| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald ponders why early American statesmen saw clearly about Islamic jihad, but their dhimmi successors of today do not.
In a recent article prompted by his reading of Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli, Andrew Bostom, who compiled The Legacy of Jihad, adduces from London’s text a number of telling descriptions of Islam and of Muslims by some of the most important figures in American history. Two of them were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in 1786 ambassadors (Jefferson in Paris, Adams in London) from the newly-established American Republic still under the Articles of Confederation (the Treaty of Paris had been signed in 1783, the Constitution was ratified only in 1787). They had a meeting with the representative of Tripolitania (present-day Libya) then in the Great Britain, Sidi Haji Rahmand Adja. Like other Christian maritime powers, the American state had suffered from the state-piracy of Muslim corsairs. The word “piracy” implies mere seeking at random for booty, and is inadequate to describe the formal system by which Muslim corsairs had for centuries been making war on Christian shipping, with the foreknowledge (indeed, often registering in advance either the places their ships would be going, or what Infidel shipping they intended to attack) and support of the Muslim rulers of the North African states -- which, in turn, were ostensibly under the control of the Ottoman rulers in Istanbul.Both Jefferson and Adams were learned men. Take a tour in Quincy or at Monticello and look at their libraries, and then imagine the reading material that sustains the current, or the last few, American presidents. But they had no reason to know about Islam. They were interested in the civilization of the West, to which they belonged. Islam was merely a disturbing and violent intruder, to south and east, of that West. The notion that someday Muslims in the Western world would be insisting that the Western world owed so much to Islam, that the Renaissance was practically a Muslim invention, that without Islam the great civilization of the Western world was unthinkable, would have been regarded by them as what it is: absurdity, from first to last, a travesty of history.
But did they know much about what prompted Muslim behavior? No. So they asked why the Barbary states (present-day Morocco, Algerian, Tunisia, and Libya) would continually attack American and all other Infidel shipping, seize the cargoes and the sailors, taking both back to Islamic lands and enslaving those Christian seamen who sometimes could be ransomed, sometimes not. So they asked the ambassador, Mr. Adja, why the Muslims of the Maghrib, the “Barbary pirates” as they were known in the West, did as they did.He had no trouble answering them, as the report written by Jefferson and Adams to the Continental Congress shows:
“…that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”Nothing surprising here to any contemporary Muslim, though many will wish that Americans will never read that paragraph above, especially since it was written by two of the Founders, two of the Framers of that Constitution which is so flatly contradicted by the principles and Holy Law of Islam. It is easy to denounce this or that truth-teller about Islam today, but not quite so easy for Muslims to denounce or attempt to belittle a report written by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Bostom also quotes London quoting William Eaton, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, who later became the U.S. consul in Tunis, and who in 1799 reported on his meeting with the Dey of Algiers, Bobba Mustafa:
“…we took off our shoes and entering the cave (for so it seemed), with small apertures of light with iron gates, we were shown to a huge shaggy beast, sitting on his rump upon a low bench covered with a cushion of embroidered velvet, with his hind legs gathered up like a tailor, or a bear. On our approach to him, he reached out his forepaw as if to receive something to eat. Our guide exclaimed, “Kiss the Dey’s hand!” The consul general bowed very elegantly, and kissed it, and we followed his example in succession. The animal seemed at that moment to be in a harmless mode; he grinned several times, but made very little noise. Having performed this ceremony, and standing a few moments in silent agony, we had leave to take our shoes and other p roperty, and leave the den without any other injury than the humility of being obliged in this involuntary manner, to violate the second commandment of God and offend common decency. Can any man believe that this elevated brute has seven kings of Europe, two republics, and a continent tributary to him when his whole naval force is not equal to two line-of-battle ships? It is so.”Not exactly one of those Western ambassadors – a John C. West or James Akins or an Andrew Kilgore or a Eugene Bird – full of salaam-aleikum lecca-leccas for their Arab counterparts. No, it was a no-nonsense early American, sure of himself, and equally sure that he could recognize a comical primitive when he saw one – and saw no need to pull any rhetorical punches. One wonders how many today would report back in a similar fashion on the absurdities, say, of Arafat and company, or the pretensions of the ludicrous Arab regimes and Arab-League officials who have been allowed to believe in their own significance and importance, when their only significance and importance is that supplied by an accident of geology and the complete failure of even these recipients of the largest unearned wealth in history to create modern polities and modern economies. The fact that these regimes remain morally and intellectually paralyzed should show those who, in the Western world, ought to know a little something about what makes the West the West, just a little something about what the civilizational fruits of Islam are – or rather, about the absence of those civilizational fruits.
In his review-article Bostom also spatchcocked on, from a period later than that of the Barbary Pirates episode in American geopolitical life, a piercing, no-nonsense quote from John Quincy Adams, writing in about 1829 after his retirement from public life:
“….he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God…the faithful follower of the prophet may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.”The “command” to Believers to engage in “perpetual war” -- performed “alike by fraud or by force” – against the Infidels, the Unbelievers, was no secret to the well-traveled (St. Petersburg, among other places he was stationed) and well-read John Quincy Adams. In a previous article Bostom had quoted John Quincy Adams comparing the essence of Christian doctrine with the essence of Islam.
This was John Quincy Adams on Christianity:
“And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man…On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE [Capitals in original].”And this was John Quincy Adams on Islam:
“Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST; TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Capitals in original)...Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant...While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”And Adams concluded:
“As the essential principle of his [Muhammad’s] faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated.”As one reads and ponders these remarks by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, one is struck by the self-assurance that they represent civilization, and that Islam and its representatives did not, and it would have been ludicrous to pretend otherwise. Islam did not change between 1786 or 1805 or 1830 and today. The doctrine of Jihad did not change. The Qur’an was not a different Qur’an; the Hadith were not differently ranked from the way muhaddithin had ranked them, according to various levels of authenticity, nearly a thousand years before. If anything, the forces of Islam were far weaker then, and far less able, therefore, to conduct Jihad. The only instrument available was military, and in military matters the Muslims were hopelessly surpassed by the technology of a much more advanced civilization – more advanced in every possible way. So what happened? How is it that today no Western leader can bring himself to write about Islam as Jefferson, Adams, John Quincy Adams, or even in modern times, as Churchill did in The River War?
What happened are any number of things, beginning with an entirely different class of rulers. What a falling-off, intellectually, there has been since the days of the Founders and the Framers. The self-assurance and leisure necessary to learn about things, the absence of breathless, round-the-clock news, the fantastic piling-up of duties so that no leader can conceivably read, and take in, once he has risen to the top, the very things he most needs to know -- all this has contributed to that falling off. And right now, of course, the thing that leaders and elites all over the Western world most need to know is all about Islam, its tenets, its history of Jihad-conquest, its subjugation of all conquered non-Muslims, and its recommended instruments of Jihad that go far beyond either “terror” or even military means. This conquest is promoted now in Western Europe mainly by demographics -- the numbers of Muslims multiplying at a rate far faster than that of the indigenous Infidels -- and Da’wa. That Da’wa is targeted at prisoners, and at others who are economically and psychically marginal, and inclined to embrace a belief-system that can be viewed as a vehicle of protest against “the System,” and also supplies, for those who need it, a Complete Regulation of Life and Total Explanation of the Universe. There are plenty of weak-minded people around, their numbers increased by the sometimes intolerable stress and stupidity of frantic getting and spending, or not getting, and not spending.
What happened? Why could Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams and so many others in American history have understood Islam, and also understood that there was no possibility of, and no need to even attempt, to “win hearts and minds” of Muslims, but rather to obtain their cooperation, to force changes in their behavior? The latter is a very different thing from winning hearts and minds, and is grounded in the reality of what Islam teaches its adherents to believe. When Theodore Roosevelt demanded from a Moroccan bandit chief the return of Ion Perdicaris (who at the time was not even an American citizen, though few paid attention to that -- he did have a long American connection) with that famous phrase about “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” he too understood that dealing with such people required that kind of attitude.
Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams read. They thought. They studied. They learned things directly. They did not have staffs that attempted to supply their every mental need by supplying little 1- or 3- or 5-page summaries of information, offered up in bite-size bullets that were not even sentences. They were well-traveled. They all had the habit of study and of thought, and would not have wasted the kind of time that our leaders, in and out of office, waste on meetings, and meet-and-greet sessions, and smiles, and wiles, and all the intolerable nonsense that modern political life requires of those who can endure it, and that often drives away the best people because, in the end, they cannot.
Just imagine that in the previous administration, one of the “experts” called on for his “expertise” on Islam was that supreme and sinister apologist, John Esposito. Jefferson, Adams, and Quincy Adams would have seen through him in a moment’s time. When they were writing, they were not worried about “offending” Muslims. They could afford to speak the truth. But so could Western leaders today, if only they would begin to do it. The Muslims have very little hold over us. Yes, they have oil. And they desperately need to sell that oil. And they are terrified that the West could begin to find other sources of energy, or that the West could begin to tax oil use themselves in ways that would dampen demand. And the Arabs and other Muslims do not “have the Gatling-gun” and militarily could be laid waste overnight. They have money with which to buy influence, but if all over the Western world those on the take were relentlessly exposed, ridiculed, held up for inspection (and that would include a good many ex-diplomats, journalists, academics and others), then that army of apologists could lose its effectiveness. There is no “oil weapon” and never was. There is a financial weapon, but it is in Western and chiefly American hands. What would the rich Arabs do if the Western world decided to seize their property in the West as the assets of enemy aliens, just as was done to the property owned not only by the German government, but by individual Germans, during World War II? And what would they do if they were to be permanently deprived of easy access to Western medical care? (How would you feel if someone threatened to deprive you of the possibility of seeing your Western doctors or being treated in a Western hospital? That might get your attention.) What would they do if they were deprived of access to Western education (for their children, especially), or if they lost any chance of moving to the West? What would they do if they began to see a relentless campaign to remove, as a security threat, Muslims from within Dar al-Harb, where they have been allowed to settle, through negligence, by the tens of millions?
What has happened is not merely a kind of cretinising of our political class, but also a laziness. This can be seen from those who are not in the executive branch, and who could, if they chose, study the contents of Islam, learn about Jihad and about the dhimmi, and never be fooled again. But do you know of any Senators and Congressmen who, over the past few years, have decided to study such matters? Do you have the feeling that John Kerry, with no money worries whatsoever and a good deal of time, has been burning the midnight oil reading Robert Spencer, or Bat Ye’or, or Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not a Muslim, so that he won’t and can’t be fooled? Do you think any of the Democrats, so critical -- for all the wrong reasons -- of the war in Iraq, will ever be able to criticize the war for the right reasons, as has been done here for more than two years?
Sometimes it is fun to imagine a figure from the past suddenly coming to life. I have always imagined John Keats suddenly appearing, and my taking him to Macdonald’s, and trying to explain it to him. Imagine Jefferson and Adams coming to life. Imagine what they would make of all kinds of things, but imagine in particular what they would make of people all over the Western world who had now allowed, within their midst, millions of people who, as a matter of belief, were taught to hate those people among whom they lived, and to work to destroy those Infidel institutions, laws, customs, manners, until Islam dominated and some form of the Holy Law of Islam could be established? What would they make of this? What would they make of the $400 billion in sunk costs spent or committed in the near-term to the war in Iraq, as we try to create out of three separate groups of Muslims a nation-state that supposedly will serve as a “model” for other Arab Muslims, a kind of Light Unto the Muslim Nations? They would rub their eyes in disbelief. They would wonder – how did this happen to the country they helped to found and nurture? Where did things go wrong? And then they would have questions. “What’s a speechwriter?” “You mean, you actually have someone else write words you present as your own, fashion your thoughts, express what should be your views?” “And what are ‘bullets’ used in these pages of Daily Briefings?” “And what is a ‘Daily Briefing’”?
They would be quite capable today, as they were in their own day, of reading and finding out about Islam – through books and through the evidence of their senses. They didn’t have CNN, Fox, spy satellites, and an army of CIA agents. But they knew what Islam was all about. It is we, with all that paraphernalia, seeking complexity when things are perhaps too obvious, too worrisomely simple for many to wish to grasp the matter, who are the innocent ones. It is Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams and many others, right up to Churchill, who had an unobnubilated grasp of Islam and of Muslims. They were not distracted. They were not charmed by a Saudi oil minister, or by someone at the “Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” They had the leisure to read, to think, and even to ponder, slowly, what it was they read, and make it their own. The hectic vacancy of official Washington is scandalous -- especially when one rises to the very top and learns only from those briefest of briefings, and even that only when it is too late, or treated as if it is too late, or perhaps beneath the dignity of the highest officials (“As for study, we’ll let our valets do that for us”).
And this is how it has become nearly impossible to get their attention, to get them to start making sense.
Posted by Robert at May 6, 2006 11:34 AM
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Perhaps it is the false security of arrogance over being the world's strongest power for so long.
Whereas in Jefferson's day security was not certain and there were challenges in all directions and so the guard was never dropped.
A spade was called spade and there were less parapolitical parasites to succour, no multinationals to appease and no media to pamper.
Compared to Bush, Jefferson et al had it nicely black and white.
There was also the nationalistic jingoism of the newly born state crying out for recognition upon its own right and in the view of the times militarism was not such ashameful thing.
naturally all IMHO
Posted by: Zathras![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 6, 2006 11:45 AM
Unobnubilated?
Posted by: Stendec at May 6, 2006 12:23 PM
Obnubilate
\Ob*nu"bi*late\, v. t. [L. obnubilatus, p. p. of obnubilare to obscure. See Ob-, and Nubilate.] To cloud; to obscure. [Obs.] --Burton. -- Ob*nu\"bi*la\"tion, n. [Obs.] --Beddoes.
at May 6, 2006 12:28 PM
When someone tells you it is not politically correct to criticize all Moslems, ask them if they would be correcting Jefferson and Adams also? Good post. Someone should do a chronology of what world intellectuals have said about Islam from the 600s to the present day.
Posted by: David England at May 6, 2006 12:35 PM
'obnubilate' is not exactly a high frequency lexical item. I find 'obfuscate' more accessible. I appreciate the depth of your knowledge and insight Hugh and think your articles are the main attraction on this site but I do think more accessible,plainer English is required sometimes to maintain a more use-friendly surface in order not to alienate some intellectually challenged readers.
Spatchcocked? Er---another trip to the dictionary.
Posted by: johndoe at May 6, 2006 1:00 PM
Thanks, Concerned Citizen. I should have remembered: obnubilatus -a -um.
Posted by: Stendec at May 6, 2006 1:19 PM
I'm glad Mr Bostom wrote the article, it ties two large issues together.
Awhile back, when delving into the issues of "separation of church and state", I located the original phrase that the Anti Religion-In-Public folks keep trotting out to bolster their point of view. From the treaty between the US and Tripoli, 1797, as follows:
"Article 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen...."
In our effort to rid ourselves of the effects of Islamic sea-faring pirates, we used words that, in the present day, are being used as a political and PC weapon to take away one of our main strengths.... our foundations as a Christian society.
It might be worthwhile for the Congress to go back and amend the wording of that treaty.
Posted by: Mr Jones at May 6, 2006 1:32 PM
l think people from the times of Adams and Jeferson had to use their wits and instincts to just survive, espeically coming out of the American Revolution.
Something that is so plain and so wrong for these two great men to pick up on, can now be hidden to the modern politicians and especially liberal elites.
at May 6, 2006 1:39 PM
Hugh,
Thanks for another compelling post.
My quoting Jefferson et al to my conversational opponents will be a new strategy, which I expect will severly tax their abilities to respond creatively.
BTW, I appreciate your use of words I never suspected existed. Gets kinda boring using the same ones all the time. Keep up the good work on both fronts.
BTWII, Just returned from our sister region, Bali, Indonesia. A more compelling and sprirtually beautiful people you could never find. Amazing grace in the face of an economy devastated following the second bombing. In my many conversations with "ordinary" Balinese, I was frequently heartbroken to hear how uncomprehending they are about the ideological foundations of the bombings. As they believe deeply in Karma (it's their word, after all) they can't imagine how someone could so foolishly ruin his cosmic chances to be reincarnated as a person again. At least the people I spoke to held no grudge, except maybe against the specific persons responsible for the bombings.
I urge anyone who wants to visit a gracefull culture of artists in a breathtaking environment (and, even if on a budget, live like a king) to ignore the US State Department and head to Ubud.
Best,
S.
at May 6, 2006 2:15 PM
Zathras:
"There was also the nationalistic jingoism of the newly born state.."
Nope. At least not as far as the "Musselmen" were concerned. Hugh's entire point is that Jefferson and Adams were realistic in their assesment of Islam, that their pronouncements were based in personal observation, experience, and other factual evidence, that those pronouncemenets and ideas and clarifications and decisions were rooted in a belief in the human mind's ability to discern and discriminate wisely and not foolishly, that is not based on preconceived notions and immature hubris, gall, delusion of one kind or another.
And that kind of thinking is the very antithesis of "jingoism."
It looks like you've got your PC lexicon too ready at hand, and not subject to critical analysis.
Posted by: ovidius_naso at May 6, 2006 2:29 PM
"When someone tells you it is not politically correct to criticize all Moslems, ask them if they would be correcting Jefferson and Adams also..."
These days, that someone will likely respond by saying, "Well Jefferson had sex with his own slave and both he and Adams were integral parts of the leadership of an imperialistic nation that "genocidally" slaughtered Native Americans and brutally enslaved black Africans."
I.e., much change has intervened since the days of the Founding Fathers -- not only in the calibre of our leadership but also in the appreciative pedagogy of our people in inheriting that legacy.
at May 6, 2006 3:01 PM
"I do think more accessible,plainer English is required sometimes to maintain a more use-friendly surface in order not to alienate some intellectually challenged readers.
Spatchcocked? Er---another trip to the dictionary."
The nolleity to take trips to the dictionary is part of the reason why we're in the pickle we're in.
Posted by: Television at May 6, 2006 3:09 PM
lol
I can't believe this! Australians are sleeping or something?
at May 6, 2006 3:42 PM
Pickle?
Posted by: Interested at May 6, 2006 3:42 PM
Opss! Wrong trend. Disregard the previous comment
Posted by: Crusader at May 6, 2006 3:43 PM
Pickle?
Posted by: Interested
Keeping in mind the screamingly staggering superiority of the West over Islam on every imaginable level, there is still hope that what we are in is only a pickle. The only potential threat to that hope comes from our own cultivation of excessive self-criticism, and consequent loss of self-confidence -- paradoxical fruits of that very same superiority.
at May 6, 2006 4:16 PM
Stendec and Johndoe,
No, I didn't know the word either, but personally I feel Hugh has been overly accomodating stylistically. "Hugh, it's too long," "Hugh, the words are too big," "Hugh, don't sound angry," "Hugh, don't use French...." Especially for the above article, he's supposed to bemoan the lack of literacy and intellectualism of our leaders, and limit his syllables? Thank God we have someone who can still twist a phrase like a cold steel blade.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 6, 2006 5:08 PM
Robert posts an article of Hugh, who in turn references Robert.
How long are you going to keep up this cat and mouse game, Robert (or should I just call you Hugh)?
Posted by: Kim Hartveld at May 6, 2006 5:14 PM
I just recently posted on Jefferson and Adams' comments on Islam at my site. Timely of Bostom and Hugh to do so now. :)
On the matter of Jefferson's affair with his servant, the "evidence" presented for that was misrepresented (in an effort to help Clinton?). It was one of Jefferson's male relatives who contributed his DNA.
Posted by: Amillennialist at May 6, 2006 5:22 PM
Any attempt by any contemporary liberal to "understand Islam" is fated to have the same outcome. It can only issue in an opinion that Islam is grand and that it has been misunderstood. Can you imagine any such endeavor coming to completion by saying, "We now understand that your religion is essentially an expansionist theocracy, totalitarian in its reach and fully committed to victory over us by any means"? Yeah. Right.
To come to this conclusion would oblige the liberal to break with the heart of his own position and admit that the evil West, the creation of white male Christian imperialist racist capitalist warmongers, is in fact the most humane civilization currently existing on the planet, the only place that liberals like him can exist, and that the Muslims are a threat to that. Yeah. Right.
Posted by: EssEm at May 6, 2006 5:55 PM
First, on the original article
If John Q Adams could time travel to now, it might have been worth re-shuffling presidents, so that Bush and Clinton could have been sent to the 19th century, or been asked to handle the Mexican and Spanish-American wars, while someone like Adams could have been brought on now to take on Islam. Then not only would we be pellucid (look it up) about who the enemy is, but so would Europe and the Infidel parts of Asia and Africa (China, Russia, India, Ethiopia, etc)
Now, on the vocabulary debate here
Hugh
Two more words I recommend you not use - Obnubilate and Spatchcocked - if you were ever hired as a speechwriter. "Speechwriter, what's that?"
spatch·cock Audio pronunciation of "Spatchcocked" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (spchkk)(Reason I generally keep a tab of dictionary.com open, when I'm reading Hugh.)
n. A dressed and split chicken for roasting or broiling on a spit.
Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams read. They thought. They studied. They learned things directly. They did not have staffs that attempted to supply their every mental need by supplying little 1- or 3- or 5-page summaries of information, offered up in bite-size bullets that were not even sentences.Ouch - I better give up using bullets. Nowadays, when I prepare presentations for Sales, I am asked to get rid of words altogether, and put in as many pictures/diagrams/flow charts (as may apply) instead. Don't want the audience dozing off.
But seriously, when I hear a speech from somebody, even the president, I either have to read the transcript again to re-absorb some of the statements, or watch a re-run of the same speech. I like Hugh's verbal challenges and agree with concerned citizen above, but I do wish he'd cut down on the French. What if people now start randomly using French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hindi, Chinese, Bengali, Japanese, Latin,... where does it end? Esparanto?
TV
You too getting into the act? Okay
nolleityPosted by: Infidel Pride
\Nol*le"i*ty\, n. [L. nolle to be unwilling.] The state of being unwilling; nolition. [R.]
at May 6, 2006 5:59 PM
This is one of the best articles so far placed on JW. It gives more meaning to "the shores of Tripoli."
Posted by: Pelayo at May 6, 2006 6:07 PM
Hugh, could you use smaller words, I have only a bechelor's degree from a lowly state university. The biggest word I know is thermodynamics.
Posted by: Pelayo at May 6, 2006 6:10 PM
I agree with EssEmm. Although many Americans may not logically connect the dots of their own PC presumptions, the line of thought is nevertheless there that would damn their own Founding Fathers as DWEMs: Dead White Evil Men. That such a thought is incoherent, let alone hypocritical (and, ultimately, horseshit), is irrelevant: hypocritical and incoherent thoughts can be held, and can motivate action, or inaction.
Posted by: Television at May 6, 2006 6:13 PM
Concerned Citizen,
For the record, I very much enjoy the unusual words in Hugh's writing, even the arcane technical ones (there seem to be quite a few medical terms, for instance). I just had no luck finding "unobnubilated" in the places I normally search. So, sincere thanks for providing the definition (where is Granny Weatherwax when you need her?). And I promise Robert and Hugh to strive unceasingly to develop an unobnubilated grasp of Islam and to encourge others likewise.
Posted by: Stendec at May 6, 2006 6:44 PM
That's encourage.
Posted by: Stendec at May 6, 2006 6:45 PM
"Well Jefferson had sex with his own slave and both he and Adams were integral parts of the leadership of an imperialistic nation that "genocidally" slaughtered Native Americans and brutally enslaved black Africans."
You might counter by pointing out John Quincy Adam's role in freeing the slaves that rebelled on the Spanish slave ship Amistad.
You might also remind such idiots that this same John Quincy Adams served only one term because he refused to remove the Cherokees from Georgia. He was subsquently replaced by Andrew (Trail of Tears) Jackson.
Posted by: Pavlov's dog at May 6, 2006 6:49 PM
It isn't often I praise without faint - though jocular - damning, but that post, Hugh, was the best I've ever read at this site. That is a hard act to follow.
Posted by: Interested at May 6, 2006 6:56 PM
"Thank God we have someone who can still twist a phrase like a cold steel blade."
Indeed, and Mr Fitzgerald is very much his own man and unlikely to be swayed by people asking for a less interesting vocabulary. And it's not mouse, never mouse.
at May 6, 2006 7:03 PM
I have a set of friends and family who are vaguely interested in "watching Jihad" but not enough to regularly read this site.
When I do run across an especially interesting or important article I forward it along, and this article certainly merited that treatment--though I did have to recommend reading it with a dictionary nearby.
Hugh, nice job.
Robert, I suggest this article merits that rare cross-posting on JihadWatch, for maximum visibility.
at May 6, 2006 7:36 PM
Hugh: "The hectic vacancy of official Washington is scandalous."
That it is. And that state of affairs is going to persist indefinitely. Government is too big, and getting bigger daily--new departments, new czars of this and that, new agencies. We should not delude ourselves with false hope, waiting for that day when a new Thomas Jefferson or Winston Churchill might appear to rescue us. Such a person could never rise to the top in the political gauntlet that leads to the presidency.
The politicians are just surfing the wave of current events, siphoning off their perks and retirement packages and speaking fees and kickbacks along the way. They are thespians, primarily, never far from the cameras.
The sea change has to come from below, welling up from an informed and angry populace. The politicians cannot ignore a movement, if they want to preserve their privileged status and generous perks.
JW/DW is nuturing the seeds of such a movement. Bless Robert and Hugh for their insight and their diligence and courage in waking us up to the unhappy truth about the Islamic threat that challenges civilization today.
Posted by: Stendec
at May 6, 2006 9:02 PM
Our founding fathers have been derided as rich white men that did not want to pay taxes. No mention is given to the plight that the signers of the Declaration of Independence endured, nor the ensuing struggle.
The "man on the street" could not name many, if any of those responsible for the founding of the republic. Most cannot name the first president. It is of no importance for those currently in government to educate the public in the history of a forming and nascent U.S. 230 years ago. It runs counter to their goals.
These arguments, as valid and compelling as they are to those who make it their duty to be aware of what is and what has passsed, will fall on the deaf ears of blind men.
Posted by: Sheik er' Bouti at May 6, 2006 9:28 PM
The biggest difference between the great statesmen of yesterday (Adams, Jefferson, and Churchill) and the mediochre statesmen of today (Clinton, Bush, and Blair) was that the former were proud and not ashamed of the accomplishments of the West whereas the latter dare not say anything good about the West and are seeking more and more ways to apologize for the sins of our ancestors. Of course they cannot speak the truth about the tenets of Islam or even of the characteristics about Muslims because such a thought is by definition racist, no matter how true and how nuanced the argument is made.
Although the "oil weapon" and even the demographic weapon do come into play, I do not feel that either contributes the most to this paralysis we are witnessing. We don't know who we are anymore and what little we do know about our identity we disparage in our own history books. Also, both the left and right have adopted some form of radical egalitarianism which dictates that we must all be the same and that is how we view other cultures, especially the Muslim world. Is it any surprise that establishment conservatives were playing the "racist" card when we raised the issue that a democratic Iraq was unfeasible? Many of them do not suscribe to political correctness or even multiculturalism, yet they still felt comfortable making the charge.
Is it any surprise that paleocons and other rightwing "critics" of Israel keep insisting that a lasting peace with the "Palestinians" is feasible if only Israel would offer more? Those who disagree would usually be labelled "Likudniks" or even worse "Kahanists". It is true, some are motivated by antisemitism but not all of them are. Trifkovic, the author of "Defeating Jihad" is not an antisemite (I thought he was at first, but after reading most of his articles, I have come to the conclusion that he is not), but he does not answer how we can both defeat jihad and create a "Palestinian" state. Why are the Americans and Europeans allowed to expel the Muslims but the Israelis are not? Where is the consistency? But more important, why does he (and the rest of the paleocons who staunchly oppose PC) assume that these genocidal primitives can even be reasoned with on a European level?
If we want to be able to speak the truth about Islam and Muslims, the West must get in touch with its historical and spiritual roots, then it must recognize that the West is unique and that other cultures are currently not on our level and that some of them (especially Muslim cultures) will NEVER reach our level, no matter how much we try to help them (e.g. the democracy misadventure in Iraq). Until we can admit that much as a people, then we will be able to say speak the truth and say things like "Muslims living in the West are a security risk and should be removed" without fearing a backlash from the tolerance brigade.
Posted by: igor at May 6, 2006 9:35 PM
Spatchcock (v): to insert something awkwardly; to introduce or interpose something into a piece of writing, especially in a forced or inappropriate way.
Posted by: SandiM at May 6, 2006 9:53 PM
An excellent piece. I have some small questions for European commenters, related to a line in Mr. Fitzgerald's essay:
"And they [muslims] are terrified that the West could begin to find other sources of energy, or that the West could begin to tax oil use themselves in ways that would dampen demand."
My understanding is that European nations have had high gasoline taxes for decades, presumably to dampen demand. Have the taxes gone to general revenues funds, or have they been dedicated to any particular use, particularly alternative energy research? Has the taxation been successful in dampening demand, or in funding any particular desirable goals? If not, why not? I expect that experience might vary by country...
Thanks.
Posted by: del at May 6, 2006 10:16 PM
Ovidius naso...my apologies for replying so late but sleep has its demands.
You said: "And that kind of thinking is the very antithesis of "jingoism."
It looks like you've got your PC lexicon too ready at hand, and not subject to critical analysis. "
If you look carefully at what I wrote you may be able to work out what I meant and without the need for any lexicon, PC or otherwise.
However for you I will explain:
The first and last paragraphs were clearly directed towards the US as an entity and not to any individual(s).
I was commenting upon the behaviour of the United States from independence to the end of the Spanish-American war. During this period the US was most definitely expansionist albeit in a mostly peaceful manner (Hawaiian missionaries?). Her victory over GB gave the US a degree of confidence towards “foreigners” that is quite obvious if you look at the years even up until WWI. The word jingoism, offensive or not, is applicable to 19th century US behaviour. Not all of it I agree but certainly to some of it.
However a brief series of incidents about what was essentially a forced protection of commercial shipping in the Mediterranean is not exactly a war against jihad. (I do not understate the naval achievement as having no overseas ports the Barbary interlude was no small undertaking and its orders had to come from the executive itself.). But the cost of the expedition far outweighed any commercial benefits and I do think that a lot of the
“Glory” over the incidents where the casualties would not even have been noticed in the war of independence or the civil war was a smokescreen for what was a very costly (in terms of money) exercise in patriotism.
There was no further US-Islam conflict in the 19th century to my knowledge as there was no commercial need or cause for such as the Barbary pirates were considerably weakened by 1815 and utterly destroyed by 1836.
All western countries, the US included had problems trading with the remainder of the caliphate and ships were always at risk near Turkey but the US stayed well clear of any further involvement and sensibly so.
My paragraphs in between were simply my opinion of why these two US statesmen found it much easier to see the Islamic problem than poor Bush. However apart from the Barbary wars no great change of heart, direction or doctrine occurred within the US.
Certainly both Adams and Jefferson seemed to understand the potential risk that was Islam and commendably so. But as the "Barbary wars" of the US came at the nadir of the caliphate(and especially so with the western part of it) and were a brief sequence of military flutters over some 14 years induced solely by the threat to shipping plus the insult of paying tribute they hardly were an example of antijihad.
at May 7, 2006 12:02 AM
"US-Islam conflict in the 19th century to my knowledge as there was no commercial need or cause for such as the Barbary pirates were considerably weakened by 1815 and utterly destroyed by 1836."
-- from a posting above
The Muslim corsairs continued to raid, no matter what promises they might be induced to make temporarily, until finally, in 1830, the French attack on Algier, and then on Algeria itself, ended the threat. As for a further "US-Islam conflict, or rather a conflict between Muslims and the American government, American missionaries were among those who witnessed, and surely their missions suffered from, the atrocities by Muslim Kurds and Turks against Christian Armenians in 1894-1896. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was the demand by Theodore Roosevelt for the safe return of Perdicaris (who was not an American citizen at the time -- see, by the way, the memoir of his daughter, who remembed how they had to be carried by local Jews because the Muslims in Morocco would not carry those they called, as she remembed, "Christian dogs.").
And in that same period (not quite the 19th century, but close) there was the Muslim revolt -- the Moros -- in the Philippines. Those who have ever been to Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire will remember that large fountain in the waterfront-garden, dedicated to Ensign Charles Emerson Hovey, killed in 1911 by the local Muslims ("Moros") when he left his ship,the U.S.S. Pampanga -- I may have the name slightly wrong -- to go to war on the island of Basilan. That "Moro revolt" was entirely a matter of Muslims refusing to accept the Infidel Americans -- who dared to attempt such things as build a network of schools for the Filipinos. The usual tricks of Infidel dogs -- pretending to "help" -- were met in the usual Muslim fashion.
at May 7, 2006 1:23 AM
We Brits should feel a bit guilty about all this. The Barbery prates were scared of the Royal Navy and left british ships alone, preying only on our competitors. When the US became independent their ships no longer enjoyed this immunity - hence all the trouble. The Brits weren't that unhappy about the situation! Eventually Europen pressure and a policy of ending the slave trade led to 2 Brit attacks on Algiers in 1818 and 1824 but the nuisance only really ended with the French invasion of 1830.
Posted by: wallyUK at May 7, 2006 1:34 AM
Jefferson, like Bush, quibbled in the face of Islamic threat and paid jizya in spades.
It was up to a better man, James Madison, to replace Jefferson's gold payments being made to the jihadists with payments of a different currency: cannon balls.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at May 7, 2006 1:41 AM
Perhaps my statement "no US-Islam conflict" was a little too concrete but certainly in terms of definitive and executive decided military actions it is correct.
The Moro problem on the other hand was a chronic ulcer inherited from the Spanish who themselves had never learnt how to conrol them and kept treating them as though they were actually normal and rational human beings which we now know no muslim can ever be. Any US war with the Moro was accidental and forced and the US missionaries and schoolteachers were as shocked with what happened to them as were the US troops who discovered their bodies. Had the Adams & Jefferson views on islam had any lasting impact they could and shoulcd have been prepared for this.
General Pershing's legendary actions have often been recounted here but it is a pity that we do not have some one in power who is as non PC as he was. That way they might think twice about any action leaving their corpses open to alitre of pig's blood.
Posted by: Zathras at May 7, 2006 2:44 AM
As long as people don't know the enemy they won't be able to win the war. Muslims are only tools used by the enemy for the destruction of mankind. When do people think in calling things by their names?
Posted by: Crusader at May 7, 2006 3:50 AM
Hugh's occasional use of the unusual word helps to make his prose sapid and even goluptious. I think we should try to follow his example now and then. And there is some evidence that in the most ancient times humanity did not conceive of separate words, but spoke in what scholars have called "holophrases." So the occasional sesquipedalianism of Hugh is perhaps a recalling of the prelapsarian condition of things, and should not be gainsaid, much less objurgated. In fact Hugh should get an award, even if only something symbolic, perhaps a nice zarf, though only if produced by an atheist, or a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu or a Buddhist or an animist or a Taoist or anyone not helping forge Islam's totalitarian gyves. Of course if we gavage too many unusual words into a small space, as I have done, we'll end up with something that to many readers will be a galimatius and nothing more.
Posted by: traeh at May 7, 2006 4:16 AM
"perhaps a nice zarf..."
-- from a posting above
I wouldn't accept a zarf without a finjan.
And come to think of it, that zarf-and-finjan combination has appeared at JW several times before.
Posted by: Hugh at May 7, 2006 10:20 AM
APF,
Jefferson paid tribute because he thought we couldn't afford war. But the tribute didn't buy peace, after all. The tribute bought time so that we could wage war, and Madison was able to wage war instead of pay tribute.
The lesson is that the tribute will never buy peace. It may buy time, but it will never buy peace.
Posted by: longtime lurker at May 7, 2006 2:59 PM
The world is full of information, which we treat as a precious commodity. But information is like sand. What is precious is meaning, which depends on composition. Disintegrate the composition, and you lose the meaning: you're left with the bullet points and a hollow ringing.
It's what I like to call "the digital mind:" a mode of thinking and being that has so internalized the technology of the age that it is unable to distinguish the whole from the sum of the parts (ANY sum of those parts). It is a kind of reductionism that says, there is no composition, only the information, heterogeneously arranged. As Negroponte said, "bits is bits."
And bullets is bullets. Any three will do.
Posted by: mountainecho at May 8, 2006 1:42 AM
Having read all your comments about Islam, there are a number of points that come to my mind:
1. I do not want to cease being on friendly terms with Muslims per se. After all: Christians (that includes me - a moderate Protestant one), Jews, & Muslims share the same god, though not the same main prophet. In addition, Muslims were good allies (as were all people of religion) against "godless" communism during the cold war. Their help during this time deserves to be remembered.
2. I have known a number of Muslims, & many of them were very pleasant indeed. Not all were, but certainly many were.
3. I live currently among Theravada-style Buddhists, to whom harmony & status is everything, & eg truth is often subjugated to both their demands. Recently, I went to a Muslim island in the same country, & found its honesty & frankness quite refreshing compared to the sweet, but sometimes deceptive, smiles of my usual neighbours - the Theravada Buddhists.
4. Based on the above, my advice is that we need to identify clearly who the "baddies" are - ie only extremist fundementalist Muslims & their brain-washed jihadist allies, not Muslims as a whole.
5. As we see in Iraq, our Muslim friends & allies are often having a much harder time from the extremists than we (& our soldiers in Iraq etc) are.
6. In WW II, fascism was a formidable enemy. But it over-reached itself when Germany attacked Russia & Japan attacked the USA. This should be our approach (& based on Osama's recent catch-all broadcast, he might help in this) - ie to find ways of causing the extremists to challenge less gentle targets than the West, & so exhaust itself against the remaining major totalitarian or near-totalitarian powers. Who are they? Well, their capitals are Moscow & Beijing, aren't they? Except that they may be thinking the same thing regarding the West - their stance over the current Iranian nuclear energy issue rather suggests this, in fact.
7. Final point: so what if early US diplomats had to visit an absolutist ruler in a cave? Surely, if he's an absolutist ruler, he's free to choose what sort of palace he has - even if it's no more than a cave.
Posted by weced at May 12, 2006 05:45 AM
at May 12, 2006 5:57 AM
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