I told you so update: in Iraq, as all over the Islamic world, there will always be a contingent of people who believe that Sharia is the law of Allah, and that it is therefore much preferable to democracy, which is human-devised law. And they will resist democracy, and fight for Sharia.
I am told by two eyewitnesses that National Review‘s Rich Lowry, at NR’s recent party for William F. Buckley, stated that because of President Bush’s bold and decisive foreign policy of spreading democracy in the Middle East, “the radicals’ whole house of cards could collapse within the next four years.” This puerile prediction betrays a remarkable and hardly excusable lack of knowledge of the history and teachings of the Qur’an and Islam, and of the modern jihadist imperative as enunciated by people like Maududi and Qutb. What he doesn’t understand (among other things) is that if this sort of demonstration really isn’t happening in four years, which I think is doubtful, it will simply be biding its time until conditions are right for it again. Throughout Islamic history there are periods of quiescence and periods of jihadist fervor. We are in the latter after a long period of the former. The error that most modern analysts make is to mistake the proximate causes of the jihadist resurgence for its root causes, and to think that if those matters they have wrongly identified as root causes are addressed, the jihad will disappear. It will not disappear: it will only go underground, and that only temporarily. Rich: call me in 2009.
“Protesters Call for U.S. Pullout in Iraq,” from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Tens of thousands of supporters of a militant Shiite cleric filled central Baghdad’s streets Saturday and demanded that American soldiers go home, marking the second anniversary of Baghdad’s fall with shouts of “No, no to Satan!”
To the west of the capital, 5,000 protesters issue similar demands in the Sunni Triangle city of Ramadi, reflecting a growing impatience with the U.S.-led occupation and the slow pace of returning control to an infant Iraqi government.
The protest in Baghdad’s famous Firdos Square was the largest anti-American demonstration since the U.S.-led invasion, but the turnout was far less than the 1 million called for by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr….
Sunni Muslim clerics also called on their followers to protest Saturday, and a large crowd gathered in the central city of Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold. Iraq’s Sunni minority was dominant under Saddam and is believed to make up the backbone of the country’s insurgency.
Sheikh Harth Al-Dhari, the secretary general of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, praised both the al-Sadr protest, as well as the Sunni demonstration, telling Al-Jazeera satellite television: “We hail the demonstrations organized by the Iraqi people on the second black anniversary of their country’s occupation.”