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 lthough
a great deal has been written about Islamic terrorism since September
11, the most cogent description of that phenomenon comes from Britain's
former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. She compares it to early
Communism: "Islamic extremism today, like Bolshevism in the
past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted
by fanatical, well-armed devotees."
Mrs. Thatcher
might have added that both Bolshevism and Islamism use strikingly
similar language, methods, and goals. The Bolsheviks conducted their
crusade under the banner of "class war"; the Islamists
call their crusade a "holy war" (jihad). The Bolsheviks
had nothing but contempt for Mensheviks, and other socialist democrats,
who argued that socialism was not supposed to come about through
blood and terror; the Islamists similarly despise traditional Islamic
jurists who reject the indiscriminate murder of civilians as contrary
to Islamic law. The Bolsheviks sought to place society in a Marxist-Leninist
straightjacket; the Islamists want to bring every aspect of life
under the control of the sharia (Islamic law). The Bolsheviks
hoped to conquer the world for Communism; the Islamists seek to
win the world for Islam.
One of the
greatest tragedies of the 20th century was the West's failure to
act against Bolshevism in its earliest, most vulnerable period.
Those who sought to do so, like Winston Churchill, were dismissed
by their contemporaries — as George Bush is currently being
dismissed by the Europeans — as reactionary know-nothings.
Yet Churchill's warning, delivered in 1919, bears repeating today:
[The Bolsheviks]
seek as the first condition of their being the overthrow and destruction
of all existing institutions and of every State and Government
now standing in the world. They too aim at a worldwide and international
league, a league of the failures, the criminals, the unfit, the
mutinous, the morbid, the deranged and the distraught in every
land; and between them and such order of civilization as we have
been able to build up since the dawn of history there can, as
Lenin rightly proclaims, be neither truce nor pact.
Replace Lenin
with bin Laden (or Khomeini, or Saddam Hussein, or that unregenerate
arch-terrorist, Yassir Arafat) and you have an excellent picture
of what we are up against today.
Fortunately,
a few Western figures appear to have learned something from the
75-year struggle with Bolshevism. Churchillian leaders like President
George W. Bush and former Prime Minister Thatcher are not about
to sit back and allow today's Bolsheviks to acquire the weapons
of mass destruction with which they can terrorize the world. They
are determined to act — and the future of civilization hangs
on their success.
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