In "Is the Gitmo Bar Pro-Islamist?" at The Corner, March 13, the always clear-thinking Andrew McCarthy takes on the artificial Islam vs. Islamism that Charles Krauthammer and so many others take for granted. I discussed Krauthammer's remarks here.
Islamism is a much broader and more mainstream (in Islam) ideology than suggested by the surprisingly ill-informed comments Charles Krauthammer made about a week ago (see Dr. K's commentary here; Mark Steyn's reaction, with which I agree, is here.) Jihadist terrorists are a subset of the Islamists, but many Islamists disagree with the terrorists' means — they are mostly on the same page as far as ends are concerned.
Personally, I don't think there is much difference, if any, between Islam and Islamism. In that assessment, I'm not much different from Turkey's Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who claims it is "very ugly" for Westerners to draw these distinctions between Muslims as "moderate" or "Islamist" -- "It is offensive and an insult to our religion," he says, because "there is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that's it."
Islamists are Muslims who would like to see sharia (Islamic law) installed. That is the necessary precondition to Islamicizing a society. It is the purpose of jihad. The terrorists are willing to force sharia's installation by violent jihad; other Islamists have varying views about the usefulness of violence, but they also want sharia, and their jihadist methods include tactics other than violence. I reluctantly use the term "Islamist" rather than "Islam" because I believe there are hundreds of millions of Muslims (somewhere between a third to a half of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims) who do not want to live under sharia, and who want religion to be a private matter, separated from public life. It is baffling to me why these people are Muslims since, as I understand Islam, (a) sharia is a basic element, and (b) Islam rejects the separation of mosque and state. But I'm not a Muslim, so that is not for me to say. I think we have to encourage the non-sharia Muslims and give them space to try to reform their religion, so I believe it's worth labeling the sharia seekers "Islamists" in order to sort them out. But I admit being very conflicted about it because I also concede that the Islamists have the more coherent (and scary) construction of Islam. We wouldn't be encouraging reform if we really thought Islam was fine as is.
In any event, Islamist ideology is multi-faceted. You can be pro-Islamist, and even pro-Qaeda, without signing on to the savage Qaeda methods. And the relevant question with respect to progressive lawyers is not so much whether they are pro-Qaeda as it is whether, as between Islamists and the U.S. as it exists, they have more sympathy for the Islamists. That's a fair question, but a very uncomfortable one to ask. Indeed, as Jonah broaches it, he softens it to whether the insinuation that the lawyers are pro-Qaeda is "counter-productive." That's an interesting question but a very different one from whether the insinuation is true.
In a column a few days ago, I addressed the insinuation this way:
“Al-Qaeda Seven” reminds me of another legal shorthand expression: “mob lawyer.” It’s a common expression — everyone uses it. I’d wager that a number of the DOJ’s Gitmo lawyers have either used it or been in conversations where it rolled effortlessly, and without objection, off the tongues of other prosecutors. “Mob lawyers” are lawyers who regularly represent members and associates of the mafia. It’s such a commonplace that even the mob lawyers call themselves “mob lawyers.” It’s a handle; it doesn’t mean the people who use the term don’t see the moral difference between mobsters who commit heinous crimes and the lawyers who defend them. Same with the “al-Qaeda Seven.”
Much of the commentary on this point, including from some people who usually know better, has been specious. The normally sensible Paul Mirengoff, for example, huffs, “It is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers ‘The al-Qaeda Seven.’” The values of the terrorists? Which values?
Jihadists believe it is proper to massacre innocent people in order to compel the installation of sharia as a pathway to Islamicizing society. No one for a moment believes, or has suggested, that al-Qaeda’s American lawyers share that view. But jihadist terrorists, and Islamist ideology in general, also hold that the United States is the root of all evil in the world, that it is the beating heart of capitalist exploitation of society’s have-nots, and that it needs fundamental, transformative change.
This, as I argue in a book to be published this spring, is why Islam and the Left collaborate so seamlessly. They don’t agree on all the ends and means. In fact, Islamists don’t agree among themselves about means. But before they can impose their utopias, Islamists and the Left have a common enemy they need to take down: the American constitutional tradition of a society based on individual liberty, in which government is our servant, not our master. It is perfectly obvious that many progressive lawyers are drawn to the jihadist cause because of common views about the need to condemn American policies and radically alter the United States.
That doesn’t make any lawyer unfit to serve. It does, however, show us the fault line in the defining debate of our lifetime, the debate about what type of society we shall have. And that political context makes everyone’s record fair game. If lawyers choose to volunteer their services to the enemy in wartime, they are on the wrong side of that fault line, and no one should feel reluctant to say so.
Read it all. And there is more here.
"I think we have to encourage the non-sharia Muslims and give them space to try to reform their religion, so I believe it's worth labeling the sharia seekers "Islamists" in order to sort them out. But I admit being very conflicted about it because I also concede that the Islamists have the more coherent (and scary) construction of Islam. We wouldn't be encouraging reform if we really thought Islam was fine as is."
This raises the question - Can Islam be reformed?
1. For 1400 years, Islam has remained a stagnant, fetid "religion". It has resisted any and all attempts to reform it.
2. Any so called "reformers" risk the charge of heresy and apostasy. This charge mandates the death penalty. Hence, the reluctance of any and all "Muslims in name only" from trying to change Islam.
A poster here at Jihad Watch once asked me how Islam could be reformed. I replied: "Start over".
The sad truth is that as long as the Qur'an exists and there are receptive minds to it's message of misogyny and hate, there will be Jihad.
Bosch Fawstin gets it right
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GzrzcElky8w/S0UnSB44znI/AAAAAAAADzM/VCnxRAIFubo/s1600-h/They+Say+We+Say.png
All Muslims are Islamists!! Islamists try to impose Islam and sharia on non-Muslims. It is a condition imposed by Mo/allah on all Muslims. Therefore no Muslim can escape from being an islmist if he has to be a good Muslim. The idea of Islamist being different from regular Muslims is a fiction created by the western apologists and experts and PC leaders so as to give a free pass to all Muslims when their coreligionists follow Islam and commit terror invoking Quran and Mo/allah. It will do us a lot of good if we stop differentiating between Muslims calling them "moderate', "radical", Islamists, etc as if all Muslims do not follow in their hearts what Islamists/terrorists preach and practice!!!
I for one have never accepted the premise that Islam is a religion. I believe it is far more a political ideology. I think the main reason governments of the world have had such difficulty in dealing with Islam is because they do view it as a religion, so the approach is totally different, and up to now uneffective!
I for one have never accepted the premise that Islam is a religion. I believe it is far more a political ideology. I think the main reason governments of the world have had such difficulty in dealing with Islam is because they do view it as a religion, so the approach is totally different, and up to now ineffective!
... before they can impose their utopias, Islamists and the Left have a common enemy they need to take down: the American constitutional tradition of a society based on individual liberty, in which government is our servant, not our master.
Further enabling this Dynamic Duo's prospects (Marxists + Moslems) is the collapse of historiography, a fairly recent phenomenon to which no doubt Messrs. Spencer and Fitzgerald would attest, given that so much of their body of work is to shine the light on the fake histories that have enveloped us.
tanstaafl
Islam cannot be "restored". It must be totally abandoned. Every last vestige of it must be eliminated.
It is useless to try to "restore" it. No Mullah or Imam will tolerate ANY modifications or modernizations. The Prophet Muhammad has spoken. His is the last word. period!
The Islamists will destroy all those who attempt to "modernize" Islam.
jaladhi
Truer words were never spoken!
P.S. - Mark Steyn "gets it!" he is one of the most astute, yet most humorous, commentators on the scene today; "America Alone" is a must-read!
That's what I said. Islam cannot truly be reformed without tossing out the Qur'an, aHadiths and Sira. When I said "Start over", I meant to empty the cup of tea and pour in a different blend.
And then there is the startling fact that only 7 years after 9/11 our we have a leader who was born a Moslem and raised a Marxist.
*** 92:8 ***
By any measure, 9/11 was a resounding success. Things have gone exceedingly well for he Cause since. Fellow Harvard alum Osama bin Laden must be quite pleased with himself.
We have no radar,or sophisticated detection equipment that can clearly tell us what is in the heart of a practicing Muslim where ever he or she may be. We can only respond to observed behaviors and actions if they are open and forthcoming such as what was openly displayed by Nidal Hasan for years prior to his murderous attack at Fort Hood. The human observer most of the time can be less effective than what a detection device might easily pick up and send a warning signal to the operator. But still that detection device is only as good as it is designed and programmed.
As human observers we carry the baggage of political correctness,the perversions of multiculturalism,certain biases,as well as concerns for our own jobs with us when we attempt to make an analysis of a situation.
If we are not equipped to recognize the ideology that drives Islamists, or any practicing Muslim based on their behavior than we can easily fail.
Muslims practice the art of deceit (taquiya),and half truths (kitman) so as to make our efforts at detection doubly harder. This is why it is so important to really understand the basic determinations of Islam so that we cannot be so easily mislead by buying into myths that Islam is a religion of peace.
The dar al harb is alive and well in many Muslims across the planet and we cannot casually dismiss any of them if we want to protect our western values.
We need to demand that judges stand firm on the US Constitution and protect and preserve it from those who are trying to subvert it with any introduction of sharia-- it is in fact their lawful duty to do so.
The asymptotic mind is fascinating to behold. And because Andrew McCarthy is intelligent and flexibly reasonable, his asymptotic tendency causes him to go into subtle contortions of logic as he ravels himself into knots in the pursuit of trying to square the circle of salvaging hundreds of millions of Muslims from their own Islam. His effort in simultaneously rejecting the distinction between Islamism and Islam while somehow retaining that very same distinction makes the reader following his raveling warp and woof of his analysis dizzy: the logical equivalent of the optical experience of staring at an Escher print.
`For that is at bottom the source of the reason why various anti-Islam analysts cannot graduate to the logical conclusion of the holistic position on the problem of Islam: they recoil, semi-consciously, from the prospect of condemning an entire people; but condemn we must, if we are to save the West, and the rest of the world. This spasm of recoiling in the asymptotic heart is psychologically contiguous with PC MC: it is, in fact, the persistence of a residue of PC MC in the heart and mind of the person who has otherwise woken up to the problem of Islam and has joined the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement. I see it, in different styles and flavors, manifested in various Jihad Watch readers who are otherwise on board with the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement.
Because Andrew McCarthy has taken the trouble to present a detailed analysis that unfolds his thought on precisely this nodus (though he seems unaware of his own asymptotic problem), we have a helpful specimen of the fascinating intricacies of asymptotic logic at work.
More on this later.
Thanks!!
I do believe that Islam can never be "reformed", because those are Mo/allah's words and no Muslim can question or change his orders to Muslims. Then again who are we to suggest to reform Islam if its followers don't think anything is wrong with it. Islam brain washes its followers to the point of making them brain dead and then it's very simple for them to carry out Mo/allah's orders no matter how abhorrent they may be to a normal human being.Only allah knows best so why think for yourself!!!
Andrew McCarthy is having a debate with himself in this article. Part of him sees the hopelessness of Islam, all of Islam, and another part hopes against hope that "nicer" Muslims can reform man's most troubling and dysfunctional religion. I can sympathize with McCarthy here but the bottom line, which McCarthy comes close to, is that rot can't be reformed. It must be discarded.
The path to freedom from the shackles that chain the better half of the Muslim world is to leave Islam completely. This is easy for me to say and, as Shakespeare observed, every man can master a grief but he that has it, but easy to say or not, this is the only sure way for a Muslim to be possessed of a noble mind and to be really free. As long as one is a Muslim, nobility of mind and comprehending all the dynamics of liberty will remain forever elusive, forever unattainable.
again, Robert and Andrew are going over what Islamics are/aren't. still doesn't answer the question, still squatting there like the 800 lb gorilla in the room:
how do we make policy towards Islamic countries?
can't kill them all.
can't isolate them all.
can't continue to allow the Left to align itself with them in a suicide pact against Western Civilization.
so, what is the answer?
(this question is becoming rhetorical)
"What is the answer"? -- from a posting just above
Why don't you start by reading, if you haven't, some of the articles in the Archives above. See what you find by way of suggestions, including the piece that says the very word "solution" is not appropriate in this case. We are to manage a situation, not to "solve" a "problem."
You will find a host of suggestions, including, in the case of Iraq, an argument repeated ad nauseam since February 2004, when with the announcement by David Kay that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and with the capture or killing of Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and almost all of the former regime's major figures, the cards in that famous game of Fifty-Two Pick-Up played, with such enthusiasm and elan, by the American armed forces.
Then you may have at least a dozen things suggested, from the Sudan to Nigeria, from China to Peru.
And then there are the various suggestions as to how, along with allowing ethnic, sectarian, and economic fissures to grow and breed resentments, hostility, even warfare, within the Camp of Islam, I offered many other ideas as to how to demoralize the Camp of Islam.
I'm not, right now, going to go over them again. Read through the Archives. You'll find plenty of relevance.
Total Deportation. The West is capable of it, technically, financially, and institutionally. What the West lacks currently is the informed will to do it. But that would answer reeko's question; though I agree with Hugh that a "solution" is not pertinent, and that only management may be expected. For total deportation will not solve the problem; it will create a new problem -- how to enforce and patrol a vast perimeter around the Dar-al-Islam, in order to do the reverse of what the Communists did around the Iron Curtain: where the authorities from within were shooting people escaping, in this hypothetical case of an "Iron Veil", the outsiders would be shooting to keep the insiders in -- in their own voluntary Islamic Gulgag. This obviously requires more massive management. These are daunting tasks; but the West is capable of doing them, and could divert some of the energy and resources it currently wastes on other less important things.
I see this issue has been turned into a dedicated post "Islam and Islamism, or, "Leaving the West With No Solutions"", upon which I will comment, but suffices to ask here why do Islam and Islamism have to be presented as a choice? Surely this is fallacious. Islamism is just a term which refers to the political dimension of Islam, whereas Islam refers to an entire spectrum of doctrine and practice, including sects such as the Mu`tazilites. The fact that the dominant, orthodox schools of Islamic jurisprudence support a literalist, supremacist tradition does not refute the existence of weaker traditions which are not literalist etc.
Islamic Calculus: The Koran is uncreated (unlike the bible.) According to Islam, it is the word of Allah -- uncreated. How can any Muslim "reinterpret" or "reform" the word of Allah? It is a crime in Islam to "reinterpret" the Koran. It is the crime of hypocrisy, and like apostasy, is punishable by death. The only way to deal with Muslims and their "perfect" Bible, which they worship idolatry wise, as if it were God Himself in not the form of a statue, but in a book of statutes, is to - by overwhelming force - destroy the whole religion completely. The sooner we embark upon this necessary earth cleansing action, the more lives will be saved and the better off everyone on earth will be.
Hugh, thank u for taking your time. i assure u, i am engaged in this. have been for decades. this is not a new profession or hobby. i'll continue this discussion on your newer post "Fitzgerald: Islam and Islamism, or Leaving the West With No Solutions"
fyi, we think more alike than not. but there are some dimensions of this argument u may not be aware of.