Their "Saviour" is no doubt, as they say, "spinning in his grave" or just angry up there sitting on the right hand of his Father
Sunday, January 31, 2010
How violence begets violence
I have just read a disturbing article in this Sunday NY Times magazin The Jihadist Next Door, about the son of a Syrian immigrant, Omar Hammami, who went from normal American life (such as it is, he was raised as a Southern Baptist and Muslim at the same time!) in Alabama, to being a violent jihadist in Somali.
As a young idealist high school and college student he began a process of finding his spiritual niche, at first somewhat of a militant some time after 9/11 when he is quoted as saying:
Soon after, the hijackers struck on 9/11, and local reporters began calling Hammami for comment. Publicly, he struck a measured tone, telling the school paper, “It’s difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this.”But he was caught off guard by the attacks and felt insufficiently knowledgeable about Islam, friends recalled.
but then he got involved with the American Salafi movement and became more involved with Islam meeting a convert named Sylvester. This branch of the Salafi were not violent:
Several of Sylvester’s students said in interviews that he subscribed to a nonviolent school, one that represented the majority of American Salafis. They tend to believe that Muslims should remain politically disengaged and take up arms only when called to duty in a Muslim-governed country; anything else represents rebellion against the government, which violates Islamic law.But he struggled with finding his identity and at one time embraced some militant thinking, and then with further study of Islam,
Hammami soon began denouncing the militant Islamists he once defended. He came to believe that Muslims were suffering because they had lost their religion, Culveyhouse and Stewart recall. The solution, Hammami now argued, was not to take up arms but to engage in a spiritual jihad, practicing the faith with greater devotion.He ended up leaving home and moving to Toronto and marrying a Somali immigrant. It was in the Muslim community in Canada that his radicalization began:
Over the next few months, Hammami became consumed with events in Iraq and Afghanistan. He began subscribing to conspiracy theories about 9/11, Dena and Culveyhouse recall. He soon found himself rethinking his nonmilitant Salafi stance.
“I was finding it difficult to reconcile between having Americans attacking my brothers, at home and abroad, while I was supposed to remain completely neutral, without getting involved,” he wrote in the December e-mail message responding to questions posed to him through an intermediary.
There is the crux of my post: think of how these young men all over the world including those raised in our own country would not have embraced the violent Jihad if we had not attacked Iraq or Afghanistan. This fellow, the doctor at Fort Hood, the underwear bomber, and many many more men, may have found the peaceful path of Islam and stayed there were it not for our "Christian" just wars.....
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