Soccer Dad

Downplaying Islam

A couple of articles caught my attention over the weekend. One was "Chechen Rebels Mainly Driven by Nationalism" in the NY Times, the other was "Muslims defend their religion on 9/11 anniversary". Both articles make efforts to disassociate Islam from terror.
In the Times article the authors write:

Chechnya's separatists have received money, men, training and ideological inspiration from international Islamic organizations, but they remain an indigenous and largely self-sustaining force motivated by nationalist more than Islamic goals, Russian and international officials and experts say.

The flow of financing from Islamic groups that supported Chechnya's separatist movement has slowed from its peak in the late 1990's, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, the chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said in an interview on Friday. Yet Chechen separatists have recently managed to carry out the most devastating attacks against Russia in years, killing nearly 600 people since late June alone.

They have also organized through local means, exploiting Russia's weak security and corruption to travel and arm themselves, the officials and experts said.

Although President Vladimir V. Putin and others have accused international terrorists of sustaining the war in Chechnya, the relationship between the separatists and Islamic terrorists abroad remains only an element in a far more complicated war, they said.

These opening paragraphs hardly contradict the notion that extremist Islam played a role in the recent atrocity in Beslan, they just play it down. Later we learn:

Officials and experts said in interviews that as Russia's conflict in Chechnya has evolved, descending from separatist bravado into barbarity, a portion of the republic's separatists have merged nationalist goals and tribal codes with the ideology and tactics of groups like Al Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, has cited Chechen resistance as part of his global religious war.

The influence of Islamic extremism is clear in much of Chechnya's terrorism now, including large-scale attacks and, increasingly, suicide bombings intended to shock and sow fear more than to accomplish a clear military or political objective. The Chechen fighters have also adopted Al Qaeda's methods of securing money through conduits masquerading as charities, officials say.

Islamic ideology has also left its mark among the separatist fighters, who have adopted, at least outwardly, the dress, slogans and strictures of extremist fighters elsewhere, though it has not taken root in Chechnya's relatively secular society.

Nevertheless, many officials and experts said that influence was limited and, to Russia's critics, overstated by the Kremlin in order to avoid addressing the roots of war in Chechnya. The number of foreign fighters is also thought to be very small - from a dozen to 200, though most estimates fall on the lower end.

Here the authors are acknowledging the influence of Al Qaeda on the terrorists, the only thing they are disputing is the number of foreign fighters. That proves nothing. (Using charities for raising terror funds isn't just an Al Qaeda tactic, Hamas is well known for doing that too!)

Essentially the article acknowledges that the Chechen terrorist use the tactics of Islamic terrorists and dress like Islamic terrorists. But it won't go further, why not? Because Chechens are still generally secular.

Well if the Islamic terrorists are the ones driving the revolution it won't really matter what the majority are, because eventually they will be forced to adopt the strictures of Islam.

It really looks that the Times, at the anniversary of 9/11 is attempting to show a kinder, gentler Islam, lest anyone get the misimpression that it is not a religion of peace.

It's worth noting the recent words of Victor Davis Hanson:

Not every Muslim is a fascist terrorist, but almost every fascist terrorist is a Muslim.

and of Jeff Jacoby (who is quoting the original)

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists," he begins, "but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The Herald News Tribune has a similar and clearer agenda: show how regular patriotic Muslims in the United States are subjected to unreasonable suspicions during the past three years.

In the three years since Sept. 11, the more than 300,000 Muslims living in New Jersey have found themselves in a compromising position: they are mourners of a national tragedy and participants in a religion that some have identified as the impetus for the attacks.

Some say they believe the majority of Americans are cautiously embracing their culture. But, they say, Americans remain skeptical.

In these early years after the attacks, Muslims expect it will be a long road before their entire community is not judged by the actions of a few.

"There exists a more subtle hatred," Haqqani said. "Overall Americans are good people, but there is a minority that maybe internally suspects our community as a whole."

Look I'm glad that American Muslim feel that it is the actions "of a few." I still get the impression that there is more concern that Muslims will be mistreated than there is for the victims of such terror. Take a look at the FBI's hate crime report for 2002 (warning: it's a large file and may take awhile to load) and you will find that of hate crimes against religious groups, crimes motivated by antisemitism outnumber crimes against Muslims by nearly 5 to 1.

Anti-Jewish bias accounted for 65.9 percent of the 1,576 reported offenses rooted in religious bias. Anti-Islamic bias made up 10.8 percent of these types of offenses, and bias against other, unspecified religious groups (anti-other religion) made up 13.8 percent.

Given that Daniel Pipes gave an estimate of about 3 million Muslims in America, Muslims have had little obvious reason for fear since 9/11 despite the righteous protests of those quoted in the Home News Tribune article.
The only extremism I found on the site of the South Brunswick Islamic Society is a link to the Working Assets voter registration drive. Imam Chebli, quoted in the article, is praised by Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR, but that doesn't prove anything since they apparently don't know each other. Maybe the Muslims quoted in the Home News Tribune article are all real moderates. It doesn't mean that after 9/11, Madrid on 3/11, two weeks ago in Russia or what happens regularly in Israel were not executed by extremist Muslims. Reasonable people would conclude that there is an element of Islam that is hostile - often violently so - toward the United States. To suggest, as the Home News Tribune does, that such feelings are those of bigots is simply trying to paper over the ugly beliefs that a significant minority of Muslims adhere to and that too few moderates actually object to.
UPDATE: Andrew McCarthy notes that the Times has a penchant for downplaying the religious aspect of Chechnyan terror. He also writes:

For over a decade, jihadists have flocked to Chechnya to fight. The reason would be well known to us now if we had accepted that our war was a war against Islamic militants and their unique worldview, rather than against nebulous "terrorists." To the jihadists, Chechnya is not Chechnya but a Muslim land, and the Russians are not so much Russians as an occupying force of infidels standing athwart the spread of the militant creed.

As a result, Chechnya has long been of immense importance to the al Qaeda network. The Chechen militants are a near-perfect analogue of Ansar al-Islam, which operated for years in Iraq with the complicity of Saddam Hussein's regime. Just as Ansar has its Abu Musab Zarqawi — the al Qaeda-affiliated commander whom Saddam coddled long before our invasion and who has led the terrorist resistance ever since — the Chechens have their Abu Omar as-Seyf (also known as Mohammad bin Abdullah al-Seif). Reared in Saudi Arabia, as-Seyf has been al Qaeda's main man in Chechnya since 1995, the formative figure in establishing a region-wide Sharia court and the backbone of the struggle — the jihad — to establish Chechnya as an independent Islamic state.

As-Seyf is considered a scholar of Salafism (like Wahhabism, a militant strain of Islam). He rejects all secular forms of government — whether American-style democracy, Soviet-style tyranny, Arab-style despotism, or otherwise — as profoundly sinful means of inculcating non-Islamic laws, values, and cultures. He believes in violent jihad as the required route to the founding of a theocratic Muslim state in which Sharia is imposed and those governed have no say. The jihad, moreover, is not war between nations; it is a series of shifting fronts in a battle between Islam on one hand and a perceived alliance of infidels and apostates on the other — a battle that rages until one side (as he sees it, his side) achieves total victory.

Reports are already rampant that as-Seyf was a prime mover behind the bloody siege of Beslan.

Cox and Forkum show how, despite positive efforts to confront Islamic terror, America isn't alway as focused as it ought to be.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 13, 2004 05:23 AM | TrackBack