Sunday, February 05, 2006
The Defining Event
Sharp changes in civilization's path have a defining event - an event where anyone who's paying attention becomes aware of the change. This defining event occurs after the tipping point, the point where the change in the path is irreversible. Tipping points are hard to see - they are usually deduced historically. They are a matter of judgment, and they may not be singular. The defining event, on the other hand, is a the first big road-side sign on the new highway - a real-time marker.
Looking back at the collapse of the Soviet Union one can make the case for a number of transformative events, or tipping points, afterwhich the collapse was irreversible. In "Reform, Coup and Collapse: The End of the Soviet State", Professor Archie Brown identifies a sequence of such events - including the agreement of the communist party to hold democratic elections in the summer of 1988. The myth of the proletariat wisdom being expressed singularly through the communist party was abandoned. That did not stand out at the time, however, there was no great acclaim.
No one missed the Berlin wall coming down, however, at the hands of the very people it separated. That was the defining event - a real-time marker. It was not a matter of fundamental change in and of itself, it was symbolic. The frontier from East Germany to Hungary had already been opened. The prison walls of the Soviet empire were breached before the Berlin wall came down. It was the defining event because no one could watch the wall coming down and not realize that the Soviet empire was finished.
Within days of 9/11 it was clear that the President Bush and his administration were asking themselves how we can prevent this attack, and our response to this attack, from becoming a war against Islam. The formulation they came up with - the war against terrorism of global reach - is a lame statement of purposes - but completely understandable. We did not want, and have not sought, a war between Western civilization and Islam. That's what Osama wanted - we wanted an Islamic reformation away from the vision of the world-wide caliphate under Sharia.
In the end of course, it takes two parties to decide not to have a war, and the decision of the United States, the EU, and the Anglosphere not to have one with Islam is not going to stand - for it was never our call to make.
The defining event, the real-time marker, that Western civilization is in a war against Islam is happening now, it is the cartoon jihad, a moniker coined by Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch so far as I know. No thinking person can watch demonstrations of 50,000 people, embassies being burned, and open calls for murder in European capitals - all in response to offensive cartoons - and pretend that Western civilization and Islam can coexist. One of them is going to give-out. The war is underway. The cartoon jihad is a largely symbolic event, but the meaning could not be more clear.
Some see the cartoons as a stupid and unnecessary provocation, and they may be all of that, but they were published in September of 2005. This is February of 2006, the decision to use the cartoons to inflame Islam is being made by Imams. Their call is being heeded.
David Duke, Tom Metzger, and their ilk have been trying to ignite a race war in America by preaching white supremacy for years. The neo-nazis speaks to a culture which, in the main - consider them to be irrelevant freaks. A small number of people, either raised to hatred, or abject failures in society, buy-in because it provides meaning to their small lives. There will always be provocative events and hate-mongers waiting to seize on them. That's not the critical variable - the critical variable is whether the culture the hate-mongers speak to has any interest in what they say.
In Islam, we have a huge number of people raised to hatred - perhaps a majority. The more democracies we promote - the more direct evidence we get. The electoral success of Hamas, the celebration of a Palestinian woman as a bomb-baby breeder, the rise of the violent Muslim brotherhood in Egypt. The Imams are the David Duke's of their world - but they are speaking to a very large number of Muslims - particularly outside the U.S - who buy-in to the story. Look at this photo in the Jihad Watch post. This a baby girl being taught to love Al Qaeda and kill infidels - growing up in London. If she's loyal to the culture her parents instill in her - she'll blow-up, rather than grow-up. Either she has the future her parents want for her, or Great Britain has a future as a democratic country. Choose one.
About one month ago, Mark Steyn wrote an article published in the New Criterion and in the Opinion Journal, entitled "It's the Demography, Stupid". Mark Steyn is a phenomenal columnist - but this piece was extraordinary even for him. I put aside a copy - and read it again a month later - to see if the impact was diminished by time. It has not. The article explains the fatal calculus of the post-Christian birth-rate in Westernized democracies, and the inevitable drift towards the rule of Islam in the EU states. The Imams have read it - they get it. They believe Europe needs them more then they need the Europeans. The westernized post-Christian democracies cannot sustain themselves.
Why would the Imams choose to push now, when they need only sit back and let the population dynamics do their work for them? I believe the reason is that the Arab Islamists are not happy about the Persians moving to the front of the pack in the race to have a full-blown Jihad with the infidels. If there's anything Islamists hate more than infidels - its another group of Islamists.
The cartoons are incidental. If they were not available another cause would be found. The Islamic culture is ready to kill to demonstrate the power of Allah over the West. This video by Michelle Malkin is a reminder - the cartoons are not the first time Islamists have been incited - it doesn't take much. Western civilization, a free press, equality of women, religious freedom - these things cannot exist in a manner that does not offend Muslims. The fundamental change, the tipping points for irreversible change have already occurred. What were they? Who knows? The formation of Israel, the failure to support the Shah, the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, there are a multitude to choose from. Fundamentally - Islam has failed to develop a culture compatible with individual freedom and modernity.
This failed culture has a billion believers. They have been largely held at bay in the abject poverty that their culture consigns them to - or in hyper-violent, oil-fed police states. They have been unleashed - through democratic reforms - and emigration. No honest person can watch the cartoon jihad and believe we are headed towards an Islamic reformation. Indeed - the Imams are with Osama, they believe this is their hour of supreme triumph. If there is to be an Islamic reformation - it will happen after the war with the West - not in place of it.
What I would ask every American, Dane, Swede, Norwegian, Australian, Brit, German, Italian, Dutchman, Spaniard and Frenchman is this: The Islamists will kill to see their world vision succeed, will you kill to see that stopped, or submit to Sharia?
Update Feb. 8 Claudia Rosettt has a piece on Cartoon Jihad in National Review Online here. One point she emphasizes is that this is not about cartoons - with which I agree. She also notes that "in the free world the job of government and politicians is not to opine upon cartoons, but to lay down the law that no one may with impunity threaten our liberty and lives." Precisely.
Update #2 for Feb. 8: Little Green Footballs has a picture from an Egyptian newspaper publishing the very same cartoons in October of 2005. No day of rage. It's not about cartoons - the Imams want a war. In the LGF posting immediately following the Egyptian newspaper note, there is a 'moderate' cleric from Qatar telling Muslims they must rage for the prophet.
Update Feb. 9: The Jawa Report is following the sad but predictable collapse of the will to fight for freedom in the EU in response to the Cartoon Jihad protests. See Creeping Facism in Europe: Press Regulation Coming. The Imam's have chosen their targets well - the age of Sharia in Europe is nearly here.
Looking back at the collapse of the Soviet Union one can make the case for a number of transformative events, or tipping points, afterwhich the collapse was irreversible. In "Reform, Coup and Collapse: The End of the Soviet State", Professor Archie Brown identifies a sequence of such events - including the agreement of the communist party to hold democratic elections in the summer of 1988. The myth of the proletariat wisdom being expressed singularly through the communist party was abandoned. That did not stand out at the time, however, there was no great acclaim.
No one missed the Berlin wall coming down, however, at the hands of the very people it separated. That was the defining event - a real-time marker. It was not a matter of fundamental change in and of itself, it was symbolic. The frontier from East Germany to Hungary had already been opened. The prison walls of the Soviet empire were breached before the Berlin wall came down. It was the defining event because no one could watch the wall coming down and not realize that the Soviet empire was finished.
Within days of 9/11 it was clear that the President Bush and his administration were asking themselves how we can prevent this attack, and our response to this attack, from becoming a war against Islam. The formulation they came up with - the war against terrorism of global reach - is a lame statement of purposes - but completely understandable. We did not want, and have not sought, a war between Western civilization and Islam. That's what Osama wanted - we wanted an Islamic reformation away from the vision of the world-wide caliphate under Sharia.
In the end of course, it takes two parties to decide not to have a war, and the decision of the United States, the EU, and the Anglosphere not to have one with Islam is not going to stand - for it was never our call to make.
The defining event, the real-time marker, that Western civilization is in a war against Islam is happening now, it is the cartoon jihad, a moniker coined by Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch so far as I know. No thinking person can watch demonstrations of 50,000 people, embassies being burned, and open calls for murder in European capitals - all in response to offensive cartoons - and pretend that Western civilization and Islam can coexist. One of them is going to give-out. The war is underway. The cartoon jihad is a largely symbolic event, but the meaning could not be more clear.
Some see the cartoons as a stupid and unnecessary provocation, and they may be all of that, but they were published in September of 2005. This is February of 2006, the decision to use the cartoons to inflame Islam is being made by Imams. Their call is being heeded.
David Duke, Tom Metzger, and their ilk have been trying to ignite a race war in America by preaching white supremacy for years. The neo-nazis speaks to a culture which, in the main - consider them to be irrelevant freaks. A small number of people, either raised to hatred, or abject failures in society, buy-in because it provides meaning to their small lives. There will always be provocative events and hate-mongers waiting to seize on them. That's not the critical variable - the critical variable is whether the culture the hate-mongers speak to has any interest in what they say.
In Islam, we have a huge number of people raised to hatred - perhaps a majority. The more democracies we promote - the more direct evidence we get. The electoral success of Hamas, the celebration of a Palestinian woman as a bomb-baby breeder, the rise of the violent Muslim brotherhood in Egypt. The Imams are the David Duke's of their world - but they are speaking to a very large number of Muslims - particularly outside the U.S - who buy-in to the story. Look at this photo in the Jihad Watch post. This a baby girl being taught to love Al Qaeda and kill infidels - growing up in London. If she's loyal to the culture her parents instill in her - she'll blow-up, rather than grow-up. Either she has the future her parents want for her, or Great Britain has a future as a democratic country. Choose one.
About one month ago, Mark Steyn wrote an article published in the New Criterion and in the Opinion Journal, entitled "It's the Demography, Stupid". Mark Steyn is a phenomenal columnist - but this piece was extraordinary even for him. I put aside a copy - and read it again a month later - to see if the impact was diminished by time. It has not. The article explains the fatal calculus of the post-Christian birth-rate in Westernized democracies, and the inevitable drift towards the rule of Islam in the EU states. The Imams have read it - they get it. They believe Europe needs them more then they need the Europeans. The westernized post-Christian democracies cannot sustain themselves.
Why would the Imams choose to push now, when they need only sit back and let the population dynamics do their work for them? I believe the reason is that the Arab Islamists are not happy about the Persians moving to the front of the pack in the race to have a full-blown Jihad with the infidels. If there's anything Islamists hate more than infidels - its another group of Islamists.
The cartoons are incidental. If they were not available another cause would be found. The Islamic culture is ready to kill to demonstrate the power of Allah over the West. This video by Michelle Malkin is a reminder - the cartoons are not the first time Islamists have been incited - it doesn't take much. Western civilization, a free press, equality of women, religious freedom - these things cannot exist in a manner that does not offend Muslims. The fundamental change, the tipping points for irreversible change have already occurred. What were they? Who knows? The formation of Israel, the failure to support the Shah, the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, there are a multitude to choose from. Fundamentally - Islam has failed to develop a culture compatible with individual freedom and modernity.
This failed culture has a billion believers. They have been largely held at bay in the abject poverty that their culture consigns them to - or in hyper-violent, oil-fed police states. They have been unleashed - through democratic reforms - and emigration. No honest person can watch the cartoon jihad and believe we are headed towards an Islamic reformation. Indeed - the Imams are with Osama, they believe this is their hour of supreme triumph. If there is to be an Islamic reformation - it will happen after the war with the West - not in place of it.
What I would ask every American, Dane, Swede, Norwegian, Australian, Brit, German, Italian, Dutchman, Spaniard and Frenchman is this: The Islamists will kill to see their world vision succeed, will you kill to see that stopped, or submit to Sharia?
Update Feb. 8 Claudia Rosettt has a piece on Cartoon Jihad in National Review Online here. One point she emphasizes is that this is not about cartoons - with which I agree. She also notes that "in the free world the job of government and politicians is not to opine upon cartoons, but to lay down the law that no one may with impunity threaten our liberty and lives." Precisely.
Update #2 for Feb. 8: Little Green Footballs has a picture from an Egyptian newspaper publishing the very same cartoons in October of 2005. No day of rage. It's not about cartoons - the Imams want a war. In the LGF posting immediately following the Egyptian newspaper note, there is a 'moderate' cleric from Qatar telling Muslims they must rage for the prophet.
Update Feb. 9: The Jawa Report is following the sad but predictable collapse of the will to fight for freedom in the EU in response to the Cartoon Jihad protests. See Creeping Facism in Europe: Press Regulation Coming. The Imam's have chosen their targets well - the age of Sharia in Europe is nearly here.
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3 Comments:
Great minds think alike...
Check out "Another Sarajevo?" at "The Drum and Cannon". A trivial incident in the Balkans in 1914 started a war that cost 10 million lives. Is the West's "in-your-face" approach likely to do the same?
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
By 
GroundState, at
8:24 PM
Jack - it may indeed lead to a war - in fact I am confident it will now. But what is the alternative? We cannot submit to their will? We cannot organize our society so that it does not offend Muslims.
By GroundState, at
8:25 PM
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