Jihad Watch: Fitzgerald: Countering the Jihad

June 26, 2005

Fitzgerald: Countering the Jihad

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald on how to find a solution to our current problems:

"When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution?" --- from a recent interview
The word "solution" is the wrong word. Had the reporter asked, or had Fallaci replied, that "what could be done to limit the damage, to contain or reverse the power of Muslims and the Jihad worldwide" then a coherent answer might have been offered, by Fallaci or by someone else.

The "containment of Communism" worked. Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern and Central Europe, and is now coming undone in China. Why? It collapsed because a sufficient number of people realized it was a farce and a failure, a failure in the very area -- the delivery of material wellbeing to the masses -- where it had most insistently promised it would be a success.

Who created the conditions for that failure to be perceived? The United States, and with the United States, other Western powers that countered Soviet propaganda and produced propaganda of their own, that did everything they could to check Soviet power once they came to their senses in the late 1940s (a little late for those countries already suffering Stalin's presence, or that of his local agents).
The Marshall Plan. NATO. Radio Free Liberty. Radio Free Europe. The Berlin Airlift. The suppression of Communist rebels in Greece. The Korean War. The money that went to non-Communist political parties all over Europe. The money that went to support newspapers and publishing houses all over Europe. The assistance or encouragement of various revolts inside the Soviet Union -- the "Forest Brotherhood" for example (the "Leshiye"). The bases everywhere. The anti-Communist propaganda. Decades of it, and trillions spent. And you know what? It worked. A group of people within the Soviet system came to some conclusions of their own about the moral and economic failures of Communism.

This can be done, more slowly, more deliberately, with Islam, and the Jihad that is central to Islam. The Infidel lands and peoples must first learn about Islam -- not from Muslims, or for that matter from non-Muslim propagandists, some of them hirelings, others ideologically wedded to Islam perhaps because it is now the most obvious vehicle of expressing one's hatred of, and alienation from, the Western world and, especially, the United States. They must thoroughly understand the texts. And then they must learn about Muslim conquest of non-Muslim peoples, and how those peoples were, in time and space, treated. And they must learn the kinds of things that Muslim apologists -- including those who are the most effective of all, the smooth-tongued "moderates" who, while seeming to denounce this or that terrorist act, will immediately be defensive about Islam itself, try to convince unwary Infidels that "Islam" has "nothing to do" with this, whether it is bombs going off, or the murder of apostates and others, or the mistreatment of women. Recently, on The Connection, all three of the "guests" -- one Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador, and the still-clueless-about-Islam Nicholas Kristof, and someone formerly in the State Department -- were quite insistent that the Pakistani lady, Ms. Bibi, who was gang-raped, suffered from people whose acts of course "had nothing to do with Islam." That's right, nothing: not the texts, not the attitudes those texts engender -- Muslims pervaded with Islam but whose actions "had nothing to do with Islam".

Here are some basic principles for that policy of containing Islam:
1) Recognition that the presence of large numbers of Muslims is a security threat and one which Infidels need not inflict on themselves. All over Western Europe, it is dawning on people, or rather has already dawned and they are furious that the ruling elites are pretending such a problem does not exist, that the lives of the indigenous Infidels, and of non-Muslim immigrants (Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, and so on), are made far more unpleasant, expensive (the huge costs of monitoring Muslim groups, protecting likely targets, investigating and prosecuting and imprisoning those found to be actively planning or engaged in terrorist acts), and physically dangerous (Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others must now go around with half-a-dozen bodyguards apiece; non-Muslims have found that whole areas of their countries are no-go for non-Muslims) due to the rapidly increasing numbers of Muslims among them.

2) Recognition that the oil wealth that has provided Arab and Muslim OPEC members with nearly $10 trillion in undeserved revenues since 1973 is what finances the world-wide Jihad. It pays for weapons. It pays for weapons projects. It pays for mosques, for madrasas, for propaganda. It pays for the vast army of hirelings, all over the Western world, who have for too long been allowed to make propaganda for the Saudis and others -- hard propaganda, and soft. These include ex-diplomats, ex-intelligence agents, journalists and producers of sham books, academics (who may benefit from Arab and Muslim money in their very own "Muslim-Christian Centers" or simply from a nice King Abdul Aziz Chair in thisandthat), and of course businessmen eager for contracts. Think of how, during the debate over whether to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia back in 1980-81, all sorts of American corporations doing business there, from United Technologies to Whitney, rushed to paint Saudi Arabia as a true-blue friend of the West --when it was then, just as much as it is now, a place full of anti-Infidel venom, taught from the earliest schooldays, and infecting every part of Saudi life. A few remarkable people manage to fight their way out of this nonsense, but only a very few -- and policy for and by Infidels cannot be made on the basis of an exceptional and nearly imperceptible handful.

Every attempt must be made to diminish Saudi and other Muslim oil-state revenues. Every other kind of energy source must be encouraged and subsidized. In wartime, one does not rely on the free market to produce a Manhattan Project, or for a bunch of entrepreneurs to set up shop at Los Alamos. The government enters the picture. The government should enter this picture, and devote a few hundred billion dollars -- the sums now being squandered, or contemplated being squandered, on keeping Iraq together.

There is the little matter as well of whether the natural world will survive, and in what fashion - you know, global warming and all that? And as it happens, the most important thing that must be done for our environment, and our mental health, is the same thing that must be done to limit the power of Islam -- diminish the use of fossil fuels. It should not be beyond the wit of those who are alarmed about the world-wide threats to the environment, or about the world-wide threat of Jihad, to ally themselves with one another, to make common cause.

3) Diminishing the oil wealth is not enough. All Infidel aid to Muslim countries, all transfers of wealth that have been based on a misunderstanding, and the belief that "Poverty" is the problem or at least, if Muslims are made richer (ideally, just like Muslims in Saudi Arabia) they will calm down, and turn to other things – all this must stop. Not only is there no evidence for it, but all the evidence suggests the exact contrary. Money in Muslim hands will inevitably damage Infidels. "Poverty" is not the problem; the ideology of Islam is the problem. It would be far better to create a situation in which all those poorer Muslim states and people -- Egypt, Jordan, the "Palestinians" -- should not receive any American or other Infidel funds. Let them go, hat or explosives in hand, to the rich Arabs, and demand that they support their less fortunate brethren in the name of Arab and Muslim solidarity. Either the money will be forthcoming, which will mean the Saudis and others will have less to spend on Da'wa and encouragement of Muslims in Infidel lands by building mosques and madrasas, but will now go to paying for bread and infrastructure in Cairo or Amman, or the money will not be forthcoming, in which case intra-Muslim hatreds based on the resentment and envy of the poor Arabs and Muslims for the rich ones, will develop. We should do everything we can, at every international gathering, to put a spotlight on Saudi, U.A.E., and Kuwaiti revenues, and on the real, as opposed to exaggerated, size of their populations. We need not let anyone, least of all fellow Arabs, just how much money those other Arabs -- who are despised as more primitive even if richer -- possess. "Class warfare" in the Muslim world? You bet.

4) Make it impossible for the Arabs and Muslims to acquire major weaponry. Any WMD anywhere in the Muslim world, however seemingly friendly or benign the regime, cannot be tolerated. It is a threat to all Infidels. Make it much more difficult, if not entirely impossible, and certainly much more expensive, for Arabs and Muslims to buy the fruits of Western technology, or to obtain access to Western education. They should no longer believe they can buy whatever they want from the very Infidels they despise and whose lands they intend, however long it takes, to islamize. They have no real sympathy for Infidels -- how could they, given what is written in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira? It is only to the extent that a particular Muslim does not fully subscribe to Islam -- i.e., is a "bad" Muslim -- that he may have some scintilla of real, rather than feigned, friendliness for the Infidel West.

A barrel of Saudi oil that now costs $1 to lift sells for $50. Fine. The next time Saudis wish to get medical care at a Western hospital, let them be charged accordingly -- by government fiat, let all those who come from OPEC states be forced to pay special prices that reflect their own prices. In other words, try to figure out how the Mass. General, for example, could bill a Saudi patient not the same amount that a non-Saudi is billed, but 50 times that rate? Or if this cannot be done, then the American (and other Western) governments should have special "security taxes" imposed on all Muslim visitors, so that every time a Saudi goes off to Europe or America (both regarded as large shopping malls, fun fairs, and brothels) let a gigantic entry fee be imposed.

5) Let the rich Arabs and Muslims know that their property in the West is not permanently safe, and that it may be seized -- as the property of German nationals was seized by the American government in World War II. Many rich Saudis have acquired illiquid real estate holdings, not always in the Prince-Bandar manner (the estate in Virginia, the Aspen ski house with views, the Plantagenet hunting-lodge), but a good many have. The Al-Saud also owns a lot of other kinds of real estate. Hard to get rid of that quickly, and to pay for the anti-Jihad war, the Americans would be perfectly justified in seizing that property, and so would other Infidel countries threatened by the Saudi money that pours into the mosques that are built, and also maintained, by direct or indirect Saudi funding, and that of other Arabs. This has to stop, and so many of the obvious things that could be done, or at least threatened, are not being done, have not even been discussed.

6) Counter-Jihad: as the Americans during the Cold War paid for Encounter magazine, or for special publishing houses that produced emigre Russian literature (Editions de la Seine, for example), and subsidized Die Monat and other publications, they can do the same today.

Where is the American money that will subsidize publication of various studies of Islam by the greatest scholars of the past, who did not mince words? Who will subsidize mass printing and distribution of books by Henri Lammens, or Snouck Hurgronje, or W.R.W. Gairdner, or K. S. Lal, or Bat Y'eor, or Zwemer or Muir or a hundred others? Who will establish, with secret funds, broadcasting stations where apostates from Islam, defectors from Islam, can tell the stories of why they left Islam, and tell those stories not only in English, but in Farsi, or in Urdu, or even in Arabic? And if the government simply cannot do this (out of a crazy, and self-defeating fear), even by presenting these speakers as figures of note, who deserve a hearing, and not as anti-Jihad propaganda, then what large foundations, what discerning rich, will step into the breach, if for no other reason than to an ensure that their own children have some kind of future?

7) Identify those populations whom the Muslim supporters of Da'wa have themselves identified as particularly vulnerable to being "turned" into agents of Islam, into those who will sign up for the Army of Islam, which -- at this point, after all that has happened -- is the only way one can properly view someone who now converts to Islam. Ten or twenty years ago, such conversion might possibly have seemed bizarre, but not necessarily a declaration of war on Infidels and their society. But that was then. And this is now. And we now know, or are aware, or are dimly aware, that there is something about Islam that our leaders are not telling us, that The New Duranty Times is not telling us, that PBS is definitely not telling us. Large numbers of people are beginning to get the idea that there is something about Islam itself that explains, not only terrorism, nor the mistreatment of women, nor the inability of Muslim societies to encourage scientific inquiry, or much in the way of artistic expression (official Islam bans music, painting of living creatures, sculpture; this makes Zayd and Amr very dull boys indeed).
These populations -- such as prisoners, or immigrant populations-- targeted by Muslims for conversion -- need to be targeted as well by those who regard Islam as a menace, and wish to inhibit its growth. Counter-Da'wa must take place everywhere.

8) Wherever there are natural fissures within Islam, or wherever such fissures can be created -- as by removing Western aid, and forcing Egypt, Jordan et al to go hat in hand to the rich Arabs of the Gulf, which can only increase intra-Arab tensions (think back to Nasser's hatred of the Saudis, and of how that played out in the early 1960s, with that proxy war in Yemen between left-wing Nasserites and monarchists backed by Saudi Arabia) -- let them widen. Do nothing to narrow them.

Iraq is the best place, the very best place, to allow the resentments of non-Arab Muslims at the Arab supremacist ideology (which is implicit in Islam, and sometimes explicit), an ideology which was expressed in the mass murder, by Arabs, of the Kurds in Iraq, a mass murder that no one in the Arab League or anywhere in the Arab Press thought to denounce, or even to mention. And a free Kurdistan would be a permanent unsettling presence -- unsettling to Iran, to Syria, to Iraq itself, and to Turkey, a country which now needs us far more than we, during the Cold War, needed it. And especially now that it has dawned on the Turks that they will not be admitted to the E.U., and if they wish to thank anyone for that rejection, they should thank the Arabs, the Arabs who bomb, the Arabs who threaten, the Arabs within Europe -- magrhebins for the most part -- who have given Islam such a bad name. And let Turkish resentment be directed not at a non-existent "Christian" Europe, but at fellow Muslims -- the already-despised Arabs. From our point of view, and from that of secular Turks who look with horror on the backsliding into Islam, any animus that can be carefully channeled or directed toward the Arabs is also a way of weakening Islam, in Turkey, and without.

And Iraq is, of course, the country that bestraddles the fault-line of Shi'a and Sunni. Let those tectonic plates move about, and let Shi'a from elsewhere who have been persecuted by Sunnis (from Pakistan to eastern Saudi Arabia) take a sympathetic interest in the Shi'as. Might it even be that the sinister members of Hezbollah would find their Shi'a identity causing them to look a bit more hostilely at Sunnis in and out of Lebanon, and the Sunnis, in turn, regarding them not as fellow Muslims but as threatening Shi'a?
Ask yourself this: was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, or a bad thing, from the Infidel point of view? You know the answer.

There is much more one could add.

But the point is made. Fallaci has her points. She is brave. She is outspoken. She has correctly and furiously identified the full horror both of Islam and of the islamization of Europe. She recoils from the idiocy of the age, that counsels appeasement and practices denial.

But La Fallaci also has a defect. She has identified the problem, but cannot stop to think exactly what is to be done, what can be done. She is sometimes criticized for self-dramatization, or "protagonismo." She puts herself as the passionate heroine of her own drama. It's okay. On her it looks good. But nonetheless, after the passion and the fury, one has to sit down and think: What Is To Be Done? And if that is not done, if all she can offer is a dramatic allusion to Seneca because she cannot think what could, quite reasonably, be done -- and be done not least because her own example shows what one person can accomplish (all three of her books are all over Italy, and all three have had a great impact, though her local allusions, and her insistence on translating her own book into English and French, have limited their appeal outside Italy, in countries she is not nearly as celebrated a figure).

Sit down. Think what you would do to counter the various instruments of Jihad. And to whom would you appeal for support? And in what words would you wish to couch this counter-Jihad?

Posted by Robert at June 26, 2005 7:39 AM
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Hugh:

No one can more eloquently lay out the problem and possible ways of "limiting the damage." However, each should pass on this information to as many as can be made to listen. As for those that will not listen, we must redouble our efforts, continuing to knock on doors regardless of how boring and tiresome we might be regarded.

Posted by: epg

at June 26, 2005 9:54 AM

"Every attempt must be made to diminish Saudi and other Muslim oil-state revenues".

It should be clear by now that enriching the Saudi's and others, is a mistake.
I like the idea of paying them less and charging them more.
The west plays a crazy game of financing those who would destroy us. The Chinese are another example...their "oil" is manufactured goods, which we buy in abundance. In both cases we are paying for our own demise, or at least a strong potential for it. We simply must quit financing our enemies or potential enemies.
But, it's another thing to get politicians, who vassilate all over the place, to get this idea.
Greed and PC are in the way.
While we strain to find a way of stopping the current jihad, G Bush is busy kissing and holding hands with the enemy, and giving them even more money(50 mil to Abbas). This schizoprenic behavior based on greed has got to stop. The current US administration needs to get real about the Saudi's and Islamic jihad, or it needs to be replaced with one that will.
None of Hughs excellent plan will be implimented unless non muslim govs recognise the need and join together in it. So far greed(and dhimmitude) is winning and people are dying...this is not a good path, but it is the one we are on...

Posted by: duh_swami

at June 26, 2005 10:59 AM

"Every attempt must be made to diminish Saudi and other Muslim oil-state revenues".

Yup. Like in that episode of the simpsons, Israel now ought to annouce to the world its found a HUGE reservoir of oil beneath it and then dig slantingly or use an L-shaped tube that connects directly into the Saudi reservoir....

Posted by: voletti

at June 26, 2005 11:54 AM

And in the usual Islamic disconnect of cause and effect, some of the Muslims will undoubtably claim that her punishment is punishment from Allah.

Posted by: jay

at June 26, 2005 12:08 PM

If the Americans leave Iraq, either the Sunni and Shi'a will come to some modus vivendi, without fighting, or they will not. Either that fighting will go on at low levels, or they will not. Whatever happens, the Sunnis of Iraq will never recover their former positions, no matter how much aid pours in from Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria (where the Alawites may enjoy diverting or channeling Muslim hatred that might otherwise be directed at them, as not-quite-Muslims).

The Shia in the Seastern oil-bearing province of Hasa have been treated badly for years by the Sunnis who, just like al-Zarkawi (from the "Palestinian" camp at Zarka, so he may be "Jordanian-born" but should properly be identified as a "Palestinian"), believe the Shi'a to be practically Infidels. The Saudi government has recently tried to ease up a bit.

But what will happen if Sunni-Shi'a violence in Iraq has spillover effects? What is the Shia in Bahrain, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and al-Hasa won't take their second-class status any more? What if there is a revolt in al-Hasa? Could the Saudis put it down? Should America help them, or help the other side, and simply seize the oil wealth and at long last, do exactly what we have been falsely accused of doing -- trying to seize the "Arab oil." We need not keep the revenues; we could manage them, and distribute them to the poorer states of black Africa, and even possibly to poor Arabs. A kind of payment for our services in protecting the Shi'a. Is this possible, or not? One does not know. Mere discussion of such matters, however, may help to get Saudi attention, and to get them to stop spending tens of billions of dollars (some $70 billion over the last decade or so) on mosques, madrasas, and the promotion of their Wahhabi Islam. We don't have to put up with it. They assume we will, because we have. There are noises to be made, to show that the mixture as before will not do.

The days when Prince Bandar can confidently swing his racket, and serve to a smiling Secretary of State, or serve up his "we're all corrupt men of the world, aren't we, so let's not play games about being indignant" have got to come to an end. Saudi officials should not be able to extend their largesse, or make free with walking-around money (as they have); they should certainly not be treated as good friends and allies, and the assorted little princebandards be allowed to behave as he behaved. Every single Saudi act -- the kidnapping of children, the persecution and torture of Christians, the malevolence directed at Infidels with which Saudi schools, texts, television programs, newspapers, khutabs, are shot through, from top to bottom -- this should be the constant topic of discussion and interest, whenever Saudi Arabia comes up. Let it be dinned into every American mind, so as to undo the damage and miscomprehension that a vast, decades-long effort at Saudi propaganda can be checked, and come undone.

Possibly a few more books written by those hwo have lived there -- of the "Inside the Kingdom of Hate" variety, would do a good deal. Let them be publicized, their authors aided. Let every single effort to reveal the truth be helped along the way. Let Jay Leno and Letterman and others keep up a steady stream of jokes, to remind Americans of what an Armenian acquaintance told me, in summing up his years in Saudi Arabia:

"Money can buy everything --- except civilization."

Posted by: Hugh

at June 26, 2005 12:12 PM

Hugh,

Fallaci's pessimism is not principally about Islam and Muslims: it is about a rampant mental disease in the West.

Your essay seems to be oblivious to the fact that there is this mental disease pervading the West that is forcefully impeding too many Westerners (particularly in high places in culture and politics) from:

1) recognizing there is a problem of Islam

2) diagnosing the problem of Islam rationally without the filters of multi-culturalism

3) having the will to act rationally upon this diagnosis of the problem.

Your essay begins with both feet solidly planted in #2 as though most everyone in the West (except a few "apologists" here and there) must agree with this, and with alacrity jumps to #3 as though everyone in the West must agree with this (except for a few "apologists" whose psychology seems to baffle you but whose etiology seems not sufficiently to trouble you).

Our Western problem is that we have MILLIONS (in high places and in low places, all across the board) who cannot even get to #1, let alone really get their feet solidly planted in #2.

We as a Civilization defending ourselves cannot really grapple with the Problem of Islam until we solve this Problem of the West -- this mental disease of Leftism. Leftism has abandoned its classical liberal values and now, in its insanity, cannot criticize Islam yet must criticize the West and the West's torchbearer, America.

Your essay is all fine and dandy, but it puts the cart before the horse. Your question -- "After the passion and the fury, one has to sit down and think: What Is To Be Done?"

No. We can't begin to do anything, until we the West come together in basic agreement about basic principles concerning the value and superiority of Western Civilization. Until this is done, we will not be able to recognize, diagnose, and fight the danger and inferiority of Islamic Civilization.

So: Either

1) We can't begin until our mental disease is treated (but this might take too long and perhaps we don't have the time to culturally recover our former sanity)

2) We must proceed within a framework of an ideological civil war within the West.

#2 seems the more realistic option -- but it is cause for an outlook and sobriety far more pessimistic than your essay admits. And it also calls for a massive internal struggle your essay entirely omits.

There are millions of diseased Westerners we will not be able to persuade with arguments or evidence. You could show these diseased Leftists beheadings and stonings and honor killings and wife-beatings and executions of gays until Kingdom come, and they will still not get it -- they will forever criticize their own West and refuse to condemn Islam, no matter how much hard evidence you put up to their nose.

So what do we do about THAT problem? Any practical solutions for that?

Posted by: metaxy

at June 26, 2005 12:34 PM

The crucial point that Hugh Fizgerald has eloquently made many times, that Jihad, 'fighting in the way of Allah', to defend and spread surrender to Allah and the Prophet, as defined in canonical, immutable Islamic texts, is central to Islam itself, should be enough for even the most simple-minded person to see that the 'war on terror' is utterly misconceived.

This one proposition should be enough: Islam requires Jihad to defend and spread Islam. That is 'the base' from which Islamic terrorism and every other form of Islamic aggression flows, not some nebulous organization driven by personalities like Osama bin Laden. That proposition should transform the way policy-makers conceptualize the so-called war on terror. We are not engaged in a 'war on terror'; this war is defined by our enemies. We fight a defensive war against Islamic Jihad which has thousands of tentacles, reaching everywhere Islam reaches. The ideology is the source of the problem, and the threat comes from Muslims and organizations of Muslims who take that ideology seriously, an ideology essential to Islam as a belief system.

'But we are not terrorists', say the Muslim apologists.

That is not the issue. The issue is whether or not Muslims absolutely reject the ideology of Islamic Jihad and other Islamic tenents that drive Jihad against non-believers: the division of people into entirely different classes, believers and non-believers, the obligation of believers to spread Islam and 'fight' those who would stand in your way, the belief that loyalty to Sharia supercedes any and all loyalties to an Infidel state: given the stakes of the global Jihad, given that Muslim groups involved in this Jihad have committed themselves to acquire and deliver WMD to American soil, given the use of deception, blackmail and every manner of stealth in furthering this cause, in accordance with the message of the Prophet, 'war is deception', Muslims must address these points and state unequivocally where they stand.

'But we are not terrorists'. Again, that is not the issue: answer the questions please.

Posted by: JTF

at June 26, 2005 1:03 PM

I see where Hugh is going.

I'd once had hopes high in this regard myself - that Iraq was the tip of the iceberg in a masterplan by the Bush-Cheney-Rove trio to topple the entire ME islamic order by precipitating internal strife built on centuries old tribal and sectarian feuds - the kinda stuff that'll put the Brits of yore to shame and turn Rudyard Kipling green with awe....

But sadly, it seems our prez is well and truly a good guy, who has no intentions of letting his inner machievelli run amok.

But maybe there is hope yet. Who knows....

I'm predicting a surgical strike against Iranina nuke facilities that'll precipitate an all-out regional war as an outraged Iran lashes out against the US in Iraq and Israel.

Posted by: voletti

at June 26, 2005 2:04 PM

JTF wrote that it "should be enough for even the most simple-minded person to see that the 'war on terror' is utterly misconceived."

Yes, it "should be". But it isn't. Millions of Westerners cannot and will not see Jihad for what it is.

Why can't they? Why won't they? A serious pathology has infected Western culture over the past few generations. That's why.

Posted by: metaxy

at June 26, 2005 2:23 PM

Hugh-

Until a WMD hits in the U.S., the faded will (cooled iron) of 9/11 hamstrings the equation.

I see no hope of the average person, blithely ignorant of Islam, and inundated by the drip-drip-drip of meaningless negativism of the defeatist Western Press (and their enabling fools in government, both Democrat and Republican) rousing from their torpor enough to react seriously to the present mortal threat to our Civilization's core tenets.

If we had declared War (Congressionally) on extremist Islamic Imperialism on 9/20/2001 (giving them a few days to catch their breath, fly to D.C. and muster the then white-hot votes) the stakes would have been clearer, and the battle could be fought more directly and effectively and at full-bore.

Now, without that central clarity, the inarticulate president and his incendiary or incompetent spokespeople (Rove, Rice and Rumsfeld, primarily) tire the ears of the public with their repetitious, uninspiring, hedging and dodging, and their attacks on the wrong targets (Rove's recent nonsense about "liberals" vs "conservatives" after 9/11, which was simply projecting the present circumstances illegitimately back onto another timeframe and mindset).

Only another attack will clear the cobwebs, and the decks.

Until then, planning for its aftermath is the only course.

And your planning sounds good.

Posted by: BigSleep

at June 26, 2005 3:26 PM

Big Sleep,

Karl Rove's sentiment was appropriate and correct, although his terminology was slightly sloppy.

The problem is not "liberals". FDR was a pre-eminent liberal, and he appropriately and rationally overcame his emotional misgivings to sign the order (whose Constitutionality has never been overturned by any Supreme Court since) to inter Japanese-Americans who were a potential threat to national security.

The problem is a cultural sea change that has occurred in the last 50 years or so, by which liberals have become Leftists.

Leftists are liberals who have abandoned their classical liberal values. They have abandoned these liberal values because they are rooted in the superiority of Western Civilization, which in turn is inextricably tied to Western Imperialism.

See Christopher Hitchens and Paul Berman -- the only two liberal intellectuals alive, apparently, who recognize this massive cultural pathology that infects the West.

Posted by: metaxy

at June 26, 2005 5:09 PM

Big Sleep, the next real battleground is Europe.

If Turkey is admitted then all is lost for Europe, our guardians are just too scared to face the truth and go to the people with this problem (which at some point they have to).

Hugh offers our guardians a horrid, terrible assessment, stuff of which nightmares are made out of. Giles Kepel on the other hand offers solutions which are palatable, they instinctivley (and desperatley)want to believe the Kepels of this world.

I recently had a discussion with a highly intelligent, educated friend (who happened to be a UK civil servant), when challenged about Islam and the consequences of Islam to our society, he didn't deny Islam's nature but just said people aren't persuaded by logic, its all perception. There's no getting through to them.

Recently I discussed Islam with a friend, initially he resisted, then buying the koran started to change his mind. I couldn't get him a hard copy of Ishak, eventually he found one: - 200 pages long, he didn't read more than the preface to understand - the book had been shortened by over 400 pages, guess which bits they cut out, in order to sanitize this 2/3 of the book had been edited out! Then he began to understand what was going on. But a couple of months later, he's regressed, 'oh, you haven't met many professional muslims, blah, blah, blah. Pointless, the whole episode reminded me of the conversation noted above.

How are we going to change course in Europe, the left would scream murder, common people just intrinsically feel that respect for other cultures is the correct way, on the surface Jihad Watch et al are intolerant,. You see it's not sophisticated, just not Notting Hill.

Blairs successors will sooner or later be faced with hard decisions and the longer this nonsense goes on for (Islamic schools, etc) the greater the problems. No dicussion in public on the victimisation of Apostates in the West, far more violence is being dished out by muslims on apostates and the infidel, than 'racist' attacks on them. Europe wide there have been hundreds of 'honour killings', do you know of hundreds of Stephen Lawrences? Yet we are getting a new bill to protect Islam, which will make our impressionable young think that critism of islam is the preserve of extremists, Ali Sina, Ibn Warraq, Anwar Sheikh, Robert, Hugh, you and me having extreme views in order to make the mussies feel more at home or better about themselves! Just keep the indfidels in the dark, they know how to best handle this!

How are we going to change course when the choices become harder, measures needed to limit Islam become harder in the future?

If Europe is ruined then the US position becomes much bleaker.

Posted by: jv

at June 26, 2005 5:39 PM

"Recently I discussed Islam with a friend, initially he resisted, then buying the koran started to change his mind. I couldn't get him a hard copy of Ishak, eventually he found one: - 200 pages long, he didn't read more than the preface to understand - the book had been shortened by over 400 pages, guess which bits they cut out, in order to sanitize this 2/3 of the book had been edited out! Then he began to understand what was going on. But a couple of months later, he's regressed, 'oh, you haven't met many professional muslims, blah, blah, blah. Pointless, the whole episode reminded me of the conversation noted above."
--- from a posting above

Tell him he has a duty to inform himself better, and that personal charm, liquid brown eyes, feigned outrage, taqiyya/kitman, filial piety and embarrassment over what Islam really teaches, all help to explain the behavior, the wilfully misleading representation of Islam by so-called "moderate" Muslims. He must get beyond that. He must go to the websites of ex-Muslims, defectors from Islam, to see what they have to tell him, to explain this.

Give him a list. www.secularislam.org (if it is back up and running), www.faithfreedom.org, www.jihadwatch.org (and the archives), www.dhimmitude.org.

Tell him to read Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim" and "Leaving Islam." Tell him to read Anwar Shaikh on Islam as Arab Imperialism. Tell him to read Bat Ye'or's "The Dhimmi," "Islam and Dhimmitude," "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam," and "Eurabia." Tell him not to let those charms, that hospitality, those plummy or soft voices, get in the way of understanding the tenets of Islam (and he must read and re-read the Qur'an, the main Hadith in the recensions of al-Bukhari or Muslim, and the Sira -- not the anodyne and sanitized Sira, but possibly that of Tor Andrae, or Arthur Jeffery, or best of all, the reprint -- Kessenger Publications -- of Sir William Muir's massive work. Tell him about Mary Boyce on what happened to the Zoroastrians in Persia, of Sarkar and K.S. Lal on Muslim rule, and the Muslim legacy, in India. Tell him about Robert Spencer's "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance," and the forthcoming "The Legacy of Jihad" by Andrew Bostom.

He owes it to his children, to Shakespeare, to Samuel Johnson and to John Keats and to Thomas Hardy, to thoroughly inform himself, and be prepared to inform others. This cannot wait.

Posted by: Hugh

at June 26, 2005 6:52 PM

JV: If Europe is ruined then the US position becomes much bleaker.

I doubt Europe will be 'ruined' but it's gonna get really nasty before it gets better. The Dutch and French are near the end of their patience. The Germans are muttering. But it's likely to take a number of terrible incidents before Europe gears up to swat down the Islamist peril.

Posted by: Loxias

at June 26, 2005 6:55 PM

I agree with Hugh that there are many actions we could be taking on an anti-Islam anti-Saudi Propaganda War, a war directed not only at Islam but at educating the West, and particularly America.

The PC mentality is placing Europe in a straight-jacket, unable to respond verbally or physically to the Islamic threat. And CAIR et al are tightening the strings on the American PC straightjacket, to the point where, as in Europe, and Australia, it will be illegal to criticize Islam. When we have reached that point, easily envisioned with this seditious supreme court, Sharia cannot be far down the road.

American politicians do not understand the Islamic threat, and most do not even know there is one. And few know comprehensively what to do about it. They are flooded in the Beltway with Islamic lobbyists and leftist cohorts who are promoting PC laws designed to to suffocate the American Constitution and the American culture. The Islamists have infiltrated every government agency concerned with defense against “terrorism”, where they promote dumbed-down policies on how to hunt terrorists and hold how-to-be-nice to Muslims tea parties with agents. They get themselves hired as FBI-CIA translators where they feed deceiving translations to our “intel” people.

We would all be speaking German or Japanese now if we had allowed this sort of thing to occur in WWII. I have to really wonder how we can overcome the Islamic threat with ignorance stacked so high in every corner inside the Beltway and with such deep penetration of Islam into our society already. General Vines’ book reading list before he went to the Middle East is a discouraging example. Surely there must be some office there inside the Beltway with a few people who know what the problem is and are really working on it without PC oversight? Surely…?

I could go on in that vein, but here it would be singing to the choir.

Hugh thinks we should pull out of Iraq and let them fight it out by themselves, and I will concede there are good arguments for doing that, if we could make the same model work throughout Islam. Hugh thinks that if we pull all our support from Arab states they will collapse from within. However, I do not share Hugh’s optimism that tribalism and inter-tribal fighting will take precedence over Islamic world-wide conquest ambitions. The Saudis have done their global Wahabbi-ization plan very well indeed. Every Friday, in every Mosque, the hate speech is overwhelmingly anti-American, anti-Israel, and Anti-Jew and Anti-Christian. Are they going to ignore that “sacred” music and instead go for local in-fighting when we pull our support? Maybe in specific localities, but as an overall strategy to castrate Islam, I do not think it will work. Islam has held half (more or less) of the eastern hemisphere’s lands for some 1400 years. Where was the tribal in-fighting that resulted in diminishing of Islam? There was lots of fighting, but it most always seemed to result in more Islam, not less. I think that when Muslims fight Muslims, they eventually kiss and make up, or at the least quit shooting at each other.

My inclination is that we should stay in Iraq for a period that can only be considered indefinite. We provide cover while the Iraqis pull a government together, tribal warts and all. We retrain their army and air force. They could eventaully be a check on the Iranian moulahs and the Saudis. Meanwhile, we are going to take more hits from the jihadists coming from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. However, they are coming to our guns where they can die for Allah with the aid of our Army and Marines. Iraq provides a focal point for them to fly to like locusts, and in the process diminishes the logistical support Al Queda can give for attacks elsewhere, attacks particularly in the US.

Pulling out of Iraq will result in another anti-US anti-Israel theocracy or Sunni dictatorship that will fight us again under the flag of Islam. It will result in a great propaganda victory for Al Queda and Al Zaqari. It will attract many thousands more of muhadjeen ready to die for Allah, somewhere else if not Iraq, and that somewhere else will likely be Israel and/or the US.

Hugh does not exactly call for a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia; he stops short of that. However, that is the sort of break that is needed. Saudi Arabia is the basic financial source of the Islamic threat to America, both internal and external. Their complicity in 9/11 was at least indirect, and possibly direct. Do we charge up our President’s kissing the King to ignorance or to fear of the Saudi oil card? Are we going to let that card be played until someday when the Supremes institute Sharia law because that is what the Europeans are doing? Certainly war should be close to the top of our options, since they are already at war with us. For our part it need not involve ground troops; blockading their ports and stopping the flow of oil will get their attention.

Hugh asks the great question (paraphrasing) if the Beltway cannot or will not take up our side of the propaganda war, what about a private institution? That is exactly what is needed and could get the job done better and faster without government-inspired PC interference. Any “angels” out there?

Letterman and Leno lampooning the muzzies could be a great educator for the American public, except that they are controlled by their PC networks and PC directors and the lawyers of the NLG-ACLU-CAIR cabal. Look how Fox crumbled on 24 after CAIR pulled some strings. And now I understand one of the Saudi princes has a major share (read that “say”) in FOX. Their huge financial reserves enable them to control the information fed to Americans – not only on FOX where we know it happened, but it can be seen in the reporting of all the media. They have been silenced by PC, or Saudi cash, or both.

There is indeed room for a very wealthy angel to finance a counterattack in the public forum. Government will not do anything to seriously address the problem until another devastating attack occurs, most likely with WMD.

Posted by: Jimmy Bones

at June 26, 2005 8:48 PM

The "containment of Communism" worked. Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern and Central Europe, and is now coming undone in China. Why? It collapsed because a sufficient number of people realized it was a farce and a failure, a failure in the very area -- the delivery of material wellbeing to the masses -- where it had most insistently promised it would be a success.

Which 'Holy' book is communism's ??? Marx's teachings didn't last very long.

Christianity and Islam on the other hand existed long before communism - and are still around - even today.

I believe it is a mistake to compare communism with Islam.

Islam has the most brutal laws ever written - found in right in the Koran....and it involves a 'religion'....thereby giving it a power [whether right or wrong] that communism never have.

'Know thine enemy'

Recently, on The Connection, all three of the "guests" -- one Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador, and the still-clueless-about-Islam Nicholas Kristof, and someone formerly in the State Department -- were quite insistent that the Pakistani lady, Ms. Bibi, who was gang-raped, suffered from people whose acts of course "had nothing to do with Islam."

From the Koran:

033.052 It is not lawful for thee to marry more women after this, nor to change them for other wives, even though their beauty attract thee, except any thy right hand should possess as handmaidens

They are permitted to trade back and forth the ones they took as prisoners of war [after killing their men] - as though they are merchandise - just so they can have ''their way'' with them. [''justifiable'' mass rape]

What makes anyone think that a Holy God would approve?

All over Western Europe, it is dawning on people, or rather has already dawned and they are furious that the ruling elites are pretending such a problem does not exist

Sounds exactly like the leaders of the U.S.

official Islam bans music

And the record companies are worried about file swapping? How many young people are aware that true Islam will ban their music? [but it's 'ok' to behead someone though]

Sit down. Think what you would do to counter the various instruments of Jihad. And to whom would you appeal for support? And in what words would you wish to couch this counter-Jihad?

An over-whelming uproar aimed at the leaders - is what it is going to take. It is a fact that the teachings of Islam violate ALL humanitarian laws:

009.005 fight and slay the Pagans ''''wherever'''' ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war. [ Is it lawful to slaughter someone who doe s not believe as you do? Ask the 'humanitarian kings' Ask the self-appointed world court. Ask the U.N. Ask the leaders ]

033.061 They shall have a curse on them: whenever they are found, they shall be seized and slain without mercy. {Is that not incitement to carry out mass murder? Is that legal?

047.004 Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight [jihad], smite at their necks. [Behead them!] { Is that not MONSTEROUS???

Why are the 'humanitarian' kings and political leaders allowing mosques to be built for such teachings? Since it is in their power to do something about it - aren't they responsible for the damage if they don't put a stop to it?

Yes - they are.

Posted by: Beth

at June 26, 2005 9:14 PM

"if Europe is ruined..."

September last year I spent a few days in Paris. I drove through one part where I got a feeling I was in Africa.

Even while driving the car I felt very very threatened: Mohammedans have virtually taken over in some parts.

Marseille I havn't been to in recent years. But the kaftans, the coffee-filters and the hijab, bilbabs and chadors are everywhere, even in the small villages in Alsace which I used to call home.

Its not nice, nobody likes it but nobody does anything about it. Not yet...

Once the bombs go off I believe the gloves willcome off. It will happen, just like in Australia...

Posted by: Terminator

at June 26, 2005 9:16 PM

We retrain their army and air force.

Posted by: Jimmy Bones

For what? a better Islamic army?

And now I understand one of the Saudi princes has a major share (read that “say”) in FOX.

(That explains the noticable changes)

The Bible teaches that numbers have more power than leaders do.

Zec 8:16 These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye EVERY MAN the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.

Eph 4:25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak EVERY MAN truth with his neighbour.

A group of teachings straight from the Koran - with links that lead to 3 different translations each - ALL approved by Islamic scholars can be found here: http://palestinename.com/frmouth.htm

Copy and paste - or send the whole page to everyone you can think of - and tell them to pass it along.

As long as Islam continues to hide its true form - it will flourish - because of how great the lie "Islam is a religion of peace" has spread.

It is not. The laws in Islam are vicious. [ out of 'allah's own mouth - is the proof given ]

Tell - or keep quiet and do nothing. But then don't complain - when it devours your way of life

Quote the Koran and point out how it thoroughly violates all humanitarian laws.

What non-muslim court could prosecute?

Posted by: Beth

at June 26, 2005 9:32 PM

If Muslims are ashamed to have their own 'allah' quoted - then they need to find a better God

Posted by: Beth

at June 26, 2005 9:34 PM

.....Islam requires Jihad to defend and spread Islam......

Exactly. Can you see Muslims going around like Mormons knocking on doors and handing out pamphlets about Moe?? That would be another funny cartoon.

A classic from "My Life with Moe"

The Hadith
Burkhari vol IX, no. 130 One day the Prophet visited here (i.e. the wife of Ubada bin As-Samit) and she provided him with food and started looking for lice in his head

Posted by: reset

at June 26, 2005 10:45 PM

"I do not share Hugh’s optimism that tribalism and inter-tribal fighting will take precedence over Islamic world-wide conquest ambitions....Maybe in specific localities, but as an overall strategy to castrate Islam, I do not think it will work. Islam has held half (more or less) of the eastern hemisphere’s lands for some 1400 years. Where was the tribal in-fighting that resulted in diminishing of Islam? There was lots of fighting, but it most always seemed to result in more Islam, not less.....My inclination is that we should stay in Iraq for a period that can only be considered indefinite. We provide cover while the Iraqis pull a government together, tribal warts and all. We retrain their army and air force. They could eventually be a check on the Iranian moulahs and the Saudis."
-- from a posting above

First, this part of the quote:

"I do not share Hugh’s optimism that tribalism and inter-tribal fighting will take precedence over Islamic world-wide conquest ambitions."

Reply:
There has been plenty of intra-Muslim strife -- the doctrine of taqiyya has its origins in Shi'a Islam, and was designed to protect the Shia not from Infidels, meek and mild, but from Sunni Muslims. Berber and Arab kingdoms warred in North Africa and Spain. Mehmet Ali sent his troops out of Egypt to attack other Muslims. The Turks kept the Arabs in the Ottoman Empire through means that included, wherever and whenever necessary, a firm hand -- and the Turkish-Arab hatreds that began then have not ceased.

Just in the last forty years, among Muslims there have been the following:

One major war, between Iran and Iraq, which lasted from 1980-1988, had a million casulaties, used up more than 100 billion dollars in oil revenues, and kept both sides preoccupied for a long time, and also involved, on the Iraqi side, financial aid from Kuwait, the U.A.E., and Saudi Arabia (and some American tanks supplied to Saudi Arabia, and then repainted, and sent to Iraq).

One minor war, the proxy war in the Yemen in the late 1960s, with left-wing Yemenis (as they were identified) supported by Nasser's Egypt, and so-called monarchists supported by Saudi Arabia. Again, both countries were bled by the conflict -- Saudi Arabia mostly with money, Egypt with men and equipment.

A war in 1971 of the army of General Yahya, of Pakistan (or West Pakistan) against those in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) who wanted independence. Hundreds of thousands of killed, millions wounded, the defeat and demoralization of the West Pakistanis, and revenge taken in East Pakistan against those who, almost all of them fanatical Muslims, the razakars, who had killed Hindus and Muslims during the conflict.

Small aggressions -- Libya against Egypt, Egypt against Libya. Syria against Jordan (Jordan rescued by the Israelis). Within Lebanon, a civil war that went on for years, and nearly destroyed Beirut, between Christians and Muslims.

In Iraq, the Shia revolt against Saddam Hussein.

In Iran, rarely reported uprisings against Farsi domination by ethnic Arabs in Khuzistan.

In Algeria, riots in Tizi-Ouzou and elsewhere by Berbers agitating for the right to use the Berber language and to preserve Berber culture; all Berber attempts suppressed by the Arab army.

In Egypt, a security apparatus grows up to deal with the intermittent threat of the Muslim ?Brotherhood, especially its attacks on tourists to destroy the tourism industry and thus harm the Egyptian economy.

In Syria, attacks by members of the Muslim Brotherhood against Alawites, including the murder of 82 Alawite cadets at a military academy graduate ceremony in 1981, followed by the massacre of possibly as many as 20,000 Muslims in the city of Hama, by the Syrian army of which the officer corps is Alawite, though Alawites make up only 12% of the population.

In late November 1979 the seizure by militants of the Mecca mosque, and after weeks of unsuccessful attempts by Saudi troops, French troops -- quickly "islamized" for the occasion -- finally flushed those rebels out.

Unrest in oil-bearing al-Hasa province in eastern Saudi Arabia, intermittently requiring increased activity by Saudi security forces.

And so on, and on -- some things coming to our attention, others kept from leaving the Middle East.

So it will not do to say that the Arabs and Muslims have always been united. If anything, the unity of the last 500 years was that of unconcern about the great world, for within the cocoon of village Islam, sans newspapers, or radio, or television, or audiocassettes, or videocassettes, or now satellite television, there was hardly any awareness of the outside, and certainly very little of the real state of Infidel countries. Meanwhile, the Muslims of the MIddle East knew, at least, that they had Ottoman rulers, and that those rulers were Muslims.

Let me continue:

Trouble and threats between Libya and Egypt.

Threats between the Sudan and Egypt.

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

The threat to invade Saudi Arabia by Iraq.

The support by Saudi Arabia of the Dhofar rebellion in Oman.

The demands made by Saudi Arabia on Abu Dhabi and other sheikhdoms, including the famous Buraimi Oasis dispute (see J. B. Kelly, "Eastern Arabian Frontiers").

The enmity between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and the wholesale expulsion of nearly 1 million Yemeni workers from Saudi Arabia.

The massacres within Iraq of Kurds by Arabs, which not a single Arab inside or outside Iraq protested at the time.

The suppression of the Arabs of Khuzistan (on the Persian Gulf), by the Farsi-dominated militry of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The ethnically-based battles within Afghanistan of Pushtuns, Tadjiks, and other tribes.

And many more similar examples.

During the past two decades, with greater frequency recently, there have been many murderous attacks on Shi'a by Sunnis. In Pakistan Shi'a mosques and Shi'a leaders have repeatedly been attacked, and many killed. In Afghanistan, Sunnis have attacked and killed the Hazaras (a Shi'a ethnic group, vaguely oriental). In the U.A.E., Kuwait, and Bahrain, the ruling Sunnis have from time to time made life more difficult for the Shi'a minority. In Saudi Arabia, the Shi'a have always been regarded as scarcely better than Infidels (though recently the Saudi government has eased up a bit).

So to pooh-pooh the likelihood of intra-Muslim or intra-Arab strife seems to be to be wrong; the evidence all goes the other way.

In any case, it is not true that I offered some thoughts on how to "castrate" (a curious word, and certainly completely inappropriate as far as I am concerned) Islam. I never said anything about "castrating" Islam, but rather, most effectively, and least wastefully, containing Islam, and attempting, by having as little to do with the Muslim world as possible, by giving no aid, no military equipment, as little access to Western technology, medical care, and education as is possible, to cause Muslims to be condemned to the solitary confinement of the world of Islam, and to begin to ponder what it is about that world that makes it, and the people in it, the way they are.

That has been happening in Iran during the last 25 years, the years of the Islamicr Republic of Iran, and no doubt the introspection, and the consideration of how Islam encourages obedience to authority and hence despotism, and encourages idleness and parasitism through its inshallah-fatalism and millennium-old reliance on either fate (i.e., that OPEC oil bonanza) or on the jizya, the money extracted from non-Muslims (and now those non-Muslims are Westerners who continue to lavish foreign aid, even if billions disppear from "Palestinian" coffers, and the Jordanian monarch siphons off much, and the Mubarak Friends-and-Family corruption takes much of what the Americans and Europeans now think they are simply obligated to keep supplying to that most unpleasant, venal, and hysteically hostile of regimes -- certainly the most hostile regime ever, in history, to have received undeserved American largesse.

Now the second part of the quote:

"We retrain their army and air force. They could eventually be a check on the Iranian moulahs and the Saudis."

Whaaa? We "retrain" their army AND their air force. Are you kidding? Iraq should not have an air force. Period. Neither Iraq, nor any Muslim state, should continue to be supplied with any weaponry that might allow the current regime, or a future regime, or groups within that country who may be favored by a general or two, or groups within that country, though out of favor with the regime, to get their hands on such weaponory.

As for the idea that the Iraqis would "eventually be a check on the Iranian moulahs and the Saudis" -- why do you say this? Why should we assume this, or base policy on this? Haven't you just before been arguing that we shouldn't rely on intra-Arab disputes, when they are likely to unite? Which argument are you making?

I make two arguments. The first is that by leaving, and nothing more, we allow the natural antagonisms to reveal themselves, without our trying to paper them over, or defend one group from another. And whether it is Kurds (the only group that should receive military aid) rising against the kind of Arab-ruled state that Jaafari really envisions (and in any case the Kurds will not now give up the idea of independence, period), or whether it is the Shi'a and Sunni (we can talk about groups when we are discussing the tribal, group-haunted Muslim countries -- these terms make far less sense in places where not the group, but the individual, has significance, but that is outside the dar al-Islam), we can exploit natural fissures, and the spectacle of those fissures widening will have beneficial consequences, for Infidels, outside of Iraq and even outside the Middle East.

The second is that except for the Kurds, military aid should not be given to the parties in Iraq. No need to make things bloodier -- a stalemate is the best result. And no major military equipment, unless it has been properly jimmied so that it can be sabotaged from afar if its American or European suppliers deems the use to which it is being put is not appropriate (the same way that supercomputers sold to the Soviet Union were rigged to be subject to outside control, and then made to malfunction). So perhaps F-16s can be supplied to some Muslim states, just as long as they can be controlled by Western technology unbeknownst to those receiving it. For all I know, this is already being done. And for all the Arabs and Muslims know -- well, they don't know, and they never will. And that, for them, is a problem. From our point of view, a very good kind of problem for them to have. Keep them guessing.

Posted by: Hugh

at June 26, 2005 10:57 PM

Jimmy wrote....Iraq provides a focal point for them to fly to like locusts, and in the process diminishes the logistical support Al Queda can give for attacks elsewhere, attacks particularly in the US. ...

I think we will have a spectacular in Europe or the US this summer. You can just smell it in the air. Our borders are a joke, OTMs must be released on their own recognizance. Is that crazy or what? Islamic Stinkers Society is so confident that with their disclaimers, they can operate freely and they do. That's just two examples, we all can name countless others. Are we ripe for a spectacular or what?

Then, and only then, there may be some hope that Dhimmi Rice - remember her despicable boohoohoo over the holey koran, all creditibility flushed down the toilet that day for me - may dump Esposito as her goto man on Islam, and get some real advice from Robert. Maybe.

Posted by: reset

at June 26, 2005 11:20 PM

Jimmy Bones aptly comments:

"lslam has held half (more or less) of the eastern hemisphere’s lands for some 1400 years. Where was the tribal in-fighting that resulted in diminishing of Islam? There was lots of fighting, but it most always seemed to result in more Islam, not less."

The only thing that hemmed in Islam was the rise to global superiority of the West during the great era of Western Imperialism, beginning in the 16th century.

No amount of internecine fighting among Muslims will diminish Islam: Islam thrives on war and bloodshed: Islam nourishes itself and gets stronger by shedding Muslim blood in religious disputes and petty tribal wars. It's like military training for them. The founder of modern Saudi Arabia, ibn-Saud, conquered the Arabian peninsula by means of his army getting stronger through killing countless fellow Arabs in petty tribal wars. This was also how Mohammed himself honed his Ikhwan ("military brotherhood"), and how the successor armies of Islam got stronger -- by killing non-Muslims and bickering Muslims alike.

The Mongol/Turkic invasions against Islam in the 13th century were staggering for Islam: yet in the end, they only made Islam stronger by becoming an internecine conflict through conversion, and made them more hungry to mass-murder millions of Hindus and aggrandize ever more territory. Only the superiority of the West hemmed them in.

Only a reassertion of Western superiority will hem in Islam. And this reassertion can only be accomplished by recovering our former pride in ourselves. We may well not succeed if our culture is constantly, and profoundly, ashamed of itself and its own historical record.

In this PC cultural situation we are in, no amount of "learning" about Islam is going to make much difference. We first have to re-learn about ourselves.

Posted by: metaxy

at June 26, 2005 11:43 PM

"The only thing that hemmed in Islam was the rise to global superiority of the West during the great era of Western Imperialism, beginning in the 16th century."

If the "great era of Western imperialism" began in the 16th century, it was not hemming in Islam. The Seljukid and then the Ottoman Turks had taken most of Anatolia, and the Ottomans had even gone beyond Constantinople, and seized Christian lands in southeastern Europe, before Constantinople fell on May 29, 1453. The city had emptied out; only about 50,000 people remained when it was finally taken. Among the weapons used by the Turks: cannon, constructed for them by a Hungarian convert (just as a Hungarian convert later built them the first printing-press for Arabic script). Ottoman armies continued to push northward and eastward in Europe. The battle of Lepanto in 1571, in which the Ottoman navy was soundly defeated, and then the two assaults on Vienna, the second in 1683 (late 17th century) helped stop the continuing Ottoman conquests. The "great era of Western imperialism" began later, unless one wishes to define as "imperialism" the conquest of the New World, or the Portuguese and Dutch trading entrepots in India, and as far as Cipangu, or Japan.

Within the Ottoman Empire, Islam itself created paralysis and stasis. Inshallah-fatalism, the habit of obedience or submission that can so easily be transferred from the mosque to the palace, the failure of modern science to develop, or with it incremental technological improvements -- the direct result of Muslim habits of mind, including hostility to free and skeptical inquiry -- all this was the failure of Islam, which ceased early on to be much more than a military empire. It was not Western imperialism that accounts for the conquest of Baghdad in 1258 -- though the Abbasid Empire had decayed long before the Mongols arrived. It was not just Western power, but Muslim technological paralysis, the primitive nature of Muslim politics and armies, that explain Westren superiority in military as in all other matters -- art, science, music, philosophy, literature, and political and legal theory. The contest hardly existed.

Islam itself hems in Islam. That is what we should strive to have first the Infidels of this world, and then the Muslims themselves, begin to realize. It is one way to divide, demoralize, and even to convert, a good many in dar al-Islam. It also happens to be true.

Posted by: Hugh

at June 27, 2005 12:01 AM

"If the "great era of Western imperialism" began in the 16th century, it was not hemming in Islam. The Seljukid and then the Ottoman Turks had taken most of Anatolia, and the Ottomans had even gone beyond Constantinople, and seized Christian lands in southeastern Europe, before Constantinople fell on May 29, 1453."

1453 is the 15th century, not the 16th. And I said "beginning" in the 16th century.

Posted by: metaxy

at June 27, 2005 12:06 AM

"the two assaults on Vienna, the second in 1683 (late 17th century)" -- I am aware that 1453 falls within the 15th century. I was beginning with the Fall of Constantinople to set the scene, giving a bit of history before (the Seljukid Turks in Anatolia before, the conquest of parts of Europe by the Ottomans even before Constantinople fell) and after (including the second assault on Vienna in 1683, the late 17th century).

My point remains the following: the West re-enters the MIddle East only with Napoleon, in 1798. And before that, for centuries, the Ottomans had, despite their conquests, internally been decaying. In fact, after the first 2-3 centuries of Islam, the world of Islam decayed -- long before the Mongol conquest of Baghdad. And it decayed because it was a system of total explanation and regulation that did not encourage thought or inquiry (see Rodney Stark on why modern science developed in the West, and nowhere else). We don't need to send armies to conquer Islam. We shouldn't. They will fight back, and they fight in every way that we deem inconceivable. We should hem them in, constrain them, deny them the fruits, technological and medical and military, of our own superior civilization. And then talk openly, and constantly, about the features of Islam, about the habits of mind that Islam instills, that keep Muslims back, and make them ill-prepared for modern democracy, for real economic systems (as opposed to OPEC manna from heaven, and foreign aid, or disguised jizya, from unwary and foolish Infidels),and for the kinds of intellecutal and social freedoms that are not so much part of the Western world, as part of the modern world. Islam holds its adherents back. Islam stunts mental growth. The evidence for this overwhelms. Let us keep pointing to that evidence. Let us embarrass them. Let us always have them on the defensive.

Posted by: Hugh

at June 27, 2005 12:18 AM

Hugh – I guess my point on all the in-fighting is that when it is all said and done, Islam is still there. I will give you that it engages them internally for a while anyway. But then we still have to cope with the aftermath. The Iran-Iraq war did not help the US or Israel vis-a-vis Islam; both during and after it was over, they were both sponsoring terrorism. Maybe if it could happen the way you propose – cut them all off of everything – maybe that would do some significant damage to them for a decade or two. But as long as Islam exists it will come back as a threat to Dar-al-Harb. Hence my choice of words: Islam must be broken (if that is better semantically than castrated); Muslims must learn they have to reject those parts of their faith that call for conquest of Dar-al-Harb, that call for beheading enemies, that call for killing of Christians and Jews, etc. Until that happens, if ever, we and our progeny are engaged in an unending war.

Practically, I think it would be politically impossible for the Beltway and the Euro bosses to cut Islam off completely. Neither of these ruling classes could bring themselves to do it. They do not have the cajones. And, importantly, even if we could cut them off from Western aid, the Russians and Chinese would move in and fill the vacuum.

As for an Iraqi airforce after we leave, they will need a protective cover against Iranian and Saudi air. Without that, either of these two states could pulverize Iraq; both of them certainly want to do that and would if we were not there now. The idea of jimmying the equipment in case of offensive use sounds like a winner.

That listing of historical Muslim in-fighting was impressive. Deserves expansion to book-length (or is there such a book already?). In this vein, has anyone ever put together a listing of decade-by-decade Islamic slaughtering over the centuries? It would be interesting to compare this with the work of the twentieth century tyrants.

Posted by: Jimmy Bones

at June 27, 2005 12:46 AM

Definite signs of paranoid schizophrenia in the above post. Is the mental healthcare system in the US in some kind of crisis?

Posted by: Doctor Phibes

at June 27, 2005 1:38 AM

Hugh,

I agree with some of your points. However:

1) you perhaps unintentionally engage in paradoxical argument by first trying to argue that Islam was a powerful threat up until the invasion of Vienna in the 17th century, then a few lines later saying it had spent itself by the 3rd century after its explosion out of Arabia;

2) I would counter by saying Islam continued straight through to the 16th century to be a major threat to the West, and the West until (roughly) the 16th century was engaged in a holding action that just barely saved Europe (while, as you yourself note, Islam was gnawing away at its SE edges while for centuries before it held all of Spain and basically held the major commercial lifeblood of Europe, the Mediterranean, hostage, and had conquered Central Asia and almost the entire Far East)

3) What really began to hem in Islam was the new and growing global strength of the West by the 16th century -- increasing exponentially each subsequent century.

4) What caused Ottoman Islam to decay (and other spheres of Islam to decay even more so) was the SURROUNDING hegemony of the West, world-wide -- one by one taking away all the commercial centers of power through military, technological, scientific, and political superiority, leaving the former, pre-16th century Islamic Expansionist Imperialism to huddle inward as an island hanging on to areas of the Middle East.

5) During the time I described above, the West completely took the Far East, Central Asia, India, and most of Africa (not to mention Spain by the end of the 15th century) away from Islam.

6) And finally, this period of spectacular Western ascendancy was not merely military, technological, scientific, and political: it was also philosophical and resulted in the most beneficent and ethical Imperialism in all world history.

7) In dismantling its own Imperialism (a feat of self-criticism and generosity unique in all world history), the West also was swept up into a cultural philosophical sea change that had many good elements and effects, but also tragically bad effects too -- namely, a profound loss of self-confidence and pride in its own screamingly obvious superiority to other cultures (superiority, not perfection).

8) This sea change has led us to where we are now, where millions of us (including untold numbers in government and academe and cultural media) sincerely believe an incoherent mish-mash of West-bashing multi-culturalism and ethical relativism: This mish-mash is in control now of nearly all policy, all intellectual study, all ideology and all pop culture: This mish-mash is horribly ill-equipped to do the very things you appropriately, but naively, urge us to do. This mish-mash is what Oriana in her wise old age throws up her hands at and bitterly laments.

9) We can, as you suggest, hem in Islam through our geopolitical "globalism", which is a crypto-Imperialism shackled by the incoherent ideological mish-mash noted above -- if only we could clear away some of the mish-mash. I honestly don't know how we're going to do it, however. When millions of intelligent Westerners would call you and Robert "extremists", "right-wing fanatics" and "racists", there is something abysmally wrong with the surrounding culture that has inculcated such pathological irrationality in them.

Posted by: metaxy

at June 27, 2005 2:19 AM

re: iraq ... i had rather hoped that planting a big fat arab democracy in heart of the middle east would create an ideological competitor to islam fascism, an alternate pathway for the masses out of their current misery & one that doesn't require blowing themselves up ;o)

i do realize that democracy & islam are in many ways very much at odds, but perhaps that's the whole point? to use the prosperity & proven track record of democracy to ease the masses away from the jihadi precipice?

hugh you may have addressed this idea already somewhere so i apolgize if so ... but i am curious, if you have a moment :o)

Posted by: fishboy

at June 27, 2005 3:45 AM

good practical info Hugh.
John Fitzgerald

Posted by: john

at June 27, 2005 6:11 AM

"you perhaps unintentionally engage in paradoxical argument by first trying to argue that Islam was a powerful threat up until the invasion of Vienna in the 17th century, then a few lines later saying it had spent itself by the 3rd century after its explosion out of Arabia..."
--- from a posting above

I did not mean to suggest that the Arabs had been spent military in the east, nor that the Ottomans in the west later on, when I wrote that Islam was in decay a few centuries after its initial conquests -- in both east and west.

Militarily, no. In Spain it took 500 years for the Reconquista, and even after the Muslims (Moors) were officially expelled in 1506, many stayed, and there were further uprisings by Muslims sporadically until a later, more complete expulsion. There is an article on this "Fifth Column" of Muslims; I recall it being by Andrew Hess (but I may have the name wrong).

Even if the Muslims were halted (Charles Martel and all that), and even if they were little by little pushed back in the Iberian Peninsula, in 1492, the year that Granada surrendered, was the year when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, with the results we all know. What that did was to divert Spanish attention, and Spanish aggression, and Spanish warriors (who might have otherwise taken the battle right to North Africa, possibly harmed or ended Muslim rule, and that, too, would have had world-historical importance).

The Muslims of North Africa continued to raid up and down the coasts of Western Europe. Under Murat Reis ("Reis" meaning "captain") there was one celebrated raid as far as Iceland, in 1627 (I think). More than a million people all over Western Europe, but especially in Italy, were seized, their villages destroyed, and taken back, as slaves, to what is present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. There is a popular study of this, which focusses on Thomas Pellow, a Cornishman taken back to Morocco, where he was forced to work with other European slaves on the palace of Moulay Hasan, built entirely by such enslaved Christians.

Arab Muslims in the east, meanwhile, were initially not successful in their attacks on the Byzantine Empire, which counterattacked in places. It was only with the Seljukid Turks, and then the Ottomans, and after all sorts of events that weakened Byzantium (the First Crusade comes to mind -- think of all that loot brought back to Venice), softened it up for the kill. There was no Western solidarity (reminds us of the ability of the Arabs today to split the E.U. from the United States, its real ally and friend).

What I meant by "decay" in Islam was civilizational decay. The more one looks at the exaggerated claims that have been made for the supposed achievements of high Islamic civilization, and that are often blandly accepted, and then repeated, by non-Muslims who have not looked into the matter, and the more one examines who actually was responsible for those translations from the Greek, that paper-making (see Dard Hunter), the concept of zero, and whatever other achievements in a very few areas (optics, astronomy), the more one realizes that 1) Christians and Jews played a very important role, and essentially, Muslim conquerors were in many ways parasitic culturally upon those higher civilizations and peoples whom, militarily, they overwhelmed.

2) After a few centuries, when those Christians and Jews no longer played such a role -- one reason was that their numbers, their wealth, their positions steadily declined. When this "high Islamic civilization" ceased to have the fructifying influence of the conquered non-Muslims, whatever civlization it may be said to have had seemed to disappear. See, for fun, the agitated and nearly hysterical review of Toby Huff's book by George Saliba (one more of the Columbia crew), Huff's measured reply, Saliba's repeated hysteria over the very idea that anyone should even wish to study the reasons for the decline of what he, Saliba, wrongly calls "Arabic" science (there were hardly any Arabs involved; high Islamic civilization was a matter largely of Persians and even some Turkic peoples (e.g. Al-Farabi); the language of the conquerors who brought Islam, for inslamization was accompanied by attempts at linguistic and cultural imperialism, in some cases partly resisted (Iranians believe, or many do, that Firdowsi's Shahnameh helped preserve Persian both as a literary and as a living language for everday).

Islam can be in "decay" -- good god, there is no there there to Islam now, with complete intellectual disarray, the absence of anything like rational discourse, no real literature or art or science, a politics of complete hysteria, and a daily life where people are well-versed in the arts of slyness, lecca-lecca flattery, and when the occasion presents itself, of a meretriciousness, a cruelty, a viciousness (see Darfur, southern Sudan, the "brave" killers of the PLO, Laskar Jihad, and so on), that more than confirms the old line: "At your feet or at your throat." Some populations of Muslims, those who may have lived in the West, or lived near large numbers of non-Muslims, may have been improved by the contact. Lebanese Muslims with Lebanese Christians, Muslims in India but not in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the "Palestinian" Arabs affected by Israeli political freedoms.

Ordinarily this kind of decay would be reflected in political and military powerlessness. Why not with the Muslims today?

Answer: OPEC oil money.

This money, which is the result of an accident, has changed everything. It has provided the wherewithal to buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of armaments from the West, and to establish arms projects (see Iran, for example, or the money the Pakistanis received from rich Arabs as well as the gullible Americans -- enough discretionary income to build that handful of bombs). It has allowed the Arabs to buy up an army of hirelings, who do their propaganda for them, at every level, in every way, everywhere in the Western world, at the U.N., and the E.U., and elsewhere. These include businessmen eager to get contracts, or oil men eager for exploration deals, or others just wishing to sell to Arab clients. It includes politicians, who can through lecture series, or consulting contracts (think of the Carlyle Group, Kissinger Associates, and all the thousand and one ways political figures, when they retire, make fortunes from their former positions, and their real or imagined power to influence things). It includes intelligence agents, even some who may have started working for the Saudis before retiring. Consider the career of that "international business consultant" Raymond Close, once C.I.A. station chief in Riyadh. When he resigned in 1977, to go into business with two Saudis, when he subsequently was involved with the BCI crooks and other louche activities, when he then describes himself as this "international business consultant" who happens to give lectures and write (or sign) Op/Ed articles that could have come from some Saudi propaganda ministry, surely -- you would think -- Congress would investigate him, as a representative figure, to discourage such things. But the 9/11 Commission apparently did not thing investigating those who have so mislead us about the nature, and intentions, of Saudi Arabia, and what Saudis are inculcated with (some people are confused, and think because a few passages in textbooks have just been discovered, that they must be recent developments -- no, they were always there, and always available to be discovered. It is just that the entire Western world, save for a few like J. B. Kelly, was uninterested in discovering the truth about Saudi Arabia). Then there are the academics, bought and paid for in some cases -- the "Centers" or Arab or Islamic Studies, or Muslim-Christian Understanding, and supplemented by those King Abdul Aziz Chairs, or this or that Harvard professor who is also an "adjunct in Islamic law" and cannot bring himself to discuss the real nature of Saudi sociey, the sharia, or any of the things that real scholars of Islamic law -- Joseph Schacht, Antoine Fattal -- make the object of their study. Everyone has been doing very well, thank you. And who cares if Saudi Arabia is one of the most barbaric and malevolent (toward non-Muslims) places on earth.

One could continue, but you get the dismal picture.

And that money also paid for the mosques and madrasas both in the dar al-Islam, and in the West, to serve those Muslims who, in the millions, by governments indifferent to, or criminally negligent about, the nature of Islam, the tenets of Islam, the persistent hold of Islam, the attitudes and mental habits that Islam naturally engenders, were allowed behind enemy lines -- as Muslims see them, but Infidels naively did not, and still do not.

And advances in technology ensure that the quiet "village Muslims" of yore, who led pious lives but knew little of the "other" parts of Islam, and could not easily be whipped up because the means for distributing the message of Islam was only the local mosque, but now includes radio, television, audiocassettes, videocassettes, and the latest entry, satellite televisison -- this has not, pace Bernard Lewis, been a force to enlighten Muslims. No, look at Al-Jazeera. Is that "enlightening" Muslims, or whipping them up into a fanatical frenzy, or to keep their fervency at a dangerous boil, or where it cannot be indefinitely maintained, to bring it to a boil intermittently.

OPEC money, migration behind enemy lines to the Lands of the Infidels, advances in technology to spread the message lest anyone forget, these are the three things that, along with Western confusion and stupidity and lack of appreciation for its own achievements (partly the result of self-deception, and wallowing in a mostly imaginary guilt about the achievements, and power, of Western civilization), make Islam -- despite the "decay" that set in, both in the Arab East and the Ottoman West, within a few centuries of the initial Muslim conquests.

Islam has nothing to offer us. It stunts individual and civilizational growth. It menaces art, science, all kinds of expression and free and skeptical inquiry. It is misogynistic. It presumes to tell us what we can and cannot do, in every single facet of our existence. If you seek its results, look at Saudi Arabia today. Look at the Sudan. Look at Pakistan. Look at the Islamic Republic of Iran. Like what you see? Want that for your children? Want to establish a "dialogue" with that, or believe the line about "we will respect you and you should respect us" (one earns respect; one does not offer it as a bargaining chip, to be traded for other respect). A horrific possiblity, but a real one. Simply by dint of overbreeding, and a failure of the Western world, and of its cretinized publics, to see what is staring them in the face, to analyze, to study, to put in about as much effort as any of us does when we buy a car, or a computer, or an air conditioner, or a toaster-oven. A little looking into Islam would be a good thing -- don't you agree?

Posted by: Hugh

at June 27, 2005 7:25 AM

Hugh:

See David Meir-Levi's Occupation and Settlement: The Myth and Reality, posted on FrontPageMagazine.com on June 24, 2005, re: which people, in recent history, were referred to as Palestinians. Not the Arab population of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, but the Jews. If he was Palestinian in the current understanding, you'd think the Jordanians would be harping that he ain't one of theirs, wouldn't you?

Posted by: waterdragon52

at June 27, 2005 8:51 AM

Hugh,

Our quibbles about Islamic decay vs. effective Islamic belligerence are beside the point: whether or not a nebula that is in civilizational decay "should" (logically/historically) be a formidable threat is beside the point that Islam throughout history has shown itself (at various junctures) to be simultaneously in decay, and deadly.

But I must object to your implication that only that geological accident, oil, explains why decayed Islam today can be a threat.

It is not only the accident of oil. One other factor (we are not counting traditional jihad doctrine since it is not new but perennial to Islam) must be added to the explanation: The dismantling of Western Imperialism.

This dismantling was not merely institutional, legal and political -- it was also philosophical. And this dismantling is not entirely a "was", either: its consequences on our policy and education continue with full force today -- worse now than when it began concretely in the aftermath of WWI, then the aftermath of WWII.

Without this philosophical dismantling and reconfiguring of Western Civilization, we would not be in a situation now where an Islam that happened to have the leverage of oil would be a threat: we (the West) would have the collective rationality and sense to have nullified Islam long ago.

Posted by: metaxy

at June 27, 2005 1:42 PM