INFORMALLY OPINING
By N.A. Pierson
IV Leader Columnist, Feb. 4, 2010
It was an odd feeling to have my reputation attacked by someone that I have never met. It was an even more curious feeling when the person attacking me committed the same faux pas as myself.
In the Dec. 3 edition of the IV Leader, Professor Jason A. Beyer decided that he had had enough of my “dehumanization” and “demonization” of Islam, as well as with my “exaggerated” rhetoric, which apparently “detracts from our civility and our humanity.”
So to set the record straight, Professor Beyer launched into a letter that culminated in the portrayal of yours truly as a bigot. Now, I don’t know Professor Beyer and I don’t believe he knows me, so I don’t have any insults to hurl at him. Besides, from what I’ve heard from fellow students and various faculty members, he’s a great teacher and a wonderful person. Maybe before he writes his condemnation of this column, he could have lunch with me first. I’ll even buy.
But this debate isn’t about Professor Beyer or me; it’s about extremism within Islam and the terrorism caused by it. On Dec. 9 of last year, according to a Pakistani newspaper, The News, five D.C.-area Muslims were detained in Sargodha on suspicion of jihadist activities. These men are suspected members of the Muslim Students Association, a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which “is a group attempting to create a ‘grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within’. ”
The people who join groups with a slogan like the Muslim Brotherhood’s have been raised on the idea that religion is everything. They are taught that if they sacrifice their lives for their religion, they will be rewarded in Paradise. An individual that later becomes a suicide bomber is inundated with the beliefs that Western culture is immoral, sacrilegious, and corrupt. This individual is taught to hate the West, to hate Israel, and to hate everything that is outside of Islam.
There is a desire to “connect the dots” regarding terror. In the last 10 years, how many terrorist plots have there been against the United States and the West? How many participants in those terrorist attacks were Muslim?
I can’t think of many plots by other people to bomb airplanes. I can think of plenty of plots by jihadists to do so. Everybody should be able to acknowledge that at this point in time the biggest threats of terrorism are coming from radical elements within Islam.
If it were any other religion that believes such things, such an ideology would be condemnable. As an agnostic, it doesn’t make a difference to me which sect of a major religion is causing harm because I am not prejudiced towards or against any particular religion.
And while not all Muslims are the enemy, we have no way of determining who is a decent law-abiding Muslim, and who wants to walk onto a military base and open fire on a group of American service men and women. We have no way of knowing which Muslims are planning to murder a Danish cartoonist that made some caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
But just because we don’t know how many members of a certain population are harboring radical beliefs doesn’t mean we should not raise any questions about those beliefs.
And just because we can accept that there is a jihadist threat to American security, that doesn’t mean that we need to take drastic measures.
Once we acknowledge the threat, we can find appropriate ways to address it without compromising our values. But we need to acknowledge it first, and we aren’t doing that.