July 11, 2005
What Now?
Actions speak louder than words, and I fear we'll hear silence...
It appears that the UK and US have decided to view the London attack as part of the ongoing campaign against terrorism. Which means they will fully pursue our current half measure. This means action in Afghanistan and Iraq, but slow plodding accomodation with Iran and Syria, as well as a failure to confront the Saudi financiers of Wahabbi radicalism.
What should be done?
Saudi Arabia - Wahabbism must go. Now. Make it plain to the House of Saud that it can face Wahabbism, or the United States. For decades the West has paid for a natural resource it could have merely taken without effort, and those funds have been used to spread fanatical radicalism to Muslims around the world. Combine this policy with the importation of cheap Muslim labor to Europe to create an underclass that acts as an enabler to the sagging decrepid social welfare construct of much of Europe - and you have an immigrant underclass that is not upwardly mobile that is imbibing the toxin of Wahabbism. It is time for the West to stop funding it's own worst enemy. The time for Saudi Arabia to break from extremism is now, and the cost will be far less than it will if they choose to embrace it and face the West.
Muslims in general - the outcry many have called for simply is not going to be heard. Why? Because, in general, there is agreement with at a minimum the goals of most Islamist terrorism. There is general support for anti-Semitic action, a general belief in pan-Islamism, a general disdain for the secular Western democracies, a general belief that Islam must expand at the expense of others all the while expecting special dispensation the secular west offers via freedom of religious expression. Until the Western societies decide that it is intolerable to have Muslim communities in their midst remain silent at best, and actively espousing radicalism and carrying out attacks at worst, then the West will enjoy many attacks similar to Madrid and London. Local Muslims radicalized by Wahabbism and anti-Semitic anti-Western doctrine will continue to buy into the message of violence with the freedoms these nations provide them in their midst.
It is not enough for Muslim communities to have press releases, or platitudes about how they don't support terrorism. They need to actively take part in taking their faith back from extremism. Yet in many quarters the extremism is mainstream. In the United States, the Muslim community is far less radicalized than it is in Europe, for the aforementioned reasons. But Europe has ingested millions of Muslims solely to fund the welfare state and now has a restive, radicalized underclass that frankly isn't all that interested in taking back their faith. Only when they feel the exaction of a cost will their be action. But what to do? Deportation? Marginalization? Western democracy has come to abhor such steps.
It will come to abhor a failure to act even more.
Posted by MEC2 at July 11, 2005 06:53 PM | TrackBack