I’ve had this discussion with people before. The argument goes something like this:
“Boy, that guy Zacharias Musawi is really crazy. He really hates Jews and Israel. And this idea that he would conspire to use a jet to commit suicide to kill Americans and destroy symbols of America’s freedom and power is nuts.”
The response: “No he is not crazy. He believes like millions of radical Muslims that all infidels must be converted or killed. It’s not craziness, it’s just evil”
Take a look at this analysis from the Hudson Institute. Laurent Murawiec gives one of the most cogent explanations of the mindset of the Islamofacists menacing the world.
[Iranian President] Ahmadjinedi wants to hasten the reappearance of the Hidden Imam, whose coming, in traditional Muslim, and especially Shiite, apocalyptics, will be the Sign of the Hour, that the End of Days is nigh. Ahmadinejad’s politics cannot be labelled ‘radical,’ as opposed to ‘moderate.’ His politics are apocalyptic and eschatological. Its vanishing point is not earthly but otherworldly. Famously Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We have not made a revolution to lower the price of melon.” The task of the Mahdi, when he reappears, will be to lead the great and final war which will bring about the extermination of the Unbelievers, the end of Unbelief and the complete dominion of God’s writ upon the whole of mankind. The Umma will inflate to absorb the rest of the world.
The politics carried out by the complex in power in Tehran – Ahmadinejad, the Pasdaran,the Basiji, the ministry of Intelligence, Supreme Guide Khamenei – is apocalyptic and millenarian – but it also is autistic: in the world, nothing that contravenes their perverted sense of what is and what ought to be, may be allowed to exist; conversely, anything in the world that contradicts their representations must be eradicated: the only things allowed to exist are their representations. In their revolt against the Order of the world,they are determined to impose upon that world an Order that incompatible with most institutions and people. They are disposed to destroy a world that refuses their dawa, as it stubbornly clings to its own ways, in order to make way for their fanciful views.
Musawi is a poster boy for those radical Muslims throughout the world. To understand him as “crazy” is dangerous because it allows us to dismiss the threat posed.
