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The Challenge for Muslims
Editorial (Chicago Tribune) - * After every suicide bombing, we search for meaning, the reasons that the bombers have left behind in their trail of human misery and destruction. We seek clues for why these men and women, often from affluent homes, embrace the kind of seething hatred that allows someone to believe that killing innocents is the pathway to heaven. * These days, answers often are filtered through the political prism of Iraq. But the debate about whether U.S. policies in Iraq or elsewhere are to blame for suicide bombings or other terrorist acts is largely misguided and futile. It not only blames the victim for the crime, but allows the terrorists to dictate American foreign policy and specify the terms upon which they may be persuaded to stop the attacks. * The question of what motivates suicide bombers "will not be answered by focusing on the grievances by which the terrorists later claimed to have been propelled: The sociopath's motivations are revealed in his behavior, not in his grandiose self-justifications," military history professor Caleb Carr wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal. * Murderous hate has been nurtured in many Arab countries through a combination of corrupt and repressive leadership and brutal intolerance for dissent or human rights. It's been fueled by regimes anxious to deflect anger from themselves to the Great Satan. * The result often is a culture that glorifies death. As one Hamas leader said: "Our suicide operations are a message...that our people love death." Until that culture changes, nothing else will. This war of ideas won't be won until suicide bombers occupy a place of contempt in Islamic culture somewhere below child molesters.