(Via Michael J. Totten) The Chronicle Online - Column: Whitewashing truth (in full):

Bala Ambati (Sweep of Daylight)

March 19, 2003


Sugarcoating and whitewashing Islamic fundamentalism has become a pastime for an odd assortment of loony leftists, so-called self-proclaimed "moderate" Muslims, warmed-over ex-Communists and perennial anti-Americans. The Sept. 11 aftermath witnessed these terrorist apologists blaming the CIA or Mossad for the attacks, spreading the idiotarian and bigoted canard about 4,000 Jews missing work that day, and simultaneously saying it was just punishment for the U.S. Those guilty of imbecilic dissonance demonstrate refusal to deal with inconvenient facts and damning reality. Rather than expressing contrition for these lies or mercifully shut up, they switched to blaming the attacks on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "globalization", or U.S. "imperialism", further proving themselves untethered from fact.


Their logical leaps and contorted convolutions never cease, now excusing the mass murder of Australian tourists in Bali on resentment over repression of Palestinians. The suicide bombing of a bus in Manila, torching of churches and worshipers in Nigeria, and throat-slitting and beheading of unveiled Kashmiri women are also no doubt due to resentment over repression of Palestinians. When will this weirdly wicked farcical falsehood yield to the truth, which is uttered by Islamic fundamentalists themselves? When a French oil tanker was rammed by explosives, the Islamic Army of Aden declared, "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate. But it is no matter-the French are also infidels." It is time to take fundamentalists at their word--they want to kill or convert all "infidels" to their perverse brand of Islam.


The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has little to do with Islamic fundamentalist hatred of others. Islamic fundamentalists seek to form over decades a caliphate state stretching from the Phillipines to Spain, and they have suicide bombed Filipinos, firebombed tourists in Indonesia, massacred Hindus in temples in India, enslaved and performed genocide on Coptic Christians and animists in Sudan and tried to impose sharia in Nigeria. What does any of this have to do with Israel and the U.S.?


All of this would be happening whether or not the US or Israel existed. Sept. 11, the suicide-bombing of civilians in Israel, and all the other recent attacks, are part of the ideology that is Islamic fundamentalist imperalism. This ideology holds that non-Muslims are worthy only of conversion to Islam or death, sharia should obliterate the difference between church and state, the ideal society is 7th century Arabia, mass-murderers of "infidels" get 72 celestial virgins in heaven, and peace on earth will come when the whole world is "dar-al-Islam" (Islamic), a peace of the grave. Sheikh Abu Hamza of London spoke for many, "If a kafir person (non-believer) goes in a Muslim country, he is like a cow. Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law. If a kafir is walking by and you catch him, he's booty. You can sell him in the market. if Muslims cannot take them and sell them in the market, you just kill them. It's okay. I say the reality that's in the Muslim books. Whether I say it or not, it's in the books."


We must stop sugarcoating Islamic fundamentalist imperialism, whether by romanticizing or justifying suicide bombing or passing off grotesqueness as "cultural difference." Justifying suicide bombers anywhere by any grievance bestows Mohammad Atta justification by his grievances. Moral relativism is popular because it enables the obtuse to rationalize cowardice. Without moral absolutes there is no need to choose between good and evil, and no shame in choosing evil.


"Moderate" Muslim-Americans too often indulge in a PC combination of issue-avoidance, subject-changing, blame-shifting, and victimology seemingly designed to deflect reality and confuse the unknowing, e.g., passing off "jihad" as inner cleansing and spiritual upliftment. Just last week, al-Azhar University, perhaps the world's most esteemed Islamic seminary, called for jihad by all Muslims on all Americans. In the real world, jihad kills. Some have written that the Quranic verses I presented in prior columns that I found inflammatory were misinterpreted or mistranslated; but then why do so many imams and sheikhs use those same translations to incite terrorism? If indeed such verses are mistranslated, it behooves Muslims to discredit and defrock the imams and sheikhs who commit blasphemy to justify mass murder.


Dr. Bala Ambati is a former fellow in the School of Medicine and is currently on the faculty at the Medical College of Georgia. His column appears every third Wednesday.