Extremes, Extremists, Extremism Quotes
The origin of the quotation is with Philosopher George Santayana--{634038}
This quotation is noteworthy because it is typical with every politically extremist group. Negotiation and compromise are unacceptable and even dangerous to them. Almost a century after this quotation the Tea Party was making the same kind of statements.
Ahmad denied saying this although the reporter who wrote the original story insists that he did and she wrote it down at the time. Ahmad did not deny the statement when it first appeared in the Fremont Argus, but only did so several years later.
This is a very important quotation. It is often cited by preventive war hawks to show that deterrence might not be a sufficient inhibitor against an extreme ideological enemy. In this case it was political philosophy that would make the enemy willing to have the majority of its population die to reach the ideological objective. More fearful is the prospect of the Theocracy of Iran where the leaders may believe that nuclear jihad is a commandment of God. More critical is the Islamic theology which says that if most of the Iranian Muslim population die in a nuclear war that they start all those people will be martyrs and immediately go to God’s Paradise. Thus, even the dead Muslims are not victims and the nonbelievers should be killed. For extremely fanatical Muslims nuclear war can be a logical and holy course of action.
The dramatic expression was actually not original with bin Laden. It emerged throughout Islamic history regarding the “enemies” of the time.
The Nazis and most of the Arabs were allies in WWII. The Jews of Palestine—although they were opposed to many of the British policies regarding Palestine—were active in the Allied cause contributing units to the British Army. Although the Germans were brutal to civilians, murdering millions, they refrained from public pronouncements or exhortations to kill civilians in most cases. The Arabs did not. The Mufti was actually given the rank of General in the Nazi SS and had his own SS unit. In this despicable exhortation he actually uses a concept and wording from the Koran. See {584355}. This quotation is important in that it refutes a common claim by some Palestinians that it was only the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust and the post war Jewish Refugee problem and that the Palestinians had to bear the price rather than place Israel in Europe. This quotation and the other by the Grand Mufti prove that Palestinians were not only complicit in persecution of Jews but took a leadership and advocacy role.
Ironically, the fascist organizations that did form in America did just that. The American Firsters claimed patriotism motivated them to support Hitler and Father Coughlin and his fascist movement was his own version of Christianity—one which the Roman Catholic Church was so opposed to that they prohibited him from appearing on the radio with his virulent preaching. He was one of several who “hijacked” American Christianity not unlike the way radical Muslims would later in the century hijack Islam.
This was the intellectual basis of the famous speech by Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race—see related quote.
Since the early 20th century, conservatives have nominated candidates who were ideologically pure but so extreme that they offended too much of the electorate to get elected. Buckley advocated weeding these candidates out, His principle became very material in the early 21st century when the conservative fundamentalist Tea Party unseated strong conservative incumbents in primary elections in favor over more extreme conservative candidates who could not win general elections.
