VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1], 2, 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 11:25:40 09/12/04 Sun
Author: Weird_Enigma
Author Host/IP: 172.129.249.110
Subject: Education, not killing, is the way to eliminate terrorist.

Change enemies, not our freedoms

We've reacted to 9-11 by becoming more like those who attacked us

KAY MCSPADDEN
Special to The Observer

It will never be just another day, not for us.

If we are very, very lucky, school children in the future will struggle to memorize the date the way children too often learn history now, as an oddity with little relevance to their lives. The war on terrorism and its attendant horrors will be as remote as the Revolution or the French and Indian War.

If we are not so lucky, future school children will know 9-11 as the beginning of the end of our freedom.

Certainly it was the end of our naiveté.

Of all the words printed and said about 9-11 in the three years since the attacks, the clearest and in many ways the most eloquent ones are those found in the recently published 9-11 Commission report. The press has focused on the commission's accounts of intelligence failures and the recommendations to reshuffle the intelligence bureaucracy, but much of the report is an attempt to help Americans reshape our understanding of the nature of the threat facing us and the possible solutions.

"In the post 9-11 world," the report states, "threats are defined more by fault lines within societies than by the territorial boundaries between them. From terrorism to global disease to environmental degradation, the challenges have become transnational rather than international. ... The enemy is not just `terrorism,' some generic evil. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism, especially the al-Qaida network, its affiliates, and its ideology. ... Our enemy is twofold: al-Qaida, a stateless network of terrorists that struck us on 9-11; and a radical ideological movement of the Muslim world, inspired in part by al-Qaida, which has spawned terrorist groups and violence across the globe. The first enemy is weakened, but continues to pose a grave threat. The second enemy is gathering, and will menace Americans and American interests long after Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are killed or captured."

The report goes on to explain this ideology, a dogmatic fundamentalism that longs for government rule under the control of religious leaders, focuses on personal morality, is dismissive of other points of view, and marginalizes women. To counter these beliefs, the report recommends that "the United States should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring of our neighbors."

This recommendation, more than any of the other 40 recommendations set forth by the commission, points to our failure as a country since 9-11. We can recognize the tyranny of religion in government affairs when it is practiced by the Taliban or by the current Iranian government, but we want our own politicians to espouse equally dogmatic, though Christian, beliefs in determining government policy.

The Islamist terrorists despise our celebration of diversity and our emphasis on personal rights and freedoms, but we allow our lawmakers to pass the Patriot Act, which curtails those freedoms and coerces conformity. We shake our heads when Muslims proscribe the rights of women and hold them to a different standard of conduct based on sex, yet we do the same to homosexuals.

If we are less free today, it is because we have reacted to the 9-11 attacks by becoming more like our enemies.

Yet it doesn't have to be that way. We can change our enemies instead.

Although the commission report acknowledges that "the small percentage of Muslims who are fully committed to Osama bin Laden's version of Islam are impervious to persuasion," it adds that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims are more open to reforms if they can be convinced that democracy and the freedoms and opportunities it can engender will benefit their children more than allegiance to a terrorist organization.

Reframing the image of the United States in the Arab world is critical, the report says, and education is an integral part of changing Muslim ideology, much of which is passed from untutored clerics to barely literate adherents.

Educational programs that support the broadening of the Muslim worldview are some of the most innovative and exciting of the commission's recommendations. In addition to scholar and student exchange programs, the commission calls for joining other nations in funding libraries and public schools in Muslim nations. It labels textbooks and increased technology such as the Internet "unglamorous help" critical to education.

"Education that teaches tolerance, the dignity and value of each individual, and respect for different beliefs is a key element in any global strategy to eliminate Islamist terrorism," the report concludes.

It is also the key element in insuring that we don't give away our freedoms here at home.

Kay McSpadden

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Observer columnist Kay McSpadden is a high school English teacher in York, S.C. Write her c/o The Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308 or by e-mail at kmcspadden@comporium.net.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.