Know Your Enemy/Understand Your Enemy Part 1 (sponsored)

I lived within the world of Islam for 33+ years — both within the United States and in Iran. I only knew as much about Islam as the average American with a reasonably good education — which is to say, not much.

My American/Persian family were moderate, peace-loving people as well as my Tehran-based Persian relatives. They would never think of being a part of terrorism in any manner. Some had become American citizens over the course of time and were living and conducting their lives and business with many U.S. neighbors and customers. Even though they missed the "old world", these emigrants were so happy to be a part of this great nation. They had immersed themselves into the new culture, the new language, the public schools with the new American traditions with enthusiasm and hope for a better future.

Violence was not a part of my world or theirs until "religious fanatics" were demanding the complete overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. These stringent adversaries/saboteurs wanted sharia law implemented in Iran, unlike the Shah who seemed willing to accept a more western ideology of tolerance toward Christians, Jews, and other minority faiths. Little did I know that the Koran does not permit this.

So when it became evident that Christians, Jews, and others were not safe, we left and dispersed into many other nations. For me and my immediate family, we returned to the United States. Was it easy? Far from it. Was it dangerous? Yes. Were there many challenges? Definitely. But we resettled with help from friends and family.

Consequently, when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, and other plots were uncovered where simultaneous attacks on the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations complex on the East River, and the FBI's lower Manhattan headquarters were also targeted, I and many Americans were confused and shocked as to who and why this was being done.

At the time the American government was saying: read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist attack were Muslims; read nothing into the fact that their actions had anything to do with any religion or belief system; read nothing into the fact that they were explaining their atrocities by citing Islamic scripture. We were told by our government that these terrorists were twisting and perverting one of the world's great religions, a religion that encourages peace.

But the violence of 1979 kept coming back into my thoughts. So I decided to investigate who would be in charge of the U.S. federal leadership to prosecute this terrorist cell. Unlike the assertions of government press secretaries and press commentators, this lead prosecutor, Andrew C. McCarthy, would have to present actual facts that proved what happened and why before a commonsense American jury. Before convicting of serious crimes, this jury would want and would expect concrete physical and circumstantial evidence that left no doubt about who perpetuated this monstrous destruction upon an American city and its innocent victims. And why?

I learned that Andrew C. McCarthy, a native born Irish Catholic from Brooklyn, N.Y. was a graduate of Columbia College and that he received his J.D. at New York Law School. For 18 years he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, and from 1993-1995 he led the terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in connection with the World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Later McCarthy would go on to supervise the Justice Department's command post near Ground Zero. He would also serve as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and an adjunct professor at Fordham University's School of Law and New York Law School. In other words, McCarthy was a seasoned prosecutor in 1993. He had the education and the law experience to meet the challenge at hand. Or so he thought.

One of the first lessons learned by McCarthy and team was that the U.S. government really did not know who it was dealing with in terms of the "Blind Sheik" as Omar Abdel Rahman was known. The U.S. government was portraying the Sheik as a wanton killer who was lying about Islam by preaching that it summoned Muslims to jihad or holy war.

Far from being a wanton killer or a lunatic, the Sheik was a globally renowned scholar of Islamic jurisprudence who graduated from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the seat of Sunni Islam for over a millennium. The area of his expertise was sharia-Islamic law. McCarthy began to question why President Clinton and Attorney General of the U.S., Janet Reno, would begin to think they knew more about Islamic culture and doctrine than the Sheik. What if the Sheik wasn't lying?

Also, if the Sheik was blind, did he have other medical handicaps? That seemed relevant to McCarthy because terrorism is hard work. If the Sheik was too sick to be useful to a terrorist organization in the building of bombs, hijacking a plane, or carrying out an assassination, how could he be the unquestioned leader of a terrorist cell? Was there more to his interpretation of Islamic law than our government was willing to concede? So McCarthy dug deeper into Islamic law as well as the Sheik's writings. And what McCarthy and his team found was truly alarming. The Sheik was quoting the Koran/Quran and other Islamic scriptures accurately.

McCarthy knew from the onset that he could not argue Muslim theology with a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence, but the lead U.S. prosecutor did believe that if what the U.S. government was contending — that the Sheik was perverting Islam — that there were probably two or three places where the Sheik could be nailed. McCarthy could say to the Sheik, "You told your followers X, but the doctrine clearly says Y." Even when the U.S. team members argued that perhaps the Sheik's preachings had been taken out of context or a full account of his words had not been given, the team discovered that still the fact remained that the Sheik was not lying about Islam.

Here is what the prosecution learned: 1. When the Sheik said that the Koran commanded Muslims to strike terror into the hearts of Islam's enemies, the scriptures backed him up. 2. When the Sheik said Allah enjoined all Muslims to wage jihad until Islamic law was established throughout the world, the scriptures backed him up. 3. When the Sheik said Islam directed Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as their friends, the scriptures backed him up. What would McCarthy do with this knowledge about the enemy? What would the U.S. government do? Would this clarification about the enemy change the tactics of the prosecution?

Part 2 will follow up on these questions. We all need to know who the enemy is and be able to call it for what it is. We need to know the tactics of the enemy and how to confront it. Yes?

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Carol Alipour-Paz was born in the Midwest — Ohio. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, with Bachelor degrees in English, French, and Science. Carol holds a Masters in Education K-12 from New York State University, SUNY New Paltz, N.Y. Her teaching career covers 30+ years in the high school and elementary levels, plus cooperating professor for college students preparing for education in classrooms. Carol has taught both overseas and in the States. She and her family have lived in other cultures outside of the U.S., predominantly in the Middle East and with her Iranian/Persian family. Carol has been the hostess of "Women to Women" on Charter Media for 4 years, and now she writes a monthly article on her website WomentoWomennv.com concerning local, state, national, and international topics.

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