“Terrorism Nests Within Us”

Mundir Badr Haloum, for Al-Safir (Lebanon), September 13;

“Twelve Nepalese citizens are slaughtered – Islam. A metro station is bombed – Islam. Civilian aircraft crash – Islam. A school is taken and the souls of 50 children [are lost] for the soul of [each] terrorist – Islam. A bus is bombed here, a railway train there, and before that there were hospitals and theaters, etc – all of them Islamic acts. [Behind] the color green are exposed rivers red with blood, flowing in the streets and public squares. And Muslims everywhere.
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“Self-examination – would result in favor of abandoning Islam – yet what gets passed on from one generation to the next is – the latest version of Islam – Algeria, Afghanistan, Moscow, and New York, the version of the planes and the buses, the metro stations, the theaters and the residential complexes. What gets passed on from one generation to the next is the faith of Jihad that takes lightly the spilling of others’ blood. How easy it is to shove someone into the category of the enemy. What gets passed on from generation to generation is the belief in legal rulings that forbid thought and permit killing. Religious Muslims prepare an offering to heaven – a fresh bit of human flesh, meant to be evidence of the truth and the proof of Jihad for the absolute truth.
“Indeed, we as Muslims produce terrorism, succor it, and praise it. We condemn it only when forced to. Motivated by considerations of power, interests, and diplomacy, we wear a pained expression on our faces but in our hearts we rejoice at the brilliant success – a large number of casualties. Unfortunately, in this black reality it does not matter if it is an American, Israeli, or Russian mind who is responsible for certain terrorist operations or whether those who kill themselves are poor, ignorant, or destitute.”
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“Islam is in need of true reform. Islam’s need [for reform] – or, to be precise, our need for Islam’s reform – is not less than the need for reform in the Arab political regimes. This is the need for people who are capable of fearlessly acknowledging that terrorism nests within us as Muslims and that we must exorcise it. Unfortunately, the meaning of delay is more death. The reform will take a long time and the price will be high, but it is the only path to our return to history as Muslims and not as terrorists.”