LAHORE, Aug 31 (APP): Suicide attacks are an attempt to defame Islam and the government is making efforts to purge the society from cancer of extremism and restore true image of Islam through collective efforts.
Prime Minister’s advisor on Interior Rehman A Malik said [this] at a joint press conference with Jamaat Islami Chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed here at Mansoorah on Sunday. — from this news article
This “suicide bombers” — fanatical Muslims — actually intend to “defame Islam” is of a ludicrous piece with those in the West, from Jim “Hiraba-not-Jihad” Guirard to P. W. Singer and his native informant Elina Noor, who think that the best way to make sense of and deal with Jihad is never ever to mention the word “Jihad” or to suggest to Infidels that just possibly the problem, East and West, flows naturally from the texts and tenets of Islam, and that it is silly to keep denying this.
It is understandable — just — why Muslims such as this Pakistani minister find themselves tied in intellectual knots, and end up claiming that people whose entire existence is fidelity to Islam are intent on “defaming” Islam. It is not understandable why anyone sensible in the West would continue to listen to the singers-and-noors, and guirards, and think that if only we continue to play the game of let’s pretend, and ignore the textual and ideological basis for the war on Infidels and on Muslims deemed to be handmaidens of Infidels because they are insufficiently fanatical in their faith, that this will be helpful for Infidels.
It is not hard to figure out where this initiative comes from. It comes from Muslim regimes and their apologists, eager to protect certain regimes that are attacked by local “truer” Muslims for their corruption and misrule. The obvious example is Saudi Arabia, where a family, the Al-Saud, has for decades been stealing, not merely skimming off the top, large amounts of the nation’s oil wealth. Those who dislike this, naturally, cannot raise a revolt against the ruler for mere appropriation of wealth; in Islam, the despot is owed submission. He (or his family, or his family-and-friends plan) can be opposed, in the moral and mental universe that Islam posits, only if he is not a Muslim, if he is an “Infidel.”
The assorted terrorists or would-be terrorists captured or killed in Saudi Arabia need to be described. They, those enemies of the Al-Saud, who see themselves as the true Protectors of the Faith, are engaged, as they see it, in Jihad against the false Muslims, the pretend Muslims, the so-corrupt-and-terrible-they-must-be-called-Infidels Muslims. Their word to describe what they are doing is “Jihad.” Such a view, the takfiri willingness to condemn the corrupt as “Infidels” represents a danger to the Al-Saud, and a danger to all the corrupt ruling families, a danger to Mubarak in Egypt (with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan al-islamiyya, a permanent worry). So the Saudi rulers, and other threatened rulers, now employ the word “hibarah” for the activities of those who are conducting Jihad against them because they are seen as either Infidels, or handmaids to Infidels, which is just as bad.
And of course, the guirards and noorsand singers, and Muslim apologists of the slyest variety with contacts in the American civilian and military, all of them ever-helpful, ever-imaginative, are pushing the line that the Americans should imitate the Al-Saud and use the word “hirabah” and not “JIhad.” And some Americans, not thinking through the matter, apparently agree. They think careful avoidance of the word “Jihad” and adoption of the word “hibarah” is just the thing.
But it isn’t. For the Americans have needs and interests that are quite different from those friendly would-be advisers who are Muslim, whether in the diplomatic corps, or American citizens now possibly employed by the American military. This is all part of the continued confusion, the willingness to believe the absurd, and the readiness to squander resources for policies based on an unwillingness, or incapacity, to think logically about the best ways to weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad. See that little affair in Tarbaby Iraq, now costing more than two trillion dollars, 4,200 American lives, where hopes and dreams are lavished on the possibility of an outcome that is simply not possible: that Sunnis will acquiesce in the new order, that Shi’a will exhibit a spirit of sweet reason and compromise. And even if that outcome were possible, it is exactly the wrong outcome if one wishes, as one should, to exploit the pre-existing sectarian and ethnic conflicts within Iraq, and the larger world of Islam and Jihad, so as to limit the capacity of Muslims to wage Jihad against Infidels.
Those insufficiently imaginative as to what may come, and as to the various ways one might avoid it, are found even — so one hears — in some of the security services in Western Europe. And these people are panicked. They don’t know what to do about the many Muslims in their midst. They feel that it is not possible to talk straight about Islam, so that even those whose duty it is to protect the Infidels do not dare level with those same Infidels, for fear of exciting reactions — whether of despair or violence — that cannot be gauged or controlled. And so Islam’s nature, its essence, its meaning, and its menace, continue to be hidden from widespread view, sometimes at the behest of security services run by the insufficiently intelligent, imaginative, and cunning.
A fantastic situation.