REFUSING TO LIVE WITH RADICAL ISLAM

From the Creeping Sharia front:

FAREED ZAKARIAH IS AT IT AGAIN. Remember him? The Muslim editor of Newsweek who wrote a book entitled the Post American World. The same book Barack Obama was reading during the U.S. presidential election, which has a chapter entitled “A Non-Western World”, and mentions Obama on page 255. The same Fareed Zakaria who declared the USA #2 in a separate Newsweek story.

We surmised Obama might be modeling some of his foreign policy strategies on Zakaria’s writings, particularly his approach to Iran—see our previous post Obama planning post American world to compare Zakaria’s words on Iran to Obama’s. With the closing of Gitmo, the failure to address the kidnapping of a U.S. U.N. worker in Pakistan, and the chumminess towards soon-to-be nuclear power Iran, and Hamas may bear that out.

In Fareed Zakaria’s latest, Learning to Live With Radical Islam, he subtitles his article: “We don’t have to accept the stoning of criminals. But it’s time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists.”

If Zakaria means that all Muslims are Islamists, he should first prove that all Islamists (i.e., Muslims) are treated as potential terrorists, then we can talk. If he means that all “radical” Muslims are Islamists, then why wouldn’t “we” treat all “Islamists” as potential terrorists? Furthermore, if Zakaria could conclusively define radical Islam that would be extremely helpful. Is radical Islam based on a different version of the Quran or other Islamic texts? A different Mohammid? A different Allah? A different jihad than Mohammad waged?

Any article detailing how “we” should learn to live with radical Islam, rather than defeat it, that begins with an opening paragraph describing how a region of Pakistan is quiet once again because the Taliban took over and implemented sharia law simply doesn’t bode well for anyone. He fails to mention that the Taliban waged a war for the Swat valley and “beheaded opponents, torched girls schools and terrorized the police to gain control of much of the one-time tourist haven”.

Keep in mind however that Fareed Zakaria routinely minimizes the Islamic terrorism threat, al-Qaeda, the odds of being a victim of terrorism, and he does it here again claiming that the Taliban aren’t so bad after all because Fareed says most “Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad globally.” Got that? “Not all these Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists or launch operations against the outside world—in fact, most do not.” See world, nothing to worry about here, just a tiny minority of Islamists want to kill us.

Fareed overlooks many a significant point in his article. One, even if it is true that only a small group of Muslims have global jihadist ambitions like al Qaeda, that’s all it takes. Just one group. Just one nuke. Look what 19 Muslims did on 9/11. Maybe Muslims should learn to live with the fact that as long as ANY Islamists (defined any way you want) have global jihadist ambitions that there will be significant consequences. Two, Fareed, given the resources and the opportunity, how quickly would the local jihadis that behead folks, burn girls schools, and adhere to the strictest of sharia law, take their local jihad global? Three, wasn’t Muhammid’s ambition to create a global khillafah or caliphate? Isn’t that the ultimate goal of Islam? For all to submit to Allah’s will?

There are interesting points made in the article but most are glossy at best. He writes about Iraq and claims that General Petraeus’ squelching of a massive insurgency is an example of accepting Islamism. What he fails to mention is the presence, and increase in, U.S. troops that executed the counter-insurgency strategy and made it work.

Zakaria does state that “Recognizing the reality of radical Islam is entirely different from accepting its ideas.” If that’s all he meant, why the cover story in Arabic and the statement ‘how to live with it’? Later in the same paragraph Zakaria takes it on his own to wildly distort reality, reminiscent of Obama’s air raiding villages comment, he states dumping resources (i.e., cash) on the problem rather than, “simply bombing, killing and capturing—might change the atmosphere surrounding the U.S. involvement in this struggle.” He also fails to mention that it was Islamism that brought the struggle to the U.S., not the other way around.

He concludes:

We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried…people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That’s the most powerful weapon of all.

Fair enough. Yet once people are enslaved to sharia law, weary or not, they are not permitted to “find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license.” Hence, we should not be giving Islamists hope and proposing how we should learn to live with their “radical Islam”, rather we should be proposing how to end it and prevent it from infiltrating our institutions and way of life.

We did not choose to live with Nazism, communism, or fascism, nor should we surrender to and live with Islamism.

Read it all at Newsweek.