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Islam vs. the West: What you need to know
Pajamas Media ^ | 7/31/2010 | Roger Kimball

Posted on 07/31/2010 1:56:52 PM PDT by markomalley

My college Greek tutor used to tell the story of his college Greek tutor, who would end every class by stepping to the blackboard, writing down two or three points, and saying, “Gentlemen, this is the irreducible minimum you should take away from this class.”

Let me emulate that example and offer the irreducible minimum you should take away from the news today. It’s from the indispensable Andy McCarthy over at National Review Online. His column is called “It’s about Sharia [1],” and the irreducible minimum I’d like to highlight is this striking proposition:

Islamism is not a movement to be engaged, it is an enemy to be defeated [1].”

Please, commit that to memory. Think of it every time someone tells you that Islam means “peace” or starts making excuses for the latest chapter in the annals of Islam’s war against the West.

For that’s what were talking about here: Islam’s war against the West. It’s not Islam’s misuse of commercial airliners, its penchant for sawing off the heads of people they disapprove of, or even its profound lack of sympathy for bacon. No, it’s Islam’s fundamental, essential  incompatibility with foundational Western values like free speech, the separation of church and state, and equality under the law. Such things are not simply missing from Islam: they are positively repudiated by Islam, a fact that is ingredient in the very word “Islam,” which, pace the multiculturalists, means not “peace” but “submission,” i.e., submission to the will of Allah.

Many well-meaning  people, I know,  will shudder when they hear this. Islam is “a great religion.” How could it be fundamentally incompatible with all those good things we like to celebrate in the West? Women’s rights, religious toleration, not to mention Chateauneuf-du-Pape and kindred potations. Aren’t we beyond all that hawkish, “divisive” talk about the “conflict of civilizations”? Very possibly — if wishes were horses, which they are not; ergo, etc.  Cf. Matthew 13:43: “He who has ears, let him hear.”

Andy’s column is a gloss on an important speech [2] that Newt Gingrich delivered at the American Enterprise Institute a few days ago. Newt’s key insight is that we are engaged not in a war against terror but a war against Sharia, i.e., Islamic law. Would that our current masters in Washington had as clear-eyed an appreciation of the nature of the conflict in which we are immersed. “Gingrich,” Andy writes, “is going about the long-overdue business of resetting our understanding of the civilizational jihad that has been waged against the United States for some 31 years.” He continues:

“The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic, and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome.

Second, that outcome is the death of freedom. In Islamist ideology, sharia is deemed to be the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society — for Islam is not merely a religious doctrine, but a comprehensive socio-economic and political system. . . .

Sharia, moreover, is anti-equality. It subjugates women and brutally punishes transgressors, particularly homosexuals and apostates. While our law forbids cruel and unusual punishments, Gingrich observed that the brutality in sharia sanctions is not gratuitous, but intentional: It is meant to enforce Allah’s will by striking example.”

One further point. The main front in the battle between the party of freedom and the party of Jihad is not unfolding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or even in the colonized bits of Europe. It is here in the United States.  The Ayatollah Khomeini used to refer to America as “the Great Satan” not because he thought we America was the embodiment of evil (though he may well have thought that, too) but rather because America epitomized everything about the West that tempted good Muslims to abandon that which made them Muslims: their belief in, and adherence to, Sharia, i.e., a view of the world that embraced the will of Allah as the last word about, well, about everything. There is no “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” in Islam because Caesar, i.e., the secular realm, has no independent claims at all.  Allah is it and Sharia describes the implementation of his law.

Andy McCarthy and Newt are right:

“The war is about the survival of Western civilization, and we should make no apologies for the fact that the West’s freedom culture is a Judeo-Christian culture — a fact that was unabashedly acknowledged, Gingrich reminded his audience, by FDR and Churchill. To ensure victory in the United States we must, once again, save Europe, where the enemy has advanced markedly.  . . .

Our allies are the Muslims who embrace our freedom culture — those for whom sharia is a matter of private belief, not public mission. Our enemies are those who want sharia to supplant American law and Western culture. When we call out the latter, and marginalize them, we may finally energize the former.”

To which I will only add, Amen.


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1 posted on 07/31/2010 1:56:53 PM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley

“All I need to know about Islam I learned on 9-11” bump.


2 posted on 07/31/2010 2:00:27 PM PDT by Sans-Culotte ( Pray for Obama- Psalm 109:8)
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To: SunkenCiv; Dr. Brian Kopp; marshmallow; little jeremiah; wagglebee; Natural Law; narses; NYer; ...
Islam’s war against the West. It’s not Islam’s misuse of commercial airliners, its penchant for sawing off the heads of people they disapprove of, or even its profound lack of sympathy for bacon. No, it’s Islam’s fundamental, essential incompatibility with foundational Western values like free speech, the separation of church and state, and equality under the law. Such things are not simply missing from Islam: they are positively repudiated by Islam, a fact that is ingredient in the very word “Islam,” which, pace the multiculturalists, means not “peace” but “submission,” i.e., submission to the will of Allah.

ping

3 posted on 07/31/2010 2:01:04 PM PDT by markomalley (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus)
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To: markomalley

ABSOLUTELY INDEED.

THX THX.

BLESS YOU BRO.


4 posted on 07/31/2010 2:08:05 PM PDT by Quix (THE PLAN of the Bosses: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2519352/posts?page=2#2)
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To: markomalley
“Islamism is not a movement to be engaged, it is an enemy to be defeated."

Truer words never spoken!

Lamh Foistenach Abu!
5 posted on 07/31/2010 2:15:23 PM PDT by ConorMacNessa (HM/2 USN, 3/5 Marines, RVN '69 - St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!)
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To: markomalley
Here's what people need to know: Islamic Scholar Warns U.S. of 'Two-Faced' Muslims
6 posted on 07/31/2010 2:21:43 PM PDT by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it! www.FairTaxNation.com)
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To: Quix
I'm watching 9/11 Conspiracies:Fact or Fiction? on the History Channel. Dylan Avery was the author. I can't believe this tripe, but it's interesting to watch.

Thanks

7 posted on 07/31/2010 2:25:21 PM PDT by STD (SoftTyranny Until He Cracks the Whip)
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To: markomalley

ting for later read


8 posted on 07/31/2010 2:37:23 PM PDT by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: STD; Alamo-Girl; Amityschild; AngieGal; AnimalLover; Ann de IL; aragorn; auggy; autumnraine; ...

THIS DISABLED VET’S RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS IS SOME OF THE MOST IMPRESSIVE AND BALANCED, FACT BASED SUMMARY I’VE EVER COME ACROSS ON 9/11:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread598768/pg1


9 posted on 07/31/2010 2:41:35 PM PDT by Quix (THE PLAN of the Bosses: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2519352/posts?page=2#2)
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To: markomalley

bttt


10 posted on 07/31/2010 3:38:47 PM PDT by aberaussie
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To: markomalley

I just finished reading Andy McCarthy’s newbook, “The Grand Jihad, How Islam and the Left Sabotage America”.
This is an essential book for understanding our peril.


11 posted on 07/31/2010 4:24:17 PM PDT by tommix2
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To: markomalley
Excellent article! Let's begin here!

Stop the 911 Mosque in NYC

12 posted on 07/31/2010 4:46:25 PM PDT by NYer ("God dwells in our midst, in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar." St. Maximilian Kolbe)
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To: Quix

Which brings me to the next obvious question, if the truthers are correct, why are you posting on FR? Extremely curious.


13 posted on 07/31/2010 6:02:15 PM PDT by STD (SoftTyranny Until He Cracks the Whip)
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To: STD

Personally, I don’t KNOW

where they are right and where they are wrong nor what %

I just don’t believe much of anything the MSM tells me about much of anything any more.

I’m skeptical we’ll learn the whole truth about 9/11 in our lifetime unless it’s when we graduate from this life and God shows us.

My values are in lock step with FR’s values. That’s why I’m here.


14 posted on 07/31/2010 6:11:02 PM PDT by Quix (THE PLAN of the Bosses: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2519352/posts?page=2#2)
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To: Quix

That’s good enough for me!


15 posted on 07/31/2010 6:15:33 PM PDT by STD (SoftTyranny Until He Cracks the Whip)
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To: STD

Thanks for your kind reply.


16 posted on 07/31/2010 6:17:35 PM PDT by Quix (THE PLAN of the Bosses: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2519352/posts?page=2#2)
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To: markomalley

Thanks for the ping!


17 posted on 07/31/2010 9:42:01 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Quix

Thanks for the ping!


18 posted on 07/31/2010 9:42:39 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: markomalley

With approximately 1.57 billion Muslims comprising about 23% of the world’s population, we have a lot of work to do.

Now where do we start?


19 posted on 08/01/2010 11:30:39 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: STD; Quix
“if the truthers are correct, why are you posting on FR?”

First of all, does *truthers* mean any opinion outside the Official Story put out by our government?

Second, the Official Story put out by our government is like Swiss cheese, full of holes.

Inquiring minds do want to know.

20 posted on 08/01/2010 12:06:02 PM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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