It’s extremely worrisome that only eight years after 9/11, a Jordanian illegal immigrant and a relatively recent Afghan immigrant that looks like this are even in the country. Equally worrisome is the problem posed by Caucasian, native-born converts to Islam such as the angry ex-prisoner arrested in Illinois.
There is no doubt these are bad people. In a more self-confident society, they’d be interrogated, tried, and hanged within a month. But I do wonder if the two arrests involving FBI informants that also functioned as co-conspirators is the best use of FBI resources, as was the case of the Illinois and Dallas arrests. There are no doubt many hateful, anti-American Muslims within our borders. But many are lifelong seethers and trash-talkers who lack the resources, brainpower, and discipline to actually harm anyone. They’re as dangerous as “attempted murderers” who cast spells and poke voodoo dolls.
When the FBI builds and provides a bomb to someone like this, it may be propelling a person that is in practical terms a low threat into a resource-draining inmate. I may be wrong; the wherewithal and ability of the accused may be higher. It’s hard to tell from this vantage point. But one notable facts suggests they were just angry losers: in both Dallas and Illinois, the conspiracy and the provision of disarmed bombs involved the work of FBI agents and informants. We also know the FBI and all government agencies are fairly risk adverse. It’s not clear they would triage potential suspects based on likelihood of success. Let me be clear that I am only concerned about this as a matter of resource allocation; there is certainly no injustice or standing to complain on the part of the would-be Muslim terrorists themselves.
On the other hand, the New York arrests of Zazi shows a much more worrisome situation, where the accused terrorist was buying bomb-making supplies independently. I am glad that he and his confederates have been found out, before they could maim and kill. One wonders if we would have drawn lessons from their success. The El Al Airlines massacre in Los Angeles, the DC Sniper (involving a convert and immigrant), and the shoe bomber plot have all gone down the memory hole, as has the Lackawama Six. Foiled or failed efforts make little impression. Even the 9/11 attacks have been converted into a saccharine tragedy and time for national service as opposed to a wake up call that certain bad people believing a certain religion hate out guts.
Have we all been so brainwashed to forget that America was able to have limos driven and food served and other menial jobs perforemd before Muslim immigration began in the last two or three decades. It’s not like these are essential or particularly valuable residents. Their continued presence is a sign of national weakness and paralysis brought on by multiculturalist liberalism. No one thought, for example, that commitment to American values required large scale Japanese and German immigration during World War II. We knew then that saboteurs and double agents would exist in any such groups and that the risk of disloyalty and danger to national security was simply too high, even if some–perhaps a majority–of those coming would be peace-loving and loyal folks who did not like and did not fit in with the authoritarian regimes they were fleeing.
These arrests all reveal something missing from our strategic approach to terrorism. We continue to ignore the “formal cause” of Islamic Terrorism which is a belief in Islam. And recognizing this would make it plain that we need to (a) close our borders to Muslims, (b) remove all Muslims we can legally remove now, such as non-citizens, and (c) limit proselytizing activities of Muslims in American prisons, the military, and anywhere else where these groups can be limited But it’s simply anathema to the liberalism and the ersatz spirituality of guys like Bush and Obama to consider that the very content of someone else’s religion might be the problem and that the Muslim terrorists might be those who understand and act upon that religion in the most sincere way.
Concerned and looking for answers, I read a lot about Islam after 9/11. Like modern Christianity, it is a varied thing with various viewpoints. But some of those viewpoints are more persuasive, rooted in the text, and made with logical and historical rigor. I concluded the terrorists and extremists were acting on the basis of an understanding of Islam that rang the most true, that seemed to manifest its historical and textual spirit most sincerely. All of this is another way of saying that the best Muslims are the worst people, and our only hope for decency among them is the extent to which they disregard or modify their religion’s teachings.
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“All of this is another way of saying that the best Muslims are the worst people, and our only hope for decency among them is the extent to which they disregard or modify their religion’s teachings.”
Very true.
For a sad example of kneejerk affirmation of our enemies’ co-religionists, see http://cbs4denver.com/video/?id=62450@kcnc.dayport.com – Denver station interviews local Muslims concerned about their image and native Denverites eager to prove their tolerance.
Did the news crew actually ran across an outspoken “man on the street” Islamo-skeptic and cut him out? Or is everyone just so well trained that they will speak the right platitudes on demand?
“These arrests all reveal something missing from our strategic approach to terrorism. We continue to ignore the “formal cause” of Islamic Terrorism which is a belief in Islam.”
Yep. Let me add to that point. The Muslim religion has teachings-and teachers-that invite a jihad (in the form of terrorism), indeed.
I’ve read Qutb and his dark-age cultists as much as the next guy. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are just the latest two-bit copycats.
But it’s more the invidious psychology of “religiosity,” the group-think, and having that level of blind faith in any religion that is truly the issue.
Case in point: it’s not as if Christianity is all that far removed from the Crusades, lest we forget, wherein a 200 year “jihad” was waged by the “good guys.” Same mentality, different clothes.
Fortunately for the West,shall we say, that bloody self-righteousness train has left the station. We got smart-intellectually honest. The reason lies in the presence of a democratic spirit, science and modernity; all have done enough as enlightenment tools to moderate the fundamentalists and extremists. All did enough to halt the narrow view of life and the transcendent imperative.
Thus, our relgiosity is today as much a social convenience as it is a faith and clearly exercised within the context of the separation of church and state. It’s not a killing tool, anymore, or proof-positive of establishing the moral order.
If we concede that the Muslim religion isn’t about to change by itself, and it isn’t (as you imply above), especially since it invariably combines government and faith, we best start introducing the other two or three variables that dilute Islam’s retrograde nature and cripple the ills of that culture’s blind faith. The internet is a great place to start, for example.
Attacking the religion per se or bombing a hundred more Pashtuns and assorted clan warriors ain’t going to change things. The law of diminishing returns will prevail. Obama or whoever may as well try to fight off oxygen.
I mean, is there one respected scientist amongst the billions of Muslims? Just one? One free thinker? Somebody who can spot the virtues of self-determination and individual sovereignty? Is there Muslim on who’s got the balls to question the great Allah?
Let me know when you find one. Until you do, the Muslim religion and the mindlessness that accompanies it will continue to be a jihad waiting to happen. We can’t arrest or shoot them all. Just ask the Crusaders.
Edit: is there one Muslim…(sorry, bad eyes)
Yes the “worst” or more “moderate” Muslims are akin to American “Cafeteria Catholics” who consider themselves to be “good” Catholics despite ignoring most of the basic central tenants of the faith.
The Crusades were a defensive (just) war after 400 years of Islamic aggression.
Of course they were. And 911, said OBL, was a latent reaction to 100 years of western aggressions.
That’s the problem, in part, of trying to figure out whose side god is on-everyone’s claim is as valid as the next. Well, unless you’d like to share with us your special connections, of course.
Should we take a global poll on whose got god’s ear? The next group of crusaders is dying to know. Literally.
“Who’s” got…, even.
Resh, how do you know God is on the enlightenment’s side either? Take any moral argument to its deepest roots, and without God even the forces of reason and dispassion can’t muster any better justification than a “just because”. Before dismissing sincere Christian belief as an incitement to intolerance and violence, you should recall that over the last 100 years the forces of reason and dispassion have proven quite adept at slaughtering people who did not accept their moral imperatives.
As much as our modern-day society likes to congratulate itself for abandoning the chains of religion, it is also increasingly obvious that in throwing away the Christian religion, or demoting it to “a social convenience” as you describe it, we are destroying the supporting structure upon which the Enlightenment was built.
The argument that should be made (but which even the Pope is now afraid to make in public) is that Christianity better reflects God’s truth than does Islam. This is a far better answer to Islam than modernism’s self-contradicting moral code of rationalism and relativism, all based on the groundless assumption that in a purely material world good and evil is somehow self-evident.
DM-
I accept your position and agree generally. Please do not interpret my post as dismissing Christianity or assigning enlightenment principles, primacy. I suspect that enlightenment as it’s typically understood, which is to say rationality plus reasoned analysis (in short), walks a dangerous precipice absent an underlying transcendent order, or an appreciation of its potential.
I’m attacking blind faith, not faith or belief per se. Extremism and fundamentalism are my concerns, or fideism if you prefer.
While Islam appears to invite a greater threshold of blind faith, leading to kneejerk terrorism, it’s not outrageous to observe that Christianity had its own similar moments. Long ago, I’m pleased to add.
The larger point in any case is that Christianity has been spared that bloodlust trail to the degree that Islam has not, for reasons apart from the religions themselves.
Modernity, rationality, science, etc.-all have moderated the avenues for religious extremism in the west. I don’t think this point is much worth contesting. The same development is not true for Islam, only because “it” has never been presented as a serious contemplation, at least since maybe the Greeks had some influence.
Insofar as whether Christianity “better reflects God’s truth than does Islam,” I haven’t spoken to god to make that determination. Are you in touch with the angels, or is this something you aver in the vein that an extremist would do so?
As I understand your argument, you don’t think there is any basis upon which to rationally argue that Christianity better reflects God’s truth than does Islam, as it is an issue of pure faith. But then you also make several moral arguments yourself, mostly praising the tolerance of Christianity and decrying the bloodlust of Islam.
But how can you be certain that tolerance is a moral good and bloodlust a moral evil, if you yourself haven’t spoken with God? Indeed, if it takes a visit from angels to know truth, and you haven’t been visited yet, why bother making any argument about any moral issue? Isn’t that just more blind faith?
At the end of the day, it’s your faith in abstract moral commandments like tolerance versus my faith in a God who has created a universe with a moral order. In reality our moral beliefs are probably roughly similar. The difference is that at least with the presence of God there is a logical continuum to my beliefs, even if still dependent on an element of faith.
Well, again I’d generally agree. Our difference in the “faith variable,” however, is not the passing abstract you portray.
The faith I have in reason and
rationality (as a direct means to contemplate moral codes or utility) imparts a measureable and reliable equation; a process unfolds that offers a level of integrity and truth by objective weight, at least theoretically.
The process isn’t perfect, I concede, and is subject to corruption, but religious truth suffers the same fate. 911 tells the tale, as do the burnings of Christian heretics.
But to juxtapose further, your faith requires, well, faith alone. You have no other variable. None. You rely on nothing objective. You have only what the other fellow, of the same faith, told you yesterday. You live by a moral code that arrived from whispering-down-the lane. And please don’t cite the gospels as apodictic proof since that is more of the same couched in religious perfume.
So while neither of us has spoken to the angels, which I hope you’ll stipulate, I have the advantage of knowing that my faith is non-contingent and, in truth, doesn’t await any call to legitimate its moral design.
So while both of us need to acknowledge objectve truths at the day’s end, regardless of their immediate or ultimate origins, your method, faith, invites any level of handy interpretation.
Which explains why Islam has grown into its own web of deceit.
I think it should matter a lot if a faith teaches something contrary to the natural law. Natural reason teaches us much of right from wrong, and it’s the consistent teachings of Aristotle, Plato, the poets, etc. Any religion that says you can kill and maim and destroy as a relgious obligation or take more than one wife and all the rest does not pass the smell test or at least deserves rejection in favor of those that don’t. As Catholic theologians say, “Truth does not contradict truth.”
I agree that faith cannot contradict natural law, but at the end of the day, even natural law requires a component of faith. First you have to BELIEVE in the concept of morality as something more meaningful than a man-made construct. Then you have to BELIEVE that the morality of natural law is superior to other doctrines of morality, which can also be deduced through rational processes.
So again, my original point is that without God morality is an unprovable concept. With the presence of God natural law makes logical sense. So the initial jump requires a little faith, but it provides order to the whole. I certainly see more truth in this belief system than in absolute agnosticism about anything more than my own consciousness, which as Descarte proved long ago, is really the only thing we can be certain of without any faith.
And part of the reason I can argue that Christianity better reflects God’s truth than Islam, without the benefit of a visit by angels, is that as a Christian my religious beliefs fall into alignment with my rational belief in natural law. For Catholics in particular, as Roach points out, religious belief and natural law must be in harmony. In Islam, morality is based solely on the Koran, which is the literal word of God as transcribed by Mohammed. If I am not mistaken, it is exactly this arbitrariness that Resh is attacking as the problem with faith. So considering this, I don’t understand why Resh thinks it is so illogical or silly to argue that Christianity better reflects God’s truth than does Islam.