Muslim 'Moderates' And Terrorism

Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 12:25:30 pm PDT

In the New York Sun, Italian journalist Fiamma Nirenstein on Muslim ‘Moderates’ And Terrorism. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - The poor people dressed in Islamic garb or in dirty blue trousers and T-shirts sitting in 118-degree heat in the hall of the Sharm el-Sheik Hospital were either the brothers, the cousins, or the friends of the people wounded in the terrorist attack of the day before. Just plenty of desperate young people.

No women were there, no mothers, or sisters, or wives. Egyptian women almost don’t live in Sharm. The family and children of the workers are in the villages near Cairo, and their beloved men come to visit for one week once a month. Sharm is inhabited by a couple of thousand military people and public officials that President Mubarak, just like President Sadat, keeps as a defense vanguard near his own villa; or by poor workers, waiters, drivers, plumbers, and cooks - lots of day laborers that serve the enormous tourism business. Only a large group of very poor workers, the other face of the holiday town of Sharm el-Sheik, have been the killed and the wounded here.

You understand many things about terrorism when you speak to them; and you understand also, unfortunately, why we will never be able to count on what we call “the moderate Muslims” for the war against terrorism.

Read the whole thing.