“Relentlessly and Thoroughly” [Free Republic]

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By Paul Johnson, a historian and journalist whose forthcoming book is a history of art. From the October 15, 2001, issue of National Review

Bold and uncompromising words were spoken by American (and British) leaders in the immediate response to the Manhattan Massacre. But they may be 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 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 strategem [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 taught 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 7th-century "breakout" of Islam from Arabia was followed by the rapid conquest of North Africa, the invasion and virtual conquest of Spain, and a thrust 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 A.D. 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 stick to the essentials of its military response and carry 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, 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 civilisation 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.

Very amusing reading all the way to the end, the usual out-of-context distortions and false light representations of history, overlooking the apparently trivial fact that the bloody end of The Golden Age of Judaism, which according to Jewish scholarship and memory occured in Muslim Spain, coincided not with any Christian liberation but with the Catholic Inquisition.

"It took half a millennium ..." to liberate Western Europe and then a scant few years for the religious tyranny of the popes to annihilate religious pluralism in Spain and countless Jewish, Christian, and muslim lives along with it. Somehow this well-known history escapes the notice of our erstwhile scholarly "historian and journalist."

But then, right at the end, he makes good sense:

And I couldn't agree more: I have been persuaded by six decades of being an American that we are "the last, best hope of mankind" -- what America does now is in fact the hope of the entire world.

I would hasten to add that those faithful to America's Promise will insure that our hands do not shed innocent blood or fail to reach those behind the terror war now being waged against America.

That will determine whether those hopes are realized or destroyed, and America along with them.

America, like all nations ever to share the sun, is in the Hands of God Who Originates Mercy and Wrath. Fortunately for Americans, as for everyone ever to draw a breath, His Mercy overtakes His Wrath.

But of course that's an article of faith in Islam, perhaps others fear God more than we do. We can't split the hearts, we don't know about that. That's also an article of faith among muslims, that I can't know what or which faith may be in your heart.

I have elsewhere said two things that go together, only to see the falsifiers repeat only one, as if it were some kind of dark portent and mantra. What I believe is this:

The best hope for Islam in this world is America. And the best hope for America and the world is Islam.

Somehow the falsifiers turn that into a crime, to think that.

The falsifiers say that means I'm a terrorist bent on "conversion at the point of a sword," and rave on as if religious conviction were some kind of crime against humanity (religious Americans accused of their faith will know what that's like) -- but neither "conversion" nor the rest has any subtance in any religious conviction at all. "There is no compulsion in religion." That's also an article of faith among muslims.

America's muslims voted as a block for George Bush, and in the end that block vote proved crucial in determining the electoral college result. The falsifiers now say that we are "taking over" by flexing political muscle like nearly every American religious community does, the Catholic Church and the Israeli Lobby being among the most effective. But we were more surprised than anyone to see the results in Florida. It's really nice that our little touch on the scale made the difference between responsible leadership and continued licentiousness and irresponsibility. That's a pretty neat way to step into the body politic in the Name of God, which is the only way we can responsibly approach participation in the affairs of anyone.

But Islam knows -- muslims know -- that God directs people to the churches, the synagogues and the mosques, and leaves others directionless, and that has never been anyone's choice but their own. Islam for America is a help and a means by which to fight evil without and within, as it always has been, from the beginning with the Founding Fathers. I mention this in A Political Process for Muslim America, which discusses the participation of muslims in America's democratic process.

There are muslims who say that citizenship in any political body but theirs is unlawful. Largely that's because they have never been citizens anywhere, since the Abbasid Tyranny of the Arabs over a thousand years ago essentially disenfranchised all muslims (and everyone else) but those in power over the Arab empire. And it is also because they don't know the history of humanity, which is not tremendously surprising.

But there are fifteen million muslims in America who think it's okay to vote for George Bush. The maniacs can sit in their little corner while we go to the polls, no one forces anyone to vote, either.

was-salaam,
ankaboot
--
Rejoice, muslims, in martyrdom without fighting,
a Mercy for us. Be like the better son of Adam.