A sacred place violated

"Taheri-azar didn't just want nine funerals with nine gravestones to mark his crime. Taheri-azar wanted front-page photographs of our faces in anguish; he wanted to draw us into reactions of irrational violence against Muslims; he wanted his day in court.

He wanted us to fear standing in the Pit - the spot that represents everything Islamist terrorism seeks to eradicate.

On UNC's campus, the Pit is a literal place where worship, art, music, poetry, relationships, celebration and charity thrive. It is a sacred space on our campus - a brick sanctuary for dialogue, nestled between two libraries full of mankind's diverse ideas.

When Qutb [al Qaeda philosopher] says the West "does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence" he called our very existence a debauchery, an abomination and an unjustifiable stain on history."

This young lady sums it all up. All we are fighting for.

I guess you all heard of the Iranian madman driving his SUV into the pit at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday. Even at the very university where he committed his insane hate crime, not every one could make up there mind if this had anything to do with Islamic terror.

Ginny could, - take the time to read all of her impressing 'Letter to the Editor' in Daily Tar Heel; click headline or Continue:

Islamist terrorists aim to alter our political landscape

By Ginny Franks, March 8, 2006

"Hit-and-run" names a crime in which people are unintentionally hit and discarded like dogs beside a highway. Drivers in hit-and-runs gain villainy for their cowardice.

But Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar - an Islamist who rented an SUV with the stated intent to kill students on campus to avenge Muslims worldwide - is not a "hit-and-run" criminal, as WRAL reported and others parroted.

He is a terrorist.

President George Bush quickly labeled terrorists as cowards following Sept. 11, 2001. We, a nation of bravado, were struggling to find words to describe what we experienced. So we chose coward.

Coward is the lowliest epithet we can fathom - in a society where we often fling nonsensical four-letter words to wound each other, the most degrading thing we can call someone is not an obscenity. It is cowardice that is offensive to us - being weak-willed, dishonorable and submissive to fear when we face evil.

Terrorists are wrong, and they are evil. But they are not cowards.

Our modern enemies have strength that cowards, by definition, do not possess.

Some have taken Islam and followed a succession of philosophers and false prophets to reach a conclusion that gives them strength and conviction that Western beliefs are dangerous.

"This was not a political or an economic or a racial struggle; had it been any of these, its settlement would have been easy, the solution of its difficulties would have been simple," wrote Sayyid Qutb, one of the philosophers who is the founder of al-Qaida principles. Qutb is right in arguing that this is instead a much more difficult struggle - a struggle of beliefs.

But we weren't afraid of ideas and beliefs, so they use weapons such as planes, bombs and SUVs.

And Qutb and Osama bin Laden's faithful, who mistakenly believe they are Muhammad's faithful, are transformed into soldiers.

They believe they are above morality - when they strike, they create unwilling martyrs in sacrificial acts or mete out God's punishment. To them, our way of life is incompatible with their interpretation of the divine. Terrorists must harden their hearts, endure physical torture and are called upon to sacrifice their lives in what is to them a sacred act of bravery.

Terrorists are evil, but they aren't cowards. The truth is that terrorists aim to make cowards of us.

Taheri-azar didn't just want nine funerals with nine gravestones to mark his crime. Taheri-azar wanted front-page photographs of our faces in anguish; he wanted to draw us into reactions of irrational violence against Muslims; he wanted his day in court.

He wanted us to fear standing in the Pit - the spot that represents everything Islamist terrorism seeks to eradicate.

On UNC's campus, the Pit is a literal place where worship, art, music, poetry, relationships, celebration and charity thrive. It is a sacred space on our campus - a brick sanctuary for dialogue, nestled between two libraries full of mankind's diverse ideas.

When Qutb says the West "does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence" he called our very existence a debauchery, an abomination and an unjustifiable stain on history.

We are a nation of disparate values. We cannot unite behind religion. We live among saints and sinners of every denomination and creed.

We cannot unite behind symbols - such as a flag that we alternately hail and ignite or a Bill of Rights some call gospel and others hypocrisy.

Islamist terrorists find one true path, while we embrace the possibility of multiple truths. There are few things in this country that we harmoniously coalesce behind and even fewer times when we speak with a united voice.

And that in and of itself is worth fighting for.

Above all we believe in - and demand - a political space where we can disagree.

And we need to believe in that political space just as strongly and be willing to sacrifice just as much in order to maintain it as those to whom its very existence is blasphemy.

That political space is the Pit. It is UNC.

It is a country in which we believe that the battle of beliefs need not divide us and need not inspire hatred of our brothers in humanity.

We must rise to defend our political space - a box on the editorial page for an offensive cartoon, a place on a shelf for an offensive book, a protest in the Pit with offensive signs - because in the end that is what we have that is worth fighting for.

It is our commitment to dialogue - to offend or be offended, to teach or to learn, to engage and to inspire - that saves us from cowardice while Taheri-azar smiles into the cameras.