In her column this week, Peggy Noonan has written about an apparent dearth of genius, an inability for anyone in power to bring any sort of creative, constructive thinking to bear on the myriad problems and true evils that are before us, threatening every nation, and every people. She says we are missing the “genius cluster” that has always arisen — “Providentially,” her friend suggests — when the world has needed it to.
Where are the geniuses who will figure out how to fight a hidden yet determined international band of beasts who are committed to death — and all too willing to “be jihad in-place” — bringing the ISIS principles to local places of business and coming to a playground near you?
What we are seeing in ISIS is what we have seen before in the death-serving ideologies of the 20th centuries; totalitarian extremism never loses its desire to destroy all that does not conform. The illness is always the same. What has changed, though, is the antibody with which the West has previously addressed this killer virus. Like the culture itself, the antibody has shifted; it no longer contains one essential component necessary to fight the evil that instigates human savagery on this level, that of a faith.
There are no “genius clusters” arising to deal with ISIS, because there are no geniuses in leadership willing to look into the medicine bag and say “we have run out of faith in anything beyond our own selves, our court systems and bureaucracies…”
Consider that when the Nazis were barreling through Europe, the majority of the western world professed – with no fear of ridicule or of giving insult, anywhere – a belief in something greater than itself. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were conventionally religious men of their times, not overly observant. But they were imbued with enough faith to recognize that some occasions called for more than rhetoric; some things called for enough humility to make a prayer of supplication, one calling on the Deity to guide, to bless, to sustain – to, as Lincoln said, have “firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”
Roosevelt led the nation in prayer on D-Day. In Britain, Churchill openly spoke of “a miracle of deliverance”: “A guiding hand interfered to make sure the allied forces were not annihilated at Dunkirk.”
Our post-Christian, post-faith Western leadership is no longer capable of making public prayer, or willing to credit heaven with anything but twinkling stars. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was told by his own government “we don’t do God” and President Obama, who once defined the notion of “sin” as being “out of alignment with my values” has not yet, in nearly 8 years, attempted to lead a nation in prayer.
This matters in the face of ISIS, especially in its revelation that its attempts to acquire power through fear are indiscriminate: they are murdering of all peoples, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or agnostic.
If this is true, one might ask, then why especially should the West reacquaint itself with the language of faith and supernaturalism?
The answer is simple: because what ISIS is doing is a true evil.
The entire piece should be read, inwardly digested and passed on, particularly today when this great country celebrates freedom, a freedom absent the tethering and mooring of the guiding hand of God that will not last long.
Think on these things but more than that, pray... pray as Ms. Scalia has asked, for a "genius cluster" to rise, one that will not overlook the helping Hand of Heaven.
Amen.
Crossposted at Wizbang.
"Some reports indicate that death became a condition of whether or not a hostage could quote from the Koran, and yet it is difficult to characterize these attacks as primarily religious when today — a day later — ISIS has unleashed hell in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad, with multiple bombs murdering over 100 and injuring nearly double that. As with last week’s attack in Istanbul, many among the dead, perhaps most, are Muslims."
Easily explainable, for those who which to learn -
"After Dhaka, it was bombs away in Baghdad, set off in the mainly Shi’a Karada neighborhood, killing nearly 200 people. Was this an “attack on Islam,” as some Western apologists for Islam have claimed? (Sunni Muslims are noticeably silent on the attacks aimed at Shi’a, and are careful not to claim that such attacks are an “attack on Islam itself.”) No, those bombs were targeted at Karada precisely because the Shi’a, in the view of the energetic takfiris of ISIS, are not real Muslims at all. And it is not just the Sunnis of ISIS, but other Sunnis, too, who share that view.
We must not forget that according to these Sunnis, the Shi’a are “Rafidite dogs” (from “rafida” – “rejectionists”), so called because they reject the legitimacy of three of the caliphs — Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman — who followed Muhammad, insisting instead that the only legitimate successor to Muhammad was Ali. This is the main, but not the only difference between Shi’a and Sunnis. The most extreme Sunnis regard the Shi’a as even worse than Christians and Jews. An ISIS spokesman put it this way in 2015: “The greatest answer to this question [are the Shi’a worse than Christians and Jews] is in the Qur’an, where Allah speaks about the nearby enemy – those Muslims who have become infidels – as they are more dangerous than those which were already infidels.” ISIS has been ferocious in its nonstop denunciation of the Shi’a. In the 13th edition of the ISIS magazine Dabiq, for example, the main article is entitled The Rafidah: From Ibn Saba’ to the Dajjal; this article contains “pages of violent rhetoric directed against Shiites,” who it claims are “more severely dangerous and more murderous…than the Americans.” The article justifies the killing of Shia Muslims, whom ISIS insists are not Muslims at all but apostates, and apostasy in Islam is punishable by death.
What about the three simultaneous attacks in Saudi Arabia? Surely these were, as the egregious Haroon Moghul assures us, “attacks on Islam itself”?
Let’s take those attacks one by one."
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/hugh-fitzgerald-was-the-medina-attack-an-assault-on-islam-itself
tim aka The Godless Heathen
Posted by: Lands’nGrooves | Wednesday, July 06, 2016 at 02:50 PM
Tim... we've criticized Obama for not calling Islamists what they are and rightly so. The criticism particularly biting when Obama ignores the fact that radical Islamists call themselves Islamists.
Are we now to deny that Muslims are being attacked by these Islamists merely because the Islamists claim they're not Muslim? The Muslims being attacked claim they're Muslim... are we to deny them that identification because the marauding killers are doing so?
Posted by: Rick | Thursday, July 07, 2016 at 12:22 PM
No, identify the dead according to what they are – Muslims, etc.
I was responding to “…yet it is difficult to characterize these attacks as primarily religious…” Somehow the writer, Scalia, doesn’t think the murderers aren’t religious because of the religious affiliation of the victims. Which is absurd.
Whether this, or any attack are religious in nature (of course the overwhelming majority involves Islam) is not dependent on the victims but obviously, at least it should be, on the perpetrators.
The Shi’a and Sunni divide explains how the terrorists justify the killing of their fellow Muslims. Though, as explained, the Sunni terrorists do not recognize the Shi’a as anything other than infidels like the rest of us. (It also explains much of the everyday and historical divide and violence in the Middle East.)
In order to win against your enemy, you must first understand them. Excusing their behavior, ignoring their motivations, not taking them for their words is foolish. Especially in this case with Muslim Terrorists, egotistically telling them that they are not Muslims while they justify everything they do comes straight from the Koran. Which is the words of Muhammad and therefore cannot be questioned, especially by infidels.
Which explains why we’ve been fighting them since the inception of this country, the Barbary Pirates, and we will continue to fight them until we acknowledge who and what they are.
tim aka The Godless Heathen
Posted by: Lands’nGrooves | Friday, July 08, 2016 at 09:49 AM
Tim, Elizabeth Scalia comes at this from the often untried because it's too difficult perspective taught by He who gave us Christian thought... and that is... that we're to love our enemies.
Does that mean we can't defend ourselves? No, not at all, and knowing that Elizabeth accepts all of Catholic teaching, she'd be the first to tell you this... we can certainly defend ourselves against those purposed in ending our lives and the lives of our loved ones...
And this is the crux of the problem. Your mindset suggests that we need to defend ourselves against all of Islam when the evidence suggests that there are only a minority within Islam that are actually out to kill us. Elizabeth's mindset is that we're going to have to link up with Muslims to defeat the radicals.
We can start by linking up with people like this guy, preferably before he pays the ultimate sacrifice.
Posted by: Rick | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 01:27 PM
"Your mindset suggests that we need to defend ourselves against all of Islam when the evidence suggests that there are only a minority within Islam that are actually out to kill us."
Oh I wish that was true, I really do.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/243220/ben-shapiro-myth-tiny-radical-muslim-minority-truthrevoltorg
"It's far easier to act as if critics of Islam have a problem with Muslims as people than it is to accept the uncomfortable truth that Islam is different."
http://thereligionofpeace.com/
tim aka The Godless Heathen
Posted by: Lands’nGrooves | Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at 09:14 AM