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are told about the rewards that hypothetically await the Ladenite
(as in disciples of Osama bin Laden) if he meets death in inflicting
death on the infidel. There is immediate entry into the next world,
to which he will be welcomed by 70 virgins. That is a considerable
incitement to Ladenite duty and brings reflection on attendant questions.
1. Is there an order into which one is ceremonially introduced,
an order that marks the ultimate Ladenite from those others who
merely serve Allah in menial capacities? If so, why do we not know
of it? If there is no such noble order, how is the sacramental mandate
passed on? Are the suicide terrorists formally recruited? How is
this done? What numbers do the Ladenites have in mind?
2. Five hundred years ago the Aztecs conducted ritual sacrifices
to propitiate the gods and woo their good favor. There were categories
of victims who prostrated themselves on convex altars, permitting
the executors broad targets for knives that plucked out the living
hearts. Children were commonplace on those altars, as also captive
warriors. But many were volunteers. Anthropologists inform us that,
in a typical year, one quarter million live sacrifices were done,
representing 1 percent of the population. We don't know the size
of the Ladenite ministry, but if we think in terms of the Arab whole,
1 percent would be about 200,000 people. To be sure, that would
include women and children. On the other hand, the Aztecs used a
lot of children.
3. If the legend is that instant divine gratification is in order
for a Ladenite aspirant, how is the extent of the terrorist act
defined? We have to assume that killing merely a single infidel
in a suicidal venture would be less than enough to earn endless
life with the virgins. If it were otherwise, the Ladenites would
be like the Narodniki in the anti-czarist terror movement at the
end of the 19th century, where one person armed with a gun or hand
grenade would seek death to a local tyrant; but without any otherworldly
reward, inasmuch as Christianity (the national religion in Russia)
forbids extemporaneous killings. But we should certainly be informed
on the matter, assuming that students of Ladenite theology can give
us the answers.
4. The deployment of a sophisticated defense against the terrorists
depends substantially on knowledge of key questions. It is widely
held that the Japanese kamikaze who dove down on U.S. naval ships
in the last months of the war did so because they had surmised that
Japanese capitulation was foreseeable, and wished to make the ultimate
oblation to god and emperor. Suicide of that nature is more like
hara-kiri, the ultimate individualization of sacrifice, affecting
only the person who plunges the knife in his entrails, no one else.
The Ladenites, we must assume from a study of their past practices,
are not given to such platonic sacrifices. They go in for major
exchanges. Their own lives for 100 or 200 at this embassy or that,
a destroyer put out of commission with over 17 dead sailors, and
now over 6,000 dead in the heart of the greatest city in the world.
To reduce damage to the infidels on that scale would appear a mincing
retreat from effective Ladenite practice. A single militant approaching
a single infidel for mutual assured destruction would certainly
take a toll, but our attention would then be given to the size of
the Ladenite pool.
And here, 5., a final consideration. For all that we accept suicidal
practice as more or less historically workaday, we should remind
ourselves that suicide is contra naturam, a violation of
natural impulses. People go through hell to stay alive, enduring
days and weeks of freezing cold, hunger, thirst, heat. Since we
are committed to calling upon Islam for legitimate transcriptions
of the Koran, we should diligently work to expose and rebut the
anti-Koranic themes of the Ladenites. The Koran, after all, teaches
that to kill a woman is always wrong, and to kill a man is excusable
only if he is armed.
It would be a long psychological and educational enterprise, but
hardly one that should be postponed. If the Word of Allah can be
got through to active or aspirant Ladenites, endeavoring to spare
them, and us, from their noxious doctrines, that would indeed be
an effective preachment of the Word of God.
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