The West is under
external attack from a portion of Islam, let us call it Islamism, that does not
want what the West offers in terms of a culture. It wants the imposition of
Sharia Law in the nations now organized upon Enlightenment principles. Islamism
has been war with the West at least since the first World Trade Center bombing
in 1993. It will be with great difficulty, probably over several generations,
to “break the spell” that such a religious ideology and vision has on so many
people.[1]
Many persons in the West will want to examine what it has done to cause them to
start such a war. Many others think that such attacks are the acts of criminals
and the West needs to respond as such. However, Islamism is an enemy similar to
that of Nazism and Communism. It will take an ability on the part of political
and cultural leaders to identify the enemy. It will take courage to combat the
enemy at every level and in multiple ways. It does not mean all-out war. The
collapse of the Soviet Union came through a concerted effort over decades. It
will take the same type of focused attention to defeat Islamism. The danger is
that if the West does not have the political will to act in its own defense in
a timely fashion, the result will be the death of millions of people who will
not have had to die. The fact that European leaders before the advent of World
War II did not act quickly meant that around 100 million people died. Islamism
has made it clear that it wants to revive its own early history of militancy.
It has burned a Muslim soldier alive, it has beheaded Coptic Christians, it has
attacked the Press for printing anti-Mohammed political cartoons, and it has
started attacking soft targets (coffee houses, etc.) ISIS(L) has said it will
go to Rome. The West needs to take such actions seriously. Islamism wants to
revive the attack upon Europe in which it engaged during the Middle Ages and to
which the Crusades was a response. What drives it is an ideology and a vision
of the future that by its nature makes it enemy of modernity. It has its
sympathizers within modernity.
Forgetfulness within a civilization occurs when most of its
members can no longer remember a time when chaos and brutality ruled.[2]
In times of barbarity, one might grow crops and always wonder if an enemy will
steal its produce. A fierce enemy may steal one’s children and sell them into
slavery. In fact, forgetfulness occurs when you think that enemy is a friend
for whom we have not yet done enough. The category of the enemy is an important
one for a civilization to remember.
September 11, 2001 ought to have reminded the West that it
has enemies. I realize it is hard. A culture rooted in freedoms that we
cherish, founded on tolerance of differing views and ways of life, does not
seem like it should have enemies. Yet, experience has shown that it does.
People ruthlessly beheaded and the act placed on the Internet is hardly the act
of a tolerant people. The focus on “soft targets” has the design of the West
self-limiting its freedom. Killing people who ridicule “the Prophet” is hardly
the way of the West. However, and we must not think differently, it is the way
of Islamism. The success of civilization can set it up for downfall. Sustained
peace and prosperity leads to complacency, and the members of a successful
civilization are apt to forget that the natural state of people in the world is
neither peaceful nor prosperous. However, ignoring the enemy, or even
pretending they are not enemies, will not make them go away. Some conflicts are
not of a nature that “we can work it out.” We forget that our society is
better--that is more just and more moral--than any that has ever existed in
human history. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you.
They have a fantasy ideology in which religious zealotry enforces cruel tribal
conformity. Such a fantasy ideology has no connection to the political and
economic realities so favored by analysis in the West. To put it succinctly,
9/11 happened to show all Muslims that Allah wants the downfall of the Great
Satan.
Islamism does not look at human life, culture, and government
in the same way as the West. In fact, it views itself as an alternative to the
West. It seems to be at war with the world. The reason is not what the West has
done, what the Hindu has done or what Russia has done. The reason is internal.
Their fantasy ideology involves a world in submission to Allah, and therefore
in submission to Sharia Law. The ideology is a fantasy because one cannot prove
it false since it relies upon a future anticipated condition of the world. It requires
a form of “eschatological verification.” Because of that, a true believer in
Islamism can continue to believer, regardless of their experience. Middle class
youths in the West can find such a fantasy attractive, especially if intellectual
alienation from the West has cultivated the mind of the youth.
Modern civilization has forgotten how it became civilized in
the first place; it is not knowledgeable of the long period of cultural
evolution involved; and it does not remember the tremendous amount of labor,
cultural and intellectual, that went into the development of civil society.
Moreover, modern civilization has forgotten about a category called "the
enemy" due to the West discarding it in favor of moral and political
discourse. This fact has left modern civilization vulnerable to attack by those
who are the enemy of civilized society.
Modern intellectuals are particularly susceptible to their
own version of a fantasy ideology and utopianism, which eventually leads them
into the irrational abyss of moral and cultural relativism, epistemological
subjectivism, metaphysical idealism, abnormal focus on politics, and
idolization of science. In the process, they have become, through the ideology
of the Political Left, an example of self-loathing within the West. Yet, they
have also become useful intellectual tools for expanding intellectual
alienation of the members of Western Civilization, softening the resolve of its
members to defend Western Civilization. Such softening is important in the goal
of Islamism toward world domination. I will not directly with this again until
I deal specifically with Islam.
What I have said
will encourage, in the minds of some, “Islamaphobia.” In contrast, my concern
is the dominance of the Political Left in Europe and along with it the spread
of Islamism is leading to the rise of both lack of regard from the traditions
of liberty in the West and the rise of anti-Semitism that has marked much of
that history. Islamism has close historical ties to Nazism and hatred of
Judaism. For example, hate crimes against Jews in Europe are far higher than
hate crimes against Islam. The small numbers of Jews in the West are far more
likely targets of hate than are adherents of Islam.
My assumption is that something like the secularity,
individuality, humanism, and modernity of the West is important for the
improvement of the human race. It leads to recognition of the worth and dignity
of individuals and therefore to the worth and dignity of differing cultures. It
encourages the expansion of liberty. It encourages respect for the improvement
of a human life through science. It encourages respect for difference,
tolerance, and diversity. In the midst of its encouragement of discourse, it is
also able to embrace a dialectic with those who have profound questions
regarding freedom, rationality, and science.
