(contents)
The Peace on
The Horizon - 75 Years after The World War 2 in the Middle East (162)
Chapter 6: Genealogy
of Islamic terrorism (17)
162 Monotheism
sharply distinguishes ally and enemy (1/6)
President George W. Bush
dared into the Iraq War, and labeled Hussein's regime to be part of the axes of
evil along with Iran and North Korea. He said that all the countries in the
world had to clarify their own position to belong either on the US side or the
terror’s side. And he shouted that “Show the Flag!”. There was no alternative to
allow ambiguity. For President Bush it was a confrontation between justice and injustice.
In religious meaning, it was a confrontation between God and the Devil. Needless
to say, the United States was justice and an agent of God, and Iraq was
injustice and an agent of the Devil. Monotheistic Christianity often uses its
own logic to distinguish ally or enemy.
However,
monotheistic Islam also had the same logic. For Islamic countries justice was in
their side. They justified themselves that they were the agents of Allah. They
claimed that the United States and other Western Christian countries were
injustice, and Western people were the agents of the Devil. The Satanic Verses
incident in 1988 was a good example. A British writer Sir Salman Rashdie wrote
a novel “The Satanic Verses” which was the lifetime story of Prophet Muhammad.
Muslims accused the author that the novel insulted Prophet Muhammad and Islam. Iran's
supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, ordered death sentence for not only the
author but also its publisher and foreign translators. Japanese translator who
was an associate professor of the Tsukuba University was killed by unknown somebody.
(To be continued
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(From an ordinary citizen in the
cloud)