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What Became of Tolerance in Islam? By KHALED ABOU EL FADL Extreme acts of violence and evil such as the recent terrorist attacks test the mettle and moral depth of societies--the society that is targeted by the violence and the society that generated it. The Japanese stealth attack on Pearl Harbor tested both the aggressor and the victim. Pearl Harbor challenged the moral integrity of Japanese normative values, but it also tested us. We responded to an extreme act of aggression with another extreme act: We interned our Japanese citizens in concentration camps, resulting in deep fissures in our constitutional and civil rights fabric. We do not have a good record when responding to aggression. As a society, we tend to vent our anger and hurt at our own citizens and then spend decades expressing regret and talking about lessons learned. Considering the scale of what has been called the second Pearl Harbor, I fear that there will be an explosion of hate crimes against Muslim and Arab Americans, both by police and by ordinary citizens. Anticipating the backlash, Muslim and Arab organizations have rushed to issue condemnations of terrorism and hate-motivated violence and have gone to pains to explain that terrorists who happen to be Muslim do not represent Muslims at large, Islam or anyone else. Nevertheless, the recent terrorist attacks mandate a serious introspective pause. As Americans, we should reflect on our own Middle East policies and the arrogance by which we deal with the dark-skinned people we collectively refer to as Arabs. Muslims, American and otherwise, should reflect on the state of their culture and the state of the Islamic civilization. As a Muslim, I feel that the horror of recent terrorist attacks demands a serious, conscientious pause. Terrorism is an aberration, but most often it is of a particular type, an extreme manifestation of underlying social and ideological currents prevalent in a particular culture. Terrorism is not a virus that suddenly infects the brain of a person; rather, it is the result of long-standing and cumulative cultural and rhetorical dynamics. In Islamic law, terrorism (hirabah) is considered cowardly, predatory and a grand sin punishable by death. Classical Islamic law explicitly prohibits the taking or slaying of hostages or diplomats even in retaliation against unlawful acts by the enemy. Furthermore, it prohibits stealth or indiscriminate attacks against enemies, Muslim or non-Muslim. One can even say that classical jurists considered such acts to be contrary to the ethics of Arab chivalry and therefore fundamentally cowardly. It would be disingenuous, however, to propose that this classical attitude is predominant or even that familiar in modern Arab-Muslim culture. I like many other Muslims grew up with an unhealthy dose of highly opportunistic and belligerent rhetoric, not only in the official media but also at popular cultural venues such as local mosques. Even in the U.S., it is not unusual to hear irresponsible and unethical rhetoric repeated in local