Today, on the anniversary of 9/11, I wanted to share an essay written by the Egyptian author Ali Salem on the terrorists involved in the attacks, and the cultural currents that spawned them. As you read, remember that Salem writes in a land where those who speak out against Islamist violence, become targets of that violence themselves. Taking up his pen in opposition to the nihilistic death cult that is Al Qaeda was thus an act of supreme moral courage. In a manner of speaking, Salem, and others like him in the Arab world, have donned the Shirt of Nessus, for “a man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.” Sadly too many people of good will, in places like Egypt, have established their moral worth (such as, by way of example, Farag Foda).
Also sadly, we in America hear but little of Arabs, like Ali Salem, who have raised their voices in opposition to Al Qaeda. I am speaking of people like Aziz Al-Hajj from Iraq, who has condemned a cause “that uses children like kerosene for igniting a total war of destruction in the name of national and religious liberty,” Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, Sawsan Al-Sha’er, and many others.
An Apology From An Arab, by Ali Salem
As an Egyptian, I find myself compelled to apologize to the American people for what happened to them on Sept. 11. I apologize because one of those involved in that horrible disaster was Egyptian. As a man of letters, I declare myself innocent of having any part in the creation of the culture that spawned these individuals.
A long time before New York City’s Twin Towers were destroyed, many towers in my country were brought down by this same brand of perpetrators. They killed President Anwar Sadat, who initiated peace with Israel and liberalism in Egypt; they killed the Egyptian writer Farag Fouda, a defender of freedom and secularism; they stabbed our Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz, when he was 82 years old, after discovering that 30 years earlier he had written a novel they considered the work of an infidel. They said they had not read the novel. Who told them it was sacrilegious? Someone living in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, or sitting in a London café or a mosque in New Jersey, told them so. In Egypt alone, these fundamentalists have killed more than 1,000 policemen and ordinary citizens, Christian and Muslim alike. In one of the most beautiful places on earth, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor, they slaughtered nearly 60 tourists in 1997. In Algeria their sickles endlessly harvest the souls of the poor and helpless. They have committed all these crimes with the purpose of establishing the kingdom of God on earth and have succeeded only in turning our lives into hell.
In my country, art, education and the economy have all been leveled to a ground zero. I’m convinced, though, that the problem we face is not religious but political. And so it will never be solved with a religious summit. If you hold a meeting of Muslim sheiks, Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis, they inevitably come out with blissful smiles and report that they have found their values to be mostly identical, and they are right.
Extremism may claim God as its redeemer, but it’s really the selfish product of lunacy. In America, the most free and modern nation of our time, you see it too. You saw it with Jim Jones, who told his flock in Guyana to follow him into death by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, and you saw it when David Koresh created his own small hell in Waco, Texas.
In my part of the world, the Arab Middle East, a great tragedy results from our governments’ well-intentioned attempts to cure society of extremism through education. These leaders, however, don’t teach what they should to produce the values they want. They seek moderation and enforce piety. They seek citizens who value life, yet their school curriculums exalt the value of science and ignore philosophy and history and the liberal, humanistic values they embody. That is why those who excel in such a system are no less immune to the call of extremism.
Our governments assume that people need to understand Islam in its purest form to stay religiously moderate. The result is the mass production of true believers, not good citizens. Because people initially welcome the imposed piety but then gradually realize it doesn’t equip them to meet the challenges of getting through life, life becomes a morbid burden. To shake off this burden, some of them, usually young men, can’t wait for natural death and decide instead to take a short cut to heaven.
Before ascending, they must have a cause that’s canonized by their community—the greatest cause on earth, capable of justifying their sacrifice in the eyes of their kin. It’s not enough to die fighting for their country; they must be fighting for God. Once they have secured that cause, they search for a way to ennoble it in the eyes of ordinary people who do not share their holy delusion but whose admiration they crave. They know that most people respect logic and reason. So they go looking for a nationalistic cause: this is what Osama bin Laden did when he claimed the Palestinian cause as a justification for the destruction of Sept. 11.
But beneath their claims is a sadder truth: these extremists are pathologically jealous. They feel like dwarfs, which is why they search for towers and all those who tower mightily. We must admit that we failed to teach these people that life is worth living. These extremists exist now, and will exist forever, so the question before us must be, How can we defend both our lives and theirs? We in the Arab world love freedom and want the chance at a decent life. We are not different from you, as it sometimes seems. We may be just temporarily backward. Working together, our governments must decide how, with what culture and by what actions, they will combat the influence of those who hate life.
May America always tower mightily and be a beacon of hope to the world. May all people of good will throughout the world come together in unity to defeat those who hate life. On a day of obscene violence done in God’s name, may we remember that, in truth, we are all brothers and sisters under the same God.
Resolute Determination 