Posted on 07/28/2005 9:39:56 AM PDT by rdb3
Why not bomb Mecca? Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has brought the issue to the table. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded that he apologize to Muslims, and commentators left and right have subjected him to vociferous criticism. At the same time, however, he seems to have tapped into the frustration that many Americans feel about official Washingtons politically correct insistence, in the face of ever-mounting evidence to the contrary, that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists.
Although Tancredos presidential hopes and possibly even his seat in Congress may go up in the mushroom cloud created by the furor over his remarks, the idea of destroying Islamic holy sites in response to a devastating terror attack on American soil is not going to go away particularly as long as elected officials rush after every Islamic terror attack to repeat the well-worn mantras about how they know that the overwhelming majority of Muslims abhor violence and reject extremism, and are our faithful and reliable allies against terrorism in all its forms.
However, although the resentment Tancredo has tapped is real and has legitimate causes, his suggestion that among the many things we might do to prevent such an attack on America would be to lay out there as a possibility the destruction of Islamic holy sites is still wrong but not generally for the reasons that most analysts have advanced.
Primarily, of course, it contravenes Western principles of justice which, if discarded willy-nilly, would remove a key reason why we fight at all: to preserve Western ideas of justice and human rights that are denied by the Islamic Sharia law so beloved of jihad terrorists. But even aside from moral questions, which are increasingly thorny in this post-Hiroshima, post-Dresden world, there are practical reasons to reject what Tancredo has suggested.
Tancredos idea, of course, is based on the old Cold War principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Both sides threatened each other with nuclear annihilation, and the threats canceled each other out. The Soviets would no more risk Moscow being wiped out than we would Washington.
But applying this principle to present-day Islamic jihad is not so easy. The Soviets did not inculcate into their cadres the idea enunciated by Maulana Inyadullah of al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11: The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death. This lust for death runs through the rhetoric of todays jihadists, and goes all the way back in Islamic history to the Quran, in which Allah instructs Muhammad: Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful (62:6). Will men who love death, who glorify suicide bombing and praise God for beheadings and massacres, fear the destruction of holy sites? It seems unlikely in the extreme and that fact nullifies all the value this thread may have had as a deterrent. Nuke Mecca? Why bother? It wouldnt work.
Others have argued, however, that the deterrent value of destroying Islamic holy sites would lie not in giving jihad terrorists pause, but in showing Islam itself to be false and thus removing the primary motivation of todays jihad terrorists. If Allah is all-powerful and rewards those who believe in him while hating and punishing the disbelievers (the vilest of creatures, according to Quran 98:6), wouldnt he protect his holy sites from these disbelievers?
However, Muslims have weathered such shocks to their system in the past. In 1924, the secular government of Turkey abolished the caliphate; the caliph was considered the successor of the Prophet Muhammad as the religious and political leader of the Islamic community. By abolishing the office, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk hoped to strike at the heart of political Islam and create a context in which Islam could develop something akin to the Western idea of the separation of religion and state. Instead, his act provided the impetus for the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first modern Islamic terrorist organization, in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood and its offshoots (which include Hamas and Al-Qaeda), and indeed virtually all jihadist groups in the world today, date the misery of the Islamic world to the abolition of the caliphate. The ultimate goal of such groups is the restoration of this office, the reunification of the Islamic world under the caliph, and the establishment of the Sharia as the sole law in Muslim countries. Then the caliph would presumably take up one of his principal duties as stipulated by Islamic law: to wage offensive jihad against non-Muslim states in order to extend Sharia rule to them also.
The abolition of the caliphate, then, accomplished precisely the opposite of what Ataturk hoped it would: it gave the adherents of political Islam a cause around which to rally, recruit, and mobilize. In essence, it gave birth to the crisis that engulfs the world today. It is likely that a destruction of the Kaaba or the Al-Aqsa Mosque would have the same effect: it would become source of spirit, not of dispirit. The jihadists would have yet another injury to add to their litany of grievances, which up to now have so effectively confused American leftists into thinking that the West is at fault in this present conflict. But the grievances always shift; the only constant is the jihad imperative. Let us not give that imperative even greater energy in the modern world by supplying such pretexts needlessly.
Are you going to be "shaken," or are you gonna go looking for blood?
I think I would feel like a fool for supporting an impotent god.
And don't think this strategy hasn't been used by Muslims already. Many mosques are built on the foundations of what were the holy sites of other religions. And they did that to make a point.
And it worked.
The middle east used to full of small religions similar to Judaism. Where are they now? The decendents of those believers are now praying to Allah.
We'll, we're going to have to agree to disagree.
Bringing up the threat of a nuclear annihilation of some portion of their core may help the moderates to realize that they are responsible for saving their religion from this radical infection.
Mosques are the batteries powering terrorism. Hatred and terrorism starts in the mosque, and radiates outward. Destroy the mosques and deport the clerics (which is what this is going to come to) and the problem will be solved.
If we are hit in another massive terrorist attack, this will be the only solution.
The ummah has huge death wish and Mecca-Medina are part of it. They know those cities will be turned to glass someday as a reposes to Muhammadan terrorism and they actually want this to happen. In the dark recesses of their minds.
Something like suicide by cop.
And Islamic faith will never recover if their bllshit Allah cannot protect his unholy cities.
That's what I said. I know I said it because I was there when I said it.
"We need to cut the conventional nonsense and cut the throat (no pun intended) of Islam itself so that it bleeds to death. Whether it be peaceful or militarily, we all know the violence will continue so long as Islam is a major religion."
Correction, some of us know.
I'm sorry, but nuking Mecca would be justified in the sense that millions and millions have sat silently by while their brethern have waged a war on the USA.
They reap what they sowed. Life sucks, but so does the USA getting nuked while we ask why they hate us.
Your right, but it would come from those that want to "Kum-bah-ya my Lord" a bomber wearing a bomb vest. These are the people that side with the terrorists and have never read the Koran, figuring that they are immune from Jihad.
After mega-terrorism destroy the Jihadist mosques and those who preach in them. The innocuous Mosques aren't worth bothering with
Exactly. Inciting violence in the mosque is not free speech.
Was this so hard for the media to get these facts straight? Yes. However, Tancredo sure got some milage out of this. This administration should take note & find out how these terrorist countries would possibly help us if they knew their possessions could go up in smoke if any terrorist act should happen again. That wouldn't be politially correct in the compassionate conservative administration but we are told that illegals only come here for jobs & Islam is a religion of peace.
70 million Hindus were decimated when Allah's armies of death rode in. All those Muslim Pakistanis you see today were forcibly converted hundreds of years ago from Hinduism.
MI Ping
This author is offering more of the "don't give them a reason to hate us" claptrap. It is actually a reason for them to fear us. So much better.
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/pillars.shtml
A pilgramage (Hajj) to Mecca is a requirement of all Muslims financially and physically able to do so. Eliminating one of the 5 pillars would seem to be a pretty useful threat.
Tancredo was wrong to mention this. It plays into the hands of Muslims who aren't moderate but wish to seem so.
I wouldn't take it off the table. But I wouldn't mention it either.
Looks like most freepers don't buy Robert Spencer's argument to leave Mecca alone.
Yes, he did, when asked what America's response should be if terrorists set off nuclear bombs in the U.S.
I think this should be just PART of response from the U.S.
Now if the author or someone else could just elucidate an equally strategic and intellectual rational discourse on how to best counteract and eliminate the Islamofacist threat of mass destruction hovering over America, then I might sit up and take notice. To date, I've not seen any such approach on how to rationally deal with Islamic-based insanity. What is the best way to deal with the threats of the insane? I'm still waiting for alternative solutions. All I read others saying is what won't work. Time is getting short.
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