Murdering CARE
By Alan
Caruba
What
kind of justification can they give for murdering Margaret Hassan, the
Iraqi director of CARE International, a humanitarian group providing
aid? The terrorist’s demand was that the British troops leave Iraq in
48 hours. If they did this, they said, she would be turned over to Base
of Jihad, a group affiliated with al Qaeda. But you and I know they
never intended to do anything else than kill her.
Hassan was born in Ireland and had a duel
citizenship with Britain and Iraq. She had lived in Iraq for thirty
years and was married to an Iraqi, Tahsin Hassan. She devoted her life
to helping the poor, particularly children. What kind of justification
is there in the murder of such a woman, representing such a cause?
There is none. There can be none. It is
one more example of the pure evil represented by the Third Great Jihad
being waged by countless Islamic groups. Thus far, according to Reuters,
more than thirty foreign hostages have been killed in Iraq. Not
combatants, not soldiers, just those unfortunate enough to represent
nations that have sent their troops to liberate Iraq or who found work
there in order to send money home to their families.
Until
everyone, not just Americans, but everyone understands the depth of evil
the Jihadists represent, we are all at risk of mindless murder. We dare
not forget that. We dare not forget the 3,000 Americans who lost their
lives on 9-11. We dare not forget Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh. We
dare not forget the Muslim ethnic cleansing occurring in the Sudan. We
dare not forget the long history of Arab hostility to the existence of
Israel. We dare not forget the Taliban in Afghanistan. We dare not
forget the Jihadist slaughter of thousands in Algeria. We dare not
forget the slaughter of school children in Beslan, Russia. I could fill
whole pages with the names of those murdered in the name of Islam.
We dare not forget Margaret Hassan whose
life was devoted to humanity’s highest ideals of concern for the less
fortunate and the children. She pursued this mission during the three
decades that Iraq was ruled by one of the cruelest dictators of the
modern era.
And it means nothing to those who
would drag Iraq and the entire world back to those Dark Ages.
All this was foreseen by one of Islam’s
earliest caliphs, Uthman Ibn ‘Affan in the year 35 or 36 after the
passing of Mohammed. A mob from distant regions of the emerging Islamic
empire, from Egypt and Iraq, entered his home intent on killing him.
“If you kill me, you put the sword to your own neck, and than Allah
will not lift it from you until the Day of Resurrection. And if you kill
me, you will never be united in prayer, and you will never divide the
booty amongst you, and Allah will never remove discord from amongst
you.” He was right. But they killed him anyway.
On February 23, 1998, a group calling
itself the World Islamic Front, led by Osama bin Laden, issued a
statement in which they quoted their prophet Muhammad saying, “I have
been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but
Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my
spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my
orders.”
The prophet got it wrong. The single
emotion common to all Muslims, whether Arab or not, is humiliation. The
single burden they share is the scorn of those who look upon Islam and
see the slayers of Margaret Hassan and all the others who have been
killed in the name of Allah.
“Moderate” Muslims may issue all the
condemnations they want. It is not that good and decent people are
Muslims, but that Islam itself is the problem. It is more than a billion
people, willingly or not, who are at war with five billion other people.
World leaders have been at pains to say
we are engaged in “a war on terror.” No, we are engaged in a war
with Islam because Islam has been engaged in a war on everyone who is
not a Muslim, while killing quite a few who are.
Try this. Substitute the word Buddhists
for Muslims and ask yourself if we are at war with Buddhism? Substitute
Hindus. Substitute Christians. We are not at war with these great
faiths. We are at war with Islam.
As the Caliph predicted, the discord
between Muslims has never ceased. The contempt that Shiites feel for
Sunnis and vice versa marks the divide within Islam, but the belief that
Islam is the only religion that should be allowed to exist on the
face of the earth is common to both.
The mob is at your door. Unless it is
defeated, no one is safe.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column,
“Warning Signs”, posted on the website of The National Anxiety
Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba 2004