Column: Defining a religion

Religions are defined not only by ideals but by realities, not just by their deepest and most beautiful insights, but by their adherents' behavior. So while Christianity's most profound principles are mercy and forgiveness, the reality of Christianity in the Middle Ages and colonial period was inquisitions and empires. When moderate Muslims state terrorist attacks are disconnected from Islam, they ignore the reality that Islamic fundamentalist imperialists act in the name of Islam and Muslims, claiming "true Islam's" mantle from conspicuously absent moderates. This reality must be confronted especially because many Muslims argue against separating church from state. Hence, Islam exists as spiritual ideal and political reality. Until the realization that theocracies cannot be democracies dawns throughout the Islamic world, saying terrorism is disconnected from Islam is a smokescreen employed to abdicate responsibility to face reality.

Over centuries, Christians broke the Church's stranglehold over politics and ended religious persecution with moral and physical force, teachings and wars. The founding moral flaw of the United States, slavery, was confronted intellectually and ended in four years of titanic war. Yet Islamic fundamentalist imperialism has usurped the face of Islam with little resistance from moderate Muslims. Today when some Americans oppose conflict with Iraq, they protest "Not in my name" or "No blood for oil"; where are moderate Muslims protesting the actions of Islamic fundamentalists with "Not in our name" banners or "No blood for Qur'an"?

There are countless demonstrations by Muslim-Americans against Israel's treatment of Palestinians, but almost none against Osama bin Laden's treatment of Americans. Replies that Islamic fundamentalists don't represent Muslims are irrelevant; they claim to without a murmur of renunciation and are esteemed by multitudes throughout the Islamic world cheering bin Laden as Robin Hood. It's vital not to let others speak in your name if you disagree, especially if they speak with guns and bombs. Rather than take on terrorist co-religionists, Muslim-American organizations compare themselves to Jews in Weimar Germany, an offensive depiction of America.

Nowhere is silence of moderate Muslims' voices more deafening than in discourse on suicide bombing, which glues the hydra-headed Islamic fundamentalist imperialism. Numerous imams, including at the holy mosque of Mecca and the esteemed al-Azhar university in Egypt, issue fatwas approving suicide bombing, while "opposing" Muslims remain silent, state it is merely counterproductive while being nonjudgmental or proffer inane excuses for the inexcusable. Apologists for suicide bombing who qualify moral judgment with equivocal "Yes, but"s have regard for neither history nor consequence.

Saying suicide-bombing is used by the weapon-less is nonsense: Gandhi, Mandela and King achieved tremendous success without violence. Waving them off as unique reveals a soft bigotry that Palestinians and Muslims cannot distinguish right from wrong, valor from cruelty or self-determination from mass murder.

Another platitude, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," romanticizes suicide bombers as comparable to Washington, Che Guevara, Patrick Henry or de Gaulle. This is the menace of cliche: Statements without substance pervert history, as those leaders targeted military assets, never sending suicide-bombers to kill opponents' civilians or children. The world cannot afford the luxury of waiting centuries for Islamic societies to evolve.

The prophet Muhammad said, "Whoever sees evil, let him change it with his hand, and if not able then with his mouth and if still not able then hate it within his heartâ_| Allah does not punish the general public because of wrongdoing of specific people unless they see evil while able to stop it and do not."

Moderate Muslims must choose whether to let megalomaniacs, liars, misogynists and murderers hijack societies and religion and pilot them into destruction's abyss. Sidelines are not moral high ground. Unequivocally repudiating and forswearing terrorist methods and imperialist aims of Islamic fundamentalism by moderate Muslims is overdue. This requires calling the present jihad by mujahadeen and martyrs awaiting paradise its name, hirabah (unholy war) by mufsidoon (evildoers) bound for jahannam (hell).