Islamic Jihad: Hurry Up or Wait?

Edward Cline

“The difference between the "radicals" and the “moderates" is that the radicals want to engage in genocide even while they are a minority, while the moderates want to wait until they are a majority. The radicals are satisfied with killing a few Hindus, Christians, Jews, here and there. The moderates want to wait and kill millions. Neither are our allies. Both are our murderers.”

So wrote Daniel Greenfield in his Sultan Knish column of March 21st, “The New Nazis,” in response to the murders of a rabbi and three children in Toulouse, France, and to the murders of the French paratroopers by Mohamed Merah. He likens, and not for the first time, Muslim jihadists, their agenda, and their tactics, to those of the German Nazis. He ended his column with: “The old Nazis marched in at the head of an army. The new Nazis bought a plane ticket. The old Nazis had to get by the French Armed Forces and the Royal Air Force. The new Nazis are welcomed in and anyone who says a word otherwise faces trials and jail sentences. The old Nazis deported Jews to camps. The new Nazis kill them right in the cities. And the killing will not stop until the Muslim occupation of Europe comes to an end.”

Greenfield is right. I would liken Islam to an ideological Black Death that must be faced up to by politicians and intellectuals. There's no such thing as a "benign" Islam. It is a death-worshipping ideology from top to bottom. And the only way to emasculate it is to repudiate it in its entirety.

The Black Death or the Bubonic Plague invaded Europe in the 14th century chiefly through Europe’s seaports. Ship rats carrying the Oriental rat fleas and passengers and crews of merchant vessels already infected by the fleas called on these ports and transmitted the disease to populations. The plague wiped out between 30 to 60% of Europe’s population over the course of two centuries, chiefly because no one knew what caused it or how to fight it. Beginning in 1346, it crept across Europe until by 1353 it had decimated all of Europe including a goodly portion of Russia. The Mideast was also stricken; many vessels calling on Italy, France, and England originated in the Black Sea. It would recede, then return many times over the centuries with diminishing potency, until the last outbreak of it in the early 19th century. The only nation to escape the Black Death’s first wave was Poland, which had no seaports, and Iceland, which had relatively little contact with Europe.

The Black Death was not welcome to Renaissance civilization. Political and religious leaders did not rationalize away its presence or its causes. They may have prayed for relief, or called it God’s vengeance, or perhaps blamed it on witches, but whatever they said, was said in ignorance of the causes. Suddenly, the plague was there and city streets filled up with the dead and diseased.

And today, just as suddenly, Europeans have noticed that their city streets were filling up with the living, walking, and arse-lifting dead, an invasion of them by invitation of their governments and often by the citizens themselves. The living dead wish to be accommodated in all things, which means gutting the cultures they migrated to and transforming them into replicas of the cultures they left behind.

I make no bones about my hatred of Islam. It isn’t the Rotary Club, or the Moonies, or any other harmless cult. Islam is as much a collectivist ideology as are socialism and communism and Nazism, and like those secular brands, its primary aim is total domination of their adoptive societies to the point that those societies become wholly Islamic. To submit to Islam is to voluntarily lobotomize oneself in favor of a ghostly authority and an iconic “prophet” who was basically a thug and a killer. Muslims submit to it, and expect all those around them to submit to it, or to defer to them.

Islam is the Black Death of modern times. It completes with secular totalitarianism. Its carriers are Muslims, who arrived by countless planeloads at the invitation and encouragement of western governments and proceeded to procreate and begin a process of insulation. At first these governments believed that Muslims would assimilate into the cultures they were migrating to, as though they were Christians of one sect settling into a country dominated by Christians of another sect. However, they were not Catholics settling in Lutheran Germany, or Episcopalians starting over in Catholic Italy.

There is no middle ground. There is no “reforming” Islam. Just as there is no “reforming” Nazism, or Maoism, or Stalinism. Islam is not a “buffet” religion; there is no picking and choosing which of its imperatives to adhere to, and which to disregard. The creed demands one’s full allegiance and obedience in every aspect of one’s private and public life, all one’s waking hours. That many Muslims do not live “by the book” is irrelevant. It’s their creed in whose name violent jihadists commit atrocities, and stealth or cultural jihadists corrode or corrupt Western social and judicial norms like bagworms consuming a tree’s bark, which means the death of the tree. The “silent majority” of Muslims dare not or care not to speak against the actions of their more zealous religious colleagues.

"Radical" and "moderate" Muslims aren't about to “reform” Islam to make it “tolerant” of other creeds or more palatable to their adoptive cultures. So that task must be accomplished by those who will be its ultimate victims, either as dhimmis, or corpses. The penicillins of multiculturalism, “diversity,” “tolerance,” “sensitivity,” moral relativism and plain political expediency are what have allowed the plague to kill so many and make significant inroads in Western civilization. It's time those who value that civilization to adopt the same "in your face" tactic as the violent and stealth jihadists have adopted. That will mean identifying Islam as a killer ideology. Period.

In his review of Abigail R. Esman’ Radical State on Family Security Matters, Patrick Dunleavy noted:
“It would seem that the very strength of Holland’s democracy and tolerance became an Achilles' heel when it came to dealing with Muslim immigrants arriving from non-democratic, Islamic fundamentalist regimes.” [Italics mine]

The problem is that the Netherlands, like the U.S., has “democracy.” Democracy is mob rule. Should the Muslims achieve an electoral majority there, or even a significant minority – then The Netherlands is finished. As will be any other European nation that boasts both “democracy” and a Muslim population whose adults don't believe in condoms or contraceptives or self-restraint. Their “planned parenthood” strategy is to breed like rabbits with the aim of swamping indigenous populations with their numbers.

The antidote to “democracy” is a republican, limited government that upholds and respects individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, all concepts antithetical to Islam and any other species of collectivism. This is what the Founders intended. They abhorred democracy. Democracy means that the majority can nullify one's rights and seize one's life and property, and abridge one's happiness at will. This is what successive American administrations have been doing under the guidance of the Democrat Party, abetted by a politically bankrupt Republican Party. So, until Europe discovers the principle of individual rights, it is doomed to thrash about combating Islam without knowing what political system would make it impossible to conquer Europe. Banning burqas in France isn't going to prevent such a conquest.

The Economist ran a story on Mohamed Merah that is typical of mainstream media reporting of the killings. Unlike many other publications, it actually employed the term “Muslim” but with cautious qualification to underplay the Islamic motivation in the killings: “Merah was segregated from his Muslim calling and branded as a “lone wolf”:
Yet the number of Frenchmen returning from al-Qaeda camps with such high-level training is only “in single digits” reckons François Heisbourg, of the French Institute for Strategic Research. Isolated French Muslims, radicalized in Islamist training camps, have been foiled trying to mount terror attacks in France before.

Once the candidates resume their campaigns, Mr. Sarkozy may emerge strengthened. Having flown straight to Toulouse after the school shootings, he has done a skilful job of being statesmanlike and solemn, yet in touch with the national mood. His Socialist rival, François Hollande, has also sounded the right note, but from the shadows. Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front candidate, may also benefit. She spoke out this week against confusing Muslims with fundamentalists, and denounced those who had at first accused her of being implicated for having fuelled racial divisions in France. “Putting real problems on the table in no way justifies the spread of Islamic fundamentalism,” she declared. The real issue, she added, was that such fundamentalism in France had been “underestimated”. [Italics mine]

Even Marine Le Pen, who is campaigning against Sarkozy on an anti-immigration and nationalist plank, found it politick to temper her words by claiming that Muslims shouldn’t be confused with Islamic fundamentalists. Which misses the point that Islam is inherently radical and can’t be divorced from its inherent fundamentalist tenets. That is, Merah’s motivations can’t be excised from Islam. What is already radical cannot be radicalized. One may as well deny that spaghetti is a form of pasta.

Merah wasn’t a “lone wolf” sociopath like Andre Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer. Merah was not acting out an episode of Sesame Street, but rather the imperatives of the Koran. He went to Afghanistan for jihadist training. His brother was a probable accomplice in securing Merah the weapons he used and stockpiled in his apartment. And the further the French authorities delve into Merah’s background and actions, the more they will find links to the “leaderless jihadist” network and Islam.

The Associated Press also commits the same error. Rewritten to excise any mention of Muslims and Islam, the original Associated Press article read:
PARIS - Authorities investigating France's deadly shooting rampage have released the mother of the Islamist fanatic blamed for the killings but were questioning his older brother to determine whether he served as an accomplice, officials said Saturday.

Police are trying to determine whether 23-year-old Mohamed Merah had any help in carrying out the execution-style murders of seven people that have shocked France and refocused attention on the threat of radical Muslim terrorists. Police say there is evidence to suggest that his brother worked as an assistant. [Italics mine]

The usage of the terms “Islamist fanatic” and “radical Muslim terrorists” is an instance of denial that a Muslim’s criminal action has anything to do with Islam. “Islamic fundamentalism” is a redundancy. One’s life is not jeopardized by “fanatical” Catholics or imperiled by “Mormon fundamentalism” because one isn’t asked by fanatical Catholics or Mormon fundamentalists to defer to their beliefs or even respect them. But such deference (and submission) is routinely required of non-Musims by Muslims and organizations such as CAIR, the ICNA, the MSA, and other Islamic front organizations.

I was reminded of an early episode of Star Trek, in which Captain Kirk and his crew land on a planet governed by 1930’s period gangsters, whose “bible” is a history of 20th century organized crime and whose customs and practices are followed to the letter by the society. It was an amusing episode written around an incredible premise.

And that reminiscence caused me to recall the ending of Francis Ford Coppola’s first Godfather movie. While Michael Corleone, acting as godfather of a son of a gang member he has had executed (his sister Connie’s husband), is attending the solemn baptism of his godson, on his orders rival gangsters are violently wiped out across the country.

That powerful, cascading sequence of scenes may be taken as the essence of Islam. There is no fundamental difference between Michael Corleone’s loyalty to the tribe and his concept of “family honor” and demands for respect, and that boasted of by Muslims. That is what panicked politicians and “moderate” Muslims must grasp here and in Europe before any progress can be made against the war declared and waged against the West by Islam. No compromise is possible between Islam and its utter and complete repudiation.

This is a philosophical conflict, and not merely a “religious” or political one. Islam’s spokesmen seem to know or sense this. Our “protectors” do not. The Mohamed Merahs of Islam are in a hurry. The “moderates” are counseling patience.

We are their enemies. We are targeted for destruction or subjugation by both groups. Whether one views the Islamic incursions as a form of the Black Death, or as the corrupting influence of gangster government, the West must identify its enemy before it can be successfully opposed.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Edward Cline is the author of a number of novels, and his essays, books, reviews, and other nonfiction have appeared in a number of high-profile periodicals.