Posted on 03/27/2008 10:57:54 PM PDT by forkinsocket
THE big surprise, viewed from my own narrow perspective five years later, has taken place in the mysterious zones of extremist ideology. In the months and weeks before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote quite a lot about ideology in the Middle East, and especially about the revolutionary political doctrine known as radical Islamism.
I tried to show that radical Islamism is a modern philosophy, not just a heap of medieval prejudices. In its sundry versions, it draws on local and religious roots, just as it claims to do. But it also draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe. I wanted my readers to understand that with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined, radical Islamism wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, than naïve observers might suppose.
I declared myself happy in principle with the notion of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, just as I was happy to see the Taliban chased from power. But I wanted everyone to understand that military action, by itself, could never defeat an ideology like radical Islamism — could never contribute more than 10 percent (I invented this statistic, as an illustrative figure) to a larger solution. I hammered away on that point in the days before the war. And today I have to acknowledge that, for all my hammering, radical Islamism, in several of its resilient branches, the ultra-radical and the beyond-ultra-radical, has proved to be stronger even than I suggested.
A lot of people right now make the common-sense supposition that if extremist ideologies have lately entered a sort of grisly golden age, the Bush administration’s all-too-predictable blundering in Iraq must bear the blame. Yes, certainly; but that can’t be the only explanation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This such shallow thinking. The roots to Islamism goes back centuries, even President Thomas Jefferson had problems with Islamists justifying their hideous actions per the Qu’ran.
Radical Islamism, or Islamo-Marxism, as I call it, IS a modern philosophy. It’s Marxism. Which is why the Left in the U.S., and in Europe, is completely reconciled to surrendering to it, since they spent over seventy years completely reconciled to surrendering to Soviet Russian Marxism, and are themselves the agents of Cultural Marxism (i.e., “P.C.”).
Even so, it’s stunning how quickly and utterly the impulse to surrender overcame any normal human instincts that might have been stirred in liberals by the fiery destruction of 3,000 Americans on our own soil.
It will never die until someone kills it. Let it be us.
Simple question from a non-intellectual:
If radical islam has such a strong intellectual component, why cannot its adherents invent anything useful?
How many Nobel Prizes in the sciences, mathematics, etc., are are held by islamists?
(And don’t start replying with the concept of zero, which was an Indian and Aztec concept, and transferred to Arab centers of learning later, or any of the other made up stuff. Show me real world and relatively recent accomplishments. I am waiting to be convinced about such intellectual strength.)
It’s a religion as well as a political movement, and religions don’t die overnight. It takes generations for entrenched beliefs to die out.
At least Bush is working on the 10% solution instead of hand-wringing while the lion’s at the gate.
If you would have took the time to actually read the Koran and "life of the prophet" via Ishaq's Sira (Biography) and Tabari's Ta'rikh (History), thus learning what the Koran and Islam really is, you'd have learned much sooner that there is no such thing as "radical islam".
It's just plain Islam, in all it's brutal evil and ugliness.
A lot may be accomplished in just one generation.
Exactly. If it refuses to die, then we need to kill it before it kills us.
Not this one. It's been slaughtering Christians, Jews, Hindu's and every other "infidel" it comes into contact with for the past 1400 years, since Mohammad invented this terrorist manual.
Naziism wouldn’t die either, except for the extreme measures we took in the 1940s.
I’m waiting for Communism to be killed as well.
Too many justify its existence and insist that we convert to it as well.
I’d be wary of measuring acheivement by political popularity contests of things like the Nobel Prize committee.
It takes an ideology — and violent action — to kill a violent ideology.
I meant for science, not for peace, which I clearly left off the list. For the peace prize, that is political and I would agree with you.
However, do you doubt the validity of those achievements in the fields of science, medicine, etc.?
Really?
It is violent, oppressive toward women, intolerant, and expansionist because those things did exist in 600 AD. Not all of Islam is like this. Quite a bit of it found something of an accommodation with the modern world during the Ottoman centuries. But Salafi fundamentalist Islam is all like this. It does not recognize the Turkish mediation because it is an Arab nationalist movement as much as a religious one. Its expansionism is that of thundering Arab tribes, not their Turkish conquerors. Its aspiration is the Arab Caliph, not the Turkish Sultan.
Such intellectual progress as might be made within the confines of religious stricture are quite well developed. The geometric designs within mosque mosaics are exquisite, better (IMHO) even than their more evocative Byzantine predecessors. But there are no faces. The imams do not permit it. That's what I think happened to Islamic intellectual life. Could be mistaken and probably am, at least in part.
If the topic interests you I'd recommend somebody who actually does know what he's talking about, Bernard Lewis. I'd recommend his The Middle East and Islam And The West for a thorough examination of this sort of thing. Good stuff.
Islam has been gathering steam ever since the fall of the Ottoman empire; and now, thanks to OUR own money that we pay for the oil we foolishy gave them control of, Islam has gained more strength than it's ever had.
Osama was one of and just the beginning of many more like him, with hundreds of millions of faithfull followers to come- and very soon.
Our retarded and ignorant of history politicians we have are just too stupid and blind to see it, much like 3/4 of the western worlds population. We've become fat, lazy and stupid, and like history has shown us in the past, great empires that slip into that ignorant stupor soon fall.
Care to share with the rest of us just what Islamic (Satan's bible aka the Koran and words of the prophet Mohammad)"scripture" is being distorted?
Simple really, because useless liberal idiots won’t allow it to die.
Enablers give alot of this and other ugliness around us it’s strength, just like anything else. We see alcoholics and drug addicts enabled by clueless enablers...or 800 lb. people bedbound and can’t even get out of their apartment for YEARS, because somebody is bringing them cases of twinkies.
These same things were said about the crazies in Japan too.
They were kamikazees after all, and too deranged and militaristic in Imperial Japan to EVER be defeated.
A couple of Hiroshima sized bombs on Mecca/Medina would kill it I imagine.
Ain’t gonna be us. One day there’s going to be a massive shout and they’re going to fall down dead.
Just keep looking up.
All of it- bar none- was stolen from the churches and other magnificent architecture, the many Hindu temples during that 1000 year assault, and other cultures they razed and destroyed to build their mosks over.
I agree with you on that. it does appear to be rapidly heading towards that predicted end.
I think that a very justified anger at Islam serves to blind us - well, me, speaking only for myself - to what certain Muslims accomplished given the limited tools the imams allowed them. Give them their due. It's little enough. IMHO, of course...
..scratch an arab ‘achievement’ and you’ll find an Assyrian, a Hindu, a Persian...
Have a peep at the letter from Peter BetBasoo on my bio page.
No doubt. But the credit belongs to the forgotten culture it was taken from. In some cases, the muslim slave - deemed to be muslim by their captors- are credited, but just because they were muslim slaves doesn't mean they were muslims nor should their work be said to be influenced by Islamic creativity.
Certainly, for a time the culture of the lands the Muhammadan barbarians conquered continued, but within a few generations all forward progress came to a standstill as the assimilated culture was forgotten and extinguished by Islamic doctrine. This is a phenomena seen throughout Islamic history. Islam, without exception grinds all intellectual progress to a halt. The only 'advancement' seen in Islamic culture that go beyond what existed in Mohammad's time is a remnant of the culture Muslim hordes conquered and enslaved.
Certainly, there isn't a single advancement in the history of this world that comes as a result of Islam ism. Rather, it came in spite it, not from the mind of the Muslim, but the mind of an external culture, whose ability to think rationally and independently of Islam had not yet been snuffed out by Islam.
“Our presidents have been satanic (Richard Nixon), angelic (Jimmy Carter), a sleepy idiot savant (Ronald Reagan), a cagey realist (George H. W. Bush), wonderfully charming (Bill Clinton) and famously otherwise (George W. Bush). And each president’s Middle Eastern policy has conformed to his character.”
I had to force myself to read beyond this idiotic comparison. What a Clymer in the NYT tradition.
Islamofacism is a modern tenet based on the principles of Hitler and with the Koran as a justification. Jihad is the Islamofacist name for what was the Nazi call to arms in the 30’s. We had to crush Hitler and we will have to crush this threat to our lives, Liberty and sacred honor.
At least he said something right: “...revolutionary political doctrine known as ...”
It's true that Islamic warriors in the tenth century would not have used Wahabite concepts.
But their conquered peoples experienced the same result that the Wahabis desire.
al Qaeda is “basking in success”??
What a tool-fool this author is. Zarqawi bemoaned the difficulties in recruitment, retainment and logistics that he was having before we introduced him to his permanent dirt nap.
There are still state sponsors of islamic terrorism and will be for some time to come. Russia is going to become more visible on that in the future for example.
Well it was done with nazism and then afterwards with communism. The truth is that Islam is really a CULT dressed in the robes of religion, mixed with politics.
Then when has to remember that alQaeda must have gone nuts when a former Muslim got baptized last weekend, Easter Sunday weekend. This is what I call the “Berlin Wall Effect”.
It can be done with Islamofacism.
Religions never die out overnight unless people are willing to exterminate populations or force conversions at the point of a sword. Even then it doesn't always work. Witness Tibet. In any event, the US doesn't have the stomach for ethnic cleansing or the zeal for launching a crusade aimed at conversion.
That is why with the growth of the Christian faith in the global south, the leaving of Islam of 6 million each year, often to become Christians, the best hope is the work of Christian missionaries. Truly it will take years, just as it took years for efforts to end communism.
Communism thrives today around the world and even on American campuses and in the halls of Congress.
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