Author: Patrick Hayes
Publication: Secularislam.org
Date: August 4, 2002
Nearly a year after we went to war
against terrorism, leaders in the West appear still unwilling, if not afraid,
to name the actual enemy that we face - much less refocus the war against
that threat.
Many Westerners have called this
conflict a new "cold war" against "radical Islam" reminiscent of our "long
twilight struggle" against communism during the Cold War. Other observers
argue and believe that the current war in this new age of Islamic terrorism
is being fought solely in and against specific groups in limited geographical
areas such as the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Abu Sayyaf
guerrillas in the Philippines, or the Muslim extremists in Chechnya.
The implication is that there is
a larger Islamic world indifferent or neutral to the West, with only a
narrow, hostile faction composed of extremists who wish to oust all Western
influences from their societies, or want to wage war on American soil in
the name of jihad.
It is time to correct that misimpression.
It is time to end that illusion. As scholar Samuel P. Huntington has written,
the struggle is indeed taking place in a much wider context. Huntington
has accurately called it a "clash of civilizations" rather than merely
a war between the United States and its allies on one side, and a conspiracy
of sub-national terrorist groups on the other. Other experts agree.
If we are indeed committed to victory
against the al Qaeda terrorists and their sponsors, we need to heed experts
such as Huntington who say it is misleading and mistaken to identify the
threat as stemming only from the homicidal and suicidal tendencies of "radical
Muslims."
In other words, we have to face
up to the ugly prospect that the enemy is Islam and its inherent hatred
of the West and all the West stands for.
"Some westerners, including President
Bill Clinton, have argued that the West does not have a problem with Islam
but only with violent Islamist extremists," Huntington wrote in The Clash
of Civilizations - Remaking of World Order (Touchstone, New York, 1997).
"Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise," he added.
This is not only because the acts
of Muslim terrorism are worldwide, as is the war itself, which includes
the search for Muslim terrorist cells within the United States and over
50 other countries. It is also because the roots of the current conflict
span nearly 10 centuries of human history.
The assumption that al Qaeda is
our only foe and that Afghanistan is the sole target of U.S. anti-terrorism
efforts fails to recognize the tension that has existed between the Muslim
world (with its archaic, 12th-century beliefs and traditions), and the
modern Western world (which Muslims abhor for its computer gaming, high
fashion and education for women, and fast foods). That conflict existed
long before Sept. 11, 2001.
The mutual animosities between Islam
and the West go back before the time of the First Crusades, to 711 A.D.,
when Muslim hordes overran a good portion of Europe, beginning with Spain.
In 732, the Muslim Arab and Berber armies were defeated at the Battle of
Tours, France, by the Frankish (German tribe) King, Charles Martel - a
defeat that effectively halted the Islamic advance into Europe.
In their march west, the Muslim
armies spread Islam where they could. The non-Arabs were called mawali,
Arabic for "clients." Although the mawali were converts to Islam, they
were considered second-class to their Arab masters. Much as they do today
with their imported workers, the Arabs used the mawali as their servants
and, in some cases, soldiers.
By the 8th century, in addition
to conquering Persia (Iran), Central Asia and much of Eastern Europe (which
is why the West is currently dealing with the problem of Muslim terrorists
in the Balkans), the Islamic armies had conquered North Africa, the eastern
Mediterranean and much of Spain, and had even established bases in Italy.
Islam, in effect, still posed a serious threat to the rest of Europe.
By the 11th century, the balance
of power was shifting back to the West and trade flourished. The Church
became stronger and more centralized, doing away with the practice of allowing
kings to appoint regional church leaders. Therefore, the Popes were able
to unify popular support. With increased wealth and power, and the need
to expand trade, in 1095, Pope Urban II called for the raising of Christian
armies to free the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Holy Land itself from
the Muslims. The actual Crusades lasted from 1096 into the 13th century.
Over the years, tensions between
the West and Islam have continued to ebb and flow, but have never been
far from the surface. The 18th century again saw the rise of Islamic fundamentalism
in opposition to what was then perceived by the Muslim extremists of the
day as the decadence of the Ottoman (Muslim) Empire.
In the 19th century, when the Jews
began to move back to what is now Israel, tensions again grew between Arabs
and Jews - a conflict that continues to this day with no reasonable end
in sight.
During World War I, the Muslim Ottoman
Empire sided with Germany against the western powers. During World War
II, many Muslims sided with the Nazis because of their mutual hatred for
the Jews. The Muslims in Central Asia were quieted for a while during the
reign of communism, when the Muslim region became part of the Soviet Empire.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, several of the former Soviet Republics,
including Russia itself in Chechnya, are facing their own war against Muslim
terrorists.
To say that the current war against
Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism is not religious in nature - at least
as perceived by Muslim fanatics themselves - is to miss the point of history
as addressed by Huntington.
Islam is currently at war with the
modern world as much as it was with the West and Christianity in the 8th
century. The Saudi princes, who today publicly voice distain and concern
about the murderous acts of Muslim terror, continue to provide financial
support to the Muslim terrorists who perpetrate those acts.
In 1998, Osama bin Laden told his
followers, "The call to wage war against America was made because America
has spearheaded the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of
thousands of its troops to the land of the two holy mosques over and above
its meddling in its affairs and its politics and its support of the oppressive,
corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control."
Ranting though his statements may
be, there is no denying the message bin Laden is sending, not only to the
al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists, but to all Muslims worldwide. (Of
course bin Laden, the Saudi princes and the mullahs in Iran discreetly
ignore the facts, because facts may muddle the minds of Muslim fanatics
and true believers.)
Besides its obvious support of Israel,
the United States has also intervened around the globe and placed American
lives at risk in defense of Muslims. These operations include going to
war against Iraq after that country invaded Kuwait. In Somalia, the Bush
I and Clinton administrations' mission was to help feed a hungry Muslim
nation. That Clinton turned tail and ran at the first sight of American
bloodshed obscured the fact that the intervention itself was aimed at saving
Muslim lives. And American troops today remain in the Balkans, where Clinton
twice intervened against the Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslims who faced
ethnic cleansing and mass murder. However, American soldiers there must
now deal with the threat of attack by Muslim terrorists.
But those facts carry little weight
in a conflict defined by its radical organizers as a religious struggle.
A recent article by Andrew Sullivan on the war against terrorism, which
appeared in The New York Times Magazine noted, "The religious dimension
to this conflict is central to its being." Sullivan added, "The words of
Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language.
Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious."
As bin Laden himself has said, the
American "crusade" is not against the Arabs, per se, but "against the Islamic
nation." This is a semantic distinction that few Americans appreciate:
Those words were used to incite the involvement of every Muslim around
the globe because there is, strictly speaking, no "Islamic nation." The
message in bin Laden's own words, and the lesson the West needs to learn,
is that the primary loyalty of any Muslim is to his religion and not to
any one nation-state.
Given the official concern about
Muslim terrorist cells within the United States, this issue of loyalty
should cause those in Washington and around the country serious concern,
given the number of Muslims of all races currently residing in the United
States as well as the number of others still flowing into the country with
visas of all types, or through the back doors of Mexico and Canada.
British author Salman Rushdie is
another expert who fully understands what is at stake here. He is a Westerner
who since 1989 has been living with a fatwah, or edict of death, on his
head, decreed by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
In a recent commentary in The New
York Times, Rushdie wrote, "If this isn't about Islam, why the worldwide
Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda? Why did
those 10,000 men armed with swords and axes mass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan
frontier, answering some mullah's call to jihad? Why are the war's first
British casualties three Muslim men who died fighting on the Taliban side?
Why the routine anti-Semitism of
the much-repeated Islamic slander that "the Jews" arranged the hits on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the oddly self-deprecating
explanation offered by the Taliban leadership, among others, that Muslims
could not have the technological know-how or organizational sophistication
to pull off such a feat?"
Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle
East Forum, wrote in a New York Post article last Oct. 19, "To me, every
fundamentalist Muslim, no matter how peaceable in his own behavior, is
part of a murderous movement and is thus, in some fashion, a foot soldier
in the war that bin Laden has launched against civilization. . By way of
comparison, I would say precisely the same about Nazis and Leninists; however
non-violently they might conduct their own lives, the fact that they back
a barbaric force means they too are barbarians and must be treated as such."
Although many in the West clearly
recognize the growing the threat of fundamentalist Muslim terror, a disturbing
number of apologists in this country and in Europe continue to argue restraint
in the war against Muslim terrorism. They argue that Islam is a "peaceful"
religion, open and tolerant of all others.
Yet the Koran beseeches the faithful
to kill the unbeliever: "And when the sacred months are passed, kill those
who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them,
besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush."
As much as bin Laden and other Muslim
fanatics argue to the contrary, the West in general and Christianity in
particular have no reason to attack Islam. The simple fact is that most
western countries, including the United States, tolerate Muslims and their
mosques within their midst, even though, as an example, the Muslims in
England in particular are becoming a serious threat to the stability of
that country. (As Rushdie points out, it was British Muslims who were among
the first volunteers to go fight with al Qaeda and the Taliban.)
History provides a stern warning:
The United States and its allies have no choice but to take aggressive
action against an enemy that shows no willingness to negotiate. And unless
specific evidence to the contrary appears - a movement within Islam itself
to disavow and condemn the acts of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations
- we should abandon the false distinction between the terrorists and the
global religion that by all intelligence continues to support them.
Patrick Hayes is a contributing
editor to DefenseWatch.