Terror trials will pose tough questions about Islam

More recently, another American citizen, Jonathan Pollard, a Jew, was sentenced to life imprisonment for spying for Israel. Mr. Pollard now sits in federal prison because he was more loyal to Israel than to his native America. 

Not a war on religion

Muslims must remind themselves that it is 11 men accused of mass murder who are facing trial – not their religion, though it may be so construed in much of the Muslim world.

When radical Muslims claim the US has declared war on Islam, it smacks of mirror imaging. It is Muslims, not secular Americans, who view wars in a religious context and fight in the name of Allah, wrongly assuming the rest of the world is trapped in a similar mind-set.

It’s not in the character of the US to fight wars over religion. America was founded by those fleeing the aftermath of Europe’s horrific religious wars. 

To his credit, President George W. Bush went out of his way to assure anxious Muslims around the world that they were not the enemy. 

It’s sometimes thought that radical Muslims began their holy war against America in 1996, when Osama bin Laden published his grievances, or in 1979 when Shiite extremists took over Iran and the US Embassy in Tehran. 

Actually, Muslim belligerence goes back much further. As diplomats in the 1780s, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with the envoy of the sultan of Tripoli. The envoy demanded outrageous sums as “protection” against Barbary pirates. Jefferson and Adams noted: 

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretentions to make war upon... [us]. 

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

A question only Muslims can answer

It is regrettable that American Muslims feel the need to hunker down after one of their own like Hasan goes rogue. But millions of other Americans have had to endure countless indignities at airline security checkpoints, hunkering down and wondering if another member of the Ummah wants to blow up flights because of an overzealous interpretation of the Koran. 

As with all faiths, virtue lies in the effect it has on its adherents. So it is not unfair to ask: “Which Islam is the religion of peace, and how do we tell the difference?” Only Muslims can answer that. 

Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column for the Monitor's weekly print edition.

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