Spread the word

In the week after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the initial shock is fading into other emotions. For some, an awful sadness takes hold. Along with the sadness, people seem to feel a new sense of community. Drivers give way instead of plowing ahead. New Yorkers are said to make eye contact with strangers for the first time. Fear of future attacks grabs some people. A few try to retreat into what seems like a worry-free past, turning off the television and avoiding the newspapers.

But for the overwhelming majority of Americans the shock has turned to bitter anger and a desire to hunt down and punish the perpetrators. A New York Times-CBS poll showed last Sunday that 85 percent across the country favored military action. Of that majority, 75 percent wanted military action even if innocent people are killed. President Bush thus has solid popular support, for the present at least, as he appears to be going forward with diplomatic and military preparations for a possible strike against the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding.

William Safire, writing in The New York Times, noted correctly that the terrorists have two powerful weapons. One is the element of surprise, which now is being countered with improved intelligence and tightened security at airports and other likely targets. Even more powerful, he wrote, is radical Islam’s ability to “erase from the brains of recruits the basic will to live. The normal survival instinct is replaced with a pseudo-religious fantasy of a killer’s self-martyrdom leading to eternity in paradise surrounded by adoring virgins.”

Mr. Safire appealed to Muslim leaders of the world to spread the word that the terrorists have misinterpreted the Koran and that their holy book actually outlaws unjust killing. This is an idea that cannot be echoed often enough. A local scholar familiar with the Koran, Professor Mahmoud El-Begearmi at the Orono campus of the University of Maine, quotes the Koran as follows: “And we have told them (Jews, Christians and Muslims) in the book (the Koran) that whoever kills a single soul unjustly is as if he killed the entire humanity.”

The professor says he knows of no Muslim clerical voice in this country or in the Middle East who has tried to justify the assaults in New York and Washington. In a sermon on campus last Friday, he said that the only way for a Muslim to go to heaven and live happily ever after was to do good deeds and struggle against personal and external temptations.