IP: War against terror is not, and should not become, a crusade

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/28_09_01/art7.htm

The questions on many Arab and Muslim minds are whether America is waging a 
war against Islam under the pretext of fighting terrorism? Is it an unholy 
war between Christian crusaders and Islam, or a conflict of civilizations?

The theory that "America's new war" is a clash of civilizations would imply 
that Islam and its culture entail a different set of moral values and 
ethical maxims than Christianity.
Such an argument is insulting and demeaning to one religion or the other, 
assuming that one is an embodiment of "good" and the other an embodiment of 
"evil."

[note this next paragraph -- it shows again the insensitivity to/ ignorance 
of  other cultures on our part djf]

Any student of comparative religions would attest that this argument is 
unfounded. Both faiths preach the same principles of love, charity, and 
tolerance. Both believe in the same God, even if the Western media 
maliciously refers to Allah when it discusses Islam, to infer that the 
deity worshipped by Muslims is a different one from the one God common to 
all monotheistic faiths.
That this war is a crusade assumes that America and its allies are 
ideologically opposed to Islam and wish to conquer its territories under 
the convenient disguise of eradicating terrorism.

Yet American allies include many Muslim states; foremost among them is 
Saudi Arabia, which houses Islam's two holiest shrines and whose ruler is 
"the Custodian of the Two Holy Shrines." Moreover, the US and its Western 
allies have in recent years sided with several Muslim parties in ethnic 
wars with Christian groups. The Western involvement in Kosovo in support of 
Kosovo's Albanian Muslim population was the first time NATO undertook 
military action in Europe.
American leaders have repeatedly referred to Russia's campaign in 
predominantly Muslim Chechnya as a genocidal campaign.

And even when the need to include Russia in the anti-terror coalition 
necessitated a softening of the US stand on the war in Chechnya at a 
meeting with American Muslim leaders on Wednesday, Bush reiterated that Mr. 
Putin should "deal with the Chechen minority in his country with respect" 
for human rights. In Macedonia, the US position is also perceived to side 
with Muslims much to the chagrin of neighboring Christian Greece.

It was an unfortunate use of a term that in the American lexicon has come 
to connotate "a campaign" rather than "a holy war" when President Bush 
referred to his war as a crusade.
This malapropism gave credence to the theory of a religious crusade, on 
which bin Laden reportedly capitalized to rally Muslims around the world to 
his cause and against the budding anti-terrorist coalition.




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