The former speaker of the House gets the war on terror. For one thing, he refuses to call it the “war on terror,” which should be the entry-level requirement for any politician who wants to influence how we wage it. Gingrich grasps that there is an enemy here and that it is a mortal threat to freedom. He knows that if we are to remain a free people, it is an enemy we must defeat. That enemy is Islamism, and its operatives — whether they come as terrorists or stealth saboteurs — are the purveyors of sharia, Islam’s authoritarian legal and political system.
This being the Era of the Reset Button, Gingrich is going about the long-overdue business of resetting our understanding of the civilizational jihad that has been waged against the United States for some 31 years. It is the jihad begun when Islamists overran the American embassy in Tehran, heralding a revolutionary regime that remains the No. 1 U.S. security challenge in the Middle East, as Gingrich argued Thursday in a provocative speech at the American Enterprise Institute.
The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic, and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome.
Second, that outcome is the death of freedom. In Islamist ideology, sharia is deemed to be the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society — for Islam is not merely a religious doctrine, but a comprehensive socio-economic and political system. As the former speaker elaborated, sharia embodies principles and punishments that are abhorrent to Western values. Indeed, its foundational premise is anti-American, holding that we are not free people at liberty to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, that people are instead beholden to the Islamic state, which is divinely enjoined to impose Allah’s laws.
Sharia, moreover, is anti-equality. It subjugates women and brutally punishes transgressors, particularly homosexuals and apostates. While our law forbids cruel and unusual punishments, Gingrich observed that the brutality in sharia sanctions is not gratuitous, but intentional: It is meant to enforce Allah’s will by striking example.
On this last point, Gingrich offered a salient insight, one well worth internalizing in the Sun Tzu sense of knowing one’s enemy. Islamists, violent or not, have very good reasons for the wanting to destroy the West. Those reasons are not crazy or wanton — and they have nothing to do with Gitmo, Israel, cartoons, or any other excuse we conjure to explain the savagery away. Islamists devoutly believe, based on a well-founded interpretation of Islamic doctrine, that they have been commanded by Allah to kill, convert, or subdue all who do not adhere to sharia — because they regard Allah as their only master (“There is no God but Allah”). It is thus entirely rational (albeit frightening to us) that they accept the scriptural instruction that the very existence of those who resist sharia is offensive to Allah, and that a powerful example must be made of those resisters in order to induce the submission of all — “submission” being the meaning of Islam.
It makes no sense to dismiss our enemies as lunatics just because “secular socialist” elites, as Gingrich called them, cannot imagine a fervor that stems from religious devotion. We ought to respect our enemies, he said. Not “respect” in Obama-speak, which translates as “appease,” but in the sense of taking them seriously, understanding that they are absolutely determined to win, and realizing that they are implacable. There is no “moderate” sharia devotee, for sharia is not moderate. Gingrich noted that in response to global outcry against the prospect of death by stoning for an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, convicted of adultery, the mullahs’ great concession appears to be that she will be hanged instead. Islamism is not a movement to be engaged, it is an enemy to be defeated.
And it has been since Mohammad came slobbering and raving out of his cave.
There are moderate Muslims. There are Muslims who take their religion with a glass of ice cold beer. There are Muslims who believe that they can co-exist. There are Muslims who were simply born Muslim and know not much more about it than that their parents were Muslim.
Not all Muslims care to spread their religion.
That! We must not forget.
However, there are millions of Muslims who believe that Allah commands them to spread their religion. Through their life path as well as through teaching, witnessing and preaching and, yes, by there are many millions of Muslims who wholeheartedly believe in conversion (reversion) by the sword.
The problem with Islam and Muslims is that it is an enormously pressurised world. Peer pressure is a real danger. I have seen peer pressure turn a room full of irreligious Muslims who drink and cavort and chase girls all through the night and weekend into a motley crue of raving fundamentalists simply by the entrance of one religious individual.
Read their histories. Once Jihad is called, no one will dare denounce it for fear of being “unIslamic.” Read of the Afghan Constitutional Convention and how their Constitution came to include Sharia and the Qu’ran. It was not a forgone conclusion. It entered the room with a Mullah who publicly dared the assembly to exclude it by asking who in the assembly would stand against Sharia and the Qu’ran.
No one dared do so.
Not even Rashid Doostom. Doostum, who is one of the most secular Afghani of the age. Doostum who is infamous for his riotous drinking and womanizing. Dostum who hated the taliban and has publicly stated that he doesn’t see the need for women to cover themselves nor the reason that they should not attend university or be shut in the home.
This man mounted on horse back and did battle against the Taliban alongside US Special Forces and stood in battle and taunted the Talib Commanders.
This man was too fearful to denounce the inclusion of Islam, the Qu’ran and Sharia law in the Afghan Constitution.
To be seen as an infidel, one who is against Islam, in the lands occupied by Islam is to write your own death warrant. From the highest in society to the lowest.
Ask Malalai Joya. Read of her life and mission.
There are many Muslims who wish to live under a secular government and to live out their religion in private.
The problem is the Mullahs and those who use Islam as a means to power.
Our war is with the Mullahs. It’s with the Ayatollahs.
Even then, not all Mullahs wish to live out their lives as Government agents. Look to the Sufis who believe that religion is a private matter and that all religious leaders should stay out of politics.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran are the enemies of freedom.
Rid ourselves of them and the tide turns.
I’ll state again. Not all Muslims and not all of Islam is the enemy. Just as I believe that not all Christians desire to force their religion on all and sundry. I believe the same of Muslims.
There are key elements.
1. Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia
2. Iranian Revolutionary Islam
Take out those two and the battle is won.
Hezbollah, the Quds force and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are the major exporters of Iranian Shi’a War on the West.
Wahhabism is the father of all Sunni terror lords and murderers. The Taliban and the Deobandi of Central Asia, Pakistan and India are all end points that can be traced to the Nejd of Saudi Arabia and their evil cult of al Wahhab. The Muslim Brotherhood is the father of all Sunni Terrorist Organizations. The MB were followers of al Wahhab and his desert madness.
Yet, we claim that Saudi Arabia is our ally.
And Iran is defended in the West by fools. Fools who side with Hizbollah against Lebanon and Israel. Fools who support Hamas.
Fools who support a Wahhabi Shrine mere feet away from Ground Zero.
