Posted on 11/21/2007 12:22:34 PM PST by fortcollins
Jihad, fighting to extend the Ummah, i.e. the world of Islam, is an obligation for all Muslims. The global jihad is by no means restricted to the above discussed countries or Al Qaeda, but is truly world wide in scope. This holy war to establish the supremacy of Islam over the entire world is going on in all regions of the world. Somalia recently established an Islamic State modeled on the Taliban only to see it crumble with the onslaught or troops from Ethiopia. Ethiopia, this once Christian country from the time of Christ, has its own problems with Islamic militancy and is now half Muslim. Muslims are destroying Christian churches in many countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria the Philippines and Kosovo among others. Islamic terrorist bombings are taking place all over the world in Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist countries, and in the Muslim countries Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria. Strong Islamic insurgencies are present in the Philippines and Indonesia. Formerly moderate Muslim countries are being radicalized by radical Islamists As President Bush has stated this is the ideological struggle of our time and it is multi-generational in scope and reach.
The religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries derived from the religious, political, social and economic effects of the Protestant Reformation. They were, for the most part, over at the end of the English Civil War. The religious wars of our time are dated from and the granting of British and French Mandates over formerly Ottoman lands in 1922 to the present time. However, in fact a religious or holy war was declared by Islam against Christians, Jews and unbelievers in Muhammed’s time and has been waged against Christian Europe since the invasion of Spain in 711 until the Ottoman unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683. Since 1683, because of Western strength and Islamic weakness, it has until our times been somewhat in abeyance. There is an one interesting commonality between the earlier religious wars and those of our time. At the time of the Reformation Islamic armies had just conquered Hungary and were threatening Germany. In his book On War Against the Turk written in 1529 Luther demonstrated that he had a good understanding of Islam and the threat it posed for all Christians and Christian lands. He understood that in Islamic lands Christians were not allowed to preach or confess Christ. Luther wrote this about the Koran and Islam: “I have some pieces of Mohammed’’s Koran which might be called in German a book of sermons or doctrines of the kind that we call pope’’s decretals. When I have time, I must put it into German so that every man may see what a foul and shameful book it is. In the first place, he praises Christ and Mary very much as those who alone were without sin, and yet he believes nothing more of Christ than that he is a holy prophet, like Jeremiah or Jonah, and denies that he is God’’s Son and true God. Besides, he does not believe that Christ is the Savior of the world, Who died for our sins, but that He preached to His own time, and completed His work before His death, just like any other prophet. On the other hand, he praises and exalts himself highly and boasts that he has talked with God and the angels, and that since Christ’’s office of prophet is now complete, it has been commanded to him to bring the world to his faith and if the world is not willing, to compel it or punish it with the sword; and there is much glorification of the sword in it. Therefore, the Turks think their Mohammed much higher and greater than Christ, for the office of Christ has ended and Mohammed’’s office is still in force. From this anyone can easily observe that Mohammed is a destroyer of our Lord Christ and His kingdom, and if anyone denies concerning Christ, that He is God’’s Son and has died for us, and still lives and reigns at the right hand of God, what has he left of Christ? Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Baptism, the Sacrament, Gospel, Faith and all Christian doctrine and life are gone, and there is left, instead of Christ, nothing more than Mohammed with his doctrine of works and especially of the sword. That is the chief doctrine of the Turkish faith in which all abominations, all errors, all devils are piled up in one heap.” “In the second place, the Turk’’s Koran, or creed, teaches him to destroy not only the Christian faith, but also the whole temporal government. His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work.”
Luther stated that the response to these Islamic assaults on Christian lands was inadequate. Further he believed that it was the responsibility of the Temporal authorities, i.e. the State, to defend Christians and Christian lands and not the responsibility of the Church. But he also made it clear that Christians should fight to defend Christian lands against the Turkish invasions but that they should fight under the banner of the temporal authority, the Emperor, not the Church. In the Battle of Vienna in 1683 in which the Ottoman armies were turned back it was the Polish King Jan Sobieski who led the defense.
Luther had written: " My advice, therefore, is not to set the armed preparation so low and not to offer our poor Germans to slaughter. If we are not going to make an adequate, honest resistance that will have some staying power, it were far better not to begin a war, but to give up lands and people to the Turk in time, without useless bloodshed, rather than have him win anyhow in an easy battle and with shameful bloodshed, as happened in Hungary with King Lewis. Fighting against the Turk is not like fighting against the King of France, or the Venetians, or the pope; he is a different kind of warrior; he has people and money in abundance; he beat the Sultan twice in succession, and that took people. Why, dear sir, his people are under arms all the time, so that he can quickly bring together three or four hundred thousand men; if we were to cut off a hundred thousand, he would soon be back again with as many men as before. He has staying power. There is, therefore, nothing at all in trying to meet him with fifty or sixty thousand men unless we have an equal or a greater number in reserve. Only count up his lands, dear sir. He has Greece, Asia, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, etc., that is, he has so many lands that if Spain, France, England, Germany, Italy, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark were all counted together, they would not equal the land he has. Besides, he is master of all of them and commands effective and ready obedience. And, as has been said, they are constantly under arms and are exercised in warfare, so that he has staying power, and can deliver two, three, four battles, one after another, as he showed against the Sultan. This Gog and Magog is a different kind of majesty than our kings and princes."
In other words, Islamic forces must be confronted with greater force or not at all. These comments of Luther nearly 500 years ago are as timely for our time as they were for his.
The religious wars of our time, for the most part, can be dated from the time of the awarding of the British mandates of Palestine and Iraq, and the French mandates of Lebanon and Syria following the end of world War I , the breakup of the Ottoman empire and the ending by Attaturk of the last Caliphate in Istanbul. This led to the Muslim Brotherhood, the writings of Sayyid Qtub, and ultimately to Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is far from a coincidence that the very focus of Islamic militancy and the religious wars of today is the very land occupied by these four Mandates. Militant Islam cannot abide Jewish or Christian political entities in lands once Islamic. Neither is it willing to accept an Iraq that is not a sanctuary for and a supporter of Islamic terrorism. Islamic forces have succeeded in eliminating most of the Christians from formerly Christian Lebanon. The stated goals now are to destroy the Jewish State of Israel and re-establish the Islamic Caliphate in Baghdad.
The religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries were brutal but compared to the present rather narrow in scope. There never was any question of establishing theocracies. Since the time of Constantine the State and the Church in Europe had been separate. It is true that political, social and economic issues also were involved. But the religious issues involved concerned primarily the exclusive supremacy of the Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals, as had also been the case since the time of Constantine.
In the religious wars of today we have a religion, Islam, that claims exclusive temporal and religious authority over all subjects in its domain. In addition it has stated goals, goals that have been in existence for 1400 years that is the obligation of all Muslims to make the whole world Islamic. In addition to that there are two versions of Islam, Shia and Sunni that have fought with each other off and on for 1400 years since the first Shia Caliph Ali, husband of Muhammed’s daughter Fatima , was murdered as was his son and Muhammed’s grandson Hussain. This split is at the heart of the current sectarian violence in Iraq. Since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara Sunni and Shia death squads have been killing civilians of the opposing version of Islam with brutality and abandon. What is desperately needed is reconciliation but that appears to be slow to come by. The American public is impatient for this to happen and wants to give up the fight which would be disastrous for our national interests. Perhaps we should recall that it took Catholics and Protestants a hundred years to realize that such actions were futile and had to end. And end they did.
Militant Islam is opposed to democratically elected governments , all man-made laws and free people, because, in Islam no one is free from Allah’s law. In Islamic countries where it Sharia law could it implemented it was and where it can be implemented, Sharia law will be implemented. Islam states that there is only one source of authority in the world and that is Allah, as interpreted by Muhammed his last prophet and messenger. All information necessary for human society is to be found in the Koran, the hadiths, or sayings of Muhammed, the traditions of Islam and the Sharia law.
For demographic and political reasons Europe is slowly becoming Islamizised. Western Civilization is based on Judeo-Christian morality, the inheritance from classical Rome and Greece, the renaissance, the reformation, the enlightenment and the rule of law. This inheritance must be protected from the forces of Militant Islam by all means including military force if necessary. As Luther said nearly 500 years ago, when Europe was also under attack from Islam, the military force needed, in our case, to defend Western Civilization from Islamic jihad must be a force more than adequate to accomplish the mission. Our defense must not be allowed to fail, not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and anywhere else in the world where the Islamic global jihad is on the move. Islam must be saved from the literal interpretation of texts in the Koran. This will have to be done by Muslims just as the religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries were ended by Christians. However, for non-jihad oriented Muslims to come to understand the jihad is the road to destruction not success, and for the juhadists to come to this realization as well, Militant Islam in both Sunni and Shia versions must be militarily defeated. There is no other military force in the world that can do this other than the United States. This is the calling of our generation. We should not fail. Indeed we must not fail.
In considering where we are in this war we fighting that was declared on us and the other Western democracies by the forces of Islamic jihadism, two things stand out. On the one hand failure is not an option because the consequences of our being defeated in Iraq and elsewhere by the forces of Islamic jihadism would be catastrophic. On the other hand, it must be said that victory is by no means assured. There has developed a "perfect storm" of forces and interests allied against us that seek our defeat.
In this essay we have discussed the forces of the Islamic jihad that include Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, salafism, wahhabism. and Khomeinism that seek the demise of Western democracy and seek the installation of a world Islamic order with a Caliphates and universal sharia law. These forces are active all over the world and not just in Iran and Afghanistan. Their collective weapon is the indiscriminate uses of suicide bombers, car bombs and roadside improvised explosive devices. Undelievable as it may seem to some these fundamentalist Islamic forces are making common cause with the secular political left in order to bring down the Bush Administration and defeat the United States in Iraq. Each side believes it will win out in the end because, clearly one side of this holy yet unholy alliance must ultimately lose. An analogy would be the political left joining forces with the Islamic revolution in Iran to bring down the Shah. In this event the political left lost out badly and many of its members were killed.
In the United States the impeachment of President Clinton and the subsequent election of President Bush gave rise to such undying hatred and hostility to Presdent Bush that it is referred to as the BDS, i.e. the Bush Derangement Syndrome. Secondly the forces of the anti-globalist movement against free markets and capitalism sees the Islamic world as victims of the West and want to see the United States defeated in Iraq for its own reasons. Much of the mainstream media wants to see Bush destroyed and if this means a loss of the war in Iraq so be it. In addition Saudi Arabia and other gulf states put large amounts of money into Madrassas in the United States to teach the Wahhabi version of Islam to Americans, and into university Middle East Centers in order to prevent Americans from gaining an understanding of the true nature of jihadism.
Defeating the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan is not easy, although we are now winning. Defending against suicide bombers, car bombs and improvised explosive devices in difficult. We never have been faced before with an enemy that is willing to kill Iraqi civilian men, women and childen indiscriminately by the hundreds. The insurgency understands full well that its only chance og winning is to destoy the willingness of the people in the United States to support the war effort until victory is obtained. They are well aware of why the United States lost in Vietnam and pulled out of Beirut and Mogadishu. Many in the United States do not yet understand the nature of this world struggleof Islamic jihadism against the Western democracies and the catastrophic consequences of defeat.
Our time is not the first time that the United States has been faced with an enemy within. On May 16, 1940, in an address to Congress President Roosevelt said this: "We have seen the treacherous use of the "fifth column" by which persons supposed to be peaceful visitors were actually part of an enemy unit of occupation". However, after the Japanese attrack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 the strong America First anti-war movement disappeared almost over night. Unfortunately President Roosevelt, acting on his not totally irrational fears, unjustly imprisoned thousands of loyal Japanese-American citizens for the duration of the war thus denying them their constitutional rights.
A stronger and more relevant parallel to the problem President Bush currently faces is what Abraham Lincoln faced during most of the Civil War. He has been quoted as saying he feared "the fire in the rear" more than the Confederate Army as a threat to theUnion, i.e. the survival of the country as one nation indivisible. He was referring to the Copperheads, the anti-war movement in the Democratic party. The Democratic party was a “peace party” in favor of going back to the status pro ante. That is they were willing to let the South back into the Union without eliminating slavery. It is fair to say that Lincoln initiated the war by provisioning Fort Sumner and unilaterally denying the South the right to secede. There was no congressional vote and the legitimate constitutional issue involved was ultimately settled on the battlefield and not by the Supreme Court.
Lincoln was ridiculed for being an uneducated “baboon”, and was routinely called far worse names by the newspapers and by his opponents than is Bush. His own Cabinet was deeply divided, much more so than is the case with Bush, and not only did members of his own party oppose him but many influential Republicans wanted to deny him the nomination. Horace Greeley said in the summer of 1864 “Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected.And we must have another ticket to save us from overthrow.”To put it mildly, the Union Army had suffered exceedingly high casualties and the country was very war weary. In 1864 Grant and his Army of the Potomac pushed South along a line east of Richmond in a series of bloody battles in which the Union Army typically suffered three times as many casualties as did Lee’s defending Army.Grant knew that although the casualties were numerically greater in his Army they were proportionally much higher for Lee. From 1861-1865 a Congressiomal Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War attempted to micro-manage the war, fortunately with little success. Just before the Democratic Convention in Chicago Lincoln presciently told one of his close associates “ They must nominate a Peace Democrat on a war platform or a War Democrat on a peace platform, and I personally can’t say I care much what they do" The platform of the Democratic party in 1864 was indeed a peace platform and the Democrats did indeed nominate a War Democrat in the person of Union General George McClellan, who had been and still was highly regarded by his troops in the field.
Of course, in contrast to these strong parallels there also were vast differences the situation in 1864 and that which we find ourselves in 2007. During the Civil War the casualties in the Union Army, as well as on the Confederate side were horrendous, The Union Armies suffered 400,000 war dead during the Civil War out of a total population in the North and West of approximately 24 million.As Grant moved south in 1864 to what amounted to essentially a stalemate in the siege of Petersburg south of Richmond his armies sufferd 61,000 casualties in May and June alone. There was scarcely a family in either North or South who hadn’t been touched personally by the war. To make matters worse a Confederate Army swiftly moved up the Shenendoah Valley virtually unopposed and attacked a weakly defended Washington, actually from the north via Silver Spring before being turned back.At great risk to his own safety Lincoln witnessed this battle in person. One cannot legitimately compare casualties and war weariness from a four year old war with 3000 dead with the unspeakably carnage of the Civil war.On the other hand Lincoln was not confronted with 24/7 cable news, multiple polls and daily second guessing of military decisions in the field. In September Sherman took Atlanta. In November, Abraham Lincoln won the election with 212 electoral votes to McClellan’s 21. Lincoln won 54% 0f the popular vote and 78% of the soldier vote which was counted separately.Fortunately because of the stalwart leadership of President Lincoln among other factors the Union was preserved.
In our time, as it was in Lincoln's time defeat must not be an option. Because of the perfect storm of opponents of our war against the global Islamic jihad from outside but also from within the United States, especially strong opposition within the Congress and the mainstream media, victory is by no means yet assured, but it is on the way.
“There is dispute as to whether this Islamic movement represents Islam per se, or a radical version of Islam.”
Egad, are we going through this sh*t again. I thought that the POTUS and many Congressmen have proclaimed that Islam is the ROP. Perhaps they should take a long, hard look at what is happening in Europe. But I think that they are intentionally blind or perhaps their eyes are filled with oil.
The Umma considers, via Sharia law, a certain Presidential candidate to be a Muslim, specifically an APOSTATE MUSLIM...an Apostate Muslim would pose gigantic problems for the US with such a one in high office...here is the link, a continuing work on the subject..http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm
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