A perspective on America and Islam
Many muslims consider the current war on terror to be a war on Islam. The muslims actually involved in promoting terrorism in some way, whether it's by contributing to one of the so-called "charities" whose money goes for guns and ammunition, or by pulling a black balaclava over their heads and joining the shrieking crowds, see the war on terrorism to be nothng less than a war on Islam.
The "Sunday" muslims who prefer a secular government and don't follow strict Islamic rules and whose female members dress in modern styles, are divided. They see the Islamic hard-liners and extremists as being a threat to their own way of life, yet see the war on terror as being too undiscriminating toward differences in Islam, and feel threatened by it as well as the terrorists it's aimed against. This results in them ultimately siding with the extremists if pressure is brought to bear, such as an invasion of their country by people not of their basic faith. It's a catch-22 situation.
All religions that grow in adherents tend to become less and less like spiritual societies and more like governments. As the power of the head priests increases, so does their desire for more power. For example, the Vatican is a separate country from Italy and the Pope is a Head of State. Powerful religions want to dominate their adherents and become governments within governments. Often, there's a lot of competition between secular governments and the dominant religion for power. In fact, a number of dictators and kings have appointed themselves Pope, so as not to share power.
Islam solved this problem by declaring the religion to also be the government. It's all in one. Christianity did not and this is why Christianity was ultimately able to resolve it's differences with government and get along peacefully. Islam and secular government are basically antagonistic of each other. Iran was secular for a long time but this finally fell apart under the endless attacks from the imams, who wanted to take away the power for themselves. When you have a population that's taught that Islamic law and rule is proper, it should be expected that a secular government would be constantly defending itself from within.
This is why the believers of Islam have repeatedly attempted to conquer the world. This is the third major attempt since the creation of this aggressive doctrine. "Moderate" muslims are in fact moderate in that they don't want to pray 5 times a day and don't see a need to follow a strict Islamic diet, or force anyone else to do so either. Still, they are muslims, and if fundamentalist muslims gain enough power to intimidate them, most will join them rather than fight them.
In Iraq, the Shiites and Sunnis have both become radicalized and fight us and each other. In Iran, which is almost all Shiite and so has no conflict between sects, there is a strong underground and increasing dissatisfaction with the dictatorship of the ayatollahs, resulting in some low-scale internal warfare. A recent election demonstrated this trend away from the current hard-line stance. The difference between Iraq and Iran this way is the result of Iran's having enjoyed a long period of secular government, prosperity and Western influence. The people became accustomed to freedom and variety in food, dress and music. Losing all that, losing their prosperity and being forced to adhere to strict Islamic law instead has naturally created dissatisfaction.
The most likely scenario is that Islam will cycle in Iran and other Mid-East countries between being fundamentalist and moderate. Historically, this holds true. Turkey is another good example. Long a secular nation, it is now sliding back into the fundamentalist morass that it rose out of. Someday it will no doubt rise up as secular once again. This is how Islam is. Islamic cultures only advance when they become moderate. Once they slide back into stone-age fundamentalism again, poverty and degradation again rule the land.
There are lessons to be learned here. First, we're not going to get rid of Islam. There's really only one way to deal with it and that's to stop feeding the oil producing Islamic countries, to start with. This means we need to be energy-independent and we need to make a huge effort to achieve this. It has to be done and soon. This will increase our own treasury and greatly reduce theirs and the financing of more terrorism.
We must stop adventuring into the Middle East. If we were actually going after the true sources of terrorism in Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, we wouldn't have all the problems we have now and we would be seen as righteous warriors. Instead we're seen as crude interlopers, which just invites more aggression against us.
We need to recognize the nature of Islam within America and boot out the muslims and tear down their mosques. There is no room in a secular nation for Islam any more than there is room in Islam for a secular nation.
We should amend our Constitution to remove equal protections for non-citizens. These protections have lost their usefulness and are being terribly abused. Foreigners caught bringing addictive drugs into our country should be treated the same as terrorist combatants. Trials are for Citizens.
The laws allowing the ACLU to be paid attorneys fees should be repealed as this will take away their power to scare people and organizations into following their dictates. The ACLU is founded as a non-profit organization and it should be made to be one. The ACLU benefits terrorism by representing the interests of terrorists and the terrorists themselves. The ACLU is essentially athiest in nature and has been attacking any reference to God or Christianity in government since its inception. Stifling Christianity in America is a known Islamist goal.
American corporations that trade with any Islamic country should be heavily taxed accordingly to discourage such trade. Goods from Islamic countries should have heavy tariffs placed on them, to both discourage trade with them and to encourage them to place high tariffs on our own goods and discourage our corporations from doing business with them.
In short, we need to become insular as a nation, close our borders, restrict our trade and reward only those nations that are truly democratic. America became a democracy after a revolution. So did Mexico and other nations. Revolutions are no guarantee that democracy will result, as Cuba, for instance, demonstrates. However, the revolutions keep occurring until democracy is finally established. Our efforts to democratize other nations have always failed and have sometimes resulted in the opposite effect. We have failed once again in Iraq and are failing in Afghanistan.
We need to get our own house back into order and try keeping it that way.
We can't keep on trading and dealing with our enemies. This is utter stupidity. We aren't setting an example for them to rise up to, to become like. We are enabling them to defeat us. The only way to beat them is to become isolated from them and let them beat themselves. If we truly want them to become democracies, we have to get out of the way and let them do it on their own, to overthrow their oppressive regimes, exactly the same as we did.
Labels: Christianity vs Islam, dhimmitude, Islam, Islam in America
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