American violence hurts Middle East relations
By Osman Salim April 15, 2010 at 4:13 pm 
Print This Post
Swedish Website Wikileaks.org recently revealed a video of the Iraq War in 2007 where an unarmed group of Iraqis were shot in cold blood by the American army. The men were purported to carry hostile weapons, but in fact they were just reporters working for Reuters trying to get their children to a hospital — a tragic case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
America’s foreign policy in the Islamic world on combating the growing instances of terrorism has been in a quagmire for what has seemed to be an eternity. Any efforts made in Iraq to rally the support of the native people are short-lived and as ephemeral as the shifting sands of an hourglass. How can the Iraqi people treat America in good faith when the same people that bring them food from the sky also paradoxically drop bombs on them?
How many deaths can be considered acceptable in wartime provided the civilians are not our own? Are the Iraqi people considered lesser human beings or perhaps mere gnats that are all potential ticking time bombs? Shakespere said in the “Merchant of Venice,” “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”
Indiscriminate killing does not solve any problem, but creates more adversaries. The terrorist acts of 9/11 revealed the despicable side of what a few men are capable of, but the 100,000 civilians killed overseas yields seldom a tear or an iota of concern.
In a recent interview with TPMmuckracker, a Talking Points Memo journalists’ blog, United States General Stanley McChrystal said, “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”
There’s a tradition in Afghanistan to pay the person you wronged an offering of two sheep to seek their forgiveness. America has followed suit with this ritual to repay families who have lost loved ones in collateral damage. But whether two sheep or ten sheep are given, nothing can extinguish the sullen anger of these people who are newly motivated for vengeance.
The graphic photos depicting obscenities of Abu Ghraib prison, the killing of Iraqi journalists working for Reuters and the carpet bombings of civilians in the Middle East only inspire more daring people to fight against America and adopt terrorism. Violence unfortunately can only beget more violence.
If the United States truly wishes to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world to end terrorism, they will have to reconsider the rippling effects of their actions.
There’s a common quote in the Quran, the Islamic Scripture, and Jewish Talmud which says, “Whoever slays a life, slays the world entire. But whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” If we truly want to live in a world where the sanctity of human life is appreciate, it can only happen with mutual cooperation.
If you tickle Osman he is going to laugh uncontrollably, and if you “poke” him on Facebook, he is just going to stare right back at you. Reach him at msalim1@asu.edu
What a courageous article ! Thank you, Osman Salim for telling it like it is.
Islamic value system, one that is antithetical to that of the west, hurts Middle East relations.
(It also hurts…
1) Sudan
2) Southern Thailand
3) Southern Russia
4) NW China
5) Kashmir
6) India
7) Pakistan
8) Sunni v. Shi'ite
9) Somalia
10) Nigeria
Here is the root cause of all these problems:
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-arti…
And this results in this:
http://eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com/2010/03/wh…
So is America responsbile for all this?
Or is it Islam?
Mohammed was a warrior. Little wonder his followers model their behavior on his.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#At…
Arafat, I did not say that America was responsible for everything. As I said before “The terrorist acts of 9/11 revealed the despicable side of what a few men are capable of….”
There is a problem with terrorism in the Middle East that the people must take blame for as well. It is especially troubling with Sunni Shiite relationships with a lot of innocents being killed with infighting.
No sane Muslim or human being for that matter would revel in delight for innocent people killed. Islam does not condone violence against innocent people. I don't think it is fair to paint very broad brushstrokes of certain groups. One could easily say how the Crusaders slayed just about every man, woman, child in their path for the sake of God. But this does not reflect the spirit of Christianity nor the contemporary Christian people.
Osman,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. You seem to be the sort of person one can differ with while maintaining a sense of good will. I will try to show you the same respect.
With that in mind, and given your reference to the Crusades I thought I would paste an article below which clearly show Islam forced the Crusades. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this subject.
—————– ———————- ———————–
>>>>The Crusades
The Muslim Game:
Muslims love talking about the Crusades… and Christians love apologizing for them. To hear both parties tell the story, one would believe that Muslims were just peacefully minding their own business in lands that were legitimately Muslim when Christian armies decided to wage holy war and “kill millions.”
The Truth:
Every part of this myth is a lie. By the rules that Muslims claim for themselves, the Crusades were perfectly justified, and the excesses (though beneath Christian standards) pale in comparison with the historical treatment of conquered populations at the hands of Muslims.
Here are some quick facts…
The first Crusade began in 1095… 460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies, 457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies, 453 years after Egypt was taken by Muslim armies, 443 after Muslims first plundered Italy, 427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople, 380 years after Spain was conquered by Muslim armies, 363 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies, 249 years after Rome itself was sacked by a Muslim army, and only after centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians.
By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.
Europe had been harassed by Muslims since the first few years following Muhammad’s death. As early as 652, Muhammad’s followers launched raids on the island of Sicily, waging a full-scale occupation 200 years later that lasted almost a century and was punctuated by massacres, such as that at the town of Castrogiovanni, in which 8,000 Christians were put to death. In 1084, ten years before the first crusade, Muslims staged another devastating Sicilian raid, burning churches in Reggio, enslaving monks and raping an abbey of nuns before carrying them into captivity.
In 1095, Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I Comneus began begging the pope in Rome for help in turning back the Muslim armies which were overrunning what is now Turkey, grabbing property as they went and turning churches into mosques. Several hundred thousand Christians had been killed in Anatolia alone in the decades following 1050 by Seljuk invaders interested in 'converting' the survivors to Islam.
Not only were Christians losing their lives in their own lands to the Muslim advance but pilgrims to the Holy Land from other parts of Europe were being harassed, kidnapped, molested, forcibly converted to Islam and occasionally murdered. (Compare this to Islam’s justification for slaughter on the basis of Muslims being denied access to the Meccan pilgrimage in Muhammad’s time).
The Crusaders only invaded lands that were Christian. They did not attack Saudi Arabia (other than a half-hearted expedition by a minor figure) or sack Mecca as the Muslims had done (and continued doing) to Italy and Constantinople. Their primary goal was the recapture of Jerusalem and the security of safe passage for pilgrims. The toppling of the Muslim empire was not on the agenda.
The period of Crusader “occupation” (of its own former land) was stretched over less than two centuries. (The Arab occupation is in its 1,380th year).
Despite popular depiction, the Crusades were not a titanic battle between Christianity and Islam. Although originally dispatched by papal decree, the “occupiers” quickly became part of the political and economic fabric of the Middle East without much regard for religious differences. Their arrival was largely accepted by the local population as simply another change in authority. Muslim radicals even lamented the fact that many of their co-religionists preferred to live under Frankish (Christian) rule than migrate to Muslim lands.
The Islamic world was split into warring factions, many of which allied themselves with the Frankish princes against each other at one time or another. For its part, the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire preferred to have little to do with the Crusaders and went so far as to sign treaties with their rivals. Even the Muslim armies that eventually pushed out the Christian rulers spent far more energy fighting each other, both before and after the various re-takings of Jerusalem.
Another misconception is that the Crusader era was a time of constant war. In fact, very little of this overall period included significant hostilities. In response to Muslim expansion or aggression, there were only about 20 years of actual military campaigning, much of which was spent on organization and travel. (They were from 1098-1099, 1146-1148, 1188-1192, 1201-1204, 1218-1221, 1228-1229, and 1248-1250). By comparison, the Muslim Jihad against the island of Sicily alone lasted 75 grinding years.
Unlike Jihad, the Crusades were never justified on the basis of New Testament teachings. This is why they are an anomaly, the brief interruption of centuries of relentless Jihad against Christianity that began long before the Crusades and continued well after they were over.
The greatest crime of the Crusaders was the sacking of Jerusalem, in which 30,000 people were said to have been massacred. This number is dwarfed by the number of Jihad victims, from India to Constantinople, Africa and Narbonne, but Muslims have never apologized for their crimes and never will.
What is called 'sin and excess' by other religions, is what Islam refers to as the will of Allah<<<.
Osman, my friend, I was thinking about one other thing you wrote.
You wrote, “The terrorist acts of 9/11 revealed the despicable side of what a few men are capable of….”
I hear this mantra all the time: It is only a few Muslims…It is a tiny minority of Muslims….etc, etc, etc…
Something does not add up here, though, and it might be something you can explain for me.
If it is indeed just a tiny minority of Muslims then how does one explain the following poll?
The highlight of the poll is this:
“But the last nail in the coffin of the myth about “the small fringe” was hammered not by Washington Post or Jerusalem Post – but by the Arab Al-Jazeera. On the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a survey conducted by Al-Jazeera asked the respondents in various Islamic countries a question: “Do you support Osama Bin-Laden?”
A whopping 49.9% answered: YES.
So, 49.9% of Muslims support Bin-Laden and share both his goals – and his tactics to achieve these goals. In the elections of 1932, Hitler received the support of only 33% of Germans.”
The following link gives you the balance of the article as well as additional surveys which suggest that anyone who says that only a “tiny minority” of Muslims are causing the problems do not really understand the facts. Any thoughts on this Osman?
http://www.rightsidenews.com/201003229181/globa…
What a good article ! Thank you…