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ished.Moreover, if you strike at the perpetrators of the Bombay protests and their supporters, you will simply extend and enlarge the cycle of violence. Your bombs will no doubt injure some innocent children and civilians alongside any terrorist activists you strike, and that will simply enrage the rest of the world and make the victims seek revenge. Your bombing these militants and activists will cause them to hate the Hindus and drive the separatists to embrace terrorism. Moreover, if you refuse to negotiate with the Moslem separatists, then their leader will be toppled and a really violent militant and fanatic will take his place. In that case you will have lost the window of opportunity to make peace. Begin by declaring a unilateral ceasefire!
Mister Prime Minister, Blessed is the peace-maker. Remember Mohatma Gandhi but not Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi. The entire world will support you and congratulate you if you respond to these horrific attacks by disarming India and opening dialogue with the terror activists. All we are saying is give peace a chance. Yitzhak Rabin would have approved. Yes, chaver, what you need is shalom, salaam, peace. You will be cheered and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into the gutter of violence. Violence never achieves anything. History is no lesson. History is the dead past.
End the cycle of violence. Show restraint. Forego the juvenile impulse to avenge. Follow my example!! Provide the Bombay bombers with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles so that they can battle against the true radicals and fanatics. And they will do so with no ACLU nor Supreme Court to restrain them. Demonstrate your humanity by paying pensions to any widows and orphans of the terrorist who blew up the cars.
Mr. Prime Minister, the proof is in the pudding. My own peace policies have eliminated war and bloodshed and terror from the Middle East. We no longer have terrorists to deal with in the Levant, only peace partners. If you follow in my footsteps you can achieve the same lofty goals.
Peacefully yours,
Shimon Peres, Peacemaker-at-Large
Steven Plaut drafted this letter on behalf of Mr. Peres.
Celebratory announcements on July 10, 2003 of a "return of Islam to Spain" marked the completion of the new Granada Mosque. Unfortunately, at a conference entitled, "Islam in Europe" that accompanied the opening of the mosque, some alarming statements were made by European Muslim leaders. For example, the BBC reports (July 12) that the keynote speaker at this conference, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim leader, implored Muslims to cause an economic collapse of Western economies (by switching to gold dinars, and ceasing to use Western currencies), while the German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger told attendees not to adapt their Islamic religious practices to accommodate European (i.e., Western Enlightenment ?) values.
Although a Wall Street Journal editorialist (July 18) chastised Spanish authorities for their apparent lack of "influence or knowledge regarding the new mosque's direction," the author of this op-ed then undermined the sound factual basis for his concerns with a romanticized, ahistorical synopsis of Muslim Spain, noting what he termed the "pan-confessional humanism" of Andalusian Islam, and even asserting "one could argue that the oft-bewailed missing 'reformation' of Islam was underway there until it was aborted by the Inquisition." In her 2002 hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, Maria Rosa Menocal, Yale Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, claimed, "The new Islamic polity not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Qur'anic mandate, by and large protected them." I maintain that reiterating these sorts of historically inaccurate to wildly exaggerated claims regarding Muslim Spain abets the contemporary Islamist agenda, and retards the evolution of a liberal, reformed "Euro-Islam" fully compatible with post-Enlightenment Western values.
Jihad conquests were pursued century after century, from the Indian subcontinent to the Iberian peninsula, because jihad, which means "to strive in the path of Allah," embodied an ideology and a jurisdiction. The basic pattern of the jihad war is captured in the great Muslim historian al-Tabari's recording of the recommendation given by Umar b. al-Khattab to the commander of the troops he sent to al-Basrah (636 C.E.) during the conquest of Iraq. Umar (the second "Rightly Guided Caliph") reportedly said:
"Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it from them, [This is to say, accept their conversion as genuine and refrain from fighting them] but those who refuse must pay the poll tax out of humiliation and lowliness. (Qur'an 9:29) If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what you have been entrusted."
Jihad was formally conceived by Muslim jurisconsults and theologians from the 8th to 9th centuries onward, based on their interpretation of Qur'anic verses (e.g., 9:5,6; 9:29; 4:76-79; 2: 214-15; 8:39-42), and long chapters in the Traditions (i.e., hadith, acts and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, especially those recorded by al-Bukhari [d. 869] and Muslim [d. 874]).
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October 2003 - 7 - Outpost