Another proposal for eliminating the Muslim threat

A reader in Europe feels that much stronger measures are needed than the ones I have proposed to make the world safe from expansive Islam. He bases his strategy on the way Gen. MacArthur dealt with Japan after World War II. He writes:

Dear Lawrence:

I find your articles very interesting. Einstein once said: “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.” You are a very good example of such an exception.

In your article “The only hope for a pluralist secular Iraq,” you say:

“It seems to me that the only one of those scenarios that has even the remotest chance of happening is Kemalization. And the necessary condition for Kemalization is that the Muslim world be deprived of all hopes of expanding itself, be deprived of any chance of waging jihad against the Dar al-Harb. And the only way to achieve that is through the isolation and containment of the Muslim world, the strategy I have repeatedly advocated.”

This is too weak. Kemalization didn’t work even for Turkey in the long run. It’s merely a way of stalling things. The power of Islam is institutionalized in the minds of the Muslims by the fear of Islamic hell, and the belief that Allah owns the world. So this is what has to be dealt with.

I believe that the way the U.S. dealt with the Japanese imperialism post-WWII can teach us something of how to deal with Islamic imperialism in this century. For an empire to be truly defeated, it also has to be defeated symbolically, i.e. in the minds of its subjects. MacArthur showed a way to do this effectively but at the same time not overly confrontationally. Instead of killing Hirohito to prove the point, the emperor was forced to declare himself as a normal human being (no longer a God, a descendant of the Sun Goddess). This was enough to break the spell of the Japanese Empire. Humiliating but not overly humiliating.

The Islamic empire has never been properly defeated. The ultimate symbol of the Islamic empire is Mecca and the Kaabah. If Mecca were destroyed, it would prove to Muslims around the world that Allah is not omnipotent. It would help them taking the first giant step towards no more fearing the Islamic hell. Mecca is the key to breaking the spell of the Islamic empire.

If the Islamists successfully detonate nuclear devices around the Western world, it is easy to imagine this leading to forceful retaliation by the West, eventually leading to the bombing and destruction of Mecca. [LA note: Rep. Tancredo has said that the U.S. should not take this option off the table.]

However, while the nuking of Mecca might prove the point, it could easily backfire. The “MacArthur way” of dealing with this would be, instead of destroying Mecca, to turn it into a museum. Occupied by international forces. Opened to people of all faiths. Thus breaking the symbolic power of Mecca and thereby the spell of the Islamic empire in the minds of its subjects.

Once the symbolic power of Mecca is broken, it will have many consequences:

• It will fundamentally change the meaning of Islamic prayer.

• It will cast serious doubt upon the idea of Allah as the owner of the world.

• The actual wordings in the Koran will have less impact in their literal sense.

• It will enable the release of Muslims en masse for their mental prison, built upon their fear of the Islamic hell.

• It will be the only chance for an Islamic reformation.

• Once the monopoly of power has been broken, prophets after Muhammad could be accepted, such a Ahmad and Bahai, as well as new ones.

My reply:

Thanks. Given the threat that Islam represents and its unchanging, Allah-ordained nature, I do not at all dismiss your strategy as a possibility to be considered. In fact, it adds a further twist to one of the four basic strategies on which I’ve been saying for years that reasonable discussion and ideas are needed and welcome. These are:

1. Crush and demoralize the Muslims world, whether through mass destruction, or (your preference) through the MacArthur approach of stripping the core of Islam of its symbolic power.

2. Democratize and modernize the Muslim world (Bush’ policy— now pretty much discredited).

3. Isolate and contain the Muslim world (my preference).

4. Police the Moslem world, that is, put a permanent military base somewhere in the Mideast (Kurdistan perhaps) from which we could deter the emergence of Islamic regimes or terrorist forces dangerous to ourselves without getting directly involved in the internal affairs of the Moslem countries.

5. Kemalize the Muslim world (Hugh Fitzgerald’s idea). This could only be done by Muslims themselves, but they would only get the idea of doing this once they had been deprived—by us—of their power to affect the rest of the world.

My own preference is a combination of 3 and 4, with 5 as icing on the cake. See, for example, this discussion.

Thanks for writing.

Reader to LA:

Dear Lawrence,

It makes me happy to get an answer from you. I just wanted to share this idea with you, since I never seen it expressed anywhere else. I think you are right in everything you say. Here in Europe any public figure saying things like you do, is living under a death threat, or is already killed.

Thomas Sowell said “There are only two ways of telling the complete truth—anonymously and posthumously”. You are going against the tide.

I read about the history of Kemalization in Turkey during the 20th century, and I was devastated. Such hard hitting measures and still it did nothing to curb Islam in the hearts and minds of the people. I think your four points are all of importance, and that we will have to deal with Islam for all of this century, and that eventually we will come to a point where we realize that the only way is to crush and demoralize the Muslim world, but also that has to be done in a sensible way, which is part of my point….

LA to reader:

Thank you very much. Your argument is very interesting and helpful. To my “crush and demoralize” option, you have added, “crush and demoralize, but in the sensible, MacArthur way.” Just like planners in the Pentagon, we need to visualize a range of options, some of them seemingly very extreme and out of the question, in order to think sensibly about what to do about Islam.

Reader to LA:

> To my “crush and demoralize” option, you have added, “crush and demoralize, but in the sensible, MacArthur way.”

When you put it in this way, I just had to laugh out loud.

But it’s true, yes. And I believe that we are better off thinking in standard examples, rather than ideology. And MacArthur is a very good standard example to us.

> Just like planners in the Pentagon, we need to visualize a range of options, some of them seemingly very extreme and out of the question, in order to think sensibly about what to do about Islam.

Exactly. And thus I do not suggest what I did because I necessarily believe that it is what will or should be done eventually. The function of opening up our minds to a new direction of thought, is more important. By offering the idea of crushing Mecca in a sensitive way, the idea will be less forbidden, and we can let ourselves think longer along the line of consequences it would have.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 02, 2005 12:25 PM | Send