"To Defeat Terrorism, First Uproot the Hate Culture," a Commentary by Dr. Sami Alrabaa

June 12, 2007

Author: Dr. Sami Alrabaa

Source: World Tribune

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/ss_terror_06_12.asp

The majority of Westerners, mostly Europeans, the mainstream media, and think-tanks, on the one hand, and Islamists, a minority of radical Muslims, on the other, are exaggerating the impact and clout of Islam and Muslims. The "Westerners", are convinced that they are waging a great "war on terror", in self-defense, and the Islamists accuse their enemies of suffering from Islamophabia.

A kind of bloody ideological conflict between Westerners and Islamists (including conservative Muslims) is developing and day after day it is becoming fiercer and more aggressive; Western values and Western culture and politics are confronting a radical, dogmatic rigid version of Islam, propagated as the only "Will of Allah". All this is reminiscent of the confrontation between capitalism and socialism/communism in the 1960s and 1970s.

Like Islamists nowadays, Arab socialists believed in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and were convinced that socialism would prevail across the entire earth. Islamists are also convinced that the "only true religion on earth" - their version of it, of course - will ultimately prevail. They also believe that there is no room for compromise or new interpretations of Islam. They feel that they are "commissioned" by Allah to spread His word and remove everything that is "un-Islamic". Their reward is clear: Paradise in Heaven.