...Within a blink of the political eye, we have witnessed political Islam's most widespread social mobilization -- from Europe, through the Middle East, and into Asia -- in response to the cartoons; political Islam's most significant assumption of political power since the Iranian Revolution a quarter-century ago, in the Palestinian community; and political Islam's most threatening military development since Saddam Hussein's attempt to put a stranglehold on the Gulf (and thereby the world), with his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and contemporaneous nuclear weapons program.
Political Islam is on the march in the three loci of politics: the street, the halls of power, and the field of battle. Its targets are both domestic (to suppress freedom and dissent within Islamic countries; sharia is already becoming the rule in Gaza) and international (to spread its sway and impose its orthodoxy abroad). While its international power is still circumscribed, political Islam's ambitions are extensive, violent, and frightening--with its members sensing its growing potential (fuelled also by America's geostrategic weakening in the Iraq quagmire). Political Islam's leaders and masses watch a Western world in evident disarray about what to do regarding each aspect of this partly coordinated, partly fortuitous offensive. We must consider that we are witnessing the beginning of political Islam's intensifying social and political mobilization into a new multipronged, intercontinental intifada. A Sunni Muslim cleric, having helped organize anti-cartoon protests in his hometown and in Beirut, explained the protests' significance: ‘The way I see it, the war [with the West] has already started.’
...This is not normal politics. This is not even the normal excess of normal politics. Imagine what European and American commentators would say if tens of thousands of Americans, Britons, Germans, or Israelis marched with calls for the murder of Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, or Muslims in response to a few anti-American, anti-European, or anti-Semitic cartoons appearing in one, or a few, Arab or Islamic newspapers. Yet Western politicians and commentators have mostly indulged this outpouring of violent hatred. Even when decrying it, they blame the cartoons' publishers and express pious regret that the cartoons insulted the Prophet Mohammed and Muslims, as if there is any normal political cause and effect (let alone a proportionate one) operating here. This Western indulgence is extremely wrongheaded and self-injurious. It cloaks the political Islamic proto-intifada in a measure of legitimacy. It emboldens its instigators and its shock troops in the street, revealing the West's unwillingness to respond resolutely to these verbal and physical assaults with moral, rhetorical, and political clarity, and to convey the unapologetic message that the West's people and polities refuse to be attacked, intimidated, and cowed...
What is political Islam's game plan for triumphing? In Iran -- political Islam's greatest power -- the leadership's pronouncements lay out the contours of its aims. Like Al Qaeda, the current Iranian regime, led by Ahmadinejad, thirsts for revenge against the 'arrogant' West. To them, the West has, for centuries, constricted, humiliated, divided, and dominated the Muslim nations. Ahmadinejad's desire for revenge is coupled with a belligerent and global missionary zeal. A renascent and ascendant Muslim world would first acquire nuclear weapons and thus attain parity of power with the West. Then it would annihilate Israel. Aided by global Islamic forces (there are an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims in the world), which are already showing their strength in Europe, political Islam would proceed to assail the West, weaken it, and ultimately subdue it. In his speeches, Ahmadinejad sets forth his overarching ambition in unabashedly taunting and insulting terms. Western nations, he proclaims, 'have stood against [the] resurrection movement of Islam. They think that they can undermine the world nations' faith in Islam with desecration of Islamic sanctities. But the Muslim nations will give them a good lesson!' Ahmadinejad boasts of 'a wave of Muslim awakening and the gradual collapse of the hegemony of the West.' Eventually, he foresees a world 'without the United States and without Zionism.'
The idea of Iran -- together with sundry Islamic regimes, scattered bands of terrorists, and an activated Muslim street in Europe -- defeating the West should not be dismissed as a Lilliputian megalomaniacal fantasy. Obviously, many Muslims and their countries will not sign on, and, in the end, political Islam cannot prevail against a resolute West. But, in the meantime, it can do enormous damage. The really bad news is that Al Qaeda is not the main problem. Iran is...
The fight, it cannot be emphasized enough, is not a 'clash of civilizations' with Muslims or Arab or Muslim countries. Rather, the fight is with annihilationist and totalitarian political Islam, its political leaders and regimes, and its unknown millions of political adherents across the Islamic world (who, let us not forget, broadly celebrated the destruction of the World Trade Center). The West must make it clear that it will not treat totalitarian political Islam as legitimate, though it is happy to conduct normal, friendly, and mutually beneficial relations with the many Islamic peoples and countries that are not intolerant and bellicose. Political Islam must not be emboldened by appeasement. Its rhetorical and physical violence must not be tolerated at all.
Do read the whole thing.
