"Better to be wanted by the police than not wanted at all."
Anonymous
Posted on 06/23/2006 1:29:57 PM PDT by Frank T
In 1938, the year of Anschluss and Munich, a perceptive British Catholic looked beyond the continent over which war clouds hung and saw another cloud forming.
"It has always seemed to me ... probable," wrote Hilaire Belloc, "that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."
Belloc was prophetic. Even as Christianity seems to be dying in Europe, Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many previous centuries.
Indeed, as one watches U.S. armed forces struggle against Sunni insurgents, Shia militias and Jihadists in Iraq, and a resurgent Taliban, all invoking Allah, Victor Hugo's words return to mind: No army is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
The idea for which our many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one. They believe there is but one God, Allah, that Muhammad is his prophet, that Islam, or submission to the Quran, is the only path to paradise and that a Godly society should be governed according to the Sharia, the law of Islam. Having tried other ways and failed, they are coming home to Islam.
What idea do we have to offer? Americans believe that freedom comports with human dignity, that only a democratic and free-market system can ensure the good life for all, as it has done in the West and is doing in Asia.
From Ataturk on, millions of Islamic peoples have embraced this Western alternative. But today, tens of millions of Muslims appear to be rejecting it, returning to their roots in a more pure Islam.
Indeed, the endurance of the Islamic faith is astonishing.
Islam survived two centuries of defeats and humiliations of the Ottoman Empire and Ataturk's abolition of the caliphate. It endured generations of Western rule. It outlasted the pro-Western monarchs in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia and Iran. Islam easily fended off communism, survived the rout of Nasserism in 1967 and has proven more enduring than the nationalism of Arafat or Saddam. Now, it is resisting the world's last superpower.
What occasioned this column was a jolting report in the June 20 Washington Times, by James Brandon, alerting us to a new front.
"Arrests Spark Fear of Armed Islamist Takeover" headlined the story about the arrest, since May, of 500 militants who had allegedly plotted the overthrow of the king of Morocco and establishment of an Islamic state that would sever all ties to the infidel West -- to end the poverty and corruption they blame on the West.
The arrests raised fears that Al Adl wa al Ihsane, or Justice and Charity, was preparing to take up arms to fulfill the predictions of the group's mystics that the monarchy would fall in 2006. Though illegal, Al Adl wa al Ihsane is Morocco's largest Islamic movement, which boycotts elections, but has hundreds of thousands of followers and has taken over the universities and is radicalizing the young.
Its founder is Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, who has declared its purpose is to reunite mosque and state: "Politics and spirituality have been kept apart by the Arab elites. And we have been able to reconnect these two aspects of Islam -- and that is why people fear us."
And, one might add, why people embrace them.
If Morocco is now in play in the struggle between militant Islam and the West, how looks the correlation of forces in June 2006?
Islamists are taking over in Somalia. They are in power in Sudan. The Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the races it contested in Egypt. Hezbollah swept the board in southern Lebanon. Hamas seized power from Fatah on the West Bank and Gaza. The Shia parties who hearken to Ayatollah Sistani brushed aside our favorites, Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, in the Iraqi elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most admired Iranian leader since Khomeini. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is staging a comeback.
This has all happened in the last year. And where are we winning?
What is the appeal of militant Islam? It is, first, its message: As all else has failed us, why not live the faith and law God gave us?
Second, it is the Muslim rage at the present condition where pro-Western regimes are seen as corruptly enriching themselves, while the poor suffer.
Third, it is a vast U.S. presence that Islamic peoples are taught is designed to steal their God-given resources and assist the Israelis in humiliating them and persecuting the Palestinians.
Lastly, Islamic militants are gaining credibility because they show a willingness to share the poverty of the poor and fight the Americans.
What America needs to understand is something unusual for us: From Morocco to Pakistan, we are no longer seen by the majority as the good guys.
If Islamic rule is an idea taking hold among the Islamic masses, how does even the best army on earth stop it? Do we not need a new policy?
My own guess the Pershing story (bury them in pigskins) is a myth or 70% myth
I read this a couple of times because after the first reading I thought I was missing something.
He starts out by wring that there was a wise man who saw Islam as a future problem for the West. Ok.
The he writes, notwithstanding with some admiration ("The idea for which our many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one"), that Islam is belligerent and on a bloody trail.
Then as usual he inserts to blame Israel- ignoring that just above he had written that Islam was predicted to resurrect and spread its "(admirable") aims.
Then he says we should change course in how we face Islam because we in the West are doomed to defeat.
And then he stops.
So presumably the change that is needed is that we no longer stand up to Islam -I would argue we haven't even begun to stand up to Islam- - but get down on bent knee.
It leaves me with one question. When is Buchanan converting to Islam?
I said foreign policy -- not just the Iraq war! The whole paleo movement is nothing but clowns full of frustrated power lust and anti-Semitism, using the new [k word] neo con as their substitute for Jews.
"Better to be wanted by the police than not wanted at all."
Anonymous
In this article, Buchanan only poses a problem and no apparent solutions; his tone is cynical and rather defeatist. Yes, fanatical Islam is a threat, and yes, we need to combat it. But the proper attitude ought to be one of *glorifying the accomplishments and liberty present in the West*, rather than acknowledging the strengths of the enemy. Furthermore, Buchanan fails to mention the outstanding gains made against Islamist fanaticism by the War-on-Terror-related initiatives in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the elimination of the murderous thug al-Zarqawi.
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You are raving and you are very insulting too.
Not everyone is as smart as you.
BTW, I like your photo.
Tsk tsk tsk.... I must've struck a nerve. Anti-Semites so hate it when Jews fight back.
Thank you!
You did not. You are just a bully who tries to intimidate your opponents. And as a bully you are a coward who is afraid of honest rational discourse.
Good Morning!
How true.
The problem is not with "being dogmatic". If you stick to the rules of logic or common sense or if you stick to the principles justice or dogmas of TRUE Faith it is good.
Good Christians have to stick to the dogmas like the one of Holy Trinity for example. Good patriots stick to the rule that you do not sell your country for a profit, etc ....
The real problem is what is CONTENT of your beliefs. For example if your belief is that you should love your enemies and forgive those who offend you the outcome is very different if you follow the rule "eye for eye".
If you are flexible on every point then you do not have spine and you are a base wretched human being.
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