This is, indeed, a terrific article which I urge others to read very very carefully. In analyzing Bush's speech, Serge has touched upon many important points, much of which mirror the views that Hugh has been so tirelessly posting.

Posted by: Razdan at October 9, 2005 8:52 AM

This excellent article contains two parts that one would wish to see revised.

The first is the appearance of a worrisome because deceptive phrase, a phrase used previously by Bassam Tibi: "either Islam will be Europeanized, or Europe will be Islamized."

Why is this worrisome? Because it implies some kind of acceptance of the idea that Islam can be "Europeanized" which is left undefined; this, in turn, implies that we need not worry quite so mch about the islamization of Europe through Da'wa and demographic conquist if there are outward and visible signs of some changes -- i.e. "europeanization" is what it might be called -- of Islam.

But isn't this something like what Tariq Ramadan proposes, when he talks of Europe being the future of islam, and suggests slyly that Muslims in Europe modify, to the extent possible, their outward and visible signs of militant Islam, so as to win acceptance?

And isn't the "Europeanization" of Islam what such political figures as Nicolas Sarkozy hope will somehow do the trick -- that if the government pays for mosques, hires and vets imams, bans the hijab in schools, that this will somehow transform Islam.

I cannot believe that Serge Trifkovic believes that Islam can be permanently transformed, because that would require changing the canonical texts. How could the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira be "europeanized"? At the margins, things could change. Changes in women's dress, changes even in attitudes toward women. But what should concern Infidels is not that so much as the attitudes toward them -- toward Infidels. And that cannot change.

Aside from the rituals of worship (Shehada, the canonical prayers or salat five times a day, charity to fellow Muslims or zakat, observance of Ramadan, hajj) there is everywhere in Islam this division of the world between Believer and Infidel, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Islam originates as a belief-system that conquering Arabs might use, with its blend of pagan Arab lore and beliefs, and stories and figures appropriated, usually badly distorted, from both Judaism and Christianity (and Zoroastrianism)), to both justify and promote their conquest of far more settled, advanced, wealthy and civilized populations of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. And there is no possibility of change -- for there has not been, and cannot be, if the Qur'an (out of which the Hadith and the Sira were no doubt spun, perhaps not entirely out of whole cloth) is the direct Word of God (no style indirect libre for these pre-Flaubertians), and cannot be changed, or interpreted away.

The second is this:

""'First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions.'
[excerpt from Bush's speech]

If the desire to end American influence in the Middle East were a defining motive for terrorism, we are in deep trouble as nine-tenths of Muslims would like to see that happen. The reason is not “because we stand for democracy and peace” but—overwhelmingly—because we are perceived as hopelessly biased in the problem of Israel-Palestine." [Trifkovic's gloss]

Here in his comment Trifkovic limits the desire of the Arabs to "end American influence in the Middle East" as linked to the perception that the United States is "hopelessly biased in the problem of Israel-Palestine" [sic]. But that is dangerously close to Buchananism and it is false. Leaving aside the phrase "Israel-Palestine" which might more accurately be phrased -- "in the problem of the Arab Jihad against Israel as an Infidel state on land once ruled by Muslims," Trifkovic here does not recognize that American influence in the Middle East is bad because
America is bad, and its influence everywhere to be opposed. And while that "badness" has many expressions -- one being its support (hardly "hopelessly biased" of course and in many ways, and for long periods, not nearly supportive or understanding enough of Israel's exemplary plight)--it can also be found in either particualar acts (military support for the Manila government or that in Bangkok, in acting against Muslims), or in the general problem: America is the most powerful and resolute of Western -- i.e., of Infidel -- countries. It therefore must be defeated. But so too must all the others.

For many years the Arabs were fixated on Israel alone because they did not have the power to consider spreading Islam hither and yon. Pan-Arabism, so often and so wrongly seen as an alternative to pan-Islamism (i.e. Islam itself, as the force to unify Dar al-Islam and to incorporate more and more of Dar al-Harb withiin its boundaries), was merely the First Stage. After all, it would have been unimaginaable to think in 1945 or 1955 of once again appealing to Muslims in southern Thailand or the southern Philippines, in challenging Infidels within their own lands, in filling every last Muslim village, and the world's airwaves, with Muslim teachngs and Muslim propaganda.

Yet three things allowed this to happen. First, and primarily, it was the revenues from the accident of ol ($10 trillion since 1973), revenues that permitted the buying of vast amounts of weaponry and military training, and building of mosques and madrasas (both centers, in the West, of propaganda and subversion), and the buying up of academic and other hirelings (chiefly businessmen and former diplomats, who lent a plausible sheen to Arab and Muslim propaganda).

The second thing to occur was the unopposed mass settlement of Muslims wiithin Europe itself since the late 1960s -- i.e. behind what most Muslims, even if they came initially for economic reasons, have been taught to regard as Infidel, or enemy lines, but the indigenous Infidels themselves hardly took notice. If North Africans swarmed to France, Turks to West Germany, and Pakistanis to England, so what? In what way did they differ from, say, the Vietnamese, or the Chinese, or the Hindu immigrants? Buit they differed very much as to its own great sorrow, and confusion, and horror, Western Europe is now finding out.

Why was this allowed to happen? Was there no one to warn of the consequences? Partly, it took place at a time, and in conditions, when attention was focused on the need for what, it was felt, was necessary labor, but why did no one think of importing such labor from Latin America or the Philippines or Thailand? Why did no one pay attention to Islam, and what Islam taught, and what perhaps not always the first generatoin, many of its members too busy making a living, exhibited, but what would surely and necessarily be exhibited by the later generations? The answer is that an entire generation of Western experts on Islam died or retired, and only a handful were around to worry aloud (such as Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq in France), but that even they were drowned out by the new generation of supposed experts, who were either tiers-mondistes for whom the "Third World" could no wrong, or were directly or indirecrtly financed by Arab money at new academic centers, or took their philo-Arab and hence philo-Islamic cue in, for example, France and England, those who had always been such when it came to the Arab-Israeli conflict and who were unlikely, given their biases, to see much wrong with Muslim immigrants. After all, to do so once the immigrants had arrived would be to admit that an entire ruling class, of all parties, had by their own negligence done terrible damage to the people, and the future, of their own countires. And so many, in so many different parties, were buy recycling (whether in or out of office) for themselves, for their friends, for the company they kept, and companies that kept them) petro-dollars, that they were not about to exhibit any suspicion about the long-term presence of Islam within Europe. Better to keep getting the money, the contracts, the smiles -- and not think too deeply about the future of France, of Italy, of Spain, of England, of Belgium, of Germany.

And the third thing that happened was the technological revolution that helped to spread Islam, the full Islam, not merely the Five Pillars of individual worship, but Islam red in Qur'
anic tooth and claw, to villages where pious but largely illiitreate Muslims may never have heard with such insistence and ferocity the Message of Islam. Would Khomeni have toppled the Shah, who controled the Iranian radio and television, had he not, from his exile in Neauphle-le-chateau, made those audiocassettes that were then shipped to Iran, and distributed by the bazaris? And now there are videocassettes, and satellite channels, and the Internet, all spreading the full message of Islam to formerly quiet Muslims, as the products of Western technology are exploited to menace and undermine that very West.

And that is when, and why, and how, those who once limited their dreams to pan-Arabism, could see the possibility of aiming higher, for pan-islamism which is nothing but Islam itself, determined to spread Dar al-Islam and push back, not necessarily by direct military conquest, the borders of Dar al-Harb.

For the first few decades, Israel was the lighning rod for Arab Muslim aggression. But it was not because of Israel, as is implied in that comment by Trifkovic above, that the United States is deplored. It will always be regarded with hostility. That hostilty, that hatred, does not prevent half of young Arabs wishing to move to the United States or another Western country, but that desire to come does not mean a desire to embrace a new way of life, new loyalties other than that to the umma al-islamiyya; no, Islam arrives with them in their undeclared, and often undetectable, mental baggage, to be secretly unpacked, when the Infidels are not looking.

Trifkovic might have left out the phrase about the possibility of Islam being "Europeanized" (and even were it to be softened, and modified, for Infidel consumption, where is the guarantee that this brand of Islam, unsupported by the canonical texts, would not in turn be thrown over for the real Islam, at such time when the demographic conquest of Europe is too far gone to be halted or reversed?).

And in describing why the United States presence in the Middle East is opposed, he ought to have avoided, even by implication, the canard about American support for Israel. Of course that is what the Arab Muslims say is their reason -- what else would one expect them to say? Would one expect any Muslim Arab, or any Believer, to suggest that Muslims do not like this or any American government that shows signs of suppoorting those fighting this or that local Jihad?

I am sure Trifkovic knows perfectly that what the United States does hardly matters, as long as the country remains that of Infidels. He deplores (and so do I) some of the American behavior in the Balkans, where we took it upon ourselves in the end to make Kosovo and Bosnia safe for the destruction of Orthodox churches, the harrying and murder of local Orthodox villagers, and the growth of Saudi influence among the local, presumably "Europeanized" Muslims (would Trifkovic accept that description? And is he quite content with that "Europeanized" Islam that can so rapidly turn into something else, into the dreams of Izetbegovic for imposition of the Shari'a, for example?

Aside from those two points, an excellent summary of the problme: the widespread failure of an entire political class, that is in danger, through ignorance or stupidity, in simply giving away, surrendering, the Infidels who have entrusted them with the duty of instructing and protecting them.

A fantastic situation, scarcely to be believed. Which is why so many people find it easy not to believe it.

Posted by: Hugh at October 9, 2005 9:48 AM

In support of Hugh's argument that it is what America stands for in itself and not US support for Israel [which I feel is much exaggerated in the press and the academy], I would point to Sayid Qutb. This ideologue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, its main ideologue after Hassan al-Banna, lived for about two years in the United States in the period 1947-1949. This was a time of the peak of public support for Israel in the United States. Yet in a book that Qutb wrote upon returning to Egypt, he has very little --if anything-- to say about Israel, or any American support for same. Rather he is shocked by American mores, ways, principles, and morality, etc.
Further, tax policies of US administrations since Truman in 1951 show support for US oil firms [first of all, ARAMCO] paying especially high royalties to Saudi Arabia which were disguised as an "oil income tax," thereby exempting ARAMCO from much or most of the US corporate income tax that it would otherwise have had to pay. Hence, one could argue that the US has been more pro-Arab than pro-Israel.

Posted by: Eliyahu at October 9, 2005 10:23 AM

Trifkovic was irked, one suspects, by some of those commentators in this country whom he felt were far too eager to accept the received version, those black-and-white accounts of men and events in the Balkans, in which Serbian fears were not so much dismissed as completely overlooked. Some of those who wrote in that vein were, or he thought they were, supporters of Israel. And this here and there seems to have affected his view of things. But surely he knows, as we all do, that the Jihad has local manifestations, but is indivisible. A triumph in one place would whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetites. And the United States need not be hated, for Muslims to wish to reduce American influence and power. Of course many Muslims (but not the Al-Saud family, who count on American troops in those bases as their final guarantor) wish the Americans "out of the Middle East." But they also wish the Americans out of Western Europe, and are constantly attempting, with success, to undermine what should be the natural affinity of Western democracies for one another by a constant appeal, within Western Europe, to the pre-existing mental conditions of antisemitism and anti-Americanism. And if they can -- campaigns of Da'wa are already underway in Latin America and never stopped in Africa -- they would do the same in the too-ignored Southern Hemisphere. But the same goes for all Infidel countries that do not appease, yield, succumb -- whenever a Western country shows a refusal to bend, as for example Australia has repeatedly shown, it then becomes an enemy because it will not yield. And the same is true for all other Infidel lands -- if the Thai government does not roll over and play dead for the Muslims in the south, it will be the enemy.

Posted by: Hugh at October 9, 2005 10:42 AM

The bottom line is always -- Islam will move upon any culture and civilization in the precise moment of advantage as it has since the very beginning. Islam has swallowed up billions of people numerous cultures and civilizations, some which believed themselves to be invincible.

Islam and the West can not coexist in the same space and has never been able to do so. As Hugh has so pointed out: Islam and the West must separate once and for all, a truth that our leaders, blinded by their own deceptions, can not or will not see nor comprehend.

The chill wind of Islam in on our brow and on our backs. Where are the civil defense corps? Where are the troops to man the battle stations? Fifth columnists inhabit our cities, our institutions; We are naked and defenseless here at home.

Posted by: epg at October 9, 2005 11:19 AM

TRIFCOVIC: "There had been no training camps under Saddam, period."

Various Palestinian groups had a presence in Iraq, including Abu Nidal's 'Fatah Revolutionary Council-General Command' which, though secular in form, was perhaps the most fanatical of them all (remember the attacks on the El Al counters at airports in Rome and Vienna in '86?).

Saddam was the ONLY leader in the world who was publicly offering subsidies (first $15,000...later upped to $25,000) to the families of suicide bombers in Palestine.

And Zarqawi himself was present in Iraq before Saddam's removal...some reports suggest that Abu Nidal was killed by Saddam's henchmen because he wouldn't fuse his efforts with Zarqawi and the Islamists.

Iraq may not have had anything to do with 9-11 but by all accounts, Ramzi Yousef, the architect of the first WTC attack in '93, entered the USA on a Kuwaiti passport acquired by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation two years earlier and then appropriately doctored.

In short, Saddam was up to his neck in his support for terrorism.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 9, 2005 11:38 AM

Thanks, Hugh, for picking up on some of the points that Serge Trifkovic glossed over. Regarding the second point; i.e. the USA being perceived as hopelessly biased in the problem of Israel-Palestine you are absolutely correct. Muslims will always find fault with us 'infidels', whether it be our stance on Israel-Palestine conflict or Kashmir conflict or Chechnya conflict etc etc. It is important to realize that short of becoming Islamic, the rest of the World will always be viewed as being 'biased' by the Islamic world. One has to realize that the common excuse used by muslims to explain their jehadic behaviour as being 'outraged' by the plight of the Palestinians or Kashmiris or Chechans or Iraqis is simply a ploy to gain sympathy amongst people who have no clue about these various 'conflicts'. In actuality muslims don't care a s.it about any other muslims ... all they care about is Islam!

Posted by: Razdan at October 9, 2005 12:20 PM