Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Islam's Jihadi Problem

Whether you call it "The Global War on Terror," just terrorism or even Islamofascism, the real enemy is religious extremism in the Islamic world. America cannot win militarily fighting those who truly believe they are called to a holy war. But we can stop supporting them and call on moderate Islam to curb these extremists.

Our response to the terror attack of 9/11 was to start two wars and tighten up domestic security. We favored the use of military power because that is what we are good at and we went after specific military power because that is what we could identify. The military targets we picked were Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda which is now more symbol than substance and our former allies the hyper-Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan. None of these represents our real enemy.

Pres. Obama, with the 30,000 man surge, has made our attempt to stabilize Afghanistan militarily a major issue for his administration and America. Actually, this surge in Afghanistan is intended mainly to bolster the Pakistani. They are the real target and for good reason. Pakistan not only has the bomb, the most dreadful weapon of mass destruction, but it is also being destabilized by Islamic fundamentalists.

Again the enemy is not the Pakistani military which is actually pretty competent and pro-Western nor even its very powerful intelligence service which has at times been soft on Al Qaeda. The real enemy is a very small but powerful group of terrorists who are preaching violent holy war against the United States. These are the Jihadi.

Islamism, fundamentalist Islam, can go either of two ways: Jihad can become violent terroristic Holy War or it can remain the personal spiritual struggle it has traditionally been for most Muslims.

Some have already chosen violent jihad. The most violent and most threatening of these is Salafism or Wahhabism, followers of the 18th century scholar Abd al-Wahhab. The names and numbers of the Wahhabi and other Jihadi sects is often confusing and overlapping but it is only a very small part of Islam.

Wahhabis, the most prominent of the Jihadi, have "an absolute commitment to Jihad, whose number one target had to be America, perceived as the greatest enemy of the faith." The Wahhabi have traditionally held that Muslims not holding to the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam are subject to execution. That is what makes possible the horror of suicide bombings that kill Muslim civilians.

The threat arises from a centuries old agreement between the Wahhabi and the Saudi royal family whereby the Wahhabi control theology and the Saudis control the secular government, which includes implementing and enforcing Wahhabi teachings.

Though the Wahhabi account for only 1 percent of Islam, their influence is out of all proportion to their numbers. They hold the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, they have the Saudi petro-money for their missionary activities and they are an inspiration for Jihadi cells around the world. That petro-money funded Osama bin Laden.

The Saudis have spent tens of billions of dollars across Islam promoting Wahhabism. Over the past 50 years Saudi money has built worldwide as many as 1500 mosques. A pro-Muslim institute offered the somewhat doubtful reassurance that "most mosques in the US are not under Wahhabi influence."

The Wahhabi and those offshoots that support violent Jihad are the true enemy for they are committed to violent struggle with all of Western civilization.

Only Islam can solve the Jihadi problem and there is a no way the United States can constructively intervene in what is essentially a theological and political problem for Islamic regimes. No amount of military action in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan is going to seriously weaken the proselytizing of disaffected young Muslims by these fanatics.

Military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan must be seen as a temporary expedient designed to give Islam time to rid itself of this scourge. Saudi Arabia is the principal culprit supporting the Wahhabi and we should stop holding their hand.

In the meantime, president Obama reached out to the Muslim world and our approval ratings in those countries rose significantly. This will, however, not last long if we continue to support repressive regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and cloud the Pakistani skies with drones that kill more civilians than terrorists.

The Islamic world, particularly Saudi Arabia, has to admit that suicide bombers killing hundreds of Muslim civilians every week is an atrocity that they must do something about. The Western world has to be very clear that the Afghan War is not a military occupation of Islam. We must also see that Islam spreads the petro-wealth to the people across the region rather than use it to build indoor ski slopes and skyscrapers in Dubai.

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