Press Release for Immediate Release – 8/14/02
The National Non-Sectarian Council of Pro-Family Activists at
www.gendercentral.com
For contact write: Rabbi David Eidensohn, Director or call 1-845-352-7267
(Used by Rabbi Eidensohn's permission on CR's Range)

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

September 11 changed the economic direction of the country from up to down. Before September 11, the economy was roaring forward, with a surplus of billions of dollars. After September 11, the economy fizzled, and has now a deficit of billions of dollars. Our country is rightfully worried about the economy. Bankruptcies abound. Major companies fire employees, close businesses, reveal the rot of "infectious greed," and thus cool investor confidence. Nobody has any idea how social security will be paid out to tens of millions of people ready to retire. The fear of the future is upon us.

Another change wrought by September 11 was our appreciation of Islam. We considered modern Islam a remnant of the past. Just ignore it, and it will vanish, we thought. However, we were wrong. We now realize that Islam is growing stronger daily, even the militant Islam. We are frightened by the trend of Arab countries to adapt anti-Western policies, to inflame their populaces against America, and to openly speak of us as Infidels and enemies. Egypt, Turkey and Jordan are the most "Western" Arab states, but their populaces are anti-American. These countries are only pro-Western because they are monarchies or military dictatorships, or, in the case of Egypt, very similar to this. Egypt has just arrested and jailed someone for being pro-democracy, an event that caused President Bush to threaten Egypt financially. If Egypt did become a democracy, it would probably become completely anti-American. We watch Islam arm itself, and find that Pakistan has the atomic bomb, and that other Arab countries are working hard to produce weapons of mass destruction. No longer can we ignore Islam's challenge to us globally and even in America. Henry Kissinger has warned that if militant Moslems get the bomb, they will not fear mutual destruction as the Soviet Union once did.

There are now three million Moslems in America, and they are increasing rapidly, even while Americans are eschewing or delaying marriage and have few children. Many blacks and even some whites are converting to Islam. Many Moslems in America are vigilant about their religion, and many hate the West.

Time's cover story in April of 2,002 and the June Rutgers's Marriage Project Study revealed that American women are in bitter trouble. Women want money, and they want babies. Babies and money don't always go together. Women professors with babies are often denied tenure. They haven't the time to make it. This change, the realization that we are destroying women, may be the most important event of the year, and it may overshadow even the September 11 bombing. If people challenged the feminist lobby, there was something of September 11 there to give them courage.

After September 11, people saw that America was living in an economic, strategic and gender bubble. This may be the most important change in recent American history.

Alan Greenspan warned years ago that the stock market was powered with "irrational exuberance," but nobody listened. The market went down after his complaint, but it rose back, raced and roared higher and higher. The new style of business was to create virtual designs and mechanisms that were not grounded in reality. Amazon.com was famous for pulling in billions while it had never made a nickel profit. People planted seeds. They had blind faith in the Internet and were sure that the future was rosy. Enron was an International Fantasy that was sustained not merely by cooking the books, but by dreams. It had no basic assets such as machines and factories. It was an abstraction. The government, Federal and state, is drowning in debt, and yet, spending goes up. If we don't get down to basics, backing the dollar with solid and real assets, maintaining government with frugal and realistic budgeting, we will end up Enron.

We now come back to the change in our attitudes about Islam. The challenge of militant Islam is very old and very clear. They want what we have. Militant clergy announce to a fanatic and enthusiastic audience: "The wives and the women of the Infidels belong to you." They mean it, and plan for it. Meanwhile, our country is anxious to avoid the appearance of bigotry.

While it is true that in recent years Islam has declined relative to its previous place in the world, this is an aberration. To understand just how powerful and dangerous Islam is, we must compare Christianity and Islam as world powers in world history. Christianity began over two thousand years ago. For centuries, it was a persecuted religion, and finally converted the Roman Emperor Constantine who issued the Edict of Milan in 313. Even so, Christianity was not the official religion of Rome, and only a few generations later did Rome became a Christian power under Theodosius. Furthermore, Christianity was always plagued with ferocious internal wars, between sects who interpreted basic doctrine differently. Even as the Turks banged on the doors of Europe, the King of France plotted with him against Charles of Spain and Germany.

Islam, on the other hand, became a world power almost immediately. Mohammad preached Islam publicly in Mecca in 613 and Islam was a mighty global power by 750, even earlier. In a series of blazing victory, Moslems conquered from Spain to India, including the Middle East and Northern Africa. Islam, from its inception, was a militant and conquering religion. One of the first things Mohammed did was to wipe out three Jewish tribes. He murdered the men of one tribe, and left the women. One wife watched as Mohammed tortured her husband to death, and then had a fate even worse.

The Ottoman Empire, founded in the thirteenth century, controlled much of the world until its defeat in the First World War. Eventually, the Turks battled their way into Europe, up to the gates of Vienna. The problems in Yugoslavia today are because of those conquests. The Crusades were unsuccessful and other than brief periods, the Moslems controlled the Middle East and much of the world, constantly threatening the West. What happened in recent times to utterly reverse this?

The deciding difference between what we will call the East and the West is that only the West created a secular culture. Jacques Barzan, the famous historian, tells us that secularists did not create secularism. In those early days when secularism began, there were almost no secularists. Warring Christian factions, in order to keep religion from destroying Europe, created secularism. Western religion caused the Hundred Years War and the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. Religion had to stop warring. The only way was to take religion out of the driver's seat, and put secularism there. Secularism is thus a product of Christian religions, and an acceptance that the rift in Christendom cannot be healed, and must be monitored by outside government. Religion in the West is therefore a menace to society if put into government. America, with its separation of church and state, is but a pure statement of Western secularism. The state remains "under G-d," but any mechanisms that can lead to violence are taken from religion. Islam has no secularism, and never surrendered religious control of government.

Therefore, in the West, values are a threat, whereas in the East, values unite government, religion and populace. The Western "vive la difference" is a sentiment commending secularism and revealing the threat of ideals. The Western fear of dogmatic authority creates fear in the home, weakens parents, and empowers children to be what they cannot naturally be. Can a civilization that fears religion and values compete with a civilization that unites government, religion and values?

Secularism is both a plus and a minus, relative to military power. The secularism of the West, enshrined upon an exhausted Europe several centuries ago, allowed for science to eventually develop without a censor. Secularism turned the energies of Western societies away from religious extremism and into materialism, technology and advanced science. Thus, in recent centuries, the West has ascended for the first time over Islam, because Islam's energies were still in religion, and its government was about religion. On the other hand, Islam was perfecting the family and fanaticism that would create a mighty cohesive force to advance Islam. The West, on the other hand, was entering a secular phase where pleasures pleased the populace, and values were suspect. The West thus moved to refrain from championing ideals, but to accept diversity, while Islam forged a cohesive program.

H.G. Wells once said that in a battle between the reasonable and the fanatic, the fanatic would win. The reasonable person has two sides to each issue, and fights for the right with half a heart. The fanatic is one hundred percent dedicated. The Turks were defeated in the First World War, and the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The West relaxed. Now, they were free of the constant fear of expanding Islam. However, the West was wrong.

Turkey was the greatest of the military countries of Islam, and it was the head of the Ottoman Empire. Only years after its defeat in WWI, Turkey secularized, and modernized. Anyone wearing religious clothing was punished. The pain of falling from a former superiority over the West rankled and pained the Arabs. The realization that technology had failed them brought the Moslem world to seek the new technology, even as it held tight, in most cases, to its religion. The obvious clash between a scientific and religious culture held Islam back, but by importing Russian, Chinese and German scientists, the Arabs armed themselves. As they did, their populations exploded, and their economies could not keep up. However, the Arabs were used to giving all for their religion, and suffering materially. They gladly watched their governments spending on tanks and jets while people lived in squalid conditions.

We now come to the third change, the perception of gender. Gender is family, and family is the cornerstone of society. The West is confused about gender. There are wars about homosexuality and feminism. Boys are raised not to be men and girls are raised not to be women. The majority of eligible adults are not married. Men are increasingly reluctant to marry. Half of those married for the first time divorce. Those who marry have very few children. Demographic factors are the mightiest weapon in a war of civilizations. Islam has no confusion about gender, marriage family or procreation. The weakness of the West regarding family will threaten all of its wealth and technological superiority.

September 11 was a shot across the bow by a civilization whose children commit suicide against the Infidel, against a civilization that has little use for children. We will not win this war until we jettison the radical gender ideas of the secularists, and return to a natural mother, at home, secure in raising a fine family, protected and adored by a husband who is a man.

We must create a natural economy, not where the masses toil as disposables, but where individuals have their own businesses and trades. We must destroy the illusions of virtual assets. We must use our scientific logic to find spirituality, in line with the trend in science in that direction, to unite the finite and the infinite. We must not fear values, and we must not fear those whose values are twisted and murderous.

Very soon, the discrepancies in Federal and state spending and the inhumanity of the global economy will compete with the natural needs of millions and billions of people who are today without power and rights. Inevitably, there will be change, even struggle. Soon, the gender struggles regarding the gay lobby, feminism, and natural family will be won or lost. In this period, too, the global disputations will come to some resolution. Some will battle with half a heart, and after destroying Saddam will leave him alone. Others will be more realistic, and will destroy those who live to destroy.

September 11 is coming. We will remember our relatives, friends and neighbors who worked diligently at their desks, contemplating return to their spouses and family, until flames and smoke engulfed them, until steel and concrete rained upon them, until the fanatics of Islam prepared for Seventy Virgins.

If they could speak to us, what would the victims say? Maybe they would ask us, "Is your blood so cheap?"