The American Spectator

Another Perspective

(Page 3 of 3)

Journal ). But Muslims, clearly preferring the duty of Jihad to conquer the dar al-Kufr (House or Nation of Infidels), are inclined as well to make their "political power" struggles matters of warfare.

One final point about the Journal's pleas to the descendants of Socrates and al-Farabi. I will leave aside it was democrats who falsely accused Socrates of offending the multiculturalism of his day, and for that he was forced to drink hemlock and die. The Journal missed the genuine comparison. On the Muslim side, al-Farabi was the right choice only in the sense that he had no impact on Islam at all. His influence, like that of Socrates and the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, was on Western religion; Judeo-Christianity. Thus, al-Farabi had a far greater impact on Jewish thought than he ever had on Islamic theology because the great Jewish codifier and philosopher Maimonides learned much of what he knew of Aristotle's philosophy through the writings of al-Farabi. As for the Greek philosophers, their influence was directly on the early Church.

The Journal "missed" this, the genuine point in the case of al-Farabi (and Socrates), for the same reason it misses the "better idea" than its own: a shallow democratist-libertarianism cure-all for the Muslim world (and much else). The point about Islam is it produces Muslims according to teachings of domination, men with many wives, and families with traditions of war and violence all within a vision of life, Islam, that praises war and a world state. Al-Farabi, as far as we know, died a bachelor, recoiled from Islam, and admired Aristotle. In a word, he did not "reproduce" in any sense as a Muslim. So the point the Journal missed, publishing a post-9/11 commentary representative of it, is this: Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization. The Journal is obliged to state so transparent a truth, most all to ask what is it that compels Western elites so relentlessly to resist facing this truth about Islam.

SO IT IS WE RETURN to the Journal's editorial of February 27. Let us be straightforward in the face of the empirical evidence that Muslims require us to treat them as we treated our enemies in World War II. If the nation-building in Europe and Japan was good it had something to do with the prior defeat and surrender of these peoples. Total submission. Without that, nothing else matters. When you have an enemy bent on your destruction, you must face that enemy and recognize that it is a war that does not end until one or the other is vanquished. Completely. That is especially important in the case of Islamic enemies whose very raison d'etre is to conquer dar al-Kufr. Israel's tack with the Palestinians, like that of America's in Iraq or Afghanistan, has been to deny this Muslim intent. Certainly Israel is being destroyed by this, by the Israel-U.S. peace process. America's similar approach is not less misguided, or less dangerous, than Israel's.

Insofar as the editors of the Journal are so smitten with the social sciences, it is interesting to note that two of the most respected historical scholars of the post-World War II American-led recovery in Europe and Japan, respectively, Professors Charles S. Maier of Harvard University and John W. Dower of MIT, both concluded at a colloquium at MIT on March 7, 2005, that two important factors that led to the peaceful and successful democratization after the war were: (1) the war was long and so totally devastating to the people of Japan and Germany with massive, unremitting bombardment of civilian centers that there was simply no will or physical ability to fight further; (2) Germans, but also the Japanese, did not inherently reject Western democratic principles.

The short answer for our friends at the Journal: American forces, and by implication Israeli, British, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, German, and Danish, need to totally vanquish the Islamic terrorists. War is hell for a reason. The reason is men facing terrorist destruction more explicit than ever came from Japan or Germany are bound to fight enemies if they are to survive. The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies. So your question, does anyone have a "better answer" is this answer.

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