The Enemy of the World
By Alan Caruba
2005/12/24
The October rioting throughout
France
has managed to convince the French at last that they are playing host to
an enemy in much the same fashion as the July bombings in
London
woke the British from their slumber. The destruction of the
Twin
Towers
had that affect on
America
in 2001.
Elsewhere around the world, in the Philippines and Indonesia,
Morocco, Turkey, and Russia, those entrusted with the globalization that
will connect us all are facing up to the single greatest challenge to
freedom since the rise and fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union,
and its quiet, but steady dissolution in the Republic of China. Communism
thrives on poverty, so we will continue to see pockets of it where nations
resist the capitalist, free trade, and entrepreneurial ingredients of
prosperity.
Few regions of the world are more plagued with poverty than the
Middle East and
Africa
, both places where Islam is widely practiced. So, despite the billion or
more Muslims in the world, the new enemy of the world is Islam as
personified in its most extreme form, the ideology of Islamism. Nothing,
however, about Islam is benign.
Anyone who has read the Koran, Islam’s holy book, knows that it
is replete with constant calls to war, constant reinforcement of the
belief that those who do not submit to Islam are unworthy of life.
“Disbelievers will be burned with fire.” “Kill disbelievers
wherever you find them.” “War is ordained by Allah.” This theme is
relentlessly driven home in chapter after chapter. (Visit www.faithfreedom.org/Quran.htm).
A friend of mine who is fighting to free his fellow Iranians from
the grip of the ayatollahs says, “You can’t reason with people blinded
by hate. Islam hates the power of the individual. Islam hates the
achievements of women. Islam hates the religious freedom of others. Islam
is against the free will and hates liberty and justice for all.”
Now that
Europe
has awakened to the threat, there is evidence that its various security
and law enforcement agencies are beginning to take action. Consider a
small news item in late November that did not make it into the mainstream
media.
Morocco
and
Spain
smashed a large al Qaeda network that was gearing up for new attacks in
Western Europe
. Some twenty suspects were arrested in
Morocco
, ten in
Spain
, and several more were secretly picked up in the
United Kingdom
,
Germany
,
Belgium
, the
Netherlands
and
Denmark
. Several members of the network had been meeting in
Turkey
to coordinate attacks on American, Israeli and Jewish targets.
Meanwhile, in
Iraq
where the “anti-war” objectors continue to say we are losing, its
citizens braved death to vote for a constitution and a democracy such as
does not exist any other comparable Arab nation.
In addition, the
US
military’s latest offensive in the western region succeeded in killing
more than 700 terrorists and capturing 1,500 in the last two months or so.
The offensive in
Iraq
has done what it intended to do, remove the dictator Saddam Hussein and
then become a killing ground of every wannabe martyr for Islam. You can
either kill them there or you can pull out our troops and end up having to
fight them in the streets of
America
.
In an excellent, new book, “Al Qaeda in Europe”, by Lorenzo
Vidino spells out just how great a struggle lies ahead for a continent
that, despite a magnificent cultural history of great art, architecture,
music and literature gave us two major wars in the last century. It was,
in fact, the positioning of vast
US
military forces throughout
Europe
and the creation of NATO that insured the freedom that was formerly
threatened first by Nazism and then Communism, and now faces the new
threat of militant Islam.
Europe
remains a
great tourist attraction with its great churches, largely unattended by a
local population that has turned away from Christianity, an industrial
base threatened by an archaic Socialist system, and an indigenous
population whose every need is tended to cradle-to-grave and which has
failed to demographically reproduce itself sufficiently.
Europe
is running out of Europeans.
Indeed, the social system Europe created proved to be a magnet
for millions from Northern Africa and the
Middle East
after colonialism retreated. Thanks to Socialism, however, jobs did not
increase, nor did anything resembling assimilation. Muslims saw themselves
as living amidst unbelievers and, with the certitude the Koran confers,
found no cause to abandon the religion that had failed to produce any
freedom in the nations they left behind and which is responsible for their
failed economies.
As Vidino notes, for “over forty years, European countries have
knowingly and voluntarily hosted hundreds of Islamic fundamentalists.
Acting on humanitarian motives, for decades countries such as
Britain
,
Sweden
,
Holland
, and
Germany
have made it their official policy to welcome political refugees from all
over the world.” Unfortunately, “most European countries rarely
distinguished between democracy-supporting opponents of autocratic regimes
and Islamic fundamentalists who had bloodied their hands in their home
countries with heinous terrorist acts.”
Indeed, the duty of all Muslims is to bring Islam to the
Europe
their predecessors had failed to conquer in earlier centuries. The
“crusaders” had to be subjugated, converted to Islam, and, given
enough time, Muslim immigrants believe they can achieve this.
Europe
, however,
must now institute a whole new system of integrated law enforcement to
meet the threat of terror. That is why the news of a coordinated effort to
smash a large al Qaeda network is such good news. For too long, Europeans
have lacked the machinery of law and internal security to meet the now
too-obvious threat in their midst.
There is some irony in all this because terrorism in
France
and elsewhere is not a new phenomenon. In the summer of 1995,
France
experienced an unprecedented string of attacks and, in July of that year,
a bomb exploded in a
Paris
metro station, killing seven people. French Prime Minister Dominique de
Villepin has recently announced new, tightened controls on immigration.
Before we chide Europe, it is well to remember that in 1993 the
first, albeit unsuccessful, attack on the
Twin
Towers
occurred on our soil. Americans at that time were encouraged to regard it
as a criminal act, not part of a determined effort to destroy our society.
Attacks on American Marines in
Beirut
, on American embassies in
Africa
, and on the USS Cole also had failed to generate a level of awareness or
concern about the Islamic Jihad.
We know better now. Or do we? While Europe begins to identify and
rid itself of the cancerous Islamofacism in its midst, Americans are
still debating over getting control of our own national borders,
despite a population of illegal immigrants estimated to be upwards of ten
to twelve million. This suggests that we are still far short of putting
this nation on a war footing, implementing the measures needed to protect
the homeland.
The war is global and while, of the more than a billion adherents
of Islam, surely the vast majority are good people who may well deplore
what is done in the name of Islam, the fact remains that millions of
Muslims hold fast to and support the deadly fantasies of Islam.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted
on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba, December 2005
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