by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
American Thinker<\/em><\/p>\n A review of\u00a0The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy<\/em>\u00a0by Dr. Walid Phares (Macmillen, 2007, pp. 288) first appeared inThe America Thinker<\/em>\u00a0under the book’s title.<\/strong><\/p>\n After the strikes of 9\/11, a plethora of books dealing with the threat of radical Islam appeared in the West. In\u00a0The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy<\/em>, Dr. Walid Phares \u2014 who had been studying Islamism and its impact on international relations decades before 9\/11 made it popular \u2014 goes one step further by articulating the struggle from democracy’s point of view. That is, not only does he delineate the general threat that radical Islam and jihad pose to the non-Muslim world, but he does so through a distinctly democratic paradigm, showing what, specifically, is at stake.<\/p>\n The result is eye-opening. The conflict between the West and radical Islam \u2014 or as Phares more accurately shows, the conflict between democracy and theocracy \u2014 is wide and far-ranging, and hardly limited to a few, finite grievances (whether Israel, oil, or unflattering cartoons of Muhammad): “Between the mosaic of democracies and the panoply of Jihadism, the disagreement is philosophical, historical, and doctrinal: it is about how the world has functioned for centuries and how it should evolve” (p.3).<\/p>\n True to its title,\u00a0The War of Ideas<\/em>\u00a0juxtaposes the antithetical, and ultimately existential, ideas that fuel the current conflict, particularly by expounding the many irreconcilable positions between democracy and radical Islam and how the latter has declared war on fundamental pillars of the former, including pluralism, gender equality, freedom of speech, and religion. As Phares puts it, “In this book, my goal is limited to the warfare of minds” (p.xxi) \u2014 that is, the notions that precede, and then fuel, the warfare of bodies, and which must be grasped by the citizenry of any democracy.<\/p>\n That is not to say that Phares’ book is abstract; insightful historical and contemporary lessons permeate it. For example, he shows how radical Islam is not so much an aberration as it is the latest manifestation of totalitarianism. As with communists and fascists, Islamists firmly believe that they alone hold the truth, that they are endowed with a universal mission, and that their mission culminates in the destruction of “rule of the people” \u2014 democracy \u2014 wherever and whenever it appears. Whereas Nazism offered a thousand-year Reich under the “master race” and Marxism offered an aristocracy of labor, Islamism offers God’s rule on earth \u2014 and will stop at nothing to achieve it.<\/p>\n Phares also offers several applicable analogies between the Islamists and the totalitarians of the 20th century. These amount to harbingers that should serve as useful reminders of not only how Islamists exploit democracy to their advantage, but what they have in store, and the only way they can be confronted:<\/p>\n The “democratic” installment of Nazis and Fascists in Europe, and the transformation of Germany and Italy into armed and expansionist regimes, led to the horrors of World War II. Islamist electoral victories, without reform in their ideological agendas, will ineluctably lead to the establishment of exclusionist Islamist states, unleashing jihadi war in the region. The electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine isn’t the issue; its jihadi agenda is” (p.191).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, as the latest anti-democratic forces plot and plan in accordance to ideologies they are willing to die for, Phares shows how the West has undergone a “lobotomy” in regards to the war of ideas: “[T]he collective international mind [lost] the ability to learn what was really happening in the Arab and Muslim world and to form a correct vision of history, facts, objectives, and the real attitudes of these radical forces” (p.153).<\/p>\n This epistemological undermining is the result of numerous phenomena \u2014 most notorious among them the fact that Middle East studies, thanks in no small part to the Wahabbi lobby and its petro-dollars, have been producing generations of scholars, and subsequent policymakers, who not only are blind to the Islamist threat, but who na\u00efvely (or nefariously) perpetuate it.<\/p>\n Similarly, Phares appreciates the dramatic role that the Qatari-based Arabic satellite station\u00a0Al Jazeera\u00a0<\/em>plays: “Al Jazeera<\/em>\u00a0has influenced the Arab world and its diaspora to devastating effect, and much to the advantage of the jihadi bloc … The region is at the mercy of\u00a0al Jazeera<\/em>\u00a0and its ideological bias;\u00a0al Jazeera<\/em>\u00a0has won several rounds over the shy attempts by the United States to readjust the image” (p.184). As a fellow Arabic-speaker who frequently monitors\u00a0Al Jazeera<\/em>, I can concur with these observations.<\/p>\n In the end,\u00a0The War of Ideas<\/em>\u00a0leaves us with two denouements. First, the status quo:<\/p>\n All it takes for the jihadists to make progress is to continue to implant their ideology in the minds of the younger waves of followers. And all it takes for the supporters of the radicals within the international society (and particularly in Western democracies) is to prevent the public, especially youth, from understanding this equation (p.xx).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The alternative is an American awakening, where<\/p>\n Americans and democracies around the world … ask questions about jihad, Jihadism, the caliphate,\u00a0kufr<\/em>,\u00a0dar el harb<\/em>,\u00a0dar el Islam<\/em>, and other crucial matters. They might suddenly understand that an ideology is growing inside the Muslim world, one that was previously misexplained within the West, and as a result there would be a crack in the wall. Someone would have to respond to bin Laden’s speeches. “What is he talking about?” Americans would ask. “You’ve told us in the classrooms and in the newsrooms that jihad is a spiritual business” (p.173).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While the verdict is still out as to which scenario will come to fruition, Phares’War of Ideas<\/em>\u00a0is the sort of book that, if read and absorbed, can help bring about the second, more hopeful scenario: an American awakening.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim American Thinker A review of\u00a0The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy\u00a0by Dr. Walid Phares (Macmillen, 2007, pp. 288) first appeared inThe America Thinker\u00a0under the book’s title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,227,590],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-r9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4090,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/radical-muslims-in-america-all-the-benefits-and-still-turning-to-jihad\/","url_meta":{"origin":1683,"position":0},"title":"Radical Muslims in America: All the Benefits and Still Turning to Jihad","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York Recent remarks by Attorney General\u00a0Eric Holder\u00a0on the threat posed by \"radicalized\" American Muslims are revealing \u2014 not just because of what they say regarding the domestic situation, but for their international implications as well. According to Holder: \u201c[T]he threat is real, the threat is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1671,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/tunisian-election-and-the-read-to-caliphate\/","url_meta":{"origin":1683,"position":1},"title":"Tunisian Election and the Read to Caliphate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch Tunisia, where the 2011 Arab uprisings began, remains an ominous model for where these uprisings will end. The nation's first round of elections are in, and, as expected, the Islamist party, al-Nahda, won by a landslide, gaining over\u00a040% of the seats\u00a0in the national constituent assembly.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1402,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ground-zero-mosque\/","url_meta":{"origin":1683,"position":2},"title":"Ground Zero Mosque","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Why it is counterproductive to the Islamist cause. by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media While vexing to many, the\u00a0mega mosque\u00a0set to be built two blocks from Ground Zero has produced one interesting but unintended consequence: like the 9\/11 strikes a decade before it, the \"9\/11 mosque\" is also creating a stir,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":994,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-elections-fail-jihad\/","url_meta":{"origin":1683,"position":3},"title":"When Elections Fail, Jihad","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch The Obama administration supports \"democracy\" and \"self determination\" in the Middle East \u2014 two euphemisms that, in the real world, refer to \"mob-rule\" and \"Islamic radicalization,\" respectively. Yet, as\u00a0Jimmy Carter\u00a0recently put it: \"I don't have any problem with that [an \"Islamist victory\" in Egypt], and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3818,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-american-values-radicalize-muslims\/","url_meta":{"origin":1683,"position":4},"title":"Can American Values Radicalize Muslims?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media Recent comments by US officials on the threat posed by \"radicalized\" American Muslims are troubling, both for their domestic and international implications. 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