A Quote by Tom Cotton
The West has been calling for years for the forces of moderate Islam to stand up to the very small percentage but very large number of radical Muslims all around the world. When countries - the U.A.E. or Egypt or Jordan - do that, we need to highlight it, we need to celebrate it, and we need to continue to encourage it.
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As a matter of fact the majority of the Muslims living in our society are moderate people. But don't make the mistake that even though there are moderate and radical Muslims that there is a moderate or a radical Islam.
The forces that led to radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, can ultimately only be defeated by moderate Muslims around the globe, countries like U.A.E. that have led the fight within their own border to promote tolerance.
We now have some years of very reliable polling by Western firms in the Islamic world, in multiple Islamic countries. And invariably, the question that asks, "Do you view U.S. foreign policy as an attack on Islam and Muslims?" is maxed out. Whether it's Jordan or Indonesia or Egypt, you get 80,85 percent of people saying "Yes."
When I look at Washington today, we need to bring us together. We need to solve problems, we need to rebuild our military so we can stand up to radical Islam, we need to get our economy growing much faster by throwing out the corrupt tax code and lowering the rates.
The fact that there are no longer large units of Al Qaeda running around means you don't need B-52s. You need intelligence and special forces. And, most importantly, you need to resurrect Afghanistan from what is literally the graveyard of countries and transform it into a normal country, which the Afghans want.
I believe we don't need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect.
I have travelled a great deal - to Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt - and can very well differentiate between moderate Muslims and Islam.
People need to be ready to have truly "global" careers. Just as companies now face world-wide competition, so, too, do people. Therefore, individuals need to get out in the world more - some large percentage of Americans don't even have a passport - and work in different countries.
Number one, we need to get in shape, number two we need to shoot, number three, we need to learn self-defense, and number four, we need to study small-unit tactics... If you do not have 5,000 rounds of .223, 5,000 rounds of .22 and 1,000 rounds of handgun ammo, as a MINIMUM, you're wrong. We need to train our families how to shoot as well. We need to get food. We need to have a year's supply of food, two years supply of seeds, we need to have a year's supply of sundry items. That's what it means to be an American. We prepare for the worst but hope for the best.
We don't need another nuclear arms race to proceed a pace and then to encourage other countries to become very, to develop these kinds of capabilities also. This is not what we need.
When I was in the US, I felt that the discourse there surrounding Muslims as the other, problematising Muslims and Islam as the other was very similar to what we find in Australia, which is that the image of Islam is a constructed image in the West. We are starting from a point of view that Islam and Muslims - well Islam is a violent, misogynistic, hateful religion and that is where the debate always starts from - that presumption underlies the discourse.
We know for a fact the Russians tried to change the outcome of our election, attacking the very fundamental of democracy. We know they did that. We need to know how, we need to know why, and most of all we need to know what to do to prevent this kind of activity, which they continue to carry on in free nations around the world.
Those who say that the West and Islam are eternally irreconcilable have more in common with the Islam extremists than they might like to think, for it's the very same argument of course advanced by Al-Qaida. And they do have it wrong. We need to work with mainstream Islam.
The external support can never substitute internal support, the example that we have to look at very well is Egypt and Tunisia ; they have all the support from the West and from the Gulf and from most of the countries of the world. When they don't have support within their country, they couldn't continue more than - how many weeks ? - three weeks. So, the only reason we stand here for two years and a half is because we have internal support, public support.
One of the things that I'm very proud to stand up and yell about is that we need to end gatekeeping in our society. We need to stop people from saying, 'You need to pass the test if you're going to come in here and do this.'
You do not need intellectuality for deep faith. You do not need it for behaving humanely towards people whether fellow Muslims or non-Muslims. You do not need a concept, a theory, you do not need intellectual arguments for justifying a way of living that is already in place in order for it to proceed.
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