"Experts: Many young Muslim terrorists spurred by humiliation," by John Blake for CNN, August 13. That’s the unpromising headline, and you already know, or can just imagine, what kinds of nonsense were spouted, and treated with great respect and seriousness, with no attempt to cross-question by an ill-informed reporter who knows too little to be skeptical, and has no idea what questions he should or could be asking -- if he only knew just a bit more. For the hapless hopeless John Blake fills out his report for CNN with the diagnosis of “experts” -- Muslims and their non-Muslim collaborators -- who carefully avoid the entire subject of what Islam inculcates, of what is in the Qur’an, Hadith, Sira, of how Muslims are taught to view man, and themselves, and the universe, and Infidels. The subject, you see, is why Muslims become Muslim terrorists, and the last thing in the world that any of these “experts” would wish to be brought up is the subject of Islam, of its effect on the minds of men, on the societies, on the states, where Muslims dominate and Islam rules. No, that is simply, in this ludicrous guide to nothing and nowhere that John Blake of CNN has produced, simply not to be discussed. Islam is, you see, the one subject that is strengst verboten, strictly forbidden, defense d’analyser. Don’t lean out of that particular window: E pericoloso sporgersi.
But such a television program does not really advance understanding. If it leaves out the gorilla in the room, Islam itself, it becomes merely a decorous rearranging of teacups. And if it is a program not devoted to what Islam inculcates about Jihad, and ignores all the various ways in which Jihad can and is being conducted, then no matter how many of these programs, supposedly designed to answer the questions that are said to so puzzle us, are shown, we will be no further along toward understanding the meaning, and menace (for Infidels) of Islam, and we will be wallowing, yet again, in sensationalism masquerading as thoughtful and scholarly inquiry. In this the CNN piece is like all other programs that are limited to finding out what makes young Muslim men “radicalize.” But what about older men? What about women? What about converts to Islam who grow up in the comforts of the West? In the West they do not suffer from despotisms, and are not turning to terrorism because “no other means of influencing politics is available to them” but because, as converts, they take Islam straight up, not on the rocks and diluted by time and custom. Their understanding of the Islamic texts leads them, all too frequently, either to participation directly in, or support for, Muslim terrorists acting within the Western world.
And a program devoted to “Muslim terrorism” ignores the much larger question, that of all the instruments of Jihad, and not merely terrorism. Such a program, by focusing the minds of a large and idiotized audience on the subject of “terrorism,” keeps attention carefully away from all the other, much more effective instruments of Jihad, such as deployment of the Money Weapon, carefully-targeted and well-financed campaigns of Da’wa in the Western world (with the economically and psychically marginal Infidels the most vulnerable to such campaigns), and demographic conquest (which for people in Western Europe is a hair-raising matter).
But let’s get back to the program. Let’s get with, so to speak, the program, after our little complaint, which no doubt was so unmannerly of us, so very ungrateful after all that CNN, and John Blake, have tried to do to help us understand.
Let’s get back to the “experts” he has rounded up --- not one of whom mentions what Islam teaches, or what effect Islam has on the minds of those of its adherents who take it to heart.
But of course, how do we know these “experts” are “experts”? We know it through all kinds of things. First, they have titles. And they have positions, that indicate that someone must have thought they were “experts,” because they got the jobs, didn’t they? No one thinks that possibly there is a closed circle of hiring and promotion here, where those who are the standard collaborators hire and promote each other, and the truth-tellers are kept down and out, because they are too unpleasant, too dangerous, and must be silenced. And another way we know these are “experts” is because the CNN reporters keep calling them “experts.” What more proof do you need? (Perhaps that word ought to be retired, and instead the knowledge and intelligence of each person claiming to be an “expert” judged without that epithet that is designed to get us to accept Authority, whether the word is, in the particular case, merited or not.)
Take, for example, one Fathali M. Moghaddam. He must be an “expert,” because how else could he, Fathali M. Moghaddam, ever have become that appetizing and impressive (to the impressionable) thing he now is, the “director of conflict resolution program at Georgetown University,” which is “in Washington”?
Who are these Muslim men and women who turn to violence? Terror experts say they are shaped by several common factors.
They see no way up or out
Fathali M. Moghaddam, director of the conflict resolution program at Georgetown University in Washington, says some Muslim youth may embrace violent causes because they believe they have no chance for upward mobility in their country.
"Imagine if you're a 20-year-old and you want to get on in Egypt or Saudi Arabia," Moghaddam says. "You better be connected by family or know somebody important."
Many don't view politics as a plausible vehicle for social change, Moghaddam says. Their countries are often run by dictators who crush secular opposition groups -- with the tacit support of the U .S. government, these youth believe, Moghaddam says.
The only opposition groups that these Middle East dictators dare not attack are those based in the mosque, Moghaddam says. Those mosque-based groups, though, tend to be open to the influence of fundamentalists.
"There's no opportunity for voice, no opportunity to express yourself," Moghaddam says. "Politics is out of the question for the secular opposition -- you're either dead or go to jail."
Muslims in the Western world, we are told by some described as “experts,” suffer the "humiliation" of not being able -- not yet, anyway -- to lord it over the non-Muslims into whose lands they have been allowed to come, and to settle, and provided with every possible benefit. See the exemplary cases of Denmark and the Netherlands, two countries that have virtually elevated to the status of state religion Tolerance and Diversity and Kindness To Foreigners. Muslims -- that is, Muslims who take Islam seriously -- have been taught, have been inculcated, with this most effective of Total Belief-Systems. (That Belief-System is too quickly and too inaccurately called a "religion." That was not what non-Muslims called Islam for more than a millennium, until recent times. For it was better understood by our ancestors that Islam was quite different from "religions" as these had been understood in the West.) Muslims have been taught to regard the only division of humanity that matters is that between Believer and Unbeliever, that is Muslim and Non-Muslim. And between the two parts of the world, Dar al-Islam where Muslims rule and Islam dominates, and Dar al-Harb, that part of the world where Infidels, non-Muslims, have so far successfully withstood islamization, there must be, there can only be, a state of permanent hostility or war (though not necessarily open warfare). And this must continue, Muslims must engage, have a duty to engage, in the "struggle" or Jihad to remove, from every part of the globe, all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam.
By right, Muslims should rule. By right, Muslim demands should be met. By right, Infidels should cease trying to oppose the spread of Islam by clinging to whatever it is that constitutes an obstacle to such spread and dominance. Among those things which constitute an obstacle to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam in this country is the Constitution of the United States, which allows freedom of speech (and that includes the full freedom to discuss all aspects of Islam critically), and freedom of conscience (which would mean that people wishing to leave Islam would be free to do so -- an intolerable idea for Muslims to accept).
Islam deserves to dominate. Muslims deserve to rule. The outrageous belief of Infidels that they have a right to withstand this outcome, and even to be under the misapprehension that they, and their religions, should be treated in Muslim countries as they have so far quite naively and generously treated Muslims and Islam in the West, causes them anguish, causes those Muslims to feel "humiliation." That, and the refusal of Infidels all over the place to bend to the will of Muslims, such as the Israelis, who are choosing to stay alive and not to yield to those who would destroy their tiny, resurrected ancient commonwealth. The Muslims are enraged against Israel on the theory that any land once possessed by Muslims must forever be Muslim (the last Muslims to rule in what is now Israel were Ottoman Turks -- the Arabs haven't dominated there for more than a millennium). On the To-Do List of Muslims, though ultimately the islamization of the whole world is on that list, priority is naturally given to places that have already, in the past, been part of Dar al-Islam.
As for the other point, that Muslims are ruled by despots and must seek their outlet for political dissidence in the mosque, that is certainly true. But why is almost the entire Muslim world under this or that form of despotism? What is it about Islam that creates people who are likely to accept or to yield to dictators, if not the view of man as a mere unquestioning "slave of Allah" who has no right to question, morally or intellectually, any part of Islam -- the main and overwhelming fact of any Muslim's life? It is Islam itself that makes despotism the natural state for any Muslim polity. This the "experts" above fail to address -- for they do not dare to examine all the ways in which Islam explains the palpable absence of democracy save in a handful of places with large and powerful non-Muslim minorities, as in Lebanon; or with a history of constraining Islam, as in Turkey; or some break, through an awareness of a non-Islamic past and a non-Islamic residue in the culture -- see Indonesia -- that has not yet been extinguished. Or perhaps, under the influence of European rule, enough was done to counter the tendency, which Islam encourages, toward despotism (again, see Indonesia).
And I haven't even gotten to all the ways that Islam encourages the very economic paralysis and hopelessness that in turn leads these "youths" in Muslim countries to turn, for their Answer to Everything, to even more Islam. They find their salvation, so they think, in the very thing which has caused, and explains, the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of their own states and societies. We who are not Muslims, if we genuinely wished both to intelligently protect ourselves, and to benefit those who, as Muslims, are not able to recognize how they suffer from Islam, should fully inform ourselves, about how Islam explains these many failures. And instead of allowing Muslims to complain, as is their wont, about Infidels, we should show them that we are keenly aware of, grasp perfectly, the nature of Islam, and all the ways in which it explains the wretchedness of Muslim countries. That wretchedness is only temporarily camouflaged by the gigantic amounts of wealth transferred to the Muslim oil states, who since 1973 have received more than twelve trillion dollars, and yet not one such state has managed to create an advanced economy. It's the most colossal economic failure, with the greatest resources available, in the history of the world. And it is entirely the fault of Muslims themselves. We Infidels had nothing to do with it.
Thanks Jihad Watch
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