Posted on 10/26/2002 6:47:21 AM PDT by Tancred
EU President Moeller said it would work with poorer countries to improve human rights, their economies and education systems to counter Islamic extremism
BRUSSELS - The European Union has warned of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, saying that over a year after the Sept 11 attacks, no one could claim that the international war on terror had been won.
'We are looking into a strategic threat which could take - and it will - the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years,' said Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
'One year has already passed and nobody can say that anybody has won a war against terrorism,' he added, referring to the US-led campaign against Al-Qaeda.
Mr Moeller called Islamic fundamentalism totalitarian and compared its spread to the growth of Nazism and Communism in Europe.
'Islamic fundamentalism is a sort of totalitarianism,' he said.
'It's not only in the Islamic world you have that, we had that in Europe, in the 1930s we had the fundamentalism of Nazism and we had Communism.'
Speaking after dinner talks among EU leaders at the opening of a summit in Brussels, Mr Moeller said that European leaders had discussed the fear of Islamic fundamentalism in Asia, nearly two weeks after a bomb attack in Bali killed over 180 people.
'Perhaps we are seeing a clash of civilisation. We will do anything to avoid a clash of civilisation,' he added.
He said the EU would work with poorer countries to improve human rights and develop their economies and education systems to counter the spread of Islamic extremism.
'It is important that we stabilise the weaker governments, states and democracies,' the Danish minister said.
Mr Moeller said the taking of hundreds of hostages by Chechen rebels in a Moscow theatre was a 'horrific event' that had 'cast a grim shadow' over the EU talks.
He said the EU had to help moderate Muslims fight against fundamentalism.
'Islam is not terrorism,' he said. 'The problem of Islamic fundamentalists is that they read the Quran in a way that is not acceptable to most Muslims.'
Mr Moeller's remarks coincided with a report in London of the arrest of a radical Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador' in Europe.
The arrest on Wednesday was the 12th under British anti-terrorist laws that allow some foreign suspects to be jailed indefinitely without trial.
When Home Secretary David Blunkett announced it to the House of Commons on Thursday, he refused to provide any details.
But in a front-page story yesterday, The Times of London said the man arrested was Abu Qutadah, a cleric who lived freely in Britain with refugee status, despite suspected links to Osama and his Al-Qaeda network, before reportedly slipping past heavy surveillance and disappearing about 10 months ago.
Qutada was wanted in Jordan on terror-related charges, and was described by a Spanish judge as the spiritual leader of Osama's militant network in Europe.
The Times said German, Italian and French intelligence agencies had also collected evidence against him.
The muslim extremists will certainly see how antisocial their actions are and will find other, much more positive and acceptable, outlets for their zeal and for all that Saudi money they will continue to receive.
In fact, I don't understand why the Eurinals have not already begun the necessary steps to establish a Muslem state in the center of Europe, made up of pieces of France, Germany and, maybe, some of those itty-bitty but really arrogant places. Once a legitimate Muslim state is in place, run by it's own Muslim Authority, things will definitely begin to smooth out.
Or perhaps he should just wait for Tivoli Gardens to disappear like the Towers?
What did we (in America) learn from September 11, 2001 and the deaths of 3,000 people. I am tempted to admit: Absolutely nothing.
Among the many unlearned lessons of Day-Which-Will-Live-In-Infamy-II-- the necessity to control our borders, the need for a patriotic renewal and the importance of combating multiculturalism -- the most significant is the nature of Islam. You will note that I do not say militant Islam, or radical Islam, or Islamic extremism or other such weasel words – but Islam, period.
Every one of the hijackers who flew airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were professing and practicing Moslems, as is Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda terrorist network, is based in Moslem countries and supported financially by the so called pious Moslem leadership of Saudi Arabia.
The overwhelming majority of Moslem religious authorities who have spoken out on the subject, including those at the main mosque in Mecca and Egypt’s prestigious Al Azar University, either endorse or rationalize acts of terrorism. On a day when Americans were incinerated or buried under tons of rubble, Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia, celebrated in the streets.
Sept. 11 was one chapter in a 1400-year jihad. Every day, the World Trade Center massacre is reenacted on a smaller scale somewhere in the world. Jewish women and children are burned alive in a bus in Israel. A missionary is beheaded in the Philippines, gunmen shoot up a church in Pakistan (deliberately firing into the prostrate bodies of women trying to shield their children). Ancient monasteries and convents are destroyed in Kosovo. Women are sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, Hindus are murdered in the Kashmir. In Denmark, the Muslim community there has put a $30,000 bounty on the heads of Jews and those who support Israel. Nuns are beheaded in Baghdad, Christians in Sudan are forced into slavery, and in Britain, Islam openly states it is going to take over not only the UK, but the whole world -- and the beat goes on.
Genocide in the Sudan, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, religious persecution in Saudi Arabia, calls for another holocaust in mosques from Mecca to Gaza, the imposition of Islamic law in Nigeria, forced conversions in Indonesia, synagogues burned in France, Jews attacked across Europe – these are everyday events, as Third World and much of the First slowly turns Islamic green.
Sadly our leaders, from President Bush on down, insist on peddling the absurdity that Islam is a religion of peace – a creed of kindness and benevolence tragically and inexplicably corrupted by fanatics.
Why is the leadership of the West reluctant to confront manifest reality? The reason lies partly with our absurd foreign policy. We have declared certain Moslem nations to be our loyal allies – including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. We would not want to offend these dear friends by saying something unflattering about their bloody, butcherly, dark ages faith.
Americans are naturally benevolent. Most of us are taught from childhood that is religion is good (and it does not matter which religion). As long as little Johnny believes in God and goodness, it’s inconsequential whether he lights candles, wears a skull cap to services or prays in the direction of Mecca.
This works with every religion except Islam.
Consider the following: Of the three major western religions: one was started by a lawgiver who helped to free slaves; one by a man of peace; the last one by a man who loved war and having sex with children. Mohammed not only led men into battle, he enjoyed marrying girls as young as six years old (it is in the Koran). The essence of his message is sick and disgusting. A holy war where you slaughter your enemies, while at the same time encouraging followers to have sex with the children they capture (as he did) for the glory of Allah. He even advised his followers to negotiate false peace treaties in order to lull their enemies.
For almost 1,400 years, that has been the reality of Islam. Within a century after the death of Mohammed, Islam spread throughout the Middle East and across North Africa. It overran the Iberian peninsula and was finally stopped in southern France. It spread eastward as far as the southern Philippines. It was not propagated by fresh-faced young men knocking on doors and announcing: “Hello. I’m from your local mosque. Have you considered the Koran?” It was and is spread by force – conversion by the sword or death. This is still in practice today.
Some will respond that all religions go through periods of violence, usually in their infancy. Christianity had its crusades and Inquisition, its forced conversions and expulsions. The evil committed in the name of Christ happened centuries ago. The evil committed in the name of the Prophet is going on now, as you read these words. Of 22 conflicts in the Third World, 20 involve Moslems versus someone else. Coincidence? In his brilliant book, “Clash of Cultures and the Remaking of World Order,” Samuel Huntington speaks of Islam’s “bloody borders.”
There is no Methodist Jihad, no Jewish Hasidic holy warriors, no Buddhist monk wanting to have 72 virgins waiting for him after a suicide bombing, no Hindu Holy men plotting to blow up people, no Southern Baptist suicide bombers, no Mormon elders preaching the annihilation of members of other faiths.
Islam is a warrior religion – the perfect vessel for fanatics, the violence-prone, the envious and haters of all stripes. This is one reason why Islam is making so many converts among the peaceable denizens of our prison system.
Still, much of the West is addicted to a fairy-tale version of Islam. Christian and Jewish clergy fall all over themselves to have interfaith services with imams. Representatives of Moslem groups are invited to the White House. The president signs a Ramadan declaration. In California, public schools ask children to role-play at being Moslems. Our universities take carefully selected verses from the Koran and present them as the essence of the faith. All that’s needed is a Moslem character on “Sesame Street.” Look – it’s the Jihad Monster!
This perspective engenders a fatally false sense of security. Imagine, in 1940, Winston Churchill taking to the airwaves to announce “Nazism is an ideology of peace which, regrettably, has been perverted by a few fanatics like Hitler and Goebbels. But most storm troopers and SS men are fine follows – your friends and neighbors.”
For the first thousand years of its history – from the death of Mohammad to the 17th. century decline of the Ottoman empire, Islam was an expansionist force. For the next 300 years, as the West rose to preeminence, Islam receded. For the past four decades – fueled by Arab oil wealth, a surplus population in the Middle East, the waning of the West and the rise of more virulent strains of the faith (Shiism, Wahhabism, Sunni fundamentalism) – Islam is expanding once more.
Due to Moslem immigration and aggressive proselytizing, Islam is being exported to the West. Moslem populations are burgeoning throughout Western Europe. (In southern France, there are more mosques than churches.) In Judeo-Christian America, Islam is the fastest growing religion. It is also spreading down the coast of West Africa, through the Balkans (after Serbia, Macedonia is the next target) and up from Mindanao in the Philippines.
Wherever it comes, Islam brings its delightful customs – child marriages, female circumcisions, rabid hatred toward Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and every other non-muslim, terrorism and support for terrorism and a virulent intolerance of other faiths.
Am I suggesting we declare war on over 1 billion million Moslems? The question is moot – Islam has declared war on the rest of the human race. When one side knows it’s at war and the other thinks peace and brotherhood prevail, guess who wins?
Ultimately, it is not about Jews in Israel, or Orthodox Serbs in Kosovo, or Hindus in Kashmir, Buddhists in Thailand, or Maronite Catholics in Lebanon, Taoists in China, or Christians in Sudan and Nigeria, but all of us. As Ben Franklin would have it – Either we will hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately.
You can't eradicate a hornets nest with a fly swatter, you have to take the battle to the hive. We can't fight the fringes of these terrorists and expect to defeat them, nor can we defeat them with flowery discourse.
Terrorism is a form of guerilla warfare, which relies on a certain cynical political dynamic to gather support where previously there was little. The guerillas claim to speak for vast multitudes who in fact have never voted for them and in practice do not act on the same principles. So much so that the guerillas when in power need tyrannical repression to enforce their party line. What the guerillas try to do is *appear* as the representatives of this or that identity group in the eyes of outside enemies they attack. They want those outside enemies to retaliate against the entire identity group they claim to speak for. That makes them the de facto representatives of their own group, and gives moderates within that group no place to stand. They count on the unifying power of an outside enemy, whose bigotry they are in fact counting on to elicite this reaction.
Aim is everything in guerilla war. You have to seperate the guerillas from the populace they move among, targeting the already politicized but not non-hostile others. You have to let them decide which side they are on by their practical choice to oppose you or not, and then hold them accountable for the decision they each make. If you don't, new politicized recruits come in as fast as you deal with the old diehards. If you do, you cut off the stream of recruitment and simultaneously drain the pool of diehards by aimed direct military action. This is the logic of guerilla war, whether anyone finds it convenient or not. There is a way to lose a guerilla war, and a way to win one. And you don't win them by lumping all "gooks" together and deciding to kill them all. That way lies only domestic division over the horror of such a course of action and united enemies reacting to it without any real choice but to side with the guerillas. That way lies sorrow, in other words.
Yes, Islam is a false religion, so what else is new? Everyone knows that almost every religion in the world is false, some would say every. Yes, Islam can be used to justify any sort of crime, so what else is new? Every religion on earth has at one time or another been used to justify every crime there is. We live with false religions used to justify crimes because we live in the real world. Those who imagine that all false religions can be exterminated and that after such a grand successful crime all further crime would cease in religious uniformity are exactly the nutjobs that got us here - that is exactly the opinion of the Islamic terrorists themselves. Which is a great reason to fight them to the death with all the guile we can muster, but not any reason to emulate them in aim or method. Which is what the bigots imagining unflowery discourse will somehow magically defeat them are actually doing, whether they realize it or not.
There is a dulling drum-beat that this terrorist problem is from a minority camp of radical Islamic fundamentalists. But where do we find statements of outrage and denunciation from the Islamic community? Which mosques and imams in Europe condemn these terrorist actions and the people perpetrating them?
The reason such statements are rare to nonexistent coincides with the reason no news cameras record a congregation of Muslims reacting to news of the most recent terrorist atrocity - the religion of peace cheers and applauds such news and supports these activities vocally and with monetary donations.
Live long and prosper.
I am not saying that we should denounce all muslims. What I am saying is that we should not attempt to pacify them through politically correctness, such as denying that John Muhammed's murder spree had anything to do with his religion. Instead, the liberal press, as reported here on Free Republic, insists on refering to him as John Allen Williams.
Are we to believe that his ties with Nation of Islam fanaticists has nothing to do with his actions? If we believe that they did have something to do with it what should our actions be? Maybe we can buy them off with more entitlement programs, or through inactions of our government officials (non prosecution of "undocumented aliens").
I resent your charicterization of my remarks as bigoted. I would tend to think of them as realistic.
I believe a more agressive stance against the radicals in our midst is not a luxury but a necessity.
Great rant, Jason; good to see you posting more lately.
You say, don't use a fly swatter go after the hive. That either means something or it is vacuous piffle. If it means anything it means attacking Muslims qua Muslims wherever they are found. If you want to refine it to attack "radical" Muslims wherever they are found, then you either have some quick and dirty test for "radical" Muslims (like whole countries) or you do not. If you do, it reduces in practice to the previous. If you do not, then you will wind up as involved in the political correctness exercise of seperating guilty Muslim radicals from innocent Muslims as the next guy. In which case your remark about PC losing the war for us makes no sense whatever.
I am still waiting for any of the bigots to explain to me how a sweeping condemnation of all of Islam helps us one iota in this war. If you aren't one of them and meant something besides "nuke Mecca" by your "go after the hive" comment, then by all means share with us just what "go after the hive" is supposed to mean and how "PC" is going to lose the war for us by preventing us from doing so.
We are going to go after Iraq. We already went after Afghanistan. PC is not stopping us from going after any hives that are really hives of radicals, that I can see. We may be picking our "move order", to dismantle the radical's power bloc by pieces, rather than say trying to invade Libya and Syria and Sudan and Iran at the same time as Iraq. But we aren't sitting here wringing our hands, tossing 3 cruise missles, or even stopping at Afghanistan.
What we are doing that is actually a point at issue between the bigot proposal and the administration strategy, is working with the likes of Musharraf, getting bases in the gulf states instead of invading them, using conventional military force not nuking whole cities, tracking down actual snipers at home not chucking whole religious groups in concentration camps. If you actually believe this is PC nonesense that is losing us the war by preventing us from going after the "hive", have the guts to say so.
If you don't see anything wrong with the strategy (of division into "good Muslims" and "bad Muslims") we are actually pursuing, and don't advocate any of the bigot proposal items above, then dissociate yourself and your comments from that line of thought. In the latter case, you might also be a tad more careful how flippantly you apply the language of pest control to political discourse. In case it isn't blindingly obvious to you, comparing whole identity groups painted as hostile, as insects, has traditionally been a preliminary to advocating their extermination.
Muslim dominated radical - Iran (Shiite), Sudan.
Radical, but led by leftist seculars - Iraq, Palestinians (PA vs. Hamas, which is Muslim radical), Syria, Libya.
Leftist radical goverment vs. Muslim radical rebels - Algeria
Government moderate in practice but using radical Islamic ideology for legitimacy - Saudi Arabia.
There is more variety in the Muslim world than you seem to suppose. Which we can and do use to divide them up, deal with the hardest cases, address one problem at a time when possible, etc.
Only problem is that they must take their collective heads out of the dark holes they've had them inserted into for years.
Nam Vet
I'm saying that if The Nation of Islam is providing a support group for these radicals, then we should go after them. Not necessarily in a military sense. There are other weapons at our disposal, such as the IRS or the INS. If someone if invoved in destroying our nation, should we ignore it because they are a member of a racial minority? What would the reaction of the press be if this killer had been a member of the kkk, or the aryan nations?
I believe our President and military are doing a stellar job overseas. I also believe our Homeland Security has it's hands tied because of the PC restrictions we have placed on it. If Mr. Ridge were to announce tomorrow that he was initiating an investigation of The Nation of Islam and its relationship to Mr. Muhammed, he would be soundly renounced in the press as a racist.
While I do not advocate that we "nuke mecca", I would not dismiss it as a future military option, nor would I allow these radicals to believe for one second that I would not use it. In the event of a terrorist group detonating a tactical nuclear device in one of our major population centers I am not naive enough to believe that placing signs declaring them "nuclear free zones" would prevent a reoccurance.
If you have information about tax evasion by the Nation of Islam, by all means publish it - or forward it to the appropriate authorities. If you have information about immigration violations by numerous affiliates of the Nation of Islam, please share them with us. You have still not explained how either would amount to "going after the hive". Because you can't; it doesn't.
As for "nuclear free zones" not preventing a recurrence of a WMD terrorist act should one occur, neither will nuking Mecca. Saudi Arabia does not have nuclear weapons, and the Islamist radicals would like nothing better than a radicalized Islamic world bent on war to the death with the US via WMD terrorism. Which is all such a course would get you.
To prevent such attacks in the first place, we have to isolate the nutjobs who want to do such things from access to the weapons with which to do it. Which means eliminating Saddam's weapons programs, and also means keeping Musharraf in power. It also, incidentally, means pressure on the Russians to not arm Iran, as at present they are doing. It does not mean either your straw man of "nuclear free zones" nor nuking Mecca.
If instead you are simple amusing your active fantasy life with visions of nuking Mecca abroad or of military crackdowns on black Muslims domestically or both, thinking it is oh so clever to avoid stumping for outright bigoted or racist policies but running as close to them as you think you can get away with, then you show moral cowardice as well as an overdose of PC yourself. If you think a course of action is necessary to win the war against our Islamic terrorist opponents, then you should have the guts to say so directly instead of hiding behind innuendo.
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