Some time ago Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald wrote a superb piece entitled “The Mask Slips in Gaza.” Now the mask is off altogether.
The mask has not merely slipped in Gaza. It is entirely off. Jihad, jihad, jihad. Use the word. The Arabs and Muslims are using it, day after day, not least in Gaza. It is a Jihad. It is prompted by the tenets of Islam, and those tenets do not say “compromise with the Infidels.” Those tenets do not say “leave them with a tiny rump state.” Those tenets do not say “Push them back to the pre-1967 armistice lines” or “Push them back until they are sufficiently small.” No, Islam tells Muslims not to countenance, not to endure, any Infidel state, any state which permits non-Muslims the right to determine their own destiny, any entity or institution which would allow non-Muslims that modicum of power that would keep them from being reduced to the status of dhimmis — no, neither the Qur’an, nor the Hadith, nor the example of Muhammad himself, permits such an interpretation.
Some, but not enough, Israelis, have come to understand this — not enough in time to prevent the Gaza disaster. But whether the Israelis do or do not come to comprehend their enemy and the relentless Jihad against them, that is no reason for the rest of us, the Infidels outside the Middle East, not to recognize the nature of the war against Israel and how it merely prefigures, and is not the cause of, the larger world-wide Jihad against all Infidels, to be conducted with whatever means prove most efficacious. It does not make sense to pursue open military challenges to the West. It does make sense to divide and demoralize and terrorize not only that West, but all parts of the Infidel population, whether or not they are within dar al-Islam: the Christians who remain in the Middle East, along with the Jews in Israel, as well as the Hindus and Buddhists and Confucians in such Muslim-ruled countries as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, or even within Infidel lands where a small Muslim population still manages, as in Europe or Thailand or the Philippines or even India, to conduct attacks on Infidels despite the disparity in numbers.
Why is it that the Western world and Americans in particular fail to comprehend this and waste time actually ignoring the problem of Islam and pretending that the matter can somehow be solved if alternative regimes — a primitive democracy rather than a primitive despotism in Iraq, for example — will somehow help to contain the threat of Islam? It will do no such thing. The way to contain Islam is not to better the lot, still less to sacrifice one’s own men and materiel and money to do so, of Muslims, however plausible some of the westernized representatives (Shalabi, Rend al-Rahim Francke, Kanan Makiya, Allawi himself), the unrepresentative representatives, may be. Rather, the way to contain Islam is to play upon and exploit the natural divisions within this or that Muslim state or population, so as to turn Muslim against Muslim, or, in the case of the Kurds, by supporting them to the hilt, to make the case of all non-Arab Muslims everywhere who wish to shake off the dominance of the Arab supremacist ideology for which Islam has always been a vehicle.
While the mask is off in Gaza, Western dhimmis are doing their utmost to keep it in place. I just finished watching a propaganda piece on the Bill Moyers show. It was all about some “Palestinian” Arab widows trying to make a go of it as the start-up owners of a pickle factory. I did not count the many occasions on which it was suggested — no, stated — that everything depended on Allah, the number of times “Inshallah” (God willing) and other phrases were inserted into conversations, not as mere rhetoric, but as expressions of deep belief. Inshallah-fatalism is not conducive to economic activity. It has its points: it can reconcile one to a miserable condition and even to the injustice of the very belief-system that is almost entirely responsible for that miserable condition. But industriousness, entrepreneurial flair, and the constant attention to detail that modern economies require are simply incompatible with the lessons and tenets of Islam, and the overall attitude of inshallah-fatalism cannot be ignored, for it pervades everything.
After the propaganda show was over, Moyers interviewed one Azza Karam, an Egyptian woman described as connected to the U.N. Commission on Arab Development (or some such name). She of course, when asked about the possible connection between the teachings of Islam and the miserable condition of these widows and of women under Islam, referred to “tribal culture.” One would think that the cities of Islam — from Cairo and Tunis and Damascus, all the way to Karachi and Dacca and Jakarta, owed the treatment of women to some “tribal culture.” And even if one could pretend that “tribal culture” rather than Islam was responsible for the treatment of women in, say, Iraq (which does have a tribal culture in many areas), could the same be said for Cairo? And even if we were to pretend that this “tribal culture” explained the position of women in the Middle East and North Africa, what “tribal culture” is there in Jakarta?
And even if we were, just for the hell of it, to pretend that it was “tribal culture” that explained the mistreatment of women everywhere in dar al-Islam, then how would we explain the same mistreatment of Muslim women in the Muslim areas of London, Paris, Milan, and Barcelona? The lingering effects of “tribal culture”? And what about the treatment of Western women who marry Muslim men, whether those women “revert” to Islam (i.e., convert) or not? Is their mistreatment, which has been so widely reported (not least after they flee those marriages that are often of convenience — to the green-card seeking Muslim groom), the result of their “tribal culture”?
The viewer saw Azza Karam’s attempt to defend Islam at all costs — in her constant refusal to even permit the slightest hint that just maybe, there was something in the Qur’an, in the Hadith, in the Sira, that might cause Muslim men to act as they do (and there is, there is), and put the kind of restrictions they do on Muslim women — as the transparent taqiyya it is. But no matter how often one views this spectacle — of the Muslim who is intelligent, personable (up to a point), and seemingly part of the same rational universe, and yet who suddenly reveals that coute que coute, that person is going to lie about, to dissimulate, to hide, the truth about Islam, for Islam must never ever be subject to a hint of criticism — it is always stunning.
Really, Azza Karam’s performance was astonishing, and most enlightening. One hopes that many non-Muslims will be able to — as we old vaudevillians say — catch her act. The things she does with masks are breathtaking.