There was a story in the Times of London the other day about three innocent men wantonly killed by drunk Russian soldiers in Chechnya. The soldier leading the summary executions was drunkenly shouting he was getting revenge for a brother of his killed. It was a barbaric story, but not an unreasonable one. This is what the cycle of violence leads to, the aftermath of Islamic terrorism at the Moscow Theater and the deadly attack on the school. When certain elements within the Muslim 'resistance', sink so low as to kill children in a classroom, it is assumed that they are sub-human. The result is that the silent majority who did not stand up to the extremists end up getting tarred by them for implicitly supporting them, and are treated as subhuman too. The Russians are nasty anyway, but a drunk, Russian with a dead brother having spent years fighting those that would kill children in a classroom? It is easy to see how it happened.
This raises a question why are the devout followers of Mohammed not outraged by the barbaric acts of their extremists. Where are the peaceful marches we see in West, like those against the Vietnam War or even the protests against Iraq War in Europe. The Irish marched against the IRA where are the marches against Al Qaeda? There are none. Can it be that the devout followers are without any sense of shame,or feelings of right or wrong ,or is it deep down they feel sympathy with them. Lets call it, the romance of the Arab bandit..
If Islamic terrorism continues, the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese will at some future date join together and the result will be a genocide of catastrophic proportions. Either the Muslims act and rein in the wildmen or the Great Powers will. It is too important for the world economies to have these loonies running around. The worlds population is increasing and resources shrinking, it will become imperative in the decades ahead that these diminishing resources are utilized in the most efficient manner. If you look at the areas of the world where oil is; the Middle East, Afghanistan, Ubekistan, Indonesia etc all these areas have high Muslim populations. If Islam does not shape up, find a way to integrate with modern culture, it will be forced to by outsiders. China will assume control of Indonesia, it has it eyes on Iran, Afghanistan will be divided up by the Russians and Americans, and the Middle East between the three. India will reabsorb Pakistan and the same fate will befall Africa. The technocrats will run it because it is a question of survival for the human race, it is a question of feeding people or letting them starve. Fertilizers require petrochemicals, trucks delivering food require gasoline, homes need heating, businesses need power.
In a sense the War in Iraq, the recent Aid to Africa are part of the same picture. The kleptocrats in Africa have been told clean up your act or we will clean it up for you, the Arabs are being told get with the program, we live in a Global Economy and thinking the days of Saladin are coming back and you can ride around on white stallions in the desert trying to relive a past glory, those days are past. There are 8 billion soon to be 11 billion mouths to feed and if you are not with the program you are out. And it will not be conventional weapons and a few hundred thousand American troops, next time it will be a few nuclear missiles in Damascus or Tehran and the argument is over.
The period we are in right now is the breathing space, the time these disfunctional countries and cultures have to get their act together so the technocrats from around the world can work in these countries without getting blown up, kidnapped or persecuted. If the hoped for Islam Reformation fails to materialize, then, the extreme measures in the service of the greatest good to the greatest number will be necessary.
Not in my life time but maybe in my childrens the day may come when Arabic is banned as subversive.
The technocrats and materialists will do what the Americans did to the Native Americans. The Indian children were sent to English only boarding schools and their culture crushed. Chinese, Russian and English will become the lingua francas. These countries can and will do it because all the weapons in the world are made by them or their allies in Europe. They hold all the cards. It requires only an agreement on who controls what spheres of influence.
If an Islamic Enlightenment can happen the world would be a more peaceful, prosperous place, if it doesn't then the materialistic cultures will reduce it to ashes. The question is can Islamic societies adopt to modernity?
Muslims are caught in a timewarp, they have not evolved in a historical or cultural sense, and if you do not evolve you will go extinct. The barbarians tribes overran the West in the 5th century, in less than a thousand years, the descendants of those barbarians were sailing around the world, had invented printing, abolished serfdom, resurrected the ancient learning of the past, laid the foundation for common law, created hospitals and universities. All this without thousands of years of civilization behind them. In 1258 a similar fate befell the Muslim world, the Mongol overran Baghdad murdering the entire population. Since then, it is as if time has stood still, you can blame the Turks, the Brits, the French, but the reality is the Arabs didn't do anything to indicate they were interested in advancing or changing their lot. India threw out the British. It now has the fastest growing middle class in the world (despite aligning itself with the Soviet Union for 50 years), meanwhile Pakistan (after 50 years of western assistance) is a basket case. The Silicon Valley of India is centered in Hyderbad, where is the Pakistan equivalent? There is none. India is a materialistic, mostly Hindu country, Pakistan is a Muslim country, both got their independence at the same time.
The difference is the social and cultural impact of Islam. For all the talk of the great Islamic Empire, the fact remains, they inherited a lot to start with; the Greeks, the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman Empires, to name a few, thousands of years of civilizations and learning. Somehow Islam managed in a 1000 years to drive it into the ground. The "glory" of the Islamic Empire seems merely like the after glow of all these earlier civilizations.
Imagine barbarians overrunning America then claiming they were a great civilization, just look at those computers, look at the medicine, look at these roads and buildings. The reality is much more prosaic, they got lucky, a bunch of camel jockeys that did not exploit the great intellectual treasures they won in battle, but appealed to the native geniuses of the people they overran, for a few years it burnt bright, then stagnation and decay set in. Why was there no printing press invented in the Muslim world, why were there no cannons and sophisticated firearms, why did their shipping, agriculture not advance the way they did in the West. How did barbarians succeed with so little, and in much harsher climates and they fail with so much.
TE Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars Of Wisdom" details the true picture of who these people were and what Islamic society is really about. Its not pretty. The Arab tribes attack a train, all they want is the loot, when they get it, they fight over it, then return to their homes, they betray each other, steal money intended for campaigns, then go make deals with the Turks, the enemy they are supposed to be trying to overthrow. The picture of the devout Muslim Arab is one of short sightedness, greed, selfishness, dishonesty, deceitfulness and a remarkably lack of imagination and common sense. The fact Lawrence admired them and felt that he was ethically challenged for leading them to believe that they would get their independence, says more about the strength of western ethics. Those questions would never enter into the heads of the tribes fighting alongside him.
It is very hard to be charitable to these people. Like Africa now, the well of sympathy has run dry. A trillion dollars of aid in 25 years spent in Africa and the place is a disaster. They throw out the industrious Indians, take over their successful stores. The whole family moves in and less than a year later it is a burnt out shell, children on the street with the swollen bellies and the flies begging and stealing money. In the case of the Middle East the situation is even worse. The people of the region inherited the great civilizations of the world and by 2001 according to Bernard Lewis, the total GNP of 22 Arab counties excluding oil is less than that of Finland. Is that laziness, lack of initiative, or is it Islam, a religion that has destroyed their ability to be creative, imaginative.
The parable of the talents in the Gospels tells how the master gave 10, 5 and one to three servants. In the story the servant given just one buried it, when the master came home he took away the one talent, gave it to the others and threw out the lazy servant. What would the master have done if the servant that was given ten talents buried his and the one with only one doubled his?
The Roar of Silence believes he would have taken the ten given it to the other servants and thrown him in Gehenna, where there was crying and gnashing of teeth. That is the lesson of the coming New Order.
