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Fitzgerald: The terminal naivete of Westerners

May 15, 2007 9:05 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

U.S. forces are building madrassas in Afghanistan.

“We are saying that we respect their culture and religion,” said naval commander Eduardo Fernandez, the man in charge of American aid efforts in the Sharana district of Paktika. “We have to give the religious leaders the respect they feel they deserve.” — from this article

Get that naval commander out of the Sharana district, out of Afghanistan, and possibly out of the navy, fast. Start educating the members of the armed forces on the tenets of Islam. Make them read, and reread, and reread, Qur’an, Hadith, and sira. Teach them about naskh, or abrogation. Teach them to distinguish the “authoritative” muhaddithin from the less authoritative ones, and the “authentic” Hadith from the kind that Karen Armstrong likes to quote. Expose every single one of the tricks of Muslim apologists and undercut them, including these:
1) That only someone who knows Arabic can comment on what is in the Qur’an, Hadith, and sira. Answer: If that were really true, then how can 80% of the world’s Muslims be regarded as Muslims, since they cannot understand Arabic?

2) That only Muslims can possibly understand Islam. Answer: Then no one who converts (“reverts”) to Islam has any idea what he is converting to?

3) That Islam says “there is no compulsion in religion.” Answer: To this one can offer up not only Muslim glosses on this line, but also 1350 years of the onerous burden placed on non-Muslims that, of course, led many to avoid such a burden (economic, social, political) by converting to Islam.

4) That Islam is a “religion of peace.” Answer: In fact, Islam is a Total Belief-System, and central to that Belief System is the uncompromising division of the world between Believer and Infidel. And between the two, Believer and Infidel, there exists a state of permanent war (though not always of active warfare — certainly not wherever other instruments of Jihad are more effective, or where it is impossible, because of Muslim weakness, to conduct Jihad to spread Islam at all).

And so on.

If this is the policy in Afghanistan, it is the wrong policy.

Bat Ye’or long ago said it would be fatal for the West to try to get involved in the Muslim lands. The terminal naivete of Westerners manifests itself in the way in which they never allow themselves to see, fully, the Muslim menace. And furthermore, the sentimentalism of the West hinders that insight, and instead imagines hardbitten troops aiding this or that hardscrabble wizened farmer, or that girl over there, and that group of young boys grabbing at proffered candy. Those boys, of course, are not yet of an age where they have sufficiently learned anti-Infidel teachings or thoroughly assimilated anti-Infidel attitudes. That will come only later.

We can only engage in enormous and wasteful activities by trying to shore up Islamic lands, or to make things nice for Muslims, or to bring prosperity to them. It will not make them like us. It will not lessen the fervor of Islam. The biggest and best-outfitted mosque in the world will, whatever happens, naturally have to have khutbas based on the texts of Islam. And just as water seeks its own level, unless every single minute of every day, and every single word of every single sermon (khutba) is monitored, there will be, in that mosque, necessarily, the introduction of the real teachings of Islam, and the holding up as a model of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.

Look at Turkey. Eighty full years of careful Kemalist constraints. Eighty years of the central government’s secularists monitoring, or even writing themselves, the khutbas to be delivered. Eighty years of systematic constraints put on Islam. Yet Islam is still there, and resurgent. The fright among Turkey’s secularists (some of whom may call themselves Muslims, as in “cultural Muslims” or “Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims, and some of whom will, outside of Turkey, tell one that in truth they are not Muslims at all) is palpable.

The policy of building madrassas and refurbishing mosques in Afghanistan is madness. It is also unconstitutional. American taxes are being used to favor, abroad, a religion, and far worse, one religion over others.

Where is the Constitutional challenge to this? There is a case to be brought. Bring it, you pro-bono-seeking lawyers you. Enter the casebooks. Enter history.

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