Radical Islam At War With America
Tuesday, September 18, 2001
By Fred Seigel
The issue is not Israel. Usama bin Laden blew up a U.S. embassy when the
Oslo "peace process" was at the height of its "success." The issue is the
inability of Islamic regimes around the globe to come to grips with the
modern world.
What did Israel have to do with the recent Islamic jihad murders in
Nigeria? While Islamic terrorists were hitting New York, Muslim militants
in northern Nigeria were killing Christians. The violence occurred in the
majority Christian city of Jos, where the Nigerian government has imposed
the Sharia (Islamic law) on the largely Christian population. The violence
began when a Christian woman was attacked after she had the temerity to
cross the street in front of a group of Muslim men who had gathered near a
Mosque. What followed was three days of killing and burning churches.
Around the world Islamic militants are engaging in a holy war against
the infidels - from Coptic Christians in Egypt and the Dinkas in the
Sudan, to Hindus in Kashmir, Bahais in Iran, Catholics in the southern
Philippines and Christians in East Timor.
In Sudan, the Islamic militants impose slavery on captured Dinkas - but
wherever radical Islam is in power, it subjugates people it regards as
infidels. The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, an organization
supporting those persecuted by militant Islam, argues that "radical
Islamism is a world ideology, fielding a world terror-army, which
oppresses millions with a racist ideology" that deems non-Muslims less
than fully human.
Here in New York, it was easy to get angry listening to Egyptians,
Palestinians and the Arabs of nearby Paterson, N.J., celebrate as they
received word of the murderous attacks in New York and Washington. But Mayor
Giuliani (who has been tireless and magnificent in this crisis) rightly
warned New Yorkers that it would be wrong to take their anger out on the
city's Arab and Muslim residents. Attacks on Arab-Americans in Paterson or
elsewhere are utterly indefensible.
Omar, a Muslim New Yorker and former student of mine at Cooper Union,
e-mailed me to say he was "sickened to watch Middle Easterners celebrate
our sorrow." He is an American who has imbibed our values while maintaining
his Muslim faith. He wants no truck with those who kill in the name of
Islam.
But it's fair to ask this of those non-Muslims at the BBC, the Nation, the
New York Review of Books and other rationalizers of Palestinian and Islamic
terror: Why is it that everywhere in the world where Muslims are in the
majority, their minorities are persecuted?
And where were these publications, not to mention respectable European
leaders, when Yasser Arafat, ranting in front of a world conference at
Davos, insisted that Israel was using depleted uranium and nerve gas
against Palestinian civilians?
And where were the Europeans at the U.N. "hate" conference in Durban, when
Islamophobia was denounced, while Muslim discrimination against non-Muslims
was passed over in silence?
It's also time to ask Arab-American spokesmen like James Zogby, who rightly
criticizes anti-Arab bigotry, why he's silent about the hate that spews
daily from the Egyptian and Palestinian media, as with the current hit song
"I Hate Israel."
In Commentary, Fiamma Nirenstein asks if the silence from the West isn't
what Bush, in another context, called "the soft bigotry of low
expectations." No doubt our multiculturalists will explain that, while
even mild anger at Arabs by Americans is sign of deep-seated racism,
venomous hatred in the Arab world is merely a part of a different culture
that can't be judged by our standards.
For all their grievances against America, there have been no Cuban,
Vietnamese or Serbian suicide bombers bringing death to our shores, and
their people haven't been celebrating in the streets at the sight of
American blood.
America, not Israel, is The Great Satan. It was hard to acknowledge before
the World trade Center attacks, but radical Islam has been at war with us
for a long time.
Fred Siegel teaches history at the Cooper Union in New York City.
©Copyright 2001, Fox News Channel
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