The Outlines of the Conflict
Terrorist bombs killing scores of Indians in a New Delhi market; Muslim murderers in Indonesia capturing and beheading three Christian teenage girls as they walk through a cocoa plantation; Dutch politicians sleeping in prisons to protect them from Muslims who have threatened to behead them; U.S. airports and public buildings locked down under a permanent security swath to ward off terrorist attacks—this, in one way or another, is the daily reality the non-Islamic peoples of the world are now living under, wherever a Muslim population is present in the same society. Yet, in a combination of philosophical nominalism and practical appeasement, the non-Islamic world has dealt with this phenomenon thus far in piecemeal fashion. No non-Islamic leader has noticed a common global pattern joining these events and trends together or called for a common global response. VFR’s Indian correspondent living in the West has noticed, and has sent in these thoughtful observations.
The Outlines of the Conflict
These latest attacks confirm what has been happening since the end of the Cold War. Islam is now resurgent and its followers know it.
The Western world had demolished Islamic military strength to the point where, at the end of World War I, nothing remained of it. Islam was a religion in the backwaters of the world—a religion of metaphorical bedouins immersed in darkness.
Two things have changed since then—the West has made itself vulnerable by a self imposed code of self-destruction (“multiculturalism”) and the end of the Cold War has given new life to hitherto suppressed religious feelings among Muslims.
What we are now witnessing is a new bloody jihad (but still part of the old historical jihad) that is global in scale. It spares no one—no one who is an “infidel” is immune from it. From South East Asia to the American Northwest, the Islamists are on the move.
The Islamists have one important advantage—they know there is a war on, whereas the non-Islamic world refuses to see it even when the reality of the war expresses all its ugliness before their very eyes. The refusal of the non-Islamic world to see the true nature of Islam and their refusal to deal with it means that in the short term the Islamists will go from strength to strength. The global jihadist movement has grown exponentially since the end of the Cold War when it was confined to fringe movements in some parts of the Islamic world. Our refusal to deal with the fanaticism of Islam has allowed this to occur.
The non-Islamic world’s advantage is superior technology and the mastery of science. None of the most technologically advanced nations are Muslim. Even second rate powers include almost no Muslim nations. But this is an advantage that can be brought to bear only if the non-Islamic world recognises what it is faced with. As long as the non-Islamic world refuses to see what it is facing, the Islamists can keep blowing up bridges, buildings, underground trains and pizza parlours with abandon and with nothing more than a few government prosecutors and lawyers to fear.
The Islamic world sees this as a war, the non-Islamic world see this as a law enforcement exercise.
We mustn’t lose sight of the lessons of history. When Muhammad founded this death cult in the 7th century, it only had a following among a handful of tribes. Thirteen centuries later, one sixth of the earth is Islamic. Western military supremacy over the Islamic world in the last three centuries ensured that a lull occurred in this long war. But that is all it was—a lull.
Now the war has started again.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 30, 2005 02:29 PM | Send