A Modern Crusade

The brutal attack on the staff of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, yesterday in Paris has raised higher the spectre of a real religious war between Islam and the rest of the world. It seems that the appeasers (like you know who) are still stuck with their heads in the sand maintaining that Muslims are a peaceful lot and that it is just extremists of some unspecified religious persuasion who are grabbing headlines around the world with all these unspeakable butcheries.

George W. Bush was tut-tutted when he opined that the horrors of 9/11 necessitated an extended “crusade” against such Islamic extremism. This word evoked the thought of how those medieval evils were eventually neutered by Christendom’s crusades and Islamic infighting. However, fate has a way of keeping mankind’s next Pax Romana at bay … in that so much of the world’s oil has been found to lie under the sands of Araby and petroleum has become the life blood of our modern society.

As a result of these sea changes, very many in the Muslim world began feeling their oats and decided that they now had the capital wherewithal to convert the rest of us to their backward thinking. And so, oil-funded Islamic proselytizing became the norm which then evoked more and more extremist thinking and actions in a religion unfortunately founded not on love but on butchery. The history of Islam, much like the history of early Christianity, is replete with mayhem and murder. The difference is that Christianity and most of the other world’s religions have evolved out of such insanity. Islam has not … as we continue to experience on almost a daily basis.

Fortunately, there are some Muslims who have recognized this flaw of faith. The current president of Egypt, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has called for Islam to abandon its extremism and growing militancy because it is corrosive and ultimately futile … see: Fox News Story. (How many U.S. media outlets have carried this item? Has the Obama administration reacted favorably to this ray of hope?) And in the 1920’s Kemal Ataturk in Turkey also recognized this Islamic failing and tried to modernize his country into a secular state. However much of the progress he made is now being rolled back by Turkey’s current fundamentalist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

I suppose that the conclusion of this short overview is that things are very likely to get worse as ancient Muslim beliefs continue to scrape against modern societies. And, yes, if things maintain their current path, the non-Muslim world (including Russia, India and China) probably is in for a very long and bloody crusade to modernize these zealots of Mohammed’s teachings. That is, unless the likes of Sissi or a neo-Ataturk can bring about a Muslim religious reformation. This, I believe, should clearly be the basis of any foreign-policy push back from the United States’ government against Islamic terrorism.

But all I have witnessed here at home is exactly the opposite.

Afterward: For a slightly more frank view ... see: The Diplomad's Thoughts.

After Afterward: George Will thinks that Sissi should get the next Nobel Peace Prize for this stance. I agree. However, President Obamais, once again, is coming down on the side of the Muslim extremists ... see: Daily Caller Story.