Could
we all possibly take a deep breath and not go insane over the terrorist
brutality in Paris? Yes, it was horrific, cowardly, and barbaric. Innocent
lives were murdered in cold calculating hate. But there needs to be a sense of
reasonable thinking now. Not just panicked terror. That is the precise goal of
terrorism: to provoke fear, frenzy, paranoia, and chaos. And when all of Europe
and the Western world collapses in horror and hysteria, screams threats against
Muslims, reaches for the big weapons, stirs up more hate and violence; and the
decent and the thinking and the caring people of the world give into the urge
for matching ruthlessness, then terrorists have truly hit their target.
This
is a war of ideas. You can’t kill an idea with bombs. This is a war of beliefs.
You can’t annihilate a belief system with deadly arsenal. And let’s not compare
this to Nazism thinking we that destroyed that idea with war. Nazism was the
mastermind of one brilliantly demented man. The whole mad enterprise was
centered in Hitler. And once he deteriorated mentally and physically, made
crucially disastrous tactical decisions, the end was in sight.
What
we’re facing today is completely different. Radical Islamic terrorists are
operating out of deeply committed religious beliefs that call for revenge and
acts of terror against those they believe threaten their faith, their culture, their
people and their way of life.
The
ISIS crowd is a particularly nasty group that consists of not only the
radicalized religious faithful but certainly unhinged zealots hungry for blood.
These are killers without conscience or fear. Some of them are fighting for
something they thoroughly believe in; others are just murderers filled with
hate against all non-Muslims. Both are ready and willing and happy to die for
the cause. And since martyrdom is considered a highly rewarded part of their belief system, that makes for very determined enemies.
President
Obama is correct in working to bring a core of allies together to face this
menace. Not just to try and crush them with violence but to try and find a way
to deal with the idea of Islamic terrorism.
That
is what we need. Leaders in the world, including our own, who understand the clearer
issue here. This is about religious intolerance, religious control, and
religious fanaticism. We have to take the longer look and see what’s underneath
all of the hatred and violence of radical Muslims. We have to see what part we
have had in the past and continue to have now in that hatred and violence. How
complicit is our interference in the Middle East tied to the stampeding rage of
Muslim extremists? And how can we either back off from that or find
constructive ways to better understand and respect what Muslim clerics and
Imams and the hard core leaders of ISIS want and need.
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best in the violent upheavals of the Civil
Rights movement: “Violence
as a way of achieving…justice is both impractical and immoral. It is
impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.
The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because
it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks
to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on
hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood
impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends
by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in
the destroyers.”
It is
extremely difficult to enter into the wisdom of this kind of thinking when
faced with the brutal slaughter of people. But King was so right. And unless we
embrace that wisdom as leaders and as a nation and even as a world the killings
will creep forward in their bloody savagery across Europe, the Middle East,
here and everywhere.
© 2015
Timothy Moody
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