What Are the Battlelines?

by Daniel Pipes
Apr 8, 2002

https://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2002/04/what-are-the-battlelines

In the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda assault against the United States on September 11, the two sides' leaders delivered diametrically opposite messages.

Al-Qaeda's chieftains spoke in starkly religious terms, calling Americans "infidels," "Crusaders and Zionists," and the enemies of God.

In contrast, President George W. Bush and other spokesmen went out of their way not to characterize the enemy in religious terms. They are "barbaric criminals who profane a great religion by committing murder in its name." Bush called them "the evildoers" or "the evil ones." Evildoers in turn he defined as "people that have no country" or "people that may try to take a country, parasites that may try to leech onto a host country."[1] At other times, they are merely a people "motivated by hate."[2] In addition, the American leadership consistently praised Islam and Muslims.

In other words, Al-Qaeda spokesmen insisted on the religious dimension of the conflict equally as much as American politicians rejected it.

As for me, I say neither is right: It's not Muslims vs. infidels nor evildoers vs. good people. It's Islamists vs. non-Islamists. (April 8, 2002)

[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011021-3.html

[2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011017-20.html

Related Topics: Radical Islam, US policy, War on terror

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