Re: Losing the Battle with Islam


*elle* wrote:

Comments invited:

"The Losing Battle with Islam, by David Selbourne
From Austin Cline,

The biggest international issue today is the growing militancy of
Islam. Everyone knows about it, but not everyone is fully aware of the
background. Islam has been growing more militant for decades, and this
militancy has taken a variety of forms over time. The religious
extremism of today may be incredibly significant, but it is also just
one piece of a larger social movement: Arab and Muslim efforts to live
in societies not dominated by Western political and cultural
institutions.

More stilumus required?

"In Selbourne's view Americans are at a loss to understand why they
are so hated, so they are turning their fire on their leader. "When
you like yourself well enough, it is very hard to hear that
anti-Americanism is rife in the world, so he's made a scapegoat.
Americans don't want to be tarred with his brush."



As for the Europeans: "They're anti-American because of fear of
Islam, which is being projected as Bush-phobia. People are very
frightened by Islam's strength and they need to blame somebody for
it."

The worst of it is that people in the West are so willing to suspend
their judgment about Muslim extremists, including clerics who issue
bloodcurdling anti-semitic remarks or denunciations of women's
emancipation and homosexuality, while vilifying Bush as a liar.

If, like Selbourne, you take the long view, there is not much point in
hating the Americans or their president. "The odium for Bush is
clouding people's judgment," he says. "It's not Bush's fault
that Islam is advancing. It is being propelled by its own organic
power."

He is pessimistic about the outcome of this religious and cultural war.
"We're up against a terrific foe. The United States and the
non-Muslim world are in a desperate predicament. We're damned if we
do and damned if we don't take them on."

In Iraq, he fears the situation is becoming hopeless and that Bush is
chasing an "illusion about the democratisation of the Islamic
world".

"You know what's happening. The United States is trying to groom
democratic liberal figures in the Muslim world and I fear it will lead
to the same end as President Diem in Vietnam." (Diem, America's
placeman, was killed by his own generals in 1963 after he was
overthrown in a military coup.) The irony is that history may well be
on Islam's side with or without violent tactics. "I don't think
there's any need for Islamists to be killing and terrorising people
- even though such behaviour is sanctioned in the Koran, no matter
what people say," Selbourne says. "Islam is advancing willy nilly
as a moral force, whether you like that moral force or not."

For Selbourne, the fragmentation of western society has left it
intensely vulnerable to a challenge of this nature. "We used to have
an animating idea," he points out. "It used to be a belief in civil
society and community. We're dismantling the social order in which
Muslims so firmly believe in their own society."

Islam is a religion on the rise, winning converts among the poor and
needy, from Africa and Indonesia to inmates of American jails.
"It's the politics of the underdog, the marginalised. If it's the
socialism of our time, with an ethic that appeals to the oppressed, it
will have the same force."

We must not forget, he warns, that it is also "the last faith" in
the Abrahamic trinity of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. "It's a
very powerful argument because it believes it has superseded the other
faiths. It's clear that the non-Muslim world lacks the moral energy
which Muslims are justifiably proud of."

In other words, if we lose the battle, forget Bush, we have only
ourselves to blame."

.

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