Deadly Islamic Fantasies (The fever swamps of Muslim intellectual pathology)

The Toronto Free Press ^ | February 2, 2004 | Alan Caruba

[quidnunc]

It is to our credit as a nation, a society, and a culture, that Americans instantly grasped the true meaning of 9/11. We understood, as we had not fully grasped before, that we were the declared enemy in an Islamic fantasy.

"It is the enemy who defines us as his enemy, and in making this definition he changes us, and changes us whether we like it or not," writes Lee Harris in his new book, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History ($26.00, Free Press). "To insist on maintaining utopian values when your society is facing an enemy who wishes only to annihilate you is to invite annihilation."

If you still have any doubts whatever, consider what Sheik Saleh al-Taleb, a Saudi Arabian imam told 500,000 people in Mecca’s Grand Mosque on January 30 during the annual hajj that brings millions of Muslim pilgrims there every year. "Oh God, give victory to the holy warriors everywhere. Give them victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies, and make this country and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists."

It was the power of that fantasy — the destruction of America — that was played out with the lives of those who seized the planes, those in the planes, and those in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. More than 3,000 died that day, including those on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

Those candidates who are berating President Bush for having "lied" us into the war in Iraq completely miss the essential reason for our "liberation" of that nation. (And they ignore the years of UN resolutions Saddam ignored with impunity.) While they understood invading Afghanistan to rid Osama bin Laden of al Qaeda’s base of operations there, they have not grasped the necessity for our military presence in the Middle East. We are projecting our power to threaten any nation that harbors the Jihadists. It is a matter of national survival.

Many of us look at the images of men on their knees, their heads pressed to the ground, facing in the direction of Mecca, and praying five times daily as some odd form of behavior left over from earlier centuries. We cannot grasp the passion with which Middle Eastern and other Muslims express and define themselves. We cannot see them as who they are, nor can they see themselves as we see them.

We are a religious society, but most of us do not express our faith as those in the Middle East. Our churches are places of beautiful music and quiet meditation. We joke about boring sermons. We believe in tolerance for other faiths. We regard them often as simply different paths to the same God. We may begin a meeting with a prayer or benediction, but we are not suffused with the view that religion is the sole subject worth discussing. The notion that millions of Muslims are bent on killing us for being "infidels" is beyond our imagination. The fact that this is preached in thousands of mosques is ever more bizarre and frightening.

-snip-

[quidnunc]

Arab Delusions & Arab Defeats

History teaches us that an entire nation or group of people can suffer from some dangerous delusions and often pay a terrible price for it. One need only cast a look back at the last century when Germans believed they were the "Master Race" and the Japanese believed their emperor was a living god and the conquest of Asia was their destiny.

For the span of more than a generation, Russians believed that Communism was the perfect economic and social system. Millions of them died in Soviet ghulags as the result. Millions more have died in Red China thanks to its adoption of this evil system.

Now we are experiencing the mass delusion of Middle Eastern Arabs and some of their fellow Muslims around the world that Islam’s destiny is to dominate and rule the entire world. Despite a long history of defeat and despotism, fundamentalist Islam now poses the greatest threat to freedom worldwide.

In the wake of the latest terror bombing, we must ask who do Middle Eastern Arabs blame? The answer is America and the Jews.

-snip-

I cite this to provide an essential insight to the "Arab" mind. In its worldview, nothing that has occurred in the Middle East since the end of the Ottoman Empire after WWI has anything to do with its endemic despotism, lack of human rights, lack of progress in the provision of education, freedom, or the development of an economic structure based on anything other than oil. Islam is never blamed for any of this and Islam is the primary reason for all of it.

-snip-

(Alan Caruba in the Toronto Free Press, February 2, 2004)
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[pabianice]

Only when enough of their own children have been murdered will the liberal elite media concede that radical Islam is the enemy. That's the way they are... "me...me...me..."

[Sir Gawain]

We regard them often as simply different paths to the same God.

No we don't.

[davisfh]

Ordinarily, I admire our president and his efforts to protect us from terrorists. However, I cringe when he characterizes Islam as, "one of the world's great religions."

I have said that if anyone out there believes that there are such people as "mainstream Muslims" who are peaceful and mean us no harm they would be stunned at how quickly the mainstream would get on board with the radicals should Muslims ever gain a political plurality in this country. Should this ever happen, there would be no Christian, no Jew and no person of any other faith who would be safe in this country.

[Indie]

Only when enough of their own children have been murdered will the liberal elite media concede that radical Islam is the enemy

Since when do they care about their own children? They and those who vote for them advocate and succeed in murdering their unborn everyday. [45 million to date in the US alone.] Socialists do not care about life, even that of their own. After all, it wastes precious oxygen that could be consumed by innocent animals, while we as humans are eeeevil.

[King Prout]

good one. thanks. fits in nicely with my own musings on the topic.

[Dajjal]

BTTT

[redrock]

Awesome article!!!

redrock

[blackie]

It is to our credit as a nation, a society, and a culture, that Americans instantly grasped the true meaning of 9/11. We understood, as we had not fully grasped before, that we were the declared enemy in an Islamic fantasy ~ Big Bump!