Date: 05 Oct 2006
Dividing the enemy ///////////// Tens of millions of Muslims have been permitted to settle within the lands of Western Europe during the past several decades. They have even been extended every conceivable government benefit and kindness to do so – subsidized housing, free education, free medical care. No matter what the nation-state, no matter what its political orientation (liberal or conservative) or where it rates on the level of social tolerance, no matter whether the Muslims in question have arrived from places with some kind of historic, even if at times tenuous connection, to the Infidel land (Pakistanis in England, Somalis in Italy) or with no connection at all (Kurds in Sweden, Moroccans in Holland), the results have been remarkably similar all over Western Europe. Large communities of people are now in place, consisting of adherents of a belief-system that is much more encompassing than anything that the Western world now understands by the word “religion,” and that teaches them to regard as enemy-held territory the various Infidel lands behind whose lines they have been permitted to settle. /////////// And behind those enemy lines, they are not required to abandon their often fanatical and hostile faith, and few do abandon it. Often the later generations cling ever more fervently to it, and implacably make demands for changes in the legal and political institutions, and social arrangements, and cultural assumptions, that characterize the advanced liberal democracies of the Western world. Even when such demands are rebuffed -- as in the grotesque and repeated attempts to limit the Western practice of freedom of speech, whether by a Danish newspaper, or by a Dutch politician or film-maker, or an English civil servant, or a French lycee’s philosophy teacher (the indispensable “prof de philo”), or even by the Pope himself -- they nonetheless are made unembarrassedly and pursued relentlessly. The constant pressure naturally affects the practice of free speech, which should be natural and has now become a self-conscious act of defiance -- defiance of those who come from outside, who would not have produced, nor have tolerated for one minute, the individual liberties enshrined in the American Constitution or the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and who are trying, as cunningly as they can, to destroy those individual rights within the Western countries in order to ensure that there is no freedom of conscience (so as to prevent Muslims in the West from leaving the religion), and to render Islam immune to all potential criticism. Calibans are attempting to order Prosperos about, an undertaking made easier because so many can no longer tell Caliban and Prospero apart. ///////////// Within the Infidel lands, the Infidels now must endure daily lives far more unpleasant and unsettled and constrained, far more expensive, and far more physically dangerous, than they were before the large-scale presence of Muslims in their lands. The Camp of Islam, as represented by Muslims in the West and their rich and powerful supporters in the oil states, have also worked to divide the Western alliance. And they have been successful in distancing the countries of Western Europe from their historic ally and political and military rescuer, the United States of America. To this end, Muslims and their collaborators within Europe, who are sometimes paid for their efforts and sometimes merely reflect an overlapping of views, have played upon the pre-existing mental pathologies of anti-Americanism and antisemitism. In France anti-Americanism appears to be a feature of long standing. Antisemitism, meanwhile, has been a permanent fixture among an irreducible percentage of the population in any Western country, impervious even to the now-recognized consequences of what happened between the period 1933 and 1945, beginning in, but hardly limited to, Nazi Germany. The divisions that have been caused as a result of these appeals, and the rivalry for the fat contracts that Saudis and other Arabs can dangle in front of businessmen from different nations should their respective countries promote Saudi or larger Muslim Arab interests, hold a lesson. ///////////// The lesson is: Two Can Play That Game. It is extraordinary how little attention -- none, really -- has been paid in the discussion of Jihad and Islam to how to sow divisions within the Camp of Islam, or at least do nothing to hinder the natural divisions from widening. Causing divisions will lead in turn to a general demoralization that will weaken the Camp of Jihad. ////////////////// But so far one side has only wielded the division weapon. Division has been accomplished in the West in a few decades, and threatens to change the moral and political landscape of Europe if trends are not halted and reversed. The Camp of the Infidels has never been united. India, the country that suffered the most from conquest by Islam, for decades appeared to be seen by the American government purely in Cold-War terms. Nehru, and especially his foreign minister Krishna Menon, were seen as too sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Partly this was a function of misperception, of confusing studies in England in the early part of the last century with the influence of the Fabian Society, and later, a subscription to the Left Book Club of Victor Gollancz. Overlaid upon this was the Bandung Conference, where the “non-allied” nations allied themselves, in their worldview, with the foreign policy and attitudes most favorable to the Soviet Union, least favorable to the United States. And the American government, beginning with the Dulles brothers, saw Pakistan as a natural ally. Unlike those slippery fellows Nehru and Menon, those Pakistani generals could be counted on in the Great Campaign of the Cold War. For what was Islam? Islam was this: A Bulwark Against Communism. The Baghdad Pact became CENTO, a “Mutual Defense Pact,” by which fiction the Americans and the British supplied military training and equipment to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, and those countries, in turn, took the equipment and had their soldiers receive the training. ///////////// CENTO collapsed formally in 1958 (it had collapsed before that) when the body of Iraqi “strongman” Nuri es-Said was dragged, and mutilated at each stop, through the streets of Baghdad, and Iraq pulled out. Turkey continued to be an ally, because for Turkey the Soviet Union was simply the latest embodiment of its historic enemy Russia. Iran stayed an ally, of sorts, until the Shah, like Nuri es-Said, fell. But Pakistan never stopped being a favored recipient of American aid of all kinds, including lots of military aid (even F-16s). It continued to be so for decades, even when the Taliban were first hatched in Pakistan’s madrasas, then sent back to capture Afghanistan, and were given diplomatic and other kinds of support by the government of Pakistan. The cushion provided by American military and economic aid permitted A.Q. Khan, once he had returned to Pakistan from stealing nuclear secrets in the West, to pay for the nuclear program that led, finally, to the production of the “Islamic” bomb which made A. Q. Khan the national hero of Pakistan, and the one untouchable figure in the entire country. ////////////// And in the Western alliance itself, over the past thirty years, Arab Muslims, wielding not the “oil weapon” (no such weapon exists, for they are eager to sell the oil) but rather the “money weapon” (that is, the revenues that come from the sale of that oil), have dangled contracts, bribed officials, bought up journalists, and arrived at secret covenants. In short, they have done all the things that have turned much of public opinion in the Western world against Israel -- cunningly painted not as a victim of the endless siege or Lesser Jihad being waged against it but as an aggressor, denying “national” rights to a “Palestinian people,” as the local Arabs in Gaza and the “West Bank” were deliberately renamed after the Six-Day War. The results can be seen all around us. Appeasement of Islam continues at the level of the nations and especially in the upper reaches of the E.U., where such people as Javier Solana, Chris Patten, Miguel Moratinos, and Romano Prodi (now back in Rome), have parroted and further promoted the Eurabian line on foreign policy. ///////////// Matters have not been helped, of course, by having as the American President a gauche and inarticulate figure who fits the European stereotype of a limited American, and who -- even when he is right -- cannot make his case convincingly. A different person, with a different and smoother presentation, aware of and able to appeal to the various fashions or mental vanities of Europeans, could do much to repair relations that must be repaired. ////////////// But what is most strange is that the ability of the Muslims to exploit or even to cause or widen divisions in the Camp of Infidels, has not caused anyone in Washington to think that two can play this game, and that the most intelligent way of proceeding is, wherever possible, to divide the Camp of Jihad and Islam. The divisions that most obviously present themselves are three: sectarian, ethnic, and economic. By sectarian divisions, one means primarily the long history of hostility between Sunni and Shi’a. The Americans in Iraq have not caused such hostility; it predates the founding of the American Republic by about a thousand years. It can be seen in the attacks on Shi’a in Pakistan over the past few decades, on the attempt by the Sunni Taliban to wipe out the Shi’a Hazara in Afghanistan, in the contumely with which the Wahhabi (Sunni) Arabs treat the Shi’a in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, in the clashes between Sunni and Shia’ in Yemen and Lebanon, in the growing fury of the Shi’a who make up 70-75% of the population of Bahrain at attempts by the Sunni ruler and local Sunnis to keep the Shi’a permanently down. And in Iraq, whether the Sunni despotism took on the protective coloration of “Ba’athism,” just as in Syria the Alawite dictatorship took on a similar camouflage, the removal of the regime of Saddam Hussein made inevitable what the Administration still keeps thinking it can prevent: a struggle, certainly involving killing, and possibly involving open and continuous warfare between Sunnis who will never acquiesce in their loss of power to the Shi’a Arabs, and Shi’a Arabs who will never return to the Sunnis the power they, the Shi’a, at long last possess – political power, and the control of the nation’s wealth that flows automatically from that. /////////////// The constant Sunni-Shi’a strife within Iraq is not to be deplored, but to be welcomed, by Infidels. That civil war could attract outside support by Shi’a in Iran and among the Hizballah of Lebanon, who might send volunteers, arms, and money to their co-religionists, while the Sunnis, though greatly outnumbered within Iraq, can expect great sums of money from the rich Arab oil states (especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the U.A.E.), and Sunni volunteers from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, to come flocking in to make sure that the Land of the Two Rivers, the land of the historic Abbasid Caliphate, is not permanently controlled by the “Rafidite dogs” (as Zarqawi called them) the Shi’a. All this ensures that all this violent energy is not being directed at Infidels. /////////////// The second great division within Islam, also visible in Iraq, is that between the Arabs and the non-Arab Muslims. Islam has universalist claims but within that pretend-universalism, it is the Arabs, the “Best of Peoples,” to whom, and in whose language, the right revelation of the Qur’an was given, who have always used Islam as it was intended to be used by those who created it: as a vehicle to both justify and promote Arab conquest of more advanced, wealthier, more settled, more numerous non-Arab populations. Everything about Islam promotes the idea of the desirability of being Arab. Non-Muslim Arabs pray five times a day turning toward Mecca in Arabia. They emulate a seventh-century Arab in his mores and manners, or those of his Companions, and do so even when they are the descendants of Hindus and Buddhists in the distant East Indian archipelago, or some misfit in Marin County who has converted or “reverted” to Islam as the Last Stop on an increasingly desperate Spiritual Search. And finally, the taking of an Arab name – so exciting for some Western converts -- and even the manufacturing of a false Arab lineage (sometimes including direct descent from Muhammad) -- helps convince non-Arab Muslims, those wannabe Arabs, that they have managed to become that splendid thing, an Arab. ////////////// But the linguistic, cultural, and political imperialism of the Arabs, which is part of Islam, is not universally welcomed. The Berber writer Kateb Yacine, possibly the most important Berber cultural figure, refused to write in Arabic, and in the French he chose was scathing on the subject of Arab domination of the Berbers. Arab militias supported fully by the government of Sudan have now murdered 400,000 non-Arab black Africans of Darfur. Sudan, in its attempts to pursue its policies and avoid Western constraints, is fully supported in turn by Egypt and other members of the Arab League. That point needs to be emphasized -- not the Sudanese government’s genocidal campaign, but the Arab League’s unanimous support for the Sudanese murders of black Africans. In Malaysia, in Indonesia, even among some Pakistanis in the West (though not in Pakistan itself) there are expressions here and there of dismay or even disgust at the forced arabization, or even the self-arabization, of so many Muslims. In Iraq, the attitude of the Kurds toward the American forces, the unfeigned friendliness of many does reflect the understanding that only the Americans have protected the Kurds from the Arabs. But it may also reflect something else. As non-Arabs, the Kurds have another identity to which to appeal -- an identity which may rival, or at least undercut, their identity as Muslims. Arabs have no such other identity; Arabness, Uruba, reinforces the Muslim identity. Indeed, it even helps to persuade Christian Arabs to adopt as their own the Muslim worldview, so entangled is the notion of “Arabness” with the idea of Islam. This helps to explain the well-known phenomenon of the islamochristian Arab, who parrots the Muslim line on Israel, and also defends, or attempts to defend Islam from any criticism in the West. ///////////// What would an independent Kurdistan do for the Infidels? It would have immediate consequences in Iran. For the Kurds of Iran would be inspired to rise up against the Persians who rule them, and to attempt not merely greater autonomy, but to free themselves from Iran and to become part of Kurdistan. This would use up Iranian energies and war materiel. The Americans could supply the Kurds with whatever equipment, training, and other help they wished, and could also offer diplomatic support by intervening with Turkey, to assure it that the American government would extract from the Kurds a guarantee that whatever territorial demands were made on Iran or Syria, none would be made on the Turkish-populated areas of eastern Anatolia. This could be presented as an offer the Turks (whose army has been trained and equipped by the Americans) will see the wisdom of accepting now that the Cold War is over, and Turkey is no longer necessary to American policymakers in quite the same way. //////////////// Kurds in Iran becoming bolder in their attacks on the forces of the Islamic Republic, and possibly aided by Kurdistan (in turn aided by the Americans), would have effects in Iran itself on other disaffected minorities -- Baluchis, and Arabs in Ahwaz and elsewhere in Khuzistan, where Iran’s oilfields are located. Barely half of the population of the Islamic Republic of Iran is Persian. Should even the Azeris join in, it will be impossible for what remains of the Persian Empire to hold together. And in attempting to hold it together, the regime in Tehran will necessarily have to divert all kinds of resources and attention that might make it easier to halt, or slow down, its nuclear program. In any case, members of disaffected minorities are more likely to want to prevent the Iranian government from acquiring such weaponry, as well as the attendant power and glory that would accrue to the regime from such acquisition. They might aid in sabotaging or at least reporting on the nuclear program. //////////////// Finally, an independent Kurdistan would or could be a model to other non-Arab Muslims, beginning but not ending with the Berbers of the Kabyle (and the Berbers of France, who might find less appeal in Islamic unity if their resentments of the Arabs can be encouraged). /////////////// And finally, there is one last great division in the Camp of Islam. That is the economic division between the sparsely populated and fabulously rich oil-and-natural-gas states -- Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar, Libya -- and the poor ones, which is to say every Muslim state that does not have the bonanza of that accident of geology that has made the Camp of Islam, over the past third of a century, such a threat to Infidels. /////////////// The sectarian and ethnic divisions within Islam are best exploited by Infidels doing nothing. Indeed, they can only be exploited fully when the American government pulls its troops out of Iraq and lets the real, unavoidable, permanent hostilities -- or ineffectual attempts to dampen them -- begin in Iraq, and to have the inevitable effects on Muslims outside Iraq, that they will have. ////////////// Similarly, the last of the three great exploitable divisions within the camp of Islam, the economic gap between oil-and-gas rich states and all the others, can be best exploited for Infidel purposes not by doing something, but by doing nothing. By ceasing to support Muslim states with great and continuing amounts of aid of all kinds -- economic and even military -- the Infidel world will end what has become a disguised Jizyah, received by Muslims as by right, and given by Infidel donors as if by necessity, to be continued for fear of offending Muslims, for fear of the Muslim reaction. The Americans have given Egypt more than $60 billion. In return, Egypt remains a world center of anti-Americanism and antisemitism. Its population, in every opinion poll, consistently shows itself to be imbued with hostility toward America. The Egyptian government, with its double game, has done everything it can to stymie efforts to effectively protect the black Africans of Darfur. It has also steadily allowed and even possibly encouraged the smuggling of weaponry into Gaza. It has done everything to inveigle the American government to “deal with Iran” by -- of course, what did you expect? -- pushing Israel to yield still more territory, to make still more concessions, in order to weaken the supposed appeal, as the Egyptians put it to credulous American officials, of Shi’a Iran to Sunnis in the Middle East. No matter what the issue, of course, the Arabs will always find a way to reinterpret and present events as dependent on further Israeli concessions. /////////////// If the Western world stops giving Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, and the “Palestinians” aid, that will clear the psychological air. And what is more, it will force the poorer Arabs to go to the rich Arabs for support. The “Palestinians” who by the tens of thousands are in these competing “security services” should be forced to give up their violent idleness and forced to work. They should no longer able to count on permanent Western aid, as so many of them do in their overpopulated, self-primitivized, permanently unviable statelets -- whose very unviability they are prevented from recognizing by the constant infusion of Western, Infidel, aid. They should be made to cease to treat such aid as akin to the protection money that was the Jizyah (the payments by Infidels to Muslim masters). They should be made to ask their “Arab brothers” for aid. Then two things can happen. The support can be forthcoming. The support can be denied. If forthcoming, it will never be enough for the poorer Arabs, who will resent more and more the unfairness of having to ask for such aid from those who, as fellow members of the umma al-islamiyya, ought to willingly give it. And if such support is given, more will always be requested. And the rich Arabs and even Iranians, if they continue to give, will more and more resent those whom they support. Consider, for example, all the reports of fury in Iran over Iranian aid being sent to Hizballah -- when Iranians at home are suffering. /////////////// The other possibility is that such aid will be denied, or nearly denied, with grand promises made (as always), and then no follow through. And that, too, will increase the intra-Muslim resentments and fury. //////////////// If one wishes to exploit the divisions within the Camp of Jihad and Islam, then, two things must be done: 1) The Americans must leave Iraq, and leave it promptly, using as an excuse the need to “let the Iraqis make the necessary compromises with each other as people must in a democratic society.” It won’t happen. It can’t happen. But something good for the Infidel camp and bad for the Camp of Islam will be the inevitable result. And the spectacle of internecine warfare, just like the spectacle of internecine warfare in Gaza, is useful for Infidels to observe: it helps give those who need to know it a little taste of what Islamic societies, uncushioned by vast wealth or by Infidel aid, tend towards. That will increase the sectarian and ethnic divisions within the Camp of Islam. ////////////// 2) The Americans and other Infidels must cease the further transfer of Infidel wealth, beyond the ten trillion transferred so far to pay for oil and gas from Muslim countries since 1973, and the trillions still to be transferred through such sales. That is, the Jizyah of foreign aid to all Muslim polities and peoples must end, and those poorer Muslims forced to get such aid, if they get any, from the fabulously rich Arab and Muslim states of OPEC. That will increase the awareness of stark economic divisions within the Camp of Islam. ////////////////// Is there more that can be done? Of course there is. But start with #1 and #2. The good results will be visible -- very shortly. /////////////// 000000000