The Islamofascists Get Something Right

They openly state that their ideology is antithetical to freedom! Often.

Via RealClear Politics is an interesting piece by Jonah Goldberg, "Don't take the president's word for it - take Zarqawi's." Goldberg makes an interesting integration. The Islamists have correctly identified individualism (via its popular misnomer "democracy") as the antithesis to their ideal politics while many of our intellectuals are still in denial about their (pun intended) fundamental opposition to freedom. Cohen quotes two left-wing intellectuals and Pat Buchanan, then contrasts them to Zarqawi.

[T]he Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "As the late Susan Sontag bravely pointed out in a New Yorker essay published right after Sept. 11, 2001, those terrorist attacks were in response to American policy [emphasis added] in the Middle East - not, as Bush has said repeatedly since, because Islamic radicals cannot abide freedom."

And Patrick Buchanan - allegedly on the other side of the ideological spectrum - has declared countless times, "Osama bin Laden and his crew ... did not stumble on a copy of the Bill of Rights and go berserk that Americans are free [emphasis added] in the United States."

In short, the notion that America is in a war for freedom over tyranny has elicited bipartisan snickering and guffawing.

Goldberg uses the words of an Islamofascist as refutation to these assertions.

Musab al-Zarqawi, the "prince" of Al-Qaida in Iraq, appointed by Osama Bin Laden, came out and agreed with President Bush. "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy [emphasis added] and those who follow this wrong ideology," Zarqawi declared in a statement. "Democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion," he said, and that is "against the rule of God."

And he's not merely a loose cannon among Islamofascists.....

If you peruse the incalculably valuable website Memri.org - which translates articles, manifestoes and broadcasts from across the Arabic world - you will find countless declarations from Islamist groups declaring that democracy is an "atheist" heresy [emphasis added] that replaces the law of God with the law of man, and that anyone who advocates elections is ipso facto an infidel. In his December statement, Osama Bin Laden "ruled" - as if he has any right to do so - that Iraqi forces who aid the upcoming elections "are apostates who should not be prayed over upon their deaths. They cannot inherit, and they must not be inherited from [after their deaths]. Their wives are divorced from them, and they must not be buried in Muslim cemeteries."

Sure sounds like someone hates democracy to me.

This makes perfect sense to anyone who is even remotely familiar with the various tenets of Islam, or even just the meaning of the word "Islam" itself: submission. Of course these principles are antithetical to the idea of every man living as he wants. The interesting question is this: assuming intelligence on the part of those on the left and the right who disavow the idea that Islamofascists oppose freedom, what might they gain by perpetuating such a misconception? As with the Islamists, one need only consider their philosophies to begin to understand.

Why might a nihilist want America to pooh-pooh the notion that its way of life is being opposed? The better to keep her from defending freedom, which will be destroyed. Why might a theocrat want us to fail to see the fundamental opposition to freedom shared by theocrats from a different faith? The better to remain undetected at home as an enemy of freedom.

This is a question that we should bear in mind any time someone airs doubts about the fundamental opposition to freedom posed by Islamofascism.

-- CAV