Whom do they hate?

Hitler loved fire. He killed the Jews twice, first with gas, and then with fire. Hitler too used the Biblical images of burnt offering and conflagration as judgment. We recognize the nature of the event in the word, Holocaust: “A burnt sacrifice; a sacrificial offering the whole of which is consumed by fire.”15 We say that Hitler hated the Jews and ask why these modern worshippers hate America so. Hitler hated and the terrorists hate our God, their Allah. One could say that a god is a set of values. Hitler hated and the terrorists hate our values. What do they hate? That human beings are constrained by the Ten Commandments; that they must set up civil courts to judge their fellow citizens and follow exacting rules of evidence and witnesses in trials. They hate the possibility that their (human) judgment is fallible. They hate the God that values life over death. “Say unto them, as I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”16 They hate a God who counts mercy, truth, compassion, justice, kindness and love are among the highest values. Words, of course, are only as good as the hearts of those speaking them.

“Ultimately Mr. Qutb (who began his career as a modernist literary critic!) rejected democracy and nationalism as Western ideas incompatible with Islam. Even pan-Arabism, which was tremendously popular in the Arab world, was simply an obstacle to the foundation of an Islamic state.”17 Clearly, there is a wish here, shall we say a burning fire, for “an Islamic state” that “rejected democracy and nationalism” and there is an interpretation of the Koran that supports it. Which came first? What other wishes are displaced by this wish? And what other Koranic interpretations are rejected? Is an Islamic state that rejects democracy and nationalism the best way to feed and clothe the poor, the best way to build a strong economy, to employ and educate all segments of the population, including women, the best way to provide justice for its citizens? Is it even a way at all? Is it even a wish?

To what extent has terror become an arm of the radical “Islamic state”? Is it an arm of a people trying to feed, clothe, and educate the poor? Edward Rothstein wrote, “The goals of fundamentalist terror are not to eliminate injustice but to eliminate opposition.”18 He points out, however, how many people in many high places assume that radical Islamic terror wishes to right injustice, or at least has “root causes” that could be extirpated. “It is remarkable how much agreement there is on the nature of these root causes. Many American intellectuals have cited American policy toward Israel, the poverty of Arab lands and inequalities and inequities reinforced by Western actions. The Vatican Synod in October, after condemning the ‘horror of terrorism’ called for the elimination of the root causes of poverty and inequality. And similar declarations were made by many nations at the United Nations this week.”19 What are terrorists and Islamic states themselves doing to get rid of these “root causes?” For them, clearly, the root cause is Us. Judging from their actions, the overriding wish is not “the elimination of the root causes of poverty and inequality.” Rather, it is the imposition of an Islamic state, with interpretations of Islam that bolster it. What if Osama bin Laden had given out his millions of dollars in microloans to local men and women to start small businesses - selling eggs, handembroidering garments, or fixing machinery - enterprises that can often be run from a home? This revolutionary concept was begun by “Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi president of Grameen Bank who gave out the first microloans in the mid-1970’s.”20 Since 1997, an international coalition called the Microcredit Summit Campaign has given out 19.3 million loans. Its goal is to give 100 million business start-up loans by 2005 to poor people with no credit history.21). The organization has “pledged to help empower women.” The World Bank has estimated that 75% of the 1.2 million people around the world who live on less than $1 per day are women.22 But that was not the fire that consumed Bin Laden’s soul. In fact, Hernando deSoto posits this economic route as the antithesis of the terrorist dream: “To divert the poor from the siren call of terrorists, America and its allies must appeal to their entrepreneurial interests…and focus on development at a micro level, encouraging capitalism from below.”23 Millions of micro-loans, trade, infrastructure, land reform, peace. There is a wish.

What benefit do radical Islamicists gain from their version of an Islamic state? Moral purity? Hegemony? License to kill? One could argue well that an Islamic state is a sure way for a country to remain in poverty. Just as Hitler’s war against the Jews diverted precious resources from his conventional war of territorial conquest24, so the terrorists’ “holy war” is dissipating funds and energy away from economic development toward an enterprise characterized by throwing its sons into fires and preventing its women from accumulating wealth. If modernization and democracy (with its concomitant sexual freedom, and freedom of women) is the enemy, then what kind of political economy do they think will make them super-powers? Oil? Let’s get ourselves free (or freer) of that. Anyhow, a one-product economy may be a good strategy for dictatorship, but is hardly a model for economic development.

The terrorists have imagined a world in which they define and interpret the law, just as Hitler did. They hate a world in which a woman could be free. The terrorists worship themselves, little men-gods who rule women. Sher Abbas Stanakzai, then, the Taliban regime’s deputy foreign minister, said in a 1997 interview: “Our current restrictions of women are necessary in order to bring the Afghan people under control. We need these restrictions until people learn to obey the Taliban.”25 From their women, to everyone else.

Wakil Motawakil, then-Taliban Minister of Foreign Affairs, said, “Taliban commanders are religious figures…We believe in Judgment Day” 26 - with themselves as judges of who shall live and who shall die. “…The Taliban have turned sports stadiums into execution grounds. In today’s Afghanistan, you can be executed for anything from adultery to murder, even for prostitution or homosexuality,”27 reported Saira Shah. Motawakil, responding to her questions through an interpreter, said: “The football stadium is a place of leisure, a place for playing games, a place for joy. When justice is done on behalf of a victim, that too is a joyful event, which brings order and security to society….If they [the international community] help us to build a separate place suitable for carrying out executions, we have no problem with that.”28 “‘When the Egyptian hosts were drowning in the Red Sea,’ say the Rabbis, ‘the angels in heaven were about to break forth into songs of jubilation. But the Holy One, blessed be He, silenced them with the words, “My creatures are perishing, and ye are ready to sing!’”29 Do we love a god who loves executions or one who loves compassion, even for our enemies?