Who Should Clean Up the Mess?

by Ali Salim
August 27, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3950/middle-east-chaos

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I understand why America lost its deterrence and its ability to fight, but why should Americans die for us? I understand why no one takes America seriously, and I can only come to the conclusion that it is time for us, Arabs and Muslims, to take our fate into our own hands.

Many people repeatedly ask why "the West" -- meaning European countries, the European Union and the United States -- sits by idly and does not lift a finger to intervene to end the war crimes and crimes against humanity now being committed against Arab and Muslim people.
The present chaos [fitna] now includes the slaughter in Syria, the endless attacks in Iraq, the terrorism in Afghanistan, the bloody confrontations in Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, the Sudan and everywhere else there are Muslims.
The reluctance of the West to participate in these disputes has enraged many people, who continually harp on the failures of "the West." We Arabs have become spoiled, self-indulgent, accustomed to the good life -- and slightly delusional: we really do think that someone else has to do our dirty work. Since the West continually attempts to bring order and democracy to the people of Islam, we tend to forget that this is not the West's job.
We have become accustomed to seeing Americans killed for us in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan. When you look at the Arab states, paralyzed by the catastrophe in Syria, it is hard to understand why the Arabs expect the Americans to clean up this mess.
I am happy that the West does not interfere, and instead makes do with criticism and threatening sanctions. We have to bring ourselves a genuine Arab Spring, without foreign help. We have to plant and water the tree of democracy in the lands of Islam with our own hands, independently.
I am happy that the Western world, led by U.S. President Barack Obama, has not lifted a finger. It is clear the problem is not that he doesn't want to, but that he cannot. American public opinion will not stand for more massive loss of American life and economic damage in wars other people should be fighting, even if those wars will seriously influence the fate of the West. For that reason at least, Obama made the right call when he said he would direct the battles from the rear: he had no other choice.
We are all lucky he had no other choice. This is the only way the affairs of the Middle East will resolve themselves on their own. Authentic revolutions take place on the front lines, not in the rear. If the desire to rule the roost really were the uncomprehending, hypocritical and condescending world view of the current U.S. administration -- because of which we lost the Egypt of Mubarak, and because of which Iran and Turkey are now Islamist countries -- we would not accept the revolt of Egyptian General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, which saved the world from radical Islam. The revolt was successful only because it was our good fortune that Sissi did not surrender to the infantile dictates and blackmail of America and the European Union.
It is the lack of American action that will cause the situation to right itself in Egypt, Syria, North Africa and other centers of unrest in the Arab-Muslim world. The naive fantasies of American and European advisors must not be allowed to interfere with real and necessary processes in the Middle East. We watched, uneasily, as the West -- because of its crude and bungling interference, mistakes and amateurishness -- helped bring radical Islam to our region. It is a genuine shame that because of Western weakness the forces of darkness and even reaction in China, Iran, North Korea and Russia gained the upper hand and harmed soldiers and innocent civilians.
When I see Obama stand behind the podium in the White House delivering yet another speech, I am convinced that words, or perhaps a few inconsequential strikes, like President Bill Clinton's retaliation for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, are the most a weak president is capable of. When I hear the U.S. call on the seething Arab-Muslim world to take stock of itself, in the name of an imaginary democracy which can never be implemented in our corner of the world, and when I hear it spout condescending ideological nonsense not only divorced from local reality but harmful to American interests, I am reminded of one of the early Muslims, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.A.S), a man named Bilal bin Rabah.

"When I see Obama stand behind the podium in the White House delivering yet another speech, I am convinced that words, or perhaps a few inconsequential strikes, like President Bill Clinton's retaliation for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, are the most a weak president is capable of." (Photo credit: White House)

Bilal bin Rabah was Muhammad's (S.A.A.S) loyal black slave. He freed Bilal and appointed him as a muezzin; and Bilal called the faithful to prayer from the minaret of the mosque of the Kaaba in newly-conquered Mecca. As opposed to Bilal, however, the sahaba, Muhammad's faithful companions, who like Bilal accompanied Muhammad (S.A.A.S) in his prophetic mission, were appointed to high positions as Caliphs and district governors. Bilal with his hoarse voice called the faithful to prayer five times a day, but few answered the call. Both Muslims and infidels in Mecca made fun of him, saying he brayed like a donkey, and many of them paid no attention to his calls to prayer.
I cannot help asking myself if the Muslim Brotherhood's dream were to come true today, and the followers of Mohamed Morsi, America's darling, did actually take over the world with their radical Islamic agenda, would they elevate Obama to some high office? Sadly, if radical Islam actually managed to realize its goal and take control of America and Europe, the Muslims who follow the tradition of Muhammad would appoint Obama to a post no higher than muezzin of the Chicago mosque.
For this reason, when I see black Americans convert to Islam (like Congressman Keith Ellison, who converted to Islam from Catholicism), with their weird empathy and incomprehensible yen for Islam and Hamas, I am amazed and horrified by the ignorance of their choice. Do they not know that Muslims were the slave traders who captured Africans and sold them to America? Do they not know that to this day many Muslims in the Arab world disregard blacks and treat them like slaves? In Arab political circles in the Gulf States, Condoleezza Rice and other black politicians are called a'bd or a'bda, the Arabic word for slave. In the Muslim Brotherhood scenario, Congressman Keith Ellison would not be a member of the Islamic Council (the Shura) and Secretary Rice would not be allowed to leave the house without a male relative, to say nothing of flying off on diplomatic missions around the world. She would stay at home and look at the world through the square veil in her hijab.
From the heart of the Middle East chaos I ask myself why we accepted such enormous quantities of arms from America without being able to use them. Why can we not unite and ourselves get rid of dictators like Assad? Why do American soldiers have to die for us? Where is Qatar, which relies on the United States for its defense but operates Al-Jazeera TV for the Muslim Brotherhood's jihad and incites the Arabs to internecine wars and creates chaos? Where are Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States? Where is Turkey? Where is Egypt and its glorious army? Because of America's empty declarations, which the Arab-Muslim world scorns like the braying of a donkey, I understand why America lost its deterrence and ability to fight. I understand why no one takes America seriously, and I can only come to the conclusion that it is time for us, Arabs and Muslims, to take our fate in our own hands: the time has come to worry about ourselves.

Related Topics: Ali Salim

German Elections: More EU, More Islam

by Peter Martino
August 27, 2013 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3951/german-elections-eu-islam

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German voters already know that whichever party wins September's election will only bring more of the same: more restriction of German sovereignty. It is therefore no surprise that, at least for indigenous Germans, the turnout is expected to be low. The Islamic immigrants, however, hope that by turning out massively, they will be able to support candidates who will favor the further Islamification of Germany.

The German general elections next month will decide the future of Europe's largest nation and economic powerhouse. The elections are likely to be close. Left and Right are almost equally large blocs in Germany. A recent poll gave the Christian-Democrat CDU of Chancellor Angela Merkel and its Liberal partner FPD, who form the present center-right government coalition, 46% of the vote. Exactly the same percentage went to the opposition parties on the Left.
Hence, as before, a small margin of voters may decide whether Angela Merkel will continue as Chancellor after the September 22^nd elections or whether her challenger Peer Steinbrueck, the leader of the Social-Democrat SPD, will take over in a coalition with the Greens and other smaller parties on the Left.
With the outcome of the elections so close, the votes of Germany's large Muslim immigrant population are immensely important. In the September 2002 general elections, the Social-Democrat Gerhard Schroeder beat his Christian-Democrat opponent Edmund Stoiber with the slightest of margins – barely 8,864 votes. The overwhelming support of the almost 1 million Islamic voters for Mr. Schroeder decided the outcome of the 2002 elections in favor of the Left.
Most of Germany's Muslims are of Turkish origin. On a total of 80 million inhabitants, Germany has over 3 million citizens of Turkish origin, forming over 4% of the population. Polls indicate that up to 90% of the Turkish voters intend to cast their votes -- a much higher percentage than among indigenous Germans of whom only 70% turned out in 2009. According to the polls, 43% of the Turkish voters intend to vote for the Social-Democrat SPD and 22% for the far-left Greens, while Merkel's CDU would only get 20%.
In an attempt to attract Turkish voters, all the major German parties have put Turkish candidates on their lists. This policy is slowly paying off for Ms. Merkel. In 2009, the SPD could still count on 50% and the Greens on 31% of the Turkish support, while Merkel received less than 11.5%. A new phenomenon is the League for Innovation and Justice (BIG), the German branch of the AKP, the governing party of Turkey. It is currently polling at 7% of the German Turkish vote. BIG was founded in 2010 by adherents of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey. Mr. Erdogan has denounced assimilation of immigrants as a "crime against humanity" and has exhorted Turkish immigrants not to become Germans.
At the moment, with less than a month to go until election day, one third of the German voters indicate that they are still undecided for whom they might vote. Given the popularity of Ms. Merkel, this is remarkable. Another remarkable occurrence was that, until last week, the crisis involving the euro, the common currency of 17 of the 28 member states of the European Union (EU), has hardly been a topic in the elections.
There is huge dissatisfaction among the Germans with the fact that German taxpayers have been made to bail out many of the Southern European countries, in order to save the euro. Germany's major parties, however, including Merkel's CDU and Steinbrueck's SPD, favor the costly operations to uphold the euro. They have both, therefore, tried to keep the euro debate out of the electoral campaign.
Last week, however, Germany's Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, announced that next autumn, the eurozone countries, to save the euro, will again need to bail out Greece. This third bailout of Greece will cost the Germans many billions. Merkel, while acknowledging that there would be a third Greek bailout, has refused to say how many billions this operation will cost the German taxpayers. "We do not know this exactly yet," she said.
She was then attacked by her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, who accused her of lying. Schroeder's move is an indication of the desperation of the SPD leadership, who have so far kept the euro out of the election debate. Like Merkel, the SDP also supports the euro rescue operation and therefore has nothing to gain. Moreover, former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is the German politician who allowed Greece to join the euro-group even though Athens did not fulfill the requirements to do so. As Volker Kauder, the CDU Secretary-General, pointed out in a reaction to Schroeder's attack on Merkel: "It was Schroeder's government which undermined the stability of the euro by allowing Greece to join."
Leaders such as Schroeder pushed through the common EU currency for strictly political reasons – the establishment of a supranational European superstate. This was done against the will of the European peoples and made no economic or monetary sense. The current economic and monetary crisis in Europe is largely the result of this.
As then-German Chancellor Schroeder himself said in June 2001, in an interview with Business Week: "A common currency imposes on us a duty to cooperate more on policy. Indeed, the creators of the euro envisioned it as an instrument to promote political union. Whatever the details of union may be, there's no doubt we need more policy coordination in Europe."
Mr. Schroeder, a shrewd politician, is gambling that the CDU's support for the unpopular euro rescue operations will cost the CDU more in the forthcoming elections than the SPD's support of the same operations will cost the SPD. Last February, a group of conservative economists founded a German anti-euro party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). This party attracts mostly disenchanted conservative voters. Schroeder clearly hopes that it will draw more voters away from the CDU than from the SPD. The CDU leadership shares this view. It is doing its best to convince voters not to vote AfD. A vote for AfD, they say, will benefit the SPD and make a coalition between the Social-Democrats and the Greens more likely.
Since both CDU and SPD support the euro and the EU's ambitions to transform itself into a federal state, German voters already know that, whatever the outcome of September's elections, the move towards a restriction of German sovereignty and more EU political integration is likely to continue. As a result, there is little enthusiasm for elections that, whichever party wins, will bring only more of the same. It is no surprise that the turnout, at least for indigenous Germans, is expected to be low. The Islamic immigrants, however, hope that by turning out massively for the elections, they will be able to support candidates who, when elected, will favor further Islamification of Germany. What the future will bring for Germany after the elections seems clear. More European integration, more Islamification.

Related Topics: Germany | Peter Martino

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