Here is an excerpt, published in Chronicles Magazine (thanks to Kaoskntrl), from Dr. Trifkovic’s new book, Defeating Jihad, which will be published by Regina Orthodox Press later this year. From the looks of this, the new book will be as superb and enlightening as his other book, Sword of the Prophet. Trifkovic writes with tremendous insight about the failure and myopia of Western governments, which we have noted here ad infinitum.
Members of the West European and North American elite class approach the war on terrorism in a schizophrenic manner. Their world view rejects any possibility that religious faith can be a prime motivating factor in human affairs. Having reduced religion, literature and art to “narratives” and “metaphors” which merely reflect prejudices based on the distribution of power, the elite class treats the jihadist mindset as a pathology that should be treated by treating causes external to Islam itself.
The result is a plethora of proposed “cures” that are as likely to succeed in making us safe from terrorism as snake oil is likely to cure leukemia. Abroad, we are told, we need to address political and economic grievances of the impoverished masses, we need to spread democracy and free markets in the Muslim world, we need to invest more in public diplomacy. At home we need more tolerance, greater inclusiveness, less profiling, and a more determined outreach to the minorities that feel marginalized and threatened by the war on terror. The failure of such “cures” leads to ever more pathological self-examination and morbid self doubt. If the spread of jihad is not due to the ideology of jihad itself, which it cannot be, then it must be our own fault.
Already with the Rushdie affair 17 years ago an ominous pattern was set. It has been replicated on both sides of the Atlantic ever since. It has three key ingredients:
1. The Muslim diaspora in the Western world, while formally denouncing “terrorism,” will accept and condone religious justification for acts that effectively challenge the monopoly on violence of the non-Muslim host-state.
2. The Muslim diaspora will use a highly developed infrastructure of organized religion in the host-state””a network of mosques, Islamic centers and Muslim organizations””and deploy it either as a tool of direct political pressure in support of terrorist goals (e.g., British Muslims vis-Ã -vis Rushdie), or else as a means of deception and manipulation in order to diminish the ability of the host-society to defend itself (e.g., CAIR vis-Ã -vis post-9-11 America).
3. The non-Muslim establishment””public figures, politicians, journalists, academic analysts””will seek to appease the Muslim diaspora, or else it will shy away from confronting the problem of the immigrants” attitudes and impact by pretending that it does not exist.
The issues of immigration, identity, loyalty, and common culture are accordingly not treated as an area of legitimate concern in the debate on terrorism. The result is a cloud-cuckoo land in which much of what is said or written about terrorism is not about relevant information that helps us know the enemy but about domestic political agendas, ideology, and psychology.
Read it all, if you read anything.