The War For Civilization: How Radical Islam is poised to destroy the Western World - Chapter 2

Chapter Two: A Look at Islam and the West

“Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah.” - Qur'an: 8:39
“Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” - Matthew 5:9

“And do not relent in pursuing the enemy.” - Qur'an: 4:104
“Blessed are the Merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” - Matthew 5:7

“Fight the unbelievers around you, and let them find harshness in you.” - Qur'an: 9:123
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” - Mark 12:31

Now, before you get on your high horse, screaming about how Islam is a religion of peace, calm yourself. Take a deep breath and keep on reading. Force yourself to keep the book open and try not to label me as an Islamophobe. By the time you have finished this book, I hope that I have convinced you of the dangers inherent within Islam. I do not saying that all Muslims are evil terrorists bent on destroying the West, far from it. Muslims are not the culprit, Islam is.
First of all, you should know that I am an atheist. And so I look at religions not for their spiritual viewpoints, but for their philosophical ones. And so far I have found that out of the major religions Christianity and Buddhism have the most positive messages, while Islam has the most negative. Some religions were formed over time, mixing with its ethnic groups culture, such as Judaism and Hinduism. Others were founded by one person, namely Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. The former religions key messages usually line up with what its culture believed. In many cases, the culture formed the religion, not the other way around. But the latter religions are quite different. They helped form the cultures which accepted them, and their entire ideological message is based upon the personality of their founder.
Buddha was a peaceful man. He was a Hindu prince who left his life of luxury after seeing people suffering, spending his life praying, meditating, and preaching. Jesus was also a peaceful man. He preached kindness, healed the sick and brought the “good news” to his followers. When he was to be arrested by the Roman authorities, he stopped his follower Peter from violently defending him. Now, can any of us see Muhammad asking his followers to lay down their arms, saving their lives but ensuring his own death?
Muhammad was a trader living in the city of Mecca. While there he was supposedly visited by the angel Gabriel and given a series of revelations. He began preaching these revelations, teaching the age old “Golden Rule” that appears in nearly every religion, namely “be kind to your neighbor”. And for a time Islam was a religion of peace. But the powerful families of Mecca didn’t enjoy Muhammad's growing power, and exiled him and his followers from the city. They journeyed to Medina, which accepted him and used the new Islamic faith in order to to unite its warring tribes. But here is where the Islamic religion began to change. The Medinan verses of the Koran are far more violent, calling for the subjugation of all that oppose Allah.
After a series of new revelations, Muhammad claimed the the golden rule was applicable only to fellow Muslims, and reneged on his former pacifism, stating that it was acceptable to make war on the infidels. Taking advantage of this new revelation, he and his followers attacked the city of Mecca, and after years of bloody conflict emerged victorious. He preached about the subjugation of women, and how they must be submissive to the man. Unlike Christianity, which views God as an understanding father, one whom you can converse with through prayer, Allah is an ominous God. Islam literally translates to “submission”, and that is what is expected of a good Muslim. The state must submit to Allah, as man could never create law that is superior to God’s law, so their can be no secular government. Man must submit to the government, as it is representative of Allah on earth, so there can be no individualism or free thought. And Woman must submit to Man, as he is Allah's representative within the household, making gender equality a feebled dream. While Christians have a merciful God, Muslims have one who demands submission, complete obedience.
Islam is a religion that demands submissive followers because Muhammad used it to control the warring tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad would use fear to conquer and fear to control, which was necessary when dealing with the violent tribes that then existed in the Arabian Penninsula. If his followers did not accept his dictums, they would never see the splendor of heaven, and if the people he lorded over wanted freedom, he would ruthlessly crush the revolt. Muhammad views on gender equality are equally as barbaric. He took multiple wives, seeing them simply as property. His last wife was the six year old daughter of one of his friends, and when her father begged Muhammad to wait until she reached the appropriate age of marriage, Muhammad claimed that Allah commanded him to take her. Once she became nine he consummated the marriage. At this time Muhammad was fifty two years old. Today Muhammad would be seen as a theocratic dictator, a sexist, and a pedophile. This is the founder of Islam, this is the founder of a religion which has over one billion followers.
Forget the PC ideas of acceptance and tolerance to minorities within the Muslim faith. Before Muhammad conquered Mecca, Medina had a thriving Jewish population. There were three Jewish tribes, living in harmony with their Arab neighbors. But Muhammad made it a practice of attacking the Jews in Medina after each battle with the Meccans, win, lose, or draw. Finally, he succeeded in killing all the Jewish men, while enslaving the women and the children. He then used the money from the sales of the slaves to help pay for his war against Mecca. He also instituted the process of dhimmitude, where all unbelievers were to be treated as second-class citizens. They were forced to pay higher taxes, endured worse punishments, and could not hold high office. They were required to move out of the way and bow to Muslims, and if stricken by a Muslim they were not to strike back. An unbeliever was not allowed to testify against a Muslim in court, new Churches and Synogoges could not be build and existing ones could not be renevated. Followers of other religions were not allowed to proseltyse and eventually these restrictions suffocated the vibrant Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian cultures of North Africa and the Middle East. Muhammad was an intolerant and violent man, and naturally Islam in its purest form has taken on aspects of his personality.
Many liberal elitists will claim that we cannot look at Muhammad’s actions from our own cultural vantage point, that he lived in a different time in a different place. And this is true. It is difficult to look at other people from other times, subscribing our notion of what is right and wrong to their actions. But the problem we face is that Muslims see Muhammad as the final and greatest prophet, the perfect human being. And therefore all Muslim men must live by his example, and all Muslim governments must subscribe to the type of institution he created. This is why Islam has remained transfixed in the Medieval Ages. As long as the Muslims feel that the system of government which Muhammad created and the laws he developed are the height which humanity can achieve, they will never be able to progress as a civilization.
When we were attacked by bin Laden on September 11th, most adults, even the well educated, did not understand this. Many still do not understand. We were caught off guard, as America has never faced religious extremism. We had experts on Russian Communism, leftovers from the Cold War, but not many on Islam. People still think of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism as greater threats than radical Islam. But they were merely political ideologies, spasms of the West as it tried to find itself in the modernizing and industrialized world. But Islam is a political, cultural, and religious ideology which has consumed an entire civilization. It instigates religious fervor, one humanities most powerful creations, and has eradicated the ancient cultures of Egypt, North Africa, Persia, and Byzantuim while replacing the with its own insitutions. And at this point in history, Islam has become poised to destroy the West. We have become demoralized over the past decades, losing confidence in our own worth. The multicultural attitude that the West has taken has devalued our accomplishments and contributions to the human race.
Liberal elitists will gladly list the terrible things the West has created, such as capitalism, materialism, and imperialism. But these accusations are ridiculous. Capitalism and materialism are what helped the Western world rise to be unparalleled in economic, technological, and military power, and are some of the West’s most powerful tools. And to point to imperialism as a Western invention is to ignore thousands of years of history. The Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Muslims, the Vikings, the Chinese, the Japanese and the Russians all have practiced some sort of imperialism over the millenia. The West was simply able to achieve their goals on a grander scale due to the superior nature of their culture.
The entire ideal of multiculturalism is to assume that all cultures are equal. This is one of the greatest lies of the 20th century, and displays how idealistic, and in many cases ignorant, modern intellectuals can be. Why did Africans never rise to world dominance, while Europeans did? They had many environmental obstacles to face, but they also had a weaker culture. The Chinese had the manpower, the technology, and the resources with which they could have ruled the world, ala Europe. But their culture, though vibrant, was not sophisticated enough. Western values of individualism, liberty, secularism, and progressivism have proven over and over again that they are superior to many other cultures when it comes to scientific and intellectual advancements.
Because of the ideals of multiculturalism, we have tolerated other cultures to continue within our own. Even when these cultures, most notably Islamic ones, are completely intolerant of individual freedoms, liberty, democracy, and gender equality. How can we tolerate people who demand intolerance? How can we respect the cultural values of immigrant cultures when they demand the institution of outdated medieval laws? Allowing them to retain their culture will cause the collapse of our own, because we will have a group of individuals whose values directly contradict the societies in which they live.
Yes, I am stating that the West has come up with the most effective culture mankind has ever seen. Forget the “multiculturalist” bullshit that our public schools teach children from kindergarten on. We are the best. That is not to say that the West does not have flaws, but our overall capability to function and grow as a society is far more effective than any other culture. All cultures are not equal. We, the West, have come up with more scientific innovations than any other civilization in the history of the world. Name me one major piece of technology created by the Islamic world in the last 500 years. The cotton gin, an important, but by no means life-altering technological invention, is greater than anything the Middle East has been able to produce since we entered the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Same goes for the Indians or the Chinese or the Africans. Their cultures are simply not advanced enough to create the Modern Era (though many have done incredible jobs imitating it).

Many will take this view as some how enthocentric, racist, and reminicent of Western imperialist attitudes towards their conquered populations. And I understand why people may believe this. It is because over the years we have been fed the farce of total cultural equality that every civilization somehow must be equal, even though western culture has given birth to the greatest era of human advancement ever seen. This has nothing to do with race or ethnicity; we can see asians, blacks, indians, and arabs who are very succesful in Western societies, sometimes outpreforming their white counterparts. No, what it is are the events and the geographical and natural dynamics which have aided the West in developing a very individualistic and secular culture. The Chinese were able to develop gunpowder long before the West did. In fact, the West wasn’t even able to invent it but imported it from the Arabs (who in turn imported it from the Chinese). But, unlike the Chinese and Arabs who restricted its use to crude rockets, cannons, and incindiary devices, the Westerners constantly experimented with this new technology over the course of hundreds of years, until they perfected a new weapon which completely revolutionized warfare.

This is the greatest feature of Western culture, its focus on science and technology, and its ability to generate new processes, materials and material artifacts. No other culture can be said the same of. Sure, the Islamic civilization gave use algebra and saved important Greek documents during the Dark Ages, but these are minor and inconsequential when compared to what the West has achieved.

It was the West that first developed steam power and adapted its use into factories, and for the generation of electrical power. The Otto and the Diesel internal combustion engines are products whose genesis and early development were in the West. Nuclear power stations are derived from the first atomic pile in Chicago. The electrical dynamo, transformer, electric motor, and electric light, and indeed most of the familiar electrical appliances, were inventions of the West.

Communication devices and systems including the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, communication and navigation satellites, mobile phone, and the Internet were all invented by Westerners. The pencil, ball-point pen, photograph, photocopier, laser printer and plasma display screen were also invented in the West.

Even ubiquitous materials including concrete, aluminum, clear glass, synthetic rubber, synthetic diamond and the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC and polystyrene were invented in the West. Iron and steel ships, bridges and skyscrapers first appeared in the West. Nitrogen fixation and petrochemicals were invented by Westerners. Most of the elements, as well as the current notion of elements themselves were created in the West.

The transistor, integrated circuit, memory chip, and computer were all first seen in the West. The ship's chronometer, the screw propeller, the locomotive, bicycle, automobile, and airplane were all invented in the West. Eyeglasses, the telescope, the microscope and electron microscope, all the varieties of chromatography, protein and DNA sequencing, computerized topography, NMR, x-rays, and light, ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopy, were all first developed and applied in Western laboratories, hospitals and factories.

In medicine, vaccination, anesthesia, MRI, the birth control pill, and all the pure antibiotics were created in the West. The method of preventing Rh disease, the treatment of diabetes, and the germ theory of disease were discovered by Westerners. The eradication of that ancient scourge, smallpox, was led by a Westerner, Donald Henderson. Radiography, Computed topography, Positron emission topography and Medical ultrasonography are important diagnostic tools developed in the West. So were the stethoscope, electrocardiograph, and the endoscope. Vitamins, hormonal contraception, hormones, insulin, Beta blockers and ACE inhibitors, along with a host of other medically proven drugs were first utilized to treat disease in the West. The double-blind study and evidence-based medicine are critical scientific techniques widely used in the West for medical purposes.

In mathematics, calculus, statistics, logic, vector, tensor and complex analysis, group theory and topology were developed by Westerners. In biology, evolution, chromosomes, DNA, genetics and the methods of molecular biology are creatures of the West. In physics, the science of mechanics and quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics were all discovered by Westerners. The atom, nucleus, electron, neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners.

Westerners are also known for their explorations of the globe and space. The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth was by Westerners, as well as the first to set foot on the Poles, the first human in space and the first human to orbit the Earth and the first to land on the moon. The landing of robots on Mars and on an asteroid, and the Voyager explorations of the outer planets were all achievements of Westerners.

The West has given us Betoven, Bach, Mozart, Da Vinci, Brunalessci, Michalangelo, Dali, Rebrant, Piccaso, Newton, Copernicus, Einstein, Galleleio, Darwin, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Edison, Jefferson, Bacon, Voltaire, Rouseau, Aquinus, Hobbes, Locke, all great leaders in their fields, all people have changed the world and the way we live and think. The West has contributed so much to humanity’s perception of government and science and art and philosophy.

But the Muslims gave us algebra. And they have as much to offer humanity as Westerners do. How is it then, that the most free countries in the world are in the West, while some of the most repressive ones are in the Middle East? In political, technological, economic, social, civil, militaristic, philosophical, artistic, nay, everything that defines civilization, the West leads the way. Anti-western historians will then point at how the West, for thousands of years, lagged behind China and occasionally the Middle East in many of these respects. And while this may be true, the West was not the West yet. After the fall of the Imperial Romans, the ideals of capitalism, democracy, liberty, and secularism began to coalesce in the Dark Ages. The Renaissance was not the rebirth of civilization, but the birth of a new, Western civilization. They modified Greek and Roman ideals with aspects of Christianity and feudalism to create the Modern West. And since its conception the West has reigned supreme among the worlds nations.

Because of the West’s cultural superiority, European nations were able to colonize the entire world. This was especially important in the Middle East, where the populous, who had been in direct contact with the Europeans for thousands of years, felt that they were superior to the white barbarians. European imperialism was a wake-up call to the once thriving Islamic civilization. Although Muhammad’s violent messages and the collective mindset of Islam could support a feudal civilization, it could not support one that was quickly being thrust into the modern era. And so, for the first time, Middle Easterners were forced to examine themselves, in hopes they could understand the reason for their decadence.

The two conclusions they reached began recieving great attention in the early 20th century. The first school of thought was propagated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey. He felt that it was certain institutions within Islam which was holding the East back, that the only way to compete with the European was to secularize the Muslim world. Turkey became, and still remains, the only secularized Muslim nation on Earth. And out of all Muslim nations, it is by far the most industrialized and successful. And unlike many Islamic countries in the Middle East, Turkey does not need to rely on oil for its economy. If the amount of money made on oil revenues were taken out of the picture, Finland would have a higher GDP than the entire Middle East.

The second school of thought came about during the same time period, but did not receive world wide attention until the 1970’s, when it was backed up by rich oil sheiks. This is the ideology known as islamofascism. Proponents of islamofascism contend that to be successful once again, the Middle East must return to “true Islam”, where all muslims are ruled by the Caliphate, nations are run by sharia law, religious minorities are forced into dhimmitude, women are restricted to the household, and nonbelievers are beaten into submission. They believe that the Muslim world only began to decay after its followers beliefs were diluted by the “perversions” of the Westerners. Once Islam redefines itself along fundamentalist guidelines then Muhammad will return and create a paradise on earth.

This is the Catch 22 which we are facing in our modern conflict. How can we deal with violent terrorist states? Should we allow them to continue to thrive, allow them to fund terrorist operations all over the globe, build weapons of mass destruction, and violently oppress their own people? That is obviously not a viable option. But what other recourse can we take? In Iraq and Afghanistan we have taken on the strategy of invading and destroying the theocratic regimes that propagate islamofacist ideologies, then institutionalizing a democratic government. But, for some reason, this strategy doesn't seem to be as effective as was once hoped. The average muslim wants to be ruled by sharia law, and when given the power to vote elect politicians who will appease them. And with the introduction of sharia and the dominance of Islam in the political process, all hope for a successful democracy goes out the window. We are seeing that in Iraq, with the newly elected president becoming closer to Iran, in Afghanistan, where in 2004 a muslim man who converted to christianity was to be killed until foreign pressure allowed him to be exiled to Italy, in Palestine, where the populous elected the radical terrorist Hamas party to power. One of the only successful Muslim democracies has been Turkey, but that is because of the pro-western attitude of its elitists. While the most powerful people in Turkey want their country to be a secularized, modern, western state, many of the commoners are just as extremist as their muslim brethren elsewhere in the Middle East. There have been numerous instances, most recently in 1997, where a radical muslim party will gain power in Turkey, after legally winning elections, and then the army, controlled by the western upper crust of Turkish society, will perform a coup and drive them from power. Any political party which advocates using sharia law or the Koran when making policy is banned, for fear that they will gain enough populist support and power to overturn the Turkish tradition of secularism.

And so, we must ask ourselves again, what can we do? Either do nothing, allowing the Islamists to gain power and continue to attack us, or invade and set up a new government. But we cannot set up a true democracy, otherwise the nation will soon be just as radical as before, and we cannot set up a pro-western dictatorship, reminiscent of the Cold War, because it will create a backlash of anti-American sentiment. To create successful states in Afghanistan and Iraq, we must look at the Turkish model and attempt to emulate it. Rather than thrusting democracy on a culture which has proven time and time again that it is unable and unwilling to accept freedom, we should create a Turkish “psuedo-democracy”, one that is ruled by an elite class of secular, pro-western politicians. There will be elections allowed of course, but religious or ethnic political parties should not be allowed to compete, lest they wrest control of the secularists and turn the fledgling democracy into a radical state. Over time, as the people become more accustomed to democracy, and as Islam slowly becomes less integral in their lives, the nation can transition into a true democracy.

Now, although terrorism is dangerous and demoralizing, and must be fought wherever it may be encountered, the terrorist aspect of islamofascism is not the most dangerous. If we only needed to combat terrorists, Western victory would be assured. But radical Islam has a strength which the West has lost, and could result in the undoing of the Western world. Europe’s population is shrinking and aging, while the Islamic world only grows younger and more vibrant. The excess population in the Middle East and North Africa is now being siphoned into the West, taking the jobs Europeans are becoming to old to do. As William Durant once said, “Civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” Europe may not be conquered through massive armies of barbarians invading Paris, crossing the Danube, or burning Rome to the ground, but by those same barbarians slowly increasing their numbers from within.