Islam and Jihadism - part 5 (Wizbang)
Islam and Jihadism - part 5
Posted by DJ Drummond
Published: June 12, 2008 - 7:30 PMWhy Islam Is Not The Enemy, and The New Mid-East
disclaimer - this concluding article was originally written in 2006, and may reflect a perspective different from the modern focus.
We do not war against Islam, nor should we. Let’s begin with the practical side. As I said early on, almost a billion and a half people call themselves Muslim. Stop right now and think about that number. If even one percent of Islam took up arms against the West, it would create an army number 14 million strong. Islam counts in its numbers a great many brilliant minds, including scientists in medicine, mathematics, engineering and chemistry. That is, a corps capable of creating WMD and their delivery systems in very short order. If such an army were formed and competently led, the resulting war would be more destructive and precipitous than anything history could show in our past. Spread around the globe as Muslims are, they would also be capable of launching coordinated raids in literally every first-world country, so that the conventional notion of battlefields and fronts would become meaningless. Such operational capability, as it happens, is exactly what the Jihadists have hoped to create. Yet, for all their planning and efforts, it has not turned out that way at all. One of the ironies of the Jihdists is that their very aggressiveness comes from a deep-seated cowardice, a fear that they are already losing. I exchanged emails this week with some Muslim colleagues, who explained that the angry protests against the Danish cartoons of Mohammed rise from a feeling of helplessness. “There is a belief, and it is popular, that the United States is attacking Islam by taking away one Muslim country at a time” he wrote. I explained that we are fighting a war against Terror rather than Islam, and emphasized the protection given to Mosques and Muslim clerics, but the Jihadists, as you might expect, continue to paint themselves as victims of Infidel aggression, and as defenders of Islam, instead of acknowledging the brutality and evil of their doctrine. But it is also telling, that the removal of the Taliban and the regime of Saddam Hussein are creating such disquiet and worry among the Jihadists. Because the Jihadists know, and fear, the power of personal freedom and the identity which is crated by the exercise of open discussion. This is why they fear ‘freedom’, to the point that editorial cartoons must be shut down and entire governments threatened for the offense of letting people make up their own mind. I have read the Quran, many times, and there is little in it that can be claimed to justify murdering children, as the Jihadists have done so often for more than a generation. Certainly nothing in the context it presents. Small wonder so many of the protestors hide their faces. They fear Allah might see them as they are, hiding behind the pretense of the faith.
I am not saying that I believe in Islam. As it happens, I am a Protestant Christian, so my faith and mind both convince me that the way of Islam is not true. Yet I am also a believer in freedom of choice, and I am an individualist. I recall that although Jesus was an observant Jew, when He chose to praise a man for faith, he praised not a fellow Rabbi or priest, but a Roman Centurion. His example of the loving neighbor who pleases God, was a Samaritan. Even if your belief is false, your heart can be true, and your faith pleasing to God through the character of your soul. It is the doctrines which we have problems accepting, not the faith. As readers have noted, anyone who personally knows Muslim believers, finds that many of them are quite humble and peaceable, unlikely to raise their voice, much less