The U.S. gave extremist Muslims throughout the world a psychological boost when it allowed the Taliban to take control of Kabul just days before the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Now, all nations are threatened even more than after 9/11. The whole debacle is also a good reminder of the inadequacy of a “boots-on-the-ground” approach to religion inspired terror.
On August 15, 2021, almost twenty years after 9/11 and the launch of the “war on terror,” we in India celebrated our Independence Day when images invaded our screens, revealing the return to power of the Taliban and a resurgent Islamic terrorism.
Taliban leadership was quick to declare that their victory in Kabul was not the end, but the beginning. That’s proved true. The Taliban vision for the world is clear. It is a vision to install Islamic rule globally via their narrow interpretation of Shariah law.
For those of us who live in the vicinity of Afghanistan, and for the Middle East, the events of August 15, 2021 are as insidious as September 11, 2001.
The question is no longer when, but where will the next attack occur. India will be among the targets.
The U.S. bungling of its exit gave victory to Taliban extremists, and gave a green light for religious terrorists everywhere that could change the geo-political map of the world.
The lack of U.S. leadership and failure in Afghanistan come as no surprise. Afghanistan humbled the British Empire and the mighty Russians — add the U.S. Empire to the list.
The “war on terror” as devised by Western nations was faulty from the beginning. Destroying terrorists and terror camps was one thing, but foreign occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was never going to work.
The war on Islamic terrorism cannot be won by resorting to brute military force and technological prowess alone because of the universal religious impulse that drives extremists.
Muslim extremists and the Taliban are willing to die for their religious ideology. Their highest religious honor is reserved for martyrs. Violence and death are divinely sanctioned.
Today, the brutal killing of Afghanis aligned with foreign forces is continuing unabated. Afghani women and girls who want education and freedom face a tortuous and violent future. It is back to the dark ages for most Afghans, due to the Taliban’s religious fervor for their brand of Islam.
Western ideology is no match for religious extremism. Religious extremists like the Taliban, satisfy a universal religious impulse in people, even when their religion involves death, destruction, and violence.
One of two global tragedies revealed on 8/15 is that the moderate Muslim majority who want peace may not be prepared to die for their convictions. Their paralysis is evidenced by silence and fear. Fear is powerful just consider the silenced voice of Salman Rushdie a generation ago.
Until the moderate Muslim majority are willing to fight for their own freedoms and fundamental rights, change is not possible.
The second global tragedy is the blinding effect of the West’s rejection of the religious faith that created its foundational values. Who would lay down their lives for Western culture today? Most in the West do not even know where their freedoms and prosperity originate from.
The West developed and prospered through a foundation of faith and reached a high mark by a process of self correction catalyzed by its submission to the power of its values. Western culture was never perfect, but at least its foundational values kept it on track. Western culture originated in a universal religious impulse satisfied by a religious faith that compelled people to love God with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves.
Rejecting humanity’s universal religious impulse is blindly self-destructive and western culture’s vogue self-hatred is ultimately suicidal.
In 2021, western virtues are unrecognizable for much of the world.
To outsiders, Western culture today is represented by crass materialism, hedonism, self-worship, destruction of the family, refusal to keep commitments, and the pursuit of personal happiness without care for the happiness of others or for the majority poor in the world. It’s all made worse by an obsessive and often irrational self-critique.
Western politics or military might will not defeat Islamic or any other violent religious terrorism alone. It will take Western values and Western culture, along with the religious impulse in which it developed; but does anyone in the west believe in them any longer?