Marx/Lenin and Mohammed have something in common, violence, terror, killing,
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Thus both Marx and Mohammed are advocates of apocalyptic totalitarianism. For both, “nothing is private,†as in Lenin’s famous dictum. The state, whether under the Communist “dictatorship of the proletariat†or Islamic Shari’a law, has the moral right and duty to control every aspect of an individual’s life.
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Similarities include the idea of peace (we rule, you submit), totalitarianism (all private matters are the state's concern), violence as a means to power (ends justify means), and class division (proletariat vs. bourgeois and believers vs. infidels). And this is just for starters. The rest is in Jack’s article which requires a subscription. It’s a thought provoking read.
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economic mismanagement. Islam is hot on wealth distribution, but feeble on wealth creation, presumably reflecting the fact that Islam is parasitic on the wealth creation of others.
This was true right from the start. Mohammed and his companions got their wealth by war and plunder. These days Muslims are dirt poor unless they get their wealth from an accident of geology, which would be useless to them without Western expertise, or from Western aid, or, if they live in the West, often, given high unemployment rates, from Western welfare.
Marxism was pretty useless a generating wealth too - wealth creation is inhibited when there are no incentives for individual effort.
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The Arab-Islamic culture still can't get the idea of wealth creation. Tom Palmer of the CATO Institute mentions on his blog that when he was in Iraq a few months back he tried to explain to the Iraqis about wealth creation, the need for property rights, and the government required for private production. They kept telling him that they had oil and thus they are rich. He heard that over and over again.
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http://victorhanson.com/articles/ibrahim090405.html..............................................
The parallels are frightening – even more than Hanson implies. Consider the German defeat after WWI. During Hitler’s rise he made much of the fact that Germany surrendered with its military intact and without an invasion of the homeland. Hitler and others believed the military wasn’t defeated but betrayed by those above (and, of course, the Jews.) In other words, Germany was defeated by WWI but not defeated enough – this took WWII. The devastation of WWII was thorough. It was apocalyptic and caused a complete loss of faith in the Germanic nationalistic philosophy.
If we assume this parallel, the Arab story is as follows: with the defeat of the Arab military in the ’67 Israeli War, secular Arab socialism and nationalism were discredited (see Bernard Lewis.) Muslims looked to their history and found glory in the rise of Islam – which conquered most of the known world in its first century. The defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan was further evidence that authentic Arab tradition – Islam – is the way to go.
But what of the current defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq at the hands of the American led coalition? Once again, Islam wasn’t defeated but stabbed in the back. The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan (with the quisling Musharaf) and the Shiites in Iraq have stabbed the jihadists in the back.
The jihadists aren’t done. They are defeated by not defeated enough. If the parallel to Germany is similar (and one can make a similar parallel to Japan), the implication is that only an apocalyptic defeat with bring a complete loss of faith. Does the parallel hold completely? I’d like to hear Hanson’s answer.
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