There is a new Crusade in the Middle East. The new battle is not for Christianity but for democracy.
Not to underestimate the actual day-to-day struggles within Afghanistan, Iraq and other overwhelmingly Islamic countries, there is also an intellectual debate which, depending on how you see it, is either hopelessly pessimistic or downright apocalyptic.
What is the Western world to do with its radical neighbors?
Most Muslims in America and in the wider Western world denounce terrorism as being fundamentally anti-Islamic. Most Americans, even those emphatically opposed to the Dubai Ports World takeover of U.S. ports, would not doubt most American Muslims’ allegiance to this country and the principles of freedom and democracy. So what is the problem?
Do we actually think that a company headquartered in an Arabic country would not offer the same security measures prescribed by the Department of Homeland Security?
Do we blame Islam in general?
Honestly, yes.
In an Al-Jazeera interview broadcast to millions in the Middle East, an American Muslim psychiatrist Wafa Sultan spoke about how it seems the only religious terrorists in the modern age happen to be Muslim.
Sultan said, “We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.”
Of course it might seem to be true by and large, but there are Jewish terrorists and Christian terrorists. Radical Christians blow up abortion clinics.
White supremacists, who have been known to cite religious beliefs, set fire to black churches and persecute minorities.
Jewish terrorists harassed Arabs and Brits in their fight for a state of Israel, even assassinating a U.N. official who had been instrumental in releasing prisoners from Nazi concentration camps.
An apologist for Islamic terrorism might cite Jewish terrorism as the progenitor of modern Middle East terrorism.
The apologist might say Jews were terrorizing to obtain a sovereign Jewish nation, just as Al-Quaida and the like terrorize to obtain a sovereign Islamic nation, albeit theirs would be much larger and more fundamentalist than any current Islamic nation.
But we’ve all got it wrong.
At least in this case, religion isn’t the problem; people are the problem.
People are using religion to provide legitimacy; not the reverse.
All too often wars of ideology have been fought and lives squandered for the sake of misguided principles, and Islamic people do not hold a monopoly on these mistakes. The recent death of Slobodan Milosevic should be a reminder of atrocities committed against Muslims.
In the end despite the fact that Islamic terrorists represent the most radical sects of the Islamic world, we still fear Islam.
The Western world deems its own culture grown-up and civilized, while Islamic terrorists attempt to hold on to the third-world mentality many Islamic states retain.
They argue Western values such as democracy and liberty cannot be transfigured in the Arab world, and perhaps they are right – a scary proposition for us.
We must prepare ourselves for two probabilities: Islam isn’t waning, and neither is terrorism, but that does not make them codependent.
We can accept the former in the spirit of liberty and do our best to combat the latter or remain ignorant of both and suffer that much more.
Sultan said, “I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book.”
The realization that Islamic terrorism cannot enjoy divine sanction can only come from Muslims if change is to accompany it.
Sultan is willing to scrutinize her religious beliefs.
I hope her candor will inspire more dialogue, but assuagement is far down the road.
 
Lake is a history senior. Contact him at [email protected]