The Muslim "street" in the Middle East has a saying. "First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday." According to Brigitte Gabriel, a survivor of the Muslim terror in Lebanon, this saying means, "first we fight the Jews, then we come for the Christians." It must be admitted, of course, that Muslims haven't waited for Israel's defeat to begin attacking Christians." Once upon a time the peaceful Christians of Lebanon built a democracy with open borders in the Middle East, and the Muslims destroyed it. They couldn't help themselves. One day they began murdering Christians until the country was no longer recognizable. Christians fled the rubble of their homes. The same situation is now repeating itself in Iraq. The New York Times Headline story on October 17 was, "Iraq's Christian Minority Flees As Extremist Threat Worsens." As reported in the Times, Christian churches in Iraq are regularly bombed, Christians are assassinated, priests are kidnapped and beheaded, and hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled their homes and abandoned their businesses.
According to the Times, "The last Iraqi Census, in 1987, counted 1.4 million Christians...." Some Christian authorities say that only 600,000 remain in the country today. With Christians being assassinated, with churches being bombed, what choice do Christians have? In Iraq, under a Muslim majority, democracy signifies nothing more than the unleashing of Islamic gangs that authorities either cannot or will not control. While the neo-communists and their useful idiots around the world decry U.S. war crimes against Muslims, the Muslims have been perpetrating crimes against Christians. And don't imagine the U.S. military has intervened to save the Christians. The American military is weak because it is governed by political correctness. The commander-in-chief has already declared that Islam is "a religion of peace." American military commanders must therefore be careful and avoid any religious conflict, though that is precisely the conflict they are in. Muslims may hate and kill Christians in Iraq, but American soldiers must refrain from hating and avoid any killing of Muslims. The idea is to arm the Muslims, and give them a democratic government. The Bush administration will never consider the possibility that many of those they have armed and empowered are implicated in the country's religious violence. That is to say, the Iraqi police and security services are more likely to work against Western values in Iraq than to support them. (By "Western values" we include the core values that make democracy possible in a country.) If anyone should doubt what has already occurred in Lebanon, what has been happening in Iraq, and what is ready to overwhelm Arab Christians on the West Bank, they ought to watch Brigitte Gabriel's documentary video on Islam's war against Middle East Christians. Here is the very ground of Muslim democracy, exposed for the barren desert it is. If democracy is possible to all races and peoples, it is yet impossible under the banner of at least one religion. For Islam democracy can only signify religious domination over non-Muslims. That this is incompatible with democracy helps to explain in part the failure of President Bush's policy. As long as President Bush continues to credit Islam with values and ideals entirely inconsistent with the teachings of the Koran, his administration will continue down the path of oblivion.
America and Britain invaded Iraq to free the people from a totalitarian regime. The invader did not win the gratitude of the country's Muslims, who quickly set up their own militias and armed gangs. Through laxity and misunderstanding, in an effort to win over the Muslim population, the occupying powers wanted to give freedom of action to the Muslims so they could govern themselves. What followed was merely the logical consequence of an absurd policy adopted out of ignorance. Herein lies the impotence of the supposed occupying power and its sham occupation and the sham democracy it aspires to nurture. There has been no Christian crusade in Iraq, no attempt to suppress the Muslims or convert them by the irresistible power of the U.S. and British forces. Irony of ironies, the invasion of Iraq best serves al Qaeda and the fanatic Islamist regime in Iran. The American and British forces uncorked fanatics who were previously bottled up by that wicked but effective dictator, Saddam Hussein. His methods were evil, but he nonetheless governed a backward religion whose ideology is hardly compatible with the construction of a prosperous modern country. From all this we can see that the West's political leaders have got it wrong. "Whether motivated by naïve wishful thinking or rigid political correctness," wrote Brigitte Gabriel, "they assert that Islam is a 'moderate,' 'tolerant,' 'peaceful' religion that has been hijacked by 'extremists.' They ignore the repeated calls to jihad ... emanating from the government-controlled mosques of so-called moderate Islamic countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia. They refuse to accept that in the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream."
The West believes in commerce and trade. Everyone can get rich if everyone gets along. So why shouldn't we all get along? Enmity is obsolete, say the Western businessmen. War is counterproductive and wasteful. Borders should be open, because trade is the path to a good life. Armies should be small because large armies are expensive and cut into a country's standard of living. The desire to conquer, to inflict death and destruction on enemies seems entirely irrational. To those motivated by money and the good things promised by economic freedom, the war system of the religious fanatic is sheer lunacy. But from the standpoint of the religious fanatic, economic freedom is lunacy because its creed of tolerance signifies surrender to alien ideas and "outsiders." In the last analysis there can be no agreement, no compromise between those who fight for freedom and those who fight for the triumph of Islam. But the West is slow to understand this reality.
"Even after 9/11," wrote Gabriel in her book, "there are those who say that we must 'engage' our terrorist enemies, that we must 'address their grievances.' Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our democratic process. Islamic religious authorities and terrorist leaders repeatedly state that they will destroy the United States and Western civilization. Unless we take them at their word, and defend ourselves, they will succeed." Sadly, there is no arguing with the logic of Gabriel's analysis. As she explains in her book, the Christians of the Middle East mistook their Muslim neighbors. In Lebanon, she noted, "Prosperity enabled the various communities and factions to suppress their ancient hatreds enough to tolerate each other, but differences in cultural standards, values, and customs between the Christian and Muslim communities may have made conflict inevitable."
Prosperity enables a society to cover up its internal divisions - both religious and ideological. Prosperity masks the warning signs and symptoms. When prosperity is removed, conflict may begin. And those who are slow to understanding the cleavages, to grasp where the battle lines are drawn may be destroyed and uprooted suddenly, unexpectedly. When prosperity crumbles the spoiled child is unleashed to vent his violent, selfish urges. The religious fanatic may attack those of other faiths. The Bolshevik and the Nazi may be counted on to fight for the transformation of society according to the dictates of class or race hatred. This is what the breakdown of modern society amounts to. Look at Weimar Germany and identify the dynamic. Then look at America today. Ignorant people say that totalitarianism has already arrived, but they have mistaken a few minor probing actions and incursions for the main event. Just wait until the bottom drops out of the U.S. economy. Wait until the left is fully empowered to decry the "failure of capitalism." The Muslims will joyously congratulate their own patience, thanking Allah for what they will term "deliverance." And then the real destruction is sure to begin.
In the known instances of modern totalitarianism, the Bolshevik, the Nazi and the Islamist share a common anti-Jewish, anti-democratic and anti-American set of themes. The Nazis under Hitler killed six million Jews, and the communists under Stalin killed 600,000 for good measure. Today the Muslim clergy preaches the extermination of Israel, the killing of millions of Jews. As reported by Paul Sperry, in a book titled Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington, we hear of Muslim clergy preaching the destruction of the Jews and the takeover of America right here in the United States. The native laxness and permissiveness of American society has long nurtured enemies within. Totalitarian thinking thrives in America - in the socialism of the university faculties, in the fanaticism of the growing Muslim minority, in the angry racism of White supremacists, Mexican nationalists and black militants. A rainbow of many-colored hatreds is brewing beneath the surface, involving a small but growing number of empty individuals who have lost their way, forgetting the spiritual richness of Western culture and its unmatched record of prosperity. These have united under various banners - Islamic, communist, anti-war, anti-Bush.
The communists have long predicted the collapse of capitalism, and soon they will enjoy a run of victories. We only have to consider how communist ideas have captivated a leading section of the Democratic Party. It is naïve to imagine that American communists gave up their fanatic beliefs because of Moscow's retreat. People do not forfeit their faith because the news from abroad is contrary to expectations. Faith in ideology continues even if the power of the believer is eclipsed by tactical retreat in Eastern Europe, where the KGB and its sister agencies exchanged open, targetable structures for deceptive invisible structures. The recent outcome of the Bulgarian elections tells the story, as the country's president and presumptive winner of the next round of balloting had a secret police code name. In ungary we see the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the revolt against Soviet occupation disrupted by riots in which the rioters cry out against the continuation of communist power under a social democratic façade. In Moscow a KGB officer presides over the ongoing murder of journalists, and open assaults against the staff of pro-democracy activist and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
The Nazis and other racist groups are also active, and ready to make an appeal. Like the leftists and Islamists they fulminate against Israel and Bush. They are ready to make common cause with the enemies of America because they seek to destabilize the country as a prelude to winning over the white population to their ideology. Timothy McVeigh was only a precursor, inspired by the white separatist ideas of The Turner Diaries. Others are sure to follow if America's prosperity is compromised.
Returning to Sperry's account of radical Islam in America, the Islamists are not simply a force in the Middle East, but a growing force for agitation and terror here on U.S. soil. According to the Brooklyn Islamic leader, Imam Siraj Wahhaj: "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing." What happened to the Christians in Lebanon was one victory in an anticipated string of Islamist victories. While feigning "shock and disgust" over the events of 9/11, the Islamic Society of North America's Muzammil H. Siddiqi contradicted his "moderate" image when he stated: "We must not forget that Allah's rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction." Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a charismatic Muslim teacher in Northern California, suggested that Islam was hijacked on 9/11. But on Sept. 9, 2001, he told a group of Muslims of America's impending fate. "The reason," he said, "is that this country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands." In reaction to these statements Paul Sperry wrote, "Surely a California-born U.S. citizen raised by a Catholic father and Greek Orthodox mother would never wish such a fate on America." Then Sperry quotes a speech in which Yusuf said, "I am a citizen of this country not by choice but by birth. I reside in this country not by choice but by conviction in attempting to spread the message of Islam in this country. I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society, whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights or any other element...." The black American convert to Islam, Ihsan Bagby stated: "Ultimately we [Muslims] can never be full citizens of this country because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country." Deceptively portraying himself as a moderate, founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Omar M Ahmad stated: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
The problem of American policy in Iraq, of Islamic hatred and violence, is not simply a problem of one region. It is the problem of France, where a dozen policemen are injured in clashes with Islamic youth on a daily basis. It is the problem of Germany, where Islamic youth intimidate school administrators and non-Muslims. It is the problem of England, where al Qaeda has spread its tentacles throughout the city of London. If America retreats from Iraq the Muslims will take it as a sign, and they will advance. The strength of Islamic fanaticism will increase. "First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday."
