10-08-08 Kay - The Third Jihad

National Post : Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The Third Jihad

We cannot disarm Islamists if their presence is not acknowledged

Barbara Kay

The first great jihad petered out with Islam's expulsion from Spain in 1492, the second in 1683 with the decisive (and to Islamists, still freshly humiliating) defeat of the Ottoman Empire in Vienna.

We're presently experiencing the terror-focused third great jihad, which seeks to recreate the triumphalist dynamics of Islam's muscular 7th-century ascendancy. How or when this great jihad will end we cannot say, only that realism insists it will not be soon and that the mission to replace secular democracy with Islam proceeds apace inside our borders as well as abroad.
We must know the enemy within to fight him. Unfortunately, our reigning establishment prefers not to confront the awkward civic triage such awareness would entail and so affects ignorance of the problem. But we cannot challenge and disarm Islamists if their presence is not acknowledged.

Islam is a private faith, Islamism an ugly political ideology. Islamists' hegemonic mission demands a choice between hard jihad -- the 9/11, suicide-bomber way -- and soft jihad, far more appealing to Westernized, educated Islamist ideologues.

Exploiting Westerners' naivete and obsessive race guilt, soft jihadists deliberately blur the line between the religion of Islam (which on no account must be "offended" in the West) and the demonstrably offensive political imperialism of Islamism.

Soft jihad cannot succeed without the complicity of naive elites, bedazzled by their own boundless compassion and humanity. Sadly, of these "useful idiots" in the corridors of wealth and power the West offers an embarras de richesses.

How does one recognize a soft jihadist? An infallible sign is her or his promotion of official shariah law.

A moderate Muslim seeks to live in a "state of Islam" within a nation to which he freely gives allegiance; an Islamist strives to live in "an Islamic state," as only Islam claims his allegiance. In non-Muslim states, therefore, an Islamist cannot be content with less than official shariah.

In his new book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, Tarek Fatah emphasizes the Islamist-shariah endorsement link: "Shariah law has become the governing tool [and] the informal constitution of ... Political Islam."

Fatak concludes that since shariah violates Articles 1, 2, 7, 16 and 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and since Canadian values are encapsulated in that declaration, a Muslim may observe shariah privately and remain a good Canadian, but a Muslim cannot be a good Canadian and endorse official shariah.

Hard jihadists run the risk of death or life imprisonment. Soft jihadists eschew such risks. Instead they play the weak victim card, ingratiating themselves with influential Western liberals who do their work for them.

Thus we see government bodies sycophantically soliciting advice and collaboration in sensitive areas like national security from self-generated and unrepresentative organizations with highly problematic views regarding shariah, Jews and terrorism.

Or, for another unseemly example, the media shrugs at the NDP's swelling Islamicization (Layton isn't called "Taliban Jack" for nothing).

I'm just scratching the surface with these examples. But for special pusillanimity in eroding free speech, the bastion of democracy, you can't beat liberal public servants' support for punitive human rights commissions' speech codes (drafted by Islamists or Islamist sympathizers) that defer specifically to Islamist sensibilities in chilling criticism of Muslims, however worrisome their behaviour.

Such appeasement amounts to a reckless disregard for our nation's democratic vigour, ironically undermining the work of those tasked with fighting the hard jihad. Add to that the shameful betrayal such a misguided approach represents to those bewildered, hung-out-to-dry ordinary Muslims who fled Islamic countries to escape shariah law, but who court peril in confronting the bogus "leaders" the establishment fawns over.

This silent majority -- championed by a handful of courageous ex-Muslim and moderate-Muslim challengers, who incur fatwas and risk physical danger in speaking out -- are the ones whose human rights have been sacrificed on the squeaky Islamist wheel.

Who is winning the third great jihad? Well, we're in the midst of a federal election. National security should be an issue. But no politician will dare whisper the word Islamism. They know they'd be harried over a career cliff to professionally orchestrated shrieks of "Islamophobe!"

So who do you think is winning?

bkay@videotron.ca