The War Against Civilisation

By Melanie Phillips
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
http://www.melaniephillips.com/
Sunday, 30th November 2008


Prashanth Vishwanathan for The New York Times

Police watched the Taj Mahal Hotel, set ablaze by terrorists, in Mumbai on Thursday.

The atrocities in Mumbai have left reporters and commentators floundering for explanations. Why India? Was this a local terrorist group or al Qaeda? Why single out Americans and Brits if they also targeted Indians in the railway station? Why attack some obscure Jewish organisation? And so on.

They are floundering because they still just don’t get it. The atrocities demonstrated with crystal clarity what the Islamist war is all about – and the western commentariat didn’t understand because it simply refuses to acknowledge, even now, what that war actually is. It does not arise from particular grievances. It is not rooted in ‘despair’ over Palestine. It is not a reaction to the war in Iraq. It is a war waged in the name of Islam against America, Britain, Hindus, Jews and all who refuse to submit to Islamic conquest.

The Mumbai atrocities told us very clearly a number of things.

The Islamists want to murder as many Americans, Brits, Hindus and Jews as possible. That is because they are waging all-out war against civilisation.

They singled out Americans, Brits and Indians in the financial heart of India to break the ever-more important strategic alliance between India and the west.

They went to some lengths in addition to single out a centre for observant Jews. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were murdered not because of Palestine but simply because they were Jews. That is because hatred of Jews as Jews is fundamental to the Islamists’ hatred of the west – and of Israel.

The Islamists showed a degree of organisation and co-ordination which are more akin to commando raids by an army than acts of terrorism.

They have the capacity not merely to commit mass murder but to cause mortal damage to a country’s economy.

If they can do this in Mumbai, they can do it in London or other British cities; the infrastructure of Islamist terror is more extensively developed in Britain, and the authorities more paralysed in the face of what they have allowed to grow in their midst, than anywhere else in the west.

And yet still the west is scratching its head...