Deserves a bump
Amazingly Prof. Ajami was able to write this without once noting that ALL of the Islamofascists are Sunni.
Islam has a different definition of 'morality'. During the Cold War, the communists used words like 'peace' and 'freedom' to good effect, but as Orwell showed (and Hayek before him), they meanings of those words were completely different. 'Peace' in the communist lexicon meant 'the absence of opposition'. So, 'peace' equaled total communist victory forever. That's what their 'peace rallies' were about.
It's the same with Islam and one of their favorite words: Morality. To Islam, morality is following the orders set out by Mohammed as dictated to him by an Angel and set down in the eternal Koran.
So, when the Koran says to 'kill the infidels', who have refused the offer to become Muslim, that killing is not only moral, but a required religious duty. When the Muslims are weaker than the infidel, the Koran says it's OK to lie to the infidels about their true intentions. The Koran and Mohammed's examples says that it's moral to sign treaties with the infidels, until Muslims are strong enough to attack the infidels.
This is a long way around to comment on Mr Ajami's comment about the 'moral emptiness' of 'official Arab life'. From the Islamic point of view, this is absolutely true of the Islamicist or Islamo-fascist point of view, morality is the enforcement from the outside of the koranic rules of life. Women must dress in a certain way and be confined to their homes. Outside their homes, they must be escorted by husbands or male relatives. What is going on in the minds of this women is irrelevant to islamicist/islamic morality. The Taliban forbid women from working, so when a woman lost her husband, it was moral to have them absolutely penniless on the streets begging for scraps of food, rather than allow them to work and earn a living.
Of course, from my point of view, this Islamic Morality is the root of the problem in the entire Muslim world.
As Rush says, 'words mean things'. The Jabba the Tutt corollary is 'the same word can mean something completely different'. Our enemies, from the Nazis to the Commies to the Islamo-Fascists use our words to mean something entirely different.
Excellent article. Excellent writing.
The audience in this macabre play, once ululating in triumph at the sight of our innocents jumping from burning buildings, have ceased to applaud. The silence is that which occurs when the play-goers begin to look for the exits.
Gee! Sounds like Democrat politicians.
It has not been easy, this expedition to Iraq, and for America in Iraq there has been heartbreak aplenty. But we ought to remember the furies that took us there, and we ought to be consoled by the thought that the fight for Iraq is a fight to ward off Arab dangers and troubles that came our way on a clear September morning, four years ago.
Needed repeating.
Fabulous read. Good will triumph over evil!
Sometimes authors overwrite a story to such a degree that it become too tedious to get through. I never know if it’s my impatience or their attempt to make something out of nothing.
He's the best.
Fouad Ajami is a Shi'ite from Lebanon. I'm sure he's glad he got out the barbaric Arab world a few decades ago. He teaches in the USA and appears on TV a lot. Very cultured man.
PING For great essay on liberating Iraq.