September 11th was a horrendous incident. The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world. As extensive as the damage to property and loss of life was, it does not compare with the damage done by cultural liberals and by liberal internationalists who seek to extend the hegemony of secular and liberal imperialism over the nations of the world. In many places around the world, secular liberalism has failed, and the people living in such societies now face an unprecedented assault on their civil liberties and property rights, while in other nations, people face the ill effects of liberal interventionism in political and cultural affairs.
Although the events of September 11th have been seriously lamented in the press, there must also be a serious inquiry into the causes and perpetrators of this event. If such an analysis can be faced with honesty, then it should come as no surprise that there are political and cultural dimensions that contributed, and indeed justified the attacks on the United States as a cultural and a political identity. The political dimension is exemplified through internationalism and interventionism, which has been the prime motivator for the dislike of the United States in not only Muslim countries, but many European, Latin American, and Asian nations. The cultural dimension is exemplified by organizations such as the ADL, SPLC, American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, and by individuals like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. To a lesser extent, it is also represented by the mainstream media, by Hollywood, and by the American music industry.
What could have caused the monotheistic affirmation of “Allahu Akbar!” to ring through the streets of the Muslim world? The fact is that had America not been a hedgemon, and merely been a small decadent state, it would be ignored by the rest of the world, including the Islamic world. The cultural left was responsible, since the end of World War Two, for the deluge of decadence and immorality in every sphere of human life, and combined with the interventionist tendencies, the deluge overflowed the boundaries of America comparable only to the pagan barbarity of the ancient Gauls, Celts, or pre-Islamic Arabs.
On the social scale, although they would seldom admit it for fear of criticizing a “non-white” people, liberals are violently opposed to the way of life in Muslim countries. While some of these liberals became the so-called “neoconservatives,” others stayed liberal and joined the ranks of the media, or became members of radical activist organizations. Furthermore, many leftists sympathized with Israel, which in its initial stages was a leftist state, as exemplified by the kibbutz and its distribution of labor. The left, in fact, hates the socially conservative atmosphere of many cultures, including the Islamic culture of the Middle East, and the Confucian culture of China. To them, those cultures represent something which is totalitarian, barracks-like, and patriarchal. Indeed, in the early 20th century, when strong Nationalist and Populist movements held sway in Europe, many on the right looked for a potential ally in Islam, and the Traditionalists also thought highly of the Islamic system. Evola, for instance, praised Islam, saying that it contained “a traditional completeness,” while Guenon and others converted to Islam. On the other side of the spectrum, leftists like Orianna Fallaci, were deriding Islam for not abiding by the standards of Western leftism.
The extensive network of media, non-profit organizations, politicians (both “Democratic” and “Republican”) are crusading today not for Christianity, but for secularism, and herein lies the problem. Although there have been wars between Islamic and Christian powers in the past, the conflict can be in no way compared to these conflicts. From Hollywood, where movies containing drug use and sexual perversions are rampant, to the promotion of gay rights by the American embassy in Pakistan, to non-profit organizations which distributed contraceptives to Muslim girls, values which are not only anti-Muslim, but anti-Christian, are being promoted extensively by political elites. These same political elites have opened up American borders to millions of illegal immigrants, begun unjustified wars, promoted racial conflicts for their own gain, and have undoubtedly done irreversible harm to American society at home by promulgating the welfare state.
In 1925, decades before September 11th, Rene Guenon wrote the following:
To be resolutely ‘anti-modern’ is not to be in any way ‘anti-Western’; on the contrary, it only means making an effort to save the West from its own confusion. In any case, no Easterner who is faithful to his own tradition would view matters differently, and it is certain that there are far fewer opponents of the West as an attitude, than of the West as it has become identified with modern civilization.
There are those today who speak of a ‘defense’ of the West, which is odd, to say the least, considering that it is the West, as we shall see later on, that is threatening to submerge the whole of mankind in the whirlpool of its own confused activity…
The Islamic critique of American culture, then, cannot be dismissed as a mere “hatred of freedom,” and though it does not always match the Traditionalist outlook, is similar enough to give it some merit, and cannot be dismissed so easily. Many Americans can agree that American culture is increasingly decadent and vulgar at all levels. They would also agree that since the 60′s, there has been a cultural clash between the cultural left and right, which witnessed the destruction of the family, the secularization of society, and the eroding of human morals. If this was disturbing to American conservatives, it must also be even more deeply disturbing to devoutly religious Muslims who not only have to endure the destruction of their homes by the American military, but also see their way of life threatened by relentless cultural assaults from left-wing organizations.
It is unfortunate that today America has not learned from the mistakes of the past. In the end, both Muslims and Westerners face a common threat: the threat of liberalism and globalism, both of which are intertwined with each other: liberalism is like a virulent disease, and globalism the vector that carries it. Liberals must not only apologize to their fellow Americans for September 11th, but they should apologize to the world for the cultural damage they have done prior to that incident, and the post-September 11th environment. Meanwhile, America as a whole needs to not only cease and desist from its entangling alliances, dreams of nation-building, and interventionist politics, but needs to reassess its cultural orientations. The people who are interest in self-preservation should join Muslims in condemning the global moral degeneracy that is produced by liberalism.
