Western Resistance

Political solidarity in this sense doesn't mean lockstep agreement with everything the government or the state sets forth as national policy. It means that despite the various disagreements among the members of organization, from a family to the nation, all those who disagree share the same fundamental political beliefs that are intimate to the social fabric of the nation. Parents may disagree which college to send their child, but they are unanimous about the need for higher education. It's about shared fundamentalism in the execution of political power, from among the littlest communities to the relationships between a citizen and the government. For the democratic Western nation-states, it is because of this sense of political solidarity that a citizen whose candidate lost an election does not take up arms in retributive anger. Instead, the citizen chose to have faith that his ideological opponent will still act in the best interests of the people and will wait until the next period to exercise electoral vengeance. A democrat cannot co-exist with a monarchist. Their fundamental beliefs in the execution of political power are too radically different from each other, and those differences demand either physical separation from each other or, conflict until separation or the elimination of one: War. Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), Prussian general and strategist, declared that war "is merely the continuation of policy by other means."

War is more a state of mind than a state of physical being or action. It's an attitude of hostility toward an enemy. When nation-states send their military forces into battle, the correct technical term for that state of physical actuality is "armed conflict". For over half of the 20th century, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were at war against each other, without firing a shot at each other. History records that era as The Cold War. The two great powers were hostile to each other. They employed proxies to do battles on their behalf, as evident in the most famous of the Cold War's proxy battles: The Viet Nam War. Their fundamental beliefs, with so little in common from politics to the economy, automatically defined each other as each other's enemy. In essence, the greater the ideological contrast between the Western alliance and the Soviet bloc, the greater the ease in what each other simply "IS", to inevitably define the other as the enemy, without requiring much elaboration.

Dictionaries define a dichotomy as a division into two usually contradictory halves.

In Islam, there exists two worlds: Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Islam made it unequivocally clear to its followers that there exist two worlds: The Abode of Submission and the Abode of War. The latter is also called Dar al-Kufr, The Abode of Unbelief. This dichotomy is without qualifications for the believers. It simply "IS". Islam demands absolute obedience to this dichotomy. Cat Stevens, a popular British singer-songwriter of the "free love" generation of the 1960s and 1970s, after his conversion and adoption of the name Yusuf Islam in 1977, repudiated everything the West believed in and, in perfect obedience to the dichotomy dictated by Islam, supported the religious fiat calling for the death of writer Salman Rushdie, who wrote a mocking novel about Islam's prophet, Muhammad. The death fatwa was issued by Iran's religious overlord Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989). That novel was The Satanic Verses (1988) and in 1999 Rushdie commented that Islam was 'the least huggable of all faiths'. Rushdie was of the same group of people as Stevens was, whom the West relied upon to keep itself honest, that the West protected with various constitutional rights, and that the public have a love-hate relationship with: Intellectuals and artists.

Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam, isn't the only one for whom this dichotomy is absolute. The murder of Dutchman Theo van Gogh (1957-2004) for his critical and negative portrayal of Islam in his films is another example. He was murdered in broad daylight and in full view of witnesses. The purposely chosen time and place emphasized the brazen contempt that his Muslim killer had for the West. Sergeant Hasan Akbar, born Mark Fidel Kools, of the US Army's elite 101st Airborne, in Mar. 2003 attacked his fellow soldiers and killed two officers. And recently, some British Muslims killed some of their fellow citizens in commanded disregard of national allegiance. Less dramatic but equally problematic was the attempt by Muslim activists to have Salman Rushdie's book, The Satanic Verses, with its derogatory portrayal of Muhammad, banned under Britain's arcane and archaic 17th century blasphemy laws. Each incident taken alone can be explained away as personal aberrations and incidental. However, taken together, these incidents (and the many less publicized ones) indicate a consistent behavioral pattern; the willingness of individual Muslims to cast aside national allegiances in favor of loyalty to a transnational religious body called the Ummah. In the case of the British subway bombings, those British Muslims conducted a coordinated attack on other British citizens, in the belief that the national body called Britain was inflicting grievous harm upon the Islamic Ummah.

Expressions of loyalty to the Ummah aren't confined to supplanting national allegiances with Islamic devotion. When Malaysia's Mahathir bin Mohamad, Prime Minister 1981-2003, opined that Jews rule the world by proxy, and insinuated the agents are the Western nation-states, he quite tacitly confirmed that he was merely a mouthpiece for whatever the Ummah chooses as belief for its followers, and Malaysian Muslims obeyed. What harm has any Jew done to any Malay Muslim? Or had any Malay Muslim even met a Jew? How could it be possible, when Malaysian laws banned Israelis and Jews from entering Malaysia, as evidenced in 1989, when Miron Bleiberg, an Australian Jew and Melbourne's soccer team's coach, was denied a visa? Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List (1993), a film that portrayed Jews in a sympathetic position, is deemed Zionist propaganda and banned from Malaysia. Malay Chinese are the real life influences upon Malaysia as they are the minority, yet are still the majority wealth holders and generators. But it is the Jews who were singled out in a speech for an Arab Muslim audience.

So how are nation-states that have defined borders, functioning governments, distinct cultural interests, and generally amicable relations with each other, to make sense of an ideology that divides the world into a simplistic division of "The House of Islam" and "The House of War"? Is there "The House of Britain" and "The House of War"? When there were fishing rights disputes between the United States and Canada, did "The House of America" send a naval battle group to intimidate the "Dar al-Kufr" of Canada? How are they to make sense of the political solidarity of "The House of Islam", the global Islamic ummah, in relation to "The House of War", which is clearly who else but them, those nation-states? Remember that war is simply hostile intent, not military expeditions. How are these largely secular nation-states to make sense of a community of believers for whom religious consciousness acquired socio-legal connotations and often inhumanely doctrinaire in its interpretations and applications? Remember the Taliban of Afghanistan who forbade male physicians to treat women, yet also denied women the educational opportunities to be literate, let alone become physicians. Or is it now worthwhile for the Western nation-states to remember the lessons of The Cold War and critically examine Islam for its contrast with the West, and the demands upon its followers?

These are the values that the West fought The Cold War against the Soviets for most of the 20th century: Freedom of expression, basic human rights, and capitalism. These are just a few of many other evolving values that greatly contributed to the overall progress and prosperity of the West: gender discrimination issues, the separation of religion and state, or scientific education. All together, these values created a culture that is progressive and opportunistic for every member. If an ethos benefitted the members in some manners, and which hasn't(?), then by virtue of those benefits, that culture deserves respect, allegiance and protection. Perhaps professor-historian Seton-Watson is correct when he states that it is not possible to scientifically explain the phenomenon of "the nation", and by extension, nationalism and patriotism. There exist "hard" elements such as political institutions or an economic system. But how is a German able to explain the cultural affinity he has for an all-brass oompah band as well as some of Germany's world class orchestras? Jazz music is an American art form, and widely celebrated throughout the world. How is it possible that the Latin American culture that produced the fantastic tango also produced the comical macarena? Combine the "hard" variables such as political institutions and economics with the "soft" variables such as the artistic and the emotive attachments and a "nation" exists.

Cultures are generally dynamic, but do not adopt elements that would lead to their destruction. Rearranging one's furniture under the direction of a feng shui practitioner is merely superstitious and faddish. But the thousand years old Buddhist statues of Afghanistan were destroyed because their existence was "insulting to Islam". Would The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, suffer the same fate? Yes. Would Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam, who supported the death fatwa for Salman Rushdie, support a death fatwa for the Marsalis brothers of jazz music fame? Probably. Would the opera Carmen be banned? Definitely. During the trial of the forementioned Sgt. Hasan Akbar, it was revealed that long before the attack of 9/11, in a 1997 diary entry, Akbar wrote that "My life would not be complete unless America is destroyed." When his unit was planned for deployment to Iraq, Akbar accused "you guys", meaning the US infidels, of going over to Iraq to "rape our women and kill our children." Who is implied by this word "our"? To be an NCO means to have been in uniform for at least a few years, and this is an elite division of the US Army, whose additional training, physical and mental hardships are designed to reject less capable men. Had Akbar seen any training program in the US military that sanctioned rape?

Cat Stevens and Hasan Akbar made clear their allegiances and political solidarity after their conversions, i.e to the global Islamic Ummah. In Ethnoecology: The Relevance of Cognitive Anthropology for Human Ecology, author Eugene Hunn stated: "...culture concept must address not only what is formally appropriate, but also what is ecologically effective." Hunn doesn't mean nature ecology but the human sort, and that: "...culture is what one must know to act effectively in one's environment." The corollary to this is that one must also learn and know what is NOT appropriate and NOT acceptable as well. Values can be categorized into two main camps: Intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic is defined as basic and essential to the nature of something. Patriotism is a value intrinsic to a nation, history is another. An instrumental value can also be considered an expedient value, and is temporary, such as an economic system or a social policy. Communism as an economic model failed miserably and was discarded. Affirmative action, a social policy, is under review. Sometimes an instrumental value evolved to intrinsic status. Gender and race discrimination issues were such social evolutions. If insufficient patriotism exists, that is, the people no longer feel any passion for continual association with a group identity complex, the nation dies. The United States can still exist as a functional state, but it would be a different society if women are reduced to secondary citizen status and blacks are reenslaved. The net effect of an intrinsic value strikes at the soul of the society and the individual.

Stevens and Akbar rejected that which is appropriate and acceptable of Western values and embraced what is appropriate and acceptable to the Islamic Ummah. Both men grew up within the Western traditions so it is impossible for them not to know that one set of value system is the antithesis of the other. The Western culture and its continuing evolving ethos have provided them with rights, freedoms and opportunities unprecedented in history. The Western nation-states made an alliance that protected them and their rights, freedoms and opportunities from the monster of communism. The West have also expended a great deal of intellectual effort to understand and counter the monster of communism. Now it is no less valid and urgent that the West must expend the same level of intellectual effort to critically examine Islam and to reject any cultural elements that would lead to the destruction of the West as a cultural system.