How our involvement in Iraq makes us more vulnerable to Islam

(The below exchange took place a few days ago, before I wrote the entry posted at 5:45 a.m. on October 20.)

Dimitri K. wrote:

You stated, though I can’t find the reference, that the war in Iraq hurts our ability to resist Muslim invasion. Am I right here? This is a very important question to my opinion, which must be addressed seriously. Does the war on the enemy’s soil with non-realistic, but in principle plausible aim, hurts our ability to resist? And if yes, why?

LA replies:

The reference was in the blog entry about the British army general Sir Richard Dannatt, where I said he seemed to be getting close to my key idea, which is that instead of spreading democracy to Muslims while allowing Muslims into the West, we should be separating ourselves from Muslims.

Our occupation/democratization of Iraq weakens us because it creates a situation in which are trying to “assimilate” Muslims to our ways, thus drawing ourselves closer to Muslims and getting involved with them, rather than drawing lines between ourselves and Muslims so that they cannot affect us.

Does this answer your question?

Dimitri replies:

From your response I finally recognized the ultimate meaning of the word “separation.” It hurts. I disliked Muslims since I first met them in the Caucusus mountains, in the USSR, 25 years ago, and l gave up my liberalism when living in Israel, 15 years ago, and I really felt sorry when visiting France five years ago, and I see the defense of the West against Islam as the vital task of our generation. But still, it hurts. Separate without appeal. Something inside me really broke when I realized it. Lots of people, some of them good people, will be our enemies FOREVER.

Can you leave at least a tiny opportunity for some future, for example, as one Israeli author dreamt, they would suddenly start to massively accept the Jewish religion? It is a miracle of course, but a man needs to believe in miracles.

LA replies:

I can’t see the possibility of Muslims, so long as they remain Muslims, accepting, i.e. becoming friendly toward, the Jewish religion. The only hope I see is on the individual level. If the West (including Israel) becomes strong again toward Islam so that the Muslims recognize they have no chance to defeat us or wage jihad against us, then some Muslims would be more likely to accept the situation and friendships between individual Muslims and individual Christians and Jews would become possible. But as I see it, the indispensable condition for such non-harmful friendships is the West’s permanent containment of the Islamic world as a whole. As I wrote at FrontPage Magazine in January 2005:

“To weaken Islam in the manner I’m suggesting is not to deny the Muslims’ humanity. Powerlessness or defeat is not what most deeply bothers Muslims, but the loss of honor. As they have demonstrated over and over in their history, they view honorable defeat, even honorable death, as desiderata. Thus Muslims can be powerless, and still keep their honor. It should be the goal of our policy to return the Islamic world to that salutary condition.

“Once that has happened, Western students and romantics of Islam could still pursue friendships and cultural interchanges with Muslims. Such inter-cultural contacts would no longer be dangerous because they would no longer be premised on the myth that Islam is benevolent to non-Muslims. If we want the possibility of decent human relations between individual Westerners and Muslims, we must defang the dar al-Islam and keep it that way. Lasting peace—or, rather, the absence of violence—can only be achieved through Western strength and dominance, not through trying to make friends with a non-existent moderate Islam. Under such circumstances a more decent type of Islam may arise. But, as I’ve said over and over, it will have arisen only because we confined the Muslims to narrower quarters on this globe.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 20, 2006 09:47 PM | Send