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Not the works of a religion?

April 14, 2004 ~ 2:01 p.m.

BOSTON, MA�Did anyone hear the President speak last night? Here�s an excerpt from that speech:

�The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar. The terrorists who take hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew.

We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the USS Cole, and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on September the 11th, 2001.

None of these acts is the work of a religion. All are the work of a fanatical political ideology. The servants of this ideology seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women.�

Sorry, Mr. Bush�what was that again? Not the work of a religion, but a fanatical political ideology, you say? Don�t you believe it.

Liberals versus conservatives, Democrats versus Republicans, Labourites versus Conservatives, etc.: those are political ideologies. When you have terrorist atrocities being committed in the name of Allah, that is the work of a religion.

Sure, there are moderate Muslims, those who practice Islam while still retaining a practical sense of the individual. There are plenty of them, and they are disgusted by terrorism as well.

But if this is not a battle of religious belief, how come moderate Muslims are afraid to speak out against it? There is a real schism occurring in Islam. Those who practice the Muslim faith in good spirit, even the imams (leaders of mosques), cannot bring themselves to condemn the fanatics for fear of reprisal.

This is a religion-based fight that we are in, and if we do not recognize that, the testimonies of Tenet, Rice, Ashcroft, et al. will be nothing short of a waste of time. Not to mention the war in Iraq itself.

We need to see the reasoning�or what barely passes for such�behind the violence being perpetrated in Iraq and in terror attacks elsewhere. It behooves us to see this as the work of those of a fanatically religious, not political, mindset.


The wife has written about our harrowing ordeal in New York City on Monday, so there�s no need for me to write about it as I intended to.

Suffice to say, neither of us are stepping foot in New York again anytime soon, if ever. Let New Yorkers have that place; we are through with it.

� M.E.M.

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