Dhimmis out of
Washington
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald
discusses the wrongheadedness of the current establishment approach to Islam and
terrorism:
2005/11/08
jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/008868.php
The most acute
criticism of Bush and Rice and Company comes not from the silly who oppose them
for being too tough, but from those who have taken their true measure:
self-satisfied, obstinate, ignorant of Islam and hence of the full scope of the
menace of Islam, naively believing that "a prosperous Iraq is a peaceful
Iraq" (is a "prosperous Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar" a
"peaceful" Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, in the only way that matters
to us -- i.e., not promoting Jihad elsewhere in the world?), or that Iraq could
conceivably serve as a model for other Arab states. For god's sake, how could a
Shi'a-dominated regime, as any future Iraq (if Iraq continues to exist as a
single country) would necessarily be, conceivably be found appealing to Sunni
Arabs, who will never forgive this blow to their pride -- that the despised
Shi'a, the nearly-Infidel Shi'a, the "Rafidite dogs," which is what
the Wahhabi Muslims consider the Shi'a, and not only Wahhabis -- how could they
possibly regard Iraq as a Model?
And if they cannot regard Iraq as a model, and if a
"prosperous Iraq" is not necessarily a "peaceful Iraq," then
why are we still there, when an Iraq that decomposes into its constituent ethnic
and sectarian components, at each others' throats, is far more likely to occupy
Arab and Muslim attention, serve as a fault line for Sunni-Shi'a hostility and
even open warfare, and use up resources -- men, materiel, money -- on both
sides, as Sunni and Shi'a states try to help co-religionists within Iraq? It
would even be the cause of unsettlement wherever there is a substantial Shi'a
population that dares to assert or defend itself against the Sunnis, as in
Bahrain
,
Yemen
,
Pakistan
, or the Hasa
province
of
Saudi Arabia
.
The war in
Iraq
right now is madness – not madness the way Cindy Sheehan and her equally
mad followers think it is, but madness nevertheless. And the madness comes from
people like Rice and Bush, who are incapable of making sense, for example, of
what is happening in
France
over the last week and more, or in
Holland
, or all over Europe, or in
Indonesia
, or in
Bangladesh
or
Pakistan
or
Kashmir
. They only know one thing -- or rather they only know that they have to stick,
because they do not have the mental flexibility not to stick, to the original
phrases and goals. They know that they have to stick to these goals and phrases
even if they make no sense if the menace is not poverty, not unhappiness, but
the ideology of Islam.
And it is the ideology of Islam. It is not merely a
"war on terror."
Is there not a single member of either party who will correctly analyze
the situation and call not for "cutting and running," but for a
husbanding, rather than a squandering of resources, and an intelligent
withdrawal from
Iraq
? Oh, phrase it as "now that the second set of elections has been held and
the Iraqis have been trained, and will be expected, and are ready, to defend
themselves." Of course it will break down into Kurd against Arab, Shi'a
against Sunni militia. Let it. Pretend you had no idea that would happen, that
you are "deeply disappointed that the Iraqis were not able to settle their
differences. We removed that terrible regime, and did this and did that -- list
of people captured or killed, schools and hospitals and electricity grids built
or repaired, and so on. Now it is up to the Iraqis themselves."
Sighs of relief from the intelligent. Sighs of
slight panic from the left, as its call for "getting out of
Iraq
" is being met, but not for the reasons it hoped, not in the spirit it
hoped. Sighs of -- well, enough sighs. Now let's figure out how to check the
various instruments of Jihad, beginning with Da'wa and demographic conquest of
Western Europe, and leave the Sunnis and Shi'a to slug it out -- or not -- in
Iraq.
And without those American troops held hostage in
Iraq
, stronger measures against
Iran
can now, at long last, be taken.
But with Bush and Rice not only mouthing nonsense,
and what is worse, actually possibly believing their own nonsense about Islam,
there is no hope. It will be the mixture as before.
The interests of Infidels, and those of the most
secular of those who remain Muslims, diverge. It is foolish, it was foolish, for
the Administration to lobby for
Turkey
(Bush's call to Karamanlis, Rice working the phones and roping in whomever she
could -- Richard Perle et al. -- to help out). It is foolish to try to recreate
the Western world in the
Middle East
. There isn't time, there isn't space. If the year were 1800, and there were not
tens of millions of Muslims already in Europe and trillions of dollars flowing
into the coffers that feed the Jihad, then we might take as our century's
project, Reforming Islam -- though it is still entirely unclear just how this
could or would be done.
Some say throw out the Hadith, all of them. Others
say throw out the Hadith and the Sira, so that the example of Muhammad is no
longer. And then they talk, for all the world like little Luthers and Calvins
and Zwinglis, about an Islam to be based on "sola scriptura" (for an
example of this, see the Turk Mustafa Akyol). But for god's sake, the Qur'an
itself has everything in it to make an Infidel's blood run cold -- and where do
the Mustafa Akyols of this world think the Hadith and the Sira come from, if
they were not teased out of, weaved out of, the whole cloth of the Qur'an? The
Qur'an itself splits the world uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel,
and the Qur'an as the Word of God is unlikely to have an editorial pen taken to
it any time soon. The most authoritative Qur'anic commentators more than a
millennium ago wrote "Stet" and there was "Stet"; the Gates
of Ijtihad swung closed with a thud. Islam cannot be reformed, but only
constrained.
The effort must, bleakly, be to constrain it. And
those who cannot face this must not be taken as our guides in the formulation of
policy.