20060113
    As has been widely reported yesterday and today, at least 345 pilgrims at the annual Hajj in Mecca died yesterday during a stampede toward the final action of that pilgrimage: the ceremonial stoning of three ‘pillars’ designed to enact the final stoning of the devil. These pilgrims were crushed to death by their fellow pilgrims apparently after some of them tripped over luggage left in the path to the pillars.
    This is a delicate subject because it is always a tragedy when people die, whatever the cause, but this kind of tragedy seems to be endemic to the Hajj. Already, 76 people died in Mecca when their hotel collapsed, and now at least 345 more died by being trampled by their fellow pilgrims. In past years, thousands more have died in similar incidents. While tragic, none of this is so remarkable, perhaps, except for the response:
“This was fate destined by God,” [Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour] al-Turki said. “Some of the pilgrims were undisciplined and hasty to finish the ritual as soon as possible.”
    So, these pilgrims deserved to die because they were in a rush? Because of their rush, their god punished them? This is a troubling insight into a religion that takes a directly barbaric view of life and death. Why is this important to us? Because this same barbaric view of life and death is what also drives the unending war of radical Islam against the rest of the world.
    It becomes very easy for members of a religion that dismisses tragedy and death as the will of god to take the next step and conceive that this god wills such tragedy and death. If god, then, wills such tragedy and death, are not the followers of such a god called upon to enact that will?
    The tragedy yesterday in Mecca gives the West a unique insight into the minds of the faithful of the Islamic world. We see a religion that dismisses tragedy and death as gods will. We see a religion whose faithful will willingly trample their fellow faithful to complete a sacred right. We see the spark of radicalism that feeds the Jihad now waged against the West.
    In this view, we see the frightening reality of a religion that, by the words of its own holy book and the constant exhortation of its own holy men, is directed and bent upon the violent conversion of the entire world to its own way.
    It is this later enemy we fight in the War on Terror. It is radicals motivated by such callousness and claim to divine will that can steel themselves to die by blowing themselves up or flying airplanes into buildings. It is the practitioners of this kind of faith that even now, as we vacillate about whether our actions in places like Iraq are justified, continue to plan and carry out their mission.
    Until we understand the nature of such an enemy and accept that nature as true, we cannot win this fight.
DLH
