• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Fitzgerald: Clarifying my positions

May 27, 2008 9:23 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

A poster here at Jihad Watch recently made a series of statements in attempted rebuttal of my position, long available here, at the “Articles by Hugh Fitzgerald” link, from early 2004 — a position from which I have not wavered, and which the news that arrives with each passing day convinces me, ever more deeply, that I have nothing to regret or to change.

I will number those statements, and answer them in turn.

#1. “So you are going to weaken the hold of Islam by directly telling the people who believe in it that it’s a cult? And by insulting them? What’s next – an inquisition? Convert of die?”

Infidels are not, in the West, fully aware of what Islam is all about. We cannot refrain from learning, ourselves or, still worse, refrain from disseminating to others, what Islam is all about, for fear that this will offend Muslims who in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere will eavesdrop on our own, internal discussions of what Islam is all about.

There are two different audiences. You apparently care more about the sensibilities of Muslims. I care about the understanding of non-Muslims, especially in Western Europe and North America. If one is too solicitous of the former, one does great harm to the latter.

Furthermore, you misunderstood me. I did not say that I think Americans or other Infidels should go out of our way to tell the inhabitants of Dar al-Islam that Islam bears all the hallmarks of what we would consider a cult, with its collectivism, and the fierce punishment it imposes on those who dare to decide for themselves what beliefs they wish to accept, and what to reject. We are the ones who should take Islam’s measure, and be sure of it. Whether Muslims overhear us or not, as we start to learn more, should not inhibit us in the slightest.

You then write the following, like a fanatical civil libertarian who claims, as if it is an argument, that the slightest enlargement of investigative powers will inevitably lead to the Gestapo knocking on all our doors at night and that sort of thing: “What’s next — an inquisition? Convert or die?” This is too absurd to warrant a reply. I do hope that others will not have failed to notice it, and will, as I did, draw the appropriate conclusions.
#2.

“There is no doubt that this site is doing a valuable service by instructing Westerners that the fundamentalists/extremists are inspired directly by the Koran. But that doesn’t mean that we need to ram it down the throats of the people we mean to turn to our side.”

This site is not so much “instructing Westerners that the fundamentalists/extremists are inspired directly by the Koran” as it is instructing Westerners that Islam itself, orthodox mainstream Islam, inculcates — on the basis of the contents of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira — a world view that makes it impossible for more than a handful of Muslims, the lapsed or unobservant or casual or “bad” ones, to ever be truly friendly with Infidels.

This site is about “instructing Westerners” that the Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then dominance, of Islam is a central, not tangential duty, of Muslims.

This site instructs Westerners that the instruments of Jihad include, in addition to “terrorism” which is merely one tactic, and not in the Western world at this time a very effective one, there is the Money Weapon (which pays for mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, and so on), and campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest. And not one of these instruments of Jihad would be rendered less effective in the slightest by whatever our military does or does not do in Iraq. But an Iraq that establishes a permanent fault-line between Sunni and Shi’a, an Iraq that requires the constant attention and worry of its neighbors, an Iraq to which both Iran and such Sunni states as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia might feel compelled to send men, money, materiel, an Iraq where the example of a non-Arab Muslim people, the Kurds, achieving independence might appeal to the 80% of the world’s Muslims who are not Arabs, and who need to recognize that Islam is, and has always been, a vehicle for Arab imperialism — yes, that is the only “victory” that I understand could be claimed, if any can at this point be claimed, for the Camp of Infidels.

Some, by no means all, military men, suffer from professional deformation. They think of “war” solely and wholly as tanks and planes and boots on the ground, and do not grasp that this war is above all ideological, and that we must ourselves learn what Islam is all about and not rely on such words as “fundamentalists” and “extremists” (as you do). Such terms in their implications are comforting, no doubt, but inaccurate. And having learned ourselves, we must help other Infidels to learn, and only then will we be able not to squander resources — as men, money, and materiel have been and are being hideously squandered in Iraq. Only then will we be able, cunningly and ruthlessly, to find ways to shake, in the first place, the loyalty of non-Arab Muslims who may be brought to view Islam as what it is — a vehicle for Arab imperialism. Only then will we be able, for both Arab and non-Arab Muslims, to let them realize that we realize this. And then they too will have to take account of that realization by Infidels, that the political, economic, social, moral and intellectual failures of their societies (covered up, of course, by the many trillions of dollars that they receive because of an accident of geology, which should not, forever, hide those failures) are a result, direct and indirect, of Islam itself.

There are many who have left the service earlier than they intended because they grasp the failure of both the military and the civilian leadership to have fashioned a strategy that makes sense. There are those who, of course, are ill inclined to see “war” as anything other than military combat, and are missing the main point about the worldwide Jihad (especially in Western Europe). There are those who, having set out on a course, and perhaps worked diligently for certain goals, are unwilling to change course, and are unable to admit to themselves that the goals they have worked so hard for are, for our long-term interests, exactly the wrong goals — this is too painful to contemplate.

I repeat what I have written here dozens of times before, since early 2004. The only definition of “victory” in Iraq that makes sense is to arrive at a situation that leaves the Camp of Islam and Jihad, not only in Iraq but everywhere, more divided and demoralized than it was before. And that can best be achieved, that can only be achieved, in Iraq, not by trying to prevent or to limit but to encourage, or at least to exploit, the pre-existing fissures, sectarian and ethnic, that Iraq so wonderfully presents if we are only unsentimental enough to exploit them — as we would not have hesitated to exploit in any previous war. The spectacle of permanent fissures, and of rich Sunni states in the Gulf having to worry about their Shi’a populations (in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Bahrain, even in Dubai with its Iranian businessmen and agents), and the kind of sectarian strife that might be triggered by such strife in Iraq — in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Pakistan — is not one to deplore but to welcome.

#3.

“You discredit the armed services who are dealing with the situation on the ground by 1) saying they dont know what they are doing (I suspect they know exactly what they are doing) and 2) not understanding anything about the real-life situation. It’s easy to be a critic when you are thousands of miles away.”

No, I do not “discredit” the armed forces when I criticize, attack, mock the policy fashioned by Bush, Rice, and others — civilians in Washington. Furthermore, when you write “the armed forces,” which members of the armed forces do you mean? General Batiste, who retired? Other generals, and officers who are not nearly as impressed as some are with the Counterinsurgency Doctrine — the one that was offered in a Field Manual, the product of General Petraeus, and Colonel Nagl, and others who apparently think such statements as “in general, insurgencies last ten years” are less ludicrous than writing “in general, civil wars last 4.7 years” or “in general, wars last 12.3 years”?

And of course, any generalizations — by generals, or for that matter by colonels — that do not take account of the nature of the situation in Iraq, are worthless. In Iraq there is not one government and one insurgency but many different groups within the Sunni and the Shi’a camps, with all kinds of shifting ties and alliances and attitudes, but with one constant: not one of them is a true and unshakable friend of the Infidels who have come to help them, all of them. There are stolid followers of policy, who never question, and there are others who do question, and try to make sense of what they have experienced in Iraq. It is the latter, who are leaving the army, who should stay and command; it is the former who have proven themselves too dumbly loyal to a policy that does not make sense.

And you also question whether I actually know anything about Iraq, about what our military have experience there? You apparently choose to believe I have no connections, know no one, least of all any of those 15,000 captains who have left the service? What makes you think I have not had close relatives serving in Iraq, relatives who before they went knew a good deal about Islam, and who on the spot, have seen the waste, seen the demoralization of the most intelligent officers and men, precisely because they are aware of how meretricious are most of the people, and understand exactly what Islam is all about, and why the policy in Iraq makes no sense? You have made a very big assumption. That assumption is flatly wrong.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Uncategorized


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • James Lincoln on Iranian Kurdistan: Muslim brothers behead their sister in honor killing over her romantic relationship
  • revereridesagain on Audio: Robert Spencer on Muslim Brotherhood influence in a Biden/Harris administration
  • SKA on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West
  • Eva on Chief Rabbi of UK Says It’s ‘Alarming’ That 44% of Muslims Are Anti-Semitic
  • Eva on Chief Rabbi of UK Says It’s ‘Alarming’ That 44% of Muslims Are Anti-Semitic

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.