How Jihad Will Be Defeated, Observation #314

I followed the trackbacks to some of the posts linking to my post You and What Army, and found a fascinating blog: Jihad of Umar.  According to his About page, Umar is apparently a white convert to Islam, a boxing fan and a promoter of some sort, and has a lot of music and movies he likes and dislikes.

I don’t know the man and his politics seems unclassifiable to me — although based on this post, it is clear that he doesn’t know the first thing about Mark Steyn who is anything but alarmist in tone… which makes his alarm-ringing so effective.  But I digress.

The point is that this observation is not about Umar the man or Umar the blogger.  It is, however, about the giant custom image header Umar has.  I can’t link to it, so I invite you to visit his blog to see it.  In the image header you see a collage of photos including a picture of Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, boxers, and  the pre-conversion Nation-of-Islam Malcolm X.

Now, I don’t know jackshit about Islam as a religion, but what little I know suggests to me that nothing in its tenets supports gangsta rap with its glorification of hedonism — the bling, the drinking, the drugs, the whoring, and so on.  Granted, hypocrite jihadis have been known to do all sorts of whoring and drug-snorting before going to blow themselves and a bunch of kids up, but the doctrines and teachings of Islam apparently are extremely moralistic and makes the Puritans look like Hugh Hefner by comparison.  After all, isn’t one of the excuses Islamists use to justify blowing up innocent civilians that the West is decadent, corrupt, and immoral?

So Umar isn’t — at the very least — a devout Wahhabi Muslim.  He isn’t, I don’t think, a devout Muslim at all actually if he’s all about idolizing Biggie Smalls and Tupac.  What he is, it seems, is someone who is projecting a certain image to the world — an image of toughness, of a macho manliness, and of danger.  Violence or hints thereof pervades that header image.  Even the intentionally inflammatory title of his blog — Jihad of Umar — is suggestive of violence in our current environment.

I think this is great.

Why is it great? Because this is ultimately how we will defeat jihad.

Oh, our military and our intelligence services and our 4-man CIA assasination teams will do their part.  But culturally, when jihad becomes just another attitude, just another accessory in the post-modern self-invention of the Western Man, just a fashion statement, we will have won the war.  Mainstream Christianity is there already — pop stars wear the crucifix as jewelry, not as a religious statement.  Umar is doing the same with jihad; so he’s just ahead of the curve, that’s all.

We have Hollywood actors and actresses walking around with pro-communist paraphernalia all the time, whether it is a T-shirt of Che Guevara or a bag adorned with Maoist symbols.  It’s just a fashion statement to them, and to their followers.  I know conservatives rightfully condemn these pampered brainless babies for their bad taste in glorifying these murderous bastards, but I really doubt the average teenager in Dubuque, IA is looking at a picture of Cameron Diaz decked out in Maoist gear then thinks about joining the local chapter of the Shining Path.  No, everyone knows that communism is dead; it is therefore safe to make it into a fashion statement.

When people like Umar can put a picture of Osama bin-Laden on his blog and not draw a huge reaction — except from those of us who think that’s just incredibly bad taste — then we will have won.  Because for that to happen, jihad and related concepts will have been discredited in everyone’s eyes.  Young wannabe tough guys will hang around street corners with their Malcolm X baseball caps, Tupac Shakur t-shirts, listening to gangsta rap from Notorious B.I.G., smoking a blunt, drinking a 40, with a keffiyeh wrapped around their necks, and a Islamic Jihad varsity jacket from some “edgy” urban label’s Spring 2012 collection.  And old-fashioned guys like me driving by them will shake our heads and mutter, “Kids these days….”  That’s what victory looks like.

Frankly, our problem as a society and as a world today is that Islam is no mere fashion statement… yet.  Some of the commenters on Umar’s blog make the same point — they call him an apostate, an embarrassment to Islam, so on and so forth.  Islam isn’t there yet.  It’s still too alive, too vital, too forceful to become a mere fashion accessory.

But thanks to the efforts of guys like Umar, it’s headed that way.

-TS