Donald Trump and Counter-Jihad
Counter-jihadis are frustrated people. We see truths that
others ignore. Jihad's death toll increases daily. We hope for a turning point,
perhaps a charismatic public champion or a social media icon to propagate our
movement.
The perfect public relations gimmick can change the
landscape overnight. Relatively few people were thinking about, or donating
money to, research to cure amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in spring of 2014. By
summer of 2014, a social media fund-raising gimmick called "the ice bucket
challenge" inspired millions to participate in raising $115 million for
ALS – five times more than had been raised the year before. Counter-jihad needs
that moment: when the landscape changes, and millions join the cause.
One might think that high-profile jihad attacks, such as
9-11, or ISIS' sexual enslavement of girls, might create a public relations
tsunami, bringing leaders into the counter-jihad camp. Alas, the opposite has
occurred. "Islam is peace," President George W. Bush said six days
after 9-11, speaking in a mosque, accompanied by CAIR. "ISIL is not
Islamic," said Barack Obama on September 10, 2014.
In 2010, a New Jersey Muslim man who had raped and tortured
his arranged, teenage wife was exonerated
by a New Jersey judge, on the grounds that the husband's behavior was
consistent with Islamic belief and practice. Also in 2010, Derek Fenton was
fired from New Jersey Transit for burning three pages from a Koran. In both
cases, Americans applied sharia's standards. In spite of these events in his
own state, Governor Chris Christie insisted
that any question of sharia in the US is nonsense. "This sharia law
business is crap. It's just crazy. And I'm tired of dealing with the
crazies."
Americans, beneficiaries of the freedom of speech as
granted in the first amendment, inheritors of Western Civilization and its
emphasis on truth as the highest value, now engage in the same process of
decoding of news items that slaves of the Soviet system used to resort to. We
hear of an explosion, a stabbing, a plot or a decapitation – the 2009 Fort Hood
shooting, the 2014 decapitation in Moore, Oklahoma, the July, 2015 shootings in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, the November 2015 UC Merced stabbing – and we all wonder
when and if we will learn the suspect's name. The name is not released for
hours or days. Officials rush to insist that the incident was not terrorism, but,
rather, workplace violence.
Tremendous resentment, confusion and frustration are
building up. People are angry. People are afraid. People don't know whom to
trust.
Wait! There's good news. Very good news. The rhetorical landscape
has slowly changed since 9/11.
Fifteen years ago, there were far more people who were
eager to play the cultural relativism card and excuse away jihad and gender
apartheid. As time has gone on, more and more people, in spite of the PC
indoctrination that permeates schools, churches, politics and media, have
concluded that there is something about Islam that poses a challenge. People
are eager to learn more. When I give talks about Islam, audiences grant me a uniquely
intense level of focus and concern. Audiences are much more likely now than in
the past to have self-educated, and to know the differences between Islam and
other world faiths, and to be able to refute standard-issue apologias for jihad.
The gap still exists, though, between average people's openness
and awareness and the elite. Political correctness demonizes and punishes
people who speak the truth about Islam. Heroes like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert
Wilders must wear Kevlar and be surrounded by armed guards. Robert Spencer and
Pamela Geller are targeted and slandered by the incorrectly named Southern
Poverty Law Center.
Speech could be used to work out solutions the problem jihad
and gender apartheid present. Speech could be used to release resentments,
frustrations, fear, and rage. But political correctness suppresses speech. Politically
correct suppression of the truth about Islam combined with public frustration
and fear are tinder, kerosene, and a match, all waiting for the spark. This volatile
situation could be exploited by a demagogue.
The freedoms Americans cherish depend on a stable civil
society. When people feel afraid, and conclude that there is no one at the
steering wheel – that leaders are shirking their duties – people become willing
to surrender their freedom and dignity to an authoritarian who will promise
them safety and order. Such an authoritarian might target not only low-hanging
fruit like innocent Muslims, but non-Muslims, as well. Authoritarians don't
like free
speech – or freedom of assembly or association. Authoritarians begin by
targeting one population as their scapegoats, but they eventually bring the
hammer down on everyone. We'd all suffer. The revolution eats its young.
On December 7, 2015, at a rally in Mount Pleasant, South
Carolina, a Republican presidential candidate stated of himself, "Donald J.
Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the
United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell
is going on."
At a November 12, 2015 rally, Trump said that his
opponents were saying, "Trump doesn't have a plan for ISIS! …I'm gonna win
… I said to my wife, I have to tell 'em about my plan, because otherwise I'm
not gonna win. They'll think I have no plan … I would bomb the shit out of them."
The audience laughed and cheered.
In a March, 2016 debate, Trump said he would torture
"these animals over in the Middle East" and "take out"
their families. When informed that his plan would require military members to
commit war crimes, Trump insisted "They're not going to refuse me. If I say
do it, they're going to do it. I'm a leader. I'm a leader. I've always been a
leader. I've never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they're
going to do it. That's what leadership is all about."
In a March 9 interview with Anderson Cooper, Trump said, "I
think Islam hates us. There is something – there is something there that is a
tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the
bottom of it. There's an unbelievable hatred of us…You're going to have to figure
that out. OK. You'll get another Pulitzer, right? But you'll have to figure
that out. But there's a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We
have to be very careful. And we can't allow people coming into this country who
have this hatred of the United States."
Some counter-jihadis see Trump as our champion and his
statements as the "ice bucket challenge" moment when counter-jihad
finally goes viral. They are mistaken.
Trump receives a gargantuan
proportion of media attention. When Trump opens his mouth about Islam, he
becomes the de facto face and voice of counter-jihad to millions of media
consumers. Donald Trump's statements about Islam and Muslims have tarred
counter-jihad with the mark of buffoonery, intellectual flaccidity, and uninformed
xenophobia. That is exactly how Islam-apologists want to depict
counter-jihad: as uneducated yahoos eager to hate, without any reason other
than their own uninformed bile, the next "other."
Look again at Trump's statement on immigration. Look at
the timing. Ask yourself if Donald Trump had made any significant contribution
to counter-jihad before that moment.
Robert Spencer is the one indispensable hero of
counter-jihad. In a July 30, 2015 essay,
Spencer identified Trump as "a blowhard and boor," and "the
poster child of American decline." Spencer described Trump's rhetoric as
savage, stupid and clumsy. He called Trump "a foe of the freedom of
speech." Trump's campaign, Spencer wrote, is "an Oprah show of
celebrity worship, lurid grandstanding, logorrheic superficiality, and tabloid
scandalmongering." Spencer pointed out that Trump had insulted
counter-jihad heroine Pamela Geller.
"I watched Pam earlier," Trump said, "and
it really looks like she's just taunting everybody. What is she doing drawing
Muhammad? I mean it's disgusting. Isn't there something else they could be
doing? Drawing Muhammad? … They can't do something else? They have to be in the
middle of Texas doing something on Muhammad and insulting everybody? What is
she doing? Why is she doing it? It's probably very risky for her – I don't
know, maybe she likes risk? But what the hell is she doing?"
Pamela Geller has shown that Trump has extensive
business dealings in the Muslim world. There's nothing wrong with doing
business with Muslims; we all do, as participants in the petroleum economy. The
problem is this. Trump had not been part of the counter-jihad movement. Suddenly
he made his December 7 announcement about Muslim immigration. Why? Because on December
2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, jihadis Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen
Malik murdered fourteen innocent Americans and wounded twenty-four others. Trump
made his immigration announcement five short days later. He exploited a tragedy
to boost his presidential campaign.
It doesn't matter if he is exploiting a tragedy to
advance himself, as long as he is advancing the cause of counter-jihad, you may
be thinking.
Look again at Trump's statement on Muslim immigration: "Donald
J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the
United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell
is going on." He actually referred to himself as "Donald J. Trump."
That sounds silly and pompous. Trump's verbal faux pas may not matter to Trump's
base. Polls have shown that Trump supporters tend to be have
less formal education. Trump's "savage, stupid and clumsy"
rhetoric, as Robert Spencer called it, does matter to millions of others – other
people who could and should be on the counter-jihad team. Trump put his own
name first in an important policy announcement. This policy, if enacted, would
have an impact on America's character and America's perception around the world.
Beginning such a pronouncement with his own name, and never offering any
justification or support, sounds like the speech pattern of an egotist, a potentate,
a petty dictator, not a serious thinker.
An intelligent case can be made for a moratorium on
Muslim immigration. That case can be made with facts. One might simply ask,
"How does it benefit America to allow more Tashfeen Maliks, more Mohamed
Osman Mohamuds, Tamerlane Tsarnaevs, Faisal Shahzads, and Mohamed Attas to
enter the United States? Have a look at the photo of eight-year-old Martin
Richard, murdered in the Boston Marathon Bombing. What can you say that
justifies his death? We know that most Muslims are not active jihadis, but we
have no way of differentiating. Other immigrants from other groups offer all
the benefits of immigration that Muslims do without the risks. There is
currently a worldwide resurgence of jihad, and there are terrorist groups from
Boko Haram in North Africa to ISIS in the Middle East to the Caucasus Emirate
in Russia to MILF in the Pacific. During a previous war, Democratic president
Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued presidential
proclamation 2525 suspending naturalization based on nationality alone. Let
us have a serious discussion on this matter."
Instead of a reasoned argument that might win over those
on the fence, Trump issued a fiat, leading with the name of the great man
superseding and ignoring all reason. It's a Trump-centric, anti-intellectual,
Constitution-is-so-superfluous-we-need-not-mention-it approach. This great-man,
fact-free approach does not serve counter-jihad.
Trump's chat with his wife, that ends with his decision
to "bomb the shit out of them," is similarly not helpful. Perhaps
Trump has not noticed, but we have
bombed the shit out of them. A 2013 study
estimated that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars would eventually cost the US six
trillion dollars. That's a lot of bombs and American blood. Muammar al-Gaddafi,
Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are all dead. Jihad still
menaces.
Trump said, "I would just bomb those suckers. And
that's right, I'd blow up the pipes. I'd blow up the refineries. I'd blow up
every single inch. There would be nothing left, and you know what, you'll get
Exxon to come in there, and in two months, you ever see these guys how good
they are, the great oil companies? They'll rebuild that sucker brand new. It
will be beautiful. And I'd ring it, and I'll take the oil. And I said I'll take
the oil." Is Trump running for president or the latest Marvel Comics superhero?
Note these three words: "I'd ring it." Trump's
magic ring would consist of American troops stationed on the ground in the
Middle East, between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Trump says that he will take the oil. In fact, in this
scenario, it would require massive American troop presence to take the oil. Trump's
answer to the question of American energy independence is blood for oil. How
many American soldiers would die to make Trump's id-fueled fantasy of
omnipotent revenge real? Which Trump supporter will be first to volunteer to
die to sustain the illusion that Trump is a serious person saying serious
things?
Any real approach to jihad must involve two features:
energy independence that eliminates our funding of jihad through our petroleum
purchases, and vast cultural change. Right now discussion of jihad and gender
apartheid is controlled by cultural relativism. This cultural relativism is a
religious dogma among politicians, journalists, academics, elementary and
secondary school teachers, and even Christian clergy.
Cultural relativism is a cultural phenomenon that has a
beginning and that can have an end. A bit over a hundred years ago, an
Englishman, Charles James Napier, could say of the Indian custom of sati, or
burning of widows, "This burning of widows is your custom … But my nation
has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all
their property … Let us all act according to national customs." Napier
insisted that Western culture was superior to the custom of sati. He insisted
on enforcing Western custom on Indians.
That kind of boldness died out in the post-World-War-II
era. Nazism, followed by the Civil Rights Movement in the US, overwhelmed the
West. Suddenly, Westerners felt an overwhelming sense of shame. Cultural
relativism, an idea advanced by anthropologist Franz Boas in the early
twentieth century, became dogma.
Of course Nazism and Jim Crow were evil and deserved to
die – but they were not the alpha and the omega of Western Civilization. We
need to be proud of, and to cherish, what we have gotten right. If Franz Boas
were alive today, he would be horrified at how far we have taken cultural
relativism.
Young people need to be educated in the gifts of Western
Civilization. Our guide must not be arrogant, ignorant chauvinism, but
objective reality. Just one such reality: high sex ratios. Throughout
the Muslim world, there are more men than women. Females die off at a rate disproportionate
to the West. These statistics hold true even in wealthy Muslims nations, and in
poor Christian nations. Dead women and girls: that's an inescapable reality. Compilations
of the worst
countries for women, citing UN statistics on literacy, life expectancy, and
safety, generally list Muslim countries as among the worst. That's reality.
The Koran contains many verses
calling for jihad. Mohammed was a warrior
who ordered targeted killings
of innocent people. Islam spread through violent conquest. These are objective
facts.
Mention any of these facts on a college campus, or in a
church meeting, or in an article to be published in a mainstream newspaper, or
while running for office, and risk opprobrium. The schoolmarms of PC insist
that you attribute unhappy facts about Islam to the evils of colonialism. Or
that you say that Christians are worse. Or that you say that, with time, Islam
will "reform."
Authentic counter-jihadis are not raving about "bombing the shit" out
of the "animals" in the Middle East. Counter-jihadis are changing
America so that we can speak the truth. We can't defeat what we can't name; we
can't defend what we don't value.
"Islam hates us": Islam is a belief system, and
as such it cannot hate. The correct sentence would be, "Islam teaches
hatred of non-Muslims." Trump is a billionaire, born with a silver spoon
in his mouth. Bill and Hillary Clinton attended Trump's wedding to his third
trophy bride. Even so, Trump's fourth-grade
speaking style convinces fans that Trump is an outsider, a man of the
people. Trump's fans also love Trump's egotism. When asked who he consults on
foreign policy, Trump replied,
"I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain
and I've said a lot of things … my primary consultant is myself and I have a
good instinct for this stuff." People who aren't Trump fans won't take a
grown man seriously who can't speak a coherent sentence in his native language
about an important topic, and who doesn't take the time to learn objective
facts that exist outside his own ego. Human lives are at stake, and Trump can't
even be bothered to speak English correctly or consult with an adviser. Why
give such a self-indulgent slow learner the nuclear codes?
When Anderson Cooper pressed Trump to support his assertion
about Islam's hate, Trump could not. When Trump brings massive attention to
counter-jihad and then speaks foolishly, conspiracy theorists can be forgiven
for wondering if Trump is not a mole for the other team. Every camera in the
world is focused on Trump. Every microphone is pointed at him. What a dropped
ball, what a missed chance, what a setback.
In 2013, Robert Spencer was interviewed by the BBC.
The interviewer asked Spencer to support his critique of Islam. Spencer
immediately, and without hesitation, recited several violent and hateful Koran
verses and hadiths. He did so calmly and authoritatively. He did not then – nor
has he ever – call Muslims "animals" or recommend that we "bomb
the shit out of them."
Anyone listening to Spencer's BBC interview would rapidly
learn that the problem is not Western racism or imperialism but jihad, jihad as
taught in the Koran and hadith. Spencer's intellectual acumen, his lack of
hate, and the courtesy he showed his interlocutors put the focus on jihad, not
on any alleged Western racism.
Trump has a huge and unshakeable fan base. As Trump
himself said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot
somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." Outside the fan base, Trump has the highest
negative ratings ever recorded. Now is the time for counter-jihadis to reach
out to, to convince and to recruit, mainstream Americans. Now is the time to
harness facts to overturn the cultural relativism. We cannot squander this
historical moment to allow buffoonery to become the face of counter-jihad.
You can read this article at American Thinker here
You can read this article at American Thinker here
