Sobre Terrorismo Islâmico: "Precisamos de Políticos que Falem como Churchill" (Rémi Brague).

Rémi Brague é meu historiador preferido. Recomendo qualquer livro dele. Brague ganhou o "prêmio nobel de teologia" do Vaticano em 2012. Brague é especialista em Islã. Ele é professor emérito da Sorbonne e da Universidade de Munique.

Ele deu uma entrevista sobre como lidar com o terrorismo islâmico.

Na entrevista, ele mencionou a necessidade de termos políticos como Winston Churchill que disse ao povo britânico enfrentando os nazistas que não tinha nada a oferecer como primeiro-ministro apenas "sangue, sacrifícios, suor e lágrimas". Isto é, preparem-se cidadãos, nós vamos para a guerra.

Pouca gente sabe e Brague não menciona mas Churchill também comentou sobre o Islã. Duas frases de Churchill são conhecidas em se tratando de Islã:

- "Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world". (traduzindo: Indivíduos muçulmanos podem ter qualidades esplêndidas, mas a influência da religião paraliza o desenvolvimento social daqueles que a seguem. Nenhuma influência é mais retrograda no mundo do que essa religião).

- "Islam is a dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog" (Islã é tão perigoso em um homem como a raiva em um cachorro).

Brague também deixou claro que o objetivo do terrorismo islâmico é o estabelcimento da Sharia globalmente. E ressalta que perdoar os terroristas não os desarmam.  Os cristãos devem lutar, devem lutar com coragem, mas sem ódio.

Vejamos parte da entrevista de Brague, publicada no First Things.

“WITH COURAGE, BUT WITHOUT HATRED”
AN INTERVIEW WITH A FRENCH HISTORIA
by Rémi Brague
7 . 20 . 16

What accounts for the fact that our political leaders, from Francois Hollande on down, have a hard time naming our enemy? There is a strange panicky fear of conflating Islam with Islamism. Why?

Do we have any political leaders? Is there a pilot on this airplane? It would be a pleasant surprise to discover that anyone is in control.

The fear of putting a name to the enemy goes back a long way. Who, before the Berlin Wall came down, dared to give a true name to Marxist-Leninism or the Soviet Union? People preferred to mumble vaguely about “ideologies.” The plural was a convenient fog.

That happens again today when people talk about “religions.” In the same way, some people prefer to use the acronym “DAESH,” which only Arabic scholars understand, rather than saying “the Islamic State,” because the adjectival form refers us back to “Islam.” And there is no true dividing line between Islam and Islamism. It is a matter of degree, not of kind. That is why it is necessary truly and firmly to distinguish between on the one hand, Islam, with all its inflections and levels of intensity, and on the other hand real flesh-and-blood Muslims. The legitimate refusal to conflate Islam with Islamism entails distinguishing these concrete people from the religious system that prevails in their country of origin.

The feeling of speechlessness and of distress produced by the outrage in Nice (weaponizing a truck, killing children)—is it a mark of a culture that has lost its sense of tragedy, its awareness of evil and of death?

People say that we are at war. But no one has the courage to do as Churchill did, and tell us that he has nothing to offer us except blood, sweat, and tears. Since the end of the War into which Churchill led his country, there have been seventy years of internal peace and prosperity. That has become our normal, and we think of it as our right, as a fact that goes without saying. War, famine, and so on is what happens to other people. Our proverb tells us that “happy people have no history.” But we have not made ourselves any happier by imagining that we have escaped from history.

These outrages are intended to render us speechless, and the media giving it non-stop coverage are helping them achieve that aim. We forget that violence is principally a means, and that we need to take our eyes off the violence itself and ask what it was aiming to achieve. The aim is to establish throughout the world a legal system that is some form of Sharia and that legislates the behavior of individuals, of families, of the economy, and in the long run the whole political system. We are fixated on the spectacular aspects of the outrages, on the decapitations and such like which the Islamic State lays before us with so much care and skill. But all of that is distracting us from the real question, which is that of the purpose of these things. This end could be achieved by means that are more discreet but equally effective, such as throwing culpability onto the enemy, social pressure, incessant propaganda warfare, every kind of trick.

Violence is perhaps a means, without necessarily entailing much action. All it takes is a menace great enough to force the adversary to surrender without a fight. In one way, using physical violence could perhaps be an error and be counter-productive, to the extent that it could provoke the enemy into an uprising. It would be smarter to tranquillize people with nice words or to show one's power without using it.

....

What can Christian faith bring to these new times of war? One has the impression that forgiveness of enemies is not only impossible but counter-productive.

Many people imagine that the forgiveness of wrongs, and even Christ's fantastically paradoxical demand that we love our enemies, means that we must refuse to see that we have any enemies. A German proverb says, “The most pious man cannot live in peace if that is not what his wicked neighbor wants.” Forgiveness of enemies is never counter-productive. But we need to see what it does produce. It does not disarm our enemies' hatred, as Tolstoy imagined. That only happens once in a while. It happened with Gandhi. But he was dealing with the English, who, even though they would do much to safeguard their interests and their power (as we all would), had no ideology. It takes an ideology to convince oneself that the opposed camp are not just our adversaries, but “aristocrats” (Robespierre), a class opposed to progress (Marx), “insects” (Lenin), an inferior race (Hitler), or, in relation to those “on the side of God” (Koran V.56), “the worst of animals” (Koran VIII.22).

When forgiving one's enemies really overthrows people, it’s by the conversion of our own heart, the refusal to get caught up in the cycle of revenge, in the escalation to the extremes of violence. The person who is ready to forgive will ask himself first whether the one who calls himself his enemy and who wants enmity has any reason for doing so. He will compel him to put things to right, without issuing blame. He will fight, because he must fight, and he will do so with courage, but without hatred.