I have long suspected that modern "jihad" is largely an excuse for Muslim men - utterly lacking in self-knowledge - to act out their sexual and personal frustrations by means of anti-social violence. Viewed in this way, the 9/11 hijackers have far more in common with Ted Bundy or "Son of Sam" than with Mohammed or Abu Bakr. These are not "martyrs," but common criminals, sociopaths, idolaters, and blasphemers, who cannot tell the difference betwen their own murderous impulses and the will of God.
I dare say, these men were not even true Muslims. Their arrogance and self-worship is transparent on every page. Like Bundy, they had enormous egos and were unable to accept ordinary lives as the ordinary men that they were. Other people were scarcely even real to them, such was their godlike view of themselves.
Nor were they clever masterminds; their "success" was largely the result of sloppiness and laziness by American and European intelligence agencies, and of the anonymous and mobile lifestyle provided by the societies in which the hijackers lived as bloodsucking leeches. And if these men have defenders claiming that they were indeed good Muslims, then that is absolutely all we need to know about Islam.
Atta and his companions thought they were teaching the world about Allah, but they did not even know - much less understand, much less master - their own minds and primitive impulses. Their sexual repression is utterly transparent; the idea of committing mass murder in order to gain entrance into a heaven populated by sensual virgins speaks for itself. Atta's personal use of female mascara says even more . . .
So, in a sense, those Muslims who claimed that Muslims could not have perpetrated 9/11 were absolutely correct. The 9/11 gang were not Muslims - they were liars, they were thieves, they were murderers. And the true horror is this: empty men, men with no morals, men who will kill anyone, anytime, are very difficult to stop, especially when the rest of us can never quite convince ourselves that such monsters exist. In depicting the day-to-day activities of Atta and his companions, McDermott shows us that "the banality of evil" is not only a slogan applicable to the Nazi past, but remains true to this day.
When a Crusader writes a book about the 19 martyrs, the usual dumb mistakes about Islam that an internet search, or a fact-checker at his publishing house, should have detected will emerge: Muslims do not "sing at weddings" or any place else, since Islam forbids music; a mosque is not a church, etc. Still, Lover of Angels is glad to have Terry Mcdermott's PERFECT SOLDIERS in hand, if only relish stories of the the early days of the Commander-General Mohammed Atta, and learn more about the recruitment of the 15 mujahideen from the Land of the Two Holy Mosques.
The author is not a man of faith, and cannot understand why anyone would sell his soul to God. But, every Muslim's dream is to die as a shaheed (martyr). The 19 sought the Red Death (martyrdom)purely for the sake of pleasing Allah (All Praise is for Him), not out of rage, poverty or even politics, in a strict sense.Mcdermott should have immersed himself in a mosque or madrasa for a year, and then tried to fathom his subjects rejection of this world and total devotion to the Hereafter.
