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Cure for an Islam Gone Mad
(Los Angeles Times) Amos Oz - The suicide-murder at the UN headquarters in Baghdad and the suicide-murder in Jerusalem have a great deal in common: A force that once was described by Salman Rushdie as "paranoiac Islamism" was at work in both cases. The same phenomenon is probably behind the fact that out of 28 violent conflicts raging right now all over the globe - from Indonesia to Kashmir, from Sudan to Chechnya, from the Middle East to North Africa - 25 involve an Islamist faction. Paranoiac Islamism maintains that "modernity" or "the West" or "the Jews" or "the superpowers" or even "the entire international community" are conspiring to erase Islam and therefore true believers must act preemptively by wiping out all Islam's enemies - and almost everyone in the world is considered a deadly foe. Paranoiac Islamism has become the worst enemy of Muslim civilization, an enemy of its values, of its heritage, and of its long-standing tradition of tolerance and wisdom.