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HATRED IN THE NAME
OF GOD
By John J. Moelaert
As the world watched in stunned horror
how three hijacked passenger planes plowed into the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon causing immense devastation and human
carnage, a chilling question emerged: What motivated the planners
and perpetrators to commit their heinous act? Part of the answer
is that they were motivated by religious fanaticism which allows
no room for reason, compassion or regard for human life. It may
not be politically correct to say this, but it is nevertheless
realistically true that fundamentalist Islam is the most brutal
of the world's main religions. Islam condones beheadings, stoning
of women, chopping off hands and the sexual mutilation of young
girls who have their clitoris cut off and their labia sewn together
to "protect their purity."
Fundamentalist terrorists are made to believe that bombing school
buses or innocent shoppers is pleasing to their God, especially
if they blow themselves up during such an act. Once the belief
is accepted that God is on one's side, any act--no matter how
barbaric--can be justified in any fully-indoctrinated twisted
mind. For example, it is believed that such "martyrs"
are rewarded for their religiously inspired brutal acts by no
less than their God Allah himself. These religious terrorists
believe that by blowing themselves up together with as many innocent
civilians as possible, they will immediately be transported to
spiritual and physical bliss beyond imagination. Their reward
will include an exalted place close to God and a heavenly marriage
to 72 beautiful virgins, called houris. Moreover their
surviving families will be assured a lifetime of honor and respect
among fellow believers.
Some will undoubtedly point out that the majority of Muslims
don't kill innocent people, but beyond such niceties is the stark
reality that Muslim terrorists could not do their dastardly deeds
without widespread and yes, even official support. See also:
Taliban: the US Connection.
As Voltaire put it so aptly: "Those you can make believe
absurdities you can make commit atrocities."
Of course, Muslims don't have an exclusive on hatred and violence,
Christians have their own brands. For example, when I saw film
clips of Northern Ireland showing Protestant fanatics terrifying
little girls (some as young as four years) on their way to a
Catholic school, I found it difficult to comprehend why some
people still behave as though we are living in the Dark Ages
instead of the beginning of the 21st century.
The scene of youths and adults shouting insults and obscenities
as these children walked the gauntlet of abuse and intimidation
with their mothers filled me with both sadness and rage. This
unadulterated hatred between Protestants and Catholic has been
going on for decades and has resulted in the maiming and murder
of thousands of civilians on both sides.
The Protestants love to provoke Catholics by marching through
the latter's neighborhoods, while members of the Irish Republican
Army (IRA) terrify their fellow Christians with bombs tossed
into crowded pubs or detonated in busy shopping areas, killing
innocent civilians to further their cause to unite Ulster with
the rest of Ireland. It defies logic that after so much bloodshed
people still haven't realized by now that violence and vengeance
make things worse for both sides--not better.
One has to wonder what goes on in those twisted minds on both
sides of this religious dispute, since both claim to be guided
by Christian principles which supposedly are based on love and
tolerance --not hatred and prejudice.
History shows that in most wars religious beliefs were the key
catalyst and often the cause. For example, religious differences
stoke the fires of hatred between Arabs and Jews in the Middle
East, between Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan and so
on.
This makes a mockery of the common belief that religion has made
the world a gentler, kinder place in which to live. Since the
end of the Cold War religion has taken the lead as the foremost
contributing factor to hatred, war and terrorism.
Religious fundamentalism, especially when mixed with ethnicity,
is fueling fanaticism around the world. Hot spots are Bosnia,
Chechnya, Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan,
Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria, the Philippines
and Indonesia.
In 1992 at Koritnik, Bosnia, Orthodox Christian Serb gunmen herded
Muslim families into a basement and tossed in grenades, then
joked that the screams sounded "just like a mosque."
The same year about 2,000 Hindus and Muslims killed each other
during riots over a site where Hindus say Lord Rama was born
900,000 years ago. Meanwhile in Kashmir people were massacred
because fanatics had barricaded themselves in a mosque to protect
its sacred relic: a hair from Mohammed's beard!
In Saudi Arabia women are commonly stoned to death for having
sex outside marriage, including rape. The men involved on the
other hand never receive such harsh punishment and often aren't
punished at all. In fact, those who enforce strict laws on sexual
behavior, rarely practise restraint themselves. For example,
quoting the New York Times, Sheik Jaber al-Sabah, Kuwait's emir
reinstated by the U.S. after the Gulf War, is said to marry a
young virgin at regular intervals, sometimes weekly, on Thursday
night, the eve of the Islamic sabbath, only to divorce her the
next day.
In Pakistan since 1991 anyone who is believed to have insulted
the Prophet Mohammed faces death by hanging. Women who wear no
veil often have acid thrown in their face by Muslim men.
Prime targets of religious terrorists are political leaders striving
for peace from Mohandas Gandhi to Yitzhak Rabin. Writers are
also high on the hit list. Bangladesh author Dr. Taslima Nasrin,
who dared criticize the harshness of the sharia code based on
the Koran, is wanted dead by muslim fundamentalists who have
offered $5,000 for her murder. She is now hiding in Europe.
Sikhs have offered $483,000 (U.S.) for the murder of Pakistani
author Sadiq Hussain for writing The History of the Holy Warriors.
The muslim theocracy of Iran recently increased the bounty for
the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses, to
$3 million U.S. In Algeria dozens of journalists have been killed
by muslim fanatics. For more examples of religious crimes I recommend
two excellent books: Holy Hatred and Holy Horrors, both by US
author James A. Haught.
What is the cause of the growing appeal of religious fundamentalism?
It provides simple answers to under-educated people who are easily
exploited in an increasingly complex world. If fundamentalist
fanaticism is allowed to triumph over reason and compassion,
humanity will regress to the horrors of the Dark Ages. In Ireland
and the Middle East they are already halfway there.
The foregoing helps answer the
question: what motivates religious fanatics? But in the case
of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington there
is a darker question that is rarely asked: what generates such
intense hatred towards the US? It is impossible to fully
understand the first question without understanding the second.
British Member of Parliament George Galloway cogently explains
his perspective on the issue:
Reaping
the whirlwind: Terrorism in the US
By George Galloway *
Remember, remember the 11th of September. The most dastardly
fireworks the world has ever seen will never be forgotten, either
in the United States or the rest of the world. The massive loss
of civilian life - office workers, school children, hijacked
airplane passengers, emergency workers - represents an unconscionable
river of blood, shed by an enemy attack on US soil for the first
time since Pearl Harbour, and is nothing less than a series of
atrocities.
Uncomfortably for Americans, and for ourselves given the umbilical
cord which seems to connect our foreign and military policies,
the fact is that their loss and the massive attack on the US
state itself which caused it will be, privately or publicly,
the subject of celebration in many parts of the world.
In Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and other countries
whose populations are in sympathy with those who have been under
remorseless US bombardment, people will consider the US to have
had to swallow some of their own medicine.
After all, they will say, cruise missiles, apache helicopter
gunships, F16s, smart bombs, depleted uranium bombs and all the
other US ordinance visited by American forces or their Israeli
allies on "rogue states" paid scant regard to the fate
of the civilians amongst whom they exploded. When an American
official yesterday said there had been "an act of war carried
out by madmen", many could recognise the sentiments very
well.
But who has belled the cat? Who possesses the motive and the
ability to carry out an attack of this gravity? This is the question
which now grips us.
When Israel, America's auxiliary, assassinated Abu Ali Mustafa,
the political leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, in Ramallah a few weeks ago, they used an American
missile fired from a US-supplied helicopter gunship. Amidst the
wreckage, the slain leader's comrades vowed revenge against not
just Israel but its supplier. Speculation that the PFLP - no
stranger to well-coordinated guerrilla actions, as the orchestral
destruction of civilian airliners in Jordan's 1970 Black September
showed - was responsible for this bloody September is inevitable.
But the sheer scale and professionalism of this crime points
away from them. They are a Damascus-based hole-in-the-corner
group whose worldwide network long ago atrophied.
The former western protege Osama bin Laden, recruited, armed
and initially financed by the US to bleed the Russian bear white
with his "mujahedeen", is a much more likely culprit.
Bin Laden has the money, the messianic fervour, the worldwide
network and, as the embassy bombs in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam
demonstrated, the logistical capability for such an operation.
He is already under sentence of death, a warrant which was almost
carried out when President Clinton launched a blizzard of cruise
missiles on a base in the Afghan mountains first built for Bin
Laden with CIA dollars. He fears nothing, believing his place
in Paradise is already booked. He also has men and materiel in
the US.
Today's Taleban, the protectors of Bin Laden, are the sons of
those US and UK-supported holy warriors once eulogised for their
role in defeating the USSR. They in turn are protected by the
military government of General Musharaf, the self-declared president
of Pakistan. The Pakistani military have long enjoyed the largesse
of the Pentagon and the State Department - the same departments
still smouldering from enemy attack.
On the first weekend of this month I attended, as a guest speaker,
the vast convention of the Islamic Society of North America,
many millions strong - they claim 7m Muslim adherents in the
US alone. Thirty thousand people attended the Chicago convention,
most of them second generation US citizens who, but for their
Islamic garb, were indistinguishable from other young people
in the American patchwork quilt. Drinking Coke, driving Chevvies,
chewing gum. And nursing their wrath.
The vast majority of those attending were non-violent religious
people, well mindful of the total Islamic injunction against
the targeting of civilians in times of conflict. But many were
brimful of bitterness at the US role in the world, especially
its responsibility for the slaughter of the innocents in Iraq
- more than a million dead, most of them children - through sanctions
and almost constant bombardment, along with the diplomatic financial
and military blank cheque drawn on the US government and in the
hands of Ariel Sharon.
Earlier this year, speaking in the House of Commons against the
son of star wars national missile defence, I said that the danger
to the US lay not in the chimera of "rogue states"
launching intercontinental ballistic missiles at the world's
only superpower, but in the terrorist's bomb in the boot of his
American car, the chemical weapon unloaded on the longshore of
the East River, the little man with the big rage ready to trade
his life for many of theirs.
Tony Blair was right to abandon his TUC speech and return to
Downing Street and the closing down of the London Stock Exchange
was no over-reaction. When the US flag burns in the dust of third
world street demonstrations, our own is usually not far behind.
So closely has Mr Blair tied us to the sinews of the US war machine,
it is inconceivable that some representative of the enragés
of the earth is not planning revenge on us.
Although the paraphernalia of Guy Fawkes night seems essentially
trivial, in truth it marks nearly 400 years on the earthshaking
importance of the blow the conspirators sought to deal the state
from the bowels of Westminster. A terrible vengence against Fawkes's
fellow believers followed. This challenge, to the hitherto untrammelled
ability of the US to deal out death and destruction and a pax
americana, is why this bloody September too will be always remembered
When the flames are dampened down and the dust from this day
which shook the world settles, we will find that, though the
US has legions of enemies in the world, it will turn out to have
sustained this devastating wound from the enemy within.
*
George Galloway is Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin and a columnist
for the Scottish Mail
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