Turkish PM Erdogan and His WifeWhy don't they love us?
This fundamentalist business is one huge cluster you-know-what but more than that, as most EB readers know, its a religious war. I have been amazed and dismayed by the Ummah's reaction to the Coalition's effort to depose the most dangerous and oppressive dictator in the world. We take out the man (Saddam Hussein) who has killed more Muslims than everyone else combined and the Muslim world sees us as a crusader enemy. Why do they react that way when we have made it abundantly clear that this is not a crusade or a religious war? In spite of our efforts more young Muslims have become radicalised. This one-sided war is being waged throughout the world by the other side's active jihadis. So far, the moderate Muslims, due to fear or sympathy for the cause have been largely unwilling to speak out against the violence. In deed, democratic elections in Algeria and lately in the Palestinian territories seem to favor the Islamists. Even the so-called moderate Turkey seems to be tilting towards fundamentalism which has been ascendant since at least 1979. Upcoming elections in Pakistan will be the next indicator on the trend line.
Why did we let this happen?
The politically correct west is unwilling to acknowledge that the jihadi mentality most closely adheres to the teachings of the Koran. As we declare Islam the religion of peace, the truest Muslims, most faithful to the teachings of the prophet are martyring themselves in a war against the infidel world. More dismaying than the Muslim reactions is the reaction of the west which is equally put off by the "holier than thou Bible or Koran thumping fundamentalists." It is sickening to hear the moral equivocation about violence in the Torah. There is nothing remotely equivalent between the two religions but each passing generation falls further away from a real knowledge of the Bible and Christianity.
It is astounding to see how secularized the west, including the United States, has become since WWII. This did not occur by happenstance but is the result of a long campaign against the status quo institutions of the west. This campaign which may well have been started by a 1947 Supreme Court decision institutionalising the false notion of a constitutional separation of Church and State. Another landmark decision in 1962, striking prayer in schools, accelerated the erosion of the Judaeo-Christian value system which the country was founded on. America's intelligentsia point to the deist Thomas Jefferson as the North Star for their separation argument. But does anyone seriously think that Jefferson's contemporaries saw him as anything other than the eccentric that he was? Of all the founding fathers, only Jefferson and one other were deists. The others were Christian but generations of public school children have been indoctrinated in this new liberalism which denies the truth and rewrites history to support the new paradigm. Today far too many people think that fundamentalist Christians and Jews are a greater world threat than the fundamentalist Islam which daily delivers indiscrimate carnage. The Gramscians and their useful idiots have convinced too many dumbed down public school alumni that all religion is a threat to mankind. (Not that Hitchens is a Gramsician but his current book is a prime example.) Equally amazing is the idea that global warming is a more immediate and exitential threat.
Until these destructive inculcations can be overcome, it will be difficult to mobilize the west in anything other than reactive police actions against the waxing Islam. But, if and when the jihadis kill thousands in another spectacular attack, particularly in Europe, the public backlash against Islam could be sudden and severe. Unrestrained by Christian civility, such an attack could trigger a reactive killing spree the likes of which has not been seen since the holocaust. On the other hand, the west may not resist a slow boil.
Since WWII the west has been on a downward spiral. It has fallen away from the Bible and into a humanist way of thinking which is unprepared to recoqnize or admit that some ideas and theologies are in fact, better than others and worth fighting for.
These attitudes have even taken root in our main stream religions with the Epicopalians and Methodists falling into the multi-culti ecumenical trap. (For Doug - remember, Bush is a Methodist). Fundamentalist Islam prospered as Bin Laden was given a safe haven in Afghanistan with years to train and teach jihad for the virulent Wahhabist theology. Had Bin Laden stayed with the slow boil technique it is likely that al-Qaeda Afghanistan would still be the going concern that it was in the 1990's. He would still be training recruits by the thousands but instead, for a few glorious weeks, the US military put the butt up his posterior and drove the monster into hiding. Saudi Arabia on the other hand, to this day continues their slow and deliberate campaign to spread a particularly nasty (and pure) form of Islam. It is to the wests enduring shame that to date, the Saudis have hardly been censured for their part in financing the worldwide propagation of hate.
Post colonial guilt led to acceptance of a massive influx of incompatible Muslims into the west. "Celebrate Diversity" became the mantra as old Biblical restraints were cast off even as the Arab and Muslim diaspora grew.
Both Christianity and Islam are in conflict with this resurgent secularization. The difference is the way each religion reacts to world. Islam (the pure version) makes no distinction between government and religion. Christianity renders unto Caeser. The left is largely unwilling to recognize the distinction because to do so would be contrary to the ideals which they have been devoted to for the last fifty years.
Man's chief concerns are money and power. In order to affect the balance of power, that is, to gain control, the left have attempted to overthrow the traditional institutions of the West. Since their failed "revolutions" of the 1960's, their efforts were particularly directed towards infiltrating western institutions in order to sabotage them from within. They have been most successful in Europe where the cancerous effects of secular socialism have left the population nihilistically unwilling and unprepared to address matters beyond themselves. In the US, the lefts' most obvious successes have been in the field of education where the old 60's radicals have acquired the power and authority to affect their changes and advance their agenda.
If elections are any barometer of attitudes and they certainly seem to be in the Islamic world, the 2008 Presidential election will give us an indication of whether the people of the United States will continue to resist the threat or will tolerate the slow boil.
