“I have a lot of Muslim friends and they see themselves as British. We’ve got to be very careful. The threat is to our British way of life and all of our British people.”– from a statement by Alan West, recently appointed in the UK to “sort out” the problem of “radical” Islam
Is Admiral Sir Alan West familiar with Muhammad’s famous statement that “war is deception”? Is he familiar with how so much in Muhammad’s life — to the great admiration of Muslims — put into practice what he preached, for he deceived those who would not succumb to him, whether individuals or tribes, and relished their gory fate — Muhammad, “uswa hasana” and “al-insan al-kamil”?
Does Alan West know for a certainty that although he has a “lot of Muslim friends,” the only reason those friends do not tell him about Qur’an 5.51, which tells Muslims they must not take “Jews and Christians as friends” and that in many other places, in the Qur’an, and in the Hadith, explains the evil of Unbelievers and why they are to be shunned, is because they are embarrassed by all this, and want to spare his feelings? And is that why they also refrain from telling him about why Muslims are taught that it is permissible to feign temporary friendship with Infidels for one purpose: to promote and protect Islam? Are these teachings familiar to Alan West?
And what does he make of the reaction of local Muslims to the effort by American and British soldiers to help build hospitals and schools and power grids in Iraq, and to keep Iraqis from killing each other, and yet have only been dealt with meretriciously, by local Muslims, at almost every turn? Has Alan West consulted with Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the unfoolable head of France’s counter-terrorism? Has he talked to those non-Muslims who have grown up in the Muslim world, and have, as Jews and Christians, or Hindus (in Pakistan and Bangladesh and Indonesia), or Buddhists (in southern Thailand or, in small numbers, in Indonesia)?
Is Alan West aware of what Boumedienne said about how the Arabs and Islam would conquer Europe, which had resisted outright military conquest by the Arabs, through the wombs of Muslim women — a statement made in public, at the U.N., in 1974? Is he aware of how often this demographic conquest is discussed in the newspapers (even in “Dawn,” the English-language Pakistani paper) of Dar al-Islam? He does know, does he, about the permanent state of war between Believers and Infidels that Islam teaches must exist? And he does know, does he, that Dar al-Islam must expand until it eventually swallows up Dar al-Harb, so that Islam dominates everywhere, and everywhere Muslims rule?
Does Alan West ever think that his “lot of Muslim friends” — charming people, liquid-brown-eyed, soft-voiced, self-deprecating smile, the whole works — might actually be past masters at this game? Has it ever crossed his mind that it is not enough for the innocent Westerners to rely on this or that “Muslim friend” or “colleague”? You know, like that nice Pakistani in the I.T. department who asks about your children, and shows much more interest than any of your hard-as-nails interested-only-in-their-job non-Muslim colleagues.
What about a little book-reading, to supplement mere “personal experience”? What about following in time and space the history of Islam, the history of Islamic conquest, to see if indeed it is widely various? What about some study to see if indeed that business about Islam being a religion “of peace” means what some take it to mean? Why not try to find out if indeed the behavior of his “lot of Muslim friends” is sufficient for him to rely on in the making of high policy? Instead of preening over his own “tolerance” and greater understanding — moral self-preening should have no place — he should be most interested in protecting others, those whom he has a responsibility to protect. For them he also has a solemn duty to find out what is behind today”s Jihad. He should start with what the books and what the many articulate defectors from Islam have offered as their own testimony. Then he should move on to what the hundreds of Western scholars who devoted their lives to the study of Islam and the history of Islamic conquest say. That is, he should focus on those who wrote in the century (roughly 1860-1960) before the Period of Arab Money and the Collaborators took over the academic study of Islam, and managed to throttle, and almost consign to a permanent submersion in Lethe, all those scholars — Snouck Hurgronje, Arthur Jeffery, Antoine Fattal, K. S. Lal, St. Clair Tisdall, Henri Lammens, Samuel Zwemer, Edmond Fagnan, Georges Vajda, Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq. These scholars are now being rediscovered, republished, and reread, thank god, just in time. People are now fed up with the espositos, armstrongs, kepels and roys, who have so badly misinformed them.
Continued ignorance on the part of West, and in the West, is no longer possible. West has a duty to inform himself, as we have a duty to ourselves, to fully inform ourselves and to inform others as best we can.
Otherwise, Alan West should get out of the way.