The terror of division mounts

On the ninth anniversary on Saturday of the September 11, 2001 attacks by terrorists on the United States, President Barack Obama found it necessary to call on Christians and Moslems to show tolerance as religious tensions seem to increasingly underlie that country’s war on terror and the US involvement in many parts of the world.

On the Information Clearing House Amy Goodman also last week wrote:”The ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States should serve as a moment to reflect on tolerance. It should be a day of peace. Yet the rising anit-Moslem fervour here, together with the continuing US military occupation in Iraq and escalating war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan), all fuel the belief that the US really is at war with Islam.”

Largely driven by the --  later abandoned -- campaign by maverick pastor Terry Jones from the Gainesville, Florida, Dove World Outreach Center of some 50-odd members, to turn 9/11 comemorations this year into a “Burn the Koran Day”, protest marches took place in Islamic cities throughout the world.

In the US tensions are also still simmering over plans to build an Islamic cultural centre and mosque close to Ground Zero in New York where the two passenger jets were flown into the World Trade Centre in 2001.

Obama warned his countrymen to distinguish between the real enemies of their country and those who could be become hostile because of the constant insults to Islam from within America. “We are not at war with Islam but with terrorists,” he said. Burning the Koran could turn out to be a recruitment bonanza for Al-Qaeda.

While surveys indicate that many Americans are convinced that their president himself is a Moslem, he found it necessary to declare his own Christian faith, saying that “as someone depending a lot on my own Christian faith in the work I do, I understand the passion and emotions that religion can invoke in others”.

Attempting to build bridges he stressed that everyone is equal in the US and that if there is a right to build a church, synagogue, or Hindu-temple in a particular spot, then a mosque can also be built there.

The fact that there is still a long way to go to heal the wounds and divisions caused by the 9/11attacks was abundantly clear when a memorial service for those who died in the attacks in New York was totally overshadowed by thousands of protesters for and against the planned Islamic complex.

In the meantime, although not nearly at the levels at the time of the Vietnam war, resistance against the US military involvement in central Asia seems to be building. Increasingly, reports are drawing parallels to that situation.

The Goodman report for instance stated: “As in Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan has a dedicated, indigenous, armed resistance, and a deeply corrupt group in Kabul masquerading as a central government. The war is bleeding over into a neighbouring country, Pakistan, just as the Vietnam war spread into Cambodia and Laos.”