Patrick Buchanan: “Second Period Of Islamic Power” – OpEd

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For the 30 years since “The McLaughlin Group” began to run on network television, the Christmas and New Year’s shows have been devoted to the conferring of annual awards.

The first award on the Christmas show is “Biggest Winner.”

This year, clearly, one of the world’s big winner was — Islam.

For this was the year when what Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc predicted in 1938 would be the “second period of Islamic power” became manifest to all mankind.

From Morocco to Pakistan, a great awakening is occurring. And perhaps the most dramatic example of Islam rising again came in Egypt, with the fall of the 60-year-old military dictatorship.

With the ouster of Hosni Mubarak after weeks of demonstrations in Tahrir Square, the West hailed the coming of democracy.

But democracy delivered a rude shock. In the first round of voting, over 60 percent of all Egyptians cast their ballots for either the Muslim Brotherhood or the radical Islamist Nour Party of the Salafis. In the second round last week, 75 percent voted Islamist.

In Tunis and Tripoli, too, the overthrow of autocrats revealed a silent majority sympathetic to Islamism.

Recep Erdogan, the most important Turkish ruler since Kemal Ataturk, was a candidate for Time’s Man of the Year as he turned his nation’s back on a century of secularism and embraced a form of Islamism.

Muslim Uighurs seek to rip China’s largest province away from Beijing and establish an East Turkestan. Muslims in the North Caucasus seek to strip Dagestan and Ingushetia out of Russia. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are in retreat and Islamists are celebrating our eviction.

While all the world has heard of the atrocity against Muslims in Srebrenica, that world ignores the desecration and destruction of Orthodox churches and cathedrals in Kosovo and the ethnic cleansing of Serbs by the Muslim Albanians that President Clinton brought to power.

Worldwide, the Muslim population has surpassed Catholicism as the world’s largest religion, with 48 members of the U.N. General Assembly now boasting a Muslim plurality or majority.

India, with 150 million Muslims, has more than both Egypt and Iraq. Russia, with 25 million, has more Muslims than Libya and Jordan combined. China has more than Syria. Five percent of Europe is Muslim, and the numbers continue to rise.

And as with Christianity when it was surging in the 16th and 17th centuries, Islam is marked today by militancy and intolerance. From Nigeria to Ethiopia, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Christians are being made the victims of Muslim pogroms. And as with Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries, Islam is a house divided, between Shia and Sunni.

If demography is destiny, the future would seem to belong to Islam.

Consider. The six most populous Muslim nations — Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Turkey — had a total population of 242 million in 1950. By 2050, that 242 million will have quintupled to 1.36 billion people.

Meanwhile, Europe’s fertility rate has been below zero population growth since the 1970s. Old Europe is dying, and its indigenous peoples are being replaced by Third World immigrants, millions of them Muslim.

Yet there is another side to the Islamic story.

In international test scores of high school students in reading, math and science, not one Muslim nation places in the top 30. Take away oil and gas, and from Algeria to Iran these nations would have little to offer the world. Iran would have to fall back on exports of carpets, caviar and pistachio nuts.

Not one Muslim nation is a member of the G-8 economic powers or the BRIC-four emerging powers — Brazil, Russia, India, China.

In the 20th century, the world saw the rise of the Asian “tigers” — South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong. Where are the Muslim tigers?

A few years back, the gross domestic product of the entire Arab world was only equal to Spain’s. Take away oil and gas, and its exports were equal to Finland’s.

Measured by manufacturing power, the Islamic world, though more populous, cannot hold a candle to China. And while Islam was a civilization superior in some ways to the West from the 7th to 17th century, somewhere that world began to stagnate and decline.

So the question arises: If Islamism is capturing Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, and will capture other Muslim nations as the Arab Spring advances, where is the historic evidence that these Islamic regimes can convert their states into manufacturing and military powers?

Where is the evidence that Islamist regimes, such as Sudan and Iran, can deliver what their peoples demanded when they brought down the dictators?

And if, like the communist regimes of the 20th century, they cannot deliver the good life that the rebels sought when they dumped the tyrants, what will follow Islamism, when Islamism inevitably fails?

In the long run, does Islamism really own the future of the Islamic world? Or has the clock begun to run on the fundamentalists as well?

Patrick J Buchanan

Patrick J. Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.

6 thoughts on “Patrick Buchanan: “Second Period Of Islamic Power” – OpEd

  • December 20, 2011 at 12:43 pm
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    Never understood this guy-probably lived all his life in the USA and still thinks that the USA is the world. get real-try living in Jakarta or Aberstwyth, or Perth Scotland and Australia or Chiang Mei or Tasmania-then try reading history and perhaps this shallow minded ness will end!

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  • December 20, 2011 at 2:53 pm
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    Can you tell me who is supporting Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen?

    I would like you to look at the history of Iran during the Shah who was brutally killing his people or Saddam Hussein at that time when he was at war with the Islamic revolution in Iran, who supported these Muslim countries. The Taliban [Wilson’s war?]Against the Russians.

    Today, the Regime in power still exists in power although the people want their leader out-he could receive treatment in Saudi Arabia and come back again to rule the country. Amazing!! Not a squeak about Egypt’s army killing their own people after Mubarak’s departure. I think one must be fair-when you scream at Syria and Iran about treating their citizens badly, what about Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and now Egypt-not a squeak!!

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  • December 20, 2011 at 5:57 pm
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    At least they can hack into controlling drones when the ocasion presents itself.

    Has this right wing idiot ever heard of the scholars of Alexadria who in the 14th century made the basis for the rennasaince and Enlightenment?

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  • December 21, 2011 at 8:11 am
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    “Has this right wing idiot ever heard of the scholars of Alexadria who in the 14th century made the basis for the rennasaince and Enlightenment?”

    One can safely say that the Pakistanis in England, the Arabs in France and the Turks in Germany are not creating any Enlightenments – only non-European Muslim children and slums

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  • December 21, 2011 at 8:12 am
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    This article is spot on

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  • December 21, 2011 at 12:07 pm
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    Mr. Bucanan,You are living with the trinity escapasim,consumerism and capitalism and relying on the killing of the innocent muslims men,women children the elderly.And now your so called democracy has started to torture the innocent American protestes,who are looking for their rights.Wake up and think of the day of accountability.

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