The Week - September 11, 2001 terrorist attack death toll approaches 3,245 - this and other items are discussed

National Review, Dec 17, 2001

It may be urged that we not apply contemporary Christian standards since Christians had a six-century head start over Muslims, and gave up religious wars only 350 years ago. Islam has not-yet?-had the chastening experience of a Reformation, Counter Reformation, and Enlightenment to temper its temporal ambitions. For that matter, it was not until the 1980s that most countries with Catholic majorities became democratic. Perhaps there are historical accidents that caused the Middle East, the home of the Muslim imagination, to develop in such a stunted way. The region is home to secular tyrannies-Iraq, Syria-no less repressive than Islamism (although even these regimes exploit Muslims' religious sentiments). Perhaps it is not impossible that Islam, as practiced by societies, will evolve in the direction of peace and freedom. But Americans can be forgiven for not taking the long view at the moment. Most religions have been able to inspire nobility and cruelty, glory as well as madness, and Islam is no exception. But that does not preclude the possibility that something in Islam lends itself, more than other religions, to exterminationist and totalitarian politics. The Islamists who have interpreted their religion in that manner are our enemies. They are not the entire Muslim world, but they are not a tiny and isolated minority of it either. Since they claim to speak for all Muslims, it is up to those Muslims who reject the Islamists' views-including, yes, Muslim immigrants to America-to repudiate them in word and deed. And it is up to the rest of us to demand that they do so. This would not be an unprecedented demand: Especially in recent years, both Christian churches and the secular culture have held Christians accountable for the enormities committed in the name of their religion.

The extent to which Islam has contributed to this war-as also to the poverty, illiberalism, and general backwardness of the Muslim world-is an open question. It is a question that Americans will necessarily debate, under the circumstances, and it was arrogant folly of American political elites to believe that incantations and intimidation could stop them from debating. They would be wiser to make constructive contributions, so that the debate is as humane and intelligent as possible.

At war ii Next Year in Baghdad

The warriors of the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been behaving according to type. For five years they maintained a regime whose police methods depended on harassing shopkeepers and beating and executing insufficiently servile women. When they faced a Northern Alliance revived by air cover, they fled their positions for a few redoubts or for the hills. The foreign gunmen of al-Qaeda shot their less desperate Taliban comrades who wished to change sides. Most recently, a party of Taliban fighters who had supposedly surrendered used concealed weapons to stage a three-day riot in a prison outside Mazar-e-Sharif. Their conduct is shifty, barbaric, and base. Whether it is also cowardly, as President Bush called the terror hijackers after September 11, is a matter for debate. Let's just say that if it isn't cowardly, it will do until something that is truly cowardly comes along.