During the stalemate that ensued following the seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen rebels, veiled Muslim women holding banners were seen in videotapes that were sent to Al-Jazeera, the international Arabic network. "It makes no difference for us where we will die. We have chosen to die here, in Moscow, and we will take the lives of hundreds of the infidels with us," recited a woman. Heigh-ho! What do you say to that?
This is just one more incident demonstrating the belligerent tactics of Islamic terrorists adding to the huge list of large-scale conflicts involving the followers of Islam.
It doesn't take a social scientist to comprehend the inklings of such a disquieting trend of Islamic belligerence. Pakistan, India, Chechnya, the Middle East, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia are all places that have faced the brunt of Islamic malevolence in the form of agonizing conflicts. And the list is growing.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, we have witnessed a slew of information concerning the religion of Islam and tidings about what strains of Islam are good and which are bad.
The media and the universities sprang into action to pacify using pitches like, "Islam is a religion of peace," and my favorite, "All Muslims are not terrorists." You don't need to be illuminated by a pedantic professor to realize that NO RELIGION, let alone Islam, can possibly constitute only one kind of people.
One must be ultra thickheaded to presume otherwise. However, these wily pitches were only used to mollify the critics and preemptively inoculate the issue against further, more scrupulous and damaging attacks.
We've witnessed the pronouncements of Bernard Lewis, the eminent scholar of Near Eastern studies: "the Arabic word 'jihad' means literally striving for war in the cause of God … warfare is legitimate against four enemies."
Yet we are trying to bilk away from confronting the principal issue that is the subject of interest to the victims of Islamic bellicosity: Why is Islam, whether mainstream or not, such a pestilence to the moderate and accommodating populaces of the world?
Discounting the hordes of media critics and concerned intellectuals who have forthrightly expressed their concern over the ostensible state of the religion, we in the West are still left with a statistically large chunk of alarmed souls whose justifiable dubiety toward Islam has been captured in many polls following Sept. 11.
The worry arises from the fact that the radical fringes of Islam don't seem to face the rebuke of their own moderate counterparts when they carry out acts of terror.
There seems to be no moderate 'in-house' Islamic majority that chides the radical entities by castigating them from mainstream Islam. After all, how many Christians subscribe to the bigoted preachings of David Duke? What percentage of white Britons buy the merchandise of the hard-line racist group, Combat 18?
Far from even sympathizing with them, most berate their racist ideologies and censure their reprehensible agendas.
The "evil" we are confronting doesn't exist in the monolithic fashion that our administration and the "moderating forces" have portrayed it. Rather, it dons an amoebic guise that easily transforms from one state to the other when needed, to obliterate the enemy.
Hence, we should explicitly spell out our strategy in confronting Islamic terrorism. Concurrently, we should also try to bridge rifts with countries like Iran where the general citizenry, despite the onerous ruling class, is overwhelmingly in agreement with the sentiments and dispositions of Americans and actively engage their support and goodwill for mutual well being. Tolerance has to stop somewhere.
Rishi Morla is an economics sophomore. Reach him at rishi.morla@asu.edu.
