Saturday July 9, 2005

I've Been Thinking:

In interviews surrounding the London bombing, one of the questions most often put before me was this: "What motivated the bombings?"
My answer: The terrorists really want to impact the world on two levels.

Level One: To remove Western influences from Muslim and Arab lands.
Level Two: To Islamify the world.
Two methods to achieve the same goal: Making the world totally Muslim.

The question itself bothers me.
Why? Because the underlying assumption is that we, non-Muslims, Westerners, did something wrong to bring this awful terror upon ourselves, that we need to right our wrong, and that because we cannot burden the cost - emotionally, spiritually, physically and financially - we must do whatever it takes to make it all just go away.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
We did nothing.
We cannot make it right.
It will cost us lives and emotion and money until we rip terror out at its very roots. Until Muslims join us in the fight against terror.

50 years of US foreign policy and the foreign policy of our allies is not to blame for the situation. That is what the terrorists claim.