Last Friday’s Chicago Tribune had a debate on whether President Bush should have used the phrase "Islamic fascists" to describe the people who we are fighting. Victor Davis Hanson said yes. Azam Nizamuddin said no.
Mr. Nizamuddin stated several reasons for not using this term: it is profiling, it is bigotry (i.e., Islamophobia), it is like those who refused to condemn anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s, etc. Of all of his reasons, the one that made me think the most was that his ten-year old son, upon hearing President Bush say the United States "is at war with Islamic fascists," asked whether that meant they would be targeted?
While a simple and honest answer would have been, "Of course not, he is not talking about us, he is talking about the evil people who fly airplanes into buildings and blow up subway trains in Spain and England," Mr. Nizamuddin does not say what he told his son.
Mr. Nizamuddin says President Bush could have and should have used a different phase to describe these people. The fact is, however, that the people who attacked us, at the World Trade Center, the USS Cole and our embassies in East Africa, were Muslim, and they attacked us in the name of Islam. The phrase "Islamic fascists" is, unfortunately, accurate
If this seems to put an unfair burden on peace-loving Muslims, it is not President Bush who is putting this burden on them. It is those Muslims who are killing innocent people in the name of Islam who are doing it. If Mr. Nizamuddin wants to complain, his complaints should be directed to al-Qaeda and those others who are planning even today to kill more innocent people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, in the name of Islam.
Not all Germans were Nazis, but Germany (first West Germany and now united Germany) understood that it needed to atone. Both Catholics and Protestants had roles to play in ending the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
The problem of these terrible people is not that of peace-loving Muslims alone. It is something we must all fight together. But as long as these people kill in the name of Islam, peace-loving believers of Islam will have an extra role to play in stopping these evil people from misusing and abusing the name of their religion.
And if Mr. Nizamuddin wants to complain this is unfair, I would ask him where the fairness was for the almost 3000 people who died on September 11, 2001.
They can also be referred to as "Islamofascists".
Posted by: Jennie | September 12, 2006 at 01:09 PM