The Next Caliphate

The Muslim religion has often had an unique proselytizing strategy ... either convert to our way of worship or we will kill you. And this impetus has been abetted by the promise that any Muslims dying in the pursuit of this end will be richly rewarded in the afterlife. These unyielding stratagems have worked at least twice in the past ... first when the Bedouins helped Islam conquer almost half of the known world and, secondly, during the growth of the Ottoman Empire. For a bloody maddeningly complicated and a maddeningly bloody exposition of this history of Islam, see: Wikipedia Entry.

Now Islam appears to be entering another ascendancy with the creation of multiple radical sub-sects spread throughout the Mideast desiring finally to create the ultimate world-wide caliphate. This, interestingly, corresponds with the leader of the free world, the President of the United States, having grown up in a Muslim world, clearly exhibiting a sympathetic prejudice to this quest. And, for some mysterious reason which escapes me, much of the rest of the Western progressive movement seems to be following in lock-step with our fearless leader.

And since there are something like 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, this is not a trivial threat. Even if only 1% of this this populous is radicalized, this still means 15 million bad guys are to be dealt with ... the ones who may be naively trying to recreate this caliphate. Fortunately for the rest of us ... some 7 billion of other religions or no religion ... there are at least three major countries which are not ready to rollover to this existential threat ... Russia, China and India. I am tempted also to include the United States and France, but not quite yet ... perhaps after the next presidential election. The rest of  Europe, particularly Germany, seems still to have the scales firmly attached to their eyes.

I can't believe that, given the firepower of the protagonists mentioned above ... and the demographic imbalances ... that this will turn out well for the caliphate antagonists ... particularly if the protagonists can garner the gumption to resist. Of course when Iran gets atom bombs ... combined with those that Pakistan already has ... this shifts the odds slightly.

Afterthought: The motivation for many liberals (Western European politicians, the Clinton Foundation, John Kerry and much of the Obama administration) to embrace Muslims and Muslim causes may be little more than money ... 30 talents of silver ... the cash crumbs that fall from the oil-rich tables of Mideastern potentates.