Yousef Ibrahim is a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and former energy editor for The Wall Street Journal. He is now a political risk consultant based in the United Arab Emirates and New York. And he is a truth teller who ought to be invited - among other places - to Seattle's Town Hall to add some balance to the next smugly condemnatory Leftist-dominated panel discussion on the role of the U.S. and The West in battling global Islamicist terrorism. In the New York Sun, Ibrahim lays it out in an op-ed titled, "The West Needs To Fight Islamofascists With Big Ideas" (hat tip - Melanie Phillips). As the anniversary of 9-11 approaches, Ibrahim's sweeping proposal deserves serious discussion.

Ibrahim argues that G-8 member nations, NATO and EU parliaments can and must hasten the "obliteration of an ideology that reduces Islam to a cult of mass murder and suicide...by withholding (from hard and soft national allies of Islamicists) Western commerce, the Internet, arms, machinery and know-how....Imagine a ban on weapons and technology, on Microsoft and IBM, on Boeing, Ilyushin transport planes and Airbus spares.." Ibrahim continues:

Draconian sanctions such as these should be applied in unison with Russia and China and clearly framed within the U.N. code. Islamic so-called moderate or client states including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Indonesia, among others, as well as enemies such as Iran, should be provided with a yardstick to define the dismantling of the infrastructure and software of terror at home — in mosques, in schools, in theocratic institutions, and inside government itself. That will demand total elimination of the madrassa rote systems, the restructuring of religious teachings, and the outlawing of political groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopt religion as political vehicles.

In the West itself, the last vestiges of tolerance toward Islamic fundamentalism must be removed. Laws targeting extremist speech, Islamic dress, storefront unregulated mosques, and the traffic of immigrant Muslims who do not speak the language nor share the values of freedom must surface in the legal codes of America, Europe, and Australia. The West must clearly process the fact that it is facing an existential threat to its core values, and it cannot be shy about installing tools of war in its democratic practices....the people responsible for those burning towers in Manhattan were only small filaments of a spider's web encompassing millions of Muslims. Beyond towers, their aim is a freeze on freedom, democracy, and secularism — foundations that took centuries to develop, requiring the defeat of communism in order to prevail.

Long before 9/11, jihadist adherents and sponsoring secular states, even communist states, had been stretching cobwebs into the suburbs of London and Islamabad, the streets of Baghdad and Kabul, the valleys between Syria and Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, and inside Western Europe and across Africa. Enablers include our closest allies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, tribal leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the merchants of Dubai and Kuwait, all the way into the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and Asia. So, just imagine a world where the likes of Muammar Gadhafi of Libya, President Chavez of Venezuela, Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, Fidel Castro of Cuba, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, along with Hosni Mubarak and his sons in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood movements of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and carbon copies in Indonesia, Pakistan, and across Asia all join hands. This is the perspective that the larger strategy requires. It's the big picture.

The strategies advanced by Ibrahim dovetail with objectives highlighted in a section titled "Strategic Vision For The War On Terror," within the National Strategy For Combatting Terrorism that President George W. Bush released earlier this week. The Bush plan says that regarding terrorists, we must "cut off their sources of funding and other resources they need to survive," and must facilitate "the creation of a global envirnment inhospitable to violent extremists and all who support them." Great vision, but empty words - unless meshed with dead-serious implementation of strategies such as those highlighted above by Ibrahim. Bush is not in a position globally to lead such a charge. A President Rudy Giuliani would be, however.

For general background purposes, here are a few additional op-eds by Ibrahim, well worth reading:

"Will The Mideast Bloom?" (2005, Washington Post);

"To My Arab Brothers: The War With Israel Is Over - And They Won. Now Let's Finally Move Forward" (2006, Jewish World Review);

"Finally, It Seems, Iran Has Overplayed Its' Hand" (2006, USA Today);

"The Road To Beirut Leads Straight To Damascus" (2006, New York Sun).

TECHNORATI TAGS: TERRORISM, YOUSEF IBRAHIM, TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, SANCTIONS, ASSIMILATION, MADRASSAS, SEATTLE, GEORGE W. BUSH, STRATEGIC VISION FOR THE WAR ON TERROR, RUDY GIULIANI, G8, EUROPEAN UNION

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 7, 2006 11:31 AM

---

---

---