December 03, 2007
The struggle continues
UPDATE: Commenter Little Coach knocks one out of the park with his take on the problem -- be sure to click on the "comments" link at the bottom of this post.
Wretchard posted an account of Muslim inmates plotting to take over Australia's most secure prisons, the attempts defeated after the Aussie's instituted 24-hour surveillance and broke up the groups, redistributing the members throughout the penal system.
Moving from the specifics of the plot, Wretchard examines the difference between how the West's useful idiots view the Muslim threat, and how the jihadis view themselves
From the outset two schools of thought have contended to explain events since September 11. One regards radical Islamists as individual aberrants from an otherwise pacific religion. Radical Islamists are therefore criminals, deviant individuals best dealt with through the criminal justice system. The other school of thought regards radical Islamists as enemy combatants -- non-uniformed soldiers of an organized hostile force. And in fact, this is how radical Islamists understand themselves when they are not otherwise making hypocritical arguments to dopey human rights activists. They see themselves as soldiers of Islam, with a duty to continue the fight within the prison and to escape if possible to fight again.
As with so many of these blog posts, the essay itself serves to start a conversation that continues in the comments section.
In response to a reader saying that the solution may be in Western societies banning Islam, Wretchard says:
I don't think Islam is the problem. Islam is as it has ever been. Nothing about it has changed. Yet in the recent past it posed no difficulties to the West. Why the danger now? What's changed is us.
That global sharia law should want all of Western patrimony atop one monstrous bonfire is to be expected. That's after all its nature. But what is surprising is the endless number of Western "intellectuals" who are stumbling all over themselves to cast the first books into the flame.
Islam is perfectly well equipped to deal with people like al-Qaeda. They have their knives, swords, stones, anthills and whips. It is we who are helpless against them. One fellow asked me how I proposed to solve the Muslim insurgency in Mindanao. I answered, "give it to Malaysia."
The real problem is internal to Western society. It is implicit in its political contradictions, for which Political Correctness has become a shorthand. The War on Terror will never be won by bombing Muslims. It can only be won by changing ourselves. Islam hasn't changed from its inception. We are the deviants; we are the ones who have been untrue to our roots.
A commenter responds by quoting the invaluable Aussie Canadian in New Hampshire:
Mark Seyn sums it up beautifully:
Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"
A friend recently said to me in passing that all great nations -- like Rome -- ultimately fail, a result of internal rot, a weakening of the collective will, civilizational ennui, if you will; a fatal lack of self-confidence.
Given the perception that the West has grown soft and weak, incapable of aggressively defending its own values -- such as they are -- it comes as no surprise that Islamists, who have come up second-best to the Western world for more than 700 years, should seize upon this moment.
Would that our liberal friends were as anxious to find a cure for the AIDS-like virus that saps our will and clouds our judgement, allowing organizations like the National Organization for Women to remain silent after a British teacher is threatened with death for naming a teddy bear, "Mohammed," for having nothing to say when the Saudis sentence a rape victim to 200 lashes for riding in a car with men, and for maintaining the fiction that our mortal enemies practice a "religion of peace."
Feh.
That previous commenter -- and Arnold Toynbee -- is right. "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder."
Posted by Mike Lief at December 3, 2007 07:29 AM
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Comments
While I visited friends the other night, we spoke of the public's apparent disinterest in the threat to our lives that is presented by radical Islam. The suggestion was met with aggressive disapproval by one member of the group, whose position was simply to disbelieve the premise of public apathy. After all, she said, everybody she knows talks about it all the time.
True that may be; but I am increasingly doubtful whether the people with whom she speaks, and the media outlets she frequents, accurately represent the national state of mind on the issue. They accurately represent MY state of mind because I generally agree with her brand of conservatism. But I am concerned that the lack of public commitment by all the people to oppose radical Islam is setting us up for a national cultural catastrophe.
This is an immediate issue. The public gets excited about the impact of climate change in the next hundred years, or the possibility that the Social Security program may fail in fifty years. But there is no national sense of immediacy in opposing radical Islam's intent to impose its will on the children now being born in America.
It is the President's job to convey that national sense of immediacy to the people. Our discussion got sidetracked into a discussion whether the idea of the president as evangelist is a criticism of George Bush, but that isn't the point. The President must do more than merely represent, or temporize . . . he must lead the public, and sometimes, create the public's opinion. I think the next presidential election has more to do with the national will to resist radical Islam than any other issue . . . and it isn't even being discussed.
Posted by: The Little Coach at December 3, 2007 12:06 PM
If everyone whingeing about Islam on obscure little Internet outposts (like this one) actually got off their arses and did something about it, we'd be a lot better off. Why, just this morning I taped a drawing of Mohammed to the urinal, began calling my Persian cats "freedom" cats, and taught my son to spit every time he sees an Islamofascist (it's really cute how often he mistakes Subcontinentals and Hispanics for terrorists, but he's getting the hang of it). Now THAT's what I call MAKING A DIFFERENCE. Don't breed or buy Afghan Hounds!
Posted by: LT at December 3, 2007 02:58 PM
I believe the Venerable Mr. Steyn is Canadian, not an Aussie (although he recently had a tour there, last year or so, and they seemed to love him there too).
Posted by: andrewdb at December 3, 2007 11:21 PM
Hey LT, my son can spit more than your son.
Posted by: The Little Coach at December 4, 2007 07:40 AM