Post by Prof. Paul Eidelberg

If an American presidential candidate were to mention this, he’d win by a landslide.

One or two of these presidential candidates emphasize the need for truth. But we need some UGLY truths, especially about ISLAM.

I’ve written lengthy articles about this  enemy, and I have cited the most respectable authors, including moderns like Alexis de Tocqueville and Winston Churchill, and ancients like Saint Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Catholic theologian; and I have even cited Syrian-born psychiatrist Wafa Sultan, who does not even regard Islam as a civilization! 

There are dozens of ex-Muslims that regard Islam as a scourge, and who forthrightly believe that the salvation of Muslims depends on their renunciation of Islam.

This being the case, why isn’t there a single American presidential candidate possessing enough moral courage to cite what even former Muslims have said about the viciousness of Islam? 

Are they silenced by the First Amendment’s right about Freedom of Speech, or about the Constitution’s guarantee about freedom of religion? 

Post By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Islam has never overcome its adolescent origin. G. E. Von Grunebaum put it differently. In Modern Islam (1962), he says, “Islam is inherently unprogressive.” “Islam,” he explains, “is not vitally interested in analytical self-understanding.” This describes an adolescent mentality.

More recently, Bernard Lewis, in “The Roots of Muslim Rage” (1990), portrays Islam’s overweening arrogance and utter contempt for Western civilization.

Ethnocentrism goes well with adolescence: Muslims are not interested in what a non-Muslim says about mankind and the universe.

Contrast Maimonides: “The identity of an author, be he a prophet or a gentile, is of no concern [to us]. We don’t rely on [the personal authority of] the individual who made [such and such] statements … but on the proofs he presented and the reasons he made known.”

Islam is not really interested in truth, which is why the Taliban says “reason stinks of corruption.” Islam knows only “Islamic” truths. Hence, Grunebaum and Lewis say that any intelligent Western statesman will understand why Muslims, steeped in the mentality of the Qur’an, lack the ability to moderate their demands in disputes with non-Muslims.

This Islamic mind-set makes nonsense of Barack Obama’s “outreach” policy to the Iranians, just as it makes nonsense of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “reciprocity” policy toward the Palestinians. Indeed, it’s idiotic to insist on reciprocity with Muslims whose sacred scriptures call for your destruction.

Obama’s mindless posture, however, stamps the liberal West, whose leaders live in a cringing state of denial of Islam’s childishly proud, 14-century record of punctuated murder and mayhem!

There is but one adult conclusion to be drawn from this 14-century reality:  Israel will not enjoy genuine peace with its neighbors so long as Muslim adults behave like adolescents! Syrian-born psychiatrist Dr. Wafa Sultan said as much when she said Islam must be “transformed,” not merely “reformed.” Let’s draw some “politically incorrect” conclusions.

First, as advised by theologian George Weigel, we must stop speaking of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the “three Abrahamic faiths” or the “three monotheisms.” These tropes, says Weigel, obscure rather than illuminate. They “ought to be retired.”

I would go further. Islam should no longer be dignified by the term “religion.” A basic aspect of religion is “altruism,” a concept wholly foreign to Islam. Altruism is intrinsically alien to Islam since its distorted theology rejects the Jewish concept of man’s creation in the image of God, the ultimate source of human dignity and of the moral unity of mankind.

Moreover, whereas the Genesis concept of imago Dei teaches Jews to emphasize the primacy of reason and persuasion in human affairs, the denial of this concept conditions Muslims to exalt the primacy of force and coercion. This syndrome can be traced to Islam’s bellicose, polytheistic origin, which prompts Muslims to behave like rival gangs of teenagers,

It follows from the preceding, and as indicated by Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born psychiatrist living in Los Angeles, Islam can’t be reformed by moral suasion from within. She rightly says Islam must be “transformed,” hence transformed from without. But to transform Islam from without, certain measures must be taken to desacralize what Muslims worship, above all the Qur’an, which virtually no one thinks of doing, even though the Qur’an is the foundation of every Islamic regime, from Iran to the Palestinian Authority.

Focus, however, on what the Qu’ran high lights, namely, the “enemy,” the “infidel.” We are not going to expunge this word from the Qur’an by “changing hearts and minds” via a “Voice of America.” As “infidels,” we are Islam’s enemy, which means that Islam is our enemy.

So let’s be grown up about this enemy and cease behaving like adolescents, mindless of Islam’s history of genocide, which exceeds that of the Nazis. We have an unprecedented and implacable enemy.

We are not wide-eyed teenagers or sentimental old ladies. Nor are we acanemics that exaggerate the influence of ideas on behavior. We have a deadly enemy. Mankind has always thought of the enemy as one you must kill or destroy first, otherwise, sooner or later, he will kill or destroy you.

But living in effete liberal democracies, we do not think this way.  “We are caught,” says Lou Harris, “in the midst of a conflict between those for whom the category of the enemy is essential to their way of organizing all human experience and those who have banished even the idea of the enemy.”

The conflict is between adolescents weaned on hatred and adolescents weaned on pap! We are being led by politicians who have made a career on pap.

Post by Paul Eidelberg

It would be a strategic error of historic proportions for the United States to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, the greatest error of the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush was to refrain from attacking Iran knowing, after the November 2008 American election, that he was going to be succeeded by Barack Obama. Perhaps this is why John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, urged Israel to initiate the attack in question.

Be that as it may, suppose Iran became a nuclear power. Having failed to attack Iran before it developed the bomb, we may reasonably infer that the US would not launch a preemptive strike once Iran proceeded to deploy nuclear tipped ballistic missiles.

Consider: In August 2009, Dr. Uzi Rubin, who has long been involved in Israeli military research and engineering programs, reported: “The Iranians have upgraded their ballistic missiles to become satellite launchers. The solid-propellant Sejil missile signifies a technological and strategic breakthrough. This missile already poses a threat to a number of European Union countries. Based on its demonstrated achievements in solid propulsion and staging, Iran will face no significant hurdle in up-scaling the Sejil into a compact, survivable intermediate-range ballistic missile. A range of 3,600 km. will be sufficient to put the EU [and eventually the US under threat].”

Dr. Rubin pointed out that even in August 2009 the Sejii, with only “an actual range of about 2,500 km.… could reach Warsaw and, indeed, six European Union countries: Poland, Slovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Greece.” By now, we may assume that Iran’s latest missiles can reach the USA.

In any event, Dr. Rubin went on to warn that “The Tabriz launch area in Iran is as big as Azerbeijan, bigger than Israel and half of Jordan. It’s about 50,000 sq. km., full of mountains, valleys, and canyons. You can hide thousands of ballistic missiles there with a very high probability of survival. So the capability to make a survivable missile that can threaten Europe now exists in Iran.”

Post-Christian Europe would almost certainly succumb to Iranian nuclear blackmail. (Indeed, Europe’s pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel orientation should be viewed in this light.) Even a partial loss of the European economy would cripple the American economy.

Now contrast the mentality of Americans even before their brains were Obamanized or lobotomized by a con-artist who can’t speak without a teleprompter: contrast, I say, America’s mentality with that of its global-minded enemy confusingly called “Islamism” or “political Islam” or “radical Islam” or some other abbreviated conception of Islam.

If it was true in August 2009, as mentioned above, that the Iranians had already upgraded their ballistic missiles to become satellite launchers of sufficient range to strike all of Europe, is it not obvious that they can deploy nuclear weapons of sufficient range—if deemed strategically necessary—to strike the United States?

Alas, there are “experts” in the US who advocate a “containment” policy vis-à-vis Iran comparable to that the Cold War vis-à-vis the USSR! Let me therefore quote a Soviet leader who scornfully told the Americans: “We will always be able to turn out more missiles than you. The reason is that our people are willing to sacrifice for these things, and yours are not. Our people don’t require a dozen colors of toilet paper in six different scents to be happy Americans now do; for that reason you will never be able to sustain public support for military expenditures.”

Ronald Reagan proved him wrong, but a very different president now occupies the White House. And threatening America today are not Communists but Muslims who have used their own children as human bombs. Or as Michael Ledeen points out inAccomplice to Evil, he there refers to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, during Iran’s war with Iraq, used Iranian children to walk over and explode enemy mine fields.

Unlike Nikita Khrushchev of yesterday’s “Evil Empire,” the Mullahs do not threaten America saying “We shall bury you.” No, listen carefully to the malediction of today’s Evil Empire. Ponder the difference between Khrushchev’s vicious threat and the satanic malediction of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, who spat in the faces of today’s liberal democrats, especially those in America: “We are going to win because you love life and we love death.”

Viewed thusly, diverse opinions about “containment” of a nuclear-armed Iran is comparable to diverse opinions about the color of toilet paper.