UPDATED: Was going to write an entirely new piece on why Glenn Reynolds might be wrong to assume that the Islamic war we are in might be a bit dangerous than a Ghost Dance, but VodkaPundit got there first. But I may still since this idea is starting to gain traction. Right now this response to the nonsense of Ralph Peters is a good start.
Ralph Peters brilliance in past articles and books means that he should be taken seriously most of the time. But I think he is going off the deep end in this article. I believe that Islam poses a threat to the west. But Ralph is building a strawman if he actually believes that most of us who feel that way advocate declaring war on Islam and killing every single Muslim in the world. Actually I look at our fight against Islam much the same way that I looked at our fight against Communism or Nazism. Eliminating those who fought against us while sparing those who didn’t was a rational way to prosecute the war.
The comparison with Nazism is even more apt, since we ended up having to kill thousands of innocent Germans, by innocent I mean those who did not believe in Nazism, because we waited so long to act. Had we stopped Hitler when he crossed into Czechoslovakia it would not have been necessary to bomb Dresden. Had we stopped Tojo in China we might not have had to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It is not some perversion of Islam that produces the drive to imperialism that has been part and parcel of Islam since Mohammed attacked Meccan caravans. All the way to the Gates of Vienna in 1683 Islam was driven by the combination of spreading Islam and a wanton desire for slaves and treasure, the original reason Mohammed attacked the Meccan caravans. That is a significantly different start than what we saw in Jesus so comparisons with Christainity don’t wash.
ISLAM-HATERS: AN ENEMY WITHIN By RALPH PETERS - New York Post Online Edition: Seven The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn’t the irresponsible nonsense on the left - destructive though that is. The really ugly “domestic insurgency” is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism.
How? By insisting that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith’s primary agenda - and, when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman.
Ralph is taking different issues and conflating them. First I am glad though a bit surprised that he is candid about Islam’s need for reform. Why should a peaceful religion need to reform? About the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers being the faiths primary agenda one need not look at the numerous examples that fill the Koran. Merely look at the example that Mohammed himself set in his subjugation of the peninsula now known as Saudi Arabia. Look at Mohammed’s total elimination of one of the jewish tribes that lived there because of a percieved insult. Does Ralph Peters deny that all of the men of the tribe had their heads cut off in a market that still exists? Finally that nonsense about those of us who have a problem with Islam believing that all Muslims are evil and subhuman, put the strawman down and step away from the pipe Ralph.
Another trait common among those warning us that Islam is innately evil is that few have spent any time in the Muslim world. Well, I have. While the Middle East leaves me ever more despairing of its future, elsewhere, from Senegal to Sulawesi, from Delhi to Dearborn, I’ve seen no end of vibrant, humane, hopeful currents in the Muslim faith.
Ralph has already admitted that Islam needs to be reformed. Why? What is wrong with Islam that demands it be reformed? How do those Muslims he says he talks to feel about the need to reform Islam? Only a fool would believe that there are not good and decent people inside of Islam. There were good and decent people inside of Nazi Germany as well. There were even some good and decent Nazis. But Nazism was an evil philosophy.
I’m no Pollyanna. I’m all for killing terrorists, rather than taking them prisoner. I know we’re in a fight for our civilization. But the fight is with the fanatics - a minority of a minority - not with those who simply worship differently than those of us who grew up with the Little Brown Church in the Vale.
Even in Germany only 36% of the people voted for Hitler. In Indonesia which is often held up as an example of a moderate Islamic State a poll in 2003 showed 58% of the people having confidence in Bin Laden, a mere two years after the single most brutal terrorist attack in history. Luckily for us that poll number in2005 went all the way down to 36% of the single largest Islamic voting block in the world having confidence in the worlds worst terrorist. Yea I am feeling all warm and fuzzy towards that opinion by the “Moderates” in Indonesia.
We are in a knife-fight to the death with fanatics who’ve perverted a great religion. But those who warn of Muslims in general are heirs of the creeps who once told us Jews can never be real Americans and JFK will serve the Vatican.
Unfortunately this name calling indicates that Ralph Peters argument rests more on emotion than rational thought.
The long overdue liberal reformation within the Islamic world can only be carried out by Muslims themselves. Those who believe in Islam with all their hearts will have to be the ones who defeat those who hijacked their faith.
Why should a peaceful religion that has been hijacked by a vanishingly small minority need a liberal reformation? Why also should that reformation be considered long overdue when Bin Laden and his troops of murderers are a relatively recent matter?
Others posting on this article.
IMAO Michelle Malkin Andrew G. Bostom
Technorati Tags: ralph peters, new york post, islam, muslim, terror, terrorists
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[…] Ralph Peters fancies himself a bit of a reverse Crusader, protecting Islam from the attacks of those like Roland unwise enough to be worried about it. A couple of months ago he took off on a rant that was shocking for its idiocy for a man who has also been capable of some brilliant thought from time to time. That is what makes these sorts of flights into lunacy so dangerous, he has credibility brought on by his increasingly rare moments of lucidity. I took him to task for that rant back here. […]
[…] We have needed the left in this war. It is starting to become clear that it is perhaps only the left who can be fierce enough to win. After all it was the left who pursued World War 2 not to some face saving treaty but to the total and utter defeat of our enemies. Before this is over, this war we are in might just need that same sort of fierceness and I just don’t see that sort of anger in Republicans. But perhaps it is simply that I am so tired of hearing President Bush, a person I thank god was in office on 9/11, repeatedly claim that Islam has been hijacked. It has not Mr. President, not unless the hijacking started around the time Mohammed hijacked the Meccan Caravans. […]
[…] For instance Ralph Peters just put out a polemic published in the otherwise sane NY Post attacking those of us who believe that the issue isn’t radical Islam vs Moderate Islam, but Islam itself. We are called bigots, pollyannas, Nazis by his clever use of Untermenschen and finally ChickenHawks. Naturally he never addresses the central issue of Islam how does Mohammed fit in a moderate version of Islam? Not that he doesn’t realize that Islam needs to be reformed since he states as much twice in the same article. Naturally this begs the question if we are so wrong about Islam why reform it? Ralph and his ilk simply refuse to go to the heart of the matter preferring the easy road of attacking those of us who point out inconvenient facts. The Pope on the otherhand avoids all of that and gives his considerable weight to the central issue of Islam. […]