Prof. Paul Eidelberg

If it is true, as I maintain, that “Islamic fundamentalism” is authentic Islam (now resurgent), and if international terrorism is merely a manifestation of Islam’s war against Western civilization, then it should be obvious that multicultural America is incapable of winning such a war.   Never mind the enormous economic interests of the United States in the Islamic Middle East.  There are some 50 Muslim states and more than one billion Muslims on this planet; they are not going to be cowed by America.

To win this war, America would have to bring about a Protestant Reformation in Islam.   Muslims would have to renounce the ethos of jihad.  Islam would then cease being a militant, expansionist, and proselytizing creed.  It would have to recognize, as one may see in the Bible of Israel, that God creates nations as well as individuals, and that the independence of diverse nations, above all Israel, is to be respected so long as they observe the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality.

Moreover, Islamic autocracies, without becoming secular, would have to become commercial republics.  On the one hand, they would cease to be corporate states in which the individual has no unalienable rights.  On the other hand, the rights of individuals would not be exalted at the expense of religious-based morality.  Accordingly, the state would introduce an ethical market economy.  This would promise an end to the poverty endemic in the Islamic world.  It would promote creativity and the development of a middle class, a precondition of a moderate and stable republic.

From this it should be obvious that American democracy, to the extent that it has departed from the principles of the American founding fathers, is hardly a model for the Islamic world.  To mention present tendencies:  Its unrestrained freedom spawns licentiousness; its indiscriminate egalitarianism undermines deference and respect for parents and lawful authority; its form of capitalism promotes avarice and materialism; its pop culture fosters vulgarity; its university-bred doctrine of moral relativism breeds atheism and cynicism.

If Islam has to undergo a “Protestant Reformation,” America has to undergo a Judeo-Christian Restoration.☼