Everything But the Name
October 8, 2005, 8:13 pm |
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by Patrick D. O’Brien
Clarity & Resolve*
October 8, 2005
http://clarityandresolve.com/archives/2005/10/everything_but.php
* Cross-posted with permission
When President Bush gave his presentation on our war on jihad at the National Endowment for Democracy Thursday morning, I wasn’t able to pay it the proper attention it deserved. I can see that now, but at the time, it was running at medium volume in a small live C-Span window on my desktop, underneath some work I was trying to complete, while I was preparing to go pick up one of my dogs from the vet’s office. My work got done, and my dog is thankfully doing all right, but I didn’t really get to take in what the President had to say on this critical topic. To be honest, I assumed that Mr. Bush’s speech would be filled with more of the now familiar boilerplate of vaguely defined terror, extremists, and Islam is a religion of peace realpolitik, with another whitewash of the seventh century Arab death cult which is currently churning out virtually all of the terror attacks on planet Earth. It wasn’t until later in the evening, when I was able to read the transcript of this important address, that I saw how completely wrong I was in this assumption.
I soon realized, however, that there was something special about what President Bush had to say at the Ronald Reagan Building when I began to notice a not-so-subdued disconcertion coming from the sinistral side of the blogosphere. When our leftocratic friends show a degree of perturbance and disdain for the President beyond their usual overemotional, unreasonable antipathy to his existence, one should take a closer look at what was said to induce such a reaction. It’s usually when Dubya hits the nail of truth on the head with the hammer of reality that the left’s protestations are most shrill, and that was the case this time. An ideologue, whether on the right or left, is usually averse to the truth if it contravenes his ideology.
Mr. Bush showed a truly impressive level of understanding for the ideological framework of Islam and its vehicle of implementation, jihad. He also showed an awareness for the value of expressing this knowledge without doing too much finger pointing. For obvious reasons, diplomacy is an important consideration when calling to account the adherents of one of the world’s great religions. Diplomacy without compromising honesty and resolve is rare, and President Bush employed it during this vital address to the American public, to the mujahideen and their supporters, and to the world. He categorically condemned the hateful, violent totalitarianism of Islam as expressed in the sacred principle of jihad against the infidel and medieval tyranny over the faithful, but he also took pains to separate it from the “real” Islam. Thusly, he tacitly conveyed support and solicitation to the many silent Muslims who are open to pulling their religion out of the Middle Ages, while challenging them to un-hijack the religion.
Words and concepts were used which most often get caught up in the filters utilized by the State Department, advisors, speechwriters, and the other whiz kids in the Bush administration’s cabinet. Words like: jihad, Islamofascism, terror, and Islamic radicalism. The President properly identified our civilization’s enemy as being an Islamic one, while at the same time reaching out to Muslims who are opposed to the continuation of fourteen centuries of jihad terror against the infidel. He was careful to lay out the case that we are war with the core Islamic doctrine of jihad, but he didn’t explicitly name it as such. I suppose this leaves some wiggle room for the existence of the “peaceful inner struggle” type of jihad.
Mr. Bush spoke about the concept of Khilafah or the Caliphate—Islam’s monolithic sharia state led by the Khalifah (Caliph)—which is established by means of armed, violent, expansionist jihad. Again, he didn’t come out to directly decry this fundamental point of Islamic dogma as the arrogant, intolerant philosophy that it is, but I doubt that the message was missed by those to whom this condemnation was addressed, and it certainly got my attention.
The President compared Islamic terror to the oppressive ideology of communism, last century’s principal object of American revulsion and animus. He spoke with deliberate contempt for the vile jihad program of orthodox Islam, and he pointedly made it clear that liberal democracy is superior to such inhuman barbarism. This open and unapologetic denunciation is a humiliating backhand to the Islamosupremacist psyche, and will be viewed as a direct challenge, which is to say it is the opposite of the enervated culture of Western multicult appeasement so often exploited by the Religion of Peace.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by what I read in the transcript of Mr. Bush’s speech. Sure, he quoted the misleading Quranic verse 5:32* that is so often dragged out by Islamic apologists and their useful idiots, but he’s talking to the nation and the world, not to a blog audience. I kind of have to let it slide, as much as it may rankle me.
Dubya had a specific message crafted for a specific audience: the mujahideen and the faithful who support them in word and deed, and the infidels who have been wondering if he has a firm grasp on why jihad is a real threat to America, to our interests, and to our friends. Everyone else is asleep and/or playing dumb partisan games of ignorant, uninformed spite. How he named what he was talking about was nowhere near as important as the fact that he knows what he’s talking about.
*Quran, 5:30-33:
His soul prompted him [Cain] to slay his brother [Abel]; he slew him, and thus became one of the lost. Then God sent down a raven, which clawed the earth to show him how to bury the naked corpse of his brother. “Alas!” he cried. “Have I not strength enough to do as this raven has done and so bury my naked brother’s corpse?” And he repented.
That was why We laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind.
Our apostles brought them veritable proofs: yet many among them, even after that, did prodigious evil in the land.
Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.
In context, this ayat (verse) is an indictment of the moral character of the Jews and divine sanction (Muslims view the Quran as God’s literal word) for killing the enemies of Islam (those who make “villainy” or “evil” or “disorder” in the land).
Copyright ©2005 Patrick D. O’Brien: may not be copied, published, or otherwise used (except for quotes) without express permission of author. Originally posted at Clarity & Resolve.
Related: Islam