The school that is hoping for American help (NYT)
The New York Times digs deep and discovers the Pentagon waging ideological warfare against Kenyan jihadis. Well done!
SIYU, Kenya - Why this particular fishing village, among the hundreds along the East African coast, may soon receive a new well, courtesy of the Pentagon, is no secret.It is not because the people here have to walk long distances and brave harsh temperatures for the limited drinking water available on Pate Island, although they do. No, the United States Central Command is concerned more with the loyalties of the people of Siyu than their thirst.
From remote Siyu, investigators say, the bombing of a Mombasa hotel that catered to Israeli tourists, and the simultaneous failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli-chartered airliner, were planned in 2002. The well is one of many public works projects being undertaken by the American military throughout the Horn of Africa aimed at changing the locals' view of a country many of them had learned to hate.
"The war on terrorism is not necessarily a shooting war," said Maj. W. Brice Finney, commander of theArmy's 412th Civil Affairs Battalion. Still, these are good deeds with a strategic edge. The main purpose is to monitor the vast coastline for terrorists fleeing Afghanistan and other spots across the Gulf of Aden. All of which explains why the military is paying close attention to Siyu.
It seems to be working to the frustration of some.
Muslim leaders say their followers have been ignoring their warnings about accepting the American largess. The people are poor and ideology takes a distant second to making ends meet."When I tell people, 'Don't let the Americans help you,' they ask me, 'What is the alternative?' " Sheik Abdulkadir said, shaking his head in frustration.
All Abdulkadir can offer the people is fear and hate. They're rejecting that. Good! Now, hopefully missionaries will follow and offer these people a chance at life in Christ.
I would love to believe they are rejecting fear and hate but I'm not so sure. We given billions of dollars and have done many good deeds in the middle east and they still hate us. The nature of this beast, I think, is to take, take, take, ask for more, and then spit in our face. It's great if we can do something nice for them and get something in return but I wouldn't count on this becoming a love affair.
Skeptic,
One of the biggest problems with foreign aid is that it goes primarily to the governments first. By the time all of the government officials and local NGO's get their cut, only dribbles are left for the people, and that looks like it comes from the local government, not the U.S.
Basic infrastucture projects like this are very visible and relatively inexpensive.
jay
People are always happy to receive American aid. this does not make them grateful, nor does it make them necessarily more susceptible to appeals for solidarity with non-Muslims, or still better, appeals to jettison Islam altogether.
Iraqis are glad to have the American soldiers rebuild thousands of schools. But what will be taught in those schools? They are glad to have their hospitals completely re-equipped. But will the obvious effect of those hospitals -- lowering the mortality rate so that Iraqi families will have those 10-12 children apiece, and so that wounded Iraqis (say, fresh from attacking Americans0 may be better treated -- is that desirable, strictly from the Infidel's point of view?
If the digging of the village well is followed by something else, some appeal which might allow those benefiting to begin to ponder, at least, why it is that Infidels can provide such assistance, while Muslims cannot, and then from the economic failure of Islam, to the relative success of non-Muslims, if there are newspapers and other outlets which might promote, for example, Christianity (a delicate matter -- and one which the government, for Constitutional reasons -- may not be able to engage in, even though it would be for geopolitical and not religious reasons).
Christians have long been permitted to engage solely in the vocation of charity: thus Italian and French monks for years labored in Algeria, providing medical care to Muslims. For their pains they converted almost no one, though many were happy to receive their ministrations. And in the end, those remaining through the last decade all had their throats slit.
Western missionaries have converted animists, but the number of conversions among those already enrolled in the army of Islam is very small. Because Islam is a Complete System, and because it is also a "trivial" (Jacob Burkhardt's piercing epithet) religion, without depth, it has great immediate appeal; it provides an enemy to hate, the non-Muslim, and a manichaeism (no universal goodwill to one's fellow man, only to one's fellow Muslims) supplies a world-view that satisfies many.
Were the Jihad and not some vague "terrorism" named as the problem, then the American government, and other enlightened governments, might engage in ostentatious consultation with Christians in Africa (in Nigeria, in the Sudan, in Kenya and Tanzaniya) to see what might be done, with Western aid, to support Christians, to increase their percentages in the population, to build churches, and so on. Even non-Christians should be supporting this, not out of religious reasons, but in order to protect themselves. No other geopolitical system, calling itself a religion, is a threat to all others. That is why, in India, Hindus must be backed to the hilt, or Buddhists in Thailand, or Jews in Israel. Not out of religious solidasrity, but out of a comprehension that anywhere Islam triumphs over those it considers its enemies, will hearten and embolden other Muslims everywhere. We are not manichaeists ourselves, but such a view has been thrust upon us.
Wells are not enough. The appeal of Islam should be diminished in whatever way it takes -- possibly by noting that, save for oil and gas (the revenues from which have nothing to do with real economic activity) Islam is an economiic failure. The belief-system encourages fatalism, and therefore passivity, and along with that passivity,a sense of entitlement - for are not Muslims the best of men? -- and aggrievement that one can see on display in Iraq today ("What's taking the Americans so long to rebuild our entire country? We don't have all day, you know.").
In Africa, there ought to be a sustained campaign that, in the public press, emphasizes both the long history of Arab involvement -- far longer, and with far more victims -- in the slave trade in black Africa -- as well as the continuation of such practices even up to the present, in the Sudan, in Mali, in Mauritania, and even, if reports from some who have managed to escape from the interior are true, in Saudi Arabia (would it surprise you really, to find out that slavery is still alive and well in the heart of Saudi Arabia? Of course it wouldn't. Ask yourself why it is you would not be surprised.) The Qur'an recognizes, and regulates, slavery; slavery therefore, as Suadi clerics recently confirmed, must be part of Islam. The Qur'an is not the American Constituton, subject to creative re-interpretation that will remove unpleasantries. Also sprach Allah, and there's no getting around it.
Today there is mass murder of black Africans. Rwanda was once the most Christian of black African countries. (Knowing that Egypt supplied the Hutus with weapons, and that Boutros Boutros Ghali was the U.N. Secretary-General at the time of the massacres and was, of course, as a Copt on a short Muslim leash, subject to the Egyptian government's oversight, some black Africans have argued that the massacre of Christians by Christians was a not-unwelcome development to Muslim Arabs, including those in Cairo; Islam, incidentally, is now having a field day in Rwanda).
The American government could do much more than build wells. If another Christian uprising occurs in Nigeria, for example, and another Biafra is declared (as might happen given the horrible persecution and murder of Christians in northern Nigeria, virtually unopposed), this time the American governmentmau realize it should recognize (only Israel and Ghana recognized Biafra when the Ibos declared their independence), and support, a free southern and largely Christian state (instead of all that vaporing about "keeping the largest black African state together" blah blah)carved out of what at present is a disintegrating Nigeria where the Muslim-run military calls all the shots and, with its camorra capitalism, takes all the money as well. A southern, Christian state would also possess all the oil revenues -- switching them from Islamic control, to those of the Christians (the oil in the southern Sudan is, likewise, under lands where Christians live, and therefore should derive the benefits).
This is a world war, and one of indefinite duration. Iraq is a very tiny part of it, and right now it is consuming, idiotically, all of our resources, and all of our attention. It cannot be that the residents of Washington are really as uncomprehending and unimaginative and as they sometimes appear to be, can it?
Would anyone in his right mind, even someone utterly unalarmed about, or indifferent to, the manifestations of Jihad world-wide, really wish Islam on any people or polity that did not have to embrace it? Does anyone think it is a system that improves political freedoms, or encourages the development of the economy, or promotes freeinquiry into the nature of the universe (the Muslim idea of science is limited entirely, as Mohammad Mathathir and other so-called "reformers" make clear, to science-as-technology, or that it in any way encourages what should be the point of all civilizations -- the emancipation of the individual mind? Islam appeals to those in need of the collective, the crowd of Gustave Le Bon, or the massed Sieg-Heils of Leni Riefenstahl's Germany. Who, in his right mind, would wish this on anybody?
Hugh:
Right on. Islam is the ideal path for the 'true believers'. But
why is radical Islam becoming more popular among young muslims in the West, esp. in Europe? What is it about the current world that encourages this? What is the appeal? Could it be that young muslims in Europe see themselves as permanent 'outsiders', and therefore are naturally attracted to radical islam as a form of protest? How many really consider the implications of an islamic Europe? Would they really like it? It seems more like an exercise in adolescent rebelliion that is fanned and exploited by committed islamic ideologues. It is similar to the appeal of naive utopianism to left wing people.
What can be done?
Mike
Winning hearts and minds? Waste of time and resources. These people's hearts, minds, and every other aspect of their lives belongs to islam.
Helen:hopefully missionaries will follow and offer these people a chance at life in Christ.
Queer:What will follow is a bunch of prostitutes setting up businesses where the American soldiers reside. That Abdul is right to think the worst of men. And it’s not a crime to reject some white men selling books and crosses. If you value freedom, then you should respect their existence first before describing them as savages.
Plus could not help himself, never mind anybody else.
Plus Christ could not help himself, never mind anybody else.
Crusader Front:
You may be right. It all comes down to how much islamic fundamentalism has a hold on the hearts and minds of its adherents in Europe.
If the muslim majority follows islam first and foremost then there will be civil war in Europe within five years.
I don't believe that the Europeans are just going to roll over and submit. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement preceded the revival of the British Bulldog in Winston Churchill.
This will happen in Europe as native Europeans come together to fight islam, once again. The end result will not only be the defeat of Islam, but also the birth of the real United Europe. Europeans will set aside their national differences and unite to meet this threat. Europe will have to unite, otherwise it will become Eurabia.
Mike
queer hoodlum,
Your homophobia is showing. I have formed this mental image of you, hoodlum. I see you as a black westerner, who couldn't make it in normal society. You got in trouble on and off for most of your life. Then, as an adult you got in real trouble, and did some prison time. There you compounded your criminal tendencies with a superficial understanding of Islam, which validated your feelings of racial superiority, and hate for people (especially whites) who succeed at life in the way you never will. At some point you probably had a homosexual experience which shocked your self-image so much that you became a queer basher. Does that sound about right?
cheers