Be Smarter than the Tiger or You’ll End Up In Its Stomach

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
10 May '10

“I always disagree…when people end by saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence. In the same way, a man can kill a tiger because he is not like a tiger & uses his brain to invent the rifle, which no tiger could ever do.” --George Orwell, March 3, 1949.

Orwell wasn’t just throwing out that last image from his imagination. One of his most famous short stories was about shooting an elephant. He didn’t do it for fun but for two other reasons. First, the elephant was menacing the townspeople.

Second, as a policeman in Burma, he knew that all the people standing and watching in the crowd expected him to take leadership and solve the problem. There was no one else who was going to do it and if he failed his credibility—and that of the British government he represented—would be shot to pieces. And if he and they had no credibility they could achieve nothing.

Orwell’s point, reminds us that what’s most scary about the current scene is that Western leaders are not being smarter than the revolutionaries, the terrorists, the dictatorial regimes, the huddled propagandists yearning to keep others from breathing free.

In fact, the basis of their strategy was to seize hegemony over “intelligence,” so that all the wrong attitudes and policies are defined as intelligent, attracting all people who wanted to be considered smart and intellectual. Or, as Woody Allen put it in “Annie Hall”:

“One thing about intellectuals, they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what's going on.”

Thus, what Orwell foresaw is the opposite of what’s happening now. Today, the West's “best and brightest” are sure good about avoiding fanaticism in fighting the contemporary battle. But for them that becomes an end in itself.

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Radical Islamism: An Introductory Primer

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
07 January '10

Posted before Shabbat

The following is intended as a work in progress to provide a very brief discussion of issues involving radical Islamism. Naturally, it is too short to make all points, deal with all aspects, and cover all details. I plan to expand it in future to include possible solutions.

A young American named Ramy Zamzam, arrested in Pakistan for trying to fight alongside the Taliban, responded in an interview with the Associated Press: "We are not terrorists. We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism."

What he says is well worth bearing in mind in order to understand the great conflict of our era. First and foremost, Jihadism or radical Islamism is far more than mere terrorism. It is a revolutionary movement in every sense of the word. It seeks to overthrow existing regimes and replace them with governments that will transform society into a nightmarishly repressive system.

And so one might put it this way: Revolutionary Islamism is the main strategic problem in the world today. Terrorism is the main tactical problem.

What is Islamism?

Radical Islamism is the doctrine that each Muslim majority country—politics, economy, society—should be ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship guided by the given movement’s definition of proper Islam. What Marxism was to Communism, and fascism to Nazism, Jihadism is to Islamism.

In some cases, Islamists have a wider ambition to transform the entire world, starting with Europe. While this may seem ridiculous to most Westerners, it does not seem so to the Islamists who hold that view.

(Read full article)
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The Lunatic Left

Pilar Rahola
PilarRahola.com
October '08

"Dear friends, of AIPAC, I finish.
I am not Jewish. Ideologically I lean to the left and I am a journalist. Why have I not adopted an anti-Israel stance like the majority of my European colleagues?...."

AIPAC Policy Conference, 2008.
Washington.

Good Morning.
I´m Honoured to be here today.
The title of my speech is: The Lunatic Left

“Kill that infidel pig!” On September 19, 2006 that simple order, issued by an Imam, changed the life of the French high school teacher Robert Redeker. Internet multiplied the threat in dozens of Islamic websites, posting his home address, telephone numbers and data concerning his children. Since that day his entire family has lived under police protection, and he has been forced to abandon his job, home and way of life. His crime? Having written an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro under the title, “What should the free world do while facing Islamist intimidation?” In it, Redeker defended democratic freedom and warned of the danger of radical Islam. Ironically, by defending the freedom of our society, he lost his own. In his recent book Il faut tenter de vivre (Dare to Live), he recounts the story of his life in hiding. A life condemned to an inner exile in his own country. For exemple, he could´nt announce the sudden death of his father for fear of being discovered. Although his a member of the editorial board of the leftist elite magazine, Les Temps Modernes, founded by J. P. Sartre, he has been deserted by the leaders of the French left, who have lambasted him for his criticism of Islam.

Thus, like Salman Rushdie, Talisma Nasreen and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Redeker has discovered that one part of the European left is betraying freedom. He speaks of the menace of Islamic fascism, which threatens, terrorizes, enslaves and kills. And his leftist companions accuse him of being Islamophobic and racist. He denounces the world’s passiveness in the face of the slavery of women, clitoral ablation, the use of children as bombs and terrorist fanaticism. And his left-wing comrades accuse him of being disrespectful of other cultures. Like myself and many others, Robert Redeker defends an Islam free of fanatics, dictators, terrorists and totalitarians. And our leftist comrades leave us alone to make that defense. He assumes, then, the moral responsibility of defending the Human Rights Charter against the encroachment of radical Islamism, which is the new totalitarian ideology the world is confronting. And our leftist comrades betray that very moral commitment. That is, we are in a moment of history which demands a firm defense of freedom. The left should lead that defense. Unfortunately, the left is not up to the moral commitment, which this historical moment requires.

(Read full speech)
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Islamic Imperialism: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Middle East

Thomas O. Hecht
BESA Perspectives 97
25 November 09

Samuel Huntington predicted that only the Islamic civilization would re-emerge as the nemesis to the West. Recently, there is a rebirth of the Islamic struggle to reassert control over parts of the world, with jihad, or its modern manifestation – international terrorism – as its tool. The US is losing its dominance in the Middle East and is gradually being replaced by Iran. The Western world is in urgent need of a leader who will powerfully defend Western values against the growing influence of radical Islam.

Samuel Huntington remains relevant as ever. His book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1996), presented a thesis that ran counter to the zeitgeist euphoria over globalization and a borderless world after the end of the Cold War.

Huntington unequivocally stated that the end of the Cold War would bring about a clash of civilizations. He inferred that soil, ethno-cultural devotion, and religion-based energy would claim and define the world in conflict. Huntington also drew a map of the world which can be described as "The West and The Rest." He recognized other less challenging civilizations – Hindu, African, Buddhist – but to him in the post-Cold War world, only the Islamic civilization would re-emerge as the nemesis to the West. According to Huntington, "The twentieth century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist Leninism was only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflicting relations between Islam and Christianity." Unfortunately, the West displays weakness and lack of courageous leadership.

Islamic History

A review of the onslaught of Islam, from its foundation in the seventh century to its current attempts to dominate the world, elucidates the gravity of the challenge currently faced by the West. Bernard Lewis has noted that since its birth, Islam has sought to merge religion and state authority, and to expand its influence. Christian awareness of the new competing Islamic faith began almost immediately after its advent with the triumphant emergence of the new religion from its Arabian homeland and its spread eastward to the borders of India and China, and westward across North Africa and the Mediterranean Islands into Europe. Islamic penetration of Western Europe ended with the Christian re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. The struggle lasted eight centuries.

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