America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn.
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Steyn.
The first three are posted on FreeRepublic here.
Posted on 11/17/2006 9:04:26 AM PST by GMMAC
This is the fourth of five excerpts from
America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn.
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Steyn.
The first three are posted on FreeRepublic here.
Franchising terror, mosque by mosque (part IV)
Communists had 'deep sleepers' who had
to be controlled in a hierarchical chain.
But with Islam, who needs that?
Mark Steyn, National Post
Published: Friday, November 17, 2006
Islam is not just a religion. Those lefties who bemoan what America is doing to provoke "the Muslim world" would go bananas if any Western politician started referring to "the Christian world." When such sensitive guardians of the separation of church and state endorse the first formulation but not the second, they implicitly accept that Islam has a political sovereignty too. There is an "Organization of the Islamic Conference": It's like the EU and the Commonwealth and the G8 -- that is, an organization of nation states whose heads of government hold regular meetings. Imagine if someone proposed an "Organization of the Christian Conference" that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and presidents and voted as a bloc in transnational bodies.
So it's not merely that there's a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project -- and, in fact, an imperial project -- in a way that modern Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are not. Furthermore, this particular religion is historically a somewhat bloodthirsty faith in which whatever's your bag violence-wise can almost certainly be justified. And, yes, Christianity has had its blood-drenched moments, but the Spanish Inquisition, which remains a byword for theocratic violence, killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in a typical year.
So we have a global terrorist movement insulated within a global political project insulated within a severely self-segregating religion whose adherents are the fastest-growing demographic in the developed world. The jihad thus has a very potent brand inside a highly dispersed and very decentralized network much more efficient than anything the CIA can muster. And these fellows can hide in plain sight. As the Times of London reported in 2006: "An American al-Qaeda operative who was a close associate of the leader of the July 7 [2005] bombers was recruited at a New York mosque that British militants helped to run. British radicals regularly travelled to the Masjid Fatima Islamic Centre, in Queens, to organize sending American volunteers to jihadi training camps in Pakistan. Investigators reportedly found that Mohammad Sidique Khan had made calls to the mosque last year in the months before he led the terrorist attack on London that killed 52 innocent people. Mohammad Junaid Babar, one recruit from the Masjid Fatima Islamic Centre, has told U.S. intelligence officials that he met Khan in a jihadi training camp in Pakistan in July 2003. He claims that the pair became friends as they studied how to assemble explosive devices. Babar, 31, a computer programmer, says that it was at the Masjid Fatima centre that he became a radical."
And so it goes. The mosques are recruiters for the jihad and play an important role in ideological subordination and cell discipline. In globalization terms, that's a perfect model. Unlike the Soviets, it's a franchise business rather than owner-operated; the Commies had "deep sleepers" who had to be "controlled" in a very hierarchical chain. But who needs that with Islam? Not long after Sept. 11, I said, just as an aside, that these days whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammed. It was a throwaway line, but if you want to compile chapter and verse, you can add to the list every week.
- A plane flies into the World Trade Center? Mohammed Atta.
- A sniper starts killing gas station customers around Washington, D.C.? John Allen Muhammed.
- A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri.
- A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet.
- A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed.
- A British subject self-detonates in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammed Hanif.
- A terrorist cell bombs the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? Ali Mohamed.
- A gang rapist preys on the women of Sydney? Mohammed Skaf.
- A Canadian terror cell is arrested for plotting to bomb Ottawa and behead the prime minister? Mohammed Dirie, Amin Mohamed Durrani and Yasim Abdi Mohamed.
These last three represent a "broad strata" of Canadian society, according to Mike McDonnell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a man who must have aced sensitivity training class. To the casual observer, the broad strata would seem to be a very singular stratum: In their first appearance in court, 12 men arrested in that Ontario plot requested the Koran.
When I made my observation about multiple Mohammeds in the news, Merle Ricklefs, a professor at the National University of Singapore and South-East Asian editor of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Islam, remarked sarcastically, "Deep thinking, indeed." Well, gosh, maybe it's not terribly sophisticated. But then again, when you're dealing with fellows who decapitate female aid workers in Iraq and engage in mass slaughter of Russian schoolchildren, maybe sophistication isn't always helpful. Particularly when sophistication seems mostly to be a form of obfuscation by experts wedded to the notion that Islam is something that simply can't be understood unless you've read all 16 volumes of their Encyclopedia, or, better yet, written them.
For those of us who aren't professors of Islamic studies, the obvious course is to step back and try to work from first principles: What's happening? Who's doing it? The five-thousand-guys-named-Mo routine meets the "reasonable man" test: It's the first thing an averagely well-informed person who's not a multiculti apologist notices -- here's the evening news and here comes another Mohammed.
From America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn.
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright (Copyright) 2006 by Mark Steyn.
TOMORROW
A fifth Excerpt from America Alone: Mark Steyn on the United States, 'the world's first non-imperial superpower'
© National Post 2006
PING!
Thanks for posting these excerpts. I am fighting the ignorance of priests in my area who are renewing efforts to dialogue with the imams. This is another tool I can use.
BTTT
"For those of us who aren't professors of Islamic studies, the obvious course is to step back and try to work from first principles: What's happening? Who's doing it? The five-thousand-guys-named-Mo routine meets the "reasonable man" test: It's the first thing an averagely well-informed person who's not a multiculti apologist notices -- here's the evening news and here comes another Mohammed."
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I love that.
"Franchising Terror" begins France.
Thanks much! Read and saved. I remember someone who was interviewing Steyn recently commented that the book left him/her somewhat depressed. I can understand why.
Yep. We are the "good guys." I wonder where he is in New Hampshire. That's where we go every summer. It's a beautiful state.
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