Posted on 11/05/2003 10:34:14 AM PST by Valin
Wrong. Nuking saudi would deal a crippling blow to arab/muslim terrorism a.k.a 'islam'.
About the only place I can disagree immediately is this: for the most part we have been dealing with Islam most successfully on its perimeter and that is to a very great degree what has alarmed the fanatics in the homelands. They are running out of excuses. The financial windfall that has fallen into their hands is only comparable to one other that I can think of offhand - the influx of precious metals from the New World that so shook the very foundations of Europe in the sixteenth century. This influx has fallen from their hands like the sand, leaving a grinding poverty, senseless authoritarianism, and none of the ingredients of the modern industrial state that serve to increase the wealth of a people once the extraction economy has passed its peak. Which is is beginning to do - the relative monopoly in oil has long since departed and only a very vigorous diplomacy has kept the price of it controlled, and only then very imperfectly. The power that that control conferred in the 1970's has likewise fallen through grasping fingers like sand.
One can see the roots of an incredible frustration here, on the part of self-righteous men thoroughly convinced that God is on their side, and again and again thwarted by circumstances they dare not look into too closely for fear they must conclude that God isn't on their side after all. A scapegoat must be found. That, of course, is us.
I agree whole-heartedly with the author that the reason fundamentalist Islam is utterly doomed culturally is its stubborn rejection of the emancipation of its women. One does not cut off one-half of one's population (in many ways the cleverer half) and expect to compete with a population not so encumbered.
I am intrigued by the author's suggestion that Afghanistan might become a beacon of reason in a Moslem world of intolerance. That is certainly not indicated by much of its history, and yet many of the ingredients are, in fact, there. That people has escaped the difficulties and challenges other Islamic populations have encountered largely due to the lack of natural resources that engendered them. It has a disparate, clannish society and relative geographic isolation, but then so did the United States in its early going. I'd love him to expand on this topic.
I'm going to have to buy this fellow's books, and I thank you again for the introduction.
We will not win because Muslims decide they enjoy Britney's navel more than the Koran.
We will win only when Muslim holy men - not politicians merely posing as such holy men, as are the terror master themselves - declare terrorist murderers to be apostates and damnable before God.
They are hypocrites. They have no actual belief in a just judge. The merciful and compassionate cannot be found in any of their acts. When Muslim men who are not simply westernized (to say nothing of those simply interested in Britney's navel), nor merely learned, but downright pious, denounce the fundamentalists as having missed the entire point - then we can start to speak of victory.
It will take someone of the stature of a Ghandi to do this.
The writer notes that religions change because men change them. That is true. But to the men that change religions, the change is quite a little thing, and religion is the big thing. Religions are not changed by those who think them unimportant. By mere activists convinced they are merely dated folklore, but perhaps useful for bossing some people around. They are changed, with any depth or lasting seriousness, only be men who care about them deeply.
When there arises a Muslim holy man who is deeply wounded by the injustices committed in the name of Islam, who regards them as a stain for which rigorous atonement is required, who is on a mission to save the souls of erring brethren, then you can start to talk of victory.
As long as it is all calculating politicians on one side, interested only in peace with the west and Britney's navel, and calculating but more cyncial politicians on the other side, interested only in war with the west and acquiring nuclear weapons, it is a delusion to speak of promise or progress or victory.
The writer talks as though the fundamentalists, while dangerous and misguided, are true representatives of the lasting nature of religion. It is certainly true that religions have had that baleful influence at many times for the entire recorded past. But they have had that influence most when they have been felt to be, and were wielded as, cynical tools of worldly rivalries.
Which is all Islam is to the terror masters. He speaks of their self-righteousness, accurately enough. But they haven't an actually righteous bone in their bodies. And until that is seen as the crucial issue in the Muslim world, the war is still with us.
There would be hatred of the west in the Muslim world even after, as there is hatred of the modern west in certain intellectual circles within the modern west. But it would be rightly seen as an impious flirtation, as playing chicken with damnation, not as a holy cause.
It is going to take a great man to make that change happen. As yet there is no sign of such a man on the horizon. There have been scholars who have seen as much and said as much (Fazlur Rahman comes to mind), but a scholar is not an example to an entire people, teaching them as though with authority, by the whole conduct of his life.
We are only limiting the destruction within the Muslim world, and the danger to ourselves from its inner turmoil, until that happens. We have to do that. But it won't settle the matter. Men need not merely something to avoid, but something to follow. And all due respect to Britney's most excellent navel, but civilizations are not founded on the frivolous.
"According to the Islamic Fiqh Council, state terrorism is the most menacing to security and peace in the world, and, therefore, standing up against it is tantamount to self defense and striving in the cause of Allah."
No I am sorry, that just does not qualify. It is deconstructionist spin and not righteousness. Party hacks wrote this, not men concerned with their own souls and those of their fellows. We are not remotely there yet.
I think of Mohammed - a killer himself. Righteousness in Islam seems congruent with killing all infidels in the world, if necessary, and I've heard it said that the older Mohammed got more viscious than the younger, "liberal", Mohammed. The last words don't sound good for us.
All religions seem like fairy tales to me, so I can only stand outside and speculate about deeply held Islamic beliefs.
The suicide bombers sure seem sincere, and some of their leaders have suffered torture and execution for their faith. I don't know of a more severe proof of conviction than sumitting to torture and execution for one's belief. Deep conviction and determination conserning what looks to me like a bad fairy tale.
But the Koran does contradict itself, apparently, and has the tolerant quotes for sincere liberal Muslims.
All of it whackdoodle to me, and sincere Muslims can die fighting each other over the "true" version. At least I hope some liberal Muslims will emerge, ones willing to die for their more enlightened Islam, since apprently it will take that to win.
But seeing Islam as demented, I hold out hope for enough of them snapping out of it all together, with agnostic children standing on the shoulders of their liberal parents. The Indonesians seem halfway there, as the author describes them.
And I know what you are saying, and is it what the article writer is also saying, and it is what has been tried for a century in the Islamic world, and it is never going to work. They are not going to drop Islam and forget about it and become secular and develop warm fuzzy feelings about westerners because we are so much more fun that religion and morality.
If you make it a contest in which they either give up their faith entirely or fight you to the death, they will fight you to the death until the end of the world. And they will think it righteousness, and you and I and the entire west corruptors whose sole motive is to detach them from their religion.
They are perfectly willing to learn from your example to only care about this worldly effects and this worldly power. That to them counsels only fighting. You can't cure cynicism with a double dose of it plus a bare belly button. The only thing that will convince them not to act immorally is -morality-.
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