Does Islam Encourage Terrorism? Yes

That was a screaming headline in the Irish Times on 13th August, over an article by Susan Philips. She is described as "a political analyst" but her political analysis excludes politics:

"Factors such as the existence of Israel and the occupation of Iraq by western armies may provide a focus for Islamists. But none of these so-called provocations existed in the 7th century when Islam spread like wildfire, mainly by the sword. Many consider Islam to contain peaceful approaches, but within its literature, significant space exists to nurture a vanguard force, which is religiously driven and committed to world domination through a process of jihad. Unless Islam is understood in such terms and is held in check by world opinion, the power of western institutions or moderate Islamic elites, it will continue unchecked in its quest to establish global caliphate." (The No case in this Irish Times is presented by Syyed Siraj H Zaidi. Though technically in the form of presenting the cases for and against the proposition, the Yes appears as part of the headline in the way the page is laid out.)

Philips is repeating the battle cry of the "war of civilisations" proclaimed by the United States a few years ago—and then denied for the purpose of prosecuting that war more effectively. The purpose of denial was to bring "moderate Islamic elites" onside for the war on Islam. But, if Islam is inherently impelled by the sacred texts of the religion, to strive for global dominance, using the means by which it established itself as a power in the world 13 centuries ago, then the "moderate Islamic elites" are not Islamic at all. And doesn't everybody know that they are the kept men of the US and the EU, corrupt themselves and keeping down their people by force, and doing an occasional bit of torture for the West.

The expansion of Islam by force was stopped on the borders of France over a thousand years ago. Islam settled down in Spain where it existed peacefully for many centuries, developing a highly civilised way of life, until it was conquered by a Crusade which reduced the region to a kind of Christian barbarism for centuries, with Inquisitions and autos da fe.

A later conflict, in the east of Europe, between the Ottoman Empire and the Hapsburg Empire, ended with a Christian victory at Vienna over three centuries ago.

The history of the world since then has been dominated by Christian globalism, in which the sword has played the dominant part, and the Ottoman state was in decline.

In 1914 Britain (with Irish Home Rule support) declared war on the Ottoman Empire for the purpose of taking over Arabia and making it part of the British Empire, connecting India with Egypt. It thought in the first instance that it could take over the Middle East by means of a simple Imperial conquest. It had been describing the Ottoman Empire as "the sick man of Europe" and expected it to crumble at a touch from the British Army. When Johnny Turk gave the Imperial forces a hard time for a year, Britain decided it needed allies in the region.

In November 1914 it had rejected an offer of Alliance from an Arab nationalist movement in Basra, not wanting to prejudice its rights as military conqueror. Then in 1916 it procured a declaration of Jihad against the Turks by the Governor of Mecca, signing an agreement to recognise an Arab state in the Middle East in the event of the Turks being defeated. But, when the Turks were finally defeated in 1918 (an event now usually referred to as a "collapse"), Britain used its power (supported by France, to which it allocated the northern part of the region) to prevent the establishment of the Arab State. It Balkanised the Middle East into several subordinate states—which it called 'national' states—suitable for manipulation. And it allocated Palestine to be the territory of a Jewish state even though its population was 90% Arab.

None of those spurious national states was Islamic in the sense in which Crusaders like Susan Philips (and David Quinn) use the word. The 'Islamist' development occurred separately through the Wahhabi revival which consolidated itself in what is now Saudi Arabia. Britain in the 1920s protected its puppet states from the Wahhabi expansion northwards (mowing the Wahhabis down in the desert with machine guns), and then formed a close alliance with Wahhabi fundamentalism in order to secure its position in the region—as the US did a short time later.

Britain governed India for centuries, and in the late 19th century it recruited Irishmen from the Christian Brothers Schools to take part in its Indian administration. Two of them wrote books about it, which our present-day admirers of the British Empire prefer to ignore.

One of them was Sir Michael O'Dwyer from Tipperary, who was the civil Governor responsible for the Amritsar massacre after World War I. He justified the massacre in his Memoirs, and urged the British Government to put down charlatans like Gandhi with a strong hand.

The other was Charles James O'Donnell, who joined the Indian administration with the intention of improving the world. He resigned his position in the early 1900s on that grounds that, under Lord Curzon's Viceroyalty, England began to lay the basis for ruling by the manipulation of religious conflict, setting Muslim against Hindu. When joining the Empire he had understood its purpose to be the fostering of a civil society stratum drawn from all religious sources to be an Indian governing class. Two generations later, Britain presided over the Partition of India in the course of which a million people died while the British self-righteously washed their hands of responsibility for the outcome of centuries of British government.

At the same time it washed its hands of responsibility for the product of its Palestine policy. It had built up a big Jewish population in Palestine, though it was still far short of being a majority (while of course not opening its own borders to Jews).

The Jewish minority turned on its patron. It made a declaration of independence and launched a terrorist campaign in support of it. In the face of that campaign Britain gave up responsibility for the Zionist project that it had launched in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration. It handed over the project to the United Nations, but used its Veto to prevent it becoming the business of the Security Council—where it would still have responsibility for it. It became the business of the General Assembly, which had no executive powers. There were few states in the UN then. A few European states, the white Colonies, and the USA and the USSR, with their client states, acting as the world community, authorised the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. It set out borders for that state, which it had no means of enforcing. The Jewish colony quickly spread beyond those borders set by the UN, and hardly anyone now remembers what they were. Further Jewish colonisation of the residue of Palestine continues down to the present day under effective UN authority in the shape of the US veto.

Susan Philips had a go at Hamas (for winning an election and not letting itself be swindled out of the result by Fatah, which is now armed with US/UK weapons and Intelligence) in the Irish Times on 22nd August. On the same day one of the Jewish terrorists who made war on Britain in 1945-7 had an article published in the Financial Times in which, although he is now a Harvard Professor, Amitai Etzioni disdained the great humbug of our time by presenting himself as a successful Jewish terrorist. (This can be read at: <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb894a8c-5047-11dc-a6b0-0000779fd2ac.html> .)

Ireland is now fully implicated in the humbug as an active member of the EU. It is doing its best to make life miserable for Palestinians in Gaza in the hope of inducing them to sell their souls. Is there any good reason why this should not be called Souperism?

Europe atones for making a sacrifice of the Jews by making the Palestine Arabs a sacrifice to the Jews. And Ireland with its ersatz Europeanism is doing its bit.

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