Islam's Threat to the West

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Wednesday, August 2, 2006 • Modified Tuesday, September 26, 2006

One half century after the Holocaust, the Western world is confronted with another demonic challenge. While Hitler tried to create a Reich that would rule for 1,000 years, Militant Islam hopes to conquer the world and impose its theology on every human being on the face of the earth.

When President Bush used the "crusade" idiom, he was accused of being "religious." Sometimes the religious perspective is appropriate. Israel's Islamic crisis should focus the world's opinion on the nature of the religious threat. Just as Medieval Jewry had two sects, rabbinites, or the Orthodox, who accepted the oral law represented by Mishnah, and Karaites, who relied on Scripture as understood with their personalistic spin, Islam is divided among Sunnis, or those who repeat and review oral traditions, and Shi'a, in Hebrew se'ah, or sectarians who rely on the Quran and not oral tradition. In Islamic Shi'ite Islam, wrong has no rights. Islam has a a mandate to conquer the world, which is divided between the Dar al Islam, the realm of those who have dutifully submitted to Muhammed's faith, and Dar al Harb, the realm of the sword, the lands of the nonbelievers who will either believe or die. The religion, or Din of Islam is advanced by the sword, sayyif, a word that also appears in Rabbinic Hebrew. Lands that were conquered by the true religion may not be alienated from Islam. Hence Israel is occupied territory. And so is Spain!

When Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas, a client government of Iran and Shi'ite Islam, Hamas said that it would not recognize Israel or negotiate with it. And acting on this declaration of war which was a statement of policy, missles were lobbed into Israel. And the Hizbollah, or Party of God, contended that it will fight Israel as long as it occupied Islamic territory. Note well that after Israel withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon, both of which were occupied in defensive wars which the Arabs lost, the attacks continued. As long as Ashkelon, Rishon leTsiyyon, Tel Aviv, Raanana, Yizchron Yaakov, Haifa, and Naharia are settled by Jews, as long as Hebron and Jerusalem are Jewish cities, Islamic lands are in the hands of religious deniers and dissidents, il-kafirun, unbelievers whose wrong theology denies them the right to sovereignty.

Some argue that Israel's response to terror is "disproportionate." Note well than many Arab states are also unpleased with the Shi'ite advance because these states are well aware that their thrones [these states are not democratic] are in the crossfire of radical Islam. For this radical Islam, rights are demanded for Islamic minorities in the West. But in Islamic states, Christianity and Judaism are dhimmi religions, second class faith communities that must be subject to the disabilities outlined in the Pact of Omar. Israel did not start the firing in Gaza, and withdrew from Lebanon only after it was assured that southern Lebanon would not be a firing range aimed at its citizens. To restore the peace that it did not break, Israel is accused of "disproportionate" retaliation. Israel is using significantly more restraint than the Russians used in Chechnya.

The technique of radical Islam is shrewd. Like the Hassidism, who won the loyalty of the masses by providing social services, radical Islam purchased the loyalty of the urban street with goods and services. But if radical Islam were interested in the Arab street as living people and not as political instruments, it would not have bombed Israel knowing the pain that would be inflicted, inadvertently and inevitable, upon good, simple Moslems who, like ancient Nineveh, did not know the difference between their right and left hands.

Radical Islam has declared war with the West. Israel is part of the West. Israel gives rights to its citizens, it allows religious conscience to a significant, but not yet satisfactory, degree, and has a right to live.

The ancient pagans hated Judaism because it gave rights to all under the rule of law. Pagan religions rule arbitrarily, favoring power elites. Judaism believes in discussion, in public law that is not arbitrary. Such a law makes for tyrants difficult. But Just as God trusted Israel with the Torah, God empowered Jews to be restless, thinkers, and fiercely independent. Islam is about "submission," Judaism is about freedom. Judaism won the West, and would do well to be a beacon to remind the West of the nature of its current enemy

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