Jihad Watch Board Vice President discusses al-Barqawi’s condemnation of Zarqawi’s targeting of Muslims and relief worker in Iraq — and some related matters:
“Operations such as the abductions and killings of relief workers and neutral journalists … have defaced the image of the jihad and are portraying its followers as killers who don’t care about bloodshed…”
— from this articleYes, those murders of Muslims, or those Infidels who help Muslims (but what, of course, are all the American soldiers doing there but helping Muslims, bringing “democracy” because, Bush informs us today yet again, “democracies do not fight democracies”) — now we hear that these murders have “defaced the image of the jihad.”
Here is the difference between the Muslims who are now taking on Zarqawi — who are now, one supposes, “good” Muslims — and the even “gooder” Muslims in whom we have put our trust, and entrusted as well our soldiers’ lives, our fortunes ($300 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan) and our “sacred honor.”
The Muslim cleric who was once such an inspiration to Zarqawi now opposes his attacks on fellow Muslims and on those relief-workers, but not on the American soldiers who are the truest and by far the most effective relief-workers in Iraq. Why? Because this “has defaced the image of the Jihad.” Among whom? Among Muslims themselves, who do not agree that Muslims should kill Muslims or those most obviously handing out baby food and suchlike to those Muslims.
And how do other Muslims, the “moderate” Muslims, the “good” or “gooder” Muslims, differ in what they deplore? Oh, they deplore violent Jihad in Iraq for a different reason. For them Zarqawi “has defaced the image of the Jihad” not only among Muslims, but among the Infidels. Those Infidels — their money, their technology, their education, their medical care, the need to continually inveigle them for at least another decade or two or three — that is also something, in their eyes, to worry about.
So there’s the difference. Those who only care about “defacing the image of Jihad” among Muslims themselves, and those who care about “defacing the image of Jihad” among non-Muslims as well.
But there is no denunciation of Jihad itself. No denunciation of the idea that Islam must cover the globe, that Islam “must dominate and is not to be dominated,” that in the end all non-Muslims must, naturally, according to right, according to justice, however long it takes, be subjugated to Muslim rule.
That is what one has a right to expect them to say: an end to Jihad. Not “terrorism.” Not “violent” Jihad. Jihad, period. An end to the idea that “Islam is to dominate.” An end to the idea that non-Muslims are in any way inferior, or that they can be treated as they have been treated, almost continuously, over the past 1350 years, everywhere that the forces of Islam conquered.
Anything less is simply unacceptable, intolerable. There must be an end, a public end, to the idea that a Muslim owes his only loyalty to the Umma, the Community of Believers. He should be able to choose the Infidel nation-state, even over that “community.” And if that is not forthcoming, not openly discussed, not possible as a matter of deep, unswervable, immutable belief — then there is no reason to attack Infidel nation-states, and their long-suffering, unwary or insufficiently-educated populations, for exercising their right of civilizational and personal self-defense and keeping those who cannot be loyal either to them or to that Infidel nation-state out — permanently out.
One more thing. I just heard on the radio Our Supreme Leader tell us, in an unsteady and unsure voice that was determined to sound resolute and steady and sure, that the course in Iraq was correct, that establishing a “democracy” was the best way to fight a certain unidentified “ideology,” and that, again we were smugly assured, “democracies do not fight democracies.”
Well, we all know where that last, apparently unassailable notion, comes from. It comes from Natan Sharansky, and his last book, a book that has become Holy Writ around the White House.
So let’s not attack Bush. Let’s make an appeal, instead, to someone who means well, who is often — but not always — correct, and who needs to try to undo the damage that book of his has done to American foreign policy, and to the worldwide campaign of self-defense, such as it pathetically is, against the Jihad, in its local expressions, in its universal appeal.
Here goes.
An Apostrophe to Natan Sharansky
Damn you, Natan Sharansky, there is plenty about you to admire, but that silly book you wrote is another matter. In it, you offered a One-Size-Fits-All analysis of the World’s Problems, and insisted that the problem is the absence of “democracy” and that you further and idiotically suggested, “democracies do not fight democracies” — failing to note, for example, among many other defects, that until the past century there were fewer than a half-dozen democracies in the world, which doesn’t provide, in time or space, much of a sample to work with, does it? Did your publishers make you do it?
Why did you write such plausible-sounding nonsense, and then let a little boy in the White House get hold of your book, and become its uncritical admirer, repeating its thesis on every conceivable and inconceivable occasion, and without for a minute considering the specifics of Islam, of the hold of Islam on those born into it, including those who reject most of it but insist on Muslim solidarity and are defensive (and therefore misleading) about it with Infidels (and that includes the “best” Muslims, our “true” friends, those who are deeply involved in fighting the “war on terrorism,” as it is laughingly known).
Can’t you publish a little mea culpa, a little self-correction, a very pretty epanorthosis, and curtsy in print, like the Dairymaid (“the Dairymaid she curtsied and she turned a little red”) in that A. A. Milne poem about the King who wants “a little butter for his bread”– and say, M’lud, I’m sorry, but I was wrong. “Democracy” isn’t enough. It isn’t anything, really, in dealing with the world-wide Jihad. I was really trying to make a specific point about the “Palestinian” Authority, about Arafat as a corrupt tyrant, and the theme just got away from me, and I wrote this book, and I published it, and then you, the Leader of the Free World, read it, and so did your aides because they have to keep up with what you are reading, and you are such a True Believer, and I am so flattered but, but–
I WAS WRONG!
C’mon, Sharansky — you owe us this. Write it out. Publish it. Anywhere you want.
Even in The New Duranty Times.