Islam, Power and the USA
Mateen Elass writes:
As a religion, Islam operates in the currency of power. Its god is Allah, the god of sovereign power, who commands all other powers (including human will) to submit before his throne. His followers shout ‘Allahu akbar,’ meaning literally ‘Allah is greater,’ a triumphalist challenge against any other powers – this is a religious twist on the boast, “Anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you…” 
So Muslims are bred to see the world in terms of power struggles, and are quick to note who has the power in a particular setting, and how to plot to accrue power over those presently ascendant, all for the sake of Islam. Since Islam is the religion of Allah, and Allah holds all the cards, Islam should be on a trajectory to rule the planet by overcoming all non-Muslim centers of power.
As the greatest of these non-Muslim centers, the USA has been labeled “the Great Satan,” i.e., the greatest earthly enemy standing in the way of Islamic world domination. Since Muslims know and respect power, even that of an enemy, the USA until recently had been safe from serious challenge by the Muslim world, knowing that any full-scale assault against America would result in a massive use of force to protect this nation and eliminate the aggressors.
However, this present administration has sent a different message to the Muslim world. Thinking that it is showing friendship and respect by pulling back our influence and presence in the Muslim world, the Obama administration, through meekness and indecision, has instead conveyed to the power-brokers of Islam that the USA has become weak and ineffectual before the challenges of Islam.
This is the central reason behind the recent actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in first capturing and detaining American sailors, then in photographing them in positions of surrender and helplessness, then awarding medals of valor to its own military for this “great victory” over America, and then recreating the humiliation of these US sailors by releasing pictures of a tearful seaman and by play-acting the event before its citizenry in yesterday’s 37th anniversary parade marking the birth of the Iranian revolution. The servile words of John Kerry and Barack Obama complimenting the Iranians on their magnanimity and generosity toward our captive soldiers completed the picture of a one-time world power now kneeling before a would-be world tyrant.
Our present foreign policy, projecting weakness and docility in the eyes of Muslim leaders and terrorists, is doing more to create global instability and chaos than the acts of any rogue regime or terrorist band. America must reclaim her role as a world superpower willing to flex her muscles strongly enough to dissuade any groups probing for weaknesses in resolve or might. Only then will the power-brokers of Islam retreat from engagement, watching and waiting for future opportunities to enslave the world for Allah.