Jihad and Crusade
Sean Michael writes and asks about the best way to prosecute the Crusade. Let me answer his questions seriatim:
What do we DO if we see the rise of “no go” areas in the US as in some parts of Europe? That is, large parts of cities where “infidels, whether civilians, police, EMTs, or even firemen are afraid to go due to facing attacks from jihadists. To tacitly abandon these areas to de facto foreign and jihadist rule would mark a huge advance in the program of subversion followed by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Assuming the police do nothing, and assuming all peaceful means have been tried and have failed, the answer would be to assemble all young men are arms bearing age, that is, the militia, and have them march into the area and restore law and order, and if encountering armed resistance, to expel or kill the scofflaws.
In other words, the citizens of a republic are responsible for the defense thereof, and the establishment of an enclave in their midst of an alien peoples hostile to the republic is a threat to the public safety and security just as much as an insurrection or invasion.
I am currently reading IMPEACHED by David O. Stewart, which deals with the Reconstruction during the administration of J0hnson, immediately following the Lincoln assassination. The problem there was parallel: large areas of the nation were occupied by federal troops, and various Southern factions and Northern ‘Copperheads’ had not yet truly laid down their arms. I do not see the problem as fundamentally different from what nations must do when sections of the nation are in rebellion.
If my answer seems outrageous or impossible or ‘beyond the pale’ — ask yourself why. Why and by what means have we reached the point when using arms to protect the integrity of soil for which our fathers died seems outrageous?
Is it because the enemy in this case is religious rather than secular? Not in uniform? Hiding behind civilians? Barbaric rather than civilized? Uses Communist cell-warfare and Cold War techniques of agitprop and anarchy rather than honorable tactics?
Allow me to suggest that categorizing the Jihadists as a denomination protected by the First Amendment is a category error. Categorizing a pro-theocracy Sharia Law movement as a private religious opinion rather than as an armed political revolution springing from a war between Christendom and the Dal al-Islam bent on her destruction, a war between civilization and barbarism going back to the birth of Mohammedanism in the Seventh Century, leads to endless paradoxes and difficulties.
Another problem is how Saudi Arabia uses oil money to train and export Whahabi imams and mullahs sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood’s aims to staff many mosques in the US. Should we any longer tolerate this?
No, we should not tolerate it.
Should such imams and mullahs be expelled?
Hanging would be better than exile, since modern telecommunications would allow them to continue to preach and recruit even without face-to-face meetings (see, for example the Fort Hood shooter).
As you said, our Constitutional guarantees on freedom of religion did not have an irreversibly theocratic religion like Islam in mind. Or should it be called, rather, a political party?
I cordially dislike renaming things merely because the implications of the name provoke an emotional reaction. It would be better to call it a religion, which it is, and a heresy, which it is, and better to realize that it is a religion which is antithetical to Christendom and the West, and to all civilization.
It would be better to call them Paynims, which they are, and Jihadists, which they are, and to declare a Crusade according to the proper and legally recognized forms for the declaration of the Crusade, and to gather Christian peoples and republics and all men of good will who might be our allies and make war against them wherever situate, and decimate their numbers until they sue for a peace they can convince us they mean to keep.
This is a religious war. You cannot fight a religious war with a secular philosophy. The secular philosophy is helpless, and is blind to the true dimensions and purpose of the war. See, for example, the risible and provocative willingness of the West to build a victory mosque on the unburied graves of the 9/11 massacre, as if to welcome our conquerors — the meaning of the act is spiritual and symbolic, and therefor the secular philosophy is required by its own logic to grant the victory not only unopposed, but by aiding the abetting the outrages of the enemy.
I see no way out of the dilemma you so starkly outlined: doing nothing about jihadist aggression undermines us; but “suspending” the First Amendment clauses on religious freedom would give aggressive secularists even more room for attacking Christians. To say nothing of how suspending the First Amendment risks lowering us to the same vile level as the jihadists.
All the same, I can’t believe passivity is all we can do. Through out the long history of the co existence of Christianity with Islam, many leaders did arise who fought Mohammedan aggression. Charles Martel, Leo III the Isaurian, Dmitry of the Don, Don John of Austria, and King John Sobieski, to name a few. I strongly hope and pray that if wars like these come again, we have the spirit to raise up such leaders.
Passivity is not all we can do, but it might well be all the secularists can do. Their philosophy strictly forbids them from fighting a religious war, or using public funds to spread Christian ideas or to discourage Muslim ideas. This is a war of ideas: they are not allowed to take sides.
The structural logic of the secularist philosophy requires them to treat Muslims as if they are Mormons or Methodists. The modern world is more afraid of Protestant Fundamentalists and Catholics than it is of Muslims, almost as if the Christians were regarded as theocrats bent on establishing a political hegemony and reducing the non-Christians to dhimmi.
Let me emphasize that I am speaking of the modern secularists, i.e. those who think the First Amendment guarantees freedom from religion but not freedom of religion. This interpretation is a very recent cultural product of a postchristian and antichristian culture.
In law, the First Amendment does not protect Aztecs or Satanists wishing to commit human sacrifice, nor Shaman wishing to chew peyote, nor any other act which is illegal in and of itself. Surely recruiting for Jihad falls into this category.
If Jihad had been waged against the West in the times of our grandfathers and fathers, they would have treated the fascist Mohammedans the same way they treated the fascist Germans and Imperial Japanese both at home and abroad. The laws would not have been read in a technical and over-broad fashion to give the enemy protective coloration or cover, and the police would have expected cooperation from peaceful Muslims who would be actively and eagerly attempting to expel the Jihadists from their midst, and who would be denouncing them publicly, and granting them no tolerance, and no soapbox and no rest and no comfort.
The difference is that the political and social Left fears the Christians and sympathizes with the Jihadists; and why not? They are allies in spirit. The Jihadists use the same rhetoric and the same techniques as the fascists and communists and other totalitarians so near and dear to the heart of the Left.
The Left are the source of the problem.
Absent them, the Jihadists would be as trifling and minor a foe as a band of robbers from the hills. Absent them, every civilized nation would rally behind Israel, and every suicide-murder or rocket attack into Israel would launch another round of wars in the Middle East and another regime change. Muslims would be terrified of provoking the righteous anger of the West.
The West has overwhelming resources and military superiority. France alone has sufficient nuclear arsenal to destroy every major city in every nation where Islam is the state religion. Such weapons will never be used. (Nor am I particularly recommending them, except to stop Iran from obtaining a nuke.) My point here is that this is not a battle to be fought on the physical level, not a military action.
It is a psychological warfare war, or, if you prefer, a spiritual war.
What do we do if we ever have “no go” areas in the US controlled by jihadists? Should we refuse to tolerate this and treat them like rebellious regions, wresting back control by military force?
What has become of us that this question is seriously to be asked? I do not fault you for asking, but I note that the unwillingness of the modern mind to use force of arms to defend civilization from its avowed and open enemies makes the question pertinent.
Frankly, I do not see why it is a question at all. If Irishmen, Frenchmen, or Chinamen, or Eskimos, or Men from Mars in tripodal fighting machines landed in England, would not the Englishmen have a right and duty to resort to force of arms to expel or kill the invaders?
Ah, but I suppose the matter is different if the invaders are invited in to do manual labor, and then maintained by public welfare, and the difference is one of cult and culture, but not of politics. We of the West cannot, because of our innate chivalry, bring ourselves to attack a foe who does not march under a flag, or behind a crowned king or imperial Caesar. It is somewhat undemocratic of us to hold it to be impossible for a grassroots movement to be a foe.
Will we need to amend the Constitution to declare the First Amendment religious freedom clauses applies only to faith which does not believe in theocracy or the merging of mosque and state, as Islam does?
I am not sure an amendment is necessary. Even under a generous reading of the Constitution, a church cannot preach, advocate, and recruit members to engage in a conspiracy for the armed overthrow of the government.
The Ummah of Islam can coexist with Christendom if Islam repudiates Jihad. If Islam cannot repudiate Jihad and remain Islam, it will remain forever in a state of war.
The expulsion of the practice of that religion from all civilized nations, and the reconquest of the traditionally Christian lands of North Africa and the Middle East would seem to be the minimum necessity for a moderate policy. If the conquest of the Middle East by imperial colonial powers was the only time in history when Christendom and the Ummah were at peace, then that is the price of peace. If we cannot or will not pay the price, then war.
Should Mohammedanism be declared not a religion, but a political party, and thus subject to the laws punishing rebellion, sedition, and treason?
That is certainly possible and may be wise, but allow me to suggest a milder course: Sharia Law should be declared not a religion but a legal system, that is, a political party, and thus subject to the laws punishing rebellion, sedition, and treason.
To soothe the conscience of our secular friends, we do not even need to say we are seeking a Crusade against the Paynim. We can say we are enemies of ‘Shariaists’ i.e. the advocates of Sharia as opposed to cannon law or civic law or common law. Any Muslim who is not an advocate of Sharia Law would not necessarily be a threat, or be part of the fight.
Another problem, what do we do about NON fanatical Muslims? That is, Muslims who are not jihadists. Problem is, the jihadist “fish” uses the “sea” of non fanatical Mohammedans they swim in to hide from their enemies. Or at least get protective coloration.
Bush uttered the only reasonable policy: anyone who is not actively aiding us, is against us. Anyone who aids, comforts, supports, or abets a Jihadists is a Jihadist.
You see, the biggest illusion of the War against the Terror Masters is the idea that there are not state actors behind the terrorists. That is not true. There are nations who are supporting and funding this effort as well as large international movements or brotherhoods.
The peaceful Muslims must expel the Jihadists from their midst, and be unwilling to provide protective coloration, no, not even offer a word of encouragement, or else the peaceful Muslims will be counted as enemies. I dislike the logic of this, but see no other option.
There are many frustrating and difficult questions like these which needs to be frankly addressed if the Western tradition of ordered freedom is to be defended. Denying or looking away from these problems will not help.
My problem, as you can see from the above, is the opposite. I believe that a war fought explicitly to protect and promote the Christian religion, that is, a Crusade or holy war, is both rightful and expedient in a case where peace is impossible. Peace with Muslims is impossible until and unless they unambiguously and irreproachably repudiate Jihad and Sharia Law.
It is my belief that the Western experiment with government built on atheist liberal principles, where the conduct of religion is both private and strictly excluded from the public agora, fails when it encounters a confident and warlike theocracy, even if the theocracy is disorganized and poor and cannot maintain a credible military threat.
The random murder of civilians has no military value whatsoever. It is only an instrument of terror. When combined with other ‘Cold War’ style communists tactics for revolution and the overthrow of the old order, such political terror can be effective, but, again, the value is primarily psychological, and the method is one of psychological warfare or spiritual warfare.
An atheist liberal society lacks any cult or culture to oppose such psychological warfare: you cannot defeat a Jihadist with a narcissist.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
