If you're wondering why traditional Muslims aren't more outspoken about condemning the Islamic radicals and identifying themselves with America, you don't realize how effectively the radical Muslims have portrayed America as an atheist, immoral society. In the minds of many traditional Muslims, we are the Great Satan. Historian Bernard Lewis points out that in all the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) Satan is not primary a conqueror, he is a tempter. Many Muslims see the values of America as seducing the traditional cultures of the world to moral self-destruction. I'm not saying that these Muslims are right. As I argue in The Enemy at Home, theirs is a partial view and even a wrong view. But it is a prevalent view, and this helps to explain why Muslims who reject violence are also reluctant to speak up on our behalf. They don't like the radicals, but they don't want to be on Satan's side either.
There is also a second reason. Prominent Americans--many of them on the right--have devoted acres of commentary to attacking the Muslim religion, complete with exposes of the Prophet Muhammad and attacks on the Koran as a gospel of terrorism. Then these same characters plaintively wonder why Muslims are reluctant to join their anti-Muslim crusade. All they are asking, to quote Victor Davis Hanson, is for Muslims to get busy "emancipating women...outlawing polygamy...insisting on secular education...and ending tribalism." Wow, Hanson, and can you also recommend a new holy book?
Robert Spencer can: It's called the Torah. Spencer wants the Muslims to just stop following the Koran and repudiate the teachings of Muhammad and the main schools of Islamic thought. In short, here are a bunch of Americans advising Muslims to stop being Muslims. (Spencer's euphemistic term for this is "cultural Muslims.") Great advice, right? Should anyone be surprised that the traditional Muslims are not signing up in droves? If you were a traditional Muslim, would you join a bunch of Islamophobes who are always denouncing your religion, its founder, its sacred text and its basic values?
These themes are explored in the fourth and final part of my response to conservative critics, which appears today on National Review Online, and which you can read here. In the end there are two broad options for the right. Fight one billion Muslims and lose, since our side is already sorely divided and a purely military approach is not enough. (It does little good to kill 1,000 radical Muslims if 10,000 traditional Muslims sign up the next week.) Or ally with the traditional Muslims who, despite our differences with them, are our best long-term hope for defeating radical Islam. Indeed, as the limits of our martial strategy in Iraq has shown, they are the only ones who can.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 2)
1. Then these same characters plaintively wonder why Muslims are reluctant to join their anti-Muslim crusade
They have set up a false dichotomy in which if you disagree with them, then you are an extremist.
The funeral in NY City was an excellent example of non-Muslims coming together with Muslims and showing the true face of so many every day Americans. The statements of these anti-Muslim people are translated into Arabic, Urdu and other
languages and played for people in the Muslim world. They are told that these very people want their children to be immoral and to leave their religion and stop believing in God entirely. This happens every Friday. They are playing into the hands of the terrorists
Tariq Nelson at 3:53PM on Mar 15th 2007
2. I don't know if it's ok to put links on this blog, but I just ran across this article which should have been on the front page of the New York Times.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=805143
This is the kind of press that moderate Muslims need.
Dianne at 5:07PM on Mar 15th 2007
3. Now that I’ve read part four, I’m not only not convinced but quite worried. You see the “traditionalist” Muslim world easily joining the so-called radicals. That should say something immediately. If “traditionalists” or “moderates” oppose the radical’s call to arms, if they treasure civility and wish to avoid a decent into barbarity, they’ll do it for their own sake not ours. The fact that you think they’ll heed the call to radicalism suggests they aren’t allies by disposition.
I’m still stunned with your song-and-dance: don’t upset the “traditionalists” or they’ll become “radicals.” One would hope that they wouldn’t do so because these so-called traditionalists abhorred the values of the radicals. One would hope that they wouldn’t do so because they don’t want to sink into 7th century barbarity. The notion that our insults will prompt them to self-immolation and a descent into savagery suggests that there was never common ground to build this imagined alliance of yours.
But I’m particularly bothered over your defeatism: we can’t fight “one billion Muslims.” Odd, we defeated over a billion Communists and won the Cold War as the left told us the only way was “peace through understanding” and “building bridges.” Why are you so scared of Muslims? We need not go to war if we establish a deterrent [1] and yes the left hampers that effort just as they did during the Cold War. The problem this time is that the right doesn’t even address the issue. When have you last heard the word “deterrence?”
[1] http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_libertyandculture_archive.html
JasonPappas at 5:12PM on Mar 15th 2007
4. Dear Danish,
The teachings of the Bible, etc. are just as violent and scientifically illiterate as of the Koran. If we in the U.S. actually practiced biblical law, we'd all be dead; we'd be stoned for wearing polyester blends, eating bacon, and coveting our neighbor's wife a.k.a. property.
We're not going to ally culturally with people who spend half their day praying because we'd have to forget how satisfying and fun it is to eat shrimp, go to swimsuit contests, and watch girls making out. And we're not going to forgot that.
The market of ideas will lead to more people enjoying the freedom and non-hypocrisy of modern America than the boring, prescientific, Sunday-wasting religious nonsense you seem obsessed with.
MWR,
Elephant Ears
lil_turk at 6:16PM on Mar 15th 2007
5. We're not "in a war against Islam" We're in a war against islamists.
One thing about pushing traditional muslims toward radicalism.....true moderate muslims (and I differentiate between them and those you refer to as traditional, as they are a subset of traditional muslims), will not join the ranks of the radicals. I believe they will remain in the middle, so to speak, alienated by the western islamophobes and hate-mongers, and repulsed by the radical extremists.
justafriend at 7:15PM on Mar 15th 2007
6. We're not "in a war against Islam" We're in a war against islamists.
One thing about pushing traditional muslims toward radicalism.....true moderate muslims (and I differentiate between them and those you refer to as traditional, as they are a subset of traditional muslims), will not join the ranks of the radicals. I believe they will remain in the middle, so to speak, alienated by the western islamophobes and hate-mongers, and repulsed by the radical extremists.
justafriend at 7:16PM on Mar 15th 2007
7. I've read Robert Spencer's books, and he has never mentioned the Torah as a substitute for the Koran. Spencer is a Catholic. If you can't beat him with logic, just call him a Jew.
the barbarian at 7:21PM on Mar 15th 2007
8. Mr. D'Souza,
I just watched your February 4th interview on C-Span and enjoyed it immensely. In your blog comments you say that we can't fight one billion Muslims and must enlist the aid of the traditional Muslims to fight the radicals for us. But in the C-Span interview you entertain the possibility that as much as 30% of the Muslim population is sympathetic to the radical agenda. That's a significant minority!
What happens if the radicals successfully detonate a nuclear bomb in one of our American cities? Do we fight them then? It seems to me that if (or maybe even when) that happpens, we have no choice but to fight "Islam." Any Muslim who is sympathetic with the radicals will have to be destroyed along with the radicals, and we will have no choice but to kill a whole bunch of "traditional" Muslims along with them, if we hope to survive ourselves. If 30% of the Muslim population is sympathetic to the agenda of the radicals who fly planes into buildings, isn't that a damning condemnation of Islam itself?
Warm regards,
Andy
Andy Gilman at 7:46PM on Mar 15th 2007
9. Your comment, "Robert Spencer can: It's called the Torah", is beyond appalling. It verges on the anti-Semitic. Have you completely lost your marbles? Spencer is not Jewish anyway, and he certainly hasn't called for replacing the Koran with the Torah. It is sad to see what has happened to you, and I think you need to take a deep breath and rethink your whole idea of the relationship between Islam and the West.
herbs at 9:39PM on Mar 15th 2007
10. The notion that we can't beat a billion muslims is hogwash. It just takes out of the box thinking and technological superiority. If a Caliphate is created, we can temporarily evacuate Israel, then do a covert operation to divert an asteroid to collide with the Caliphate, killing them all. After the muslims are dead, Israel can be restored. Of course, it can only be done if we gain a lot more technological competence in outer space than we have now. And we need nopt worry about the oil, since it will all be gone by the time (20-30 years??) we can do something like this. We just need to invest a lot in space colonization, armaments, and transport.
AndrewP at 9:43PM on Mar 15th 2007
11. I recently read in the Economist that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted to being involved in a failed attempt to kill Pope John Paul II.
I loved Dinesh's new book, as I thought it made some very compelling points.
However, doesn't Kalid's admission contradict D'Souza's premise that Muslims don't hate Christians, they hate Atheists and Pagans?
Joey Staudt at 12:33AM on Mar 16th 2007
12. Dinesh, what part of JIHAD do you not understand? What other religion has the concept of jihad, the notion that if you die fighting for allah you get 72 virgins in paradise?
When somebody cuts the head off someone and calls it God's will, why can't you get that?
And Muslim morality? When you look at Female Genital Mutilation, honor killing, stonings, amputations, forced veiling, marriage and divorce, temporary marriages.
And you want to lecture Americans on their morality. You're a joke.
mrcombi at 2:47AM on Mar 16th 2007
13. http://vwt.d2g.com:8081/2007/03/dsouza_astounding_to_be_so_rig.html
epaminondas at 7:39AM on Mar 16th 2007
14. Hey, Dinesh: Maybe it's time you took some history courses in school. Your ignorance is appalling.
Oh, and the Torah? What does that comment mean? Are you anti-Semitic? Spencer has many many times referred to his Christian background; this is not something obscure. Why don't you actually read what someone says before attacking them?
Seymour Paine at 9:36AM on Mar 16th 2007
15. People of America, Why are you so hateful? You know, Mr. D'Souza, you hit the jackpot when you said "America is an atheist, immoral society." You're all so hateful. You hate God, you hate morality, you hate your fellow Americans, but worst of all, you hate yourselves. If you didn't hate yourselves so much, you wouldn't feel so much hate towards everyone and everything else. Now you blame everyone else for your problems: it's the lefts fault, it's the rights fault, the liberals are hypocrites, the conservatives are hypocrites, the whites hate the blacks, the blacks hate the whites... when is it going to end? will YOU end it?
Quincy Q. at 11:06AM on Mar 16th 2007