Friday, January 5, 2007

Not Islam v. the West, But Islam vs.Islam


Quote of the day:
“I know collectors with 40,000 bottles who if you poured them a glass of Gallo Hearty Burgundy wouldn’t know the difference.”
--Robert M. Parker, Jr.

Many assumptions and stereotypes continue to come to us about Muslims, Arabs, and what 9/11 was about. Some of them need closer examination.

Reza Aslan graduated from the Harvard Divinity School, where he did a scholarly study of the Koran. His book "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam" helped to dispel some of our questionably broad assumptions, but they are persistent. He was interviewed in the December "Sun," and made some very interesting observations:

“We have this idea in the U.S. that we’re the primary target of the jihadists, but we’re not. They call us the ‘far enemy.’ The primary target is the older Islamic institutions.”

“By bin Laden’s own admission, al-Qaeda will never reestablish the caliphate. A few years ago the majority of Muslims didn’t even know what the caliphate was, let alone want it to come back. But when the president of the United States of America, the most powerful man on earth, announced that he was afraid bin Laden could re-create the caliphate, it gave an air of legitimacy to this absurd idea.... For Bush, talking about the caliphate may have been a good strategy for getting reelected, but it is a terrible strategy for winning this ‘war on terror’ that we’re supposed to be fighting.”

“Five years later [after 9/11], and we’re still asking ‘Why did they attack us?’ That question has been answered a hundred times over by the jihadists. In their own words they have said the purpose of the attacks of September 11 was to goad the United States into an exaggerated retaliation against the Muslim world. Then they could frame the U.S. military response as a ‘war against Islam.’

“The irony is that it didn’t work at first. The war in Afghanistan had almost unanimous support in the Arab and Muslim worlds, even from some of the U.S.’s staunchest enemies.

“In one Muslim country, immediately after September 11, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets, lot candles, and prayed in an exuberant display of compassion for the U.S. That country was Iran.”

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