The morning after the 9/11 attacks..we began talking about the Twin Towers attack. Ruud shook his head sadly about it all. He said, "It's so weird, isn't it, all these people saying this has to do with Islam?" I couldn't help myself.. I blurted out, "But it *is* about Islam. This is based in belief. This is Islam." Ruud said, "Ayaan, of course these people may have been Muslims, but they are a lunatic fringe. We have extremist Christians, too, who interpret the bible literally. Most Muslims do not believe these things. To say so is to disparage a faith which is the second largest religion in the world, and which is civilized, and peaceful." I walked into the office thinking, "I have to wake these people up.".. The Dutch had forgotten that it was possible for people to stand up and wage war, destroy property, imprison, kill, impose laws of virtue because of the call of God. That kind of religion hadn't been present in Holland for centuries. It was not a lunatic fringe who felt this way about America and the West. I knew that a vast mass of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam. .Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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[The day of the attacks] "We [the United States] began talking about the Twin Towers attack. Ruud shook his head sadly about it all. He said, 'It's so weird, isn't it, all these people saying this has to do with Islam?' I couldn't help myself...I blurted out, 'But it *is* about Islam. This is based in belief.
This is Islam.'" The article continues: "My Dutch friend had warned me that our failure to understand Islamic beliefs and culture would get us killed. But I couldn't get the point. I blurted out, "But it *is* about Islam.
This is based in belief. This is Islam." Ruud responded by reminding me that, in the past, many Westerners had perpetrated atrocities in the name of Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. He said that for centuries most Christians had thought that their faith made them morally superior to others because they believed that they were doing God's will by killing infidels... The time when countries are at war with one another is also when people are often more inclined to believe their own governments' propaganda about their enemies…Ayaan told me that she agreed with her former teacher Ruud van Lidth de Jeude …I agreed with her when she said that most Muslims were peaceful people who loved peace and did not wish to wage war against infidels… Yet I knew that a vast mass of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam."
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