Islam Needs Reformation and Turks Should Lead the Way
Ali Ferda Sevin, June 20, 2002 - 9/11 became a word in our lexicon after some fanatic Arabs hijacked and crashed passenger planes into The World Trade Center and The Pentagon on September 11, 2001. They did this to please God and achieve martyrdom we were told by Osama bin Laden in a videotaped boast.

A mad scientist plants humanlike robots among the population. With a coded message, he activates them to do evil things. The scenario is staple science fiction of film. It became real life big time here at home on 9/11. It had been real life in Israel for some time, reaching a high of 7 suicide bombings in 7 days of last March before subsiding somewhat. Since September of 2000, there had been some 80 suicide/homicide bombers in Israel. These were no mechanical robots of fiction. They were robotic humans. How did they come to be such unthinking mechanical things with human flesh and blood? Even under hypnosis, the unconscious human mind would not allow deeds that the conscious would not permit.

It turns out that an obscure version of Islam, called Wahhabi, teaches that God wants Muslims to become martyrs by committing suicide if they take some infidels with them to the other side. The believers are told they will go to heaven to be serviced by 72 virgins while the infidels burn in hell. Young bucks start blowing themselves up in public places, hoping to earn a place in a heavenly bed. Could it be that these men, while still alive, are not allowed to look at a woman unless she is covered up in a small tent of a garb? Is it because they really believe they can satisfy their sexual urges only after death? Sex is said to be the second most powerful human urge next to hunger. But how do you explain the Arab girls who seem to be taking up the practice of blowing themselves up in Israel. Surely, they don't believe the Koran sanctions lesbian sex with 72 virgins. We saw parents, interviewed on TV, declare how proud they were of their boys for blowing themselves up and wish they had more sons to offer for Islam. Next come a bunch of girls who blow themselves up to take a few Jews with them. Is it sibling rivalry? Are these sisters who are so consumed with envy that they are shouting, "I too can blow myself up"? Is this "Women's Lib" Islamic style?

Committing suicide to please God? The notion shocks the very core of our faith in a Supreme Being that is supposed to watch over us. The Wahhabi teaching is EVIL in capital letters by any definition of the word in the monotheistic tradition of Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. How the Wahhabi sect emerged from Islam is for scholars to determine but there is no question that its home is Saudi Arabia. It is also clear that Wahhabi followers are many. There were twenty such misguided souls in the 9/11 attacks. Presumably, nineteen of them are now frolicking with 72 heavenly virgins each. They were all Arab males, most from Saudi Arabia. The twentieth, Zacarias Mousaoui, missed his plane to heaven and will be facing living hell in a US court. Or maybe not. The court may decide the 72 virgins allotted to him should not wait much longer and give him the death sentence he was unable to execute on himself. The Germans are denying him even that opportunity in a clear case of misplaced compassion. Petrified by the thought of the unthinkable death sentence, they refuse to give us information to help prove Mousaoui's culpability in the 9/11 plot, that was hatched in Germany, unless we agree not to pursue the death sentence in his trial.

We already know that Mausaoui is a student of Wahhabi teaching. We learn that the word "Taliban" means "students" in Arabic and The Taliban, who took control in Afghanistan after the Afghans defeated the Soviets with our help, are graduates of Islamic schools called madrassas. It is no secret that the Saudis have been spending large sums of oil money to build mosques and finance madrassas around the globe. We now learn that the Wahhabi clerics have been the real power behind the Saudi family that rules Saudi Arabia as an absolute monarchy. The Saudi clan is hanging on to power not by popular will of the people but by spreading protection money when and where needed. Much of this largess goes to the Wahhabi clergy who establish Islamic schools around the world. We further learn that these madrassas attract the disenfranchised youth in the Islamic countries where they provide room and board but also teach them how to die in search of 72 heavenly virgins. To supplement the religious brainwashing, there is a reward of $25,000 for the family of the robot "martyr," gratis Saddam Hussein and other oil-rich Arabs. We learn that the Saudis have raised more than $100 million in a recent telethon to aid the families of suicide/homicide perpetrators. The promise of worldly rewards, not the 72 heavenly virgins, may explain the late arrival of girls to martyrdom. We also learn that the psychological technique of creating robots out of humans in the name of God can be effective in attracting disoriented youth even from centers of affluence where $25,000 is chicken feed. John "Taliban" Walker is a living example from upscale Marin County, California.

This is religion gone berserk. It is The Crusades in reverse with a weapon of the 21st century. The Crusaders sent massive armies to conquer Islam in the 13th century. Wahhabi style Islam is sending suicidal robots to show how a religious crusade is done nowadays. The bright side of this insanity is that suicidal attacks must be self-limiting in the end. If the production of robots cannot keep up with the depletion rate, the attacks will stop. If, on the other hand, there is enough robotic material in the pipeline of production to supply recruits for suicidal missions, the danger will remain. Sadly, as long as the madrassas keep teaching that God will reward the suicide/homicide bomber with 72 virgins in heaven and governments keep paying their families, there will be a steady supply of such recruits. Saddam gives $25,000 to the family of a suicide bomber and we treat him as our enemy. The Saudis raise $100,000,000 for the cause and we treat them as an ally against terrorism? The oil we get from Saudi Arabia may be worth the price we are paying them in dollars but it is proving to be counterproductive in our fight against terrorism as long as those dollars are financing madrassas teaching evil to the vulnerable youth in the name of Islam.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was keenly aware of the stultifying effect of the madrassas in Ottoman Turkey. He was mainly concerned that these religious schools were teaching The Turkish youth how to recite The Koran in Arabic to the exclusion of basic education for them in Turkish. He knew that the Turkish Republic could not survive in the 20th century unless the Turkish youth were well educated in the arts and sciences even as they held on to their Muslim faith. Even Ataturk would be shocked to see the depth of depravity extant in the Wahhabi style madrassa. Islamic madrassas in the Middle Ages had been centers of learning of all things in addition to Islam. They had been the sole avenues for knowledge of the ancients to seep through the European Dark Ages and give rise to The Renaissance. In the late Ottoman period, however, madrassas had become a roadblock to progress. Ataturk replaced the madrassa system with a secular public school system as one of the first acts in forging a republic out of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The result is easy to see for anyone willing to look. A population of Muslims, governing their public affairs by democratic means instead of religious commands from God as interpreted by self-appointed clerics.

The Wahhabi phenomenon is living testimony to how self-appointed clerics can turn pious scripture to pure evil. Mohammed was persecuted and acted in self-defense to fight back. Thus, one finds words in The Koran to justify defensive violence. "An eye for an eye" in the bible is no different. The Koran may not contain the biblical metaphor "Turn the other cheek," but this is not to say that it condones wanton killing of innocents. Quite the opposite, it prescribes conciliation in preference to violence toward ones adversaries. The Koran is the word of God for Muslims. Scribes recorded the text as Prophet Mohammed recited what he heard from God in a trance. It came down to us from Arabic scholars and its meaning has been interpreted by many clerics. The laymen can also read the words in many translations. Depending upon who reads what parts of the Holy Scriptures, and to what purpose they are employed, humankind can benefit greatly or, alternatively, we can suffer great harm. If anyone can justify the actions of the suicide-bombers in the plain language of The Koran, let's hear it. Otherwise, it is incumbent upon the Islamic spokesmen everywhere to condemn the killing of innocents unequivocally. For any reason. Anywhere. With no exceptions. This goes double for killing innocents to please Allah of The Koran whose holy name is always followed by the descriptors "The Compassionate, The Merciful."

Sadly, no Islamic cleric has surfaced in the global arena to condemn unconditionally the wanton killing of innocent civilians by Muslim terrorists of any stripe, suicidal or not. Sure, they say they don't condone what the fanatic Islamists have been doing. The tongue-in-cheek language they use in saying so leaves one wondering whether they mean it. It reminds this writer of the Armenian-Americans in '70s and '80s when Armenian predecessors of the Arab terrorists of today were killing Turks at will around the globe. A spokesman for Armenian-Americans would be interviewed on TV about a killing, say in Los Angeles, and he would say that the Armenian community does not condone terrorism. Then he would add something like "BUT it is understandable because Turks committed genocide against Armenians 80 years ago." This was the big "BUT" mantra they repeated ad infinitum, never once explaining why it took 80 years for the avengers to avenge the alleged genocide. The subtle conversion of Christianity into a hate machine against Turks in the minds of young Armenians in Armenian Churches took time. Armenian-Americans are still trying to free Hampig Sassounian who is serving a life sentence in San Quentin for the January 28, 1982 assassination of Kemal Arikan, The Turkish General Consul in Los Angeles. They are using tax-exempt donations to the Armenian-American organizations to fund the legal expenses. One way to look at this is that the tax-paying Turkish-Americans are subsidizing Sassounian's tax-exempt defense. This is an outrage. It is also an outrage that Islamic leaders are repeating the same mistake in virtually excusing Muslim terrorists as the Armenian Church has excused Armenian terrorists.

Islam needs reformation to bring it into the 21st century, as The Armenian Church needs to relearn the lessons of Christian reformation that brought Christianity out of the Dark Ages. Heirs to the Ataturk legacy have a profound obligation to civilization today. Fanatic Islamists are out to destroy The Western Civilization that Islam rescued from the Dark Ages of Christianity. Turkish Islam must now lead Muslims out of the darkness. This is no time for timidity. It is time for Islamic reformation. Who else but the Turks can do a better job?

The author is a former President of ATAA.