Posted on 10/11/2001 9:09:27 AM PDT by ninachka
October 10, 2001
This is a war on more that terrorism
By Linda Chavez
We are not fighting a war on terrorism. Terrorism is the means by which our enemy chooses to wage war against us, but we should not confuse its tactics with the nature of the enemy itself. The enemy has an ideology. It has a command structure. It has troops. And it is clear in its aim -- nothing short of the destruction of our civilization.
The enemy is militant Islamic fundamentalism. The command structure is made up of hundreds of mullahs around the world, including some living in this country, who preach death to the infidels. Its troops include not just the thousands of trained terrorists but the millions of others who support the mullahs and finance the terrorists through their donations to radical Islamic groups. To pretend otherwise risks not only our own defeat, but that of the moderate Moslem world as well.
In his 1996 book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington presciently described "a quasi war develop(ing) between Islam and the West," Even before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Huntington noted, "many more Westerners have been killed in this quasi war than were killed in the 'real' war in the Gulf." The direction of Islam as a religion has become increasingly threatening to non-believers, not just in the West but throughout the world. Its threat extends beyond the Middle East to Asia and Africa, even to the United States where some fundamentalist imams spread their hateful doctrines protected by our First Amendment.
Not all, or even most, Moslems are our enemies, certainly. Indeed, the moderate Islamic nations are on the front lines of this war and have been among its first casualties, starting with the Iranian revolution in 1979. Some of the most brutal tactics of the fundamentalists have been used against fellow Muslims in Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, the response of virtually every moderate Moslem leader to the threat posed by fundamentalists has been to accede to the fundamentalists' interpretation of Islam, and to further the Islamization of all social, cultural, and political institutions in their countries. Even Turkey, which since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's policies of secularization in the 1920s and 1930s has been the most pro-Western Moslem nation, has become more Islamist in the last few years. As Huntington observed, every Moslem country in the world is more Islamist today than it was two decades ago, with the exception of Iran -- but only because Iran was the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution.
Despite what our leaders keeping telling us, Islam is not inherently a peaceful religion. Unlike Christianity, in whose name wars have been fought but without any Scriptural basis to support those wars to be found in the teachings of Jesus Christ, Islam can find explicit justification for its jihad or "holy war" within its sacred text.
The Koran instructs believers to "slay the idolaters ... make war on the leaders of unbelief -- for no oaths are binding with them -- so that they may desist. Will you not fight against those who have broken their oaths and conspired to banish the Apostle? They were the first to attack you. Do you fear them? Surely God is more deserving of your fear, if you are true believers. Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands and humble them." The Koran is filled with elaborate instructions on the conduct of war, the methods of executing the infidels, the rewards that will accrue to those martyred in a holy war.
The very nature of fundamentalism is to take these instructions literally. And there is plenty of historical precedent. For nearly one thousand years, Europe was under nearly constant siege from Islamic invaders, from the first Moors who conquered Spain in 710 to the last Ottoman attack on Vienna in 1683. So long as the trend within the Moslem world today is toward a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, the West will continue to face a new threat to its survival.
Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a TownHall.com member organization. Contact Linda Chavez
©2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
I posted this on the Front Page because I thinkmost (if not all) FReepers would appreciate it. Also because after reading it I thought that it should be on the front page of every newspaper in the nation!
I did a search and could not find this article...if it has already been posted, my apologies...
BUMP
a) They are enacting the just punishment of Allah; So, when they slam themselves into innocent buildings, they are actually fulfilling the just punishment of Allah against Allah's enemies.
b) They earn the just mercy of Allah. Their acts of destruction merit "mercy points" with Allah's rewards.
The question posed to Western Christendom is this: How do you counter such beliefs?
Or do you mean coming up with a tactical means of discouraging this conduct?
Also, I should point out that Usama bin Laden and the Taliban belong to the Wahhabist sect of Sunni Islam. Wahabbism teaches a strict predestinationism and its adherents believe that they are fated to die in Allah's service - that they have an inner call to martyrdom which they have no power to resist. Therefore, to some of these terrorists there is no meaning to the term "winning points" - they're simply doing what they believe they were born to do.
I think it would be more accurate to say that Wahabbism teaches a brand of fatalism. But predestinarianism is not fatalism.
Cordially,
My point is this: various Moslems use various reasons to justify or excuse the evil the Qu'ran preaches and that terrorists practice. There is no clear theological argument that will undermine Wahabbist fatalism or Ismailist "works-righteousness". It's like trying to convince a Marxist that his economics are demonstrably flawed - the economics were never really the point of Marxism in the first place: power was.
Likewise, for Islam God was never the point, nor was the demon they worship in His place ever the point. It was Mohammed's lust for power.
There's a lot of good info on Wahhabism here.
Likewise, for Islam God was never the point, nor was the demon they worship in His place ever the point. It was Mohammed's lust for power.
Total agreement. Very, very well said.
Cordially,
The mad bombers are mad because the West has countered these beliefs very successfully in the past 1,000 years or so. We do it by being what we are. Everyone has a religious instinct that tells him that God is love. In the case of the Muslims that creates a conflict between what their religion teaches and what their instinct is telling them. So, although we see very few converts to Christianity -- the cultural divide makes it an unlikely event under any circumstances -- we see many defectors from the militant Islam toward its humanized versions.
Dead is dead. Destruction is destruction. Seventy-eight innocents massacred at Waco. Fifteen-hundred farmers businesses destroyed at Klamath Falls. Government mandatory gas-mileage-ratings; how many deaths and destructions due to less safe cars has there been? In the name of what?...An oil shortage?
It's an illusion.
The negligible amount of oil that has been conserved, at the cost of human lives and millions of dollars in damages, more than that amount of oil could have been retrieved from Alaska and several offshore oil fields, if the government didn't make drilling in those areas illegal.
The EPA and endangered species act are the decrees that "legitimize" saving sucker fish and oil at the expense of innocents and their businesses. That's just the tip of the parasitical iceberg. Individuals and businesses that produce value/profits for individuals and society that government destroys.
Which is the worse of two evils? A mass-murder that kills in broad daylight, or the value/profit destroyer and mass-murderer that operates under a veil of legitimacy, when in fact it is intentional deception that the politicians and bureaucrats wield to gain unearned/usurped paychecks and power?
What is the primary tool of terrorism? To instill fear. Most Americans fear the IRS. That fear is well founded when a person considers that the IRS is the strong arm that demands the citizens pay the protection money the politicians and bureaucrats will dole out to whomever they deem needs it more than you and every other taxpayer. Skimming a cut of the money for themselves before doling it out.
Two-thirds of government is parasitical. That means for every dollar that taxes are reduced, more than a dollar is gained by the citizens and compounds its value into the future. But we came to this conclusion by the opposite. For every additional tax dollar the citizens lose more than a dollar. For whatever citizens gain from their tax-dollar is increasingly diminished by government expanding its power and reach. Creating more illusions that cost more taxpayer dollars to fund and destroy more values/profits, businesses and benefits that individuals, society and humanity rightfully earned.
The one third of government that is valid is its protection, self-defense and security functions. Military, CIA and FBI. Most unfortunately, Clinton partially deconstructed the purpose of those agencies and replaced them with political correctness. He had the help of the media/academe/celebrity stooges.
The American people desperately seek a solid foundation to hold on to. They want the terrorists and terrorism destroyed. They give the government their full support. But also comes Americans full support of ending socialist-terrorism by government against its own citizens.
How might that happen? Perhaps when the government claims rights for U.S. citizens of Middle-Eastern decent. Piling that illusion on top of rights for Blacks, Hispanics, lesbians, gays, non-smokers, humans, plants and animals, employees, patients, the criminal's rights (but seldom the victim,) the elderly ...but for all that a person will hear only one out of a thousand times the mention of individual-rights/property-rights. One mention of individual rights for a thousand mentions of a dozen other rights -- illusionary rights.
That is a Grand-Canyon size disconnect/void because, when the smallest minority, the lone individual's rights are protected, all other larger-than-one minorities are protected. Individual/property rights is the solid foundation Americans seek. They will find it. And then implement a system of government that abides it.
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