Forget tactics; the “clash of civilizations” is not what you think

From People of Shambhala

The words “The Clash of Ideas” are splashed across the cover of the special anniversary issue of Foreign Affair this month. This is of course a play on the “clash of civilizations” narrative that we’ve heard countless times since 9/11, and a nod to the notion that this clash – between radical Islam and the West, or liberal democracy – is fundamentally a “war of ideas.”

I have come to believe that this diagnosis is not only wrong, but a large part of the reason why we, who believe in freedom and the rights of the individual, appear to be losing ground. (For example, we are seeing more sharia in the West, despite us knowing that full sharia demands the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and discrimination against religious minorities. And we are seeing our right to free speech eroded, especially across Europe.)

The battle is not one of ideas. It is a… read more.

8 Replies to “Forget tactics; the “clash of civilizations” is not what you think”

  1. ‘Spiritual’ – no way. This is ‘Control’ & ‘Power’, pure and simple. That’s what sharia law is and clearly, it clashes with the democratic freedoms of the western worlds. A culturaly backward society trying to push and idiology that Allah is supreme. In the western world we believe that God gave us the power to think for ourselves, be it right or wrong and with that power, we learn to improve our life. Sometimes it work, sometimes it doesn’t. But we continue learning. With sharia, there is no such thing as learning and improving. One simply stagnates in the dark ages.

  2. This, of course, is why we are losing. We simply have no clue what we are fighting. The Merriam Webster definition of spiritual is here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spiritual. The first three are:

    1: of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit.
    2 : of or relating to sacred matters
    2b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal.
    3: concerned with religious values.

    Today we think of spirituality as synonymous with “nice.” It’s not.

    Even “power” — a term you use to describe sharia — refers not to ideas but to the spiritual.

    “Spirituality” means who you are, what you stand for, what values you live for, are prepared to fight and maybe die for, what kind of man you are and aspire to be (for good or ill).

    The Nazis were strongly influenced by the spiritual currents of the day. So were many fascists. Julius Evola, a fascist theoretician, was a very articulate writer on spirituality — from meditation to symbolism — but he also believed in war and violence, and saw Islamic Jihad as a great example of how fascists should think and act. For Evola and for others like him, then and now, war was a spiritual value in and of itself. it was the total abandonment to the supernatural forces of creation and destruction. It was to live entirely for values as opposed to living to acquire more property, objects, pleasure, comfort, etc. Luckily, when the West confronted fascism it knew it was about more than ideas, tactics, superior weaponry, or brute strength.

    That is war.

    To quote Ronald Reagan in 1964: “The ultimate determinant in the struggle for the world will not be bombs or rockets, but a test of wills and ideas – a trial of spiritual resolve.”

  3. In many ways, it is a battle of ideas. Not really with Islam, but the long ideological struggle with Communism. There’s a good argument to be made that this is a long, sustained movement by the communist left to subvert and replace our culture. Yuri Bzmenove talks of the tactics of the KGB, which match what we are seeing now to an extent that one should find astonishing

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or9CeuqcfMY&list=LLB8HPt2EGG0pPysadHmtMaA&feature=mh_lolz

    The appearance of Islam is incidental. The caliphate only ended because the west decided to take a position of strong influence, which encouraged the importation of Arab Nationalism in place of Islam and the Ummah. Once the west abrogates its position of the stabilizing influence in the world, theres nothing left to support the movement, and it dies out. The apparent union with the left and Islam is really nothing more than that between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany early in WWII: a marriage of convenience.

  4. I dont believe it is a marriage of convenience.It is a marriage where one party (Islam)lies to the other (the left), and where the left believing that it is much cleverer than the other and everyone else , will one day wake up and realise it has been really stupid and niave. This will be to the detriment of western society. It is like Von Papen believing that he could control Hitler in 1933. Hitler had his own destiny to fulfill and would do anything to acheive it .Islam believes it has a destiny to fulfill also.

    Was it Goebbels who said that if you tell a lie often enough people will eventaully believe it.?

  5. Both parties are lying to each other. (Which should be a lesson about the importance of the truth.)

  6. There are people who see what is going on, but those people do not control the media. Once again, in the absence of leadership, it will have to get very ugly. I don’t wish for that, but the Left is taking us to the brink again.

  7. There are several reasons that the West is currently losing the war, 1) most refuse to admit this is a war of survival, 2) the left has spent decades weakening the Western culture, 3) the left and the athiests have spent decades weakening Christianity. Then there is the fact that after WWII the peace at an groups have caused us to stop thinking in the terms of victory.

    This is a war of survival and must be fought as one, if we don’t freedom is going to be lost in most of the world, and civilization in all of it.