E Pluribus Unum, All of Them Together (II)

Apart from the simplicity of the fallacy, it also underscores a lamentable and potentially fatal lack of knowledge and understanding of Islam. How ever does one explain to postmoderns that any Christian clergyman is not the equivalent of every Muslim imam, and that Jihad isn't any war that somehow involves religion? The concept of Jihad is based on Islamic dogma alone. Within Christianity there isn't anything even remotely resembling it.

Even the much vilified Crusades were wars to reconquer Christian holy lands that had fallen under the terror campaigns of the Prophet's armies and as such don't qualify for Jihad.

Another bee in the postmodern bonnet - the discovery of the Americas and the subsequent conversion of the native Indians - was originally a quest of exploration for a shorter route to the Indies, and as such doesn't qualify either. Social wrongs by the way, were addressed by the totally innovative Laws of Burgos (1512), Valladolid (1513) and the New Laws of 1542, instituted on the initiatives of Dominican Friar Antonio de Montesinos and Father Francisco de Vitoria. These Acts are considered the birth of international law.

For a shortcut, reading the Politically Incorrect Guide (PIG) to Islam would help towards a better understanding of the concept of Jihad, but for the time being our Hindu friends can help out. The Editorial to "The Next World Conflict" on The Naimisha Journal (Volume 2, Number 1, 2002) warns us that Jihad's principle tactical tool is terror sanctioned by religion ... it cannot be treated as ordinary war ... "terror struck into the hearts of the enemy is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved."

This makes instructive reading for the aficionados of hotchpotch! The Journal goes on quoting a book, 'The Quranic Concept of War' written by a brigadier in the Pakistani army. The tome carries a prologue by one of Pakistan's former presidents, another military strongman known as General Zia Ul Haq. "The source of this ideology is the Quran, and the doctrine of total war ... of the military campaigns of the Prophet. More than mere military campaigns and battles, the Holy Prophet's operations ... are an integral and inseparable part of the divine message revealed to us in the Holy Quran ... The war he planned and carried out was total to the infinite degree. It was waged on all fronts: internal and external, political and diplomatic, spiritual and psychological, economic and military."

I kept this link to the BBC news article "Islamabad faces suicide bomb call" for which the Biblical quote "as you sow, so shall you reap" could have been invented. Pakistan's President Musharraf may be having tea and sharing jokes with John Stewart, but I can't help feeling - as with the Saudi's - he's playing two tableaux at once, since duplicity towards infidels is entirely considered a done thing. Let's not forget that Taliban Afghanistan was Made in Pakistan: hanging rape victims in football pitches and banning general education, as well as wrecking the entire local entertainment industry seemed at the time preferable over chaos. Getting the genie back into the bottle in another matter.

It also sheds light on the breathtaking way in which Islamists always seem able to turn the tables. It leaves one half of the audience reeling with astonishment, while the other fifty percent or so, blindly repeats the irrationality. Although Al Qa'ida's attacks on the US/S Cole, the Twin Towers and the African Embassies to name but a few, all happened prior to the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, which were a reaction to 9/11 (yesss they were!), in their view it is Islam that was first attacked; they are the defenders and it is the West that is the aggressor, as the anti war crowd doesn't stop reminding us.

Naimisha Journal contributor N.S. Rajaram in 'Background: Jihad as Threat to Civilization' explains this triumphantry of unreason as follows: "The central theme behind the causes of war ... was the cause of Allah ... In the pursuit of this cause, the Muslims were first permitted to fight, but were later commanded to fight the Way of God as a matter of religious obligation and duty. As a result, those who resist it are the aggressors, and it becomes necessary to fight a 'defensive' war to overcome them in their own territory! But this Jihad doctrine does not stop here; it goes on to encompass the whole world ... It is a universal doctrine, to be applied to all of us, and not just the believers."

You can see and hear the doctrine in action here. Islamists deal wholesale in these unreasons (no wonder they are admired by postmodernism). Note for example that suicide bombing isn't considered suicide - which is Haram in Islam; since however the deed causes the actor to be dispatched to 'paradise' forthwith, it cannot be considered suicide. This is also the reason why Muslims killing Muslims isn't murder: the victims go straight to their inevitable and ultimate destination in paradise, so it's just sending them on their way a little earlier. By this rationality, killing them is actually doing them a favour.

Which is all very well, as far as the alarmist and the 'cynical exploitation of an obvious lie to crassly enhance neocon c.q. Republican political power' is concerned. On the contrary according to some, nothing particularly epic or existential is at hand. As far as they are concerned "the great secular triumph of (more or less) free markets, a world economy, democracy, individual rights, socialized economic security, and their management by merit-based technocrats will be an inevitable continuity in human affairs", comments Tony Blankley in 'Is there Writing on the Wall' yesterday on Townhall.com.

"Our nation and Europe seem to have hardened in their divisions on those topics ... a sense of futility is increasingly hard to resist." It would seem the discourse isn't going anywhere, any time soon. The age of reason was in another epoque.