Finally time to ask the ultimate taboo question?

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Nov 9, 2009 at 20:18

During WW II, I'm not aware that there was a single terrorist act by any Japanese citizen of the US either before or after the flagrant injustice of their being taken from their homes and interned as security risks.

Today we have the exact opposite problem of even tough-minded generals succumbing to what Pipes' quotes as "unforgivable political correctness" in forbidding ourselves from even considering whether mass murderer Hasan at Fort Hood was acting according to a widespread Islamic belief of what it means to be a good Moslem.

On the Sunday news shows I listened to Jack Reed (D) and Lindsay Graham (R) engage in the completely bipartisan act of agreeing that we must not even consider Hasan's act as being due to his Islamic beliefs, except possibly that he might have been following extremists who had "hijacked" the "real" Islam.

Is it ever going to be time to ask whether there is something inherent in the doctrines of Islam and the personal psychology displayed by its founder that seduces and lures a minority of its believers, especially susceptible young men, to embrace and become addicted to violence? And, as Hasan put it according to one witness, come to believe that it is "noble" to engage in homicidal and suicidal attacks against unarmed persons of all ages and both sexes?

Put another way, is it possible that we've had it backwards for many years now, and especially since 9/11 - that instead of concluding that Islam is a peaceful religion which has been "hijacked" by rogue imams, mullahs, and other 'bad apples' like bin Laden, what is really going on is that Islam has inherently violent doctrines at its core, but that most Moslems are better than these doctrines and practice their religion as if these doctrines do not exist? If this is so, is it safe for us and our soldiers, and ultimately for them, to go on respecting their denial, and indulging our own, regarding an unfortunate but inescapable truth of their religion?

To consider an analogy, how do you think the Cold War would have turned out if we had confronted and opposed the Soviet Union and their captive nations without our leaders once, over 45 years, ever having said anything critical about its animating ideology, Communism?

Is it therefore time, at long last, to ask the ultimate taboo question in our contest with (Islam's) terrorism?

Ron Thompson

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