The Real Bigots
By Jeff Jacoby 
The Boston Globe

September 3, 2001

    Secretary of State Colin Powell shunned the UN's World 
Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, 
and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, for fear of 
lending unwarranted dignity to an ugly anti-Israel, anti-Jewish 
slanderfest.  Just how ugly became clear Sunday, when delegates 
to the conference's forum of non-governmental organizations 
voted to brand Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of 
"systematic . . .  war crimes, acts of genocide, and ethnic 
cleansing" and urged the UN to reinstate its notorious resolution 
equating Zionism with racism.

    It had been obvious from the outset that antisemitic Israel-
bashing would be high on the Durban agenda.  Delegates arriving 
last week were greeted by the sight of posters featuring a large 
Star of David and the word "apartheid" in big letters.  A press 
conference called by 20 Jewish organizations was broken up when 
Arab rowdies began shouting and blocking the speakers.  The 
Associated Press reported that the Arab Lawyers Group distributed
"pamphlets depicting Jews with fangs dripping blood and wearing 
helmets inscribed with Nazi swastikas."  Josef Goebbels died in 
1945, but his intellectual descendants are alive and well.

    "There's anti-Semitism and hate literature at the world racism 
conference," Columbia University law professor and human rights 
scholar Anne Bayefsky told reporters last week.  "It couldn't get 
much worse."

    Well, serious people know better than to take the UN seriously.  
It is clear that Durban is not meant to focus soberly on "racism, 
racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance."  
It is clear less from the topics drawing so much attention -- like 
Israel -- as from the topic about which nothing is being said: 
militant Islamic fundamentalism.

    Of all the forms of intolerance and xenophobia abroad in the 
world today, none is as violent, oppressive, and widespread as 
radical Islamism. Islamist persecution is in the news almost daily.  
Consider some of the stories being reported as the Durban 
conference was gearing up:

(*) Afghanistan's Islamist dictators, the Taliban, announced that 
six international aid workers who have been jailed for more than 
three weeks on charges of preaching Christianity will be put on 
trial.  The 16 Afghans arrested with them will face the death 
penalty if they are found to have converted from Islam.

(*) Iran's "moderate" president, Mohammed Khatami, pledged to 
continue providing financial support to Hezbollah, one of the 
world's most murderous organizations.  Iranian support for 
Hezbollah -- the Islamist terrorists who blew up the US embassy 
and Marine barracks in Beirut -- has been estimated at 
$100 million a year.

(*) The humanitarian group Middle East Concern said that 
10 Christians, all foreign guest workers, were arrested in 
Saudi Arabia after hosting a party that included a talk by an 
evangelist.  Under Saudi law, it is illegal for non-Muslims to 
hold religious services -- even in private.

(*) A Pakistani criminal court sentenced Dr. Younus Shaikh to 
death for blasphemy.  His crime?  Telling his students that 
before becoming a prophet at the age of 40, Mohammed and his 
family had not been practicing Muslims.

    It is important to emphasize: Islamism is *not* Islam.  
On the contrary, it is a perversion of Islam.  The traditional 
religion practiced by most of the world's Muslims is tolerant 
and moderate, an ancient faith with a rich tradition of 
scholarship.  Islam places great emphasis on virtue, charity,
and living according to God's will; it is not at all incompatible 
with political democracy or religious pluralism.

    Islamism, by contrast, is a power-obsessed ideology.  
Like other 20th century "isms" -- Communism, Maoism, fascism, 
totalitarianism -- it is radical, repressive, cruel, 
contemptuous of human rights, and deeply hostile to outsiders.  
Countries ruled by Islamists, such as Iran, Afghanistan, and 
Sudan, are among the most unfree places on earth.  Without 
exception, they strangle basic freedoms, oppress women, incubate 
terrorism, and persecute religious minorities.

    Islamist xenophobia and violence has many faces.  In Sudan, 
the regime uses chattel slavery, forcible conversion, and mass 
murder as weapons in its jihad -- holy war -- against black 
Africans in the south.  Islamist gangs in Egypt carry out 
deadly pogroms against Coptic Christians.  This summer,  
Afghanistan's Taliban demolished ancient Buddhist works of art, 
then ordered every Hindu in the country to wear yellow 
identification badges. Terrorist networks like Osama bin Laden's 
and Islamic Jihad place a premium on killing and wounding 
Americans.  Death sentences are pronounced against authors --
like Salman Rushdie or, more recently, the American Khalid 
Duran -- who write books the Islamists don't approve of.  
The litany is grim, the victims are many, and the threat is global.

    An international conference genuinely committed to the fight 
against racism, xenophobia, and intolerance would place Islamist 
violence and bigotry squarely in its spotlight.  But Durban 
is not such a conference.  Which is why the subject of Islamism 
won't even come up.