Polite Kid

A commenter of mine took exception to my brief, passing reference to a spirit of resistance to Islamization in his country, the UK. Honestly, the blog entry was not about the UK as such, but merely referenced certain signs of resistance to Islam which I perceived. This caused offense to the reader, who commented on my 'paranoia and xenophobia' and scoffed at my rather emotional statement about Islam swallowing up the UK.
In my replies, I declared I was done with the debate, having said all I felt was worth saying. And my point in this entry is not to get yet another 'last word' in with my dissenting commenter, but to put some facts out there for any third parties who may have been reading the exchange of comments, and for any fence-sitters out there who are not persuaded that there is in fact an Islamic threat, involving much of the Western world.
My dissenting commenter cited the small percentage of Moslems in the UK, and denied that immigration was a threat.
It may be that Moslems are a relatively small percentage in the UK, but by the evidence of the stories I've linked and excerpted below, those few Moslems make a whole lot of waves, considering their small numbers, and they are making a lot of people jump at their command, so it seems:
16,000 say no to mosque
Sixteen thousand residents have put their name to a petition protesting against plans for a mosque and community centre in Dudley.
The dossier of signatures was delivered by Ukip Councillor Malcolm Davis to Dudley Council yesterday - the deadline day for objections.
Despite the overwhelming opposition to the project, the Express & Star revealed the �18 million scheme earmarked for land in Hall Street had been recommended for approval in "exceptional circumstances."
Police protect girls forced to convert to Islam
Extremist Muslims who force vulnerable teenage girls to convert to Islam are being targeted by police, Met chief Sir Ian Blair has revealed.
Police are working with universities to clamp down on "aggressive conversions" during which girls are beaten up and forced to abandon university courses.
The Hindu Forum of Britain claims hundreds of mostly Sikh and Hindu girls have been intimidated by Muslim men who take them out on dates before terrorising them until they convert. ''
Muslim pupils 'need their own showers'
Muslim schoolchildren should be treated differently from other pupils, the country�s most prominent Islamic organisation has said.
They should have separate changing rooms for sports and swimming, single sex classes for sex education, prayer rooms and new rights to Islamic worship, and different uniform rules, the Muslim Council of Britain said. ''
Now, we might dismiss the above stories as being isolated and anomalous. But how do we dismiss things like this:
Many British Muslims Put Islam First
The recent homegrown plot in Britain to blow up transatlantic flights will intensify the fear that the country's 1.6 million Muslims are rejecting political tolerance and free speech for a violent, radicalized version of Islam. There is a real concern that British Muslims do pose a threat to that country and its traditional values. So how prevalent are such radical views among British Muslims?
Some answers are provided by the most comprehensive survey to date of Muslim opinion in Britain. The results from NOP Research, broadcast by Channel 4-TV on August 7, are startling.
Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. This figure is more than twice as high as those who say it was not a conspiracy. Tragically, almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror. ''
40% of young UK Muslims want sharia law
Young British Muslims are more likely than their elders to support sharia law and admire al-Qaida, but three-fifths of 16-to 24-year-olds say they have as much in common with non-Muslims as with Muslims, according to an opinion poll published on Monday.
According to Jonny Paul, writing in the online edition of The Jerusalem Post, the survey, entitled "Living Together Apart: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism" and carried out by UK think tank Policy Exchange, found evidence that young Muslims held more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than those over age 55. ''
And from the blog of Islam expert and scholar Daniel Pipes
More Survey Research from a British Islamist Hell
Here is another page with extensive links on Islam in the UK and Ireland
And from the blatantly leftist Guardian
Revealed: preacher's messages of hate
An undercover investigation has revealed disturbing evidence of Islamic extremism at a number of Britain's leading mosques and Muslim institutions, including an organisation praised by the Prime Minister.
Secret video footage reveals Muslim preachers exhorting followers to prepare for jihad, to hit girls for not wearing the hijab, and to create a 'state within a state'. Many of the preachers are linked to the Wahhabi strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which funds a number of Britain's leading Islamic institutions.
Britain: dhimmitude and the dole
With quotes from an Evening Standard article:
Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.
"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."
From the IslamThreat blog, a link to videos of hatemongering imams
From the (British) USS Neverdock blog: a series of links on appeasement of Moslems in Britain
Dhimmitude UK
Melanie Phillips reports on the 'Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia'
Now this commission is calling for a law outlawing religious discrimination. The intention is clear � to make it illegal to tell the truth about Islamist extremism. For as the Muslim Council of Britain repeatedly informs us, it is Islamophobic even to refer to 'Islamic� violence. So it would presumably wish to make illegal, for example, the report in yesterday�s Sunday Times which chillingly informed us that, according to a Home Office analysis:
'�there may be between 10,000 and 15,000 British Muslims who actively support Al-Qaeda or related terrorist groups. These numbers appear to draw on intelligence, opinion polls and a report that 10,000 Muslims attended a conference held by Hizb ut-Tahir, described by the Home Office as a structured extremist organisation, last year. Although less than 1% of the Muslim population, the sheer size of the actual pool of potential Al-Qaeda recruits - those who go to meetings to express their support - represents a stark warning about the extent of the threat.�
Now although this is only a fraction of the Muslim community, most of whom are entirely peaceful and law-abiding, 10-15,000 is a hell of a lot of people in this country to support a terrorist war of religious conquest against it and the rest of the west. It presents a danger the likes of which this country has never seen before and which it plainly hasn�t got the first idea how to confront. Yet according to Muir�s commission, it would appear that even to say such a thing is 'Islamophobic�.
And while, as I have said, most Muslims would abhor such violence, it also remains the case that their community has done nothing to rid itself of the sources of the contagion. ''
Melanie Phillips is a mainstream writer who tends toward the neoconnish end of the spectrum; hardly a 'far-right' extremist. Yet she is articulating a degree of alarm. Is she xenophobic and paranoid?
And the very neoconnish Mark Steyn writes on the same general topic here:
Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.''
As usual, Steyn is writing in a flippant tone which may belie the serious subject here: the UK's 'descent into dhimmitude.'
I don't see how the evidence of the many links above can be dismissed. I don't see how any thinking person can deny that Islam is at the very least a serious problem for the UK and for all Western countries, because the exact same pattern is repeated in each and every Western country in which Islam has taken hold.
My irate commenter objected to my implying that there were British people who were 'xenophobic and paranoid' as he declared me to be.
Judging by the content of the many links above, I am inclined to think he may be right; the dissenting voices, which he deems, from on high, to be 'xenophobic and paranoid' are probably few and far between in the UK. It looks as though most of the citizens of the UK are fully on board with acquiescing to Islam. Perhaps I overestimated the extent to which the inconquerable spirit of Britain still survived. More fool me; I was hoping that there was still some healthy national spirit and desire to preserve the legacy of generations. Without that 'xenophobia' there isn't much chance of standing up to the militancy of Islam on the march, whether here, or in the UK or anywhere else.
Here are the words of some great Englishmen of the past on the subject of Islam:
Winston Churchill wrote in 1899,
"The religion of Islam above all others was founded upon the sword � Moreover it provides incentives to slaughter, and in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men � filled with a wild and merciless fanaticism".
John Wesley wrote,
Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it...have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind".
Maybe that 'xenophobic and paranoid' spirit is gone from Britain now, replaced by the new religion of 'tolerance' and openness and multiculturalism.
I think it's time, actually, to deploy a newly-coined word for those who ardently defend 'diversity' and multiculturalism. 'Xenophiliac' is the word some of us have used; I like it. It's a counter to the wheezy old 'xenophobe' label, and I like that it seems reminiscent of words describing fetishes, unhealthy fixations. I personally find the craving for endless 'diversity' and otherness to be a strange kink in some people. And history is on my side, as few countries have gone a-whoring after strange flesh as our modern Western liberal countries are doing. It's a mania. It's odd. It has no precedent in history, unless it might be in the old Roman Empire wherein they allowed numbers of barbarians from all over the Empire and undermined themselves in the process. But what else could be expected from an effete and decadent culture?
So it appears that I may have been wrong to imply that there was still a spirit of resistance in the UK, or still any 'taint' of a healthy ethnic self-consciousness. Or it may be that the problem is the inability to recognize a threat as a threat. If no threat is recognized, no response to it can be mobilized. Openness and tolerance in a society are much as AIDS is to the physical body; with AIDS, the body ceases to recognize invading cells, and forms no resistance thereto. And in the West, many of us stubbornly refuse to recognize a threat.
Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern,if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told." - Winston Churchill
This is true for us in America, too. As long as our programming in favor of 'tolerance' overrides our survival instinct, the odds are not in our favor. I am betting on the will of the American people to be strong enough to shake off the decades of liberal/leftist indoctrination. But as for the UK? I know my own country and my own people, but I don't claim a similar familiarity with Britain. So I have to defer to the judgment of others. If it's more important to the British people to prove themselves innocent of 'xenophobia' and 'paranoia' then so be it. At least as the country slides into full-blown sharia law and dhimmitude, which better heads than mine have predicted, then at least they can be proud of their lack of 'xenophobia.'

Labels: Dhimmitude, Diversity, Immigration, Islam, Multiculturalism

Of the commentary I've read on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, this piece by Andrew McCarthy at NRO makes the most sense -- although I disagree with his ultimate conclusion.
Benazir Bhutto Killed by the Real Pakistan
A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country�s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent. President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy � or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy � to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine!
If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto�s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.
There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the "rule of law" as a cudgel to bring down a military junta.
In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.
Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.''
I agree about the 'real Pakistan' -- but I would go further: I would say 'the real Islam.'
Listening to the various presidental candidates' pronouncements on this event gives me the impression that most of them hope to use this to their political advantage; McCain beating his chest and emphasizing his 'experience' in dealing with military matters, and Giuliani grabbing another pretext for reminding us of his superior leadership after 9/11. Thompson seems to be taking a similar tone, as also Hillary Clinton. It seems that overall, the assassination will be used to try to justify even more military (and political) intervention in the Middle East and to 'destroy Al Qaeda' at whatever cost to us in human life or money.
Only Ron Paul said what seems evident to me: our interventionist policies are at least in part a factor in this assassination and the whole chaotic picture there.
In an interview from a few months ago, Benazir Bhutto herself lent some credence to that view:
Fortunately for her, the West�s urgent fear of Pakistan as a breeding ground for terrorists has given Bhutto the chance to redefine herself. During most of her exile, she was considered irrelevant by Washington. Then she hired Hillary Clinton�s image-maker, Mark Penn, and began playing up to Musharraf.
When Musharraf�s popularity dove in 2007 after his jailing of judges, lawyers and journalists, Bhutto suddenly emerged as America�s "ideal." U.S. politicians needed her�progressive, secular, female, willing to compromise�to put a face of democracy on their support for Musharraf�s autocratic rule.
True to form, Bhutto manipulated Musharraf to erase the charges against her, promising not to return to Pakistan until after national elections. She then broke that promise. But once she sensed that even her stalwarts were appalled at an arranged political marriage to a dictator, she spurned Musharraf and became her own woman again.
I sense a dark reflection in both Bhutto�s psychological history and her country�s constant turmoil�a compulsion to repeat past traumas. A prime example is the way she returned to her country on Oct. 18.
Ignoring warnings of terrorist cells plotting to kill her, Bhutto presided from atop a caravan over a parade that took 10 hours to snake through Karachi. Near midnight, the streetlights went out. The police disappeared. Her feet swollen from standing, Bhutto ducked below into a steel command center to remove her sandals. Moments later, a bomb went off. "I had a sickening, sickening feeling," she tells me. She now believes the bomb was wired to an infant that a man had been trying to hand to her. She recalls saying to the people with her, "Don�t go outside�another blast will follow." It did.
[...]
Despite the corrosion of her reputation by corruption and compromise, Bhutto appears to be America�s strongest anchor in the effort to turn back the extremist Islamic tide threatening to engulf Pakistan. What would you like to tell President Bush? I ask this riddle of a woman.
She would tell him, she replies, that propping up Musharraf�s government, which is infested with radical Islamists, is only hastening disaster. "I would say, 'Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.� I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years."
It seems to me that our policy of meddling in the affairs of Islamic countries in particular comes at too high a cost and with too small a return. How has our experiment in 'democracy' worked so far? We have no great success stories to point to. A while back we were told that the 'elections' in Iraq were a great triumph, yet we can see now that those elections were not the turning point we were assured they would be. And how many lives and how many dollars have we spent since then?
Bhutto's assassination appears to be another instance of our meddling, in the name of 'democracy' and in fighting 'Islamofascism', resulting in unforeseen complications. Some are predicting civil war in Pakistan now, and even if that civil war does not materialize, Pakistan will still be a chaotic, terror-plagued country, and an unreliable 'ally' at best.
We will see whether this event leads to more military involvement on our part, and whether the hawkish candidates make political hay of this story. I am afraid that may be the case, but it may be just as likely that the substantial portion of the American people who are fed up with our 'war on terror' will balk at the idea of an escalation of that conflict, and a deployment of more troops to the Middle East. It could go either way.
Of course, reading the commentary over at the big GOP forums, it's easy to get the impression that this event whets the appetite for more military involvement. Many of the commenters agree very much with Andrew McCarthy's concluding comments:
But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence.
If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they�ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.''
No, I can't agree with McCarthy there, though his piece made sense until that last paragraph or so.
Leaving aside the fact that we are not waging all-out war against jihadists or anybody else, but fighting a politically correct war against a 'few extremists' who are causing all the trouble, there is still the inescapable fact that, even if we were committed to all-out war against Islamic enemies, Moslems number between 1 billion and a billion and a half worldwide. Rather a staggering number, even if we believe that nonsense about only a 'tiny minority' being pro- jihad. How many troops can we marshal against such a numerous enemy, and in so many places? It's foolishness to think we can militarily defeat or wipe out 'jihadists' singlehandedly, or even with the pitifully few allies we have in our current 'war on terror.'
Since we can't destroy them, and since hoping to convert them either to another religion or to a milder, less violent form of Islam (which does not exist, by the way) the best we can do is to minimize involvement in their affairs. They have plenty of Islamic countries in which to practice their way of life; there is no need for them to be given entree to our countries in the West, because in doing so we entangle ourselves in their affairs and we give them political power in our countries. We have to let them run their countries as they see fit; what else can we do? We are not omnipotent, nor should we try to manipulate the whole world to our advantage. Doing so only increases the resentment and animosity that many Moslems and others already feel towards us.
That is far from saying that 'we cause Islamic terrorism', a position which many people try to attribute to Ron Paul, but it is apparent that the more involvement we have with Islam, the more we welcome Moslems into our country and the more we meddle in their countries, the greater the possibility of conflict and terrorism in our countries.
And there is simply the undeniable fact that we cannot work our will around the world; we cannot, physically, impose our way of life, and more importantly our way of thinking on alien peoples. They are not like us; the foolish utopian universalists on the right who imagine that everybody is interchangeable and that 'everybody wants democracy' are living in a delusional world. And even when given 'democracy', many in the Islamic world use it to install some very tyrannical regimes. Democracy in the sense of the vote or representative rule is only a method, it is not a guarantee that a free society will result.
We need to give up our messianism or our paternalism, and leave the people in the rest of the world to do what they like as long as they don't threaten us. But as long as we invade, intervene in, and invite, the world, we will have to deal with unfortunate consequences.

Labels: Interventionism, Islam, Jihad, Middle East, Presidential Candidates, Wilsonianism

''By all that we hold dear on this earth, I bid you stand, men of the West!"
- Aragorn, in Return of the King
Via Democracy Frontline, a report on the speech given by the two leaders of the Vlaams Belang Party of Belgium to members of the Robert A. Taft Club in Arlington, VA.
Now the largest party in Belgium, the VB is one of the most successful European political parties battling for immigration restriction and local autonomy. Party spokesman Philip Dewinter and chairman Frank Vanhecke stressed to an enthusiastic audience that their struggle is America�s struggle, that they are fighting for the preservation of Western Civilization everywhere.
[...]Mr. Dewinter, who spoke first, immediately revealed his Confederate sympathies by saying how pleased he was to be speaking "on the good side of the Potomac River." He opened with a salute to the "visionary" Patrick Buchanan, noting that the book Death of the West was a warning to all Western people. Europe, he said, is where the conflict is sharpest because the continent "is about to be taken over without a fight by people who are hostile to Western Civilization." The newcomers are largely Muslim, with the effect that "Europe is gradually turning into Eurabia."
Mr. Dewinter spoke of a serious demographic crisis, pointing out that average European lifetime fertility of 1.2 to 1.4 is far below the replacement rate of 2.2
[...]"We are living on a dying continent," Mr. Dewinter warned, "but we are not dead yet."
[...]Mr. Dewinter quoted Libya�s Muammar al-Gaddafi who, citing the highest estimate, predicted that "the 50 million Muslims in Europe will turn Europe Islamic in a few decades." This is, indeed, the fate the VB works to prevent. "Islam is a primitive religion," said Mr. Dewinter, that could "lead Europe back to the Dark Ages."
[...]"We share the same Western civilization," he said. "Join us in our struggle for Western survival!"
[...]Whenever anyone criticizes multiculturalism, he explained, its supporters point to the United States as a successful example. "Is multiculturalism working in America?" he asked with a smile. "No, no," cried the audience.''
I second the audience's ''no, no.''
Small occurrences like these, which might seem insignificant to many people -- just two men, from a minority party in a small country, speaking to less than a hundred men in Virginia --- are significant to me; they are a sign that, even in the most dire circumstances, people are searching for solutions, and finding ways to take a stand against the 'dying of the light' in Europe. While people like Mark Steyn, whose mother is Belgian, are cracking jokes about the fall of Europe to the forces of Islam, these men, Dewinter and Vanhecke, are doing what they can toward the survival of their people and their way of life. And they are seeking to make common cause with other Western peoples, rightly recognizing that we are all in the same troubling situation. Some may counsel despair and passivity, some may preach resignation and cynicism and detachment, but these men are trying to do something about the situation. These are true 'men of the West.' Passivity, resignation, and submission are not part of the heritage of the Western peoples, at least not until this age of gathering darkness. I maintain that it isn't in our nature to give in and give up.
Mr. Vanhecke predicted his party will suffer further attacks from opponents who care nothing for democratic principles or the will of the people. "Freedom of speech is absolutely essential," he said. "We ask US citizens to protest this lack of free speech in Europe." If Americans do nothing, he warned, they too will be strangled by European-style totalitarianism. "We are fighting for the West," he explained; "we are fighting for you." He, too, brought the audience to its feet, with a ringing quotation from The Lord of the Rings: "Men of the West, stand and fight!"
The choice of the quote from The Lord of the Rings is an inspired (and obvious) one; that phrase, which was uttered by Aragorn, seems to be particularly fitting for our time, as does the whole scenario of Tolkien's LOTR cycle. The West in dire peril from the forces of Mordor, and the need for essentially home-loving, peaceful peoples to unite and stand against a relentless enemy. Tolkien may not have foreseen today's threat to the West, but his works were prophetic nonetheless.
If Dewinter and Vanhecke and the Vlaams Belang party can stand up against the Islamic onslaught, surely we in America can emulate their example, and we can speak up in support of them and others like them; we are all part of the same struggle, and we can draw inspiration from one another.

Labels: Islam, Western Culture

On the subject of airline 'security', this editorial acknowledges the concerns many have about the new procedures:
''Led by agitators and sober commentators alike, the public is distressed and angered by the TSA's new procedures, implemented just in time for the Thanksgiving rush. They include imaging that essentially reveals nude portraits of those who pass through the scanners, and highly intrusive pat-downs.''
The first sentence in that quote gives away the writer's tack, which is one that ultimately leads to a justification of the scans and intimate searches, or at minimum, dismisses profiling.
The editorialist mentions the 'underwear bomber' of 2009, and the fact that passengers thwarted his attempt to carry out his plan, but he fails to note that the would-be bomber was on a no-fly list, and was inexplicably allowed to board. Profiling would have made it far less likely that he would have boarded, even if he were not on a no-fly list. He fit one or more categories: his name, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, indicated his likely religion, and he also had a one-way ticket if I remember correctly.
Now, doubt is being cast on whether his bomb would have been powerful enough to bring the plane down, but that is just hair-splitting, as far as I am concerned.
The editorial mentions also the ink-cartridge incident on a cargo plane, but passenger security would not have prevented such incidents.
So no, profiling would not eliminate any and all threats but it would go a long way, and it would simply be the most straightforward and most honest way of confronting the threat.
Profiling, and making it much harder for people from certain countries to immigrate and even to visit would be the best security measures we might have. As long as our government flatly refuses and rules out these common-sense measures, they are not serious about security or about the lives of citizens. Their rigid and dogmatically PC approach shows reckless disregard of the safety of the citizens whose safety they are supposed to defend.
The editorialist uses a cliched argument against profiling, one which we started hearing a few years ago. The claim is made that terrorists are getting smart. Supposedly they know we are scrutinizing airplanes and at least looking with some caution at Moslem travelers (though not profiling, perish the thought), so now they are going to change tactics. I've seen a number of articles over the last few years about how the next tactic will be to use Western White people or non-Moslem people to carry out attacks, or to act as accomplices.
However I can't think of any major terror attack in which White non-Moslems were involved. Can any of you? I think this is just propaganda that is being sown in order to further discredit the efficacy of profiling. The fact is, with any generalization, as with profiling, there will always be the rare exception, but that never invalidates the general rule.
This leads to the larger question of how we regard the terror threat as such. First of all, the so-called 'War on Terror' is a colossal joke, for the reasons I mention above. We are still letting people from terrorist-producing countries and backgrounds enter our country freely. We are still promiscuously open in our immigration policies. Political correctness trumps common sense, and takes precedence over preserving American lives.
However I am aware that many on the right dismiss outright the potential for terrorism. They believe the threat is an invention of our corrupt government, being used as a pretext for stripping us of our liberties and rights in the name of 'security.'
Actually I agree there is likely truth in that skeptical belief. At least, I can see that the government is exploiting the potential for terrorism, using it to justify totalitarian measures which ultimately make us no safer, but leave us less free.
However, unlike some on the right, I don't believe that the Moslems would be our friends were it not for Middle East politics or our pro-Israel policies. I do think we should abstain from taking sides in Middle East disputes. I don't think we should be in Iraq or Afghanistan or any of those countries. But I don't go so far as to say that we and the Moslems could get along just fine if we minded our business. Just look at the history of Europe, and it's clear that Islam has always been at war with White, Western countries, or against historic Christendom -- even when we refuse to see ourselves as at war with them.
And quite apart from that, they are just not compatible with us.
We do not need immigration from those countries. Their interests and ours do not coincide.
On this subject, inevitably someone will recite the rote phrase one hears about all minorities: ''But they're not all like that." Usually that inane statement is followed by some anecdote about a friendly colleague or co-worker. Irrelevant. The fact that less than 100 percent of some group are a direct threat to our lives does not mean that they, or their influence, are desirable in our country. Moslems pose a threat to us in other ways besides clumsy and sometimes successful attempts to kill us. They tend to undermine our culture and our freedoms (complaining about our national and religious symbols displayed in public), demanding special concessions and privileges, and generally displaying a hostile attitude toward us.
And then there are the stories like this one which don't always get national coverage. These things are happening here and there.
I think we need to guard against knee-jerk reactions against our political enemies -- for example, the neocons want to stir up animosity towards Islam so we should turn a blind eye to the threat, or even defend Moslems, as some do. To believe that the neocons 'want us to hate Moslems' should not cause any of us to perversely defend Moslems. They are not our friends. Neither are 'neocons,' of course, but we are stuck with them, for the most part.
But to regard Moslems insouciantly as 'no threat' is not wise.
Whenever we start to find ourselves agreeing with the left, that should give us some pause.

Labels: Big Government, Islam, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Security, War On Terror

The picture on the left shows a follower of the Religion of Peace, holding his holy book, which, according to Tony Blair, is 'progressive', 'reforming', 'practical' . How can we have been so wrong, Tony, as to believe otherwise?
According to Blair:
To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is. I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later. The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance.'
Does this even require comment?
Not a couple of weeks ago, Blair made a speech in which he appeared to be repudiating multiculturalism, and denounced 'extremism' and 'fundamentalism', in an ambiguous turn of phrase, which could be interpreted as a warning to the 'extremists' (so-called) of the BNP, or the 'Islamists', those apocryphal bad guys who have 'hijacked' the religion of peace.
So much for Blair's supposed Damascene conversion away from multiculturalism. Well, maybe he's not really a multiculti anymore, but a full-blown Dhimmi. Only the unwary and the naive, I think, really bought the speech of a couple of weeks ago.
The other thing that has me shaking my head is that Blair is reputedly a Christian. I know that as a Christian, I am supposedly not to judge someone's spiritual state, but I have serious doubts as to whether a real believing Christian could believe the things he purports to believe. Christian belief does not leave room for submitting to Islam.
I can hardly believe that there are still 'conservatives' who think Blair is the modern-day Churchill, and our great ally. They tend to forget he is a leftist, his participation in the Iraq adventure notwithstanding. I suppose the fact that he is a leftist, through and through, explains it all.
And lest we get too complacent and think that only the Brits are succumbing to the dhimmi impulse, consider this story, in which
The American Transportation Security Administration has instructed airport security guards to be sensitive to more than 15,000 Muslims traveling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj Muslim holiday.''
It seems that they guards have been subjected to 'sensitivity' courses teaching them that 'suspicious' Moslem passengers may simply be praying. What, like the Flying Imams?
And speaking of the 'Hajj' or the Mohammedan pilgrimage to Mecca, many Americans were blissfully unaware of what it was not so long ago; of course the multicultists think we were too insular and provincial and ethnocentric back then, and we have to be 'educated' about things like the Hajj, Jihad, suicide bombing, and all those enriching spiritual practices. So we get articles like this in our media.
Apparently our government means business about being 'sensitive' to Mohammedans, as this story indicates:
Strip-Searched Muslim Woman Gets Apology
-- from the Homeland Security Department.
And not to be outdone in 'sensitivity' by DHS and the Transportation 'Security' Administration, the Pentagon and our Armed Forces are doing their bit:
As US troops battle Islamic extremists abroad, the Pentagon and the armed forces are reaching out to Muslims at home.
An underlying goal is to interest more Muslims in the military, which needs officers and troops who can speak Arabic and other relevant languages and understand the culture of places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The effort is also part of a larger outreach. Pentagon officials say they are striving for mutual understanding with Muslims at home and abroad and to win their support for US war aims. Among the efforts to attract and retain Muslim cadets:
� West Point and the other service academies have opened Muslim prayer rooms, as have military installations.
� Imams serve full- and part-time as chaplains at the academies and some bases.
� Top non-Muslim officers and Pentagon officials have taken to celebrating religious events with Muslims overseas and here in the US.
"There is a message here, and that is that Muslims and the Islamic religion are totally compatible with Western values," says Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in an interview.
All of this is very encouraging -- if you're a Mohammedan or a stone leftist who hates the West, and wants to see Christendom destroyed, by gradual means or by force.
It seems as if Tony Blair is not the only dhimmi in the West.

Labels: Dhimmitude, Islam, Moslems

This odd story has been discussed in a couple of blog posts at Steve Sailer's blog and has provided fodder for a lot of jokes among the commentariat.
It is laughable on one level, but the picture it paints, of a certain type of White liberal/leftist, is depressing.
Lots of pro-White bloggers and writers have written at length about Whites' misplaced altruism and inverted empathy for aliens at the expense of our own, and this story is a rather exaggerated example.
The hoaxster, a 40-year-old man who posed as a young lesbian living in Syria, offers the typical leftist defense of his deception:
"While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground," he writes.''
Ah, the ''truthiness'' defense. The details may not have been true, but they COULD have represented a truth.
A few people, in commenting on MacMaster's bizarre hoax, have remarked how the whole victimhood storyline is something that plays well among the multiculturalist set, the people who perpetually idealize the sainted 'Others', especially if they are of the LGBT persuasion. Then there is the glamorizing of this 'Arab Spring' storyline, with the oppressed Arabs as noble fighters for Freedom.
But actually, another group of avid fans of this kind of storyline is the neocon/counterjihad group. One of the things that led to my disillusionment with the counterjihadists several years back is that American counterjihad types seemed to be excessively focused on Europe and the Middle East, rather than on our country. I always wondered why their main concern was for these far-off places, while this country, our country, is being invaded and colonized, and our whole system seems to be crumbling. And it is not all due to Islam.
I certainly care about Europe; I follow the news from that part of the world, and I wish our European cousins well, but Europeans are ultimately the ones in whose hands Europe's future rests, and America must be defended by Americans. Nobody out there in the wider world will come to our aid, or lie awake nights fretting over us and our future. It's up to us, and it's up to the Europeans to defend their interests.
Still, many Americans seem to feel more comfortable (verbally) fighting Islam, especially on the European front, rather than tackling our home-centered problems like mass immigration, urban violence, and the degrading of our culture. I think partly this is because it is acceptable to oppose Islam, especially among those on the Republican right. However, I've noticed that for these people, their political incorrectness does not extend to criticizing other minority groups; only Islam is fair game.
Other minority groups are higher on the PC totem pole, and must not be spoken ill of. Moslems, however, enjoy less protection from criticism, at least among Republicans.
Leftists will criticize Islam if it conflicts with their pro-gay belief system. Feminists on the left are less willing to take a stand against Moslem mistreatment of women, though feminists on the right will criticize Islam on their misogyny, as well as their 'homophobia.'
I've long noticed that the counterjihad right tends to exalt and fawn over Moslem feminists (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and, for example, Irshad Manji, Glenn Beck's favorite lipstick lesbian.
And the shock stories about 'honor killings' or stoning of women in some Islamic country are always popular, with the underlying message being that we have to come to the aid of these poor victims of Islam. We should make their struggle our own. The fact is, though, this is not our responsibility. We have our own people to look out for, and yet somehow it seems to be the preference of many White Americans to weep over people on the other side of the world, and the more 'other' the better.

Labels: Ethnocentrism, Ethnoloyalty, Islam, Non-Interventionism, Xenophilia

...backlash feared by Muslim community.''
The 'backlash fear' stories will come next; trust me.
I thought things had been a little too quiet lately on the terror front.
By now we have all heard about the latest thwarted bomb plot in London. I noticed that on this afternoon's reports on the cable news channels, they were carefully avoiding any mention of Moslems and the Religion of Peace.
Police avert car bomb carnage
...Scotland Yard, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur urged people to be "alert and vigilant" and to
report any suspicions to the police.
Disruption would be kept to a minimum, he said, although the police were reviewing the safety of a number of big public events set to take place in the capital over the weekend.
"I want to reassure Londoners that we are doing everything possible to make them safe," he added.''
Tariq Ghaffur? So now the Scotland Yard assistant commissioner is himself a Moslem?
Meanwhile, in our country, the President spoke at a rededication ceremony at the Islamic Center of Washington, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary. In his remarks, he included the usual twaddle about militants not representing true Islam.
In this account of the event, we learn that Bush will appoint a special envoy to the Moslem world:
President George W. Bush announced Wednesday he will establish an envoy to a coalition of Muslim countries, with hopes of bolstering ties to the Islamic world and improving the image of the United States.
[...]
"Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states, and will share with them America's views and values," Bush said in a ceremony honoring the 50th anniversary of the Islamic Center, a mosque and cultural center in Washington.
"This is an opportunity for Americans to demonstrate to Muslim communities our interest in respectful dialogue and continued friendship," Bush said.
[...]
Those attending Wednesday's ceremony, including Bush, took off their shoes as they entered. Bush listened as a verse from the Quran was read.
"We live in a time when there are questions about America and her intentions. For those who seek a true understanding of our country, they need to look no farther than here," Bush said.
"This Muslim center sits quietly down the road from a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Catholic parish, a Greek Orthodox chapel, a Buddhist temple - each with faithful followers who practice their deeply held beliefs and live side by side in peace," he said.
Bush singled out Iran and Syria and accused them of religious and political repression.
"Millions seek a path to the future where they can say what they think, travel where they wish and worship as they choose," he said. "They plead in silence for their liberty and they hope someone, somewhere will answer.
"So today in this place of free worship, in a heart of a free nation, we say to those who yearn for freedom from Damascus to Tehran: you are not bound forever by your misery. Plead in silence no longer. The free world hears you. You're not alone. America offers you its hand in friendship. We work for the day when we can welcome you into the family of free nations."
This story is yet one more bit of evidence that the President is not the fundamentalist 'right-wing Christian' he is represented as; his actions (such as observing Moslem rituals such as taking off his shoes and listening to the Koran reading) would not be acceptable to a Bible-believing Christian. And no, being 'president of all the people' does not mean taking part in Mohammedan rituals and ceremonials. If it does, then no believing Christian can be President.
But the most troubling thing to me is not the President's fellowshipping with those of a false religion, and a religion which teaches violence and world domination, but his willful attempt to disarm us as a nation. And yes, despite our use of military force to bring 'liberty' to Iraq, we are disarmed in that we are compelled by our diversity-crazed elites to live side-by-side with hostile peoples, and we are conditioned to believe that it's only a small minority who pose a threat.
Fostering that kind of detachment from reality amounts to disarming us.
The President speaks in saccharine, smarmy platitudes about all faiths, Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, living 'side by side in peace', but if you want to see the reality of this forced coziness among disparate peoples and 'belief systems', take a look at what is happening in London. That is the reality; not the kumbaya liberal nonsense the President is peddling. And as long as we are forced to accept a murderous cult into our midst, there will be the hard reality of terror plots and bombs. And next time, the attacks may be carried out, and not fortuitously thwarted beforehand. Our luck cannot hold out forever, not as long as we keep on rolling the dice and living dangerously with diversity.

Labels: Islam, Jihad, Moslems, Muslims, Political Correctness, Terrorism

...another Moslem protest.
These headlines come around every year at this time:
By Aroonim Bhuyan, Dubai, Feb 13 : Protests against Valentine's Day celebrations are building up in the Gulf region with the Saudi Arabian moral police banning the sale of red roses and an Islamic group in Kuwait warning the media against "glorifying the pagan celebrations". Thawabet Al Umma, while condemning the Feb 14 celebration, has warned the media against misguiding Muslims "by glorifying such pagan celebrations", according to a report in the Arab Times website.
"Such traditions are imported from the West, and people blindly follow them without looking into the good and bad aspects. Participating in such celebrations will tarnish the image of Islam," it said in a statement.
So, in light of the fact that the news stories represent déj� vu, I decided to repost my blog entry from last Valentine's Day, which I titled
..and never the twain shall meet
As another Valentine's Day is past, some recent news articles on the subject give us pause to consider the gulf between us in the West and those in the non-Western, non-Christian world.
In a society which insistently tells us that we are really all the same, and that our respective cultures can easily be thrown into the blender and retain their flavors, let's think about the differences in worldview displayed in these stories:
At the Conservative Voice, Grant Swank writes about the Moslem campaign against Valentine's Day.
To extremist Muslims, inter-gender love is anathema to their interpretation of Allah�s ethic as set forth in the Koran. It�s contrary to the extremist Muslim murderers global who see their lot in life to spread hate rather than love.
Therefore, when Valentine�s Day comes around once again this year, extremist Muslim mouthpieces are hailing it as from Satan.
According to Dr. Walid Phares� report: "Valentine�s Day Enrages Jihadists," a Muslim cleric has let the world know that "love is forbidden, love is infidel," per AP.
A Muslim scholar stated that "basic love is not permissible outside commitment to Jihad." Romantic expressions is "decadent."
And it is not just Moslems who object to our Valentine's Day traditions.
Indian Hindus protest Valentine's Day
In India, hardline Hindu nationalists have been burning Valentine's Day cards in protest against what they consider a corrupt and commercial Western celebration.
As South Asia Correspondent Peter Lloyd reports from New Delhi, every year in the capital and other northern cities the radical fringe of Hindu politics gather for noisy protests against Valentine's Day.
This year was no exception.
They denounced it as a corrupting influence on Indian culture.''
This article from India, while more pro-Western, shows again the gulf that exists between Western ideals and customs, and those of non-Western cultures.
... it is evident that such days, and the general ethos of romance and love conveyed through advertisements, serials and books, is raising aspirations in the young. They dream of a chance to "fall in love" and live "happily ever after". Sadly, that is where the dream ends. For Cupid's arrow, in this country, must land in a preordained space � it must strike a person of the right caste and creed. Otherwise, the love match is rejected. Increasingly, that is the hard reality that thousands of young people, who delude themselves into believing that things are changing and that they will be able to make a choice on the basis of the dictates of their hearts, are being forced to face. They are firmly brought down to earth by families who refuse to accept their right to make a choice. If a couple refuses to fall in line, they must face rejection, ex-communication, and even violence. The happy endings are few and far in-between.''
It's a commonplace among those who are wary of Islam to label it misogynistic, oppressive of women. And so it is. But to a great extent, so have been most non-Western cultures. It's ironic that Western feminists are the loudest complainers about the supposed oppression of women in our countries, seemingly oblivious to the fact that generally speaking, women have enjoyed the highest status in Western countries, in Christendom. than in any other culture. I invite anyone to show me an example of a culture outside the West in which women had higher status and more respect.
And the whole tradition of Valentine's Day, which ostensibly honors a St. Valentine,or one of several Saints named Valentine. And apparently, around the 14th century, the feast day of St. Valentine became associated with romantic love, which in turn, developed as an ideal along with the Code of Chivalry.
I've long been fascinated with the Code of Chivalry; I think it was one of the proudest achievements of our Norman ancestors. Now these days, for some reason, our Norman ancestors are not well spoken of; it's more fashionable for those of British ancestry to claim kinship to Anglo-Saxons and Celts, while the poor Normans are judged harshly. Why? They were too strong, and too capable. In our modern world, the strong are devalued, and the weak, the underdog, and the victim reign supreme. Ironically, that grotesque exalting of the weak is something of a perversion of the chivalric tradition. Under the chivalric code, men were to treat the weak generously and kindly, but they were not to disown their power. Strength was honored, not disparaged as it often is now.
Here is one writer's modern take on the meaning of chivalry
Chivalry spells out certain ethical standards that foster the development of manhood. Men are called to be: truthful, loyal, courteous to others, helpmates to women, supporters of justice, and defenders of the weak. They are also expected to avoid scandal.
Beautiful ideals! They attract us with a sense of nostalgia that is almost religious. That's because they are part of us already. Unfortuantely, they must contend with powerful, often destructive influences, like commercial television, that bombard us with outrageously bullish images of men that are, at best, inappropriate.
The virtues of chivalry offer more than pleasantries and politeness. They give purpose and meaning to male strength, and therefore support the overall workings of society. They remind us that Camelot is an ideal worth striving for, the reflection of who we are when we are at our best. Here is a short summary:
Truth provides the foundation of chivalry. A man who lies cannot be trusted. His strength and ambitions cannot be counted on. Truth should always remain our greatest concern.
Loyalty denotes a relationship that is based on truth and commitment. If we are fortunate, we have companions who are loyal to us�but we must be loyal to others as well. Remember, loyalty is a virtue to cultivate, even when it is not reciprocated.
Courtesy provides the means for cordial and meaningful relationships. A society cannot be healthy without courteous interaction. We sometimes admire people who trample on courtesy to get what they want�but keep in mind, the contentious world they create is very disappointing, and we all have to live in it.
Chivalry calls men to honor women, and to serve as their helpmates. This precept merely states the natural order of things. Men should honor women first as people, and then as the conduits and nurturers of life. That certain men commit violence against women, or treat them with disrespect, is an outrage against nature, and presents a poor image of manhood.
Justice involves little more than treating people fairly. It also calls for mercy. We all make mistakes.
We admire men who are strong, but if their strength is not directed to uphold what is good, what value does it have? We are therefore called to use our strength to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and commit ourselves to just causes. Never oppress other people.
[...]
Chivalry also speaks about romantic love. People today often romantic love disappointing. It promises more than it delivers, especially in regards to permanence. Why? Because we perceive romantic love as something spontaneous, something that does not demand work and a strong moral base. Medieval literature tells us quite the opposite. The very essence of romantic love is commitment. This is where chivalry provides a vital ingredient. Love relationships provide the laboratory where the virtues of chivalry are tested to their fullest, and manliness is finally proved. An added bonus shows that proper love encourages us to do our best in all things.''
And here is an excerpt from a 19th century work on Chivalry.
From G.P.R. James, The History of Chivalry, 1830
The first point required of the aspirants to Chivalry in its earliest state, was certainly a solemn vow, "To speak the truth, to succour the helpless and oppressed, and never to turn back from an enemy.''
[...]the knights for long after the first institution of Chivalry, were "simple in their clothing, austere in their morals, humble after victory, firm under misfortune."
In France, I believe, the order first took its rise; and, probably, the disgust felt by some pure minds at the gross and barbarous licentiousness of the times, infused that virtuous severity into the institutions of Chivalry which was in itself a glory.
[...] [N]o words will be found sufficient to express our admiration for the men who first undertook to combat, not only the tyranny but the vices of their age; who singly went forth to war against crime, injustice, and cruelty; who defied the whole world in defence of innocence, virtue, and truth; who stemmed the torrent of barbarity and evil, and who, from the wrecks of ages, and the ruins of empires, drew out a thousand 14 jewels to glitter in the star that shone upon the breast of knighthood.''
[...]There cannot be a doubt that Chivalry, more than any other institution (except religion) aided to work out the civilization of Europe. It first taught devotion and reverence to those weak, fair beings, who but in their beauty and their gentleness have no defence. It first railed love above the passions of the brute, and by dignifying woman, made woman worthy of love. It gave purity to enthusiasm, crushed barbarous selfishness, taught the heart to expand like a flower to the sunshine, beautified glory with generosity, and smoothed even the rugged brow of war.
For the mind, as far as knowledge went, Chivalry itself did little; but by its influence it did much. For the heart it did every thing; and there is scarcely a noble feeling or a bright aspiration that we find amongst ourselves, or trace in the history of modern Europe, that is not in some degree referrible to that great and noble principle, which has no name but the Spirit of Chivalry.'' [emphasis mine]
An old friend of mine, years ago, used to say 'Chivalry isn't dead; it's just moribund.' And that is true, I think. Our age has forgotten the roots of our civilization, going back to European Christendom, but some of the remnants of the Code of Chivalry still survive, and those traditions are what divide us from the Moslems and the Hindus and the rest of the non-Western, non-Christian world. And to those agnostics and atheists who are indignant at any mention of Christianity and Christendom, I can only say that history cannot be denied; even if you dislike Christianity, it is part of our European heritage. All of us of European ancestry had Christian ancestors going back many generations, and Christianity largely shaped European culture.
The high ideals of Chivalry are all but forgotten today, and the word is rather an archaic word which refers to now politically incorrect things like opening doors for women. But it encompassed both love and war, and it encompassed faith as well. The knight was strong yet compassionate toward the weaker: children, women, the old. A knight fought fairly, and did not attack the unarmed. Please notice how those basic rules of civilized warfare are not observed by Moslems or most non-Western people. Perhaps the Japanese code of bushido closely approximated the Western chivalric tradition, but in general, chivalry, as known in Christendom, was unique in the world.
Our more humane standards in warfare, as compared to the Moslems, make a striking contrast. Unfortunately, they put us at a disadvantage in our war with Moslems. If we are fighting by the old chivalric traditions, as we have been, trying to avoid harming civilians and noncombatants (and how can we tell, when our opponents are not regular, uniformed soldiers) and they are fighting with no holds barred, we are at a disadvantage. Our chivalric traditions leave us vulnerable, when facing an opponent who is not principled. How can we deal with an enemy who is not above using women, children, and the old, as human shields? An enemy who sends children out in harm's way, purposely? Our chivalric codes took the barbaric edge off warfare, as long as our enemies were others who observed the same rules. Now, this is not the case.
And notice how in every Western country where there are Moslem colonies, there seems to be a pattern of rape against the indigenous Western women, often gang rape.
Our prolonged contact with Moslems can only result in conflict, unless one of us is conquered and submits culturally. To survive among Moslems would require that we become more like them; we can no longer cling to our age-old traditions of measured, civilized rules of warfare. We would have to match them in ruthlessness if we are to continue to try to coexist in the same space with them. And in fighting to survive, we would lose something of ourselves, of who we are and who we have been for thousands of years. This would be as tragic as the mere physical or political conquest by Moslems: the surrender of our standards, ideals, and civilization. This is just one more reason why separation from Islam is necessary if we and our culture are to survive intact.
St. Valentine's Day may be thought of as just a sentimental, but ultimately silly, holiday by many people, but it is symbolic of what makes us in the West what we are, with our idealism and sentimentality. The celebration is emblematic of the stark contrast between us and the non-Western world. To them, our romantic love is corrupt, decadent, and intolerable. I think they see it as weak and feeble. And, isolated from the rest of the chivalric code, maybe it is. Christendom, the West, must rediscover the strength and justice aspect of chivalry, and not only the softer, tenderer side which, alone, makes us vulnerable to the predators abroad in a dangerous world.
Forum comments here.

Labels: Chivalry, Islam, Multiculturalism, Western Civilization, Western Culture

Recently on this blog I've written about the role of Christianity in the decline of the West, and now Robert Spencer has written a book, Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't. John Derbyshire offered his review of the book, and Spencer replied here.
Derbyshire, in his review, first examines the question of moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity, because Spencer describes this as the 'prevailing malady in the West.' Derbyshire expresses impatience with this point of view:
I understand that this bogus equivalence must be very vexing to a committed Christian, but Spencer seems not to understand how wacky all religions seem to the irreligious. All religious faith, after all, depends on magical thinking. To people who eschew such thinking�people who prefer to ground their beliefs in the strict rules of evidence used in modern law and science�Mohammed�s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God�s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ.''
To begin with, that last sentence is a non sequitur. Whether or not Derbyshire the scoffer thinks Catholic doctrines are 'preposterous' has nothing to do with the question of the effect of Islam or Christianity on their respective adherents.
And another quibble, which may seem insignificant, is that Derbyshire evidently confuses the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. These are not the same thing, and Derbyshire's evident confusion here shows me that he does not understand the basics, and has not done his homework vis-a-vis Catholicism or Christianity. He makes it clear that he considers Christian beliefs childish and absurd, on a par with the Koranic beliefs, and so he is in a sense making an equivalency on that basis between Mohammedanism and Christianity. If Derbyshire wants to argue Christianity with Spencer or anyone else, the least he might do would be to do some research, and not merely cite creaky anecdotes from friends who attended Christian Brothers schools. But Derbyshire seems uninterested; he's a sophisticated, empirically-minded man of the world and can't be bothered.
Indeed, everybody who grew up in the West, although many may scorn Christianity and the Bible, seem to feel qualified to argue theology or doctrine with Christians although the critics of Christianity may have little or no familiarity with the Bible, except in a second-hand fashion.
But Spencer does a masterful job at pointing out Derbyshire's inconsistencies in his own response.
John Derbyshire seems to think that since, in his view, Islam and Christianity are equally preposterous, they are equally likely to incite violence: "Mohammed�s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God�s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ."
Huh? "And so"? One thing is unbelievable, and so is another, and therefore they�re of equal moral value? Come now. I myself find National Socialism no more preposterous than Shakerism � does that mean that National Socialism is no more or less likely to make us better or worse than Shakerism?
[...]
Derbyshire�s review, while marvelously written and delightful to read, is full of inconsistencies. I don�t see how he could possibly find what I reveal about Islam to be "persuasive" if at the same time he thinks that Islamic and Christian doctrine are equally likely to inspire their adherents to commit acts of brutality, since the contrary assertion, as he himself notes, is a major point of my book.
[...]
But I digress. The ringing peroration of Derbyshire�s review is his declaration that while "Islamia has sunk into the grip of a poisonous ideology�the ideology of jihadism�the Christian West (Spencer actually says 'Judeo-Christian,� but that is just a lagniappe) has been seized by an even more destructive ideology: globalization." (Not a lagniappe at all, but that is a discussion for another time.) He claims that "a great enabler of globalization has been the Christian tradition. If all men are brothers, heathens only a little less enlightened than Christians, they why should not a Pakistani, or a Somali, or for that matter a Mexican, come to live in the U.S.A.?"
One may wonder, given this line of reasoning, why Catholic Europe, at the apex of its self-conscious religiosity, didn�t throw open its doors to the jihadist invaders instead of resisting them. One may wonder why the United States, governed in the main by Protestant Christians for the most part throughout its history, maintained relatively sane immigration policies until the 1960s.''
I am glad Spencer makes this last point; I have been arguing it myself whenever this subject comes up, as it does frequently these days. I have never yet heard any of those who are accusing Christianity of weakening the West answer this argument satisfactorily. If Christianity inexorably leads to passivity and universalism, why did this tendency not manifest itself until more than 1900 years after Christianity began?
And I also wonder why, in this age of wholesale Christian apostasy, anyone seriously thinks that we in the West are committing suicide because of our Christian faith. Anyone who says this must believe that Christianity is much more widespread and that it is taken much more seriously than many 'Christians' in this lukewarm age actually take their faith.
But there is a grain of truth there: the only 'Christians' who seem to be full of 'passionate intensity' these days are the leftist kind: the Barry Lynns, the Cardinal Mahonys, et al. The universalist, open-border, self-immolating Christians are the most zealous of all, to judge by their visibility and their determination to force their agenda on everybody. However, despite all the sound and the fury from the Christian left, who are after all the 'religious' wing of the leftist army, they do not represent true, historical, Biblical Christianity. Yet few will be aware of this unless they educate themselves by reading the Bible, first of all, (which does not prescribe a 'one-world' globalist system), and by reading history books, in which they might learn that our European ancestors' Christian faith enabled them to drive back the Mohammedan interlopers, and to push them out of Europe. Christianity then was not incompatible with self-defense or with particularism and love of one's own. It is not incompatible with those things now.
European blogger JKayce at Kayce's Corner writes about Europe's Multiple Personality Disorder, and the rise of Islam in Europe:
We have acquired values that have estranged us from our true selves, values which basically are an expression of internal corruption, and in our pride we blinded ourselves to the corrupt source of our values.
So, now we are confronted with the consequences.
In our foolish idea of tolerance, compassion and love we have allowed the immigration matter to go completely out of hand, to the extent that our societies are disintegrating and people are reverting to yet another corruption, a weak bid: ethnical/racial identification.
The hollowing of the Christian faith whereby it degenerated into a dogmatic institution thriving on the conformity principle, even marrying the dogma of various Christian churches to the State ideology so that the idolatry is made complete, has rendered typical Christian institutions impotent and fossilized reminders of the past. The decline of Christianity is culturally based and rooted in this very principle of conformity, and it is the logical result of the culmination of a process which has been at work for many decades prior to its current demise.
Thus the inevitable outcome as embodied in the empty churches on the European continent is merely a symptom of the spiritual bankruptcy and corruption which preceded this.
When Mosques take the place once occupied by Churches it is really God asking us:
"What is the rock of your foundation?
Where is your claim of superiority based upon?
If your love and tolerance brings forth your own demise, how can you maintain its superiority?
[...]
I strongly feel that the most important reason why Islam is growing so strongly is due to the spiritual bankruptcy of Europe by which Europe does not have the spiritual armament necessary to combat the spirit of Islam.
Although often it is said that Europe has a Christian identity, it is overlooked that Europe suffers from a Multiple Personality Disorder. There is no one prevailing Christian identity, but instead we see a plethora of identities, often with conflicting and opposite interests.
So where is Europe able to get its spiritual strength from to wrestle with the spirit of Islam?
A house divided against itself cannot hold up.''
JKayce is right; the weakness of Europe, and the rest of the West, is not due to Christianity, which is very attenuated and divided within right now; the weakness is due to a fragmenting in which there is no common belief system and strength deriving therefrom.
Some claim that America is in better shape, in part because we still have a strong Christian foundation here. I wonder how true that is? We are suffering from the same division within Christianity and in the larger society, with leftists and even 'conservative' secularists lining up against Christianity.
Still, at least we are having this discussion now, and that in itself is a beginning. Spencer's book is one that I hope to read.

Labels: Christendom, Christianity, Islam, Jihad, Mohammedanism, Western Civilization

The discussion of the rioting in France by 'youth' is continuing around the blogosphere, and here at What's Wrong With the World, as at other
blogs, the argument is being made by a few, rather insistently, that either the rioters are not 'Arab', being in many cases sub-Saharan Africans, of unknown religion, or that if they are Mohammedan, their religion has nothing to do with the violence. Why? Because they are not devout Moslems, but rather, dressed Western style, and following the ghetto culture common to Western urban underclasses.
I wonder why it is so important to some to assert that the riots have nothing to do with Islam? Are they eager to exonerate Islam from the charge that it promotes violence? Are they leftists seeking out 'Islamophobia', or neocons doing the same thing? Are they just nit-picky pedants who want to show how much more knowledgeable they are, in distinguishing sub-Saharan Africans from North Africans or whoever?
To me, the point that the rioters look to be sub-Saharan Africans for the most part is a pedantic one; the fact is, there are plenty of Moslems in Africa, and they are not confined to North Africa.
Secondly, suppose they are non-religious. Many of them do seem to be typical urban toughs who, as in seemingly all countries, emulate the worst aspects of MTV/hip-hop/Hollywood culture. Surely there are people who identify with that culture in all Western countries and in some non-Western countries -- yet it seems to be mostly those from the Islamic world, whether born there or in the West, who are prone to rioting and otherwise acting out violently. Why is that? Is the religion really just coincidental?
And just because they appear to follow an underclass urban 'youth' culture does not mean that their Islamic background is irrelevant to them or to their behavior. Islam is not just a matter of worship or ritual or religious observances. One need not be an outwardly devout practitioner of a faith to have been influenced by it if one grows up in a culture shaped by that religion. In America, most people are of Christian background; their ancestors practiced Christianity much more rigorously, no doubt, than today's generation does; we live in a secular, godless culture in the West. There are still people who live according to their faith, but the larger culture is godless and secular. Still, the residue of Christian influence in our culture is not fully obliterated. Many liberals who are as anti-Christian as they can be, even professing atheism or some other religion, have been shaped by Christian ethics and standards because our culture is at its core Christian, despite the secularizing trends. Leftists who, for example, become crusaders against animal cruelty, don't realize and probably wouldn't acknowledge the fact that Christianity is the ultimate source of their concern for animal welfare. Many of our charitable practices and our do-gooding projects are based in Christian morality, albeit they have been cut loose from their Christian roots.
So one need not be a practicing, believing Christian to be part of Christian culture, which still exists in an attenuated form in the West.
These 'youths', in some cases, are apparently French-born, though not of French blood. Their parents, or possibly grandparents or even great-grandparents were immigrants who, however, lived in enclaves with others from their home countries, practicing a culture and a way of life which is alien to the West, or old Christendom.
Just because the young people wear baggy gang-style clothing and listen to hip-hop does not mean that they are no longer Islamic; they have grown up in areas where their friends and relatives were members of the same Islamic-based culture, and they identify with their own people, not with the people of the country of their birth.
One can be Islamic in a cultural sense, and an ideological sense while not observing the minutiae of Islamic precepts. And these young people have also imbibed a leftist philosophy, a victimhood ethos, in which they feel entitled because they are outsiders, 'discriminated' against. Blend this with the basic us-vs.-them outlook of Islam, in which there is the Islamic world and the Infidel world, which is the realm of struggle, and you have a recipe for anger, disaffection, and in the right circumstances, violence.
After 9/11 when I really began in earnest to learn something about Islam and its aggressive ideology, I noticed that the jihadist viewpoint owes something to the leftists as well as to the Koran and the Hadiths. Franz Fanon, for example, was the first name which came to my mind. Fanon, who wrote the popular 70s book 'Wretched of the Earth', was widely read and very influential in the Arab world as well as in France, in earlier decades if not now.
In France, which educated and celebrated him, he's little read and rarely quoted. Even so, the spiritual climate he helped create remains, which is why his story shouldn't disappear. To forget him is to ignore one crucial foundation stone of the world we confront today. It was Fanon who brought into modern culture the idea that violence can heal the spiritually wounded.
Fanon, a psychiatrist, romanticized murder. He argued that violence was necessary to Third World peoples not just as a way to win their liberty but, even more, because it would cure the inferiority complex that had been created by the teachings of white men. Once liberated by violence, the formerly subject populations could help bring peace and socialism to everyone.
For the young in many parts of the world, he perfectly expressed the spirit of the times. He was the talk of revolutionary Paris in the 1950s, when the young Saloth Sar, not yet known as Pol Pot, lived there. Later, in America, the Weathermen and the Black Panthers loved to quote him. The book in which Fanon clearly articulated his theory, The Wretched of the Earth, went into six editions in Arabic. Today it's hardly necessary for revolutionaries to read him. His poison flows through the bloodstream of everyone who kills joyfully for an imaginary future.''
Fanon might be said to have been instrumental in the terrible violence of Algeria, which tore that country apart.
So of course there is a leftist element in the 'uprisings' in Europe (which are not confined to France). Flemming Rose, the publisher of the controversial 'Mohammed cartoons' which sparked worldwide rioting, writes about the role of the 'cult of victimology' in these violent outbreaks. And of course the 'cult of victimology' is at the heart of leftism.
So yes, there is a leftist element to the troubles in Europe and wherever Moslems and 'infidels' attempt to coexist, but if it is only leftist ideology, or only poverty and 'alienation' or 'racism' that causes these riots, why are they mostly confined to Moslem enclaves, and areas with large Moslem population? Surely Moslems are not the only poor people (if indeed they are necessarily poor, as their apologists usually claim) and not the only people under the influence of leftist delusions.
And it seems very much like hair-splitting to argue that because these rioters are not bearded and robed young men wearing traditional headdresses, they are not in any way motivated by Islam. Maybe these young men are half in the Western world, at least by their styles of dress and their behavior, but that does not mean they are Westernized in any real, deep sense. Surely, after so many examples of 'assimilated' Moslems in the West developing 'sudden jihad syndrome', or becoming involved in terror acts (the 7/7 bombers in the UK, for example) we don't believe that Islam is something so easily doffed and put aside.
An old proverb which gets a lot of use here on this blog is that 'blood is thicker than water', or occasionally, I say blood is thicker than culture. You can take the boy out of the Islamic world, but you can't take the Islamic world out of the boy -- a few defectors notwithstanding.
It's easy for young immigrants, or children of immigrants, to learn the language of the host country and to adopt the style of clothing and the music and the easy, careless personal morals popular among the urban youth everywhere in the West now. But it is not so easy to change one's habits of mind, the customs passed down from one generation to the next, or perhaps innate tendencies of one's ancestors. In some cases, it proves to be impossible. To believe that adopting outward forms like language, clothing, and music preferences transform the mind, spirit, and heart is absurd, but it is undeniably the kind of thing that liberals dearly love to believe.
Are the rioters then truly 'jihadists'? Are they acting under the specific instructions of some mad imam somewhere, who is pulling their strings? Probably not, but those things are not necessary to be able to say that Islam plays at least a part in the behavior we are seeing. And the fact that they come from a radically different and hostile culture certainly plays a huge part in their supposed alienation and anger and resentment. So at the very least, Islam plays an indirect part in what is happening. Islam is always a volatile ingredient to add to Western civilization.
But for those who somehow feel comforted, for whatever bizarre reason, by denying any role for Islam in these troubles, go right ahead and deny if it makes you feel better, safer, or more moral. But please don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by insisting that we deny it too.

Labels: Crime, Eurabia, Europe, France, Islam, Jihad, Leftism

Ya think?
In this article from the London Daily Telegraph, the obvious is acknowledged.
The alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners and last year's terrorist attacks on London have made more people fear Islam as a religion, not merely its extremist elements, a poll for The Daily Telegraph has found.
A growing number of people fear that the country faces "a Muslim problem" and more than half of the respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy. That compares with less than a third after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America five years ago.
The findings were revealed as Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, conceded that the multi-culturalist approach encouraged by the Left for two decades had probably been a mistake and could have contributed to the alienation that many young Muslims said they felt and experienced.'
[...]Miss Kelly said that diversity had been "a huge asset" but she acknowledged that the wave of immigration, the highest in British history, had brought fresh challenges.
[..]After years when many on the Left have either shut down the debate on cultural diversity or sought to avoid it, Miss Kelly said, "We must not be censored by political correctness and we cannot tiptoe around the issues." [Italics mine]
Obviously Miss Kelly is part of the problem, I mean, anybody who can say diversity is 'a huge asset' with a straight face is delusional or a pathological liar.
How, exactly, is this 'diversity' I hear so much about a 'huge asset'? And while you're at it, tell me how, precisely (and I need specifics) diversity is supposedly 'our strength'? Out of all the people who have parroted that imbecilic phrase, I have never heard one of them specify how diversity strengthens us, or why it is such a boon to us that we sacrifice the lives of our citizens in order to create it. And diversity, however much we have of it, is never enough, it seems. There are always cries for 'more', no matter how much diversity we have had inflicted on us in the West. It appears, just as the famous saying 'you can never be too rich or too thin' also applies to diversity; you can never be too diverse.
Diversity is the reason why we are balkanized and fragmented in the West; the reason why we have countless squabbling ethnic/racial/religious groups, all of them with a grievance and a grudge against the majority, all of them victims, all with chips on their shoulders, all with a list of demands on the rest of us. All of them require special concessions and special 'outreach programs' which cost money (taxpayers' money, of course) and all of them are ultra-sensitive and must be handled with kid gloves.
As a result of all this enriching, strengthening diversity, Western countries are instituting coercive laws to ensure that nobody is offended, slurred, discriminated against, or disrespected. People like Miss Rita Kelly are appointed to positions like Communities Secretary to cater to and make obeisance to the 'diverse communities', and to properly indoctrinate the recalcitrant majority who stubbornly refuse to get with the PC program. And when Miss Kelly says disingenuously ''We must not be censored by political correctness and we cannot tiptoe around the issues.'' -- surely she does not expect to be believed. Of course there is not and cannot be anything resembling honest discussion, which is not censored by Political Correctness, either in the UK or here in America. Any discussion or 'debate' which is allowed in our countries is heavily censored and rigged in favor of the 'victim' groups, and the Moslems are skilled at making themselves out to be victims, even as they commit terror acts the world over.
And because of our seeming insatiable need for 'diversity' and all its enrichments, we allow millions of these Mohammedans, an unknown number of whom are estimated to be members of terrorist 'sleeper' cells and jihad movements, to enter our countries and live among us. To question their presence is heresy. So on and on it goes; the recent spate of terror scares on several airlines illustrate the madness of our policies, and yet no one in authority dares criticize the presence of the Mohammedans among us. Granted, our politicians are now widely regarded as sellouts and traitors by many of their constituents; we have very low expectations of them. And even most of the more 'conservative' pundits will not even hint at the possibility of removing Moslems from our midst. What will it take to break the PC spell?
One of the few commentators who has consistently been saying that we need to curb Moslem immigration and repatriate some of them is Lawrence Auster, and he says this again in a recent post, dealing with the recent terror scares:
I�ve said it before, and I�ll say it again: this is our future, FOREVER, so long as significant numbers of Muslims reside and travel freely in the West.
Look at it this way. Would Charles Martel, after defeating the Arab-Moorish army at the battle of Tours and then driving it forever out of Gaul at the battle of Narbonne a few years later, have then commenced admitting "peaceful" and "moderate" Muslim immigrants and tourists into Gaul? We say we�re waging a war against a certain group, but never question the mass presence of that group among us.
And again, another voice of truth in the blogosphere is the redoubtable Fjordman, writing from Norway.
Here is a sample of Fjordman's comments, in his recent lengthy essay:
In Norway, it is probably unprecedented in the thousand years since the city of Oslo was founded at the end of the Viking Age that the indigenous population is being attacked on such a large and random scale. And the government is doing� well, pretty much nothing really, except for hiding the problem as much as possible and continuing Muslim immigration. This isn't good enough.
We are tired of hearing nonsense about "Islamophobia" while our children live in fear of Islamic terrorism. The purpose of the state is to uphold law and order and maintain the nation's borders and territorial integrity. Western European governments are doing neither, yet are busy with political censorship and interfering with details of our private lives where they have no business. It's time they are reminded that they are our servants, not our rulers.
Time for a few brave souls to step up and speak the unspeakable: maybe when enough people break the taboo, the timid among us, who need 'permission' to think and say these things, will find their voice.
But as I always say, time is short. The clock is running.

Labels: Islam, Threat, West

Gandalf at Up Pompeii cites an interview with Tom Tancredo by a Danish journalist in which Tancredo prescribes the deportation of all Moslems in Europe.
Gandalf links to what appears to be a very leftist blog (which I prefer not to link to directly) as the source of information on the interview. The interview was apparently for a Danish TV series called 'Clement in America' and there may be a video link at some point, but as yet there is not.
Interested readers should check out Gandalf's post at the link above.
If Tancredo did say this, good for him. As usual he is the lone voice in the wilderness among our politicians. Invariably after I say that, someone will always say 'yes, and that's why he can never be elected.' However I am of the belief that we should never say never. Things change, and if we believe that a Tancredo can never be elected, then we may as well say good-bye to America and the West, and just close up shop.
Our ancestors, thank God, did not have that mindset. They created this country in defiance of the odds.

Labels: Europe, Islam, Presidential Candidates, Separationism, Tom Tancredo

We've got a problem on the right.
The American people as a whole are sorely divided in many different ways: one generation against another; the social classes (which do exist, though not in the European sense) are divided, and of course race is the biggest and most serious source of division. The deep rift between left and right, which has become a chasm in recent decades, is largely centered on race, even more than on class conflict. The left have worked themselves up into a frenzy over how 'racist' most of their racial brethren supposedly are, and they are willing, it appears, to see open conflict over this.
Bring religion into the mix, and you have one more source of deep division. So with the Islamic population that has been imported into our country, bringing with them religious and racial disparities, you have a very volatile combination.
The events over the last several days in Oregon, with the Somali immigrant attempting a bombing at a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony, have caused something of a revival of discussion of the Islamic question. On several genteel conservative blogs there is actually rather tentative talk about curbing Moslem immigration, and -- imagine! -- sending them home.
A few years ago, I asked why we are so afraid of the 'd' word (deport). We were not always afraid of it; Eisenhower, who was hardly a right-wing nativist, actually did deport a good many illegal Mexican migrant workers. But now, the word deportation has, thanks to the left and their media, been associated with phrases like 'cattle cars' or 'tearing families apart.' But all 'deport' means is to send somebody back to their place of origin, otherwise known as home. Imagine that.
I still think we ought to use the simple phrase ''sending them home''. The left are diabolically good at finding emotionally-laden words to use against us; we can respond by refusing to let them dictate the terminology and the words used to frame the debate.
About this time, someone will suggest that it is horrifying to send people back to some pestilential and dangerous country like, say, Somalia. But pray tell, how did Somalia, or other such places get to be cesspits? And will those same conditions not eventually develop here as we import the authors of all the chaos to live among us?
But back to the question of Islam specifically: there are many on the right who believe that Islam is not a threat except insofar as we cause that to happen. We, with our evil foreign policy and our War On Terror, have caused terrorism. Actually I can't help but remember that my far-left friend, whom I have known since college, said the exact same things. You might say in response, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Leftists might be right about Islam and our wars in the Middle East.
Nonetheless, I always stop and think twice if I start to agree with my lefty friend.
For the record I opposed the War in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's one of the things (immigration being another) which sent me running and screaming away from the GOP. I started this blog as a way of examining some of these issues and also as a way of exploring where I belonged on the political spectrum, as I was not an average Republican nor was I a paleoconservative -- because I did not agree with many paleos that Islam was not a threat if we simply leave them alone.
I am all for leaving them alone, but to say that they are not our enemies is not possible for me.
Here we read a frequently-quoted right-wing writer scoffing at the idea that Islam is a threat.
Consider that ten minutes before the first tower got hit in New York, the thought had occurred to practically no one in America that Islam constituted a mortal threat to all that we hold holy, chiefly chain restaurants and iPods. But Islam afterwards offered to fill this void that the Russians had wimped out on. For a brief period after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Americans had no threat to worry about. They found it deeply puzzling. Weren't we supposed to be afraid of something? It didn't feel right.
Then came New York, and suddenly we saw it: The Clash of Civilizations. Islam was out to get us. Why hadn't we noticed? A roaring hatred for Moslems sprang up from people who had never met a Moslem, who had a garden slug's grasp of history. A deep satisfaction came over the land. We had been made whole again.
Battling Mohammedans quickly became an industry. The government at first tried to peddle Terrorism as the enemy, not Islam, but it didn't stick. Something more robustly flackable was wanted.
I find Buchanan, of the American Conservative, proclaiming that Islam is a Culture of Jihad, and most militant. No doubt. Very. Would it be poltroonish of me to note that just now Christian armies are busily annexing and wrecking Afghanistan and Iraq, having recently bombed Somalia?
[...] Those Moslems. Militant, they are. The bastards.''
I don't know if Reed is a Christian; I don't read his stuff often, but it appears he is not. I also know he is an expatriate who is married to a Mexican and who has Mexican children, so I consider that as having abandoned his American identity. Fine; he's done the right thing to move to Mexico.
But I think his writings are very influential among some on the right, and there are many around the right-wing blogosphere who say things much like Reed says above.
I don't see what solutions he offers except to leave the poor Moslems alone, but what would he have us do about those who are in our midst, like the Christmas bomber-wannabe? Oh, perhaps he'd say that the incident was ginned up by the powers-that-be, that it was a sting, that the boy was lured and baited into a trap.
Honestly, I acknowledge the basis for a lot of the cynicism on the right; I have a certain degree of it myself. But do those who scoff at the idea of an Islamic threat believe that everything (like 9/11) was an 'inside job' or a 'false flag operation'? I have a feeling that when/if another major incident happened, most on the hard right would say that it was a false flag deal. Is it not even possible that there might be genuine terror attacks?
I am just trying to understand the mindset; do people believe that Moslems in general do not hate us or consider us their enemies? It's easy to rationalize their militancy by blaming it on our government, but doing so ignores the long history of Islamic hostility towards Christendom, and their repeated attempts to conquer our forefathers or convert them forcibly. Moslems not only invaded, repeatedly, our ancestors' homelands, but often kidnapped and enslaved numbers of Christian Europeans. We have a long, troubled history with them which starts long before any of our current foreign policy mistakes.
And leaving the question of 'terrorism' aside, there is the very real problem of the gradualist approach wherein Islam colonizes Western countries with the express purpose of Islamizing them. They don't even need violence to attain their ends, as they simply immigrate en masse, bring their relatives, and have many, many children at their hosts' expense. All the while, as they reach a critical mass, they get a foothold in influential positions, and agitate against the host country's culture and religion. We see what is happening in Europe; how can one blame this on our foreign policy?
No, they've always been hostile to us and always will be. We cannot coexist in the same country, not without losing our identity and being absorbed into their race, culture, and religion. It can't be done.
But the fact that the right is divided on this issue is a big problem.
I wonder if some on the right see Islam as a weapon to be used against Christianity, much as the Christ-hating left sees them? The left is so consumed by their hatred and resentment of Christianity that they will submerge their own agendas (feminism, gay rights, atheism) and take their chances with Islam rather than co-exist with Christianity.
The left are playing the game of siding with ''the enemy of my enemy'', and hoping to make common cause, dancing with the devil. They are doing this at their peril, as they may well see someday -- or maybe not.
Incidentally, Chris Roach has a very good piece discussing the potential for the 'suicidally liberal' people in Oregon to wake up to reality.
''It�s not clear if an event like this, even if successful, can remove the politically correct scales from the eyes of Portland�s leaders. Theirs is a web of deception that will likely detect, even in this, a clarion call to redouble their efforts of outreach, tolerance, and the like. Liberalism like that of Portland�s mayor renders intelligent people stupid and blind to basic reality.''
I tend to think that the true-believer liberals would actually rather die and feel good about themselves while doing so, than to violate all that they believe in and identify with. I just hope that our whole society isn't taken down with them.

Labels: Diversity, Immigration, Islam, Jihad, Multicult, Poitical Correctness, Social Divisions

Dutch politician doubts Muslim ministers' loyalty
AMSTERDAM: The leader of a Dutch anti-immigration party will call for a vote of no-confidence in two Muslim government ministers next week, citing their dual nationality as the issue, a newspaper reported today.
Geert Wilders said in an interview with the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad the appointment of Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb and Turkish-born Nebahat Albayrak as junior ministers was wrong because both could have loyalties towards countries other than the Netherlands.
[...]
In Saturday's interview, Wilders said: "I do not want to live in a country where some day six or seven members of cabinet could be Muslim," adding that Islamic laws were "barbaric", referring to four people who were beheaded in Saudi-Arabia this week.
"I want to encourage Muslims to leave the Netherlands voluntarily. The demographic development should become such, that the chance is small that we again have two Muslims in the cabinet." About 1 million Muslims live in the Netherlands out of a population of 16 million. ''
This article is a rarity in that it does not use terms like 'far-right' or 'extremist' in describing Wilders's party, the Party for Freedom (PVV) . But whatever they say, or don't say, Wilders is a brave man for speaking out as he has; I hope he sets an example to be followed by others. We don't have anyone remotely comparable to him in our political scene; even Virgil Goode, who has taken a lot of flak for his criticism of Islam, was slated recently to attend some kind of Moslem service in the name of 'outreach' or dialogue. But Wilders' call for Moslems to leave voluntarily was a brave act; I don't know that anybody will take him up on it; but it's a start.
And here is an unexpected op-ed piece from Investors Business Daily, which I recently linked to; they are showing uncommon common sense in this piece (H/T Lawrence Auster, View from the Right):
Profile Of A Terrorist
Global Jihad: A new Gallup poll finds that richer, better-educated Muslims are more likely to be radicalized. This explodes the myth of the poor, dumb terrorist.
Since 9/11, the politically correct elite have mau-maued Americans into thinking the terrorists have hijacked a peaceful religion out of ignorance and poverty. Or that they've been brainwashed by Osama bin Laden.
But Gallup found the opposite to hold true: The most radical among Muslims � those who support jihad � earn more and stay in school longer. These are the smart ones, not the rubes.
[...]Gallup merely backs with statistics what we already knew. Contrary to liberal dogma, education makes Muslims only more extreme, not more moderate. Education doesn't stop terrorism.
Inviting more Muslims to our shores in the hopes they'll embrace our culture and adopt our values also seems misguided.
Yet this is the logic behind the White House's deal to grant 21,000 student visas to young Saudi men over the next four years. It's been sold as a cultural exchange program.
But do we really want to educate thousands of Saudis on our campuses if education helps only to radicalize Muslims?
Gallup's survey of Muslims, the largest conducted, puts to rest theories that radicals attack us because they're poor and alienated from society. Or because they're dim and easily misled.
Radical Muslims have an education and an economic future, yet they still hate. They're literate enough to interpret their holy books, yet they still embrace jihad against infidels.
Perhaps the only sane course in this war is to separate the West from Islam.''
[emphasis mine]
Truly it is the only sane course, and the mark of how insane our world has become is that there are so few voices calling for the obvious course, which is, of course, separation.
This op-ed represents a kind of breakthrough, and coming from an unexpected source. I suppose I would expect a business-oriented media source to be more like the Wall Street Journal, with its cosmopolitan, libertarian, no-allegiance-but-to-the-almighty-dollar, Open Borders crusade. So, kudos to the IBD and their op-ed staff. I hope a few more intrepid voices who are not cowed by PC will speak up in the mainstream media. I truly hope this is the first of many voices speaking out for separationism. Spread the word.

Labels: Islam, Moslems, Political Correctness, Religion Of Peace