Islamic Imperialism

From FrontPageMag.com, an interview with the author of Islamic Imperialism: A History, Dr. Efraim Karsh. Far from an abberation, imperialism was THE founding principle of Islam and has remained its most characteristic feature.

In Islamic Imperialism: A History, I show that Islamic history has been anything but reactive. From the Prophet Muhammad to the Ottomans, the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of an often astonishing imperial aggressiveness and, no less important, of never quiescent imperial dreams. If, today, America is reviled in the Muslim world, it is not because of its specific policies but because, as the preeminent world power, it blocks the final realization of this same age-old dream of a universal Islamic empire (or umma). For generations of Muslim leaders it has been Islam’s universal vision of conquest as epitomized in the Prophet’s summons to fight the unbelievers wherever they might be found.

As a universal religion, Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or subject communities and obliges all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising “struggle in the path of Allah,” or jihad. As Mohammad famously told his followers in his farewell address: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’” This goal need not necessarily be pursued by the sword; it can be achieved through demographic growth and steady conversion of the local populations by “an army of preachers and teachers who will present Islam in all languages and in all dialects.” But should peaceful means prove insufficient, physical force can readily be brought to bear.

There is a pervasive guilt complex among left-wing intellectuals and politicians, which dates back to the early twentieth century and stems from the belief that the West “has been the arch aggressor of modern times,” to use the words of Arnold Toynbee, one of the more influential early exponents of this dogma. This has resulted in a highly politicized scholarship (especially under the pretentious title of “post-colonial studies”) which berates “Western imperialism” as the source of all evil and absolves the local actors of any blame or responsibility for their own problems. But this self-righteous approach is academically unsound and morally reprehensible. It is academically unsound because the facts tell an altogether different story of Islamic and Middle Eastern history, one that has consistently been suppressed because of its incongruity with the politically-correct dogmas. And it is morally reprehensible because denying the responsibility of individuals and societies for their actions is patronizing.

The birth of Islam was inextricably linked with the creation of a world empire and its universalism was inherently imperialist. It did not distinguish between temporal and religious powers, which were combined in the person of Muhammad, who derived his authority directly from Allah and acted at one and the same time as head of the state and head of the church.

Whether Europe will come under Islamic domination by the end of the 21^st century really depends on whether Europeans will awake to reality and recognize the real nature of the threat confronting them. Thus far, this hasn’t happened, though some recent developments, such as last year’s French riots or the violence attending the Danish cartoons, have acted as (admittedly modest) wakeup calls. Only last month Mu’ammar Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, predicted the imminent Islamization of Europe. Many Muslims and Arabs unabashedly pine for the reconquest of Spain and consider their 1492 expulsion from the country a grave historical injustice waiting to be undone. Indeed, as immigration and higher rates of childbirth have greatly increased the number of Muslims within Europe itself over the past several decades, countries that were never ruled by the caliphate have become targets of Muslim imperial ambition. Since the late 1980s, Islamists have looked upon the growing population of French Muslims as proof that France, too, has become a part of the House of Islam. In Britain, even the more moderate elements of the Muslim community are candid in setting out their aims. As the late Zaki Badawi, a doyen of interfaith dialogue in the UK, put it, “Islam is a universal religion. It aims to bring its message to all corners of the earth. It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim community.” To deny the pervasiveness and tenacity of this imperialist ambition is the height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is to play into its hands.

Commentary

The imperialistic and hegemonistic designs of Islam remain its most salient feature rendering grotesque and barbaric all who are pulled into its malevolent orbit. And yet Western intellectuals and the cultural mavens persistently refuse to acknowledge its 1400 year history of unparalleled mayhem. It cannot be emphasized enough: It is not the religious extremists that are causing the problems. It is ISLAM as taught and practiced by Mohammad (MHRIH). Every single article, news program, or essay that fails to deal with this fact is an irrational sop to the multiculturalists and PC gibberish.

The core problem in the Middle East is not poverty, as Western intellectuals would have you believe. It is ISLAM as taught and practiced by Mohammad (MHRIH). Man has experienced poverty more racking that this for eons without resorting to terrorism. ISLAM is the root cause of poverty. Christian Western Civilization developed the infrastructure necessary for the production of wealth: The protection of private property, an edifice of laws creating a stable social structure and protecting the rights of all individuals, the subordination of the state’s rights to those of the individual etc.. NONE of that has occurred in an Islamic society. And Bush with his ham fisted pursuit of the chimera of Democracy in the Middle East has done little to clarify the issues. For as Spengler has said at the Asia Times: “Something more than democracy is required for peace and prosperity, and that is a people committed to good rather than evil. Democracy in the Middle East means something quite different: Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. The sooner President Bush changes the subject, the better.”