Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.
Quran 9:73
The United States is spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the war on terror. It has sacrificed the lives of approximately 2500 American citizens to provide freedom and opportunity to nearly fifty million people in two nations on the opposite side of the earth. Americans have been told by their leaders that the ‘war on terror’ is being fought against groups of radical Islamic fanatics. It has also been widely said that Islam is a religion of peace. But are America’s soldiers fighting Islamic fanatics? Or is this war about something much more substantial?
With all the people, resources and blood being sacrificed in the “war on terror”, it would be reasonable to examine why America has such calculating, devious and relentlessly bloodthirsty enemy. But many news outlets avoid the task of critically examining Islam for fear that Islamic clerics would place a Fatwa, or a religious degree, upon its network and reporters. The “religion of peace” placing a death proclamation on someone or some group doesn’t strike any news agency in the world as odd, hypocritical, or at least worthy further examination?.
Why is it that large pockets of Muslims around the globe seem to violently despise America? It’s been said that this hated stems from the US’s support of Israel. An argument can be made to contend that the arms and financial support that the U.S. supplies Israel is the sole reason for the nations continuing ability to defend itself against overwhelming odds. Others would say that because of America the “Palestinians” haven’t a homeland. Both of these popular television assumptions would be partially true but neither completely correct.
America did take part in the United Nations creation of Israel in 1948. But America wasn’t the only country involved in this decision. The League of Nations had been surveying the land as early as 1919 as a place to repatriate Jews from around the world. There were many land surveys conducted on the British occupied territory. Great Britain, not U.S., was the major factor in this United Nations mandate. The term “Palestine” was a geographical term coined by the Romans and used by the British to specify the area of land, which was under British occupation, that later would be used to repatriate the Jewish people. By many historical and diplomatic accounts Palestine was never nation and the Palestinians were never a people.
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not"
- Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946
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"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
- Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council, 1956 (later to become the first leader of the PLO)
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From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries ...
- Professor Bernard Lewis, Commentary Magazine, January 1975
America’s validation of Israel in the United Nations and later her recognition of Israel as a nation pales in comparison to the “gift” of land Great Britain provided and the United Nations mandated. Yet America is the “Great Satan" and England is just ... Great Britain. Why is that? Wouldn’t England be the logical choice for Islamic anger due to its role in the formation of Israel and its proximity to the Arab world than America? Why is the United Nations who facilitated and legitimized the turnover not a target of hostility as the United States is? Could there possibly be another reason Muslims clerics elevate America to “Great Satan” stature and not these other more culpable entities?
Muslims hate America because of Islam’s own practice of destroying any pre-existing history of a conquered nation that does not glorify Islam. As the Taliban did in Afghanistan, anything that reminded the indigenous people of its non-Islamic past was forbidden or destroyed in accordance with Islamic law. Could Islamic nations fear that America’s influence in politics, culture, and trade will erase their own culture as they have deliberately erased the cultures in Afghanistan or Persia (Iran)?
To a devout Muslim America is vile, blasphemous, and as far from “pure” as pure can be. Muslims see American women as degrading themselves on the silver screen and canonizing behavior which they see as unfit as wives and mothers. Muslims see American men as slovenly, easily corruptible, lacking of virtue, and wallowing in one vice or another.
In Islam Allah is the center of all things. Allah is the giver of all that is good. Allah is the wellspring of all success and prosperity. If one is not diligent in his studies of the Koran or does not live as proscribed by Mohammed, Allah can remove his blessings or not grant paradise. Devout Muslims on a very fundamental level must hate Democracy and Capitalism. These concepts and practice by their nature blaspheme against Allah.
Democracy, in its simplest form, is the ability for a body of people to have a say in their future which, to them, directs the success of the group. This delegation of authority to a sub group of people, as well as the authority placed in each person to vote, is what Muslims find profanatory. To vote and to hope on something other than Allah is blasphemy and is considered sinful. To blaspheme Allah is to be marked for death as was the case for author Salmon Rushdie for writing a novel. To blaspheme Islam is to be murdered as was Theo Van Gough for making a film about the abuse of Muslim women by Muslim men in Europe.
Capitalism, in its simplest form, is the ability for men to guide their own destiny with hard work and ambitious creativity. To Muslims this is blasphemous since it removes the authority of one's prosperity from Allah and places ones hope on his own ability.
Democracy and Capitalism combined are the substance which manifests into the “American Dream”. The American dream is fundamental to American culture and is in complete opposition to what Islam demands of its followers. Strict interpretation of the Koran would have Muslims living in non-Muslim countries purged from the religion or at least recalled to an Islamic nation to live under Islamic leadership. Muslim followers are, through one interpretation, to be lead only by Islamic leaders. This explains the insertion of Islam into conquered territories by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. To Muslims, Islam is the only law in every aspect of life. Islam, which means submission or to surrender ones self, is an all encompassing doctrine which dictates social law, governing law, and religious law. The totality of Islam in Arab societies, and the consequences of not converting to Islam, account for the massive conversions of people to Islam in conquered countries. It also helps to explain Islam’s zeal to erase any trace of a country’s former beliefs (as the Taliban did in Afghanistan).
America as a nation must understand that the war on terror is a war against fundamental Islam. To continue to naively proceed in war with the continued mindset that the enemy is simply “a group of radical extremists” is to ignore why people like Osama Bin Laden have not been found in allied Islamic nations. It fails to explain why traditionally impoverished Islamic peoples have scarcely responded to sizeable rewards for those terrorists America most desires to catch or kill. It also ignores the fact the “insurgents" in Iraq are coming from Iran and Syria and that the 9-11 terrorists were mostly from America’s long-time ally Saudi Arabia. If in fact America is battling a “group of extremists that have hijacked a peaceful religion”, than that group is absolutely huge, well armed, astoundingly well organized, incredibly mobile, and remarkably elusive.
Despite America’s best efforts, the Middle Eastern people possess a thousands of years of ingrained subservience to Islamic validated dictatorship. If the US’s current efforts are to be successful, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan will have to learn to differentiate between religious doctrine and social law. The gamble isn’t whether these human beings can change their way of looking at or doing things. The gamble is if neighboring countries like Iran or Syria, and groups like the Taliban, Hamas, or Hezbollah will allow the people of a liberated Iraq or Afghanistan to develop their countries in ways which adjust, isolate, or entirely remove the totality of Islamic dogma.
