Islam has rules for how the faithful should live their lives. Voluntarily living in a non-Moslem country has been a major hole in practice. Qatar has, unfortunately, tried to fill that gap.
According to the world-famous website, Islamweb.net—which is directed and financed by the state of Qatar—any Muslim who lives in a non-Muslim nation is obligated to hate his adopted nation and its “infidel” citizens (even while receiving benefits from them).
This comes in the form of a fatwa (an Islamic sanctioned decree) titled “Conditions that Legitimize Residing in Infidel Nations” (all translations in this article my own). Along with “preserving and upholding his Islam,” the “first condition” for any Muslim who lives among non-Muslims is that he/she has “enmity and hatred for the infidels.”
This, incidentally, applies to those millions of Muslim migrants voluntarily immigrating into and flooding Western Europe. If they take their Islam seriously, they are duty-bound to hate and be disloyal to those nations welcoming them in and providing them with free food, shelter, and healthcare. [emphasis added]
Islam has rules on how Moslems are to behave in Moslem societies and even in Moslem societies conquered by non-Moslems. But given the long stretch of early Islamic conquests, nobody setting down doctrine thought about the duties of Moslems who choose to live in a non-Islamic society, as so many have chosen in the modern era. It is a lacuna in Islamic thinking that damages the idea of Islam as an organizing template for every facet of life.
And I worried about the hate being promoted by the push for separation of the religions:
If that kind of violent exclusive thinking infects too much of the Islamic world, the jihadis will have won the civil war over who defines Islam.But Europe, which is experiencing this problem, can issue their own decree:
In practice, most Moslems are perfectly willing to get along with other people rather than elevate hatred to an obligation. Which is good for all of us.
But there are violently intolerant people in sizable numbers whose hate and violence are a force multiplier despite their minority status.
Nothing the Europeans have tried worked and the American [assimilation] model is not possible. It is too late to open the gates and let the Moslems in as equal citizens. They have too much fanaticism and too many grievances to assimilate even if the Europeans could accept them.
The third point is what will follow a decision to try something different when those peaceful options fail. Eventually the Europeans will have to choose between surrender and harsher options. Will Bosnia and Kosovo be the models the Europeans will follow in desperation as the alternative to surrender? I don't think the Euros are so permanently soft after five decades of easy life under our protection that they have forgotten centuries of brutal ruthlessness. The Europeans turned the Moslems back inside Europe itself at Tours and Vienna, and expelled them from Spain. They are capable of doing so again.
And this time the US won't come to the rescue of Moslems under assault. Unlike our past military actions to save Moslems, we won't intervene to save Europe's Moslems. We wouldn't want to provoke Moslem anger by doing so, eh? Ingratitude for past efforts will suppress any sympathy we have. Continued terrorism will lead us to at least remain quiet as Europe goes about its dirty work.
I dread this outcome.
I've said this before, but our war on terrorism is as much a war to save Islam is it is to save ourselves from Islamist terrorism. If it ever comes to a war of civilizations, we will end the extreme restraint that we have fought with thus far. I don't want to go that far. I want to lose our cities in nuclear flames even less.
With their fatwa on living in "Infidel" countries, Qatar is working hard to erase the distinction between fighting jihadis and fighting Islam itself. In nearly 20 years of waging this war on terror, we have been careful to fight the former while appealing to the latter larger group for allies. Successfully.
But is that Qatar fatwa really how Islamic authorities want this clash to play out? Because the European response to Islamist thinking and the jihadis it spawns can get more kinetic than it is starting out as.
