THE MUSLIM WAR ON THE WEST AND THE RESPONSE

Introduction

It has been said that he is the West’s greatest scholar of Islam. He allowed the history’s two most provocative civilizations to see each other clearly and he has allowed Muslim, Jew, and Christian to have a real dialogue of civilizations. Professor Bernard Lewis has been denied access to many Muslim countries. Much of his work has been done in Turkey. In March, 2007 professor Lewis received the Kristol Award and delivered the 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute Annual Dinner in Washington D.C. (www.aei.org). Present were among a great number of prominent Americans Vice President and Mrs. Dick Cheney.

Professor Lewis pointed out that he was not offering any predictions concerning the future of Europe and the Middle East. He was merely identifying some trends and processes. Now, in the words of Professor Lewis, is a true turning point, a major change. 1800 – 1991 the Middle East was dominated by outsiders. In some of the Muslim countries there are ethnic, sectarian, and regional conflicts at present.

The Cosmic Struggle for World Domination

It seems as if there is a return of the great struggle for world domination between Christianity and Islam. This fight has been ongoing during fourteen centuries. The attitude of triumphalism is still a significant force and this force is expressing itself through new militant organizations.

It has been claimed that the Prophet Muhammed wrote letters to various rulers of the world at the beginning of Islam stating that he had brought God’s final message. Your time, he wrote, has passed. Your beliefs are superceded. Accept my mission and my faith or resign or submit – you are finished.

Then followed the first attack on Christendom. It can be divided into three phases.

During Phase One the Arabian Peninsula was captured. Then Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa. Then followed Spain, Portugal and southern Italy. The Muslim warriors were stopped in France. It took a long and bitter struggle to retake some of the lost territory. One of the lands not retaken for good was the Holy Land during the Crusades.

It did not take Islam long to initiate Phase Two. Now it was the Turks and Tartars, who attacked. The Mongols of Rus had been converted to Islam after conquering the land. The Turks had first taken Anatolia and in 1453 captured Constantinople. Large parts of the Balkans were next in line and for a while Ottomans ruled Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Austria. Barbary corsairs raided Europe from North Africa. Christian states counterattacked, this time more quickly and successfully. Now the term “imperialism” was invented. When Asia and Africa invaded Europe it was not imperialism.

In Phase Two the counterattack reached the Muslim heartlands. The Caliphate was abolished and in the words of Osama bin Laden, Islam had reached the ultimate humiliation.

The Third Phase started in 2001 with the 9/11 attack on New York. Now Islam was taking the war into the heart of the infidel enemy camp. This military new phase is continuing.

Political Correctness

Professor Lewis in his lecture pointed out that originally it was not acceptable that Muslims remained in countries taken by the Christians. They would have to leave and come back when Muslims reconquered the land. The legal interpretation has now changed and Muslims can live in Christian countries if they are permitted to practice their faith.

Before the Third Phase started Muslims had in great numbers started to emigrate to Europe. They were attracted by generous welfare and the possibility of employment. They would have freedom of expression and education, two things they often lacked at home. The answer to the immigration in Europe has been multiculturalism and political correctness. These terms do not exist in Islam. Here they are very conscious of their identity.

A frequent problem in Europe is the ongoing revision of history. The Pope has apologized for the “attack” of the crusades. In 2002 the French Prime Minister Raffarin in the National Assembly introduced Saladin, a hero of Saddam Hussein, as a man who defeated the Crusaders and liberated Jerusalem. Liberated Jerusalem?

Third Time Lucky?

It is not impossible, explained Professor Lewis in Washington, that this time the Muslims will succeed. They have clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause. In Europe we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. The Muslims are loyal and have discipline, and perhaps most important of all, demography on their side. Natural increase and migration are producing major population changes. It can lead to significant majorities in some European countries.

The West, however, still has some significant advantages: knowledge and freedom. In Muslim countries the term freedom was and is a legal concept. One was free if one was not a slave. The Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, and more and more desired. The West may after all survive the developing struggle and freedom in the Western brought to the Middle East.

The clear Muslim strategy (in the Third Phase a conglomerate of Islamic states, mainly Iran, terror groups and insurgents well explained in the term islamofascists) gives us reason to reflect. Maybe the Third Phase of Lewis is also a Second Cold War. Like in the war with the Soviet Union the enemy is seeking the demise of Western democracy. The islamofascists are seeking technological advances to be used to threaten all Western populations. The conceptual strategic clarity is similar to that of the Bolsheviks. So far the islamofascists are inferior in number, wealth, and weaponry but they are attracting support outside the Middle East: Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea to mention a few states.

Iran

The center of the ongoing new Cold War is Iran. The regime in Teheran is seeking to achieve the status of a global power (see David Hazony’s article “Cold War II – What Islamist Iran has in common with the Soviet Union”, Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2007).

“Like the U.S.S.R., Iran is an enemy that even the mighty United States will probably never meet in full force on the battlefield and instead must fight via its proxies, wherever they are found. Like the Soviet Union, the ayatollahs’ regime is based on an ideological revolution that repudiates human liberty and subjects its political opponents to imprisonment and death, a regime which, in order to maintain its popular support, must continue to foment similar revolutions everywhere it can, to show that it is on the winning side of history. And like the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Iranian regime today has two clear weaknesses, which could ultimately spell its downfall: economic stagnation and ideological disaffection.”

There is much to learn from the endgame with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. A wide range of fronts were opened: military, technological, diplomatic, psyops, covert operation, and public relations. Escalating the arms race and through trade sanctions it was possible to show that the regime was headed for collapse. Bold statements (as President Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin in 1987) the West emboldened the internal opposition in the Soviet tyranny and the subjugated nations of Eastern Europe. Also anticommunist resistance was encouraged from Latin America to Africa and Afghanistan. Expansion was halted and rollback achieved. The goal was to make it clear to the Soviet elite that they were on the wrong side of history. The shift had, however, to start at home in America amd in Western Europe :

“A belief that victory was possible, that the Soviet Union was impermanent, and that concerted effort could change history. It required a new clarity of purpose”.

Iran should be an easier target than the Soviet Union. Relentless pressure on the regime in Teheran (destabilizing the hard core of the rulers through an insurgent war, ever more serious sanctions etc.) could start a chain of events similar to those during the 1980s in the fight against the Soviet tyranny. There are many enemies in the present Cold War besides Iran but defeat of Iran could turn the tide of the ongoing war. Today’s conflict with Persia/Iran is not new. As Victor Davis Hanson (in he article “The Twenty-Five Hundred Years’ War”, March 30, 2007 in American.com – A Magazine of Ideas – Online) points out Westerners have always viewed their relations with Persia in terms of freedom versus despotism. There has however, from time to time, been hopes for change. Classic historian Xenophon believed that Cyrus the Younger was a pro-Western reformer who might bring Persia into the Hellenic world. The reforming Shah Reza Pahlavi for a long time was regarded as a ruler that could incorporate ideas from the West.