No book recently published better grasps the theological and philosophical dichotomy inherent in the war between Islam and the West than Serge Trifkovic's Defeating Jihad.
Defeating Jihad
by Dr. Serge Trifkovic
Regina Orthodox Press
Boston, Mass., 2006
Ppbk, 335 pgs., index, Bibliography
ISBN: 1-928653-26-X
PHENOMENOLOGICAL DISTINCTIONS: WHO IS THIS ENEMY?
The Koran teaches in sura 29, verse 46, that “our Allah and your Allah is One; and it is to Him we bow.”
Much has been made of that Koranic scripture as a means of establishing a theological bridge between Islam and the Judeo-Christian belief systems. However, there are significant differences in the interpretation of the divine character of the Islamic “Allah,” and the Judeo-Christian/Greek concept of the transcendent, generous, loving God that is missing in the constant propaganda generated by the media and government.
One of the first doctrines of Islam calls for the Muslim, when the time is propitious, to make war (Jihad) in the name of Allah for the purpose of conquest, and all that that entails, and conversion. The reward of the mujahadeen is immediate in the bifurcated sense that should he conquer he is given a share of the plunder, permitted to rape and to take slaves or, in the event of his death in combat his spirit is immediately elevated to paradise and he enjoys the “company” of seventy-two virgins. The concept then is a commingling of the metaxical reality and “the divine ground,” as well as the re-introduction of cosmological elements that distort and deform the “search for insight into necessary being.” The result is the degradation or deformation of human consciousness by means of introducing a tension that employs oppression, war, and the suppression of “free will.”
The true Muslim is always in a state of Jihad, or preparing for Jihad, until the final victory that will bring forth the gnostic notion of the worldwide Caliphate; the domination of Allah’s creation by the forces of Islam. In victory he offers the defeated the opportunity to join with Allah. If refused he may strike down his foe or force him under Islamic “protection” by accepting the contract (Dhimma) whereby the defeated pay a poll and land tax subject to death or slavery. This tension has, over the centuries, resulted in the movement of the conquered toward Islam, to the point that there are very few Christians remaining in what were once Christian lands. This state of war — Jihad — is ongoing until Islam has conquered the world.
By contrast the “radical differentiations” of the Judeo-Christian and Greek traditions initiated an “epochal consciousness” that destroyed the viability of the cosmology of the ancients, revealed the nature of the Divine as ultimately love and generosity, explicated the true nature of human consciousness, the free will exercise of the “question,” and the purpose of human existence, which is “the opportunity to participate, by way of (a) trusting response to God’s appeal, in the Divine reality that is beyond perishing.” These tremendous theological and philosophical (reason and revelation) “theophanic events” opened the doors to a remarkable expression of the human spirit and intellect in the arts, literature, sciences, and, perhaps most importantly, in providing man with “historical direction.” No such epiphany occurred in Islam.
No book, recently published, better grasps the above mentioned theological and philosophical dichotomy inherent in the war between Islam and the West than the book in review, Defeating Jihad (Regina Orthodox Press), by Dr. Serge Trifkovic, an editor at Chronicles magazine. Trifkovic’s wide ranging knowledge of Islam and its historical relationship to the West has served him well in presenting to the public an objective, in-depth analysis of this on-going conflagration that thankfully eschews the “party line” and seeks answers to questions that leave our political leadership muttering inanities about “Islamic fundamentalists,” or “the War On Terror.”
Trifkovic’s pronounced philosophical insight requires him to ask the question; “. . . if terrorism is an aberrant of Islam’s alleged peace and tolerance, or a predictable consequence of the ideology of Jihad?” This appears to be a question never raised by Western governments. And, these Western governments, the United States included, embrace a self-destructive view that “open immigration, multiculturalism, and the existence of a large Muslim diaspora within the Western world are to be treated as a fixed given and should not be scrutinized in any anti-terrorist debate.”
Trifkovic’s recommendations are a decidedly good first step in addressing and defining the conflict between Islam and the West. His expressed hope is that his book will initiate an “awareness of its (the West's) moral, spiritual, and civilizational roots,” a hope, I fear, that is wasted on a moribund culture floundering in the depths of post-modernity. Prophetically, Trifkovic ends his “introduction” with the comment that, “Miracles do happen, and therefore they will happen,” which indicates a strident faith in a transcendent, generous, and loving God.
One might be forgiven the idea that five years following the 9/11 massacres we would find America devoid of Muslims, and Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in smoldering ruins, the remnant of its peoples living in the desert or hiding in the mountains, while enthusiastic, highly paid, American workers and allied foreigners pump Arab oil to the United States, resulting in gasoline prices hovering around $.76 a gallon. In a world where common sense prevailed the Bush Administration would have issued an apology to Russia for critiquing its war against Chechen Muslims, and a similar apology to the Serbs for interfering in its war against Albanian Muslims. And, even considering the pusillanimous, puerile, and inchoate actions of the Bush Administration we must nervously anticipate the ascent to power of the neo-Marxist Democratic elite that supported the Albanian Muslims by supplying them with military hardware and money.
Trifkovic’s acumen is best illustrated toward the end of the book when he says; “The refusal of the elite class to protect Western nations from Islamic terrorism is the biggest betrayal in the West’s history. It reflects a global problem that is a synthesis of all others, and goes beyond 'Culture Wars.' It is the looming end of culture itself.”
The author reveals that Jihad and Islam are not our only problems; “The global thinkers in the elite,” he writes, “are our main enemies and jihad’s indispensable allies. The elite class, rootless, arrogant, cynically manipulative, and irreversibly jihad-friendly, has every intention of continuing to 'fight' the war on terrorism without naming our mortal enemy, without revealing his accomplices, without expelling his fifth columnists, and without ever daring to win.”
Trifkovic then has identified an elite class of post-modern managers who eschew the republican virtues and the essential metanarrative, the nomenclatura that embraces the myopic nihilism of the contingent world-imminent reality as the whole of being while refusing to acknowledge the transcendent ground of reality. Their mendacious message is, “peace, democracy, diversity, world government;” their true legacy will be chaos, disorder, disorientation, and death.
Defeating Jihad is available on Amazon.com.
robertcheeks@core.com
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