Author: Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Publication: Fox News
Date: November 16, 2001
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38956,00.html
Washington - Two months into America's
war on terror, some conservative strategists are starting to disavow President
Bush's dictum that the conflict is not against Islam, insisting that to
fight terror means to fight the fundamentalist streak wound through much
of the world's third largest religion.
Islam, these hardliners say, is
at its core a faith hell bent on destroying the west and the civilization
of the non-believer, or infidel.
"It is a religious war - it is a
war of Islam against us," charged Morgan Norvel, a U.S. Marine and the
author of Triumph of Disorder: Islamic Fundamentalism, the New Face of
War. "Islam is hostile to all non-Islamic countries. Conflict was, and
still is, part of the faith."
"The problem is Islam itself - there
is no such thing as peaceful Islam," said William Lind, author and military
historian for the Free Congress Foundation. "There were never a case where
Islam was spread throughout the world by missionaries, but rather by the
sword."
Such words are provocative these
days, especially as Bush goes out of his way to demonstrate that the war
is against terrorists and not their faith. The president, though he decided
not to halt the bombing in Afghanistan for the holy month of Ramadan, will
host Muslim leaders at the White House next week for a fasting ritual.
Bush is backed by moderate Muslims
in America and elsewhere who say the Taliban and similar fundamentalist
groups preach a perversity of Islam that is not the true word of the prophet
Muhammad, the father of the faith.
John Voll, a Georgetown University
professor of Islamic history, says all of the world's greatest religions
- including Christianity - have historically seen their faiths perverted
and people murder in the name of God.
"Bin Laden and the Taliban . is
a particular movement that is rationalized by one of the worlds largest
religions," he said. "But it is not accepted by the mainstream believers
of that religion."
But hardliners like Lind and Norvel
said that to treat Sept. 11 as an isolated terrorist attack and not part
of a global fundamentalist movement against America and Christianity may
cost us the war.
"We cannot continue to whistle past
the graveyard," said Lind. "If we think of this as only a war on terrorism
we will fail. Terrorism is a technique. What is going on here is much more
than a technique."
People like Lind also are concerned
about taking a multi-lateral approach to the conflict. Cliff Kincaid, head
of the Washington D.C-based America's Survival, Inc., says the U.S. should
be wary of United Nations involvement. The U.N stood by complacently as
terrorists became the scourge of world in the last 30 years, Kincaid said,
and failed to stop the Taliban and its cohorts with its treaties and sanctions.
In fact, Kincaid says that judging
from the lukewarm response to Bush's recent speech to the U.N., the world
body seems downright unsympathetic.
"When our president appealed to
them for support to find the killers, he got only polite applause," he
said. "The UN is an anti-American body, though they want our hospitality
and our money."
Fred Gedrich of the Freedom Alliance,
a conservative Washington-based think-tank, chides the U.N. for giving
equal standing to countries routinely accused of being linked to state-sponsored
terror, among them Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Sudan, North Korea and
Cuba.
"That devastating terrorist attack
(Sept. 11) proves we can't rely on the U.N. or these U.N. treaties to protect
our national security. It (U.N.) obstructs and delays justice," charged
Kincaid.
Tom Neumann, executive director
of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, says that's why
he does not trust the tentative coalition that Bush has built with the
Middle Eastern nations post Sept. 11.
"We cannot conclude a war on terrorism
without concluding a war against all of these agents, all of these entities,"
he said, pointing to the different terrorist organizations, most of which
support the Palestinians' violent war against Israel.
He added, "it is politically incorrect
to suggest that this is a war against Islam."
"Maybe it isn't a war against Islam
but a war of Islam against Christianity. But yes, it is a clash of civilizations,"
he said.
More moderate voices disagree. "This
is a clash on a number of levels and it is first a clash with the Taliban
and bin Laden. This is why we can get the support of Egypt and Turkey,"
says Georgetown's Voll. "It is a war where Christians and Muslims can get
together against a particular mode of fanaticism."
