9/11: 4 Years Later

Four years after the horrible events, after one war in Afghanistan and another in Iraq, with Europe in disarray, with Russia and China in a first joint military exercise, with a terrorist as fraudulently elected president in pro-nuclear Iran, with natural disasters becoming a concern to everyone, with the oil price in unprecedented height because of the increased Chinese and Indian demand, and with terrorist attacks multiplied (Madrid, London, Breslan, Istanbul, Cairo and various other places), it is worthy to examine to what extent the US passes the stern test successfully.

The US as the Global Don Quixote in Pursuit of Shadows

If we make a complete and truly objective repertory of the American reactions to the 9/11 hit, we will have to accept that the target always escaped. Afghanistan was quickly invaded, but the terrorists moved to Pakistan, a supposed US ally. Some democratic order has been initiated in Kabul, but obscurantist and extremist ideas rule the daily life there, whereas expanded poppy cultivation and growing opium trade may account for one-third of GDP. Not a significant achievement!

The US pursued its quixotic policies in Iraq, finding a rather unsuccessful pretext, the possible chemical, bacteriological and nuclear weapons of Saddam Hussein. Facing French veto following many months long opposition from the front France – Germany – Russia – China, and creating a rather loose Alliance with the UK, Japan, Italy, Spain, Australia, Poland and other countries, the US disregarded the UN, did not demand an approval for the war against the loathsome Iraqi dictator, went ahead and quickly deposed him. But joy did not last much in the streets of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul…

The spectrum of Islamic Terror suddenly appeared and with great pugnacity. Soon the number of Americans killed in Iraq will be higher to that of the nefarious day, 9/11 (2752 treacherously and inhumanly murdered people). And what makes sure that ‘Iraq’, after avoiding Islamic Obscurantism and Extremism under Saddam’s cruel totalitarianism, will not slide to the way of Ossama Bin Laden? Nothing!

After the criminal act was performed, many scholars, statesmen and simple people asked along with Bernard Lewis ‘what went wrong?’ The failure to answer correctly, accurately and pertinently this question led to a victory over shadows that can never be eliminated! What a Quixotic act indeed!

Where does the mistake lie?

Hit by the Islamic Terror, the US failed to identify it.

America in its totality failed to identify what the Islamic Terror is. Is it an act? A belief? A system of thoughts? A theological system? A philosophical system? A political – ideological system?

To what extent is the Islamic Terror related to Islam as Religion itself? What are the theoretical origins of the Islamic Terror? How far in the past can one retrace the sperm of thoughts that prevailed in the minds of the criminals who performed the 9/11 inhuman acts? And what was the development of these negative thoughts, their systematization, from the initial moment of their inception down to our era, when they have ultimately been concretized into an act? Who contributed to the path of these thoughts, adding negativism over negativism, up to holding human people captive within such Hatred so that they end up performing this iniquitous act?

To what extent are we met with political manipulations, and we can find political and financial support to the Islamic terrorist groups offered by non-elected governments and totalitarian regimes? Why not considering a minister as a real terrorist, when he holds the same anti-Western ideas, the same hatred, and the same obscurantist world vision as a militant terrorist?

Has there been a Western involvement in the formation, in the development and in the rise of Islamic Terrorism? Direct? Indirect? What if a middle range country aspiring to global supremacy finds the Islamic Terror as the way to engulf the US in a war that cannot be won?

All these dimensions have not been checked, analyzed and clarified in America. The French opposition generated a well-justified indignation, but no one thought to check how deep the Colonial French policies have gone in generating thoughts, ideological systems, as well as problematic and dysfunctional milieus that are responsible for the production of terrorists.

None realized or dared confess the simple reality that, when the majority of a society, the bulk of a country, supports enthusiastically the horrible and antihuman acts of 9/11, then
a. the Islamic terror is a matter of dozens if not hundreds of millions,
b. the local government is responsible for having not properly educated the local people in a way that it would never slide into support of antihuman acts, and
c. the real enemy is not just the militant, who commits a suicidal act to damage US interests, but the totalitarian governments that allowed such barbaric and criminal societies be formed where the common mind, the average people, the public opinion in its majority supports such acts, notwithstanding what the official position of the hypocritical and totalitarian government may be.

The identification of the Islamic Terror is an essential turning point in America’s fight, since it will eradicate confusion.

This is Islamic Terror

Islamic Terror is a mindset, a system of ideas, a Weltanschauung, formed under strong impact of Islamic theological systems that were rejected at the times of the Great Islamic Civilization.

From Ahmed Ibn Hanbal to Ibn Taimiya, from him to the obscurantist Sheikhulislam Ahmed Semseddin Efendi, who prohibited Science within Islam and destroyed the Istanbul Observatory, and further on to Muhammad Ibn Abdel Wahhab, a murderous obscurantist and a sheer Satanist, down to modern times with Mohamed Abdu, Khomeini, Shaarawi (a tenebrous figure who rejected organ transplants) and Zawahiri, there is a millennium long line of Islamic Obscurantism, Barbarism and Ignorance, a Negative Parasite that gradually prevailed within Islam.

Islamic Terror is the imposition of hedjab (veil) on women.

Islamic Terror is any social – political segregation of women.

Islamic Terror is the prohibition of premarital sex.

Islamic Terror is the penalization of adultery.

Islamic Terror is the prohibition of homosexual sex.

Islamic Terror is any discrimination based on religious considerations.

Islamic Terror is the excision of young girls.

Islamic Terror is the prohibition of alcohol anytime anywhere.

Islamic Terror is the opposition to the abolition of the capital punishment.

Islamic Terror is the discrimination of homosexuals.

Islamic Terror is supporting Islam as state religion after the Caliphate’s end.

Islamic Terror is any opposition to the modernization of Islamic Law with the much-needed abrogation of the stoning and cutting hand for theft.

Islamic Terror is the declaration as Kafir (infidel) of any scholar who stipulates that there have been indeed textual changes in the Coran.

Islamic Terror is the reduction of the Islamic Civilization and Religion into a few ‘obligatory’ prescriptions, such as 5 prayers per day, fasting in Ramadan, etc.

Islamic Terror is any rejection of Islam’s secularization according to the Turkish model of Kemal Ataturk.

Islamic Terror is the insistence on Friday as non working day.

Islamic Terror is the social imposition of common prayer at the workplace, involving interruption of the work.

Any idea supporting theological strictness instead of scholarly Wisdom is Islamic Terror.

Any exclusion of the Esthetics from the average life - due to theological strictness - is Islamic Terror.

What the American approach to the Fight against Islamic Terror should be.

What the US ignores is that all the aforementioned policies are not only constituent parts of the Islamic Terror but also absolutely anti-Islamic approaches and concepts.

America must see its fight within a historical context as a fight of Light against Darkness.

The best allies for America will be the Great Islamic Philosophers, from Ibn Rushdi to Ibn Battuta, and from the Shu’ubiyeh to the Mutazilites.

America must stand by Takuyiddin Efendi, the 1577 Director of the Istanbul Observatory, who calculated solar parameters using the "three-point method" (first used in the West by Copernicus & Tyco Brahe) but lost the critical battle, facing Sheikhulislam Ahmed Semseddin Efendi, who claimed that wherever observatories were constructed and men dared to pry into the secrets of the heavens, divine punishment resulted in the form of natural disasters, epidemics or wars, terrorizing the Sultan and ultimately obliging him to close the Observatory down in 1579.

The Fight is the same, and it is not West versus Islam. It is within Islam and outside Islam; within the West and outside the West. It is a diachronic Fight between Good and Evil.

Murad III failed and the Ottoman Empire started losing ground to the West.

President Bush must avoid failing similarly.