Former Radical Islamist Speaks Out

[The Reaper]

Direct from a former terrorist.

Know the threat and engage it discriminately.

TR

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770

I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist
By HASSAN BUTT - More by this author »

Last updated at 07:38am on 2nd July 2007

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.

And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.

Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.

But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.

The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.

For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.

But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.

However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.

And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

[x-factor]

That is a brave dude. First, intellectually and morally brave to confront and defeat the evil within himself. Second, physically brave to speak out. As an "apostate" (according to the Salafis), he just put a giant bullseye on himself.

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Direct from a former terrorist.

Know the threat and engage it discriminately.

TR

Indeed. Question is, will anyone pay attention...

[frostfire]

He also put a bullseye on himself.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n2761108.shtml
Excerpt:
(CBS) It's not often you get a chance to talk to someone who was a key player inside a terrorist organization for twenty years, but 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon did just that when he interviewed Nasir Abas, one of the most valuable members of a terrorist group ever to change sides and work for the authorities. Abas is from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. And he was a top commander in Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's franchise operation in Southeast Asia.

When Abas was inside the organization, he trained hundreds of young militants to become terrorists and became one of the most wanted men in the region. For 20 years, he worked to achieve an Islamic state throughout Southeast Asia. He embraced the idea of a holy war and spoke the language of jihad.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I hate the infidels," Abas admits he once believed.

"When you say you hate the infidels … infidel is a word that means something, in your language, in Jemaah Islamiyah or al Qaeda. … But explain to me, what is an infidel?" Simon asks.

"Infidel is a non-Muslim people," Abas replies.

"And you hated non-Muslim people," Simon remarks. "At that time you would have hated me."

"Of course. But now not," Abas says.

Back then, in his days as a terrorist, Abas' view of the world was simple: black and white. But that ended in October 2002, when the island of Bali, known in the west as a paradise and a playground, was shattered by explosions.

Two massive bombs blew that paradise apart, killing 202 people. The victims were mostly young people from Australia, the U.S. and the U.K.

Nasir Abas had nothing to do with the attack itself, but he knew what was behind it because he knew the bombers. He had trained them.

"How do you feel about so many of your friends causing the death of so many innocent people?" Simon asks.

"I feel unhappy, I feel sinful," Abas replies.

He says he feels sinful because he taught the bombers much of what they knew.

Within days of the bombings, police zeroed in on Jemaah Islamiyah. Three of its members, the key planners, were brothers; the mastermind was Abas' brother-in-law. It was really a family affair, and it didn't take long for police to track down Abas himself. When they knocked on his door, he says he attacked the police with the hope that they would kill him.

"It is better to die than to be arrested," Abas explains.

.....

[The Reaper]

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/...mir_taheri.htm

New York Post

'ISLAMOPHOBIA' IDIOCY
By AMIR TAHERI

July 3, 2007 -- LONDON

THE car-bomb/suicide-terror operations in London and Glasgow should have provided a fresh opportunity for reminding everyone, especially Muslims in Britain, that terrorism in the name of Islam still poses a major threat to public peace and safety. Yet this is not what is happening.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown keeps repeating that the attacks have nothing to do with Islam - but, at the same time, keeps inviting "Muslim community leaders" to Downing Street to discuss how to prevent attacks. If the attacks have nothing to do with Islam, why invite Muslim "leaders" rather than Buddhist monks?

Brown hasn't deemed fit to tell it like it is: that Muslims in Britain, indeed all over the world, must come out and condemn terrorism in unambiguous terms.

Instead, we are hearing that the attacks may have been prompted by "Muslim bitterness" about Salman Rushdie's knighting, the latest addition to the Islamist litany of woes. Some "moderate community leaders," like a certain Baroness Uddin, drop hints that Muslims have "foreign-policy issues" that might make them unhappy. The barely coded message: Unless Britain reshapes its foreign policy to please al Qaeda, it must expect to be attacked.

The most that "the moderate community leaders" concede is a "yes, but" position: Yes, it is not quite right to blow up innocent people - but, then again, we must understand how anger at the policies of the government of those same innocent people might prompt some Muslim youths to want to slaughter everyone.

Worse still, Ken Livingstone, London's quixotic leftist mayor, has shifted the blame from the terrorists to the British at large, who are supposedly tempted by "Islamophobia."

Thus, Livingstone works his way into a logical impasse: Do we dislike them because they want to kill us, or do they want to kill us because we dislike them? He implies that the main blame must lie with the British government and its U.S. allies, especially President Bush, who has declared war on terror rather than seeking to cuddle it.

But can one accuse Britain of "Islamophobia"? The answer is an emphatic no.

Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects - most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth.

A Shiite Muslim can't build a mosque in Cairo; his Sunni brother can't have a mosque of his own in Tehran. Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran. The works of a majority of Muslim writers and philosophers are banned in most Muslim countries.

In Britain, all mosques are allowed; no Muslim author or philosopher is banned. More importantly, rival Muslim sects do not massacre each other, as is the case in half a dozen Muslim-majority countries.

The only time that the British media practice self-censorship is when an item might be seen as remotely anti-Islamic. Every British publisher has turned down at least one book proposal for fear of hurting Muslim feelings. "Taking Muslim sensibilities into account" is also the reason given for the cancellation of some art exhibitions and the selection of works on display in others.

Even the most rabid anti-West and pro-terror Islamist clerics are granted visas to come to the United Kingdom and spread their message of hatred (at times, as guests of Mayor Livingstone and his friends). Hamas and Hezbollah are strongly present in Britain; the Islamic Liberation Party, banned in all Muslim countries, has its headquarters in London.

Pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah militants are featured on British TV almost every evening. The Islamic Republic of Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, maintains a "personal office" in London with twice as many personnel as Iran's official embassy.

The latest "Islamophobia" charges come as Prime Minister Brown has appointed two Muslims to his ministerial team, the first in U.K. history.

The terrorists who tried to kill people in London and Glasgow are the same ones killing people in Baghdad and Karachi. They are the same who killed tens of thousands of Egyptians and perhaps as many as a quarter-million Algerians over the decades. They are motivated not by any religious grievance but by an insatiable appetite for political power. They want to seize control of societies, break them into submission and impose on every individual a mad tyranny of terror in the name of God.

If Islam is the religion of peace, then the real Islamphobes are those who planted the car bombs in London and Glasgow - not the poor Brits who are censoring themselves and curbing their hard-won freedoms in order not to offend "the Muslim community."

[nmap]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Brown hasn't deemed fit to tell it like it is: that Muslims in Britain, indeed all over the world, must come out and condemn terrorism in unambiguous terms.

There seem to be few - very few - among the political leadership of the west who will "tell it like it is". And there is a dearth of Muslims, anywhere, willing to condemn terrorism.

I regret to say that I see no evidence of any change in these trends.

[.]

Today's jihadists: educated, wealthy and bent on killing?
U.K. suspects radicalized in West, researchers say

Craig Offman
National Post


Wednesday, July 04, 2007


The arrests of medical doctors in the plots to kill Brits and Scots en masse might seem a frightening twist in the war on terror, but the development is not surprising, experts say.

For years now, the intelligence community has insisted that al-Qaeda's leadership is well-educated and well-steeped in Western ways. They join the movement for what they see as intellectual, not emotional reasons. They view themselves as concerned humanitarians, not mass murderers.

"Of course they'd want to be involved," said Dr. Marc Sageman, who wrote the landmark study in 2003 on al-Qaeda, Understanding Terror Networks. "Who wouldn't want to do something out of concern for the people?"

In his findings, Dr. Sageman found that 62% of group members had a university education, a percentage that surpasses the United States. These conclusions helped dispel the idea that poverty and ignorance are the main motivators of violent acts of despair.

The vast majority of terrorists, his survey discovered, came from solid middle-class backgrounds; their leadership hailed from the upper middle class.

Some of the doctors under suspicion today, including the Jordanian surgeon Mohammed Jamil Abdelkader Asha, also had well-heeled histories.

"These doctors remind me of the second wave of al-Qaeda leadership," said Dr. Sageman, who delivered testimony to the 9/11 Commission. "They are the best and brightest who went West to study, and they were radicalized there."

British authorities have not officially said whether the suspects are thought to belong to an al-Qaeda-affiliated group or cell, and some security experts have noted the failed attacks in London and Glasgow were not as well planned as other strikes attributed to seasoned terrorists.

Dr. Sageman said the new suspects could simply be a bunch of similar-minded men who met through medical circles.

To many, however, the recent round-up of suspects indicates the continuing resonance of al-Qaeda's message in the affluent parts of the Islamic community and amid professions such as medicine and engineering. "It's the 'Yuppification' of al-Qaeda," said Tarek Fatah, the Toronto-based Muslim political activist and author. "The movement has gone upscale."

Mr. Fatah cited recently thwarted alleged terrorist cells In Toronto: Many of their members came from comfortable backgrounds.

Historically, there is a well-trodden path of well-funded professionals who travelled West and later became violent radicals, beginning with 19th-century Russian anarchists bent on assassinating the Czarist leadership.

Recent examples of physician-turned-terrorists include George Habash, the radical Palestininan who studied pediatrics. Al-Qaeda's Egyptian second-in-command, Ayman Al-Zawahri, is also a doctor.

In May, Florida doctor Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 52, was found guilty of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda by a U.S. federal court.

To most, a doctor who is a terrorist commits a double transgression against humanity, but in the end these are radicals who are driven by a near-Messianic sense of vision.

"What we're seeing tells us that ideology can trump morality, humanity and in this case, the Hippocratic oath," said Brian Michael Jenkins, the counterintelligence expert and author of Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves.

Mr. Jenkins, who is senior advisor at the Washington, D.C., think-tank Rand Corporation, hypothesized that a terrorist doctor's interests transcend his own profession and nation-state, which is dominated by man-made law, not God-given edicts. The doctor would consider himself part of a universal brotherhood, and the plight of Muslims in the world is the concern of all Muslims, says Mr. Jenkins.

"As a physician, part of the appeal is humanitarian," said Mr. Jenkins. "For example, he'd say that the U.S. embargo led by the U.S. that denied Iraqi hospitals medical supplies and equipment led to the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children." Mr. Fatah also says that there is a prestige factor at play as well. "By devoting yourself and your resources to jihad, you are giving your worldly estate to charity. In their mindset it's the equivalent of being Bill Gates."

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/n...e963fb&k=15652

[The Reaper]

Good analysis.

It has reached the point where I am beginning to doubt the existence of any number of moderate Islamics.

As the author indicates, there are extremists and the moderates are deniers and enablers. I wonder about the "reformer" category. Other than a few writers whom Islam has marked for death, where are they?

And worst of all, we appear to be enablers as well, denying that religion has anything to do with it and praising diversity, hiding the motivation of the killers among us as not politically correct to mention. Kind of like avoiding photos or physical descriptions of criminals. Wouldn't want to offend anyone.

TR

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...7-7583,00.html

Irshad Manji: Religion is the root cause of terrorist threat
Why are most of the terror suspects (so far) well-educated medical professionals, not poor and dispossessed types?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 05, 2007

THIS week's arrest of Mohamed Haneef in Brisbane may be more curious for the fact he's a professional lifesaver than for the possibility that he's a terrorist. So far, most of those being investigated in the latest British car bomb plots are, as is Haneef, doctors. The seeming paradox of the privileged seeking to avenge humiliation has many scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, dispossessed and resentful?

September 11 should have stripped us of that breezy simplification. The 19 hijackers came from means. Mohammed Atta, their ringleader, earned an engineering degree. He then moved to the West, opting for postgraduate studies in Germany. No aggrieved goatherder, that one.

In 2003, I interviewed Mohammad al-Hindi, the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

A physician himself, al-Hindi explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. "Suicide is done out of despair," the good doctor diagnosed. "But most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."

In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It's something else. Time and again, that something else has been articulated by the people committing these acts: their religion.

Consider Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who masterminded the July 7, 2005, transport bombings in London. In a taped testimony, Khan railed against British foreign policy. But before bringing up Tony Blair, he emphasised that "Islam is our religion" and "the prophet is our role model". In short, Khan gave priority to God.

Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered Amsterdam filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into van Gogh's body. Knowing that multiple shots would finish off his victim, why didn't Bouyeri stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate van Gogh?

Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is an implement associated with 7th-century tribal conflict. Wielding it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into van Gogh's corpse, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic poetry. Let's credit Bouyeri with honesty: at his trial he proudly acknowledged acting from religious conviction.

Despite integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow up Canada's parliament buildings and behead the Prime Minister.

They called their campaign Operation Badr, a reference to prophet Mohammed's first decisive military triumph, the Battle of Badr. Clearly the Toronto 17 drew inspiration from religious history.

For people with big hearts and goodwill, this must be uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-and-order types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press conference, police boasted about avoiding those words. If the guardians of public safety intended their silence to be a form of sensitivity, they instead accomplished a form of artistry, airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried out under its banner.

They're in fine company: moderate Muslims do the same. Although the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, it is important to start making a more important distinction: between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones.

Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam but deny that Islam has anything to do with it. By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions, effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations. To do so would be admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there.

Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for reinterpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is over.

Reinterpreting doesn't mean rewriting. It means rethinking words and practices that already exist, removing them from a 7th-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a 21st-century pluralistic context. Un-Islamic? God, no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyse and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates and quite possibly more constructive.

This week a former jihadist wrote in a British newspaper that the "real engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology". Months ago, he told me that as a militant he raised most of his war chest from dentists. Islamist violence: it's not just for doctors any more. Tackling Islamist violence: it can't be left to moderates any more.

Irshad Manji is a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. She is creator of the documentary Faith Without Fear and author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in her Faith (Random House, Australia).

[The Reaper]

At least some see the idiocy in all of this Political Correctness.

TR

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...68528361773780

Pussyfooting Around The Terrorists
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 05, 2007 4:20 PM PT

War On Terror: Judging from the political correctness coming from British leaders, one wonders if the threat facing the West is terrorism or racism. You can't win a war if you don't know you're in one or who the enemy is.

Failure to recognize the nature of the war we're in and who the enemy is seems to be a theme of the government of newly instated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In words reminiscent of Bill Clinton's treatment of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, 10 Downing Street seems to think the latest terrorist plot is strictly a law enforcement matter.

As the London Daily Express reports, Brown has instructed his ministers, including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, to avoid using the word "Muslims" in connection with the current crisis. And indeed, in a BBC-TV interview last Sunday Brown did not refer to Muslims or Islam once — not even to say, as is often said here in the U.S., that a great religion of peace had been hijacked once again.

A Brown spokesman has confirmed that the phrase "war on terror" has been dropped, explaining that "there is clearly a need to strike a consensual tone in relation to all communities across the U.K." So, the stirring words of Churchill, Thatcher and Blair in moments of crisis have been officially replaced with Rodney King's famous lamentation, "Can't we all just get along?"

Smith has said that "terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions." Which is certainly true. But the latest attacks, like the London subway bombings, are not random cases of arson and violence, but part of an Islamofascist war on the West that rages from Bali to Amman to Madrid to London to New York.

In responding to Smith's words, Tory backbencher Philip Davies wondered, "What purpose is served by this? I don't think we need pussyfoot around when talking about terrorism." As one reader asked on the Daily Express' Web site, "Well, if they aren't Muslims, what the hell are they? They sure aren't Methodists or Quakers."

It is true that not all Muslims are terrorists, nor should all be under suspicion. It's also true that, save for the occasional convert, most terrorists have been young Muslim males of Middle Eastern or Asian descent. To some, this is profiling. In police work, it's called a description of the suspects.

That description has changed slightly with the advent of the so-called "homegrown" terrorist. With the Fort Dix Six and the current crop of deadly doctors, they could be anybody anywhere, even respected and trusted medical professionals. The one common thread, though, is a dedication to Islamofascism not likely to be found among, say, Anglicans.

London played host to the infamous Finsbury Mosque. It was the spiritual home for "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid and al-Qaida trainee Feroz Abassi, the man who allegedly plotted to blow up the U.S. Embassy in France. A belated police raid found it stocked with chemical weapons gear, as if the mosque was planning to live through a chemical attack.

Scotland Yard has reported that the London subway bombers regularly heard sermons by radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, the former imam of the Finsbury mosque. He regularly preached the legitimacy of "martyrdom operations" against infidels.

Recently the European Union, agreeing that not all Muslims were terrorists, at least decided to find out which ones were. In May, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini announced the EU would be monitoring mosques. Italian Interior Minister Guilliano Arnato said Europe had evidence of the "misuse of mosques, which instead of being places of worship, are used for other ends."

They have been used by groups like Al Muhajiroun ("the immigrants"), which celebrated 9/11 as "A Towering Day in History" and whose leader had ties to Osama bin Laden. It operated freely post-9/11. Its spokesman, Anjem Choudry, proclaimed, "One day the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street."

If Islam is a religion of peace and Muslims are as likely as anyone else to be victims, then they need to decide whether it's worse to be offended or dead, and oppose — as well as expose — those among them who support murder and terror. We should be free to look for them, even in a mosque.

[The Reaper]

ISLAM'S PROBLEM
WE MUST STOP DENYING OUR RELIGION'S ROLE IN VIOLENCE
By IRSHAD MANJI

July 8, 2007 -- LAST week, two very different Brits had their say about the latest terrorist plots in their country. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the nation that "we have got to separate those great moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practice violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their religion." By contrast, a former jihadist from Manchester wrote that the "real engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology."

Months ago, this young man informed me that as a militant he raised most of his war chest not from obscenely rich Saudis, but from middle-class Muslim dentists living in the United Kingdom. There's sobering lesson here for the new prime minister.

So far, those arrested in connection to the car bombs are, by and large, medical professionals. The seeming paradox of the privileged seeking to avenge grievance has many champions of compassion scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, disenfranchised, and resentful about both?

WE should have been stripped of that breezy simplification by now. The 9/11 hijackers came from means. Mohamed Atta, their ringleader, earned an engineering degree. He then moved to the West, pursuing his post-graduate studies in Germany. No servile goat-herder, that one.

In 2003, I interviewed Mohammad Al Hindi, the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. A physician himself, Dr. Al Hindi explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. "Suicide is done out of despair," the good doctor diagnosed. "But most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."

In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It's something else. And, time and again, the very people committing these acts have articulated what that something else is: their religion.

CONSIDER Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who master minded the July 7, 2005 transit bombings in London.

In a taped testimony, Khan railed against British foreign policy. But before bringing up Western imperialism, he emphasized that "Islam is our religion" and "the Prophet is our role model." Khan gave priority to God, not to Iraq.

Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered Amsterdam film director Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into van Gogh's body. Knowing that multiple shots would finish off his victim, why didn't Bouyeri stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate van Gogh?

Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is an implement associated with 7th-century tribal conflict. Wielding it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into van Gogh's corpse, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic poetry.

Let's credit Bouyeri with honesty: At his trial he proudly acknowledged acting from "religious conviction."

DESPITE integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow up Canada's parliament buildings and behead the prime minister. They called their campaign "Operation Badr," a reference to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military triumph achieved by the Prophet Mohammed. Clearly, the Toronto 17 drew inspiration from religious history.

For people with big hearts and good will, this has to be uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-and-order types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press conference, police boasted about avoiding those words.

If the guardians of public safety intended their silence to be a form of sensitivity, they instead accomplished a form of artistry, airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried out under its banner.

THEY'RE in fine company: Moderate Muslims do the same.

While the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, a more important distinction must start being made - the distinction between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones. Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam - but deny that Islam has anything to do with it.

By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions - effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations.

To do so would be admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there.

Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for re-interpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is over. Re-interpreting doesn't mean re-writing. It means re-thinking words and practices that already exist - removing them from a seventh-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a twenty first-century pluralistic context.

Un-Islamic? God no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyze, and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates, and quite possibly more constructive.