Michael Oren Quotes
America faced its first hostage crisis in the Middle East… Thomas Jefferson was President and over 100 Americans were being held hostage by Arabs from the Barbary Coast and the Arabs believed that if they were killed, they would go immediately to heaven. 220 years later America is still facing the same problem.
Michael Oren, Middle East Historian, C-SPAN Book TV, January 15, 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
“Musselman” was then a term for Muslims used by Europeans. The Arabs then, as many terrorists still do, commonly captured American and European ships enslaving the crews and passengers or holding them for ransom. Jefferson and Adams explained that if this could not be stopped and resolved it might mean war. The Americans could not understand why they were attacked when American had done nothing to offend the Arab Counties. The Arab envoy explained their “duty” and “right” to attack Americans and why war was not a serious deterrent to Islamic nations. Ironically, the same explanations were given by Arab leaders in the early 21st century to illustrate why the Arab countries could not be intimidated.
This characteristic of much of Islam is corroborated by Islamic scholars and politicians. To some, the implication is that it is foolish to negotiate with Muslims over issues that have been classified as jihad. The negotiation is only a sham which will go on until Islam feels strong enough, and then force and violence will be used. While this is historically and culturally true, many Muslims have modernized and see the world in terms of vested interests and negotiated settlements and compromise just like most others. And there have been many non-Islamic ideologues who have also used negotiations and diplomacy as a smokescreen to buy them time to strengthen militarily and then have used force and violence.
Slogans taken from posters listing 10 people targeted by Muslim extremists. Most were people who had said or published material that some fundamentalist Muslims had decided were offensive to Islam. One was Charlie Hebdo, the French Publisher who Islamic terrorists murdered later. Note the Americanisms that the terrorist propagandists adopted. The Wanted Dead or Alive was taken from the posters of the American West of the 19th century. The "Yes we can" was lifted from the Barack Obama 2008 campaign slogan. The "Bullet A Day Keeps the Infidel Away" is a takeoff on the American saying "An apple a day keeps the Doctor away." One of the reasons for these Americanisms was that the founding editor was Samir Khan, self-described American traitor.
Fanatic Muslims believe that suicide bombers when they blow themselves up have done so to defend Islam and therefore will not only go directly to heaven but will get 72 Virgins when they get there. Most of the suicide bombers are young men with very little or no sexual experience. At the time that Trainor made this remark, there had been an enormous increase in suicide bombers in the Iraq war.
Most Americans and Europeans and their governments feel that Muslim leaders and organizations have not done very much in terms of “drawing the line” and publicly condemning terrorism. However many of the critics did not understand the intimidation that exists in most Islamic communities where the fascist fundamentalists target any Muslim public critics as heretics and apostates themselves. Many have been killed or injured in assassination attempts.
In most religions, the clerics generally denounce violence especially where innocent people are involved as do many Islamic clerics throughout the world. However, a very large proportion of the Islamic Clergy not only condones violence but actually urges it and uses their interpretation of religious duty to motivate people in that direction. They tend to drown out the pacifistic Muslim clerics and in some cases they call for their death for heresy, thus intimidating many Islamic moderates.
In 1904 a naturalized American citizen, Ion Perdicaris, was kidnapped and held for ransom by Achmed Ben Mohammed Raisuli, a Moroccan warlord and descendent of the Prophet Mohammad. Raisuli had made a series of economic and political demands on the Sultan of Morocco who was dragging his feet in dealing with the problem. The administration ordered a naval warship to stand off the coast of Morocco and this ultimatum was dispatched to the Sultan of Morocco, and was read aloud from the platform of the Republican National Convention in Chicago which was in the process of renominating Theodore Roosevelt for a second term as president. Two days later Perdicaris was released. Kidnapping to intimidate has been a classic Arab terror political and quasi military technique as well as one for pure economic greed.
The quotation is notable as it illustrates the great difficulty that modern democracies have with extreme Islamic fundamentalists. Their very perception and world view is so different that often we think of the extremists as insane and they often feel the same way about us.
Michael Bornstein Oren is an American-born Israeli historian, author, politician, former ambassador to the United States (2009–2013), and former member of the Knesset for the Kulanu party and a former Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Office.
