Posted on 10/02/2001 1:07:50 PM PDT by Drew68
So You Want a Holy War? We have now Islam to deal with. October 2, 2001 1:25 p.m. hatever is or is not authentic transcription of Islamic dogma, we do know that the people who ran the airliners into the World Trade Center believed that a Koranic voice was telling them to do what they did. We have the four-page document that told them not only what to do, but what to think. "Kill them, as God said; No Prophet can have prisoners of war."
They would not cavil, their clerical dispatcher knew, but even so there was a reiteration of the sacradeness of their mission. "Recognize...what God has prepared for believers in endless happiness for martyrs.... Be steadfast and remember [that in] God you will be triumphant."
Here is a strategic suggestion from the Western high command. Declare in full voice that Islam is widely profaned and mistaught. That if it isn't — if the Koranic high exegetes are paralyzed with doubt whether such as the Ladenites are true to their faith — then the faith being practiced must be disavowed by the legitimists. Say as much and say also that the Western world is prepared to denominate the imposters as such and to call for a restoration of a Muslim religion consistent with civilized conduct.
We have done such a thing in the political world. Without using the language of excommunication as such, what we got around to doing in the postwar world was to exclude Communism as an acceptable model for the organization of political life. We did this because, by our experience with Communism in practice and by the exercise of reason, we judged it incompatible with irreversible advances in human behavior. When finally the United States abolished slavery, the word went out: No more. No Christianity cum slavery. One or the other.
We have now Islam to deal with. We do not need to make the point that its political and economic record is miserable, that only one of 18 Muslim states (Turkey) is democratically governed. There are those who are willing to advertise the individual hypocrisies. A spokesman from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, while calling on his faithful to overthrow the government of Pakistan for the sin of maintaining equable relations with the United States, sends his own two sons to the United States to school. The Taliban has taken unmarried women detected in pregnancy and buried them to neck level before execution. Where is Islamic condemnation of such practices? For that matter, where is condemnation of Saudis chopping pickpockets' hands off?
We read of the mobs in Karachi who denounce the United States and flaunt signs that call out to "CRUSH AMERICA." In a pinch, we have to gamble. Perhaps human nature isn't reliably self-interested enough to prefer liberal democracy to protracted tyrannical misery. But we have to hope that the raw instinct is there to welcome relief. There were Kuwaitis who prostrated themselves with gratitude to liberating GIs, even as there are millions of Afghans who flee the wretched world of their Muslim oppressors where they have been kept alive by American food shipments to Afghanistan and bank now on American food shipped to Pakistan, where they will reasonably hope that before America is entirely CRUSHED we will have stored enough food for them and their children.
It is thought to be a sign of toleration to defer to Islam as simply another religion. It isn't that. It is a form of condescension. Carefully selected, there are Koranic preachments that are consistent with civilized life. But on September 11th we were looked in the face by a deed done by Muslims who understood themselves to be acting out Muslim ideals. It is all very well for individual Muslim spokesmen to assert the misjudgment of the terrorist, but the Islamic world is substantially made up of countries that ignore, or countenance, or support terrorist activity. Mustafa Kamal Uddin, a 32-year-old body-and-fender man in Karachi, explained it to a New York Times reporter. You see, he said, holy wars come about only when Allah has no other way to maintain justice, times like now. "That is why Allah took out his sword" on September 11th.
We demand to know: Who taught Mustafa Kamal Uddin to reason in that way, and the crowds in Karachi to support such thinking? Pending an answer to the question, and the unmistakable assumption by reputable Muslims of the responsibility to extirpate such misteaching, renounce modern Islam. Either restore the proper Allah — or get ready for a holy war.
I'm still looking for a columnist who writes only things I agree with. Can you recommend any for me?
Of course they are not disavowing anything. I've almost convinced myself that any devout Muslim is an extreme fundamentalist Muslim, and that the peaceful ones are like the self-professed Christians who only go to church on Easter Sunday and Christmas.
...And I could just see Jonah trying to pass Buckley a pink slip (LOL).
This is exactly what I and many other FReepers have been feeling and expressing these past few weeks and our State Dept. and Media have done their best so far to convince all of us not to believe "our lying eyes".
Kudos to WFB for setting the record straight. Unfortunately for the lovely Miss Coulter....her words strictly about forced conversion were a case of emotional hyberbole and her defiance to her editors resulted in her dismissal. I fear not that she will find another more suitable place for expression.
Where are the Muslim religious scholars denouncing these acts? Who is in charge of the mosque at Mecca? Couldn't he issue a statement denouncing such teachings? All the rational leaders of Islam should produce a joint statement pointing out that anyone teaching such doctrine is wrong and such actions will put the perpetrators, the planners and the financers in the Islamic hell.
There is something wrong if the peaceful followers of Islam don't mind being grouped-in with these murderous fanatics.
ABC broadcast an interview that an American crew had with an Islamic fundamentalist/terrorist in a prison somewhere in the mid-east. The reporter was stunned at the answer to his question: "Would you strap a bomb around your waist and blow up a group of school children?" The response, "If the religious scholars told me to do this, I would." What kind of fools are these? How do you comprehend the incomprehensible?
Both are sadly accurate.
I respect all those folks, and many more (Thomas Sowell, George Will, R. Emmett Tyrrell and many more). My point was I can't say I always agree with any of them. I agree with you that Buckley was wrong about the Panama Canal, and I think he's wrong about legalizing drugs; still, I agree with what he says much more than I disagree, and I greatly respect what he has done for the modern conservative movement. In my opinion, his advancing of it is in the same league as Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh.
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
We are coming.
5.56mm
Amen! I have advanced this same theory with my friends. Yes, these fanatics use religion to give their political aims more legitimacy, but if the Muslim officals will not openly unite to condemn those actions, then their silence speaks louder than any words. Consider how Christian leaders openly condemn anti-abortionist bombings and killings. Why haven't the Muslim leaders done the same with the WTC atrocity?
I know that Bush and some of his people have said this, but is Buckley talking about ISLAMIC leaders saying this? I won't hold my breath, but maybe Dubya and Co. can convince some of them to speak out.
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