Islam's Newer, Bloodier Borders Expand into Somalia and Ethiopia

In his "The Clash of Civilizations," historian Samuel Huntington famously observed that "Islam has bloody borders." From the eternal stalemates in Kashmir and Palestine to the sectarian deathmatch going on in Iraq, Huntington has found himself right on the money. Now Islam is out to show the world just how ruthless is their quest to unite the entire world under the 'religion of peace' by engineering a whole new battlefield on which the Muslim world has chosen to duke it out with the West by proxy. This battlefield is the horn of Africa, where Somalia has launched a gloriously mad invasion of their technologically superior, better-organized, and economically superior Ethiopia, which also happens to have a much more religiously mixed society than mostly-Muslim Somalia.

Much like the conflict between Israel and the newly militant-conservative wing of Hezbollah, the current discord between Somalia and Ethiopia is more significant as a proxy battlefield than as a single, geopolitical event. The contentious dynamic between Ethiopia and Somalia has certainly changed irreversibly, but more importantly, we have outed the motives and alliances of this movement. The Associated Press that a "significant portion" of the invaders are not from Somalia [1] and in fact, leadership positions of the Islamic militancy have probably been assigned to key officers imported from Al Qaeda [2].

The meteoric rise of the Islamic courts' army throughout these last couple of years saw mercenaries streaming in from as far away as Pakistan [3] to join the latest and greatest in Islamic neo-fascism. While only the most ignorant of ignorant Westerners view Islam as a single, monolithic entity, the modern Muslim right-wing has shown its resilience and its unity in this conflict in their ability to deploy great numbers of mercenaries and martyrs-to-be to the impending Islamic state of Somalia.

This should be terrifying. This should trouble all of us. What has taken place in the jungles of the heart of darkness is looking like just another microcosm for the terrifying new dipole of the 21st century: right-wing Islam, and everybody else. The ability of the Muslim right-wing, working with the assistance of a small but powerful and wealthy donor base, to deploy armed, trained military assets around the world quickly is terrible news for the developing world.

Militant Islam is not a phenomenon that is at all unique to the 21st century, but it is in this century that the survival of civilization is threatened by it. I say "civilization" and not "our civilization" because conservative Islam has proven time and again to be a terrible strain on its own host countries, not just ours. The constraints placed on democratization placed on governments across the world by majority Muslim populations, especially in less-discussed places like Indonesia, have prevented the full incorporation of some of these nations into the global marketplace. Fear and hatred of Western civilization, which represents the sort of secular social liberalism that the modern Islamic clergy shows to be evil, have stifled market growth and foreign investment, both of which have been crucial to the rapid economic growth of other parts of the developing world.

Let us return to Somalia and Ethiopia as a microcosm for that which we should be most wary of. Two things leapt out at me during the rapid and dramatic conquest of Somalia by the armed forces of the Hadith Courts. One, is that the Islamic army seemed to be operating with the consent of the majority: resistance was token, which may simply be a product of disunity among warlords, or the willingness of the economically downtrodden Somali people to follow any symbol of strength, or it may reflect something much more chilling about Islamic fundamentalism. In its host nations, citizens seem to actively object to democracy, in favor of Koranic law.

For an example of this, let us shift over to Pakistan. For much of Pakistan's modern history, the law regarding rape required women to be able to produce at least four witnesses to the crime in order to achieve a conviction (this is impossible), otherwise they could face charges of adultery. These conditions vaguely reflect the stipulations of Islamic canon, which states that those who accuse others of certain sexual crimes must produce four witnesses. While this author is convinced that such text is included in Islamic canon to forgive the reprehensible sexual appetites of a 7th-century Arabic pedophile, adulterer, and serial rapist named Mohammed, what is more important is that this law existed in Pakistan by majority consent. Even more reprehensible is that, when the Pakistani legislature was considering appeal of this law, they faced massive protests by (male) Muslim leadership figures and their own, servile population demanding that Pakistan KEEP justice out of the hands of their women. In the end, they ended up passing a heavily re-worked, "watered down" edit of the law to quell the protests of the vicious Muslim establishment [4].

This is but one example of the fact that in nations such as Pakistan, the average citizen has no desire for democracy or peace. We see this in Iran, where the citizenry has worked day and night to forfeit their rights to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, simply another reincarnation of the pattern than began with their disastrous constitutional adventure in the early 20th century, which collapsed as pro-Islam clergymen convinced the population that democracy is incompatible with Islam. We see this in the return of Hamas, which rose to power on promises of establishing a strong central government that would fortify itself against criticism. Saudi Arabia, one of the Bush administration's closest allies, was forced to repeal a law that would have allowed women to drive a car, which was roundly criticized for its sinful liberalism by the Muslim clergy [5]. So on, ad naueseum.

Another thing that intrigued me about the rise of the armed wing of the Hadith Courts in Somalia was the complete lack of foreign intervention. Why? American intelligence was certain that Al Qaeda operatives were working with the Somalians in order to establish a strong military leadership. From a purely humanitarian perspective, the destruction and oppression promised by the Hadith Courts is abominable even as just an idea. Where instead were our military attentions? Iraq, where we have been throwing away good money and good lives on futile objectives and useless, impotent attempts to democratize people who love nothing but the death of their neighbors. Iraq has proven to be nothing but a long, series of excuses: first, we needed to eliminate the incredible disappearing WMDs, then we needed to stop the non-existent Al Qaeda threat in Iraq, then we need to spread democracy, then we need to oust Saddam Hussein, so on, so forth. If I were more cynical, I would also offer that we needed to take over before somebody else got their hands on the oil. And now, we find ourselves in the middle of a sectarian civil war, driven by Islam, armed by Islamic governments, funded by the Muslim right-wing, and loudly cheered by Iran.

Islamic terrorism has wreaked havoc wherever it has found home. Whether it be Kashmir, Mogadishu, or the ocean end of Manhattan, we know everything we need to know about the intent and capabilities of armed Islam. Its moderates are quiet and drowned by a rising sea of conservatism, and its military assets are growing. Shouldn't our conclusion that the rise of Islam is itself enough to intervene in an overseas conflict? Need we deploy ground intelligence to hunt for any more excuse to help Ethiopia defend itself than the fact that conservative Islam is on the rise next door? Where are our embargoes against Eritrea and any of the Arabian or Persian nations that are arming the forces of coercive ideologies? Why has our spine vanished as soon as the battlefield moves to a place that has so little oil?

I speak not as a nervous Christian or as a nervous Jew, but as a nervous atheist. The menacing fairy tales of the Fertile Crescent have generated more turmoil and more discord than any other ideology in human history. From Hitler's Catholicism to Russian Orthodoxy's servility to Stalinism, we have enough historical examples to show that, wherever a conservative religion is sufficiently armed, death reigns. In the American South, which has been overrun with Bible-thumping Baptists, we have one of the highest murder rates in the civilized world, not to mention the clinic bombings and the Bible-based racial hate. Overseas, Islamic fundamentalism is turning into the Crusader Army of the 21st century. Unless we show our willingness to confront Islam without any of the other political trappings we typically attach to our invasions and embargoes, the bloodshed will never end and radical Islam will continue to devour its host nations.

With conservative Islam on the dramatic rise in France, the UK, India, and Russia, where should we expect the blade to fall next? Will we wait for the onion domes to collapse or for another subway train to be derailed by high explosives? Or will we remain complacent until the first mushroom cloud appears? We need to recognize that Islam, as a political ideology, is incompatible with democracy and must be rejected by humanity in order for civilization at large to survive.