So You Want a Holy War? (William F. Buckley Jr.)

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.

Don't worry about PC. It is a luxury of a peaceful, prosperous society. One more attack and watch the ramparts begin to crumble.

If there has to be another attack, maybe it could be at Berkeley or some place where the US haters can be found.

Actually, Ann Coulter was not fired. NRO stopped carrying her column. The two are entirely different things.

Presumably, dropping Buckley's column is not an option.

Islam has no organized priesthood, nor have churches or church services comparable to Christian services or centers of worship. However, temples, or mosques, exist for prayers, and mullahs, or learned teachers, are available to explain regious doctrine.

Thanks! That explains a lot. Wonder what credentials are required to be a mullah - or can anyone just claim the title if they want to and run around issuing edicts and fatwahs?

Gee, and we only have ten million of them in our nation that the government will admit to. Out of ten million couldn't they even round up five moderate muslims to stand next to President Bush in a mosque while he pleaded for their lives. All the while these muslims with terrorist connections stood beside him, with that look on their faces, guilty from a distance of the terror in NYC and DC, having created and funded charitable front organizations for terrorists. Unbelieveable.

I was happy when Bush used the term "Crusade" in his speech to congress.

It wasn't in a speech to Congress. It was an "unscripted" remark he made in response to a group of reporters questioning him on a Sunday afternoon (Sept. 16, I believe) after he had disembarked from the helicopter bringing him back to the White House from Camp David.

He has never used the term since. In fact, from everything I am observing, he seems to be moving toward making peace with his own "Inner Jihad."

...many people are upset right now with NRO's dismissal of Ann Coulter (as am I).

Coulter deserved to get canned.

The column she wrote went way over the line.
She brazenly and publicly mocked the editors of NRO after being reprimanded for the column. I don't know about you, but my bosses don't look too kindly on being publicly mocked.
She has a marked tendency to be much too full of herself. In some ways she resembles little Billy Clinton---it's all about her.

I guess I was too young when the Panama Canal was a big issue (I'm 32 now). I don't remember Buckley's involvement in the debate. However, I'm not sure that I'd oppose relinquishing the canal if the issue were put to a vote today so I can't say that I'd condemn him for his position then.

As for the socialist comment, I've read enough of his writings, which are infused with respect and support for the free market system, to seriously doubt that he considers himself a socialist.

Cutting off peoples hands and feet for stealing a loaf of bread sounds like something out of Europe's dark ages.

Actually, I think this custom was practiced in China until the last 100 years or so. The Christian West abolished the practice.

please cite a source for your assertion.

i find it next to impossible to believe,
unless your remark is wildly out of context somehow.

I hear only ambiguous statements from Moslem clerics. When stupid reporters ask if they condemn suicide, of course they answer yes - but do they condemn martyrdom in a jihad? Of course not! That's how I know the unscheduled Moslem pilot who deliberately downed EgyptAir flight 990 two years ago did so as a terrorist act for the glory of Allah - not as a suicidal man.
It is way past time for Americans to stop propagating the LIE that Allah is the same as the Christian God. No Moslem or informed Christian believes such nonsense.

Allah is EVIL, a deceiver, a bloodthirsty oppresser who laughs 5 times a day when he sees rows of men in robes with their butts in the air. He enslaves the men that Jesus would set free. The men in turn enslave the women and children to their arrogant oppression. They rule by fear and lies, not by faith and love.

Carefully selected, there are Koranic preachments that are consistent with civilized life.

Unfortunately, you must make the same kind of selection from the Old Testament to find a Christian or Jewish sect that is consistent with civilized life. It is just that our ancestors did that for us long ago, and we don't even think about the "unpleasant parts" of the Old Testament.
Read Mark Twain's "Letters from Earth" if you want to see particular passages dissected

So9

Having grown up as a baptist, I can understand all of those warning signs you pointed out.

I think that there are many churches that function as 'soft' cults run for the profit and esteem of their elders and leaders..power is a strong drug.

I am very careful of my choice of churches for this reason.

..."LETS ROLL!!!!!!!!!"- The late, great Todd Beamer of Flight 93

"Defeat it, or be defeated by it" -Blair (war sure makes strange bedfellows)

Unfortunately, you must make the same kind of selection from the Old Testament to find a Christian or Jewish sect that is consistent with civilized life.

I was reading past where my pastor was quoting from Leviticus this past Sunday and read where one should be stoned for using God's name in vain and an example of this being done....Well I would have suffered that fate just today when I lost my mouth and did the same. What Christian church would actually advocate "Joe's Olde Time Church of God" stoning me to death as I sit here at my computer? In fact all churches would come out to denounce this behaviour and think it horrid. You are correct, we pick and choose from our books and don't try to take the entire books as something to imitate page for page.

How can you continue to be a fan of a man who joined Jimmie Karter in shoving the Panama Canal into the hands of the communists?

By reading what he writes and wholeheartedly agreeing with him. If you want to live in the past, go ahead. I prefer to live in the present and look to the future.

I don't see what you like about this piece. This is so vague and dumbed-down compared to Civilization Envy, a much more substantive analysis of the problem. Compared to Civilization Envy, WFB's piece is full of wind.

And compared to Coulter, writing FUTURE WIDOWS OF AMERICA: WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN, WFB is full of pomp and circumstance signifying nothing.

NR is going downhill fast.

In short, if bin Laden is teaching falsely then why don't mullahs get up as a BODY and say so. If they remain silen, then we will assume that silence implies that thay consent to Bin Lden's teachings.

"Who is silent gives consent."

Buckley does not = Coulter. Buckley asks for mainstream Islam to clarify the distinction between it and what the purported Islamic theology of the terrorists which to them "sanctified" their actions, and to go about doing it publically and in their own lands, or become subject to becoming personnas non grata in the civilized world. Coulter suggested forcible conversion of Moslems to Christianity in the lands of the perps, ala some sort of cruscade redux. I see a considerable distinction, even if most here do not.

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