Fitzgerald: The terminal naivete of Westerners

U.S. forces are building madrassas in Afghanistan.

“We are saying that we respect their culture and religion,” said naval commander Eduardo Fernandez, the man in charge of American aid efforts in the Sharana district of Paktika. “We have to give the religious leaders the respect they feel they deserve.” — from this article

Get that naval commander out of the Sharana district, out of Afghanistan, and possibly out of the navy, fast. Start educating the members of the armed forces on the tenets of Islam. Make them read, and reread, and reread, Qur’an, Hadith, and sira. Teach them about naskh, or abrogation. Teach them to distinguish the “authoritative” muhaddithin from the less authoritative ones, and the “authentic” Hadith from the kind that Karen Armstrong likes to quote. Expose every single one of the tricks of Muslim apologists and undercut them, including these:

1) That only someone who knows Arabic can comment on what is in the Qur’an, Hadith, and sira. Answer: If that were really true, then how can 80% of the world’s Muslims be regarded as Muslims, since they cannot understand Arabic?

2) That only Muslims can possibly understand Islam. Answer: Then no one who converts (“reverts”) to Islam has any idea what he is converting to?

3) That Islam says “there is no compulsion in religion.” Answer: To this one can offer up not only Muslim glosses on this line, but also 1350 years of the onerous burden placed on non-Muslims that, of course, led many to avoid such a burden (economic, social, political) by converting to Islam.

4) That Islam is a “religion of peace.” Answer: In fact, Islam is a Total Belief-System, and central to that Belief System is the uncompromising division of the world between Believer and Infidel. And between the two, Believer and Infidel, there exists a state of permanent war (though not always of active warfare — certainly not wherever other instruments of Jihad are more effective, or where it is impossible, because of Muslim weakness, to conduct Jihad to spread Islam at all).

And so on.

If this is the policy in Afghanistan, it is the wrong policy.

Bat Ye’or long ago said it would be fatal for the West to try to get involved in the Muslim lands. The terminal naivete of Westerners manifests itself in the way in which they never allow themselves to see, fully, the Muslim menace. And furthermore, the sentimentalism of the West hinders that insight, and instead imagines hardbitten troops aiding this or that hardscrabble wizened farmer, or that girl over there, and that group of young boys grabbing at proffered candy. Those boys, of course, are not yet of an age where they have sufficiently learned anti-Infidel teachings or thoroughly assimilated anti-Infidel attitudes. That will come only later.

We can only engage in enormous and wasteful activities by trying to shore up Islamic lands, or to make things nice for Muslims, or to bring prosperity to them. It will not make them like us. It will not lessen the fervor of Islam. The biggest and best-outfitted mosque in the world will, whatever happens, naturally have to have khutbas based on the texts of Islam. And just as water seeks its own level, unless every single minute of every day, and every single word of every single sermon (khutba) is monitored, there will be, in that mosque, necessarily, the introduction of the real teachings of Islam, and the holding up as a model of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.

Look at Turkey. Eighty full years of careful Kemalist constraints. Eighty years of the central government’s secularists monitoring, or even writing themselves, the khutbas to be delivered. Eighty years of systematic constraints put on Islam. Yet Islam is still there, and resurgent. The fright among Turkey’s secularists (some of whom may call themselves Muslims, as in “cultural Muslims” or “Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims, and some of whom will, outside of Turkey, tell one that in truth they are not Muslims at all) is palpable.

The policy of building madrassas and refurbishing mosques in Afghanistan is madness. It is also unconstitutional. American taxes are being used to favor, abroad, a religion, and far worse, one religion over others.

Where is the Constitutional challenge to this? There is a case to be brought. Bring it, you pro-bono-seeking lawyers you. Enter the casebooks. Enter history.

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Hugh | September 4, 2010 12:35 PM | Reply
It’s hard to tell which will be the bigger fiasco: Iraq or Afghanistan. So far, in men, money, and materiel, Iraq is way ahead. But Afghanistan is coming up on the outside, Petraeus up, and glued to Iraq’s right flank and in the stretch, it’s…

Why is that?

Because in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan have any of the important questions even been asked, much less answered?

What is the proper definition of victory?

And would, then, lead to such a victory?

The answer to the first question is:

An outcome that weakens the Camp of Islam, both in the immediate vicinity and ideally, world-wide.

The answer to the second question is:

An American withdrawal from Iraq will inevitably lead to hostilities, possibly only low-level, possibly something more widespread, between Sunni Arabs, and Shi’a Arabs. The former will never accept their new and diminished status; the latter will never give up the power they have finally acquired with the downfall of Saddam Hussein, and of his Sunni-despotism-in-disguise. The world that Islam naturally creates is one of mistrust, even of Muslim for fellow Muslim, of hatred of Muslims who are not of the same sect, and who then can be treated as Infidels, and with aggression and violence an accepted part of that world. That is not something the Americans, or the bringing of “freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads,” can change. Since the Americans cannot constrain Islam — only Muslims can do that in the lands of Dar al-Islam, as Ataturk did, or on a lesser level, Bourguiba — they must stop their insensate belief that they can change societies and peoples so very different from ours or from any non-Muslims. And instead of working to bring unity and prosperity to such places, the Americans by withdrawing will allow them to sink to their natural level, which from the point of view of Infidels is not a bad thing. As long as Muslims are kept bottled up, as much as possible, to fight among themselves, why should we care?

And the fresh news, brought daily, of suicide bombings, or other attacks, by this sect or tribe or family, against that sect or tribe or family, will simply indelibly connect Islam with non-stop violence in the minds of non-Muslims, and help to open their minds fully to the dangers they have created for themselves by failing to grasp the nature of Islam, and letting into their countries large numbers of Muslims.

In Denmark, in France, in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Great Britain, in Belgium people are waking up. And they will continue to do so, undeterred by the bien-pensants of the press and politics, the very people who for decades permitted the immigration policies vis-a-vis Muslims that have led to the disastrous situation we see all about us. And they will not take kindly to the American government telling them what it should or should not do, including that business of backing Turkey’s entry to the E.U. (it will never happen, even if Erdgoan loses the next election – and it shouldn’t).

The mounting evidence is simply too great, too mounting, too irrefutable, for people to keep worshipping at the altar of those diseased Idols of the Age, Tolerance and Diversity. Those who are cocooned in their great wealth, or their immutable and pious certainties (Mayor Bloomberg, the editorial board of the New York Times) look sillier and sillier every day.

The important thing is not to be put off, on the subject of Islam, by the antics and attitudes of some of those who are exercised about Islam, but too easily pigeonholed as belonging to a kind of reflexive right. You can be perfectly easygoing, bemused, dismayed by the shouters on Fox News, and still be relentlessly anti-Islam. The most powerful opponents of Islam so far have been identified with what might be called, wrongly, the left: Oriana Fallaci and Pim Fortuyn come to mind.

What Islam is as a Total Belief-System, and what mosques are for beyond being, as Mayor Bloomberg puts it, “housese of worship,” and what the large-scale presence of Muslims means for the non-Muslim indigenes and non-Muslim immigrants in Western Europe — a situation far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without such a large-scale Muslim presence — should worry you, whatever your other views on a dozen or a hundred matters.

You don’t have to accept any package of opinions or attitudes along with your worry over Islam, a worry that only increases the more you find out about the doctrine of Islam, and about the recorded behavior of Muslims, acting on that doctrine, when over the past 1350 yewars they conquered many non-Muslim lands and subjugated many non-Muslim peoples. You need not deny global warming, applaud grotesque levels of economic inequality, or denounce “lefties” at every turn, in order to make common cause with others who are worried about Islam. You need only find out about, and consequently worry about, Islam and what its votaries in the West want to do, and might be able to do, unless they are dealt with in a way that makes clear to them the days of ignorance, distraction, and consequent confusion about Islam are over. You need only keep a cool head, one from which all pre-fabricated pieties and fashionable attitudinizing have been banned.