Of course they are the best and brightest

Submitted by Peter Newton (United States), Dec 3, 2003 at 10:02

I agree completely Daniel...as usual. This is far more disturbing than thinking of our enemies as slavering monsters, but a definite reality that cannot be ignored. It points directly to the issue of the terrorist's complete faith, not in the Islam of the Koran, but in their Imams and teachers of intolerance and hatred. Americans know firsthand how the simple truths of the Bible, Torah, and Koran can be used as a pathway into people's hearts and perverted towards evil ends.

Like you, I cannot blame the religion itself, but must blame the hate peddlers that seem to have infused it. Immense faith can drive a perfectly normal person to do incredible things, and generally strong faith in the major religions is channeled for good. Supplanting or undermining the teachings of Islam with the drives and the desires of Imams and Mullahs, bent on lost dreams of conquest and glory for Islam, does indeed bear striking resemblance to the propaganda tactics of other totalitarian ideologies we have defeated. Only at their most progressed states of perversion does the allegiance of followers change from an oath to the state, a religion, or an organization into an oath to an individual or governing body, but it almost always results in the original call to arms and loyalties of followers ending in an oath to a power hungry few that wish to destroy the world and recreate it their vision of paradise.

That these hateful people target the best and brightest is almost elementary. Strong faith spans the breadth of civilization. Certainly luminaries in our own culture, more often than not, have strong faith on which they claim to draw strength. For these genial people to commit atrocities, that their declared faith expressly forbids, there must be an influential catalyst that slowly and subtlety twists the truth till the beliefs of the follower no longer reflect the teachings of the religion as a whole. This must be scrutinized further, and action taken to remove the catalysts once they are identified. Does that mean that this war need be carried directly into places of worship? I don't know. I find that notion offensive, but unless we address this problem "directly", I see this being a perpetual battle that we shall shamefully pass to our children, and we shall be counted a generation of Americans that passed our children a world that is far more dangerous than the one we inherited.

Thank you for all you are doing and have done for us. Come to St. Louis allready!

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".