{"id":51,"date":"2002-06-23T15:48:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-23T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=51"},"modified":"2002-06-23T15:48:00","modified_gmt":"2002-06-23T20:48:00","slug":"mirror-mirror-why-americans-dont-understand-the-threat-of-jihadism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"Mirror, Mirror &mdash; why Americans Don&#8217;t Understand the Threat of Jihadism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(Third in a series.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?m=200206#6\">What<br \/>\nal-Qaeda Wants<\/a> and the first essay in this series, <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?m=200206#48\">The<br \/>\nMirage of Moderate Islam<\/a>, I have described Islam as a warlike and<br \/>\nbloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist<br \/>\nrevival.  I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic<br \/>\nduty of jihad, and elucidated Osama bin Laden&#8217;s goal as nothing less<br \/>\nthan the destruction of the West and the establishment of a global<br \/>\nIslamic theocracy.<\/p>\n<p>I have further explained why it is difficult for anyone living<br \/>\nwithin the Islamic worldview to reject or argue against these goals.<br \/>\nJihadism &mdash; the belief that Muslims have not merely the right<br \/>\nbut the <em>duty<\/em> to smite the infidel and propagate the Faith by<br \/>\nforce &mdash; proceeds direct from the Koran and is accepted as a core<br \/>\nreligious duty by almost all Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>These are simple truths, readily discernable from reading the words<br \/>\nof the Koran, the study of even an outline of Islamic history, and the<br \/>\npropaganda of Osama bin Laden himself.  Yet they are truths that<br \/>\nalmost no one in the West is speaking in public, in plain language.<br \/>\nIn this essay, I will examine the reasons Americans are not yet<br \/>\nideologically prepared to fight the war against terror as it must be<br \/>\nfought if we are to win.<\/p>\n<p>First, the U.S. government is telling a Big Lie for diplomatic<br \/>\nreasons.  It is trying to sell the idea that Islam is a `religion of<br \/>\npeace&#8217;, with al-Qaeda representing only a small fringe of extremists.<br \/>\nPart of this is in order not to be seen attacking the religion of our<br \/>\nArab allies in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>But domestic politics is an even more important motive for this Big<br \/>\nLie.  U.S. policymakers in the know may well fear that if they<br \/>\ndescribed the relationship between terrorism and Islamic doctrine<br \/>\naccurately, the current broad consensus on war policy might collapse<br \/>\nunder a hailstorm of accusations of bigotry, prejudice, and<br \/>\nintolerance by the <em>bien pensants<\/em> who run the national media<br \/>\nand academe.  In a political climate where directing extra scrutiny at<br \/>\nyoung male Middle Eastern air travellers is attacked as unacceptable<br \/>\n`racial profiling&#8217;, this fear would be well-grounded.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the academy has failed us.  Americans are almost<br \/>\nuniversally ignorant of Islamic doctrine and history.  Most of the few<br \/>\nwho have some knowledge of the area cannot connect that knowledge to<br \/>\ncurrent events.  The Islamic-studies and Middle Eastern history<br \/>\nestablishment completely, utterly failed to anticipate al-Qaeda&#8217;s<br \/>\nrevival of jihadism, ignored or rationalized the decade of<br \/>\nanti-American terrorist acts that led up to 9\/11, and is presently<br \/>\nincapable of supplying any significant analytical help to defeating<br \/>\nthe terrorists.<\/p>\n<p>The exact anatomy of this failure is well described in Martin<br \/>\nKramer&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jewishworldreview.com\/1101\/wrong.asp\">Ivory Towers On<br \/>\nSand<\/a>.  One background problem was a Marxist-influenced tendency to<br \/>\nsee political change as all-important and dismiss religious fervor as<br \/>\na spent force.  Another was a reluctance to confront or discuss the<br \/>\ncontinuing phenomenon of terrorism at all except through the lens of<br \/>\n`post-colonial theory&#8217; that excused it as a legitimate tactic of the<br \/>\nPalestinian or anti-imperialist struggle. Yet a third was the<br \/>\npostmodern belief that objective truth is impossible.  In effect, the<br \/>\nMarxist\/multiculturalist\/postmodernist preoccupations of the<br \/>\nIslamic-studies establishment rendered it incapable of seeing,<br \/>\nthinking, or passing judgment. Confronted by the smoking hole where<br \/>\nthe World Trade Center used to be and Osama bin-Laden&#8217;s gloating<br \/>\nvideos, the academics had no way of connecting their theoretical<br \/>\nabstractions to the brutal facts and nothing to say.  Nine months<br \/>\nlater, they still doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Americans outside of universities have few grounds for smugness,<br \/>\nhowever.  While most of the rest of us have not had our critical<br \/>\nfaculties rotted out by Marxism, multiculturalism and postmodernism in<br \/>\ntheir explicit forms, a lower-grade version of the same infections has<br \/>\ndone much to damage our capacity to understand the threat of jihadism.<\/p>\n<p>Americans have always had the odd parochial habit of assuming that,<br \/>\ndown deep underneath, everyone is basically like us &mdash; sharing<br \/>\nour historically peculiar mix of pragmatism and idealism; valuing<br \/>\nhonesty and fair dealing; tolerant, materialistic, freedom-loving,<br \/>\nopen-minded, tempting to value comfort and success over ideology.  We<br \/>\nreflexively believe that everyone can be reasoned with essentially in<br \/>\nour own terms.  Most Americans don&#8217;t understand fanaticism and violent<br \/>\nevil.  We have a tendency to be `fair&#8217; by assuming that in any dispute<br \/>\nthere must be some right and some wrong on both sides.  It&#8217;s telling<br \/>\nthat we use `extreme&#8217; as a political pejorative.<\/p>\n<p>Since at least the end of World War II, this parochialism has<br \/>\nbecome so acute that it has almost blinded us to serious threats.<br \/>\nWhile more of the left-liberals who shilled for the Soviets and Mao<br \/>\nZedong and Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot during the Cold War were closet<br \/>\nCommunists than is yet publicly admitted, a good many were honest<br \/>\ndupes who simply couldn&#8217;t believe that Communists were actually<br \/>\nmotivated by the sinister craziness of hard Marxism, and therefore<br \/>\nassumed that America must somehow be at fault.  Conservatives<br \/>\napologizing for unsavory pro-American strongmen mostly weren&#8217;t closet<br \/>\nfascists, either; a good many of them had obvious trouble seeing<br \/>\ncaudillos as more than cigar-chomping CEOs running a particularly<br \/>\ntough business, and never mind the gold braid and funny hats.<\/p>\n<p>The see-no-evil tendency in American folk psychology created<br \/>\nfertile ground for the rather less benign dogmas of multiculturalism<br \/>\n(&#8220;all cultures present ways of living that are equally morally valid&#8221;)<br \/>\nand postmodernism (&#8220;there is no objective truth&#8221;).  Originally<br \/>\nconstructed by Marxists (and one ex-Fascist) as part of a program to<br \/>\nideologically disarm the West against the radical evil of Communism,<br \/>\nthese dogmas have both outlived their original ends and seeped into<br \/>\nAmerican pop culture.  Their effect is that many of us can no longer<br \/>\nbring ourselves to think of any political movement, religion, or<br \/>\nculture as radically evil unless it is safely part of history (and,<br \/>\nfor political correctness, was run by dead white European males when<br \/>\nit was alive and kicking).<\/p>\n<p>This was a relatively harmless form of self-delusion between 1992<br \/>\nand 2001, the decade of self-indulgence bracketed by the fall of the<br \/>\nSoviet Empire and 9\/11.  No longer.  We are at war.  Western<br \/>\ncivilization is under attack by a foe that revels in the wholesale<br \/>\nslaughter of civilians, one that proudly announces its intention to<br \/>\nbring a second Holocaust of fire and blood down upon us all.<\/p>\n<p>If our civilization is to survive, we will need to recover the<br \/>\nmoral judgment needed to recognize radical evil, the language in which<br \/>\nto condemn it, and the determination to act.<\/p>\n<p>In a perverse way, al-Qaeda has made this easy.  They have murdered<br \/>\nthousands in a single attack on one of our heart cities, they have<br \/>\nattempted to unleash biological weapons on us, and have actively<br \/>\nplanned to detonate nuclear\/radiological weapons in our population<br \/>\ncenters.  Those who cannot recognize even this as radical evil<br \/>\n&mdash; those who persist in arguing that the 9\/11 attack was somehow<br \/>\njustified by something United Fruit did in Guatemala or the Israelis<br \/>\ndid in Lebanon &mdash; are rapidly dealing themselves out of the game<br \/>\nof deciding how we shall respond.<\/p>\n<p>Having recognized al-Qaeda&#8217;s behavior as radically evil, we must<br \/>\nnext recognize that its motivating ideology is evil, too.  And the<br \/>\nfirst step there is recognizing that Islam&#8217;s apologists are<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.upi.com\/view.cfm?StoryID=18062002-044316-3353r\"><br \/>\nsystematically lying to us<\/a> about what they believe and intend.<br \/>\nOutside of a few fringe groups like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0226056767\/qid%3D1024685562\/sr%3D1-1\/ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F1\/002-8067869-9300863\">Dauri<br \/>\nBohras<\/a> and a tiny minority of intellectual reformers who generally<br \/>\ndare not speak their ideas in their own home countries, there is<br \/>\nsimply no constituency in Islam prepared to recognize Western concepts<br \/>\nof peace, tolerance, and pluralism.<\/p>\n<p>We will not be prepared to win the war against Islamic terror until<br \/>\nwe understand the following things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Islam is a religion of war and conversion by the sword, not peace.<\/li>\n<li>The primary threat of terrorism comes from Arabs and<br \/>\nmiddle-easterners between the ages of fifteen and forty, and we must summon<br \/>\nthe will to profile accordingly.<\/li>\n<li>We are dealing with religious fanaticism rather than rational grievances<br \/>\nagainst America or the West.<\/li>\n<li>Our enemies cannot be reasoned with or appeased anywhere<br \/>\nshort of surrender and submission to shari&#8217;a law.<\/li>\n<li>Apologists for mainstream Islam are systematically<br \/>\nlying to us about Islamic doctrine in order to shield terrorists who<br \/>\nthey know are acting in strict accordance with that doctrine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The hardest challenge for Americans is to grasp is the fact that<br \/>\nthe evil of the 9\/11 hijackings, the destruction of the World Trade<br \/>\nCenter, and the threat of al-Qaeda weapons of mass destruction set off<br \/>\nin American cities is not simply the evil of al-Qaeda.  It is in fact<br \/>\nthe Koranically-correct expression of the tendency of Islam (Sunni<br \/>\nfundamentalism) which is has been pre-eminent through most of Islamic<br \/>\nhistory and now encompasses over 90% of the worlds Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>We need to face the fact that we are confronting not just a<br \/>\nbarbaric and evil group of men, but a barbaric and evil religion. To<br \/>\nprotect ourselves, we must either force the complete reform of Islam<br \/>\n(purging it of jihadism and its tendency towards periodic<br \/>\nfundamentalist outbreaks) or destroy its hold over its followers.<\/p>\n<p>This is a problem for Americans; first, because we have been taught<br \/>\nthat we that we must not be intolerant of other peoples&#8217; religions;<br \/>\nand second, because fully grasping the nature of the danger Islamic<br \/>\nposes to Western civilization requires thinking uncomfortable<br \/>\nthoughts about the dominant Christian religion of our own culture.<\/p>\n<p>The reader is at this point invited to learn more about the<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A61275-2002Jun16.html\"><br \/>\ndeveloping alliance<\/a> between Islamic and Christian fundamentalisms.<br \/>\nThen, to learn all about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jhuger.com\/kisshank.mv\">Kissing Hank&#8217;s Ass.<\/a><br \/>\nBefore 9\/11, &#8220;Kissing Hank&#8217;s Ass&#8221; was an edgy joke.  Today it<br \/>\ndemonstrates why ending the threat of religiously-motivated terror will<br \/>\nrequire us to confront and destroy the fundamentalist\/jihadist impulse<br \/>\nnot merely in Islam, but also in Christianity and all other<br \/>\neschatological monotheisms where it finds a natural home.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity, like Islam (and unlike almost all of the other<br \/>\nreligions of the world) has violent intolerance of other religions and<br \/>\nthe impulse to conversion by the sword wired into its doctrinal DNA.<br \/>\nMost Americans have trouble believing the Koran means what it says<br \/>\nabout the duty of jihad because for most Christians, the parallel<br \/>\nChristian duty to smite the infidel is a historical dead letter.  But<br \/>\ncounterparts of al-Qaeda such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religioustolerance.org\/cr_ident.htm\">Christian<br \/>\nIdentity Movement<\/a> exist in the West, imbued with all of<br \/>\nal-Qaeda&#8217;s rage.  Christian fundamentalists express the same<br \/>\nhatred of modernity and determination to jam the world back into<br \/>\na medieval mold that motivates Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n<p>To win the war on terror, we must understand jihadism and clearly<br \/>\ndistinguish it from ethical self-defense.  We must be prepared not<br \/>\nmerely to counter fanaticism not merely by killing the fanatical in<br \/>\nself-defense, but also by discrediting the doctrines and habits of<br \/>\nthought that make fanatics in the first place &mdash; whether they occur in<br \/>\nthe other guy&#8217;s religion or our own.  Islam has declared itself the<br \/>\nimmediate adversary of modernity &mdash; but more than one world religion<br \/>\nwill have to go under the knife before our children can sleep in<br \/>\npeace.<\/p>\n<p><em>(To be continued&#8230;)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=78108401\">Blogspot comment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Third in a series.) In What al-Qaeda Wants and the first essay in this series, The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty of jihad, and elucidated Osama&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=51\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mirror, Mirror &mdash; why Americans Don&#8217;t Understand the Threat of Jihadism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}