- THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FOUNDATION
11006 Veirs Mill Rd, STE L-15, PMB 298
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
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- DHUL HIJJAH 1430 AH Dec. 2, 2009
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- Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace):
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- As many of our readers are aware, I've been working on
a paper on the Ft. Hood tragedy (off and on) for some time now. My prayer
is that this will be an in depth, Islamically-based analysis on what happened
and why. While only Almighty ALLAH can ever know with certainty the answer
to the question why, I'm hoping to explore, in as objective a way possible,
some of the factors that led up to that human explosion on Nov 5, 2009.
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- My examination of this issue goes beyond intellectual
curiosity, and/or the knee-jerk reaction that many Muslims experience whenever
a tragic occurrence brings unwanted attention on Muslims in America. It
has to do with the health and welfare of Muslims in America; and indeed,
with the health and welfare of America itself.
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- Like most people reading this introduction to the thought-provoking
commentary that follows, I have seen a significant number of Muslim leaders
of varying stripes weigh in on this tragedy before a national audience.
MOST have delivered dangerously poor representation on this issue.
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- It is with this in mind that I invite the reader to reflect
deeply over what Professor Stephen Walt has to say. I believe Walt's analysis
factors significantly into why Major Hassan's intellectual output was as
it was in the months leading up to this tragedy, and why he ultimately
did what he did. (It will also prepare you for my humble analysis which
will come later, insha'Allah.)
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- As for the Muslim "leaders," or opinion shaping
apologists, who have been doing their best to assure the powers-that-be
that there is no problem with Muslims helping to fight America's imperialistic
wars, I advise you to reflect even deeper on the painful analysis provided
by Professor Walt (below). And then those of you who presume yourselves
learned (in the "Islamic Sciences"), check the condition of your
heart!
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- El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan
- ______________________
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- http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/30/why_they_hate_us
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- The New ForeignPolicy.com Global News : Passport : Ricks
: Drezner : Walt : Rothkopf : Lynch The Cable : The AfPak Blog : Net Effect
: Shadow Govt. : Madam Secretary : The Call Why they hate us (II):
How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?
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- Mon, 11/30/2009
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- Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's
New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity
for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face
in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing
term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region.
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- If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would
recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to
rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes
that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but
the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell
each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.
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- I heard a different take on this subject at a recent
conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing
a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other
participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. "If
the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world,"
he said, "it should stop killing Muslims."
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- Now I don't think the issue is quite that simple, but
the comment got me thinking: How many Muslims has the United States killed
in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims?
Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible,
but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly
lopsided.
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- Here's my back-of-the-envelope analysis, based on estimates
deliberately chosen to favor the United States. Specifically, I have taken
the low estimates of Muslim fatalities, along with much more reliable figures
for U.S. deaths.
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- To repeat: I have deliberately selected "low-end"
estimates for Muslim fatalities, so these figures present the "best
case" for the United States. Even so, the United States has killed
nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost. The real ratio is probably much
higher, and a reasonable upper bound for Muslim fatalities (based mostly
on higher estimates of "excess deaths" in Iraq due to the sanctions
regime and the post-2003 occupation) is well over one million, equivalent
to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.
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- Figures like these should be used with caution, of course,
and several obvious caveats apply. To begin with, the United States is
not solely responsible for some of those fatalities, most notably in the
case of the "excess deaths" attributable to the U.N. sanctions
regime against Iraq. Saddam Hussein clearly deserves much of the blame
for these "excess deaths," insofar as he could have complied
with Security Council resolutions and gotten the sanctions lifted or used
the "oil for food" problem properly. Nonetheless, the fact remains
that the United States (and the other SC members) knew that keeping the
sanctions in place would cause tens of thousands of innocent people to
die and we went ahead anyway.
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- Similarly, the United States is not solely to blame for
the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq after the 2003 invasion. U.S.
forces killed many Iraqis, to be sure, but plenty of Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis,
and foreign infiltrators were pulling triggers and planting bombs too.
Yet it is still the case that the United States invaded a country that
had not attacked us, dismantled its regime, and took hardly any precautions
to prevent the (predictable) outbreak of violence. Having uncapped the
volcano, we are hardly blameless, and that goes for pundits like Friedman
who enthusiastically endorsed the original invasion.
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- Third, the fact that people died as a result of certain
U.S. actions does not by itself mean that those policy decisions were wrong.
I'm a realist, and I accept the unfortunate fact that international politics
is a rough business and sometimes innocent people die as a result of actions
that may in fact be justifiable. For example, I don't think it was wrong
to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 or to topple the Taliban in 2001. Nor
do I think it was wrong to try to catch Bin Laden -- even though people
died in the attempt -- and I would support similar efforts to capture him
today even if it placed more people at risk. In other words, a full assessment
of U.S. policy would have to weigh these regrettable costs against the
alleged benefits to the United States itself or the international community
as a whole.
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- Yet if you really want to know "why they hate us,"
the numbers presented above cannot be ignored. Even if we view these figures
with skepticism and discount the numbers a lot, the fact remains that the
United States has killed a very large number of Arab or Muslim individuals
over the past three decades. Even though we had just cause and the right
intentions in some cases (as in the first Gulf War), our actions were indefensible
(maybe even criminal) in others.
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- It is also striking to observe that virtually all of
the Muslim deaths were the direct or indirect consequence of official U.S.
government policy. By contrast, most of the Americans killed by Muslims
were the victims of non-state terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or the
insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans should also bear in mind
that the figures reported above omit the Arabs and Muslims killed by Israel
in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Given our generous and unconditional
support for Israel's policy towards the Arab world in general and the Palestinians
in particular, Muslims rightly hold us partly responsible for those victims,
too.
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- Contrary to what Friedman thinks, our real problem isn't
a fictitious Muslim "narrative" about America's role in the region;
it is mostly the actual things we have been doing in recent years. To say
that in no way justifies anti-American terrorism or absolves other societies
of responsibility for their own mistakes or misdeeds. But the self-righteousness
on display in Friedman's op-ed isn't just simplistic; it is actively harmful.
Why? Because whitewashing our own misconduct makes it harder for Americans
to figure out why their country is so unpopular and makes us less likely
to consider different (and more effective) approaches.
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- Some degree of anti-Americanism may reflect ideology,
distorted history, or a foreign government's attempt to shift blame onto
others (a practice that all governments indulge in), but a lot of it is
the inevitable result of policies that the American people have supported
in the past.
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- When you kill tens of thousands of people in other countries
-- and sometimes for no good reason -- you shouldn't be surprised when
people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in
revenge. After all, how did we react after September 11?
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- Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer
Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
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