Washington Times : AS u Tengah dilanda Tsunami

EDITORIAL: The Islamic tsunami

Author warns that American exceptionalism is threatened

Spoiler for berita: 

Is an Islamic tidal wave coming? "There is a plan to take over Western civilization," warns David Rubin, "and we need to recognize it for what it is." Mr. Rubin is a native New Yorker who served as mayor of the Israeli town of Shiloh. He spoke to The Washington Times about his new book, "The Islamic Tsunami: Israel and America in the Age of Obama" (2010, Shiloh Israel Press).

According to Mr. Rubin, the first wave of the tsunami is Islamic terrorism, which he says is "a strategy intended to intimidate people so they won't speak out when the second wave hits." Mr. Rubin has firsthand experience with terrorist violence; he and his 3-year-old son, "Ruby" Rubin, were wounded in a Dec. 18, 2001, terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Afterward, he established the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund dedicated to helping relieve the trauma suffered by child victims of terrorism.

The second and more threatening wave is the creeping takeover of Western political and social institutions, something Mr. Rubin calls the "silent tsunami." The spearhead of this movement is "collusion between Islamic ideologues and the far left to promote the idea of moral relativism," he said, "that all values and ideologies are equal. But they are not. Americans have never believed this."

One dangerous manifestation of this viewpoint is the fashionable intellectual movement to infiltrate Shariah law interpretations into American jurisprudence, something for which there is no need and no precedent and which is antithetical to American norms and traditions. The notion of creating a "Shariah compliant" U.S. Constitution is really a way of ending the American ideal.

Confronting the growing threat to Western civilization first involves admitting the problem exists, something President Obama not only refuses to do but strongly denies. The administration has censored any discussion of the problem in these terms within the government, preferring to focus on ill-defined "violent extremism" when the real extremist threat is only partly violent and wholly Islamicist. Mr. Rubin notes that Mr. Obama's vaunted outreach effort to the world's Muslims has been "a total failure in generating respect for the Judeo-Christian world." The president keeps reaching out, but Islam is not reaching back.

Instead of pandering to Islam in hopes that somehow the threat will go away, Mr. Rubin says the United States needs to rediscover its roots. "The United States is a country built on Biblical foundations," he said. "The United States needs to cease apologizing for what it is and where it comes from." That America is a pluralistic nation in which people from many cultures may live, work and flourish doesn't overshadow the fact that the country was founded on a specific set of ideals that enabled this pluralistic culture to take root. Islamism constitutes a mortal threat to those ideals, just as fascism and communism did for previous generations.

Despite what moral relativists believe, all belief systems are not created equal. A moral defense of the American ideal is possible and increasingly necessary. Mr. Rubin believes Americans "do not have to be ashamed" of the religious basis of the country's founding. "America is built on freedom of worship, but of a particular religious root," he says. The United States has to reclaim and defend the civilization on which it is based or risk declining into second-rate status and being overwhelmed by the tsunami steadily building on the horizon.

Terjemah:
Tulisan itu dibuka dengan kalimat yang menantang: Apakah gelombang pasang Islam telah datang? "Islam berrencana untuk mengambil alih peradaban Barat," David Rubin memperingatkan, "Dan kita perlu mengenali untuk apa itu."

Rubin adalah warga asli New York yang menjabat sebagai walikota kota Shiloh, Israel. Dia berbicara kepada The Washington Times tentang buku barunya, The Islamic Tsunami: Israel and America in the Age of Obama (2010, Shiloh Israel Press).


Menurut Rubin, gelombang pertama tsunami adalah terorisme Islam, yang menurutnya adalah "strategi dimaksudkan untuk mengintimidasi orang sehingga mereka tidak akan berbicara keluar ketika hits gelombang kedua." Rubin mengaku memiliki pengalaman langsung dengan kekerasan teroris, ia dan anaknya yang berusia 3 tahun, Ruby Rubin, luka-luka dalam serangan teroris 18 Desember 2001 di Yerusalem. Setelah itu, ia mendirikan Shiloh Israel Children's Fund yang didedikasikan untuk membantu meringankan trauma yang diderita oleh anak korban terorisme.

Gelombang kedua dan lebih mengancam adalah pengambilalihan secara halus lembaga-lembaga politik dan sosial Barat, sesuatu disebut Rubin sebagai "tsunami diam." Ujung tombak gerakan ini adalah "kolusi antara ideologi Islam dan paling kiri untuk mempromosikan ide relativisme moral," katanya, "bahwa semua nilai dan ideologi adalah sama, tapi nilai mreka tidak. Publik AS tak pernah percaya ini."

Salah satu manifestasi berbahaya dari sudut pandang ini, demikian bunyi editorial itu, adalah gerakan intelektual untuk menyusup interpretasi syariah hukum menjadi yurisprudensi Amerika, sesuatu yang tidak perlu dan tidak ada preseden dan yang bertentangan dengan norma-norma Amerika dan tradisi. Gagasan untuk menciptakan Konstitusi syariah di AS dan cara ini benar-benar merupakan cara mengakhiri idealisme Amerika.

Presiden Obama kata mereka, dengan tegas menolak. Rubin mencatat bahwa kebanggaan penjangkauan Obama dalam upaya merengkuh umat Muslim di dunia telah gagal total dalam menghasilkan penghormatan dari Yahudi-Kristen. "Presiden terus menjangkau, tetapi Islam tidak pernah terjangkau."

Rubin mengatakan Amerika Serikat perlu menemukan kembali akar-akarnya. "Amerika Serikat adalah negara yang dibangun di atas dasar Alkitab," katanya. "Amerika Serikat perlu berhenti meminta maaf."

Menurutnya, Amerika adalah bangsa yang majemuk yang dibangun pada cita-cita tertentu yang memungkinkan budaya pluralistik berakar. "Islamisme merupakan ancaman mematikan bagi cita-cita, seperti fasisme dan komunisme lakukan untuk generasi-generasi sebelumnya."

"Amerika dibangun di atas kebebasan ibadah, tetapi akar agama tertentu," katanya. Kata Rubin, Amerika Serikat harus memperoleh memperoleh kembali dan membela peradaban yang menjadi dasar atau berisiko menurun ke dalam status kelas dua dan menjadi kewalahan oleh "tsunami" yang tengah terus bangunan di cakrawala.