In matters both great and small the two governments--and their respective publics--have sent mixed messages regarding both the nature of the wars forced upon us and our political will to not only accept the gauntlet but press on until the opposition is crushed. Whether the burka or the Taliban, whether Afghanistan or Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen, Iran's nuclear quest or the effort by Muslims to build a gigantic mosque and monument to Allah's grandeur where once the shadow of the Twin Towers fell, the governments and peoples of both the US and the UK speak with confused voices.
The ground truth upon which the shaky and ultimately fatal drift at the policy level is based is not hard to state--or to understand. Violent political Islam as well as its non-violent kin arises from the religion of Islam. The requirements and justifications for war against the "infidels" even unto death, perhaps most certainly unto death, is written in the Koran, the collected sayings and acts of the Prophet. These requirements and justifications have been commented and elaborated upon for centuries by learned and highly esteemed Islamic theologians and experts on jurisprudence.
While these requirements and justifications are not accepted by all Muslims anymore than violent political Islam is practiced by all followers of Islam, the path of jihad is walked, the justifications and requirements accepted, by a portion of the Muslim community. This reality, unpleasant as it may be to the sincere believers of the ideals of multi-culturalism, has been accepted by no less a paragon of Islamic apology and multi-cultural correctness than the WaPo.
Americans generally and the British generally do not want to accept the idea that violence for political ends may arise organically from religious faith. We are victims of our own successes in separating the communities of faith from the secular state. As a direct consequence, we can afford the luxury of religious tolerance.
The wars of religion reside in our distant past. Never really waged in North America, the wars of faith molder in the collective archives of distant memory, of half or more forgotten lectures about European history. For us the very idea of killing in the name of faith is so bizarre, so reprehensible that it passes the boundary of rationality and enters the dark land of mental illness. Not unlike the Jews of Germany in the 1930s as the flames of antisemitism flared ever higher, we reject the notion that civilized people do that sort of thing, commit that kind of crime, perpetrate that variety of horror.
While many Muslims share the same sense of bewildered outrage which afflicts us when a bomber does his worst, there are those followers of the Prophet who approve the bombing, celebrate the killings of "infidels" and "apostates," who cheer those who inflict slaughter on the unarmed to the heavens above. It is this latter group, the Muslims who either promote and practice violent political Islam or support and approve of those who shed the blood of the innocent, which is the enemy of the US and other civilized states including Great Britain.
Caught in cognitive dissonance between what we wish to be the truth and the ugly realities presented to us by the bombers and trigger-pullers of violent political Islam, we, the Americans, the British, and our respective governments temporize, equivocate, take halfway measures, deliver mixed messages, question the rightness of our cause, find excuses for those who would kill or change us and our societies, and generally go adrift at the policy level.
The world is not the way we would wish it to be. As a result we know we have to do something, but there is nothing we can do which comports well with our beliefs in the secular state and the appeal of religious tolerance and respect.
Consider the burka. This garbage sack like garment is not required by the Koran or other sacred writings but has been imposed in much of the Islamic world by force of custom and the exaggerated fear of hell which is part and parcel of an Islamic upbringing. Because the burka is a highly visible, irrefutable cultural expression of Islamic faith, it has become a focus of attention on both sides of the vast invisible line dividing the Muslim community from that of the assorted "infidels" which comprises the majority of the globe's population.
Public opinion in the US is tolerant of the all-encompassing garbage sack burka. This is probably because so few Americans come into contact with burka caged women. It is hard to have a definite view of something seldom if ever encountered.
The situation is different in Europe. There the burka is common. In France, Spain, the UK, and other Western European countries, the average citizen is likely to encounter the burka daily particularly if living in an urban center. As a consequence, emotions are running high over banning or not banning the garment.
Belgium, France, and Spain are moving rapidly toward a ban of the most extreme versions of the dress, those which cover the face. In England the majority of the public, the hoi polloi, are reported to support a French style ban. Simultaneously, the political elite, the hoi ollogoi, at least as represented by two cabinet members, oppose any ban. One, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Minister, considers the burka to be "empowering" and "conferring dignity."
Not surprisingly, agreement with Minister Spelman's position is not universal. Not even all Muslim women agree with her. The philosophical and political responses to apologists for the burka run the spectrum from classical liberal to ancient conservatism.
Leaving aside the question as to how voluntary wearing the burka might be in a male dominated culture, (Husband, father, or brother to woman, "Wear the burka or else...") the fact remains that the commodious garment allows the ready concealment of a suicide vest. The basic question is simply how comfortable would even the most liberal, multi-culturally, sensitive person be within say twenty meters of a person who might be carrying twenty kilograms of explosive and ball bearings?
An even more fundamental consideration is that of political will. The burka, like the minaret appended to a mosque, is a political expression. Resistance to such alien manifestations within a Western society and its polity is also a political expression. The conflict is one of political will: which side has the greater political will?
In this way, the issues of garbage sacks on women or minarets mirror the larger, bloodier wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Whether one considers Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or even the Iranian "Mahdi Bomb," the crux is political will. The side with the greater will is the side destined to win in any and every one of these foci of conflict between West and political Islam.
One of the most important considerations in developing and maintaining political will is the definition of goal. As important is the defining of the enemy: Who is he and what is he after? Next in line is the necessity of defining and articulating in a compelling way just what motivates us in our fight.
If the US, the UK, and other civilized states are going to prevail, or even survive, in the struggle forced upon us by the Ever Faithful To The One True And Pure Vision Of Islam, it is utterly essential that we escape from the cognitive dissonance which has clouded our thinking, our policies since that horrible day nearly nine years ago. We must accept that not everyone in the world, not every Muslim, accepts the separation of institutions of faith from those of the state which has emerged in the West over the past two or so centuries.
We must accept that there exists a sizable number of Muslims who see the obligations of their faith to include the violent imposing of their beliefs, their law, their customs upon all of us. We must acknowledge that these good Muslims read in their sacred literature a limitless remit to seek a global caliphate in which only the writ of Allah as interpreted by Muslim clerics governs.
The devotees of violent political Islam are neither madmen nor "misunderstanders" of their religion. They are True Believers in their understanding of the requirements of their faith. No apologies for their beliefs and consequent actions are needed. Also unnecessary are well meaning efforts at outreach, accommodation, or appeasement.
The imperatives of their faith preclude all attempts at outreach, accommodation, appeasement. The same imperatives render any efforts at apology or explanation mere exercises in self-delusion.
What is needed, needed far more than weapons or foreign aid, is political will. We are faced by a hydra-headed enemy possessed of a political will of the greatest sort. The only way we can oppose, or better, defeat the violent political Islamist is by having a greater political will held for a longer period.
From the outset the war has been one of political will in which corpses and ruined buildings, like burkas and minarets, are merely means of expressing, testing, and either eroding or reinforcing the political will of each belligerent.
The Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, "Purity of heart is to will one thing." Today, it must be recast as, "Success of policy is to will one thing."
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