A World in Danger?

Frank Fox

Frank Fox is Professor Emeritus of West Chester University; his field of study was Russian and East European History. He has recently published a book: God’s Eye: Aerial Photography and the Katyn Forest Massacre, published by West Chester University in 2001.

Every catastrophe in history is foreshadowed; there are always some signs in the sky warning people about the danger. Rarely does anyone believe them. -Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish policeman in a ghetto in Poland.

Perechodnik was right although it is doubtful that human society will in the future avoid calamities that it could prevent. This is perhaps for students of the human psyche to ponder and interpret. Not every human “flight from reason” can be avoided. Still the record of civilizations teaches us that while insanity may succeed in the short run, it does not prevail in the long term. The events of September 11, 2001 have been subject to much scrutiny, but it is worth noting that those who plan a calamity do not succeed for the simple reason that they do not take failure into account. The Japanese who attacked at Pearl Harbor did not consider the strength of the “sleeping giant.” Terrorists such as Osama bin Laden had already decided to give up their own lives thus acknowledging a priori their failure. Al-Qaida could succeed in the short term when it assumed the character of a corporation and used the technology of the West, but after all it cannot do more than superficial damage. It could reward its followers only with death or imprisonment and it is thus inferior to a criminal enterprise that while it can also mask its character with legitimate activities (and if it makes war it is generally against its own) it can at least promise wealth on earth to its members and entrance into universities rather than paradise for its young.

In the aftermath of the horrible events that befell America we need not only examine our weaknesses but also take pride in our strength. Much is being written about the clash of civilizations and particularly about impending conflict between Islam and the West. For example, Patrick Buchanan has just published a book, The Death of the West, that promises to be a best seller. He forecasts demographic projections that spell the end of Western Civilization and the invasion of Europe and Asia by Islamic and African forces that will destroy our way of life. It is not the first time that forecasts have been made about the decline of the West. It is fundamentally poorly done history. Civilizations do not die. The Roman Empire did not “fall.” It became something else.

Islam is trapped in the twenty-first century with a faith that seems to be in the realm of flying carpets, when what threatens it is carpet bombing. It is a faith that has not found its Luther and Calvin. Those who have remained steadfast to the teachings and imagery (verbal rather than pictorial) are not nations but families with flags and thus have not yet achieved that status which the smallest states in Europe have enjoyed for centuries. When a medieval merchant in Italy started his ledger with the sentence: “In the name of God and profit,” he at least understood the role of religion in the new world of finance. The Islamic world may understand business methods but it has not yet understood the role that religion should have in their lives-indeed, it has not even grasped something as fundamental as the kind of clothing that makes progress possible. When Kemal Ataturk decreed that his people should stop wearing the fez and that women need not remain veiled, he understood that simple fact.

It may not be politically correct to say this but Islam may be a fundamentally flawed faith. That it appeals to many who are downtrodden should not surprise us and is not to its credit. Socialism also appealed to many of the dispossessed worldwide and it is not to its credit that these ideas were propagated by intellectuals far more sophisticated than the mullahs. But in the end, once the hypnotic effects of its verbal inventions wore off, it collapsed under the weight of its own foolishness, though unfortunately not before it brought death and misery to millions worldwide. The bankruptcy of the Islamic movements (as was the case with both Socialism and Fascism) is best seen in their fanatical devotion to anti-Semitism, which for them seems to be the way to find allies. Bin Laden and his followers assumed that they could bring the West to its knees with an attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, one assumes, an attempt to destroy the White House. But it is an old story that if you intend to kill the king you had better succeed, because the king’s revenge will be most terrible.

Americans are a resourceful people, quite capable of taking care of themselves, and will wreak terrible vengeance on those who are trying to stop them from enjoying life. Terrorism, the weapon of the weak, should alert us, not frighten us. We have to say this loud and clear to friends and foes alike: If one wishes to kill and maim innocents in the pursuit of a religious goal, one should be speedily helped to achieve martyrdom.

The fundamental inappropriateness of Islamic beliefs will eventually lead to cataclysmic changes in Moslem society. The younger generation, the jeunesse doree from Mecca to Teheran, is waiting for an opportunity to depose their elders. The fact that some of them have chosen to give up their lives for reasons as varied as those that guided (ironically) the Crusaders, should not be taken as symptomatic of the generation as a whole.

It is incredible that in the entire world of Islam there is no thundering voice that may describe Jihad as an abomination, an intentional and cowardly attack on the innocent that no religion should sanction. It is telling that there has not been an important Islamic teacher or leader who has stood against this self-defeating ideology. An Islam that seems to have a great appeal among those who are in prison tells us a great deal about its future. As a faith it offers a refuge for a mind in turmoil, but unlike other faiths that have preached love of the other, it turns the mind towards hatred of the other. It may change a belief, but the chemistry remains the same-toxic and volatile.

This world of Islam bears only superficial resemblance to that civilization which held an honored place in the preservation and dispersion of knowledge when medieval society was still centered on the Mediterranean basin. But the absence of Islamic activity in the formation of nation states ended such a chapter. After the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, there was no longer any prospect of competition with the West. The world moved West, away from the Mediterranean and over the Atlantic. It led to a new chapter in world history in which Islam was only a bystander. The fact that there are frequent voices in the world of Islam that still call for its unification and even the restoration of the Caliphate shows that those who believe in such mirages are bound to be disappointed.

Of course we are in danger individually and in groups-that is nothing new-but as a civilization the West, with America as its model, is just beginning to make its mark on the world. After all, the Roman civilization lasted for more than a millennium. It did not even know enough about human reproduction so it could not associate drinking from lead goblets with infertility. America, contrary to Buchanan, does not depend solely on reproduction. Its ideas are doing the propagating. It has a great future for itself and for the entire world.