CNA Staff, 10th May 2008 (CNA) - A former
Jordanian minister has seized upon commentary about the decline of
Western power, saying on Arabic-language television that Islam will
conquer Rome. He went on to say that Spain is an Islamic land that
should be retaken and that America has begun to realize its “end is
near.”
The remarks by former Jordanian Minister of Religious Endowment Ali Al-Faqir
were broadcast on Al-Aqsa TV on May 2.
According to a transcript prepared by the Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI), Al-Faqir said Palestine from the Jordan to the
Mediterranean is an Islamic land. “Spain – Andalusia – is also the land
of Islam,” he said.
“Islamic lands that were occupied by the enemies will once again become
Islamic. Furthermore, we will reach beyond these countries, which are
lost at one point. We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like
Constantinople was conquered once, and as it will be conquered again.
“America has occupied, thundered, and foamed with rage, and proclaimed,
like Pharaoh, ‘I am your supreme God,’ but it will come to its end, and
they have begun to realize that their end is near,” he said.
Al-Faqir then alluded to commentary about the declining prominence of
America and Europe.
“We have begun to read in American and European newspapers that ‘our
glory is on the wane, and there is nothing we can do about it,’” Al-Faqir
said, according to the MEMRI transcript.
“This morning on Al-Jazeera TV, I saw American scientists and strategic
theoreticians, who said that America would soon come to its end. They
said it before about the USSR, and, indeed, it has come to its end, and
we say now that America and the EU will come to an end, and only the
rising force of Islam will prevail.”
American and European pundits and commentators have recently discussed
the perceived decline in American power, especially economic power.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, national security columnist Fred
Kaplan said President George W. Bush’s “follies” had accelerated the
decline of American influence. “For half a century, we had been a
super-power," Kaplan wrote. "Now we're upper-middle management in a
world without bosses.”
Parag Khanna, a research fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote in
the New York Times that the U.S. is “competing—and losing—in a
geopolitical marketplace,” arguing that globalization has eroded
American primacy.
Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, published excerpts
from his new book in the May 12 issue of Newsweek. Zakaria argued that
a “seismic shift” in power and attitudes has transported the world into
a post-American phase where the United States will not have the vastly
unequal influence it has enjoyed in recent decades.
Other writers argue that American economic and cultural dominance will
continue. The American Enterprise Institute’s economic policy director
Kevin Hassett has advised readers to “ignore the obituaries.”
