[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Cult of Death

[RJ Mac]

OK editorial, but still skirting the issue.  Other
instances of crimes of faith in the recent past have
been the Egyptian airliner whose Moslem co-pilot
seized controls and steered the plane into the sea;
and a massacre atop the Empire State Building a little
over a year ago, the lone gunman who picked off
tourists perceived to be Jews.  The media said little
about that one, only that he was "an Egyptian,
frustrated at his inability to find work in this
country."  The Village Voice reported the man in fact
had written some anti-semitic screed in explanation of
his action.  

Try this following essay:
===========
Massacre in Beslan
In the name of Allah the merciful and the kind
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
———————————————————

Why not call a spade a spade? Why such a childish
reluctance among most political commentators to tell
it like it is that neither "mercenaries" nor
'international terrorism' was responsible for the
dastardly and murderous attack on school girls and
boys, and their parents and teachers, in Southern
Russia. What united those cruel and cowardly
terrorists was that THEY WERE ALL FELLOW MUSLIMS, and
for that reason came to one another's aid. Why can't
we, or daren't we, say this? It is so absolutely
clear, whether in Beslan, or in the horrifying and
ongoing genocidal murder of the South Sudanese - many
of them Christian - or at the terrifying attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that it is
Muslims who are behind these massacres and responsible
for them.

When we look to the Philippines and the massacres
suffered there by the poor Philippine , we see that
the perpetrators are Muslims.  When we look to the
massacres in Bali, or Kenya, on the Metro in Madrid
which cost 200 Spaniards their lives - again, those
responsible for these beastly deed were all Muslims.
Not mercenaries, not international terrorists - but
Muslims. Not even just extremist Muslims - just
Muslims.  Until we are prepared to say it in this
brutally honest way - there will never be reform in
thought, philosophy or practice of what Islam has
sanctified from its very inception: war and the sword,
which it unashamedly calls "holy war".

Unless there is repentance and a total foreswearing of
the sanctification of this gory terrorism and jihad in
the name of Allah, (as, today, multitudes of
Christians who have foresworn and repented of the
bloodshed of their crusades, the Spanish Inquisition,
the Holocaust and other black pages in Church history)
- we need to speak out this message loudly and
clearly:

That unless ISLAM and ISLAMIC scholars condemn, not
only in words but in forceful resolutions, the use of
terror and killing as a means to force the nations of
the world to submit to the will of Islam, there will
be no accommodation with such an ideology.  It is them
that have to change, not those of us who tell them
what we see - ugly terror in the name of ISLAMIC
brotherhood designed to bring the whole world into
submission to Allah.

Now if some people would object - and sadly there are
many such nitwits - that this terror has nothing to do
with the ISLAMIC religion as such, but only with some
extremist elements in ISLAM, and furthermore that
ISLAM itself is a peaceful and tolerant religion, I
think we need to be absolutely clear and straight
about it - also if we want any chance to win this
huge, all encompassing fight. I think we all owe it to
the countless men, women and children already brutally
and mercilessly massacred, (and this in the name of
the, repeatedly called, all merciful Allah) all over
the world.  So, let us ask some questions here:

Wasn't Yasir Arafat, after all his terrorism,
considered a moderate by the stupid, self-deceived
western world, when in OSLO he was awarded the Nobel
prize of peace? Wasn't the same argument used then
that is used today, that he, albeit a Muslim and a
master and initiator of terror, was not so much the
problem, but that it was his even more dangerous
fellows, the Hammas and Hizbollah - "the extremists"!

Wasn't Saddam Hussein, a Muslim who called himself
"the most faithful servant of Allah", considered a
moderate, so that in the beginning, seen through these
rosy spectacles by the West, he received weapons from
France (the nuclear reactor!) and even the United
States, because the real fanatics then were seen as
belonging to camp of Khomeini and Iran? A Khomeini,
who at his beginning was described by President Carter
as 'a holy man,' and by his spokesmen in the United
Nations, Andrew Young, as "a saint," before the eyes
of at least some honest people were opened to see that
he was more of a devil.

The Chechen Muslim rebels, are they moderate? What
about the Bosnian Muslims? Who are the Muslim
moderates? Arafat, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Muammar
Gadaffi, the Saudi government, which has been funding
and supporting much Muslim terror all over the world,
also because of the strong Wahabi influence in Saudi
Arabia? Fifteen of the 19 suicide terrorists involved
in the 11 September were Saudi Muslims.

Now, I do believe, that by stating these realities we
actually bring this terrifying problem of ISLAMIC
terror one step nearer to its solution, because we are
willing to put ISLAM on the defensive, so that it
knows that its game is up; if they want our
acceptance, then Muslims, and not our opinion about
them, have to change. And they have to change
drastically in order to win our shocked and deeply
wounded confidence.

We owe it to the immense suffering just experienced by
the Russian children, mothers, fathers and teachers.
We owe it to the multitude of others - the Sudanese,
Philippines, and Spaniards; the Americans who threw
themselves, in pure agony, out of the skyscrapers
rather than be burnt alive; we owe it to all those
sitting in planes or quietly eating their pizzas in
Israeli restaurants; we owe it to those who, from now
on, have to live as semi-invalids, crushed and in deep
sorrow because they never again will be able - except
by divine miracle - to enjoy life with their crippled
bodies.

If, therefore, there are Muslims and Muslim leaders
who still wish to insist that they are peace-loving
and tolerant, and absolutely against these
Muslim-perpetrated acts of hate-filled genocide and
massacre, then they have a tremendous opportunity to
demonstrate this today, by forming a united, Muslim
military force from these moderate Muslim countries,
and stop the genocide of South Sudanese Christians by
the Muslim Sudanese government. Then they can prove to
the world that, indeed, there are Muslim nations that
are willing to fight against Muslim terror and
genocide.  Let us wait and see how many, truly
moderate, peace-loving, Muslim leaders will come
forward for this.

Finally, one would truly hope that, after this
terrifying experience of terror which especially these
Russian children had to go through, Russia will heed
the voice of the international community and no longer
play with fire by giving Iran, the very sponsor of
such terrorism, the nuclear help and know-how to make
its much desired ISLAMIC nuclear bomb, thus
threatening the whole region, not just with terror as
Iran already does today, but also with genocide; all
in the name of its blend of ISLAM.

Let not Russia think for a moment after this massacre
that it can play both sides with impunity. It will
have to choose - either it is for terror or against
it. Russia cannot have it both ways.


#  #  #
================================================
> 
--- michael at intrafi.com wrote:




> 
> Cult of Death
> 
> September 7, 2004
>  By DAVID BROOKS 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> We've been forced to witness the massacre of
> innocents. In
> New York, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and
> Bali, we
> have seen thousands of people destroyed while going
> about
> the daily activities of life. 
> 
> We've been forced to endure the massacre of
> children.
> Whether it's teenagers outside an Israeli disco or
> students
> in Beslan, Russia, we've seen kids singled out as
> special
> targets. 
> 
> We should by now have become used to the death cult
> that is
> thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world. This is
> the
> cult of people who are proud to declare, "You love
> life,
> but we love death." This is the cult that sent waves
> of
> defenseless children to be mowed down on the
> battlefields
> of the Iran-Iraq war, that trains kindergartners to
> become
> bombs, that fetishizes death, that sends people off
> joyfully to commit mass murder. 
> 
> This cult attaches itself to a political cause but
> parasitically strangles it. The death cult has
> strangled
> the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide
> bombers have
> not brought peace to Palestine; they've brought
> reprisals.
> The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of
> Iraq;
> they're forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is
> now
> strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not
> independence but blood. 
> 
> But that's the idea. Because the death cult is not
> really
> about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the
> sheer
> pleasure of killing and dying. 
> 
> It's about massacring people while in a state of
> spiritual
> loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom
> of
> barbarism - freedom even from human nature, which
> says,
> Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of
> sadism
> and suicide. 
> 
> We should be used to this pathological mass movement
> by
> now. We should be able to talk about such things.
> Yet when
> you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan
> massacres,
> you see people quick to divert their attention away
> from
> the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't
> want to
> stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge
> those
> parts of human nature that were on display in
> Beslan.
> Something here, if thought about too deeply,
> undermines the
> categories we use to live our lives, undermines our
> faith
> in the essential goodness of human beings. 
> 
> Three years after Sept. 11, too many people have
> become
> experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the
> editorials and public pronouncements made in
> response to
> Beslan, you see that they glide over the
> perpetrators of
> this act and search for more conventional, more
> easily
> comprehensible targets for their rage. 
> 
> The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the
> American journalistic response, made two quick
> references
> to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly
> veered
> off with long passages condemning Putin and various
> Russian
> policy errors. 
> 
> The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on
> behalf
> of the European Union, declared: "All countries in
> the
> world need to work together to prevent tragedies
> like this.
> But we also would like to know from the Russian
> authorities
> how this tragedy could have happened." 
> 
> It wasn't a tragedy. It was a carefully planned mass
> murder
> operation. And it wasn't Russian authorities who
> stuffed
> basketball nets with explosives and shot children in
> the
> back as they tried to run away. 
> 
> Whatever horrors the Russians have perpetrated upon
> the
> Chechens, whatever their ineptitude in responding to
> the
> attack, the essential nature of this act was in the
> act
> itself. It was the fact that a team of human beings
> could
> go into a school, live with hundreds of children for
> a few
> days, look them in the eyes and hear their cries,
> and then
> blow them up. 
> 
> Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms
> the
> media used to describe these murderers. They were
> called
> "separatists" and "hostage-takers." Three years
> after Sept.
> 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about
> this
> evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What
> drives the
> terrorists to do this? What are they trying to
> achieve? 
> 
> They're still victims of the delusion that Paul
> Berman
> diagnosed after Sept. 11: "It was the belief that,
> in the
> modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be
> the
> enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in
> some
> fashion, reasonable." 
> 
> This death cult has no reason and is beyond
> negotiation.
> This is what makes it so frightening. This is what
> causes
> so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion.
> They don't
> want to confront this horror. So they rush off in
> search of
> more comprehensible things to hate. 
> 
=== message truncated ===



		
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