Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Can Islam reform?

By James Lewis


When liberals sound out on religious fundamentalism they never seem to think of Islam. Yet the Religion of Surrender -- Islam means "surrender," not "peace" -- is by far the most fundamentalist religion in the world.

Everything is supposed to go back to the Qur'an, written in the Arabian Desert in the 7th century, straight from the mouth of Allah and therefore impossible to question. If you can't question something you're set for mind-lock, and all the troubles flow from that.
As historian Bernard Lewis points out, Islamic civilization always gets stuck in dogmatism whenever the fundamentalist priesthood takes over. That is why the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution took place in Europe and then America, and not in Muslim Persia, Spain or Ottoman Turkey. In a rigidly closed society everybody becomes mind-locked. We can see it every day in the media.


Liberals claim that the US Constitution should be a 'living document" -- meaning they want it dead. Well, the Quran brings the ancient desert war of Mohammed back to life. There's a living document that'll kill ya! That kind of fundamentalism is utterly stuck in a dysfunctional past.

Liberals respect the Qur'an more than the US Constitution. The Qur'an runs a billion Muslim minds, half of them women living under virtual house arrest, and subject to constant fear and indoctrination -- and murder if they try to escape.
Liberals respect that kind of thing.
When Muslims encounter the modern world they may yearn for freedom, or they may wish to go back to the mythical past. They feel torn between past and future, just like other, less militant creeds.
The battle for civilization will be won or lost in their minds and in ours.
Civilized peoples always hope to fight a war of ideas, so that we will not have to fight a hot war. But peace is not won by cowards. If you can't stand up for your beliefs during family holidays -- politely but firmly -- you have not yet begun to fight.
Conservatives have to bear a share of the blame for the victory of radical liberalism in the recent election. Not all the blame, but we have not done enough. Half of America is on our side, at least 100 million people.
We must begin by standing up for our beliefs to friends, family, local leaders, then nationally and internationally. This is a worldwide struggle.
You have in your hands the most fabulous tool ever invented for outreach. If we don't use computers and the web, as well as personal contacts, to stand for our values, nobody else will do it for us. When we stand up for our values we also empower others to do the same thing.
So far the United States and our "allies" have failed dismally to stand up for our values. We keep surrendering to barbarians, a sure formula for civilizational defeat. It is abject cowardice, and there's no excuse. None.
The answer to the election of 2012 is not to retreat from our principles, but to redouble our efforts, work smarter and harder, do retail politics -- everything is local -- and never, never, never, never give in. Churchill had it right. Persistence wins the day.
The election did not change right or wrong, good or evil. They are what they are. A lost election is a setback. So was Valley Forge. So was the Battle of the Bulge.
Our history is full of setbacks followed by victories.
We need to read history. This isn't the first time control freaks have tried to take over. King George was a control freak. Slavery in the South was bloody control freakery.
Abe Lincoln was the first Republican president of the United States, and contrary to media myths, Republicans have stood for freedom when the Democrats stood for slavery, Jim Crow, the Soviet Union and the Chicago Machine.
In a few places like India there are peaceful Islamic sects, but Saudi Arabia and Iran are run by totalitarian war cults. The Saudis were pure desert warriors until the British Empire raised them to power a century ago. Even Karl Marx couldn't get more fundamentalist than the Wahhabis, a tiny sect with oceans of oil money to buy corrupt socialist parties and media.
When we see mosques rising today we should see them as another sign that Saudi oil money is coming back to destroy constitutional government. Saudi religious fundamentalism can't tolerate real freedom, just as radical socialism can't. You can see it in the liberal media and their politicians. Hillary's recent PR bomb against Israel did not happen by chance. Those pro-jihadist PR bombs show all the signs of being orchestrated, because normal people don't mouth the identical words on cue, day after day, like the Hollywood liberal artillery brigade. 
Normal people have diverse beliefs. Only ideological monopolies repeat the same slogan over and over again. Presumably somebody pays for those PR bombs. They are much too predictable to be accidental.
No major religion today is as fundamentalist as Islam. If you doubt that, kindly explain which Christian or Jewish sect would commit the atrocities of 9/11? Southern Baptists? Holy Rollers? The Lubavitcher rebbe? What religious Christian or Jew believes that God wants him to commit those civilian massacres that constantly plague the Muslim world?
We stand in horror of the murder of children in Newtown, CT. We should. That is what civilized people do. But let a hundred Shi'ite pilgrims in Iraq be blown to pieces by Sunni terrorists, and there is no outrage. To liberals, Muslim massacres mean nothing. They don't fit the agenda.
Everything comes down to ideology. Muslims don't kill impulsively, but for ideology. When they kill other Muslims it's because there is no worse enemy than a heretic in their eyes. That is why 40,000 people have died in Syria in a war between Sunnis and Shi'ites that started a thousand years ago.  Talk about being stuck in the past? Talk about religious fundamentalism? In the House of Peace everybody is somebody's heretic. 
It's like the old Dean Martin song: 
Everybody hates somebody sometime
Everybody falls in hate somehow
... but it's not funny in the real world.
Islam is a fundamentalist religion at war with itself, and with infidels like us, because it preaches a war doctrine rooted in 7th century Arabia. Islam cannot change as long as it stays mind-locked in the 7th century.
So the question Can Islam reform? is no small matter, as Samuel Huntington wrote in his classic The Clash of Civilizations. We don't know the answer yet. An Islamic Reformation is one of Rumsfeld's Unknown Unknowns, the biggest one we all face today.
But then every civilizational war starts off as a complete unknown. In 1938 Churchill didn't know that the civilized world could win against Hitler. He guessed, and then acted on his hope and passion, and made it happen.
We have to become Churchillian again.
There is no other way.
Imperialistic Islam may be able to reform, but only if the civilized world resists with all its might.
Think of those half billion women under religious house arrest, if that will clarify your values. The media don't tell us about those women, and that's a giveaway all by itself. What the media hide from us is more important than what they say. By their evasions ye shall know them.
If we surrender to sly media infiltration and open sabotage, we will keep being bamboozled by the Obamas of this world, and civilization will die.
It's happened before.
Dark Ages happen throughout human history, and they always come from a tyrannical media priesthood. This is an old, old struggle. Reagan said that civilization has to be reborn in every generation. He was right.
Nazi fascism lasted only thirteen years in power, but that was long enough to kill many millions of human beings. 
Soviet imperialism lasted from 1917 to 1990, seven decades of inconceivable horrors, covered up by the major Western media and deliberately spread to China and North Korea, where the death camps are still running today.
Resurgent Islam got its biggest boost in the 1970s when Jimmy Carter enabled the rise of fascist Khomeinism in Tehran, something he keeps defending even today. There is no rational defense of criminal neglect, Jimmy. No defense at all.
The atrocities of 9/11 were a direct consequence of Carter and  Clinton decisions. Good ole Bill had four chances to catch Osama bin Laden and never wanted to take the political risk. When 9/11 happened, Clinton insiders knew instantly who was to blame. Obama comes straight from the Carter-Clinton school of leading from behind.
Thinking people know that aggressive Islam must be resisted the way we resisted Hitler and Stalin. We know how to do it. We did it until a few decades ago. But the recent election shows that the American people are not ready to face that reality. Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe the monopoly media have poisoned our minds beyond repair.
If we fail, the Western Enlightenment -- think of the US Constitution -- will fade from history. China, Iran, Russia are intent on world power. Maybe civilized values will arise again. Or maybe not. If we leave the struggle to the ignorant, the mind-locked, the gutless, the mediocre and the lazy, if we let America-haters run our politics and media, they will win.
Gird up your loins, folks.
Militant Christianity had its Reformation, a crucial beginning of free thought in Europe. Judaism had a self-reformation after the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE.   
All religions have a history of war, because human beings started out that way. Indian religion starts from a tale of chariot warriors in the Bhagavad-Gita, the Song of God.
Yes, American Pop Buddhism claims to be pacifist today, but that's the usual ignorance about history. Zen Buddhism was adopted by the medieval warriors of Bushido Japan, who saw no contradiction in practicing Zen. Like the warriors of the Bhagavad-Gita, they thought that spiritual practices made them better warriors.
Civilized religions emerge from an ancient history of warfare. When humans get lucky we discover ways to be more civilized. But we keep teetering on the edge, ready to fall back to the bloody past.
It is possible that Islam can reform itself. But liberal collusion with Islamist warlords will not make it so. Surrender will not help. Phony pacifism will be laughed at by war cults every single time. Helping radicals like Morsi rise to power in Egypt is suicidal. Obama policy in supporting militant Islam is either delusional or malevolent.
Twenty years ago the Soviet Union crumbled because its imperialist thrust was resisted by the West, led by the United States. We contained Soviet imperialism without major war, until they ran out of aggressive energy.
But first we had to name the enemy.
If you can't name the enemy, you can't think about him. If you can't think about him you can't resist.
Our biggest struggle is not on the battlefield but in our minds. It always is.
China's Philosopher Kung, Confucius, insisted that the right use of words has to come first.  
Start by telling the truth -- the right use of words -- and the right answers will follow.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/12/can_islam_reform.html at December 19, 2012 - 12:11:43 AM CST

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