janelle
09-07-2004, 10:27 PM
Charlotte Hays from Beliefnet
September 7, 2004 | 4:30 p.m.
Who dares to look into the abyss? The slaughter of innocents in Beslan was so shocking that even the most relentlessly enlightened among us must be having a difficult time thinking of the killers as "freedom fighters" or "insurgents."
The death toll of children at Beslan is more than 150. Some of the children were taken hostage when they arrived for their first day of school and had explosives strapped onto the bodies before they were eventually slaughtered. The monsters refused them water or food.
As the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial "on the unique depravity of modern Islamic terror": "It's hard to fathom now--with the images of Russian children in body bags scorched into our memories--but when the history of the war on terror is written, last week may go down as a turning point."
It's only a minority of Muslims who embrace this kind of terrorism. But it's still not easy to talk about the relationship of Islam to these horrific acts of terror, as much as we need to. Writes Dennis Prager:
"The truth is that everyone with a conscience has questions about Muslims and Islam. But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions. Most people are so afraid of being branded intolerant that the most natural and goodhearted questions are only posed by the handful who have the courage to do so (usually conservative Christians)."
Prager continues:
"It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren't--even among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren't--and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in 1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren't--despite the destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with China."
New York Times columnist David Brooks is quite chilling on the cult of death that is found among a certain number of Islamic militants. Note well: Brooks is careful to point out that only a minority of Muslims embrace the ideology of death--and he further argues that the killing isn't really about advancing Islam.
Here's what he says:
"[T]he death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.
"It's about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism--freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of sadism and suicide.
"We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings."
Columnist Ralph Peters, writing last week in the New York Post, was more sectarian in his approach:
"The mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.
"Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by 'martyrs.'
"It isn't politically correct to say this, of course. We're supposed to pretend that Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’ All right, then: It's time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan."
September 7, 2004 | 4:30 p.m.
Who dares to look into the abyss? The slaughter of innocents in Beslan was so shocking that even the most relentlessly enlightened among us must be having a difficult time thinking of the killers as "freedom fighters" or "insurgents."
The death toll of children at Beslan is more than 150. Some of the children were taken hostage when they arrived for their first day of school and had explosives strapped onto the bodies before they were eventually slaughtered. The monsters refused them water or food.
As the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial "on the unique depravity of modern Islamic terror": "It's hard to fathom now--with the images of Russian children in body bags scorched into our memories--but when the history of the war on terror is written, last week may go down as a turning point."
It's only a minority of Muslims who embrace this kind of terrorism. But it's still not easy to talk about the relationship of Islam to these horrific acts of terror, as much as we need to. Writes Dennis Prager:
"The truth is that everyone with a conscience has questions about Muslims and Islam. But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions. Most people are so afraid of being branded intolerant that the most natural and goodhearted questions are only posed by the handful who have the courage to do so (usually conservative Christians)."
Prager continues:
"It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren't--even among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren't--and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in 1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren't--despite the destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with China."
New York Times columnist David Brooks is quite chilling on the cult of death that is found among a certain number of Islamic militants. Note well: Brooks is careful to point out that only a minority of Muslims embrace the ideology of death--and he further argues that the killing isn't really about advancing Islam.
Here's what he says:
"[T]he death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.
"It's about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism--freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of sadism and suicide.
"We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings."
Columnist Ralph Peters, writing last week in the New York Post, was more sectarian in his approach:
"The mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.
"Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by 'martyrs.'
"It isn't politically correct to say this, of course. We're supposed to pretend that Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’ All right, then: It's time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan."