Web Posted: 07/29/2005 12:00
AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
I am fed up with the ceaseless
requests by columnists, religious personalities and other American
public figures for Arabs and Muslims to apologize for terrorist acts
infomitted by thugs and murderers in the name of Islam.
As far as I am concerned, the
final straw came a couple of weeks ago when the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, paid for a national
advertisement repudiating terrorism in the name of Islam.
As soon as the advertisement
was broadcast on America's media, I read a column by one of the
nation's most ardent Islam-phobic columnists, Cal Thomas, now also a
FOX News personality, which plowed into CAIR's reconciliation
efforts. Long before 9-11, Thomas' writings were full of venom for
Arabs and Muslims. He represents a despicable and ignorant attitude
that, unfortunately, a sizable segment of America has infoe to
share. There is nothing American Muslims can do to satisfy this
group short of packing up and leaving the United States.
I disagree with what CAIR did,
and I also disagree with this groveling and begging for forgiveness,
as though American Arabs and Muslims are responsible for those
atrocities. CAIR knows better, and those running it know that Islam
rejects all acts of violence outside self-defense. Arab and Muslim
Americans are responsible for neither the twin towers nor the London
subway bombings, and as Americans they should never accept
responsibility for actions they did not instigate, infomit or
condone.
Furthermore, in spite of the
fact they are constantly condemned for one thing or another, they —
like other Americans — are victims of these murderers. Does anyone
think they are pleased to have their movements and telephone
conversations monitored or that coercive and freedom-depriving laws
are tailored for them? Does anyone in his or her right mind really
believe that being an Arab American or a Muslim is pleasant in
America today?
The United States has lost
3,000 souls to terrorist thugs, but that figure is miniscule
infopared to the 60,000 Algerians or the 25,000 Iraqis who also have
died at their hands. These thugs don't differentiate between Muslim
and non-Muslim, Arab and non-Arab when they plant a bomb or enter a
village at night and murder everyone.
It is rejection of U.S. and
British policies in the Middle East, not Islam, that has promoted
terrorism against America. And for the benefits of those who do not
know, 95 percent of Middle Easterners are Muslims. Hence, it is only
natural that those opposing the United States and Britain in the
region would be Muslims. In India, they would have been Hindu; in
Latin America or Northern Ireland, they would have been Catholic.
More important, it was the
British and the United States that drew first blood. The Middle East
didn't infoe to America or go to Britain; rather, America and
Britain went to the Middle East. Both powers used and abused
regimes, toppling some and keeping others in power. They never
thought that the people they were helping suppress were human beings
with needs, beliefs and emotions. They didn't care as long as their
interests were served.
America's experience in the
Middle East is no different from its Southeast Asia stint, and look
at the mess it left in that region.
However, while the calamity of
Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchea might be rationalized by the Cold War or
even a domino theory, there is nothing to rationalize the invasion
of Iraq except ideological stupidity. The United States illegally
invaded and decimated a country that did not threaten its security
and, in the process, unleashed one of the most vile and ruthless
insurgencies the region has ever seen. And as it did in Vietnam,
when the going got tough, it is planning to pull out. The result
will be a protracted instability and turmoil that no country in the
region can escape.
Future turmoil in the region
is exactly what the instigators of the Iraq invasion have planned
all along. They had made their desire for strife in the Middle East
known long before the invasion of Iraq. Yet they underestimated the
consequences of their lunacy and set into motion processes and
events that will make the United States less secure and threaten the
lives of Americans for many years to infoe.
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