Letter to the Editor

Terrorism extends beyond simple religious distinctions

Saxine's comments in his article entitled ‘Enough Apologia, time to take responsibility” in the 9/16/05 edition of The Miscellany News overlook recent major developments involving global terrorism and numerous statements lack qualification. Greater care should be displayed towards accuracy. He may be startled to know that this preceding July, the Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwa against terrorism and extremism: “Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism. Targeting civilian’s life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram—or forbidden—and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not martyrs.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations supported the religious ruling alongside of no less than 120 U.S. Muslim groups.

Additionally, it is difficult to collect and report on “mainstream” Muslim sentiment regarding terrorism, primarily being that when terrorism occurs, media preponderance is to report non-Muslim sentiments whenever such acts can be traced to so-called “Islamists.” When terrorism occurs, the initial media response is to cover victims' plights and gather their testimony. Securing Muslim opinion grows more problematic covering “mainstream” Muslim opinion overseas.

Saxine does not define or qualify what constitutes "mainstream" in this regard, but I suspect he means so-called “non-extremist” Muslims (“extreme” misleadingly having come to mean not any extremity of thought or philosophy in any regard except towards the West). While condemning terrorism, such Muslims are not precluded from strongly disagreeing with American foreign policy. Such is the rare case that whenever Muslim opinion is sought, such criticism will be performed alongside condemnations of terrorism. Unfortunately, heightened American sensitivity typically ignores such condemnations, focuses on the criticism, and sees it as tacitly endorsing terrorism.

Lastly, Saxine should acknowledge that terrorism is a global issue not limited to “Islamism.” His essay’s structure, as well as its timing (the 9/11 anniversary having recently passed), gives the impression that terrorism is not the concern, but rather American geo-political vulnerability.

Recently, Protestants set machine guns on Belfast authorities, inflicting numerous casualties. This is just one of many citable examples by which I have never read Saxine, or anyone else for that matter, condemn Western terrorism as passionately. While Saxine demands consistent logic in defining the motives of a racist Chicago mob attacking a group of Sikhs when terrorism is rooted to economics, he should likewise employ consistency when addressing terrorism issues.

A survey of terrorism in the past 20 years easily reveals Islamists to be lagging behind their Western counterparts. As such, Western terrorism constitutes a greater threat to the civilized world. For Westerners, there seems to be little confusion about what constitutes terrorism, except when we apply that clarity to our own questionable acts. What is the Iraq war, if not one gigantic exercise in terror? We rationalize the disaster, only finding that the steady stream of explosive revelations coming out of government renders dubious every possible scenario conjured. We can only conclude with confusion, mutually shared by the West and the Islamic world. We don’t really know our own motives the way we don’t really know terrorist motives, except to ruminate on perversions of sacrosanct principles, be it either Islam, Christianity, democracy or theocracy, patriotism.

—Dennis Farr ’06