The Ruxted Group

There is a geopolitical and social expression: The Islamist Crescent. While Muslims exist quite peaceably throughout the world, most conflicts are found within this war-torn Crescent which stretches from Morocco, on the Atlantic, across North Africa, through the Middle East, and West Asia and up to Central Asia. It also extends down from West Asia to include parts of Thailand, all of Malaysia and Indonesia and parts of the Philippines in the Pacific. The Islamist Crescent contains the battlefields in this new, world war and the enemy’s secure home bases. The current hot spots include: Israel/Palestine, Pakistan/Afghanistan, Sudan, the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf and, of course Iraq. Within the crescent various groups struggle for supremacy between each other, while united in hatred against the liberal, secular west.

There are other fronts. Europe is facing increased unrest and violence related to socio-economic problems which fester in a large and fast growing Muslim underclass. North America has been the site of the worst of the al Qaeda attacks: New York on 11 September 2001. The same site, the World Trade Center, was an al Qaeda target in 1993. The US was also a target overseas, e.g. Dar al Salaam and Nairobi (1998) and the USS Cole (2000, in Aden). Several suspected ‘home-grown’ Muslim terrorists are currently awaiting trial in Toronto.

It is important to emphasize that the new world war is not a resumption of the Crusades of antiquity, pitting Christendom against Islam. The two religions are not at war. This is, rather, a clash between Western, liberal, democratic, secular beliefs and various specific movements that want to bring back barbarity. As Dr. Wafa Sultan, an American immigrant from Syria, expressed it, this is “a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.”¹

Barbarity is, on the face of it, a harsh word; yet what else can one call a social system invokes a death penalty for matters of fashion -- in this instance, the execution of women, in public, for being found outside of their homes without the full burka?² What else can we call a social system that uses indiscriminate car bombs in civilian neighbourhoods in efforts by Sunni to terrorize Shia, and Shiites to terrorize Sunni? What else do we call groups which videotape the executing – by slow beheading – of a person for the proclaimed 'guilt' of being born a Jew? If Human Rights Watch,² a group not known for support of US actions, declares an Islamist group guilty of war crimes (as it did in mid April), should we not describe the war criminals as barbaric?

Barbarism is a harsh word, but it is the right one. Muslims are not barbarians; not all Muslims support the ‘jihadists’ and their goal of converting the whole world to their medieval paradise. It is likely that a majority of Muslims dread a return to such a theocracy. The methods of Islamist extremists, however, are undeniable examples of 21st Century barbarism.

This new world war is not just a clash of arms, either. There are real, deadly battles in Iraq and Afghanistan – and here Ruxted takes pain to remind readers that these two conflicts are not the same; they started for different reasons and are pursued with different aims. It is true that there are some common ‘players’ on each ‘team’ in each theatre but the two conflicts are quite separate and distinct. Other battlefields include:

• The banks and bourses in London, New York, Paris and Toronto, as well as the basements of mosques in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver where Muslims give money to what they believe are charitable causes but which, too often, are fronts for our enemies;³

• The pages of our daily papers and the alternative press and the Internet where both sides work assiduously, and often covertly, to spread their message. That is precisely what Ruxted is doing, right now, albeit not covertly. We make no attempt to hide our intentions, which is to provide information such that all readers, regardless of faith, can make informed decisions;

• The classrooms – in universities, high schools and even elementary schools, secular and religious, where propaganda is disseminated under the guise of liberalism. Our enemies utilize the naiveté or anti-Western predisposition of our academics to create a vision of desperation as a sop to their barbarity. Such professors and teachers quote the propaganda, just as their fathers and grandfathers used to quote the 'party line'; students absorb the lesson and as a result lend support to the overt and covert actions of the enemy.

None of these battlefields are new – we ‘fought’ on all of them in 1939/45. Like that world war, this one is also a ‘total’ war – for hearts, minds, treasure, lives and will.

Ruxted understands that there are many Canadians who object to this war, indeed to any war, on principle. Yet it appears that the opposition to our participation in this war is based in too large a part on a diet of flawed or absent information. This is hardly the recipe of informed opinion.

The Ruxted Group affirms that we are fighting a new war, different in type from the 20th century's ‘great wars’ and the long Cold War, too. Although different, this new war is also a world war and it is a total war. As we said last week, it is also a ‘good’ war, a just and necessary war which pits civilization, as we understand it, against barbarism – worthy of Canada and her soldiers' commitment and sacrifice.

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1. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html?ei=5090&en=d13886daba5e586f&ex=1299733200
2. Human Rights Watch http://hrw.org/wr2k6/wr2006.pdf
3. Center for Contemporary Conflict http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Jan/comrasJan05.asp