I respect Cliff May's work. I think his article on the Palestinians was an absolute knockout punch, and I applaud much of what he has accomplished with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. But his latest article is one of the most appalling things I have read in a long time -- principally because it comes from Cliff May, who should know better.
It isn't that Cliff goes out on a limb in this one -- oh no, his position here is the easiest one to take in the world. He simply seems with his Islam/Islamism distinction here to repeat the dogma that currently goes unchallenged in official Washington and the mainstream media: that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. But what is most disheartening about this piece is not that; it is that May asserts this and never offers a scrap of evidence for it. He even acknowledges that the fabled Vast Majority of Moderate Muslims Who Abhor Terror has been singularly inactive against it. Through it all, however, he doesn't seem to notice that there are no clothes on his emperor: that he hasn't given his readers even one reason to believe that what he is saying is true.
I think May's column here is indicative of a much larger tendency. Most people, inside and outside of Official Washington, believe that Islam is peaceful at its core not because of any evidence, but because they really, really wish it were. And because those who have come to a different conclusion after examining the Qur'an and Sunnah, or who simply note that the jihadists make copious use of the Qur'an and Sunnah, are branded as racists and hatemongers, they just can't bear to come to that conclusion. Well, if we are going to face squarely what we are really up against and come up with viable defensive strategies, we better start getting over that, and fast.
From "The War Against the Free World," by Clifford D. May:
America is not fighting a war against Islam. America is fighting a war against Islamism.
The difference between Islam and Islamism is straightforward: Islam is a religion, a faith, the basis of a great civilization and culture, one that once dominated the world.
By contrast, Islamism is an “ism” – a theory, a doctrine, a political movement. Islamists believe that Muslims have a God-given right to dominate the world; or, as the Islamist theorist Abdullah Azzam phrased it, a duty to establish “Allah's rule on Earth.”
Sure, Cliff, big contrast there. Now let me ask you this: when did "Islamism" develop? Did not Muhammad himself teach that "Muslims have a God-given right to dominate the world" After all, he said: "It is reported on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah." (Sahih Muslim, book 1, no. 30). Doesn't the Qur'an command Muslims to "fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah" (Qur'an 8:39)? Could I not quote hundreds of other passages to support this? And no, Cliff, I would not be pulling them out of context. All the schools of Sunni jurisprudence, as well as the Shi'ites, say the same thing.
Scholar and former Pakistani diplomat Husain Hoqqani quotes a booklet by Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamist group reportedly linked to the recent London bombings, which declares “the U.S., Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam,” and lists among its goals “the restoration of Islamic sovereignty to all lands where Muslims were once ascendant, including Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan. . . Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris."
Theoretically, it is possible to be an Islamist and not support terrorism. An Islamist might believe there are peaceful ways for Muslims to achieve the power and glory to which they are entitled. In practice, however, it is an exceptional Islamist who scruples about the killing of “infidels.”
Yes, Cliff, but you still haven't explained what evidence establishes that Islam is distinct from Islamism. And you can't -- which is one reason why what you mention next is true:
Egyptian-born journalist Mona Eltahawy has lamented the fact that even many Arab and Muslim intellectuals can't quite bring themselves to condemn suicide bombings carried out in the name of Islam. Though they call themselves moderates, she writes, they “are little more than apologists for a terrorism that not only kills innocents in the dozens but ruins the lives of the millions of Muslims living in the West.”
Islamists have been waging war on America for more than a generation. The seizing of the U.S. embassy in Tehran was an act of war perpetrated by the Islamists who came to power in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 also was an act of war, as were other attacks in that decade and the 1990s.
After Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden became the world's best-known Islamist. The sophistication and lethality of his attacks made the hostage-takers and truck-bombers look like dilettantes. But long before we were surprised by bin Laden's capabilities, we should have been aware of his intentions. In 1996, bin Laden had published his “Declaration of War Against the Americans.”
America's leaders failed to respond to that threat as they failed to respond two years later when bin Laden wrote: “There are two parties to the conflict: World Christianity, which is allied with Jews and Zionism, led by the United States, Britain and Israel. The second party is the Islamic world.” For good measure, bin Laden issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, in which he called on Muslims to kill Americans – civilians and military alike.
The vast majority of Muslims did not heed his call. But some did. And too few Muslims – too few religious leaders, in particular – stood up to say forcefully that bin Laden was a renegade, an enemy of Islam who brings shame to the faith.
Why not, Cliff? Because they knew that Osama was acting in accordance with traditional Islamic law. They knew they had no leg to stand on against him. It is true that they were afraid. But that is not all.
One reason that did not happen is fear. Harvard scholar Ahmed H. al-Rahim notes that some Muslims who criticize Islamism – the writer Farag Fouda, for example -- have been assassinated. Others – Sayyid Mahmud al-Qimany, for example – have been threatened, and so “to spare his family the fate that befell Fouda's, Mr. Qimany recanted all his writings, promising never to write again… his only weapon was his pen, which alas he surrendered to the Islamists as others before him surrendered their lives.”
At this point, scholar Mamoun Fandy has written, “we desperately need a series of fatwas that assert that Islam does not condone violence against innocent people. …We also need to exclude those among us who believe that violence is the way to defend Islam. … It is also time to remove the title of 'mosque' from any place in which Molotov bombs are prepared.”
No, Fandy, we are getting those "fatwas that assert that Islam does not condone violence against innocent people." They are not enough. We need a clear declaration that Islam considers the aggregate of civilians in America, Britain, Israel and elsewhere to be civilians. We need this because it has been explicitly denied by jihad terrorists. Those terrorists would have no trouble endorsing fatawa that condemn attacks against innocent people. What we need are fatawa that they would not be able to endorse -- that they would see as condemning their actions. We have not seen such fatawa.
A war is being waged against America and, indeed, against the entire Free World, nations the Islamists view as decadent, weak and Satanic. Mr. al-Rahim has proposed that Muslims who reject the bellicose Islamist interpretation of Islam need to find the courage to say so unambiguously and publicly.
Indeed. But Cliff and others like him also need to face up to all the reasons why they haven't done so already.
“Why not a ‘Million Muslim March' on Washington,” he wrote, “of law-abiding Muslim citizens clamoring to reclaim their faith from those who would kill innocents in its name?”
And if there were a serious “peace movement” would its members not march with banners saying, “Stop the War Against the Free World”?
Would they not be demonstrating outside the embassies of Iran and Syria and other nations ruled by terrorist masters? Would they not be protesting, too, outside London's Finsbury mosque, one of a number of “houses of worship” where an ideology of hatred and murder is preached and, on occasion, practiced?
OK, let's see such marches. Let's see Muslims protest outside the Finsbury Park mosque. Let's see the Million Muslim March. If what Cliff May says here is correct, we should have already seen these things. Why haven't we?
