Popular Muslim uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt were supposed to herald an embrace of Western values. But with anti-American riots erupting throughout the Mideast, the "Arab Spring" has only worsened hostilities. What happened? According to Andrew C. McCarthy's new book â "Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy" â the notion of a new generation of Muslim Madisons holding aloft the lamp of liberty was a fable. He argues the Arab Spring actually reflects Islamic triumphalism. And the Obama administration, by promoting it, has opened Pandora's Box. As a former federal prosecutor, McCarthy helped put away Egyptian terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He now heads the East Coast branch of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The author of the best-sellers "Grand Jihad" and "Willful Blindness" talked with IBD about how the Arab Spring has turned into an Islamist winter. IBD: You argue in your book that it's an "illusion" that Islam is compatible with Western-style democracy. Please explain, because that's not at all what the president and the media have been telling us. McCarthy: Western democracy is not just popular elections. It's a culture of liberty, a way of looking at the world. Islamic society is not a liberty culture. It's based on submission to Allah's law, Shariah. In fact, it rejects the core conceit of Western democracy that the governed have a right to make law for themselves and chart their own destiny irrespective of Shariah or any other code or ideology. So the two are plainly incompatible. IBD: So, most of the "Arab Spring" Muslims don't really want "democracy" as we know it, they just want the chance, through free elections, to vote in repressive Shariah law? McCarthy: That's right. And it's worth stressing that I am not so much arguing this as relating what Islam's most significant voices themselves say. IBD: Why are our policymakers so naive? McCarthy: Since the early 1990s, the government has discouraged the study of Islamic supremacist ideologyâthe mainstream Islam of the Middle East and the belief system that inspires both jihadist terror and nonviolent methods of spreading Shariah. We are just supposed to accept as a given that Islam is a "religion of peace" that is perfectly compatible with Western democracy and U.S. constitutional principles, full stop, end of story. IBD: President Obama is providing aid to the head of Egypt's new regime, Mohammed Morsi, thinking this Muslim Brotherhood hard-liner is somehow going to be an enlightened reformer and human-rights defender. Yet there's reporting that he's already freeing dangerous terrorists locked up by his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, and may even give amnesty to exiled al-Qaida leaders who are Egyptian nationals. What are you hearing? McCarthy: Even before Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt, the transitional government was freeing terrorist leaders in an effort to appease the Islamists who, as we've seen, make up most of Egypt's population. The freeing of terrorist leaders has continued under Morsi, who has also made a priority of pressuring the U.S. to release Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheik, a global terrorist leader who is serving a life sentence in the U.S. after I prosecuted him in the early 1990s. IBD: You in fact put away the Blind Sheik as a federal prosecutor in New York. Why is his release so important to al-Qaida and the Brotherhood? McCarthy: The Blind Sheik is considered a hero to Islamists. They've been agitating for his release since the moment we locked him up in the summer of 1993. Various atrocities have been committed to try to coerce our government into transferring him to Egypt â the most notorious being the 1997 Luxor massacre, in which 62 tourists and police were killed. Morsi has just pardoned Mustafa Hamza, the terrorist leader who ordered the Luxor operation. That pretty much tells us everything we need to know about Morsi..... More http://news.investors.com/ibd-edito...y-says-obama-created-mideast-chaos.htm?p=full
This is such a telling indictment of the administration. You have to wonder why the mainstream media will not go near it, and in fact, will do everything in their power to censor it. Is it because they see any mention of obama's failures as unthinkable? or is it because they themselves cheerled the arab spring hysteria? Or is it because most of them are like obama and deeply resent america's power and influence, as well as Israels' refusal to submit to pressure? It will be interesting to see if Obama is pressed during the foreign policy debate about plans to release the blind shiek, who after all bombed the World Trade Center?
I too am curious to see if Romney will hit him hard on his completely failed policy in the ME. I hope he guts him on it.
I didn't post the title of McCarty's book but suffice it to say that the enterview title was about the coming war in the Middle East. Islamaists are making a push to spread their law and I think he is right that sooner or later it is going to boil over. Probably soon if the Great Appeaser is re-elected president.