Each September 11th will always remind us that our conflict with Islam has yet to be resolved. 

On 9/11, I was working in midtown-Manhattan when the planes struck in lower-Manhattan.  I recall a comment I made at the time to a colleague that the disaster was caused by a failure of diplomacy.  I was thinking of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our frustrating quest for a 2-state solution.  Indeed, Osama Bin Laden was obsessed by that festering sore, but his immediate aim was to expel American troops from Saudi Arabia.  Our military presence there stemmed from President George H.W. Bush’s war to free Kuwait from Iraqi aggression.  Bin Laden, a Saudi, saw the “infidel” presence near Islam’s holiest of cities Mecca and Medina as worse aggression than Muslim Iraq occupying Muslim Kuwait  It all goes back to the Crusades – which were about Jerusalem, not Mecca or Medina – a trauma that has given radical Islam PTSD ever since.

As defenders of Western Civilization we have battled Islam since its birth.  Unlike Christianity, whose founder preached human brotherhood, Islam came out swinging – conflict and intolerance are enshrined in its dogma.  No matter if the vast majority of Muslims are normal people, there is a core of fanatics who use terror to dominate the rest.  Just think of our own European experience with the Inquisition and medieval orthodoxy.  We were fortunate in having a Greco-Roman foundation of tolerance and free-thought before Peter & Paul brought us monotheism.  Without that foundation, Islam would have swept us into its maelstrom during its centuries-long (A.D. 711 – 1683) invasions of Europe.

So, what will it take to satisfy Islamic terrorists?  We could start by removing every American/European soldier from all Muslim countries.  Remember when President Reagan sent peacekeepers to Lebanon in 1982?  We lost 241 servicemen when terrorists blew up their barracks.  Reagan pulled out and things settled down.  That is until 1991 and Kuwait.  When our first troops landed in Saudi Arabia to strike at Kuwait, Israel was no longer the Great Satan – we were.  In 1993, radical Islam sent its first message, the bombing of the World Trade Center; and the messages kept coming – the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and then the U.S.S Cole – culminating in 9/11.  Kuwait started it all.

But, pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia or any Muslim country is not enough to placate the fanatics.  Western culture – its graven images, its women’s liberation, its religious freedom, its free thought, and everything else that we and moderate Muslims embrace – is also an existential threat to 7th Century Islam.  Many of the 19 suicide hijackers on 9/11 lived the good life in the United States before their murderous flights.  One team rented a porn movie in a Boston hotel, according to the FBI.  Hijackers shaved off all of their body hair to prepare for their martyrdom (hotel maids found copious hair in sinks and tubs).  A list in Arabic was found to remind the fanatics to man-scape before meeting their virgins in Paradise, “because the angels will ask for your forgiveness as long as you are in a state of ablution, and will pray for you.”

No outside force freed medieval Europe from religious dogma. Our liberation came from within. It took many lifetimes to restore our Greco-Roman legacy with a Renaissance, and then the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) that killed millions of Protestants and Catholics to settle our internal Christian hatreds.  Islam, too, cannot change from without. 

It will be necessary for Islam to solve the problem of violence by fanatics.  How do you change a society when you are threatened with death at every utterance?  Many American liberals condemn dictatorships in Muslim countries, but fear works both ways.  Even fanatics can be intimidated.  Which has the best chance of reforming: a secular dictatorship like Egypt or an Islamic state like Iran?  Then, there is the problem of how to reform religious education for Muslim children – a wellspring of fanaticism.  The challenges facing moderate Muslims are daunting.

With a vast exodus of Muslims from the Islamic World to Europe and America, what will our future hold?  We already see our Western history being tailored to the requirements of minority “victimhood”.  In this regard, some politicians and educators don’t see a need to identify the 9/11 terrorists as Arabs or Muslims.

Will the brutal side of Islamic history be expunged someday? -JLM