Two months ago I wrote an essay comparing the zeitgeist of the Islamic world today with that of Germany in the years leading up to the ascension of the Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party to power. In both cases there exists/existed a small, vocal, passionate minority with a much larger sympathetic population surrounding them. In the 1930's, the Nazis were able to achieve dominance by virtue of the faint heartedness of the democratic opposition within Germany and the apathy of the Western world which preferred appeasement to engagement.
Since 9/11, the West has not been apathetic. The question of how Islam could reform itself and how the moderate Muslims could take back their religion was pressing when I wrote "Good Muslims" and "Good Germans". I could not at that time see much reason for optimism:
It is also worth wondering if there even exists a sizable population of moderate Muslims. The MSM, our government, most civilized people seem to believe that if they insist there exists a moderate Islam, then it must be so. While I have no doubt there are moderate Muslims, their lack of visibility is troubling. When even in this country, where dissenters are safer than most anywhere else, a rally for Muslims against terror draws minimal numbers, it is troubling. Whenever there is an article written, or a public stance taken, opposing the Islamic fascists, the brave individual Muslim puts their life at risk, receives condemnation from official organs of Islam, and often receives death threat fatwas. They receive nothing but calumny from the governments which are supposed to be our allies in this war. The official Egyptian press and the state sponsored Imams in state supported mosques, regularly spew out the worst hatred of infidels (that is Americans and Israelis, especially, but with special vitriol for those Europeans who have the temerity to object to their increasing dhimmitude) and apostates. Most Islamic states have death penalties for apostasy, for desecration of the Koran, and for any of a number of offenses against Islam; at the same time, Shariah law openly, arrogantly, discriminates against those who are not sufficiently Islamic, and grants almost no rights to non Muslims.
Thus, sadly, we can expect minimal help from any Moderate Muslims who might exist, and only the minimal levels of assistance that they can get away with from the so-called Moderate Islamic states in the world. If our MSM and their allies in the Academic, Left wing, and European elites, succeed at disarming us, and the Islamofascists husband their resources, the fight in which we are in the early stages may yet feature all of Islam against the civilized world. The fall out (literal and figurative) will touch everyone on the planet before it is over.
The clock is ticking on Islam. We do not know how much time we have left or where the hands are. In 1947, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists first displayed a "Doomsday Clock".
Their intent was to highlight the danger posed by the existence of nuclear weapons. On February 27, 2002, the Board of Directors moved the hands of the clock from 9 minutes to midnight to 7 minutes to midnight. Among other reasons for the move, they stated:
The confluence of the rise of extremists who sacrifice their lives for their cause combined with weapons of mass destruction is an especially worrisome development. So too is the increased awareness since September 11 that terrorists need not manufacture or purchase fissile materials to fashion a crude nuclear weapon or release dangerous amounts of radiation. They need only attack poorly guarded nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons facilities, which contain sizable quantities of these materials. Significantly, President Bush acknowledged on January 29, 2002, that diagrams of U.S. nuclear power plants were found among Al Qaeda materials in Afghanistan.
At this point the war on Islamic fascism can still go awry in many ways. The Islamists are becoming more desperate. The Sunnis are becoming more involved in the political process in Iraq, having no desire to be exterminated by their more numerous and angry Kurdish and Shi'a foes. Al Qaeda is in grave danger of losing this battle and have been moving their forces to other countries (war theaters). They will continue to try to blow up Shiites and Americans, but it is only a matter of time before they are marginalized in Iraq. Al Qaeda knows that only spectacular successes can reverse their slide and blowing up Egyptians, Iraqis, and Lebanese are poor recruiting tactics compared to blowing up Europeans and Americans. Killing Israelis does very little to enhance their prospects but gaining a terror state in Gaza would be helpful. In any event, a spectacularly murderous attack in London or Rome, or New York, or Washington, would be the most powerful statement they could make that they are viable and growing stronger; as bin Laden said, "the Arab prefers the strong horse." Despite the presence of an estimated 16,000 Muslims in England who have trained in al Qaeda camps, small scale destruction on the order of 7/7, and failed attempts as this past weekend, will do nothing to enhance the cause but will only induce the British to introduce more and more restrictive laws governing the behavior and presence of Muslims in England; enough attacks like the last two weeks and the only Muslims who will be left in England will be those who renounce Islam.
There is some evidence of liberalization in countries throughout the Arab world but it is slow and not without serious reverses. In Egypt, according to Ahmed H. Rahim, an Iraqi-American who has taught Arabic and Islamic studies at Harvard University, the forces of Islamic fascism have had two major advances. From today's Wall Street Journal, Why Not a 'Million Muslim March'?:
Two recent events have sent shock waves through Egypt. The later of the two was the terrorist bombing of the resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh. The first, unnoticed in the West but no less unsettling, was the silencing of a liberal scholar, Sayyid Mahmud al-Qimany.
Mr. Qimany, an outspoken critic of Islamism whose many writings have been banned by al-Azhar University (Sunni Islam's most revered institution of higher education), recently received a death threat declaring him an apostate. "We have individuals," the message read, "who are willing to cleanse their sins with your blood." The individuals threatening him wished to make an example of Mr. Qimany in the same way they had of his fellow secular writer Farag Fouda, assassinated in 1992.
If Mr. Qimany did not retract his statements and writings against the Islamists, his fate was death. Despite the Egyptian government assigning bodyguards to protect him, he knew that once he was declared an apostate, the state could do little to prevent the Islamists from assassinating him. So to spare his family the fate that befell Fouda's, Mr. Qimany recanted all his writings, promising never to write again. He knew that he was alone in his battle against the dark forces of Islam; his only weapon was his pen, which alas he surrendered to the Islamists as others before him surrendered their lives.
This is an inauspicious event. Most would agree only Islam can reform itself and repudiate the fascists who some claim have "hijacked" the religion of peace. Others, like Oriana Fallaci (Part I & Part II), would assert that Islam itself is the problem and can not be reformed. Wretchard attempts to repudiate her pessimistic assessment, though by calling her Cassandra, he reveals his ambivalence:
To all appearances Fallaci pulls out the stops and regards Islam itself as an imperalistic enterprise, bent on conquest and incapable of coexistence with others. In her phrase it has obtained "a bridgehead" in preparation for further advances. The Belmont Club pointed out that the problem with this argument is that Muslims themselves are the most frequent victims of Jihadi violence; and the second that Muslims comprise the most numerous allies of America against organizations like the Al Qaeda. By turning Islam into a black box, the inside of which we are unable to understand or alter, Fallaci dooms the conflict into an external clash between two irreconciliably opposed civilizations. There is no significant room for an Islamic liberation movement. Fallaci expects nothing from within Islam itself. The "bridgehead" builds from Islam outward. No counter-landing is possible within the Ummah.
Unfortunately we are still waiting for the mass of moderate Islam to make its voice heard. Dr. Sanity has put together a representative sampling of links today. The evidence is overwhelming that the silence of the Moderate Muslim is not an accident and the existence of the Moderate Muslim remains in question. I do not know what time it is. We will only know it is midnight when the bomb devastates the middle of a Western city. Or perhaps a mass murder on the scale that al Qaeda planned in Jordan would be the trigger. Ultimately, I do know that if the Islamic nihilists are successful in their glorious pursuit of death and mass murder, the resulting Western response they will have evoked will destroy Islam. No amount of multi-cultural psychosis, no amount of calls for reason and moderation in the West will save them. It is up to Islam to save itself and we still see little evidence that they recognize their danger.
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