Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank argue that al Qaeda’s jihadist dream is dying, and that those doing the killing of it are not so much coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but theorists and clerics in the heart of Islam.
(Encoded) in the DNA of apocalyptic jihadist groups like Al Qaeda are the seeds of their own long-term destruction: Their victims are often Muslim civilians; they don’t offer a positive vision of the future (but rather the prospect of Taliban-style regimes from Morocco to Indonesia); they keep expanding their list of enemies, including any Muslim who doesn’t precisely share their world view; and they seem incapable of becoming politically successful movements because their ideology prevents them from making the real-world compromises that would allow them to engage in genuine politics…
(Given) the religio-ideological basis of Al Qaeda’s jihad, the religious condemnation now being offered by scholars and fighters once close to the organization is arguably the most important development in stopping the group’s spread since September 11… If this is a war of ideas, it is their ideas, not the West’s, that matter. The U.S. government neither has the credibility nor the Islamic knowledge to effectively debate Al Qaeda’s leaders, but the clerics and militants who have turned against them do.
Took long enough.
We want millions. Seriously.
I’ve been thinking of how to gently put this, and then I thought, to Hell with that.
Frankly, I don’t care how many scholars / would-be scholars / self-promoters / imams rotting in Arab prisons / (fill in your own category here) repudiate Osama bin Laden, or al-Qaida, or takfir. For all the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve expended in tremulous fear of AQ, the reality is that AQ never, in its wildest fantasies, threatened America or the West.
Meanwhile, every single one of these yahoos, those lovable, cuddly “moderate Muslims,” praised to the heavens by Berger and Cruickshank for their “bold” assault on AQ, is waging jihad on you and I and everything we hold dear. Ask any one of the leeches point blank, do you repudiate the overturning of Western governments and their replacement by Sharia governments? Do you repudiate the inferior status of infidels and recognize them as being everywhere fully coequal with Muslims? Do you repudiate the inferior status of women in Islam, and are you willing to recognize their full moral and legal equality with men?
Of course, B&C can’t ask those questions because they know what the answers would be from every one of the sheep-shaggers trotted out as the “rising tide of resentment against al-Qaida.” They are all advocates of Sharia, from the urbane university lecturer sipping his Earl Grey, the serpentine Usama Hassan, whose deceptions, careful misstatements, and meticulously fabricated self-legend are all well-known, to the immaculately groomed Noman Benotman, scamming a deal for LIFG prisoners as he scoots about on a private jet (paid for by whom for the benefit of whom?). What suckers the authors are (although not so much as TNR, who apparently paid them for this slop).
“War is deception,” taught Mohammed, who practiced it ruthlessly, luring his victims into complacency until his henchmen could wield their swords. Say B&C, the tide is turning because these nice men (a mixed bag of jailed murderers, mostly) renounce AQ violence because it kills Western innocents? Ask any one of these sheep-shaggers how a Westerner can be “innocent.” By definition, a kufr (it’s a nasty little word, like nigger, that’s how you and I are identified as by Islam, by its holy little snivel Koran and its collections of fairy tales, the Hadith, and by all the mountains of tafsir and sirah) is guilty of rejecting the Koran, of rejecting the call of Allah—and because of that we all deserve death or enslavement at the hands of Muslims.
Jihad is fought not only with the sword, but also with the pen, with the tongue, with the purse. It is fought by the taxi drivers who refuse blind passengers with seeing eye dogs, by the Muslims filing lawsuits demanding the FBI finish their security investigations yesterday so they can become instant citizens, by the accommodations of taxpayer-funded footwash basins in airports and universities, of Muslimah-only swim times at the public pool, and by the frontal lobotomy of our State Department and DoD who insist that “jihad” is not a bad thing. It is fought every day in the waves of immigration, legal and illegal, that increase the numbers of Muslims within our borders, immigrants who have made our lives better just how?
It makes not a whit of difference who accuses bin Laden by name or not — this article is written by pedants who want to show how much more connected, how much more aware of the inner workings of the global jihad they are than we poor pissants are (and to increase their private consulting fees accordingly). Meanwhile, they miss the real war.
Because the real turning tide are those immigrants. They’re all moderate, right? They’re all repudiating jihad and Sharia, right? They are so glad to be in America and England, to be the heirs of an ancient tradition of reason and equal justice before the law that stretches back to the Greeks and Romans, that they’re burning their hijabs and giving their prayer beads to local hippies. Didn’t they march in the streets against bin Laden and Al-Qaida over the Memorial Day weekend, honoring the sacrifices of our soldiers and sailors against the splodeydopes of the global jihad? I’m sure all of us have recently participated in at least one of those Muslim-sponsored rallies supporting the US effort in Iraq. Or you saw the local mosque line up with the local Methodist church and the local synagogue to march in their part of the parade? Maybe you saw them down at the cemetery, beflowering the markers of those who died to make us free?
Oh? You haven’t? You didn’t?
Which tells you what?
I see you’re already miles ahead of Bergen and Cruickshank.
Lex, my Father taught me a few life lessons, many, many years ago. He said, “Be very careful of the things you want, you may just get it and then some.” The second one was, “Don’t assume anything, first, spell it, ASS-U-ME! Be specific.” As I see it, this “individual” wants “millions”, but she doesn’t specify the “what.” Therefore, we should “consider this request.” I figure this is an emergency, therefore we should deliver by overnight air delivery. I never said anything about landing, I figure about 60K feet, should do it. Oh yeah, what = ball bearings, millions and millions of them. I know you can not do it, but just writing the thought is important. Is it possible I’m wrong? If so, where and why?
Grumpy
In the spirit of beating dead horses, I note that Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, also skewers this same article in the pages of The Spectator:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/735986/dangerous-naivety.thtml