‘What went wrong?” That was the title of Bernard Lewis’s landmark book on Islam’s thousand years of global dominance followed by the decline of the caliphate between the 17th century, when Muslim armies were halted at the Gates of Vienna, and the early 20th century, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. This fall from grace left deep scars — grievances expressed most lethally on Sept. 11, 2001, soon after Professor Lewis’s book was completed.
Ten years later, the question we might be asking is “What has gone wrong with us?” The atrocities of 9/11 were said to be a new Pearl Harbor that would once again “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
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Instead, many, if not most, of our political leaders fight fitfully and without conviction, uncertain about both the nature and the gravity of the threat. One example: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Britain’s storied intelligence service, last week called the 9/11 attacks “a crime, not an act of war.” She did not explain why she thought using hijacked planes as missiles to destroy the political, military, and financial centers of the free world was akin to a bank robbery. She did not cite other instances in which common criminals seek no monetary benefit, kill themselves during the commission of their crimes, and call that “martyrdom.” She did not say whether she thought Osama bin Laden, as a criminal suspect, should have been entitled to a presumption of innocence rather than bullets through the chest and head.
She did, however, note what she imagines to be “the causes and roots” of the many acts of terrorism carried out by Muslim militants in the name of Islam, including, as usual, “the plight of Palestinians” and the belief that the West is “exploiting their oil and supporting dictators.” According to the Guardian newspaper, she added that terrorist campaigns could not be solved militarily, so she “hoped there were those — she implied in Western governments — who were considering having ‘talks with al-Qaida.’”
A second example: National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said in a recent speech that he and President Obama know what the Iranians are against but “what are they for?” Have Donilon and Obama read nothing that Iran’s revolutionaries have written? Have they heard nothing that Ayatollah Ali Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have said? Let me boil it down: They are for restoring to Islam the power and glory it enjoyed a millennium ago. They are for the defeat of the Great Satan and the Little Satan and anyone else who defies Allah’s will as they interpret it.
Manningham-Buller, Donilon, Obama, and so many others — they are smart people. So, again, what has gone wrong? I think they have become disoriented. I use the word advisedly.
The “Orient” is the East. Not so long ago, the study of the Middle East and Islam was a discipline called Orientalism. The greatest modern Orientalist was — and for my money, remains — Professor Lewis, now 95 years old and still sharp as a scimitar.
In more than three dozen books, he has detailed the history and cultures of the great Islamic empire founded by fierce and determined conquerors who, starting in the 7th century, pushed west to Spain and east to the Philippines, defeating, among others, Christians and occupying their lands including, in 1453, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (now called Istanbul).
These forces marched north into the European heartland as well, but their ambitions were frustrated in two historic battles. The first was the Battle of Tours in 732 when Charles Martel, leading the Franks, stopped the powerful forces of the Umayyad Caliphate from overrunning what is now France as well as other Western European territories.
The second was the Battle of Vienna in 1683 when Jan Sobieski, king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, seeing the Turks close to breaching the walls of the city, led his outnumbered troops in a daring counterattack. The date was September 12. Pope Innocent XI hailed Sobieski as the “savior of Vienna and Western European civilization.” The Ottoman commander, Kara Mustafa Pasha, was strangled with a silk cord by order of the commander of the Janissaries, the home guard of the Sultan.
But, Mr. May, your own article clearly lays out that Islam has always been militant. So, if the history of Islam is militancy, and the Muslims are aware of their history, then are they not accepting their religion for what it is - namely, that it is one of militancy and dominance?
If Islam truly IS inherently peaceful (the result of a revisionist reading of Islamic history) as so many on the left believe, then the time for spokespersons in that religion to demonstrate their good will and peaceful intentions was many years ago - and they still have not done so.
There may be peaceful Muslims, but there are enough who are militant that those proclaiming peace are rendered irrelevant. And, who knows what they are saying to their adherents in the Middle East? The burden of proof for the peaceful nature of this religion is and was on its adherents.
The fact that our own useful idiots on the left - the blame America first crowd - doesn't get that we are, indeed, in a war, only plays into the jihadists' hands.
The logical extension of your thoughts in this column would be that it is in the best interest of "The West" to identify the most strident advocates of Islam expansion and kill them, or to suppress Islamic history.
Either seems to be a losing proposition. At some point the option of cooperation based on common points of interest must be incorporated into a strategy for confronting a perceived threat. Commerce and trade agreements, education, joint ventures for development projects in the West and in the Muslim countries, must also be prominent stategies.
Dubai, and the wide open commercial opportunities there, represents a wiser point of intersection with the Muslim world than any strategy of intellectual or armed confrontation.
Robo, your first proposal makes the most sense. This is a culture which is militaristic, jingoistic and expansionary. For us to just be left alone requires that they be defeated. Islam didn't bother the West for three hundred years because of the defeat of their forces at Vienna.
If we "identify the most strident advocates of Islam expansion and kill them" then we will have a basis upon which to build "cooperation based on common points of interest".
If we fail to do so, Islamic expansionism will continue. Eventually we will sell them enough rope to hang our own culture.
We don't have to defeat Islam, in fact that is impossible for all practical purposes, but if we separate ourselves from them we can much more easily protect ourselves from them. That is, all spread of Islam in the West, which only began in the 1960s must be stopped, entirely, and what has occurred gradually reversed. Only the rarest Muslim academic or politician or businessman would be allowed in and only on temporary visas, WHERE THEY SERVED US SOME PURPOSE. We can still do business with Muslims as long as they are contained in the lands they have already filled and subjugated. Their religion will keep them weak in the modern era as long as non-Muslims do not build them up or give them technology. Our CIA should keep the various Muslim groups fighting among themselves to keep them occupied. We could try to help non-Muslims in Muslim lands, for instance in Sudan, we should have helped the millions of Christians killed by the Muslims there, instead we just observe the so-called civil war. Even a mild mannered peaceful weak Muslim, in the West, is a threat, as a Muslim, as part of the ummah, as a follower of a religion whose sole purpose is the elimination of non-Muslim governments including our so-called freedoms, so-called Constitution, so-called rule of law, our democracy.
not exactly. the most strident advocates of islamic expansion are the ones that are telling the truth that the "moderates" are conceiling. the strident ones are the best friends we have in the muslim world. they are trying to awaken us from our trance. it is the "moderates" that we should be worried about. they are winning the war that mohammed declared against civilization.
Muhammad is formally, officially, doctrinally, the supreme example of conduct for all Muslims for all time. This is not a tradition, it is core elemental Islam. Muhammad was a terrorist, he broke all ten of the Ten Commandments, he was truly a despicable man. Judging not by the standards of the religion he invented but by the standards of the Bible, upon which Western Civilization was built, Muhammad is evil and presently is in Hell.
The religion of Islam CAN NOT EXIST without violence and Jihad force. That is, there is nothing in the religion that would cause people to voluntarily join it, assuming they are otherwise emotionally healthy and know the truth about Islam. People are born into Islam and there is a death penalty for leaving it. Others join it when the society they are living in becomes Islamic and they find it too difficult to cope as a non-Muslim in that environment, given the nature of Islam.
A reformed Islam, without Jihad, not only wouldn't be Islam any more, but it would cease to exist within a few generations as soon as people found they could leave it and not be killed.
Of course sharia should not be allowed in the West, but Islam itself, Muslims, should also not be allowed in the West. The West WILL NOT SURVIVE Islam within our borders.
While the Battle of Tours was very important in preventing the Caliphate from conquering Western Europe, it was a small affair compared to the Battle of Talas (Abbasid Calphate vs Tang China and Karluks) where 200,000 soldiers fought, of the century of Khazar-Arab wars which saw similar sized armies and which kept The Caliphate checked at the Caucuses.
The notion of rappochement, along with the notion that somehow the West deserved to be attacked and therefore should look to itself (like a woman who is raped should look to her clothes . . . ?), is the manifestation of psychological debility or maybe just plain arrant cowardice.
In any case, it won't work. and there's a reason: Islamist jihadism has laid down the fundamental rule of the game: "we will attack and attack you until we can dominate you utterly. If you don't want this, we challenge you to do the necessary, which is destroy enough of us so that we cannot mount a credible threat against you. Anything short--you lose!"
Islamist Jihad has laid down the fundamental ground rule of this war: "We will attack and attack you and are not afraid to die in doing so. To stop us requires not defeating us, because we will always come back. It requires annihilating us utterly. Do you have the stomach to do this to defend yourselves to that extent? If you do not, we will win, and you are doomed."
Any suggestion for killing millions of Muslims is out of line and totally unnecessary. Remember, most of these people had no choice in becoming a Muslim and really can't leave or they would be killed. All that the West needs to do is keep Islam out of the West, save our civilization. If Islam or Muslims attack us in the future, even after we have totally eliminated Islam from within our borders, then we could begin taking out so-called Islamic holy sites, including even Mecca, but erasing Mecca from the face of the earth, something absolutely possible with our current arsenal, should be held back as a threat to keep them in line.
Are Obama's fantasies drug induced or does he just suffer from delirium? How long has he been affected by his delusional state? Is there even HOPE for him at this point?
America will be safest when Obama is committed to a psychiatric hospital. How about Shutter Island, can we send him somewhere like that?
