Justifications

In the book, “In The Belly of The Green Bird” by Nir Rosen, he reports some of the justifications that Zarqawi gives for his use of violence. Zarqawi claims that beheading criminals and aggressors prevents bloodshed of innocent Muslims. He claims that burning the bodies of the Blackwater contractors by saying “Punish someone the way he punished you, so if cluster bombs burn bodies, we can burn bodies.”

A defender of Zarqawi claims that Muhammad was a messenger of mercy, but Muhammad’s mercy could not read the world without the defeat and decapitation of criminals and leaders of infidelity who obstruct his mercy. Another claim was that jihad was justified even if it caused the killing of Muslims, since it was better that Muslims die in the path of jihad rather than at the hands of Americans – it was also better that they die for jihad than live outside the laws of Allah (God). This was because democracy and secular rule in general, were a rejection of Allah, a rejection of God.

All of this sounds depressing like the American right wingnuts religious claims. They will claim that Jesus taught forgiveness and love, but the Muslims don’t understand that – they only understand force. Therefore, we have to fight them and subdue them – and the forgiveness stuff can go to hell, I suppose. They feel it is quite acceptable to kill innocents in the pursuit of war, and never even take note of that fact. They will also claim that it is better for people to get killed than to live under a ‘false religion’ which even includes many Christian faiths. Oh, and finally, they believe that we have to ‘fight them over there, so we don’t fight them over here’ so all this war and fighting saves the lives of innocent Christians.

Except, of course, it doesn’t. But neither side is terribly bright, in my opinion, so they fail to notice that their use of violence only leads to more violence.