May - Why Aren't We Killing More Muslims?
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Clifford May-
Ten years later, the question we might be asking: What has gone wrong with us? The atrocities of 9/11 were said to be a new Pearl Harbor that would once again “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Instead, many if not most of our leaders fight fitfully and without conviction, uncertain about both the nature and the gravity of the threat. One example: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Britain’s storied intelligence service, last week called the 9/11 attacks “a crime, not an act of war.” She did not explain why she thought using hijacked planes to destroy the military, political and financial centers of the Free World was akin to a bank robbery. She did not cite other instances in which criminals seek no monetary benefit, kill themselves during the commission of their crimes and call that “martyrdom.” She did not say whether she thought Osama bin Laden should have been entitled to a presumption of innocence rather than a bullet through the head.
A second example: National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said in a recent speech that he and President Barack Obama know what the Iranians are against but “what are they for?” Let me boil it down: They are for restoring to Islam the power and glory it enjoyed a millennium ago. They are for the defeat of the Great Satan and the Little Satan and anyone else who defies Allah’s will as they interpret it.
Manningham-Buller, Donilon, Obama – they are smart people. So, again, what has gone wrong? I think they have become disoriented. I use the word advisedly.
The “Orient” is the east. Not so long ago, the study of the Middle East and Islam was a discipline called Orientalism. The greatest modern Orientalist was – and for my money remains – Professor Lewis, now 95 years old and still sharp as a scimitar.
In more than three dozen books, he has detailed the history of the great Islamic empire founded by fierce and determined conquerors who, starting in the 7th century, pushed west to Spain and east to the Philippines, defeating, among others, Christians and occupying their lands including, in 1453, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (now called Istanbul). These forces marched north into the European heartland as well but were beaten in two historic battles: Tours in 732 and Vienna in 1683.
“The Muslim peoples,” Lewis has noted, “like everyone else in the world, are shaped by their history, but, unlike some others, they are keenly aware of it.”
If many of our leaders fail to comprehend all or any of this, part of the explanation may be that the intellectual waters have been muddied. In 1978, Edward Said, a Columbia University professor of comparative literature, published a book titled “Orientalism,” an assault on Lewis and other Western scholars. Said’s contention was that Europeans and Americans were not competent to understand Muslims and that their attempts to do so should be dismissed as neo-colonialism.
Those concerned with the rise of militant movements within the Islamic world, Said contended, were racists. His views came to dominate American and European universities. Small wonder that the attacks of 9/11 were not anticipated by most academic experts or the diplomats and intelligence analysts who had studied under them.
It should not go unmentioned here: As much as Lewis has been denigrated by Islamists and their apologists, he also has been criticized by some on the right who see no hope for a reformed Islam – an Islam as distant from Khomeinism, Wahhabism and bin Ladenism as 21st century – Christianity is from the Inquisition.
But few Muslims are likely to fight for such reform until and unless Islamism is defeated. And that cannot happen so long as the West’s leaders fail to recognize 9/11 for the act of war it was, so long as they think they can sweet-talk self-proclaimed Jihadis into being reasonable, so long as they remain convinced that the conflict now underway is a crime or a mystery disconnected from the powerful currents of history and faith.[[In-content Ad]]
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Ten years later, the question we might be asking: What has gone wrong with us? The atrocities of 9/11 were said to be a new Pearl Harbor that would once again “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Instead, many if not most of our leaders fight fitfully and without conviction, uncertain about both the nature and the gravity of the threat. One example: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Britain’s storied intelligence service, last week called the 9/11 attacks “a crime, not an act of war.” She did not explain why she thought using hijacked planes to destroy the military, political and financial centers of the Free World was akin to a bank robbery. She did not cite other instances in which criminals seek no monetary benefit, kill themselves during the commission of their crimes and call that “martyrdom.” She did not say whether she thought Osama bin Laden should have been entitled to a presumption of innocence rather than a bullet through the head.
A second example: National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said in a recent speech that he and President Barack Obama know what the Iranians are against but “what are they for?” Let me boil it down: They are for restoring to Islam the power and glory it enjoyed a millennium ago. They are for the defeat of the Great Satan and the Little Satan and anyone else who defies Allah’s will as they interpret it.
Manningham-Buller, Donilon, Obama – they are smart people. So, again, what has gone wrong? I think they have become disoriented. I use the word advisedly.
The “Orient” is the east. Not so long ago, the study of the Middle East and Islam was a discipline called Orientalism. The greatest modern Orientalist was – and for my money remains – Professor Lewis, now 95 years old and still sharp as a scimitar.
In more than three dozen books, he has detailed the history of the great Islamic empire founded by fierce and determined conquerors who, starting in the 7th century, pushed west to Spain and east to the Philippines, defeating, among others, Christians and occupying their lands including, in 1453, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (now called Istanbul). These forces marched north into the European heartland as well but were beaten in two historic battles: Tours in 732 and Vienna in 1683.
“The Muslim peoples,” Lewis has noted, “like everyone else in the world, are shaped by their history, but, unlike some others, they are keenly aware of it.”
If many of our leaders fail to comprehend all or any of this, part of the explanation may be that the intellectual waters have been muddied. In 1978, Edward Said, a Columbia University professor of comparative literature, published a book titled “Orientalism,” an assault on Lewis and other Western scholars. Said’s contention was that Europeans and Americans were not competent to understand Muslims and that their attempts to do so should be dismissed as neo-colonialism.
Those concerned with the rise of militant movements within the Islamic world, Said contended, were racists. His views came to dominate American and European universities. Small wonder that the attacks of 9/11 were not anticipated by most academic experts or the diplomats and intelligence analysts who had studied under them.
It should not go unmentioned here: As much as Lewis has been denigrated by Islamists and their apologists, he also has been criticized by some on the right who see no hope for a reformed Islam – an Islam as distant from Khomeinism, Wahhabism and bin Ladenism as 21st century – Christianity is from the Inquisition.
But few Muslims are likely to fight for such reform until and unless Islamism is defeated. And that cannot happen so long as the West’s leaders fail to recognize 9/11 for the act of war it was, so long as they think they can sweet-talk self-proclaimed Jihadis into being reasonable, so long as they remain convinced that the conflict now underway is a crime or a mystery disconnected from the powerful currents of history and faith.[[In-content Ad]]
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