What Hezbollah Wants...

An important article by Robert Fulford of the National Post.

But Hezbollah wants an Islamic world and believes such a world to be worth killing and dying for. Recently, that way of organizing society has crept into another corner of the globe. After a 29-year separatist struggle, the Indonesian province of Aceh won the right to adopt Shariah criminal law, becoming the first region of that country (a theoretically secular state) with that privilege. The radicals have beaten the moderates, and now the moderates face a dreadful future.

In Aceh, roaming Taliban-like squads of vice police in brown uniforms now tour the streets, looking for men drinking alcohol or women consorting with men other than their husbands. These people are then caned outside mosques, watched by crowds and TV cameras. Women claim they are more often the objects of vice-squad raids than men. Ordinary citizens sometimes grab couples sitting in parked cars and hand them over to the vice police. The same rules govern foreigners. An Italian aid worker, accused of having a little marijuana and being seen alone with a woman (his translator) is imprisoned, faced with caning. The vice police are turning into a steadily expanding bureaucracy -- and other provinces are now talking about following Aceh's example. So now a great religion, which once inspired enviable poetry, philosophy and architecture, has reduced itself to promoting institutionalized thuggery.

That's the world Hezbollah desires. It seems clear that the crisis in the Middle East is a struggle for a decent civilization. Given that truth, anyone arguing that the West should remain neutral looks like either a fool or a scoundrel.