Jihad Watch Advisory Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald assesses the jihad against Israel:
What is surprising about the Jihad against the Infidel state of Israel is how transparent have been the attempts to disguise it for Western audiences, yet how successful those attempts have been, and not only in the outside world, but in Israel itself.No discussion of anything in the Middle East, or elsewhere that involves Muslims, can take place without a thorough grasp of what Islam is all about. Is there a special unit in the Pentagon and the State Department made up of people well-versed in Qur'an, hadith, and sira (obviously not Muslims themselves, or non-Muslim apologists such as Sells and Esposito), and who furthermore have been adequately supported in their studies of the history of Jihad and of dhimmitude? Why not? Is there another entire parallel world of people who are trained, and who can be listened to instead of to the assorted PLO propagandists and antisemites who see "Likud" conspiracies everywhere – not to mention the leftists who see the cause of "Palestine" as a way to assert their third-world credentials (it's getting awfully hard to depict the Arabs, who have recently received 5-6 trillion dollars in unearned and unmerited wealth, as part of the "Third World" -- but since when did reality matter?) as well as a chance to beat up not only on Jews (leftist antisemitism is a powerful force) and but also upon the United States. Among the latter are Rashid Khalidi, Joel Beinin, Laurie Brand, Juan Cole -- just to offer a list of the most recent presidents of MESA, the scandalous association of "Midde Eastern Scholars of America" which, for all I know, may have a few real scholars still in it. Just like the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, which broke away from the MLA more than a decade ago, surely the real scholars of Islam and the Middle East should make their case before the public and above all to Congress -- which must not be fooled by the word "scholar" or by the invocation of various "prestigious" university titles or associations. These mean exactly nothing, except as an indication of how cleverly the real story of Islam has been pushed to one side by propagandists unfit to walk the halls where once Arthur Jeffery, Joseph Schacht, Richard Gottheil, and others once walked.
At Columbia, Georgetown, and various other places, when one compares the few real scholars of the past with the clowns who have usurped their places, one gets a melancholy Hyperion-to-a-satyr sense of things. Not so much lachrimae rerum as -- Who engineered this? Who was not looking when the Middle Eastern Departments of this country were, most of them, transformed in such insidious fashion? What brave and intelligent administrators and university presidents and members of the faculty -- members outside the Middle Eastern Studies departments -- are going to make the investigation, based on a true understanding of Islam, and the subsequent cleaning-up their highest priority?Imagine an English department that failed to mention Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Johnson, Keats, Dickens, or Joyce. Well, plenty of Middle Eastern departments are so busy with their courses on the "Arab-Israeli" conflict, and the "construction of Palestinian identity," and most recently -- sensing that something about Islam is in the air – with attempts to describe all talk about Islam as just so many varying "discourses" representing different political "agendas." This is a transparent attempt to prevent any serious investigation of the tenets of Islam and their reception over 1350 years, and the remarkably similar ways, over those 1350 years and from Spain to eastern Asia, Muslims first conquered and then subjugated, and then slowly asphyxiated, all sorts of non-Muslim peoples: Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs (under the Mughals), Confucians, others. An unbroken record of mistreatment and violence. But if MESA has much to do with it, our attention will continue to fix on the essentially trivial example of the sliver of Infidel-controlled territory upon which many people believe that most ancient of Middle Eastern peoples, the Jews, have every right to re-establish their commonwealth. But of course, in the view of Islam, no Infidels anywhere have rights -- except insofar as those "rights" may be generously granted by the dominant Muslims, "rights" that at any point can be removed at will.
Fascinating that a few British observers in the 1930s wrote about Jihad; that Shlomo Carlebach's observations on the Jihad, preserved amusingly by Edward Said in his preposterous "The Question of Palestine" in the early 1950s, also showed an understanding; and that more and more scholars even in peace-hypnotized Israel are realizing, with clear-sighted alarm, that the Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel is not susceptible of "solution." Or rather, that the only long-term "solution" that will not result in the disappearance of Israel and the seizure of the Holy Land by Muslims is that of Israel remaining overwhelmingly and obviously strong, which requires it not give up any more territory, so that the Arabs will be able to invoke "Darura" as the reason for not going to war in the military sense. Anyone care to take issue with that? Is anyone assuming that things will just be hunky-dory, if not for the Jews then at least for the Christians who might want free access to the Holy Land, if Israel disappears?
In all other senses -- diplomatic, political, economic, demographic -- the war will continue. It cannot but. The Muslim Arabs, or most of them (and one must make policy not on the basis of the handful of the enlightened or the plausible, but on the basis of the primitive unenlightened -- those mobs in Gaza, for example) have to continue the Jihad. They simply must.But the Israelis have to come to their senses. The late George Ball, an enemy of Israel, used to insist that we should "save Israel in spite of itself" He meant, of course, that we should force it to make suicidal concessions. The phrase, however, can be appropriated and put to better use.
And that "saving Israel in spite of itself" would require making clear that there is no "two-state solution" and indeed, no "solution" at all. The very idea of a "solution" to many of the world's problems is itself a reflection of silliness, or naivete, or stupidity. The only "solution" is the one that worked for the United States in the Cold War: wait, and wait, and keep up the pressure, and keep up military and other kinds of warfare against an enemy that is active on all fronts, and hope that eventually the environment requires an end to the use of fossil fuels, or there is some gathering understanding, even if it is not expressed, by intelligent Muslims that they have far more to lose by going in for the kill against Israel than if they concentrated instead on constraining Islam. In that way the many failures -- political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral -- of the world of Islam might, to the degree that Islam is constrained, be undone, or remedied, and an otherwise hopeless situation ameliorated.
Anyone who is interested in the Middle East but who has a short attention span for scholarly works, would do well to read Leon Uris'novel, The Haj. I have been studying Islam and the Muslim world ever since 9/11 and the novel is remarkable in its analysis of Arab culture and Islam. If after reading the Uris novel, your appetite is whetted for sterner stuff, I suggest David Pryce-Jones', The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs. Here are the Amazon links or get them out of your local library for free (my library had both books):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553248642/qid=1116526379/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-2412384-5144804?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060981032/qid%3D1009395231/sr%3D1-1/ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F10%5F1/002-2412384-5144804
We are here, we are here, we are here!
Can Islam change? Can Islam become a personal faith, a quietist religion, in which the people who practice it simply just want to be left in peace like the Amish?
Anyone who has criticized Islam publicly is familiar with the veiled and not so veiled threats that one receives afterwards. For infidels who criticize Islam, that is only a taste of what a Muslim who dares to say anything critical about Islam receives. The religion is based on fear and intimidation. Muhammad set the example with assassinating opponents and stifling dissent. All of Islam is a fear society. Under those circumstances, how can anything change? It is not for nothing that the punishment in Islam for apostasy is death.
Westerners who think that all religions teach the same things, that all religions are peaceful, love your neighbor affairs are deluded and ignorant. Those who say that surely not all Muslims can be "like that" have a point but a very small one because the "tiny minority of extremists" is actually a "tiny minority of moderates". The extremists are in the majority. Those apologists for Islam, those Muslims who say that they do not believe the hateful things that their co-religionists do are not in the majority. They are in fact such a tiny minority as to be almost non-existent.
By all means we cannot tar all Muslims with the same brush. Anyone who studies Islam is immediately struck by the various sects who have split off from mainstream Sunni Islam for instance, such as the Ahmadis and Ismailis. However, one should bear in mind that Sunnis and Shias do not consider Ahmadis and Ismailis to be Muslims and members of those sects are found in large numbers in North America because they sought to escape religious persecution in their home countries, much like those long ago Puritans who also sailed to the New World for the same reasons.
By all means keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out.
Nice article Hugh, but I just have one concern:
"And that "saving Israel in spite of itself" would require making clear that there is no "two-state solution" and indeed, no "solution" at all. The very idea of a "solution" to many of the world's problems is itself a reflection of silliness, or naivete, or stupidity. The only "solution" is the one that worked for the United States in the Cold War: wait, and wait, and keep up the pressure, and keep up military and other kinds of warfare against an enemy that is active on all fronts..."
I agree in theory with you that the Occupation should not end and no land concessions should be made, but what troubles me is what should Israel do about the demographic problem that it is having with the Arabs? Although it is true that many Christian Arabs are leaving the territories in droves, the Muslim Arab birthrate in the territories is astronomical -- mainly thanks to the UNRWA. Would it be wise for Israel to "wait them out" as the Arabs continue to multiply and seethe next door? And let's not forget about the "Palestinians" inside Israel proper that have citizenship; give them ten or twenty years and it could become a naqba for the Jewish state. If we add WMDs into the equation (i.e. Iran) and the possibility of Hamas or Hezbollah procuring these WMDs, will it really matter to these terrorists that Israel is a military powerhouse? What I'm getting at is that Israel's time is limited and an opportunity to crush this Jihad may not present itself in that short timeframe.
Hugh
Something that may give you heart after the meeting last night??
An Israeli Genral said what ever it takes??
I like those words myself!!
I saw some of the Arrests in Iraq on TV and they looked like palis??
not Iraqis??
And today I heard that they were chaining the bombers into the cars and setting to bombs off by remote this meand they are running out of crazys but the bullys are still strong but if the People stand up to a bully they can destroy the Bully!!!
this is the lesson of David!!
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider
Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO STAY THE COURSE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM AMEN
PS
I haven't had any e-mail since April 10th so if you all wrote me a nasty letter I never got it!!
I have maintained for atleast twenty years, that there is no solution to the Arab-Israeli war. It is a Jihad against the Jews, as clearly stated by the imam in Gaza, as well as other imams on numerous occasions, and required by the koran. It will be solved on Judgement Day or when islam is no more, whichever happens first.
Israel has made many mistakes in this war, many due to pressure from America, and many more from its own innate dhimmitude.
First, it should never have given any lands until there was real peace. That has been the case in all wars, so why policy should have been changed for this one, is incomprehensible.
The next should have been a clearly stated policy, that for each terrorist attack on Israel, would lead to the outright annexation of territory, which would not be handed back even when a final peace came about. That should have been the price for the horrific murders of men, women and even deliberate murders of Jewish children. The Arabs were never required to pay the real cost of terrorism, (even now they are not required to), and so there was no incentive to stop. However if they had started to lose territory for good, it would been the worst defeat in the Jihad as can be. Allah grants no favours if one is losing land. Teerorism would have stopped and a peace treaty signed and kept to, for the consequences would have been disastrous for the Arabs.
As for the demographic problem. This can be dealt with by making the practice of islam as difficult as possible. Muslims would then leave of their own accord.
The only person from Israel who clearly understood the "Palestinian problem" and who proposed the only workable solution to it- Meyer Kahana- was murdered by a Muslim in New York City. SEE:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/kahane.html
The Muslims and Jews cannot live together in Israel. The former will not accept it. Because they resent the fact that the Jews got the idea of the monotheistic G-d before them (although Ikhnaton in Egypt had it even earlier, but the traditionalist priests overthrew him and restored the older polytheism). And, like Cain, Muslims have been trying to defeat the Jews so the followers of Islam can claim the title of "Chosen" for themselves.
Since Kahane's assassination, the cowering and coddling and capitulation has gone on.
And will lead, as DP111 notes, to demographic doom for the Jews in Israel -in a century or less.
Their laws will become Sharia-fied as Muslims become the majority of voters.
The dhimmi Jews remaining will revert to their 1094 A.D. status.
And some will escape to freedom in whatever survives of the West.
Assuming we learn from their sad lesson:
Please don't feed the animals.
I tuned in to C-Span for a look at the "Muslims against Terror" rally.....and there was no one really there. Just occasional passers-by who appeared to stop and see what was going on. It didn't look like a rally at all. Kind of puts things in perspective doesn't it?