An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
In 1938, the year of Anschluss and Munich, a perceptive British Catholic looked beyond the continent over which war clouds hung and saw another cloud forming.
"It has always seemed to me … probable," wrote Hilaire Belloc, "that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."
Belloc was prophetic. Even as Christianity seems to be dying in Europe, Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many previous centuries.
Indeed, as one watches U.S. armed forces struggle against Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, and jihadists in Iraq, and a resurgent Taliban, all invoking Allah, Victor Hugo's words return to mind: No army is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
The idea for which our many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one. They believe there is but one God, Allah; that Muhammad is his prophet; that Islam, or submission to the Koran, is the only path to paradise; and that a Godly society should be governed according to the Shariah, the law of Islam. Having tried other ways and failed, they are coming home to Islam.
What idea do we have to offer? Americans believe that freedom comports with human dignity, that only a democratic and free-market system can ensure the good life for all, as it has done in the West and is doing in Asia.
From Ataturk on, millions of Islamic peoples have embraced this Western alternative. But today, tens of millions of Muslims appear to be rejecting it, returning to their roots in a more pure Islam.
Indeed, the endurance of the Islamic faith is astonishing.
Islam survived two centuries of defeats and humiliations of the Ottoman Empire and Ataturk's abolition of the caliphate. It endured generations of Western rule. It outlasted the pro-Western monarchs in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia and Iran. Islam easily fended off communism, survived the rout of Nasserism in 1967, and has proven more enduring than the nationalism of Arafat or Saddam. Now, it is resisting the world's last superpower.
What occasioned this column was a jolting report in the June 20Washington Times, by James Brandon, alerting us to a new front.
"Arrests Spark Fear of Armed Islamist Takeover" headlined the story about the arrest, since May, of 500 militants who had allegedly plotted the overthrow of the king of Morocco and establishment of an Islamic state that would sever all ties to the infidel West – to end the poverty and corruption they blame on the West.
The arrests raised fears that al-Adl wa al-Ihsane, or Justice and Charity, was preparing to take up arms to fulfill the predictions of the group's mystics that the monarchy would fall in 2006. Though illegal, al-Adl wa al-Ihsane is Morocco's largest Islamic movement, which boycotts elections, but has hundreds of thousands of followers and has taken over the universities and is radicalizing the young.
Its founder is Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, who has declared its purpose is to reunite mosque and state: "Politics and spirituality have been kept apart by the Arab elites. And we have been able to reconnect these two aspects of Islam – and that is why people fear us."
And, one might add, why people embrace them.
If Morocco is now in play in the struggle between militant Islam and the West, how looks the correlation of forces in June 2006?
Islamists are taking over in Somalia. They are in power in Sudan. The Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the races it contested in Egypt. Hezbollah swept the board in southern Lebanon. Hamas seized power from Fatah on the West Bank and Gaza. The Shia parties who hearken to Ayatollah Sistani brushed aside our favorites, Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, in the Iraqi elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most admired Iranian leader since Khomeini. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is staging a comeback.
This has all happened in the last year. And where are we winning?
What is the appeal of militant Islam? It is, first, its message: As all else has failed us, why not live the faith and law God gave us?
Second, it is the Muslim rage at the present condition where pro-Western regimes are seen as corruptly enriching themselves, while the poor suffer.
Third, it is a vast U.S. presence that Islamic peoples are taught is designed to steal their God-given resources and assist the Israelis in humiliating them and persecuting the Palestinians.
Lastly, Islamic militants are gaining credibility because they show a willingness to share the poverty of the poor and fight the Americans.
What America needs to understand is something unusual for us: From Morocco to Pakistan, we are no longer seen by the majority as the good guys.
If Islamic rule is an idea taking hold among the Islamic masses, how does even the best army on earth stop it? Do we not need a new policy?
"It has always seemed to me … probable," wrote Hilaire Belloc, "that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."
Belloc was prophetic. Even as Christianity seems to be dying in Europe, Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many previous centuries.
Indeed, as one watches U.S. armed forces struggle against Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, and jihadists in Iraq, and a resurgent Taliban, all invoking Allah, Victor Hugo's words return to mind: No army is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
The idea for which our many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one. They believe there is but one God, Allah; that Muhammad is his prophet; that Islam, or submission to the Koran, is the only path to paradise; and that a Godly society should be governed according to the Shariah, the law of Islam. Having tried other ways and failed, they are coming home to Islam.
What idea do we have to offer? Americans believe that freedom comports with human dignity, that only a democratic and free-market system can ensure the good life for all, as it has done in the West and is doing in Asia.
From Ataturk on, millions of Islamic peoples have embraced this Western alternative. But today, tens of millions of Muslims appear to be rejecting it, returning to their roots in a more pure Islam.
Indeed, the endurance of the Islamic faith is astonishing.
Islam survived two centuries of defeats and humiliations of the Ottoman Empire and Ataturk's abolition of the caliphate. It endured generations of Western rule. It outlasted the pro-Western monarchs in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia and Iran. Islam easily fended off communism, survived the rout of Nasserism in 1967, and has proven more enduring than the nationalism of Arafat or Saddam. Now, it is resisting the world's last superpower.
What occasioned this column was a jolting report in the June 20Washington Times, by James Brandon, alerting us to a new front.
"Arrests Spark Fear of Armed Islamist Takeover" headlined the story about the arrest, since May, of 500 militants who had allegedly plotted the overthrow of the king of Morocco and establishment of an Islamic state that would sever all ties to the infidel West – to end the poverty and corruption they blame on the West.
The arrests raised fears that al-Adl wa al-Ihsane, or Justice and Charity, was preparing to take up arms to fulfill the predictions of the group's mystics that the monarchy would fall in 2006. Though illegal, al-Adl wa al-Ihsane is Morocco's largest Islamic movement, which boycotts elections, but has hundreds of thousands of followers and has taken over the universities and is radicalizing the young.
Its founder is Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, who has declared its purpose is to reunite mosque and state: "Politics and spirituality have been kept apart by the Arab elites. And we have been able to reconnect these two aspects of Islam – and that is why people fear us."
And, one might add, why people embrace them.
If Morocco is now in play in the struggle between militant Islam and the West, how looks the correlation of forces in June 2006?
Islamists are taking over in Somalia. They are in power in Sudan. The Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the races it contested in Egypt. Hezbollah swept the board in southern Lebanon. Hamas seized power from Fatah on the West Bank and Gaza. The Shia parties who hearken to Ayatollah Sistani brushed aside our favorites, Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, in the Iraqi elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most admired Iranian leader since Khomeini. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is staging a comeback.
This has all happened in the last year. And where are we winning?
What is the appeal of militant Islam? It is, first, its message: As all else has failed us, why not live the faith and law God gave us?
Second, it is the Muslim rage at the present condition where pro-Western regimes are seen as corruptly enriching themselves, while the poor suffer.
Third, it is a vast U.S. presence that Islamic peoples are taught is designed to steal their God-given resources and assist the Israelis in humiliating them and persecuting the Palestinians.
Lastly, Islamic militants are gaining credibility because they show a willingness to share the poverty of the poor and fight the Americans.
What America needs to understand is something unusual for us: From Morocco to Pakistan, we are no longer seen by the majority as the good guys.
If Islamic rule is an idea taking hold among the Islamic masses, how does even the best army on earth stop it? Do we not need a new policy?
On The Other Side Of The Coin..........Dr Nik's rebuttal:
Pat ,
I am very tempted to chip in and go straight for the jugular and say that ' that clash of civilisation need not be' if Obama [ let us forget that chap Bush Junior who cannot be one of the brightest US President you guys have ever had ! ] wakes up in the middle of some of his nights and listen carefully to the lilting and haunting rendition of The Glorious Qu'ran by qari Abdul-Baasit and ,yes, go through the old English transliteration by Picthal. Listen to Surah Maryam [ Divine letter 19 : 1-98 ] for instance. Forget about what the likes of John Esposito and his misguided orientalist friends had to say and advice for a moment.
[ http://www.quranexplorer.com/ ].......see Link
But then Obama is a 'murtad' so how can he ever has the spirit or the generosity to see things through the prism of a Muslim pacifist. The West psyche is all about political, cultural and ideological subjugation, and economic plunder, and 'our ways are holier than thou' and thus we have the divine duty to liberate you guys approach....for centuries. It is now so deeply ingrained in the Western genes,to the point some of our thinkers think, that the rest of the world has to think and live like you do, otherwise they are just considered as some'yellow' or coloured 'bastards', non entities and non human, that can be dispensed with, just like your cats and dogs. Probably your cats and dogs get treated more humanely than these 'Muslim non entities. We see that everywhere: Lebanon, forget about Palestine they are no longer humans, Iraq ,Afghanistan, those simple folks in Northern Pakistan who for decades have been living under Syariah until recently you guys decided they should be part of the equation in your now ' infamous war agianst terror' [ whatever it mean] , Sudan, Somalia, just to name a few.. Please do not come to this part of the world we do not need your 'dirty hands' meddling in our affairs. We are enjoying our peaceful coexistence with ourselves and neighbours.
Let me put it in simple terms that you guys can understand. World peace is about Fairness and Justice, whatever colour ,language or religious or non religious persuasions you happened to be. The 1.4 billion Muslims all across the globe do not give a hoot whether Sarkozy, Obama or Blair become Muslim tomorrow, or remain , in our opinion, 'spiritially confused souls', because we believe that are their own funerals, both figuratively and literally. The Muslim rulers in 7th century Spain thought so as well because, unlike you guys we lived by this principle : "Say: Disbelievers ! I do not worship what you worship nor do you worship what I worship. I shall never worship what you worship. You have your own religion and I have mine " [Surah al-kafirun, 109 ]. Your 'religious persuasions' are your divine right.
But we care that world Super Powers in a position to impose, exercise due care to insist on justice and fairness in this planet of ours. You guys can burn the Qur'an tomorrow if you like, you can even 'fornicate' openly in the park if that is your choice, and that is not our concern, you can remain God-less untill Doomsday, that are your indomitable rights! We do not question your rights to free expression.
But history has taught us over centuries that you guys are bad news.Very bad news. When Muslims brought light ,science and civility to Europe through Islamic Spain in the Middle Ages, you guys gave the world it's first inquisition, a hundred years later after Cordoba. And for centuries that followed: slavery, plunder and outright massacres and total subjugation of Muslim populations in the Middle East and the Far East and wherever they were. Your guys even want to determine how we think.
Well you may say that was history. But is now any better?
Palestinians being hunted like dogs in their homeland, the long arm of Uncle Sam destabilizing Muslim countries in North Africa, Central Asia and everywhere there are huge reservoirs of the black gold and etc etc and etc, supporting 'puppet governments here and there and suppresing and not recognising popular elected administrations elsewhere.The mind boggling CIA games in Pakistan to finally subjugate a sovereign nation in order to' denuclearize' it, the 'pariah'rizsation and 'talibanization of anything Islamic the world over. What games are you guys playing in cohort with the impotent United Nations and the blank cheques of the Western and Zionist controlled Security Council?
How can millions of pacifist like me counter intellectuals like Osama Ben Laden, Ayman aL Zawathir, Dr Azahari et al who would continue to inspire and motivate thousands of 'jihadists' ,that indeed, the West really had not declared war on Islam years ago and now,when all across the globe Muslims had suffered direct and 'collateral damage' by the millions. Countless lives lost,and endless misery and a sense of hopelessness, depravation and injustice.
Don't you think Pat that it is high time people like Obama and Sarkozy address the bigger issue of justice and fairness on this increasingly small planet of ours. Your young men in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the globe can go home and see their parents, enjoy their young and productive lives rather than being shot at and maimed, if people like Obama can look beyond the narrow confine of nationalism and bigotry, into the realm of justice and fairness! We are confident he can if he tries hard enough and allow himself to listen to his very soul and conscience!
You guys have no choice. Who is imbecile enough to fight against 1.4 billion Muslims? That chap we believe who thought so, hopefully, is fully retired somewhere on his farm in Texas enjoying his beer!
Obama has to start afresh and give this world of ours, a new hope: Justice and fairness for all.
To paraphrase Robert Fisk, the celebrated English journalist, who is any time better and more sincere than all your BBC and CNN journalists all added up together, we Muslims wanted freedom from 'you guys'. Please leave us, and our lands, in peace.Islam is an idea whose time has come, not even the might of all the West can beat what is jutting out increasingly like a sore thumb now: The Absolute Truth.
The [faithful] slaves of the Beneficient are they who walk upon the earth modestly, and when the foolish ones address them answer: Peace.[63] And who spend the night before their Lord, prostrate and standing;[64] And who say: Our Lord! Avert from us the doom of hell; Lo! the doom thereof is anguish;[65] Lo! it is wretched as abode and station;[66] And those who, when they spend, are neither prodigal nor grudging; and there is ever a firm station between the two.[67]........[Surah al-Furqan, 25 : 63-67 ]
Dr Nik Howk
3 comments:
This whole entry of your b;oog is most inspiring and hits right on the button. I had the oppoertunity to sit and talk with proffessor Ghanin al Najar while on a flight back to Dubai from Kuwait. He is one of those political analyst on th Yeman video. A Sharp character yuo would have enjoyed picjing his brain.
Kudos to you brother!
Sam
TQ Sam for sharing the pain. It is really painful inwardly.
We Muslims across the globe have a lot of 'teething' housekeeping to do, not helped at all being surounded by a pack of 'wolves' in dainty clothes in the forms of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, European Union, etc and etc.
Time has changed but the formulla is still back to Richard the Lion's Heart 's time. Only they appear on prime Tv in suit rather than in armour of medieval time !
The language unfortunately is still the same.Just that we present day Muslims forget our place in 'the destiny of man', and history itself. We are divided on as many fault lines as we could ever think of.
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