From Jihad Watch:
Praise the Lord... and Pass the Ammunition
The movement to stop Islamic expansionism in the West is by definition a rag-tag coalition. We come from different world views, religions, races, lifestyles and political parties. If you want a metaphor, think of those wonderful World War II movies that used to depict American units composed of an ethnic mix from central casting--a voluble New York Jew, a Boston Irishman, a rural Southerner, a Midwestern hockey player--each with starkly different family backgrounds and beliefs, sparring through the first act as they waited for combat, who were welded into a rough but durable unity by the common threat they faced: the diabolical racist aggression of Nazi Germany. It was melodrama, but it was based in truth, and it reflected the broader reality in America. Split as we might have been on Dec. 6, 1941 about the wisdom of taking part in the Second World War, resentful as Irish-Americans might have been of Great Britain, torn as Italian-Americans might have felt about invading Italy, suspicious as Christians might (and ought to) have been about sending aid to Stalin's Russia, when our nation was openly attacked by the Axis, we pulled together for the duration of the fight. Propaganda broadcasts might highlight our differences and try to appeal to the private grudges (some of them justified) we held against each other. We shrugged them off, and soldiered on. That is what we must do against the new Axis power, the new Comintern we face.
St. Paul said that in the body of Christ, there were many members, each with its different function. Whether or not you like that metaphor's provenance, I trust you'll grant it fits us. Some of us are skilled at outreach to "mainstream," religious Protestants whose awakening to the jihad threat is retarded by an undue deference for "faith," in whatever form; the task here is to point out the essential evil of Islamic supremacism, and the fact that "moderate" Islam (where it exists) is the equivalent of backsliding, modernist post-Christianity.
Others of us can use our connections in liberal circles to confront the deeply engrained resistance to applying "Western" standards of human rights, justice, and tolerance to non-Western people and societies; here the task is to appeal to universal standards of human rights that trump the relativistic acceptance of "foreign" customs and faiths as sacrosanct.
Some people can speak to their fellow libertarians, urging them to drop their reflexive suspicion of the American government, all its works and all its pomps, in recognition of the massive threat to liberty posed by international jihad.
Still others of us must speak to paleoconservatives, who have no trouble (believe me!) in robustly critiquing alien cultures, whose fear of Islam competes with their resentment at the double standard practiced by the likes of Allan Dershowitz or Marty Peretz--who favor brusquely hard-line nationalism in Israel, but slackshouldered multiculturalism everywhere else. (To such people I like to point to David Horowitz, whose American patriotism is every bit as robust as his defense of our ally Israel, who favors the same defense of American borders and national interests as he hopes Israelis will practice.)
Others among us must address Catholics and Orthodox, who have ancient quarrels with the secular culture of the West (and practices they dream Muslims will help them thwart, such as pornography and abortion). Some are opposed to major aspects of Zionism--and still others (as we have, alas, seen) have internalized genuine anti-Semitism, which they justify by pointing to the history of Communism; such people need to shamed or scared until they stop fighting the last war and turn to the new one, which threatens Jew and Christian alike.
The need for this unified front is never going to paper over entirely the differences that exist--nor should it. There are certain fundamental issues that need to be discussed, if only to make clear to ourselves the what and why of the things we oppose. We need to be be able to answer clearly and coherently when apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood compare their movement to the Christian Right; when multiculturalists equate Islamo-realism with "racism"; when Reason-style libertarians equate "Islamophobia" with "homophobia."
If someone could push a button tomorrow and magically transform every Muslim on earth into a Hindu (it's nice to dream, isn't it?) we would have real and contentious differences to fight over. But none of them compare to the mortal threat posed by the aggressive totalitarian religious/political, international revolutionary movement that is Islam--which is fueled by oil wealth, cannon-foddered by high birth rates, enabled by liberal guilt and conservative divisions, and poised to take the extraordinary image of Western man we have inscribed painstakingly over the centuries, and gouge its eyes as an idol.
That icon we can rally around, those vandals we must resist to the death, whatever our other quarrels--just as Sunni and Shi'ite lay aside their squabbles to hunt the infidel.
Posted by Roland Shirk on February 10, 2011 10:00 PM
Praise the Lord... and Pass the Ammunition
The movement to stop Islamic expansionism in the West is by definition a rag-tag coalition. We come from different world views, religions, races, lifestyles and political parties. If you want a metaphor, think of those wonderful World War II movies that used to depict American units composed of an ethnic mix from central casting--a voluble New York Jew, a Boston Irishman, a rural Southerner, a Midwestern hockey player--each with starkly different family backgrounds and beliefs, sparring through the first act as they waited for combat, who were welded into a rough but durable unity by the common threat they faced: the diabolical racist aggression of Nazi Germany. It was melodrama, but it was based in truth, and it reflected the broader reality in America. Split as we might have been on Dec. 6, 1941 about the wisdom of taking part in the Second World War, resentful as Irish-Americans might have been of Great Britain, torn as Italian-Americans might have felt about invading Italy, suspicious as Christians might (and ought to) have been about sending aid to Stalin's Russia, when our nation was openly attacked by the Axis, we pulled together for the duration of the fight. Propaganda broadcasts might highlight our differences and try to appeal to the private grudges (some of them justified) we held against each other. We shrugged them off, and soldiered on. That is what we must do against the new Axis power, the new Comintern we face.
St. Paul said that in the body of Christ, there were many members, each with its different function. Whether or not you like that metaphor's provenance, I trust you'll grant it fits us. Some of us are skilled at outreach to "mainstream," religious Protestants whose awakening to the jihad threat is retarded by an undue deference for "faith," in whatever form; the task here is to point out the essential evil of Islamic supremacism, and the fact that "moderate" Islam (where it exists) is the equivalent of backsliding, modernist post-Christianity.
Others of us can use our connections in liberal circles to confront the deeply engrained resistance to applying "Western" standards of human rights, justice, and tolerance to non-Western people and societies; here the task is to appeal to universal standards of human rights that trump the relativistic acceptance of "foreign" customs and faiths as sacrosanct.
Some people can speak to their fellow libertarians, urging them to drop their reflexive suspicion of the American government, all its works and all its pomps, in recognition of the massive threat to liberty posed by international jihad.
Still others of us must speak to paleoconservatives, who have no trouble (believe me!) in robustly critiquing alien cultures, whose fear of Islam competes with their resentment at the double standard practiced by the likes of Allan Dershowitz or Marty Peretz--who favor brusquely hard-line nationalism in Israel, but slackshouldered multiculturalism everywhere else. (To such people I like to point to David Horowitz, whose American patriotism is every bit as robust as his defense of our ally Israel, who favors the same defense of American borders and national interests as he hopes Israelis will practice.)
Others among us must address Catholics and Orthodox, who have ancient quarrels with the secular culture of the West (and practices they dream Muslims will help them thwart, such as pornography and abortion). Some are opposed to major aspects of Zionism--and still others (as we have, alas, seen) have internalized genuine anti-Semitism, which they justify by pointing to the history of Communism; such people need to shamed or scared until they stop fighting the last war and turn to the new one, which threatens Jew and Christian alike.
The need for this unified front is never going to paper over entirely the differences that exist--nor should it. There are certain fundamental issues that need to be discussed, if only to make clear to ourselves the what and why of the things we oppose. We need to be be able to answer clearly and coherently when apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood compare their movement to the Christian Right; when multiculturalists equate Islamo-realism with "racism"; when Reason-style libertarians equate "Islamophobia" with "homophobia."
If someone could push a button tomorrow and magically transform every Muslim on earth into a Hindu (it's nice to dream, isn't it?) we would have real and contentious differences to fight over. But none of them compare to the mortal threat posed by the aggressive totalitarian religious/political, international revolutionary movement that is Islam--which is fueled by oil wealth, cannon-foddered by high birth rates, enabled by liberal guilt and conservative divisions, and poised to take the extraordinary image of Western man we have inscribed painstakingly over the centuries, and gouge its eyes as an idol.
That icon we can rally around, those vandals we must resist to the death, whatever our other quarrels--just as Sunni and Shi'ite lay aside their squabbles to hunt the infidel.
Posted by Roland Shirk on February 10, 2011 10:00 PM
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