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Holy City? Give me a break!

by alan Caruba

august 19, 2004

What if I were to invite you to visit the "holy city" of San Diego, named after a saint? So was St. augustine, Florida. Providence, Rhode Island references God’s grace. There is hardly a major city where one cannot find an impressive cathedral or other religious structure. From one end of america to another, you can find "holy cities", but while they honor religious figures or ideals, they do not claim to be "sacred" ground.

So what makes Iraq’s Najaf a "holy city" other than the fact that there is a big mosque there? What, for that matter, makes every grain of sand in Saudi arabia "sacred"? Or makes Mecca and Medina more sacred than cities that preceded both by well over two thousand years, Jerusalem and Vatican City in the midst of Rome? Other than pure arrogance, what gives Islam the right to claim Jerusalem as an Islamic holy city when Muhammad never physically stepped foot there, nor anywhere else outside of arabia?

Returning to Najaf, the home base of Muqtada al-Sadr, the renegade Shi’ite mullah, just how holy is a mosque when it serves as a place to store weapons and plan military operations against an interim government? So I suggest that the time to give him five minutes to get out of town or watch his mosque turned into a parking lot has arrived.

This is likely to make a lot of arabs angry at the Big Bad United States of america, but frankly these people don’t need any excuse to dislike us. I get a lot of email from people in the Middle East who don’t like what I have to say about Islam. One universal theme runs through virtually all these communications and it is that the United States and Israel are responsible for the "oppression" in their nations, not the monarchs and despots that run those nations.

It is the U.S., they contend, that supports these dictators and, therefore, is to be blamed for their actions. as for Israel, it is responsible for everything that is wrong with their lives. By contrast, militant and even peaceful Muslims are never to blame for anything.

In the past, I have tried to reply reasonably that the United States has not only suffered attacks on its homeland, but also a long succession of attacks going back to the seizing of its diplomats in Iran in 1979, the bombing of Marines in Lebanon, the attack of the USS Cole, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. all by Muslims. It was Muslims who blew up trains in Spain, a nightclub in Bali, synagogues in Turkey and argentina, foreign compounds in Riyadh, and let’s not forget those US embassies in two african nations.

For good measure, I tried to point out that our military has gone in harm’s way to defend and protect Muslims in Kuwait, in Somalia, in Bosnia, and against the Taliban in afghanistan. Now it is engaged in the liberation of 25 million Muslims in Iraq, setting them on the path of democracy and freedom.

None of this, I assure you, has the least affect on the thinking of my correspondents, nor, I suspect, on any of the other millions of totally ungrateful slaves of the despotic governments of Saudi arabia, Egypt, Syria, algeria, Libya, the Sudan, and other nations where Islam plays a significant role in governance or whose militants are engaged in insurrections to become the government. In Islam, there is no separation of church and state.

Islam so suffuses the lives of Muslims throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, they are utterly blind and indifferent to the fact that it has consigned them to backwardness, poverty, and the mercy of whoever is in charge. There is little hope for the individual Middle Eastern Muslim, even if he is an educated member of the middle class. That is why most of the 9-11 hijackers came from this segment of Saudi arabian society. That is why Osama bin Laden, who came from a Saudi family of great wealth, uses Islam to advance his self-glorification and evil agenda. and right now, the Saudis have launched a public relations campaign to tell us what good friends of ours they are. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

So here come the americans with our military power and these morons sit in front of their television sets listening to and watching al Jezeera tell them over and over again that their sacred lands or holy cities are being destroyed by us simply because we want their oil. Yes, we want their oil. We are paying $44 a barrel for it right now! Has the money gained from its purchase in the past done anything to benefit the individual Muslim? Has it built a decent infrastructure or educational system in any of these places?

I suggest we americans get over the notion that we are "creating" Islamic enemies. Just as the nation of Israel was born surrounded with Islamic enemies and has battled them for over a half century, the only thing the United States can do is kill our enemies and liberate the rest who must be dragged into the 21^st century and connected to the rest of the world before they destroy us in the name of allah.