For a militant, that is. The statements of militant Islam no longer shock or excite us. We now understand where fellows like Zacarias Moussaoui are coming from religiously. He didn’t make this stuff up; it’s part of his religion (via AP):

– “So you would be happy to see 9/11 again?” Prosecutor Rob Spencer asked. “Every day until we get you,” the bearded 37-year-old Frenchman shot back.

– He mocked a Navy officer who wept as she described the death of two subordinates in the attack on the Pentagon. “I think it was disgusting for a military person” to cry, Moussaoui said of Lt. Nancy McKeown. “She is military. She should expect people at war with her to want to kill her.” Asked if he was happy to hear her sobbing, he said, “Make my day.”

– He criticized U.S. support for Israel. “Every child who has been killed in Palestine has been killed because of you,” he said. Israel is “just a missing star in the American flag,” he added.

– In a lengthy explanation of why he hates Americans, Moussaoui said Islam requires Muslims to be the world’s superpower as he flipped through a copy of the Quran searching for verses to support his assertion. He said one verse requires Muslims “to fight against all who believe not in Allah.” “We have an obligation to be the superpower. You have to be subdued,” Moussaoui said.

This man seems neither strange nor irrational to us. He is fighting his version of the good fight so that Islam can rule the world as he has been taught it was meant to. Our problem is that we haven’t yet decided to fight back, at least in the realm of ideology and religion. Officially the US sees Moussaoui as an “evildoer” or a “terrorist” or some such aberration. This is a terrible and harmful, possibly fatal, error on the part of the West. Moussaoui views himself as a religious man doing his duty. Perhaps you think we misstate the situation; read V. S. Naipaul’s Beyond Belief, and we’ll talk. As it says on page 142, quoting a statement of Ayatollah Khomeini: “Martyrs look toward Allah — they think of nothing else. They see Allah. They are concentrated on Allah.” We have little doubt that this is how Mr. Moussaoui sees the world.

Unless the West gets its arms around the ideological issue, the West is in big trouble. Judging by the latest cave-in at Comedy Central (of all places), it is indeed our view that the West is in big trouble.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 4:14 pm and is filed under General, Religion, Republicans, War, art, culture, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.