Islam is not our Enemy

I have been thinking quite a bit about this during the last few days. Between annoying Oliver the other day and with September 11th coming up, I have been in a rare contemplative mood. This is what I came up with.

I don’t think Islam is our enemy. Not even Wahhabi. Nor do I think that Saudi Arabia is our enemy, even though certain members of the Royal Family certainly are. I think, actually, most Muslims are getting played. A certain group within Islam is manipulating their religion and a good portion of the believers in it to their own ends. Our real enemy: Pan-Arabism

Once upon a time, the Arab Empire, after uniting through the Treaty of Hudaybiya swept out of Mecca and raced across North Africa into Spain. It only stopped when Charles Martel turned back the invasion at the Battle of Tours. The greatest empire in history in exactly a century, and then… nothing.

The empire was largely helpless against incursions by the Europeans and the Mongols. The biggest hero of the whole time period is Saladin, who was a Kurd. Any expansions were made by not by Arabs, but by Turks. Which pretty much brings us up to the 1950’s.

However, pan-Arabism persists as a romantic yearning among the masses, and as a political slogan for some populist parties. Former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, an authentic Egyptian nationalist, adopted this self-serving objective in the 1950s and 1960s, hoping to use it as leverage for power on the international scene. When he utterly failed to achieve unity first with Syria, then with Iraq and Yemen, he hoisted the banner of “scientific socialism” and tried to use the Arab League in his struggle against “Western imperialism” and its “surrogate state” ­ Israel. However, the pan-Arab organization was and remains more a useful public forum than a tool of coordinated action. Resolutions ­ conceived to please public opinion in member states ­ are rarely implemented. - Eric Rouleau

Osama bin Laden is a character from a bad novel. The youngest son of a father who had no interest in him (and whose interest in his mother seems not to have existed outside his bedroom), he started out rebelling against his father by fighting foreign invaders in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the world, he never grew up.

But he does have one talent: Centuries ago, there was a sect of Islam better known now as the Assassins. Whether or not eveything said about them is true, the fact is that Osama has had a talent for convincing his followers that by following his bidding, Paradise awaits.

This is not about Islam. It is about one idiots losers thirst for vengeance against his father and those that bankroll him because it serves their own interests. That is who we are fighting against.

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Islam is not our Enemy

Shooting Prisoners Again

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