Who is the enemy?

In a recent issue of SojoMail, Omar Al-Rikabi writes:

Well ... first of all you can't fight and win a "war on terror." Terrorism is a method, not a country or ideology. I once heard it said that fighting a war on terror is like having the flu and declaring a war on sneezing: you're only attacking the symptoms. As long as there have been people, there has been terrorism.

But what frightens me is the mindset in this country, and in the church, that seems to think terrorism was born and raised in the Middle East, and if we can take out the Muslim Arabs then the world will be a safer place. Put this idea up against the idea in large segments of the Arab world that America has, in a sense, created terror herself with her policies toward the Middle East. So the cycle continues, and we have "become a monster to defeat a monster."

So who is the enemy? I believe that on this side of the cross, according to the scriptures, that "we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12)

Mr. Al-Rikabi is a seminary student who was raised by a Muslim father and a Methodist mother. He has friends and family on both sides of the war in Iraq.

First, I agree with his point that you can't fight a war on terror/terrorism. It is a sypmtom of an underlying fear and mistrust between the West and the East. Also, terrorism certainly wasn't "born and raised" in the MidEast. How quickly we've forgotten the 30 years of terrorism between Protestants and Catholics in N. Ireland and England.

What if we, and radical Muslims around the world, prayed to defeat the real enemy instead of each other?

Technorati tags: terrorism, enemy