A Fight For Western Civilization

Fire of Liberty
I have to say that William F. Buckley Jr.'s makes an apt observation on why the most recent passage of the terrorist detainment/interrogation bill is a must in our current War on Islamic terrorism. While I recommend you read WFB's article in its entirety, I figured I'd share with you a part of the column which caught my eye:

Necessarily, with the intervention of the Supreme Court, we needed to come up with a vocabulary appropriate to the challenge. This, Congress has pretty much decided, can be effected by a new nomenclature. It would continue to give the U.S. military authority to detain suspects and to interrogate them vigorously, though not brutally, in the effort to contain the terrorist movement.

How is that movement relevant? "The question of offensive jihad is ... complex and controversial," writes Habeck. "The most widely respected Islamic authorities ... all assume that Muslims have a duty to spread the dominion of Islam, through military offensives, until it rules the world. By the 'dominion of Islam' these authorities did not mean that everyone in the world must convert to Islam, since they also affirmed that 'there is no compulsion in religion,' rather that every part of the Earth must come under Islamic governance and especially the rule of the sharia.

"Azzam's definition of offensive jihad (Azzam is the principal modern theorist of militant Islam) follows this traditional understanding of jihad, noting that it is a duty for the leader of the Muslims 'to assemble and send out an army unit into the land of war once or twice every year.'" The jihadist is obliged to perform with all available capabilities "until there remain only Muslims or people who submit to Islam."

The author reminds us that Azzam's explanation of offensive jihad is "a recounting of the interpretations of the most respected traditional Islamic authorities. To deny this fact would be to deny one of the main reasons that jihadis have gotten a hearing in so much of the Islamic world today."

It is clearly wrong to assume that every Muslim is a jihadist. But it is also wrong to assume that every jihadist is heretical to his faith; and we end with real questions about how to deal with real people whom we catch with gunpowder stains on their robes. We have gone through a conventional constitutional modification, in the evolution of our commitment to prevail over the jihadists, and we need not apologize for it.

It's always good to have the sage words of great insight of a conservative octogenarian during the silly season of mid-term elections.

*Also check out Mary Habeck's wonderful new book Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror to get an even greater understanding of the individuals that take up arms against the US and the whole of Western Civilization.