the head of the snake

Submitted by Charles Martel (United States), May 12, 2019 at 18:40

Iran, most visibly thru its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, has been the principal impetus driving the so-called Palestinians in their serial aggressions against Israel. Tactically, the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank, Gaza and parts of East Jerusalem has done little but embolden her adversaries.

Philosophically, the continued persistence of the Al-Aqsa mosque atop literally the holiest Jewish land on the planet exemplifies a core problem with Islam - which is that conquest and supersession of all rivals is "built into its DNA". Imagine how inconceivable is the inverse where the Kaaba in Mecca is destroyed and a giant synagogue erected atop the wreckage and you begin to appreciate the dichotomy and the danger in misperceiving Islam as simply another religion and the Palestinians as just a sort of subjugated minority.

In truth, the Palestinians are merely the tip of the Islamic sword presently wielded by Iran. But the problem of Islam extends far beyond Iran and it is only getting worse We've now Islamists in the United States Congress and longstanding populations of Christians are being systematically wiped out in Africa and Asia. Jews are fleeing an increasingly Islamic France as German Jews did in the 1930s.

Western Europe is facing an existential crisis similar to that which metamorphosed formerly Christian Lebanon to Islamic in the 1970s. Look ahead two or three decades and the chances that England, Germany and France will remain secular societies based on a Judeo-Christian weltanschauung don't seem likely.

Some, including Dr. Pipes believe the antidote to fundamentalist Islam is moderate Islam. Others, including myself, believe that moderate Islam is no more a possibility than moderate Naziism. I fervently hope Dr. Pipes is correct and that I am mistaken but much evidence seems to point to a far less happy outcome.

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