End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED NOV. 18, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
'Only God can judge that'

Some local Muslims embrace conspiracy theories, refuse to distance themselves from radicalism

Aziz Eddebbarh of Las Vegas, representing the Muslim Public Affairs Council, called the editors of the Review-Journal a couple of weeks back to ask if he could come in and make a presentation to the paper's news staff on the religion of Islam, and some of the ways it's been misinterpreted since the events of Sept. 11.

He was invited in for an hour at lunchtime on Tuesday, Nov. 13. The idea, clearly, was to leave the staff with the notion that the Muslim faith is one of peace and tolerance -- nothing at all like the hate-filled, violent, bigoted sect that some might imagine, if they were to judge only from the actions of 19 young Egyptian and Saudi men who flew airplanes full of innocent passengers into office buildings full of innocent New Yorkers on Sept. 11, or the Muslim Palestinians videotaped dancing in the streets of the West Bank when they got the news.

But it didn't quite work out that way.

The first half of our time was taken up by a little slide show which I dare say plays well to sixth grade classes: photos of the faithful gathered in Mecca, listings of the five pillars of Islam, that kind of thing.

The slide show was presented by Mr. Eddebbarh's wife, Toni, a native Minnesotan of Swedish descent, who says she converted to Islam seven years ago, after 12 years of marriage. That was a nice touch, public-relations wise. But things went downhill from there.

Islam is not a religion of compulsion, the Eddebbarhs explained. Each Muslim gets to decide for himself the meaning of the dictates of their holy book, the Qu'ran (Koran.) Traditional Muslim women are not required to wear head scarves; they choose to do so in a gesture of modesty, and "So they will be viewed not as sex objects, but as intellectual equals," Mr. Eddebbarh explained.

But it didn't seem to be working out that way in Saudi Arabia, where women are barred from driving cars, or in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, where women who sought an education -- or who left the house alone to seek medical attention, or who showed an ankle or a single hair on their heads in public -- were beaten with sticks, I pointed out. For that matter, Western relief workers who had been arrested and threatened with death sentences for possession of books which could be used to "teach Christianity" were released only Thursday, upon the fall of the Taliban. Our armed forces were discouraged from holding weekend chapel services while overseas to liberate Kuwait a decade ago; it's not even clear I could have gone to Kandahar and put on the same kind of little slide show about Christianity that Mr. Eddebbarh was staging for us here ... without being sentenced to death. Does that mean the Taliban are bad Muslims?

"Only God can judge that," responded Mr. Eddebbarh.

Nor is it just the Taliban. Less than three months ago, on Aug. 25, Dr. Younis Shaikh, a medical lecturer, was sentenced to death following his conviction in a Pakistani court for violating the country's blasphemy laws.

In Pakistan, those found guilty of blasphemous statement against the Koran or the prophet are generally put to death by hanging. According to the New York Times, Shaikh was arrested in October, 2000 after delivering a physiology lecture which included a discussion of practices prevalent in pre-Islamic, 7th-century Arabia. He stated that Mohammed was not a Muslim until his revelation at age 40, and thus neither he nor his family practiced many of the customs associated with the Islamic religious tradition. According to the London Times, "He was also said to have made reference to certain customs of the day such as circumcision and removal of underarm hair."

A student complained to the police and a religious vigilance group known as Majilis Tahaffuz Khatm-i-Nabuwat -- the Committee for the Protection of the Finality of the Prophethood. On Oct. 4, 2000, Shaikh was arrested and jailed. According to the report in the New York Times, "The Movement for the Finality of the Prophet, well known for pursuing blasphemers, filed a criminal complaint and sent a mob to the college and the local police station, threatening to set them on fire." As has become commonplace in the anti-blasphemy crusade in Pakistan, religious hard-liners vowed they would kill the doctor even if he should be acquitted. (See www.secularislam.org/news/shaikh.htm.)

Given all this business about tolerance and peace, I remarked how strange it is that the state-controlled Islamic press in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia insists on continuing to rile things up with their anti-Zionist slanders.

Writing on New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's rejection of Saudi Prince Al-Walid bin Talal's proffered $10 million for the families of the World Trade Center victims (less than the Saudi royals have contributed to bin Laden, if Sy Hersh of the New Yorker is to be believed) after the prince coupled the offer with remarks that of course it was all the fault of the Jews, Mahmoud bin Abd Al-Ghani Sabbagh, columnist for the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh, recently wrote (as translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute):

"Because the governor [sic] of the Big Apple is a Jew, he refused [to accept the donation] and caused a storm. ...

"Giuliani said: 'The Prince's declarations are grievous and irresponsible; these Arabs have lost the right to dictate [to us what to do]. What we (America) must do is kill 6,000 innocent people.' By Allah, I am amazed at your act, you Jew; everything Prince Al-Walid said was true. What happened proves beyond any doubt the public insolence, the open hatred and the collapse of American democratic theory. If democracy means a governor [sic] who is a homosexual in a city in which dance clubs, prostitution, homosexuality and stripping proliferate the U.S. can keep its democracy."

Joining in the attack on Giuliani were columnists in the Palestinian Authority mouthpiece Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, editor Hafez Al-Barghouthi writing: "New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was obsessed by his hatred of Arabs even before the terrorist attacks on New York. He hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father, so as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph Hitler [sic]. This is why he prefers to shorten it to Rudy."

(In the rough-and-tumble of New York City politics, personal secrets have short half-lives. While Mr. Giuliani has taken some political heat for consorting with a woman not his wife, it would be a considerable revelation to most New Yorkers should he turn out at this late date to be a Jewish homosexual, let alone that he has publicly called for the reprisal killings of "6,000 innocent people.")

# # #

Extending this trend of moderation and well-researched reporting, some in the mainstream Arab press even go so far as to suggest the Trade Center massacre was actually planned by Israel, I pointed out to our Tuesday lunchtime visitors.

"I find that extremely credible," said local physician assistant Basel Aladham, a gray-haired Palestinian who entered the room after the slide show had begun.

Now, far be it from me to underestimate the Mossad's powers of persuasion. But getting 19 Muslim religious zealots to commit suicide -- and murder thousands in the process -- all to the greater glory of ... Israel?

In a Friday follow-up phone call to Mr. Aladham, who was born in Kuwait of Palestinian parents but who immigrated here 23 years ago and has been a U.S. citizen since 1988, I could not get a direct answer as to whether he believes the 19 young Muslim hijackers were duped into doing the will of the Israelis, or whether we have simply been misled about who seized those planes, altogether.

"Speaking from a purely Islamic point of view, it's hard for me to believe that any Muslim could think of doing such a thing. The teachings of Islam prevent anything like that from happening; therefore any Muslim with even half a brain or who would claim to be a Muslim, whatever happened would be from the legalistic point of view unthinkable."

Well, yes. But under this doctrine of law, we would have to dismiss charges against any murder suspect -- even one found standing over the corpse with a bloody knife -- if he could merely prove he was Muslim or Jewish or Christian, since all three religions prohibit murder.

"Second of all, you need resources," Mr. Aladham continued, embracing the odd "We couldn't have done it because we're so pathetic and incompetent" argument which is perhaps hardest for Westerners to understand. "And the only country that has such resources is the United States and Israel, " Mr. Aladham continued.

"Whenever you investigate any crime, the first thing the investigator asks himself if who is benefiting. Obviously not the Arabs, not the Saudis. Prior to these events, if you look at what was happening in Israel, which unfortunately has not been fully reported in this country, the Israelis on a daily basis were committing atrocities against the Palestinians, with a lot of pressure from the United States to have a dialogue or even to recognize a Palestinian state. But after this happened those pressures withered away. Since then there have been massacres -- I have a satellite dish that gets 150 international channels, and there were incredible massacres in those three days [following Sept. 11] that we didn't hear about on CNN."

Where previously he was skeptical about claims that the western press -- including the BBC and French Channel 5 -- are prejudiced, he now believes they are, Mr. Aladham confided. "The only beneficiary is Israel, so the notion that Israel is responsible is quite credible. Osama bin Laden's organization just doesn't have the resources. When you are in a plane going at 200 or 300 miles an hour, you have to be a pilot with 20 or 30 years experience to hit that building with accuracy. To tell me someone went to a little puddle-jumper school for six months and then hit those buildings so accurately, it's quite unbelievable."

Despite the fact it was the Palestinians -- not the Israelis -- who danced in the streets at word of the World Trade Center collapse (the Palestinian Authority successfully suppressing footage of at least one such celebratory rally in Ramallah by the simple expedient of threatening to kill the videographer if the footage was ever aired), he has simply "seen no evidence" that Osama bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Aladham continues to insist.

On Nov. 14, T.R. Reid of the Washington Post Foreign Service reported:

"LONDON, Nov. 14 -- In an unbroadcast videotape made last month, Osama bin Laden declares that his al Qaeda network 'instigated' the Sept. 11 attacks, the British government said today, and explains that 'If avenging the killing of our people is terrorism, let history be a witness that we are terrorists.'

"Bin Laden made the video on Oct. 20 for distribution among al Qaeda members, Prime Minister Tony Blair said today in an address to Parliament. On the tape, a British government document says, an interviewer asks bin Laden about the attacks on New York and Washington, and the Saudi replies: 'It is what we instigated, for a while, in self-defense. And it was revenge for our people killed in Palestine and Iraq. ...'

"In making his case today, Blair also said that intelligence sources have now linked a majority of the 19 men identified as Sept. 11 hijackers with al Qaeda. ... A British government statement released today also said that a senior bin Laden associate has admitted since Oct. 4 to have trained some of the hijackers in Afghanistan."

London's Sunday Telegraph also cited the new bin Laden video in this week's edition, saying that bin Laden used the tape to justify killing the victims in the World Trade Center.

"The twin towers were legitimate targets, they were supporting U.S. economic power," the newspaper quotes bin Laden as saying. "It is significant that throughout the video he uses the personal pronouns 'I' and 'we' to claim responsibility for the attacks. In the past, he has spoken of the attackers only in the third person," the Telegraph reports.

# # #

Back at our Tuesday lunchtime gathering, Mr. Eddebbarh grew slightly more emotional as he spoke of Islam's love of justice, immediately reaching for the "but" which so many Muslim spokesmen can't seem to help introducing after they condemn the Sept. 11 attacks ("whoever may be responsible for them ...")

"But we have to remember the 800,000 Palestinians who were driven by force from their homes" insisted Mr. Eddebbarh, who several times deflected political questions by insisting he had come to discuss only religion, not politics.

Leaving aside for a moment the question of how many Muslim Palestinians left their homes in what was to become Israel voluntarily in 1948 -- the Arab powers, after all, were promising to "push the Jews into sea" and shortly return them in triumph -- I decided to ask Mr. Eddebbarh if there were any Jews, even a single Jewish family, that was physically forced from its home in what is now Jordan between 1922 and 1948, without being compensated for their confiscated property.

"I don't know of any examples of that," replied Mr. Eddebbarh, who presumes to lecture others on their lack of knowledge of the history of the conflict. "But if that were the case, then yes, Islam would stand for justice for those Jews too; Islam stands for justice."

Well, that explains it, then. I daresay that was the sixth demand on Mr. bin Laden's list, right after evicting all the non-believers from Saudi Arabia (the Eddebbarhs claim there is actually no religious restriction on non-believers visiting Mecca or Medina; the only restrictions are due to "security concerns"), throwing the Jews into the sea, and the overall discontinuance of Western culture and capitalism in general.

Probably they just ran out of room at the bottom of the page to write "Compensating the Jews who were booted out of Jordan after 1921."

"If that happened it is definitely an injustice," agreed Mr. Aladham on Friday. "But does that justify Jews coming from Europe to displace an entire nation? There are three million Palestinian refugees, who have been living in camps for 50 years."

In part because it does not suit the political purposes of the neighboring Arab states to welcome them and grant them citizenship, of course -- unlike Israel, which gladly resettled the Jews evicted from Jordan (the Palestinian state created in 1922) rather than leave them squatting in camps around that nation's borders, the better to win U.N. resolutions condemning the Hashemite dynasty for its racist refusal to settle "the Jewishtinian problem" ... by refusing to carve out and create yet a second Jewish state.

Mr. Aladham goes on to detail the promises of Arab independence which the British broke after receiving Arab aid against the Turks in the First World War -- Lord Balfour and company sitting down to draw completely arbitrary lines on the map to create the current nation states of the Middle East.

But in fact, those nations now have had their independence for 50 years -- along with the blessings of great oil wealth -- and the freedom to adjust their boundaries as they saw fit. Besides which, if the British are at fault, why isn't anyone flying planes into their skyscrapers?

Responds Mr. Aladham: "The United States unfortunately is the only country that is capable of putting pressure on Israel, you see?"

Ah. So in this parallel universe, the Israelis engineered the events of Sept. 11 in order to force the United States to put pressure ... on Israel?

Islam is a religion of peace, Mr. Eddebbarh insisted. Muslims are never allowed to make war "except to rectify an injustice." But within moments, he was bragging that "While Europe was in its Dark Ages, many cultures were living together in peaceful harmony" in Moorish Spain.

Precisely what injustice the Moors were seeking to "rectify" when they conquered Spain by the sword Mr. Eddebbarh did not make clear. And that ill-fated expedition over the Pyrenees, which would have led to the Moorish conquest of France were it not for the victory of Charles Martel (grandfather of Charlemagne) at Tours in 732? Why, that must have been to rectify "The French Injustice," we can only conclude.

There are plenty of articulate spokesmen in this country for a more secular, less paranoid, less benighted practice of Islam -- one that will take responsibility for the failure of the Muslim (and particularly the Arab) world in the past 50 to 80 years to build modern, tolerant, pluralistic, affluent societies, instead of blaming every failure on a conspiracy of the long-gone colonial powers and "The International Jew." I've recently quoted sensible remarks on these topics from Muslim writers like Salman Rushdie and my friend Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad of Washington's Minaret of Freedom Institute (www.minaret.org.)

But if they aim to make new friends and influence people, the Muslim Public Affairs Council may want to make a few upgrades to the Aziz Eddebbarh traveling slide show.

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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