The sharp edges of Islam

[Guest guest]

>Title: The Sharp edges of Islam

>Author: Paul Johnson, a historian and journalist

>Publication: National Review

>October 15, 2001

>

>Bold and uncompromising words were spoken by American (and British) leaders

>in the immediate response to the Manhattan Massacre. But they may have

>succeeded by creeping appeasement unless public opinion insists that these

>leaders stick to their initial resolve to destroy international terrorism

>completely. One central reason why appeasement is so tempting to Western

>governments is that attacking terrorism at its roots necessarily involves

>conflict with the second-largest Islamic religious community in the world.

>

>It is widely said that Islamic terrorists are wholly unorthodox in their

>belief that their religion sanctions what they do, and promises the

>immediate reward of heaven to what we call "suicide bombers" but they

>insist are martyrs to the faith. This line is bolstered by the assertion

>that Islam is essentially a religion of peace and that the very word

>"Islam" means "peace." Alas, not so. Islam means "submission," a very

>different matter, and one of the functions of Islam, in its more militant

>aspect, is to obtain that submission from all, if necessary by force.

>

>Islam is an imperialist religion, more so than Christianity has ever been,

>and in contrast to Judaism. The Koran, Sura 5, verse 85, describes the

>inevitable enmity between Moslems and non-Moslems: "Strongest among men in

>enmity to the Believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans." Sura 9, verse

>5, adds: "Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. And seize

>them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them, in every stratagem [of

>war]." Then nations, however mighty, the Koran insists, must be fought

>"until they embrace Islam." These canonical commands cannot be explained

>away or softened by modern theological exegesis, because there is no such

>science in Islam. Unlike Christianity, which, since the Reformation and

>Counter Reformation, has continually updated itself and adapted to changed

>conditions, and unlike Judaism, which has experienced what is called the

>18th-century Jewish enlightenment, Islam remains a religion of the Dark

>Ages. The 7th-century Koran is still tau!

>ght as the immutable word of God, any teaching of which is literally true.

>In other words, mainstream Islam is essentially akin to the most extreme

>form of Biblical fundamentalism. It is true it contains many sects and

>tendencies, quite apart from the broad division between Sunni Moslems, the

>majority, who are comparatively moderate and include

>

>most of the ruling families of the Gulf, and Shia Moslems, far more

>extreme, who dominate Iran. But virtually all these tendencies are more

>militant and uncompromising than the orthodox, which is moderate only by

>comparison, and by our own standards is extreme. It believes, for instance,

>in a theocratic state, ruled by religious law, inflicting (as in Saudi

>Arabia) grotesquely cruel punishments, which were becoming obsolete in

>Western Europe in the early Middle Ages.

>

>Moreover, Koranic teaching that the faith or "submission" can be, and in

>suitable circumstances must be, imposed by force, has never been ignored.

>On the contrary, the history of Islam has essentially been a history of

>conquest and reconquest. The rapid conquest of North Africa, the invasion

>and virtual conquest of Spain, and a thrust followed the 7th-century

>"breakout" of Islam from Arabia into France that carried the crescent to

>the gates of Paris. It took half a millennium of reconquest to expel the

>Moslems from Western Europe. The Crusades, far from being an outrageous

>prototype of Western imperialism, as is taught in most of our schools, were

>a mere episode in a struggle that has lasted 1,400 years, and were one of

>the few occasions when Christians took the offensive to regain the

>"occupied territories" of the Holy Land.

>

>The Crusades, as it happened, fatally weakened the Greek Orthodox Byzantine

>Empire, the main barrier to the spread of Islam into southeast and central

>Europe. As a result of the fall of Constantinople to the ultramilitant

>Ottoman Sultans, Islam took over the entire Balkans, and was threatening to

>capture Vienna and move into the heart of Europe as recently as the 1680s.

>This millennial struggle continues in a variety of ways. The recent

>conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo were a savage reaction by the Orthodox

>Christians of Serbia to the spread of Islam in their historic heartlands,

>chiefly by virtue of a higher birthrate. Indeed, in the West, the battle is

>largely demographic, though it is likely to take a more militant turn at

>any moment. Moslems from the Balkans and North Africa are surging over

>established frontiers on a huge scale, rather as the pressure of the

>eastern tribes brought about the collapse of the Roman Empire of the West

>in the 4th and 5th centuries AD The number !

>of Moslems penetrating and settling in Europe is now beyond computation

>because most of them are illegals. They are getting into Spain and Italy in

>such numbers that, should present trends continue, both these traditionally

>Catholic countries will become majority Moslem during the 21st century.

>

>The West is not alone in being under threat from Islamic expansion. While

>the Ottomans moved into South-East Europe, the Moghul invasion of India

>destroyed much of Hindu and Buddhist civilization there. The recent

>destruction by Moslems in Afghanistan of colossal Buddhist statues is a

>reminder of what happened to temples and shrines, on an enormous scale,

>when Islam took over. The writer V. S. Naipaul has recently pointed out

>that the destructiveness of the Moslem Conquest is at the root of India's

>appalling poverty today. Indeed, looked at historically, the record shows

>that Moslem rule has tended both to promote and to perpetuate poverty.

>Meanwhile, the religion of "submission" continues to advance, as a rule by

>force, in Africa in part of Nigeria and Sudan, and in Asia, notably in

>Indonesia, where non-Moslems are given the choice of conversion or death.

>And in all countries where Islamic law is applied, converts, whether

>compulsory or not, who revert to their earlier faith,!

> are punished by death.

>

>The survival and expansion of militant Islam in the 20th century came as a

>surprise. After the First World War, many believed that Turkey, where the

>Kemal Ataturk regime imposed secularization by force, would set the pattern

>for the future, and that Islam would at last be reformed and modernized.

>Though secularism has - so far - survived in Turkey, in the rest of Islam

>fundamentalism, or orthodoxy, as it is more properly called, has increased

>its grip on both the rulers and the masses. There are at present 18

>predominantly Islamic states, some of them under Koranic law and all ruled

>by groups that have good reason to fear extremists.

>

>Hence American policymakers, in planning to uproot Islamic terrorism once

>and for all, have to steer a narrow path. They have the military power to

>do what they want, but they need a broad-based global coalition to back

>their action, preferably with military contributions as well as words, and

>ideally including such states as Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

>To get this kind of support is not easy, for moderate Moslem rulers are far

>more frightened of the terrorists than of Americans, and fear for their

>lives and families. The danger is that they will insist on qualification of

>American action that will amount, in effect, to appeasement, and that this

>in turn will divide and weaken both the administration and U.S. public

>opinion.

>

>It is vitally important that America sticks to the essentials of its

>military response and carries it through relentlessly and thoroughly.

>Although only Britain can be guaranteed to back the White House in every

>contingency, it is better in the long run for America to act without many

>allies, or even alone, than to engage in a messy compromise dictated by

>nervousness and cowardice. That would be the worst of all solutions and

>would be certain to lead to more terrorism, in more places, and on an

>ever-increasing scale. Now is the ideal moment for the United States to use

>all its physical capacity to eliminate large-scale international terrorism.

>The cause is overwhelmingly just, the nation is united, and the hopes of

>decent, law-abiding men and women everywhere go with American arms. Such a

>moment may never recur.

>

>The great William Gladstone, in resisting terrorism, once used the phrase,

>"The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted." That is true today.

>Those resources are largely in American hands, and the nation - "the last,

>best hope of mankind" - has an overwhelming duty to use them with

>purposeful justification and to the full, in the defense of the lives,

>property, and freedom of all of us. This is the central point to keep in

>mind when the weasel words of cowardice and surrender are pronounced

>

>

>----

> http://www.ofbjp.org

>----

>A worldwide community of BJP's friends, supporters and activists:

>Friends of the BJP - Worldwide: http://www.ofbjp.org/fob

>----

>

>

 

 

_______________

Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp