Boston attacks alert West to Islamist danger

Submitted by Bart Benschop (Australia), Apr 29, 2013 at 10:10

Dear Mr. Daniel Pipes,

Thank you for your article.

I was born in the Dutch East Indies before WWII, the largest Muslim country in the world where members of my family lived and worked for over three hundred years.
They were mainly navigators, judges and good Calvinist Ministers.
My father was an engineer and my mother a dendrologist, that is someone who studies trees.
One of my grandfathers was a professor of colonial history.

As a child I survived an attack in Soerabaja by East Javanese Muslims just before the Japanese invasion. We survived because our servants managed to smuggle us away. After the end of WWII we were attacked again many times over a period of eighteen months till we were evacuated. Those that were not evacuated and their defenders were all murdered. In the history of the Dutch East Indies one finds a repeating pattern of Muslim Jihadi attacks.

The authorities in the Dutch East Indies was acutely aware of Jihad and knew how to deal with it. All the early Western studies of Al Sharia come from there.

Probably the only successful war against Jihad was in Atjeh on advice of Professor Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje.
One should read his warnings from before 1900 or Winston Churchill's on the border between British India and Afghanistan who were just two of many 'colonials' who understood the threat of Islam and understood how to contain and fight it reliably.
I have lived, worked and traveled widely in Israel, Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and North Africa over some sixty years.

Just as you or Geert Wilders or many others or I, we have a problem explaining Islam and Jihad. The problem as I see it is a phenomenon we call East Indian Deaf, which means only hearing what one wants to hear. The other problem is that nearly all publications on the subject do not translate Arabic properly. Islam to non Muslims is such an alien ideology that it is very difficult to comprehend. Even in Israel today and going back to before 1948 it is still not generally understood.

The study of Arabic and Islam in the West is appalling and have been in decline for a very long time. Muslim ruled, with the exception of the Ottoman Empire, are highly unstable and have violent swings. As Westerners we should stand back, not get involved, only trade with them where it is to our profit and contain them when they step over our borders. The idea of aid in any form is ludicrous.

Kind regards,

Bart Benschop

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