HOW TO AVOID A LOOMING CATASTROPHY

Submitted by carl (United States), Feb 28, 2006 at 13:41

Muslims are working around the clock to convert as many westerners as possible. There is a coming confrontation between the Arab world and their Muslim proxies and the Western world. In history there have always been nations who longed greedily for supremacy and fought one another. The French and the British, the Germans and the Russians, The Russians and the Americans. Now the Arabs feel that their turn has come for supremacy.

This conflict will not be won with weapons alone. This will be a psychological war more than a military war. Much in the same way Muhammad had fought his enemies. Here the Muslims have complete superiority because of the use devious rules which the West has not even began to comprehend. The Muslims are thinking centuries ahead while the West vision is limited to a fixation on tolerance and freedom and democracy in the present. This aspect alone makes the West completely vulnerable and inferior in the conflict.

Another handicap of the West is it's belief that "if we are kind and just and open and play by the rules then that means that all others will do so". The Muslims have no intention of playing by any rules. There is no issue of conscience and honor for Muslims as the Quran has absolved a Muslim from honoring his or her word or any agreement with a non Muslim.

The West is at a great disadvantage because of its social situation. The super-industrialization and advanced technology have reduced tremendously the contact and bonding between people. Human beings need one another's company as much as air and water. Humans could not have survived without the trust and reliance one another. Being alone in the wilderness always meant certain death. Our genes are made to trigger depression when we are lonely. But suddenly so many of Westerners are extremely lonely, with no group to relate to and to bond with. There are millions of depressed people who long for camaraderie and bonding, warmth and attention. Depression and anger go hand in hand. Being depressed comes with being angry at whatever real or imaginary injustice that caused depression. And here is where the Muslim camp taps on a resource as valuable as the oil in the Arab world. It should be no surprise that discontent and emotional vulnerability on of many westerners is exploited the most. It not a coincidence that here is an exponential growth of websites that target westerners to convert.

There are few things more satisfying to the nature of humans than to have power over one another. Whether you can get others to do what you tell them by threatening them with a gun or with a scripture the satisfaction is enormous. This is a side of religion that is subtle and confusing. Muslims (in the same way as Christians had done once) are taking great satisfaction from the power and the rush of converting the more technologically advanced Westerners. Once on a website geared towards conversion I posed the question to my handler and said that I have doubts whether he is encouraging me to follow Islam because he thinks is the right thing or because he gets a satisfaction from getting me to submit (to God of course which happens to coincide with my handler's ambition). The chat room was monitored by other "teachers" and the supervisor intervened as my handler could not find an answer right away. The answer was that it is a great joy to bring someone to the right path. Once again I made the point the right path also happens to be what he believes was the right path. In my view there is no escape from this aspect of proselytizing. But Islamic countries forbid proselytizing within their countries. No church is allowed to be built in Saudi Arabia. Yet the Saudis have built one of the largest mosques in Rome.

The uneven approach of the West to the Arab Islamist ambitions will come at a heavy price in this conflict. It is as if the Western intellectual, mostly liberal, mindset has lost it's ability to think straight. I witnessed the most obvious example when listening to NPR show last year. Three young Muslims were invited to speak about Islam in the wake of the London bombings and the notion that the bombers were using (following?) instructions in the Quran.

The complaint of the guests was that the media is vilifying islam by saying that the suicide bombers were Muslim. This was considered a great injustice, that the suicide bombers were just criminals and media never calls a criminal or any other killer a Christian bomber or killer; that the media never call Hitler a Christian dictator yet Osama bin Ladin is refered to as an Islamic terrorist. There was no one to counter this point of view; for example Hitler never quoted the bible when he indoctrinated his followers; nor is the typical criminal in the West following any Christian quotes when he or she commits mass murder.

As far as I know Osama bin Ladin is a devout Muslim and quotes the Quran as part the heart and soul of his struggle. One of the guests was making a point of the great friendship he had with someone he worked with even though "he was raised a Christian". This is a very telling statement. It does not take a scholar to decipher what he meant. But it does take a bit of reading of how the proselytizing view other religions. What the guest meant was that his friend was raised a Christian implying that even though one is raised in another religion one can still revert to Islam. On the websites becoming a Muslim as referred to as "reverting" to the true religion since everyone is born a Muslim. There is no question that Christian missionaries also feel that other religions are not right and that theirs is the right religion. The problem with the NPR scenario is that the guests were not Muslim missionaries but young and intellectual (one was a Harvard medical student if I remember correctly). The second problem I found that there were no counter opinions expressed. An the third problem was that the host himself accepted these comments at face value.

This is only a minor but telling example of the state of the spirits in the clash of civilizations. The West lives in a bubble of illusions built on the false impression that wealth and military power are sufficient to overcome the willpower of fanaticism.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".