Are all the world's terrorists Muslims?

Following the massacre by mostly Muslim terrorists in Beslan, Russia, that killed, at last count, 338 people, including at least 156 children, and wounded hundreds of others, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote on September 8, 2004:

Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television in Dubai, wrote in a London Arabic newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, "Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture."

Under the headline "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists Are Muslims!," he wrote, "Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims." He also wrote that if Muslims want to change their image, they must "admit the scandalous facts," rather than disparage critics or justify terrorists' behavior.

Now it may be a bit extreme to suggest that all the world terrorists are Muslims. Yet the facts are disturbingly clear: most of world-class terrorism today appears in one form or another to be terrorism committed by Muslims, and all the reticence of Western governments and media officials to face this disturbing reality, as evidenced by their preference for words such as "militants" and "extremists" won't change the disturbing facts. Thomas suggests that "moderate" Islamic clerics should "defrock" and denounce other clerics who preach hate and the destruction of Christians, Jews, and all things Western, arguing that the appropriate place for "diversity" and "sensitivisity" training is not in the liberal Western countries but in those that harbor and train terrorists and export terrorism as a religious mandate and national policy. This may seem a trifle facile, of course, and much more needs to be said and done. But the voice of Abdulrahman al-Rashed is certainly one that needs to be heard at the table of nations.

Read more of Thomas' article here. For further reading, see below:


Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World (Regina Orthodox Press, 2002)

Dore Gold, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism (Regnery Publishing, 2003)

Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004)

Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)

Robert Spencer, Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics (Ascension Press, 2003)