Mutilation of victims and Muslim lawPage 2 of 2 -- Gaza: After six Israelis are blown up in a bomb attack, Palestinians are filmed dancing in the streets and playing with the dead men's body parts. In a video, two Islamic Jihad terrorists take credit for the massacre -- and display the severed head of one of their victims.
Iraq: Islamofascists videotape their murder of Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old US civilian. Shouting "Allahu akhbar!" ("God is great!"), they saw off Berg's head as he shrieks in pain and fear. The disfiguring of victims' bodies did not begin this year. In a notorious lynching four years ago, two Israeli reservists were taken from their car to the second floor of a Palestinian police station in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where they were literally torn limb from limb. Their internal organs were pulled from their bodies, their eyes were gouged out, and what was left of them was thrown from a window to a cheering crowd below, which set the corpses on fire and dragged them through the town. Perhaps even more infamous -- at least to Americans -- were the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002 and the mutilation of the bodies of US soldiers in Somalia in 1993. We are in a war to the death with an enemy whose deepest civilizational values come straight out of the 8th century. In the world that they would impose on us all, there is no dissent, no pluralism, no path to God but theirs -- and no mercy or tolerance for those who might choose a different path. Our enemies make no secret of their intentions: We will bow to their totalitarian idea of Islam, or we will be killed. And not only killed, but mangled, mutilated, and subjected to the most hideous indignities they can devise. The terrorists and their followers burn and batter corpses for the same reason the Taliban smashed magnificent statues -- for the same reason Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf": to openly proclaim their contempt for the moral principles of the civilized world. Ultimately it is up to the world's moderate, modern Muslims to rise up against the barbarians in their midst. Until that day comes, there is nothing the West can do to ameliorate or appease this enemy. We can only destroy it -- or be destroyed.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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