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The idea of subduing militant Muslims by threatening to bury them with pigs has held currency for many years. Just a few weeks before the September 11 terrorist attacks on America in 2001, Deputy Israeli police minister Gideon Esra suggested in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that Palestinian suicide bombers be buried in pig skin or blood. In the 1939 film The Real Glory, Gary Cooper portrays Dr. Bill Canavan, an American Army doctor in 1906 Manila who tries to protect the native population from ruthless invaders (i.e., Muslim fanatics). At one point in the film, the Dr. Canavan character drapes a captured Muslim in a pigskin and proclaims that henceforth all slain Muslim rebels will be buried in pig skins, thereby discouraging their savagery by threatening to prevent their entry into paradise. And, of course, the above-cited anecdote about General Pershing's handling of terrorists in the Philippines has circulated widely on the Internet ever since 9/11 and even made the rounds at the top levels of U.S. government: The history of the American administration of the Philippines between the Spanish cession of the islands at the conclusion of the Spanish-American war in 1898 and the attainment of full political independence in 1946 (including American attempts to pacify various independence-minded groups through military means) is too long and complicated to explicate here. Suffice it to say that General John J. Black Jack Pershing was part of the process as Governor of the troublesome Moro Province between 1909 and 1913. We found no references to this alleged incident in Pershing biographies, however, nor does it match the way Pershing is generally recorded as having dealt with the Moros in 1911. When they refused to obey Pershing's order banning firearms by surrendering their weapons, his response was to draft a letter to the Moros expressing sorrow that his soldiers had to resort to killing them to enforce the order: When negotiations stalled and matters came to a head, Pershing was still reluctant to be responsible for any more loss of life than was necessary: Pershing's strategy was to surround the Moros and wait them out while attempting to induce them to surrender, a strategy that worked effectively: the Bud Dajo campaign ended with only twelve Moro casualties. But in his report Pershing seemed keenly aware that the best approach was not to take any action that would encourage religious fanaticism: As William Lambers noted, Pershing executed no Muslims. At most, anecdotal accounts attributed Pershing's success to his merely threatening to do as described: Yet another account, from the 1938 book Jungle Patrol, attributed the deed to someone other than Pershing: Nonetheless, the desire for simplistic solutions to complex problems has spawned several widely-circulated notions that seek to transform a fight against terrorism to the easily-manageable level of a horror film or a comic strip. One popular notion is the concept that a pig is to a Muslim as a crucifix is to a vampire: simply arm yourself with a porker, and you can use it to render even the most fanatical terrorist helpless, sending him cowering in fear lest he come into contact with anything porcine. Such notions reduce an extremely widespread and diverse religion, and the people who follow it, to a monolithic entity with a single set of beliefs and rules to which everyone adheres. Islam has a variety of sects and sub-sects just as Christianity has a multiplicity of denominations; assuming that all Muslims believe and behave identically is like assuming that all Catholics and Baptists believe and behave identically because both of the latter groups are Christians. In one sense, messages such as the ones quoted above could be considered as silly as Muslims' proclaiming that a good way to throw the U.S. into disarray would be to bomb America with juicy steaks on Fridays, because Americans are Christians, and everyone knows Christians who eat meat on Fridays go to Hell. Never mind that not all Americans are Christians, that not all Christians are Catholics, that not all Catholics believe in exactly the same things, that not all Catholics are equally religious or faithful, and that even the rules of Catholicism have changed over time. Also implicit in this type of reasoning is the notion that terrorist, Muslim terrorist, fanatical Muslim and devout Muslim are all synonymous. They aren't: just as not all Muslims are terrorists, not all terrorists are Muslims; and just as the religiously devout are not all fanatical, not all religious fanatics are devout. Religion is unfortunately sometimes wielded by those who use it as a weapon in the arenas of politics and power, and counter-religious behavior is often justified or sanctioned in the service of a greater cause. The terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 were reportedly seen partaking of alcohol and engaging the services of naked lap dancers in the days before 9/11, activities which should have been anathema to true Muslims. Perhaps they were Muslims in name only, maybe they weren't all that devout, or possibly they rationalized that Allah would overlook their transgressions with booze and women since they were about to die in the service of Islam. Whatever the case, concerns about the afterlife probably wouldn't have dissuaded the hijackers from their plans to crash Flight 11 into the World Trade Center had a few pigs turned up on board the plane. If their relationship with Allah were a concern to them, well, the hijackers could choose to believe that Allah would understand and make allowances for true warriors of the faith. (After all, the fact that the Quran forbids suicide and consigns those to commit it to Hell wasn't sufficient to deter the 9/11 terrorists.) Nonetheless, the discouraging Muslim terrorists by burying them with pigs concept is still invoked in the modern era, even if the evidence of its use (or success) remains nebulous: Sightings: On 17 August 2017 President Donald Trump tweeted about the Pershing legend, presumably in reference to a suspected act of terror in Barcelona:
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