SENTINEL WATCH October 31, 2005 Issue

WHERE IS OUR FOCUS?

MYRIAM BETOUCHE

MY FATHER WAS BORN into a Muslim family, and therefore I am especially sensitive to the vulnerability of young Muslims today being targeted for recruitment by radical Islamic terrorists. A youthful characteristic is a passion for justice. That is why the attraction some young people have to perverted doctrines needs to be understood so we can work to eradicate them. One such doctrine is the glorifying of suicide for religious reasons. To me, a suicide bomber—usually a young, radical Islamist—is a misguided warrior who has not separated in himself what the Bible calls "the precious from the vile" (see Jer. 15:19).

As Christian Scientists, we might compare inflamed hatred toward Western values to a sickness of the mind, and treat it as such. Science and Health states: "Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction" (p. 460). So how do we erode this solid conviction that violence is a viable pathway to achieving religious goals?

Science and Health explains that "evil is sometimes a man's highest conception of right, until his grasp on good grows stronger" (p. 327). We can understand this better, perhaps, by seeing that apart from the battles in Iraq, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or any unresolved discord affecting the Islamic world, historically Muslims have felt a deep, underlying "humiliation"—an inferiority complex—toward the industrialized West, along with fears of modernity, the fear of losing sacred values on the road to materialism.

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