Islam And The West (1)

Allah only forbids you [to make friends]
respecting those who made war upon you
on account of [your] religion, and drove
you forth from your homes …
whoever makes friends with them,
these are the unjust.
The Examined One 60.9
The Koran

Allah does not love the unjust.
. The Elephant
The Koran 105.2

These are two very interesting passages from the Muslim Koran. Especially since, in the eyes of most of the Muslim world, we have made war on them on Iraq and Afghanistan—and with our air strikes in Pakistan. Not to mention our policy of backing Israel.
If we take the Koran literally—as many, many fundamentalist Muslims do—then they we see that their faith forbids them to make friends with us. If they were to make friends with us, they would be unloved by Allah himself. I should imagine that this type of passage will make life difficult for people in the American government who want to reach out to Islam.
In Muslim eyes we made war on Iraq; we drove tens of thousands out of their homes into neighboring Jordan and Syria; and we are guilty in Sunni eyes of backing Shiites, in Shiite eyes of backing Sunnis. It is still remembered by Muslims that President Bush spoke of making a “crusade”.
In their eyes we have done much of this “on account of their religion”. The passages give justification to those who train in Middle Eastern camps and dream of carrying the war to the very shores of “The Great Satan” as they did on September 11, 2001. How could Allah love them if they did not?
Like our crusading ancestors of centuries ago, we have grasped a tiger by the tail. It is a tiger with great patience—it took two centuries to dislodge the crusaders from Palestine and Syria, but they never quit trying. They made truces; they sent gifts; various factions even made temporary alliances.
But they never gave up their fundamental strategy of war to the finish against the Christian invaders. I hope quite fervently that our top diplomats all take a few hours to read a short history of those crusades.
They won’t like what they learn, but the consequences of not learning at all will be far worse. Like the crusaders who eventually had no home in Europe to go back to, we can’t just pack up and go away. The crusaders had their homes to defend; we have our oil necessities to defend.
We—the Christian West, primarily England and America—have had our hands on Middle Eastern oil resources since the first wells came in a century ago. By now Saudi and Kuwaiti oil wells are as essential to our survival as are the Great Lakes and California vegetable fields.
We’re as stuck as the crusaders were in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. We can make truces, send gifts, make temporary alliances—but we must accept the fact that the price of oil will always include blood. Ours and theirs.
The Twentieth Century hiatus that came when repeated defeats at Western hands rendered Islam quiescent, shocked into momentary acceptance of Western power, are over. They ended forever when the Shah was thrown out of Iran in 1979. We will never go back to the days when Armco was the biggest power between the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans.
The British, French and Turkish troops that once kept the peace in the region are gone. Now all that is left are American forces—facing a far more rebellious populace than those earlier occupiers ever did. The creed of religious conquest that sent desert hardened warriors out of Arabia to conquer the world for Allah in the Seventh Century has had a renewal—in Gaza, Iran, Pakistan and a dozen other nations.
Sending our armed forces into harm’s way in Muslim waters is scarcely new. Our first naval squadron was sent to the southern Mediterranean at the founding of our Republic. They stayed there until the French and British took over in the 1830s.
The Marine Hymn celebrates our conquest of Mexico AND our incursion into Muslim North Africa over two centuries ago. We’re kind of back where we started.
From time to time, I will go back in history and explain how, over the past 1,400 years we Europeans have been engaged in non-stop warfare with these same people. We should refresh ourselves in this background in order to understand what is going on now.
I hope Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are doing the same. Islam, with its vows to convert or conquer us will be there long after the present financial crisis is dealt with.