Walid Phares: “The West needs to isolate Jihadism by defining it”

At the Launch of his new book The Confrontation at the European Parliament

Brussels, European Parliament, EFD-FDD, March 12, 2008

At the invitation of European MP Jana Hybaskova, a launching event was organized at the European Parliament for Dr Walid Phares’s new book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. The breakfast lecture was attended by a number of legislators, including MEP Paulo Casaca, experts at the European institutions, US and Arab diplomats, NGOs representatives and the staff of the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD). Phares, is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and a visiting scholar with EFD. 

Phares at the launching

The Confrontation, his latest book of a trilogy beginning with Future Jihad (2005-paperback 2006) and the War of Ideas (2007-paperback 2008), is an analysis of the global Jihadi threat and policy recommendations to Governments and international alliances in order to meet and defeat the Terror challenges. Based on 25 years of continuous research, teaching and publishing on Islamist movements and ideologies, The Confrontation, as Phares announced at the European launching “is first of all a confrontation with ourselves liberal democracies and with our view of the world and of the mounting menace. It is about the ability of the free world to come together in defining the conflict in which it is involved, a conflict which was waged by radical ideological forces since decades against all what the international society has reached in terms of consensus on democracy, human rights, pluralism, gender issues and all matters related to basic human freedom.” Phares said while al Qaeda attacked the US on 9/11 and drew an American campaign into “Middle Earth” (a term used in his book to depict the Middle East battlefields), the same movement attacked in Madrid and London and the ideology inspiring it produced violence across Europe, Russia and India, in addition to the Arab Muslim world.

Phares, who is educated in three cultures, argued that “the West needs to isolate the specific ideology which has been producing the waves of Terrorist groups and individuals for decades. This global web of totalitarian doctrines is the center of a world factory producing radicalism and violence, more so than just foreign policies and socio economic disenfranchisement. Social injustices are part of national dramas but radical ideologies seize the political agendas and transform it into irreversible violence.” 

Phares, MEP Hybaskova and EFD Director Roberta Bonazzi

Phares added: “But in order to isolate this totalitarian ideology and free the next generations from its impact, one has to define it. The West cannot dodge the threat doctrine if it wishes to win the war of ideas. It needs to clearly define its threatening dimensions and condemn them such as discrimination between cultures, genders, and religions and mistreatment of minorities. The real confrontation of the threat begins by educating the public as to what in the Jihadi ideology is in contradiction of international law, pluralism, human rights and Peace. Only then the West, and in general terms the free world, can begin to seriously confront the movements and regimes which have adopted it, should they be Salafist or Khumeist.” Phares concluded that Europe’s intellectual elites –in general- have failed to educate their public about the real menace of combat Jihadism. “A new generation of analysts and researchers can help European societies to catch up and ready themselves to meet the advancing challenges of Jihadi forces on the continent.”

Phares: "Define Jihadism to isolate it"

www.theconfrontation.net

 

                                              

                                                                                                           

                                  

Comments

[Gary Johnson]

Jihadism is the strangest of animals. It gets stronger when you fight it, when it fights you, and when left alone. It is a riddle. It is solvable. Unfortunately, in order to isolate the threat of Jihadism the West is in an untenable position - we must consider (through the free inquiry allowed in our culture) that Islam, Jihad, Islamism, Islamic Radicalism, the ideologies of Shariah and Fundamentalism, what have you, are all silken strands in the spider web of a Pirate Death Cult.

Walid Phares' last three books have been far beyond their time...and far behind their time. As of 9/11 the US was already ten to twenty years behind in its education regarding the middle east. Now, six years later, we are a full generation behind. His conclusions are right, yet not realistic - sadly. It would be wonderful if we could pick our leaders on the basis of their knowledge of the Islamist menace. But that is another generation out. He follows suit with Bhutto's call for an Islamic Fund and for inclusion to isolate jihadis, but then turns around and sites inclusion and monetary independence as the source blood of Islamist infiltration. True, the world can break things down to their simple essences if it were an educated world. But let's face it, if this were an educated world, the Democracy of the middle east would look a lot less like the populism that is driving the clerical fascisms of the day.

[Gary Johnson]

Walid Phares' frustration is evident in the first 100 pages of his newest tome, The Confrontation. What has been taken as a battle between cave dwelling radicals has morphed into multiple strata of currents, waves and tides. Movements are driven by ideology or collective will or both. Walid Phares has captured that reality and turned it into a full fledged rallying cry for the intellects of Freedom to Awaken from their slumber of indolence and decadence.

Walid asks for a more clairvoyant generation, a better educated public. He is essentially calling for a Revolution of the Intellectual community of the free world. This is a call I respond to whole heartedly as a man who has the ability to bridge Walid's generation with the generations of new. Yet my frustration grows day by day as I buy two or three books a week on the subject of Islamofascism and Islamic Jihad to educate myself without the help of an institution such as AMU or NDU or a fellowship from an auspicious NGO like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to get my works published. I have been studying Islam since 2006. I have done everything I can within my meager means to stay abreast and ahead and to see the trends. It wasn't rocket science to predict Bhutto's assassination. Just as it doesn't take a genius to spot the openness of our society and the weaknesses perceived by the infiltrating jihadists in all walks of our culture.

I read Walid's book Confrontation aloud so that I could hear the call to Revolution. The main problem we are facing is an educational cabal of sorts. If you don't have a twenty year study record on "extremism", "Islam", "Middle Eastern Studies", "World Religions", or already have an established forum, the possibility of you breaking out into the fore of literature or politics in the War of Ideas is so slim that it is nil without getting into bed with a group that will strangle your message...for instance, a case could be made against the concept of Democracy as a Solution and as Democracy acting as a Neocon blinder on Walid Phares due to his association with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, just as someone rising through the ranks of a Soros Foundation would find the peer pressure of progressivism stifling. The argument can be made...but only the apologists for Islam would make the argument.

The Confrontation is a great primer for understanding the situation we are now in with the middle east. It would have been preferable for Walid to teach us how we can fight the 20,000 to 30,000 deobandi madrassas that have sprang up in the last 30 years of Pakistan's turbulent coups in their stumbles toward democracy. Let's say each madrassa creates just 10 radicals per year...just 10!!! Suddenly in 3 years you are looking at roughly a million radicals. Add that to the concept of Fatah as rendered by the likes of Charles A Allen when discussing the Sepoy Mutiny in "God's Terrorists" and you have a chance to learn that from 15 weakened driven out warriors, the Wahhab cult grew to a force of 5,000 to 10,000 fighters through their Pashtun networks in short order to repel the next British Assault. It is time for us to put the pieces together and isolate Jihadism, true...but to what purpose? Are we seeking victory? Or are we seeking to shore up the main and outcast the chaffe?

When considering that answer, we must analyze the nature of Koranic purposes...truly therein we must analyze the concepts of Resistance, Rebellion and Death in the shadow of Camus as we determine the triggers and realities of oppression, repression and persecution.

[Gary Johnson]

Only one mention of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in The Confrontation, Dr. Phares?

Why?

Are not Iraq's Muqtada al Sadr and Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah operating on parallel paths in the ascent of the Shia Crescent?

Geopolitically, Nasrallah is loved equally by Sunni and Shia alike - he has stated over and over that he has built his Hezbollah utilizing the regions common hatred (enmity) against Israel. He has what, 50,000 Katyusha Rockets now? How have the UN peace keepers done anything but stand as targets in this supposed sanction? Why has the United States not eradicated the Hezbollah nucleus?

When did kidnapping Israeli soldiers become a legitimate tool of Resistance rather than a mainstay of the pirate policies of the Mediterranean Barbary Coasts that William Eaton fought in the early 1800s with zero fanfare as the first espionage success story in America?

The United States must define the ethics of Freedom Fighters...the nature of revolution...the nature of insurrection...the nature of resistance.

The West must view Israel as a Castle under siege. How do you defeat a besieging force? Do you behead the leaders or disrupt the supply lines?

Is Moshe Sharon right in the fact that our Abrams tanks are built by the Egyptians rather than by US taxpaying citizens?

Why do we not have a fleet of 10,000 Predators each bearing hell fire missile packs, and facial recognition software?

In summa diplomacia?