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Tiny minority of extremists update: the Post tells us that the idea of a restored caliphate "resonates with mainstream Muslims." Someone ought to notify Stephen Schwartz that it resonates not with Wahhabis only. It's interesting that what I have been saying for years now, about the jihadist goal of restoring the caliphate and dating the troubles of the umma to its abolition, has been dismissed and ignored by the learned analysts -- but now the Post accepts it as axiomatic.
"Reunified Islam: Unlikely but Not Entirely Radical," from the Washington Post, with thanks to all who sent this in:
ISTANBUL -- The plan was to fly a hijacked plane into a national landmark on live television. The year was 1998, the country was Turkey, and the rented plane ended up grounded by weather. Court records show the Islamic extremist who planned to commandeer the cockpit did not actually know how to fly.But if the audacious scheme prefigured Sept. 11, 2001, it also highlighted a cause that, seven years later, President Bush has used to define the war against terrorism. What the ill-prepared Turkish plotters told investigators they aimed to do was strike a dramatic blow toward reviving Islam's caliphate, the institution that had nominally governed the world's Muslims for nearly all of the almost 1,400 years since the death of the prophet Muhammad.
The goal of reuniting Muslims under a single flag stands at the heart of the radical Islamic ideology Bush has warned of repeatedly in recent major speeches on terrorism. In language evoking the Cold War, Bush has cast the conflict in Iraq as the pivotal battleground in a larger contest between advocates of freedom and those who seek to establish "a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia."
The enthusiasm of the extremists for that vision is not disputed. However unlikely its realization, the ambition may help explain terrorist acts that often appear beyond understanding. When Osama bin Laden called the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "a very small thing compared to this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years," the reference was to the aftermath of World War I, when the last caliphate was suspended as European powers divided up the Middle East. Al Qaeda named its Internet newscast, which debuted in September, "The Voice of the Caliphate."
Yet the caliphate is also esteemed by many ordinary Muslims. For most, its revival is not an urgent concern. Public opinion polls show immediate issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discrimination rank as more pressing. But Muslims regard themselves as members of the umma , or community of believers, that forms the heart of Islam. And as earthly head of that community, the caliph is cherished both as memory and ideal, interviews indicate.
Read it all. The article gets into some silly territory, blaming Bush and American foreign policy for not being more sensitive to legitimate caliphate aspirations -- betraying yet again that the Post has no clue whatsoever just how much a restored caliphate would pose a threat to the West (not least because of the nature and goals of the groups promoting it most energetically). But there is some useful information in the piece.
Posted by Robert at January 15, 2006 2:44 AM
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"The article gets into some silly territory, blaming Bush and American foreign policy for not being more sensitive to legitimate caliphate aspirations -- betraying yet again that the Post has no clue whatsoever just how much a restored caliphate would pose a threat to the West"
Why do you even think the Post cares about "the West"? There is no "west", in the mind of Wash Post liberals. There's only a committment to an abtract "inclusiveness" that decrees every single culture's cultural demands must try to be met - except the "west's", because the west doesn't exist as anything more than a bunch of economic actors who are to use their resources to accomodate other cultures.
Without exaggeration, this is what it has come to.
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at January 15, 2006 4:22 AM
Someone in MSM is beginning to realise that we are entering into a dangerous phase. We have no Churchill yet but the times they are a fast approaching, will soon produce the man or woman.
The origins of the Great War of 2007 - and how it could have been prevented By Niall Ferguson
Posted by: DP111 at January 15, 2006 6:51 AM
From the WaPo article
"I think the smart thing to do if you're the president of the United States is to sort of de-Islamicize the problem," said Kirstine Sinclair, a University of Southern Denmark researcher who co-wrote a book on Hizb ut-Tahrir. "Talk about security risks instead. When you talk about expanding the war on terror to talk about states with an Islamist agenda or even the caliphate, you stir up emotions and you're actually creating the clash of civilizations."
The clash of civilisations is already underway, its just that most people do not realise it or are deliberately closing their eyes to it. The headon clash is inevitable - I prefer sooner while we still have the odds in favour. The calliphate will come on the wings of war within and will be destroyed similiarly from without.
Interesting that the DT article is on a similar theme of large scale global war in the ME though for different reasons ie Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. And even here there is commonality as Iran's nuclear drive is for leadership of the islamic world ie a calliphate with Iran at its centre.
Though 2007 seems fairly near. If that is the case I had better start stocking up.
Posted by: DP111 at January 15, 2006 7:10 AM
.... a handful of converts in an attentive audience segregated by gender: fashionably dressed young men on the right, women in head scarves on the left.
This is something of a trend. Designer jeans for the men, potato sacks for the women. Nineteenth century mill owners dressed plainly, their status being reflected in the fashionable, pretty clothes of their wives. Increasingly, a Muslim man's status is reflected in the extent to which "his" women shroud themselves in black, while he is free to preen and strut. Perhaps, like metrosexual man, Muslim man will start using moisturiser, waxing and visiting "colour me beautiful". Perhaps he will have steam facials to unclog those pores and lymph drainage to eliminate those toxins. Meanwhile, his be-chadored women won't even need to wash their hair - nobody's going to see it.
For four hours they heard Hizb ut-Tahrir's disciplined, intensely argued belief that the Muslim world lost its moorings when it imported not only scientific advances from the West, but also systems such as nationalism and democracy that emerged at the same time.
It took four hours to say something as stupid as that? And during this four hours, it occurred to nobody that scientific advances and the development of systems that value the individual go together?
Posted by: Interested at January 15, 2006 7:51 AM
"If...we rely on Western ways of thought, even in the teaching of the Islamic sciences, it will be an unforgivable blindness on our part. Indeed it is incumbent on us, while pursuing purely scientific or technological subjects for which we have no other resources except Western ones, to remain on guard and not to mix up scientific facts with philosophical speculations, as these philosophical speculations are generally baseless and against religion, especially against Islam. Even a slight influence from them can pollute the clear spring of Islam." - Sayyid Qutb
In other words, they'll take what fish we give them but refuse to learn to fish for themselves. Not a good prescription for a self-sustaining society. Islamic societies are doomed to perpetual parasitism.
Posted by: Rebecca JW at January 15, 2006 9:51 AM
"they'll take what fish we give them but refuse to learn to fish for themselves."
-- from Rebecca's posting above
And what's more, will be puzzled, and will try to figure out what, they are certain, must be the secret and real reason for people in the Western world engaging in the study of ichthyology. That, after all, is what so puzzled Edward Said; why would anyone study another culture or religion, in his view, unless to "promote the project of imperialism" (words to that effect). Disinterested curiosity baffled his primitive mind, which only seemed to be that of an advanced denizen of the Western world. It never was.
Posted by: Hugh at January 15, 2006 10:17 AM
Perhaps one day the scales will fall from their eyes.
Posted by: Interested at January 15, 2006 10:23 AM
Interested: "Perhaps, like metrosexual man, Muslim man will start using moisturiser, waxing and visiting "colour me beautiful". Perhaps he will have steam facials to unclog those pores and lymph drainage to eliminate those toxins."
Apparently the State Department thought it rather important to foster the development of Metrosexual Muslim man. What on earth were they thinking? That men with manicured nails would eschew violence because it might mess up their manicures or something?
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/monacharen/2005/06/03/15616.html
Posted by: Caroline at January 15, 2006 10:49 AM
Only a FOOL would believe that triumphalism and the restoration of the Caliphate is the goal of Islam. Disinterested persons should be measured for their burqas, get ready to live under Sha'ria, prepare to memorize the Koran in Arabic, and be prepared to either pay the jizya or zakat. The bottom line is: pepare to defend your way of life or give in to the tyranny of Islam.
Posted by: epg at January 15, 2006 11:05 AM
From the Nial Ferguson article DP111 linked to "A second precondition of war was demographic. While European fertility had fallen below the natural replacement rate in the 1970s, the decline in the Islamic world had been much slower. By the late 1990s the fertility rate in the eight Muslim countries to the south and east of the European Union was two and half times higher than the European figure. This tendency was especially pronounced in Iran, where the social conservatism of the 1979 Revolution - which had lowered the age of marriage and prohibited contraception - combined with the high mortality of the Iran-Iraq War and the subsequent baby boom to produce, by the first decade of the new century, a quite extraordinary surplus of young men. More than two fifths of the population of Iran in 1995 had been aged 14 or younger. This was the generation that was ready to fight in 2007."
Spengler at Asia Times has had several interesting articles about the role that demographics is playing in Iran's saber-rattling. He implies that the Muslim world also faces a demographic crisis in the long term and are well aware that their strengh lies in their youth right now and so they know they have to act right now. :
"Shifting a full 15% of the population from the ranks of the working to the ranks of the retired will place an uncomfortable burden on American taxpayers, to be sure. But the shift in the case of Muslim countries is much worse. Between 2005 and 2050, the shift from workers to pensioners will comprise 21% of Iranians, 19% of Turks and Indonesians, and 20% of Algerians. That is almost as bad as the German predicament, where the proportion of dependent elderly will rise from 28% in 2005 to 50% in 2050. ....... Iran's ultra-Islamist government has no hope of ameliorating the crisis through productivity growth. Instead it proposes totalitarian methods that will not reduce the pain, but only squelch the screams. ...........the Islamists have to strike quickly and decisively, not only to advance their cause in the West but also to consolidate their power in home countries where conditions will become unstable before long. "
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI13Ak01.html
"Islam has one generation in which to turn its foothold in Western Europe into a governing power, before the effects of slowing population growth set in. Although the Muslim birth rate today is the world's second highest (after sub-Saharan Africa), it is falling faster than the birth rate of any other culture. By 2050, according to the latest United Nations projections, the population growth rate of the Muslim world will converge on that of the US (although it will be higher than Europe's or China's).
Islam has enough young men - the pool of unemployed Arabs is expected to reach 25 million by 2010 - to make its stand during the next 30 years."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK08Aa01.html
Posted by: Caroline
at January 15, 2006 11:08 AM
The goal of reuniting Muslims under a single flag stands at the heart of the radical Islamic ideology...
Were the dumbasses at the Washington Post able to offer any evidence that the goal of restoring the Caliphate is radical? If they have none, they shouldn't use that word. Unless, of course, they're programming opinion, in which case lying is just fine cuz that's for the greater political good.
END O' THE RAINBOW POT O' GOLD END O' THE RAINBOW MODERATE MOSLEM MAN
Also, did the morons at the Washington Post comment on the obvious conflict between the idea of an inter-regional government and Islam's de jure and de facto status as a religion?
Political ideology or religion, which is it? Too bad the stupes at the Washington Post don't even know to ask this question.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at January 15, 2006 11:31 AM
Would that this vow to eschew Western science were real. But, alas, I suspect it's only rhetoric, meant to put the good mujihadeen in the properly Islamic state of mind so that they can better pillage, rape, and plunder their way back to their rightful positions as masters of the universe.
Islam has always been a parasite civilization, from the Biblical and Rabbinic material appropriated into the Koran, to the Greek philosophy and Hindu mathematics that became "proofs" of its golden age of learning.
The real point is not to promote "Islamic science", but to enable Islam's power over (mostly dhimmi) scientists. Once power is attained, Muslims become noticeably more relaxed about issues of authenticity:
The telephone, the secretary: the modern apparatus seemed strange. But Khalkhalli saw himself as a man of the age. "During the days of the prophet swords were used to fight, now they have been replaced by Phantom aircraft." Phantoms: not American, not the products of a foreign science, but as international as swords, part of the stock of the great world baazar, and rendered Islamic by purchase.
Naipaul, "Among the Believers"
And Maududi died while receiving world-class treatment at a Boston hospital...
Posted by: emperor_diocletian at January 15, 2006 11:37 AM
Political ideology or religion, which is it? Too bad the stupes at the Washington Post don't even know to ask this question.
Indeed. And what does this imply about having 5 million Muslim "citizens" in France, 1 million Muslim "citizens" in the Netherlands, or even 3 million Muslim "citizens" in the U.S?
But Muslims regard themselves as members of the umma , or community of believers, that forms the heart of Islam. And as earthly head of that community, the caliph is cherished both as memory and ideal, interviews indicate.
That reservoir of respect represents a risk for the Bush administration as it addresses an issue closely watched by a global Islamic population estimated at 1.2 billion.
Not just the Bush administration, my oh-so-tolerant, eager to celebrate-diversity-at-the-drop-of-a-pin friend.
Posted by: emperor_diocletian at January 15, 2006 11:48 AM
Included in this Washington Post article was this message from Zawahiri:
He advised Zarqawi to use Iraq's Sunni areas as the base for "an Islamic authority or emirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate."
The question is this: Does Zawahiri's idea of a caliphate coincide with most other Muslims? Or are there variations in type of Caliphate? Are some caliphates more dangerous than others? If the answer is that Zawahiri's caliphate coincides with most other Muslims, than perhaps the West should withdraw from Iraq in Afghainstan and change battle strategies. But if the answer no, and Zawahiri's plan for the middle East is more sinister than other Mulims, than the West should remain in Iraq and Afghanistan until there is something resembling constitutional democracy. Why? If one supposes that Zawahiri plans are achievable, than establishing a semblence of a constitutional republic in Iraq and beyond provides a counterstrategy to his goal of a wider caliphate that will eventually attack Israel and begin W.W.3. Also this system of government is incompatible with the caliphate. Of course, this rests on the assumption that most Iraqi's and Afghani's dont share Zawahiris goals
Considering it was accomplished in Afghanistan, and considering Zawahiri and his ilk have extensive battle experience, does Zawahiri's plan seem that far fetched? It apears to me that without Western protection his plans for Iraq are achievable.
The conclusion of the article says this:
"Ten years ago, when I started, it was totally unrealistic to think there could be a caliphate," he said. "But now, people believe it could happen in a few years."
Why would people think it could happen? Is it perhaps because Osama bin Laden's claim that the "U.S. cant stomach a long and bloody battle" appears vindicated by the events in Iraq, or, more specifically, calls for a withdrawal before there is stability?
at January 15, 2006 12:24 PM
The idea of the Caliphate is the biggest joke. Muslims cannot live in peace in their own villages. How on earth will they all adhere to a Caliphate. The day Muslim savages live like civilized humans, maybe then they could think of a Caliphate. I doubt it very much that a day like that will ever dawn.
Muslims are so regressive, every day they go further into the past. There will never be a enlightened Muslim. They will be savages till the end of time and will always be the low bred pariahs of humanity, way down in the totem pole of civilization.
at January 15, 2006 1:49 PM
The commies had a 70 year empire (ignoring the pretense in China that it was anything but yet another Dynasty, disguised as socialism).
Hitler had a 12 year long "1,000 year Reich".
The Restored Caliphate will be in that league of delusional despotic daydreams.
It may come, but it sure won't last, because it will then drop the pretense, once and for all, of being a 'peaceful religion'.
And with that The Umma of Islam will plunge toward global dominion. Using Pakistani (and Iranian?) nukes for playing cards.
And the world's free people shall respond with all the multifarious cunning that a scientifically-based society can muster.
Freedom always discovers more weapons (along with medical cures, amazing art, new technologies, etc.) than slavery.
Islam's fatal flaw.
Posted by: profitsbeard at January 15, 2006 2:01 PM
A world Califate is not possible. Even with nukes, it cant be achieved. They got to come up with some thing better than that. Maybe Mahdi is better than nukes, or maybe Mahdi was only a demon talking to Mohammad. Yet we cant underestimate Mohammads demon. It is still alive and we can see and hear the results of its actions/influence.
Freedom cannot be 'given' by any government. Every human except muslims are born with freedom and the only thing a gov can do is interfere with your freedoms or not interfere with them.
The Religion of Peace is the diametric opposite of the idea of freedom. Their clerics have said this themselves. Allah did not give muslims freedom, he gave them automatic and defacto slavery. A free person will not willingly submit. 'Submission' is slavery and is inconsistant with freedom. Islam and its muslim clones cant co-exist with freedom because it wrecks Islamic authority. Apostates have freed themselves. All Islam can do is seek revenge by murder, it cant repair the hole the apostate made in Allahs armor. Enough of those holes and Allah will look like a rotton chunk of Swiss cheese ( Dont blame the Swiss, it's not their fault).
It's understandable that muslims would be envious of free people. So instead of trying to kill off freedom, they should be begging Allah to give them a little more of it...but alas,
Allah has made muslims so slavish for so long that they have become anal retentive in the 'clogged up' meaning. Only enough truth to cause apostacy, will act as a spiritual fizzic, to cleans the channels, and expell Mohammads demon into the sewage cesspool, where it rightfully belongs. 'Push the button pull the chain, there goes Allah down the drain'. Does that sound disrespectful? I certainly hope so. Disrespect is one of the proper responces to Islam...
at January 15, 2006 3:35 PM
The idea of the Caliphate is the biggest joke. Muslims cannot live in peace in their own villages. How on earth will they all adhere to a Caliphate.
They're not supposed to live in peace, even amongst themselves. Their stated mission is to expand by whatever means possible.
The Restored Caliphate will be in that league of delusional despotic daydreams.
It was WWI that ended the Caliphate after a nearly 1,300 year run. Its restoration would be to return Islam to its natural state after a brief interruption.
A world Califate is not possible. Even with nukes, it cant be achieved.
Modern communications tools such as TV, the Internet, jet travel, cell networks, containerized global shipping --- all these things point towards consolidation of a fractured Islam into a unified, sleek, new and modern form that is able to leverage Islam's many strengths on a global basis.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at January 15, 2006 5:21 PM
It is insane to imagine that allowing your enemy to coalesce and gain momentum, or to unify the forces he has arrayed against you will amount to anything other than your own suffering...
That is, unless you still fail to understand that there is an enemy fighting you...
As long as bozos in the West continue to understand this calamity of Islamic Jihad in the context of politics and not war, they will be unable to grasp what is at stake...
The notion that Islam will ever be able to turn from it's insidious trajectory is false. The notion that "moderation" exists in Islam in sufficent force to alter the trajectory away from confontation and annihilation of the West is false...
Increasingly, those who hold out this false hope, whether they be non-Muslim Westerner, a clueless Muslim, or a dissembling Muslim, that person will also be perceived as an enemy of the West, and a dangerous fellow travellor with the Jihadist...
I don't see this resolving in any gentle way... There will be no peace between the West and Islam...
So what will it be? Fight them now, with all our might? Or wait for them to gain strength, wait for them to continue to infiltrate our institutions, wait for them to demoralize us, to erode our rights and privileges as free secularists, as free humanists, as free Westerners?
Posted by: jsla at January 15, 2006 6:47 PM
Alarmed Pig Farmer-
After a huge ship sinks, part of it often breaks off and rises again to the surface, momentarily looks imposing, but is merely a dead chunk of a failed vessel. It wobbles on the waves a while, then it, too, sinks beneath the oblivion of the
sea of history.
This is how I judge the potential for a "Restored Caliphate".
It might appear for a brief, bloody splash, but has no chance against an armed, freedom-loving, scientifically-empowered global majority.
A factor that did not exist to counterbalance Islamic Imperialism until the post-WW II global spread of freedom.
Islam is lame.
It is based on inner slavery, and such a dogma is self-dooming.
But it can kill a lot of people in its current violent confusion, with cults competing to produce a Caliph, Mahdi or Master Mullah.
Which is why Islamic immigration should be stopped, student visas for Muslims mainly denied, and why this trend of The Soft Suicide of the West needs to be reversed until after Islam reforms itself.
Either it will evolve into a mature acceptance of the Unviseral Declaration of Human Rights essential for Civilization.
Or Islam will disappear.
A diseased appendix.
Posted by: profitsbeard at January 15, 2006 7:14 PM
"Universal" Declaration of HUman Rights [-above-] & not uni-visceral (although I like the sound of that, too).
Everybody synchronize their guts.
Posted by: profitsbeard at January 15, 2006 7:17 PM
Islam is lame.
Then why the huge winning streak?
You're underestimating the galvanizing power of TV and all those Islamic web sites. What countervailing ideology has even one-tenth the potential for growth that Islam has so clearly demonstrated?
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at January 16, 2006 9:51 AM
What countervailing ideology has even one-tenth the potential for growth that Islam has so clearly demonstrated?
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at January 16, 2006 09:51 AM
How about militant hedonism?
Posted by: Susanp at January 16, 2006 10:13 AM
I think it was on the series "Smiley's People" with the incomparable Alec Guiness battling the sinister Karla, where the beginning featured a Russian doll, a doll within a doll, within a doll. I love that image. We have to fight Islamism on all its fronts like we did with communism; political, social, and economic as well as military.
Bush's mistake was not conceiving the totality of the conflict and his crime was not to have defined it. But how could he define it, if he could not conceive it, and if none of his bright, ambitious, energetic and excessively young and smiley advisors couldn't conceive it either?
at January 17, 2006 7:15 AM
Indeed, Rebecca -- Even now, even after an almost endless stream of atrocities in every land where they reside, perpetrated by Muslims using every manner of Islamic justification, and in the face of daily evidence that a HUGE proportion of Muslims globally support terrorism in the furtherance of Islam (whether tacitly or explicitly) we still find a frightening lack of awareness of Islam's complicity in every calamity they have caused, in every atrocity they have perpetrated, and in every act and word of hatred they speak...
Mostly I'm infuriated, first by the abominations of Islam and Muslims, and then by our citizenry's continued blitheness about Islam and those Muslims who believe in it, spread it, protect it, or attack on Islam's behalf...
But, knowing how confusing the whole topic can be, and knowing that Islam partially resembles other foes we have defeated (Communists come to mind, as do Nazis...), I also see how different Islam is -- how complicated the matter is to understand...
It is also true that most of our options are deplorable, and perhaps on some level this explains the unwillingness to confront the ugly reality which confronts us in Islam -- It is the antithesis of our rational secular humanist society -- And it specializes in taking our strengths and turning them into vulnerabilities -- our technology, our freedoms, our wealth, our tolerance -- all of these are exploited expertly by our Muslim enemy... These things enhance his fight against us, shackle our ability to fight aginst him, and become the very mechanisms by which he will undermine and possibly destroy the systems we have developed so that we may possess the rationalism, the secularity, the humanism, the tolerance...
UBL surely cleaved a diamond on 9/11 -- and drove a gaping hole through our society and world... Even the subsequent global increase in "radicalism" of Islam is now blamed on the US by many if not most of our cultural allies -- those who also face the grave threat of Islam -- And many of those are in more direct peril from Islam, yet they would prefer to blame us, and to do everything in their power not to offend the Muslims, not to hold THEM to account, and never to make the association between the terror they feel which prompts this, and the presence of Muslims and Islamic terrorism in their midst... They appear to lack the will or the courage to hold the Muslims themselves responsible for the atrocities of the Muslims, the hatred by the Muslims for them and us...
And how can we ever win against this foe when so many in the blame US for their attacks, and if we respond, will then blame us for "radicalizing" them further?
Posted by: jsla at January 17, 2006 3:34 PM
jsla:
President Bush should never have gone to a mosque immediately after 9/11. He should never have given the islam the accolade of a Religion of Peace. This was a primary mistake. It took the pressure off islam and placed it on the US for all subsequent actions in the misnamed WoT.
Posted by: DP111 at January 17, 2006 4:42 PM
I understand your sentiment, DP111 -- welcome back -- but there's an innuendo in your comment of the very notion I'm decrying, that is, that WE far more than THEY are responsible for the mess we're in --
Yes, Mr. Bush made a grievous mistake in whitewashing (and continuing to whitewash) Islam before he knew all the facts... This was a terrible error... but that's the end of the matter... His leadership also has been muddled in the most important areas -- mainly by the (until recently) relentless refusal to link terrorism with Islam... but again, that's not the nub of the matter... Long before Mr. Bush, or the magnificent nation of the USA, there was Islamic Jihad in all its filth... It started with their execrable "prophet" and it will end... When?
And i reiterate, the escalation of terrorist acts by the Muslims is soley THEIR doing -- soley THEIR crime -- THEY are responsible completely...
And the lack of response from among most of our erstwhile allies in the rest of the world to grapple with the threat, to participate with us in our fight, is THEIR lack, not ours, and certainly not President Bush's...
On this, the 300 birthday of Ben Franklin, I quote and apt nugget of wisdom pertaining to another struggle wherein we confronted a far more benign but nevertheless unacceptable tyranny...:
"We will either hang together, or we will hang separately..."
In this fight against Islamic Jihad we must ALL participate to the fullest -- after all it's going on EVERYWHERE that Muslims exist -- and we MUST cooperate with each other... There has been shamefully little help from those I call our "cultural allies"... And there is shamefully little consciousness among them of the sheer magnitude of the dangers...
Anecdotally I would add, however, that very often when this topic comes up in new company, I will more often than not be greeted with a great deal of interest and curiosity -- I most often hear comments like "Gee -- I've been thinking something like this for the longest time, but nobody seems to be discussing it anywhere..."
I think, at least in America, there is FAR more recognitions of the contours of this battle, and the nature of the Muslim enemy than you'd ever know by reading or watching the media... But then, the media elite in America are kissing cousins of the media and political elite in Europe -- all of them tend to think of the average citizen as "those people at the bottom, the ones that don't know anything, the ones who are motivated by low impulses like scraping by, bigotry, and religion, unlike we elevated aristocrats who know better..."
It's always the same -- it's the brilliance of Democracy -- the average people nearly always have it right -- and it's the craven cowards and ideologues at the top who screw things up so... In this I agree with you on Mr. Bush, and every other Western leader... I think the average American, and I suspect the average Briton or European knows full well what's going on... knows what's at stake, and doesn't like it one bit... I fervently hope THEY are willing to do what it takes to defeat the Muslim menace... Our time is running out... Our options get worse with each passing day...
Posted by: jsla at January 17, 2006 8:07 PM
DP111 and jsla - thoughtful posts. I think what we are beginning here at JW (and a bit elsewhere) is the embryo of a new political movement specifically designed to deal with Islam on all levels at the number one priority. Both parties are vulnerable on this issue. A new political movement proposing a comprehensive policy toward Islam could easily draw from both parties. A real women's movement needs to re-emerge too.
It ain't over till it's over.
Posted by: Rebecca JW at January 18, 2006 8:20 PM
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