By William J. Murray:
On January 30th the Wall Street Journal carried a column by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht which made the preposterous assertion that Islam would become moderate in a democratic setting. Gerecht went so far as to state that Israel would eventually be accepted by its Islamist neighbors when they are all “free men voting.
The alarming nature of the column was the fact that this is the advice that has been given to presidents and Congress for many years, and the results have been disastrous, as can clearly be seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and other Middle East nations.
I authored a very lengthy rebuttal to Mr. Gerecht which I knew would not be published by the Wall Street Journal, since their editors drink the Kool-Aid that makes them believe the ballot box will eliminate poverty and war worldwide — never mind the fact that Adolph Hitler was duly elected to office by the German people.
Because I believe it is so important to expose the thought processes of those in the establishment CIA and State Department who advise the White House and the Congress, I am reprinting my WND.com column in this edition of the Chairman’s Report. The headline of the column makes reference to the “Pickle Factory,” the insiders’ name for the Central Intelligence Agency. The name comes from code for the daily CIA briefings to the President which are called Pickles. (WND.com changed the title to The ballot box will not tame Islamism.)
Contrary to CIA specialist, democracy will not “diminish” Islamic imperatives
How a Wall Street Journal column rationalizes delusional thinking at the Pickle Factory
By William J. Murray
The Wall Street Journal used a half page of its editorial space on January 30th to publish a totally illogical, if not delusional, column (Israel’s New Islamist Neighborhood: If Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives) by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht regarding the future “moderation” of Islam in the Middle East. It appears the Wall Street Journal’s editors, economic conservatives who can see no wrong in the human rights abuses in wealthy Islamic nations, wanted to highlight the column to justify U.S support of the Muslim Brotherhood in the takeover of half a dozen nations in the vicinity of Israel.
Gerecht asserts that:
“Israel may one day be accepted by its Arab neighbors and by its most deadly foe, Iran—but only when Arab and Iranian Muslim identities allow for it. At best, that change is decades away. Modern Islam’s great internal tug of war, between the search for authenticity and the love of modernity, must quiet before the Israeli-Palestinian clash can end.”
The key word in this paragraph is “modernity” which brings in the assumption that Islam will move out of the 7th Century and somehow accept a Martin Luther who will “fix” Islam with a reformation that will bring about the equivalent of same-sex marriages in the Episcopal Church.
On what does Gerecht base his assumptions? Later in the column he writes:
“Yet if Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives. Representative government demystifies politics and ethics, as the here-and-now takes precedence over abstract aspirations. It makes the mundane transcendent. It promotes healthy division because it puts competing visions, even competing fundamentalist visions, to the vote. It localizes ambitions and focuses people’s passions on the national purse.”
Western history is no more a guide for modernizing Islamic nations through democracy than Stalinist history was a model to modernize China. It took over 500 years, from the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 until the ratification of the American Constitution in 1789, for cultural acceptance of democratic thought despite a Judeo-Christian religious base which promotes the dignity of the individual’s rights. Islam has no such history or character.
And to what “national pulse” does Gerecht refer? The Super Bowl? Europeans are less in touch than even Americans with any political pulse other than to demand even more benefits from their governments.
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Apparently Gerecht sees a morally splintered Western society in which citizens have the power to vote themselves lavish entitlements as the model for the Middle East. His discussion of democracy shows his total lack of understanding that the words democracy and freedom have different definitions. Democracy is merely a process of selecting leaders and is in no way synonymous with freedom, as can be seen in the United Kingdom where even politicians are jailed for their Facebook comments which are deemed politically incorrect.
In that same paragraph be asserts that democracy “puts competing visions, even competing fundamentalist visions, to the vote.” When has this ever happened anywhere? Are the views of Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Baptists, conservative Catholics or murderous mullahs put to the vote in Western democracies? This is nonsense.
Read more at Religious Freedom Coalition
William J. Murray is the chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Coalition and the author of seven books including “My Life Without God,” which chronicles his early life in the home of destructive atheist and Marxist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
