Posted on 12/27/2003 3:23:46 PM PST by quidnunc
The leading element of anti-Americanism in contemporary world politics is the radical Islamist one, which, since the 1990s, has viewed the United States as its strongest and principal enemy. This perception, especially after the American occupation of Iraq, is often accompanied by a demonization of the United States in an apocalyptic sense within a concept of a war that heralds the end of the world.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks and the onset of a global war against terrorism led by the United States, anti-Americanism has become an integral part of world politics. The debate over war in Iraq and then the war itself, invoked even more anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim World, as well as in parts of Europe. In parts of the world, anti-Americanism is also linked to anti-Globalization.
Yet, the leading element of anti-Americanism in contemporary world politics is the radical Islamist one, which, since the 1990s, has viewed the United States as its strongest and principal enemy. This perception, especially after the American occupation of Iraq, is often accompanied by a demonization of the United States in an apocalyptic sense within a concept of a war that heralds the end of the world.
The roots of Islamist anti-Americanism were deep long before the rise of the Jihadist movement in the 1990s, or the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. They were developed by the anti-American atmosphere of secular Arab regimes, such as the Nasserist and Ba'thist ones, and encouraged by their alliance with the Soviet Union. Millions of Arabs grew up with and were indoctrinated by anti-American slogans, and the perception of the United States as an enemy that was plotting against them by supporting Israel.
Secular Arab anti-Americanism was mainly political, and not part of a cultural worldview. But, it heavily contributed to the development of Islamist anti-Americanism, by contributing one very important element — the sense of a global Western conspiracy against the Arabs and the Arab and Muslim world.
The sense of confronting a conspiracy is a crucial element in understanding contemporary Islamist anti-Americanism. It provides the Islamists with their main justification and motive for developing the image of the "American enemy." The fact that the Islamists became the leading proponents of anti-Americanism in our time supported the notion that a cultural clash of civilizations was occurring. In previous decades, Arabs and Muslims had vacillated between being pressured by their governments to espouse political hatred of the United States, while, at the same time, there was admiration for its culture, education, freedom, and wealth. Millions of Arabs and Muslims had been dreaming about immigration to the United States and some of them managed to fulfill these dreams. The Islamists managed to turn this dual situation among certain circles — especially intellectuals and highly educated Muslims — into a war of cultures. They spread anti-American feelings, not to mention support and justification for terrorism against the United States.
The first Islamist to declare a cultural war against the United States and Western civilization was the Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). Qutb was a senior official in the Egyptian Ministry of Education in the late 1940s, and a member of the then influential movement of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1949 he was sent to the United States for two years to study methods of education. During the two years that he spent in the United States, he began to develop his radical ideas and doctrines, which, in the 1960s and 1970s, would become the philosophical basis of a wide spectrum of Jihadi groups.
Malise Ruthven, who spent time exploring the writings of Sayyid Qutb, wrote that he "was as significant in that world as Lenin was to Communism." Ruthven characterized his visit to the United States as "the defining moment or watershed from which 'the Islamist war against America' would flow."
Sayyid Qutb wrote many articles and letters from the United States. Many of them were collected in a book published in Saudi Arabia in 1985.(1) Many references to his views on the United States are found in his writings, including his monumental interpretation of the Koran, "In the Shadow of the Koran" (Fi Zalal al-Koran).
In his letters and writings, Sayyid Qutb laid the foundation for the perception that American society, and hence Western culture, was the new form of Jahiliyyah — the pre-Islamic period, which represents ignorance of God's rule and the rule of arbitrary law instead. In his famous book, Milestones (Ma'alim fi al-Tariq), Qutb draws the most important element of his conclusions from his interpretation of Western society in the American paradigm:
The leadership of mankind by Western man is now on the decline, not because Western culture has become poor materially or because its economic and military power has become weak. The period of the Western system has come to an end primarily because it is deprived of those life-giving values, which enabled it to be the leader of mankind.It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable.
Islam is the only System, which possesses these values and this way of life.
From these conclusions, he then defines the nature of the clash between Islam and the West/United States:
The enemies of the Believers may wish to change this struggle into an economic or political or racial struggle, so that the Believers become confused concerning the true nature of the struggle and the flame of belief in their hearts becomes extinguished. The Believers must not be deceived, and must understand that this is a trick. The enemy, by changing the nature of the struggle, intends to deprive them of their weapon of true victory, the victory, which can take any form, be it the victory of the freedom of spirit….(2)
Qutb argued that the worst form of colonialism, which had outlasted the formal end of European colonialism, was "intellectual and spiritual colonialism." He advised the Islamic world to destroy the influence of the West within itself, to eradicate its residue "within our feelings." Anti-Americanism, according to Qutb's philosophical legacy for the generations that followed him, was "the greater Jihad" in Islam — the Jihad of the self or Jihad al-Nafs. This Jihad would therefore require the emergence of a new generation of Muslims who should fight the West primarily in their own minds long before moving to launch a military Jihad.
(Excerpt) Read more at meria.idc.ac.il ...
You mean like the secular and socialist Ba'athists?
The fact that we are not at war with each and every Muslim makes no difference, the salient fact is that everybody who is waging war against us is Muslim and they are waging thast war for religious reasons.
No, they are not waging a war for religious reasons, they are using religion to serve their ambitions. Religion is a rallying cry, but it is a neo-caliphate ambition that is driving the attacks on Muslims and non-Muslims both.
These tactics are not much different than what the NAZIs used to gain national support for their attacks leading to WWII. It was cultural identity that drove the purity and fatherland war cries.
It's been said that WWII was a war against facism. Albeit a popular phrase, the NAZIs were socialists and the Japanese were imperialists. I see these broadbrush claims of a religious war by Muslims much the same. It's easier to fit on a bumper sticker.
To make the cheese more binding, many Pakistani Muslims — who are not part of the middle-Eastern culture — are also at war with us.
I don't remember making the claim that we were at war with middle-Eastern cultured Muslims. We are at war with neo-caliphates. They are spread throughout the world. They are American, European, Indonesian, African and are densely populated in middle, middle-Eastern, central and south Asia. They share a common cultural ambition which is a rebirth of a global caliphate run from the holy lands. It is an Islamic caliphate and the fact that Muhammad ran every aspect of society certainly underlies the blurring of social functions in many of his followers minds, but the neo-caliphates are not pursuing a religious war as much as they are pursuing one of cultural identity.
What's the matter with those Muslims? Don't they realize that sodomy, abortion, fornication, and pornography are basic expressions of our constitutional rights? Do they really think they can impose their tradtition-bound religious values on us?
The caliph was/is regarded as a successor of Muhammad and that makes the Jihad to recusitate the caliphate a religious endeavor.
Don't forget, in Islam the division of the civil from the religious is regarded as an artificial construct.
And the 'cultural identity' which the 'neo-caliphates' seek to establish is a world-wide fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.
Their stated aim is to force the world — all of to — to submit to their vision of Islam, and that makes it a religious war.
OK, let's make the analogy between Zionists and neo-caliphates, shall we?
I happen to be a supporter of the state of Isreal, so I guess I'm a Zionist. I suppose then that I must also be Jewish (which I'm not).
But let's take that paragraph you've prominently highlighted and put it in Zionist terms:
The religion of such [Zionists] is not incidental to their [violent] acts as is the case with, say, Timothy McVeigh or Spain's Basques. [Judaism] is their raison d'être, their inspiration, their call to battle, their means of recruitment and, in the second before they [commit] themselves, their great comfort.I suppose there are some Muslims who would find that statement quite accurate. I think that Zionism is more of a cultural and statist cause than religious. I also find that the neo-caliphates' cause is more cultural and statist.
But hey, maybe this is a crusade of all the Judeo-Christian religions against all Muslims. I could be wrong.
Let's return to basics.
A significant percentage of the Muslim world is waging a jihad against those whom they consider to be unbelievers with the ultimate goal being to subjugate the world to Wahabist Islam.
Jihad is defined as 'A Muslim holy war or spiritual struggle against infidels.'
That makes the jihadists' decades-long rampage of killing a religious war.
Here's an excerpt on how Pipes defines modern jihad:
As this suggests, jihad is "holy war." Or, more precisely: It means the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.That makes the jihadists' decades-long rampage of killing a religious war.The purpose of jihad, in other words, is not directly to spread the Islamic faith but to extend sovereign Muslim power (faith, of course, often follows the flag). Jihad is thus unabashedly offensive in nature, with the eventual goal of achieving Muslim dominion over the entire globe.
Jihad did have two variant meanings through the centuries, one more radical, one less so. The first holds that Muslims who interpret their faith differently are infidels and therefore legitimate targets of jihad. (This is why Algerians, Egyptians and Afghans have found themselves, like Americans and Israelis, so often the victims of jihadist aggression.) The second meaning, associated with mystics, rejects the legal definition of jihad as armed conflict and tells Muslims to withdraw from the worldly concerns to achieve spiritual depth.
Jihad in the sense of territorial expansion has always been a central aspect of Muslim life. That's how Muslims came to rule much of the Arabian Peninsula by the time of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. It's how, a century later, Muslims had conquered a region from Afghanistan to Spain. Subsequently, jihad spurred and justified Muslim conquests of such territories as India, Sudan, Anatolia, and the Balkans.
OK, fine. We're at war with the jihadists and their Religion of Violence.
Oh for the love of Pete, stop trying to bury the original point of contention in a morass of sophistry.
I'll try, and please, no more personal information about Pete - OK?
There are two main branches of Islam and a scant handful of subsects.
At the risk of being monotonous I have to repeat that to a devout Muslim Islam their culture — and their polity too.
The more secular and less devout the Muslim is the less likely he is to consider himself to be at war with us.
By any standard this is a religious war.
I realize that there are many world-weary sophisticates who have an ideological stake in denying that this is a religious war.
If the proposition can be maintained that this is a culture war then at least some of the blame can be attributed to the U. S. and the aforementioned world-weary sophisticates can continue sending Americans on a guilt trip.
but once it becomes a religious war then the equation changes and the onus shifts squarely onto the Muslim aggressors.
Not true, the most important element in the "cultural war" is the umma and re-establishing the caliphate.
What you advocate is outlawing jihad, not Islam.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.