Dale K. Robinson
September 11, 2005
In his poignant song, Alan Jackson asked “Where were you when the world stopped turning?”
I was getting ready for work. I had just turned to Fox News as I finished getting dressed to watch smoke billowing from the New York skyline as the news anchors discussed the unbelievable – an airliner had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. And as I watched, another airliner suddenly appeared and flew into the second tower. One might have been an accident. Two meant it was done on purpose.
I was on my way to work when my wife called to say the first tower had collapsed. Then the second went down and initial reports said that nearly 30,000 people may have died. Indeed, it seemed as if the world had stopped turning that day. September 11, 2001.
Singer-songwriter Daryl Worley asked “Have you forgotten how it felt that day to see your homeland under fire … Have you forgotten when those towers fell?”
I haven’t forgotten, although it seems some have. Others would like to bury their heads in the sand and ignore it. And some of our own want to us to blame ourselves for the evil that has been visited upon us. But Pogo was wrong – the enemy is not us.
Our enemies are radical Muslims who follow the beliefs of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian sent to the United States to study American education institutions in the late 1940s. He earned a master’s degree from the Colorado State College of Education in 1950.
Qutb was offended by the racism he observed and experienced in post-war America. He was scandalized by the openness between the sexes in our society and considered us “uncivilized” and “backward.”
Qutb wrote: “… if woman is freed from her basic responsibility of bringing up children; and if, on her own or under social demand, she prefers to become a hostess or a stewardess in a hotel or ship or air company, thus using her ability for material productivity rather than the training of human beings, because material production is considered to be more important, more valuable and more honourable than the development of human character, then such a civilisation is 'backward' from the human point of view, or 'jahili' in Islamic terminology.”
Qutb also wrote: “Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice, not because of the danger of complete annihilation which is hanging over its head - this being just a symptom and not the real disease - but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress. Even the Western world realizes that Western civilization is unable to present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind. It knows that it does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence...
“It is essential for mankind to have a new leadership...
“It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which positive and constructive, and which is practicable.
“Islam is the only system which possesses these values and this way of life.”
This is what the followers of Qutb believe – Mohammed Atta, al Zawahiri, al Zarqawi, bin Laden. They also believe, as Qutb did, that the only way to redeem the West from our “barbarism and depravity” is to convert or kill the unbelievers, including Muslims who aren’t “Muslim-enough” to suit them. These men are the “new leadership” he declares mankind needs.
They point to the “oppression” of the Palestinians, the “theft” of Arab oil, and the “godlessness” of Western civilization to recruit new followers. They blame the West for all that is wrong in the Arab world. They call us “crusaders,” a word that inflames Muslims, but one which means little to us today. Some 800 – 1000 years ago, Europe went to war against the Muslims in a “crusade” to take back the Holy Lands. Those wars have been over for centuries, yet our enemies are still fighting them and actively recruiting new soldiers all the time.
How do we combat this enemy? We have to attack him directly, of course, take the combat back to him, as we did in Afghanistan. More importantly, we have to change the mindset of the people they would recruit.
And that is what we are attempting to do in Iraq today. We are giving these people something better to live for than dying for an extreme form of Islam. It is slow going, it has cost nearly 2,000 American lives, many more Iraqi lives, and more will die yet.
But it is working – eight million Iraqis went to the polls last January to vote in an election that did not have a predetermined outcome. Iraqis are struggling with a constitution just two years after the fall of Saddam (it took our nation more than a decade to get our constituition after we declared independence!)
Perhaps more importantly, public opinion in Iraq has turned against the Islamic extremists. We are changing the hearts and minds of a large portion of the Muslim world. That’s a good thing.
And worth remembering.