The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (37 page)

What we are fighting today is not precisely a “war on terror.” Terror is a tactic, not an opponent. To wage a “war on terror” is like waging a “war on bombs”; it focuses on a tool of the enemy rather than the enemy itself. A refusal to identify the enemy is extremely dangerous: It leaves those who refuse vulnerable to being blindsided—as proven by the White House access granted by both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to now-jailed jihadists such as Abdurrahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian.

A forthright acknowledgment that we are facing a renewed jihad would go a long way to preventing that sort of diplomatic and intelligence embarrassment. This is not really as far-fetched as it may seem. Jihad terrorists have declared war on the United States and other non-Muslim nations—all the U.S. and Western European countries need to do is identify the enemy as they have identified themselves.

Defeating the jihad internationally

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush warned the world, “You’re either with the terrorists or you’re with us.” But because of official Washington’s persistent refusal to acknowledge exactly who the terrorists are and why they are fighting, that bold line in the sand has been obscured time and again. And few, if any, are even asking the right questions.

During her Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was grilled about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, and how long our troops will be in that strife-ridden country. But no one bothered to ask her a more important question: When and how will American foreign policy be adjusted to defeat the goals, not just the tactics, of our jihad opponents?

Three years after September 11, this has still not been done. It should have been the first order of business. Other nations take this as axiomatic—including our enemies. Article 3 of the Iranian constitution stipulates that Iran must base its foreign policy on “Islamic criteria, fraternal commitment to all Muslims, and unsparing support to the freedom fighters of the world.”

I recommend that the United States do the same: state its goals and interests regarding the global jihad. This would involve a serious reevaluation of American posture around the globe.

A few modest proposals to this end: In the first place, it is scandalous that so many years after President Bush announced that “you’re either with the terrorists or with us,” the United States still counts as friends and allies—or at least recipients of its largesse—so many states where jihadist activity is widespread.

Tie foreign aid to the treatment of non-Muslims
. A State Department that really had America’s interests at heart would immediately stop all forms of American aid to Kosovo, Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, Pakistan, Indonesia, and even Iraq and Afghanistan, and any other state, until each demonstrably ends all support—material, educational, and religious—for jihad warfare, and grants full equality of rights to any non-Muslim citizens.

Reconfigure our global alliances on the same basis
. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the other exporters of jihad should be put on notice. Continued friendly relations with the United States absolutely depend on an immediate and comprehensive renunciation of the jihad, including a reformation of schools that teach it. It cannot be enough for a state to denounce or renounce terror; each must stop Islamic jihad as a means of undermining the integrity of other states. At the same time, the United States should try to cultivate closer ties with states that have been victims of jihad violence—most notably, Russia. So far, Russia’s resistance to the global jihad has been even more inconsistent and shortsighted than our own. However, if the U.S. were to acknowledge that we are up against a worldwide jihad and seek closer ties on that basis, this might start to change.

Call on Muslim states to renounce sharia’s expansionist imperative
. To be a friend of the United States, each state must renounce any intention to try to realize the Islamic goals enunciated by Pakistani Islamic leader Syed Abul Ala Maududi, who declared that when Muslims are ruled by non-Muslims, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
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His comments were in full accord with Islamic theology and history, as well as with the Qur’an as it has been read and understood by Muslims for centuries. This is the goal of the jihadists today; it should be the fundamental defining point of U.S. alliances with Muslim states.

Initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources
—so that the needed reconfiguration of our alliances can be more than just words. President Bush took a first tentative step toward this in April 2005, when he called for the construction of new nuclear power plants and oil refineries to decrease American dependence on foreign (i.e., Saudi) energy supplies.
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But this was to propose only a stopgap when a total overhaul is needed; much more needs to be done. The “Manhattan Project” is a deliberate choice of analogy. During World War II, the United States invested millions and set the brightest scientific minds in the world on the atomic bomb project. Is a similar effort being made today to end our dependence on Saudi oil?

Muhammad vs. Jesus

“So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”

Jesus (Matthew 7:12)

“None of you will have faith till he likes for his (Muslim) brother what he likes for himself.”
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The Muslim version of the Golden Rule extends only to fellow Muslims, not to unbelievers.

In a larger sense, does anyone in the State Department have the will to advocate these and other measures? Or is it only regimes like the bloody mullahocracy in Tehran that are allowed to speak openly about their principles and goals, and take all the necessary measures for their own defense?

Secretary Rice needs to ask and answer these questions. The State Department’s bureaucracy has been playing realpolitik for so long that it reflexively thinks it can work with the Islamic jihadists—as if dropping care packages into Indonesia will somehow blunt the force of the Maududi dictum that “non-Muslims have absolutely no right to seize the reins of power.”

The State Department needs to come to grips with the fact that it is facing a totalitarian, supremacist, and expansionist ideology—and plan accordingly. Not only has it not been done, but it is so far off the table that it never even occurred to Democratic senator Barbara Boxer to use it as another partisan stick with which to batter Dr. Rice’s competence and veracity at her confirmation hearing.

Now it is up to Secretary Rice herself to demonstrate whether she has the vision to do what is needed.

Defeating the jihad domestically

The first thing we need in order to defeat the jihad at home is an informed citizenry:

A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read

Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington
by Paul Sperry; Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2005. Sperry details just how bad things have gotten in America: Muslims with clear ties to jihad terrorists have entrenched themselves deeply in our political system and military establishment. This book underscores the urgency of mounting a full and effective resistance to the Islamic jihad—before it’s too late.

Read the Qur’an.

In 1141, Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny, had the Qur’an translated into Latin. After that, every preacher of the Crusades was required to have read it.
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If Europeans were going to go to the Middle East to fight Muslims, it was clear to virtually everyone that they needed to have a working knowledge of their opponents’ mindset. Yet in the United States, the idea that knowing something about Islam and the Qur’an might help clarify some issues regarding the War on Terror meets with ridicule, indifference, or charges of “racism.” Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the department of anthropology and school of international affairs at Columbia University, recently heaped contempt on the idea that the Qur’an had anything to tell us about modern terrorism: