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Jewish World Review Nov. 13, 2007 /3 Kislev 5768
Islam and the nation-state
By Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Throughout the world, one of the most
prevalent causes of war, terrorism and political instability is the ongoing
weakening of the nation-state system. There are several reasons that the
nation-state as a political unit of sovereignty is under threat. One of the
most basic causes of this continuous erosion of national power throughout
the world is the transformation of minority-dominated enclaves within
nation-states into ungovernable areas where state power is either not
applied or applied in a haphazard and generally unconstructive manner.
While domestic strife between majority and minority populations has been an
enduring feature of democratic and indeed all societies throughout history,
the current turbulence constitutes a unique challenge to the nation-state
system. This is because much of the internal strife between minority and
majority populations within states today is financed and often directed
from outside the country.
Traditionally, minorities used various local means to engage the majority
population in a bid to influence the political direction or cultural norms
of the nation state. The classic examples of this traditional
minority-majority engagement are the black civil rights movement in the US
in the 1960s and the labor movements in the West throughout the 20th
century. By and large, these movements were domestic protests informed by
national sensibilities even when they enjoyed the support of foreign
governments.
Today while similar movements continue to flourish, they are now being
superseded by a new type of minority challenge to national majorities. This
challenge is not primarily the result of domestic injustice but the
consequence of foreign agitation. The roots of these minority challenges
are found outside the borders of the targeted states. And their goals are
not limited to a call for the reform of national institutions and politics.
Rather they set their sights on weakening national institutions and eroding
national sovereignty.
MUSLIM MINORITIES throughout the world are being financed and ideologically
trained in Saudi and UAE funded mosques and Islamic centers. These
minorities act in strikingly similar manners in the countries where they
are situated throughout the world. On the one hand, their local political
leaders demand extraordinary communal rights, rights accorded neither to
the national majority nor to other minority populations. On the other hand,
Muslim neighborhoods, particularly in Europe, but also in Israel, the
Philippines and Australia, are rendered increasingly ungovernable as arms
of the state like the police and tax authorities come under attack when
they attempt to assert state power in these Muslim communities.
Logic would have it that targeted states would respond to the threat to
their authority through a dual strategy. On the one hand, they would firmly
assert their authority by enforcing their laws against both individual
lawbreakers and against subversive, foreign financed institutions that
incite the overthrow of their governments and their replacement with
Islamic governments. On the other hand, they would seek out and empower
local Muslims who accept the authority and legitimacy of their states and
their rule of law.
Unfortunately, with the notable exception of the Howard government in
Australia, in country after country, governments respond to this challenge
by attempting to appease Muslim irredentists and their state sponsors. The
British responded to the July 7, 2005 bombings by giving representatives of
the Muslim Brotherhood an official role in crafting and carrying out
counter-terror policies.
In 2003, then French president Jacques Chirac sent then interior minister
Nicholas Sarkozy to Egypt to seek the permission of Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi
of the Islamist al-Azhar mosque for the French parliament's plan to outlaw
hijabs in French schools.
In the US, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI asked
the terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations to conduct
sensitivity training for FBI agents.
In Holland last year, the Dutch government effectively expelled
anti-Islamist politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the interest of currying favor
with Holland's restive Muslim minority.
THE FOREIGN policy aspect of the rush to appease is twofold. First,
targeted states refuse to support one another when individual governments
attempt to use the tools of law enforcement to handle their domestic jihad
threat. For instance, European states have harshly criticized the US
Patriot Act while the US criticized the French decision to prohibit the
hijab in public schools.
More acutely, targeted states lead the charge in calling for the
establishment of Muslim-only states. Today the US and the EU are leading
the charge towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and the
creation of an independent state of Kosovo.
In two weeks, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will host the
Annapolis conference where together with her European and Arab
counterparts, she will exert enormous pressure on the Olmert government to
agree to the establishment of a jihadist Palestinian state in Israel's
heartland with its capital in Jerusalem and its sovereignty extending over
Judaism's most sacred site, the Temple Mount.
The establishment of the sought-for Palestinian state presupposes the
ethnic cleansing of at a minimum 80,000 Israelis from their homes and
communities simply because they are Jews. Jews of course will be prohibited
from living in Palestine.
FOR ITS part, the Palestinian leadership to which Israel will be expected
to communicate its acceptance of the establishment of Palestine, is one
part criminal, and two parts jihadist. As Fatah leader and Palestinian
Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues have made clear, while
they are willing to accept Israel's concessions, they are not willing to
accept Israel. This is why they refuse to acknowledge Israel's right to
exist as a Jewish state.
A rare consensus exists today in Israel. From the far-left to the
far-right, from IDF Military Intelligence to the Mossad, all agree that the
Annapolis conference will fail to bring a peace accord. Since Rice's
approach to reaching just such an accord has been to apply unrelenting
pressure on Israel, it is fairly clear that she will blame Israel for the
conference's preordained failure and cause a further deterioration in
US-Israeli relations.
While Israel is supposed to accept a Jew-free Palestine, it goes without
saying that its own 20 percent Arab minority will continue to enjoy the
full rights of Israeli citizenship. Yet one of the direct consequences of
the establishment of a Jew-free, pro-jihadist State of Palestine will be
the further radicalization of Israeli Arabs. They will intensify their
current rejection of Israel's national identity.
With Palestinian and outside support, they will intensify their irredentist
activities and so exert an even more devastating attack on Israel's
sovereignty and right to national self-determination.
SHORTLY AFTER the Annapolis conference fails, and no doubt in a bid to buck
up its standing with the Arab world, the US may well stand by its stated
intention to recognize the independence of Kosovo.
On December 10, the UN-sponsored troika from the US, Russia and Germany is
due to present their report on the ongoing UN-sponsored negotiations
between the Kosovo Muslims and the Serbian government regarding the future
of the restive province of Serbia. Since the Kosovo Muslims insist on full
sovereignty and Serbia's government refuses to accept Kosovo's
independence, those talks are deadlocked. Since Russia refuses to support
Kosovo's removal from Serbia, there is no chance that the UN Security
Council will pass a resolution calling for Kosovar independence.
The push for Kosovar independence was begun by the Clinton administration.
It was the natural consequence of the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Yet
the basic assumptions of that bombing campaign have been turned on their
head in recent years. In 1999, Serbia was run by a murderous dictator
Slobodan Milosovic. He stood accused of ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its
Muslim population which was perceived as innocent. Today, led by Prime
Minister Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia is taking bold steps towards becoming a
liberal democracy which abjures ethnic cleansing and political violence. On
the other hand, the Saudi-financed Kosovo Muslims have destroyed more than
150 churches over the past several years, and have terrorized Kosovar
Christians and so led to their mass exodus from the province.
As Julia Gorin documented in a recent article here, in Jewish World Review,
Kosovo's connections with Albanian criminal syndicates and global jihadists
are legion. Moreover, Kosovar independence would likely spur irredentist
movements among the Muslim minorities in all Balkan states. In Macedonia
for instance, a quarter of the population is Muslim. These irredentist
movements in turn would increase Muslim irredentism throughout Europe just
as Palestinian statehood will foment an intensification of the Islamization
of Israel's Arab minority.
The Kosovo government announced last month that given the diplomatic
impasse, it plans to declare its independence next month. Currently, the
Bush administration is signaling its willingness to recognize an
independent Kosovo even though doing so will threaten US-Russian relations.
In a bid both to prevent the Bush administration from turning on Israel in
the aftermath of the failure of the Annapolis conference and to make clear
Israel's own rejection of the notion that a "solution" to the Palestinian
conflict with Israel can be imposed by foreign powers, the Olmert
government should immediately and loudly restate its opposition to the
imposition of Kosovar independence on Serbia.
In the interest of defending the nation-state system, on which American
sovereignty and foreign policy is based, the US should reassess the logic
of its support for the establishment of Muslim-only states. It should
similarly revisit its refusal to openly support the right of non-Islamic
states like Israel, Serbia and even France, to assert their rights to
defend their sovereignty, national security and national character from
outside-sponsored domestic Islamic subversion.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the
Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor
of The Jerusalem Post.
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R. A. Hettinga