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world community is prepared to believe that terrorist activity is
not an expression of the Islamic faith. We say this because
credible Koranic experts tell us so and because the sense of religion
is elementary respect for human life. The United Nations, in September,
passed two resolutions, one in the Security Council, one in the
General Assembly. The Security Council voted unanimously its condemnation
of the terrorism. The Assembly didn't take the vote of its members
individually, but the resolution was passed by a standing vote.
Azerbaijan's representative called movingly for blood donations
by U.N. representatives — "we do love this city, we love
New York, and we want to help it."
Adrian Karatnycky,
the president of Freedom House, reminds us soberingly in National
Review that it is misleading to think of the terrorists as pure
emanations of a foreign culture. We are reminded of the leading
terrorists of the century and their ties to the West. Lenin of Zurich,
Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh of Paris. Che Guevara the cosmopolitan doctor.
The ringleader of the contemplated bombing of a 400-room hotel in
Jordan was an American-born Muslim, Raed Hijazi. He grew up in a
privileged family, studied business administration at Cal
State and, according to Jordanian prosecutors, got his taste of
radical Islamic teaching at a mosque near his Sacramento campus.
His mullah there put him progressively in touch with Osama bin Laden.
Yes, the West
is the generator of America's Weather Underground, Germany's Baader-Meinhof
Gang, and Italy's Red Brigades, but never mind that Mohamed Atta,
who led the terrorists on September 11, lived an urbane life brought
up by a middle-class family or that he had years of experience living
in Germany and in the United States. That doesn't vitiate the faith
by which the terrorists died, which was hardly Western. Kill
them, as God said; No Prophet can have prisoners of war. That
was a sentence in the text the terrorists were guided by, found
in the abandoned car in which one of them drove to the airport,
to seal his fate and that of five thousand New Yorkers. "Be
steadfast and remember [that in] God you will be triumphant,"
his catechism went on.
Ms. Aasma Khan
of New York is co-creator of Muslims Against Terrorism. According
to Robin Finn of the New York Times, the "month-old
coalition of urban professionals [is] dedicated to educating fellow
New Yorkers — and beyond — that Islam neither endorses
nor tutors terrorists." She is an "angrily articulate
advocate intent on disproving any link between Islam and the fugitive
who dominates her
nightmares, Osama bin Laden."
Now all of
this is reassuring. But we have every day, in the press and on television,
accounts of public acclaim in the Islamic world for the deeds of
September 11. Quoted before in this space was the 32-year-old body-and-fender
man in Karachi, who explained to the reporter that holy wars come
about only when Allah has no other way to maintain justice, times
like now. "That is why Allah took out his
sword" on September 11."
The Judeo-Christian
West does not have the authority to proclaim Islamic doctrine. However
persuaded we are of the profanity of September 11, declarations
to that effect need to come, to be sure from theological exegetes,
but most pointedly from political leaders.
The United
States, in company with Christian leaders of the West, should ask
for specific affirmations from presidents and prime ministers and
caliphs of the more than 50 Moslem countries. It would not be untoward
to ask that, in the tradition of international signatories in recent
history, on the order of the Atlantic Charter, they affix their
names to a declaration. It would read:
"We, political
leaders of the community of Islamic nations, reject such terrorism
as was practiced on September 11, 2001. The men who took this action
in the name of Allah were impostors who profaned the word of the
prophet."
Not more would
need to be said, but that Declaration of Islamic Doctrine and Modern
Terrorism, with names and titles of world leaders, should appear
everywhere, in parliaments and mosques, subway stations. And airports.
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