Challenge For Muslims

From the Chicago Tribune:

After every suicide bombing, we seek clues for why these men and women embrace the kind of seething hatred that allows someone to believe that killing innocents is the pathway to heaven.

The debate about whether U.S. policies in Iraq or elsewhere are to blame for suicide bombings or other terrorist acts is largely misguided and futile. It not only blames the victim for the crime, but allows the terrorists to dictate American foreign policy and specify the terms upon which they may be persuaded to stop the attacks.

Those who ask "why" often confront a litany of grievances, past and present, depending on which terrorist group is answering. Some of the "reasons" for murdering innocent civilians: Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, American troops in Saudi Arabia. Beyond that is the "decadent" Western culture itself.

But it's worth noting that suicide bombers attacked this nation on Sept. 11, 2001, long before Iraq or Afghanistan. And terrorists who decry the mistreatment of Muslims in one part of the world say nothing while Muslim insurgents slaughter Muslim civilians day after day in Iraq.

The question of what motivates suicide bombers "will not be answered by focusing on the grievances by which the terrorists later claimed to have been propelled: The sociopath's motivations are revealed in his behavior, not in his grandiose self justifications," novelist and military history professor Caleb Carr wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal.

The point is: There will always be an excuse for those who hate relentlessly. In many cases, the hate is the point.

Murderous hate doesn't fester in a vacuum, of course. It has been nurtured in many Arab countries.

The result often is a culture that glorifies death.

Until that culture changes, nothing else will.

This war of ideas won't be won until suicide bombers occupy a place of contempt in Islamic culture.

Terrorist leaders marshal the extraordinary power of hate to battle the modern world, "infidels" of all races and religions. Anyone who dares not believe exactly as they do is fair game, even fellow Muslims.

Tony Blair is right. This isn't about a clash of civilizations. Those who dispatch suicide bombers, and the bombers themselves, have no claim to belong to any civilization--or any religion.

Read the entire editorial -- LynZee