“With this centrality in mind, our goals in the Middle East should change from, in effect, promoting sharia-democracy to preventing the export of sharia and terrorism to advance sharia.” – Diana West, in her proposed speech for President Bush
Diana West’s speech would be a considerable improvement on what is coming from Washington today. But “Shari’a” is perhaps not the best framing of the conflict either. The problem with the use of the term "Shari'a" is that while it is the ideal which the more fanatically "immoderate" Muslim states (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan under the Taliban) attempt most closely to approximate in their legal codes, other Muslim states do not. And if they do not, then some Muslims well versed in taqiyya-and-tu-quoque would answer the speech by saying that this is an "exaggeration" and just look, look at all the Muslim states that, while independent, have not imposed the Shari'a.
To this one can reply in several ways. First, the Shari'a is aspirational, and not always and everywhere to be imposed at once. But surely Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Sudan are four Muslim countries that are very large in land area, contain between two and three hundred million of the world's Muslims, include both the center of Shi'a Islam (Iran) and of Sunni Islam (Saudi Arabia, with its Two Holy Places), and two of the four are currently the greatest recipients of oil and gas revenues and likely to remain so for years to come. So to say that "only four" of the 57 members of the O.I.C. have accepted the full Shari'a should be seen as the taqiyya it is.
And a further reply would note that even in the so-called "soft" states that insist that their legal codes take the Shari'a only as a guide, in fact the treatment of non-Muslims has clearly reflected the legal status they would receive under the full Shari'a. In Egypt, for example, the treatment of Copts is unequal at law. In Kuwait, another supposedly "soft" or "moderate" and progressive Muslim state, the treatment of apostates (e.g., Mr. Qambar) shows that the letter, and where not the letter the spirit, of the Shari'a is to be found there.
Despite these caveats, and warnings of how this perfectly sensible suggestion might be replied to, it would be a significant advance. It is different from the suggestion I have made before, which is to emphasize Jihad -- but Jihad as being understood as a struggle to remove all obstacles to the spread of Islam until, at some point, every part of Dar al-Harb has been subsumed into Dar al-Islam. And subsumed it must be, not only through "qital" (combat) but through the "money" weapon and the campaigns of Da'wa (the Call to Islam), and the demographic conquest which creates ever greater pressure on Infidels, in their own Infidel nation-states, to succumb, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, to Muslim demands for exceptional treatment, and then to Muslim demands for actual changes in the political and legal institutions of the Infidel nation-state. The particular name or history of the government or people of that Infidel nation-state hardly matter in the calculation of what must be its final fate, for no Infidel state is any more to be accepted as permanent as any other would be.
Or perhaps both can be discussed. The Shari'a has to be discussed, made a deliberate topic, so that everyone -- guests on Charlie Rose, interviewers on Sixty Minutes, Larry King and Christiane Amanpour and local talk-show hosts, even unto the lowliest and tommiest of pontificating friedmans and pretend-inquiring ashbrooks, will be forced to learn about what the Shari'a is.
Nearly five years have gone by, and there is not a single major figure -- outside, that is, of the Internet, where all sorts of intelligent life can be detected -- in politics or in the press, who has deliberately taken upon himself the task of learning about Islam and relating what he learns to his audience, in making sense of Islam's tenets, attitudes, atmospherics, as they explain so much of what is otherwise inexplicable in Iran and in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen, in Egypt and in Algeria, in the Sudan and in Mauritania, in Nigeria and in Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, in Bosnia and Kosovo, in France and Spain and England, in Denmark and in Sweden, in Germany and in Russia.
They have not felt that responsibility. They have not understood, not been forced to understand, not forced themselves to understand, the intellectual work now to be required of them. They will do everything they can, it seems, to resist such work. Too bad. No one can now offer an opinion on anything -- on Israel's understanding of what it faces, nor the understanding of those who would impose on it a "two-state solution" that is hopeless and dangerous, and will only whet rather than sate Muslim appetites, on America's understanding of why the currently-stated goal of American policy in Iraq is both unrealistic and exactly the opposite of what the American goal should be, if Islam and its menace were to be rightly understood. No one has bothered to find out about Islam. Not those who have continued to support a war in Iraq that, once the scouring for weapons was over, lost its only legitimate rationale, and who are now trying the trick of dampening, by slow degrees, their three-year enthusiasm as they try to backtrack or to distance themselves from their former opinions without quite admitting how wrong they have been. And those opposed to the war in Iraq are mostly opposed for all the wrong reasons, which is why when one is opposed for the right reasons, one feels compelled to carefully explain the right reasons for opposing the war, in order to clear up what otherwise would be almost certain confusion.
Raising the matter of the Shari'a puts on the spot all those who make pronouncements -- the buchanans and novaks, brothers under the skin, just beneath the first layer, to the coles and kosses, all of whom have ignored Islam because it would take too much time, it is too complicated for them, it isn't really relevant --any absurd excuse will do.
Everyone will have to recognize, and to study, and no longer to ignore, the legal status of non-Muslims and women under Islam, and the rights accorded even to individual Believers in Islam, which is a collectivist belief-system that has no discernible interest in the freedom of conscience, much less other conceivable rights that are accorded to individuals under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
So whether one wishes to go by the South Face (Jihad) or the North Face (Shari'a) to obtain one's purchase on the slippery and sometimes sheerest rock-face of Islam, it can be said of all intrepid mountaineers, that in this case, climbing to reach the summit of understanding and to look down with an inobnubilated view of men and events that can only be understood or made sense of once one has attained to that summit of understanding, can be done by one route or another. One person will have his trip made easier by personal experience of living as a non-Muslim in a Muslim society; another will have himself whisked to the top once he has digested the testimonies of ex-Muslims, those essential defectors from Islam. Still another may have that summit-experience given to him when he discovers that a smiling Muslim apologist in his town has all the time been saying quite other things to Muslim audiences, and that these have been caught on tape, or overheard by an informant. Some will simply spend time in the library with books on Islam and the history of Islamic conquest. Some by one path, some by another, some delivered to the top by motorized vehicles on paths widened over time by who preceded them, some making the slow trip on their own, pedibus calcantibus.
In this case, it is the Arrival, and not the Journey, that matters.
Hugh:
".... there is not a single major figure -- outside, that is, of the Internet, where all sorts of intelligent life can be detected -- in politics or in the press, who has deliberately taken upon himself the task of learning about Islam and relating what he learns to his audience, in making sense of Islam's tenets, attitudes, atmospherics, as they explain so much of what is otherwise inexplicable in Iran and in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen, in Egypt and in Algeria, in the Sudan and in Mauritania, in Nigeria and in Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, in Bosnia and Kosovo, in France and Spain and England, in Denmark and in Sweden, in Germany and in Russia.
They have not felt that responsibility. They have not understood, not been forced to understood, not forced themselves to understand, the intellectual work now to be required of them. They will do everything they can, it seems, to resist such work.Too bad".
Absolutely,absolutely.
India too sorely lacks intellectual activism. Rage that erupts after a terrorist attack fizzles out soon.Many do not have 24/7 access to Internet.A lot of Hindus that genuflect before the contemporary *godmen* do not let their cerebral atoms work. And are adequately impressed by the godmen's specious assurance "all religions are the same....love will conquer all and breathing techniques would bring Eternal Peace..." yadayada.A charlatan buster perceptively said "These *godmen* by their charities are making people stupider whereas Bill Gates with his (more awesome amounts)charities is making people smarter"
Alas,how many have the razor sharp intellect and tenacious quest for Truth, as Hugh and Spencer to
see through the muslims' shibboleth?
What does the word "inobnubilated" mean?
-Crows&Cows,
To "obnubilate" means to cloud or obscure something. Like when one "clouds an issue".
Inobnulated means clear, as in perceiving the true form or substance of something.
from above
"Still another may have that summit-experience given to him when he discovers that a smiling Muslim apologist in his town has all the time been saying quite other things to Muslim audiences, and that these have been caught on tape, or overheard by an informant"
I have noticed people in government do not understand Islam , mainstream media and others doing the same thing. The more I read and listen, the more easily I recognize them for the appeasers they are. I also know appeasment will never work.
I share what I have learned with others so that they too will be able to spot those who are so wrong.
I thank all the posters (pro and con) who continue to open my awareness and increase my ability to recognize the nature of the Islamic plague that besets the world today.
Sharia-democracy to prevent terrorism
and sharia?
Oh come on Diana! That's a trick that NEVER
works, and you should know it!
Or should I remind you to the fact that although
Mahmoud Ahmedinajad is opposed by a large part
of the Iranian population, and especially the
urban population, he still is elected by the
MAJORITIY of the Iranian people, mainly the
ultraconservative rural population?
And by the way, what does she define as 'sharia-
democracy'? The Muslimbrotherhood?
A slightly less radical Iranian president?
Or perhaps the current situation in Iraq?
America did a damn good job in removing Saddam,
but anyone with some knowledge of the facts
could tell that with Saddam and his clan gone,
the first thing the people of a democratic Iraq
would vote for would be an islamist sharia-state.
And the first step in that process is already
taken, just think of the Iraqi constitution.
You see, these sharia-states are not made by
psychopathic power-mad dictators like Saddam,
they're made by the very muslim people who inhabit
such countries, because their faith teaches them
that islamic law is the most fair and just law
any man could wish for, and that all problems
will mysteriously dissappear once the sharia
is implemented.
This of course, is sheer nonsense.
Just look at what the sharia has changed Iran,
Saudi-Arabia and Afghanistan under the Taliban
into. THAT'S the result of sharia rule.
And it's foolish to think that the contens
of the sharia will change even one bit by
"democratizing" the thing, because that will
only change the way in which it is implemented:
by voters instead of jihadi's.
There's ample of evidence to demonstrate
to the muslims of the world how the sharia
creates nightmarish states where religious madness
precides over reason.
But countless muslims refuse to see this, and keep believing in the "perfection" of the sharia laws, AND they will do whatever they can to implement such laws.
It's just like communism, just as aimed at the
collective, just as overidealistic, just as destructive. Or am I the only one who sees a
resemblance between the Red Army and the hordes
of Mohammed, the Cultural Revolution and the
destruction of countless non-islamic holy sites,
buildings and books?
Communism was and is a dangerous ideological
threat, because it presented certain concepts
as "the great solution" while they didn't work.
And political islam is no different, except that
it has a religious dimension: it is based on the
tenets of the second largest religion of the world.
And the concepts of political islam don't
work in reality any more than those failed
concepts of communism do, but because it has such
a clear religious dimension, people will keep
believing in these sharia-laws and refuse to
doubt them no matter how clear they may proven
to be a failure, because they believe these laws
are the will of God...
Anyway, democracy means "rule of the people".
But then I ask myself, what if the people is evil?
Or worse, caught in religious madness?
The actual threat does not come from the qur'an
or the sharia itself, but from the people who
believe in them.
Without those people, the qur'an and the sharia
would be meaningless texts. But hundreds of millions of people believe in them,
and there's the core of the problem...
Thank You,Eisenhund!
Exsgtbrown: "I thank all the posters (pro and con) who continue to open my awareness and increase my ability to recognize the nature of the Islamic plague that besets the world today".
Yes,I also owe it to you all.For saying it,enlivened with huge dollops of wit and humour too! But for this site I would have been demoralized.
OT (slightly) for an insight into the *awareness* of Indians(Hindus)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/24/sports/fuhrer.php
"guests on Charlie Rose, interviewers on Sixty Minutes, Larry King and Christiane Amanpour and local talk-show hosts, even unto the lowliest and tommiest of pontificating friedmans and pretend-inquiring ashbrooks,"
Could it be that some of these people know but their networks are controlled by "we must not offend Islam"??
hypocrites?
Hugh,
Wonderful piece. A tribute to your excellent website, I am a soldier currently in Baghdad trying to widen a few footpaths myself for my brothers whom have been force fed the usual mantra concerning Islam. Just today MG Chiarelli posed a question about how does one win an information operations war when one side is obligated to be absolutely truthful and transparent in its actions vs. the enemy with absolutely no constraints placed upon it or expected of it? I passed a note to the officer assigned to initiate this study defining the word taqiyya, and furthermore passing the article in which you referenced the necessity to understand Islam in the current counter insurgency fight. There are officers here that read Robert, Dr. Trifkovic et al. Just not many at the moment. Keep the faith and keep writing.
Postings and emails from soldiers who have served or are serving in Iraq are important, and welcome. One hopes that these soldiers who have endured the "gratitude" of the non-existent "Iraqi" people, and puzzled over it -- not having been trained at Fort Jackson or Fort Benning or Fort Bragg on anything important about Islam (the Five Pillars of individual worship are hardly what matter -- what matters are the tenets of Islam concerning Believers and Infidels, and how those tenets give rise to attitudes, to the atmospherics, that suffuse Muslim societies and peoples).
Here are some things for General Chiarelli and others, beating their heads against the stone of "counter-insurgency" techniques, to ask themselves:
1) Why is it that the "Iraqis" the American soldiers meet seem to be so graspingly, or cunningly, eager to get, get, get, whatever they can out of us, the Americans, for themselves and their families and their tribes, but so uneager for us for others in Iraq, other tribes, other ethnic or sectarian groups, to be similarly treated? Why, except for a handful of officers and perhaps a few thousand men, are Iraqis unable to conceive of the greater good of the nation-state of "Iraq"?
2) What effect has Islam, a belief-system that does not encourage but discourages free and skeptical inquiry, have in creating, among Muslim peoples, and certainly in Iraq, a great susceptibility to the most preposterous rumors, conspiracy-theories, and calumniating of the American soldiers who, far from wishing to remain in Iraq, would like nothing better than to leave,and are there only to create --or at least that is what they are told they are doing, told they have a chance of doing -- a society that, presumably, will be so much better run, with that "democracy" we hear so much about (in truth, that "democracy" in the Western sense, with the guarantees of rights for the politically vanquished, and for individuals, does not and can not exist in Iraq or any other society suffused with Islam).
3) What effect on American decision-making, and on American hopes and dreams, did such unrepresentiatve smooth, secular-seeming, thoroughly Westernized Iraqis-in-exile such as Allawi, Chalabi, Kanan Makiya hve on encouraging a misunderstanding of Iraq by those who made and are making policy in Iraq?
4) What effect on American generals and high civilian officials in Iraq have the Christians, who form the household staffs -- the drivers, the cooks, the cleaners, and so much else -- in the Green Zone, and who have furnished far more of thoe interpreters/translators relied on by the Americans? Have they received a skewed view of Iraq, a view of it as being populated by those who are civilized, quasi-Western men, and are decisions being made on that basis?
5) What effect has the inattention to Islam, or the cursory treatment, or the apologetics (Islam as "one of the world's great religions" instead of Islam as a belief-system that uncompromisinlgy divides the world between Believer and Infidel) had on American troops, who may -- if they stop to think about things -- begin to wonder about the "mission" that they have been given, and in wondering about it, and not having been given enough information, may become less enthusiastic, even demoralized.
6) What effect has the failure to properly instruct American officers and men in Islam, out of all kinds of timidity and all kinds of ignorance, had on their greater understanding of things? Once they become disenchanted with the mission for which they are risking their lives, and which is unattainble (it is impossible to imagine the Shi'a ever giving the Sunnis what the Sunnis demand, and impossible to imagine the Sunnis ever acquiescing in being dominated by the Shi'a in a Shi'a-ruled Iraq) and, furthermore, deprives the Americans of the ability to exploit the sectarian fissures within Iraq that will have obvious consequences outside Iraq, as Sunnis and Shi'a in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan, and Lebanon are affected by, and identify with, their co-religionists in Iraq.
7) What do General Chiarelli and other generals and higher officers now serving in Iraq think of the Iran-Iraq War? Do they think it was a good thing for the Infidels of this world, keeping Khomeini's Islamic Republic preoccupied for eight of its first nine years in existence, and also using up men, materiel, and money of the aggressive and vicious Saddam Hussein?
8) Why would the consequences of civil strife in Iraq not do the same, in keeping Muslism busy, and buying time? Would not the time being bought, as sectarian (Sunni-Shi'a) and ethnic strife divides and demoralizes the camp of Islam, be an intelligent goal? The Kurds, were they to attain their goal of independence, would show other non-Arab Muslims, such as the Berbers of Algeria and Morocco, an example of what was possible, and in their appeals to fellow Kurds in Syria and Iran, help unsettle both those unsavory regimes. As for the seemingly daunting problem of Turkish opposition that apparently has encouraged the Americans to insist on Kurds remaining within Iraq, that is based on a failure of imagination, and timidity. Turkey is not the "ally" we once thought it to be, based on the assumption that secularism,Kemalism, were permanent. American generals made judgments about Turkey, as they once did about Pakistan, based on their meetings with affable, briskly professional generals -- they forgot, or overlooked, the Muslim masses and the power of Islam in Turkey, in Pakistan. American guarantees of Turkish territorial sovereignty could be given in order to win begrudging Turkish acquiescence in an independent Kurdish republic, and such a guarantee would have to be honored as well by the grateful Kurds themselves, so dependent on American goodwill, diplomatic, and military support.
And while sectarian and ethnic divisions within Iraq will preoccupy the camp of Islam, there will be time for Americans and other Infidels, watching those conflicts and attaining an even better idea of Islam, to observe and begin to understand that this is not a "war on terror" but a Resistance to a War, the war that Islam naturally makes on all non-Muslims, those who are subjugated, and those who as yet remain unsubjugated in the Dar al-Harb.
9) Why do the officers and men of the American military, repreatedly asked to risk their lives for a mission that is imperfectly conveyed to them because it is both incoherent, and in the end makes no sense, have to endure the continued refusal of their government to teach them effectively about the doctrine, and practice (over 1350 years) of Islam? And does the government bear a responsibility not to have soldiers, who may as they compare their own experience of Iraq and "Iraqis" with what they have been told, may as they become disenchanted and even demoralized, seek for other, false explanations ("So, it really is all about the oil"), rather than the true one: those who make policy had an idea, and now the idea has them. They did not identify the enemy, but merely listed a tactic ("war on terror"). Having failed to identify the enemy (those who participate in, or support in other ways, the Jihad to spread Islam until it subdues its enemeies everywhere, until all obstacles to its dominance everywhere are removed, and Islam dominates, and Muslims rule), they also failed to learn about Iraq and its sectarian and ethnic divisions (find "What Did the Bush Administration Not Know About Sunnis and Shi'a in Iraq" in the "Articles" above).
10) If the "insurgents" are today Sunnis who refuse to accept the new power arrangements -- arrived at through purple-thumbed process, not mass murder -- how would "reconstruction" and jobs help? Unlike the Communist insurgencies in Malalya, and Greece, and Vietnam, where the conferring of economic benefits could here and there win hearts, win minds, Muslim hearts and Muslim minds are essentially unwinnable by Infidels. The refusal to understand this, the confusion based on personal relations with those who offer feigned affability in order to have the Americans lavish still more aid on them (everyone is waiting to see what military equipment will be left behind, for this or that militia to appropriate, or this or that so-called "Iraqi" army or "Iraqi" police unit to take, and use against its enemies), and to continue to do the work, by risking American lives, what should long ago have been done by Iraqis if indeed there is a sense of "Iraqi-ness" beyond the handful. Asking people, in polls, if they "believe in Iraq" or "want Iraq to remain as one unit" or questions of that ilk do not get to the real problem. One would have to ask Shi'a "would you be willing to remain in Iraq if you had to divide the country's oil wealth, and to share its political power, evenly between Shi'a Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds?"
Reply: No. And one would have to ask the Sunnis: "Would you accept an Iraqi government dominated by the Shi'a, reflecting their 60-65% of the population, and recognize that Sunni Arabs constitute only 19% of the population, and for decades a Sunni Arab despotism treated Shi'a Arabs and Kurds terribly?" Reply: No.
Questions to ask. Questions to be discussed, in Green Zone or in Forward Operating Bases, or once one is back home, at Fort Bragg, Fort Jackson, Fort Benning, Camp Pendelton, or even in the Pentagon. And for the National Guard and the Reserves, returning to their families across the nation, they should study what they can about Islam rather to discover how ignorance, innocent rather than malevolent, and timidity can give rise to policies as wasteful and ineffective as the one now in place.
There's ten things to think about, ten questions to ask.
War, it has been famously said, is too serious to be left to the generals. For that matter, it is too serious to be left to the civilians. War is too serious a matter to be left to anyone, civilian or military, who refuses to learn what he needs to learn. In the case of fighting the forces of Jihad, that something that needs to be learned is Islam itself, and the sources, promptings, doctrines, and practice of Jihad. And from that study will come a recognition, no longer so difficult, of the fissures in Iraq that present themselves, and that if allowed to develop can only divide and demoralize and otherwise weaken the camp of Islam. Holding Iraq together, and pouring more men, materiel, and money into it from the United States, is not that way. It is the opposite of that way.
James,
Thank you for your service.
My nephew will be headed your way soon.
He spent many summers with us as a child and teenager, and stopped by for several days, with an Army buddy, between Basic and ATI.
I queried him a bit about what his Drill Instructors had taught him about the enemy, and ME culture, that he will soon meet.
He and his friend seemed to agree that they would be there to "kill Habib" and to "help rebuild roads and stuff".
As you're aware, there's a lot more to it than that, and I'm disappointed that senior leadership has been so unwilling to acknowledge what Islam really teaches. I'm sure they really do know.
If it weren't for Muslims, Islam would just be a pile of books. But there a many Muslims, and leadership needs to understand the content of those books.
Stay safe.
PRCS
Senior Chief Petty Officer
USN (Ret)
After reading the article on the link below, titled Are America's Children Being Turned Into Wussies? lets hope and pray the battle for our civilization gets won well within the next 10 years or so.
http://sixthcolumn.typepad.com/sixth_column/2006/08/are_americas_ch.html
It seems this could apply to kids anywhere in the West, be it the US, the UK, France, Sweden, Germany etc. We well remember this thread from back in January http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/009677.php#comments about those 25 or so Muslim youths who terrorised 600 passengers on a train in France during the early hours of New Years Day. From this, it appears we have become too soft, especially when compared with the generations who fought in two World Wars, and would never have let anything like that happen to them. And why is this? For starters, people born during the 1880-1925 era, like the vast majority of World War I and II veterans, were invariably born into poverty, and were toughened up by the hardships they faced, the absence of money, and having to make their own entertainment, like playing football by kicking an empty can around. There were none of these soft-soaping whiny liberals, none of these social worker types that we have an entire army of today. And the soldiers of that era had one duty - to fight. Nobody got squeamish over inflicting casualties on the enemy. It was well and truly 'them or us', 'kill or be killed' etc. None of this 'disproportionality' bullshit that we heard all too often a month ago. Our Islamist enemies look at us and see a gullible and feminised metrosexual society, and as Hitler remarked about the Soviet Union, if we kick in the door, the whole rotten structure will come crashing down. This is how Islamists see us in the West. Bin Laden described us as paper tigers. And thanks to the conduct of the Western MSM and press over the last five years, and particularly the last six weeks, he'll be even more convinced that we most certainly are. We have been fighting with one arm tied behind our backs, thanks to a bunch of spineless and self-loathing media eejits, academics and lawyers who are the original wussies. They have poisoned us with self-guilt. They have held us back by describing those who dare name the enemy and identify its motives, its beliefs and its methods as 'racists' and 'bigots', yet antisemitism is perfectly acceptable to them as has been amply displayed by their anti-Israeli attitudes. They stopped those Danish cartoons being published out of 'so-called respect for Islam', but since when did Islam respect other faiths? Does it occur to them that Muslims believe theirs is the only faith that should exist and no other? And there is the fatal flaw of 90% of non-Muslim Westerners not even possessing so much as a basic knowledge of Islam - so there is an inability to evaluate the enemy and through this, an overtendency to blame ourselves whenever we suffer a terrorist atrocity. So, on the whole, there seems little to be optimistic about as regards the Battle for Western Civilization.
some people have pontificated on this matter of having the US and others leave Iraq, but do not give a way to leave without appearing to be appeasing the terrorist,(remember Somalie and what Bin Laden said about US military) and who would fill in that vacuum and leave it a more dangerous place. war is awful, but the "west" have been handcuffed by the leftist elites in our media and government. We should go to war to totally destroy our enemy, until they roll over dead and or give up. but our military have tip toed around havens of military traps within mosques, and homes of civilians. when we walk out before some sort of settlement is acheived, the left will have won, and we will be even under less control over our sovereignty. within the US State Dept. you have a "shadow government" appointees of Clintonoids leaking out information, you have the Democrats and media harping on attacking the GOP, and these types are much more dangerous to our own liberties and safety. There are so much ineptness within the CIA,FBI, and most of all State Dept. l just spoke with a friend who's son went to Univ in Israel, is fluent in Arabic, among other languages but because he is "Jewish" will not be hired by the State Dept. So go on keeping attacking the GOP, you only enable the leftist media elites, and weaken the country and west in general. thank goodness the left were not strong enought to stop the Nazi's defeat, if we listened to some of the above posters we would of never entered WW2.
The problem with Diana West's speech is that it is written for JWers. It is not written for the American people, which any speech coming from the president would need to be.
She wants Bush to start talking about Sharia as a reason for pulling out of Iraq, without even getting him to explain what Sharia is. That itself would take up most of the speech. How many Americans know what Shariah is? Ten percent would say that it is a Spanish sexpot. Cuchi-Cuchi. The other 90% wouldn't know.
Such a speech is totally misdirected at the American people. What a president would need to say is that while establishing a democracy was the initial intent, it has recently become apparent to him that democracy in Iraq seems to be taking a path that is inconsistent with American values in that anti-democractic values are being written into the constitution in order to appease the general population.
The problem with this, as in Diana West's version, is that it puts the blame on islamic values, whether you use the term Islam or the term Sharia. This is problematic for the president who has always defended islam as a religion of peace and the muslims people as peace-loving and worthy. Now, in order to back out of the democracy enterprise, he has to say that the people are fundamentally screwed up because of their religious values.
What credibility would he have then? None. To every american it would look like a cheap excuse to back out of an unpopular war. Few, if any, Americans would actually take such a concept at heart. For them, it would be a cop out.
In order to convince the American people that you are withdrawing from the democracy enterprise, you have to explain to the American people why democracy is fundamentally incompatible with islam. That would entail a sermon about islam that would put the average Joe 6-pack to sleep.
Remember that all this time, the president and everyone in favor of the war in the Iraq, has always maintained that it is only the leadership of Iraq that had to be changed. Then, with the leadership gone, they said it was just the terrorists and insurgents that were the problem. What nobody in power as ever said is that is the iraqi people themselves that are the problem. And the problem is their religion.
For Bush that entails two taboos. 1) Admitting that it is the people that are the real resistance to democracy and 2) that it is the religion of the people that is the basis for that resistance.
Those two taboos will never, can never, come out of Bush's mouth, or in fact, the mouth of anybody in political power, because they conclude two things that are so politically incorrect as to be blasphemous.
So Diana West's speech is a non-starter for Bush or anybody in the Whitehouse. My version, which gets around explaining what Shariah is, is no better. Both speeches are fundamentally unacceptable because they violate those two taboos.
Back to the drawing board, Diana.
They will do everything they can, it seems, to resist such work. Too bad.
Few are willing to face up to Islam. What an awful mess it is, what a horrible future it presents. Islam is the worst thing in human history, worse even that the bubonic plague.
But, as terrible as Islam is, it is made even worse by its unfortunate convergence with computer networks, microcircuitry, advanced biologics, aeronatuitcs, and nuclear weapons.
Islam is all bad, and it's gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.
There is only one solution to Islam, and nobody has the courage to admit what that is.
Hugh,
I think you draw the picture a little too broadly there. Yes, the Internet has a lot of people who know what the Islamic threat is all about. But there were quite a few others even in the old media. They may not have been scholars of Islam, knowing every little thing about it--but they had savvy about not burying your head in the sand where Islam was concerned. I'm thinking about columnists like John Leo, authors like Tom Clancy and Tom Wolfe, scholars like Bernard Lewis, feminists like Phyllis Chesler.
I think part of the problem is the exclusionist nature of some of the stuff on JW. Because the above folks wouldn't agree with 100% of what Spencer or Hugh claim, they are ignored or even denounced. Because some folks who post here seem to insist on making this an issue of "Islam vs. Christianity" rather than "Islam vs. Western civilization," someone like Tammy Bruce wouldn't be welcome here because she's a proud lesbian.
If you really want to be part of a broad coalition to fight Islamic radicalism, you have to be willing to accept people into your coalition who don't always accept every word you say--just as long as they agree on the general ultimate goal.
Make that Islam vs. civilization (not Western civilization.)
This ideology of murder and oprression will steamroll China every bit as easily as it is now rolling over Europe. The Chinese are showing great stupidity and ignorance in their dealings with Islam (Iran) and will suffer for their misdeeds in this life-or-death matter.
The Pig Loving Maldivian asks:
I don't think so.
Because what I have noticed, is that even after these columnists and journalists go into retirement, they still express the same views. In fact, some of them become even worse when they don't have editors and TV producers constraining what they have to say. Look at the wild statements Helen Thomas has started making as she goes around the country on lecture tours. And Peter Arnett got to be so much of an embarrassment that CNN actually had to fire him.
The real reason is that the liberal journalists' views were shaped by the Vietnam War and the 1960's. They absorbed a narrative of "Western imperialism" versus "Third World self-determination," and today they just think Islamic radicalism is the latest attempt by the Third World to shake off Western colonialism.
As for the conservatives like Novak, their views were shaped by the Cold War. They always thought of the Muslim nations as America's allies against Communism and moral decay--and that mindset remains with them.
I remember a phone call to the conservative talk-show host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a few years before 9-11. This woman had been married to a Saudi, and she was living with him in Saudi Arabia. She couldn't take life in their society anymore so she renounced Islam, fled Saudi Arabia and came to the U.S., even though she was as yet unable to get her children away from their dad. Dr. Laura told her to go back to Saudi Arabia, even though under sharia, a woman who abandons Islam and abandons her children can be punished with death. The woman protested, "Even though I might be killed?" Dr. Laura said, "Go back to your children!!!"
"columnists like John Leo, authors like Tom Clancy and Tom Wolfe, scholars like Bernard Lewis, feminists like Phyllis Chesler... I think part of the problem is the exclusionist nature of some of the stuff on JW. Because the above folks wouldn't agree with 100% of what Spencer or Hugh claim, they are ignored or even denounced."
-- from a posting above
What "exclusionist" nature is that? Articles by Bernard Lewis have been put up here -- one just two weeks ago, in fact, and sometimes he has received praise, and sometimes criticism. Phyllis Chesler's articles have been put up here. I don't recall anything posted here by Tom Clancy or Tom Wolfe or John Leo, but not because they do or do not agree "100%" with "what Spencer or Hugh claim." Perhaps they did not write pieces relevant to the subject at hand, or perhaps those pieces were never forwarded to Robert for possible inclusion. I have no idea whether any of the three mentioned agrees "100%" with Robert or me or the man in the moon about anything. Robert chooses what to put up, taking suggestions from everywhere and help from some volunteers. That does not mean that he agrees with it completely, or that he thinks I should refrain from taking the occasion to differ, and in explaining my reasons, possibly making a useful point or two.
The notion that only those who "agree 100% with what Spencer or Hugh claim" are not "ignored or even denounced" is nonsense. Why, if that were true, then this website could not exist, and virtually nothing would be put up except the collected writings of R.S. and H.F. What a dull website that would be, especially if we had to confine ourselves to Islam. This absurd assertion is made, please note, on the very thread that unwinds from an article by Diane West, an article that is clearly not one that I "agree 100% with" as can be seen from my posting on the same thread, yet of course Diana West's articles will be put up here, because they make sense, they appeal rather than appall.
Bernard Lewis is hardly someone who "100% agrees" with R.S. and H.F., but one of his articles was put up just two weeks ago, and not for the purposes of mockery or dissection. Criticism is not denunciation.
In a second posting by the same poster one finds the following:
"As for the conservatives like Novak, their views were shaped by the Cold War. They always thought of the Muslim nations as America's allies against Communism and moral decay--and that mindset remains with them."
That many American officials saw Islam only as a "bulwark against Communism" has been dealt with often -- several hundred times (merely google "Jihad Watch" and "Posted by Hugh" and "CENTO" for a small sampling)--but here it is used to explain away the particular nonsense from a particular commentator, the unpleasant Mr. Novak. But Novak, as everyone knows, suffers from an anti-Israel bias so profound as to be positively buchananesque (that is,explicable only as the outward and visible sign of that pathological mental condition that strikes anywhere from 10-15% of the adult populuation), and which naturally leads some who might recognize the full menace of Jihad to miss it whenever recognizing it might just possibly be to Israel's benefit. In Novak's case, it is far more than not being able to get beyond the Cold War.
August22
Bush got himself into this hole through one glaring omission - he didn't do his homework on Islam, especially when it should have been done immediately after 911. Had he done so, he would have understood why atrocities like 911 took place, and why atrocities continue to take place in the name of Islam - both in Iraq and the rest of the world. He quoted Churchill, but he overlooked the words Churchill used to describe Islam back in 1899 when he was only 25 years old. Even at that tender age, he was far wiser than Bush, Rice, his advisers, or anyone else inside his inner circle - and certainly far in front of any Democrat or any other Western leader of today. Also, Bush and his minions could have studied the writings of John Quincy Adams, and the problems he had with the duplicity of the Bey of Algiers, or some of the quotes of Thomas Jefferson. He could have thumbed his way through history books which would have told him about the conquests of Islam and the sheer wickedness and depravity of Mohammed. All this information could have been garnered by just a few mouse clicks. But nobody thought to do any proper research on Islam, and Bush, along with many other Western leaders and politicians followed that 'religion of peace' mantra without doing any serious study - and as a result, they've boxed themselves in, meaning that only a future President will be able to tell it as it is - just like JQA, but will it be too late by then?
My largest concern today is this lack of exposure Islamism is getting in the mainstream media.
The things we see them saying and teaching and believing needs to be exposed in the mainstream media. It needs the light of the West shone on it.
Instead, we are burying it. There is a show here or there. Most of the shocking news we find online we do not find in the mainstream media.
This is self-censorship of the worst kind.
Our choices are dwindling. The time to confront the reality of this problem is growing shorter. It is true, this may be a decade long problem, or several decades. But the kind of rhetoric, the kind of radicalism we see in Islamism worldwide today -- that will eventually explode.
As for "sharia-democracy", I can only suppose here she is pointing to Philistine and the election of the terrorist group there... as well as to our belief that Democracy is the solution to much of what ails the world.
Democracy, alone, of course, never works. For Islamist, in particuliar, it does not look like it with all of its' requirements for freedom is not going to work. Which gives us the singular possibility of war.
Ultimately.
George W. Bush got elected by saying that he is a Uniter not a divider.
Bill Maher just now on Larry King live, said it so elonquently.. Bush has achieved something that no one else can, he has united the Sunni and Shi'a against us, and that indeed he has.
Bill Maher quoted (unknowingly) Sun Tzu, who said "Divide your enemies" against you, Bush's tactic and goal is to unite our enemies, and he does this by demanding that we stay the course and calling anyone who disagrees a coward (cut and runner).
Not only that but he is demanding that we "stay the course" so he can finish the job of uniting Islam, which means uniting it against the west.
Yep he's a uniter, he has united all Islam, Sunni, Shi'a, Ahmadi, Wahhabi, all juridicial schools and even the Sufi's..he has done more to unite the muslims than any of the Caliphs or Imams.
Great job Georgie boy.
Nariz l thought you would be brighter than quooting from loser like Bill Maher, his most lame jokes the stooge Larry King will laugh at. geesh l hope you get your news from a more serious place than larry King lol
Hugh,
I think you ought to read this article from the Armed Forces Journal, because it has an excellent idea:
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899/
Better blood-borders than bloody borders. This will take off the pressure for people to resort to Islamic fundamentalism as some kind of pan-ethnic glue at the cost of non-Muslims.
If certain Islamic countries disappear in the process, then it's a small price to pay for wider world peace.
And I thought the idea of this post was off the wall. Still do.
But, the other posts, and comments were superb. I tip a hat to Hugh, and ZenaWarriorPrincess for their thoughts, just spot on.
Islam is trailing a Grizly, perhaps it is unsure as to when, but a change takes place, and the hunter becomes the hunted. Bush won't have to inform about anything then, just start allowing the hard work to take over.
No speaches then, just get to that hard work.
I read the piece in Armed Forces Journal with its Big Bright Idea. Disagree with many of the things said in it, but above all with the belief that the problem with establishing a more "peaceful" Middle East is, for example, to weaken Israel (any further weakening of Israel will whet Muslim appetites), its inattention to the problem of Christians scattered about in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and its assumption that most of the problems are those that can be solved with border changes. Borders are not entirely trivial, but the main problem was, is, and remains Islam. If the prescription were to be followed -- and it is simply a fantasy, bun apparently to write -- and all those borders were somehow to be realigned, how would this weaken the camp of Islam? If every Muslim state in the Middle East no longer has to worry about internal conflicts, because of a conscientiously-applied program of border adjustment and large-scale rearrangement of sectarian and ethnic minorities, why would that make things better fo the West or other non-Muslims? Would Islam itself be more peaceful, would its doctrines have changed?
I don't like these kind of fantasy articles, especially when they appear in military journals and temporarily find enthusiasts. wrong things -- it is not the Saudi mismanagement of Mecca and Medina that is the basis of unhappiness with the regime, it is the entire regime, and its appropriation of much of the nation's wealth, and in order to protect the continuance of corruption, its compentsatry . I don't agree with much of it, including its implications for Lebanon and Israel.
The question I would ask is not whether the individual Muslim states would have an easier time of it, but whether the Camp of Islam, as a whole, would be weakened as a result, or not.
The one important goal that Peters mentions, as has been mentioned by all kinds of people, is the usefulness of creating a free Kurdistan. He argues for it on moral grounds (36 million Kurds, etc.). He says nothing about the importance of establishing an example of a non-Arab Muslim people throwing off Arab domination, and thereby inspiring other non-Arab Muslim peoples, such as the Berbers or the black African Muslims of Darfur. Nor does he consider the possibility that constant unsettlement of Syria and Iran, by its Kurdish population, might occupy and preoccupy both of those countries, and the effects would be better than if somehow, magically, the Kurdish-populated areas were to become part of Kurdistan.
Finally, his analysis of what is the source of discontent is often flatly wrong. In Saudi Arabia he thinks it is the Saudi role in Mecca and Medina. That may annoy people outside Saudi Arabia, and Sami Agarwal the Saudi architect, and a few others may deplore the destruction of old Ottoman forts and even older sites in both cities, but the real fury is directed at something unlikely to change: the appropriaton of much of the country's oil wealth by the 30,000 or so princes, princelings, and princelettes, who have no intention of giving it up, as little as they would their role as Guardians of the Two Holy Places.
This suggested scheme to rearrange all the borders of the Middle East is fantasy, but not useful fantasy. It ignores the real problem for Infidels, which is Islam, and were it somehow to be carried out it would not necessarily weaken, and might even strengthen, the individual components, the Muslim-dominated "nation-states" that in Islam possess less significance than they do in the non-Muslim world, for to Beleivers it is the Umma that matters, and the nation-state an artificial and unnecessary construct.
As a fantasy, it is little different from those lists made by young girls, as they sit dreaming in class, in which they take their own first name, and then ring changes on the last names, supplying those of potential husbands: Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Wentworth Miller. And during that class period, during which Mrs. Caruso was boringly talking about tomorrow's test and what they should study for it, by the time the bell rings, all that Kimberley has to show for the hour is a sheet of paper with her name, and ten or fifteen possible married names -- Kimberley Depp, Kimberley Pitt, Kimberley Miller. Fun for Kimberley, but when she has to take the test tomorrow, she won't be laughing.