No Time For Dhimmi
Most "enlightened ones" argue that Islamic terrorism is merely a fanatical perversion of a peaceful Islam which deviates from its true teachings. They call for a Western-style modernization of the Muslim world, hoping thereby that radical Islam will be tamed. This analysis misses the point. The nature of the terrorist threat is unambiguously Islamic and is not so much a deviation from Muslim tradition as an appeal to it.
Islam is linked from the beginning with the practice of divinely sanctioned warfare and lethal injunctions against apostates and unbelievers. Islam experienced no period of wandering and exclusion; from its inception, Islam formed a unitary state bent on military conquest.
The oft-quoted remark that Islam is a religion of peace is false. It is historically illiterate to claim that war is foreign to Islam and it is theologically uninformed to argue that jihad is merely a personal inner struggle with no external military correlate.
The Prophet died a successful military leader who created a single Islamic polity that expanded - through warfare - all over the known world. The caliphate combined the double logic of a religious community and an imperial state.
While the Koran enjoins that there shall be "no compulsion in religion," Islam still regards it as a holy duty to extend militarily the borders of the House of Islam against the demonic world of unbelievers.
When extremists say they are killing in the name of Islam, they are in part appealing to Islamic traditions of long standing.
Al Qaeda sympathizers avidly read European fascist literature and pursue religious ends via atheist methods. Historically Islamic expansion was linked to the rise of Nazism in Europe - they befriended and aided each other. Recruits to the cause are not the excluded uneducated poor, they are intellectuals with a radical critique of Western society and its impact on Islam.
Yhere can be no accommodation with an ideology that seeks to fashion the whole world in its own image - at least there was no accomodation for Nazism or Communism. Why is it so "vogue" to be so accommodating today?
Islam is linked from the beginning with the practice of divinely sanctioned warfare and lethal injunctions against apostates and unbelievers. Islam experienced no period of wandering and exclusion; from its inception, Islam formed a unitary state bent on military conquest.
The oft-quoted remark that Islam is a religion of peace is false. It is historically illiterate to claim that war is foreign to Islam and it is theologically uninformed to argue that jihad is merely a personal inner struggle with no external military correlate.
The Prophet died a successful military leader who created a single Islamic polity that expanded - through warfare - all over the known world. The caliphate combined the double logic of a religious community and an imperial state.
While the Koran enjoins that there shall be "no compulsion in religion," Islam still regards it as a holy duty to extend militarily the borders of the House of Islam against the demonic world of unbelievers.
When extremists say they are killing in the name of Islam, they are in part appealing to Islamic traditions of long standing.
Al Qaeda sympathizers avidly read European fascist literature and pursue religious ends via atheist methods. Historically Islamic expansion was linked to the rise of Nazism in Europe - they befriended and aided each other. Recruits to the cause are not the excluded uneducated poor, they are intellectuals with a radical critique of Western society and its impact on Islam.
Yhere can be no accommodation with an ideology that seeks to fashion the whole world in its own image - at least there was no accomodation for Nazism or Communism. Why is it so "vogue" to be so accommodating today?
posted by Anonymous @ 7/29/2005 08:59:00 AM
|
<< Home