Baroud:
The Palestinian group has no clear record and no apparent affiliation with any other known Palestinian faction. They laid out impossible demands and employed Islamic rhetoric. Both journalists were forced to convert to Islam, in a very disturbing, yet amateurish act. Any Islamic interpretation, no matter how fundamental, forbids such practice. Qoranic verses in this regard are indisputable.The forced conversions play into a meme that receives strong circulation in fundamentalist Christian circles here in the states. Simple-minded buffoons that they are, our evangelical good-ol-boy brethren believe that the jihadists' goal is not dynasty change in Saudi Arabia, not the elimination of Israel, not the eradication of American influence in the Middle East, not even the re-establishment of the Caliphate. No, it's not about anything going on over there-- it's really all about us.
Did the Holy Jihad Brigades -- a dodgy name by any Palestinian standards -- know that forcing a person to recite that "There is No God but Allah" does not qualify them as Muslim?
Many of our Christian friends actually believe that what Osama and the Palestinians and any other Muslims who don't like us really, really, really want to do is to march into our land, raid our churches, and force all Christians to convert to Islam.
This delusion has always had one problem: No evidence has ever backed it. Osama has never talked about such a thing. Neither has any Palestinian. Neither has anyone in Hezbollah. Neither, so far as I know, has any Arab of any stripe.
Now look at what has happened. Isn't that con-veeeeeenient?
3 comments:
You are right Cannonfire. That FOX deal certainly looked set up. No one said it at the time, but no other group has used this tactic or* the media chose this one to publicize.
However, as it is with Christians, to invite people into the religion, I feel sure, the islamic goal in general, not that it has to do with anything we have seen, is to establish a religious state. That is what Muslims believe . They do believe in general here... that you and I should not have a religious choice other than their religion. That to me is the problem... NO CHOICE
Anon 3:08, not true historically. When the Muslims controlled Jerusalem, they were perfectly content to allow Jewish temples and Christian churches to operate there. No religion has ever been as insistent on NO CHOICE as the various Christian factions throughout history, from Catholic to Protestant to Fundamentalist.
The Islamic "goal" has a lot less to do with religion than it does with casting off the yoke that Muslim countries are controlled with by western-based corporations that are backed up by the military of western governments, esp. the USA.
Religion is a unifying force for the Muslims, a way to fight back against the financial and economic leviathan of the West. IMHO.
I think that's partially true, uni. Islam did conquer by the sword, and in so doing wrote some of history's bloodiest pages, particularly in India. And yet by the time of the Crusades, Moslem countries were probably more cultured and tolerant than ours.
In the 20th Century, many Islamic countires fell under various despitisms. Once Nasserism was crushed, there was little choice left. A dissenter from the prevailing social order can turn to religion, or he can turn to...what? In Saudi Arabia, after the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to take over Mecca, the monarchy learned that they could not squelch religiously-based dissent. All they could hope to do was to co-opt and control it.
So I don't think religion became just a way of combatting the west. To any young man in an Islamic nation disatisfied with his government, with his culture, with his place in society, with the way things are -- in short, to any young man feeling a sense of alienation (which is a phase most intelligent young men go through) -- religious zealotry is pretty much the only outlet left.
One could argue that something like the same process is taking place here in America. Fewer youths go through a socialist phase in college. If you're young and alienated, there's really no place to turn but religion.
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