Islam and Terrorism

What does religion have to do with it?

November 12, 2009

by Jack Curtis - A Woodward Report Columnist

Shouting: “Allahu Akbar!” while shooting unarmed, unsuspecting victims doesn’t

tell the world much more than that the shouter is likely Moslem. PresidentObama

asked us not to jump to conclusions, safe advice now and good advice generally.

We have two choices at Fort Hood: we can suppose the shooter is an Islamic terrorist or that he is a nut. (Of course, he could be both.) If he is a terrorist, he could be acting on his own or as part of an organization. That seems the more significant question. We get murderers acting on their own on a regular basis, unfortunately. The kids who shot up Columbine High School in 1999, the disgruntled ex-employee in Florida on the heels of Ft. Hood and the fairly regular shootings of innocents by aggravated employees, patients, clients, neighbors etc. are now regular occurrences in our society.

Aggravated Moslems are turning up more regularly in this role since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; that is a pretty likely scenario given the prominence of those events. From the news, most of the aggravated Moslems in the U.S. have been independent operators; the majority being inept enough to have been nailed before causing trouble. Consider what we might be seeing if we had invaded say, Mexico. The only way to avoid this sort of thing is probably, not to invade places. Then, you might still get the same result over some perceived mistreatment at work instead; a nut is after all, nuts.

If an organization is involved, it is a part of war and a different thing. There are over a billion Moslems; if they were at war with us, we would not need to wonder. The murderous groups who are at war do these cowardly deeds because they are weak; they do not represent Islam, only their own interests; religion is a cover and a means for using people. Countries such as Iran and Syria sponsor state terrorism; Saudi Arabia finances fundamentalist Islamic movements worldwide; all of this draws on Moslem populations to organize violence and inspires Moslem nuts to imitate them. Islam has not attacked us; Moslems have and so long as Moslem populations keep supplying foot soldiers for violence, policy should deal directly with that fact, not encourage more violence with denial. If you know a redheaded assassin is after you, you don’t ignore nearby redheads because all the other redheads in the world are safe for you.

Islam is more than a religion; it sets up all of life and expects Moslems to follow its orders; the orders are from God but explained by men. Not all such men are worthy. Like most religions, Islam does not accept disagreement and with much of its population living in essentially pre-enlightenment cultures, its practitioners’ reactions to other views ranges from sophisticated to barbarous. That is a fact and we should expect a stream of barbarian attacks now that technology has provided cheap weapons and travel while Islamic politicians needing scapegoats find them in Western society; Danish cartoonists, Indian authors and Dutch politicians are witnesses.

Nuts we cannot escape these days but we can watch for them; organized political murderers must be identified and removed by proactive policies. And we must be careful to diagnose which case may be before us and not confuse the two; that can be hard when they overlap. We should nor make the mistake of mislabeling for short term, political convenience. Islam is not the enemy, but the enemy comes from Islam and uses it to make war on us; we cannot afford to pretend otherwise.

Fort Hood Gunman Nidal Hasan dressed in Muslim Clothing on the day of the murders