The Greater and Lesser Jihad:
Mahathir, the (now ex-)PM of Malaysia, pissed off the West, by saying that Islamic nations (and, in general, all poor nations) should focus efforts on internal economic development, as a stepping-stone to the eventual goal of defeating Israel (and, in general, defeating the West). Mahathir was advocating Greater Jihad, as the task of the moment. He didn't give up the long-term goal of the Lesser Jihad (holy war), and this is what really irritated Westerners who heard him.
As a practical matter, achieving the goals of the Greater Jihad is going to take a while. A long while. Even if every Muslim nation, from Morocco to Indonesia, focuses all resources on education, building roads and airports, health care, raising wages and creating jobs, how long is it going to be, before they reach the standard currently set by Europe and the U.S.? It'll take several generations. At least.
And in the process, they will find that the only way to achieve parity in economic development, is to educate their women, abandon the medieval rules of Sharia, and generally adopt pluralism and tolerance. Just as the Communists found out, the only way to beat the West, or even keep up with them, is to (selectively) imitate the West.
So, there is really no problem with Muslims who won't give up their vision, their maximalist long-term goal, of converting the whole world to Islam by force. As long as they don't do it today. Or tomorrow. As long as it gets put off into the indefinite future. Redirect them to the Greater Jihad, and they will never get around to the Lesser Jihad.
Those who succeed in achieving the Greater Jihad, walk a path that leads them away from the Lesser Jihad. Nations that achieve the goals of the Greater Jihad, become satisfied status-quo powers. They have a contented population, steadily rising standards of living, methods of non-violent conflict resolution. They compete with other nations, on cultural and economic battlefields.
If Americans honestly look at their own nation, and their own beliefs, we will see that we too are Maximalists, every bit as much as the Islamists. Americans overwhelmingly believe our culture, our political and economic system, is vastly superior to all others, and is destined to spread to every corner of the world, displacing all competing systems. This attitude is what scares the rest of the world. Not just the Saudis and Malaysians, but the French and Mexicans.
Further, the loudest and fastest growing religious denominations in the U.S. all say it is their right and duty to spread their beliefs to every corner of the world, with the eventual goal of displacing all competing beliefs. Catholics, Mormons, all the evangelicals, they all have an agenda as maximalist as the Wahabi imams. From 312 AD (when the Emperor Constantine converted Christianity into a Crusading religion), all the way through to the Enlightenment (14 centuries later), all major Christian sects practiced conversion by the sword. The tradition continues (partly secularized), as America tries to convert the Muslim world to Americanism with our tanks and attack helicopters.
Perhaps, before we insist that the Others give up the Lesser Jihad, we should do so ourselves. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. |
