental  innocent civilian casualties.   While the US does not deliberately target innocent civilians, it does drop bombs and fires missiles at targets deep in residential areas, as it did in the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign that lit up the skies over Baghdad.  Bombs and missiles are “WID”s,”weapons of indiscriminate destruction”, imprecise weapons that frequently miss the intended target, dependent on often faulty intelligence,  bring death and destruction to innocents.   When used on targets in heavily populated areas, it is certain that innocents will die from their use, and hospital records in targeted cities have the grim records of thousands of civilians killed by air strikes.   So the moral question is, should such weapons be used at all on targets in populated areas when it is certain that many civilians will be killed “inadvertently”? And is there an “acceptable” magic number of innocent casualties?  Even if there was only one child killed, it is one too many, ask its mother, if you care.

 

Deane Berson (Gazette, June 9, 2005) suggests that Muslims should wage “jihad” against those who are committing acts of terrorism.   He mentions “the long-standing oppressive conditions in Muslim countries as a whole”, but seems not to understand how they relate to terrorism.  Unfortunately, he does not realize that misguided “jihad” springs from those “oppressive conditions”, and further contributes to them.

 

Deane mocks the protest of Muslim women forced in France to remove their head scarf, which is an expression of modesty, and alleges that Muslims do not protest against acts of terrorism.  Most of the leaders of the Muslim world, even the Iranians, protested against the 9/11 attack and expressed their sympathies to the US and if he cares, he can read their statements on websites like CAIR’s at http://www.cair-net.org/html/911statements.html  and news reports.  Acts of terrorism have been condemned by the leaders of countries, like President Musharraf, leading scholars like Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of the Al-Azhar mosque of Cairo, and American Muslim leaders like Hamza Yusuf and ISNA’s Dr. Ingrid Mattson, and repeatedly by the preachers in local mosques in America, including ours in Colorado Springs.  If the American media, on which Americans rely solely for news, has not reported these statements, or Americans have not been listening, should that be taken to imply that Muslims have not condemned terrorism?

 

And let’s be consistent in applying protests as a measure.   During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, there were horrific reports of attacks by the heavily armed Serbs on the virtually unarmed Bosnians.  There was the cold-blooded massacre by Christian Serbs of over twice the number of victims of 9/11 at Srebrenica, of mass rapes of Bosnian women, of children decapitated and their heads kicked around like soccer balls by Serb soldiers, and there was not even a squeak of protest from Americans, Christians or Jews.  There was a public demonstration, called by the Muslims, on the steps of the Denver Capitol building in Denver against the massacres, rapes and decapitations by the Serbs, and neither Deane nor many non-Muslim Americans were there to protest.  And who in America protested the massacres in Rwanda?  What does it say when there was protest in the West against the destruction of Buddha statues made of stone, but there was no protest in the West against the horrific massacres of thousands of flesh and blood human beings in Rwanda and Bosnia?

 

Deane sets up his criteria for judging a religion by what its followers do, which is fine if used consistently.  In any large group of people, there is a spectrum of beliefs and behaviors, and so the question is which part of the spectrum should be used, and why?   Should Jews be judged by the Jewish extremist groups in Israel, one of whom murdered the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and now demonstrate against Sharon, or by the socially liberal views and behavior of the majority of Jews in the US?  Should Christians be judged by the genocidal Serbs and by the racist KKK?  Should Catholics be judged by the IRA? He seems to be using his criteria selectively and inconsistently against Islam.

 

I find it surprising that Deane believes that the Judeo-Christian heritage contributes to fair-mindedness.   The history of Christian Europe, from the Dark Ages to WW II, suggests otherwise, especially from the Jewish perspective, as does the racist segregation of the African-Americans in the US till the 1960’s. But Americans, in the wake of 9/11, have behaved nobly, and I commend them for it.  I have been impressed by fairness and common sense of the many Americans I have met after 9/11, and their capacity to distinguish the religion from its followers, and to distinguish good Muslims from bad Muslims.   All religions in current and past history have had good and bad followers, be they Jews, Christians or Muslims.  If one is looking for an excuse to disrespect Judaism, Christianity or Islam, one will find many excuses in past and current history.  I do not believe that Deane speaks for most Americans who, unlike him, can differentiate between good and bad Muslims, and can differentiate between the religion and its followers.

 

When Deane says that “Few of us want to disrespect any religion”, he is obviously unaware of the TV and radio talk shows that infest the US air waves.  Besides these, there are some in the US in positions of leadership and influence, religious leaders, politicians and journalists who deliberately or ignorantly misrepresent Islam, insult the Prophet, and stereotype all Muslims as terrorists, with rhetoric from Medieval times.  Is it not disrespectful to stereotype a religion based on its lunatic fringe, using inconsistent criteria, and deliberately or ignorantly misrepresenting its beliefs?

 

It is true that in Muslim countries there is poverty, corruption, authoritarian rule, injustice, sectarian violence, civil wars, terrorism, lack of education, lack of basic human rights, even lack of necessities like food and water. These oppressive conditions are fertile ground for some people wanting to change the conditions by force.   Who should be held responsible for these oppressive conditions?  Some, like Osama Bin Laden, blame the oppressive conditions on the oppressive regimes in Muslim countries, which tend to be non-democratic dictatorships and monarchies, and on the supporters of those regimes, like the US, who have their own agenda for supporting these regimes.  Osama’s misguided approach was to use force to change the regimes, but lacking a military force for invasion, he chose to launch terrorist attacks on America to dissuade it from supporting the regimes.  However, the causes of the problems run deeper and wider than just the regimes, which are but a reflection of the problems.

 

There are two very American metaphors for understanding and solving these two types of troublesome problems.  One is the “Gunfight at the OK Corral”, a direct confrontation with those who attack us, whom we need to fight militarily, which America is doing.  For the other type of problem is the metaphor of: “To get rid of the alligators, you need to drain the swamp”.  The real solution to the problems in the Muslim world, including terrorism, is to drain the swamp by removing the “oppressive conditions” in Muslim countries.   Terrorism is a symptom of the underlying oppressive conditions.  The challenge for Muslims and the rest of the world, including America, is how to effect this change without the Muslim countries going into a death spiral of wars and escalating violence.  It is the duty of Muslims to encourage the good and stop the evil, by words or by force, whatever is within their capacity, so they have a great responsibility in this regard.

 

But is the only solution military invasions by the US of Muslim countries to remove the regimes, and is it effective?  Draining this swamp is going to take more than military invasions by the US, and more than street demonstrations by Muslims in Europe and US.  Since the US is deeply involved, the US should work in cooperation with Muslims in developing a strategy to drain the swamp, to dialog, to use persuasion, to pressure regimes to stop oppression, to encourage business as we do with China, to facilitate education and jobs, to win Muslim minds and hearts, to address injustices, to help remove the oppressive conditions.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no coherent Muslim or US strategy to drain the swamp.  Developing and executing this strategy, not more invasions or street demonstrations, should be the proper “jihad” for the Muslims and the US, beginning with the recognition of its importance and urgency.

 

 

Americans are impatient because they find it difficult to comprehend why Muslim countries are in a state of turmoil, especially when compared with the stability of the United States.  It has taken the US a couple of centuries and much turmoil to reach this state of relative stability.  To understand the turmoil in the Muslim countries,  imagine if the War of Independence, the Civil War in which Americans killed Americans, segregation, wars with Mexico over territory, Prohibition and organized crime, the Great Depression, disputes between businesses and labor, religious persecution like of the Mormons, drugs and the "War on Drugs", and the friction of current religious, social and political divisions were all going on simultaneously, you would have some idea of the turmoil in Muslim countries.  It is not unreasonable to expect that it will take them some time to reach relative stability, as it did the US, and one can not expect that in just a few months or even a few years they will be as stable as the US, so patience towards the Muslim countries is required of America.