[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 108 (Monday, July 9, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8761-S8762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WAR ON TERROR

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona is 
recognized.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, most of the activity with regard to the 
terrorist plot in Great Britain occurred while we were on our breaks 
back home. I wanted to briefly discuss that today.
  It seems to me that the terror plots in Great Britain must serve as a 
wake-up call to those of us in the United States who perhaps have been 
too complacent about the terrorist threat. These plots remind us of the 
dangers we really face each and every day, and we need to employ all 
possible intelligence and follow-up action in order to stop the attacks 
and roll back these terrorist groups.
  The war against terrorists and on the radical ideologies that drive 
terrorism will go on and is going to go on for a long time, and attacks 
will not occur every day. So we have to remain resolute in the face of 
this long-term threat, never allowing temporary respites from violence 
to tempt us into thinking the terrorists have stopped recruiting and 
plotting.
  Abroad we must confront the challenges not just of terrorist networks 
but of states like Iran and Syria that provide funds and equipment for 
the terrorists. At home we have to have adequate intelligence to find, 
monitor, and disrupt terrorist cells that could strike at any time. It 
requires vigilance and cooperation among many enforcement entities and, 
importantly, the support of the American people. Against this threat, 
to say ``out of sight, out of mind'' can have no place.
  Now, the first point I would like to make today is that as the plot 
in Great Britain revealed, this is not about grievances. This is about 
ideology.
  There are those at home who are members of what is called the Blame 
America First crowd, which was a term coined by my friend, the late 
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who say the Islamists hate us because of 
what we do. They allegedly hate us because we don't do enough to fight 
poverty, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of Iraq, 
or because of the latest Danish cartoon, or whatever. Of course, this 
is nonsense.
  The radical ideology that spawns this terrorism has nothing to do 
with such grievances or poverty. The perpetrators of the plots in Great 
Britain were doctors, not individuals radicalized by unemployment or 
poverty-stricken slums. These plots certainly were not the result of 
British policy. They unfolded on the very day that Gordon Brown, a 
critic of Britain's roles in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, took office. 
Nor did they have anything to do with American policy. From what we 
know of the individuals involved, it appears the motivation was the 
same as all of the other acts of terrorism in the name of militant 
Islam.
  This radical doctrine had its roots in the early 20th century and 
gained momentum through the writings of radical Islamists such as 
Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s, long before the Iraq war. It has 
everything to do with the hatred of our values, our freedoms, all that 
we stand for, and we see the hatred in attacks that go back several 
decades.
  Review them: The 1979 takeover of our Embassy in Tehran; the 1983 
Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut; the 1993 bombing of 
the World Trade Center; the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers; the 1998 
Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the 2000 attack on the USS 
Cole; September 11, 2001, and all of the attacks since then, including 
Beslan, Madrid, London, and elsewhere. In every case, the rationale was 
the same--advancement of the radical ideology of militant Islam; a 
perversion of the faith, to be sure, but based on their concept of the 
faith nonetheless.

  The sheer evil of the acts and the perpetrators shocks our souls, 
especially because it is allegedly grounded in religion. People trained 
as doctors--those who are supposed to value and preserve life--were at 
the center of the plot in Great Britain to destroy innocent life.
  We in the West, who believe in reason and rationality, have trouble 
comprehending the mentality of radical Islam and those who subscribe to 
it. But we need to understand it, to call it what it is, and not too 
shrink from this honesty because the terrorists and their sympathizers 
hide behind a great religion. Importantly, we must not seek to 
rationalize and explain the views and the behavior of our enemies 
through our values and experiences. Militant Islam seeks not to change 
our policies but to destroy our very way of life and replace it with a 
Taliban-like society ruled by Sharia law and its enforcers. Militant 
Islam has declared war on the West--be very clear about it. It is 
fundamentally at odds with freedom, with democracy, with the inherent 
humanity of the individual, with critical thinking, and rational 
decisionmaking, not to mention all other religious beliefs.
  While it might be fueled by grievances, it is not caused by the West 
but, rather, by the very backwardness and ideological rigidity that 
they would impose on others.
  The second point is this: We should be clear that militant Islam, 
though bound together by common ideology, comes in various stripes, 
including al-Qaida, responsible for 9/11 and which may have inspired 
the recent terror plots in Great Britain; Iran's radical regime, whose 
leader promises to ``wipe Israel off the map'' and envisions a ``world 
without America,'' and which is speeding toward the development of 
nuclear weapons; the Wahabbism of Saudi Arabia, which is funding 
radical ideology in mosques and madrassas all over the world, including 
here at home; groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which cloaks its 
radical ideology in a new veneer of tolerance while its activities 
support terrorist groups like Hamas and many others.
  But state-sponsored testing of the United States and the West is also 
in full force. Iran is testing our resolve in Iraq where it is using 
its Revolutionary Guard and its terrorist client, Hezbollah, to train 
and arm those who are fighting our soldiers. Iran is testing the 
resolve of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan where it is providing 
support to al-Qaida. Syria is testing our resolve in Lebanon, where it 
is assassinating anti-Syrian officeholders while serving as a conduit 
for the weapons that are rearming Hezbollah. Hamas is testing our 
resolve in Gaza where it launched a successful coup against the 
Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
  Third, successful American response depends on resolve and support of 
the American people. We must understand the nature of our enemy and its 
ideology, confronting them head-on, with full confidence in the 
rightness of our cause. This is not a matter of moral relativism. We 
must not allow ourselves to be gagged by faux political correctness. We 
can say that these terrorists were bound together and motivated by a 
hateful ideology grounded in their interpretation of Islam without 
condemning any other Muslims. We must not embrace groups who tell us 
they stand for peace without renouncing violence in the name of Islam. 
We must not reward evil with retreat from any of the battlefields where 
the fight is raging, including Iraq and Afghanistan. And we must be 
willing to support intelligence and enforcement activities, including 
incarcerating those who have plotted against or attacked us.
  As we celebrate the success of protecting our homeland since 9/11 and 
preventing loss of life from the attempted attacks in Great Britain, 
let our words and actions prove that we have not forgotten the resolve 
that we displayed six years ago today, and let us not fall into the 
temptation of blaming ourselves for the actions of those who, inspired 
by hatred, have declared war on us. It is not grievances which have 
spawned this hatred and these attacks but, rather, the hateful ideology 
of militant Islam.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed at this point in the record a 
New York Post op-ed by Irshad Manji, dated July 9, 2007.

[[Page S8762]]

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the New York Post, July 8, 2007]

                            Islam's Problem

                           (By Irshad Manji)

       Last week, two very different Brits had their say about the 
     latest terrorist plots in their country. Prime Minister 
     Gordon Brown told the nation that ``we have got to separate 
     those great moderate members of our community from a few 
     extremists who wish to practice violence and inflict maximum 
     loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their 
     religion.'' By contrast, a former jihadist from Manchester 
     wrote that the ``real engine of our violence'' is ``Islamic 
     theology.''
       Months ago, this young man informed me that as a militant 
     he raised most of his war chest not from obscenely rich 
     Saudis, but from middle-class Muslim dentists living in the 
     United Kingdom. There's sobering lesson here for the new 
     prime minister.
       So far, those arrested in connection to the car bombs are, 
     by and large, medical professionals. The seeming paradox of 
     the privileged seeking to avenge grievance has many champions 
     of compassion scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs 
     supposed to be poor, disenfranchised, and resentful about 
     both?
       We should have been stripped of that breezy simplification 
     by now. The 9/11 hijackers came from means. Mohamed Atta, 
     their ringleader, earned an engineering degree. He then moved 
     to the West, pursuing his post-graduate studies in Germany. 
     No servile goat-herder, that one.
       In 2003, I interviewed Mohammad Al Hindi, the political 
     leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. A physician himself, Dr. Al 
     Hindi explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. 
     ``Suicide is done out of despair,'' the good doctor 
     diagnosed. ``But most of our martyrs today were very 
     successful in their earthly lives.''
       In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver 
     that drives suicide bombers. It's something else. And, time 
     and again, the very people committing these acts have 
     articulated what that something else is: their religion.
       Consider Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who 
     master minded the July 7, 2005 transit bombings in London.
       In a taped testimony, Khan railed against British foreign 
     policy. But before bringing up Western imperialism, he 
     emphasized that ``Islam is our religion'' and ``the Prophet 
     is our role model.'' Khan gave priority to God, not to Iraq.
       Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim 
     who murdered Amsterdam film director Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri 
     pumped several bullets into van Gogh's body. Knowing that 
     multiple shots would finish off his victim, why didn't 
     Bouyeri stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate 
     van Gogh?
       Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is 
     an implement associated with 7th-century tribal conflict. 
     Wielding it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding 
     moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into van Gogh's 
     corpse, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable 
     rhythms of Arabic poetry .
       Let's credit Bouyeri with honesty: At his trial he proudly 
     acknowledged acting from ``religious conviction.''
       Despite integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of 
     Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, 
     police nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow 
     up Canada's parliament buildings and behead the prime 
     minister. They called their campaign ``Operation Badr,'' a 
     reference to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military 
     triumph achieved by the Prophet Mohammed. Clearly, the 
     Toronto 17 drew inspiration from religious history.
       For people with big hearts and good will, this has to be 
     uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-
     and-order types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding 
     up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and 
     didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press 
     conference, police boasted about avoiding those words.
       If the guardians of public safety intended their silence to 
     be a form of sensitivity, they instead accomplished a form of 
     artistry, airbrushing the role that religion plays in the 
     violence carried out under its banner.
       They're in fine company: Moderate Muslims do the same.
       While the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, a 
     more important distinction must start being made--the 
     distinction between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones. 
     Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam--but 
     deny that Islam has anything to do with it.
       By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of 
     theological interpretation to those with malignant 
     intentions--effectively telling would-be terrorists that they 
     can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims 
     won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing 
     interpretations.
       To do so would be to admit that religion is a factor. 
     Moderate Muslims can't go there.
       Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's 
     scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for re-
     interpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on 
     notice that their monopoly is over. Re-interpreting doesn't 
     mean re-writing. It means re-thinking words and practices 
     that already exist--removing them from a seventh-century 
     tribal time warp and introducing them to a twenty first-
     century pluralistic context.
       Un-Islamic? God no. The Koran contains three times as many 
     verses calling on Muslims to think, analyze, and reflect than 
     passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In 
     that sense, reform minded Muslims are as authentic as 
     moderates, and quite possibly more constructive.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon is 
recognized.

                          ____________________