Posted on 10/10/2001 9:27:32 AM PDT by jern
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 (news - web sites), 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 (news - web sites), 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.
© 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
First, I'm not at all sure that Bush misunderstands the situation. But he would be wise to continue to SAY that the terrorists don't represent Islam as a whole. At the same time he has to lean on the Muslim states to clamp down on fundamentalist propaganda and education of children.
Second, I disagree with the statement "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." Politically correct revisionist historians have done immeasurable damage to the West by spreading the canard that the Crusades were purely aggressive or even colonialist wars. Defensive war has always been legitimate in Christian thought.
Most of Europe's wars against Muslim expansionism were defensive in nature. Islam was a violent, expansionist movement that conquered mostly Christian North Africa, the mostly Christian and pagan Middle East, Turkey, and the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople. They overran Spain and entered France. The raided the coasts of Europe for hundreds of years and took Christian slaves. They nearly conquered Vienna. Christians can hardly be blamed for resisting these violent onslaughts.
The Crusades were the ONLY episode when Christianity was on the offensive, and even then it can be argued that their purpose was defend Constantinople and recover the Holy Land. Is that so evil? True, one of the Crusades went astray, and not everyone's heart was poor in all those armies. But for the most part they were, pretty surprisingly.
The politically correct haters of the west not only have undermined their own societies with their lies, but they have committed a vast treason against their own nations and peoples by brainwashing the ARABS into thinking that it was Christianity that was the offender, and that Muslims were poor, innocent victims. That was hardly the case.
As this violence, which stems in large part from the propaganda of our own intellectuals, sweeps back over us, you can be sure that these folks will be marching for peace and understanding, while leaving it to the conservatives and to ordinary people to go out and fight the onslaught they have helped greatly to provoke.
The Serbs tried to tell us this during our incursions into Bosnia and Kosovo. They've been at the forefront of this war for centuries.
Yeah, nothing but freepers hijacking jets and flying into buildings full of thousands of people.
The West is just as bad as the Islamic lunatics, you are so right. It's all morally equivalent.
So let's not fight back, let's just lay around and wait to be converted at scimitar point.
I think it's been very civilized lately. America is quickly relearning civilization but it's true we had lost a lot of it since the 1960's.
Where do the mass baby killers come off with all of this touchy feely moral outrage? They don't represent Western CHRISTIAN civilization. Let's remember who created this civilization. Before Sept. 11 these creeps were bashing every aspect of Western civilization with multiculturalist and moral relativist swill in all directions. Remember Jesse: "Hey, hey! Ho, Ho! Western culture's got to go!!!" They have no right to the mantle of Western "civilization." Before Sept. 11, the people hurling abuse at "Western" civilization and waging their own peculiar cultural jihad against Western Christian values were the liberal multiculturalists, moral relativists, and Brave New Worlders in this country. But even now there are signs...that they don't want to fight to defend it. Anyone surprised?
Western civilization is not Hollywood-style liberal-socialist anti-Christianity. Thank God.
If the rest of the Muslim world doesn't stop this trend toward fanatic fundamentalism within their midst, we must, to survive. Interestingly, I can see why they abhor some of what the West stands for ... abortion is a heinous aberration in our midst ... but I cannot in any way condone murder to war agaisnt abortion policy. That is a fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity, the forced adherence to eschatology.
The terrorists and those supporting them (even here in the U.S.) do not want to co-exist; they desire to rule over the world and we have clear historic descriptions of what that will mean to those who do not bow down to their prophet, their mullahs, their imams, their terrorist warriors.
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