I have long believed that the goal of bringing democracy to Iraq — a goal that is often confused with bringing freedom to Iraq — may in fact be inimical to the immeasurably more important goal of vanquishing the Jihad. This for the pulverizingly simple reason that the Jihad is popular in the Islamic world, including Iraq. I doubt that it commands majority support — but it certainly commands majority acquiescence, and enormous factional sympathy. That is to say, waging war to subjugate the infidel (however defined), being an ancient and enduring feature of the Islamic religion, perforce is an enduring feature of Islamic society. Emancipate that society from autocracy and suppression — free popular passions from the yoke of Leviathan — and you may well find that the Jihad is not weakened but considerably strengthened.
It is a matter of some astonishment, and indeed discouragement, to me that this possibility has not really been wrestled with. It is as if a man were to say in about 1970, “there is really no possibility that freeing the Poles from the yoke of Communism will issue in a Catholic revival”; or as if a man were to say in 1865, “surely you cannot imagine that blacks in the South will use their newly-won freedom to practice Christianity”; or as if a French nobleman were to say in the early 17th century, “only a fool would expect the Edict of Nantes to advance the cause of Protestantism in France.”
There is no necessary connection between democracy and secularism; or between democracy and religious temperance. Often the very reverse is true: religious enthusiasms are among the most popular, that is, the most democratic, and thus the most potent. King Philip II of Spain did not send his half brother Don John, the great victor at Lepanto, to suppress the republicans in the Low Countries because Calvinism was an unpopular fad of the elite. Monks were not the characteristic demagogues of Byzantium, leading common Greeks out into the streets of Constantinople against Emperor and Patriarch, because mystical Orthodoxy was a mere courtier fashion.
How impoverished is the imagination that merely assumes democracy to be a natural antidote to the Jihad! Consider: One of the more disturbing powers of this Islamic doctrine of holy war is its appeal to the alienated and villainous, to the petty thug or delinquent. The Jihad grants to the outlaw a higher purpose; it annihilates whatever pangs of conscience remain; its democracy reaches to the very basest elements of society, where the lofty platitudes of Western politicians are sneered at. In the late Middle and early Modern Age, the Mediterranean and its coast verily crawled with Christian renegades, brigands, pirates, gangsters, lowlifes, marauders, and the like, whose avarice or lust or aimless wrath was disciplined into service against the infidel. Some of the greatest corsairs and slavers, whose bloody trade sowed terror on the tranquil coasts of Christendom, were Italians and Greeks. Our own prison system, its Islamic chaplaincy awash in Wahhabi influence, is following this pattern. A plot out in Los Angeles originated in the California prison system; Jose Padilla was converted in prison. We hear reports on the alliance between Latin American gangs and the Jihad every few weeks — more jobs Americans won’t do, I suppose — and the same people who (quite rightly) remind us, in the context of Iraq, that there in no good reason to dismiss the potential for alliances between secular tyrants and Jihadists, find that alliance, on our very doorstep, uninteresting.
The lineaments of the catastrophe that Islamic democracy might mean have hardly been even conjectured at by most public men of our day. We are told that certain candidates are “good on the war,” who haven’t shown even an inkling of awareness of the problem. We are urged fervently to support the war in Iraq; but that support is idle at best, if the goals of the war run counter to the interests of the Republic. And if Islamic democracy is Jihadist democracy — I do not say it must be; I say only it might be — then they sure as hell do run counter. We are rightly implored to search for and uphold the moderate Muslim (which, if the phrase means anything at all, must mean the Muslim who rejects the Jihad) but what if he is also an Islamic heretic? You cannot preclude the possibility.
The unwillingness to think hard, and discuss openly, the character of the Jihad — its antiquity, orthodoxy, and commonality in Islam — paralyzes us. What might the last 50 years have looked like, if no one had the guts to look hard at what Communism actually is, where its sources of inspiration and strategy come from, who its adherents read and absorb? Imagine a Cold War where every mention of Communism was prefaced with some careful qualifier: “radical” Communism, “fundamentalist” Communism.
A republic, according to Publius, is that form of government where men are ruled by “reflection and choice,” as against “accident and force.” Some measure of my alarm and annoyance may be judged from consideration of this: that on the greatest crisis of our age, Americans have abjured Reflection and made their Choice for comfortable illusion instead of hard reality.
[Cross-posted at Redstate.]
Comments (9)
Americans, I fear, have made that choice because they are incorrigible optimists.
If I might quote Daniel Larison, or at least offer a paraphrase, let's stop the optimists before they get us killed.
Posted by Maximos | August 30, 2007 11:42 AM
This for the pulverizingly simple reason that the Jihad is popular in the Islamic world, including Iraq.
This is what happens when a formal abstract liberalism meets the substantive reality of a popular wicked doctrine in the Other. The liberal superman has only the will, he has no substantive foundation other than a nihilistic rejection of where he came from. So the only substantive understanding of the world that he can reject as intolerant is that of his own ancestry.
To a point. At some point, when the superman perceives a real existential threat, he doesn't respond through intolerance of other free and equal supermen because that would be his interior unmaking. He responds by redefining the threat as the untermensch, as something less than human to be stamped out. At that point may God have mercy on us all.
And this is no mere speculation: already there seems to be public voices which simultaneously balk at restricting who can come here on religious-ideological-ethnic grounds and at the same time view nuking Mecca as a viable response should the Jihad escalate to a certain point.
Ideas like the Jihad Sedition Law are important in the long run not just to protect us from the Jihad, but to protect us, and the rest of the world, from ourselves.
Unless, of course, I am wrong.
Posted by Zippy | August 30, 2007 3:37 PM
Were I not living through this slow-motion civilizational autodeconstruction, I'd swear that this was all a science-fiction movie. Millions of our fellow-citizens believe that it would be incomparably wicked to prohibit the immigration of Muslims, or even to proscribe certain of their doctrines, but do not blanch at the thought of genocide. Truth is stranger than fiction, indeed.
Posted by Maximos | August 30, 2007 3:55 PM
I didn't know that about the "nuke Mecca" crowd. I always associate it with Tom Tancredo, who is also an immigration hawk. I guess I'm just not getting around enough.
Posted by Lydia | August 30, 2007 3:59 PM
"Millions of our fellow-citizens believe that it would be incomparably wicked to prohibit the immigration of Muslims, or even to proscribe certain of their doctrines, but do not blanch at the thought of genocide."
And your evidence that there are millions of Americans who simultaneously hold these 2 ideas?
I suspect that a minority of pencil geeks with a big toy gun, otherwise known as neo-conmen, might hold these 2 ideas.
Of course some thinking-alergic morons might also hold these ideas, but it is because no one explain to them a better way to handle Mohammedians.
Posted by mik_infidelos | August 31, 2007 4:10 AM
"for the pulverizingly simple reason"
Great turn of phrase.
"How impoverished is the imagination that merely assumes democracy to be a natural antidote to the Jihad!"
Jorge Bush has a magic ability to dumb down everyone around him (I have no other explanation for dismal failure of Cheney and Rumsfeldt, both very smart and experienced politicians, administrators and corporate executives).
Virtually all conservativedom slavishly followed Bush demented ideas.
If a rulling party entered a period of temporary insanity, an opposition party must provide intelligent critic. Unfortunately Dems are in their own, not so temporary insanity state.
It appears that the only critic they are capable is "Bush lied, people died".
Posted by mik_infidelos | August 31, 2007 4:27 AM
Mr. Cella points out that jihad is an enduring feature of the Islamic religion, and therefore if Islamic societies are democratized, jihad will be liberated. He then adds:
"It is a matter of some astonishment, and indeed discouragement, to me that this possibility has not really been wrestled with."
I'm surprised that Mr. Cella would say this. For at least the last couple of years, since the Lebanon elections that increased Hezbollah power, the Egyptian elections that increased Muslim Brotherhood power, the inauguration of a sharia constitution in Iraq, and the Palestinian elections that brought Hamas to power, many observers—not just paleocons, but mainstream conservatives—have been saying that democracy in Muslim countries will unleash jihadism.
Posted by Lawrence Auster | September 1, 2007 11:56 PM
I ought to have said sooner what a fine post this is, Paul. Kudos.
The point about the prisons and the jihad as liberating the thug and channeling his thuggery is particularly apt. And the comparison to the rogues and renegades of past centuries as being recruited for the jihad is chillingly relevant. In fact, it leads almost ineluctably to the conclusion that we should have _no_ Muslim prison chaplains. And after all, since Muslims have no sacraments, it's not even as though not having access to a chaplain will hinder the practice of religion by those already Muslim when arrested and/or convicted. Not that it's clear to me that convicted prisoners have the same claims as people not in that position to access to the comforts of their own religion. In fact, they arguably don't.
I think Paul's point, Mr. Auster, is not that no one is saying it but that no one in a position of power is saying it--not even on the Republican side. And as far as I know (I'd love to be given quotations to the contrary) not even any of the long-shot runners for the Republican primary are saying it.
Posted by Lydia | September 2, 2007 3:41 PM
"I think Paul's point, Mr. Auster, is not that no one is saying it but that no one in a position of power is saying it--not even on the Republican side."
Nor will they. Should anyone in the Bush coterie, or any of those on the left, begin to openly question the democracy panacea construct as actually being an enabler of the jihad and not it's solution, they would endanger the entire specious design for the neocon liberal democracy project that states, "all peoples everywhere long for freedom" and therefore equal freedom of all human beings ought to be the highest political order. The liberal theory would begin falling like a house of cards. Although it is certain that many of them have quietly entertained this idea, they dare not verbalize it.
The fog of liberalism continues to clear, as the emperor still has no clothes.
Posted by dempsey | September 2, 2007 7:23 PM