...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Militants? Losers? Jew-haters? Virginizers?: Daniel Pipes says it’s impossible to defeat your enemy if you’re not prepared to identify him. From FrontPage Magazine:

If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."

This timidity translates into an inability to define war goals. Two high-level U.S. statements from late 2001 typify the vague and ineffective declarations issued by Western governments. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defined victory as establishing "an environment where we can in fact fulfill and live [our] freedoms." In contrast, George W. Bush announced a narrower goal, "the defeat of the global terror network" – whatever that undefined network might be.

"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and counterterrorism is the main response.

But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."

In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari‘a).

Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism…

I’d put it to you somewhat differently. The “enemy” are those who are pushing the sharia agenda. Are these folks likely to be open to “an alternative form of Islam”? Doubtful. Any “alternate form” would be immediately discounted as Satanic or the domain of the apostate (which, to the sharia-shillers, often amounts to the same thing). Also, if those who are already practicing an “alternate form of Islam”—Irshad Manji, Tarek Fatah, Salim Mansur and the like—are going to have any influence, they will have to fend off all the death threats, the method those devoted to Islam in its purest form often use to deal with their “deviants”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments (6)

Comments:

#1  17 June 2008 - 12:05

 

Blatchford's ramblings in today's Globe certainly do nothing to advance the counter-jihad. It reads that she'd bonk the jihadi if given the chance.

Anonymous

#2  17 June 2008 - 12:16

 

Those "harmless" young lads? The paintball gang who couldn't shoot straight? Why, they just fell in with the wrong crowd. The whole thing has been overblown by all the "Islamophobes".

scaramouche

#3  17 June 2008 - 12:25

 

Prediction: Mobin Sheikh is going to cost the Canadian taxpayer, directly and indirectly, countless millions in the coming decades as he advances daw'a. This man is a blatant Islamist engaged in uncompromising soft jihad against the Canadian state. But nincompoops like Blatch have fallen for his story.

I reckon his current involvement in the Toronto18 case is to establish himself as a "moderate Muslim" in dhimmified/PC Canadian government circles- an elaborate cover for his real aims. But it would be futile to question him on his true goals, as we'd just be inundated with taqiyyah and kitman.

Anonymous

#4  17 June 2008 - 12:37

 

Right you are. And Sheik has been fighting the "soft jihad" for some time. In fact, I remember very distinctly seeing him and his burqa'd wife (both Polish and Catholic; reverted to become his Missus) at the anti-sharia tribunal protest at Queen's Park. He and the wife were there to make a pitch for the pro-sharia forces. Sheikh knows that those "hard jihad" types like the paintball boys are likely to put people's backs up against the encroachments of sharia--the reason he's so keen to co-operate with authorities and shut them down. However, we'd be idiots to think that just 'cause he abjures violence, his pro-sharia agenda is any less of a threat than that of the would-be virginizers.

scaramouche

#5  17 June 2008 - 12:53

 

Quaere, then: Does the Canadian government have the sophistication to a) identify this threat, and b) respond adequately to it?

Or will it take Pipes' "education by murder" to elicit an appropriate state response?

Anonymous

#6  17 June 2008 - 13:12

 

Respond to it? In our purple Kool-Aid-swallowing multishumti society? Highly doubtful. As long as no one's about to blow us up--and enough people remain bone ignorant about the sharia and the jihad imperative--the government is unlikely to perceive the looming threat of the "soft jihad"--or do much of anything to counter it.

scaramouche

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