Convert or Die?

[Nada Nuff]

In a recent discussion involving the recent terror attack in London, one radio personality used the expression "convert or die" to describe the mental attitude of the terrorists. Is that really how they feel? And, if so, what is it about the Muslim religion in particular that seems to create so many radicals? I have very strong religious beliefs myself, but I can't understand why one feels the need to force their beliefs on others. I understand the necessity of spreading religion to non-believers very well, but why choose terrorism and possible death over religious discretion? I rarely if ever hear about any other religious faction producing such crazed "zealots". It's almost as if they have a quota to meet.

Or did the radio guy exaggerate? Are the terrorists just misguided sects, wrongly claiming that "God" backs their "mission" when in fact they are not true Muslims to begin with?


Those in the know, your thoughts are appreciated. But please, no preaching--I'm not looking to convert.

[tian]

Symposium: Through the Eyes of a Suicide Bomber
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 12, 2005




The July suicide bombings in London were yet another horrifying reminder of the dreadful tactic perpetrated by Islamic jihadists in their holy war. To be sure, Israeli citizens have long known the nightmare of suicide bombing – and Iraqis, unfortunately, have become acquainted with it daily.

What exactly is inside the mind of the Islamic suicide bomber? What impulse motivates a human being, who supposedly believes in God, to blow himself up alongside innocent people? To discuss these and other questions with us today, Frontpage Symposium has assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests today are:



Jessica Stern, an expert on terrorism, a lecturer on the subject at Harvard, and the author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill;



Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a prison psychiatrist who has had much experience with treating Muslim patients in Britain and who has witnessed the "collision of cultures." He is the author of his new collection of essays, Our Culture, What's Left of It. The Mandarins and the Masses;



Dr. Nancy Kobrin, an affiliated professor to the University of Haifa, Arabist, psychoanalyst and author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh's New Clothes: Islamic Suicide Terror and What It's Really All About;



and



Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz, a scholar of Islamic Studies and author of Von Allah zum Terror? Der Djihad und die Deformierung des Westens (From Allah to Terror? Jihad and the Western Deformation).



FP: Jessica Stern, Dr. Tilman Nagel, Dr. Nancy Kobrin and Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.



Suicide bombings are a perpetual reality in Iraq and Israel today.



In Israel, we see Palestinians, often kids, blowing themselves up alongside Jewish inoccents while their parents cheer on in euphoria. In Iraq, we see foreign fighters coming from all over the Arab and Muslim world to detonate themselves amongst innocent civilians.



Now they have struck in London.



Let’s start from square one to crystallize things. What instils the yearning to blow oneself up?



Dr. Raddatz?



Raddatz: If you were a molecule type of "personality" who has only one alternative of existence, namely being stripped of any individual ego and merged with the mass of the "umma", the community of Allah, you might also be tempted to look for some dynamite - or rather C4 - in order to focus your unimportant life into one single, supposedly grandiose moment. When you in addition to that are not able to distinguish spiritual from material aspects, you are in really serious trouble.



In one previous symposium, Dr. Kobrin rightly mentioned the regrettable inabililty of not so too few Muslims to tell brain from mind. While they cut heads off, they think to destroy the thoughts of their victims. Similar to that they expect to meet innumerable beautiful girls in paradise since all their lives they have been told to proceed directly there as reward for the martyr death. Needless to mention that there will be unlimited erections as well as hymens renewed constantly. Some of the Palestinian suicide bombers wrap their penises into fire-proof aluminum foil to save them for the pleasures to come. Their parents get even doubly rewarded, by cash and "honor." Allah provides for an unusually profitable deal, indeed.



What we are facing here is not only pre-modern but pre-cultural "thinking". The Koran and Islamic tradition set guidelines conserving a manichaean type of prevalence claim that ultimately rejects any other society alternative. While strengthening its orthodox structures worldwide, Islam keeps on lacking one very important feature which most cultures have developed and which is indispensable for diverting violence inside a group: the subliminal function of the sacrifice concept. The impossibility for the average Muslim individual to develop a thinking outside the community and for the Muslim collective to deal with power and with women without violence has prevailed until today and is even picking up again due to modernization conflicts.



In this context, one has to keep in mind the Western "scientists" in sociolgy, anthropology, neuro-physiology etc. who deny the singularity of the human mind. Therefore, they have no problems with cognition Islamic style and thus explain "martyr" bombers as "emergency defence". Ultimately we are talking about politics, of course, renewing sympathies with a radical ideology quite close to the biology of Fascism.



FP: Ms. Stern?



Stern: There has been exponential growth in suicide attack worldwide, the most virulent form of terrorism, which accounts for less than 5 percent of all terrorist events but about 50 percent of all casualties. Many suicide attacks since1980 originated in organized campaigns to drive perceived occupiers from the attackers` homeland, and US military interventions have only exacerbated the problem. That said, most military occupations in history have not led to suicide bombing campaigns.

The answer to your question - what instils the yearning to blow oneself up – is dependent on many factors. I believe the reasons are likely to be a combination of political, religious, psychological, organizational, and material factors. But not all suicide-murder operations are committed by religious zealots. It used to be the case that a secular group – Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger’s – were responsible for most suicide-murder attacks. Now Islamist groups are more important.

You mention two areas: Palestine and Iraq in particular.

In Palestine, Hamas and the other terrorist groups use religion to justify their aspirations for political power and to recover Palestinian territory from Israeli occupation. Part of this land is sacred to Muslims but also to Jews and Christians. To achieve their ends, some of which are accepted as legitimate by much of the world, Hamas and the other terrorist groups in the region are committing atrocities against Israeli citizens and against the Palestinian people. The terrorist leaders deliberately inculcate the idea that “martyrdom operations” are sacred acts, worthy of both earthly and heavenly rewards. Mainstream Islamic scholars are increasingly voicing their view that suicide-bombing attacks against civilians are not acts of martyrdom but suicide and murder, both of which are forbidden by Islamic law.

I believe the best way to understand the situation in Palestine is to see suicide-murder as a kind of epidemic disease. Ordinary suicide has been shown to spread through social contagion, especially among youth. Studies have shown that a teenager whose friend or relative attempts or commits suicide is more likely to attempt or commit suicide himself. Not surprisingly, ordinary suicide is more common among youths who are depressed or exposed to intense social stress. Suicide bombing is different from ordinary suicide: It entails a willingness not only to die, but also to kill others. Often, an organization takes charge of planning the suicide operation, and the terrorist may be on call for weeks or, in the case of the leaders of the September 11th attacks, years. But there are some commonalties.

The situation in Gaza suggests that suicide-murder can also be spread through social contagion, that there is some tipping point beyond which a cult of suicide-murder takes hold among youth. Once this happens, the role of the organization appears to be less critical: the bombing takes on a momentum of its own. “Martyrdom operations” have become part of the popular culture in Gaza and the West Bank. For example, on the streets of Gaza, children play a game called shuhada, which includes a mock funeral for a suicide bomber. Teenage rock groups praise martyrs in their songs. Asked to name their heroes, young Palestinians are likely to include suicide bombers on the list.

There were more suicide attacks in Iraq in 2004 (104) than for the entire globe in any previous year of contemporary history, involving fighters from at least 15 Arab countries. And the rate of suicide attacks in Iraq in 2005 is likely to surpass that.

From talking to terrorists and those who monitor them, I and others have learned that terrorism thrives in an atmosphere of humiliation, marginalization, and dashed expectations. Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, describes globalization as deeply humiliating to Muslims. That's why, he says, he encourages the youth of Islam to carry arms and defend their religion with pride and dignity rather than ignobly submit to the “new world order.” Perceived humiliation and religious fervor are both tools that terrorist leaders can cynically exploit to promote “martyrdom.”

FP: Thanks Ms. Stern.

To make the statement that “US military interventions have only exacerbated the problem” might be true on some levels, in the sense that if you confront your enemy he is going to engage in violence. But to mention U.S. intervention in the context of our discussion is to imply that it is America’s fault somewhere that a Muslim in the world gives up his college education and comfortable material existence and flocks to Iraq to blow himself up. Daniel Pipes’ article The California Suicide Bomber is a perfect example of where a suicide bomber does not come from among the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden. His cravings to kill himself alongside innocents stemmed from many factors other than having supposedly suffered from American “imperialism.”

There can be all kinds of military occupations, invasions, etc. Not all people blow themselves up.

Ms. Stern, you mention that “mainstream Islamic scholars are increasingly voicing their view that suicide-bombing attacks against civilians are not acts of martyrdom but suicide and murder, both of which are forbidden by Islamic law.” These are truly encouraging developments and we all hope they continue. But unfortunately, these Islamic scholars are pretty effective in their invisibility and in getting absolutely no respect from suicide bombers and from a large section of the Muslim world. Why is that? Why is it that the parents of Palestinian suicide bombers do not shiver in dread worrying that their dead kids are in hell -- because their clerics teach that suicide bombing is against Islamic law and will not lead you to paradise, but to ever-lasting hell-fire? How come the 9/11 hijackers weren’t depressed knowing they would be in hell after they would commit their crime, because their clerics and their religious texts told them this would be the case?

Could it be that maybe suicide and murder might just not be all that directly in conflict with certain components of Islam law? Scholar Robert Spencer’s Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West clearly demonstrates that Islamic jihad finds much of its basis in Islamic religious texts. Yes, there are many portions of Islamic texts that teach tolerance and peace, and we must all fight for this part of Islam to prevail and to defeat the side that Islamic extremists and terrorists refer to and manipulate. But can we, and is it wise for us, to deny that the negative and dark side exists?

Terry McDermott’s new book Perfect Soldiers is a clear example of how the 9/11 hijackers were the last thing from impoverished and oppressed victims. For some reason, I highly doubt that if you gave a New Testament to each of those individuals and that if they experienced a religious conversion to Christianity, or if they became atheists, that they would still have longed with such fervor to leave this world though smashing planes into populated American buildings filled with thousands of innocent people.

Humiliation, marginalization, and dashed expectations? Yes, those words can fit the plight of many Jews under Nazi occupation, but you didn’t see them strapping bombs unto themselves and walking into cafés and blowing themselves up. These terms also fit my Russian peoples and many of the Russian dissidents who suffered under the horror of Soviet tyranny. These dissidents included my parents and many of our friends. They were humiliated, marginalized and suffered dashed expectations. I can’t name you one who walked into a café in Russia and blew himself up alongside innocents.

It is clear that Islamist terrorists hate globalization. But they do so because it makes life on this earth even more materially comfortable. They reject earthly pleasure and happiness. The enjoyment of life represents humiliation to them. The sight of a happy free and spontaneous woman laughing, dressed as she wants to be dressed, represents humiliation to them. That is the problem. Can we really blame America for the unhappiness of those who venerate a death-cult that rejects individualism and the pursuit of happiness in earthly existence?

Ms. Stern, I am by no means saying that you have argued some of these notions that I am questioning and criticizing. I am just provoking a dialogue here that I hope will help all of us crystallize some important themes relevant to this discussion.

Dr. Dalrymple, tell us about your own personal experience with your patients and what it revealed about the Muslim mindset. As you answer this, please also include what we really want to narrow in on: what is inside the mind of the suicide bomber?



Dalrymple: I agree that poverty and humiliation are not sufficient explanations of the phenomenon. These are things which are almost part of universal human experience.



I think the problem is a combustible mixture of elements.



The first is the belief that Muslims are in possession of the final revealed truth, and that they have a testament and a tradition of sayings of the Prophet that in essence answer all human questions, and by the light of which all such questions ought not only to be answered but are answerable. While no doubt there are Christians who feel more or less the same about their favoured scriptures, they now have to live in a world of competing ideas. Muslims have created societies in which it is possible, perhaps, to dispute what the Koran and hadith mean, but not their underlying authority to answer all questions. It is still not safe in a Muslim country to say 'There is no God and Mohammed was therefore not his prophet, but a man suffering from a delusion.'



While in possession of transcendental religious and philosophical truth, however, it has not escaped notice that the Muslim world has fallen behind the rest of the world. Japan, China, India are fast catching up or overtaking the West: they have been able to meet the Western challenge. No Muslim country has managed more than a kind of parasitic prosperity, dependent on oil - the industry which no Muslim did anything to discover or develop. Even their wealth, then, is a reminder of the dependence. The whole of the Arab world, minus the oil, is economically less significant to the rest of the world than one Finnish telephone company.



The fact that Islamic civilisation was once exquisite, and in advance of most others, is in this context a disadvantage. It means that Muslims tend to think in terms of recovery of glory, rather than anything new. In Muslim bookshops, you can find books about the scholars and scientists who led the world 600 years ago or more - who are a perfectly legitimate subject of enquiry of course - but after that there is a hiatus. If there had been no Muslims for the last 300 or 400 years, the world would have lost no technical or scientific advance.



So there is both a sense of superiority and a gnawing sense of inferiority. Repeated attempts to 'catch up' within an Islamic context have failed. Moreover, there is an element of personal self-hatred as well. For all the hatred of the West, it is absolutely essential to the satisfaction of the tastes of the modern Muslims. They are all partly Westernised. Even Osama dresses half-Muslim, half-Western. His reliance of Western inventions is total. As for the attractions of the flesh-pots of the west, they need not be stressed.



Then, of course, there is the day to day humiliation of individuals, who do not see a purely pragmatic way out of their impasse. I think this completes the mindset.



In summary, we have:



* Metaphysical superiority.



* Technical and intellectual retardation.



* Self-hatred caused by the impurity of their own desires.



* No practical means of escape from genuine quotidian humiliations.



* The promise of rewards, for their families on earth and for themselves in the other world.



FP: Thank you Dr. Dalrymple. So, let’s get deeper into this now. With this background and context, let’s get inside the mind of a hypothetical suicide bomber. Paint a picture for us of a Muslim, let us say, that you once had in your psychiatrist office in Britain. Let us suppose that he decides to go to Iraq to blow himself up. Illustrate for us the step-by-step process that is going on in his mind, as he quits his life and heads off to Iraq. Sketch for us the thoughts patterns that lead to this decision-making. Pretend you are writing a script for a movie and we are listening to what is going on in his head as he quits school or his job, starts packing his suitcase or whatever, and is visualizing with great glee how he will detonate himself in a crowd of civilians in Baghdad.



Dalrymple: Clearly, although the fundamental socio-psychological conditions I have described apply to millions - hundreds of millions - of people, only a vanishingly small proportion of them actually want to be suicide bombers, even if rather more admire and approve of suicide bombers.

So what pushes someone over the edge, as it were? In my experience, which admittedly is limited, and of a selected sample, I would say the following:

The suicide bomber is of above average intelligence. He, or she, is therefore searching for an explanation of his or her existential plight. (You need a certain level of intellection for this to be so.) This involves the identification of an enemy.

The person who becomes a bomber often has a special, personal sense of grievance. This can derive from an intrinsic sensitivity to perceived insult, consequent upon the normal variation of human personality, or can come from outside, eg a person is humiliatingly accused of something of which he is guilty, but regards the accusation itself as lese majeste. For example, a Muslim rapist I know wanted to become a suicide bomber, having become convinced that the West was rotten to the core, deficient in moral worth, because it took the word of a mere woman against his.

So to refine it further, we need all the general cultural and economic conditions, plus the personal particularities I have suggested.

The act of killing oneself for a cause, in the process taking a few 'enemies' with one, is an apologia pro vita sua. Let us not forget that we in the West have a long and inglorious, irrational tradition of supposing that the lengths to which people are prepared to go in the furtherance of a cause is itself evidence of the moral worth of that cause.



The kind of would-be suicide bomber I have known thinks to himself:

They have accused me of what I have done.

What I have done is no crime.

Therefore those who accuse me are the corrupt of the earth.

Those who accuse me are truly representative of the society from which they come.

The destruction of the corrupt of the earth will be rewarded appropriately. Therefore it matters not which individuals I destroy.

The belief is therefore not in representative government, but in representative guilt.



FP: Thank you Dr. Dalrymple. This is fascinating and frightening stuff. Dr. Kobrin?



Kobrin: Yes Jamie, it is perversely fascinating and downright terrifying. It is also part of the Eros of the terrorism. Dr. Dalrymple has succinctly described the crux of the problem – that the other is always already guilty and hence expendable. Similarly Dr. Raddatz is correct in fore grounding the Ummah. Just as the child in Arab Muslim culture is not permitted to separate from the Umm [Ar. mother], this enmeshment gets repeated and reinforced by the Ummah as a singularly fused group. There are working groups which strive for the betterment of life and then, there are regressed destructive groups. The Islamic terrorist organizations are among the most destructive because they send their own to be killed off using women and children under the guise of martyrdom while attacking and murdering the innocent. Just because this is done consciously as a tactical tool does not mean there doesn’t exist a vicious psychological undercurrent.

When there is no sense of self, this leads to many problems. If you are denied a life and live in a community where power [meaning absolute control of the other] is the rule of thumb and it is enforced brutally through honor killings, child beating, sexual abuse, beheadings etc., fear and terror are pervasive. The need to hate and the need to have an enemy are in place by age 3 – and the Jew is among the most hated of all. I will return to this in a moment. It is precisely because of the terror that few factor in the ramifications of shame-based child rearing practices because the implications are enormous and the ability to do effective interventions are highly compromised.

What winds up happening, in a nutshell, is that the mother who has been so pervasively and insidiously traumatized struggles to give the child what s/he needs. It’s not that the mother doesn’t want to and I don’t mean to minimize the role of the father either but it is here that the problem of splitting the world irrationally into loving vs. hating begins without being able to develop the cognitive piece to bridge between the two extremes.



There are many adults who may appear to be high functioning but the splitting is there below the surface in their minds and they still struggle to be “free” from their terrors of abandonment and rejection, feeling humiliated and shamed by this impotent inability. So that when the terrorists and the Ummah scream in a deafening voice “we have been shamed and humiliated!” it might be worth the while to ask – how did they themselves participate in creating a collective self which is so easily shamed by others? If a person has a realistic sense of self, it is hard to buy into being shamed as an adult. There is the Arabic saying: “He hits me and cries, and races me to complain.”

Dr. Stern raises the subject of the Tamil Tigers. Yes, counter terrorism studies have repeatedly defined them as a secular nationalist ethno-separatist organization. However, the experts forget that it is the first three years of life when the cultural-religio ideologies are absorbed like a sponge ingrained into the personality. In Hindu culture as in Arab Muslim culture, the child is not supposed to separate from the mother. Prabhakaran, the charismatic leader of the LTTE, claims that religion is a non-issue and ironically vowed never to marry, yet did so in a Hindu ceremony. What is the importance of this? It shows that the process of identify formation is much more nuanced and complicated than we like to admit. It is a reminder that there is no purity of identity. Indeed the LTTE on the one hand threw out their Muslim Tamil-speaking members in the early 1990s and yet on the other, there are reports that they are recruiting people of mixed parentage – Tamil-Muslim and Hindu-Catholic from the south (personal communication, A. Gunawardena) When I was in Sri Lanka in March, I wondered about this history and the growing local Arab Muslim community.

This added dimension of religious identity is thrown into this mix. For example, Muslims refer to Hindus as najus meaning ‘filthy’ because they are polytheists. This is its socially sanctioned prejudiced attitude. Then there are the Jews and Christians as Dr. Stern points out with the land of Israel being sacred to all three. But in the mind’s eye of the Muslim, Judaism and Christianity and their believers are subjugated to Islam as Dhimma. The root of the word means to blame so that the Prophet Muhammad built into the religion an institutionalized ideology where you can always blame the other and never have to assume responsibility for your own community’s predicament. This is to say nothing of the ideology of submission only to Allah and never to a non-Muslim so that any occupation stings deeply.

You know, Musa (Moses) is the most frequently mentioned prophet in the Qur’an. Why? Because of the giving of the law at Sinai Moses makes divine will manifest in human discourse in the Torah. However, to be a believer requires a leap of faith. The Christians had to appropriate the giving of the law and then added to it with the New Testament. The Prophet Muhammad was faced with a much more difficult task since he had to juggle two preceding religious identities. Muhammad initially borrowed extensively from the Jews who at that time lived in what is now Judenrein Saudi Arabia. He borrowed with the hopes that the Jews would convert. When that didn’t happen, he became enraged and more deeply engaged in Jihad and Da’wa [the call to convert]. However, this still left him and his followers with the problem of their mixed heritage, that is – their Judaic and Christian roots.

The Ummah struggles to admit to this borrowing. It is very difficult to do so when the Jew and Israel are always at the eye of the storm. Muslims seek to cancel out their Judaic roots and the Islamic terrorists seek to kill them off rather than accepting the fact that Judaism and Islam are so similar up to a point. The unacknowledged terror is the fear of losing their identity in the other. Think: enmeshment. Jihad is unique to Islam – Judaism and Christianity have nothing remotely similar. People routinely fail to remember that the Muslims invaded Spain fi sabil Allah – [fighting] in the path of Allah in 711 AD. They came on Jihad. The Crusades were a response to massacre, forced conversions to Islam, Muslim invasion, conquest and the animosity for the Prophet co-opting the New Testament by the Quran. So the Islamic terrorists attempt to resolve their religious identity confusion by brute force, using suicide bombers as a tactical tool with this psychological undercurrent. By the way, the Sira (the biography of Muhammad) records that the prophet attempted suicide twice; though this has rarely been pointed out as a modeling moment for Muslim identity. (personal communication, R. Paz)

Thus, it is not merely that the ideologies per se are exacerbating the violence but it is the way in which they function and are deployed by their practitioners. I agree with Dr. Dalrymple that poverty and humiliation are not sufficient explanations rather that there is a fear of recognizing that their identity is mixed – not pure. They are uncomfortable with “the impurity of their own desires” which are accompanied by violent fantasies that get acted out in real time on innocent victims. Just like BTK, the serial killer, their external life is a mask of sanity but their internal life is a mess of psychosexual violent fantasies.

But surely it can’t be that hard to comprehend what kind of mind the suicide bomber must have, given the fact that s/he is part and parcel of the Umma, born and raised by the Umm. The vast majority of whom venerate Ayman al-Zawahiri who ordered the execution by firing squad of the 15 year old son of one of his closest confidants in the presence of the father and other colleagues. (Montasser al-Zayyat, The Road to Al-Qaeda, p.105) This mind is merely a reflection of the crisis within Islam. [E. Sivan, Hitnagshut b’tokh ha-Islam [The Crash Within Islam in Hebrew]. The crisis has been projected on to the West.

[tian]

Symposium: Through the Eyes of a Suicide Bomber: Continued
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 12, 2005

FP: Thank you Dr. Kobrin. One very powerful and clear dynamic here is the guilt these extremists feel for their own sexual desires, which have been demonized in their religion and culture, and now they seek the cleanse themselves of this guilt through hating the object of their lust (freedom in the West) and then ridding themselves of their dirty flesh (suicide) in an attempt to redeem themselves.

Dr. Raddatz, could you kindly expand a bit and succinctly crystallize for us the meaning of:

[1] having no “sense of self.”



[2] “shame-based” child rearing practices.



[3] splitting the world irrationally into loving vs. hating.



And kindly comment how and why this pathology leads to scapegoating the Jew and hating him most of all.



Also, why and how does suicide bombing become a rational and legitimate course of action within this pathological dynamic? And kindly comment on Dr. Kobrin’s point that the Sira records that the prophet attempted suicide twice. This is not a very well known fact. Could you integrate these phenomena for us?



Raddatz: Quite an ambitious request as it goes right at the core of the whole question.



The way we look at the problem of Islamic violence has a lot to do with our kind of fancy differentiating. I am far away from criticizing Ms. Stern, but when we stress that there are imams condemning suicide bombings we simply tranquilize ourselves with time-consuming platitudes.



Firstly, as FP has pointed out, those imams do not play any mentionable role in Muslim politics. Secondly, they are part of what is referred to as "taqiya", the Islamic duty to systematically lie to non-Muslims, and thirdly the real heavyweights in the imam business, like Muhammad Tantawi and Yusuf Quaradhawi, make no bones about suicide terrorists belonging to the most valuable form of existence Allah has ever had the grace to create. As Tantawi pointed out, inside this privileged species there is even another inbuilt peak version: If you kill as many Jewish women and children your paradise guarantee is even more guaranteed, so to speak.



What we have here is the usual - admittedly gruesome - ideology constructed by elites to manipulate people. By the same time we arrive at the first point FP wants me to elaborate on - the so-called “self.” Although many profit takers in the current science scene want to discuss it away, it is still there. It is still a generally accepted interpretation that the "self" is the somewhat paradoxical faculty to observe oneself observing oneself. In other words, the interaction between ego and self constitutes the personality that is able to separate - at least hypothetically - from its own role and judge it in a greater context. If it is, however, only thinkable as part of a mass, the "ummah" or any other politico-religious "movement", there will be little individual distance from any controversial question.



Correspondingly, these "individuals" will be convinced more by material than by theoretical arguments. Thus, they will be rather "pre-destined" i.e. commanded by "holy books" and/or leaders who decide for the people and represent a collective self. What we have to keep in mind is this: Due to the still intact survival instinct only a small Muslim minority wants to blow itself and others up, but a large majority agrees to the Islamic justification of destroying non-Islamic situations.



As a direct consequence we are faced with the "shame/honor" mechanism. Typical for totalitarian systems altogether. As being "oneself" is an aberration, it is a shame to insist on it and a corresponding honor to renounce it and denounce others if they do not follow this rule.



"Ego-extinction" (Arabic: tadjarrud) is an official, high-ranking mental exercise to get rid of individual temptations. Among the "normal" Muslims you will find very few who allow themselves an independent, outspoken opinion outside the official Islam mainstream. Whoever has lived for a longer period of time in Islamic countries - like myself - very probably has experienced that there is a lot of distrust and tactical behaviour within the closest family relations. He or she who violates the rules or just makes simply a wrong decision, does bring shame over the family, over the tribe and - ultimately - Islam. Here we have the very reason why inventions are simply unknown, everyday things always delayed and almost only able to be accelerated by corruption. In this context I think Ms. Kobrin's concept of "umm" and "ummah" - mother and community - is very worthwhile pursuing. It will probably explain why we will eternalize our problems with Islam if we do not realize that the groundwork is being laid during earliest childhood.



The forgoing absence of an intellectual distance to questions concerning Islam calls for Manichaean behaviour and language as well as readiness to exert violence. Therefore, the Western "dialogue" with Muslims has shied away from compromises let alone contradiction so far. Every major Muslim demand, especially the conservation of pressurizing women and the death threat to dissidents and converts, has been accepted and thereby added to the love/hate split thinking also in the Western migration scenario. This is what I meant by "fancy differentiating". It is our own political or rather "Islamic correctness" that has developed very hard codes of thinking and behaviour itself. Meanwhile we have a mandatory line of argumentation in Europe that depicts Islam as a problem-free phenomenon which has to be imported unchanged and kept as unintegrated as possible. The second highest constitution judge in Germany spreads the semi-official rule that Islam must not be forced to answer questions critical to the "religion".



Thus, we should not be too astonished at the Western process - at least in some major European countries like England, Germany and France - of a distinct approach and assimilation to Islamic rules and regulations. It is accompanied by long-term aspects which are clearly meta-historical and out of direct political reach, namely a growing hostility against women, combined with an equally growing "understanding" for homosexual and paedophiliac interests, as well as renewed anti-Semitism. The latter is not restricted to Muslims but being emancipated again in Europe nowadays. It is an old phenomenon as the repeated attempt to "overcome" traditional society patterns, particularly connected to the Jews as "inventors" of the first law as such in the development of mankind.



We have heard that Moses is mentioned frequently in the Koran, and I may add the well known fact that anti-Semitism goes historically along with periods of distinct power concentrations. So it is probably the decline of Western individuality, along with with the media info explosion, curtailing the collective memory, which promotes radical ideologies like Islam with all strings attached - growing sympathy for organized crime, violence and women's repression, anti-hetero sexual "theories" and other post-modern achievements. To blame the US is a favourite game in Europe, but does not grasp the overall picture at all.



As for Muhammad’s biography (sira), the scholars are not very certain about the double suicide thing, as they are very shy about him altogether. We are faced with another psychological question here waiting for discussion and clarification. It has a lot to do with Muhammed’s wildly changing mental states and obviously deeply rooted, rather psychotic situations, reported by his companions. As the Koran waits for a historical analysis, Muhammad waits to be laid on the couch. I call him the "burning glass" of Islam, meaning the representation of a world moving power in the nutshell of a personal but highly abstract lifetime. It is the combination of radical exclusiveness with the "leader's will" that justifies any violence and gives suicide bombers the illusion of individuality - a sense of life by dying.



FP: Thank you Dr. Raddatz. While it is crucial that you bring up the reality of "taqiya" and that we must not be naïve when confronting it, I think at the same time we must stress that there are many Muslims and Muslim clerics who are sincere in their belief in a peaceful Islam and are honest in their denunciation of terror. I think it would be fair to say that Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community, is one of them.



In any case, Ms. Stern?



Stern: Well, I agree with both you and Dr. Raddatz -- there are Muslim clerics who condemn suicide murder- as we have seen in the week following the London attacks. And yet we should not assume naively that the clerics who support suicide murder are unimportant in this war.

We are all struggling with the question of why terrorists do what they do, and how their situations differ from those who are not terrorists. One problem we face is that we don't have enough interviews of radicals who said no to terrorist recruiters -- so it's hard for us to assess what qualities distinguishes those who say "yes" from those who say "no."



The notion that poverty causes terrorism has been disproven again and again, as the other participants have pointed out. But terrorists I have interviewed tend to emphasize humiliation and confused identity in their answer to the question -- why do you do what you do? Sometimes it also seems to be a kind of vicarious humiliation - the notion that my people are humiliated so therefore I must act to avenge their pain.



Still, as our other contributors have made clear, most people feel confused about their identities at some point in their lives, and most people feel humiliated. I think of my university, Harvard, as a humiliation factory - everyone feels humiliated, except, perhaps, the president. And yet we don't see a lot of terrorists emerging from Cambridge. Not yet, anyway. So if humiliation is important, it is certainly not sufficient.



Could it be that the shame-based child-rearing practices and splitting the world into good and evil are important additional ingredients, as you suggest? I think that Dr. Raddatz is absolutely correct in emphasizing Manichean world views. I have the feeling that honor and shame are also critical here, but at this point it's just a feeling - I haven't been able to do the interviews that would allow me to assess your hypothesis.

I brought up the question of military occupation only because it is described as the most important factor in a recent book, Robert Pape's Dying to Win. But I see terrorism as much more complex than this - it is not just a response to military occupation. Most military occupations have not resulted in terrorism, and much of the terrorism we worry about most today is not a response to military occupation.



FP: Dr. Dalrymple?



Dalrymple: I think the question of 'military occupation,' in light of the London bombings, must be viewed as at best an ostensible justification rather than a real reason for Islamic terrorism, at least outside Israel and Palestine.

I was very interested to see that one of the people involved in the bombings was not only a believer, but a devotee of Elvis Presley. Now these things seem to me to be highly contradictory. I think it is difficult to find any interpretation of Islam that is reconcilable with an admiration for Elvis Presley, who is surely symbolic of all the decadence of the west that Muslims (not entirely mistakenly, I must confess) see. Elvis Presley represents the triumph of sexual desire over all restraints; nothing could be further from the spirit of Islam, at least in its sublunary phase. For these two things to exist in the same human breast creates a terrible and guilty conflict. (Another bomber loved cricket - the quintessentially English game.)

Let us not forget that it is possible to be a terrorist - to kill people at random - without any wish or vocation to die oneself. It is true that a terrorist who kills himself while killing others is even more terrifying, since it is difficult to conceive of anything that might deter him, but overall the terrorist who lives to kill another day may be more effective in the pursuit of any definite end.

The point is:

i) that the Islamic terrorists, at least of the London bomber kind, have no specific demands to make


ii) they are clearly trying to resolve some conflict within themselves.

I think they are trying to prove to themselves that the west offers them no temptations, that they are actually more Islamic than the Prophet, though at the same time a still small voice tells them that this is not so. Death is a solution, it squares a circle.

FP: Dr. Kobrin?



Kobrin: First I want to extend my heartfelt condolences to Dr. Dalrymple on account of seven/seven. As someone who has been so involved in trying to understand the mind of the Islamic terrorist, I can only imagine how difficult these days have been.


Now, there is no question that the entire Islamic terrorist organization and its members who are “manufacturing” suicide bombers like Al Qaeda lack a balanced, nuanced sense of self. The tragedy is that they and their Ummah have come up with a feeble justification of military occupation to excuse their aberrant behavior. Then there are the scholars of Academe who should know better and who should be more insightful but aren't. They willingly take the bait – hook, line and sinker which only further compounds the matter, thereby putting more innocent people at risk of being murdered. They vicariously murder and are therefore, accomplices. This is not so passive aggressive behavior.

All the ideologies of Islam especially tadjarrud and taqiyah which Dr. Raddatz explains, must be explored from not just a psychological point of view as to the meaning that they express but also how their practice impacts children in light of early childhood development. Here in lies the crux of the problem.

The neighbors, friends and family who say that they never dreamt that so-and-so suicide bomber could do something like that or that he/she was a radical Islamist terrorist, remind me of the shocked family members and neighbors of serial killers. It is routinely understood in the field of mental health that a person can appear ‘normal’ but mask violent fantasies and act them out in real time, murdering innocent victims. This is not rocket science.

Dr. Raddatz’s image of the Prophet Muhammad as the “burning glass” of Islam resonates with the intense charisma that he continues to hold for his followers. The sense of deprivation in the narratives of the Quran (cf. J. Lachkar.1983 The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Unpublished PhD thesis. Los Angeles: International University.), Sunna, Ahadith and Sira is huge and very attractive to many of the followers who carry within themselves their own deprivation. Deprivation should not be confused with poverty. Those hijackers of 9/11 and the suicide bombers who were well educated and came from middle to upper middle class families had their own sense of emotional deprivation, rejection and abandonment which went undetected and which was accompanied by profound rage leading to violence and cold blooded murder.

Dr. Dalrymple points to the severe conflict within and an inability to reconcile and tolerate difference. He raises the important issue that you can be a terrorist and murder without committing suicide. However, the combination together is extremely terrifying because the dirty little secret is – ‘they do not want to die alone.’ No one probably does . . . but we don’t go around taking out innocent people by murder in order to “square” the circle. It should not be forgotten too, that the Prophet Muhammad died with his head in the lap of his “favorite” wife Aisha whose name happens to mean ‘life’. Furthermore, he was buried in her room where she continued to live, earning her keep from the alms she received from pilgrims who visited the site. Think: Womb to Tomb. The image venerates a permanent fusion signaling that the ideal is never to separate.

And by the way, what’s with this ‘favorite wife’ business? Polygamy is nothing more than a clever way to pit one wife against the other and never have to deal with male rage. Plus if you don’t like what your wife says, you can merely blow her off and go on to the next so that you never have to learn how to resolve conflict. That would make learning how to negotiate a peace quite difficult – don’t you think? That’s why, if we are going to discuss “the military occupation,” it needs to be understood in light of Islamic history and its ideologies rather than taking it at face value. The ideology of submission, i.e. Islam, would make it very difficult for male Muslims to tolerate any other position than conqueror but certainly not that of the conquered.



FP: Dr. Raddatz? Feel to comment on what has been said in the previous round, but let's also move on to the recent suicide bombers of 7/7 in London. In terms of what we have learned, up till now, of who they were, what do their pathologies and crimes bring to this discussion?



Raddatz: As Ms. Stern rightly pointed out, our subject gets more complicated the more insight we gain, be it psychological, political, social and what have you. Islam appears as a comprehensive spectrum that contains and encourages all sorts of behaviour but clearly favours deceit and violence as far as the achievement of goals is concerned, especially in "competition" with non-Islam.



I also agree that "humiliation" is one of the key words in the affair since the Western superiority in productivity and education is clearly staggering. Aside from this: Whatever negative happens it is somebody else's guilt anyhow. We have to consider again that the Islamic self is usually understood as part of a greater mass or "movement". Thus, the destruction of something un-Islamic may imply also self-destruction in order to get noticed at all.



Insofar as Dr. Dalrymple's remark of the London terrorist being a Presley fan confirms the compatibility of both in the mass aspect. In other words, watching the behaviour of rock festival participants can be quite revealing if you search for signs for mass movements in the Western civilization. Moreover, it is amazing how parallel things seem to develop as far as "humiliation" at Harvard and European universities goes. It is a favourite term over here as well and exemplifies a fast spreading educational elitarianism that in turn fraternizes with the Islamic elites and purifies Islam from any violence reproach: The Islam is not the problem" and "violence is not the Islam".



There should be consent not only on the spectral character of the Islamic culture but also the corresponding special kind of freedom it creates. As the Koran and tradition offer a wide variety of measures between peace and war, Muslim power has always preferred the violent side and, therefore, has brought about a historically grown phenomenon which I call "counter-ethics". This means to say that the special Muslim freedom created a similarly special inclination to violence wherever an opportunity arises to gain an advantage - inside and outside of Islam.



We should note here some very important examples I have mentioned partially in a previous round. They confirm the power of man and a rather free interpretation of what is referred to as "religion" but is merely naked and mostly quite primitive power politics. Firstly, Jews and Christians have been historically extinguished although there are Koranic regulations to the opposite. Secondly, women have been historically humiliated, beaten, raped and killed although there are Koranic rules and many traditions to the opposite. Thirdly, dissenters and apostates are badly beaten and often killed although there are clear rules saying that their punisment should be postponed into the beyond.



So we should not be very astonished if we are repeatedly confronted with "honor" murderers, suicide bombers and other Islamic geared perpetrators as long as our "elites" tell us that "Islam is not the problem". In my new book coming out next month ("Allahs Women - Djihad between Sharia and Denocracy") I describe - among other subjects - exactly this self-legitimizing violence which does not need a "self" but simply asks for and lives on "individuals" serving indoctrination purposes. In London, terrorists were at work who grew up in the Western environment, obviously without assuming any individualizing element of this civilization.



They confirm the complete failure of "integration" and, moreover, Dr. Kobrin's impressive formula of "womb to tomb". The "divinely" granted freedom to kill secures Allah’s community and simultaneously the only form of "individuality" possible in Islam. We know that "not all" followers of Islam are violent but its spectral structure and growing populations will provide for vast supply in the future.



However our politicians may twist the matter, as long as they are unable and/or unprepared to face these Islamic realities they will not only violate their responsibility towards the non-Muslim majority - they will encourage further bombings and "honor" killings as well as the risks of greater conflicts. In this context we should not forget either the growing pressure coming from the Islamic investor side which plays a fast rising role in the global portfolio management and state financing game, thereby adding to corruption and political paralyzation. The major players in Jeddah, Riadh and elsewhere are often identical with those who finance Al-Qa'ida, PLO, Hamas and so on.



FP: Ms. Stern, your comment on the Pakistani suicide bombers in London? And, by the way, this conversation is getting me very depressed. Is there any hope is combating this enemy? From this discussion, it seems hopeless. Can you please offer some optimism how we might prevail over this death-cult and threat to our freedom, safety and overall way of life?



Stern: Well there are reasons to feel hopeful. First, the Muslim community in London reacted very swiftly to condemn the attacks on the public transportation system there, something we did not see enough of after 9 11. Second, I think law enforcement and intelligence officials have a better understanding of the "enemy" than they did immediately after 9/11. There is growing recognition that obliterating the threat is not possible, that penetration of terrorist organizations is often a better approach than capturing or killing operatives, and the level of cooperation among and between law enforcement and intelligence agencies continues to expand.



It is also important to remember that terrorism tends to run in fads -- Islamist terrorism will not be with us forever, although, admittedly, it is likely to replaced by other "brands..". Alas, risk is part of life -- and terrorism is unlikely to go away. All this suggests that the most important thing we can do as individuals is to make sure we are loving our family as friends as well as we can: every day is precious.



FP: Dr. Dalrymple, do you have some words of optimism and hope?



Dalrymple: The London bombings may have caused at long last people to examine their fatuous multiculturalist pieties, which I believe are fundamentally derived from the restaurant model: today we eat Hungarian, tomorrow Mexican, the day after Lebanese, and so forth. Clearly, this is possible and very enjoyable, but there are more important and deeper things in life than a variety of cuisines.

Perhaps people will begin to see that some values are simply not compatible with others, and will now be prepared to stand up for those that we believe in. Certainly I hope people will start to examine the abominable abuse of women that, if not universal, is very widespread in the Moslem population, and that is a large part - I believe - of the attraction of Islam to increasingly and essentially secularised men. (Interestingly, a recent article in Le Monde about French converts to Islam gave the statistic that 83 per cent were men -and I suspect that the 17 per cent of women were in response to love affairs, though I don't know this to be the case. This is eloquent testimony.)

In Britain, if we had the courage to defend Moslem women, I think Islam would lose a lot of it residual attraction. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister's wife went into court shortly before the last election to defend a Moslem schoolgirl's right to wear 'traditional' costume - not traditional in Luton, by the way - I suspect to obtain the Moslem vote for her husband, and probably knowing, and certainly with the duty to know, the often abominable social meaning of this costume.

Let us hope the recent events have taught the Prime Minister the folly - no, the sheer wickedness - of this.



FP: Dr. Kobrin, last word goes to you.



Kobrin: It might be helpful to consider that when we find ourselves feeling hopeless and helpless about terrorism that these feelings are really not ours but rather – those of the terrorists – denied, split-off and quite literally inflicted on us.


I agree with Dr. Stern that the counter terrorist experts, law enforcement and the military are broadening and deepening their thinking which will help facilitate more effective strategies. It’s interesting too that Dr. Stern characterizes terrorism as a fad. Psychologically fads express imitative behavior. This links back to a point which Dr. Raddatz made of singular importance – the lack of a self. The terrorist persona is “as if” it had one when it doesn’t. I find it ironic that identity theft is a frequently occurring crime which sponsors terrorism because the term itself exposes not only the terrorist’s problem of identity but more importantly that the terrorist actually must steal from another in order to bolster this tragically fragile sense of self. In the expression “identity theft’ we have a good example of the “transparency” of the terrorists and their concrete, imitative behavior about which they themselves remain clueless. Unfortunately, it comes with a significant price tag for us and I agree with Dr. Raddatz we should be very concerned about the push to expand investment and banking. Dr. Dalrymple’s restaurant model is valuable in understanding the disastrous effect of such superficiality nor could I agree more about why there are so many European secularized male converts to Islam.

Coming on the heels of the initial London bombings, we now have Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh’s tragedy. Unfortunately, things will probably have to hit rock bottom in a series of Muslim countries before the Ummah really takes on the problem of Islamic suicide terrorism which is of its own making.

For us, several things might be important to keep in mind as we learn to counter terrorism in our daily life – that perseverance and endurance are needed over the long haul, being prudent rather than hyper vigilant, remaining skeptical rather than cynical when possibly encountering the Islamic demeanor of deception. We should also enjoy life not because the terrorists are envious that we can and they can’t but because it is part and parcel of loving our family and friends and caring about others. Countering terrorism entails knowing not only ourselves well including our deepest fears but now more than ever we must know the terrorists’ terrors – their deepest and darkest -- in order to be effective in containing the violence.



FP: Jessica Stern, Dr. Tilman Nagel, Dr. Nancy Kobrin and Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium. We’ll see you again soon.

[Gods_Favorite]

In a recent discussion involving the recent terror attack in London, one radio personality used the expression "convert or die" to describe the mental attitude of the terrorists. Is that really how they feel? And, if so, what is it about the Muslim religion in particular that seems to create so many radicals? I have very strong religious beliefs myself, but I can't understand why one feels the need to force their beliefs on others. I understand the necessity of spreading religion to non-believers very well, but why choose terrorism and possible death over religious discretion? I rarely if ever hear about any other religious faction producing such crazed "zealots". It's almost as if they have a quota to meet.

Or did the radio guy exaggerate? Are the terrorists just misguided sects, wrongly claiming that "God" backs their "mission" when in fact they are not true Muslims to begin with?


Those in the know, your thoughts are appreciated. But please, no preaching--I'm not looking to convert.

The goal of Al Qaeda is to live under an Islamic world, if you listen to Bin Ladens tape he encourages people in the west to accept Islam. And yes the terrorists are using Islam as a front for their political goals, Islam forbids suicide in any fashion, even if it kills your enemies, all these jihadi fucks are hyprocrites and liars plaine and simple and most Muslims know this but have yet to take any action.

[gene cisco]

jihadi fucks are hyprocrites and liars plaine and simple and most Muslims know this but have yet to take any action.

Yeah, so is bush and any muthafucka stupid enough to sign up in armed forces over AFTER it has come out bush dropped the ball on the war.

Anybody taking their ass to the recruiters office here is just as fucked up as them!!!!!!!!

"We the people" need to dead this shit. I mean we got fools dying in iraq thinking they helping us be free. HAHAHAAHAH

Binny got fools blowing themselves up thinking he gives a fuck.

Binny-bush, same muthafucka.

Anybody that sign up here for the armed service(now)---suicide bombers for him----- same shit

mis fucking guided!!!!!!!

Hell, GF, you were here, I called this shit, now we have more suicide bombers than ever!!!!

Gas prices high as fuck, nobody is joining the forces, draft will have to come cause this is a 10 year battle, AND meanwhile we create more of the enemy.

Lets be honest dog, if you was a binny laidem recruiter it would be easy getting a suicide bomber now then pimpin a hoe out a strip club, all cause of lies.

Its always a time to cut losses, stop putting sugar on the table and you have fewer ants.

Why the fuck canada aint under heat, they just as free as us or england? Of course supporting this war will get u fucked.

Anyway, like I said just as many white boys felt they had to do something after 9/11, so many arabs might feel the same after this bullshit?

All in all its a ploy by the rich the middle clas/poor shouldnt have to play, but our young our prime pickins on both sides leaving nothing but grief and hatred on both side.........SAD

[Gods_Favorite]

Yeah, so is bush and any muthafucka stupid enough to sign up in armed forces over AFTER it has come out bush dropped the ball on the war.

Anybody taking their ass to the recruiters office here is just as fucked up as them!!!!!!!!

"We the people" need to dead this shit. I mean we got fools dying in iraq thinking they helping us be free. HAHAHAAHAH

Binny got fools blowing themselves up thinking he gives a fuck.

Binny-bush, same muthafucka.

Anybody that sign up here for the armed service(now)---suicide bombers for him----- same shit

mis fucking guided!!!!!!!

Hell, GF, you were here, I called this shit, now we have more suicide bombers than ever!!!!

Gas prices high as fuck, nobody is joining the forces, draft will have to come cause this is a 10 year battle, AND meanwhile we create more of the enemy.

Lets be honest dog, if you was a binny laidem recruiter it would be easy getting a suicide bomber now then pimpin a hoe out a strip club, all cause of lies.

Its always a time to cut losses, stop putting sugar on the table and you have fewer ants.

Why the fuck canada aint under heat, they just as free as us or england? Of course supporting this war will get u fucked.

Anyway, like I said just as many white boys felt they had to do something after 9/11, so many arabs might feel the same after this bullshit?

All in all its a ploy by the rich the middle clas/poor shouldnt have to play, but our young our prime pickins on both sides leaving nothing but grief and hatred on both side.........SAD


Not everyone joining the armed forces is doing it to fight for Bush, alot of people are signing up to get a job and actually have a life, with the economy the way it is I'm not surprised, you'd be surprised how many people in the Military disagree with Bush but it is our job. Its wrong to condemn everyone who joined the Military after 9/11 because their not all joining because they agree with the Bush administration.

Alot of what you say is true but what would you have us do now? up and leave Iraq? isn't it our responsibility now to make sure the Iraqis can at least defend themselves against these terrorists? or would you rather leave the Iraqis at their mercy?

[gene cisco]

Fuck them. Its about us.

Pull out, cut losses and we done.

Iran, china, and north korea are 1000 times more dangerous.

This shit will go on for 10 years and more.

If you cannot admit a mistake, you are fucked.

You know a dude on a porn board calling himself gene cisco called this shit and thats sad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean had all of us been in the pentagon at least we would have had open talk and done shit right, either bomb them to hell or not do it.

[Gods_Favorite]

I mean had all of us been in the pentagon at least we would have had open talk and done shit right, either bomb them to hell or not do it.

HA true.

[tian]

According to the experts that I included in this thread, the US's role in suicide bombings is merely one of the necessary enemy that this mindset thrives upon. Ultimate good and evil is the battle that plays in this mindset. Save a total conversion to Islam by the US, the US would not have been saved from Islamic terrorism. Even if we decided tomorrow to pull our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and with no further intervention on behalf of Israel, the US will still be seen as the "enemy." So this abdication of moral responsibility by placing blame on others for their actions is pointless. Remember, Osama Bin Laden declared war and committed acts of war way before Bush took office. The World Trade Center was first bombed in the 90s and Clinton was president back then.

Before you blindly respond to this entry, please read the transcripts from the symposium on this matter from Frontpage Magazine that I included on this topic. It will probably save us all a lot of typing time...


tian

[QueEx]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24999