by *David D. Perlmutter TNA News with Commentary Weekend 3-4 November 2001

On Sunday in St. Dominic's Catholic Church in Behawalpur, Pakistan, parishioners and visiting Protestants just finished singing "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," when Kalashnikov-toting young men described as wearing "bin Laden beards" rambled in, started firing, then ran away. They left 16 people dead, including three children and a Protestant pastor. As happens so often in the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Egypt, the disingenuous government blamed "radicals." Yet, it's important to ask by whom and from where such fanaticism is born and bred.

Unfortunately, almost from the first smoking hours after the morning of Sept. 11, American mass media have been copping out in covering the origins of Islamic terrorism. I teach at a journalism school so I know it's partly our fault; it's easy to learn and practice formulas, harder to teach out-of-the box creativity. Practicing journalists, especially the television species, find it simpler to plug-'n'-play the safe story than research the unconventional one.

Practically every news show has filed several versions of the following script: Sept. 11 had nothing to do with Islam. Insert Islamic cleric or scholar assuring us this is so. Oh, and Islam, like all religions, is about peace and has only been "hijacked" by "radicals" for the purposes of terror. Insert American scholar of Islam assuring us that this is so.

It doesn't help that experts on these issues are as biased as journalists tend to be ignorant. Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a noted Palestinian activist (who was born to Christian parents), appeared on Nightline a few weeks ago and claimed that "assassination did not exist in the Middle East" until the Israelis created it. Ted Koppel, who usually comes off reasonably well read, let the statement pass. Problem: the word "assassin" (from the Arabic, hashshashin, meaning hashish-user) comes from a famous medieval sect of Islamic terrorists.

Or consider the overwhelming protection, support and good intentions shown to American Muslims by other faith communities and the U.S. government. In contrast, no Christian living in Pakistan, Jew in Syria, or Bahai in Iran enjoys such tender protections. Is there a single Muslim country where holders of minority religions are not second-class citizens or don't live in fear of massacre?

That's why I think Koppel and all other Americans should read a hair-raising and mind-opening volume that has quietly become an Amazon.com bestseller: Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq. The author, who was born a Muslim in Asia, wisely writes under a pseudonym because, as he points out, assassination is the standard fate of anyone who dares ask any tough questions about Islam.

It's simplistic to sum up a book - the author has written or edited four more on this subject as well - that examines 1,500 years of history and thousands of liturgical documents. But Warraq makes the case that:

- Islam, unlike other world religions, was designed as a warrior faith to be expressed through conquest and subjugation, not love or disputation.

- Islam specifically demands that holders of other faiths must be wholly subservient to Muslims and undergo all sorts of humiliating hardships from having no political power to paying crushing taxes.

- In historical practice, Islam has had occasional periods of tolerance for other faiths, but these are far overshadowed by countless bloody persecutions and genocides by Muslims.

Basically, Warraq argues that to say that there is a "moderate" Islam vs. "radical" one is semantic foolishness. By this reckoning, the mass murders of Sept. 11 and last Sunday were just putting into practice what is taught daily in thousands of Mosques and Muslim religious schools throughout the world. And Osama bin Laden's version of the faith is not a perversion but a legitimate, historically mainstream interpretation: non-Muslims must respect it and fear it as such.

There is obviously room for debate on this issue. That's only fair. After Sept. 11, we heard many Muslims at home and abroad denounce the acts of terror but add that their roots were in the history of American foreign policy. Americans have the right to respond: why not critically examine your own roots, history and policies as well?

The world's press also owes it to its own standards of fairness and accuracy, and to the victims of terror of Sept. 11 and now a church in Pakistan, to stop listening to only one partisan side of the story. There is another side: It's time we started reading and seeing it.