“We are beginning to learn some of the lessons we had to learn during the Cold War “” that to take on the opposing ideology we had to take on the extremists, but we had also to win over moderate opinion.” — from Gordon Brown in this article
During the Cold War, Gordon Brown claims, “to take on the opposing ideology we had to take on the extremists, but we had also to win over moderate opinion.”
Which “extremists” are those? Stalin and Mao? And which exemplars of “moderate opinion” were appealed to? Was it Khrushchev and Brezhnev?
During the Cold War the instruments of warfare included propaganda designed to limit the appeal of the enemy ideology — not “extremist” Communism, but Communism tout court. And it was those within the Soviet Union, the most thoughtful people, who realized the failure of Communism on its own terms (to offer a more just and more prosperous society). This realization came only in part because of relentless outside pressure, and those who came to this realization ended the central role of the Central Committee and the self-discredited Communist Party.
Victory in the Cold War was not defined as replacing the “extremists” within Soviet Communism with those of “moderate opinion.” Had it been, “victory” would have been achieved when Stalin died and Malenkov and Bulganin were no longer ruling, and “moderate” Khrushchev was in power. But Khrushchev was followed by the 18-year regime of Brezhnev, and it was only after that, when Gorbachev, advised by Aleksandr Yakovlev, and then Yeltsin, and many others, together ended the rule not of the “extremists” but even that of those Communists of “moderate opinion,” that the Cold War could be said to have been won.
Brown should be forced to explain his analogy. He should be forced to explain, that is, how he intends to bring Muslims of “moderate opinion” to power in Saudi Arabia and Iran and Sudan and elsewhere, and to keep them there, and also how he intends to do the same for the now-obviously deeply unsettling and menacing Muslim population within Great Britain.
To what passages in a text-centered belief-system will he, Gordon Brown, appeal? And how much of the Qur’an, how much of the Hadith, how much of the life of the exemplary Muhammad will Gordon Brown the Islam expert have to teach 1.8 million Muslims to ignore, and to permanently ignore, and to make sure that their children and grandchildren also ignore and that none or few of them ever relapse? How will he make sure that none of them ever take a peak at what is, Gordon Brown will discover, the real and true Islam, the Islam that divides the world uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel, the Islam that divides the land mass of the world between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb and requires a state of war to exist permanently between them (though does not always require open warfare when the Muslim side is too weak, and would be harmed by conducting such operations)?
How will Gordon Brown, and how will others who think dreamily like Gordon Brown, perform this trick, this Party Trick that has not the slightest chance of success? It has no chance of success because it ignores both the doctrine and the observable practice of Muslims wherever they may be found today and for the past 1350 years, years of Jihad-conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims, stopped only by countervailing and more powerful military force.
Gordon Brown should ask himself two questions.
The first is: why Muslims? Why is it, of all the various immigrants who have arrived in the United Kingdom, Chinese Christian or Confucian, Hindus from India or Indonesia or East Africa, black Africans from Nigeria or Ghana or Kenya or Tanzania, Indians from the Andes, Poles or Russians or Armenians, or any others, that only the Muslims who appear to have this peculiar trouble with integrating, this seeming irreducible inability to offer heartfelt loyalty, or even express any interest in, the legal and political institutions and history of the United Kingdom and those who inhabited it for the past several millennia?
The second is: why Muslims everywhere? Why is it that not only in the United Kingdom, but also in France and Germany, in Italy and Spain, in Belgium and the Netherlands, in Denmark and Sweden and Norway, that governments everywhere find that Muslims present the same problems, the same loyalty offered only to fellow Muslims, members of the umma al-islamiyya? Why is it that in all these places they make demands, outrageous demands, for changes in the legal, political, and social arrangements, the laws and customs and institutions, that everyone else accepts and that reflect slow progress, achievements attained over centuries by the non-Muslim populations of the various European countries?
What is it that makes Muslims different from all other immigrant groups, many of them quite alien, bearing alien creeds — alien, yes, but not, as with Islam, not only an alien but also a hostile creed?
And what is it that makes Muslims such a problem, so that their large-scale presence has everywhere in Infidel lands created conditions that are far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for the Infidel population than would be the case without such a large-scale presence?
Answers to #1 and #2 must be given. Now, or later. Better now.