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The Islamic Threat Is Greater Than German And Soviet Threats Were (Dennis Prager Alert)
Townhall.com ^ | 03/28/06 | Dennis Prager

Posted on 03/27/2006 10:09:17 PM PST by goldstategop

Only four types of individuals can deny the threat to civilization posed by the violence-supporting segment of Islam: the willfully naive, America-haters, Jew-haters and those afraid to confront evil.

Anyone else sees the contemporary reality -- the genocidal Islamic regime in Sudan; the widespread Muslim theological and emotional support for the killing of a Muslim who converts to another religion; the absence of freedom in Muslim-majority countries; the widespread support for Palestinians who randomly murder Israelis; the primitive state in which women are kept in many Muslim countries; the celebration of death; the "honor killings" of daughters; and so much else that is terrible in significant parts of the Muslim world -- knows that civilized humanity has a new evil to fight.

Just as previous generations had to fight Nazism, communism and fascism, our generation has to confront militant Islam.

And whereas there were unique aspects to those evils, there are two unique aspects to the evil emanating from the Islamic world that render this latest threat to humanity particularly difficult to overcome.

One is the number of people who believe in it. This is a new phenomenon among organized evils. Far fewer people believed in Nazism or in communism than believe in Islam generally or in authoritarian Islam specifically. There are one billion Muslims in the world. If just 10 percent believe in the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, the Sudanese regime, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, bin Ladin, Islamic Jihad, the Finley Park Mosque in London or Hizbollah -- and it is inconceivable that only one of 10 Muslims supports any of these groups' ideologies -- that means a true believing enemy of at least 100 million people. Outside of Germany, how many people believed in Nazism? Outside of Japan, who believed in Japanese imperialism and militarism? And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism?

A far larger number of people believe in Islamic authoritarianism than ever believed in Marxism. Virtually no one living in Marxist countries believed in Marxism or communism. Likewise, far fewer people believed in Nazism, an ideology confined largely to one country for less than one generation. This is one enormous difference between the radical Islamic threat to our civilization and the two previous ones.

But there is yet a second difference that is at least as significant and at least as frightening: Nazis and Communists wanted to live and feared death; Islamic authoritarians love death and loathe life.

That is why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the Soviet Union. Communist leaders love life -- they loved their money, their power, their dachas, their mistresses, their fine wines -- and were hardly prepared to give all that up for Marx. But Iran's current leaders celebrate dying, and MAD may not work, because from our perspective, they are indeed mad. MAD only works with the sane.

There is much less you can do against people who value dying more than living.

The existence of an unprecedentedly large number of people wishing to destroy decent civilization as we know it -- and who celebrate their own deaths -- poses a threat the likes of which no civilization in history has had to confront.

The evils committed by Nazism and Communism were, of course, greater than those committed by radical Islam. There has been no Muslim Gulag and no Muslim Auschwitz.

But the threat is far more serious.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: deathcult; dennisprager; freedom; islam; islamofascism; threat; totalitarianism; townhall; waronterror; west
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Islam doesn't have a Gulag or an Auschwitz. Yet, it is qualitatively more serious as threat to the West and our civilization on two counts: 1) the number of people who actually believe in radical Islam - over 100 million and 2) the transmogrification of Islam into a Death Cult. Imagine Iran with the nuclear bomb and that mindset and you can begin to see no civilization in history has to confront an entire segment of a belief group that believes in death as opposed to life as the ultimate reward. That is the challenge of our time.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

1 posted on 03/27/2006 10:09:22 PM PST by goldstategop
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To: goldstategop

Great stuff from Dennis. He is right on the mark.


2 posted on 03/27/2006 10:17:05 PM PST by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
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To: goldstategop
The more backwards the country the higher the percentage of radical Islam believers. The 10% figure may be valid for advanced countries but not Turdistan.

Over all, about 40% are wack jobs. IMHO

3 posted on 03/27/2006 10:17:13 PM PST by ncountylee (Dead terrorists smell like victory)
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To: goldstategop

America-haters and Jew-haters are the same group.


4 posted on 03/27/2006 10:19:37 PM PST by thoughtomator (Pacifism is objectively pro-terrorist; Amnesty for illegals is objectively anti-American)
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To: goldstategop
Stupid number play. The whole Germany, Japan and Russia were controlled by the corresponding ideology. That was (for that time) much more formidable than 100 million third-worlders today.
5 posted on 03/27/2006 10:21:05 PM PST by eclectic (Liberalism is a mental disorder)
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To: goldstategop
And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism?

I love it. If I hadn't seen the Dennis Prager byline, I would have thought that line came from Ann Coulter...

6 posted on 03/27/2006 10:21:38 PM PST by Zeppo
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To: goldstategop
btt.

With the Nazi's the government rounded people up and shipped them off for concealed murder.

With Islam, a neighbor may be your slaughterer.
7 posted on 03/27/2006 10:21:46 PM PST by TASMANIANRED (The Internet is the samizdat of liberty..)
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To: goldstategop
Not just Soviets and Germans, but Japan also.

And the Spanish Inquisition, Ghengis Khan, both William and Hannibal the Conquerors, and the 10^3 km-sized astroid that's headed straight to earth.

8 posted on 03/27/2006 10:24:38 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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To: goldstategop

It is qualitatively different for a third reason that's even more terrifying than the first two, imo; namely, you can defeat muslims in any given battle, or in any given war, and yet they will come back, generation after generation, century after century, until they've utterly destroyed your civilization. Just ask India which, over a period of centuries, lost both Afghanistan and Pakistan to them, and is still locked in unending conflict with them.


9 posted on 03/27/2006 10:24:47 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: goldstategop
Only four types of individuals can deny the threat to civilization posed by the violence-supporting segment of Islam: the willfully naive, America-haters, Jew-haters and those afraid to confront evil.

IOW about 70% of the American public. See tagline.

10 posted on 03/27/2006 10:27:18 PM PST by Carry_Okie (Islam offers us three choices: submit, fight, or die.)
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To: LibWhacker
you can defeat muslims in any given battle, or in any given war, and yet they will come back, generation after generation, century after century, until they've utterly destroyed your civilization.

This is the identical case that Hitler made against Jews. But you feel it's okay?

11 posted on 03/27/2006 10:28:29 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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To: SteveMcKing
Oh, please! I'm more pro-Jewish than anyone here.

History doesn't lie. Study Indian history. The muj don't quit. Perhaps 80 million were slaughtered in India alone.

12 posted on 03/27/2006 10:33:28 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: goldstategop
Once again a talking head with no military experience writes a shock column. True, it is going to get bloody with the jihadis, but it is not Armageddon. This magical number of 10% is specious at best.I have served two tours in the land of jihadis and can honestly say almost all of them want nothing more than you and I do. The vast majority of the jihadis are illiterate, uneducated drones that are not a military threat.
13 posted on 03/27/2006 10:36:29 PM PST by roughman ( roughmen stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm (orwell))
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To: goldstategop
A Christian college student who writes under the pseudonym of John Clark Mead studied Islam while he was a graduate student in social anthropology. He wrote "The New World War" based on what he discovered.

As a student, he was commissioned by the Muslims to help them "put a good face on Islam" during the late 1990's. He lived in Southeast Asia while he interfaced with them. He met many Imams and became personal friends with some.

He had Imams take him aside and tell him that the Muslim world is at war with the west because they see plainly that Western culture is destroying their religion and culture. The radical Muslims have a 50 year plan to destroy the West and they are about 7 to 8 years into the plan.

John's assessment of the numbers is similar to Prager's. John believes that 10% of the Muslim's of the world fall into the category of radical and are willing to become soldiers in the fight. There are another 10% which are "scholars". These people could easily go either direction.

The vast majority of Muslims are "tepid" and are Muslim in name only, usually because they happen to live in a Muslim country. They are not likely to fight for Islam any more than the Swedes would fight for Christianity even though they are a "Christian" nation. However, there is no point in making them alarmed. The radicals will try to do this. Remember that the Dutch cartoons circulated in the Middle East were "enhanced"?
14 posted on 03/27/2006 10:42:59 PM PST by the_Watchman
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To: eclectic

Not a stupid number play! The Japanese and German populations were held under a spell, as it were, which was broken by the defeat of their national armed forces. As seen on the History Channel, the American occupiers of Japan worried about the emergence of a fanatical resistance based on suicide tactics, but no such thing developed. It was over.


15 posted on 03/27/2006 10:43:11 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: thoughtomator

Uh..no. You seem to want to say the two are one and the same, as if the USA was a Jewish nation. It isn't, and never will be. It is a Christian nation. Read up on James Madison, Patrick Henry, Noah Webster, etc to see why.


16 posted on 03/27/2006 10:46:58 PM PST by Windsong (Jesus Saves, but Buddha makes incremental backups)
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To: thoughtomator

Wrong!!


17 posted on 03/27/2006 10:49:20 PM PST by duckln
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To: Windsong

He's not saying that America-hating and Jew-hating are the same thing. He's saying that it's the same people doing each of these. To dispute this thesis, one must go further than making the distinction between the two types of hating.


18 posted on 03/27/2006 11:00:28 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: roughman

'..magical number of 10% is specious at best..'

The 10% was just a number Mr Prager threw out for argument's sake. I don't think he meant it to be very exact or verifiable.

But another problem in this particular socio-mathematic exercise is in determining the base number not just the percentage of the base.

Who really knows how many Muslims are actually Muslim at heart rather than just folks who simply have developed a fondness for their heads?


19 posted on 03/27/2006 11:10:22 PM PST by BuddhaBrown (Path to enlightenment: Four right turns, then go straight until you see the Light!)
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To: Windsong

America is more Jewish than Israel is, in its constitution (as in "what it's made of", not the document). It's no coincidence that the Liberty Bell quotes Deuteronomy and the Supreme Court has Moses at its apex.


20 posted on 03/27/2006 11:26:45 PM PST by thoughtomator (Pacifism is objectively pro-terrorist; Amnesty for illegals is objectively anti-American)
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