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ïìMassacre Draws Self-Criticism in Muslim Press,î by John Kifner, New York Times, 9 September, p. A8.
The historical question for the Muslim world is, "Where are you going with all this?" Where are you going with the radicalism, the rejectionism, the nihilism, the cult of death, the keeping-out-the-West, the death-to-infidels, the whole nine yards.
Where are you going with this? Where does it take you? What's the happy ending you generate? If not for you, then your kids. Tell me what that world looks like.
If you ask that question to a serious radical, all you will hear about is the past. There is no future in that vocabulary, just past tragedies leading to current grievances that . . . if met . . . would solve nothing.
No Israel? Middle East still sucks at globalization and is falling behind.
No U.S. Military there? Middle East still sucks at globalization and is falling behind.
No Western influences? No oil trade? No occupiers? The Middle East still sucks at globalization and is falling behind.
The real courage to be found right now in the region are the critics willing to say the harsh truths, like Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a TV executive at a popular Arab station, writing in pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat:
It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims . . .
The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings all over the world, were Muslim. What a pathetic record. What an abominable 'achievement.' Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture? . . .
Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheik allowing, nay, even calling for, the murder of civilians. How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?
There has to be a definition of the Islam in the greater Middle East that isn't about what the outside world has done to the region, but what the region has to offer the outside world--besides oil and terrorists. Until that positive definition of a future worth creating emerges there, it is going to be assimilation by negation, meaning the Core absorbs those willing to leave and join and largely babysits the rest, killing them when they get out of line.
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