Posted on 07/20/2005 4:58:04 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
'The whole Arab world was dangerous for me; I went to London," an Egyptian Islamist, Yasser Sirri, a man 41 years of age, with three convictions against him in his native land, recently said of his decision to move to England. An opponent of the autocracy of President Hosni Mubarak, Sirri had initially fled to Yemen, then to Sudan. He found refuge in London, where he runs an "Islamic observation center" and carries on with the "holy struggle" against "ungodly" Arab regimes and their supporters in the West.
The Islamists are now within the gates. They fled the fires and the terrors of the Arab-Islamic world but brought ruin with them. This new Islamism mocks the borders of nations and the very idea of nationality. "We may carry their nationalities," a Wahhabi preacher decreed recently, "but we belong to our religion." The geography of Islam has altered. A religion of Afro-Asia has migrated westward. It arrived in Europe, timid at first, carried by migrants glad to escape the failing lands of the Islamic world. Then the migrants were joined, in the 1980s, by preachers and militant men who had fought and lost cruel, bloody wars against the regimes in Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and other despotic lands. These plotters were merciless men; they had been shown no mercy in their native lands. They hated the West but were drawn by its magnetic power. There were liberties in western Europe to be used, and welfare subsidies, and laws against extradition. There were the new technologies--developed by "infidels" but available to the holy warriors. It was easy for the preachers of hate to find foot soldiers in Amsterdam, Antwerp, London, and the suburbs of French cities. There were second-generation children who were in no man's land, on the fault line between the civilization of Islam that they did not know and the civilization of the West to which they did not fully belong.
These lands in the West were bilad al-kufr, lands of infidelity and unbelief. In these new extensions of Islam, London was the most accommodating of cities. It was there that the big Arabic newspapers, denied oxygen by the repressive regimes of Araby, were published. And it was there that men and women from Arab and Islamic lands built new lives, free to live the life of the faith. The terrorism against London is thus a singular act of betrayal.
A fanatic London-based preacher from Syria by the name of Omar Bakri Muhammad tells the tale of this great betrayal. A man of Aleppo, Bakri fled his native Syria in the 1980s and turned up in England in 1996. Since then, he has given his host country nothing but grief and sorrow, calling openly for "holy war" against the West, exhorting young Muslims of Britain to join the insurgency in Iraq. He hailed the death pilots of 9/11 as the "magnificent 19 who changed the world," and he called on Muslims to give the "infidels a 9/11 day after day after day."
"Eurabia." The vulnerability of Europe to the furies of this malignant Islamism is a defining feature of its contemporary life. There are the young men "next door" in Leeds and Madrid, and there are the burning grounds of the Middle East and North Africa hurling their disinherited young people across the Straits of Gibraltar to an aging European continent. We are not in "Eurabia" yet; that great city is still London and not "Londonistan," and no reverse reconquista of the Iberian peninsula by the Moors of North Africa looms on the horizon. Still, liberty is not a suicide pact. We should be done with the search for "explanations" that dignify the hatreds, that attribute them to western deeds and policies. We should see the new hatred dressed in religious garb for what it is: a war against the very order of contemporary life. A man of Moroccan origin, Muhammad Bouyeri, who killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, shot him, then slit his throat, and with his knife attached on his body a message of unadorned barbarism. "I knew what I was doing," Bouyeri said. "I slaughtered him."
It would have been nice to think that in the new lands of the West, a more tolerant version of Islam might have taken root. Instead, a neurotic zealotry has made its appearance. In Scotland the leaders of the industrialized world had assembled to discuss disease and poverty. Then a more deadly animus struck, reminding all of us of more atavistic furies still on the loose.
Indeed! It is, to quote Hilaire Belloc, "the Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed." You might be interested in reading Belloc's great chapter on Islam from his famous book, "The Great Heresies." It's available online here.
Yep! Very astute analogy.
I have to comment on every thread that I see here regarding Islamists/Muslims. Read Paul Sperry's book Infiltration. If you care about this country and if you think the country is being protected from more terrorist acts, this book will wake you up.
In the beginning of the book, Sperry explains that OBL is the model Muslim as he is carrying out EVERYTHING the Koran demands of Muslims. Those who say all the bla, bla, bla we are so used to hearing including the words our President has promised to use (yes, he did to CAIR and other Muslim organizations) are dissembling. They are masters at their lines and the spokesmen for Muslims around the world and especially in our country have learned their lines well.
We believe their words at our peril. Read the book!!!!! PC is going to bite us in the butt big time if we don't wake up! It's what is running the war on terror in Washington, DC......we must not offend the Muslims and our government agencies are more than happy to oblige. For what reason? Who knows?
But why...why would Bush sell us out. He is...I am beginning to think...but why? He is conscious of his role in history...and he isn't stupid. Why is he selling us out?
Thx for the link. I read Belloc's chapter this morning and thought it provided an excellent historical backdrop for understanding Islam.
Ditto! Perhaps we should post it and get a discussion going on it.
A program of infiltrating the homeland madrassas with an eye toward incarceration/deportation is needed at once. Perhaps this is already in the works.
I think it would generate some interesting discussions.
The prism through which I view Islam is spiritual (whereas Belloc's was religious, political, and, of course, historical). I reread the article in part this afternoon and would strongly recommend your posting it.
I think the difference between a spiritual view and a religious view is that I see Allah as Satan (if Allah isn't Satan, Satan's got some competition).
I hate to sound like a dope, but I've never actually posted a thread here before. Would you mind doing it? ;-)
On the contrary, I think Belloc would agree with you about Allah. He might not have said it that explicitly in the article, but heresy implies the work of the evil one. If Allah is not Satan per se, he is certainly one of his demons. The religion's twisting of truth and pseudo-sexual violence is demonic in nature.
The reason I say that Allah is Satan and not just a demon is that Satan wants to take credit for everything evil (though he sees evil as good).
Our God encourages us to be creative...to think. But Satan wants all the credit.
Jesus (our Beloved) wants us to be His brothers and sisters...but Satan want us to be minions and slaves.
An added note...Jesus is the Eternal Optimist to want me as a brother. He has my complete fealty but I am more like his cat than His brother.
Yes, and did you notice that Belloc pin-points the root of the heresy as a rejection of the fundamental truth -- in fact, it's the Truth! It rejects the incarnation of Christ. What better way for the enemy to deny our Lord than to reject Jesus' divinity? So, yes, I think at the root of this religion, you can see great evil. Satan can never create anything, he can only corrupt. And Islam is the ultimate corruption of Judeo-Christian truth.
I am of Lebanese Maronite Catholic descent. The Maronites are the Christian descendants of the ancient Phoenicians. We trace our origin to a group of disciples of the hermit St. Maron and by him to the church that St. Peter founded in Antioch. We are the only Christians in the Middle East who refused to be dhimmis. We had to retreat to the remote mountains of Lebanon in order to maintain our faith and our very lives against the Muslim invaders. When the Crusaders arrived in 1099, my ancestors greeted them with open arms! I still get livid every time I hear someone making disparaging comments about the Crusaders. They came because my ancestors begged them to come and help us!
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