Andrew McCarthy’s Guide for the Perplexed
Do you wonder what the hell happened in Libya? Right after our ambassador and three other Americans were murdered by that “spontaneous” uprising in Benghazi by people who just happened to be armed with RPGs, know the layout of our safe house, and who congregated on — let’s see, oh, right, it was on September 11, what do you know! — right after that, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed surprise: after all, hadn’t we helped “liberate” the Libyans from the monster Gaddafi and made way for . . . for what? Oh, right, for the “Arab Spring”!
I think that the administration’s response to the crisis in Libya might be the coup de grace for Obama’s reelection bid. In my view, Romney would have won anyway. I’ve been saying that for months. The president’s record on the economy is just too catastrophic to win him another term. And this, remember, is the first time in his life that this president has had to run on his record, on what he has actually accomplished, as distinct from his “charisma.” But what happened in Libya — and, more to the point, how the administration has twisted, turned, equivocated, and lied about what happened and what its initial response to the crisis was — that is likely to put the final nail in the coffin of Obama’s reelection bid. As Mark Steyn pointed out in a devastating column:
In those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and Special Forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy – or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order. So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hell hole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop.
How do you spin that, Mr. President?
But I digress. I brought up Libya in the first place because it presents yet another example of what is one of the biggest foreign policy, nay, existential challenges the West faces: the challenge, that is to say, of Islam.
At the end of his book America Alone, Mark Steyn suggests that, when it comes to its encounter with Islam, the West has three choices: acquiescence, annihilation, or enlightenment. We can acquiesce and become good Muslims or dhimmis; we can engage in armed conflict with a theocratic Islam; or we can work to segregate the secular currents that buoy many Muslims from the ideological imperatives that direct so much of the Muslim population. The only palatable alternative, it should be clear, is the last. But in order to pursue it, we have to be clear about what it is we are dealing with.
There is a great deal of nonsense spouted about Islam, from the corridors of Western power just as much as from the opinion columns of the commentariat. The Bush administration’s insistence, for example, that Islam was fundamentally a religion of peace was misguided public-relations claptrap. Nor does it help, as Andrew McCarthy forcefully points out in a must-read column today, to suggest that Islam is “not a religion,” as some conservatives have done. The real issue, as Andy notes, “ is ideology, not religion.” He goes on to make a critical point:
The distinction is worth drawing because, for the most part, Islamist terror is not fueled by Muslim zealousness for Islam’s religious tenets — for instance, “the oneness of Allah.” We Westerners recognize such beliefs as belonging to the realm of religion or spirituality. To the contrary, Islamist terror is driven by the supremacism and totalitarianism of Middle Eastern Islam — i.e., by the perception of believers that they are under a divine injunction to impose all of Islam’s tenets.
We in the West are puzzled by Islam because, having been brought up to believe in religious freedom, we are confronted by this specious syllogism:
- We believe in religious freedom;
- Islam is a religion;
- Ergo, we must respect and protect that which goes under the name of Islam.
This is a version of the fundamental antinomy of liberalism, which moves from a belief in tolerance to an acceptance of ideologies (like communism, say) that demand tolerance for the “point of view” that we should be destroyed and replaced by a different way of looking at the world.
Christianity at its core makes room for the secular realm (“render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”) in a way that Islam does not (everyone and everything always and everywhere is subject to the will of Allah). That difference is critical. It does not mean that we in the West deny the pertinence of religious and moral tenets for everyday life. As Andy puts it, “the fact that we separate church and state in the West does not mean our moral sense is without influence — indeed, profound influence — over how we conduct secular affairs. But in the West, we reject the notion that any religious belief system’s tenets should control those affairs. In the United States, we reject the establishment of a state religion — such official primacy would suffocate freedom of conscience, a bedrock of liberty.”
The operation of this fundamental moral economy works in a very different way in Islam. “By contrast,” Andy points out:
The foundation of Middle Eastern Islam is submission to Allah’s law, not individual liberty. This interpretation of Islam thus rejects a division between the secular and the spiritual. Its sharia system contemplates totalitarian control. That makes Islamist ideology (i.e., Islamic supremacism, or what is sometimes more elliptically called “political Islam”) just another totalitarian ideology, albeit one that happens to have a religious veneer.
There are thus two things to bear in mind:
- “Islamist ideology . . . [is] just another totalitarian ideology.”
- Islam’s theological tenets “are every bit as deserving of the First Amendment’s guarantees as any other.”
The price of that guarantee, however, is assimilation:
Muslims must accept that, in America and the West, it is not Islam but our traditions — especially the separation of church and state — that set the parameters of religious liberty. This way, Islam, the religion, is protected, but Islamic supremacism, the totalitarian ideology, is not. The latter undeniably draws on Islamic scripture, but it is categorically akin to Communism or National Socialism, not to religious creeds.
It is often said that the first step towards solving a problem is acknowledging that there is a problem and having the courage to call it by its real name. We Western liberals have a difficult time doing that. We habitually extend to others the benefit of the doubt, the latitude of tolerance, the dispensation that assumes all are, at bottom, freedom-loving creatures with domestic concerns akin to our own.
This is dangerously naïve and wrongheaded. Exactly how wrongheaded can be summed up in a single word: sharia, i.e., Islamic law. They — hundreds of millions of Muslims — want it, we do not. Al-Qaeda wants to impose sharia the world over. But it is not just al-Qaeda. “Non-violent Islamists also want to impose sharia, “ as Andy notes, “that’s why they’re Islamists.” Moreover:
These reputedly non-violent Islamists are not a “small minority” — they may be a majority of the world’s Muslims, and they are certainly a majority of the Middle East’s Muslims. They are al-Qaeda’s ideological allies, and, truth be told, they’re not really all that non-violent: They generally disagree with al-Qaeda’s attacks on Muslims and on non-Muslim countries, but they are supportive of violence against what they take to be non-Muslim aggressors in what they consider Islamic territories. Indeed, the sharia to which they adhere requires financial support (zakat) for those fighting in Allah’s cause.
The bottom line? “Sharia is the tie that binds terrorists to all other Islamists.” We in the West will never get a handle on the problem of Islam — the problem that this deeply illiberal ideology poses for our civilization — until we acknowledge the true dimensions of the problem we’re dealing with. Neville Chamberlain thought that Hitler was a man he “could do business with.” He was wrong about that, with unfortunate consequences. Had he straight off acknowledged the true nature of the threat Hitler represented, he might have saved the world, and not least the Germans, a great deal of unpleasantness.
Yeah, but I think most people with any brains recognize the problem, even if only implicitly – Muslims have the right to believe what they want to believe, but not to make anyone else believe it. They cross a line when they go from one to the other. If they insist on doing so, they must be rebuffed, by force if necessary. Simple as that. As I said, most people with any brains can figure it out.
Unfortunately, that leaves out most of today’s politicians, academics, media-ocrities, etc. We can change presidents and congressmen but it seems when they get to the DC bubble (the “nitwicity”) the sound of the bleating makes it difficult for them to think straight forever after. Ask John Roberts.
REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 3 of 3)
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/26/rezko-obama-and-the-nadhmi-auchi-railroad-linking-chicago-washington-and-baghdad-part-3-of-3/
Yeah, but I think most people with any brains recognize the problem, even if only implicitly – Muslims have the right to believe what they want to believe, but not to make anyone else believe it.
Muslims believe they have the right to impose their beliefs, through terror if necessary, on non-Muslims. Muslims believe their prophet – a man who was a paedophile, a rapist, a caravan robber and a mass murderer – is the perfect man. The video by the Coptic Christian was a light hearted parody compared to the facts of Mohammed’s actual life.
Muslims have laws against apostasy. They do not accept freedom of conscience – for their adherents or for non believers. Muslims are encouraged to practice deception. There is no moderation in Islam. There is also no concept of live and let live. For example, by claiming Jesus was a mere prophet, Mohammed blasphemed Christ (something I say as a Christian, he had every right to do) yet Muslims – all 57 states – think it quite appropriate to impose “Mohammed blasphemy” laws on the world.
Islam is an imperialistic, totalitarian, misogynistic, fanatical, backwards ideology with religious aspects. It is not a legitimate religion.
The “war on terror” should be renamed to describe it more accurately as “the defence against Islamic Imperialism”. Islam is incompatible with democracy and Muslim immigration should be banned.
Terry Gain – Well said.
And I would just add that the peaceful Muslims are actually Christians that mistakenly believe they are Muslims or are forced to declare themselves Muslims. They are as much Muslim as a decent person is a Democrat.
I would say Jews, rather than Christians. One cannot be a Christian without believing in the divinity of Christ and His death and resurrection.
I absolutely agree: Muslim immigration must be banned and the rock-throwing, stoning, Muslims of Dearborn deported. By their actions, actions I might add that were NOT prosecuted by the local dhimmie authorities, Muslims demonstrate their rejection of Western notions, let alone American Constitutional guarantees, of freedom of speech. Our government this past decade has become an official protector of Muslims at the EXPENSE of all other faiths and secular views. The influence of the Saudi’s Wahhabism through Muslim infiltration in our government is bearing its malign fruit.
And I disagree strongly with Andrew McCarthy’s naive and nuanced view of Islam, his promoting of the concept of a “secular” thread in Islam that would separate Muslims from their Sharia; the only reason Muslims in the West, and here in America particularly, do not openly and loudly demand Sharia is that they do not YET have the numbers to impose it on us. But you see, as in Dearborn, what Muslims will do when they comprise a large enough segment of a given population, all the while DEMANDING that we be tolerant of them AND their Sharia.
I suggest every one of you, and especially Mr. McCarthy whose work on this topic nevertheless merits our considered attention, read “A Real Islam Policy for A Real America,” by Lawrence Auster who hosts amnation.
The war against ideology in USA should be, most of all, an ideological war. People need to be mobilized against Islamic totalitarian anti-human ideology, as they are mobilized against communism. There are not many people who would admit in US that they are communists, even though there is no persecution of communists now, as far as I know. People should learn about Islam and its dangers in schools, everywhere. Islamic ideology is like a plague. It spreads to our government and eats it from inside. It turns Obama’s government into Islamic weapon against us.
Yes, Buck. Other syllogisms might be more to the point.
-We believe only in religions that today do not coerce non-believers to accept them as masters.
-Islam is a religion some of whose believers today would coerce non-believers to accept them as masters.
ERGO 1: We reject all those particular believers in coercive Islam.
ERGO 2: We don’t want them in our free country.
ERGO 3: We need to stop them from entering the country as soon as possible.
The solution is to eliminate D.C. as the Imperial Capitol. Require that Congress live within their district and have them meet 4 times a year in alternating cities. That won’t get rid of K street but it will put a hitch in their getalong. Plus if your representative is your neighbor, it will reduce the hubris they grow in D.C. from being treated like lords.
A compromise between water and sewage is still sewage
Disagree.
Islam is like Communism. Belief in it makes the believer, at the very least, a security threat to the US, and potentially a lethal threat. The threat is not removed until believer converts to some less threatening religion or leaves the country forever.
If someone follows Islam he believes that he has a duty to subdue unbelievers and force them to pay the jizyah, convert, or die. If he does NOT believe this, he is NOT a Moslem. There is no room for any other belief – this is from Koran and then Koran is the dictated word of Allah. It cannot be changed.
Communists and fascists and KKK peacefully exist in USA, have their newspapers, public meetings and web sites. However, they can not admit to their ideology in any civilized company. Islam should be treated the same: as pervert, anti-human ideology which advocates genocide.
Annihilation!
Does anyone know where I can find a simple explanation of wha
Does anyone know where I can find a simple explanation of the “theological” tenets of Islam? That is, after giving me an explanation of which god Islam supposedly worships; because due to the obvious differences of Islam’s teachings regarding Israel, Christianity and human beings that are NOT of Islam, the god of Islam cannot be the same god as that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Islam is more akin to witchcraft than anything else; since control and manipulation are central to witchcraft also. I reject the notion that we must respect Islam; a “religion” that has literally killed millions in its wake; and still IS killing daily; still mutilating women daily; still hanging gays daily and still attacking other cultures daily and even worse; making the lives of its followers a living hell.
You have to back to old pagan beliving arabia. Allah was actually a minor pagan diety – the moon god. That is why you see the crescent moon on ALL muslim flags. These people KNOW that allah is NOT the same God as that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God and Father of Christ.
It has been discussed here that allah and the whole muslim religion was just an excuse for the arab colonialism of that time. It can be argued it’s the same ideology that guides them today – world-wide expansionism. Their Manifest Destiny, if you will.
Thanks for the explanation lolly.
I think McCarthy is playing a dangerous game … there may be moderate individual Muslims but there is NO moderate Islam. To call the Quran “holy” is an absolute travesty that is akin to calling Mein Kampf “holy”. Such is the deception known as Islam.
Count me among those here with Husky.
I’ve posted elsewhere that this idea of “moderate muslims” is malarky. Those muslims calling themselves “moderate”….where do they draw lines in their Koran as to which verses they’ll choose to live by and which verses to ignore?
Are they (these moderate muslims) in fact given any choice? Where is that “choice” spelled out?
I know, I know…there’s that thing somewhere which says that, in effect, any means justifies the “end” of establishing their “sharia law”.
There’s also this gathering of the acrid stench of taqiyya…the subtleties of which we’d better be well acquainted with….pronto.
Those so called “moderate muslims”, are they then…. only moderately pregnant….. with the semen of their Koran?
This is the essence of hypocrisy, but it does us no good to tell muslims about this hypocrisy…..we define it differently. Asian Islam has its own “logic” incompatible with Western Civilization.
Hence, this idealistic “assimilation” as we Americans know it simply cannot work…..work at all….. inside our America.
Is it just me, or did Joe Biden ruin the word “malarky” for everyone?
Even if someone is a “moderate” Moslem, his religions requires him to give to Islamic charities – which support the Jihadis with funds and logistics.
look at: http://www.politicalislam.com
and youtube videos on islam by bill warner.
Why We Are Afraid, A 1400 Year Secret, by Dr Bill Warner
on youtube
With all due respect to Mr. McCarthy, whose essays are regular reading for me and whose books I’ve enjoyed and learned much from, the distinction between Islamism and Islam is a distinction without a difference. The jihad imperative, “jihad fi sabil Allah” or “war for the sake of Allah,” is part and parcel of Islam, hardwired into it from the moment Muhammad fled to Medina, as show in the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the learned Islamic commentary from the earliest days to the present. I can understand why he makes that distinction, for to do otherwise leaves little room for those Muslims who reject the jihad imperative and accept Western democracy, but to act as if that imperative isn’t part of “real” Islam is just to fool ourselves.
I agree. McCarthy is not so different from the politicians who seek to apply artificial divisions where none exist. Perhaps, at some point in the past, in certain parts of the world, there were Muslims who had no interest in this totalitarian ideology. Obama was apparently exposed to a such a less-ideological form of Islam during his time in Indonesia, which is why he clearly believes Islam to be a religion of peace.
Those days are gone, for the most part. One need look no further than the state of the religion in Indonesia and Malaysia. Muslims in those countries, and in most Muslim countries, have embraced the more ideological forms of Islam brought by Saudi-funded missionaries. They haven’t been forced to embrace these forms, they have willingly accepted them. That is the state of Islam at this moment, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. The sooner our “thought leaders” figure that out, the better. Bloomberg, Chris Christie, and Rick Perry are perfect examples. Otherwise shrewd men who have swallowed the obviously false distinctions hook, line, and sinker.
I agree. I don’t believe there is any separation between religious or colonial islam and those who claim “secular” islam. Those who practice “secular” islam do so by funding the violent portions and they, themselves, utilize the more devious aspect of the demographic jihad, by infiltrating and breeding their way into demographic majorities in their host countries. When they get sufficient numbers they begin lawfare jihad. They NEVER stop.
I don’t want them annihilated, but I want then ALL out of western countries and isolated into their 57 states. There is plenty of room for them there and the west will begin to thrive again – after we take back the schools and outlaw their allies – leftists.
Living in the eye of the Islamic storm; schooled by a few from the counter terror field; being best friends with one who participated in the raid on Entebbe,rendering a unique vantage point too; having close contact with 2 of Israel’s leading political scientists/analysts;and having a background in geo-politics and Islam, I offer up commentary from my unique vantage point. It is what it is.
There is little doubt that Andrew McCarthy is an incredible font of highly accurate information on the subject matter. There are only a handful who are in his league. Therefore, those who do not heed his words seriously are whistling past their own graveyards.
Out of many of my own commentaries, perhaps this one will help some of those who are still perplexed – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/21/repeat-until-the-cows-come-home-there-is-no-moderate-islam-period-addendum-to-what-the-west-in-general-and-its-leaders-in-particular-know-about-islam-can-fill-less-than-a-thimble-m/
Being a patriotic American, as well as a committed Zionist, gives one a sense of urgency which cannot be squelched. All those who feel the same should school themselves on the above subject matter. Why? Western civilization hangs in the balance, and we all have a part to play.
Living in the eye of the Islamic storm; schooled by a few from the counter terror field; being best friends with one who participated in the raid on Entebbe,rendering a unique vantage point too; having close contact with 2 of Israel’s leading political scientists/analysts;and having a background in geo-politics and Islam, I offer up commentary from my unique vantage point. It is what it is.
There is little doubt that Andrew McCarthy is an incredible font of highly accurate information on the subject matter. There are only a handful who are in his league. Therefore, those who do not heed his words seriously are whistling past their own graveyards.
Out of many of my own commentaries, perhaps this one will help some of those who are still perplexed – /2012/08/21/repeat-until-the-cows-come-home-there-is-no-moderate-islam-period-addendum-to-what-the-west-in-general-and-its-leaders-in-particular-know-about-islam-can-fill-less-than-a-thimble-m/
Being a patriotic American, as well as a committed Zionist, gives one a sense of urgency which cannot be squelched. All those who feel the same should school themselves on the above subject matter. Why? Western civilization hangs in the balance, and we all have a part to play.
I am going to make an assertion that I would like to see both Roger Kimball and the knowledgeable readers of these pages pick up on. I assert that there has lived in our time one man who knew how to tame the beast of Islam and that man was Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi or simply “the Shah”. Further, I believe that the back stabbing of the Shah that Jimmy Carter rendered was possibly the greatest single blunder of our time. Few people seem to appreciate the degree to which the Iranian people wished to embrace the West, with some exception to the excesses of our pop-culture, and join us as a modern and enlightened culture. The Shah, jerk that was at times, and likely his successors (they could not have stopped the juggernaut toward civil modernity) was the last and only hope for avoidance of our current situation as it regards today‘s Islam. Jimmy’s ignorance regarding the Shah’s understanding of the threat of Islam how to control it, and the importance of doing so, has left us where we are today.
Yooper, your assessment is certainly not a blooper. You are decidedly on target.
While Carter was a die hard leftist, he was also dumb as a post, in the realm of geo-politics. On the other hand, the Islamist-in-Chief PURPOSEFULLY deposed Mubarak & Qadaafi, dictator strongmen. Though hardly democrats, they definitely were the antidotes required to thwart the rise of Islamism in the region.
It is a lot more complicated, but I suspect you get the picture…and the evidence being amassed re Bengazigate proves my thesis, one developed as soon as he took office, as he exposed his geo-political hand.
I believe that President Jimmy Carter deliberately organized the ouster of the last Shah of Iran as revenge for the Shah’s not allowing Carter’s brother to do some kind of business deal in Iran that was illegal in Iran. Carter also probably supported the Ayatollahs because they were religious.
PAthena, you are correct, but his driving force was his basic ignorance of the region’s bloody dynamics. He knew less than enough to fill a peanut!
During WWII there was no distinction between Germans and Nazis or between Japanese and militarists. If there had been, the Western Allies would still be fighting in Europe and the Pacific.
Unfortunately, the second scenario, annihilation, is what lies ahead by the Mohammedian’s choice. The question really is: Which side will be annihilated?
This is an insightful comment, precisely because all three of our enemies in World War Two were cultural movements which were both political and religious in nature.
Imperial Japan was the most obvious example. The Shinto belief system venerated the Emperor as a “living god”, and called for war to extend his dominion over the Earth. It’s noteworthy that one of the first conditions the victorious Allies imposed on Japan following the surrender was that, while the Emperor could remain, he had to state, firmly and publicly, that he was not a god, “living” or otherwise. The “otherwise” part was added to prevent future would-be Tojos from calling for another rising after Emperor Hirohito’s death, in his name, on the grounds that having died and ascended to Heaven, the late Emperor would then indeed be a deity. This clause was apparently the idea of General MacArthur, who for all his shortcomings in dealing with higher authority such as Truman had a far better understanding of Japanese culture and tradition than most Westerners.
Moving on to Italy, Mussolini from his first election in 1921 tried to move Italy to a rebirth of the Roman Empire, with all the trappings. While he paid lip service to the Pope, he really pushed the Italian culture as far back toward pre-Christian Roman practices as he could get, both socially and in philosophy. His obsession with this can be found on any military firearm made in Italy during his tenure; one made in, for instance, 1938, would not be marked “1938″, that being a Christian date. Instead, it would be marked “XVII” for “Year 17 of the Fascist Era”- in Roman numerals, no less. The rest of Il Duce’s tenure was equally marked by his efforts to erase Christian elements from the “new society” he was trying to create, and replace them with pre-Christian Roman equivalents.
And then we come to Nazi Germany. Even if you disregard pre-Nazi groups like the Thule Society, which was inspired by a mixed bag of German Romanticism and the “theosophical” meanderings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (the pseudo-Russian pseudo-mystic who first used the term “Aryan” to mean “ethnic German”- that wasn’t its original meaning, BTW), Nazism was both a political and a religious belief system at the same time; one that venerated pre-Christian Nordic deities and customs.
Nordic festivals replaced Christian ones as official holidays in Germany, which was ironic as of course many such festivals (Easter, Christmas, etc.) were originally “Christianized” versions of ancient seasonal or other festival days. Nordic runes were used as the official emblems of many government departments because of a belief in their “spiritual” power. The German Agriculture Ministry used the “fee” rune, meaning “cattle” or “land”, as its emblem, and the “sig” (“sun”) rune, an angular “s” shape, was the emblem of the Hitler Youth. Doubled, it was the emblem of the infamous Schutzstaffel- the SS.
To me, the most interesting was the “folh” rune. Also known as the “plant” or “death” rune, signifying “going back to the earth” (i.e., the grave), it replaced the Christian cross on the graves of German soldiers, especially SS men. Looking like a triangular three-pronged fork or pitchfork with the points up, if you turn it 180 degrees and put a circle around it- it’s the “Peace” sign, so beloved of our modern-day “progressives”, who probably never bothered to find out where it originally came from.
In marriages in Nazi Germany, a Party member officiated instead of a priest. Salt was given as a sanctification- an old Nordic custom. And instead of a Lutheran Bible, the newlyweds received… yes, a copy of Mein Kampf.
Mein Kampf has been a best-seller in the Muslim world, in Arabic translation, ever since it was first published in 1924. Mainly because so many believing Islamists see so many parallels between the teachings of the Prophet- and Hitler’s philosophy of the subjugation and extermination of those regarded as “inferior”. Especially Jews, but including Christians and other “unbelievers” as well.
(NB; Hitler referred to Christianity as a “Jewish plot” several times in the book. So much for the modern equation of “Christian=Nazi” so beloved of our “enlightened elite”.)
The moral is that political movements can become religious movements, or vice versa. And that as Frank Herbert once said,
clear ether
eon
Verily, World War II was a war between Christians and pagans; one the pagans started with the intent of conquest.
Thanks for the interesting and erudite comment. One small point: Mussolini’s dating system was based on that adopted after the French revolution.
Let’s not overlook the possibility of Islam annihilating itself, if properly challenged.
Islamic societies have never been the cradle of significant inventions beneficial to humanity, unless one considers the maintenance of slavery, and its ultimate embodiment, the suicide bomber, a great invention. So far in history, Islamic conquest have not been challenged with great success. Consider the comparatively sophisticated Persian empire, which was not able to prevent its conquest by numerically inferior illiterate fanatics invading from the south. From an Islamic perspective, the superiority of Islam is the great axiom, and they have always professed so vigorously.
The superiority of the West is not axiomatic, because it can be measured empirically: Consensual governance, high productivity in the creative disciplines, medecine, industrial development, aviation, electronic communications, unmanned teleguided missiles, etc… all relatively recent developments (five centuries or so, which is not much in the framework of human history), which have caused the living conditions of western citizens to become far more desirable than those of the Islamic subjects of miserable societies of the Middle East. Here I deliberately do not use the word “citizen”, because it does not properly apply under tyrannical circumstances.
Modern supremacist Islamism can be seen as the desperate Islamic response to the ascent of all manifestations of the contributions of the West. Satellite dishes can be seen on rooftops in the greater Middle East. Attempts to forbid them have evidently failed. There is a special error of perspective (or a special case of projection) typical of the Islamic mind: The satellite dishes represent a form of foreign infiltration easily interpreted from an Islamic perspective: An insidious subversion by a devious ennemy engaged in their own jihad against them. The fervor of today’s jihadists may well be the impulse to confront the expansion of the West. What are we seeing today in the Middle East? We might perceive it through another special error of perspective, leading to stupid invocations of “religion of peace” from cowardice and the wishful thinking that comes with it.
What could come of it? There is no historic precedent to the modern challenge of Islam. If today’s Islamists succeed in getting the upper hand in Egypt, Syria, Lybia, etc… (Persia and Lebanon are already under their thumb), they may well totally ruin whatever is left of those meager economies, and produce a humanitarian disaster, and utterly discredit themselves in the eyes of whomever manages to survive these great implosions.
We could not save them, even if we try. In the meantime, it is our duty to make it clear to our muslim immigrants that their religious freedom is garanteed, but their subversive efforts will fall under the enforcement of our laws. What was the mafia? It was only a highly destructive failure of assimilation from a minority asserting the supremacy of their own values! Let us not pretend that we have any excuse for being asleep at the helm.
President Barack Obama, known for his knowledge of 57 states in the United States (!), declared at his Cairo speech lauding Mohammedans, that Muslims had invented the printing press (Gutenberg did that In Mainz), that they had invented the compass (the Chinese did that), and had established the first university (Italians did that in Bologna, around 1000 years ago).
That is simply not true. American, British, even Soviet propaganda (at the end of the war) made a clear distinction between the German people and the Nazi regime.
This did not apply in the fighting because Germany as a nation was at war with the Allies. The Nazi regime was the official government of Germany, obeyed by the German people.
By contrast – Moslems are not a nation, and there is no official government of Islam which has declared war on the U.S.
Some Moslems, claiming to speak for Islam, have declared such a war and attacked the U.S.
Other Moslems reject that claim and oppose the “war”. Many of them have helped us fight Islamist terrorism, which is often directed at Moslems.
We have received much assistance from governments of Moslem countries.
We also know that the Islamist rulers of Iran are hated by most of their Moslem subjects, and (unlike Nazi Germany) face continual resistance to their authority. Does it make sense to treat the Moslems of Iran as a monolithic enemy?
McCarthy’s points are
Sharia-supremacist ideology is much more widespread among Moslems than is accepted by most Westerners.
To defeat the Islamists, that ideology must be explicitly attacked and refuted, which is not being done.
But that ideology is not the same as Islamic theology.
Back during World War II, the distinction was made between the Nazi ideology, which asserted that German culture and “race” were superior and should rule the world, and the simple fact of being German.
Some people refused to make this distinction – they called for the suppression of the German language and population controls on Germans because German culture and “race” were inherently warlike and destructive. Fortunately these cranks did not get their way. Their views were publicized extensively by Nazi propagandists, and did much to keep the German army fighting to the last ditch.
Let’s not make similar mistakes now.
Wrong. We fought Germany, period. We destroyed whatever we could because we understood it was winner-take-all. Originally, we thought we’d be dropping a nuke on Germany. From ball-bearings to foodstuffs, we understood that we had to kill the morale of the enemy. Don’t even get me started on Japan.
Ever seen any of the following movies?
The Mortal Storm (1940)
Hotel Berlin (1945)
49th Parallel (1941)
A Voice in the Night (1941)
Enemy of Women (1944)
Edge of Darkness (1943)
The Seventh Cross (1944)
Hitler’s Children (1943)
All made during WW II, all featuring sympathetic German characters.
As I already pointed out, this had no effect on military operations, though, because Germany was an organized legal entitity whose members were bound by its formal declaration of war against the U.S.
“Moslems” are not an organized entity, and no one has authority to speak for Moslems.
“We also know that the Islamist rulers of Iran are hated by most of their Moslem subjects,”
Just because you “know” that doesn’t make it a fact. Out of approx 75 million people the best guess is that 60 million support the Mullahs. That estimate is based on polling done in the mid 90′s. The Iranian people vs the Mullahs is a fantasy started by the Shah’s people in exile that dream of taking back power. It isn’t real and they are not going to regain power. They stand about the same chance of taking back Iran (Persia) that the English do of taking back the USA.
“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”
~George Orwell
There is no ‘Fundamental’ Islam, no ‘Islamist’ Islam , no ‘Fanatical’ Islam, no ‘Highjacked’ Islam there is just ISLAM. Those that ‘misunderstand’ this will live to regret it. There are ‘moderate’ Muslims, I know many and am in fact married to one and she and her family are extremely ‘moderate’ , but it THEY who are the real ‘misunderstanders’ of Islam. They have been brought up all their lives with Islam yet know virtually nothing about it except what the Imam tells them and that is a pile of LIES. I know far far more about Islam than any of my in-laws. Did you know that all knowing allah who pre-destinates (no FREE WILL in Islam) everything you do only understands primitive ambiguous Arabic not only Arabic but the ancient Quraish primitive , ambiguous dialect of Arabic as spoken by Mohammad and his TRIBE what a co-incidence hey. Of course Muslims and the Koran claim itself to be for ‘All men for ALL time’ and to be ‘Clear and easily understood’. So by that we can say that allah is an Arab supremacist and is boring, repetitive, misogynistic,anti semitic, self contradictory and a LIAR as all these things are in the Koran
“How does America separate Islamic religion from Islamic supremacism?”
A questioner asked something similar of Salman Rushdie at his appearance on at GW earlier this month. Along the lines of “how do you reject the violence and hatred of Islamicists but still maintain respect for Islam as a relgion.” Rushdie’s terse answer: “I don’t recommend it.”
Ah, written like one who has never read the Quran.
About 80% of the Quran was written to repeat three basic things, with instructive stories to reinforce them: 1) A good Muslim prays five times a day. 2) A good Muslim participates in zakat (religious alms giving), and 3) A good Muslim participates in jihad with his wealth and his life. The goal is that the whole earth be in perfect submission to Allah.
There. I’ve summed it up for you.
When is jihad appropriate? First, it is always appropriate against pagans, agnostics, and atheists, who are an abomination to Allah. Second, it is appropriate against any Jew or Christian who oppresses Islam. What is oppressing Islam? Simple. It is having a lifestyle that differs from Islamic holy law and refusing to submit to dhimmitude. Also, of course, Muslim are ordered to jihad against “hypocrites,” who are Muslims who do not conform to Muslim ideals.
The nice thing is that many Muslims don’t believe this–because the Quran is rarely studied in their native languages and instead is memorized in Arabic, which most Muslims don’t understand. Even the clerics of many countries have very, very actual understanding of the Quran and the Hadiths, as education there is extremely poor.
Sadly, education, then, is our enemy, because as they become educated, they become better able to understand the whole message of the Quran. Some choose an incredibly impressive mental dissonance and reinterpret the Quran in ways contrary to every meaning it has ever had. An even smaller number choose to reject Islam. But many, realizing that they had not been proper Muslims, embrace the whole message of Islam. Education in Islamic areas raises the risk of extremism and violence for just this reason.
MimiR, thank you for this line:
>> Some choose an incredibly impressive mental dissonance and reinterpret the Quran in ways contrary to every meaning it has ever had.
_That’s_ the perplexity. I’ve simply developed a mental dissonance of my own, wherein I don’t challenge those people. I know good ones, second-generation Americans, who fulfill zakat by giving to the United Way.
Yup, and in-turn, United Way gives that money to terrorists.
So if that means being a good muslim, I guess they’re on-track.
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/435
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled when they make that choice. But talking about these people as Muslim is calling people who thing that all nice people go to heaven and Jesus was a very nice man are Christian. Culturally? Perhaps. But they reject the very foundations of their faith.
The Democrats won’t do anything to upset Muslims because they want to be the party of minorities, which include Muslims.
The Republicans won’t do anything because the Left controls the media and will label anyone who speaks out as a bigot, and the “Honey Boo Boos” (as Zombie calls them) will vote Democrat.
This problem (like our spending and entitlement problems) is going to have to get a lot worse before enough people will be willing to do what is necessary.
Extract our own resources, stop letting them invade us, no more aid. There is no reason whatsoever to deal with the inbred lunatics at all. And if the ones with citizenship or were born here give a hint of trouble, throw them in a super max prison for the rest of their worthless lives with NO accommodations for their bogus religion. The rest will snap to or not, I don’t care. Lock them all up.
Along with this common sense policy is kick the un out and defund the vipers nest. No embassies on American soil for muslim countries.
“Islam’s theological tenets “are every bit as deserving of the First Amendment’s guarantees as any other.”
The price of that guarantee, however, is assimilation:
Muslims must accept that, in America and the West, it is not Islam but our traditions — especially the separation of church and state — that set the parameters of religious liberty. This way, Islam, the religion, is protected, but Islamic supremacism, the totalitarian ideology, is not.”
Roger, your columns are usually very insightful but not this one. You and Andy McCarthy are far more educated than am I, but on this issue of Islam you are dead wrong.
You say that Muslims must accept our tradition of separation of church and state but you don’t say what happens to them if they don’t. This is very important because they have never made that concession ever anywhere. So how is that going to be accomplished?
You say that Islam’s religious tenets are as deserving of the first amendment protections as any other, but one of their religious tenets is that must kill the Jews and rid the earth of all other religions. Just how are you proposing to get to get them to abandon one of their basic principles? Freedom of religion is anathema to Muslims.
The tenets of Islam are Not deserving of First Amendment protection because they stand in opposition to virtually our entire constitution.
In short you are asking that a new religion called Islam, but without some of the features Westerners find objectionable, be created and that it be created by Muslims themselves to please the hated infidel. And with no mention of what the penalty to them would be if they do not. Lots of luck on that one.
The whole idea of any substantial numbers of Muslims assimilating is a pipe dream and an exercise in wishful thinking.
I commend you for your thoughtfulness and your cogency.
You are exactly right. It always comes down to this; What are you gonna do about it? When we name the source, that is the time we’ll focus on delivering ourselves from the dilemma.
My own point of view is this. Whatever anyone wants to call it, whatever it is described as being, and whatever it seemed to be in the past, islam does not trump U.S. law or the Constitution. It does not trump me or my family.
There can be no parallel set of laws to our secular laws. There can be no compromise of our sovereignty.
The man running against the incumbent President didn’t get where he is by waiting for things to happen. I think you are going to see a proactive administration which is going to FINALLY start to deal with this issue. With a little luck in November, there will be enough votes to catalyze both houses into action. Soon it will be the majority of voters that congress will answer to instead of this or that constituency, God willing.
Mr. Kimball,
I reject your statement that of the three alternative strategies described by Mark Steyn for the United States in the struggle with Islam, “The only palatable alternative, it should be clear, is the last”. (Pursuing some ill-defined Islamic enlightenment).
Why is it “not palatable” to destroy a civilization that threatens our freedom and security? Why is it “not palatable” to crush a civilization and religion that is dedicated to our destruction and enslavement?
Islamic supremacism is a feature, not a bug, of Islam. Islamic doctrine divides the world into the Dar al Islam (the realm of submission) and the Dar al Harb (the realm of war). Whether we look at the “verses of the sword” in the Koran, or the personal example of the Prophet Muhammad as a political and military leader, or the thousand plus years of Islamic aggression against non-Islamic peoples, the evidence is crystal clear: Islam is a threat to the freedom and security of all non-Muslim peoples and nations. The degree of threat has increased or decreased over time as Muslim power has increased or decreased, but the threat itself has never ended because it is a core part of Islam.
We should accept the reality of the Islamic threat and get on with crushing it.
Two related points:
1) Freedom of religion is not a suicide pact that requires us to tolerate threats to our freedom from an intolerant religion. John Locke’s Essay on Toleration lays out the arguments very well for suppressing a religion (Roman Catholicism) that threatened the religious and political liberty of Great Britain. Tolerating the dissenting Protestant sects was acceptable in Anglican Britain because they did not threaten the freedom of Britain. In contrast, Roman Catholicism did threaten England’s freedom through both external attack and internal subversion. (Spanish Armada, Gunpowder Plot, etc.).
2) We should be under no illusions about the level of violence that may be required to achieve an Islamic Enlightenment that is comparable to the Christian Enlightenment.
The Christian Enlightenment in Europe only occurred after more than one hundred (100+) years of religious warfare between Catholics and Protestants. The Catholic church did not give up its efforts to suppress Protestantism until it was forced to by the military defeat of its Spanish and Austrian champions. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that laid the foundations for the Christian Enlightenment was a peace of exhaustion. Between one-quarter and one-third of the population of Central Europe died in the Thirty Years War alone.
Thank You.
joe in houston,
You’re welcome! It is good to see that more and more people recognize Islam for what it is and understand the terrible threat it poses to our liberties and our lives. What is sad is that we are still a minority of the general US population. What is even more sad is the willful blindness of so many of our leaders and the pundits and academics who shape US policy.
I treasure Roger Kimball and Andrew McCarthy and their willingness to confront the Islamic threat. However, even these highly intelligent men are unable to openly state this simple truth: The problem with Islam is Islam.
I suspect that the reason Roger, Andrew, and other more prominent conservative pundits do not accept this simple truth is that they fear where this conclusion leads. It is a terrible thing to contemplate the destruction of a major civilization. But it is a more terrible thing to contemplate the loss of our freedom, our security, and our civilization because we are unwilling to do what must be done to end the Islamic threat forever.
Our world shrinks every year because of advances in transportation technology and communications technology. The power of men to do harm to other men grows every year because of advances in weapons technology. We are trapped on this planet with Islam whether we like it or not. Their ability to attack us grows with every year. We were able to deter the Soviet Union without having to fight a global hot war to defeat them because they valued their lives on Earth. It will be much more difficult to deter Islamic peoples who believe that the quickest route to heaven is through jihad against the infidel.
Excellent post, but just a couple of observations. You said” Islam is a threat to the freedom and security of all non-Muslim peoples and nations.” That is true but the real threat to humanity is when a people or nation becomes a Muslim Nation. Those enduring the worst suffering from Islam are those who practice it.
You assert “2) We should be under no illusions about the level of violence that may be required to achieve an Islamic Enlightenment that is comparable to the Christian Enlightenment.”
Unfortunately, what we are experiencing now IS the Islamic Enlightenment. Islam is not descended from Judiasm and Christianity as Christianity is descended from Judiasm. Islam is an attempt by an evil psychopath to use some aspects of those earlier religions to justify his appetite for violence and perversion.
No “Enlightenment” that is acceptable to Westerners is possible. The violence that would be “required to achieve an Islamic Enlightenment” would be better spent trying to achieve an “Islamic Extinction.”
Ultimately, either Western Civilization or Islam will be destroyed.
I wonder if those who are always concerned about treating Muslims fairly have ever considered that the best thing that could be done for Muslims is to liberate them from their their horrible, irredeemable “religion”?
chuck,
Thanks for the kind words and great comments. I agree that what Islam does to its long-term practitioners is a tragedy. Like all totalitarian systems, Islam cripples and warps the humans who have to live within it.
Re the question of is Islam already in its Enlightenment period or not:
I have to agree with JFM (comment 19) that Abdul Wahhab of 18th century Arabia was Sunni Islam’s Martin Luther and Sunni Islam is going through an equivalent to the Protestant Reformation. (Shia Islam’s equivalent to Martin Luther was Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and they are also going through a Reformation).
Just as the Protestant Reformation was driven by the desire to return Christianity to its core teachings and a simpler, purer form, the current Islamic Reformation is driven by a desire to return to the Prophet Muhammad’s core teachings and a simpler, purer form of Islam. Just as the Protestant Reformation emphasized the primacy of the Bible and the example of Jesus Christ’s life on earth, the Islamic Reformation emphasizes the primacy of the Koran (and the Hadiths) and the example of the Prophet Muhammad’s life.
The problem for all non-Muslims with the current Islamic Reformation is that when Muslims actually read the Koran (and the Hadiths) and study the life of Muhammad, they learn that it is a core duty of good Muslims to struggle to establish Islamic rule over the whole earth. It is very difficult for any Muslims to challenge these teachings successfully because the Koran is believed to be the literal word of Allah as dictated to Muhammad by the ArchAngel Gabriel.
This is also why many of the most dedicated jihadis are the most educated Muslims — they have actually read the Koran in their native languages, studied the life of the Prophet and his companions, and examined Sharia law in detail. In many ways they are equivalent to the early Protestants in their devotion to studying the Bible and trying to live as Jesus and his early followers lived. Unfortunately, they are also equivalent to many early Protestants in their intolerance for dissenting opinions (heresy) and their attempts to create an Islamic utopia through theocratic rule.
Of course, you can also argue that Sunni Islam is equivalent to the Roman Catholic church of the Reformation in its drive to both conquer the infidels and suppress the Shia heretics. In either case, we’re screwed as non-Muslims if they defeat us.
James, You have explained very clearly why what we are seeing is THE Islamic Reformation.
I simply can’t understand why intellectuals refuse to see that the Reformation meant taking Christianity back to its roots. The Reformation did NOT consist of Christianity completely re-inventing itself as they think Islam will do if we just ask them nicely enough.
This distinction is enormous as well as obvious. The only reason any one with even a little knowledge about these two religions doesn’t see this difference is because they don’t want to see it.
Chuck,
“This distinction is enormous as well as obvious. The only reason any one with even a little knowledge about these two religions doesn’t see this difference is because they don’t want to see it.”
You cut right to the core of the problem with that statement. There is a truly staggering amount of moral and intellectual cowardice among the leadership of our country. Wishing for a pleasant result doesn’t make it happen. Refusing to look at the reality of Islam and Islamic history isn’t going to change Islam or Islamic behavior.
This is certainly true, but unfortunately, both Western culture and Christianity have discredited ourselves.
What is the face of Christianity today? Television preachers who are essentially just hucksters, crazy leftists (Anglicans, in the UK at least), and an incredibly corrupt Catholic church (which was never particularly Christian to begin with)
Similarly, look at Western culture. Beyond it’s increasing self-loathing, it’s lost its self-confidence. Look at how we reacted to 9/11 – creating a dubious “Homeland Security” agency, submitting would be airline travellers to sexual assault, when simply arming pilots and locking doors would be sufficient.
Your own demoralization and negativity toward religion reflect a certain strain of opinion only. The hollow caricatures of Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity which you deride are far from the actual reality.
Catholics and Evangelicals are active, strong and vibrant communities and are ministering to the sick and hungry by the millions each and every day. Catholic Universities are among the best in the world and Catholic Hospitals and Charities are helping more people than ever in the history of the world.
Christianity in the West is certainly no less relevant to society than it ever was, it’s just that that secularism has demoralized so many people that they never even think to look at what the very basis for morality is.
The best counter argument to Mohammedanism is the example of Christ.
“The best counter argument to Mohammedanism is the example of Christ.”
As in the First and Third Crusades?
Islam without Sharia would be like Christianity without the Ten Commandments. This is what Western leaders and politicians fail to see or deliberately ignore.
And a peaceful Muslim is like a liberty-loving Democrat.
If Muslims don’t separate Islam , the religion from Islam the political identity of Muslims then who are we to tell them to do it. Bottom line, Muslims will not separate politics of Islam from the religion of Islam. It is simply not allowed by the religion and its followers and their so called prophet.
Let’s not have this delusional dream which is becoming a ghastly nightmare day by day. Believe me all Muslims are Islamists and there is noway one can say that there are Muslims who do not believe in core principle of Islam – that of conquering converting the entire world to Islam and that is what Islamists want!!
Let’s reword it this way:
-We believe in religious freedom
-The Aztec reliogion is a religion
-Ergo, we must respect and protect that which goes under the name of the Aztec religion.
NOT!!!!
The fact is the First Amendment was written by people who thought only of Judeo-Christianism and implicitly assummed every religion followed the Golden Rule. They knew of Islam, let’s remeber Jeffersion needing to read the Koran in order to learn how to deal with the Barbary Copast pirates, and had forgotten or didn’t know about the Aztec religion or the Kali cult.
The fact is: Islam doesn’t follow the Golden Rule, is at war with every other religion and in fact evrty other institution, believes its followers should be given special rights (killing a non-Muslim comes cheaper) and sets as an example to be followed, the most perfect ever, a highway robber, murderer and raper.
Also we msy stop dreaming about a Martin Luther (who BTW was nopt precisely an example of tolerance): first because the Koran is supposed to be a copy of an uncreated book not even Allah can change and the controversial verses are in the Koran so there is no way a Muslim Martin Luther can change them, second because Luther advocated a return to true Christianity. In Islam there has laready been a Luther. He was called Abdul Wahab and pne of the best followers of his and Muhammad’s doctrine was Osam bin Laden.
So stop dremaing and stop dreaming abourt secular Muslims because sooner or later someone wil put a Coran under their noses and teel them “Read!”, and they will read that djihad is a sacred duty and that there is no place for place for a secular sphre in Islam.
So the thing to do is making them bze ashamed of and rejecting Islam until the day even in Saudi Arabia it will be as dead as the Greek religion.
Oops, the above should read: they knew nothing of Islam, let’s remember Jefferson needing to read the Koran in order to learn how to deal with the Barbary Copast pirates
He didn’t have to deal with barbary pirates or read the koran until he was president and AFTER he’d written the Declaration of Independance. I believe he was “out of town (France)” during the Constitutional Convention.
Ok, but I think the people who wrote the Forst Amendment knew about as much about Islam than Jefferson: nothing. Had they had they could have put aside their basic assumption that all religions were benevolent.
Andrew you have gotten the story straight as to the threat of Islam. Unfortunately our PC leaders do not understand the underlying truth of what you have stated for reasons known only to them. When the Minnesota Congresswoman asked about the Assistant to Hillary Clinton and her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood she was lamblasted by the media and other politicians who refuse to acknowledge the truth. Yet, this same woman’s father, mother and brothers are heavily involved in the Muslim Brotherhood and she herself worked for a branch which seeks to overthrow all governments worldwide and rule by a caliphate – otherwise known as a Inman. Ask yourself one question – Who did Obama make his famous Cairo speech too? Not the government of Egypt – the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Not widely reported by the media which should have been spelling out the dangers of such a speech to an organization which was based on overthrowing all governments worldwide and establishing the Muslim Brotherhood as the ruling caliphate for the world. It is time for all not only western, but, all nations leaders to understand this danger and start to work to defuse it before it requires civil wars in all the countries to rid themselves of the intolerance of Islam.
As I have done, and will continue to do.
It is barely within the realm of possibility to separate out a religion from Islam — i.e., to segregate its mythos and the non-coercive, non-violent aspects of its ethos from its militant-theocratic dictates. However, this will never happen, because the core tenet of Islam is that the Qur’an, in which those elements are intermingled, is the immutable, uneditable Word of God, handed down to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel. Believing Muslims would take it amiss if such an editing job were suggested to them, and would never accept having it imposed on them.
The “militants / fundamentalists / jihadists” have the Qur’an on their side. They also have the life and sayings of Muhammad, the Perfect Man, on their side. Thus, to indulge in airy fancies about a domesticated version of Islam, compatible with American law and traditions and thus safe for us to tolerate, achieves nothing positive, and might just do actual harm.
Not your best column, Mr. Kimball.
The intermingling of good and bad elements.
Methinks that was intentional. “Why, Islam can’t be what you say it is because it contains X,Y, and Z.”
Sad to see intelligent conservatives duped like this.
Capone opened many soup kitchens in Chicago.
Hitler loved dogs.
One swallow don’t make a summer.
Never believe anything a Muslim says. He is under instruction from his beloved Koran to lie in any situation in which lying will allow him to advance the cause of Islam. Muslims residing in the West are a cancer that is metastasizing. Islam’s mosques, schools, dress codes and associations of all sorts must be banned. Any Muslim caught advocating sharia or jihad should be tried for treason and executed. (Rewrite the law, if necessary.) Any Muslim caught forcing Islam and sharia on his family should be prosecuted for abuse and deported. Any foreign entity caught organizing or financing Muslim activity in the West should be considered a mortal enemy and its activities disrupted in any way required. We should let up only when and if non-Muslim beliefs are free to flower and prosper in Muslim countries, which is to say, never.
Spot on Sargon. The cure for this disease is harsh medicine indeed, but it will be much easier to administer now that the disease is containable, than later when the entire body politic is infested.
The legitimate power of the State must be turned explicitly against Islam. Crimes which emanate from Sharia or from an Islamic impetus must be prosecuted vigorously and Islam itself criminalized.
We must get over our squeamishness about naming and shaming the enemy amongst us. Islam must be isolated, ridiculed, rolled back and eliminated, and most certainly NOT allowed to infiltrate and subvert our institutions and to use OUR God-given freedoms against us.
Speaking of naming and “shaming,” that is exactly what Hillary Clinton advocated earlier this year be directed at ANYONE who speaks critically of Islam. GatesofVienna had the story sometime in August, I think. She is fully behind the OIC’s effort to ban speech, around the world, that is critical of Islam.
“How does America separate Islamic religion from Islamic supremacism?”
Great line. How many laughs did it get?
IIRC, Islam ranks people in casts: Moslems on top, Christians and Jews in the middle (and look how they’re treated), pagans and atheists on the bottom. Sounds like supremacism to me, built into the religion by Allah itself.
No, pagans and atheists are dead.
On Facebook, there’s an active community group called Islam vs Atheism with all the discussions about the Koran, science, religion, and atheists but it’s heavily pro-Islam, anti-Western stuff with the veneer of atheist beliefs to attract gullible Western atheists. The discussion is a bait to proselytize atheists about Islam and the Koran.
A perfect example of taquiyya (lying/deceiving for the sake of Islam).
I find this analysis somewhat disheartening. Of the nearly infinitesimal number of Western intellectuals that seem to grasp the true menace of Islam – Kimbal and McCarthy being two of them – most ultimately opt for this formulation of separating the fascist strands embodied in Sharia from the abstract theological ones within Islam – “the oneness of Allah” etc…
The probelm with this extremely intellectual formulation is that it requires two impossible things to happen in order to be a successful formulation.
First: Western civilization must take graduate level courses in epistemology, Islam, Western Civ, the history of fascism, etc. for the mass of our society to even grasp what they’re proposing.
Second: In order to be effective, Westerners who take the required courses must overwhelmingly come to the same conclusions as the afore-mentioned infinitesimal number of Western intellectuals have done on the subject.
How likely is that? Look at any college staff anywhere in the nation, and it’s clear that opinions differ wildly on virtually every philosophical question of the day. Even things which shouldn’t necessarily be lauded, like pederasty, Jihad, communism, and cannibalism, are entertained by factions within the community of bright lights as laudable, normative, justifiable, understandable, etc.
The “science” Roger is proposing isn’t settled. In fact, the West has had 11 years since 9/11 to look into Islam and come to a conclusion similiar to the one which the nearly infinitesimal number of Western intellectuals have done – and what has the West come up with? A jumble of inanities which cover everything from “It’s All Our Fault(tm)”, “Winning Their Hearts and Minds(tm)”, nation building, “Leading From Behind(tm)”, more Muslim immigration into the West, more visas for Muslims to study in the West, continued insistence that “Islam is a Religion of Peace(tm)”, “the Vast Majority of Muslims are Peaceful(tm)”, etc. Those, and vicious excoriation towards anyone suggesting otherwise.
No, Roger, I admire you very much, but you don’t have it quite right. Sometimes the unpalatable is required of us. We cannot square this circle with intellectual games. Yes, we must name the enemy, and I wholly concur that Sharia is an important aspect of Islamic fascism. But the mere presence of millions of Muslims, their growing influence within the corridors of academia, the media, and government, along with the myriad ways Muslims connive to subvert thos institutions (and are being wildly successful, I add), assure that we will never confront Islam in the manner you propose.
We are limited to accepting Islam and becoming Muslim, accepting Islam and becoming dhimmis, or destroying the Muslim enemy before he subverts and annihilates us. Maybe after the dirty and clean nukes start going off you’ll change your tune, but by then the wrecking crew will have shattered most of what holds Western civilization together. The clock is ticking, and the unforgiving moments crowd in and bear down relentlessly upon us.
Many Muslims have lived their lives in an Islamic society that does not actually know the contents of the Quran due to language barriers. As long as they don’t find out what it says, they will stay more or less peaceful.
I find this analysis somewhat disheartening. Of the nearly infinitesimal number of Western intellectuals that seem to grasp the true menace of Islam – Kimbal and McCarthy being two of them – most ultimately opt for this formulation of separating the fascist strands embodied in Sharia from the abstract theological ones within Islam – “the oneness of Allah” etc…
The probelm with this extremely intellectual formulation is that it requires two impossible things to happen in order to be a successful formulation.
First: Western civilization must take graduate level courses in epistemology, Islam, Western Civ, the history of fascism, etc. for the mass of our society to even grasp what they’re proposing.
Second: In order to be effective, Westerners who take the required courses must overwhelmingly come to the same conclusions as the afore-mentioned infinitesimal number of Western intellectuals have done on the subject.
How likely is that? Look at any college staff anywhere in the nation, and it’s clear that opinions differ wildly on virtually every philosophical question of the day. Even things which shouldn’t necessarily be lauded, like pederasty, Jihad, communism, and cannibalism, are entertained by factions within the community of bright lights as laudable, normative, justifiable, understandable, etc.
The “science” Roger is proposing isn’t settled. In fact, the West has had 11 years since 9/11 to look into Islam and come to a conclusion similiar to the one which the nearly infinitesimal number of Western intellectuals have done – and what has the West come up with? A jumble of inanities which cover everything from “It’s All Our Fault(tm)”, “Winning Their Hearts and Minds(tm)”, nation building, “Leading From Behind(tm)”, more Muslim immigration into the West, more visas for Muslims to study in the West, continued insistence that “Islam is a Religion of Peace(tm)”, “the Vast Majority of Muslims are Peaceful(tm)”, etc. Those, and vicious excoriation towards anyone suggesting otherwise.
No, Roger, I admire you very much, but you don’t have it quite right. Sometimes the unpalatable is required of us. We cannot square this circle with intellectual games. Yes, we must name the enemy, and I wholly concur that Sharia is an important aspect of Islamic fascism. But the mere presence of millions of Muslims, their growing influence within the corridors of academia, the media, and government, along with the myriad ways Muslims connive to subvert thos institutions (and are being wildly successful, I add), assure that we will never confront Islam in the manner you propose.
We are limited to accepting Islam and becoming Muslim, accepting Islam and becoming dhimmis, or destroying the Muslim enemy before he subverts and annihilates us. Maybe after the dirty and clean nukes start going off you’ll change your tune, but by then the wrecking crew will have shattered most of what holds Western civilization together. The clock is ticking, and the unforgiving moments crowd in and bear down relentlessly upon us…
I think I have found the quickest, easiest and most accurate way to describe Islam and what should be done about it.
Islam is the Bad Bob of religions and must be dealt with the way Judge Roy Bean dealt with Bad Bob.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubjIc3qLPds
To whatever extent Islam is a foe of the West, its only real and true weapon is immigration, further exacerbated by our political correctness. Positing any solutions outside that reality is fluff. The fact is, the hard solution necessary will not be used. The result will be further no-go Islamic enclaves in the West lost to local sovereignty as long as we reject reality. This is why liberal progressivism is a suicide cult, played out over long decades. What is left when you kill the goose that laid the golden egg and rationalize it using historic guilt?
Since this article deals with the threat to the West of the ideology/religion called Islam, I believe that one very important aspect of the growth of this threat has been ignored.
Globalization reached the Middle East during the third and fourth decades of the past century. This was the time when the West’s appetite for oil first became a worldwide game. All the major western powers of the time rushed to these lands attracted by the availability of inexpensive oil and the ease with which deals could be made with the ruling families/clans/tribes in the area.
This is when the tribes of the Arabian deserts tangled one with the other for the control of these riches. The house of Saud won in Arabia, but the Hashemites were given control of other areas such as Iraq, Jordan etc. The western powers using their military prowess created so called states by carving wholly unnatural borders following lines on a map instead of the geo- political realities on the ground. These “real estate” were portioned out to clans/tribes as prizes for their cooperation in the exploitation of the natural riches.
This was the first time since the Crusades, that the West became entangled in the lands of Islam.
Globalization continued its fast pace, and fast forwarding to the decade of the 60′s, another factor brought both cultures even closer. The advent of cheap and easily accessible air travel. The 747 had an electric effect in world migration which brings us to our current predicament.
Islam has always been Islam. Since the Prophet walked the earth there have existed the same fissions, fusions,schisms and rivalries in Islam. Salafism is nothing new or modern, as is rejection of Salafism. The factor that has changed is the existence of large Muslim population in the West.
After the defeat of the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna, the Muslim presence in the European continent was limited to some areas of the Balkans. Western Europe had no Islamic population. When the West reached the post-industrial era and very high standards of living, the people of these nations decided that enjoying the levels they had reached was more important than a stricy work or family ethic. The need for labor started to be satiated by immigrants from Islamic lands. They naturally brought with them all the problems that had been confined to their lands for centuries. When these people could not adapt to their new way of life, because of their upbringing, they carved out their own fiefdoms in European countries. Whole sections of Paris and London, Berlin and Oslo became in effect a carbon copy of the lands they had left.
This is the point at which Islam became a threat to the Western way of life. The more Muslims felt outsiders, the more they became radicalized and turned to Islam as a solution for their problems. Radicalization as we know it today did not come from the Middle East to Europe. It spread from Europe to the Middle East. Al Qaeda’s roots are more European than Arab. The basic ideology that we fear today was forged in Switzerland rather than Saudia.
What I am trying to say here, is that Islam has not morphed from what it has always been, a “total” ideology which encompasses, religion, politics, sex, education, family and every other facet of life, and is incompatible with modern western concepts of life. What has changed is the reach of this ideology deep into that world that cannot exist with it. The moment we understand that integration is not possible, that living side by side is a naive belief, then steps may start to be taken to correct the situation. Until then we just keep digging a deeper and deeper hole from which it will become harder and more violent from which to extricate ourselves.
And YOU make the mistake of believing you “can do business with” Obama. I offer Benghazi as example one of many.
Obama preaches in the exact fashion Reverend Wright pontificated his disciples. He spits out speech fragments in the same fashion as a Claymore mine.
Additionally; If you believe there is that much separation of State and Religion in the U.S at this time, you must not be reading any of the other postings on PJM.
Isn’t it obvious the Democrats are trying to replace the Church with their form of government?
Yes, and that “religion” is secular socialism. It was previously called “National Socialism” but then Stalin said that was a “right wing cult” when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and the Western “intellectual elite” immediately bought into Brother Joe’s statement. The only difference between the Communists and the National Socialists is that the NS crowd recognizes that they can benefit enormously from a quasi-capitalist economy, i.e., they don’t have to own the means of production as long as they can easily control and milk it.
Agreed;
We are being attacked by an external enemy as well as internal enemy.
Further evidence:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331561/obama-vs-rule-law-editors
I just read a “shocking” story of Buddhists in Burma who razed an entire town of muslims to the ground in retaliztion to a Buddhist girl being tortured, raped and murdered.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224002/Entire-villages-burned-ground-Religious-groups-clash-Burma-deadly-results.html
Now, it is known this was not the only case of Buddhists being targeted by muslims in this country, but for BUDDHISTS to finally “GET IT” and ACT should be blueprint rather than the human rights violation they are calling it.
During the “Jim Crow” era, there were many incidents when whites responded to a sex crime (or alleged sex crime) by a black, or a black using force in self-defense against whites, by attacking and destroying entire towns and neighborhoods where blacks lived.
The infamous “Black Hundreds” of Imperial Russia generally launched their pogroms against Jewish villages after some lurid accusation had been made.
Blacks in the Crown Heights neigborhood of New York, incited by Al Sharpton, responded to the traffic death of a black struck by a Jewish driver with a three-day rampage against Jews and Jewish businesses in the area.
Moslems in Pakistan and Egypt have attacked and destroyed Christian communities for alleged crimes by individuals.
I don’t think anyone should be like that.
Religion is ideology.
I agree with Phineas. It is a distinction without a difference. The idea that the approach we have allowed our politicians and public officials to take in regard to the Islamist threat is dangerously naive and wrongheaded is indisputable.
The problem is that America has a blind spot where it comes to “Freedom of Religion.” Firstly, freedom of religion IS NOT an absolute. Let’s say, for instance, that we had some real live Aztec Pagans who were sacrificing American captives to their stone idols. Would this “religious” expression be tolerated for one instant? I think we know the answer to that, and yet here in our midst, we have a “religious” group that subscribes to the idea that Jews should be annihilated, that Christians should be enslaved or killed, that Homosexuals should be executed, that women are second class citizens whose rights should be severely curtailed and that it is licit to murder your own daughters for the “crime” of dating western boys, etc. etc. etc.
Clearly, this medieval barbarism that hides behind the skirts of “religion” deserves the same amount of “tolerance” and “respect” as the Aztec Pagans. It is my belief that the legitimate power of the State should be turned against Islam. There is NO DIFFERENCE between a “secular” muslim and and Islamic Fascist, it is merely a question of degree.
It is said that at no time during the 1930′s and 40′s were there more than 3% percent or so of Germans who were actually Nazi true believers, and yet they controlled all 100 Million Germans in the country. Likewise, it is the most Radical of the Islamic Fascists who call the tune to the muslim invaders in the West.
Islam and freedom cannot co-exist. The price of Religious Freedom for the muslims is assimilation. This is a price that they will never pay. The “choices” posited for dealing with Islam were given as acquiescence (capitulation), annihilation or enlightenment(assimilation). I think it is FAR more likely that the fourth “option” will be put in place by default. That fourth alternative is “Containment and Repatriation.” In effect it will be a cross between the Spanish Reconquista and the Cold War. The spaces on the map dominated by Islamic Fascists will be isolated, surrounded and eventually rolled back. Pressure will intensify on muslims now in the West to either “truly” assimilate (Christianize or otherwise renounce Islam). We in the West need to get over our squeamishness about Colonialism. It is honestly the only way to deal honestly with savages.
Western civilization has a tradition to show respect, tolerance and reverence to all religions. But when a religion, any religion, claims for itself a right to forcefully impose itself on others and backs up that claim with a long well documented history of deadly aggression then that religion forfeits any claim to the deferential treatment it might otherwise be due. Islam is such a religion.
Other religions have violent histories as well, but they have put themselves through a process of enlightenment and have separated themselves from their brutal past. Islam has not only failed to do this, as we enter the early decades of the 21st century Islam is actually regressing and actively working to erase whatever progress has been made towards becoming a more tolerant and enlightened religion.
There are of course some who practice the religion of Islam who would like to see their religion undergo an enlightenment. Good for them, but for all intents and purposes they are just Muslim dhimmies. They have no power to effect change and as a matter of self survival they are cowed into silence. On the one hand I feel sympathy for them, but on the other hand I view them, especially those living in the West, as irrelevant bystanders in this struggle.
Romney, sounding much too much like George Bush, says we cannot kill our way out of this problem. I suppose technically he has a point but just what ARE we to do about the problem? Christianize islam? Maybe in a thousand years.
The truth is we must treat islam like we treated the Nazis. It may take decades for us to awake to this need but eventually we will be forced to it by the islamists themselves. We must confine them to their native areas and encourage them to kill each other wherever and whenever they clash between their sects. I suspect the real reason we have put up with them is our need for their oil. That need is dwindling. Their oil is running out. Soon they will no longer be able to finance their backward and corrupt societies.
The wild card is in the deck however. If they can pull off an EMP attack on the US and EUROPE they have enough energy presently to make a very big geo-political play. I am convinced this is Iran’s goal.
“Christianize islam?” Yes, actually. It’s that or kill them. One way or another, we will be forced to war as long as they continue to be Muslims who know what the Quran says.
Here’s the long and short of it:
As soon as they are able to do so, committed muslims will wage war against any society that houses them to establish an islamic order and to force any neighboring non-muslims to submit to islamic law – and their less committed co-religionists will do little to nothing to stop them.
Salim Mansur is correct:
http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/10/12/salim-mansurs-senate-testimony-close-the-borders-to-muslim-immigrants/
Western democracies are for democrats, not islamic supremacists.
I notice the Dem’cat push their ideology under the guise of equality and fairness in their quest to buy votes and tip our society over.
I also notice Islam push’s their ideology under the guise of a religion with Sharia law as the guiding principles in their quest to control society and tip the western world over.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the same thing. To take it a bit further I think we are looking into the very core of the human condition. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac and humans are sickeningly over sexed. American ‘progressives’ are hell bent for total control of everything. Just like in the scene in 1984 where the Burton character has Winston on the rack. Complete total control … even control of every human’s thought processes … is the goal of the Left. Absolute power. Plainly they all ascribe to the ‘ends justify the means’ argument and they know it. The Left and the islamist are the exact same identity. Not two sides of the same coin. They are identical.
“religious tenets” and “ideaology” can’t be separated in islam, especially concerning women. islam can’t be “tolerated” even for a micro second. If a serial killer like Ted Bundy had founded a “religion” and sprinkled in some “religious tenets,” would we respect one iota of that evil? With the exception of his fellow sociopaths, no, we would not.
Any state that declares itself an “Islamic state” or that includes Islam (or Islamic Sharia) in its constitution has formally embraced “political Islam” with all that that entails. Such a state has declared war against all free men in general, and against the United States in particular. This Islamic war is total war, in that 1) its goal is the total annihilation of our civilization, including our freedoms, our laws, our religions, our customs, our history, our social understandings, and our very identity and 2) its relentless assault on us encompasses every sphere of human activity: not just open warfare, but economic warfare, legal warfare, diplomatic treachery, terror, piracy, subversion, and every variety of criminal enterprise.
As a matter of policy, we should respect the Islamic belief system by steadfastly treating it as it sees itself. We should declare that a defacto state of war exists between the United States and these Sharia countries, individually and collectively. We need not immediately attack them, but any aggressive act issuing from their territories, no matter how small, should be answered with overwhelming force. Any attack from them should result in mountains of smoking rubble, sunk air and naval fleets, wrecked infrastructure, and military mass casualties on their soil. No nation building. No reconstruction aid. No apologies. Ever. And each time we should follow up by sending them a bill for our services–that is, demand war reparations (which they will refuse to pay). All immigration from these countries should be halted permanently. Moreover, no person from these countries should be permitted to set foot on American soil, no matter how briefly, for any reason. As in any war, there should be no trade with these hostile nations. We should not send them technology, food, medicine, foreign aid, or the slightest anything else that would aid or comfort them in their war against humanity. Finally, we must relentlessly attack their ideology worldwide–broadcast on every medium 24/7 our contempt and revulsion for their vicious “master race” supremacism, their calls for genocide, and their treacherous “obliterate the other” jihadist warfare. We must tell them every day, in every way, why they are not noble, why they are reviled, and why they will never be welcome here. They have made their Islamic bed–make them sleep in it.
It would be great to live in a country where common sense again ruled the day.
“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”
~George Orwell
“As a matter of policy, we should respect the Islamic belief system by steadfastly treating it as it sees itself.”
This doesn’t seem to be all that difficult to understand but our elites insist on insisting that Muslims don’t really mean it when they say they want to destroy us, even though that’s just what they try to do whenever they get the chance.
Western arrogance is not exhibited by those who would like to impose some sort of civilization on Muslims; it is exhibited by progressives who assume that everyone else, no matter the extent of their indoctrination, are people “just like us” (conservatives are not included in us) and will assimilate if given the chance.
I think your idea of total isolation of Islam is the best hope for avoiding all out war.
With all due respect, what analogy do I begin with…”being a little bit pregnant?” Today, islam is like that.
If you want to make the case that in this country muslims must assimilate, good luck with that. In the internet age, muslims can keep going to the well of their beliefs and fears and replenishing themselves. Dearborn is an enclave, not a salad, not a melting pot in the community. Do you think we can just shut off the saudi tap which funds the bulk of mosques?
And what if there were a new exclusively religious branch of islam that was westernized in its understanding of peaceful coexistence? It would be attacked by the rest of the muslim world, and no member would be safe beyond our border.
Islam is at war with everyone and everything. Christians and Jews (and everyone else) are dying because of their faith(s), which is to say, who they are, not what they have done. We are reaching a point of determination, in which we name our enemy.
The time is approaching when this country will, with utmost regret and pragmatism, understand that muslims are going to start dying because of who THEY are, having declared war on all others in the name of all that they believe.
False dichotomy. Not only can religion be ideology, but ideology can be religion. If you don’t believe the latter, you’ve never met a true green believer. There is no Warming but Anthropogenic, and AlGore is it’s messenger.
“There is no Islam without the sword, because it has no meaning or identity without violence.”
Great line Adina, cheers!
Islam is islam. There are no moderate muslims, Only those who are willing to let someone else do the dirty work for them.
The tenets of islam are not compatible in any way with western thought or democracy.
If you are islamic and adhere to the koran, you cannot be an american.
There have been more killed and more atrocities in the name of islam than perhaps any other political or religious conflict.
The hypocrisy of the left when it comes to islam is staggering. They complain about the church but seem perfectly willing to have an illiterate immam tel them what to do and how to behave.
No mosques should be allowed in america until all religions are welcome in islamic lands. The constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion. The moslems want to establish one.
The moslems will kill, terrorize and lie to promote islam. they will only stop when the reaction to this will be swift, brutal and equally terrifying.
Thank you. Now I know I’m not a lonely voice in the wilderness. Or is it a hall of mirrors?
…when it comes to its encounter with Islam, the West has three choices: acquiescence, annihilation, or enlightenment.
Read the fatwas, listen to the unbelievable vitriol spewing from the lips of contemporary Islamist so called religious leaders (e.g. al Qaradawi, Hassan Nasrallah, Ayatollah Khamenei, the cretin we just imported to the US from Britain, Abu Hamza, likely even Imam Rauf of Lower Manhattan mosque fame, when he isn’t lying to American audiences) and all the delicate little debates can fade delicately away, where they belong.
Look at Islam’s historical heroes of the 21st century like the beyond weird Sayyid Qutb, al Zawahiri’s, and eventually bin Laden’s role model.
Since lying to the infidel (taqiyya) is integral to the construct of Islam, how is the most “palatable” course, enlightenment, even possible ?
A new Islamist group in Indonesia got the memo that slaughtering Hindus, Christians and so forth wasn’t cutting it in the arena of popular opinion. 11 were arrested yesterday for the “new” strategy of wiping out American embassies and targeting American interests.
Al Zawahiri has issued a new order to kidnap Americans anywhere in the world.
To these guys and so many others, Allah offers only 2 options for the infidel, dhimmitude under sharia or removal from the planet.
Since the Koran is regarded as the only source of truth existing in the world, how is “enlightenment” possible ?
YOU WRITE
This is a version of the fundamental antimony of liberalism
BUT YOU MEANT
antinomy
Samuel Clemens, over a century ago.
“When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane, not in all things, but in religious matters. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic — for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it.”
~Mark Twain
Thanks for mentioning Mark Twain in this context.
I’ll bet you took that from his “Innocents Abroad” which is everlastingly appropriate reading today for our dumb clucks in our State Department.
I read it in 1958 while on an airline employee vacation to Lebanon and Jordanian controlled Jerusalem at that particular time….I still have it somewhere…badly worn.
Islam’s religion says: “Convert or Die”. This is really, really simple:
No freedom of religion
No choice of action
No dissent allowed
No other religions permitted
Forced worship
Rejection of women’s choices in life
HORRIFIC PENALTIES for every crime–mostly death penalties
ISLAM IS EVERYTHING THE CONSTITUTION STANDS AGAINST: A state religion enforced without mercy; a “religious test” FOR EVERYONE, and especially leaders, and the rejection of INALIENABLE RIGHTS FROM A SUPREME BEING.
LET’S LOOK TO AN AUTHORITATIVE COMMENTER TO SUMMARIZE THE TOP 10 ISLAMIC RULES: From http://www.americanthinker.com… [snarky comments are mine]
10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped. [So much for "fantasy football"--ouch]
9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives. ["War on Women"--you've no idea]
8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge—physical eye for physical eye. [Boy, THAT solves our "tort lawyer" problem QUICK!]
7. Islam commands that a male and female thief must have a hand cut off. [New growth industry: PROSTHETICS--JOBS OF THE FUTURE TODAY]
6. Islam commands that highway robbers should be crucified or mutilated. [California's highways WOULD REALLY BE DEPRESSING THEN]
5. Islam commands that homosexuals must be executed. [Shush--No gays here, nope, not a one, no, no no]
4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death. [That "hook up" thing you got now? GONE OVERNIGHT .]
3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself. [Hey, we LOVE the new scheme, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!]
2. Islam orders apostates to be killed.
1. Islam commands offensive and aggressive and unjust jihad. [Overpopulation--Solve it instantly! "Redistribution" is just getting us ready for the "main event"]
Now, since Ovomit DEMANDS to be made the center of everything in the world, let’s let him express his CRUCIAL ROLE IN THE ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA:
* He says that “the most beautiful sound” is our enemies’ call to a foreign deity and
* He says the “future does not belong” to those who slander the prophet of Islam”
See: See, “Obama Recites The Islamic Call To Prayer In Perfect Arabic / The Adhan / Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuXxtg4M_z8 and also see http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2012/08/29/barack_obama_a_muslims_useful_idiot.html
ROMNEY & RYAN WIN BIG…just a little while
Thanks for some much-needed levity in such a grim subject! Your asides had me ROTFL.
Congratulations. You’ve also just pointed out why so many “progressives” are so enamored of Islam.
They don’t believe in freedom of religion- they believe everyone should worship them.
They don’t believe in dissent- except when they’re doing the dissenting, then it’s “patriotic”.
No other religion than “progressivism” is permitted anywhere they hold sway- try to put a Nativity scene anywhere in public view in a progressive-run town. Just. Try.
Forced worship? Absolutely. If you don’t worship their deities (big government, massive debt, anti-technology primitivism, Holy Mother Gaia), they will punish you for your failings in the “enlightenment” and “true social consciousness” departments.
Rejection of women’s choices? Unless they choose to be Gloria Allred or the equivalent, absolutely. My mother, who worked and raised a child (me), would have appalled them. In fact, her having me rather than aborting me would have appalled them.
Progressives see Islamists as like-minded “social reformers”, because they make the mistake of thinking, “They hate Western Civilization as much as I do, therefore, we are the same”.
They overlook the small detail that the Islamists hate Western civilization in toto. Especially the part that considers itself “progressive”.
One of our great difficulties in what has been, and will continue to be, a very damned long conflict is that unlike its first iteration from about the 8th through 14th Centuries AD, this time around a major portion of our self-anointed “intellectual elite’” think the enemy are the good guys.
Because they imagine that the enemy must automatically love them because of sharing their hatreds.
Funny thing. The moderates in the French Estates-General made the same mistake about Robespierre, Marat, et al when they joined with them against Louis XVI. Just as the Mensheviks in Imperial Russia made a similar error about Lenin & Co. when they enlisted their help in deposing the Tsar.
In each case, after the “Triumph”, the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” crowd didn’t live long enough to realize the enormity of their error. Courtesy of la guillotine’ and Trotsky.
clear ether
eon
The article makes it sound like the confrontation with Islamist supremacy is to a small degree our fault. Of course this is not deliberate on the author’s part or of anyone else that writes about this problem. It’s just a by-product of the kind of language polite society has to use when referring to Islam.
In truth the only real option for dealing with Islam’s supremacists is to kill them, period, absolute end of argument. And you don’t have to write an article about that, much less put it PJ Media where maybe 99 percent of its readers have very mature attitudes about Islamism.
Now, when someone writes “we in the West are puzzled by Islam” the rejoinder should be that we are puzzled as to why, given its stunning intellectual inferiority to the main religions, anyone in their right mind would be so militant about it. In the West Islam appeals only to brainwashed liberals or idiot white trash or black convicts because it scratches some political or maybe social angst they have toward the West and nothing more.
I once listened in on a conversation between a black American convert and a Christian Afghan man. The Muslim convert repeatedly referred to the Bible in a denigrating way to make what he believed was a valid point. It was more than telling that he never once made a reference to the beauties and wonders of Islam.
Christianity is many things to many people. It is salvation, rescue from feelings of hopelessness, reason in the face of chaos, comfort for those in pain.
Islam is the religion of anger and hatred. It is juvenile and stems from that part of the psyche that is emotionally immature.
There was a time, back in the middle ages when the leaders of Christianity acted as muslims do. However, with the advent of the printing press and people becoming educated, more read the word of God and realized that much of what the church leaders were spewing was wrong. It took centuries to undo.
Sadly, the kuran, even if the average dand-people could read it, owing to a vast education of the people, it would still say to “go out and kill those who aren’t like us”; To lie to them and deceive them and pretend to be their friend so that you can eventually kill them and be victorious over them.
I am reminded of an episode of Star Trek yet again. “Spectre Of The Gun” where the alien is talking to the crew of the Enterprise who just beamed down to say hello and says, “You are disease!”. I look upon islam just like that. They are using every method imaginable to infiltrate our society and then when someone, within their constitutional rights insists that they don’t like it, they are labeled an “islamophobe” as if that’s a bad thing. A “hater”.
But it’s not wrong to hate disease. It’s not wrong to hate that which destroys good. It’s quite healthy, in fact. Someone in this thread I believe said that if we had to face Hitler now, we’d spend ridiculous amounts of time and money trying to understand and accommodate the Nazis. Understanding the enemy is one thing. Abetting and encouraging is something else.
But, the marriage between “liberals” (national socialists) and muslims is actually to be expected. They are both insane and feed off one-another.
Islam is inside these United States to help change culture. It is but one part of an agenda to bring change.
In the New Age all countries must have hate speech laws. The turd world Marxist countries call for it already so as not to insult their perfect man.
The solution for the U.S. is pretty clear. We must restrict all Muslim immigration. I suggest we allow none. There is no sane reason to allow them
here when we’ve seen the results in other countries. In the mean time we can only hope our government will find a way to handle the Muslims in other countries who want to attack us from without. Of course this is such a valid common sense solution for peace in our own country I expect few politicians will embrace it.
McCarthy’s article is right on the money.
Our officials in Washington need to wake up. All the appeasement and apologies in the world will not make these guys like us.
You want to pacify the Muslims? Short of a bloody world war in which we engage in wholesale slaughter, culminating in the use of nuclear weapons, there is only one way we can do this:
We must stop spreading democracy. Next time an Islamic nation provokes us, we topple their government, but in its place we install not a democracy but a theocracy run by Christians. It may have the appearance of a democracy, but one where only Christian (or at least non-Muslims) can vote. We impose upon Muslims reverse-dhimmitude, so that Muslims will be forced to pay tribute to Christians and will be forbidden from owning firearms or indeed any weapon more dangerous than a meat cleaver or butcher’s knife. Muslims will be allowed to keep their mosques, but not build new ones or broadcast the call to prayer. Catholics, however, will be allowed to broadcast calls to Liturgy of the Hours (rather than that obnoxious noise that Muslims use, Catholics use sweet sounding bells). If a Muslim murders a non-Muslim, he will be put to death AND all of his property will be forfeited to the victim’s family, and if the victim has no family, it shall be forfeited to the State.
I’m thinking the “Frankenstorm” is going to drown out (sorry, couldn’t stop myself) “Benghazigate” in the Media. Unfortunately, the bulk of America still turns to the MSM for all the trash unfit to print.
On a Positive note, the Media clusters mostly in New York, which will soon look like New Orleans only with less Gators. Obaqma said he told his people “to take care of it”. Given the general level of incompetence shown by the White House Clown Posse, If I lived in NY, I would be scared. Very very scared.
You’re right about that. I’m sure Obama’s team is thrilled the media has switched to nonstop Hurricane Sandy coverage. The little coverage the Benghazi fiasco has gotten will be gone by the time Sandy has passed through.
This is all well and good for a stimulating discussion over cocktails, but by the time all you lovely intellects get through slicing and dicing, we’ll be completely overrun and our liberties so severely circumscribed that nobody will recognize the place. We’re just about there now.
To borrow a line from Emerson, “Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy.”
We’re losing the sturdy part at warp speed, aided and abetted by what one can only liken to the, methodical in result if not in intent, genocide of our warrior class, who, through some miracle of grace, continue to retain their ability to think and see clearly.
When did anyone ever think he’d live to see the day when the President of the United States would watch American soldiers fight to the death for over 7 hours, deny their pleas for help three times like the modern-day Judas he is, and then flip the switch and catch some Z’s so he could continue to look good to those equally deluded members of the populace who, stunningly, actually seem to regard him as some sort of ”eye candy”.
Discussions like this are starting to make those legendary theologians who argued about angels on the heads of pins look like robust realists.
I have said it before, and I will say it again – the world will not be safe until Islam has been annihilated, utterly, and completely. We have to be ruthless. Destroy every mosque, madrassa, shrine, and obliterate the city of Mecca and everything in it. Possession of a Koran, or participating in a Islamic service – death penalty. Muslims not allowed to own any weapons, or serve ins ANY capacity in the military, or hold any government job. Yes, its drastic, but it it absolutely necessary.
I agree. It sounds unpleasant, but what you describe is what eventually happened to Nazi Germany and it will need to happen again if we want to get rid of Islam just like we got rid of the Nazis.
I am afraid we only have 2 choices: it’s them or us. And the enemy is already within our borders.
How about just leaving them alone, limiting immigration and pressing cultural assimilation on those already here? We have a first amendment in this country that allows one to be a Muslim, communist, Nazi, moonie, any other cult you can think of. Let’s also be honest and admit the big obstacle to leaving them alone is not just immigration (mostly to Europe) but also a Jewish state smack dab in the middle of Muslim territory. I wish Israel well, but they need to stop the west bank colony project which makes no more sense than united states trying to colonize Mexico. Also they can’t depend on big brother to defend them. Zioniand want to live in that crazy neighborhood they better be willing to protect themselves.
I fear there will be no real move to counter Islam in the West until it is too late. Once we are unarmed slaves, then we will wake up. I just hope we are like the Spaniards were when we do. Santiago Matamoros ora pro nobis.*
(The Spanish uprising took Saint James the Apostle as their patron and called him Saint James the Moor-slayer. Hence, *”Saint James the Moor-slayer pray for us.”)
McCarthy is a bit naive if he thinks that radical islam and moderate islam need to be and can be separated. He obviously doesn’t understand that the islamists interpret islam just the way it was supposed to: by taking it literally. The koran says there is no room for interpretation and that islam is the ultimate truth. So if it says in the koran to fight infidels wherever you find them, to invade their countries and use hirja (immigration and high birth rates) to conquer them,that’s what muslims MUST do. Not doing it would mean not following the koran and thus questioning god’s word as the koran claims to be god’s word (unlike the bible). This is why you never hear muslims oppose islamic violence and extremism like they really mean it. So claiming we must assimilate them is ridiculous as muslims only accept god’s law and not human law. No muslim will ever assimilate and give up jihad because he firmly believes he will burn in eternal hell fire in the afterlife.
Islam and muslims, and I mean all of them, are hell bent to take us over until “there is only islam”, as the koran commands. We will have no choice but to fight and stop and reverse muslim immigration unless we want our children and grandchildren to live a life like the Copts and Christians in Egypt and Pakistan.
“How does America separate Islamic religion from Islamic supremacism?”
I don’t have to read this article to know the answer to that. You don’t. It would be like thinking you could separate water from wet.
I found Andrew McCarthy’s post unusually muddy. If you’d move away from the water–maybe just to Franklin Co. N.J. where they’re building an unwanted mosque in a quiet neighborhood just 5 miles from a mega mosque… Are our immigration policies sound?
This is actually, a lot easier and simpler than it sounds! STOP THE PC BS! This Hypocritically Correct Crap is going to continue to get people killed! You call things what they are and to hell with the A-Holes who are insulted by it! If your insulted, then you are guilty! After all, who complains about this, other than the Terrorist Co-Conspirators? UN-Indicted or not, they are colluding with Terrorists and Hurting this country! The Cair’s(Council on Arab Infidel Relations) and the ISNA” and the list of Terrorist Apologists goes on & on and must be removed from places of influence in our Govt., that Pres. Judas has brought in! If you still have doubts, then inform yourselves! I would suggest JihadWatch & AtlasShrugged. But this Hipocritically Correct BS, MUST END! It’s stupid, self defeating and Suicidal! The other thing is to fight the Obama Jihadi media! Don’t allow them or anyone to bully you into Kissing Terrorist Backside!
Bloggers are joining the fight against the Obama Jihadi media! Important Link and ADDENDUM on how to take on the Obama Jihadi media & Win: http://paratisiusa.blogspot.com/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-those-who-should-know.html?spref=tw
God Bless America!
Romney Rep. Peter King: Presidential Kill List “Totally Constitutional”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6GQr8m5cOY&feature=player_embedded
Published on Oct 25, 2012 “A 16-year-old American boy killed in an Obama administration drone strike “should have [had] a far more responsible father,” Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs says in a new video released by the group We Are Change. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda propagandist killed by a U.S. drone a year ago. But the child was killed in a separate strike some two weeks after his father was killed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KtG4n6Ci8w&feature=player_embedded
60. Washington76 Well, at least he is a good Muslim now. Better late then never.
PBUH- Place Bomb Under Hood
The only effective response to Islam is to force failure of their objectives. When Charles the Hammer stopped them in France, it created self doubt. They were obviously not pleasing Allah or else Allah would be helping them. This is why the Islamist is so easily beaten. There is no way for them to please their insatiable deity and their failure sends them into a death spiral emotionally and spiritually. Western countries need to become self-sufficient in oil and get their fiscal and moral houses in order. Let them stew in their juices.
How assinine. First:
“The distinction is worth drawing because, for the most part, Islamist terror is not fueled by Muslim zealousness for Islam’s religious tenets — for instance, “the oneness of Allah.””
Then:
“We Westerners recognize such beliefs as belonging to the realm of religion or spirituality. To the contrary, Islamist terror is driven by the supremacism and totalitarianism of Middle Eastern Islam — i.e., by the perception of believers that they are under a divine injunction to impose all of Islam’s tenets.”
Translation: It is not fueled by the tenets of Islam, it is fueled by the tenets of Islam!!! The primary tenet of Islam is that they are under “a divine injunction to impose all of Islam’s tenets.”
And then there’s this whopper:
“Islamist ideology . . . [is] just another totalitarian ideology.”
“Islam’s theological tenets “are every bit as deserving of the First Amendment’s guarantees as any other.”
If it is another totalitarian ideology, then it is NOT deserving of ANY first amendment protections at all. You make the second statement as though we are allowed to redefine what Islam is before we accept it, and in so doing, expect every Muslim in the world to accept and live with our redefinition. The writer is the worst of everything people say about Americans all over the world, because he thinks he can just redefine something, and make the problem go away. Further evidence:
“Muslims must accept that, in America and the West, it is not Islam but our traditions — especially the separation of church and state — that set the parameters of religious liberty. This way, Islam, the religion, is protected, but Islamic supremacism, the totalitarian ideology, is not. The latter undeniably draws on Islamic scripture, but it is categorically akin to Communism or National Socialism, not to religious creeds.”
In other words, we’ll protect your right to worship as you see fit, except for those parts that say you can kill people, run our government with Sharia law, etc. Other than THAT, of course, you can have all the Islam you want.
How arrogant. The worst, though?
“Mark Steyn suggests that, when it comes to its encounter with Islam, the West has three choices: acquiescence, annihilation, or enlightenment. We can acquiesce and become good Muslims or dhimmis; we can engage in armed conflict with a theocratic Islam; or we can work to segregate the secular currents that buoy many Muslims from the ideological imperatives that direct so much of the Muslim population. The only palatable alternative, it should be clear, is the last. But in order to pursue it, we have to be clear about what it is we are dealing with.”
No, there are only two choices. Acquiescence is giving up, and annihilation is the only possible answer. This “segregate the secular currents” crap is the same as the above paragraph. It implies that you can tell Muslims you can believe this part, but not that part. Won’t work. Try telling Christians they can believe in Jesus, but not Moses. Or any other part of Christianity. You wouldn’t do it either.
This is the infantile minds we have working on this, and the reason it isn’t solved.
There’s only one thing to do with rats. Kill them.
Iranians are incredibly open to the gospel message of Jesus’ love and forgiveness. Many are disillusioned with the oppression of Islam and are desperate for the truth.
Every day, more Iranians are hearing the hopeful message of The Way, The Truth and The Life through satellite TV broadcasts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HtsAlW1v1k&feature=player_embedded
63. Doc Neaves
Yes but not right now. This generation is too soft. Suggest the need to kill 4 or 5 hundred million Muslims and you will get called everything but a white man. I have suggested dropping out of the Geneva conventions so we can do a tit for tat and destroy a mosque as retaliation for every terrorist attack. Standard reaction is to be called psychopath and warmonger and things much worse.
My worry is for my grandchildren. They are growing up with terrorism as a big part of their life. One day they will be in charge. I suspect their response to killing 400 million Muslims using nuclear weapons will be along the lines of “better targeting could have gotten 500 million”.
According to “Generations” the current children will be team and goal oriented. Even better soldiers then their parents, who are histories ‘best ever’.
I started dropping this tag line at FP. People were enraged. Got so mad I could almost see their spittle hitting the back of my flat panel. When they get that worked up over a throwaway line from a low budget horror flick, there is a nerve exposed.
“I say we pull out and nuke ‘em from orbit. It’s the only way to make sure.”
- FO Ripley
Roger (& Andrew): You can’t separate the secular from the “religious” in islam, simply because it’s really always been ALL only a secular (us-versus-them, and might-makes-right) affair anyway!
Moslems ARE atheists!
While all “real” religions, at WORST, only say:
“Obey our silly rules, or GOD (/’the gods’) will get you!”
ONLY islam says:
“Obey our silly rules, or WE will get you (‘for god’)!”
So obviously, moslems are only atheists because they have NO faith in their god’s abilities or desires to pay any attention to them or to anyone alse ever anyway, not even a desire nor ability to enforce even it’sown us-versus-them, might-makes-right creed.
Allah is described in the Qur’an as a big, bad, remote, scary thing, so the group called “islam” and it’s rule-book, the Qur’an, are the only gods they can worship and obey.
So, static islam itself is the false idol they continue to worship – and it’s about as responsive to human needs as the rocks they used to worship!
MOSLEMS FEAR ALLAH, AS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE ANYTHING WORSE THAN AN OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, CAPRICIOUS UNKNOWABLE AND UNKNOWN BEING. COMPARED TO SUCH A THREAT, EVEN THE HOPE OF IT’S OPPOSITE – OF A RATIONAL SET OF PRINCIPLES AND PHYSICAL LAWS LIMITING SUCH A BEAST – SEEMS DANGEROUSLY NAIVE AND IN FACT LIKELY TO FOCUS ITS WRATHFUL AND PAINFUL ATTENTIONS ON THE IMAGINER.
THUS ALLAH IS PORTRAYED AS ONLY HATING THE NOTION THAT IT’S POWER IS LIMITED OR SPLIT; THAT IT IS, IN FACT, LESS THAN OMNIPOTENT. SO ALL SHARIA ‘LAWS’ BASED ON THIS SUBJECTIVE FEAR ARE NATURALLY AND BY DEFINITION, DELIBERATELY IRRATIONAL (CAUSE AND EFFECT CANNOT BE HELD TO CONSTRAIN ALLAH’S POWERS OF INFLICTING RANDOM PAIN)!
THUS TO MOSLEMS, ALL FACTS ARE ONLY OPINIONS, BECAUSE NO ONE CAN EVER KNOW ANYTHING, SINCE ALLAH IS IN CHARGE AND HE CAN ALWAYS CHANGE HIS MIND ABOUT ANYTHING &/OR EVERYTHING ANYWAY!
IDOLATRY is an excuse to remain criminally, negligently, delinquently irrational; to enjoy the “right” to remain ignorantly, irresponsibly WRONG!
To criminals who pretend to believe that all facts are only opinions, of course all laws are also held by them to be only suggestions! AND VICE-VERSA!
THEY HAVE NO PRINCIPLES BEYOND THIS CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT, DELINQUENT TREASON TO RATIONALITY!
IF SOMETHING HAPPENED, THEN ALLAH WILLED IT TO HAPPEN, SO IT CAN’T HAVE BEEN BAD, BY DEFINITION! MIGHT MAKES RIGHT, EVERY TIME! And if I’M BAD (as a delinquent criminal moslem) since I got away with it, then it was really ALWAYS a GOOD thing anyway, so no one has any right to attack ME by accusing me of anything, either!
This is why these criminals (and their liberal enablers) push for their backwards “anti-Blasphemy” notions that it should be “illegal” to accuse any criminals (moslems) of their crimes, if doing so might hurt their feelings, and so “make” them commit even more crimes!
Islam is NOT A RELIGION (at all, much less one “of peace”)! It’s ONLY an ancient, ongoing extortion-racket CRIME-syndicate!
The ‘theological’ notion of Allah’s “oneness” is CRUCIAL to their main criminal, might-makes-right alibi, that “we aren’t responsible, and no ones is every really a criminal anyway, because we’re really all only victims anyway:
“God told us to commit these crimes! Whee!”
;-(
I am an avid follower of Uncle Vlad — Unk, I call him — and look forward to his definitive annotated six-volume edition of the Koran, based on the Victorian British textbook edition once routinely assigned for study to the future administrators of the Empire’s Middle Eastern colonies. This man knows whereof he speaks, and we fail to listen to such expertise at our own risk. Thanks, Vlad, for what you do.