American and Western influence in Muslim world

The Arabs say they have no general fight with the West but oppose specific infringements of Muslim sovereignty, specifically the matter of Israel. An implicit suggestion is that the West abandon Israel—but that would not work. Said Qutb, the spiritual godfather of today’s Islamists, hated the United States long before it got behind Israel. If the U.S. cut Israel loose, the Arabs would claim victory over the Israeli infidels and press on, just as the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan led to the Chechen war. Islamists see the French decision to disallow veils in public schools and the United States dislike of polygamy as a cause for asymmetric warfare. Islamic fundamentalists hate Western values and the West’s decadent culture, though it is not America culturally encroaching on the world of Islam but Muslims fascinated with Western culture, bringing it into their countries, the Islamic fundamentalists fear. Islamic terrorists do not deal in mutual deterrence. They would promote Islamic values against Western culture in any case. Democratic Western freedom of speech provides opportunities for peaceful agitation as well, and if the United States security agencies crack down on Islamists for inciting anti-Israeli terrorism and jihad, the Islamic fundamentalists will cry religious persecution and call for more Islamic terrorism.

While Israel inevitably imports Western influence into the world of Islam, other forces beyond Israel are in play—satellite TV, the internet, movies, McDonald’s, godless physics, too low oil prices, unfavorable exchange rates, and so on and on. If the West, on the contrary, shut down TV satellites and blocked the internet, Muslims would cry discrimination. Muslims inevitably import Western influence, since they must spend the oil proceeds in dollars and euros—for Western consumer goods. America cannot meet Islamist demands of pressuring Russia, China, and India to stop local persecution of nominally Muslim minorities. Those three countries, historically insouciant about human losses, will not accede to Islamic terrorists, and America could do nothing to resolve the issue. If Israel vanished, the Islamists would go on to Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, Indonesia. Islamists see it their duty to protect Muslims living among the infidels and insist the West to let them live under sharia, not local law. Even if America found some unimaginable way to satisfy all the Muslim demands by severing cultural and political ties while preserving economic relations, that would end only the defensive Islamic jihad. That tremendous Islamic victory would clear the way for an offensive jihad to bring Western infidels under the Koran and sharia. Without Israel, the American problems with Islam would suddenly become many.