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Facing Up to Unholy Terror


(U.S. News) Fouad Ajami - Israel had been the first battleground in this ongoing war between civilized life and terror: It was there that pizzerias and buses and discotheques became targets of terror. It was there that the cultists of death cut their teeth and developed their rituals of mass murder - the videotapes, the boys (and then the young women) with headbands proclaiming their zeal for "martyrdom," the posters lionizing mass killers. And it was there, too, that religious preachers bent the faith to their will. In our innocence, we think that a battle ought to be waged for Muslim hearts and minds, that perhaps if we refined or amplified our message, this hate would be driven away. It is in this spirit that the 9/11 commission recently recommended the launching of a campaign of public diplomacy in the Muslim world. But this is illusion. For at heart, this war for Islam is one for Muslims to fight. It is for them to recover their faith from the purveyors of terror.
2004-09-15 00:00:00
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