Yes, This is About Islam
                               (The New York Times, November 2, 2001)

                                                By:

                                           Salman Rushdie



                                       Student: Mitja Sabadin

                                           Brno,17.5.2006





                                      "This isn't about Islam"

Why have we been listening this "mantra" for weeks after September 11 attacks?



*      To prevent reprisal attacks on innocent Muslims living in the West

*      United States had to maintain it's coalition against terror

*      To avoid suggestions that Islam and terrorism are in any way related



                                   "Of course, it is about Islam"

    But it is not about the personal sphere of the religion:



*      "Fear" of God (worship God)

*      Variety of customs, opinions and dietary practices

*      The "sequestration" or near-sequestration of "their" women

*      Other personal-sphere related attitudes and views







                                          But it is about:

*      Demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda

*      10.000 men on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border answering some mullah's call for Jihad

*      Denying the know-how of the Muslims to pull-off such attacks on the WTC and Pentagon

*      Attaching responsibility to Jews with the most classical anti-Semitism theory





                                         Muslim : Islamist



*     Muslim is a politically neutral word

*     Islamist:

   Somebody who is engaged in a radical political movement, usually powered by poverty, who blames
outsiders or "infidels" for the ills of the Muslim society and is against the "Westoxication" of
their society.





                           The Islamist movements are not the solution!!!
                                                Why?

*      Because they blame the West for their problems and for the ills of their own societies

*      But the real problem lies in their own society, in the politicization of Islam

*      It's like the non-communist socialists used to distance themselves from the tyrannical
socialism of the Soviets





                                             Solution?



*     Way to another Islam, the personal faith, not the "state faith"

*     Restoration of the religion to the sphere of the personal, its depoliticization

*     Secularization of Muslim societies on the base of secularist-humanist principles