George Rebane

The pen is mightier than the sword only to the extent that it can evoke more powerful swords.

As millions of others on this planet, my thoughts have turned to Islam and its role in the ongoing global reign of terror exemplified again by the slaughter in Paris last week.  These reflections have been piqued by the diversity of reporting and commentary on these attacks, and how many in the news, commentary, and government industries have trouble calling a spade a spade.  To be accurate, there are a precious few outlets and commentators that dare connect Islam to these events, but most speak only of disconnected and broadbrush notions like ‘criminality’ and ‘terror’ which blossom forth spontaneously out of the void.

This morning listening to NPR I heard an extended interview with Irshad Manji the author of The Trouble with Islam (2004).  She taught us that in addition to fundamental and moderate Muslims, there now exists a group identified as “reformed Muslims”.  She never said from what these folks had managed to reform themselves, but the tenets of this newest version of Islam seems to have been transplanted from the reformed versions of Christianity and Judaism which have succumbed to the siren call of secular humanism, but have yet to complete their wholesale renunciation of their former religions.

Ms Manji waxed eloquently about the proper understanding of the Quran which really teaches non-violence, condemns terror, encourages self-discovery of beliefs, promotes free expression, and elevates women in society.  These finer points of progressive Islam have been missed over the centuries, and continue to be misunderstood.  She also seems happy to have discovered that Muslims marrying outside their faith tends to dilute the stricter teachings of the prophet, and will over time bring Islam into a state of rapprochement in countries where such intermingling of cultures is fostered and tolerated.  But what the poor woman apparently misses completely is that that is the raison d’etre for Islamist jihad – Islam per se cannot survive in multi-cultural amalgams such as exist in liberal western countries.

This report wouldn’t be complete without mentioning that her astounding revelations about Islam have brought forth an uncountable number of the obligatory death threats from fellow believers who for centuries have held quite different views about free expression.

Today our fearful, ignorant, and/or progressive commentators fill the airwaves with condemnations of “terrorists who use Islam for cover”.  The implication here is that these killers are intrinsically evil and would in any case go shoot up satirical publications, Jewish delis, slaughter thousands of fellow countrymen, machinegun kids in classrooms, and crash planes into buildings.  They are claiming to be devout Muslims only because Islam provides a handy scripture that promotes and condones such attacks.  All this terror is only intrinsic evil seeking an umbrella of twisted legitimacy.

Fortunately, more reasoned and civilized Muslim writers and leaders have recently started questioning this claimed legitimacy, a questioning that is still under the lamestream’s radar.  Leaders like Eqypt’s president Al-Sisi who openly in a large Islamic forum questioned the motives and means of the Islamic jihad, and worried about how the world’s population will hold its 1.6B Muslims to account for the large scale carnage that now covers most of the world within reach of its state-sponsored terrorists and terror cells.  These Muslims are confirming to the rest of us that we really are in a war between civilizations in which Islam is using terror as a weapon, not terrorists using Islam as a legitimizing cover.  In this context some more thoughtful of these voices question, ‘Does Moderate Islam Exist?’

When considered in this light, the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ demonstrations this weekend in Paris and other cities continue to miss the point, and IMHO are bringing much joy and satisfaction to Islamists worldwide.  They show how world leaders can march down the broad boulevard of a defenseless western city claiming “solidarity” in everything under the sun – Charlie Hebdo, war on terror, wanton killings of innocents, respect for all cultures, free speech, tolerance for satire,  … – except recognition of the resumption of an historic global conflict.

Meanwhile the Islamic State has become the exemplar and rallying quest for tendentiously radical Muslims everywhere.  IS has demonstrated the next phase of jihad that has added the conquest and administration of territory to the ongoing acts of Islamist terror.  Boko Haram in Africa has duplicated the feat and now controls a large section of northeast Nigeria.  Similar conquests are prepared on the Indochina peninsula and the Philippines, all while progressive western governments are seeking new ways ‘to show respect’ for the burgeoning Muslim enclaves in their cities.  Yes, they are indeed celebrating in places like Teheran, Mosul, and Benghazi.

All this is going on while we continue to ask ‘What is Moderate Islam?’  Into this confusion noted Muslim intellectual and writer Dr Tawfik Hamid advises us that “until the leading Islamic scholars provide a peaceful theology that clearly contradicts the violent views of the IS, the existence of a ‘moderate Islam’ must be questioned.”

[12jan15 update]  To illustrate how western media abet Islamic terror, one need only read the leading editorial in this week’s Economist.  There that iconic sage of the newspaper industry admonishes its western readers to examine two “themes” from the Paris attacks to see if something bigger has been afoot here during the last two decades.

One is free speech, and whether it should have limits, self-imposed or otherwise. The answer to that is an emphatic no. The second is Muslim Europe—and whether episodes such as this are part of a civilisational struggle between Western democracies and extreme Islam, on a battlefield stretching continuously from Peshawar to Raqqa to the centre of Paris. Again, the answer is no.

Well, maybe batting 500 is pretty good in that league, but I don’t think so.  After having pooh-poohed the reality of a civilizational struggle that has gone on for one and a half millennia and now conceded by observers of all faiths, the Economist’s mavens blithely go on to detail the “battlefield stretching continuously” over the entire world.  But please don’t connect the dots because these are just “criminals, not clashing civilizations”.

But a little later we read that those who can connect the dots may well “have a point”, that “there may well be a connection between Paris and foreign jihad. Part of it is ideological: in their minds, at least, terrorists in the West are often waging a worldwide battle for their faith, powered by ideas they pick up on the internet. There is a practical link, too. Some of those involved in recent European plots—and one of the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack—have been radicalised and trained in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”  Practical link?  No kidding! (more here)

We continue with this international charade in fighting an enemy whose name we cannot say, and whose assaults are treated as if they were disjointedly perpetrated by vicious groups of individuals motivated by “ideas they pick up on the internet.”  We continue to proclaim that we are doing battle with the tactic of terror instead of the strategists who launch such tactics.  And to make sure that everyone understands, we demonstrate on city streets in the millions against the tactic of terror, while showing ‘solidarity’ against what?  This dredges up the ridiculous picture of a similar demonstration not held by Parisians in September 1939 against the wanton use of blitzkrieg, while never once mentioning Hitler or Nazi Germany.

To add to the farce, Obama’s foreign policy midgets decided that America did not need to have anyone from its national leadership link arms with other such personages.  This oversight was so unseemly and sophomoric that the administration had to hurriedly issue a ‘My Bad’ statement admitting its screw-up.  To make amends our president promises to hold a conference where high level leaders will meet to affrim their policy of swatting mosquitoes without once considering to drain the swamp.