I was curious what they were saying in the Arab world, so I went to Twitter and searched on “September 11” in Arabic. I expected to find a mixed bag – some tweets celebrating the attack and expressing solidarity with Osama bin Laden, others condemning it and expressing solidarity with America. So it surprised me that what I found was overwhelmingly the former: anti-American, pro-terrorist, and pro-hatred.
Here’s a sampling:
@jijbnt, who calls himself "We are all Osama", describes the image of the plane crashing into the second tower as "a beautiful memory":
Muhannad echoes the sentiment:
Persho from Egypt sends his love:
Algelaud Hussein, whose profile says he dreams of being a pilot, tweets:
Abdullah al-Ali from Kuwait, who runs an IT security firm, accuses President Obama of secretly planning an Arab holocaust.
Abu Amoam prays for Osama bin Laden:
@7AZ1M accuses the American military of killing millions of Iraqi and Afghan children:
Not sure what khabor is, but eating it doesn’t sound like a good thing.
Of course no September 11 post is complete without the obligatory Truther:
I really did set out to write a balanced piece and make today a day about healing, but all I found on Twitter was extremism. We keep hearing about moderate Muslims, but they weren't speaking up today. If any of my Arabic-reading friends come across their tweets, tweets that condemn the attacks and are sympathetic to the victims, please comment with links, and I'll pull them together in a future entry.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com
An ancient Asian is noted for saying, "It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle."
ReplyDeleteSun Tzu didn't comment about situations where you are indecisive about naming your enemy, much less knowing them, but I suspect that if he had, it wouldn't have been encouraging.
Maybe we should turn to a western philosopher for some wisdom on the path we should take with these who wish us dead.
"Here a question arises: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved. . . . Love endures by a bond which men, being scoundrels, may break whenever it serves their advantage to do so; but fear is supported by the dread of pain, which is ever present."
Those are the words of a Prince, wiser than the one we've trusted so far to solve this problem.
Thanks, Charles! Not only do we need to know what our enemies are saying about us - we need to know that they consider themselves our enemies.
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