Immigrants or Colonizers?

By Jan McDaniel

We Americans arrived, not as immigrants, but as European colonizers of the North American continent that was already inhabited by an indigenous race, whose ancestors were colonizers from Asia.

This bit of history was recently mentioned by an Israeli columnist who remarked on the irony of President Obama lecturing Prime Minister Netanyahu on where Israel can build settlements, while Obama was speaking from the formerly Iroquois territory of Washington, D.C.

I’m not sure the Iroquois nation extended that far south, but never mind—the point is valid.

The colonization process is underway again, or maybe it is better to say that it never stops.

We of the Western civilization send troops and Predators to Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan to get them, of the Islamic civilization, to reconsider their attacks on us and their neighbors. We advise them, with uneven success, on the creation of new Constitutions intended to embody Western freedoms.

They of the Islamic civilization immigrate to our Western countries to build a colony of believers in order to replace our civilization with theirs.

The indigenous inhabitants of North America recognized an existential threat in the Europeans, fought them, and lost. The indigenous civilization was subjugated by the new dominant civilization. Sometimes the waning civilization chooses not to fight. But either way, one of the big threads of history is the rise and fall of civilizations through colonization.

Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man:

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of
Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

If mankind ever arrives at any universal ideology, the distinction between immigrant and colonizer will disappear. But timing is everything. It is very dangerous to assume that we have arrived at the end of history, or will soon. If we behave as if the universal civilization is just around the corner, and thus do not need to resist Islam, we can be undone by our premature idealism. The issue is spelled out in detail in Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power.

President Obama is pushing America to catch up with Europe’s headlong rush to the end of history and he clearly does not believe that we are being colonized by Islam. What is his motivation? No one knows-- our CEO keeps his cards close--but his Cairo speech unveiled him as the Great Syncretist and he demonstrates interests that reach beyond America. If he serves two presidential terms, he will then be 56 years old. Who would be better positioned to lead a United Nations equipped with serious enforcement powers?

Most Westerners agree with Obama, and have not yet recognized an existential threat from Islam, though some in Britain and The Netherlands and a few in America are starting to react.

Some Muslims view their move to the West only as an attempt to live a better life, not to be terrorists, not as an attempt to change anything about their host country. Islamic law and doctrine are the farthest things from their minds. They are Muslims in name only.

But some of the new colonizers, the ones who run mosques and speak for Islam in the West, understand the history of Islamic colonization. As Solomon and Maqdisi explain in Modern Day Trojan Horse, the process is modeled on Mohammed's Hijra and the conversion of the pagan and Jewish Yathrib into Muslim Medina. The same process was used to convert Indonesia and Maylasia into Islamic states and these colonizers understand that Europe and America are next.

These directors of the Islamization process take money and direction from the Saudi clerical establishment and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some Brotherhood (Ikhwan in Arabic) directions were found in documents uncovered in the investigation for the Holy Land Foundation trial:

The most interesting exhibit is a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum by Mohamed Akram, dated May 22, 1991, where he outlines the Ikhwan vision of the future. He leaves no ambiguity as to the nature of the Ikhwan calling. Under the heading "Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America," he writes:

"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and
'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Douglas Farah,
counterterrorismblog.org

Islamists also understand that the natural process of assimilation can swallow colonizers. That is why Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan publicly told Turkish Muslim citizens of Germany in 2008 that “Assimilation is a crime against humanity."

If you believe that Western and Islamic civilizations are not essentially different, but essentially compatible, then none of this will be convincing.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in Turkey v. Refah that Islamic law is not compatible with Western civilization. If you agree with the Court's judgment, then Muslims in Europe and America are colonists, not immigrants.

History teaches us this: If the Muslim colony continues to grow, what we did to the Iroquois will happen to us.

Murray v. Geithner

Kevin Murray is suing our Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Murray, represented by David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center, claims that the government is violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by allowing AIG to sell sharia compliant insurance products.

AIG is 80% government owned now, so AIG actions are government actions. The suit claims that in offering sharia compliant products, the government is illegally promoting a particular religion, Islam. For more on sharia compliant finance and a copy of the legal documents, go here.

The government filed a motion to dismiss on two grounds, lack of standing and that the government had no intent to promote religion.

U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff recently denied the government motion to dismiss, saying: “In this case, the fact that AIG is largely a secular entity is not dispositive: The question in an as-applied challenge is not whether the entity is of a religious character, but how it spends its grant.” Kendrick, 487 U.S. at 624–25 (Kennedy J., concurring). The suit will go forward.

Given the nature of sharia (Islamic law), sharia compliance in any context is inappropriate in America. That the American government should support sharia in any way is a scandal, and illegal as sedition in addition to violating the Establishment Clause.

Islamic law is illegal in America because, unlike all other religions, the Koran (K. 9: 5-16) contains what is interpreted to be a religious duty on all Muslims to convert all national governments to Islam and does not preclude the use of violence in doing it.

This suit may turn out to be the first shot in the war against sharia in America.


Originally posted on 5/29/09

An Absurd Argument

Over and over, I see and hear the statement that America cannot do something or other because that will make us no different from our enemy. Absurd.

We will always be different from our enemy, even if we betray our best standards, even if we stoop to conduct the enemy uses routinely. Our history is full of examples—detention of Japanese-American citizens springs to mind.

We will always be different from our enemies because when we stop doing something repugnant and illegal by our own standards, we revert to who we have always been. Our history says who we are, not an instance of bad judgment or criminal behavior in the present. Our identity is not fragile and subject to rapid change under stress.

In other words, no country is perfect. Missing the mark of perfection does not change your identity, and it does not mean that you have adopted an “anything goes” attitude. I am absolutely certain that not one of the people who make the absurd argument would apply it to themselves. Mistakes do not define a person, but how the person corrects the mistakes does. Instances of illegal behavior do not define a state, a consistent history of illegality does.

Voltaire had a lot to say about the mistake of making the best the enemy of the good. That is what Americans who dine out on condemning American mistakes in its war with traditional Islam are doing. They would certainly refocus their efforts if they were convinced we were losing.

Why wait until the last ditch? Why not leave the overpopulated ranks of critics and join us infidels against jihad before it becomes necessary for us to win at all cost?

Alan Caruba recently said on this site that it is time to use nuclear weapons against Iran and North Korea because we have no options. Exercising that option would not make us the same as Iran and North Korea any more than removing Saddam Hussein from power made us the same as Saddam’s Iraq.

But we do have options. We have not begun to fight the ideology of traditional Islam that supports the goal of supremacy through jihad.

Because we are unwilling to declare the ideology of our enemy to be illegal in our country, we correctly hesitate at placing Guantanamo prisoners in American prisons. For the same reason, we are unwilling to close American mosques where imams spread the ideology of Islamic supremacy.

The clash between Islam and the West has only gotten worse since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Given the incompatibility of the respective ideologies, only one will survive in its present form. If it comes to a nuclear exchange, we will win. The question is on how many will die in the process.

The best option, from the critics’ point of view, is for us to stop shooting. That will not stop them from killing us. The next best option is to fight back in the ideological war.

Originally posted on 5/28/09

An Invitation to Muslims

If Muslims and non-Muslims ever accept the fact that there is a state of war existing between them, a promising option opens up.

Sunni-Shia fighting is continuous in the Islamic world. The conflict between Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan is about the supremacy of Islamic law. The Persian-Arab divide is explosive. The Syrian Alawites are occasionally attacked as heretics because of their worship of Mary, Sufis and Ahmadiyya are suspect, etc. Muslims living in the West, beyond the reach of an Islamic state with the power to enforce Islamic law, are beginning to challenge the traditional tenets of Islam that are so out of step with modern views of human rights.

These disagreements will damage the unity of Islam no matter what non-Muslims do. But when one group dominates, it will demand the support of all the rest in the battle against the unbeliever, to continue the pursuit of global supremacy for Islam.

The option: We and Islam can remove the cause of the permanent warfare.

Our strategy should be defined as inviting Muslims who reject the goal of Islamic political and religious supremacy through violence to join us against the Muslims who are using violence in seeking it. If this coalition based on mutual respect and equality wins the war against the supremacists, much of the tension between Islam and the rest of the world would be eased.

There would still be issues between Islam and the West over human rights. Islam’s list of rights and ours are different. But with violence removed as an option for spreading the religion, we would have the time to deal with those serious issues as we walk back from the edge of global religious war.

Such an invitation has been issued, with the definition of what it means to reject the doctrine of Islamic supremacy through violence:

We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.

We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.

We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.

We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.

We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.

We call on the governments of the world to:

reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;

eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;

protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;

reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;

and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.

We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.

We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.
We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;

to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;

and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.

Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must choose for themselves.

Released by the delegates to the Secular Islam Summit,
St. Petersburg, Florida on March 5, 2007

Endorsed by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Magdi Allam, Mithal Al-Alusi, Shaker Al-Nabulsi, Nonie Darwish, Afshin Ellian, Shahriar Kabir, Amir Taheri, Wafa Sultan, Hasan Mahmud, Tawfik Hamid, Ibn Warraq, Manda Zand Ervin and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.

Where are the Western leaders who will issue this invitation to end the permanent state of war declared by the believers in Islamic supremacy? Where are the Islamic leaders who will accept it?

Originally posted on 5/25/09

Update 8/9/09: Response to Secular Islam Summit http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015663.php

The Demeanor is the Message

A consistent fact worth noting: Jihadists in the dock are invariably unrepentant, proud of their criminal deeds and aggressive toward the justice system that is judging them. They appear quite certain that their behavior is correct and that those judging them have no right to do so. They frequently wear a calm smile, as if they are in on something and no one else in the courtroom has a clue.

Where does this attitude come from? Ordinary criminals are sometimes repentant, sometimes not. Why are Islamic criminals 100% unrepentant? Are Muslim criminals this defiant in courts of Islamic law?

This is the last sentence of the Fatiha, the very important opening prayer of the Koran, which pious Muslims are obliged to repeat many times daily:

Guide us to the straight path: the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray. [Haleem translation]

The usual interpretation of this verse is that the “straight path” is Islam, “those You have blessed” are Muslims, “those who incur anger” are Jews and “those who have gone astray” are Christians. If a Jew or a Christian said this prayer, it would have a very different meaning. When a Muslim says this prayer at an interfaith meeting with Jews and Christians, are they aware of the Muslim’s meaning?

So starts a divergence of meaning given to words used on both sides of the present war, and an explanation of why the two sides so often seem to be speaking past each other with no common ground. How can non-Muslims understand what Muslims say if commonly used, crucial words do not have the same meaning to both sides?

I have been puzzled for years over knee-jerk charges of racism against those who criticize Islam. My reaction is “What race is Islam?” The penny dropped for me when I read our UN Representative explaining to Muslims that racism is not an appropriate charge because, unlike one’s race, one’s religion can be changed.

But the Muslims charging critics with racism do not see the difference. One’s religion, for them, is no more changeable than one’s race. They do not recognize that a Muslim has the right to change his religion. So of course when Islam is criticized the charge should be racism—you are criticizing an aspect of a Muslim that is unchangeable. Racism is also a handy way to demonize a bothersome critic and place anything he says beyond consideration.

Wolfgang Bruno explains some more results of this divergence of meaning:

Peace: “Peace” in Islam equals submission to the will of Allah through his divine and eternal law, sharia, and the extension of the Dar al-Islam – or 'House of Islam' – to cover the entire world. The absence of sharia is the absence of peace. Since it is the will of Allah that Islam will rule the entire planet, entering non-Muslim lands to subjugate the population and wipe out their corrupt, infidel culture is not seen by Muslims as "waging war," but as spreading peace.

Freedom: Hurriyya, freedom, means freeing all people from being slaves of the laws of men and making them live in perfect slavery, in submission to the will of Allah and his laws.

Religious freedom: Subjugation of non-Muslims to religious apartheid and second class citizenship in their own country under Islamic rule. This option is only available to Christians and Jews, not Hindus, Buddhists or others, who have only the choice between embracing Islam or death. Muslims should practice sharia. Since these laws require the subjugation of non-Muslims, “freedom of religion” for Muslims essentially means the freedom to make others unfree.

Jihad: Peaceful, inner struggle that has killed up to 80 million people in the Indian subcontinent alone, and enslaved or killed tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people on three continents for 1350 years. It can also be violent, but only for defensive purposes, such as the Muslims who defended their way from the Arabian Peninsula to the borders of China, wiping out the indigenous cultures along the way.

Aggression: When non-Muslims do anything to preserve their culture and resist the Islamization of their country. Even when this “aggression” is non-violent, such as publishing a cartoon critical of Islam, this intolerable insult to Islamic supremacy on earth can be answered with violence by Muslims. Since a refusal to submit to sharia is a rebellion against Allah, the very existence of non-Muslim communities can be viewed as an act of aggression.

Do not let Mr. Bruno’s tone of grim humor mislead you. His assessment is spot on, and is no joke. I am told, and I believe, that some misunderstandings are simply due to the difficulty of translating from the Arabic.

The root of the problem comes from the necessity for early Muslims to differentiate Islam from Judaism and Christianity and to demonstrate Islam’s superiority. They did this by simultaneously absorbing Jewish and Christian ideas and leaders and rejecting the legitimacy of the religions:
• Moses and Jesus are accepted prophets in Islam.
• Jews and Christians have incurred anger and gone astray.

Doublespeak was present from the inception of Islam.

The next time you hear or read a pious Muslim call for peace and justice, remember that these words have special meaning to that Muslim. Peace and justice can only be attained by those who are subject to Islamic law. Everyone who lives under the rule of infidels is in the house of war and subjected to injustice; peace and justice are established when Islamic law is supreme.

Ask a pious Muslim to explain to you the laws that determine to whom he can offer the traditional Islamic greeting “Peace be upon you.” If you get a straight answer, you will be told that peace is to be offered only to those under Islamic law and known infidels may not be greeted with that phrase.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four featured three examples of how deliberate manipulation of language works to impose a desired mental attitude in the target audience:
• War is Peace
• Freedom is Slavery
• Ignorance is Strength
From the Western point of view, all three reversals of meaning are present in Islamic law.

The Muslim accused of a crime by an infidel state can only be contemptuous and amused by those who think they are speaking his language.


Originally posted on 5/24/09

Abuse of Muslims

"Guantanamo is used by al-Qaida as a symbol of American abuse of Muslims and is fanning the flames of anti-Americanism around the world," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.
Andrew Taylor, Associated Press, 5/20/09

It must be obvious that we are losing the propaganda war to al Qaeda.

We have been backed into a corner with few options. Capturing enemy combatants can never meet the legal standards of criminal law. Requiring soldiers to be policemen will not work. Nor will handing veto power over military operations to lawyers.

Fighting a war against an enemy dressed as a civilian, police ally or in our uniform is difficult under any conditions, but impossible under present rules of engagement.

We need to make the enemy identifiable. Our intuition tells us that most of the inmates of Guantanamo are enemies. So why is an American senator so troubled at their incarceration? Why is there a gap between what we intuitively understand and our ability to act on that understanding?

Look at the problem of enemy identification from the enemy’s point of view. He is standing up shouting, waving his arms identifying himself as our enemy. We can’t see him.

He marches in the streets carrying signs that identify him as our enemy. He has entire television stations and websites that broadcast day and night one message—I am your enemy. We can’t see him.

Our enemy is identified by what he believes. He proudly identifies himself when he announces his beliefs. We can’t hear him.

What is the content of the unspoken fear of bringing Guantanamo inmates to American prisons? It is that they will spread their beliefs in our prison populations. This infection is spreading in Britain and to some extent in America. From the enemy point of view, time spent in Guantanamo confers high status.

Of course we don’t want the rock stars of jihad preaching in our prisons. We can’t compete with them. That would identify Islamic teachings as the enemy’s ideology, and we are officially not at war with any part of Islam.

If we stand mute while the enemy preaches, we lose the propaganda war and the enemy gains recruits. We have a message too. It has proven to be more attractive than the enemy’s. That’s why there is a long line of people wanting to come to America, and no line to get into countries governed by the enemy’s message.

But if we refuse to identify the enemy, our message remains unspoken.

We must confront the ideology of Islamic supremacy through violence. Anyone who preaches or acts on it is our enemy. All Muslims who believe it should not be part of their religion are our allies.

Originally posted on 5/21/09

Intimidation

Tony Blankley,washingtontimes.com, 5/19/09, commenting on a Pew poll of Palestinians that showed they did not believe they could live side by side with a Jewish Israel, 77% to 16%:

Keep in mind, also, that after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a Sinai peace treaty with Israel, in October 1981 he was assassinated during a military parade in Cairo. A fatwa authorizing the assassination had been issued by Omar Abdel-Rahman, a cleric later convicted in the United States for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

It would take an unusually courageous leader to sign a peace treaty and his own death warrant in one document.

The same poll showed the Israeli population did believe they could live side by side with a Muslim Palestinian state, 61% to 31%.

I can think of two reasons why the poll came out as it did. One is the unique position Jews hold in Islamic law. There is a deep current of Jew hatred in Islam.

The second is intimidation. That is a nice word for politics by murder. This kind of intimidation has been used by both sides. But Israel reacted differently to it than the Palestinians did. After the murder of Rabin in 1995, Israel did not see a continuing rash of murders leading to civil war.

Politics by murder has become standard among the Palestinians. The larger point of Blankley’s article is that the two state solution is doomed on both sides. The right of return provision in the Arab plan dooms Israel to a Muslim majority. The Palestinian leader who signs a peace treaty with a Jewish Israel would have to be very confident in his bodyguards. The two state solution that would actually work, Jewish Israel and Muslim Jordan, is not seriously considered, and could not be implemented without American aid.

But most Americans and Israelis see their interests diverging because of the following assumptions:
• Americans need to repair their image with the Muslim world which is angry because of American support of Israel.
• Israelis need to protect themselves from an overt Iranian threat but cannot do so without disrupting the American image building program.

But in fact, America and Israel are facing identical problems. America is trying to assure no further attacks from the forces of traditional Islam, Israel is doing the same. Both countries are trying to find some way to security without full scale war against an Islamic ideology with global ambitions.

No one wants full scale war, but how to avoid it? Our two previous struggles against ideologies with global ambitions are instructive.

In World War II, it is probable that global conflict was inevitable. Too many people became convinced that the war machine of Germany was unstoppable. The Germans built a façade of invincibility and the Italians and Japanese were convinced. Many more countries were convinced enough to sit the conflict out, not taking sides.

In the Cold War, unlimited warfare was avoided by the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union caused by the arms race.

The WWII solution remains the final resort for America and Israel. The Cold War solution will not work. The forces of traditional Islam are too well funded to go broke with the war model they are using. There is one remaining approach that might avoid unlimited warfare. It is the identification of the ideology of traditional Islam as the marker of our enemy and a determined attack on that ideology.

The political will does not exist in either America or Israel to implement an ideological attack on traditional Islam. That political will is not likely to appear until more Americans and Israelis die at the hands of jihadists. Our short term future is more politics by murder.

Originally posted on 5/20/09

What Are They Thinking?

Deny and keep denying.

That’s the tactic some Muslims use today when faced with the chasm between modern human rights standards and the standards of traditional Islam. They also use it to disguise the fact that Islamic law constitutes an open-ended declaration of war against all non-Muslims.

Here are some of the traditional Islamic teachings that we non-Muslims are now being told we have misunderstood due to our cross-cultural insensitivity and inability to read Arabic:

• Wife beating and other forms of misogyny (female circumcision, honor killings)
• Spreading Islam by military conquest (offensive Jihad)
• Humiliation of conquered Christians and Jews (Dhimmitude)
• Muslims should not take non-Muslims as friends
• Mohammed’s nine-year-old wife
• The word “Islam” means “to submit” (to Allah’s will)
• The 9/11 attacks were permissible jihad
• It is Allah’s will for Islam to become dominant everywhere and every Muslim’s duty is to advance this goal; resistance to this imperative is injustice and impiety

The idea is to deny that these teachings are supported in Islamic law and that something is wrong with us if we ever got that impression.

The latest example of this tactic is The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali. Mrs. Ali-Karamali has impressive credentials—a J.D. from Stanford, a graduate degree in Islamic law from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

As Kamala points out here, her charm, wit and intelligence are not enough to overcome stubborn facts. You may think that Mohammed’s love life seems wildly out of place on a list of teachings which have serious implications for non-Muslim Americans. Why would it even be there? It’s there because Mohammed is the model Muslim, whose every action and opinion is law. If he did it in seventh century Arabia, it is right today in America.

So, why not say that what he did was right or at least acceptable in his time, but no longer?

Because questioning the appropriateness of using Mohammed’s behavior in seventh century Arabia as a guide for how Muslims should behave today opens the floodgates of reform. Are his commands to slay the unbeliever still appropriate when there are more than a billion Muslims in the world? Are his commands that prohibit gold ornaments, dogs, wine, representational art, pork, friendship with non-Muslims, etc. still reasonable?

I believe traditional Muslims will do everything they can to avoid reform. Here’s why.

Since the defeat of Islamic forces at Vienna on September 11 and 12, 1683, the Middle Eastern Islamic world has shrunk in size and influence. An oil-funded, resurgent, irredentist Islam is trying to reverse that trend. For them, 9/11 is the beginning of payback for 318 years of losses. They want their empire back. They see this war as a defensive effort to overcome and roll back the centuries of loss they have suffered and will continue to suffer as globalization and its attendant secularization force all traditional societies into a defensive position.

The West is defending itself against this effort -- unwilling, even if able, to recall the forces of globalization. What we have is a war in which both sides consider themselves to be on defense.

Real Islamic reform would stop the war. But traditional Muslims think they are winning and see no reason to reform. Soothing words by Mrs. Ali-Karamali, supported in various degrees by John Esposito, Khaled El Fadl, Karen Armstrong, Tariq Ramadan, Timothy Garton Ash, Ian Buruma and many American academic heavyweights are meant to lull us into believing reform is unnecessary. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Geert Wilders, Paul Berman, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Spencer, Pascal Bruckner, Ibn Warraq, Nonie Darwish, Magdi Allam, Wafa Sultan, Amir Taheri, Brigitte Gabriel and other informed heavyweights from all parts of the political spectrum are not lulled. Some of these disputants met in debate on these issues here.

Mrs. Ali-Karamali evidently hopes we will believe without any evidence whatsoever that her Westernized interpretation of Islamic law will have some effect on the people in the Middle East who actually are in control of the definition of Islamic law and are keeping the war going. They feel besieged and surrounded by the forces of globalization, democratization and secularization in a way Mrs. Ali-Karamali does not and perhaps never has, living in America. She forgets that the colonist does not define the empire.
The tail does not wag the elephant.

But who knows? I could be wrong. Perhaps later she will see the need for the reform that will end up defining the empire. Changed circumstances can change minds. It has happened to colonists in America.

What I cannot understand is why anyone would think that traditional Islam will be successful in America without deep reform. What are they thinking? That America will ever adopt the goal of being more like Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran or Pakistan, the states where Islamic law is most accepted?

Do they really think they can bring a medieval desert society’s standards to 21st century America and no one will notice? Granted, the elites of America and most Western countries seem to be having some problem finding their sense of cultural identity. But do they imagine that the middle and working classes of America, the vast majority of the population, are going to stand still and allow this?

Do they think the women of America are going to surrender all they have gained in the last 90 years? Do they think gay America will welcome a belief that holds them to be criminal because of their sexual preference? Most amazing of all, do they think that a religion that defines itself everywhere as anti-Western and anti-American can be at home here in that hostile form?

It’s possible that an overwhelming sense of cultural superiority and entitlement blinds them to these realities. Without reform, it is inevitable that the violent people in their religion will push non-Muslim Americans too far.

My sense of the situation is that it would not take very much right now.

Originally posted on 5/16/09

Defining the Enemy

Words matter. They matter more than usual when defining an enemy in a war.

Our enemy has had no problem defining the enemy. Their enemy is everyone who opposes the spread of Islam. The West is high on that list because of its military and economic power and because it is the engine of globalization. Globalization is the organism that carries the pathogens that will transform or destroy traditional Islam and other tribal, pre-modern ideologies: capitalism, democracy and secularism.

We do have a problem defining our enemy. Here is a list of proposed names for our enemy that I see every day on the internet, arranged from the least specific (least likely to inspire political backlash) and least inclusive to the most specific and inclusive:

Criminals
Extremists, Terrorists
Radical Islam, Political Islam
Islamists, Fundamentalists
Traditional Islam
Islam

Another characteristic of this list is that it implies a response level appropriate to the enemy definition. If the enemies are criminals with no ideology that connects them, then we need do nothing in addition to business as usual—catch them and send them to jail and the problem is solved.

If the whole religion of Islam is identified as the enemy, the response cannot be business as usual and World War III is upon us.

I refer to Radical Islam, Islamism and Traditional Islam as the enemy in generalized contexts, but when being specific I use Traditional Islam, for the following reason:

The Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam:

We are advocating on behalf of all humanity, including Muslims who are themselves victims of Radical Islam. This group will never claim that Islam as a religion is inherently radical. We will take action against Radical Islam based upon concrete political grounds only.
http://hrcari.wordpress.com/about/

The only criticism I have of that statement is that it does not address the theological source of Radical and Political Islam. That source is traditional Islamic law.

Those who describe the problem in Islam as Radical and Political usually trace it back to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1929) and the writings of Sayyid Qutb, 1906-1966. What they miss when they say that today’s problem only appeared in the 20th century is that Qutb got his ideas from that influential Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who was born in 1263 and died in 1328.

None of Qutb’s ideas were new to him or Islam:
• Separation of religion and state should not be allowed.
• The use of force is allowed to overthrow non-Islamic governments (sedition).
• The use of takfir — the Muslim equivalent of excommunication -- which carries a death sentence, is allowed.

My conclusion is that Islam must be reformed to remove traditional Islamic law that threatens non-Muslims. Our present problems with Islam did not start in the 20th century.

Originally posted on 5/16/09

Occidentalism

Proponents of free markets, limited government, limited immigration, individual liberties, national pride and patriotism have been painted into a corner and described as opponents of multiculturalism.

We should stop wearing that label for the following reasons:

• We don’t in fact oppose multiculturalism. No one has a problem with the fact that America has more than one cultural group. We settled that issue long ago.

• We don’t even oppose cultural relativism entirely. We don’t care if South Pacific Islanders have a different view of cultural values, so long as they don’t try to impose them on us. Live and let live. We do and should reject any notion that our culture is just one among many, all of which are equally valuable and welcome to become part of our multiculture without change. If South Pacific Islanders come to live here, they will have some adjustments to make, and we don’t apologize for that.

• What we actually oppose is the leftist-Islamist alliance called Occidentalism

Occidentalism is the hatred of all things of Western culture, especially capitalism. It has a long history, but the present mixture of haters is composed of:

• Bitter-end socialists who think the wrong side won the Cold War
• Disaffected Westerners whose every act is motivated by shame over racial, colonial and imperialistic mistakes made in the past by the West
• Islamists.

An alliance of temporary convenience if ever there was one. The holy text for Occidentalists is Edward Said’s Orientalism.

The leftist-Islamist coalition has defined the Culture War in a way that we should reject. We don’t want to return to nineteenth century America. We don’t want to return to a society dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. We want Americans to be proud of America as it is now and of its history and traditions, mistakes and all. What we should resist is the message that America has been bad in the past, but can become something good in the future if it changes a lot.

We want to reverse the changes that message has brought about.

• We have to show how historically wrong it is to say our culture is just one among many, no better, no worse.
• We need to reverse the trend against patriotism and pride in our nation’s history and traditions.
• We have to learn to say no to illegal immigration and make it stick. It might also be a good idea to slow down legal immigration to give us some time to absorb.
• We must re-introduce the teaching of American history in our schools in a way that produces citizens who are proud to be American right now. We must teach world history in a way that shows liberal democracy to be a vast improvement when compared to the ways societies have been organized in the past.
• We must resist the trend that places Spanish on the same level as English.

We should resist the call to follow Europe’s lead in socialism and cultural relativism, especially in its acceptance of Islamic law. But most of all we should oppose Occidentalism. We should defend the culture of the Enlightenment, encourage national pride and patriotism. The West is the only part of the world where national pride and patriotism are not openly and enthusiastically celebrated.

Think long and hard about why that is true.

Originally posted on 5/15/09

Saudi Blowback

We see many instances of the West’s contradictory efforts to respond to the assault from traditional Islam.

Traditional Islam has the same problem.

The Saudi government—a family leading a tribe with a flag—is not always on the same page as its Wahhabist clergy. Pakistan is an example.

The Saudi government has been building and staffing schools in Pakistan for some time with the goal of creating public demand for the Pakistani government to enforce more Islamic law. The Saudi clergy want this effort to create a Pakistan that more closely resembles Saudi society. The Saudis have the same program in Bosnia—and America, England, etc.

Rachel Eherenfeld, in the 5/12/09 Forbes, says that the total Saudi aid to Pakistan since the Taliban incursion caused massive displacement has been 150 tons of dates, while so far in 2009 has given the Palestinians almost $2 billion.

Maybe the reluctant aid means nothing. Maybe they are assuming that America will foot the bill. But maybe they see a monster of their creation and are reluctant to feed it very much.

A bin Laden-friendly Taliban in control of Pakistan’s nukes has to be a recurring Saudi nightmare.


Originally posted on 5/14/09