REAL MUSLIMS & FALSE MUSLIMS
by George Jonas
National Post
July 11, 2005

The interviewer was asking about the terrorists. "They aren't Muslims,"
replied the distraught man, clutching a photograph. Behind him, an older
man nodded. "They aren't even human."

The two men in the NBC news clip wore traditional Bangladeshi clothes. A
caption identified one as Shamsul. They were being interviewed in a
Muslim-populated area of London, near the station where one of the bombs
went off. Both looked unprepossessing, but the snapshot one held up to the
camera showed a young woman of surprising beauty. "Daughter," the man
identified as Shamsul said. Apparently she was still missing, 36 hours
after the explosion.

The older man was the woman's grandfather. "I used to hold her, like this "
he explained, as if an accurate demonstration of how he held his
granddaughter 20 years ago might aid in her recovery. The father was still
responding to the earlier question. "They can say, who did this, that
they're Muslims," he repeated, "but they're not."

The camera lingered on his face as he desperately waited for confirmation
from someone, anyone, that the terrorists didn't share his faith. There was
none forthcoming. In his white tunic, wearing a fez-shaped headgear,
Shamsul looked like a person in denial. Or like someone who had just
suffered a devastating triple loss, robbed in an instant of his daughter,
his religion, and his reputation.

Shamsul seemed to anticipate that the people who "did this" in London will
call themselves Muslim, just as the people who did Madrid on March 11,
2004, or the people who did New York and Washington on September 11, 2001,
called themselves Muslim. When he said "they aren't Muslim" he meant that
terrorists who blow up trains or fly passenger jets into office towers may
claim, or even think, they're acting for Islam, but they aren't. People who
act for Islam are like Shamsul. They work hard, raise sturdy sons and
beautiful daughters, and believe that God is merciful and killing is wrong.
Real Muslims blow up nothing. On the contrary. Real Muslims, or their
beautiful children, risk getting blown up themselves when they travel in
planes, trains, or buses targeted by false Muslims.

It's impossible not to sympathize with a man who, in the space of a few
minutes on an ordinary Thursday morning, not only loses a precious child to
a savage band of barbarians, but his religion as well. After claiming the
life of his daughter, the feral assassins claim Shamsul's spiritual life by
reducing his Islam, a complex and compassionate faith of mercy and
tolerance, to a primitive and brutal creed of fanaticism, malice, and
mayhem. And then, adding a final insult to injury, his neighbours in the
heart of Europe, instead of recognizing a fellow victim, may look at him
with fear, loathing, and suspicion because he shares, even if only
nominally, the religion of his daughter's murderers, possibly along with
their garb, voice, appearance, and gestures.

It would be comforting to agree with the distraught Shamsul that he alone
is the real Muslim, and the terrorists aren't. But the unhappy truth is
that they're both real. In the House of Islam there are many rooms.
Pretending that those who blow up things aren't real Muslims may postpone
waking up to harsh reality, but sleeping through a war isn't a viable
option. And we ARE at war: At war with a branch of Islam.

We're not at war with "terrorism." Terrorism is a weapon, not an opponent.
We've been at war with militant, fundamentalist Islam, that uses terrorism
as a weapon.

Of course, militant Islam has been at war with Shamsul's moderate Islam as
well. Shamsul's is the bigger war. Muslim victims of Muslim violence dwarf
non-Muslim victims. The first number in the millions (counting Bangladesh,
Saddam's depredations against Kurds and Shiites, the Iran-Iraqi war, etc.)
Non-Muslim fatalities barely add up to twenty thousand, even after decades
of low-grade global terrorism, Kashmir, Chechnya, two Gulf wars, and 9/11.

There have been three main strands of violence running through the
Arab/Muslim world since World War II, two secular and one religious. One
was quasi-Marxist and resulted in such terrorist organizations as George
Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded in 1967.
The PFLP engaged in some spectacular hijacking operations throughout the
1970's. The other secular strand was Arab national-socialistic, spawning
such Nasserite and Baathist regimes as Col. Gaddafy's in Libya, the
al-Assad-family's in Syria, and Saddam Hussein's in Iraq. As for Yasser
Arafat's PLO, it straddled ­ some say, bridged ­ the Marxist and
national-socialistic shores of the pan-Arab stream, alternately quarreling
with, and borrowing from, both sides.

Terrorism was part of Marxist and pan-Arab nationalism, but the worst
violence emerged from Islam's religious revival. Initially encouraged by
the West to counteract Marxist influence, militant Islam grew in the
hothouses of Wahabbi oil-sheiks, the madrases of Pakistan, the
CIA-sponsored training camps of Afghanistan, and the revolutionary councils
of theocratic Iran. Eventually it resulted in al-Qaeda, as mobile,
intangible, and destructive as fire.

The malevolent flame followed Shamsul to London. He needs our help to put
it out. We need Shamsul's.

© National Post

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