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| Arabia | |
| Madness | |
| 2004-04-23 | |
| Now, if only they could apply this reasoning to their clients, the Palestinians, then surely there, would be peace in the Middle East. But it’s not going to happen, is it?I If one man has a dispute with another, how would he try to convince the world of the correctness of his argument? Would he set out his case point by point so that the virtue of his position could be judged? Or would he instead take a totally innocent 11-year-old girl whom he had never met and slice her into little pieces? If he did the second, how significantly would he be advancing his cause? What would he be proving? The obvious answers are that he would not only be exposing his arguments to revulsion but would be demonstrating conclusively that he was mad. Such a person is somewhere in the Kingdom now. On Wednesday he sent one of his fanatical accomplices in a car loaded with explosives to Al-Washm Street. Among the four dead was an 11-year-old Saudi girl. What virtue, what nobility, what sense is there in a cause whose supporters can stoop so low as to write their propaganda in the blood of a child? The only good thing that came out of Wednesday’s horror was that with the death of the bomber there is now one less demented bigot in this country. Something calling itself the Al-Haramain Brigades, which boasts of links with Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, has said it was responsible for the Riyadh crime. For most ordinary people, admitting to such barbarity beggars belief. No civilized person could ever do such a thing. It is clear therefore that we are dealing with men who have lost all decent instincts if they ever had them in the first place. The one emotion that can blind moral judgment, destroy all traces of humanity and lead to the wicked enormities in Riyadh is hatred. Hatred is a deadly poison, because it so often springs from fury at shortcomings within the hater himself. One man hating alone develops psychotic responses. A group of men who channel their hatreds together into a single cause rapidly feed each other’s bigotry and malevolence. The cause is incidental to their own sickness. What really matters is the opportunity it gives them to share their intolerance and fanaticism. Together they pass into a world of utterly distorted reality, where they will actually congratulate themselves on the general revulsion and loathing that their evil deeds inspire. There are therefore men who could be living close to any of us today who regard the blood baths on Wednesday in Riyadh and Basra as wonderful victories, who rejoiced at the gruesome wreckage they helped create. These, then, are our enemies. They deserve not a moment’s sympathy, not a nanosecond of consideration. Utterly consumed by hatred, they are deaf to reason and blind to the great wrong that they are doing. They dishonor the cause of Islam. They dishonor the dust they walk on.
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| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 If one man has a dispute with another, how would he try to convince the world of the correctness of his argument? Would he set out his case point by point so that the virtue of his position could be judged? The way that Moslems deal with apostates from their stupid religion is to kill them. . |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-04-23 10:20:53 PM |
| #2 You notice this is from the English language daily. I doubt if either the sentiments or words find their way into the arab language press. If you never had culture, you're a barbarian. If you are the decayed, dissolute remnant of a once great culture, you're a Morlock. These people are morlocks. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-04-23 5:41:45 PM |
| #1 "Hatred is a deadly poison, because it so often springs from fury at shortcomings within the hater himself." Amazing, how clearly they can think when they themselves are on the receiving end of that murderous hatred. Utterly amazing. Yet they seem, most of them, incapable of the same clarity when the principle is applied to the 9/11 hijackers, or to Palestinian suicide bombers, or when the principle is extended to focus not just on the hatreds within themselves, but those built into their malevolent brand of Islam. I spent many months after the 9/11 attacks reading Arabnews.com every day, and came away from the experience convinced that Arab culture renders its members completely, utterly self-centered--it makes them, effectively, permanent two-year-olds. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-04-23 11:34:04 AM |