Sunday, November 5, 2006
Walid Shoebat and his group...is anyone listening? Here's Tawfik Hamid: Hot for martyrdom
He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.
"Yes, 'imperialism,' " he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."
Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while at medical school in Cairo, and devoted himself to the cause. His group began meeting in a small room. Then a larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers of al-Zawahiri. By the time Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating other students who were unsympathetic.
He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.
"I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."...
"He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism."
Well, rather obdurately complacent at times. Over-reactions, succombing to fear, etc., yes, need to be eschewed, all while better assessing it all, weighing it all, and then acting upon those measured assessments.
Easy for me to say.
Still, with 24/7 MSM/media saturations, over-reactions are not in one direction only; fear mongering the current administration is a tactic almost constantly deployed by the Left/Dems and MSM consorts as well.
And this Walter Laqueur interview is worth a repeat emphasis as well. Some many coal miners' canaries, so little heed.
The opening question/response in that Laqueur interview highlights a recurring topic. "Locating" and defining anti-Semitism, beyond what are virtually Hitlerian forms (i.e. in forms originating from various Leftist precincts), is too often dismissed or marginalized to the point where the topic is not even engaged.
Ironically, and it's a profound irony, the Left tends to see themselves as the chosen, the righteous, the good, and in virtually religious and absolute terms, hence the discussion is very often not even opened up or is terminated and disengaged if the attempt is made.
Eye-opening, or it should be, anyway.