Posted on 12/12/2014 11:53:33 AM PST by Kaslin
In a remarkable but thus-far unnoticed address on Dec. 5, Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain (an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf and home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet), candidly analyzed the Islamist enemy and suggested important ways to fight it.
He has much to teach Westerners (starting with his hapless UK counterpart, Crown Prince Charles), if only we would listen. Yes, some Western leaders speak about confronting the Islamist ideology, but the majority avoids this issue by resorting to euphemism, obfuscation, and cowardice. Most frustrating are those leaders (like Tony Blair) who deliver powerful speeches without follow-through.
Prince Salman, 45 and widely acknowledged to be the Bahraini royal family's principal reformer, opens his remarks by addressing the inaccuracy of the phrase, "War on Terror." The time has come, he says "for us to get rid of" a term that dates back to 9/11. "It is a bit misleading, it is not the entirety and the totality of our conflict" but merely a "tool" and a tactic.
He goes on in flawless English to place the current conflict in historical context: "If I think back in the last century, we faced a very different foe. We faced communism and we faced it together. But when we faced communism we understood it as an ideology. Terrorism is not an ideology."
He notes that "we are not only fighting terrorists, we are fighting theocrats." As Salman uses this term, theocrats are men "placed at the top of a religious ideology who [have] the power by religious edict to strip someone … of their hereafter – and use [religious power] for political gains." They are also tyrants, isolationists, and misogynists who will need to be fought "for a very long time." He scorns them for being "very much like the seventeenth century" and having "no place in our modern twenty-first" century.
He urges us "to discard the term 'War on Terror' and focus instead on the real threat, which is the rise of these evil theocracies"; to this end, he proposes to replace "War on Terror" with his formulation: a "War on Theocrats." This concept, he hopes, will make it possible to "start to put together the military, social, and political – and maybe even economic – policies in a holistic manner to counter this, as we did with communism." In perhaps the outstanding line of the speech, he states that "it is the ideology itself that must be combatted. It must be named, it must be shamed, it must be contained, and eventually it must be defeated."
So far, perfect. But Salman avoids the bitter reality that the "twisted" and "barbaric" ideology he describes is specifically Islamic and the theocrats are all Muslim: "this war that we are engaged in cannot be against Islam, … Christianity, … Judaism, … Buddhism." So, when naming this ideology, Salman dithers and generalizes. He proffers an inept neologism ("theo-crism"), then harkens back to World War II for "fascist theocracy." He implicitly rejects "Islamism," saying he does not want a "debate about certain political parties, whether they're Islamist or not."
I submit that Islamism is precisely the term he seeks for the enemy ideology; and we are engaged in a "War on Islamism." Salman understands the problem well –the transformation of Islam into a totalitarian ideology. But he seeks refuge in the pretense that Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism all share this affliction. Better that he – and other forthright Muslims – accept the ineluctable reality that Islam alone contains a totalitarian temptation.
On the positive side, Salman's remarks fit into a growing trend among Muslim politicians directly to confront the Islamist danger. Two recent examples:
· In an important conceptual breakthrough, the nearby United Arab Emirates government has placed theCouncil on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and many other non-violent groups on its terrorism list on the grounds that they engage in incitement, funding, and the other precursors of terrorism.
· The government of Egypt issued an INTERPOL arrest bulletin for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 88, the hugely influential spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, for "incitement and assistance to commit intentional murder, helping … prisoners to escape, arson, vandalism and theft."
This new tendency has great importance. As I often say, radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution. Now, we may add another influential leader, indeed a crown prince, to the ranks of those Muslims who wish to find a solution.
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Well he is not long on this earth ..... I am sure the islamic nutbars will find a way to “quiet him”...
If you like your head....sorry, you won’t be keeping it, Princie.
Poor fellow, he sounded very sensible. I hope he has good and loyal security l.
Brave man,,
Salman's statement is true and clear. He cannot clarify it any further without putting his life in grave danger.
Show me another national leader with the sole exception of Bibi Netanyahu who has comparable courage.
Very interesting. The Al-Khalifa family were always moderate muslims. I lived in Bahrain in the 80’s when his grandfather (?) was the Amir. The elder Al-Khalifa had quite the eye for western women. He had a small house on a private beach and only white folks were allowed (besides him) on that beach. He used to sit out on his little porch and pick a hot one out, ask her to come up and visit, and if she was “compliant”, she left with a Rolex watch. It was a widely known “secret”.
“....Western leaders speak about confronting the Islamist ideology, but the majority avoids this issue by resorting to euphemism, obfuscation, and cowardice.”
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Hey you timid congress critters and MSM “reporters”, do you hear what this Muslim prince is saying?
He is way ahead of all of you on that curve.
Take off the kneepads and unpucker your lips when addressing Islam.
It ain’t no ROP, y’all hear?
Talking about security guards — many Muslim princes and sheikhs have Christian body guards because they know that they can trust them in favor of the muzzies who just might stab them in the back.
YES, he is.
He IS a prince who knows what's right and wrong.
Also WE westerners are sucking out his country's ONLY natural resource. He KNOWS that the KSA has only 200 more years of petroleum. After that they are on their own.
They spend a ton of money educating their people, but that won't be enough as not EVERYONE there can be, or even should be, educated much beyond a high school level.
They need engineers, of all kinds. THAT is a horse camel of a different color.
P.S. They DON'T need "urban" engineers, like many women have decided to do. They need PETROLEUM and MECHANICAL engineers.
Women STILL aren't becoming engineers, other than "urban engineers" (parks and gardens)
biological and biosyststems (whatever that is)
biomedical (whatever that is)
environmental (whatever that is)
food (whatever that entails)
systems (almost 100% women already, desk job)
engineering chemistry (??)
geomatics (mapping, almost all men for some reason)
mineral (huh?)
plastics (playground equipment)
MOST engineering that is worth anything requires advanced math WAY beyond calculus. Most women don't go any farther than trig.
Side note: My husband had a professor of this particular wiggy math. Everyone in the class, all ten MEN, called him GOD. They did so because he had a great white mane of hair, a slow, methodical, booming, clear basso profundo voice and his opening statement in class was: "I will make this SO clear that EVEN your MOTHER-IN-LAW will be able to understand."
When I was there I remember that some EAST GERMAN soldiers were used.
The KSA also used a South Korean construction/military group, called Rae Dik Dae Lim, to guard the on-shore petroleum and gas wells.
King Abdullah can afford to hire the best.
By the way, FYI, "Abdullah" means "slave of Allah."
I never liked the term radical to describe Islamists who are following Islam as written.
Radical implies to many people that the people described as radicals are somehow doing something contrary to the basic beliefs of Islam.
Calling them radicals would be like describing a good Samaritan deed done by a Christian as a radical act.
Moderate Muslims can't change the basics of the religion because it is set in stone in the Koran and Hadiths.
There just isn't any wiggle room to contort and distort Islam to make it more palatable to today's secular leaning why can't we all get along societies. - Tom
*snicker* Sounds like the man was ‘living the dream’ of any guy on the planet.
I hope you have a great security team, because you’ll NEED them since ISIS will kill you... (ISIS beheaded 4 Christian kids for not converting to Islam.)
Pimpin’!
Jamal?
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