Hi All,
I'm currently reading my way through Wallid Phares, excellent book
Future Jihad. Phares, who is Lebanese, is currently MSNBC/NBCs terrorism expert, he advised the 9/11 commission, is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Phares leads off his book with a warning that for several years now the West has been attempting to "redefine" Jihad away from its historic meaning, and to explain it away as benign and spiritual. Having been raised in the Middle East himself, he recognized that this "spiritual" view of Jihad being actively peddled in the West was not the view of Jihad the predominates in the Middle East, for instance he writes:
In most literature, scholarly articles, public lectures, and lobbying and social efforts related to the Middle East politics, as well as religious studies and interfaith activities, there was a constant attempt to portray Jihad as a spiritual phenomenon that could be and was abused by extremist ideologies and radical political factions who were making it into something it really was not. In the early 1990s, I was stunned to read and hear the Western establishment making these tremendous efforts to convince audiences and readers of the benign character of jihad; in the Middle East, for the most part, the term retained its age-old, unreconstructed meanings. Jihad is not benign, and the West's denial of that fact was terrible ironic. By instinct and as a result of my personal and professional background, I realized the enormity of what was happening: The United States was paving the way for its own defeat, by blurring its vision, confusing its mind, and moderating its reactions to the early danger signs, not to mention the terrorist strikes to come.
What we are seeing in the violent reactions within the Umma to these cartoons, is the real, unreconstructed, historic face of Islam and the longer we go on peddling this ridiculous notion that at heart it is a peaceful, moderate to liberal religion that will tolerate dissension, permit other religions to proselytize within its "bounds" and turn the other cheek when criticized or ridiculed, the more certain that we will eventually lose the
war the Jihadis have declared on us. You don't coexist peacefully with Islam, you either convert, submit to being a subjugated third class citizen, or you die. Those are the only three options that have ever historically been offered. In a sense, the blind seething hatred that has been unleashed on the west in the wake of the Cartoons, the election of Hamas, the massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan, and the ongoing "we will develop and use Nuclear weapons to kill you all" stance of Iran might actually be a good thing if they cause a few people in the West to wake up to the true nature of Islam.
Please understand me, I wouldn't make the above observations about any other world religion. Even those that do persecute on occasion, tend to do so in an unsystematic fashion, and not in pursuit of violent world conquest. Islam is thoroughly different, it is an ideology of conquest, domination, and subjugation by any means necessary. Either the civil magistrates in the West begin to actively resist its expansion, or we get used to the idea that someday our children may have to choose between converting to Islam or submitting to Dhimmitude. I don't know many fathers here who would be wild about their daughters or grand-daughters living the rest of their lives under a Burka or a Hijab, unable to even go outside unless they are escorted by a close male relative, and yet that is the reality that some of my friends who live in Muslim nations like Pakistan have had to deal with, don't think for a moment that it couldn't also become the reality of life in Europe.
- SEAGOON
