Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (33 page)

Also affecting the Muslim and Arab nations' ability to become a positive contributing member to the world are their forms of government. Most countries in the Middle East have been ruled for generations by dictators. You can identify each country with one man, one family, or Islam. Libya: Gadhafi; Syria: Assad; Jordan: King Abdullah; Saudi Arabia: the royal family of Sand; Kuwait: the royal family. In Iraq it used to be Saddam Hussein. Iran: Muslim fundamentalists. Even in Jordan, home of Western-educated King Abdullah and Westernized queen Rania, where relatively free elections occur, the ultimate power is controlled and maintained by an unelected king. The only opposition these dictators have comes from extremist Muslims, whom they have managed to suppress up until recently. In the global community of developing democratic societies, this concentration of autocratic and royal purveyors of power seems absolutely medieval. Israel is the only truly democratic, secular country in the Middle East, right in the middle of all of them.

In line with the medieval thinking, Arab rulers know how to control their populations: keep them ignorant. That’s how you rule people, keep them ignorant and control the content and flow of information into society. You brainwash them into believing whatever you want them to believe, using the government-controlled newspapers, radio, and TV. Then let human nature, pumped with hatred, anger, rage, pain, and suffering and spiced with Islamic holy deception, take its course.

Another method these one-man or religion-based regimes use to stay in power is to create a sideshow to distract the population from problems at home. That’s why the Arab world has done nothing to help the Palestinian refugees they created when they attacked Israel in 1948. It’s called the “Palestinian refugee problem.” This is one of the best tricks that the Arabs have played on the world, and they have used it to their great advantage when fighting Israel in the forum of public opinion. This lie was pulled off masterfully, and everyone has been falling for it ever since. First you tell people to leave their homes and villages because you are going to come in and kick out the Jews the day after the UN grants Israel its nationhood. You fail in your military objective, the Jews are still alive and have more land now than before, and you have thousands of upset, displaced refugees living in your country because they believed in you. So you and the UN build refugee camps that are designed to last only five years and crowd the people in, instead of integrating them into your society and giving them citizenship. After a few years of overcrowding and deteriorating living conditions, you get the media to visit and publish a lot of pictures of these poor people living in the hopeless, wretched squalor you have left them in. In 1967 you get all your cronies together with their guns and tanks and planes and start beating the war drums. Again the same old story: you really are going to kill all the Jews this time or drive them into the sea, and everyone will be able to go back home, take over what the Jews have developed, and live in a Jew-free Middle East. Again you fail and now there are even more refugees living in your countries, and Israel is even larger, with Jerusalem as its capital. Time for more pictures of more camps and suffering children. What is to be done about these poor refugees (that not even the Arabs want)? Then start Middle Eastern student organizations on U.S. college campuses and find some young, idealistic American college kids who have no idea of what has been described here so far, and have them take up the cause. Now enter some power-hungry type like Yasser Arafat who begins to blackmail you and your Arab friends, who created the mess, for guns and bombs and money to fight the Israelis. Then Arafat creates hell for the world starting in the 1970s with his terrorism, and the “Palestinian refugee problem” becomes a worldwide issue and galvanizes all your citizens and the world against Israel. Along come the suicide bombers, so to keep the pot boiling you finance the show by paying every bomber’s family twenty-five thousand dollars. This encourages more crazies to go blow themselves up, killing civilians and children riding buses to school. Saudi Arabia held telethons to raise thousands of dollars to the families of suicide bombers. What a perfect way to turn years of military failure into a public-opinion-campaign success.

The perpetuation of lies and uncritical thinking, combined with repetitious anti-Jewish and anti-American diatribes, has produced a generation of Arab youth incapable of thinking in a civilized manner. This government-nurtured rage toward the West and the infidels continues today, perpetuating their economic failure and deflecting frustration away from the dictators and regimes that oppress them. This refusal by the Arab regimes to take an honest look at themselves has created a culture of scapegoating that blames western civilization for misery and failure in every aspect of Arab life. So far it seems that Arab leaders don’t mind their people lagging behind, save for King Abdullah’s recent evidence of concern. (The depth of his sincerity remains to be seen.)

To get a better understanding of the societies that introduced mass killing by suicide bombers we must understand how the culture operates. Arab countries are tribes with flags. As Arab tribes in the Middle East were divided by the British and the French and given land that both these powers controlled, new countries emerged that are now considered a part of the international community. However, these tribes kept to themselves because of their religion, culture, and way of life. The lack of transition, education, and business development in these countries ensures that most people stay trapped within their societies and cultures, ruled by centuries-old tribal customs, traditions, and ways of thinking that are still revered and followed as they were hundreds of years ago.

Tribal and spiritual leaders are the real power brokers in Arab societies in the Middle East. They are honored, respected, and obeyed by the rest of the community. Every word they utter is considered a word of wisdom not to be questioned. Children are raised with the idea of obeying and respecting as ultimate authority the family patriarch, the elders of the community, and the religious leaders; in almost all areas of life the religious leader, known as sheikh or mullah, is the one with the utmost authority. In most cases those religious leaders lack proper education, which is irrelevant as long as they know the Koran and live according to its law. The West has now come to see the power mullahs have in their communities and on political issues. A shoe bomber, the World Trade Center truck bombing, hundreds of suicide bombings, and of course 9/11—all inspired by religious leaders preaching the vision of jihad and martyrdom—speak of this mesmerizing power and influence. More recently, when riots in France erupted, the French government turned to the mullahs to calm down the crowds and maintain control after all police efforts failed. A few words from the Muslim mullahs quieted the streets of Paris and the surrounding areas.

These tribal countries are maintaining an aspect of their culture I hold just as accountable as their religion for the death and mayhem that are commonplace: the rituals of tribal life based on honor
(ard).
The concept of honor in the Arab world is the driving force behind wars, killing, and international conflict. Any perceived injury to the honor of one member of the clan by an outsider is considered an injury to all members of the Arab world. Any dishonorable action by one member of the tribe reflects on the whole community. Therefore the drive for revenge to cleanse the honor justifies the killing of innocents, who have to pay the price to wipe away the shame. Positions of power are given to unqualified individuals simply to honor them as a favor for past deeds or for killing individuals for dishonoring or betraying the tribe, or allying themselves with an enemy tribe.

The family’s respect and position in the community in an Arab or Islamic country is directly linked to and dependent on the family’s honor. That honor is the sole responsibility of the women of the family, who are taught from childhood the consequences of their behavior. The male members' honor lies between their women’s legs. The woman is the property of the man, be it her father, husband, or brother, a whole network of male members who ensure that the family’s honor is guarded at all times. The word
aib
("shame") is used frequently and associated with everything a woman does, from her dress code, to her social behavior, to her language, to her makeup, down to a hair that has escaped her headscarf. A married woman cannot leave home without the permission of a male member of her family. When the father is absent, the son must give permission to his mother to leave. An unmarried woman must remain a virgin with her hymen intact until marriage. In most Islamic countries a woman has to produce a proof of her virginity to her family-in-law on her wedding night. If she fails to bleed, it means she is not a virgin in their eyes, and then her death becomes the obligation of her immediate family members, her father and brothers.

It is shameful for an Arab woman to be seen with a male who is not a relative or a family member. Merely creating the suspicion of being touched by another man can cost her her life. Hundreds of women and young girls are savagely butchered in the Middle East every year. Human rights organizations can’t even come close to counting the number of murders because of the close guarding of such shame by families. Even if a young girl is raped, she still has to die because she soiled the family’s reputation and honor. Only her sacrificed blood will be able to cleanse the family’s name.

Even in Jordan, under British-educated King Abdullah and his wife, Rania, Article 341 of Jordanian law justifies murder when honor is in question. It states that if the act of killing another or harming another was committed as an act in defense of his life, or his honor, or somebody else’s life or honor, then it was justified. In many cases the murderers of girls who are killed in the name of honor are innocent of any crime. My doctor, who is an Iraqi and now resides and practices in America, tells me stories about the many girls she saw during her practice in the Middle East. Butchered and beaten girls were brought to her to examine, and after examination were found still to be virgins. Most of the girls were either dead when they got to her or were unsavable.

Women have no rights in Islamic societies. Women are not permitted to get an education. They are not allowed to leave the house or work without a male guardian’s written approval. The Koran gives the husband the right to beat his wife. Sura 4:4 in the Koran says, “Men are the managers of the affairs of women. Those you fear may be rebellious admonish and banish them to their couches and beat them."

I have seen Arabic TV talk shows where men who have beaten their wives black and blue calmly defend their actions with the confidence and assurance learned from their culture and the stamp of approval from their religion. Watching Muslim imams and other clerics on TV describe their support for the practice and even clarify it with verses from the Koran is equally disgusting.

In Islam a wife has no right to divorce. That right belongs only to the husband, who can at a whim utter the words “You are divorced” three times in a row, and she is divorced. Then after being divorced she is looked upon as used goods by men, who will not stoop to marry her. They want a virgin, of course!

A highly circulated story of an honor killing, distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services, was that of Rofayda Qaoud, a Palestinian teenager who was raped by her two brothers, who shared her bedroom, and became pregnant. Her mother bought her a razor and asked her to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. The young girl refused. So, says her mother, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud, she did what she believed any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family’s “honor” through murder. Armed with a plastic bag, a razor, and a wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter’s room. “Tonight you die, Rofayda,” she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda’s wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of “No, Mother, no!” After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick. It took her mother twenty minutes to finish the job.
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A girl born in the Middle East is doomed to a life of misery, especially if she is a Muslim. Many girls commit suicide as the only way out of a miserable situation, be it a forced marriage, soiled honor because of rape, or just rumored sexual promiscuity. The world did not pay attention to this phenomenon until it started seeing female suicide bombers, which made the Western world start questioning what drives a woman to become a suicide bomber. This seventh-century Middle Eastern Islamic tribal practice of degrading women is now a threat to the civilized world, a source for willing recruits who strap on bombs to kill innocent people. In the West it is completely beyond our imagination why women could be willing to kill other women and children. We know that in Islam the man is rewarded with seventy-two virgins in heaven, but what is a female martyr’s reward in the afterlife? Her real reason for becoming a suicide bomber is to cleanse her honor. A few examples will dispel any misconception that these women suicide bombers exemplify the heightened frustration of people and societies so oppressed that they resort to suicide bombing as their last hope of achieving freedom. That’s what the Islamic terrorists and Palestinians want the uninformed Western minds to think.

In January 2004, Reem al-Reyashi, a Palestinian from Gaza, became the first female Hamas bomber. She faked a medical condition at the Erez crossing and killed four people, leaving her two young children motherless. According to numerous reports, al-Reyashi had committed adultery and was given the terrible choice of dying at the hands of her family or attaining an “honorable” death by becoming a suicide bomber. Her lover, a member of Hamas, gave her the explosives and instructions for conducting the deadly mission, and her husband drove her to the Erez crossing to commit the heinous act.
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