Are Zionists Preferable to Arab Rulers?
21 November 2001
Spokesmen and leaders from all Arab and Islamic states, and not only those states, have repeated again and again that there is a difference between “terrorism,” like that which took place in America in September, and “resistance,” like that which is constantly taking place on the roads and in the restaurants of Israel. Indeed, in articles throughout the Arab press, it is Israel that is the purveyor of “terrorism”: Shooting at the PLO militia men who take pot shots at Jews is terrorism, invading PLO strongholds to arrest Hamas members is terrorism, assassination of terrorist leaders is terrorism, settlements are terrorism, even Jewish immigration is terrorism. According to the Arab press, all attacks on Israel are “resistance” and all those actions taken by Israel to eliminate the threat of attack are “terrorism.” In light of this atmosphere in the Arab media, a recent article penned by outspoken Kuwaiti professor Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, who was imprisoned for defaming Islam in 1999, is all the more striking in its forthrightness.
The article, entitled “Sharon is a Terrorist – and You?” was published in Kuwait’s al-Anbaa and Egypt’s Akhbar al-Youm. As implied in the title, al-Baghdadi begins his article by clarifying that “there is no dispute” that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a terrorist. However, as “the Koran orders us to act fairly even to our enemies,” he then asks his readers, “But can anybody prove that Sharon has carried out terrorism against the citizens of Israel who elected him?” He answers, “This has not happened. The Zionist entity does not terrorize and imprison its intellectuals and writers.” In contrast, notes the professor, “…the Arab [rulers] carry out terrorism against their [own] citizens within their [own] countries… Persecuting intellectuals in the courtrooms, trials for heresy, destruction of families… all exist only in the Islamic world…. The intelligence apparatuses that killed hundreds of intellectuals and politicians from the religious stream itself - The Zionist entity has never done [such things] against its citizens. Isn´t this terrorism?!” The Kuwaiti professor writes, “Iraq alone is a never-ending story of terrorism of the state against its own citizens and neighbors. Isn´t this terrorism?!” The Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, notes al-Baghdadi, cynically “begins his speeches of menace with the words, ‘Al-Salaamu Alaikum.’”
The Kuwaiti professor even seems to blame Islam itself, even if only as it is practiced in the Arab world, when he writes, “Islamic religious rulings permitting [people´s] blood, about which the Arab Muslim people and its leaders – who believe in the religion of mercy and peace [meaning Islam] - remain silent, exist only in the Arab world…” In a even more frontal assault, al-Baghdadi states that the “Arabs and the Muslims claim that their religion is a religion of tolerance, but they show no tolerance for those who oppose their opinions.”
This state of perpetual internal terror, the Kuwaiti opines, leads to external terror as well, “The Afghans were living a good and healthy life – though they fought each other - until the Muslim Arabs came in and brought them into the hellish circle of terrorism… Who hijacked the Kuwaiti plane and killed Kuwaitis? Wasn´t it the believing Hizbullah?” Indeed, he continues, “The Palestinian Arabs were the first to invent airplane hijacking and the scaring of passengers. Isn´t this terrorism?!” Summarizing, al-Baghdadi writes, “Arab Muslims have no rivals in this; they are the masters of terrorism towards their citizens, and sometimes their terrorism also reaches the innocent people of the world, with the support of some of the clerics.”
Yet, Ahmad al-Baghdadi writes, the terrorism of the Arab world could not have gone on, unpunished, forever: “Today, the Arabs and the Muslims are paying the price of their terrorism towards their citizens and towards the world.” In fact, if Arabs now feel “spit upon” and degraded in the West, the Kuwaiti professor thinks that “[o]ne cannot complain to the West for what it is doing to them, because the Arab and Muslim world, everyone - governments and peoples - are lying about terrorism.”
The Kuwaiti professor concludes his cutting article with his understanding of President George Bush’s war on terrorism: “Now the time has come to pay the price. Nothing comes without a reckoning, and the account is long - longer than all the beards of the Taliban gang together. The West´s message to the Arab and Muslim world is clear: mend your ways or else...” |
