Buchanan:
“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here … and … around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.’”
So said
Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate.
Yet,
that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel
Huntington. His “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”
has been described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as providing “quintessential insights
necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.”
That
Clinton is unaware of the thesis, or dismisses it, does not speak well of the
depth of her understanding of our world.
Another
attack on Trump, more veiled, came Monday in an “open letter” in The Washington
Post where four dozen religious leaders, led by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,
charge “some politicians, candidates and commentators” with failing to follow
Thomas Jefferson’s dictum:
“I
never will, by any word or act … admit a right of inquiry into the religious
opinions of others.”
Intending
no disrespect to Jefferson, if you do not inquire “into the religious opinions
of others” in this world, it can get you killed.
“We
love our Muslim siblings in humanity,” said the signers of Cardinal McCarrick’s
letter, “they serve our communities as doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers,
journalists, first responders, and as members of the U.S. Armed forces and
Congress.”
Undeniably
true. But, unfortunately, that is not the end of the matter.
Did the
worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, 9/11, have nothing to do
with the Islamic faith?
Did
Fort Hood and the San Bernardino massacres, the London subway bombings and the
killings at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the slaughter at the Bataclan in Paris,
have nothing to do with Islam?
Does
the lengthening list of atrocities by terrorist cells of ISIS, Boko Haram,
al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front have nothing to do with Islam? Is it
really illiberal to inquire “into the religious opinions” of those who
perpetrate these atrocities? Or is it suicidal not to?
There
has arisen a legitimate question as to whether Islamism can coexist peacefully
with, or within, a post-Christian secular West.
For, as
the Poet of the Empire, Rudyard Kipling, wrote: “Oh, East is East and West is
West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at
God’s great Judgment Seat.”
As of
1960, the Great Wave of immigration into the United States from Southern and
Eastern Europe had been halted for 35 years. And the children of these millions
had been largely assimilated and Americanized.
Yet, 50
years after the Turkish gastarbeiters were brought in the millions into
Germany, and Algerians and other North Africans were brought into France, no
such wholesale assimilation had taken place.
Why
not? Why are there still large, indigestible communities in France where French
citizens do not venture and French police are ever on alert?
What
inhibits the assimilation that swiftly followed the entry of millions of
Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews into the United States from 1890 to
1920? Might it have something to do with Islam and its inherent resistance to a
diversity of faiths?
Set
aside faith-based terrorism and Islamist terrorism, and consider the nations
and regimes of the Middle and Near East.
Iran
holds presidential elections every four years, but is a Shiite theocracy where
the Ayatollah is a virtual dictator. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni kingdom and home
to Wahhabism, a Sunni form of puritanism.
Those
ruling regimes are rooted in Islam.
And
while secular America embraces expressions of religious pluralism and sexual
freedom, homosexuality and apostasy are often viewed as capital crimes in
Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Where
Islam is the ruling faith, the Quran is secular law.
Catholic
historian Hilaire Belloc saw our future on its way, even before World War II:
“[I]n the contrast between our religious chaos and the religious certitude
still strong throughout the Mohammedan world … lies our peril.”
Historically,
Christianity came to dominate the Roman Empire through preaching, teaching,
example and martyrdom. Islam used the sword to conquer the Middle and Near
East, North Africa and Spain in a single century, until stopped at Poitiers by
Charles Martel.
And
this is today’s crucial distinction: Islam is not simply a religion of 1.6
billion people, it is also a political ideology for ruling nations and, one
day, the world.
To the
True Believer, Islam is ultimately to be imposed on all of mankind, which is to
be ruled by the prescriptions of the Quran. And where Muslims achieve a
majority, Christianity is, at best, tolerated.
Nor is
this position illogical. For, if there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his
Prophet, all other religions are false and none can lead to salvation. Why
should false, heretical and ruinous faiths not
be suppressed?
Behind
the reluctance of Trump and other Americans to send another U.S. army into a
region that has seen wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan leave us with ashes in
our mouths, lies a wisdom born of painful experience.
