[size=4]The Silent Imams[/size=4]
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A43
President Bush visits the main Washington mosque and declares Islam a religion of peace. He urges Americans to publicly accompany and protect "women of cover" -- Islamic faithful wearing the shawl. He encourages American schoolchildren to find a Muslim pen pal.
On Monday, he held the first White House Ramadan dinner -- "a way for the administration to publicly make the case that it is sensitive to Muslims." (CNN) Indeed, the administration has put together an entire "Ramadan public relations offensive" to "highlight its sensitivity to Islamic tradition." (Washington Post)
Now, it is one thing for the president to affirm American religious tolerance and speak out sternly against anti-Muslim prejudice, as he did early and often after Sept. 11. That is honorable and very American. And in fact, one can only be astonished how few acts of anti-Islamic bigotry -- and how many acts of sympathetic understanding -- have occurred in a nation driven to grief and fury by a monstrous mass murder.
But it is quite another thing to protest so much that, yes, we do respect Islam. Why the doubt? [b]No country on earth has been more welcoming to Muslim immigrants. Which is precisely why the Sept. 11 terrorists could spend a year and a half in America going about their murderous business unmolested[/b].
And why must we constantly repeat that we are not at war with Islam? [b]We never declared war on Islam[/b]. It was Islamic fanatics who, killing 4,000 Americans in the name of God, declared war on us. Why, then, are we the ones required to continually demonstrate our religious tolerance and respect for others? Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the Islamic world, of those in whose name this crime was perpetrated?
Imagine if 19 murderous Christian fundamentalists hijacked four airplanes over Saudi Arabia and, in the name of God, crashed them into the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, destroying the holy Kaaba and killing thousands of innocent Muslim pilgrims. Could anyone doubt that the entire Christian world -- clergy and theologians, leaders and lay folk -- would rise as one to denounce the act? Yankee Stadium could not hold the trainloads of priests and preachers, reverends and rectors -- why, even rabbis would demand entry -- that would descend upon a mass service of atonement, shame, ostracism and excommunication. The pope himself would rend his garments at this blasphemous betrayal of Christ.
[b]And yet after Sept. 11, where were the Muslim theologians and clergy, the imams and mullahs, rising around the world to declare that Sept. 11 was a crime against Islam? Where were the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? The voices of high religious authority have been scandalously still.[/b]
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