The war, the world-wide war, is primarily one of ideologies. The hold of Islam on the minds of its adherents is extaordinary. Usually that hold is obvious, is visible. But Islam also teaches, and Muslims are well-versed in, the craft and art of deception. "War is deception" Muhammad famouslly said. They can smile, and indeed the Qur'an and Hadith teach them to smile, when necessary, even when there is murder in their hearts. And the hold of Islam, at times intermittently seemingly relaxed, can suddenly or gradually take hold again of the minds of those who might, temporarily, appear to have become relaxed or unobservant or lapsed Muslims. It has happened so many times, to so many people mentioned at JihadWatch, that one wonders how any non-Muslim security services, or armies, or police forces, dare any longer to believe that they can trust, in any real sense, any of those who are Muslims. From the imam who supposedly was a useful police informant, but who tipped off Najibullah Zazi, to the many Muslims who took part in rally-round-the-American-flag or Interfaith-Healing rallies after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, and then were discovered to have said before, and also after, bloodcurdling things about America and about non-Muslims, leading not a few to suddenly flee abroad (for example, one of the prime movers of the Boston Mosque), all of this should be carefully written up, with example after example, and distributed to the military, to the police, to the security services. A good knowledge not only of the texts and tenets of Islam, but perhaps even more importantly, of the attitudes, and the atmospherics, of Islam -- that affect even the most worldlly, even those who seem so much, outwardly, like us -- see Ambassador haqqani, for example, now attacked by others in Pakistan for being too "pro-American" by cleverly having extracted another 7.5 billion in American aid, will now be thought by some in Washington (perhaps by Senator Kerry, who no doubt has entertained, or been entertained, by Husain Haqqani and his winsome Ispahani wife, such a useful helpmeet in times like this). Haqqani is a deep defender of Islam, and a clever mis-representer, in his own charming and smooth self, of Islam to the naive. Being naive is one thing. Being naive because one is almost wilfully ignorant of Islam, and the varieties of deception that Muslims are capable of, and even the varieties of self-deceptiion (how many of those "liberals" -- from Ayman Nour in Egypt, to Pinky Bhutto in Pakistan -- exhibit surprising attitudes explicable only by reference to the deep unshakeable effect of Islam?) that Muslims practice. When even a self-declared non-believer as Kanan Makiya bristles when the matter of Islam is raised, or writes about the Arab massacre of Kurds and puzzles over the silence of Arab "intellectuals" on these massacres, failing to recognize the nature of Islam, and the Arab supremacism of which Islam has always been, and always will be the vehicle, one realizes just how remarkable is the hold of Islam, the residual hold, even on many of those who, outwardly, now seem to be our sort, people wh think and act like Westerners. Don't be fooled, even when they fool themselves.
The Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslim may still relapse, or may still, in choosing to call himself a Muslim, be open to such relapse. And in any case, the existence of such people, especially the practiced cheats and charmers among them, such as Husain Haqqani, helps to deceive unwary Infidels about the nature of Islam. Why, attacks on such people, by other Muslims still more extreme, sets up the mental equivalent of those optical illusions, where a box that is smaller than another can actually appear to be larger, depending on the surrounding visual context.
The unwillingness of a Muslim to declare himself, even to himself, an apostate, one who comes to recognize that "reform" is not possible (as the truth-telling Magdi Allam finally realized) in Islam, and to recognize its effects on minds (taught not to question, but to acquire the habit of mental submission), and hearts (taught to hate all non-Muslims, and to see the world as divided between Muslims and non-Muslims, and a state of permanent war -- though not necessarily of open warfare -- to exist between the two camps)means that he must always be considered as, potentially, someone who will turn. Given the fashion, in policy-making circles, to have at least one Muslim on the staff to advise -- Vali Nasr for Holbrooke, Daria Mogahed for Obama, and who knows who is on staff for Hillary Clinton -- or the dangerous reliance on venal and sinister apologists for Islam. Think of John Esposito, think of Raymond Close, think of Eugene Bird and Mrs. Bird, think of James Akins, think of all those outwardly-respectable former diplomats to Arab countries, who now, well-ensconced in sinecures at those foreign policy groups that ostentatiously wrap themselves in the mantle of "American national interest" (as opposed, you see, to those "pro-Israel groups" that cannot possibly be promoting the "American national interest") and who are supported, directly or indirectly, by Arab money who for years have misrepresented Arab and Muslim attitudes and intentions, and have essentially been, and remain, shills for the Arabs not only in the obvious case, that of sweetly promoting the "Palestinians" -- that is, the shock troops of the still-unreocgnized Jihad against Israel, but also in such matters as energy policy, where without a recognition of the use, by the Saudis and others, of the Money Weapon, in funding the world-wide Jihad, there is unlikely to be the kind of support for taxes on oil and gasoline that, for other reasons, are needed).
Deception may be obvious in the case of this policeman in Afghanistan, or in the many other such examples of Afghan or Iraqi police and army who turned on their Infidel trainers and supposed comrades-in-arms, or for that matter, the examples of Muslims in the American military who killed fellow, but non-Muslim, soldiers, or deserted to the other side, or offered to provide intelligence so that attacks could be made on their units or their ships.
But Deception, Muslim deception, about the nature of Islam, and therefore about the permanent and immutable threat of Muslim populations to the non-Muslims among whom they have been allowed, so naively and so dangerously, to settle -- that is not yet recognized, that is not yet obvious to more than a few. But it will be.
The war, the world-wide war, is primarily one of ideologies. The hold of Islam on the minds of its adherents is extaordinary. Usually that hold is obvious, is visible. But Islam also teaches, and Muslims are well-versed in, the craft and art of deception. "War is deception" Muhammad famouslly said. They can smile, and indeed the Qur'an and Hadith teach them to smile, when necessary, even when there is murder in their hearts. And the hold of Islam, at times intermittently seemingly relaxed, can suddenly or gradually take hold again of the minds of those who might, temporarily, appear to have become relaxed or unobservant or lapsed Muslims. It has happened so many times, to so many people mentioned at JihadWatch, that one wonders how any non-Muslim security services, or armies, or police forces, dare any longer to believe that they can trust, in any real sense, any of those who are Muslims. From the imam who supposedly was a useful police informant, but who tipped off Najibullah Zazi, to the many Muslims who took part in rally-round-the-American-flag or Interfaith-Healing rallies after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, and then were discovered to have said before, and also after, bloodcurdling things about America and about non-Muslims, leading not a few to suddenly flee abroad (for example, one of the prime movers of the Boston Mosque), all of this should be carefully written up, with example after example, and distributed to the military, to the police, to the security services. A good knowledge not only of the texts and tenets of Islam, but perhaps even more importantly, of the attitudes, and the atmospherics, of Islam -- that affect even the most worldlly, even those who seem so much, outwardly, like us -- see Ambassador haqqani, for example, now attacked by others in Pakistan for being too "pro-American" by cleverly having extracted another 7.5 billion in American aid, will now be thought by some in Washington (perhaps by Senator Kerry, who no doubt has entertained, or been entertained, by Husain Haqqani and his winsome Ispahani wife, such a useful helpmeet in times like this). Haqqani is a deep defender of Islam, and a clever mis-representer, in his own charming and smooth self, of Islam to the naive. Being naive is one thing. Being naive because one is almost wilfully ignorant of Islam, and the varieties of deception that Muslims are capable of, and even the varieties of self-deceptiion (how many of those "liberals" -- from Ayman Nour in Egypt, to Pinky Bhutto in Pakistan -- exhibit surprising attitudes explicable only by reference to the deep unshakeable effect of Islam?) that Muslims practice. When even a self-declared non-believer as Kanan Makiya bristles when the matter of Islam is raised, or writes about the Arab massacre of Kurds and puzzles over the silence of Arab "intellectuals" on these massacres, failing to recognize the nature of Islam, and the Arab supremacism of which Islam has always been, and always will be the vehicle, one realizes just how remarkable is the hold of Islam, the residual hold, even on many of those who, outwardly, now seem to be our sort, people wh think and act like Westerners. Don't be fooled, even when they fool themselves.
The Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslim may still relapse, or may still, in choosing to call himself a Muslim, be open to such relapse. And in any case, the existence of such people, especially the practiced cheats and charmers among them, such as Husain Haqqani, helps to deceive unwary Infidels about the nature of Islam. Why, attacks on such people, by other Muslims still more extreme, sets up the mental equivalent of those optical illusions, where a box that is smaller than another can actually appear to be larger, depending on the surrounding visual context.
The unwillingness of a Muslim to declare himself, even to himself, an apostate, one who comes to recognize that "reform" is not possible (as the truth-telling Magdi Allam finally realized) in Islam, and to recognize its effects on minds (taught not to question, but to acquire the habit of mental submission), and hearts (taught to hate all non-Muslims, and to see the world as divided between Muslims and non-Muslims, and a state of permanent war -- though not necessarily of open warfare -- to exist between the two camps)means that he must always be considered as, potentially, someone who will turn. Given the fashion, in policy-making circles, to have at least one Muslim on the staff to advise -- Vali Nasr for Holbrooke, Daria Mogahed for Obama, and who knows who is on staff for Hillary Clinton -- or the dangerous reliance on venal and sinister apologists for Islam. Think of John Esposito, think of Raymond Close, think of Eugene Bird and Mrs. Bird, think of James Akins, think of all those outwardly-respectable former diplomats to Arab countries, who now, well-ensconced in sinecures at those foreign policy groups that ostentatiously wrap themselves in the mantle of "American national interest" (as opposed, you see, to those "pro-Israel groups" that cannot possibly be promoting the "American national interest") and who are supported, directly or indirectly, by Arab money who for years have misrepresented Arab and Muslim attitudes and intentions, and have essentially been, and remain, shills for the Arabs not only in the obvious case, that of sweetly promoting the "Palestinians" -- that is, the shock troops of the still-unreocgnized Jihad against Israel, but also in such matters as energy policy, where without a recognition of the use, by the Saudis and others, of the Money Weapon, in funding the world-wide Jihad, there is unlikely to be the kind of support for taxes on oil and gasoline that, for other reasons, are needed).
Deception may be obvious in the case of this policeman in Afghanistan, or in the many other such examples of Afghan or Iraqi police and army who turned on their Infidel trainers and supposed comrades-in-arms, or for that matter, the examples of Muslims in the American military who killed fellow, but non-Muslim, soldiers, or deserted to the other side, or offered to provide intelligence so that attacks could be made on their units or their ships.
But Deception, Muslim deception, about the nature of Islam, and therefore about the permanent and immutable threat of Muslim populations to the non-Muslims among whom they have been allowed, so naively and so dangerously, to settle -- that is not yet recognized, that is not yet obvious to more than a few. But it will be.