Muslim Brothers
By Eliza Griswold
The New Republic, June 9, 2010
Edited by Andy Ross
A Mosque in Munich
by Ian Johnson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 318 pages
America's efforts to use the religious and political fervor of Islam to its
own ends followed a Nazi program intended to do much the same thing during
World War II. In the eastern regions of the Soviet empire, the Third Reich
mobilized Muslims and other ethnic minorities to fight for the liberation of
their homelands. The Nazis plucked Muslims from German prisoner-of-war
camps: some became German soldiers, some joined the SS, and some worked as
propagandists.
Once World War II ended, many of these men were
employed by the United States. The CIA used Radio Liberty to broadcast
anti-Soviet propaganda into Eastern Europe. To reach the millions of Muslims
in the Soviet Union, the Americans turned to the former Nazi workers. The
idea was to use Islam to undermine the Soviet system. Islam, American
officials mistakenly believed, was the ideal antidote to godless communism.
Ian Johnson tells us: "Islamists differ from traditional Muslims because
they use their religion in pursuit of a political agenda, via either
democracy, or violence. ... Implicit in Islamism is a rejection of Western
society and its values." Americans continue to misunderstand that much of
Islamism is born out of opposing the West.
America continues to
support groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. American bureaucrats and
foreign policy-makers turn to the best-looking business-suited Islamist
leaders as allies. Many are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a
proponent of radical Islam. The United States finds it easier to turn to
self-appointed spokesmen for Muslims than to reach out to Muslim groups that
are organized by ordinary people.
Johnson interviewed members of the
European branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. One day in Köln, Johnson rode
along with Ibrahim El Zayat, a young Islamist who leads many German Muslims,
in his BMW. Zayat is controversial, and it is hard to know whether or not he
condones the use of violence. At the end of the ride, when Johnson asked
Zayat about his alphabet soup of radical affiliations, Zayat replied: "I
don't deny that I'm in these groups. ... When I'm asked clearly, then I
answer." We must ask the right questions.
AR I'm shocked, shocked
at the perfidy of it! Americans took over not only Nazi jets and rockets but
also Nazi spies and agents! As for the Muslim Brotherhood, who ever doubted
that it has a political agenda that sets it on a collision course with the
West?
Guilt and Surrender
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
National Internest, April 30, 2010
Edited by Andy Ross
The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism
By Pascal Bruckner
Princeton University Press, 256 pages
The New Vichy Syndrome: Why
European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism
By Theodore Dalrymple
Encounter Books, 160 pages
Pascal Bruckner argues that Europe's crisis is even worse than it appears.
He is concerned with a collapse of self-confidence manifested by:
— A
drop in the birthrate so drastic that populations are no longer growing
—
A reflexive hostility to the United States and Israel
— A self-hating
narrative of national and continental history
— A perverse refusal to
take seriously the threat from militant Islam.
Bruckner mocks the
notion of Islamophobia as it is now used by the softer-headed European
liberal Left to deflect any criticism of Muslims as a form of bigotry
supposedly akin to racism. The willful elision of religion and race is an
obvious category mistake. Criticizing a religion is not racism.
Some
on the left seem to find it hard to admit that too many Arab states are
corrupt autocracies at best and murderous theocracies at worst. European
confusion about how to deal with Muslims is further complicated by the
question of Israel. Just as reasoned criticism of the Muslim religion isn't
Islamophobia, so too reasoned criticism of Israel cannot be dismissed as
anti-Semitic.
The West's position had been compromised by a loss of
nerve, or by a bad conscience about the injustices of capitalism and
colonialism.
Theodore Dalrymple is a provocative conservative
commentator. His targets are multiculturalism, political correctness, moral
relativism, the culture of complaint, the substitution of rights for civic
and social obligation, the catastrophic implosion of the underclass, and
whatnot.
Dalrymple's father was a Communist, his mother a Jewish
refugee from Germany. He has spent his life as a doctor and psychiatrist
working some of the grimmest English prisons. He is no armchair warrior.
Dalrymple writes that "Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic
condition, of being smug and anxious at the same time," wanting "as of
right, both security and luxury in a world that neither can nor wants to
grant it either." But does that mean that Europe is dying or that it will
succumb to internal decay and a demographic revolution?
Islamophobia
is one problem, another is the fear that Europe is under threat of
Islamization. Europe has acquired a large Muslim population but made no
serious effort to assimilate it. Given the respective birthrates, Muslims
can only become an ever-larger minority, many of whom will not consider
themselves citizens of Europe.
The Continent needs to think how it
can absorb its new Muslim citizens. Even liberals can't be happy about
arranged marriages and "honor killings" of girls who choose the wrong boy.
But Dalrymple's mordant spirit can carry him away. He tells us that Muslim
youths "regard young white women in Britain, not without good reason, as
vulgar sluts." And he writes that the British defeat of China in the
nineteenth-century Opium Wars "must surely be applauded by all those who
believe in man's inalienable right to intoxicate himself with anything he
pleases."
Europe must recover the old self-confidence with which it
once fashioned the world. Europe and America should reconnect. But it takes
two to tango.
AR See my new book for a
proposed renewal of the background ideology of the Western world.
Women and Islam
David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy
Edited by Andy Ross
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argues that the women of Afghanistan are
one of the reasons we are there. The fundamental human rights of women trump
the teachings of any religion. To denigrate, abuse, or devalue in any way
the majority population of the earth is either an affront to God or an
affront to decency.
Should we be providing aid of any sort to any
nation that doesn't honor the most basic tenets of the universal declaration
of human rights? What is going on in these countries is a disgrace every bit
as grand and incomprehensible and awful as the Holocaust.
We need a
new international understanding on these issues, one that will produce a
coalition of nations that will strictly enforce a ban on aid to countries
that abuse women. No one has been more tireless or vocal in pursuit of these
goals than Clinton. We can't be a moral society and turn a blind eye to
this.
AR Sure — we must condemn Islamic gender politics.
Edited by Andy Ross
I grew up in Pakistan. Since I migrated to the United States, I felt that a
clean line could be drawn between the legal secular world in which I was
being trained and the gray area of women’s rights and responsibilities in
Islam.
Practising law, I saw the battle to define equality as far
from the realities of everyday lives of ordinary Muslim women. The American
legal system allowed them a level of equality and self-realization that was
not yet available in Muslim countries.
In the vast majority of Muslim
countries, Islamic law, interpreted for centuries by men, is being used as a
tool to enslave women. If things are to change, the recipe lies not in
eliminating faith from the legal sphere but rather redefining it.
"Islam is like a drug"
Hamed Abdel-Samad, Der Spiegel
Edited by Andy Ross
I predict the downfall of the Islamic world. In almost all countries with a
Muslim majority, we see the decline of civilization and a stagnation of all
forms of life. Islam has no convincing answers to the challenges of the 21st
century. It is a doomed religion.
Islam is like a drug. A small
amount can have a healing and inspiring effect, but when the believer
reaches for the bottle of dogmatic faith in every situation, it gets
dangerous. Islam divides the world into friends and enemies, into the
faithful and the infidels.
My dream is an enlightened Islam, without
Sharia law and without jihad, without gender apartheid, proselytizing and
the mentality of entitlement. A religion that is open to criticism and
questions.
The terrorists invoke religion. And the perpetrators
invoke the Koran more often than not. That's why we urgently need heretics
who question everything about this religion.
Most so-called reformers
of Islam remind me of the band on the Titanic. The underlying problems are
not addressed. The Koran itself is never questioned. Reformers and
conservatives alike continue to be obsessed by the holy book.
The
dangers posed by Islamists are real, and many Muslims' unwillingness to
integrate in Germany is a serious problem.
Muslims: I'm Sorry
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times, September 19, 2010
Edited by Andy Ross
Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole.
Many Americans believe that Muslims are prone to violence.
I've seen
some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran;
girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls
subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in
Yemen and Sudan who claim to be doing God's bidding.
But I've also
seen the exact opposite: Muslims in Afghanistan who risk their lives to
educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders
who campaign against female genital mutilation; Pakistani Muslims who stand
up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur,
Bangladesh and other parts of the world who risk their lives to help others.
Those Muslims set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that
we should all emulate.
To them and to others smeared, I apologize.
AR I fear that Nicholas Kristof
is doing some Christian grandstanding here. He can grovel all he wants, of
course, but there may not be much future for primitive faiths. We need
compassion that rises above Christian or Muslim orthodoxy and finds its
faith in secular harmony. Only by leaving the prejudices of priests and
imams behind can we meet the challenges of this millennium. Our science and
industry have given us a world beyond the ideas of the old prophets. We
don't believe in alchemy or write on papyrus. I say it's time to update the
business model of faith, hope and charity.
Fear
By
Bruce Bawer
City Journal, September 2010
Edited by Andy Ross
The plan by Terry Jones to burn copies of the Koran on September 11 caused President Obama to express the hope that Jones would call off his "destructive act." We were so scared of Muslim reactions that the president himself weighed in. You could burn a stack of Bibles or any other non-Muslim religious text without causing a ripple. One report showed Muslims in Kabul burning an American flag. We’ve grown used to seeing the revered symbols of Western values routinely desecrated in the Muslim world. But when a nut decides to burn a few Korans, everybody from the president on down begs him to reconsider. This is obscene.
