Fjordman Vs. Steyn
0 comment Wednesday, August 6, 2014 |
The inimitable Fjordman has another essay on Islam and the West.
Obviously I am an admirer of Fjordman's thoughtful pieces, although I notice that when I link his pieces here, I draw no comments on them. Still I find them worth reading. His latest is called Why the Future May Not Belong to Islam
and in it, he addresses Mark Steyn's book of cheerful doomsaying, 'America Alone.'
Fjordman, bless him, is not ready to write the West off, as Steyn seems to be doing.
Canadian writer Mark Steyn [whose mother is Flemish] thinks ''The future belongs to Islam.'' The main reason for this, according to him, is demography, with massive population growth in Islamic countries and low birth rates in infidel nations.
[...]
Critics would claim that Mr. Steyn isn't contributing to maintaining Western willpower by suggesting that we've already lost.
[...]The best way to deal with the Islamic world is to have as little to do with it as possible. We should completely stop Muslim immigration. This could be done in indirect ways, such as banning immigration from nations known to be engaged in terrorism. All Muslim non-citizens in the West should be removed. We should also change our laws to ensure that Muslim citizens who advocate sharia, preach Jihad, the inequality of ''infidels'' etc should have their citizenship revoked and be deported back to their country of origin.
We need to create an environment where the practice of Islam is made difficult.
[...][David] Selborne believes that many people are underestimating the strength of Islam. Perhaps, but some observers, including Mark Steyn and Mr. Selborne himself, may be overestimating it. They overlook the fact that Islam has many weaknesses, too. Don't underestimate your enemy. Muslims should be credited for making clever use of our weaknesses, but this ''we're all doomed and have already lost'' theme is overblown.
We should implement a policy of containment of the Islamic world. I'm not saying that containment is all that we will ever need to do, but it is the very minimum that is acceptable.
[...]We should restrain their ability to hurt us physically. We can't prevent it completely, but we should limit it as much as possible. ''
[Emphasis mine above].
Bravo to Fjordman for stating this all-too obvious truth: we need to quarantine Islam, We need to contain it. We need to confine them to their own benighted corners of the world. The more contact we have with them, the greater the risk of damage and harm to us. The more contact with Islam, the more Moslems we allow to live among us, the greater the likelihood of more terror attacks, more deaths of our citizens. The continued presence of Islam among us means, at best, a continued loss of liberty, as we allow ourselves to be subjected to greater intrusions such as increased domestic surveillance (which can also, fortuitously, be used against American citizens), greater intrusion on our persons, as the ridiculous and PC-riddled searches at the airport, and the loss of our former rights, such as the right to express our majority Christian religion freely. We are now becoming resigned, it seems, to having to eliminate more and more symbols of our faith from the public square lest we 'offend' any Mohammedans, while they seem to have carte blanche to foist Ramadan and other Moslem observances into our public space. Our public schools are now openly teaching Moslem culture and religion to our younger children in the name of 'tolerance' and 'diversity' while the word 'Christmas' is banned, and while Christmas carols are forbidden.
Containing Islam should absolutely be a no-brainer, but oddly, this suggestion is almost never mentioned in any public discussion on Islam and terrorism. Why? Why? Is there some unwritten rule that this idea is off the table, never to be mentioned or hinted at? Have we become so beaten down by PC that we have trained ourselves never to even think such thoughts?
Many 'conservatives' talk an aggressive game when it comes to the 'War on Terror'; they are fire-breathers when it comes to fighting in Iraq but here in America, on our own turf, (or what once was our own turf) we have to bow and scrape and be PC and avoid offending. What is that about? It's like going out to hunt down criminals far from home, leaving your doors unlocked, your windows open, and posting a sign that you won't prosecute trespassers.
Mark Steyn is such a tough-talker on Iraq, and he writes entertaining columns but he also is averse to using the word 'deport' or 'repatriate' in his joke-fests on Islam and 'Eurabia.' Heck, he never even mentions the 'I' word: immigration.
He appears to have more antipathy toward the French than toward Moslem terrorists. He seems to treat the idea of 'Eurabia' as a running joke, while essentially preaching doom and destruction. The West is doomed, doomed, he tells us, and there is no solution except outbreeding the Moslems (though he doesn't seem to think it possible) or reforming Islam and/or teaching our Moslem immigrants to appreciate our values so that they can keep the democracy fires burning when we Westerners are extinct. That, according to Steyn, is the best we can hope for. And he is downright cavalier about it.
I, for one, find his flippant attitude about the death of the West to be odd and a bit creepy.
Give me Oriana Fallaci; she obviously cared very much about the West; there was passion and fire anguish and anger in her words. She 'raged against the dying of the light,' God bless her. Steyn does no such thing; it's all joke fodder for him, material for his stand-up comedy routine: 'take my civilization -- please!'
Fjordman, with his reserved Scandinavian style, is no match for Fallaci in ardor and toughness, but you get the definite impression that he wants the West to survive, and that he has thought about solutions to the urgent question of our survival.
I know that Steyn is an idol and a darling of many on the 'right' these days, and I may be goring somebody's ox by criticizing him, but at this juncture in our history we need something more than just a court jester to make us laugh at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. We need thinkers, people with real ideas on how we can defeat the Islamic threat and save the West for our progeny. I, for one, am not ready to concede defeat. And I get the impression that Fjordman is not, either.
Let's contain Islam while there is still time. It's later than we think.

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