|
September
11: What Changed? By
Rabbi David Eidensohn
September 11 changed the economic direction of the country from up to down.
Before September 11, the economy was roaring forward, with a surplus of
billions of dollars. After September 11, the economy fizzled, and has now a
deficit of billions of dollars. Our country is rightfully worried about the
economy. Bankruptcies abound. Major companies fire employees, close
businesses, reveal the rot of "infectious greed," and thus cool
investor confidence. Nobody has any idea how social security will be paid
out to tens of millions of people ready to retire. The fear of the future is
upon us.
Another change wrought by September 11 was our appreciation of Islam.
We considered modern Islam a remnant of the past. Just ignore it, and it
will vanish, we thought. However, we were wrong. We now realize that Islam
is growing stronger daily, even the militant Islam. We are frightened by the
trend of Arab countries to adapt anti-Western policies, to inflame their
populaces against America, and to openly speak of us as Infidels and
enemies. Egypt, Turkey and Jordan are the most "Western" Arab
states, but their populaces are anti-American. These countries are only
pro-Western because they are monarchies or military dictatorships, or, in
the case of Egypt, very similar to this. Egypt has just arrested and jailed
someone for being pro-democracy, an event that caused President Bush to
threaten Egypt financially. If Egypt did become a democracy, it would
probably become completely anti-American. We watch Islam arm itself, and
find that Pakistan has the atomic bomb, and that other Arab countries are
working hard to produce weapons of mass destruction. No longer can we ignore
Islam's challenge to us globally and even in America. Henry Kissinger has
warned that if militant Moslems get the bomb, they will not fear mutual
destruction as the Soviet Union once did.
There are now three million Moslems in America, and they are increasing
rapidly, even while Americans are eschewing or delaying marriage and have
few children. Many blacks and even some whites are converting to Islam. Many
Moslems in America are vigilant about their religion, and many hate the
West.
Time's cover story in April of 2,002 and the June Rutgers's Marriage Project
Study revealed that American women are in bitter trouble. Women want money,
and they want babies. Babies and money don't always go together. Women
professors with babies are often denied tenure. They haven't the time to
make it. This change, the realization that we are destroying women, may be
the most important event of the year, and it may overshadow even the
September 11 bombing. If people challenged the feminist lobby, there was
something of September 11 there to give them courage.
After September 11, people saw that America was living in an economic,
strategic and gender bubble. This may be the most important change in recent
American history.
Alan Greenspan warned years ago that the stock market was powered with
"irrational exuberance," but nobody listened. The market went down
after his complaint, but it rose back, raced and roared higher and higher.
The new style of business was to create virtual designs and mechanisms that
were not grounded in reality. Amazon.com was famous for pulling in billions
while it had never made a nickel profit. People planted seeds. They had
blind faith in the Internet and were sure that the future was rosy. Enron
was an International Fantasy that was sustained not merely by cooking the
books, but by dreams. It had no basic assets such as machines and factories.
It was an abstraction. The government, Federal and state, is drowning in
debt, and yet, spending goes up. If we don't get down to basics, backing the
dollar with solid and real assets, maintaining government with frugal and
realistic budgeting, we will end up Enron.
We now come back to the change in our attitudes about Islam. The challenge
of militant Islam is very old and very clear. They want what we have.
Militant clergy announce to a fanatic and enthusiastic audience: "The
wives and the women of the Infidels belong to you." They mean it, and
plan for it. Meanwhile, our country is anxious to avoid the appearance of
bigotry.
While it is true that in recent years Islam has declined relative to its
previous place in the world, this is an aberration. To understand just how
powerful and dangerous Islam is, we must compare Christianity and Islam as
world powers in world history. Christianity began over two thousand years
ago. For centuries, it was a persecuted religion, and finally converted the
Roman Emperor Constantine who issued the Edict of Milan in 313. Even so,
Christianity was not the official religion of Rome, and only a few
generations later did Rome became a Christian power under Theodosius.
Furthermore, Christianity was always plagued with ferocious internal wars,
between sects who interpreted basic doctrine differently. Even as the Turks
banged on the doors of Europe, the King of France plotted with him against
Charles of Spain and Germany.
Islam, on
the other hand, became a world power almost immediately. Mohammad preached
Islam publicly in Mecca in 613 and Islam was a mighty global power by 750,
even earlier. In a series of blazing victory, Moslems conquered from Spain
to India, including the Middle East and Northern Africa. Islam, from its
inception, was a militant and conquering religion. One of the first things
Mohammed did was to wipe out three Jewish tribes. He murdered the men of one
tribe, and left the women. One wife watched as Mohammed tortured her husband
to death, and then had a fate even worse.
The Ottoman Empire, founded in the thirteenth century, controlled much of
the world until its defeat in the First World War. Eventually, the Turks
battled their way into Europe, up to the gates of Vienna. The problems in
Yugoslavia today are because of those conquests. The Crusades were
unsuccessful and other than brief periods, the Moslems controlled the Middle
East and much of the world, constantly threatening the West. What happened
in recent times to utterly reverse this?
The deciding difference between what we will call the East and the West is
that only the West created a secular culture. Jacques Barzan, the famous
historian, tells us that secularists did not create secularism. In those
early days when secularism began, there were almost no secularists. Warring
Christian factions, in order to keep religion from destroying Europe,
created secularism. Western religion caused the Hundred Years War and the
Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. Religion had to stop
warring. The only way was to take religion out of the driver's seat, and put
secularism there. Secularism is thus a product of Christian religions, and
an acceptance that the rift in Christendom cannot be healed, and must be
monitored by outside government. Religion in the West is therefore a menace
to society if put into government. America, with its separation of church
and state, is but a pure statement of Western secularism. The state remains
"under G-d," but any mechanisms that can lead to violence are
taken from religion. Islam has no secularism, and never surrendered
religious control of government.
Therefore, in the West, values are a threat, whereas in the East, values
unite government, religion and populace. The Western "vive la
difference" is a sentiment commending secularism and revealing the
threat of ideals. The Western fear of dogmatic authority creates fear in the
home, weakens parents, and empowers children to be what they cannot
naturally be. Can a civilization that fears religion and values compete with
a civilization that unites government, religion and values?
Secularism is both a plus and a minus, relative to military power. The
secularism of the West, enshrined upon an exhausted Europe several centuries
ago, allowed for science to eventually develop without a censor. Secularism
turned the energies of Western societies away from religious extremism and
into materialism, technology and advanced science. Thus, in recent
centuries, the West has ascended for the first time over Islam, because
Islam's energies were still in religion, and its government was about
religion. On the other hand, Islam was perfecting the family and fanaticism
that would create a mighty cohesive force to advance Islam. The West, on the
other hand, was entering a secular phase where pleasures pleased the
populace, and values were suspect. The West thus moved to refrain from
championing ideals, but to accept diversity, while Islam forged a cohesive
program.
H.G. Wells once said that in a battle between the reasonable and the
fanatic, the fanatic would win. The reasonable person has two sides to each
issue, and fights for the right with half a heart. The fanatic is one
hundred percent dedicated. The Turks were defeated in the First World War,
and the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The West relaxed. Now, they were free of
the constant fear of expanding Islam. However, the West was wrong.
Turkey was the greatest of the military countries of Islam, and it was the
head of the Ottoman Empire. Only years after its defeat in WWI, Turkey
secularized, and modernized. Anyone wearing religious clothing was punished.
The pain of falling from a former superiority over the West rankled and
pained the Arabs. The realization that technology had failed them brought
the Moslem world to seek the new technology, even as it held tight, in most
cases, to its religion. The obvious clash between a scientific and religious
culture held Islam back, but by importing Russian, Chinese and German
scientists, the Arabs armed themselves. As they did, their populations
exploded, and their economies could not keep up. However, the Arabs were
used to giving all for their religion, and suffering materially. They gladly
watched their governments spending on tanks and jets while people lived in
squalid conditions.
We now come to the third change, the perception of gender. Gender is family,
and family is the cornerstone of society. The West is confused about gender.
There are wars about homosexuality and feminism. Boys are raised not to be
men and girls are raised not to be women. The majority of eligible adults
are not married. Men are increasingly reluctant to marry. Half of those
married for the first time divorce. Those who marry have very few children.
Demographic factors are the mightiest weapon in a war of civilizations.
Islam has no confusion about gender, marriage family or procreation. The
weakness of the West regarding family will threaten all of its wealth and
technological superiority.
September 11 was a shot across the bow by a civilization whose children
commit suicide against the Infidel, against a civilization that has little
use for children. We will not win this war until we jettison the radical
gender ideas of the secularists, and return to a natural mother, at home,
secure in raising a fine family, protected and adored by a husband who is a
man.
We must create a natural economy, not where the masses toil as disposables,
but where individuals have their own businesses and trades. We must destroy
the illusions of virtual assets. We must use our scientific logic to find
spirituality, in line with the trend in science in that direction, to unite
the finite and the infinite. We must not fear values, and we must not fear
those whose values are twisted and murderous.
Very soon, the discrepancies in Federal and state spending and the
inhumanity of the global economy will compete with the natural needs of
millions and billions of people who are today without power and rights.
Inevitably, there will be change, even struggle. Soon, the gender struggles
regarding the gay lobby, feminism, and natural family will be won or lost.
In this period, too, the global disputations will come to some resolution.
Some will battle with half a heart, and after destroying Saddam will leave
him alone. Others will be more realistic, and will destroy those who live to
destroy.
September 11 is coming. We will remember our relatives, friends and
neighbors who worked diligently at their desks, contemplating return to
their spouses and family, until flames and smoke engulfed them, until steel
and concrete rained upon them, until the fanatics of Islam prepared for
Seventy Virgins.
If they could speak to us, what would the victims say? Maybe they would ask
us, "Is your blood so cheap?"
6 |
|
|
D. Eidensohn's poem
"The Wall" won an International Poetry Contest. His poems appear in
|