Author: Robert Spencer
Publication: Jihad Watch
Date: May 6, 2006
URL: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011328.php
Can you feel the gloom? I can. The President
insists that "we are winning the war on terror," but as Americans
are becoming more informed about Islam, and about the nature of the global
jihad, and with that knowledge comes the realization that in the face of various
aspects of this immense, life-and-death challenge, our leaders are responding
either improperly or not at all.
Hence the formidable Derbyshire writes this
about the Moussaoui sentence at National Review's The Corner:
Does anyone, DOES ANYONE, think we're going to defeat Islamofascism by squirting
clouds of this multicultural mush at it? The terrorists sure as hell don't.
Does anyone think the enemy gives a fig for our determination not to "focus
on hatred, bigotry, and irrationality" (Judge Brinkema). I wonder if
you can win a war without deploying hatred. Homer didn't think so.
The New York Post described Judge Brinkema's
closing remarks as "a tongue lashing." I would say that's about
right. They have suicide bombers - and, any day now, nukes which they will
use. We have wet tongues.
"When people see a strong horse and a
weak horse, naturally they will favor the strong horse."--Osama bin Laden.
Yes, they will. We are doomed, doomed.
Likewise, at the Restoration Weekend in Phoenix
not too long ago I was on a panel with Daniel Pipes, Phyllis Chesler and Steven
Emerson. The topic we were given was, "Are we winning the war on terror?"
All of us said no.
How can this be, when the enemy has nothing
approaching our military might? Because far more important in the long run
than the jihad of bombs and beheadings is the soft jihad of subversion of
the West, which is succeeding magnificently while most citizens of Western
countries are completely unaware that it is happening. Those who are unaware
of just how bad things have gotten would do well to read David Selbourne's
The Losing Battle with Islam. Selbourne, a historian and former Oxford professor,
writes with an unusual and refreshing clarity and honesty about the ways in
which the West, through short-sightedness, ignorance, and a deeply rooted
unwillingness to make hard decisions or face hard facts, has enabled the jihad
threat to grow to its present dimensions. And he explains why things are likely
only to get worse.
Selbourne details how, "in contrast with
Western confusion, indecision, anxieties to avoid offense, and an unstable
media feverishness over individual events, a steadier truth is to be found
in Islamist declarations that a 'confrontation' is in progress between 'Islam
and world infidelity', and that a 'clear crystallization' is taking place
between the 'two camps' of Islam and non-Islam." The mujahedin keep pushing
that confrontation, while instead of standing up and defending our civilization,
heritage, and values, our leaders are doing everything they can to ignore
that confrontation and pretend to themselves that as soon as they hit upon
the right mix of concessions and fuzzy-focused "anti-terror" and
"democratization" initiatives, peace will return.
Selbourne explains why this will never work,
and how "the tolerances, moral inertias and hidden sympathies of the
corrupted liberal could themselves become liberticidal..." He exposes
not only the murderous ideology of the mujahedin, but also the devices they
use to further its advance. Enormously helpful are Selbourne's catalogues,
such as his list and explanation of twelve common devices of deception --
to wit:
FIRST DEVICE: To appear, in your own interest, to be sympathetically disposed
to the non-Islamic world, while continuing covertly to act against it, as
by condeming hostilities against it in which you have had, and continue to
have, a hand. This device has been best exemplified by the conduct of the
Saudi royal household....
He also catalogues "Nine Arguments which
have been commonly used to keep at bay 'unwelcome and inconvenient truths'
about the Islamic revival and its advance." As one who has been on the
receiving end of all nine of these, I highly recommend this catalogue as a
useful tool to help anti-jihadists spot such rhetorical tricks and defeat
those who use them.
I also highly recommend Selbourne's assessments
of why democracy, modernization, and hearts-and-minds initiatives are useless
in this struggle, and doomed to failure.
This book makes many points with which I disagree.
Selbourne decries the "disproportionately small attention" given
to Muslims who "disapprove strongly of Islamism's words and actions,"
while in my experience there has been disproportionately large amounts of
attention given to such people, despite their lack of any significant following
in the Islamic world. The emblematic example of this was Kamal Nawash's Free
Muslims March Against Terror, which drew international press coverage (including
enthusiastic and extensive domestic coverage), an audience for Kamal with
Karen Hughes in the State Department -- and all of 25 Muslim marchers.
Much more importantly, although he writes
passionately and well about the excesses and enormities of Israel's enemies,
Selbourne seems to have bought into the propaganda of Palestinian mujahedin
to an alarming degree. He apparently fails fully to realize that Israel faces
the same jihad, motivated by the same ideology, as that which the rest of
the world faces. He decries Israeli settlements in the West Bank as "illegal"
and "a rank injustice," with no attempt whatsoever to understand
those settlements in light of the history of Israel's relationships with its
hostile neighbors, or in light of larger questions about territorial gains
won in wartime and kept for security purposes -- despite the fact that what
Israel has done has been done by innumerable states throughout history, including
Poland, the Soviet Union and others after World War II, and no one ever uttered
a peep of protest.
Despite these undeniable flaws, The Losing
Battle with Islam is eminently worth reading -- and eminently worth passing
on to the many, many pollyannas among us. It may be that as voices like Selbourne's
grow in numbers and intensity, sufficient numbers will awaken to the jihad
threat in time to prove him wrong -- in which event no one would be happier
than he.
