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Just as an example of our own unawareness: nobody seems to remember our stance in Chechnya, where we basically sat on our hands while Muslim civilians were being slaughtered. I'm not trying to take a side in that particular issue, but it's those kinds of foreign circumstances that have painted a pretty bad picture of us to our enemies - and we should be aware of that.

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Both the extreme right and extreme left need to move to the center with the rest of us.

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~BELIEVE~

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Why are thousands of people fleeing Afghanistan in search of havens like Australia? What could have driven the escape of the Afghanis rescued by the Tampa?

Four Corners takes viewers on a shocking journey into Afghanistan to reveal the horror of life under Taliban rule.

In this powerful film from Britain's Channel 4, reporter Saira Shah goes in search of her father's birthplace to find a nation devastated by war, drought and one of the most repressive regimes on the planet.

Shah leaves behind a sea of Afghani refugees on the Pakistan side of the border to begin a cat and mouse game with agents from the Taliban's Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue.

She links up with an underground group, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA provide chilling, secret footage of public executions of men and women at the main soccer stadium in Kabul.

Shah asks the Taliban Foreign Minister if it's right that executions are carried out in a place of entertainment funded by international aid. The minister replies that the international community should build a separate facility for executions.

RAWA takes Shah to a clandestine school for girls. It's run by women teachers who have been banned from working by the Taliban. "If they find out that we're running a course here, they could hang us all," says one.

Shah visits a secret beauty salon where women seek a measure of normality in a world gone mad. "This is a form of resistance," says one woman as she paints her nails. "We're defying the Taliban."

Shah tours a gynaecological hospital where the desperate plight of women can be clearly seen. The place is filthy, with few doctors or medicines. More women die in childbirth in Afghanistan than anywhere else, Shah reports.

She then heads to the front line of the civil war in north-east Afghanistan. There she finds graphic evidence that the Taliban have been torturing and massacring unarmed civilians.

This is a harrowing and depressing portrait of a country ruled by terror. But Shah discovers slivers of hope among the poor and the weak, as they battle on in a daily struggle against tyranny.

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why was it necessary to cry out "war!"? there have been terrorist attacks all over the world before this without the victimized country declaring war.

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I am not an expert on conventional warfare but the Russian tried using more air-to-ground fighting. Missiles don't go very far down caves unless you're a real good shot. Ground-to-ground fighting is the only way to get in to all the underground hiding places. Nothing against the Russian people but I think our armed forces are much better equipped, and they are going to have the people behide them, plus we will have allies fighting with us.

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September 13, 2001 Talk about it E-mail story Print


COMMENTARY
Islam Must Challenge Its Dark Doctrines

By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI,


In the emerging debate over how extensively to define the enemy facing the West we need to avoid both wishful thinking and hysteria.

The minimalists who insist that the enemy is only a small band of fanatics around Osama bin Laden severely underestimate the penetration of extremist doctrine within much of mainstream Islam, especially in the Arab world. But those who invoke a war of civilizations—a conflict between Western democracy and international Islam—risk widening the circle of enmity to large parts of the Islamic world that have so far been immune to the appeal of jihad, or holy war.

Far from being regarded as fringe lunatics, the terrorists who struck against U.S. civilian and military targets are widely regarded as heroes within the Arab world. Religious edicts have been issued in Arab countries endorsing the attack, and thousands danced in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza. That pathological response isn't just the result of anger at perceived injustice, but of years of hate indoctrination in mosques and from state-controlled media. Indeed, only in the Arab world is Holocaust denial a mainstream notion.

Islamic doctrine easily lends itself to extremist cooptation. Islam divides the world into two regions: Dar al Harb, or the house of war, containing all territories ruled by non-Muslims, and Dar al Islam, or the house of Islam, which is destined to dominate the former. In a world groping toward planetary interconnectedness, this Islamic doctrine—which justifies the madness of holy war—must be challenged by Muslims themselves.

Humanistic Muslims need to face the lethal consequences of their theology toward non-Muslims. Apologetics about the nobility of Islam aren't good enough anymore. Just as much of Christianity has confronted its anti-Jewish theology, and many Jews are struggling to uproot the exclusivist strain within Judaism, tolerant Muslims can no longer afford to defend Islam's more problematic concepts.

We are all heirs to complex religious traditions; the obligation of believers is to preserve the beauty of their faith while transforming its negative residues.

Those who try to shift the blame for the latest terrorist atrocities on U.S. support for Israel miss several key points. The Arab war against Israel isn't over occupation but the right of a Jewish state to exist. Last year, at Camp David, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from almost all the territories and to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians—and the Temple Mount with Islam.

More broadly, the terrorist's holy war isn't aimed ultimately at Israel but the West. Muslim nations are among the the most vociferous in ideologically opposing globalization—not just its excesses but also its blessings, like a free media and a sense of shared responsibility for international stability.

Indeed, perhaps Israel's greatest offense to Arab sensibilities is its very Westerness, proof for many Muslims of its supposed colonialist essence. Western standards of human rights—which Arab propagandists routinely use to excoriate Israel—are almost unknown within the Muslim world.

Still, it would be disastrous to declare Islam itself the enemy. For many Muslims, the doctrines of holy war and of Dar al Islam are irrelevant to their faith, and have in effect been allowed to lapse. Sufis, or Muslim mystics, go further, transforming holy war into a spiritual doctrine, a battle against one's own imperfections.

Demonizing one of the world's great faiths is an affront against all religions.

The terrorists want nothing more than to widen this war to include the whole Islamic world. And those in the Arab world—especially Yasser Arafat—who actively nurture the culture of terrorism yet pretend to condemn it hope to avoid the West's judgment. Neither should be allowed to dictate the U.S. response to terrorism.
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Yossi Klein Halevi's latest book is "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land" (William Morrow, 2001).

For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights/register.htm

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Strength and Honor
The enemy is fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, hate.

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We are all heirs to complex religious traditions; the obligation of believers is to preserve the beauty of their faith while transforming its negative residues.

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Please keep in mind while reading this: it was written by a Jew, not a muslim.

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Strength and Honor
The enemy is fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, hate.

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Just trying to get people to think a little bit further instead of jumping to conclusions.

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Strength and Honor
The enemy is fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, hate.

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So you just jumped to the conclusion that none of us was capable or willing to think?

Thanks.

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For many Muslims, the doctrines of holy war and of Dar al Islam are irrelevant to their faith, and have in effect been allowed to lapse. Sufis, or Muslim mystics, go further, transforming holy war into a spiritual doctrine, a battle against one's own imperfections.

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They hide behind the idea of fighting for God, but in actually lack the true knowledge of Allah to ever be able to please Him as they so desperately want to do. Add in the general culture of not enough food and necessities for living, crazy regimes taking over and terrorizing and torturing their own people, lack of education, being cut off from the rest of the world in about every way, putting the blame for their lot on Western civilization, and madmen masquerading as leaders, sometimes religious leaders of those countries, and it's no wonder we're in this mess. The woes of these cultures are so incredibly complex, there is no easy answer.

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Strength and Honor
The enemy is fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, hate.

Edited by: babzee  at: 9/18/01 10:40:39 am