Checkmating the Savage Element - Words of Wisdom from William Buckley

Shantanu

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Feb 6, 2001
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Here's a pretty good read from the National Review. There's immense duplicity on the part of the world's Muslims. They say Islam means "peace". Why hasn't there been stern condemnation of the terrorist attacks from all Islamic leaders? The Muslims claim that the Taliban don't represent Islam. Why hasn't the Muslim community demanded vengeance against the Taliban for misrepresenting their relgion? Unlike Christianity and Judaism, which have been reformed many times in the past few millenia, Islam is still practiced the same way as it was in the 7th century. Islam will not now, and will never be reformed to become compatible with modern civilization. I'm not being racist. There's nothing wrong with Muslims; the problem lies in Islam itself. Ask yourself this: How many Muslim countries are there where minorities are tolerated or protected? How many Muslim democracies are there? (One or two, last time I checked.) What we should should do, is put the Muslims in such a place, that will have no choice but to reform their religion. That will do more good for all people, than any amount bombing (though I wholeheartedly support that as well).

William F. Buckley elaborates:

"So You Want a Holy War?
We have now Islam to deal with.


October 2, 2001 1:25 p.m.


Whatever is or is not authentic transcription of Islamic dogma, we do know that the people who ran the airliners into the World Trade Center believed that a Koranic voice was telling them to do what they did. We have the four-page document that told them not only what to do, but what to think. "Kill them, as God said; No Prophet can have prisoners of war."

They would not cavil, their clerical dispatcher knew, but even so there was a reiteration of the sacradeness of their mission. "Recognize...what God has prepared for believers in endless happiness for martyrs.... Be steadfast and remember [that in] God you will be triumphant."

Here is a strategic suggestion from the Western high command. Declare in full voice that Islam is widely profaned and mistaught. That if it isn't ? if the Koranic high exegetes are paralyzed with doubt whether such as the Ladenites are true to their faith ? then the faith being practiced must be disavowed by the legitimists. Say as much and say also that the Western world is prepared to denominate the imposters as such and to call for a restoration of a Muslim religion consistent with civilized conduct.

We have done such a thing in the political world. Without using the language of excommunication as such, what we got around to doing in the postwar world was to exclude Communism as an acceptable model for the organization of political life. We did this because, by our experience with Communism in practice and by the exercise of reason, we judged it incompatible with irreversible advances in human behavior. When finally the United States abolished slavery, the word went out: No more. No Christianity cum slavery. One or the other.


We have now Islam to deal with. We do not need to make the point that its political and economic record is miserable, that only one of 18 Muslim states (Turkey) is democratically governed. There are those who are willing to advertise the individual hypocrisies. A spokesman from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, while calling on his faithful to overthrow the government of Pakistan for the sin of maintaining equable relations with the United States, sends his own two sons to the United States to school. The Taliban has taken unmarried women detected in pregnancy and buried them to neck level before execution. Where is Islamic condemnation of such practices? For that matter, where is condemnation of Saudis chopping pickpockets' hands off?

We read of the mobs in Karachi who denounce the United States and flaunt signs that call out to "CRUSH AMERICA." In a pinch, we have to gamble. Perhaps human nature isn't reliably self-interested enough to prefer liberal democracy to protracted tyrannical misery. But we have to hope that the raw instinct is there to welcome relief. There were Kuwaitis who prostrated themselves with gratitude to liberating GIs, even as there are millions of Afghans who flee the wretched world of their Muslim oppressors where they have been kept alive by American food shipments to Afghanistan and bank now on American food shipped to Pakistan, where they will reasonably hope that before America is entirely CRUSHED we will have stored enough food for them and their children.

It is thought to be a sign of toleration to defer to Islam as simply another religion. It isn't that. It is a form of condescension. Carefully selected, there are Koranic preachments that are consistent with civilized life. But on September 11th we were looked in the face by a deed done by Muslims who understood themselves to be acting out Muslim ideals. It is all very well for individual Muslim spokesmen to assert the misjudgment of the terrorist, but the Islamic world is substantially made up of countries that ignore, or countenance, or support terrorist activity. Mustafa Kamal Uddin, a 32-year-old body-and-fender man in Karachi, explained it to a New York Times reporter. You see, he said, holy wars come about only when Allah has no other way to maintain justice, times like now. "That is why Allah took out his sword" on September 11th.

We demand to know: Who taught Mustafa Kamal Uddin to reason in that way, and the crowds in Karachi to support such thinking? Pending an answer to the question, and the unmistakable assumption by reputable Muslims of the responsibility to extirpate such misteaching, renounce modern Islam. Either restore the proper Allah ? or get ready for a holy war."
 

hagbag

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Feb 6, 2001
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i have asked on other forums:

WHERE ARE THE ( imams , mullahs , ahyatollahs , shieks , caliphs , etc ) LEADERS OF ISLAM?

seems to me that if a roman catholic had murdered the people in n.y. and d.c. and penn. and claimed to have done it in the name of jesus christ , the pope would have excommunicated them posthaste.

i see the usual "islam teaches love and tolerance " interviews on t.v. , usually with a local college professor.

what i do not see is the universal condemnation that these murders demand.

are the leaders of islam so cowed by the enormity of the murdres that they are stunned to silence?

are the leaders of islam so embarassed that thier faith has been hijacked by fanatics that they realize that they have no moral authority?

OR ARE THEY CO-CONSPIRATORS?

hagbag








 

trmiv

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
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Bump, hopefully more people will read this article. I just read it on Yahoo, and found myself agreeing with a lot of it.
 

Hakunin

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May 12, 2001
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I agree with a fair amount of it, although encouraging a holy war probably isn't exactly a smart move on the part of the US, or any Western country for that matter. Besides, I don't think that a body and fender man in Karachi has the final word on Islamic doctrine...
 

Shantanu

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Feb 6, 2001
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<< I don't think that a body and fender man in Karachi has the final word on Islamic doctrine... >>



No, the Mullah does, and the Mullah is the one who puts these ideas in the Fender man's head in the first place. The point of Buckley's article is not to start a war, it's to put the Muslims in a such a tricky position, that will have no other choice but to do like we want them to (i.e. dump the terrorist element), otherwise they will risk looking like bloodthirsty savages.
 

glenn1

Lifer
Sep 6, 2000
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<< are the leaders of islam so cowed by the enormity of the murdres that they are stunned to silence?

are the leaders of islam so embarassed that thier faith has been hijacked by fanatics that they realize that they have no moral authority?

OR ARE THEY CO-CONSPIRATORS?
>>



Unfortunately, the longer they lapse in their renunciation, #1 becomes untenable, #2 becomes an act of mortal cowardice in contradiction of the obligations of a man of faith, and #3 will appear to be more and more the case. A co-conspirator can be one who is a willful agent of passivity in the face of a moral abomination, as well as a conciously undertaken act of commission.