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9/11 OR HOW THE WEST WAS WON
by
ROBERT J. LEWIS
_____________________
It
is beyond our power to choose
what we stand in need of.
Montaigne
Terms
-- A Muslim is a believer in or adherent of Islam.
-- Islam is the monotheistic Abrahamic religion articulated
by the Koran
-- An Islamist espouses orthodox Islamic beliefs.
-- The Arab league defines an Arab as a person "whose
language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country,
who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking
peoples."
HIJACKERS, HOOKERS
AND PARADISE NOW
 Only
days prior to his rendezvous with 72 virgins in Islamic
heaven, Mohamed Atta, before piloting his plane into the
North Tower of the World Trade Center, was reported to be
seen drinking and gambling. Some of the other hijackers
spent their last hours on earth in strip clubs paying for
lap dances; others sought solace in the arms of sex workers.
And while much ink has been spilled analyzing the political
underpinnings and psychological profiles of the hijackers,
very little attention has been paid to their whol(r)esale
embrace of Western decadence just prior to takeoff. Could
it be that what they did and why they did it in the hours
leading up to their suicide mission are of more significance
than the death and destruction they wrought?
What are we to read
into their decision not to pass their final hours in the
mosque of their choice and receive blessings from the Prophet,
but to spend them in the (naked) bosom of the culture they
would attempt to bring down in the following days?
Letting the facts on
the ground -- that is from the boudoir -- speak for themselves,
they were observably not concerned that their earthly desires
and subsequent fulfillment would compromise their good standing
with the Almighty. More likely, they had long since ceased
believing in Him in the name of Whom thousands were brutally
murdered. To state the obvious, the hijackers were manifestly
inner conflicted, just as the transference of their humungous
self-loathing onto the West is the necessary red herring
that unites the brotherhood of jihadists and terrorists
everywhere in the world.
For Westerners endeavouring
in good faith to understand the meaning and implications
of what Samuel Huntington has termed “the clash of
civilizations,” the lifestyle choices of the hijackers
before bringing down the Twin Towers offer a telling example
of Islam’s growing inability to hold sway over its
flock, and the growing incommensurability of Western and
Islamic values. Which reveals jihad and its terrorist operations
as desperate, last-ditch efforts to hold on to a way of
life that is being undermined by Western (global) culture.
Islam, as an all-embracing ethos conceived to provide for
the spiritual, psychological and moral well-being of a people,
is on its way out because, in the words of Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, from Nomad, “Islam
is built on sexual inequality and on the surrender of individual
responsibility and choice. This is not just ugly; it is
monstrous.” She argues convincingly that millions
of Muslims, despite their reluctance to enter their apostate
views into the public domain for fear of reprisal, have
already signed on to that declaration.
Before the entire world,
the hijackers laid bare their radical estrangement from
Islam as well as their twisted,  schizophrenic
mindsets. Where actions speak louder than words and prayers
left unsaid, the Koran was no match against the consolations
of the flesh: Islam’s heavenly heights could not compete
with the high guaranteed by the triple Scotch. Well aware
of the publicity and scrutiny their lives would generate
following their voluntary demise, they couldn’t be
bothered to wait even a day or two for the promise of 72
heavenly houris because the promise was a lie that had been
drained of purchase. Prior to and a condition of their hatred
of the West was manifest self-hatred. The big lie they foisted
on themselves was to hold the West culpable for their pathologically
alienated selves when in fact their religion and culture
-- de facto prisons -- kept them locked out and
strangers to their nature which, incidentally, flowered
upon contact with the West. What sustains and propagates
the big lie is that the terrorist believes defeat of the
West will resolve his inner conflict when in point of fact
there are only two practical solutions: to recognize and
embrace the baseball-capped person he sees when he looks
into the mirror -- or Paradise Now.
Small wonder Islam designates
the West as The Great Satan, the great temptation. Islam’s
spiritual leaders are rightfully concerned that once exposed
to the virus of Western values the good Muslim can never
be as good as he once was. For sure, the hijackers succeeded
in bringing down the Twin Towers in spectacular fashion,
but the West had already won the day just as the West is
winning the great clash. Like all the major religions before
it, Islam is an idea whose best days are long gone. The
age of secularism, whose reach is global, is upon us and
the new god in the starless, byte-bright sky is the Internet
whose infatuated faithful are legion.
Never has the relationship
between Islam and the West been so asymmetrical. And so
much so the West can’t even be bothered to introduce
an equivalent demonizing moniker for Islam (how about The
Great Cous Cous) because there is nothing in the latter’s
ethos that tempts or appeals to the Western mind. If it
weren’t for their oil, the West wouldn’t give
the Arab world and Islam the time of day – and they
know it. And even though it dare not be thought, much less
whispered, the West regards much of the Muslim-Islamic way
of life (its systematic debasement of women, its barbaric
judicial system) as infra dig (beneath one’s
dignity). Hirsi Ali writes: “My Muhammad says my husband
can beat me and that I am worth half as much as a man. Is
it I who am being disrespectful to Muhammad in criticizing
his legacy, or is it he who is disrespectful to me?”
Which isn’t to
say that when we allow ourselves to think outside the box
we can’t sympathize with the Muslim father who shudders
when his ten-year-old daughter announces she wants to go
shopping for a g-string, or he learns that his 12-year-old
son has witnessed every kind of sexual act imaginable on
a computer screen and there’s a 70% chance that his
children will experiment with drugs before they turn 15.
As to our sexual mores,
manner of dress, religious conduct and Western law versus
Sharia, the divide (breach) between the West and Islam is
gaping – and there is no middle ground, just as there
is no such thing as moderate Islam -- or moderate any religion
for that matter. When it comes to the Gods and Their commandments,
you either believe or you don’t, that is you either
comport yourself as if there will be theological consequences
to your actions or there won't. And if you don’t believe,
you’re a heathen, and Islam rightfully regards the
West as a haven for heathens, and that includes lapsed Muslims
who wear that secular badge with pride and without prejudice.
The moderate Muslim or Islamicist is a fiction the West
has invented in order to conceal its hidden agenda: to have
Islam turn upon itself, to cajole the apostate (presumed
moderate) Muslim to
undertake the West’s bidding. We’re
now seeing that long-term objective begin to bear fruit
as more and more westernized Muslims, especially women,
are speaking out against Islam. The Western Front is comprised
of millions of Muslims who have been told they are moderate
when in fact they have already been co-opted by the West
but are in denial for as long as it takes them to resolve
their inner
conflictedness, at which point they
come to recognize that their shame and rage against what
is ‘tyrannical’ in Islam is authentic, and that
they are uniquely qualified to speak comparatively and confidently
of new found values they deem more commensurate with their
own
Take away his language
and what remains of the Arab or Muslim who has made his
love of basketball, gambling, late night cable TV, mini-skirted
women, wine with his meal and pre-marital sex his permanent
abode, for whom the Koran is just another book on a reading
list, and prayer, even once a day, a downright noose-ance?
There will come a day when Islam will be defined by its
political objectives and grievances and there will be no
clash of civilizations (culture). There will come a day
when Muslims will eat, dress, think and get mad at their
computers like everyone else. In this godless future, enmity
will be based on the usual suspects: economic disparity,
race, colour and geo-politics.
For much of its history
and prior to the world-transforming revolution in communications,
Islam was geographically vaccinated against the ways of
the West. But with the introduction of the Internet all
of that has changed – forever. Mere exposure to the
West is all that is required to collapse Islam’s once
indomitable pillars of faith. Nowadays, we hear much of
stealth jihad, a term introduced by Robert
Spencer in his book of the same title. It
outlines Islam’s not so secret agenda to overthrow
the West and establish an imperial world state.
What we don’t
hear about is Western jihad, the West’s purposeful
strategy to overwhelm Islam with its culture. Not only is
Western jihad more insidious than any Islamic stealth equivalent,
it is working so well the response to it, of necessity,
has been radical and fraught with violence. But even the
terrorist, who in good faith has volunteered to fight for
the honour and integrity of his culture and religion, knows
that once exposed to the ways of the West there’s
no going back home. The West has to merely enter a single
aspect of its culture (its freedoms, gender equality, music,
decadence) into the Islamic sphere and the good Muslim becomes
instantly vexed, exercised, even tormented – and,
alas, in some instances, radicalized. In especially large
urban centers, from Tehran to Sanaa to Mecca, there are
democratic reform movements which have necessitated desperate,
totalitarian responses. But if history is a reliable indicator,
those measures, however brutal, will fail since it is a
law of human nature that we would all rather be free (no
matter what the consequences) than not.
Any system
or ideology that undertakes to regulate human behaviour but
ill considers human nature in its calculus does so at its
own peril. Communism, flouting the DNA-writ territorial imperative,
collapsed because it short shrifted man's basic makeup. Islam,
steadfast in its refusal to lend an ear to the cry of freedom,
has similarly prepared the ground for its own demise, the
fact of which does not excuse the West for what until now
has been a meek and propitiatory response compared to its
relentless and methodical denunciation of communism that was
ganged up on until its walls came tumbling down in 1991. Are
the protocols of political correctness such that we are afraid
to offend even as our hard-earned values wither thin in compromise?
Hirsi Ali writes: “The thin fingers of self-censorship
begin to tighten around individual minds, then groups of people,
then around ideas themselves and their expression. When free
speech crumbles in this way, when Westerners refrain from
criticizing or questioning certain aspects of Islam, they
abandon those Muslims who seek to question them too. They
also abandon their own values.”
Since the effects of
terrorism and suicide bombings cannot begin to compete with
the Internet as a hegemonic tool, the spectre of the development
and launching of a terrorist nuclear attack is debatably
the most pressing matter of our times and human history.
And even though the writing is on every screen, we’re
not staying on the page. Islam is imploding from within.
Radical Islam recognizes that the conventional terrorism
it sponsors will not bring about a new world order, which
makes the apocalyptic solution -- if I’m going to
go I’m going to take everyone with me -- an option
the West must begin to take more seriously. Is Iran’s
nuclear program an on-going development that should be allowed
to be brought to completion?
What we learn from the
9/11 hijackers is that once exposed to freedom there is
no turning back and that the real infidel is the Muslim
who cannot refuse Western values, which makes the great
"clash of civilizations" an inner conflict that
has been outed and unleashed on the world.
I have no doubt that
in the not too distant future we will all be living in a
secular, homogenized world, sharing alike in a culture whose
salient features will be shaped by communications technology.
If you are among those for whom pluralism is the most effective
response to that future scenario, for whom ideas are only
as good as the competition, you may very well find yourselves
looking back with nostalgia to the golden age of ‘the
great clash’ -- and the ferment, fervour and commitments
that characterized that exciting period.
Here’s looking
at you, Abdul.
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