Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
“[T]he Islamic world is a source of danger and destruction is all too conceivable. Indeed, it’s been on display, in plain sight, for years… The jihadist threat is real, and it must, obviously, be fought and defeated. But that raises another problem—not a problem with Islam, but a problem with the West. We have lost our nerve. In recent years, the attitude of Barack Obama has prevailed over the spirit of Charlie Hebdo. The claims of sensitivity have trumped the attachment to freedom. Appeasement of jihad has supplanted the war on terror. Most fundamentally—let’s be honest—fear has overwhelmed courage. And so the American president has been happy to proclaim, as he did at the United Nations in September 2012, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” He has been less willing to say that the future must not belong to those who kill in the name of the prophet of Islam… We face a crisis of Islam. We need to be clear-eyed about that. But we also face a crisis of the West. Only if we come to grips with that second crisis will this period of consequences turn out to be an occasion for renewal rather than another marker on the path to decadence.”
2010s, 2017, The Two Crises (2017)
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William Kristol 21
American writer 1952Related quotes
August 19, 2012 speech marking Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan http://www.timesofisrael.com/khamenei-israeli-a-malignant-zionist-tumor/
2012
In an interview with CNN. Trump Spokesperson Says Obama Invaded Afghanistan. He Didn’t. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-afghanistan-trump_us_57af33d8e4b007c36e4ef660?utm_campaign=chrome&utm_medium=browser-extension&utm_source=currently, as quoted by Sam Stein. (August 13,2016)
Source: Engineering Education and Engineering Practice in the Year 2000 (1967), p. 134-135 as cited in: Ben. F. Barton (1981) The nature and treatment of professional engineering problems: The technical writing teacher's responsibility. p. 19
Interview with Charles Krauthammer: America's "Great Success Story", in Middle East Quarterly (December 1994) http://www.danielpipes.org/6305/charles-krauthammer-americas-great-success-story
1990s, 1994
Context: Communism always had sympathetic Westerners who amounted to a fifth column, including communist parties and intellectuals. Its appeal made it a double threat, internal and external. In the old days, communist parties were on the verge of getting parliamentary majorities in some European countries. That threat doesn't exist with Islam. The fundamentalists have nothing like that demographic or political import, even in Europe. The Muslim population in America is not much fundamentalist, nor radicalized. Rather, it accepts American religious pluralism and lives, like other religions, in a quite harmonious and pluralistic way.
Of all the ideologies remaining in the world in the debris of the collapsed Soviet empire, fundamentalist Islam is the only one that, at least in our lifetime, appears to pose a serious problem to the West. It's the only expressly anti-Western ideology of any importance in the world and it means to destroy the Western position, Western institutions, Western culture, wherever it can. This occurred in Iran, and will happen again in Algeria. Should fundamentalists take power in Egypt, there will be profound geopolitical consequences. A region very important to us will be destabilized, with many problems resulting. Once that happens, we'll be asking ourselves why we weren't worrying about this years ago.
Statement in the Wall Street Journal, Salman Rushdie: ‘I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, as We All Must’ http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/01/07/salman-rushdie-i-stand-with-charlie-hebdo-as-we-all-must/ (7 January 2015)
Page 105, The Hindu Phenomenon, ISBN 81-86112-32-4.
On Hindutva
Sam Harris, Lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDMOxjHIt0U at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley (November 10, 2010)
2010s
Context: "Religion" is a nearly useless term. It's a term like "sports". Now there are sports like Badminton and sports like Thai Boxing, and they have almost nothing in common apart from breathing. There are sports that are just synonymous with the risk of physical injury or even death … There is, I'm happy to say, a religion of peace in this world, but it's not Islam. The claim that Islam is a religion of peace that we hear ceaselessly reiterated is completely delusional. Now Jainism actually is a religion of peace. The core principle of Jainism is non-violence. Gandhi got his non-violence from the Jains. The crazier you get as a Jain, the less we have to worry about you. Jain extremists are paralysed by their pacifism. Jain extremists can't take their eyes off the ground when they walk lest they step on an ant... Needless to say they are vegetarian. So the problem is not religious extremism, because extremism is not a problem if your core beliefs are truly non-violent. The problem isn't fundamentalism. We often hear this said: these are euphemisms... The only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam.