That image is from Richard Dawkins’ website. It’s offensive, but sometimes you should be offensive. I’m writing this blog post on 9-11. For me, all the bad parts of the war happened long after 9-11. The bombs in Nuweiba, in Dahab, in Najaf, each killing people I knew – those happened years later. But still this is the day that matters most and the day that you think about those other bad days.
People I meet don’t seem to appreciate the real importance of this day – that today, 9-11, was the start of a war. They treat it like a volcano, or a hurricane. But it is a war, and its perpetrators are our enemy.The chief proponents of the war haven’t been good at explaining this. They have fallen prey to a faith-based blindness. To put it in their terms, the problem of the proponents is that ‘they hate the sinner but love the sin’.
Here is the Ur example of this. President Bush in September of 2001:
The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. [source]
Is that true?
Think about it this way: imagine that a group of violent terrorists were murdering their way through China with goal of restoring Tibet to the Dalai Lama. They bomb civilians and murder politicians. Do you support their methods? Hopefully, no. Do you support their goal of a free Tibet? Hopefully, yes. The terrorists in this case have a just goal – is it moral to oppose them because of their tactics?
Put another way, does opposing the British tactic of area bombing German cities in World War II make you a Nazi? Or can you oppose the tactics while still praying for a British victory?
Here are some illuminating numbers, coming from a poll of the Islamic world earlier this year:
Between 64% and 94% of the Islamic world wants our values to fail. And between 49% and 79% of Muslims share Al Qaeda’s goal of Islamic law ruling over a global Muslim nation.
So what does that mean? Look at the numbers, if you are a Muslim man in Nablus, who do you want to win? America and its western judeo-Christian values, or Al Qaeda and its Islamic values and sharia law?
So why ‘white-wash’ it? Why deny that our enemy is fundamentalist Islam?
Well, start with the assumption that believing in a magic space man makes you moral and see where that leads you:
1. Al Qaeda is evil.
2. Believing in God makes you good.
3. Al Qaeda believe in God.
4. But Al Qaeda is evil…
A little cognitive dissonance later and you end up with stupid phrases like “War on Terror”, and the myth of a hijacked Islam. By refusing to name our true enemy, we end up fighting the wrong war. I understand why a Christian would do this, but I have no idea why an atheist would.
I’m an atheist, so I won’t, I’ll state it plainly right here: fundamentalist Islam is my enemy.
Islam like Christianity and Judaism are wrong and are – in large parts – morally repugnant. Unlike, Christianity and Judaism though, fundamentalist Islam is actively trying to kill me and people like me around the world. If I were a politician, now would be the time that I went out to find an Imam who would claim to stand up for me while sharing the misogyny and irrationality of my would-be assassin.
But I’m not a politician yet, so instead let me introduce you to Ehsan Jami. Ehsan is the key to how we should fight this war. He is an apostate ex-Muslim. Today he is launching a campaign to spread apostasy. This is something we all should support. Between Al Qaeda and the West, an apostate has only one choice – and that is the West.
And this is the real war – the war to spread apostasy and divide the people of the Muslim nations from their corrupted faith. To do this our soldiers should not just guard Mosques in Baghdad, but should also guard apostates in Kabul and in Ehsan Jami’s home of Amsterdam.
On this 9-11 I hope that some leader of the West, any of them would come out and admit it – that this war isn’t against a fringe, but against a whole faith. Bombing terrorist camps won’t win this for us [though we should keep bombing them], defending apostates like Ayan Hirsi Ali, Ehsan Jami, and Ibn Warraq will.
So before I close, let me summarize to avoid confusion:
- 9-11 was the start of a war
- Our leaders refused to correctly identify who this war was against
- They did this because of their own religious faith
- Our war is against fundamentalist Islam
- Fighting Muslims is a waste, it’s immoral and we can’t win that way
- Yes, continue to battle terrorists in their camps, but…
- The only way we will really ‘win’ this war, is if we can spread apostasy and weaken fundamentalist Islam so that it is not a threat.
For more on this, read Ibn Warraq here.
