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By Shannon Blosser
National Review

A recent act of terrorism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill left students and faculty in disbelief, wondering why a former student would ram an SUV into a crowded group of students. Many of them extended their disbelief to include a willful denial that the attack was an act of terrorism at all.

Mohammad Reza Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old Iranian native who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in December, rented a Jeep Cherokee Laredo from a local rent-a-car dealership and launched his attack at a popular gathering place for students known as “the Pit,” located near the student union and campus libraries. Nine people were injured — none seriously — in Taheri-azar’s rampage. Three days later, he made his first appearance in Orange County District Court, where prosecutors read out the 18 charges levied against him, including nine counts of attempted murder.

Coverage of the offense has focused on two themes: the reasons for the attack and the reaction of the campus community. The two story lines would presumably be closely related: The motives are revealed, and the campus proceeds to denounce them. But it hasn’t been that simple, and the second story line has become oddly disconnected from the first.

Taheri-azar has not exactly been ambiguous about his motives. “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah,” Taheri-azar said to District Court Judge Pat DeVine. Taheria-azar intended his attack as a response to U.S. foreign policy, and by doing so he thought that he would be viewed as a martyr by radical Islamists who promote terror worldwide.

UNC-Chapel Hill officials released an audio of Taheri-azar’s 911 call to dispatchers turning himself in, just moments after he ran over the students.

In the four-minute call, Taheri-azar sounded as though he couldn’t wait to be arrested. When the dispatcher asked why he ran over the students, Taheri-azar responded, “The reason is to punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”

Perhaps Taheri-azar’s decision to attack UNC-Chapel Hill had something to do with a cartoon published recently in The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper of UNC-Chapel Hill, depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

There is more to Taheri-azar than just his words to police. His actions in court, and the images of him in the media, suggest that he views himself as a hero in the Muslim world. A smug smile as he walked out of the courthouse and an exuberant wave to the TV cameras indicated that he thinks someone in the Middle East, or maybe in the United States, will look upon him as a leader and follow his example. He reportedly told detectives that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States’ turn to be killed.” If this comment doesn’t lead people to conclude that this was an act of terrorism, it is difficult to see what could.

Some students took the initiative to denounce the attack and stage a rally to label it as an act of terrorism. Jillian Bandes, a columnist who was fired from The Daily Tar Heel in September for comments she made about Muslims and terrorism, told The News & Observer, “Why not label terrorism? Not doing so suggests a certain leniency toward that kind of thing.”

But many of the attendees at the rally were there to denounce the use of the term. Muslim students told the media they were offended by those who believe it was an act of terrorism. By Monday afternoon, signs were seen in the Pit that called the rally organizers racists and asking about 100,000 people killed in Iraq.

A UNC sophomore, Johnathan Pourzal, told the Durham Herald-Sun that the mission of the event organizers offended him. “By calling it religious violence, you are telling people that Muslims are violent,” he said.

Wesley Pruden,
Washington Times

George W. Bush wants to be remembered as the president who rose to the challenge of Islamic terrorism, and he’ll no doubt get his wish. But he might not be regarded as quite the Teddy Roosevelt of his century.

The challenge in Iraq grows ever more unfathomable to the civilized world. Only yesterday the bodies of 20 Iraqi civilians were discovered with nooses around their necks, hands tied behind them, grisly work done in the name of Allah. This was a day after 40 others were found beheaded and the Iraqi interior minister blames American soldiers. But beheading is an Islamic taste; Christians and Jews have no beheading tradition.

All presidents, Republican or Democrat, have to say things sometimes they don’t really mean, sometimes delivered with a wink and a nudge, sometimes not. When George W. talks about “the religion of peace” as if the Islamists are just a little confused, like a congregation of wayward Episcopalians, we have to think he doesn’t really mean it. Presidents, like governors and even mayors, have to keep in mind that in a country as big as ours there’s always the criminal element to consider. We don’t want our crazies to get any ideas, like Shi’ite imams in pursuit of Sunni holy men.

But this president and his men (and women) should keep in mind, as certain presidents before them didn’t, that Americans think for themselves, and they’re always skeptical of what their government tells them. Americans keep Ronald Reagan’s famous caution in mind at all times: “Trust, but verify.”

President Bush has discarded the mantra of “weapons of mass destruction” as the reason he went to war in Iraq, replacing it with “promoting democracy,” and a lot of Americans look at the neighborhood where the promotion and nation-building is taking place and reward the idea with a Bronx cheer. The Bronx cheer is getting louder. Most of us know better than to imagine that men fiercely dedicated to a religion that hasn’t changed much in a thousand years will embrace a philosophy of government based on liberty, equality, tolerance and brotherhood (and treating women with humanity and respect). The Golden Rule — “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — is usually translated in the Middle East as “do it unto others before they do it unto you.” How can anyone build a nation with clay like this?

“The better idea,” Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle, two Bush-friendly intellectual observers, write in the Wall Street Journal, “consists of separating the struggle against radical Islamism from promoting democracy in the Middle East, focusing on the first struggle, and dramatically changing our tone and tactics on the democracy promotion front, at least for now.”

The problem the Bush administration has created for itself, they argue, is that has tried to cure one disease — radical Islam — by prescribing for another, the absence of a coherent political system in Arabia. This problem is complicated by the insistence of millions of Muslims that their religion is also a political ideology, that the state cannot be separated from the religion. It’s a hostile ideology.

George W. is never more eloquent, or as persuasive, as when he describes American aims in the Middle East in terms of American security. Joe Sixpack — and even Mike Merlot and Cherie Chablis — will always rally to the ramparts to defend American security once it’s clearly explained to them, hang the cost. But nothing provokes a good ol’ boy like somebody blowing smoke at him. A lot of us have reluctantly concluded that neither the power of American arms nor the grandeur of American ideals is likely to cool the passion of madness; the Islamists are at war with the 21st century (as well as the 12th through the 20th). The Islamists for their part recognize the fragility of a religious ideology that can be threatened by a Danish newspaper cartoon or the conversion of a single Muslim to another faith, and fight all the more irrationally.

Dealing with the grave Islamist threat to American security won’t be easy. The West — actually, the United States — must find a way to kill the guilty while encouraging and supporting moderate and peaceful Muslims. Americans will rise with the president to the challenge if the president will just tell it like it is. That won’t be easy, either.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times.