ISLAM'S CIVIL WAR

 Artículo de Jim Hoagland  en “The Washington Post” del 03/03/2004

 Vietnam taught that Rule 1 of getting involved in foreign civil wars is famously and simply: Don't. But the United States today is caught in a civil war within Islam. Al Qaeda's murder by airliner of nearly 3,000 people on American soil in one September day in 2001 leaves Americans without any other option.

Tuesday was another day of religiously inspired atrocities, in Iraq and in Pakistan this time. The latest waves of holy murders should shake from their fantasies the Islamic political leaders and religious authorities who deny that a war for control of Islam is raging around them. The war will claim many more lives if Muslim society does not face up to the cancerous growth feeding on Islam and lead -- not join, but lead -- the fight against that cancer.

The Arab summit to be held at the end of March in Tunis is an important moment for a meaningful recognition of the nature of this struggle, which has been made blindingly clear in the past two days: Peacemakers and killers have each sketched out their paths to the future.

On Monday in Baghdad, the much-maligned Iraqi Governing Council negotiated and agreed to an interim constitution that sets new standards for political freedoms and religious tolerance in an Arab country. Tolerance becomes a fundamental right and condition for Iraqis.

Islam is a source, not the only source, for legislation under this basic law. The right to convert from one branch of Islam to another, or to another religion, is protected. After agonizing debate over whether it could discriminate against Iraqi citizens on the basis of religion, the council agreed that Iraqi Jews can reclaim citizenship and properties taken from them in Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. (Tip to U.S. Special Forces: Get a copy of this document to Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda's uberfuehrer will choke to death on his own rage if he reads it.)

These provisions were written and blessed by 25 Iraqi politicians who were chosen by the occupation authority. But these Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, Kurds and others must answer to constituents soon to be empowered with the right to vote. The head U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, wisely stayed on the sidelines as the Iraqis wrestled over the substance of the law, according to U.S. and Iraqi accounts of the deliberations.

It will be modest progress if the autocrats, dictators and monarchs planning to meet in Tunis do not sneer at the interim constitution for not having been produced by a more "representative" group. Hypocrisy has never been an inhibited force at these gatherings.

But King Abdullah of Jordan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and their cohorts must do more than that. They can no longer avoid dealing forthrightly with the words and bloody "religious" deeds proclaimed by al Qaeda and its associates in terror. These leaders must delegitimize religious murder, whether practiced against Shiites, Christians or Jews. They must take away the religious sanctuary the extremists claim. They must validate the spot-on sentiment voiced recently by one professional U.S. analyst of the war against global terrorism: "The jihad will vanish only when the Muslim world sees terrorists as heretics, and not as holy warriors." The American role will then be to "shield moderate Muslims from intimidation and violence" as the struggle progresses.

Iraq is now the center of this epochal conflict. Scarcely 24 hours after the Governing Council finished its deliberations, suicide bombings and other explosions devastated Shiite religious shrines in Baghdad and Karbala and killed at least 143 people. This coincided with a shooting attack on Shiite worshippers in Quetta, Pakistan, where at least 42 people died. Quetta authorities continue to let Sunni extremists use Shiite shrines as shooting galleries.

The reasons why Sunni extremists target all Shiites as "the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy" were spelled out in chilling detail in a recently captured document believed to have been written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, who ran an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before going to Iraq. Zarqawi is now suspected of having staged the car bombing that killed Shiite Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim and about 100 of his followers last August as an initial step in the holy war Zarqawi plans for Iraq.

President Bush has repeatedly said the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam. This has to be the case. But Americans cannot shy away from treating this struggle as a religious civil war, one that will be won or lost within Islam. More important, neither can Muslims.