Too Smart To Understand

Have you ever met someone that is too smart?  Someone that is so intelligent and has learned so much that they have lost all common sense and the ability to reason in real world ways?  These are the people who try to be too clever when playing logic games and completely miss the answer.

The Washington Beltway and academia are populated by people like this.  They pride themselves on being the smartest people in any room and engage in deep and convoluted analysis of every problem before them.  In addition, these people tend to be secularists, or if  they are religious, they are in the mold of the Deists of the 18th Century.  They believe that God might exist, but that he doesn't engage in life changing and world changing events.  Even worse, most of these people tend to view religion as a way for charismatic leaders to dupe the simple and keep them subservient while they operate for their own selfish motives.

For example, these people always dismiss the men who oppose abortion as wanting to keep women in slavery; and worse, dismiss the women who are pro life as submissive chattel who are afraid to be free.  If someone suggests to these enlightened intellectuals that pro life men and women believe the way they do because of strong religious conviction, that person is immediately given a look that says unenlightened opinions are not welcome.  The person is then told about the control mechanisms of a paternal society and how one must look at the underlying goals of the abortion opponents.

The enlightened ones view Muslims and Islam the same way.  First, look at how they see Osama Bin Laden's opposition to the United States having troops on Saudi soil.  The "smartest people in the room" say that it is because we are an imperialist power, propping up a corrupt regime that oppresses the people.  The simple answer, though, is that Osama opposes our presence in Saudi Arabia because we are "kafir" infidels. 

Osama wants the entire Muslim world governed in the same way that the Taliban governed Afghanistan.  You can't get any more oppressive than that.  It is completely ludicrous to think that Osama worries about "oppressed masses" in the same way that leftist academics do.  The word "Islam" doesn't mean "peace" regardless of what President Bush claimed after 9/11.  It means "submission". 

Osama opposes the United States because it is a non-Muslim power and its troops owe no allegiance to Islam.  Muslims oppose the United States because the United States supports Israel, and not because of nationalistic longings for the Palestinians.  Muslims for years have privately acknowledged that the Palestinian issue is a tool to sway the secular West.  Muslims oppose Israel because the idea of Jews in control of the Holy City of Jerusalem is an abomination to them.  The Beltway crowd and the Ivy League crowd are too smart to understand that, though.  They can't imagine religion controlling such matters.

The recent events regarding the burning of Danish embassies in the Middle East is another example of how the smart folks are incapable of getting it.  One after another, they keep saying that the publishing of sacriligious cartoons in European newspapers is only an excuse.  Many of them even blame Bush and the invasion of Iraq.  W isn't the president of Denmark.  Denmark certainly hasn't been guilty of an aggressive foreign policy against Arab peoples. "This must go much deeper," the smart people say, though.

The President of Iran publicly denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel.  The smart people try to minimize the fact that he is following his deeply held religious beliefs. 

When Muslim cleric Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiras says, “I say to you: You must look at our situation with an outlook of confidence in Allah's victory! If you help Allah [spread Islam], Allah will bring you victory. We once ruled the world and the day will come when, by god, we will rule the entire world," the elites in the West ignore it or pretend that he is merely using religious rhetoric to make a point.

When three Christian schoolgirls are murdered by Islamic radicals in Indonesia, the enlightened ones won't discuss it, or worse, try to pretend that President Bush has somehow inspired these attacks.

The bottom line is that the Beltway crowd and academia doesn't understand religion.  At least they don't understand fundamentalist type religions.  They don't understand millions of people truly feeling a cosmic duty to obey words that are considered divinely inspired.

No matter how many times the Islamist says that he is obeying the will of Allah, the smart crowd is going to look for other explanations.  No matter how many Mohammed Attas die as martyrs, seeking their reward in Paradise, the academics will try to explain away the clear evidence of religious faith in their acts of murder and suicide.

No matter how obvious it is that religion is the primary motivation in everything these people do, the secularists will be unable to see it.  I realize that this isn't a new phenomenon.  Marx wasn't the only intellectual of his day to view religion as "the opiate of the masses" or something similar.

The problem is, though, that until those fighting the Islamofascists recognize the real deep seated religious component of this evil, they will continue to misread the acts of terrorism and the statements of Middle Eastern leaders.  That could turn out to be fatal for the entire West. 

Our culture and their culture is completely incompatible.  Our dominant religions and theirs are only compatible, in their eyes, when we are subject to sharia law and accept our place as "kafir", with only the rights of second class citizens.

Compromise is impossible.  Appeasement is impossible.  God doesn't permit partial obedience.  THAT is the biggest thing that the secularists and academics don't get.