Locked in a Cosmic Battle With Islam

CNSNews.com ^ | April 01, 2004 | Alan Caruba

[veronica]

Americans are pragmatists. We are interested not only in how things work, but how we can improve them. We are fascinated with cars and with every kind of machine and gadget that make our lives easier as well as entertaining us with the leisure time they provide. If you want to find Americans, go to the mall.

Despite this, however, Americans can surely be rated as among the most religious people. The success of the film "The Passion of the Christ" is ample testimony to that. The debate raging over the morality of same-sex marriage, the outcry against the removal of a monument depicting the Ten Commandments from a courthouse, and the continued opposition to abortion attest to the deep concern Americans have for moral issues.

America and other nations of the West are, however, locked in a cosmic battle with Islamic fundamentalists around the world who view Western civilization as a form of idolatrous barbarism. The attack on the World Trade Center was symbolic of the great battle being waged against us. To the Islamists, the towers represented the worship of materialism, of money and greed. To Islam's true believers, there is no validity in Judaism, Christianity, or any other religion. To them, idolatry is the most heinous sin and, if they must die to destroy us, they will do so.

Ian Buruma, the Luce Professor at Bard College, and Avishai Margalit, the Shulman Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explore this battle in a book. It is "Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies" published by The Penguin Press ($21.95). It is a relatively short book, but one so packed with insight that the mind lingers over every sentence.

As the authors note, "Wars against the West have been declared in the name of the Russian soul, the German race, State Shinto, Communism, and Islam." The present "war on terrorism" should more accurately be called "the war on Islam" because we have been forced to defend ourselves again a large number of Islamic organizations waging this war. While we focus on al Qaeda, the creation of Osama bin Laden, there are dozens of comparable Islamic groups wreaking havoc in various parts of the world, from Israel to Indonesia, from Saudi Arabia to Morocco, from Spain to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Turkey, from Kenya to Russia.

It is a cosmic war pitting their belief that Islam is the only true religion and therefore the salvation of mankind against Western values of individual freedom, human rights, Capitalism, and Democracy. Those fighting this battle feel called by Allah, their god, to save the world.

Why? "When people are not only humiliated by foreign forces, but oppressed by their own government, they often retreat to the 'inner life' of the spirit, pure and simple, where they can feel free from the corruption of power and sophistication," say the authors of "Occidentalism." Most certainly, the Arabs of the Middle East fit this description. So do Muslims in many other areas of the world. Though Islam has spread widely throughout the world, representing an estimated 1.3 billion people, not all Muslims subscribe to the battle being waged in its name, but all find in Islam the comfort of absolute certitude.

An earlier commentary of mine, "The Decline and Fall of Islam", is rebutted on an Internet site in Bangladesh. A Muslim who called my attention to it wrote, "ISLAM is the real truth, and truth never dies." I replied to him that Islam is his truth. And neither the "truth" that the Earth was the center of the universe is in fashion, nor the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Religions do die.

Islam literally means "submission" to the will of Allah. As a religion, it controls all aspects of life down to the minutest details when practiced by the true believer. Throughout Islam, there is a widespread belief that Islam is under attack. This is ironic in that it is the West that has come under actual attack through a long series of bombings. What I believe is that Islam, unable to adapt to the modern world---a world dominated by Western thought and achievement---instinctively senses it must either conquer the world or eventually lose its grip on its adherents. In some countries, apostasy, leaving Islam for another religion, is punishable by death.

"The attack on the West is among other things an attack on the mind of the West," say the authors. They describe how Islamists and others see it. "It is a mind without a soul, efficient, like a calculator, but hopeless at doing what is humanly important. The mind of the West is capable of great economic success, to be sure, and of developing and promoting advanced technology, but cannot grasp the higher things in life, for it lacks spirituality and understanding of human suffering."

This may seem incomprehensible, given that Christianity is based on the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus, and Judaism's history is millennia of suffering for its worship of a single, universal God of mankind. However, unless you understand the mind of those who are pitted in war against America and the West, you will never fully grasp why they are willing to sacrifice their own lives to win it.

"Self-sacrifice for a higher cause, for an ideal world, cleansed of human greed and injustice, is the one way for the average man to feel heroic. Choosing to die a violent death becomes a heroic act of human will. In totalitarian systems it might be the only act an individual is free to choose." Muslims have lived in totalitarian systems for centuries. When the Islamic revolution seized Iran in 1979, it imposed yet another totalitarian system.

If the last century gave us the kamikaze pilot, willing to give his life in a futile effort to protect the emperor and Japan, this new century has given us the holy warrior of the Islamic jihad. In the words of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical movement founded in Egypt in 1928, "God is our objective; the Koran is our constitution; the Prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."

We face, individually, as a nation, and a civilization, the Islamic holy warrior and our only defense will be to capture or kill him before he does the same to us.

[FierceDraka]

Have you ever noticed that the most arrogant people you meet just happen to be those with the least reason to be proud?

Yes, I most certainly have! Same thing with the most intolerant people being the ones with the dirtiest, darkest secrets.

[Mackey]

What I would like to know, are "moderate" mohammedans increasingly joining the jihad squads these days? Is the Islamicist thing building steam or not? There seems to be a whole bunch of Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis, etc. flocking to Iraq to try their luck at Holy War.

If it is, then we're going to need a whole lotta bullets and we better get a head start on making them.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See the link at post #5 for another aspect.

[ApplegateRanch]

This is interesting, but it overlooks the home-grown Islamist threat, right here in the US.


There is an (literally) unholy alliance of the Socialst Workers Party USA, Communist Party-USA, Communist Party-Iraq, and the Islamic movement on campus.

Check out the below links, found on an American's web-page, linked to an Islamic discussion board.

This is linked on the page of a poster [( http://forums.gawaher.com/index.php?showuser=4091 ) and his own homepage ( http://www.13813.0catch.com/index.html ) ] to the site.

"Our Position is to De-legitimize the Next US Presidential Elections"

---

http://www.geocities.com/iraqiresistancesolidarity/NiceImprovement.html
Nice Improvement!: In Response To A Recent Anarchist Poster Entitled "We Support Our Troops When they SHOOT Their Officers".
...
John Paul Cupp
Co-Editor Iraqi Resistance Solidarity Network

www.geocities.com/iraqiresistancesolidarity

iraqiresistancesolidarity@yahoo.com

---

There is much more to the "anti-war" movement than most seem to realize. Check out a few links for yourselves, and see what is not being told on the "news" when demonstrations are covered.

[livius]

I highly recommend the book by Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies. The big enemy right now is, of course, Islam, and he discusses how it is different and simultaneously more dangerous than other enemies we have faced in the past.

Definitely worth a read.

[7.62 x 51mm]

Not kidding. The evil koran regulates every kind of behavior right down to the scatalogical comings and goings. I was astounded that thinking brains could put up with religious regulation such as that. I fart in their specific direction! LOL!

[7.62 x 51mm]

I don't have a problem with that at all. As for damage to the earth? It'll heal itself very quickly. Always has. Bombs away!

[backhoe]

Cross-link:

-Islam, a Religion of Peace®? Some links...--

[TASMANIANRED]

Religion is more than a set of beliefs.

Religion is a set of codified beliefs generally set up to improve the individual through moral behavior, ( right behavior) . When individuals are improved then cultures improve.

Hindu's, Budhists, Confuscians and Christians all fit the description enven though 3 of them are non Christians.

Islam does not fit this definition of Religion. Islam in general does not better individuals nor does it better society.

Islam has endless laws regarding use of the left hand, prayer while crossing the threshold of bathrooms, what animals are suitable sexual outlets, the beating of women.

In most religions there is equality of the genders, not so in Islam. No other religion requires slaughter of the (other) infidel.

Most Religions require the "golden rule" that is applicable to others outside of the religion. Not so with Islam.

Islam is a blood cult, there is no room for self governance outside of the proscriptions and prescriptions enumerated in the Koran. There is no vitality of ideas and thusly it will always be behind and barbaric.


The so called enlightened period of the Middle East during the dark ages of the West is mistermed. There was actually very little new discovered or developed. The actuality of it was Islam subsumed and integrated the knowledge of the areas it conquered.

Islam values death above life. There is inward looking in Islam and there is no forgivness or atonement. If you have sinned against Islam the payment is death, there are no second chances. The subcults within Islam , eg Suffi, that do espouse uplifting and union with God are regarded as dangerous cults.


One Christian tennant is :"By their fruits you will know them"

What are the fruits of Islam
Islamists are the only group that openly espouses slavery.

Islamists are the only group that openly embraces the 4th class status of women.

Islamists are the only group that openly endorses honor killing.

Islamists are the only group that openly endorses barbarity and mutilation of innocents.

Islamists are the only group that condones sex with children as long as they are hairless.

Islamsits are the only group that endorses bestiality.

Islamists are the only group that encourages their own children to slaughter themselves in the hope that they will kill the infidel and then promise them 72 virgins in the afterlife as a reward.

The God of Islam is Satan.

[RipSawyer]

Good grief, my memory is insufficient to retain all the rules necessary to properly take a leak, forget about all the rest! What demented hashish smoker dreamed up all this crap? Hell is definitely real and the mooselimbs live in it daily!

[ApplegateRanch]

But they willingly ally themselves with the Socialist Workers Party & various Communist Parties, and even allude to ties with DPRK, to defeat 'the occuppation" and their dreaded "Zionist Entity". Yet, all the while they claim there is no "nationalism' in Islam; just loyalty to the Ummah.

[7.62 x 51mm]

It's not a wonder that the muzzies are always so angry and ready to kill, what with being 'regulated' so tightly by their false moon idol 'god'. Pathetic creatures, all.

[quadrant]

The great tragedy of this war with Islam - a phrase with which I agree - that it has dragged us into conflict with all Muslims. Perhaps there will arise within Islam a move- ment that will moderate the tenets of the faith, but I doubt it.

Islam has existed for too long without internal questioning for this to happen. It is difficult to imagine that Islam will undergo the same sort of reform that transformed Christianity (for the better and for the worse) from a religion that exercised power through the tenacles of the state to a faith that (at least in theory) influences policy throught the well-spring of the heart.

There are Muslims who wish no part of this war - I know because I've met them - but their religion is being used in such a way as to bring it into conflict with the entire world.

It is we in the West - not to mention in places like India, and Africa which have seen violent religious conflict - who are are on the front lines on the struggle but the rear areas (like China and Latin America) will be drawn into the fray.

As a Christian, I beleive this struggle was an historical and Biblical inevitablitiy, but that does not lessen my regret at the loss of life.

[Cronos]

Islam has produced nothing but ruin, backwardness and terror while the Christian world has progressed right into the 21st century and left them in the dust

And the only time the Islammicc world dominated culturally was because of it's conquered peoples -- the Greeks, Persians, Indians, etc.

[Cronos]

Savagery is all the animals understand. Spanking them in Afghanistan and Iraq is a good thing, but then showcasing our superiority by helping them to make a pretense at being civilized is intolerable to them. We should have just smashed them--smashed them very hard and left them with nothing but smoldering ruins and a stern warning not to make us come back again.

Actually I think we've been too nice. We should offer them the convert or die choice