Radical Islam Must Be Fought on the Cultural as Well as the Military Front

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the author who goes by the pen-name Ibn Warraq are apostate Muslims who have bravely written about the threat that jihadism poses to Western civilization, and have sharply criticized Western leaders for obfuscating this threat by adhering to “politically correct” taboos and pieties. Reviewing recent books by each of these authors, Fred Siegel and Sol Stern argue for the necessity of fighting a cultural and intellectual battle against radical Islam, and use the experience of the cold war as a model:

The international Communist movement was adept at advancing Soviet imperial interests through the use of front groups—student organizations, labor unions, artists’ associations—operating freely within the Western democracies. These “progressive” organizations peddled innocent-sounding slogans about the need for disarmament, world peace, and social justice, while covering up the fact that they had been penetrated by Communist fellow travelers and agents of influence and were actively abetting Soviet expansionism. [In similar fashion], Hirsi Ali unequivocally identifies seemingly innocent-sounding Muslim groups as agents of an Islamist agenda. . . .

[During the cold war], while the U.S. and its allies “contained” the Soviet military threat, they . . . vigorously pursued the anti-Communist struggle in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. . . . [T]he Truman administration created a program to mobilize pro-democracy civic groups in the U.S. and Europe to oppose the Communist propaganda machine. . . . [T]he CIA covertly funded some of these groups. . . . [T]here is little question that bolstering the pro-democracy groups, particularly in confronting the far more sinister and clandestine foreign operations carried out by the Comintern and KGB, paid off in the life-and-death struggle against Soviet totalitarianism.

In their latest works, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq have produced a call to action in the United States and the free world. . . . Now is the time for the U.S. and other Western democracies to recognize that combating Islamist terrorism by military means alone will not work, and that a full-scale cultural counterattack is needed to convince Westerners of the danger—and to convince Muslims in the West that Islamism is a dead end for their own communities as well as for the entire Muslim world.

Siegel and Stern also note Ibn Warraq’s insights into Islamic anti-Semitism:

[T]he Hamas covenant makes clear that Israel must be destroyed not merely because it is a “Jewish state” but also because of the enduring Islamic principle that any territory once controlled by Muslims must be returned to Islamic dominion. . . . Islamic anti-Semitism, [Ibn Warraq argues], is not a 20th-century doctrine given additional potency by the Nazis. It is deeply embedded in all of [Islam’s] sacred texts, including the Quran, the sunna, and the hadith. For American and Western policymakers, this textual connection is key to understanding the motivation of Hamas (also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement) and its close ally, the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamic holy texts are even relevant for understanding the sources of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to Ibn Warraq, it is in the life and works of the founding father of Palestinian nationalism, the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, that one clearly sees the confluence of the original Islamic commandments and modern Arab and Palestinian hatred of Jews. . . . Ibn Warraq notes that the mufti not only succeeded in Islamicizing the Palestinian resistance to the Zionist project; he also was responsible for radical Islam’s survival in the 1950s and 1960s and its 1970s revival.

Read more at City Journal

More about: Anti-Semitism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Cold War, Hamas, Politics & Current Affairs, Radical Islam, U.S. Foreign policy, War on Terror

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa