From: jawad@ecst.csuchico.edu (Jawad Ali)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam,soc.culture.iranian,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.turkish,soc.culture.asean
Subject: Wake Up, Muslims!  You are the enemy.
Date: 10 Jan 93 16:54:51 GMT
Reply-To: jawad@ecst.csuchico.edu (Jawad Ali)
Organization: California State University, Chico
NNTP-Posting-Host: geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu
Originator: gwydion@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu

On soc.religion.islam there has been some discussion on the errors of 
indulging in Jewish-conspiricy theories.  It is equaly important to 
look out for other's conspiricy theories about Muslims.  Here is some
food for thought:

Los Angeles Times, Saturday, January 2, 1993.

Israel Sees Self Defending West Against Militants
=================================================

MIDEAST:  Tel Aviv calls itself the 'first target'
of Islamic fundamentalists with aims beyond the region.
Critics say that such talk 'demonizes' a religion.

By Michael Parks, Times Staff Writer.

-------------------------------------------------

JERUSALEM -- Israel, which for years won American and European backing
as the bulwark against the spread of communism through the Middle East,
is now projecting itself as the West's defence against militant Islam,
a movement it is portraying as even a greater danger.

	In the Israeli view, Islamic fundamentalism is already sweeping
across the Middle East, North Africa and now Central Asia, and will soon
chalange Western influence in regions far beyond, as Muslims try to make 
the 21st Century the "Islamic century."

	And while Israel considers itself the "first target" of militant
Islam, blaming the fundamentalists for an upsurge in guerrilla attacks on]
its forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and increased terrorism
against civilians, top officials here are warning that a "holy war" will
also be waged against the West.

	"Our struggle against murderous Islamic terror is also meant to 
awaken the world, which is lying in slumber," Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
said last month in justifying his decision to expell 415 Palestinians as
supporters of militant Islamic groups.  "We call on all nations, all peoples
to devote their attention to the great danger inherent in Islamic
fundamentalism.  

	"This is a real and serious danger that threatens world peace in
future years.  And just as Israel was the first to percieve the Iraqi
nuclear threat, so today we stand on the line of fire against the danger
of fundamentalist Islam."

	Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was equally grim in his portrayal
of what he called "Khomeinism," the militant, pan-Islamic fundamentalism
espoused by the late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

	"Since the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, we consider
Khomeinism the greatest danger the Middle East is facing -- not only us
but the Arabs as well," Peres told a press conference here.  "It has
many of the characteristics of communism.  It is fanatic, it is ideological,
it is religious and it claims, like communism, that the goal justifies the 
means... Most of all, it has the same inclination to export its ideas."

	Peres said that for Israel, the threat from Iran come not only in
its support of Muslim militants among Palestinians but also in its 
destabilizing effect on Egypt and other Arab states, whose stability is
important for Israel's security as well as for peace in the region.

	Israeli officials who focus on Iran say Tehran is providing money,
weapons and political guidance in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon and Syria
as well as Egypt, in Algeria and Tunisia in the Maghreb, and in Sudan,
several small Persian Gulf states and the newly independent nations of 
Central Asia.

	But the greatest danger will come, they say, when Tehran acquires
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, along with the means to deliver
them.  

	"Iran has to be identified as Enemy No. 1," said Joseph Alpher, a
former official of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service and now deputy
director of the influential Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv
University.  

	The whole Israeli political and intellectual Establishment, in fact,
has been galvanized to put across this message.  

	"It is surely time that Washington, and indeed the West in general,
woke up to the real dimentions and charracter of Hamas,"  Israeli historian
Shmuel Katz said of the Islamic Resistance Movement.  "It represents and
propagates the 'Iranian revolution,' and its methods are revolutionary
and violent.  It seeks to dominate, first of all, the Arab world and to 
become the leader of all Muslims....

	"Its ideological purpose is broader.  It sees itself as the flaming
sword of Islam, designed to exact 'vengeance' not only on Israel, but on the
West at large....  It will not be long before the reach of those [Iranian]
arms includes Europe."

	In meetings with Western leaders, in discussions with visiting 
Jewish groups, in academic papers and in bachground briefings for foreign
correspondents, Israelis argue both for continued Western support, particularly
from the United States, in combatting this threat -- and for less pressure
on their country in negotiations with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab
states.

	"This is a message we have to get across to the new Administration
in Washington,"  Rabin told visiting U.S. Jewish leaders in a recent meeting,
according to an American participant.  "We are not sure that President-elect
[Bill] Clinton and his team fully comprehend the danger from Islamic
fundamentalism and the critical importance of Israel's role in fighting it."

	The message of that session, one of several top-level meatings meant
to put Israel's views before the Clinton Administration as it takes office
and formulates its policies was "Don't push us" in the negotiations, the 
participant said.

	Rabin can produce, as he did both for the American visitor and in
recent speeches, a series of frightening quotations from the "covenant"
of the Islamic Resistance Movement and other fundamentalist declarations
that Israel feels sum up militant Islamic fundamentalism.  Among them:

	-"It is the fate of the Jews to be slaughtered by our hands.  We
	 have take upon ourselves to fulfil our obligations to society
	 and to torture them because torture is the faith of the Jews."
	-  "No Jew is innocent.  All Jews must be killed.  Throughout
	history they have only brought bad luck to the world."
	- "Israel will exist untill it is destroyed by Islam, the same
	  way it destroyed its predecessors."

	Rabin argues strongly to American and other Western visitors that
"a bad agreement [on the Arab-Israeli conflict], the result of pressure"
would destabilize the whole Middle East and sharpen the danger posed by
militant Islamic movements to the West.  

	"We were left with the impression that, whereas Communism was 
rapacious, it was more or less rational, interestedin its overall
stategic position and concerned with direct benefit,"  the American
said after meeting Rabin.  "Now, Israel faces rapaciousness that is 
irrational.  That is, the nasty, old Middle East that we knew if not
loved, is being replaced by one far, far nastier.

	For Israel, however, the essential conclusion is that there
is yet another enemy threatening its existence and against whom it will
need Western allies to survive.

	"In Islam, Israel is facing an existential threat,"  a highly
placed Israeli official said at the start of a recent briefing for 
foreign correspondents.  "The state of Israel and the future of the 
Jewish people are in jeopardy ...."

	Then he quickly caught himself in what his listeners took as an
embarrassing exaggeration and corrected his statement.  

	"In Islamic extremism, this militant Islamic fundamentalism 
espoused by Khomeini, we see a fundamental danger,"  he said.  

	Outside Israel, scholars of the Middle East, Islam, Arabia and
Persia have warned recently against the "demonization" of Islamic
fundamentalism, a campaign they see as directed at islam as a religion.
As for the movement itself, they don't consider it a threat to Israel's
existance or that of the West.

	Even here in Israel, there are some dissenting voices.  

	Ehud Yaari, a specialist on Palestinian affairs, warned in the 
current issue of the magazine Jerusulem Report that "Israeli officials
show a striking tendency to exaggerate the public support" for Hamas
in comparison with the mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization.

	"Among the Palestinians, only a minority of 20% to 25% backs the
movement's terrorist methods and its fundamentalist rejection of any
negotiations with Israel as non-Islamic,"  Yaari contended.  "The movement's
active membership is small.  It is hard to imagine Hamas eclipsing the PLO."

	But, as Rabin said in another speech last month, the Israeli
leadership remains convinced it is facing a threat in militant Islam.

	"The Arab world, and the world in general, will pay if the cancer
of radical-fundamentalist Islam is not halted at the academy of Khomeini
and his followers in Iran,"  he said.

j n a