The expectation throughout the Arab world has always been that any contender for power must first conclusively demonstrate a convincing brutality to make a substantial claim on the loyalty of the people. This is the essential message in the recent book
The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith. It is not American foreign policy or the desire to create another independent Arab state in “Palestine” to add to the other twenty-two or even the call for Jihad that is essentially responsible for the endless conflicts in the region. The region’s own millennia long historical cultural and political heritage is fundamentally the reason for conflict and will not disappear with American disengagement from the region or a Palestinian state.
It is this reality that Obama and all the “expertise” of the Foggy Bottom State Department, scores of academics and ultra-liberal no nothings among inane/insane politicians such as Mayor Bloomberg and radio/television “journalists” do not, cannot acknowledge and prefer to remain willfully deaf, dumb and blind with regard to the Middle East, “allies” like our “friends in Afghanistan and Iraq and so MUST accuse us – ordinary, decent, law-abiding and patriotic Americans with charges of Islamophobia, and worse, bigotry of every sort that includes racism, homophobia, greed, and of course, INTOLERANCE and IGNORANCE.
The sad truth is that the shoe is on the other foot. Not one of these paragons of virtue who claim sophistication and Ivy league degrees can even explain that the American Constitution does NOT ABSOLUTELY guarantee Freedom of Religion and that both Federal and State Law have taken action against the practices (not the beliefs) and consequences of dangerous and immoral behavior. This was the issue that forced the confrontation of the government against Brigham Young and the elders of the Church of the Latter day Saints (Mormons) to alter their “religion” and accept that American law and citizenship were not congruent with plural marriage or the exploitation of young teenage girls. The Utah territory would not have entered the Union without this confrontation when state power forced a “religion” to change its practices.
The same has been true in many Appalachian states where state authorities forbade the practice of the so called serpent churches among several Pentecostal denominations after the deaths of numerous individuals handing venomous snakes. The states forced churches and church members to accept that the state had a priority to protect individuals from reckless behavior and protect human life in spite of the claims of “religious freedom”.
Had the government moved earlier, the absurd and grotesque suicidal deaths of more than 900 people, most of whom were American citizens, might have been prevented. These naïve followers of the Reverend James Jones ended their lives in the greatest act of mass suicide in American history. His “Peoples Temple” was a Church – i.e. a Religion, whom these same Leftwing and Liberal advocates of tolerance for Islam believe is protected by the Constitution ABSOLUTELY without any qualifications. His “religion” led to the greatest SINGLE LOSS of AMERICAN CIVILIAN LIFE IN A NON-NATURAL DISASTER BEFORE 9/11. The fact that it happened in Guyana was due to the real fear of Jones that he would not be able to continue his church in the United States because he knew that his cult was not permitted ABSOLUTELY by the Constitution to practice acts that could endanger human life.
Yet, the self appointed Liberal, Tolerant Intellectuals who are shedding tears over the possible need to move the Islamic “Cultural Center/mosque” from Ground Zero have undoubtedly never read any part of the Koran or any part of the Sira and Sunnah or done any research on the use of Jihad to expand the Dar al-Islam, yet stridently label anyone as a bigot or intolerant who has, and is aware of the potential danger.
The existing partially-free press in Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Pakistan and Egypt and the Arabic press in Great Britain admitted in numerous editorials that the conflict in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has not been a civil war but that jihadi terrorists have flocked there from as far away as Indonesia and Chechnia to sow death, destruction and mayhem to intimidate all those who oppose the extremist Islamist view of the world. The editorial in the April 15th,2007 issue of the London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat , the leading Arabic International Daily Newspaper, repeated essentially the same message and had this to say:
“To make the picture clearer... This religious war has nothing to do even with the major issues, slogans related to which are raised in the terrorists' literature itself, like Palestine, Iraq, the U.S., etc. These are people who want martyrdom, that is, they want to fight war, anywhere in the world, and for any cause that has a religious angle.
They are not fighting for money, public reform, or for... the environment, and they are not nationalists, pan-Arabists, or communists... They are not jokers, hippies, or oppositionists. They are seekers of martyrdom, meaning that they are in a hurry to go to Paradise. They are not interested in the life of this world, and they want to take with them to the grave the greatest number of people possible.
I know that this is an issue that is difficult for the Westerner to understand. It is also difficult for many of the Muslims themselves to accept this, and they always try to justify it with issues that they consider legitimate and comprehensible. But the truth is that these terrorists want death for the sake of Allah... That is, even if the Americans left Iraq tonight, and the Jews fled Palestine, and extremist religious governments were established in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt - this would not satisfy them... They want Paradise, and for this they will travel to the ends of the earth, to the North Pole and the South Pole, to fight the infidels".
The Egyptian ’Ali al-Qasimi, in his 1946 book, “These Are the Chains” published in Cairo, identified the Muslim Arab individual as pulled apart by the conflicting forces of modern progressive Western influence and the traditional Arab culture regarded as the “perfection of the ancients”. Al-Qasimi did not hesitate to identify the remedy: unreserved adoption of the progressive humanism of the West by ridding Muslim lands of the “crushing heritage of the past“. As David Pryce-Jones so accurately put it….
“Every Arab knows what his society is like, how it fares in comparison to others, and how wide of the mark are apologetics in all forms. To articulate this knowledge requires a rare combination of courage, talent and opportunity.”
THE FILM
Let me also please recommend a film - “Sahara” (1943), with Humphrey Bogart playing Sergeant Joe Gunn, a tank commander in the North African desert, did not win any academy awards but it too reveals essential truths about the Strong Horse principle. In most respects though, it stands a notch higher than most World War II fighting films glorifying the Allied cause and graphically portraying the absolute evil of the Nazis. It also highlights so effectively the camaraderie of the Allies using the skirmishing just prior to the decisive Battle of El-Alamein to portray the heroic sacrifice of a handful of American, British, Commonwealth, and Free French soldiers. Each of the soldiers with the single exception of Bogart’s character are not portrayed as career army men but come from diverse walks of life and are looking forward to rejoining wives, sweethearts, families and civilian careers.
Nor is it the actual combat in the desert and a heroic stand at a deserted well reminiscent of the Alamo, as exciting and gripping as this is, that makes this such an entertaining film. Rather what makes the film an everlasting tribute to the heroes that dealt Nazism a decisive blow, are two dramatic subplot incidents involving ……
1. A Black Sudanese career soldier by the name of Tambul who refuses to be intimidated by a fanatical racist Nazi pilot played by Kurt Krueger (a Swiss educated German expert skier and actor who eventually settled in the U.S.). The pilot has been shot down by Sgt. Gunn and taken captive. At first he refuses to be examined by the Black Sudanese on “racial grounds” because Tambul is inferior, a clear reference by the Hollywood producers to the behavior of Hitler in his racist ideology against the Jews, Salvs and Blacks.
2. Another Axis soldier, an Italian by the name of Giuseppe, (J. Carrol Naish) is taken prisoner by Tambul. The German and Giuseppe are locked in a hut while the outpost comes under attack by a stray contingent of 500 soldiers of the vaunted Afrika Korps commanded by Major Von Falken. They have come 150 kilometers out of their line of march in order to get water from the well, unaware that it has run dry.
Sgt. Gunn carries out an elaborate ruse to try and trick the Germans, offering them non-existent water if they lay down their arms. In between bouts of fighting and negotiations the two Axis prisoners are debating the possibility of escape in order to warn the German troops of the trick. The dialogue of this debate has significance and relevance for today with regard to Iraq, “Palestine” and the debate going on within Islam and between Islam and the West…..
German prisoner: Now is the time we must reach the German camp.
Giuseppe: No, I cannot do this.
German Prisoner: We have only to overpower one man now and take his rifle and maybe get a machine gun. Then we have a chance to kill them all!
Giuseppe: I don’t wan-to. I have no hatred for these men.
German Prisoner: Love or Hate - it is not for you to decide.
Giuseppe: I’m not going.
German Prisoner: This place will soon be taken. If you refuse to help me now. I’ll DENOUNCE you!
Giuseppe: DENOUCE ME THEN! Italians are NOT like-a Germans. Only the body wears the uniform, not the soul. Mussolini is not so clever like-a Hitler. He can dress his Italians only to LOOK like thieves, cheats and murderers. He cannot like-a Hitler make them FEEL like that. He cannot like-a Hitler scrape from their conscience the knowledge that RIGHT is RIGHT and WRONG is WRONG or dig-a holes in their heads to plant HIS Ten Commandments - Steal from thy neighbor, Cheat thy neighbor, …KILL thy neighbor!
German Prisoner”: You Weak Italienische Schwein. You DARE to insult the Führer?
Giuseppe: That would take and artist. I am BUT a mechanic. BUT are my eyes blind that I cannot see, that I must fall to my knees to worship a MANIAC who has made of my country a concentration camp, who has made of my people SLAVES ? Must I KISS the hand that beats me, LICK the Boot that kicks me ? NO !
I’d rather spend my whole life living in this-a dirty hole than escape to fight again for things I do not believe against people I do not a-hate and for your Hitler. It’s because-a of a man like him that God created HELL! The German pilot in fury then knocks Giuseppe down and stabs him. Although mortally wounded, he struggles to his feel to warn Sgt. Gunn that the pilot must be stopped before reaching the German lines. The pilot is stopped and killed by the black Sudanese Tambul who sacrifices his life in the attempt.
Watching the film Sahara today, one feels compelled to ask why through their long history under ruthless leaders able to inflame Arab and Muslim passions for wars of revenge and conquest motivated by hatred and extreme religious and nationalist fanaticism, the rank and file Arab soldiers who have been so abused and misled, never reached the stage of asking the same questions as Giuseppe.
The scenes of Egyptian mobs moved to an emotional catharsis begging for their leader and the man most responsible for leading them into the worst catastrophe of their four thousand years of history, Gamal Abdul Nasser, to return to power after their 1967 disastrous defeat in The Six Day War is a potent example of a people answering with a dramatic, unequivocal frantic YES to Giuseppe’s question as to whether they should fall to their knees to worship a maniac.
The same hysteria of hero worship and wild endorsement of an unqualified YES with chants of Allahu Akbar (God is Great) marked the funeral of Yassir Arafat, an Arab leader without a single achievement or accomplishment to improve the material well being of his people beyond pieces of paper - the many resolutions passed by the United Nations to bolster Palestinian egos and their sense of victimhood. His record of personal corruption in funds siphoned off before reaching his suffering people exceed that of any of the notoriously corrupt Arab kings, emirs and princes. This macabre cry that “God is Great” has greeted the worst barbaric atrocities committed in the name of Islam by many throughout the Muslim World following jihadist suicide attacks in Jerusalem, Madrid, New York, London and increasingly throughout much of the rest of the world - Bali, Beirut, Istanbul, Kenya, Morocco, Algeria and Jordan.
Whereas we in the West have been conditioned to expect the resignation of any political leader for a serious blunder whether in the economy, matters of war and peace or any act of sexual impropriety, nepotism, graft, corruption, or by profiting from his office, the majority of the Muslim population in many Muslim-majority states has been conditioned to kiss the hand that beats it and lick the boot that kicks it until another even more despotic, more ruthless rival is able to outmaneuver the leader and seize power. In any future Palestinian state, the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas or another even more radical movement will fight it out to determine who ends up on top, inevitably it will be a “charismatic” leader similar to Nasser, or Saddam Hussein or Arafat.
A major current of thought that has gained ascendancy in large parts of the Arab World and among Islamist extremism worldwide is identical to the world-view of the German pilot in Sahara” who kills Giuseppe for “daring to insult the Fuhrer”.
Yet, this madness has begun to provoke a reaction in the hearts and minds of all those Arabs and Muslims who realize that they are the principal victims and that the weakness, vacillation, doubts and penchant for appeasement by their own public officials may place them in jeopardy. More and more writers, journalists, artists, and intellectuals in North Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf states, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia have begun to ask Giuseppe’s questions. Only then, will the Arabs be unafraid of the constant fear of reprisal, and like Giuseppe, bravely confront their tormentors ……Denounce me then!
The utter futility of elections where they are held cannot disturb the pattern of the few ruling the many, of the admiration by the masses of the strong leader who is inevitably the most violent and powerful. Lee Smith convincingly outlines how the reality in almost all Arab and many Muslim majority countries opposes the original naïve view fostered by the Bush administration of bringing “democracy” to Iraq as if this were to be devoutly desired by ordinary Arab “moms and dads”. These societies are not ready for the kind of society that took the West centuries to evolve. All these illusions have been shattered in the past through failed constitutions, repeated coups and civil wars in Lebanon, Syria, among the Palestinians and Jordanians and in Iraq and will ultimately fail in Iran.
