This is a topic that does not relate directly to Israel, although it affects people's attitudes about the morality of Israel's (as well as the United States') defense of its citizens against Islamic terror. So to preclude any confusion, henceforth when I use the term "we," it will be in reference to both Israel and America - two nations united in democracy and strong western values like freedom, justice, love of life, and opportunity.

I believe that now more than ever, many Americans are acutely aware of the special affinity between our nation and Israel. I think that some Americans are starting to "get it" when it comes to the deadly menace of Islamofascism which Israel has been up against for decades. I am somewhat ashamed that it took a cataclysmic event of the magnitude we saw in the 9/11 attacks, but I honestly feel that many of us now have a much greater appreciation for what our brothers and sisters in Israel have been living with for so long.

As human beings, we instinctively think causally. It's absurd to assert that anything "just happens." So, we automatically look for the causes of the effects we see around us. The stunning effects of terror cry out deafeningly for a reason. As far as I'm concerned, terror is the pinnacle of man's depravity. And as for the definition of terror, I use Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d), which states:

The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. The term "international terrorism" means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country. The term "terrorist group" means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

When we here in the west are faced with the monstrous nature of terror, we are forced to somehow make sense of the senseless. We search for a reason behind this madness; we search for the now proverbial "root cause." I think sometimes we naively forget that, irrespective of grievance or cause, there is no excuse for the intentional murder of unarmed innocents. Be that as it may, for practical reasons of academia and governmental policy, terror must be understood.

The perennial question falling off the lips of many intellectuals since 9/11 has been, "Why do they hate us?" More often than not, this query comes from those on the left, because most on the right are quite beyond trying to understand "root causes" by the time buses are being blown up and a pregnant woman and her children are being shot dead in her car. If you think about it, such a question answers itself as far as the leftist is concerned. If this question is seriously asked, it is already presupposed that there must be something we do that enrages these people so greatly that they are willing to immolate themselves with high explosives in order to kill us. I personally believe that no one deserves to suffer the demonic attacks of terror that are increasingly hitting western targets outside of Israel.

Asking this question also erroneously ascribes the concept of sense and legitimacy to acts of terror. But still, it is a fair question to ask, because terror doesn't happen in a vacuum.

One of the most famous caricatures of the western liberal is that of someone who wants to throw a lot of money at social ills in the hopes of buying a solution. In register with such thinking, many pundits and academics on the left have posited that Islamic terror comes from the desperation of economic deprivation. Many of us here in the west buy into this idea (pun not intended). I almost did, but thankfully Daniel Pipes saved me from that folly (see, for example, "God and Mammon: Does Poverty Cause Militant Islam?" at http://www.danielpipes.org/article/104). Subscribing to this notion says far more about the western mind than it does about the causes of Islamic terror. It's a bit presumptuous of us to think that what the Islamic world needs and wants is material gain. We are projecting our secular values onto a quasi-religious problem. Of course everyone likes to eat and to receive basic medical care, but that is not what this is about.

If you begin looking into just who gets involved with terror groups and who carries out suicide attacks, you will see that it is quite often not the disenfranchised and impoverished masses. It is usually intelligent young men from middle class (or higher) backgrounds, with college educations (often at western universities). They are devout Muslims who are well versed in many aspects of their faith. It's definitely not about money. It's about Islam and its doctrine.

Westerners are flummoxed when they encounter a problem of such herculean dimensions that can't be solved with money. We have become complacent in our secular democracy. We are sometimes unmindful of our vast freedoms (because we are free to be) and how precious they are. It is only through our hard-won freedom that we were able to conceive the secular society which protects these freedoms. It is the freedom afforded us by secular democracy that has brought us great achievements in art, science, technology, and other areas of human endeavor.

Islam, on the other hand, has contributed nothing to science and reason in the last millennium due to its static and grindingly intolerant state. Islam is a totalitarian ideology which affects every minute aspect of the Muslim's life from personal hygiene, to mundane everyday matters, to how man should be governed. The west has outpaced and surpassed the Islamic world as sensationally as it has because we have moved on and separated religion from state, thus effecting a secular environment in which science, the humanities, and reason may thrive (along with religious freedom). These priceless assets which many of us take for granted are impossible under shari'ah (Islamic law).

Additionally, we see here how President Bush's notion that "they hate us for our freedoms" was somewhat misguided. Muslims do not want our "freedom" because it is anathema to them. The most severe sin to a Muslim is what is known as shirk. Shirk, while often used to denote polytheism, really means ascribing to anything equal or greater importance than that which is given to God. Man-made law is shirk, since Muslims believe they were given the revealed word of God as concerns how man is to be governed. Man's law is not equal to God's law. So, no, they don't hate us for being free per se, but they do hate us for being free in an unIslamic way.

Also, Islam causes economic malaise. Before the west taught the Arab states how to extract and process its oil, the Islamic world was still back on its heels due to the west's primacy after the industrial revolution. The recent phenomenon of Islamic terror began with the Muslim Brotherhood and the newly enriched Wahhabi/Salafi sects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia around the same time that Arabian oil fields opened up. It was further exacerbated during the last oil boom in the seventies. We might note here the bitter irony of our petrodollars being used to fund an ideology which seeks our destruction.

I'd also like to note briefly that by no means do I believe that all Muslims are to be condemned. I take issue with the ideology that gives rise to the hatred and violence of Islamic terror, but not with each and every one of its adherents. I see no reason why, if reformed, Islam could not be a valuable part of the modern world, as are many religions. In its present form, however, it is markedly at odds with much of the world, particularly the secular democracies of Europe, Israel, and the United States.

So, if they don't hate us over economic disparity or because we're free, then why the heck do they hate us? What on Earth could drive people to detonate bomb vests in a crowded restaurant or bus; or saw someone's head off while droning "God is great," or fly planes full of passengers into skyscrapers full of employees trying to go to work? Again, justification for such ignoble acts aside, when a Jew watches someone he loves blown into several hundred bloody pieces before his eyes, or when a mother watches her son's severed head or other body parts being displayed as gruesome trophies for the video camera, or when a country reels with the deep psychic shock of witnessing its citizens being murdered en masse - when confronted with such sheer madness, it is only natural to want to know: Why do they hate us?

Well, I know why they hate us. And it's not even because we and the "evil Zionist entity" are complicit in the ongoing "occupation" and "oppression" of the "Palestinians" (although this ruse is a useful red herring to the Arab world). They hate us because according to their scripture - which they view to be inerrant - it is the entitlement of Muslims to lead all of mankind and to establish God's kingdom on Earth (Khilafah); and we have spectacularly robbed them of that absurd notion with the awesome power of secular, liberal democracy and capitalism.

Before the west put the capstone on the edifice of capitalism and industrial power, Muslims were always successful, powerful, and to their minds, superior. We've ruined all that now. Even the oil doesn't help them, because until they can successfully introduce Khilafah, they will settle for the devil they know (corrupt, local despots) over the devil they don't know (shirk, secular democracy). This provides another reason to hate us. We are seen to be in league with the tyrants who oppress and exploit the umma (the Muslim community). We may secure transitory geopolitical alliances with these thugs (the shah, Saddam, Mubarak), but to Muslims (and their western enablers), we're a big part of the problem, if not the entire problem. We are Satan to them.

So, it doesn't really matter what economic stratum a Muslim comes from. What matters is that it is categorically obligatory for any able-bodied Muslim male to engage in jihad when jihad is waged. As for the western Muslims who aren't out on the field of battle killing infidels, they are engaged in da'wa (calling the infidels to Islam) and taqiyya (lying about the faith to protect and strengthen it) right here among us. And anyway, I submit that anyone who doesn't actively oppose terror is condoning it, if only tacitly.

A worldwide Islamic state is the goal of Islam. Islam is a dystopian nightmare, which its adherents think is utopian. So, rich or poor, when they are met with our flat refusal to accept the idea of their theocracy, there is conflict, and as we're beginning to see here in America, it gets deadly. Muhammad's hordes, who raged out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, conquering nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific, were wealthy men - very wealthy. They did if for Islam. They did it because the Qur'an and the hadith say that it is their right, and to them this scripture is God's unquestionable revealed word.

Islamic terror is really about the establishment of God's law on Earth everywhere on Earth. That is more important to a Muslim than material comfort. As westerners, we are baffled by such an idea, and so the more "progressive" among us think that a fusillade of money might be in order to get those angry young men with that faraway glint of righteous explosions in their eyes to stop killing us. Because we deserve it. All the money in the world won't solve this problem, though. It'll only fund more terror. And who wants money when you have a mission from God? Many wealthy and "westernized" Muslims are just as convinced that Khilafah is the pinnacle of man's mission on Earth as their destitute brethren. They can do their part by contributing to Muslim "charities."

When we begin to understand that we are dealing with a quasi-religious and political ideology that can take a wealthy and educated profligate like Osama bin Laden (who once enjoyed sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the discotheques of Beirut) and turn him into the scourge of God, then we begin to understand the true power of this threat.

For Israelis, there is the added dynamic of the virulent anti-Semitism endemic to Islam and the Arab world. The privations, pogroms, and humiliation visited upon the Jews living in dhimmitude in Arab nations is well documented throughout the ages. The Jews are depicted in the Qur'an and several sunna in an extremely unfavorable light, which is easily interpreted as grounds to indulge in lurid hatred and persecution against them. In the Arab press, all manner of lies and slander about the Jews and Israel are presented as fact. To Arab/Muslim sensibilities, it is an affront that not only did the despised Jew return to claim his homeland, but he additionally brought democracy and developed the means to defend it. I think the fact that the Jews can fight back now - more than effectively - bothers a lot of people, actually.

Professor Alan Dershowitz also reminds us that another "root cause" of terror is the simple fact that it often works (see "Why Terrorism Works", Yale U. Press). Our open media are used against us in mass coverage of terror acts. Western governments often respond to terrorist demands, caving in when pressured by their populace. Any quarter given to terrorists is exploited as weakness in their cruel calculus. Even when terror groups do not get what they've demanded, they gain much when the whole world pays attention to what they've done. To quote the Palestinian Liberation Organization's chief observer at the United Nations, Zehdi Labib Terzi, "The first several hijackings aroused the consciousness of the world and awakened the media and the world opinion much more - and more effectively - than twenty years of pleading at the United Nations." So, it is clear that when terrorism is rewarded, it invites more terror. Any parent of a three year-old could tell you as much. The Turkish Armenians and Kurds were ignored when they tried to use terror to make their case, so now you don't ever hear about Armenian or Kurdish terror. There's a reason. Additionally, you don't hear too much about Tibetan Buddhists, and many other groups who have genuinely been wronged, resorting to terror out of desperation and financial woe.

In the end, I really don't care why the degenerate Islamic killers hate us. These people are murderous brutes, whatever else they may be. I happen to think that the United States and Israel are not what is wrong with this world. But even when there are legitimate hardships for Muslims, murder is the wrong way to go about expressing your outrage. As far as I'm concerned, the minute you murder innocent, unarmed civilians to advance your "cause," you have shown me that whatever your grievance was, it is no longer relevant in any sense. That's not desperation or fighting for freedom. That is murder, and it is wrong and evil.

Soon the more liberal-minded among us here in the west will get it. Frankly, they will have no choice. I am sure that it was a bitter pill to swallow for many leftists in Israel when they had to face the fact that Islamofascism cannot be appeased. But when murderous fiends are killing your family, your friends, and your countrymen, despite your most honest, magnanimous, and lofty efforts (and often because of these efforts), it's time to face facts.

No, I don't care why they hate us. I have a functional moral compass, and I'm not in thrall to relativism. I know that we're in the right here.

 
Patrick D. O'Brien, who describes himself as a Irish-American atheist writes, "I do not support Israel for religious reasons, but rather because I feel that it is simply the right thing to do. I became concerned with Israel's affairs and struggles after witnessing the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and have come to love Israel and its people through the writings of Theodor Herzl, Alan Dershowitz, Yaacov Lozowick, et al. I staunchly supports Israel as an American, a Zionist, and a person of conscience." Contact him at patrickafir@yahoo.com

This article appeared on Israpundit and is archived at
http://israpundit.com/archives/007849.html#more

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