ReasonOnline just published an interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, immigration, civil liberties, and the fate of the West.
Here’s what she had to say on the War on the West.
Reason: [When you say that Islam has to be defeated] Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?
Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.
Reason: Militarily?
Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.
Reason: Are we really heading toward anything so ominous?
Hirsi Ali: I think that’s where we’re heading. We’re heading there because the West has been in denial for a long time. It did not respond to the signals that were smaller and easier to take care of. Now we have some choices to make. This is a dilemma: Western civilization is a celebration of life—everybody’s life, even your enemy’s life. So how can you be true to that morality and at the same time defend yourself against a very powerful enemy that seeks to destroy you?
Reason: George Bush, not the most conciliatory person in the world, has said on plenty of occasions that we are not at war with Islam.
Hirsi Ali: If the most powerful man in the West talks like that, then, without intending to, he’s making radical Muslims think they’ve already won. There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.
Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,” he’s wrong?
Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.
[…]
Reason: In Holland, you wanted to introduce a special permit system for Islamic schools, correct?
Hirsi Ali: I wanted to get rid of them. I wanted to have them all closed, but my party said it wouldn’t fly. Top people in the party privately expressed that they agreed with me, but said, “We won’t get a majority to do that,” so it never went anywhere.
Reason: Well, your proposal went against Article 23 of the Dutch Constitution, which guarantees that religious movements may teach children in religious schools and says the government must pay for this if minimum standards are met. So it couldn’t be done. Would you in fact advocate that again?
Hirsi Ali: Oh, yeah.
Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—
Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I’ve been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn’t allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with—what’s the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.
This is what the GOP should make as their central plank.
Shalom Ted,
No worry. The US won’t be Islamized.
From 1920 to 1933 when alcohol was prohibited (less the Phillippines and the Kennedy residence) under Prohibition, the US learned much.
Polygamy has been illegal since 1878.
Kol tuv,
Dr Alyami is a Saudi friend living in the US. He is a democrat first and writes
Hirsi Ali is on the proper side of the line. Her framework is just not sustainable under current circumstances.
Arab Muslim wealth is derived from the artifically priced oil. Without the petrodollars they’d return to sand flies and scorpions. They are noncompetitive in pearl diving with the new Asians.
Obviously, without the petrodollars, they couldn’t afford fire crackers, let alone the ability to launch terrorist attacks on 5 continents.
In the West, our hemoglobin is oil. Note that LBJ mothballed the prototype commercial cargo ship the N.S. Savannah faster than saying Bobby Baker (1964). Does the closing of Dieblo Canyon and Mohawk Valley ring a bell?
America’s oil axis is not really Houston-Tulsa but Houston-New York City. It’s both the oilwell machinery and the financial vehicles. The hemoglobin is needed to prop up the middle class. CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System, is the largest state pension fund in the US. Throw in the California teachers’ CalSTRS. The New York Pension Fund is the 2nd largest institutional investor in the US after CalPERS. Might as well mention the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board…managing 114 Billion $ of assets for the Canadian government.
Think oil stocks are absent ?
The US military will take another 2 decades to recover from the day care center mentality placed on it. Post Carter/Church Committee, it was used as a Civilian Conservation Corps. The entire US Army has only about 120 surgeons.
The USG DID respond “to the signals”. Illustrative: in Dec, 1985 when Arrow Air crashed in Gander Newfoundland with 248 paratroopers lost, the response was a flat USG profile. The US had to trade off America’s worst military crash in “peacetime” to protect the oil flows.
Next month at Annapolis, SecState Rice will be busy. Ever hear of the ocean vessel “The Condoleeza Rice”, owned by Chevron?
All this is not that complicated or complex.
Kol tuv,
Re: and the Threat from her Arab and muslim Enemies here is another view that could be a topic for more discussion. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5562994845555852135
Saddam in Iraq was the first Muslim Nation or the second or the third to actively
seek and start to build nuclear programs. Libya had one we found to our chagrin, Egypt had and still does, Syria is playing around with one and the Iranians are well advanced towards achieving one, We also forget that Pakistan already has one and has in the past sold its secrets to other Muslim countries. The Saudis have enough money to buy one off the shelf and at the very least, finance either the outright purchase of a nuke or nukes or developments costs of third parties. Logic dictates that it is only a matter of time before all or most Muslim countries will either have the bomb or use other Muslim countries that do as a nuclear protective umbrella.
Pakistan as currently the only Muslim country with the bomb, must be forced to denuke, I mean forced and now. Any threat any means must be first applied to that end. Not a Simple or Easy task but it must be done. This in turn will send a strong message to the rest of the Muslim world that at their own peril they will be destroyed if the continue or seek to develop or purchase Nuclear technology that is weaponable. Economic sanctions have proven not effective nor enforceable so the only option is first the threat of massive force and Absolute Use of Force if the threat is not heeded.
Muslims I believe may be fanatical but not stupid. They will get the message. If the west can prevent Nuk proliferation in the Arab and Muslim world then the war against Islam is potentially winnable , if not look down the road in the near future for a world Armageddon! No one will be spared in this and Al Gores Claims of Global Warming will then at least be an undisputed fact.
The key here of course is America. Will they in a short period of time have the Leadership to impliment and enforce such a concept? I don’t think so but I have been surprised in the past. Will they double or tiple their armed forces? Will they spend 2-3 times more on Armaments? We they be assertive to the point of dictating to other countries what they can and cannot do? Will they see the Russians and Chinese as real enemies not just economic competitors? Will America read the riot act to Europe and place them on Notice that support for Any Muslim country who is active either in supporting Jihad against the west must be placed in a category of Enemy State with all that this term implies? Will both USA and Europe adjust their internal policies to curb
and blunt internal Muslim proliferation as a group and as a religion?
Will the citizens of America and Europe be prepared and willing to relinquish civil and Human rights, and a high living standard to allow the accomplishment of the above requirements?
If the answers to My questions are No, then the West will lose its battle with Islam.