An article that speaks more plainly than many, though in many places still not as plainly as it could. However, one can hardly fault the final paragraph.
“Catherine McGregor: Unlike Us, Jihadists Are Very Clear About Who They Are”.
‘Last week marked the 50th anniversary of Israel’s stunning victory over its Arab neighbours (that is: its Arab Muslim neighbours – CM) in the Six-Day-War, which was indeed the third Arab-Israeli War, when the Israeli army and air force decisively defeated a coalition of Arab states (that is: Arab Muslim states – CM) on two fronts.
‘Despite being heavily outnumbered and surrounded on three sides, with the sea at their backs, the Israelis fought superbly. They had lived with an existential threat from their neighbours since the proclamation of their nation, and were acutely aware of the consequences of defeat.
‘Israel’s victory redrew the political landscape of the Middle East, and the consequences of the Six Day War reverberate through the global political system to this day.
‘Indeed, no understanding of the global Jihad is possible (sic – CM) without examining the effects of Israel’s defeat of the Arab (sic: Arab Muslim – CM) coalition comprising Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan.
I am not so sure that the author should assign so much significance to this one event. The global Jihad was being waged on three continents, off and on, for more than 1300 years before the Jews managed to regain sovereignty over a portion of their ancestral homeland. The Ummah, of course, greatly dislikes being forced by Infidels to disgorge any part – however small – of that which it has previously stolen from said Infidels, since anything Muslims have ever gotten hold of is supposed to belong to them forever, and in any case, all Infidels are deemed to be illegally holding property that belongs to allah and therefore to Muslims; but from that point of view, the longer-ago lnfidel liberation of Spain, as well as the much more recent Infidel recovery of sovereignty over most of the Balkans except Albania and Bosnia, and over India, and East Timor, are just as irritating to the Ummah, as the Jews’ liberation of part of the land of Israel. – CM
‘The spectacular defeat of that Arab coalition utterly discredited the secular nationalist project in the Middle East.
One wonders whether that phrase ‘secular nationalist project‘ should rather be worded as “secular nationalist tactic“. Islam never went away; and no truly secular nation could ever be constructed out of populations steeped in Islam. In 1955 an astute Israeli Jew named A Carlebach said, of Israel’s Muslim Arab neighbours – “These Arab Islamic countries do not suffer from poverty, or disease, or illiteracy, or exploitation; they only suffer from the worst of all plagues: Islam. Wherever Islamic psychology rules (one might add: and not only in ethnically-Arab countries but everywhere else that Islam has been imposed – CM) there is the inevitable rule of despotism and criminal aggression. The danger lies in Islamic psychology, which cannot integrate itself into the world of efficiency and progress, that lives in a world of illusion, perturbed by attacks of inferiority complexes, and megalomania, lost in dreams of the holy sword. The danger stems from the totalitarian conception of the world, the passion for murder deeply rooted in their blood (or, perhaps, one might say, hardwired into the cult and the culture that grows from the cult – CM), from the lack of logic, the easily inflamed brains, the boasting, and above all: the blasphemous disregard for all that is sacred to the civilized world... their reactions – to anything – have nothing to do with good sense. They are all emotion, unbalanced, instantaneous, senseless. it is always the lunatic that speaks from their throat. You can talk ‘business’ with everyone, and even with the devil. But not with Allah… This is what every grain in this country shouts. There were many great cultures here, and invaders of all kinds. All of them – even the Crusaders – left signs of culture and blossoming. But on the path of Islam, even the trees have died…”.
And Carlebach observed, of the Muslim assault upon Israel – “We pile sin upon crime when we distort the picture and reduce the discussion to a conflict of border between Israel and her neighbours. First of all, it is not the truth. The heart of the conflict is not the question of the borders; it is the question of Muslim psychology... The Arabs (when speaking to Infidel outsiders who might be inveigled into supporting their cause – CM) raise claims that make sense to the Western understanding of simple legal dispute. But in reality, who knows better than us that such is not the source of their hostile stand? All these political and social concepts are never theirs. Occupation by force of arms, in their own eyes, in the eyes of Islam, is not at all associated with injustice (well: so long as it is Muslims taking things from Infidels; if Infidels take back something that Muslms previously seized, that is in Muslim eyes a terrible injustice; indeed, all infidel possession of anything at all anywhere is deemed to be a gross injustice, since everything in the world is viewed as belonging to allah and therefore to Muslims – CM). To the contrary, it constitutes a certificate and demonstration of authentic ownership. The sorrow for the refugees, for the expropriated borders, has no room in their thinking. Allah expelled, Allah will care. Never has a Muslim politician been moved by such things (unless, indeed, the catastrophe endangered his personal status). If there were no refugees and no conquest (and, to update somewhat: “if there were no so-called ‘occupation’ of the so-called ‘West Bank’, that is, of Judea and Samaria , nor of so-called ‘Arab East Jerusalem’, that is, the Jerusalem Old City, Temple Mount and Mount of Olives”- CM) they would oppose us just the same.” [Ma’ariv, October 7, 1955].
‘In its place came an Islamic revival inspired by the teachings of a range of Islamic scholars, foremost among whom was Sayyid Qutb, whose principal works “In the Shadow of the Koran” and “Signposts on the Road” (also known as “Milestones” – CM) became bestsellers throughout the Arab world.
One should, however, bear in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood, devoted to the restoration of the Caliphate, was founded in 1928, not in response to the resurgence of the Jewish state of Israel – which would not happen for another twenty years – but, rather, in response to the formal abolition of the Caliphate. – CM
‘Qutb was executed on 29 August 1966 by the regime of President Gamal Abdel Nasser but his works inspired the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sunni Islamists (sic: pious Sunni Muslims – CM) everywhere.
‘Unlike his counterpart in the Shia tradtion, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Qutb did not live to see the revolution (or, rather, the Islamic revival – CM) he advocated come to pass.
‘The Islamic revival took root in fertile soil after the humiliation of the Arab states.
Is our author trying to imply that Israel should have allowed themselves to be destroyed so that the ‘secular’ ‘Arab’ states, glorying in their victory over the Yahood, could have avoided the ‘humiliation’ that enabled the Islamic revival??? – CM
‘Population growth in the Arab world (sic: ‘in much of the Muslim world whether Arab or non-Arab’ – CM) approached 50 percent between 1955 and 1970.
Largely because of the introduction of Infidel advances in medicine and technology, and the beginnings of the immense infusion of petrodollars. – CM
‘That demographic change was accompanied by increased levels of education and literacy, which were essential ingredients in dissemination of radical teachings (or, rather, classical Islam – CM) in books and pamphlets.
Radio and cassette tapes do not require a literate population to be understood.. and these were used at least as much as the written word. Khomeini’s sermons were circulated on cassette. – CM
‘Today, contemporary Islamists (look, let’s cut right to the chase: contemporary Muslims – CM) have proved more than adept in using social media to propagate their message and plan operations, than the bureaucratic state law enforcement bodies trying to defeat them.
‘The core of Qutb’s theory was that the era of Arab nationalism was similar to states of barbarism in which the pagan Arabs lived before the emergence of Islam.
Everything not-Islam, anywhere, is Jahiliyya, ‘ignorance’. Not just the pre-Islamic Arab tribes, but every Infidel state, society or civilisation, everywhere on earth and in every stage of human history. Pre-Islamic Egypt is viewed with just as much contempt as the pre-Islamic Arabs; the most pious Persian Muslims, the most pious Pakistani Muslims, utterly despise and treat with contempt the surviving monuments of the civilisations created by their non-Islamic ancestors. – CM
‘He advocated a return to strict personal piety and to a borderless land of Islam, where the community of believers lived under a Koranic constitution.
Under the Sharia. – CM
‘Those who seek to exonerate Islam for the escalating violence directed at the West (and not only at ‘the West’; think, just for starters, of the Jihad in Myanmar and the Jihad against India and the Jihad grinding its way onward in west and east and central Africa, and the Jihad in Sinkiang, and the Jihad against Buddhist-majority Thailand – CM) on the grounds that it is an understandable response to the invasion of Iraq (but the mass-murderous attack of September 11 2001 took place prior to the invasion of Iraq – CM) are simply ignorant of the history of Islamic evangelism (sic: rather, “of Muslim imperialism, conducted by Dawa and Jihad” – CM), and the teaching contained in its key texts.
‘The Ottoman Empire took its version of the Caliphate (sic: “took the Caliphate” – CM) deep into Europe, laying siege to Vienna in 1683, and occupying territory in the Balkans until its disintegration during the First World War.
‘From the perspective of today, the Arab world’s relatively brief flirtation with nationalism, rather than Islamism (sic: ‘the Arab Muslim world’s brief experiment with regional nation-states in the wake of the dissolution of the Caliphate’ – CM) looks like the aberration.
‘It is easy to dismiss Qutb’s vision as the delusion of a zealot. But that would be a mistake.
Why no mention of the equally-influential Hassan al-Banna? – CM
‘The current global Jihad adheres to the key tenets of his writings, although it has been adapted and refined to adapt to the globalised world, which emerged after the Cold War.
‘The exhaustion of the nationalist project in the Arab world left an ideological vacuum, which was ultimately filled by Islam.
‘Arab’ ‘nationalism’ was always only the thinnest of veneers, like a crust of rock on top of the lava lake in a temporarily-dormant volcano; Islam was always there, underneath, exactly as it was in non-Arab Muslim entities, notably Turkey, despite Ataturk’s much more strenuous and systematic efforts to keep a lid on it (now being steadily undone by Erdogan and his ilk) and Iran, despite the efforts of the Shah, which were very rapidly undone by Khomeini and those who answered his revivalist call. – CM
‘Along the way the West missed numerous danger signals, from the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, through to the publication of Osama Bin Laden’s fatwa calling for jihad against Jews and “Crusaders” in 1998.
‘Initially, Bin Ladens’ war aims (his purported war aims, rather, as presented in those communiques intended for the ears of western infidels, as opposed to those presented in Arabic for Muslim ears only; for more, see Raymond Ibrahim’s “The Al Qaeda Reader”, which sets out the glaring difference between the language of manufactured grievance, used by Al Qaeda only for Western infidel audiences, and the open and unapologetic incitement of offensive Jihad, directed toward fellow Muslims – CM) were modest, compared to those that have come in his wake.
He hoped to force infidel troops to leave Saudi Arabia and for the United States to abandon Israel. The attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 were directed to that end.
Really? Was that ‘all’ or even in any sense what he intended? A reading of Raymond Ibrahim’s translation of Al Qaeda’s Arabic-language communiques suggests something rather different and much, much less “modest”. Here is Ibrahim, in an essay entitled “The Two Faces of Al Qaeda’ (Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 54, Issue 4, Page B 13, September 21, 2007) summarising what he found. “Numerous Arabic books dealing with Al Qaeda passed through my hands… A good number contained not only excerpts or quotes by Al Qaeda, but entire treatises written by its members. Surprisingly, I came to discover that most of these had never been translated into English. Most significantly, however, the documents struck me as markedly different from the messages directed to the West, in both tone and (especially) content.
“It soon became clear why these particular documents had not been directed to the West. They were theological treatises, revolving around what Islam commands Muslims to do vis a vis non-Muslims. The documents rarely made mention of all those things – Zionism, Bush’s “Crusade”, malnourished Iraqi children – that formed the core of Al Qaeda’s messages to the West.
“Instead, they were filled with countless Koranic verses, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) and the consensus and verdicts of Islam’s most authoritative voices. The temporal and emotive language directed at the West was exchanged for the eternal language of Islam when directed at Muslims. Or, put another way, the language of “reciprocity” was exchanged for that of intolerant religious fanaticism.
“There was, in fact, scant mention of the words “West”, “U.S” or “Israel”. All of those were encompassed by that one Arabic-Islamic word “kufr”, “Infidelity”, the regrettable state of being non-Muslim that must always be fought through “tongue and teeth.” – CM
‘Ultimately, Bin Laden underestimated American resolve, based on his observation of their precipitate retreat from Somalia in 1992. He believed that the West was cowardly and casualty-averse. He paid for that miscalculation.
‘However, the jihad that he inspired has transformed.
The latest great wave of Jihad did not at all begin with Bin Laden. Jacques Ellul, in fact, in his foreword to the English edition of Bat Yeor’s “The Dhimmi” (1985), points to the partition of India as a critical moment, politically and psychologically. “Very often people think that the explosion of Islamic religiosity is the particular work of Khomeini. But – no. We must not forget the atrocious war in India in 1947 between Muslims and HIndus [which had] solely a religious foundation. The number of victims was more than a million, and we can only suppose that this war had no other origin than the independence of an Islamic Republic… From then on there was no year that was not marked by the religious renewal of Islam (the resumption of the conversion of black Africa to Islam, the return of detached populations to the practice of Islamic rites, the necessity for socialist Arabic states to declare themselves “Muslim” etc… And the extremism of the Imam Khomeini can only be understood in the light of this movement…”. And a little later, after discussing the (petrodollar-financed) “…vast operation of Islamic propaganda, building of mosques everywhere…” Ellul adds – “Now that Islam has a national, military and economic power it will try to extend itself, on the level of religion, to all the world. And the British Commonwealth and the United States are in their sights, too.” Remember: Ellul wrote those words before the First Gulf War, and 18 years prior to September 11 2001 and 20 years before the London bombings of July 2005. – CM
‘The past fortnight has been incredibly depressing, with the attacks in Manchester and London. The tempo of operations in Europe appears to be escalating. It is little comfort to victims to hear that this is the inevitable consequence of the defeat of Islamic State forces in Syria.
It isn’t. The multiplying of violent Muslim attacks on Infidels in Europe is the inevitable consequence of the admission of very large numbers of Muslims inside the gates of Europe. Got Muslims? Got JIhad. The attacks of September 11, the bombing of the trains in Madrid, the human bombs in London in 2005, all took place before ever Islamic State in Syria and Iraq got itself organised. And, to be quite blunt, if no Muslims had ever been allowed to settle in the UK, then the mass murders of 2005, and the beheading of Lee Rigby in London, and the kidnapping and torture-murder of Kriss Donald in Scotland, and the industrial-scale rape and pimping of Infidel British girls by Pakistani Muslims for years and years and years, and the mass murder by a Muslim human bomb in Manchester and the murder sprees – ghazi raids – in London within the past couple of months, could simply not have been achieved, no matter what was happening or not happening in Syria, or Afghanistan, or any other part of the dar al Islam. – CM
‘It is even more offensive to skate over the enduring and utterly intractable nature of this threat (of this wholly inappeasable 1400 year old enemy of all of Infidel humanity both western and eastern, northern and southern – CM), and engage in the muddle-headed self-loathing that portrays Muslims as innocent victims of Western and Zionist imperialism.
“Too many among us do not yet even believe it is a war.
‘And too many utterly misunderstand the nature of the enemy.
‘Most of the self-designated “terrorism experts” muttered the usual tired pieties that hitting back hard “is just what the terrorists want”.
Hitting back hard is the only way we will be able to prevent them from getting what they want. And what do they want? Ms McGregor concludes by getting that part completely right. – CM
“Unlike us, the jihadists are very clear about who they are and what they want. They keep telling us. It is a global caliphate, governed by sharia law.
And that is what all Muslims qua Muslims are supposed to want and to work towards, using all the instruments of Jihad, whether by the thuggery of knives and hit-and-runs on London Bridge and in Borough Market or by human bombs in a concert hall foyer or on a train or a bus, or Kalashnikovs in Paris, or by hijra – the demographic jihad of force-breeding and mass immigration, or by the ‘image management’ engaged in by the slithery besuited likes of Walid Aly, or Tariq Ramadan, and the equally smilingly-sinister exquisitely-made-up hijabettes whining on TV about how the mean ol’ infidels are looking at them funny when they go about in the street flaunting their Allah Gang Uniforms. – CM
“This is going to be a long war”.
No: “We are in the latest stage of a very long war that began some 1400 years ago and has never stopped since, though in various times and places it has been forced into abeyance, usually because this or that lot of targeted Infidels proved too tough a nut to immediately crack.” – CM
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