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

Hugh Fitzgerald: What do we want in the Muslim lands?

Jan 6, 2016 2:54 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

India Kashmir Saudi Execution Protest

The multifarious geopolitical messes in the Middle East, the almost comical variety of resentments, hostilities, mutual denouncements, and hatreds in the Muslim lands that are presented to us each day on some news channel’s platter, the confusion worse compounded that overcomes us when we look at any part or aspect of the Camp of Islam — all this beggars belief, but you’d better nonetheless believe it. You’d better believe, for example, that the Uber-Sunni Saudis, who gave rise to Al-Qaeda, who provided Al-Qaeda not just with Osama bin Laden but with a host of other members (including 11 of the 19 who went on that 9/11/2001 mission), are now dead-set on executing members of that same Al -Qaeda, and have just done so, and are also prepared to make war on the uberest-Sunnis of them all, the members of the Islamic State. And at the same time as those Saudi rulers execute, in the same galere, both those Al-Qaeda and Islamic State anti-Shi’a fanatics, they also can — and did — execute a leading Shi’a cleric in Saudi Arabia, one Nimr Al-Nimr. Those who like things kept simple, and not complicated, will be disappointed by the Muslim Middle East, where every (geopolitical) prospect teases, and only man is vile.

Let’s see what we can do to improve our chances of seeing things steadily and whole, by standing a bit back from the radio, and limning the broad outlines of Islam.

Let’s begin with the all-encompassing nature of this faith. Islam is a Total System, a Complete Regulation of Life, a Compleat Explanation of the Universe. The True Believers in Islam are consumed by their demands of their faith. There is no such thing as “wearing one’s faith lightly” when that faith is Islam. Even those whom one might have suspected to be Islamic “moderates” turn out too often on closer inspection to believe in the uncompromisable rightness of Islam, the ingratitude and perfidy of non-Muslims, the need or duty to engage in the Struggle or Jihad, using chiefly combat (qitaal) or terrorism, but not excluding the use of other instruments to promote the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam everywhere. And among those instruments are economic warfare (less of a threat now that the “oil weapon” has so obviously faltered, and oil producers are desperate for customers), propaganda and diplomatic warfare, and the latest instrument of Jihad, demographic conquest, through the large-scale movement of Muslims into non-Muslim lands, where through their mere presence they gain political power and inhibit the freedom to maneuver of political leaders and the freedom of speech of people who become too fearful to speak out about Islam: if they dare to do so, they are promptly attacked by all the bien-pensants.

But, as Muslims like to say, meaning something quite different, “Islam is not a monolith.” By that phrase they attempt to inhibit non-Muslims from ever speaking about something called “Islam” because — since it is “not a monolith”– any such generalizing attempt would be false. Yet in the basic tenets and teachings, in the centrality of the Qur’an, in the agreement as to which are the most authoritative collections of Hadith, in the understanding of what constitute the Five Pillars of Islam, the faith called Islam is indeed a “monolith.”

But that is not the end of the story. As Professor Bernard Lewis pointed out long ago, Muslims in the Middle East have “multiple identities.” A man may be a Muslim “and an Arab” or a Muslim “and a Berber” or a Muslim and a “black African in the southern Sudan.” A man may be a “Sunni Muslim” or “Shi’a Muslim” or — so as not to overlook a very small group found mainly Oman and in some Algerian oases — an “Ibadi Muslim.” And some Muslim peoples possess the awareness of and tug from a particular national history — I am thinking of Egypt and Iran especially, as those nations (along with Israel) have the strongest sense of national identity in the Middle East. An Egyptian is “Egyptian” or an Iranian an “Iranian” in a way that a Qatari is not a Qatari, nor an inhabitant of Abu Dhabi an Emiratian.

Islam is a universalist faith. It is meant for everyone to accept. And those who among the Ahl al-Kitab, or People of the Book (that is, Christians and Jews), do not accept the full message of Islam — i.e., become Muslims — are required to pay a tax, or Jizyah, in conditions that bespeak humiliation, in order to be allowed to continue to practice their religion.

The universalism of Christianity does not admit of favoring of one group of Christians over another. In Islam, however, Arabs are privileged. If Muslims are “the best of peoples,” then among Muslims, “Arabs are the best of peoples.” Islam was revealed to a 7th-century Arab, in western Arabia, and written down in the Arabic language, the same language in which, ideally, the Qur’an ought to be read. Indeed, it was not until Ataturk in the 20th century ordered a Turkish translation of the Qur’an, and a Turkish-language commentary or Tafsir, that a non-Arabic version was available. Non-Arab converts to Islam are encouraged to, and often do, assume Arab names. Some even give themselves — this is particularly common in Pakistan — made-up genealogies that make them descendants of the Prophet, and therefore entitled to use the honorific “Sayed.” Muslims are taught to dismiss their own non-Islamic or pre-Islamic histories (personal and collective), as being identified with what in Islam is called the Time of Ignorance, or Jahiliyya. These pre-Islamic pasts are to be regarded with contempt and dismissed, for they have nothing to do with Islam. Muslims should ideally dress like, and emulate the mores of, 7th century Arabs, of Mohammed and his Companions. And Muhammad, who for all Muslims, and for all time, remains the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and Model of Conduct (uswa hasana), was, of course, an Arab. No wonder that Islam itself is called “the gift of the Arabs.”

While this privileging in Islam of the Arabs leads some non-Arabs to play the sedulous ape, and to re-imagine themselves as Arabs — all those Pakistani “Sayeds” — at the same time other non-Arabs react differently, and come to resent their treatment at the hands of the o’erweening Arabs. Think of how the Arabs of the northern Sudan treated the non-Arab Muslims of Darfur (rape, pillage, sexual slavery); what they did to the non-Muslim black Africans was, of course, even worse.

Or think of how the Arabs of Algeria for many years attempted to prevent the Berbers, about 30% of the population, from speaking the Berber tongue, or from observing Berber ways, even forbidding the public reading by a Berber poet back in 1980, a suppression that led to riots in Tizi Ouzou, in the Berber-inhabited Kabyle. And in Morocco, where half the population may be Berber, the Berber movement takes on an anti-monarchical aspect. The Moroccan Arabs, like the Algerian Arabs, have been conducting, in slow motion, a forced arabisation to which not all Berbers wish to succumb.

And in the immediate Middle East, think of the Kurds, a non-Arab Muslim people treated by the Arab Saddam Hussein with great ferocity. His Arab troops killed 182,000 Kurds, employing chemical warfare at Halabja, and he moved hundreds of thousands of Arabs into the Kurdish areas to “arabise” the Kurds.

And outside the Middle East, the cultural imperialism of the Arabs has caused resentment among the local Muslims, all the way to Bangladesh and to Indonesia, especially in Java.

Ideally, non-Muslims should be working to increase the fissures within Islam. They should seize the language, and control the debate. And the central thesis, which they should be repeating again and again, can be expressed thus: Islam Is A Vehicle For Arab Supremacism. And they can fill the airwaves, and the Internet, with the supporting evidence. Is it not true that Muslims pray five times a day Mecca-wards, that they emulate the mores of 7th-century Arabs, that upon conversion they assume Arab names, that they — ideally — read the Qur’an only in Arabic, and with an Arabic Tafsir (Commentary)? All this is so very different from those Christian missionaries who translated the Bible into every tongue they could, including some that had never before been reduced to writing. Is it not true that the Arabs, through Islam, have discouraged any local interest in pre- or non-Islamic histories, but have encouraged interest, among so many isnon-Arab Muslims, in Arab and Muslim history? Our aim should be to always and everywhere seek to find existing or potential fissures within the Camp of Islam, and to steadily widen them merely by adducing the truth.

But there is another great divide in that Camp of Islam even more obvious and of more immediate significance than the ethnic fissures: it is that between Sunni and Shi’a. Bob Woodward has reported on President George W. Bush as having plaintively asked a member of his staff to fill him in, after being told the Iraqis were divided into “Shi’a and Sunnis,” which information confused him because he, President Bush, thought “they were all Muslim.” We have come some way from that early exclamation of ignorance. Everybody and his brother now knowingly refers to the “Shi’a and the Sunnis,” but without any suggestion of knowing when the schism occurred, and what it was about, and why it matters.

In a sense, it doesn’t matter to us, the Infidels, when and where and why the Sunni-Shi’a split arose. What matters is our attitude toward that split: whether we deplore it or welcome it.

So far, American policymakers have made enormous efforts to minimize that split. They use that all-purpose word “destabilizing.” Anything that “destabilizes” in the Muslim Middle East is bad. And especially in Iraq, where the Shi’a inherited the power that had been stripped from the Sunni Arabs when the Americans invaded, the vast American effort was dedicated to keeping Iraq a single and prosperous country, where Shi’a and Sunni (and Arab and Kurd) could take part in a joint adventure to rebuild the country. Did this make sense, from an Infidel point of view? Why would one not wish Iraq to be subject to centripetal forces, and to break apart, possibly in partes tres, with a Kurdish part corresponding roughly to the old Ottoman vilayet of Mosul, the Sunni part to the old Ottoman vilayet of Baghdad, or possibly only Anbar Province (given that so many Sunnis have been pushed out of Baghdad by the Shi’a), and a Shi’a Arab part corresponding to the old Ottoman vilayet of Basra?

Again and again over more than a decade, we heard how important it was not to allow Iraq to split into Sunni and Shi’a regions. But no one explained why keeping Iraq in one piece was in the American, or general Infidel, interest. And if the Sunnis in Lebanon, perhaps with their numbers increased by Sunni refugees from Lebanon, attack the Shi’a, that is, attack Hizballah, the military and terrorist organization that claims to represent the Lebanese Shi’a, why is that a bad thing?

And if the Saudi incursion into Yemen, on the side of Yemen’s Sunni tribes fighting the Iran-backed Houthi (Shi’a) rebels, why is that something to deplore? At the very least, this conflict might use up Saudi money and materiel and keep the Saudis occupied, and less able to cause mischief elsewhere; ideally, neither side will win, but both sides will continue to go at it, losing men, money, materiel, destroying infrastructure, and in general creating a mess in one more Muslim country. And in one more such country, mistrust and hatred between Sunni and Shi’a in Yemen can only deepen. Again, why would that be — from our point of view — a bad thing?

And this brings us to the news of the week: the execution by the Saudis of a leading Shi’a cleric, Nimr Al-Nimr, and the severing of all diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and then between Iran and Iraq, Iran and Bahrain, Iran and Qatar, Iran and Oman, Iran and Kuwait, and the downgrading of relations between Iran and the U.A.E. All the stories in the Western press are full of dire warnings, of worry and despair expressed at this state of affairs, and fears as to “what willh appen next.”

I can’t understand this worry, this fear. Which was the Roman who laid down the law: Divide et impera? I am perfectly open to being persuaded that the deepening of the Iran-Saudi Arabia rift is a terrible thing for us. I am equally eager to be persuaded that whipping up the resentment of non-Arab Muslims for Arab Muslims is a Bad Thing. But I just can’t figure out why.

Perhaps, among this post’s readers, someone will enlighten me, and explain why ethnic and sectarian fissures in the Camp of Islam are a terrible thing for us, the Infidels. I’ll stay right here, ready to listen. I’m all ears.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Sunni-Shi'ite Jihad Tagged With: Nimr al-Nimr


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Comments

  1. Carrie Singer says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 3:02 pm

    Because it’s Islam, Jake.

    Non-Muslims are Muslims of a different sect, like Sunni and Shia, to name the largest.

    The top of the heap of non-Muslims are Jews, then non-Muslims, then any other sect but yours, and you know what happens when a group goes after Jews first.

    Remember the Palestinians? Their grievances against Israel were not against Israel itself, but that it was IN the Caliphate. Always was. That’s why Palestine was never admitted to the Arab League. It was Jordanian.

  2. jihad3tracker says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 3:05 pm

    MR. FITZGERALD HAS AN UNDERSTANDING OF ISLAM AND ITS GEOPOLITICAL COMPLEXITIES THAT IS AS DEEP AND COMPREHENSIVE AS ROBERT SPENCER’S MASTERY OF THE SUBJECT.

    This is a perfect essay in comprehensive truth to send on to the senators and congresspersons IN YOUR OWN STATE. Even if they are left-leaning Democrats — or ESPECIALLY if they fit that description.

    • Carrie Singer says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 3:08 pm

      If it’s so complex, how does even the youngest, most uneducated Arab understand it? lol

      • jihad3tracker says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 4:51 pm

        Hello Carrie — By “complexities” I mean vectors and conversations in the web of relationships among Sunnis, Shi’ites, tribes, politicians, monarchs, dictators, secularists, orthodoxists, scholars, theorists, historians, combatants, clerics, and billions of Muslims who just want to live from one day to the next.

        Young, uneducated Arabs understand Islam by reading the Qur’an, sermons at Friday prayers, and following the news. But my emphasis was on ONLY what surfaces with enough force to affect, in large or small degree, that toxic swamp which we label as “The Middle East”. .

        • Carrie Singer says

          Jan 6, 2016 at 5:10 pm

          If you haven’t noticed, that “toxic swamp” has been leaking our through every nook and cranny.

          If someone understands something “complex,” they can boil it down to three symbols and two letters.

          E=mc2

          Or five letters.

          Islam

        • Carrie Singer says

          Jan 6, 2016 at 5:11 pm

          O o

          Three letters and two symbols.

        • Blurb1000 says

          Jan 7, 2016 at 7:49 am

          Three letters one symbol and one number.

      • Angemon says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 6:43 pm

        Carrie, there’s an old Arab saying that goes along the lines of “I against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world“.

        I against my brothers – Saudi Arabia vs the islamic state – sunnis vs sunnis.
        I and my brothers against my cousins – Saudi Arabia and the islamic state vs Iran – sunnis vs shias.
        I and my brothers and my cousins against the world – Saudi Arabia, the islamic state and Iran vs non-muslims.

        That take on the basic, tribal instinct present in most human beings is all the uneducated Arabs you mentioned need to know.

      • Everyone Else says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 12:01 am

        The reason “the youngest, most uneducated Arab understands it” is if you’re fighting for your tribe all the rest becomes clear.

    • Sam Hawkins says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 4:35 pm

      Hugh Fitzgerald is a treasure.

  3. Don McKellar says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 3:43 pm

    It would all be a good thing except for one thing: the idiocy of most our current political leaders who, for the most preposterous non-reasons imaginable, believe they have to somehow “get involved” From the closet moslem in the White House, to the vapor-head Cameron to the now quite mad Merkel. And also don’t forget the massive economic forces putting either pressure on or simply just bribing them and/or all their entourages and advisors. Namely Big Oil’s economic stakes in these moslem rat holes, as well as the US Military Industrial Complex and all the money it makes out of Saudi Arabia and the rest. Absolutely, we as citizens in advanced and civilized non-moslem countries have no real good reason not to happily stand back and even encourage moon god death cult in-fighting. But to stay out of it, we have to work at completely eradicating the “leadership” we have now so we CAN stay out of it. And keep them from exporting their bullshit.

    The only bright spot in the free world right now who can and will actually do this is running for the President of the United States right now. He is, truly, “untouchable”. Vote Trump.

    • Radegunda says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 10:03 pm

      Please tell us how Donald the Great is going to “eradicate” the current “leadership” (whatever that means). Also, please cite evidence that he endorses your idea that we should “stay out of it,” or even understands what Hugh explains here.

      Or are such grimy details unnecessary to spell out when you’re pinning your hopes for salvation on a “truly untouchable” superhero cult figure?

      • nabi ZK (pbum) says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 5:56 am

        yeah. Bit the alternative is Hillary.

        nabi ZK (pbum)

    • robert says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 1:08 pm

      this is good stuff-i agree

  4. Walter Sieruk says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 3:58 pm

    Just about part of the above article title alone. On the idea of What are “Muslim lands ” ? Or what constituents an area as “Muslim lands” ” To be even more specific ” What is about the land the composes the State of Israel.?” To whom does this land really belong ? The people who are members of the different Islamic terror jihad organizations. Such as Hezbollah, Hamas, P.I.J. etc. The members of those jihad entities are in total ignorance that they in their agenda to destroy the State of Israel and replace it with an Islamic “state” are ,very much , fated to lose. That is that those jihad entities,just named, are fated to fail in that goal. This is because they are greatly overruled by the God of the Bible. For the God of the Bible had giving all of this land that copses the State of Israel,including the West Bank, to the Jewish people. As seen in ,for example, Psalm 135:4.”For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself. . Israel for His special treasure.” [N.K.J.V..] For this land in that area of the Middle East belongs to the Jewish people by Divine Right. As revealed in Genesis 28:13-15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. This land also belongs tot he Jewish people by historic rights. As shown in First Kings 4:20,21,24,25. 8:55,56. In all fairness, there is one way for Hezbollah ,Hamas, PI.J and other like-minded Islamic entities to convince God to change His Mind about being so strongly for Israel and then cause Him to then turn His Back to Israel and thus have that nation be no more.. That way is for the members of those Islamic organizations to gather together and then change the laws of astrophysics ,including the astrophysical laws that control the sun ,the moon and the stars. For God had declared in Jeremiah 31:35,36. “Thus saith the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for alight by night… The Lord of host is His name. If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever.”

  5. Myxlplik says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 4:04 pm

    Seems to me that as Western countries, having read the tea leaves about diminishing oil supplies, are well under way into becoming independent either through alternatives or domestic petroliates other than Middle Eastern oil, the need for a stable Middle East for energy is going away. Next, immigration to the West from destabilized & warring Muslim factions within the monolith of Islam. We seem to be well on our way to squelching the domestic need to solve Muslim despair via a place for them to flee to, or the need to strap our boots on and sally forth as easy target practice for jihadists.

    If we can decide to not take the hoards of Muslims in from destabilized Dar al Islam, and sit back while not engaging militarily, and if we are okay without so much of their oil, then let them have at it. Personally I don’t even see how a conversation with any of them is useful at this point.

    No aide, trade, travel, or immigration.

    • Tom @ Harris says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 4:16 pm

      Comment of the decade AFAIAC. As for Hugh’s question, “What do we want in the Muslim lands?”, I know what I want – squat, that’s what.

      To paraphrase Edwin Starr: Islam, what is it good for? Absolutely nuthin’!…Good God y’all…

    • Goat Pimp says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 6:48 pm

      Agree but the only wild card is their attainment of nuclear weapons. That is the scary part.

      My guess is that they would probably prefer to fulfill Islamic end-times prophecy than anything else.

    • vickie says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 7:45 am

      http://listverse.com/2012/12/23/10-everyday-things-that-started-life-as-oil/

      http://empoweredsustenance.com/beeswax-candles-and-allergies-an-effective-solution/

      I am doing my part -no candles, no makeup, no synthetic fibers [rayon, nylon, spandex, acrylic, and polyester] use COTTON!!, recycle or up use plastics, use of products until they literally fall apart

      http://www.ranken-energy.com/products%20from%20petroleum.htm

  6. mortimer says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 4:22 pm

    The only Muslims who think that ‘Islam is peace’…are Western Libtardian-Libertiles. THEY believe without evidence that Islam is similar to cultural Marxism…’really-truly’ a revolutionary TRIUMPH of the proletariat! Even though Muslims do not ‘actually’ realize that they are proletarian revolutionaries! The Lib-tiles ‘know’ that they are.

    The question that Fitzgerald asks is an excellent one: Which flavor of Islam do we want…1) Shi’ite which tastes like… or 2) Sunnite (which tastes like ISIS)?

    Actually, I prefer Ahmadi or Ismaili versions of Islam, because they are almost totally pacifist. But they are heretics, aren’t they? So much for the lack uniformity…whenever Sunnis or Shi’ites take charge, their Sharia law looks almost identical in harshness and intolerance.

    • Goat Pimp says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 6:54 pm

      “The question that Fitzgerald asks is an excellent one: Which flavor of Islam do we want”

      I agree it is an excellent question and I agree with his answer: dead ones.

      • eduardo odraude says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 12:40 pm

        He is not asking which flavor we want. He is suggesting the non-Muslim world foment divisions within the Islamic world, and he is asking how fomenting division in the Camp of Islam could not be good for the non-Muslim world.

  7. Buraq says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 4:28 pm

    The fear of Islam’s imminent implosion originates from the Left’s concern that the maniacal monster it relies on to pulverize its enemy – the capitalist West – might just keel over and give up the ghost at any moment. Every article expressing concern for Islam’s cohesion is really a subconscious expression of concern that the Left’s program might well go awry, confirmed by the din of committed religious ideologues busily turning plowshares into swords.

    That’s my 10 cents worth, Mr Fitzgerald.

  8. Jack Diamond says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 5:19 pm

    They said it in the Cold War too, anything that “destabilized” Soviet hegemony was perilous and foolhardy.

    The “Camp of Infidels” have nothing to gain by either faction actually winning, just by them exhausting, preoccupying, each other (i.e. the way the Iran-Iraq war, in horrible fashion, that took care of a generation of Iranian Islamic Revolutionaries who might have otherwise been employed elsewhere). Divide and rule worked for Caesar against the Gauls, worked for the British Empire, works for Muslims. It isn’t about changing Islam or reforming Islam, it is about returning the Muslim World to the condition of weakness and division and defeatism that characterized it in the “good old days” before the money bonanza and Muslims got the idea they had the “upper hand.”

    While one shouldn’t let the debate drift from the Jihad itself to a particular group the media can isolate as “the problem” (ex. al Qaeda; ISIS) I’m hoping High will write something at length about the Islamic State.

    He proposed a few years ago declaring war, not just on the Islamic State but on the Caliphate idea itself, primarily, it seemed, as a way begin to apply treason laws to our Muslim 5th column. Maybe he can expand on that, what war against “any Caliphate” (and Sharia) would mean, and how he best thinks this particular caliphate should be dealt with–given we are not disengaged from the Muslim World, given we are having more not less (or zero) Muslim immigration, given the inevitability of more and maybe many more IS-inspired attacks in the USA both for their own sake and to expressly draw America (“the Romans”) into a ground war in Syria (the Dabiq prophecy). Robert Spencer concluded his book on ISIS “they mean to kill us by the death of a thousand cuts. As long as the Islamic State exists, the West will not have peace…the United States will not have peace. Either the Islamic State will die or we will. But how to kill it?” So, how to best kill it?

    • eduardo odraude says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 12:51 pm

      Though it might well be better for the non-Muslim world if the Islamic world were divided into a much greater number of much smaller states, a non-Muslim strategy of fomenting division could lead to failed states in endless civil war and could create huge refugee crises. Huge numbers of refugees might then get into the non-Muslim world via Western compassion for and ignorance of Muslims and Islam (and through lack of compassion for non-Muslims). This would especially be true if the West were known to have fomented divisions that led to chaos, civil wars, and refugees.

      • Jack Diamond says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 2:19 pm

        Close up exposure to large numbers of Muslims is a sure cure for ignorance of Muslims and Islam. Europe has been getting that education for over 40 years. Now it’s an accelerated learning curve.

        Eurabia is not something new or began with the refugee crisis. Europe has had the welcome mat out for a long time. Nor are most of the refugees really refugees at all. They are
        migrants and invaders, fake refugees, determined to get to the wealthiest welfare states. ISIS even declared they would create a refugee crisis into Europe which they would infiltrate with jihadis (and have). It’s more a deliberate than spontaneous crisis. To the degree we “fomented” the crisis, it is a result of the folly of the Arab Spring (and bringing ‘majority rule’ to Iraq) but it is only Islam that has brought the chaos, civil wars, and refugees. We don’t need to foment anything, the fissures and cannibalism within Islam have existed since the beginning. As for real Muslim refugees from war, present or future, they belong in the Muslim world (where they prefer to remain), not in Europe or North America. We should take in Christians from the Middle East, via Western compassion. If compassion were the true reason for taking in refugees and not something else. But Iran and Saudi Arabia and their allies tying up wealth, weapons, and manpower against each other is obviously better than having them targeted at us, directly or by proxy.

        • eduardo odraude says

          Jan 7, 2016 at 2:51 pm

          Contact with Muslims may be a sure cure for ignorance of Islam and Muslims, but the cure may take so long to work that the patient dies first. In other words, chaos in the Middle East, both the chaos inherent to Islam and any chaos we might foment, create a risk of huge refugee flows into a non-Muslim world where non-Muslim politicians and large portions of the non-Muslim population will do nothing to stop those flows.

          Mr. Fitzgerald’s policy therefore only makes sense in a context where the non-Muslim world is more or less agreed on containing the Islamic world (including helping refugees there, not bringing refugees into the West). If something like what Trump proposes (moratorium on Islamic entry to the US) comes to pass, then Mr. Fitzgerald’s policy might make sense.

  9. jihad3tracker says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 5:51 pm

    Hello Mr. Fitzgerald — Here is my meager shekel’s worth in reply to why pursuing a tactic of “ethnic and sectarian fissures” are terrible for the Infidel: Yes, in the overarching struggle to defeat Islam’s strength toward winnig worldwide caliphate establishment, we should pry it apart using the strategy you write about.

    But, with formerly-stable cohering entities seeing their power dissolving, and thus lashing out at whomever seems to be vulnerable, what would the result be for Mid-East Christians, the state of Israel, and Europe’s foolish Muslim-welcoming nations ?

    Such a balancing of completely unknown future events complicates the conclusion — which is inescapably a “least worst” decision. Graeme Wood’s remarkable article in last January’s Atlantic Monthly ended with his boost of waiting for ISIS to stall and then slide from victory for a long-enough period to end recruitment motivation.

    That patience won’t work for the Middle East’s entirety: too many actors with limitless energy and materiel, and in Europe, too many foolish, cowardly, cognitively dissonant moral-relativist prime ministers. How to accomplish the miracle of conversion to a peaceful heart and wisdom about Islam’s intent ?

    That is above my wisdom rank.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 6:12 pm

      Reducing an answer to five words: not all problems have solutions.

    • Jack Diamond says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 6:35 pm

      My two-bits would be that Israel probably benefits from the chaos, and that “containment” of the madhouse should involve rescuing or providing safety for persecuted Christians if at all possible; just as it “should” involve preventing development or use of WMD by Muslims, period; “should” involve not allowing a mass invasion of Muslim hordes into the West; (failing on all counts) and probably will have to deal specifically with the ongoing Murder Inc. called the Islamic State, that won’t allow us to ignore it. I don’t think of exploiting any and all divisions in the Camp of Islam as being disengaged.

      • Goat Pimp says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 7:10 pm

        I agree that we need to keep engaged.

        I also agree with Graeme Wood that ISIS is vulnerable to a stalling and shrinking of its territory as that de-ligitmizes its authenticity as a Califate. I think we may be already starting to see that.

        I agree with you that unfortunately the rest of the ME entities don’t have this legitimacy problem, and that if we can clean-up our own houses of potential jihadis (as Fitzgerald states, that pretty much encompasses all Muslims), then we can focus our energies on border protection and making sure none of them get WMDs. Those should be our only concerns. Other than that, let them have at it.

        • jihad3tracker says

          Jan 6, 2016 at 7:50 pm

          Hello G.P. —- I will jump on to your trampoline because it is the latest post as of 7:45 Eastern time. Can we agree that Iran’s growing missile arsenal & centrifuge capacity, has the strongest potential military threat to ATTEMPT to get what it wants ? No guarantee of success, of course.

          If yes, then THE NEXT PRESIDENT (IF A REPUBLICAN) can cancel parts of that deal leading to nuclear deliverability. Thus Israel survives annihilation for a couple of decades, the Saudis find new alliances for pushback, and the West has a few more years before it caves to superior motivation.

          Bottom line, straight to the chase: don’t buy wines that will have their best vintage maturity in 2035 or thereafter.

  10. Jack Diamond says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 5:52 pm

    second time now I’ve typed High instead of Hugh. I must be destabilized myself.

  11. William says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 6:09 pm

    One possible downside to us infidels I see from escalation of conflicts among Mohammedans is the possibility of an emergent victor who may be more ruthless and more effective militarily than present. We may expect multilevel conflicts to result in a fragmentation where all sides are weakened to the point of impotence. But another possibility, like nature, is survival of the fittest. The fittest may emerge victorious and capable of dominating all the conquered. The fittest could be the most ferocious, the most cunning, the most effective. And that victor could be the Arabs, more capable than currently composed. The one assured way to take advantage of the escalation and fragmentation of the Mohammedan world would be for the infidel to conquer the severely weakened belligerents – divide and conquer. We infidels cannot remain passive spectators to the internecine carnage. We would need to step in at the point when all sides are near exhaustion to ensure the obliteration of the cult of Mohammed.

    • Myxlplik says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 7:17 pm

      Wouldn’t the slovenly nature of regions governed by these victorious Muslims of the future lead to cholera, typhus, and malaria doing most of that work for us?

      Several generations hence they’d be helpless beggars for sure, made meek by dysentery and inbreeding. Much easier and safer to let their own natural tendencies do them in, they certainly don’t need our help in that regard.

      Why waste an expense on, what nature will provide for free?

      • robert says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 1:26 pm

        this makes a lot of sense to me

    • Goat Pimp says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 7:23 pm

      When you “conquer”, what do you do? Outlaw the practice of the cult? Do you have to occupy?

      I agree with others that ostracization and marginalization of the cult will do a lot of the heavy lifting down the road as it did with Naziism. That is not to minimized the combative actions that might be necessary in the mean time.

  12. jewdog says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 6:14 pm

    Thanks, Hugh.
    You ask if someone can persuade you why Islamic fracturing is not a good thing. I would argue that as long as there are substantial numbers of people who take the lethal antagonisms inherent in Islam to heart, then internecine conflict is a useful diversion. But since those internal conflicts are caused by Islam itself, then their absence could signify a general change of heart or a turning away from Islamic militancy, unless, of course, that unity derives from government repression. The answer may be moot: As long as Islamic ideology reigns, then the chaos it brings is good, but if it weakens than chaos would be undesirable, but it would probably be absent in that case anyway.

    • Goat Pimp says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 7:33 pm

      I agree that if the Islamic ideology weakens, the fuel for the violence will be greatly reduced. Who want to die if you are not going to get your 72 virgins?

      I also think the internecine conflict is useful. Unfortunately the quickest and safest way to eradicate an intractable virus (mental or otherwise) is to kill the host.

  13. Martin says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 7:16 pm

    Just one point on an excellent article by Hugh, there are seven pillars ..the seventh being jihad..but they like to omit that ..five pillars is just another taqiyya for the kuffar

    • Dave J says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 7:49 pm

      Our clueless leaders don’t realize that there are 3 components to Hijra (immigration to spread Islam): Preparation (including stockpiling weapons), Consolidation (establishing a political base), and Jihad (destruction of the host Country culture and its replacement by Sharia.

  14. Dave J says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 7:28 pm

    The fissures and divides among the Muslims is one of the few bright spots in this war of civilizations (actually a war between savagery and civilization). We should return all Muslims to their home countries and subtly encourage them to destroy each other. One side is winning – we aid the other, and so on. They don’t seem to need too much help hating each other. With one proviso – any attack on the West will bring a nuclear strike on their misbegotten heads.

  15. Matthieu Baudin says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 10:01 pm

    ‘What relationships do we want with Muslim countries and with their cultural and religious minorities’ – this I think is the way we should be approaching the issue. We could start by putting human rights at the forefront and giving it the weight it deserves, the emphasis placed on life and limb issues more than on democratic principles or other more abstract political goals. The old cold war alliances are now severely outdated and need to be reworked and re-created to reflect new community expectations for a renewed commitment to human decency and conduct. The new moral expectations that we establish need to be entirely free from the drab and insincere garb of cultural relativism that has clouded our minds for so long.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 1:19 pm

      Perhaps we should do to the Islamic world what we did to the Soviets — a strategy of containment until such time as real freedom of religion and freedom of speech are established in Muslim states.

      • dumbledoresarmy says

        Jan 8, 2016 at 7:45 am

        Yes.

        Separation, and then containment.

        the *only* non-Muslim military incursions into Muslim territory that I would support unhesitatingly would be a/ rescue expeditions to assist the remnant non-Muslim communities who are too small to be able to establish and defend viable sovereign enclaves, to get OUT alive (e.g. Yazidis, Mandaeans, Iraqi and Syrian Christians; Hindus Sikhs and Christians from Pakistan), and b/ massive-force destruction of WMD facilities…e.g. and most obviously, Iran’s nuke program. Re the latter, if the entire non-muslim world understood *exactly* how dangerous nukes will be, sooner or later, in the hands of people who believe that paradise is *only* most certainly obtained by those who “slay and are slain in the cause of ‘allah'”, then both Iran’s and Pakistan’s nuke arsenals would be annihilated in short order by the USA, China and Russia acting in concert to make the world safer for Infidels.

  16. Vae Victis says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 10:15 pm

    I agree entirely with Hugh Fitzgerald, we should, as far as possible, stay on the sidelines in the Middle East, assist both sides in their quest, profit from both.
    We could even assist to mop-up the survivors.
    No one can hate more than a Muslim. They make it a calling, an art. It consumes their every thought, their very being (soul).
    They worship death, misery and destruction.
    We should be doing our very best to assist them on their journey to paradise.

    It could be a win – win scenario for all. They get death, we get life.

  17. Vikram K Chatterjee says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 12:56 am

    I agree, by and large.

    Question: What does Hugh think that we should do about Pakistan’s nukes? Should we threaten to overthrow the rule of the Punjabi military class in Pakistan? If they fear that, they may be eager to give up their nukes or other advanced weaponry.

    If anyone cares, here’s my article exposing Maajid Nawaz as a stealth jihadist:

    https://vkchatterjee.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/maajid-nawaz-stealth-jihadist-exposed/

  18. Lloyd Miller says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 4:56 am

    Be not so sure the Muslim “Oil Weapon” is dead. More likely that the Saudis are using it with a vengeance, keeping the price low until their competitors with their new technologies are crushed. Next they will instruct their “BIG OIL” 5th columns around the world to outlaw fracking, oil sands, etc. in the name of “the environment.”

  19. Jura says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 5:07 am

    And in one more such country, mistrust and hatred between Sunni and Shi’a in Yemen can only deepen. Again, why would that be — from our point of view — a bad thing?

    What about the ongoing war in Syria and Iraq?
    It is only sunni-shiite split that poured there from Iraq, from its sunni parts.
    Hint: Assad is shiite, reigns the predominatly sunni Syria. His opponents are sunni, either FSA or IS.
    Consequence of such war? Watch the news. Especially moronic Europe these days. What about the genocide of non Muslims or non Arabs in the middle East?

  20. nabi ZK (pbum) says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 6:07 am

    Seems like we did stir the pot a bit by putting Shia in control of Iraq. Look at all the chaos and death. When the dust clears we should smash the last man standing. Probably Iran. In the meantime Let’s sell weapons to both sides 🙂

    nabi ZK (pbum)

  21. BC says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 6:53 am

    The answer to why should we worry is very simple Mr Fitzgerald. Refugees. If Arabs were busy tearing their countries apart and remaining there, as for example the English and Scots did for many centuries
    in what is now Britain. The problem now is we have means of travel and in addition people smugglers to speed people on their way. Where do they head tor? Not to their brother Muslims near at hand, some of whom have declared their countries ‘not suitable’ for refugees, but to the countries of the infidel. So much for the myth of Muslim brotherhood. Thus we, with our great humanitarian traditions, are supposed to welcome these people who continually say they view us with contempt!
    There is an exception to the above – Jordan which has accepted large numbers more in fact than their own populations. Significantly Jordan is ruled by a more secular ruler!

  22. David Hayden says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 10:56 am

    I agree with your assessment, Hugh; therefore, I can’t help “enlighten” you. But I’m “all ears,” too.

  23. michael mouse says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 11:58 am

    with the help of the EU rights laws, open borders, the PC brigade and the BBC liberals, Sadiq Khan could become the first muslim layor of London. With imams in the mosques controlling the postal votes of non English speaking muslim immigrants the first muslim lord mayor of London would be a huge PR coup for Islamic recruiters on the net. The fact that there is no allah and sex obsessed muslim men have been promised sex even when dead and islam wants all non believers dead does not seem to worry many people in power especially the leader of the Labour party who is an islamist supporter and Khan’s boss.

  24. eduardo odraude says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 12:29 pm

    To Mr. Fitzgerald,

    Although there might well be strategic advantage for the West if the Islamic world were divided into a much larger number of much smaller states than currently exist, there seems a clear downside. The question is how to foment greater division without creating a vast refugee crisis that might massively increase the Muslim population in the non-Muslim world.

    If the West should become known to have fomented failed Muslim states, many in the West will insist that we take responsibility for the humanitarian crisis that results. “If you break it, you fix it.” Was that Colin Powell? And even if failed states are fomented invisibly, ignorance about and compassion for Muslims in those failed states (and lack of compassion for non-Muslims in infidel states), might well bring huge numbers of Allah’s acolytes into non-Muslim lands.

  25. eduardo odraude says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 1:06 pm

    Perhaps no strategy can be assured to have the desired effects until non-Muslims are sufficiently educated to unite in the view that Muslim refugees must be cared for in their own regions and not brought to non-Muslim lands. Huge numbers of Muslim refugees coming into the non-Muslim world is the frightful risk of Mr. Fitzgerald’s proposed strategy of chaos.

    So perhaps the main job now is for non-Muslims to educate themselves about Islam so as to be able to reliably and accurately inform the public. Otherwise any strategy can lead to disaster produced by those unaware of the totalitarian character of Islam and its core texts.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 1:25 pm

      Mr. Fitzgerald’s only makes sense if it could be combined with a strategy of containment (including caring for refugees in their own lands rather than bringing them here). And there is no consensus on that yet. On that question the dice are still in play in both Europe and the U.S.

      • eduardo odraude says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 1:27 pm

        I meant to say “Mr. Fitzgerald’s policy”, not just “Mr. Fitzgerald’s”

  26. Andrew H. says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 1:10 pm

    I am sure it was an excellent article but too long for me since I know exactly what the world needs to do with Islam. It needs to treat it like a terrible disease from which we distance ourselves and which we try to eradicate. Distancing means deporting Muslims from our lands and not allowing news ones to enter unless they have rejected Islam and need protection from their fundamentalists who kill apostates. If we really had a heaven and an almighty God in heaven he (or she) would bring down a killing disease which would wipe out all the people in Muslim lands and give the world a break.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 1:34 pm

      God may exist but not be almighty or omniscient. Especially if you believe human freedom is real. Check out the theology of the mathematician/philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and logician Charles Hartshorne on the question.

      • eduardo odraude says

        Jan 7, 2016 at 1:40 pm

        The idea that God is omnipotent and omniscient is far stronger in Islam than in other theologies, because Islam conceives God somewhat in the image of an all powerful human tyrant. But God may exist and be the most superlative being in a number of ways (such as compassion) without also being almighty or omniscient. Again, see Hartshorne and Whitehead.

        • eduardo odraude says

          Jan 7, 2016 at 1:52 pm

          If you believe that human beings are really free (or at least sometimes act out of free will), and that their decision-processes are real, then it would seem that God cannot be omniscient. After all, if God were omniscient, God would know in advance the outcome of our decision processes, and that would mean our “decisions” were not truly our decisions, but had in fact all been decided before we were even born. If God is omniscient, that would seem to mean our human decision processes are all a sham. If you don’t believe that, if, rather, you believe human beings truly decide outcomes sometimes, it would seem you cannot believe that God is omniscient, whatever other superlative qualities God may possess.

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