Father Schall on the Fragility of Islam
Fr. James V. Schall S.J. remains at the age of 83 an indispensable voice in foreign policy, combining theological depth and strategic acuity. “The Fragility of Islam” is the subject of his latest pronouncement at the Catholic Thing blog. Western analysts tend to accept the narrative of Muslim triumphalism, the assertion that the strong faith of the Islamic world will overwhelm the temporizing and vacillating West. Not so, Fr. Schall argues: Islam itself is “as fragile as communism.” He writes:
The major change Islam looks to is not modernization or objective truth but, in a stable world, the submission to Allah of all men under a caliphate wherein no non-believers are found.
We still look back at communism, at least the non-oriental variety, with some astonishment in this regard. Almost no one thought it could “fall” without a major military encounter. That it disintegrated so quickly and so completely seems incomprehensible to anyone but a John Paul II. He understood its frailty, its failure to understand the human soul and its origins….
Religion or faith, even in Islam through Averroes, has been conceived as a myth designed to keep the people quiet. The scholars could quietly let the caliphs and the imams rule if the intelligentsia were left free to pursue philosophy, which was conceived to be anti-Koranic in the sense that the Koran did not hold up under scrutiny about its claims.
The fragility of Islam, as I see it, lies in a sudden realization of the ambiguity of the text of the Koran. Is it what it claims to be? Islam is weak militarily. It is strong in social cohesion, often using severe moral and physical sanctions. But the grounding and unity of its basic document are highly suspect. Once this becomes clear, Islam may be as fragile as communism.
A tiny minority of analysts, this writer included, have argued instead that Islam cannot be reformed or situated in democratic institutions; its militancy, rather, stems from the realization that it cannot survive modernity. “Koranic criticism yet may turn out to be the worm in the foundation of radical Islam,” I wrote in 2003. Much of the Muslim world is repeating the West’s transition out of traditional society, but in lapsed time.
That is the subject of my forthcoming book, How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying Too).
‘I would add that the empire has no tailors, either’
This is most likely what motivates the mad mullah’s of Iran to go nuclear.
They plan to go out with a bang.
The difference between Communism and Islam is that the globalist elite want to incorporate it into their new world order agenda and unlike Communism why they are always accommodating it and selling it to us as a religion of peace when the facts speak the oppisite.
As with Communism, the elite’ keep forgetting that the group (Islam) they now view as useful foot soldiers in their campaign for Absolute Power Forever view them, in turn, as “useful idiots”.
After all, Lenin said that capitalism would sell Communism the rope that they would then use to hang the capitalists. The modern-day Islamists have similar opinions of their apologists in the West, and of the opportunists who seek to co-opt Islamism as part of their own plans.
If the Islamists were to “win”, the elitists who see them as their tools would be the first bent over for the headsman. If the elitists win, they’ll be “tolerant” of the Islamists’ continued depredations on everyone else, to justify their own “extreme measures” to quash dissent. (“Terror must be maintained”- First Rule of the Terran Empire, as quoted by Spock-2 in “Mirror, Mirror”.)
What we have here are two groups who are living their own delusions, which are respectively megalomaniacal (the Western elites) and eschatological (the Islamists, especially in Iran’s ruling mullahocracy). The problem is that both lots expect everybody else to “share the fantasy”- which does not smell anything like Chanel’ No. 5.
clear ether
eon
Islam cannot survive critizism, which is why the OIC is trying to ban it world wide: “…n Islam, pure illiteracy is divine. The uneducated prophet of Islam called himself “a guardian of the illiterates sent by Allah” (Bukhari, 3:34:335). Another hadith (Sunaan Ibn Majah V:4290) reveals that Allah loves illiterate people and hates educated people and he had promised the first entry to Paradise to the illiterate Muslims and the last entry to the educated Muslims. The reason was simple. Muhammad wanted to keep his followers away from education because he knew that his newly established religion could not survive if criticism is allowed. As Toland (cited Gunny, 1996; p. 95) wrote, “… because he [Muhammad] clearly saw that the spirit of inquiry would not favour him. This is how Islam maintained itself”. Qur’an (5:101, 5:102) very strictly prohibits criticism. Diderot (1975, p. 230) expressed the same reason of Muhammad’s concern to keep his followers in darkness of ignorance, because reason is the greatest enemy of Islam. He wrote “since he [Muhammad] could not read or write, and so this had encouraged Muslims to hate and have contempt for knowledge, which in turn secured the survival of Islam”.
Allah not only loves illiteracy but poverty also. As Imam Ghazali, one of the greatest Muslim scholars of all time, had pointed out; prayer, a big family and poverty will ensure Paradise. To promote further admiration of poverty among the Muslims, Ghazali wrote that Allah and His Prophet praised one who remains satisfied with poverty. He even goes to the extent to exhort Muslims to condemn wealth but praise poverty because it is better than wealth (cited Kasem, 2006).
This is how illiteracy and poverty are glorified in Islam as Allah’s will. Illiteracy and poverty often go hand-in-hand and followed by backwardness. This is how Muslims achieve all three together. Non-Muslims will never be able to catch up the Muslims in this field. But Muhammad never wanted to remain in poverty. He was so greedy that in spite of his flourishing slave trade and plunder, he wanted to grasp the property of other Muslims also. As per Sunaan Abu Dawud, 18:2895, Muhammad was the inheritor of those who had no heir. …” http://www.islam-watch.org/SujitDas/Holy-Islam-Illiteracy-Poverty-Backwardness.htm
Islam is not so much about Allah as it is about Muhammed. That is why Muhammed is so protected by Muslims, even far more than they protect Allah. Muhammed is where Islam is most fragile. Sujit Das’s “Unmasking Muhammed”is about the fragility of Islam based on Muhammed, http://islammonitor.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3459
One may disagree with Christianity, but while he lived, whether or not one thinks he was the son of God, Jesus was a nice man.
Interesting that Jesus was also for poverty and illiteracy. His main problem with Pharisees was that they educated people instead of preaching to them. Though unlike Mohamed he did not seek wealth and did not have a harem.
The “devil’s advocate”in me also applied these criticisms to Christianity. But Christ never advocated poverty. He did say that wealth brings immense challenges and temptations for worldly desires. Warning people of such temptations and reminding them of their obligations does not mean wealth is a sin and poverty is a virtue. Christ had wealthy apostles. He made them see that their primary goal was attaining Heaven and that their wealth could be an obstruction… or it could be a useful tool.
Christ’s admonishment of the Pharisees is also not an endorsement of illiteracy. They may have been the better educated class of people, but the Pharisees’ used their education and devotion to ritual as a crutch. They did not live their faith, even though they had memorized every prophet’s teaching. Such people deserve to be criticized, but it doesn’t mean people who lead a good, Christian life are better off being uneducated as well.
> Interesting that Jesus was also for poverty and illiteracy. His main problem with Pharisees was that they educated people instead of preaching to them.
You obviously have never read the Gospels or studied Jesus’ teachings. Jesus did not promote poverty or illiteracy, and his main problem with the Pharisees wasn’t that they were educated but that they were religious hypocrites.
Jesus’ extensive quoting from the Torah is a clear indication that He was well educated.
And in actual fact, although the Gospels do not recount details of Jesus’ formative years or his training as a young adult, there is much to support the assertion that Jesus was trained as a Pharisee, and that accounts for the intensity of His rebellion against their hypocrisy.
This is supported by Jesus’ teaching style and methods, such as use of Parables, which were common teaching tools of the Pharisees.
In any case, if Jesus promoted poverty and illiteracy it isn’t likely that His teachings would have ever attracted anyone outside of the lower and uneducated classes. But we know that is not true, as its clear from the New Testament accounts that there were indeed rich (Joseph of Arimethea) and well-educated (Paul) followers in the earliest Church.
According to Pope Benedict XVI (citing Rabbi Jacob Neusner), Jesus’ most important problem with the Pharisees centered on his radical Christological declarations, e.g., Matthew 12:8 (“the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath”). See V. 1 of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ defense of his disciples’ Sabbath violation was that the priests of the Temple also violate the Sabbath (by performing sacrifices) — the Temple is a special case as the focal point as it were of God’s Indwelling, and Jesus makes the same argument for himself and those closest to him. That is tantamount to declaring himself to be the Incarnation of God, as Benedict observes. Whether one believes that or not, it is hardly fair to attack the Pharisees for not believing it, for we Jews have a different view of things. Otherwise there always will be Jews who care too much about outward appearances, and Jesus was by no means unique in his remonstration (the Hebrew prophets often used tougher language to scold their fellow Jews). The old canard that Judaism is a religion of dry outward observance while Christianity is a religion of inner faith is both wrong and offensive. Spend a Saturday morning with Orthodox Jews at prayer if you don’t believe me.
The simple answer is to delegitimize Islam as a religion and name it for what it really is…. a cult…..a cult of death!
I couldn’t agree more.
CENSORED FOR INFLAMMATORY LANGUAGE — DPG
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Hello – moderator??
“all it takes for evil to exist is for good people to stand by and do nothing”
David P. Goldman – you there?? Of all people, a Jew (and a frum one at that) should not stand by while someone calls in all seriousness for the wholesale gassing of an entire people (an entire religion, no less – deja vu, anyone?), and including US citizens…
Ashamed of you all, and the moderator especially!
But the hate you show them is also evil. No matter what they do the best way to counter them is not with hate, but with love and the understanding that they could change. Also have 10 megaton warhead as a backup just to be safe
Dave, ya got it backwards, drop the nuke and the rest will follow or some such.
As for Spengler’s reference to Turkish fertility rates, that is certainly the reason why that country’s hydrophobic prime-minister, Recep Erdoclown not too long ago suggested that his fellow countrywomen should have three children each (a remark to which some women responded by saying that he ought to try to get himself pregnant instead.)
He also said that 2038 will mark the end of the Turkish nation if present trends continue.
When I read Father’s piece I to was encouraged. Much anticipating your book.
Your remarks here may also hint at why you stepped aside from First Things – as if that’s any of my business. But it shows the difficulty of having “great acuity” and living among the “timid”.
My departure from First Things had nothing to do with Wilkens’ article, which was published before I was hired. First Things, like many print journals, is under financial pressure and reduced permanent staff. I continue to contribute regularly to First Things and wish the magazine well. The magazine is entitled to represent contrasting points of view.
– but he needs to leave Georgetown.
{REPLACE PRIOR POST WITH THIS}
When I read Father’s piece I too was encouraged. Walking about thinking we must never consider the death of Islam all the while knowing it is bound over to the fate of all totalitarian ideologies – no matter how bloody is their decline and fall what a shame.
It does us no good, all this expended energy propping up the dying.
Why do we do it? Because Islam is one of the three great monotheistic religions, and its disappearance somehow threatens the other two? What rot! One may be very clever, even elegant, in stating such a position, but all it takes is a Fr. Schall with his few brief paragraphs to shatter such brittle elegance.
However much I can admire the timid when they are strong, their capitulating timidity must be culled from the armory needed for the battles coming toward us around the corner and over the hill.
Must say, though, Mr. Goldman, the stringing of your remarks may hint at why you stepped aside from First Things – as if that’s any of my business! Yet it does show the difficulty of being in possession of “great acuity” while living among the “timid”.
Anyway, much looking forward to your book.
All clergy, academics, intellectuals and political leaders are beyond “timid” concerning Islam. Why, you can’t even bring yourselves to decry polygamy from any relevant standpoint and there are many slapping you upside the head! It is a dysfunctional practice which ruins societies no matter what the religion and what’s most telling; always for the same scientific, demographic, genetic, moral and sociological reasons. We should be able to study and discuss dispassionately because it is not a religious issue.
Spengler,
I have pre-ordered your book and am looking forward to it. I agree with your analysis simply on the basis of how shrill certain segments of Islam have become. That usually the point as which the show is almost over.
I agree with the good father Schall that Islam is quite fragile. In fact, I think this is the reason why Islamic terrorism exists in the world today. They are fighting a rear-guard action against the decay of their societies.
Communism seemed most robust in the 1970′s, only to collapse less than 20 years later. In retrospect, it was obvious why the Soviet Union collapsed so completely. There was no real productivity. Everything was sucked up and consumed by the government bureaucracy, which destroyed all value.
I think the same thing will happen to Islam (Islamism) in the next 20 years. Iran is one bellwether. If an Islamist regime comes to power in Egypt, it will likely produce the same result within 20 years, if not sooner. You will note that the Brotherhood is not particularly eager to take power. They take power and they take ownership of the economic mess. They know damn well they can’t do diddly squat to solve the serious economic problems. The Brotherhood remains content to carp from the sidelines.
The problem with Islam is the same as the problem with communism. It inhibits productive accomplishment. Not a single product is manufactured to international standards in the Muslim world. More books are translated from English into Japanese each year than has been translated into Arabic in the last 1000 years. Their patent application rate is nearly zero. These are not the hallmark of a productive society.
I think what will replace Islam in the Middle East will be somewhat ugly, but stable. It will be a tribal-based gangster nation setup similar to that of Russia. This will actually benefit Israel as the one thing gangsters can always be counted on is to be dominated by their lust for money. It will be easy to cut deals with them and to play them off against each other.
Good points.
The central crisis in the Muslim world is not one of faith but of economics. Simply put, Islam and communism are similar in that both are ideologies of the mind not of reality. Trying to translate a utopian, collectivist ideology into an actual economic infrastructure to support a large industrial population – is impossible. Fiction doesn’t move well into facts.
Collectivism, or public ownership of the means of wealth production, is impossible in any economy over a few thousand people. A small hunting/gathering band, a small commune – can be collectivist but not a nation of multimillions.
Islam is more accurately an economic, political and societal system rather than a religion. However, it set its economic and political axioms up As If it were a religion, thus rendering those axioms immune to adaptive change. That’s why it is in trouble in its home nations – and why Islam, as that ideology based only in words, survives well out in the West. In the West, Muslims are parasitic on the existent capitalist economy, and make use of all the technological advances in the production of food, housing, medical care – that are impossible achievements in an Islamic society. Islam rejects the use of reason, science, objective reality and thus, has not made one scientific contribution to the world since its inception.
The problems in the ME nations are due to the collapse of the economic infrastructure, which has been based on state ownership of one wealth producing commodity (oil) and the rigid framework of a tribal or two-class political and economic system: tribal rulers..and the ruled. This set-up supports a no-change, no-growth society, but the population base in the ME has doubled in the last few decades and the single-source economy can’t sustain the people. Even to extract their oil, the ME relied and continues to rely, on Western technology and expertise.
The ME has to enable the development of a private business economy, the small to medium businesses that are the mainstay and wealth producing sector of a capitalist economy. The tribal rulers have been adamantly repressing such an emergence of a middle class – but – there is no choice. The imbalance between wealth-producing capacities and population size..is too large, and a middle class economy must develop.
And, this middle class, which must have economic power, must also have political power. That means the end of the tribel rulers – and they are fighting to prevent this. But, it will come..with difficulty and many setbacks.
I think you are overlooking one thing. Oil. They bathing in money from oil.
If Islam is collapsing, why is it rapidly growing?
Is see nothing but trouble ahead.
Those predicting that Islam will simply fizzle out are not reading the same things that I read. I’m baffled.
The Soviet Union has lots of oil and natural gas. They even became Western Europe’s largest supplier during the 80′s, much to the consternation of the Reagan administration (who tried to convince the Europeans to not build the pipeline). Nevertheless, all that oil and natural gas failed to save the Soviet Union.
You are absolutely correct. Islamists desire to have what non-islamists have improved, such as the state of Israel. Everything gets better where Jews go.
The comparison between Islam and communism is fraught with problems. First, whereas communism rose and fell within the span of a mere century, proving its staying power was indeed tenuous, Islam has persisted for more than 1400 years. True it’s power has waxed and waned over that span, but unlike communism, Islam itself has persisted through all manner of events, upturns and downturns. Islam has gripped diverse nations, and few have extricated themselves once Islam took hold. The list of nations which have jettisoned this “fragile” scourge is very short, and the divorces were extremely bloody. Spain, Greece, southern Italy – that’s about it.
The capacity of Islam to destroy is tremendous. Many champion the Current “freedom” movements arising in places like Iran and Egypt. But consistently those “freedom fighters” do not eschew Islam, but call for more of it. The shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” and the green banner of Jihad are the emblems of all so-called freedom movements across the arc of Islam.
Islam is not fragile, but it is opportunistic in the extreme. If given the opportunity, and the prospect of booty – the ancient mechanisms of terror, genocide, and war are revived and rampage anew. After Islam’s initial and stunning spread, the Muslims gorges on the spoils from superior civilizations for centuries. It was the prospect of new rapes and new pillages which spurned Islam forward. When eventually deprived of the productivity and wealth of their victims, from formerly great nations like Persia and India and Byzantium, it is true that Islam began to languish and wither. Perhaps, had oil not been discovered under the feet of the Arabs, Islam would have withered to dust and collapsed like communism did, but I doubt it. In any event, we now have a revived Muslim monster, freshly forged on trillions in unearned oil loot. As long as Muslims export oil, terror, and excess millions to spread more Islam, we will not see an end to their soaring bloodlust and terror.
Until we shut off the money spigot and expel Muslims from our dominions so they can no longer wage Jihad or parasitize our wealth, there will be no end to the scourges Islam wreaks.
Nothing would be stupider than to ‘expel Muslims from our dominions.’ There are a billion and a half Muslims, many of whom want no part of the fanaticism that we abhor. Many of them are extremely talented. Consider Israel, which absorbed over 100,000 scientists and engineers from the former Soviet Union. These weren’t Communists, but refugees from Communism. We should encourage talented and enterprising citizens of Muslim countries to come to the United States, provided, of course, that they accept American principles. That requires some screening and a bit more sophistication than we typically evince, but that is just the sort of challenge that makes America the greatest nation on earth.
It would not be stupid, but wise to expel Muslims from the West. Over and over again, Muslims exhibit “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” [Examples: the Little Rock Arkansas Recruitment shooter, killing one and wounding two others; Major Nidal Hassan of Fort Hood; the attempted follow-on Fort Hood bomber, the AWOL Soldier; the Times Square Bomber; the would be Seattle bomber; heck the very Westernized Mohammed Atta.]
Expelling ALL Muslims would be an excellent thing. You would at one stroke eliminate the huge welfare burden in places like Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Germany. You eliminate at one stroke all the car burning, violence, rapes (approximately 85% of all rapes in Norway are done by Muslims against natives — two days before Anders Breivik a young Norwegian woman was raped on the steps of Parliament by Muslim men while security guards did nothing.
Expelling all Muslims from the West would reduce in many places the Welfare burden by about 50-75%, and reduce the crime rate by about 80%. Why?
Because Pakistanis, North Africans, Iraqis, Egyptians, and the like are not Ashkenazi Jews from Russia. Israel got the benefit of a highly educated, highly secularized, highly intelligent population, that was in tune with Zionism and the idea of a historic Jewish nation in Israel. The West has got semi-literate, low IQ, tribal people who practice polygamy, cousin marriage, honor killing, and the like. I’m shocked that Mr. Goldman does not recognize that Russian Jews are not the same as Pakistani tribal Muslims. Not the least of which is that Muslims HATE HATE HATE the West and its secularism, and wish to … “DOMINATE” as they are fond of telling us.
No Muslim presence AT ALL in the US, no 9/11. Don’t let Muslims in (or stay) and they cannot kill you. Simple as that.
Moreover, Muslims criticizing Western presence, evangelism, and secularism in Muslim countries have a point. Colonialism and imperialism ARE BAD. Westerners do not belong in, nor have the right to control, Muslim peoples. There is no “White Man’s burden.” Neither for that matter do Muslim peoples have any historic right to live in Western lands. Muslims do not belong in Norway or Sweden any more than Norwegians or Swedes belong in Iraq or Pakistan. Muslims have no more right to tell Danes and the Dutch how to live their lives, what cartoons they can draw or see, what they can eat or drink, than Danes or the Dutch have a right to tell Muslims how to order their lives, and rule over them.
Since the benefits are so obvious (lower welfare, lower crime, higher social cohesion) and the costs of continuing Muslim presence (constant Jihad, Shariah zones in Britain, grinding low-level warfare against natives) Muslims WILL be kicked out of Europe … and America. Because Muslims are not Jews. The only questions that remain are how that will occur.
Quite likely in response to massive cross-border invasions. Egypt will “solve” its problem by simply invading across the Med into places like Greece or Italy, which could not fight their way out of a paper bag, and have all that money, property, prospective slaves, and the like. France too looks a tempting target. As does of course, Spain for Morocco. If the mass of Egyptians got on boats and landed in say, Southern Italy, and simply took over, who would stop them? Really? A depopulated and demilitarized Europe invites invasion. Particularly as Egyptians starve.
The corollary to Chinese pigs eating before Egyptian peasants is that Egyptian peasants will simply “take” from weak countries around the Med that are rich and feeble.
That is the history of Islam. Like communism, it was and is essentially a parasitic culture. It grew whenever there were cultures it could conquer. It then sucked them dry. Whenever they were blocked from conquest they withered away into poverty and stagnation. Such is the fate of parasites when there are no new hosts to infect and the current ones grow feeble from their blood sucking.
And just like in days of old, the Muslims often bought off the infidels with silver and gold to provide them with the tools to expand their conquests. Treason for money was their most potent weapon. Things have not changed much, have they?
Whew – you sure are mixing up your definitions.
A ‘Muslim’ is a societal and ‘religious’ identity. A ‘Swede’ or ‘Dane’ is a national identity. You’ve merged the two and this is fallacious. You can be a Swede AND be a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu and yes, even a Muslim.
Islam has to reform itself and that isn’t easy, but other religious have accomplished this as well, divesting themselves from the political and economic to rest only in the metaphysical domain.
And no, forbidding all Muslims from living in the West won’t stop Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic fascism. Enabling the nations of the ME to move out of tribalism (two-class) and enabling the emergence of a middle class engaged in private enterprise…that will reduce the fundamentalism and fascism.
As for the West, rejecting the relativism of multiculturalism, rejecting the welfare state, insisting that ALL immigrants follow ONE law, the civic law of the land, learn and use the language of the host nation, and separate church/state – that has to be done.
Well put.
Unfortunately you fail to realise the Islamic concept of the Ummah which is the global Islamic community which transcends nationalism and it is why Muslims say they are Muslim first and everything such as nationality follows after.
And you cannot reform Islam because the Quran, the source of their supremacy and intolerance, cannot be altered or changed in any way. We’ve seen how different sects like the Ahmadiyya, who are treated as heretics and are persecuted by mainstream Muslims.
Muslims reject intervention or foreign interpretation of their faith and asking them to reform it themselves is unlikely to happen because the Quran cannot be changed.
Forbidding Muslims from living in the West is clearly a measure of precaution and must be done to prevent further tensions and strife. It may not cut off the root of Islamic extremism but it prevents their invasion efforts which is crucial in defeating such a parasitic ideology.
“Consider Israel, which absorbed over 100,000 scientists and engineers from the former Soviet Union. These weren’t Communists, but refugees from Communism.”
I have a bad feeling about this. The US infamously took in much of Germany’s intellectual and industrial elites after WWII in Operation Paperclip, and the country began a long-term shift towards the socialist left ever since, that hasn’t been reversed. Trying to brain drain a totalitarian state isn’t worth the danger.
Israel has been exposed to too many poisonous ideas that haven’t gone away yet, and the post-Soviet euphoria might just explain some of it.
Must disagree with you. The leftward tilt started with FDR and Communists embedded in his Administration long before paperclib. For example: Henry Wallace who was neither Jewish nor brought here through paper clip. That is not to say, regretfully, that Jews were not attracted to Leftist nonesense (and, regretfully, still are).
I can’t speak for Jews in Israel who are expatriates from the former Soviet Union, but they seem to be voting for rightist parties, so I would think, though I may be wrong, that those Jews, having experienced Communism first hand, want no part of it.
And now…rather than commies infiltrating the WH we have the new kid on the block”
“Infiltration of the federal government by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood is worse than some have warned recently, says a former FBI special agent in Washington.
The agent confirmed that at least three operatives of the Egypt-based Brotherhood – whose credo is “Jihad is our way and death in the cause of Allah is our dream” – have penetrated the Obama administration.”
Will we ever learn?
And before FDR and his commie pals were the so-called Progressives – the “Liberal Fascists” enamored with socialism who are documented in the book of that name.
Muslims already living in the West shouln’t be expelled, but all Muslim immigration must stop immediately. “Screening” them isn’t effective since the most radicalized is the second generation. Even if the immigrants pass the “screening” you can’t tell their children won’t become radical. And it sure doesn’t help when both Muslim leaders and leftists believe the West is evil and must be profoundly transformed while all criticism of Islam is labled racist and Islamophobic. I mean, why would young Muslims adopt Western norms if both their Western professors and their Muslim mentors say the West is evil, racist, unjust, imperialist, violent, and Islam is just fine, a religion of peace, tolerance and a wonderful harmony between people of different faiths (except for that tiny, but very persistent, “minority of extremists”)?
The majority of Mulsims are fanatic by my definition. The majority are not terrorists, of course, but various surveys show that large majorities in many prominent Muslim countries support the death penalty for apostates and adulterers, severe corporeal punishment for theives, and even a caliphate. That’s quite extreme in my view. But even if only a minority were fanatics, why take a chance? It’s like playing Russian roulette – even if there’s only one bullet in the gun, what compelling reason do you have to point it to your head?
I don’t see how the government can single out Muslim immigrants without violating the Bill of Rights of our Constitution.
In the past, we did have so-called “ideological exclusion” clauses in our immigration laws, that let us ban known Nazis or Communists from immigrating to America. But those were political ideologies, not religions.
sinz54: There are two ways: The easiest is to have spies in Mosques to listen to the “Imam’s” sermons. If the sermons are treasonous, or call for Jihad, shut down the Mosque and expel the “Imam.” That might prevent second generation problems from occurring.
A more drastic approach would consider Islam a political ideology rather than a religion. (As I have said frequently, Islam is a political ideology cloaked in the pretense of religion.) In that case, anyone adhering to its most radical tenents could be expelled from the country for treason, or for wanting to overthrow the government of the United States by force. The latter was the same reasoning used for Communists in the 1950s.
Islam is a theo-political doctrine. Westerners should understand that others may have different concepts than they do. For instance, not in all cultures and religions there’s a clear distinction between spirituality and law. The ideal in Islam is for the state to be governed by Sharia law – that makes it political. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a religion as many Westerners suggest because they can’t grasp the concept of lack of distinction between personal spirituality and totalitarian political aspects. It’s quite simple and logical really – according to Islam god gave humanity a set of laws by which to govern all their affairs. God’s law is perfect, just and enlightened, while for humans to make their own laws for themselves is arrogance, hubris, a defiance against god. Man-made law is also by nature imperfect and not as just and enlightened as god’s law because god is all knowing and all good and humans aren’t. It also means that some humans rule over others rather than everyone being ruled by god’s law, which makes it tyrannical and oppressive. Muslims who believe that see you as corrupt and evil and want to replace your constitution with Sharia law. So it is political even though it’s a religion.
The difference between communism and Islam in this regard is that all communists want/ed to replace your system with a communist system while in the case of Muslims some do and some don’t. But there are too many who do and too many passive others who want object it. It just too much of a political risk.
Indeed this is a challenge for modern Western thinking, but common sense and a measure of flexibility must be applied and lessons must be learned. Reality can’t be ignored forever. If immigration and birth rate trends will continue more or less the same your children or grandchildren will understand all too well the political aspects of Islam and the lack of distinction between religion and law, and will curse you for your madness in allowing this to happen to them. Just look on Muslim majority states around the world. Not through PC eyes, but ask yourself if you’d like to live in such a place, why so few Westerners ever immigrate there, and would you wish it for your grandchildren. Why do that to them?
There’s clearly something very wrong with mainstrean Islam from a Western point of view. Either you have the courage to admit it, define it, and reject it, or you’ll keep importing it and condemn future generations to deal with much more serious problems when Mulsims will make a signicant part of the population. It never ends well. You already start noticing it when they are less than 10% of the population. It’ll get worse when they’ll be 20%. When they’ll be 55% it will be over.
Awful typo in my comment above: “too many passive others who want object” should be, of course, “who won’t object.”
Radical Islamists have spoken and written openly about their desire to overthrow existing governments and legal systems. These are political goals. Islam is a religion, but Islamism is a political idealogy.
I think that one could credibly argue that Islam is itself un-American by its very nature, as it calls for rejecting secular rule in favor of Sharia law, rule by Koranic dictates. This is because secular law is apostacy, that no law by men is to be above the Koran. It isn’t a tiny minority that believes this either; The center of Islam, Saudi Arabia and other whole nations are run thus.
I do believe that there is a sizable population of Muslims that are here because they fled the repression of it, but if they will not reform into a sect that denies Koranic political supremacy, or if they maintain a community that tolerates child and spouse abuse because of Islamic social and cultural demands for Sharia compliance, what does that tell you about the power of the radicals to force conformity within their overall community?
There are all sorts of tiny, break-away kooky sects within the USAs Christian population, but they are completely tolerated by their fellows in the more powerful denominations. Why aren’t we seeing that here from the Muslim population? Could it be the very real threat of violent retaliation by radicals to keep them in line?
I think we should be targetting and expelling the foreign radicals and appropriately policing Muslim communities to make sure that they follow the laws duly passed by the legislature and not the Koran.
It’s like playing Russian roulette – even if there’s only one bullet in the gun, what compelling reason do you have to point it to your head?
Excellent point, though I prefer the rattlesnake analogy. Why let a bunch of rattlesnakes slither around your house on the grounds that “90 percent of them are peaceful and won’t bite”? All it takes is one.
Still, I find myself agreeing with those who advocate expulsion. For one thing, telling the sheep from the goats is impossible, a fact that “sleeper agents” always exploit. For another, Islam — like it or not — is totally incompatible with our founding principles. In the appendix to 1984 Orwell showed how the Declaration of Independence could not be translated into Newspeak, other than by boiling the whole thing down to the single word crimethink. Similarly, to a devout Muslim that same document boils down to the words heresy and blasphemy. Muslim ambassadors, consuls, and others with diplomatic immunity should be allowed to stay, though subject to as much oversight as international law allows. The rest should be declared persona non grata and given a reasonable time (3-4 months?) to get their affairs in order and leave.
The West needs to make Islam even more fragile by working 24/7 on new fuel sources. If an efficient alternative to oil is found or invented, the Muslims quickly go back to camel herding and Life After People becomes a reality show in places such as Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh.
Having read Fr. Schall’s article, I’m amazed he made no mention of the Sunni-Shiite schism (if that’s the right word) within Islam. That seems to be the ultimate fragility. Recall the violent ethnic cleansing of Iraq as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds killed or expelled the “others” from areas where they predominated. If left totally to their own devices, the Sunnis and Shiites might destroy each other, or at least cripple each other to the point of irrelevance.
“There are a billion and a half Muslims, many of whom want no part of the fanaticism that we abhor.”
They are the most quiet and passive billion and a half I’ve ever heard of. Especially here in the US – where are the cries of outrage over evil committed in the name of their religion ?
Where are the Muslim organizations dedicated to aggressively outing fronts like the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR in the media ?
I agree on the Koranic criticism concept — but doesn’t it have two fatal flaws — one literally and one figuratively ? Koranic criticism would likely undermine the edifice of the entire belief system by delegitimizing the Koran. And those doing the critiques are risking their lives to jihad.
Christ gave His blood for us, Islam demands your blood. It is a power religion in it’s death…..though it will be nasty as it dies and we are in for it unless we wake up soon.
whatmeworry,
Aww, you know, it’s that huge group of American Moslems who are demanding that St Nicholas Orthodox Church be rebuilt before a mosque at Ground Zero is even considered. The ones who have been donating huge amounts of money toward that end. Yeah, them.
I believe that we have a definitional problem here. Many commentators — myself included — would quite vehemently reject the notion that there are any Muslims who “want no part of the fanaticism that we abhor”. We would accept, though, the statement that there are many who call themselves Muslims out of inertia, confusion, or cowardice, who want no part of that fanaticism.
Akatsukami-san,
“We would accept, though, the statement that there are many who call themselves Muslims out of inertia, confusion, or cowardice, who want no part of that fanaticism.”
I’m not sure it’s exactly cowardice – when there’s a guaranteed death penalty for non-conformers, pretended conformity is simply self-preservation. See parallels with communist and other totalitarian regimes. It would be nice if those “cowards” would rise up (and I suspect they are a VERY significant portion of the Muslim population) but…most people are not potential martyrs. Nor do they wish to be. They’ll do what it takes to stay alive.
David,
Your comparison is simply wrong.
Jews who emigrated to Israel (and USA) from Russia did not do that to further advance communism. They come to escape communism. You will find that majority of russian jews in israel (and USA) are leaning lot more to the right than native jews.
To continue with your analogy, we should only welcome FORMER muslims who must denounce islam as a condition of admittance. I know, it is unconstitutional to demand this (unless we manage somehow treat islam not as a religion but a cult) – I am just trying to take your analogy to its logical conclusion.
Muslims are NOT like Jews. No, they do NOT have an equivalent level of talent and ability, simply because they weren’t raised with a value system that develops talent and ability.
Just look at the number of Nobel prizes that Jews have won, compared to the number that Muslims have won. Then look at the number of Jews in the world, versus the number of Muslims.
Besides that, as other commenters have pointed out, Muslims present a security risk to whomever they are in contact with. That is not the case for Jews.
When I hear people discount moving Muslims out of infidel socities I cringe, Islam thrives on hatred of the other, you should note that Muslims tend to be more extreme the more they mix with other cultures, and while they can swallow other cultures and take their riches Islam will endure, it will collapse once they have taken over the world, but by then it will be too late for humanity. Anyway our own civilisation is already collapsing, most people have not realised yet…
“Many of them are extremely talented.”
Seriously? What kind of talent are you talking about? Where is it on display?
Islam as a religion and culture has been around for 1,500 years. Islam as the ideology, Islamism, has been around only since the 1960′s. It is this ideological form of Islam that is fragile. Spengler argues that the religion itself is fragile. I have no basis to argue against this (I will learn more when I get his book next month). However, I argue that Islamism as the ideology is even more fragile and will disappear in the next 20 years.
I totally disagree with your proposal to “expel Muslims from our dominions.”
But your analysis of Islam’s staying power is absolutely correct.
Let’s remember too that Jews, until the mid 20th century, were a persecuted minority all over the Western world, facing discrimination, harassment, pogroms, inquisitions–and ultimately genocide. But Judaism survived.
Why do religions fall? It’s because their main adherents give up, not because they were defeated by outsiders. (Murdering 6 million Jews in gas chambers didn’t destroy Judaism.) That’s why we don’t worship the Greek gods anymore.
Islam won’t disappear. Indonesia is a good example of a Muslim country that seems to be doing OK and is even relatively democratic. And native Africans who adopt Islam aren’t being wrecked by it; in fact, they’re busily displacing Christian Africans.
What has to change (and will) is traditional *Arab culture*. (Indonesia is not an Arab nation.) It’s a backward culture that frowns on science, denies anything resembling equal rights for women–and is partial to violence. Even among Muslims–the Sunni-Shia conflicts between Iran and Iraq, between Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis, etc.
But Arab culture won’t change until the West stops buying their oil, and they’re forced to stand on their own two feet. Right now, Arab culture is a world parasite–producing nothing of value, having stolen (nationalized) the oil that was prospected, drilled, and developed by British and French companies.
Indonesia and Malaysia are two exceptions, for the time being. Keep in mind, though, how Attaturk’s secularized, democratic Turkey has flipped. Nothing will prevent those twou countries from doing the same thing in the future.
The persecution of non-Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia is steadily rising. And the outright persecution and second-class status of non-Muslims, especially Christians, in Indonesia is well known, but likely not frequently reported upon in Western media.
Rory – Thanks for the info.
I completely agree with you that religions don’t die as a result of being defeated by outsiders, unless, of course, they’re successfuly wiped out physically or forced to convert en mass. And I don’t mean that as a suggestion (not feasible anyway with 1.5 billion believers), but as a statement of historical fact. Some religions were totally wiped out by stronger more aggressive religions with greater numbers and domination (Islam among the latter).
Judaism is indeed perhaps the most notable example of surviving ultimate disasters. It didn’t start with persecution in Europe. First the kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian empire and basically wiped out. Shortly after the kingdom of Judea was conquered by the Babylonians, the temple destroyed and the people, or at least the elites, exiled. Then it was conquered by the Persian empire that allowed them to return. Then by the Greek empire. The Jews managed to liberate Judea from the Greeks only to be conquered by the Roman empire. If God really exists and his words are true, how did he allow all this to happen?
Then they rebelled against the Roman occupation totally believing god was on their side and will deliver them. They had some surprising initial successes, but they were defeated and finally crushed by the Romans, resulting in the destruction of the second temple, genocide, expulsion, being sold to slavery and a couple of millennia of exile with frequent pogroms, persectution, expulsions and migrating from place to place in search for safety, culminating in another genocide in Europe, the third one actually (after Assyria and Rome), if not the forth (Babylonia). Surely, according to the theory that defeat, disaster and humilliation, or the destruction of Mecca, will cause Muslims to lose their faith, all of this should have convinced the Jews that the Jewish religion is false. But obvioulsy enough Jews were not convinced and the Jewish religion survived all of that.
How come? Because the strong in faith will find some explanation that will allow them to hold on to their faith. For instance that god didn’t stand by them because they have sinned, or that the leader they were following was a false messiah. After the caliphate was defeated and dismembered by European infidel forces some Muslim thinkers thought long and hard why it happened and reached the conclusion it happened because they were not pious enough, they abandoned the fundamentals of Islam as expressed in the original texts, adopted too many infidel (modern) ideas and ways and strayed from the right path. They didn’t think the cause for the disaster was too much Islam, but rather not enough Islam, so instead of abandoning Islam it gave rise to Islamic fundamentalism which gradually conquered the hearts and minds of growing numbers of Muslims who believe that the Islamic golden age was a direct result of strict piety they need to return to to bring about the Islamic revival.
I keep hearing how moderate Indonesia is, all I can say to that is East Timor, and suggest that people read about those Christian school girls beheaded. Malaysia is also not moderate, note how they treat the Chinese, ther are a lot of rapes.
Islam is weak once it has to survive on its own, it thrives on conflict which it creates itself, my point of view is that Islam will collapse, but only once it has conquered the world.
I agree with much of what you said. I think Mr. Goldman and the good Father are looking too narrowly at the intellectual framework of Islam, which is indeed fragile, while neglecting its extremely strong props.
One is sheer emotion. Islam is a scary religion to believe in and a scary religion to give up. Its followers are very good at compartmentalizing dogma on the one hand and the natural morality and reason that militate against it on the other. Even Muslims who scarcely follow in their own lives are very defensive about their faith.
Second point, you only have to travel or live in a Muslim country to see that Islam, like communism, is merely a figleaf for totalitarian and authoritarian governments. The Saudi royal family are hardly good Muslims, but they use Islam as an excuse to intrude in every aspect of a citizen’s life. You can go a long way with that game.
The number of countries that extricated themselves from Islam, in this case the Ottoman occupation, is much longer than Mr. Doodslag’s list. He fails to name Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Montenegro, Macedonia, Hungary and part of Croatia. Considering Albania is still majority Muslim and around 40% of Bosnia’s population is Muslim as well, the two countries cannot be included. The same is with one third of Cyprus. The divorces from the Ottomans were very bloody as well.
I agree with Morton Doodslag. Islam is a genocidal ideology. Muslim behavior is highly predictable. When their population is small, they are Meccan Muslims, so they are friendly and they have extremely large families. When they become the majority, they are Medina Muslims, so they are obsessed with killing their kafir (non-Muslim) neighbors. Muslims call emigration to the West Hijra (or Hegira). It means conquest by emigration. There are fatwas prohibiting Muslim migration for economic reasons. They can migrate only if the purpose of the migration is the conquest. If the present trends continue, in 50 years European Muslim population will grow from 52 million to 370 million, while U.S. Muslim population will grow from 8 million to 147 million. If we prohibit Muslim migration to the West, Muslim population will grow anyway because Muslims have three times as many children as Westerners. Appeasement or half measures will not solve this problem. There are only four solutions: ban Islam, deport Muslims, sterilize them, or kill them. If we do nothing, we will become persecuted minority in our own homeland, like the Christian minorities in the Middle East. My favorite solution is sterilizing Muslim women after first childbirth. Quinacrine sterilization is cheap and safe. Spanish queen Isabella faced the same problem in 1499. She issued decrees for mass conversion of Muslims to Christianity. Those who refused were either killed or forced to leave the country. The Koran and Arabic texts were burned, mosques were destroyed or converted into churches. This policy worked well. Isabella became a hero.
___________________________________________________________________
“Muslims must kill non-believers wherever they are unless they convert to Islam.” – Ali Gom’a (grand mufti of Egypt, the highest Muslim religious authority in the world, Al Ahram, April 7, 2008) source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8066
In an Al-Jazeera survey on September 11, 2006, 49.9% of the respondents avowed that they did indeed support Osama bin Laden. source: http://tinyurl.com/ys6w42
35% of Egyptians and Saudis say that supporting jihad is Islamic duty. source: http://tinyurl.com/yzl3thz
“There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t always follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it… How naive is the self-deception of the West to continue to talk of moderate Islam?… The Western mind-set — that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away — is delusional. We’re trying to appease Islam, but we are headed for a terrible confrontation between fascist Islam and Right-wing fascists who will step in when liberals fail to do so… This is the beginning of a challenge with no possible compromise. There is no bargain that can be struck when the question at hand is one of basic human rights.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali (She lives in the USA and is the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust.)
What country are you talking about, Polkadot? You can’t do this under the American Constitution. You’d have to throw the Bill of Rights out the window. So are you just letting off steam, or do you want to get rid of the Constitution?
If Islam is recognized as a genocidal ideology, rather than a religion, it can be banned for the same reason that mafia is banned. The U.S. constitution is becoming obsolete. It has spawned hotels for foreign women who make anchor babies in the U.S. I believe that the world is going to suffer so many cataclysms (economical, environmental, nuclear, and inflicted by Muslims) that the existing states will collapse and their constitutions will become irrelevant. I believe that by the end of this century the world will be made of wealthy, fascist, high-tech enclaves surrounded by total anarchy resembling modern Somalia. (I am a naturalized U.S. citizen.)
Exactly!
Islam is NOT a religion in the sense that Westerners are familiar with. Islam is an expansionist, enemy, totalitarian POLITICAL ideology that seeks to rid the world of everything but itself.
We have not only the right, but also the duty and the obligation to rid ourselves of Islam and to expel its adherents, who truly are enemy aliens, from our midst.
You dont have to throw out the bill of rights, you just have to amend/enforce the Immigration laws…
Right now, White, Christian Westerners are virtually prohibited from immigrating to the USA.
Talk to someone from Scotland, Australia, France or Luxembourg about how long it takes.
Its nearly impossible, the wait is years, and the numbers allowed are very low.
Why?
Our first “priority” seems to be immigrants from Mexican, as we have an absolutely unrestricted open border.
Our second “priority” seems to be third world Caribbean/African/middle eastern.
For some reason, we put “those most likely to succeed” LAST as we assume they dont “need” to come here.
Simply re-visiting our immigration priorities, and enforcing them, will keep Muslims, and a lot of other dangerous undesirables out as well.
We actively, purposely, limit the number White Christians.
Maybe we should re-visit that idea.
I agree with The Root ’83. Europe and America do not have immigration policy, but open borders. We need an immigration policy that restricts immigration to those who are smart, educated, young, healthy, and most of all, having Western mindset (passion for innovation, capacity for self-criticism, and gender equality). Every applicant should take IQ test. If he scores less than 110, he should be rejected. It is rather difficult to determine if the immigrant has the Western mindset because he/she can lie about it, but we can guess that educated people, atheists, agnostics, and people living in the West have the Western mindset. I like the idea of national ID and police raids on suspected illegal immigrants. (I am a naturalized U.S. citizen.)
I’d actually advocate sterilizing the Muslim men considering that they are allowed to marry Muslim and non-Muslim women and they are responsible for what could be rape epidemics in Europe and the sexual grooming of under-age White girls in Britain as well as “Love Jihad”; the practice of wooing unsuspecting non-Muslim women in order to convert them for the purpose of demographic domination.
Muslim women aren’t allowed to marry non-Muslims so there isn’t much use in sterilizing them.
You also got to consider that Muslim descent in patrilineal, so if the father is a Muslim then the child is automatically considered a Muslim.
If you sterilize male Muslims then you undermine their patriarchal, supremacist self-image and it may help to make them more docile.
Hmmm – since many radicalized Muslims (Ft. Hood shooter, Times Square bomber) were U.S. citizens, I guess that means you’d forcibly sterilize U.S. citizens as a part of your preventive measure. Zat right?
Call me stupid, but whoever moderates this website is sleeping on the job. Expressing an opinion is fine, but calling for violence is not. That goes double for the previous idiot who said all Muslims in the US (including U.S. citizens) should be gassed.
Obscenities get moderated (f*ck that, I say!), but calls for violence do not? Don’t you care about the reputation of this website, and of PJM in general? And don’t give me a bunch of free-speech bullshlt, because they can go call for violence elsewhere.
Ah, it looks like the comment calling for gassing US Muslims has been removed (along with my comment ‘you should be ashamed of yourself’). Good. Let one leftie newsperson or blogger (Huffpo, anyone) get ahold of a comment like that one (or the above calling for forced sterilization of US citizens), and it will be the end of the reputation of the conservative blogosphere (I can just hear it now – “yeah, it was one commenter – but that site is MODERATED!…”).
Wake up guys and monitor your site! I’ve seen better self-monitoring at huge Tea-Party rallies where there was no-one in charge and the whole crowd made sure that no real or staged ‘tea party racism’ was tolerated…..
No, on second glance, the comment (and response) are still up.
Hello – moderator? Are you there?
“All it takes for evil to exist is for good people to stand by and do nothing”
Someone is calling for the wholesale gassing of an entire people (including US citizens) on the basis of their religion. Deja vu anyone??
David P. Goldman – I’m calling you out as the moderator. As a Jew – and a frum one, no less – you should not be asleep at the wheel on this one. I for one am not going to stand by and let this pass unnoticed and unchallenged. This comment should be removed and it’s author banned from the site. Free speech does not include calls for violence.
Advocating violence should be prohibited if the violence breaks the law. War and death penalty are also forms of violence, but calling for a war or a death penalty is not prohibited. (Winston Churchill called for a war against Germany, and yet he was not a criminal.) Political scientists define a state (polity) as an organization that has a monopoly on organized violence.
I have never advocated violence against Muslims, but I suggested sterilizing Muslim women after first childbirth so that they do not have more than one child. If Muslim women do not like this policy, they can migrate to a country that does not have such restriction. I am absolutely certain that civil war is imminent if the Muslim population of the West continues to grow. Sterilizing Muslim women is a lesser evil than the civil war. If you (Miriam) do not like my solution, please suggest a better one.
We had similar problem with the American Nazis during WWII. According to Wikipedia: “The German American Bund or German American Federation was an American Nazi organization established in the 1930s. Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of the Nazi Germany… With the start of World War II, most of the Bund’s members were placed in internment camps, and some were deported at the end of the war.” source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-American_Bund
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia deported millions of German citizens from their countries after WWII because they were dangerous fifth column. We can treat the Muslim fifth column the same way – we can strip them of citizenship and deport them to Saudi Arabia.
At the end of WWII Russia broke the non-aggresion treaty with Japan, annexed Japanese island of Sakhalin, and deported its Japanese population. Nobody other than Japanese people questions the legality of the annexation and deportation.
“polkadot” —
As for the morality of your final solution,
if we as a people were to implement it,
we would no longer deserve to exist as a people.
I’m alright with that.
Some things are worse than dying.
As for your numbers: “If the present trends continue, in 50 years European Muslim population will grow from 52 million to 370 million, while U.S. Muslim population will grow from 8 million to 147 million.”
In the US, Muslims are current 0.6% of the population.
Note: There are more Buddhists than Muslims.
Half of US Muslims are Sunni. Half are Shiite.
Note: There are more Hindus than either of the two.
Most Shiites are secular. They arrived in 79, fleeing mullah-madness.
I’ve never seen that their fertility rate differs markedly
from the US population as a whole.
Your conquering Muslim wombs are going to have to belong to Sunni ladies.
I don’t think they can do it.
If they want to take over
they’ll not only need 147M (currently 50% of the US population),
they’ll also need enough to account for the overall growth of the US population in the next 50 years.
200M? 225M? More?
Unless the Saudis have purchased the laws of biology, too,
I suspect it’s not physically possible.
The formula is complicated: but if I’m flogging it right,
each woman would have to average 14 kids,
assuming all her baby girls marry at 9.
But suppose that the men were so inclined
to use their women’s wombs to weapons of mass cultural destruction,
no way the women are going to stand for it.
No way. No how. Full stop.
If you ever wondered why Muslim men spend so much time
drinking coffee and tea with the boys outside the home,
it’s because they’re terrified of their women.
I’d add that 1/4 of US Sunnis are African American,
and their husbands faced the added difficulty of getting beaten
up side the head with a pan.
One other problem with your numbers:
like the rest of us,
Muslim women in the US are too dang busy to have 15 babies,
and arranging their marriages before they leave grade school.
Facts are: most of those Sunni women are working professional careers or training for such careers.
We know a lot about the demographic profile of American Sunnis,
they’re not what you think.
They’re better educated than most.
More prosperous than most.
They also have more kids than most.
About 1/3 of a kid per couple.
TFR averages less then 2.5.
Average American TFR 2.1.
Not a winning formula for conquest by womb.
My guess, looking 50 years out:
Shiites are going to be less than 0.3% of the total US population. (Hispanics have more kids than they do.)
Sunnis are going to be about 0.35% of the total US population.
In either case, the Sunnis are not going to take over.
They’ll still be only the 5th largest religious community in the US.
And we’ll still be right to call ourselves:
a Judaeo-Christian-Buddhist nation,
with a dash of Hindu and a tiny smidgen of Muslim.
If we’re lucky, our Sunnis will also have cleaned house by then,
with FBI and Department of Corrections assistance.
Look, I don’t blame you. And I don’t mean to make fun of you.
Such numbers are bandied about by Muslim clerics all the time.
The clerics are insane, though.
They also come from cultures with grave social pathologies.
They’ve failed at every important test in the last century.
Pregnant women is all they got left to bet.
The odds are long.
As for Europe, there’s a different dynamic there.
And I’d not be buying 30 year bonds there, in either case.
Cheers, JCL
Prof. Lamoreaux,
Thanks for injecting a note of sanity into the conversation.
DG
@John C. Lamoreaux. You need to refresh your math skills.
Muslim population in North America has annual growth rate of 6% versus 0.9% for total U.S. Its present population of 8 million will double to 16 million by 2014. source: http://www.allied-media.com/AM/index.html
2001 survey led by researchers from Hartford Institute for Religious Research
provided a basis for the estimate of 6-7 million Muslims in the USA.
Present 52+ million Muslims in Europe will be doubled and grow into 104 million within 20 years. source: http://tinyurl.com/ygr763r
Driven by immigration and high birthrates, the number of Muslims on the [European] continent has tripled in the last 30 years. Most demographers forecast a similar or even higher rate of growth in the coming decades. source: http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=60
Europe’s Muslim population is set to increase from around 13% today to between 22% and 37% of the population by 2025. source: http://news.scotsman.com/europeanunion/CIA-gives-grim-warning-on.2595505.jp
USA has exploding population of Latinos, many of them illegal immigrants. It seems likely that by 2050 Latinos will be the American majority. source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K46PxTqkKWo
Across Western Europe 16 to 20 percent of babies are being born into Muslim families… By 2025, one-third of all European children will be born to Muslims… In Italy, 95% of all rapists are Muslims. Eighty-five percent of all murderers are Muslims… France will have a Muslim majority in less than 25 years! Another telling statistic is that although the Muslims are 12% of France’s population, 70 percent of a total of 60,775 prisoners in France are Muslims! All of France’s urban suburbs are being roamed by Muslim black African or Arabic gangs… A very high proportion of French Muslims are in the underclass, that segment of the population that relies not so much on education and work as on welfare and predatory activities. In fact, over one thousand Muslim neighborhoods are under monitoring throughout France. Seven hundred of those Muslim neighborhoods are listed as “violent” and nearly 400 hundred are listed as “very violent.” Violence ranges from rape (95% of rapists are Muslim), murder (85% of murderers are Muslim), theft and looting of cars (58% committed by Muslims) and street fighting to assault on teachers and civil servants… source: http://www.masada2000.org/islam.html
@polkadot
Matters in Europe are very different from the United States.
Europe (and still more Russia) face problems uniquely their own.
I’m not sure anyone quite understands them yet.
I’m inclined to think them grave.
Just the other day, it was announced that
Russia doesn’t have enough healthy young men 18-19 yrs old, to fill the ranks of its armed forces:
even were she to draft each and every one of them healthy enough to serve.
Meanwhile, Europe can’t be bothered with such trivial matters as self-defense,
let alone raising families.
As I suggested, I’m not optimistic.
On the other hand, it’s not clear what happens when there’s no longer money for a dole.
It’s far easier to be poor in Damascus than in Paris.
At the same time, I’m not ready to believe in a kinder and gentler Europe.
This is the continent that invented and perfected the arts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Fascism, too, still crouches at its door.
Frankly, I’d not rule out calls for future US humanitarian missions, in which our military rescues
Muslim refugees from Europe and transport them to safety in the Middle East.
(We’d undertake such missions, too — as we’re that sort of people.
The world’s never known a country more kind and generous than the United States.
And that’s something of which we can be proud.)
—
As for the demographic profile of Islam in the US,
I know the numbers that you cite.
They cannot be sustained, however.
No responsible demographer gives them credence.
And for good reason.
The figures come from CAIR and other MB related organizations.
They were put forward at a time when it was in their interest
to suggest that Muslims comprise numbers equal to those of the American Jewish community.
The numbers were also arrived at by a dubious method, if such one can call it:
They called a couple hundred mosques and asked how many members there were, and extrapolated.
When David Barrett, one of the most respected demographers of religion,
as well as other professionals,
called CAIR out on their numbers,
the response was predictable.
Blame the Jews.
Hooper’s response: “Very often the representatives of the extremist wing of the pro-Israel lobby such as the American Jewish Committee seek to block Muslim political participation.”
—
Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is the largest and longest-running study of the demographic profile
of religion in the U.S. PDF (200 pages) here: http://goo.gl/yB9Kr
It’s their numbers I followed above.
Every other professional has reached similar conclusions:
Muslim are less than 1% of the total US population.
How much less?
We’re not sure.
Pew comes in higher than every other major study.
Pew 2007 0.6%
Baylor 2006 0.2%
Pew 2000-2007 0.5%
GSS 1998-2006 0.5%
Gallup 1999-2001 0.3%
ARIS 2001 0.5%
NES 2000 0.2%
—
As for Muslim TFR in the U.S., again the data simply does not support CAIR’s claims.
The number is harder to project forward, but for what it’s worth, Pew estimates:
Foreign born Muslims: TFR 2.6
Native born Muslims: TRF 2.1
In general, they conclude, by second and third generation,
Muslim rates converge with the national average.
On global fertility and projections, including North America, http://goo.gl/qemqq and http://goo.gl/GV2U8
They strongly support DG’s conclusions, which for other reasons, too, strike me as extremely sound.
—
With respect, I’d encourage you to have a look at some of the items cited. The question is important,
and the situation has been confused by CAIR’s self-serving lies. I think we can safely say, though,
that Islam will remain nothing more than a minor (if excruciatingly loud and obnoxious, and sometimes deadly)
part of the U.S. religious landscape.
But in terms of numbers, one is just as likely to have a Buddhist or Hindu neighbor as a Muslim one.
Cheers, JL
Sorry, I forgot to mention: the Hartford study was directed by Ihsan Bagby,
whose cv screams “allahu akbar”….
On him, from Discover the Networks [http://goo.gl/aW6Py]:
\begin{quote}
General Secretary of the Muslim Alliance of North America
Board member of Council on American-Islamic Relations
Board member of Islamic Society of North America
A black convert to Islam, Ihsan Bagby is an associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he attended Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree and then earned his Master’s and PhD (the latter in 1986, in the field of Near Eastern Studies) from the University of Michigan.
In a WorldNetDaily report detailing how certain Muslim group leaders are hoping that “the U.S. Constitution will one day be replaced by Koranic law,” Bagby, an Islamic fundamentalist, is quoted as saying, “Ultimately we [Muslims] can never be full citizens of this country [the U.S.], because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.”
Notwithstanding his belief that genuine Islam is incompatible with the desire to assimilate into American society, Bagby’s custom is to depict Muslim Americans as a politically moderate group that harbors no desire to extensively alter U.S. customs or institutions.
In 2001 Bagby published the results of his comprehensive study, The Mosque in America: A National Portrait. In April 2004 he wrote A Portrait of Detroit Mosques: Muslim Views on Policy, Politics and Religion, which interpreted the findings of a survey conducted by a Detroit-area Islamic organization, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. According to Bagby’s reading of the data, “The vast majority of Muslim Americans hold ‘moderate’ views on issues of policy, politics and religion.” In a newspaper interview, Bagby elaborated, stating that the results showed that “the mosque community is not a place of radicalism.”
But as scholar of Islam Daniel Pipes writes, Bagby’s interpretation amounts to “a case of survey research being distorted by its sponsors to hide the actual results. This is intellectual fraud and political deception.” In actuality, the survey found that among the Muslim respondents: fully two-thirds believed that “America is immoral”; approximately 90 percent favored universal health care; some 79 percent supported affirmative action for minorities; and 81 percent advocated the application of Shari‘a (Islamic law) in Muslim-majority nations.
In addition to his professorial duties and research ventures, Bagby is the Imam of Jamaa’ah al-Taqwa, a mosque in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is also the General Secretary of the Muslim Alliance of North America; a Board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations; an Advisory Board member of the Islamic Society of North America; and is affiliated with Muslims in American Public Square.
\end{quote}
@John C. Lamoreaux
Most European countries prohibit collection of statistical data about minorities, including Muslims, so the available data are sketchy. I believe that existing U.S. data are not reliable. We need reliable statistical data about the numbers, rate of growth, employment, and crime rate of many demographic groups, especially Muslims, blacks, and Latinos.
American Muslims are much less violent than European Muslims because they are better educated and, except Dearborn, Michigan, they are not a majority in the place where they live. There are hundreds of sharia mini-states in Europe. These mini-states are no-go zones for kafirs (non-Muslims) including the police, ambulances, and fire trucks. As the mini-states expand, Muslim mobs force the kafirs to flee and abandon their homes. So far the kafirs offered no resistance to the Muslim mobs. European media always call the Muslim mobs “youths” rather than Muslims.
@polkadot re “I believe that existing U.S. data are not reliable.”
Fine, you believe it.
But you have no basis for that belief. It’s unfounded and irrational.
Every professional demographer in the U.S. concurs that the total number of Muslims is around 0.5%,
and probably less.
And that it as to be expected. Immigration began in earnest only some forty years ago.
That’s simply not enough time to bring in 10 or 12 million Muslims.
0.5% is about what one would suspect.
My sense is that you want there to be more Muslims,
probably for the pleasure it gives you.
And I’d guess it’s the same sort of pleasure normal folks get
from reading books like McCarthy’s The Road.
There’s something uniquely American about this delight
in contemplating the end of civilization.
And it can be healthy, if reminds us of the fragility of life.
When it devolves into a genocidal fixation on ‘doomer porn’,
it may be time to see a doctor about the dosing of one’s lithium salts.
I was astonished and happy to read that the Muslims’ reproduction rate, as it exists right now, will not sustain their populations, and that from an economic standpoint, they cannot survive with so few healthy, workimg adults to support their increasing numbers of the aged and infirm. This indicates to me a self-sustaining,if you will, collapse.
I’d been thinking all along that they were breeding like cats.
It seems then that the only thing in their favor as a continuing threat to our West is that accident of nature called oil, and the physical inability of Western countries to expell those unassimilatable Muslims now rooted amidst us. This idea is supported, at least in our America, by the reality that we cannot (or, will not) even control illegal immigration from Mexico and those areas south.
This reality is in turn exacerbated by the idea that the present administration and their ilk are looking towards these blooming numbers of illegal immigrants as future votes.
In that respect, we Americans contain the demographic “seeds” of our own decline unless and until we pull our legislative heads out of our a***s. That will take some doing.
Don’t get your hopes high on the fertility rates. It’s low in Iran and Turkey (among ethnic Turks), but high in most Muslim societies.
What are the fertility rates for muslims here and in Europe? That is one of the major hazards for Western, particularly Western European societies. It does no good if muslims suffer demographic collapse in the ME yet multiply prolifically in the west. Most muslim immigrants do not assimilate in any western societies not even here in the US which historically has been much more successful in that regard. Accepting immigrants from muslim nations give those countries a safety valve and must be eliminated. Western Europe’s demographic trajectory is about the same the Islamic countries noted above, expulsion is the only hope if their cultures are to survive. Expelling them from the US would be very difficult due to our history of accepting immigrants and freedom of religion. The alternative is to make them so uncomfortable that they leave.
It is true, but the high birth rate Muslim societies can’t feed themselves either. That’s make them more dangerous, unlike the Soviets who wanted to live, the Muslim don’t mind to die as long you die along side with them.
I was also surprised that fertility was so low in Iran and Turkey. I find that to be very interesting.
Fertility typically drops in a successful, prosperous society. The Classic Greeks and Romans had the same problem.
We may see, in Iran and Turkey, fertility rising as prosperity evaporates.
I can’t say there’s a physical inability to expel Moslems–there is a psychological inability to attempt to discern the few who should be expelled. That’s a very different thing.
Phina is right. It doesn’t count for every Muslim country. Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Gaza and Pakistan still have a high fertility rate.
Fertility rates for most important predominantly Moslem countries, 1995-2000
1990 2010 % chg
Afghanistan 6.21 5.50 -11.44
Algeria 3.70 1.76 -52.44
Bangladesh 4.39 2.65 -39.64
Egypt 3.67 3.01 -17.99
Indonesia 2.74 2.28 -16.79
Iran 4.93 1.89 -61.67
Iraq 6.56 3.76 -42.69
Kazakhstan 2.43 1.87 -23.05
Malaysia 3.47 2.70 -22.20
Mali 7.33 6.54 -10.78
Niger 7.35 7.68 4.48
Nigeria 6.31 4.82 -23.62
Pakistan 6.35 3.28 -48.35
Saudi Arabia 6.48 2.35 -63.74
Sudan 6.00 4.93 -17.84
Syria 6.55 3.02 -53.90
Turkey 3.12 2.18 -30.13
Uzbekistan 3.67 1.92 -47.69
Yemen 7.15 4.81 -32.73
Note in all but a few of these countries, fertility rates have either declined massively, or are already at moderate levels.
This doesn’t eliminate the demographic threat – even if Moslems follow the path of Western and east Asian countries, they are doing so later, and thus will contain to gain in relative numbers for at least another generation. But it does suggest that the problem is not quite as apocalyptic as it has been made out.
To posters whose comments did not appear until just now: I am Shabbat observant and thus unable to moderate between Friday sundown and the end of the sabbath on Saturday night. Your patience is appreciated.
Shavuah Tov!!
Oh, you are the moderator? So could you look at polkadot’s comment and my response above? (Posted motzi shabbos – so no excuse there, unless you were at a melave malka)
Glad you removed the ‘gas all US Muslims’ remark, but the ‘foribly sterilize all US Muslims’ remark is still up??
If you care about the reputation of PJM and this website (and as a proud conservative, I do – because I need to be able to recommend a website to others without being afraid of what they will find there) – please be vigilant in your moderating duties. Calls for violence (esp. against US citizens) are NOT okay – and will also destroy the reputation of this website and PJM if they are public ized elsewhere.
My mistake – Anne’s ‘I don’t understand why they haven’t gassed them all’ comment is still up…
Hello?????
It seems that the only places where moslems can afford to hard large families , 8-10 or over, is in the Western countries where they can live on the dole. Look at birth rates in places like America, England or Norway and contrast.
You beat me to it Andy. I was thinking along the same line and just shook my head thinking how western nations are funding their own subversive elements through their social welfare societies. I hope all those little allahs and aieshas being born in non-muslim countries decide to become westernized. Only time will tell.
As of right now my only concern with muslims living in American is the growing threat of domestic terrorism. We will all want them out of America once buses, trains, buildings, gas stations, grammer schools, shopping malls, (the list is endless), start blowing up right after hearing the words “allahu akbar.”
Then we will all be asking ourselves “how could we not see that this was going to happen.”
My 2 cents.
Sorry to disappoint everyone but this is bunk. Communism is not dead and never will be dead. We have a socialist in the White House for God’s sake. And there’s some young hottie in Chile who’s stirring up all sorts of trouble and has a lot of support. It will always be a stupid ‘populist’ ideal that generates emotion and decimates in results.
The same goes for Islam. The demographics may be tapering off but they have already won. See Mark Steyn. The problem not addressed is that the younger generation is more radicalized than their elders. The ‘Arab Spring’ will be a disaster to all those countries who have it because the radicals will take control.
Game over man, game over. And if the yobs take to the streets by then……who has won?
I disagree in one sense, the tense you used, “…will take control”, inaccurate, more like already have started to take control. Have you read recently about the Muslim Brotherhood’s war against certain apparel worn at beaches. They are already starting to impose shariah law. I guarantee you the first basic right to be attacked is free speech. Just watch. Mark my words give it a few months to a year and it will be a crime in Egypt to mock or critize Islam. I don’t know what’s worse what’s happening overseas in these nations or our nation’s idiotic complacency to think “oh, that’ll never happen here”. It’s started already, look at Dearborn, Michigan.
Don’t get your hopes high on a subdued Islam either.
Jeremiah 6:14
They say Peace, peace; but there is no peace.
The word of the Lord will stand against all other words.
Dont you mean Islamism? Or do you tar and simplify a whole complex religion
with millions of adherents, including moderates? From the comments one can see you are feeding hatred of Muslims. And I grew up with Catholics, so I know
some who are compassionate and peace loving and certainly dont lump them all together. But the Catholic church of Father Schall is opposed to women’s equality, opposed to gay rights,covered up sexual abuse of children by priests for years. Its Pope lives in great luxury and its celibate male priests preach to poor families in the Third World not to use birth control. Let us hope all
opressive forms of religion whether fundamentalist Islam, rigid Catholicism
or fundamentalist Christianity will not survive
I am with you, Eve. I think Goldman (and Schall) should keep Islam and Islamism separate as does Daniel Pipes. Islam is indeed very old and immensely robust. Islamism is quite recent and can legitimately be compared with communism. In fact, it can be argued that it is the heir to communism as the chief ideology opposing US-style capitalism.
There is nothing frail or fragile about Islam (the ancient faith as distinct from the recent political ideology). It’s unlikely Schall will live to see its triumph over Islamism. Goldman might. I wonder, then, if he will recall his error and acknowledge it. We’ll see … in a few more decades from now.
There is no difference between Islam and Islamism because jihad is as old as Islam. Reforming Islam is not a new idea. Mutazzilites (ninth and tenth century), some Baghdad caliphs (al-Mamun, al-Mutassim and al-Wathik, 813-847), as well as Akbar the Great of India have attempted to reform Islam. They have failed. Islamic orthodoxy struck back with greater brutality and horror in every instance. Introducing innovation (bidah) in Islam is, according to Ghazali, a crime punishable by death. Reforming Islam is impossible because the Koran (according to Muslims) is a literal word of Allah, because Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was exceptionally cruel bandit, and because Muslims call Muhammad uswa hasana (model of conduct) and al-insan al-kamil (perfect man). In other words Muslims believe that it is their Islamic duty to emulate Muhammad’s crimes. Islam rejects the Golden Rule. Muslims believe that there is no such thing as innocent kafir (non-Muslim). All kafirs are guilty because they know that Islam is the only true religion and yet they deny it. Wafa Sultan said that reforming Islam would essentially require creating a new religion and calling it Islam.
_______________________________________________________
“There is no difference between Islam and Islamism.” – Wafa Sultan
“There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” – Recep Tayyip Erdogan (prime minister of Turkey)
“There is no radical Islam, no hijacked Islam, no corrupted Islam, no extreme Islam and no moderate Islam: Islam is Islam is Islam” – Victor Sharpe
If Islam is fragile, what do you expect to happen to it? I suspect it would be more logical to look for a splintering of Islam, much as happened to Christianity following Luther. Of course, Christianity split on the Catholic side earlier than that, forming Russian and Greek Orthodox churches along with Roman Catholicism. However, in 1186 all Islam agreed there would be no more “primary” interpretation of the Koran, Hadiths, or Sura. That, effectively, froze Islam, at least until now. Without breaking that impasse I don’t see how Father Schall’s predictions can come to pass.
In terms of doctrine, practice, and organization, Islam has been “splintered” for centuries. Pakistan is self-defined as an “Islamic republic”, but has not adopted Sharia law – because the many Moslem sects in Pakistan disagree on which version of Sharia is authoritative.
There is the division between Shi’a Islam and Sunni Islam, which are substantially different. Shi’a Islam, as practiced in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, has a formal hierarchy comparable to the Catholic Christian system of priests, bishops, and patriarchs.
Sunni Islam has no comparable structure. Mosques and clerics self-organize, more like Baptists. Anyone can call himself a mullah or imam. There are some institutions with great prestige, notably Al-Azhar University in Cairo, but they have no authority.
Sunni Islam is also divided between “mainstream” Sunnis and Wahhabi/Salafist puritans, historically regarded as troublemakers.
One major factor in the recent shaping of Islamic culture has been enormous oil wealth in the hands of Saudi Wahhabis. The formerly despised Wahhabis now subsidize (and influence) Moslem clergy, mosques, schools, and books in many countries. Wahhabis attack the mystical Sufi traditions in Sunni Islam, prompting opposition from Sufist Moslems.
There are still other distinct Moslem sects such as the Ismailiya (a branch of Shi’a Islam) and the Ahmadiyya (followers of 19th century Punjabi cleric Ghulam Ahmad).
Get their youth addicted to all of the bells and whistles of Western civilization. Music, partying, gameboys. They’ll become just as disinterested in being militant as our own.
Yes, indeed; we can take hope from the memory of how the intended perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were seduced by the pleasures of the flesh and abandoned their mission in favor of drinking at strip clubs.
I don’t suspect you can’t judge the actions or desires of all young Muslims by the hijacker’s actions. It’s not the violent disaffected we’re talking about, it’s the ruck, the common and not terribly into being a Jihadist ones. Yeah, they could theoretically be converted over to fundamentalist beliefs, but that’s an extreme leap for most people. It takes a lot. Even over there.
Convert the ruck. Subvert them, invade their youth with all of the things that Western civilization possesses. Addict them to it. Make them hip and urbane. I’d give them one-two generations tops, and they’d be just like the bulk of the youth in the US today. Blowing themselves up in a mall wouldn’t be their “thing” anymore.
Remember, this same sort of thing naturally occurred in Japan during the 80s onwards. Japan’s dynamic strength was their odd business culture. I suspect we all remember when we used to be amazed at the scenes of an entire factory shift of workers out there, doing exercise en mass and the average guy doing 70 + hour weeks routinely. That’s a form of fanaticism of it’s own, but it only works well if everyone is always on the same page.
A lot of that began to go out the window around then, where those just of adult age, and the one’s to follow, had started to become “Western Urbane,” and really weren’t any longer into that sort of thing – they wanted to have fun, and enjoy the fruits of a quite civilized, affluent nation, not work like a Dog and do knee jerks every day in the parking lot.
See what I’m getting at? We deliberately, overtly and covertly do the same thing to Muslim youth as hard as we can.
Crud. First sentence should read, “I don’t suspect you can judge…”
Don’t get your hopes up. They’re not as easy to entice as you would hope. These are 100% hard, resistant youths with a clear goal of dominating unbelievers. Anyone who steps out of line is promptly sent home (to Pakistan) for further “education”.
I do not agree that this would work. The majority of Muslims in the UK are quite urbane (second generation and all that), but a portion of them were still able to be radicalized (much to the grief of their much less urbane first-generation parents).
There are solutions – and constitutional ones, at that. But they are complex, intricate, require time, energy and money, and must be implemented system-wide.
I wrote a dissertation on this topic. It’s online (A Systems Understanding of Terrorism with Implications for Policy – see link) – skip to chapter V, if you are interested in just the policy stuff.
Here is an excerpt from a related conference presentation:
Policy Approaches:
The following policy issues are partial, tentative and by no means original. They simply are provided as an example of policy approaches across a complex system. Additionally, each policy approach (educational reform, for example) is itself a multifaceted issue that must be designed and implemented with care, as the manner in which a policy is implemented can at times be as significant as the policy itself (for example: utilizing local leadership in law-enforcement efforts, or local clergy in reaching out to radicalized youth).. Lastly, when any policies are suggested, possible obstacles to the implementation of those policies must be considered (both tangible and intangible) as well as unforeseen negative effects. Also, the need for international cooperation and coordination is self-evident.
Societies:
Non-Western societies – address local issues, bolster alternative sources of education, press for human rights and rule of law in repressive societies. Western societies – promote active outreach and employment opportunities to youth as well as criminal process for any infractions. Monitor mosques, schools and clubs where radicalism may be spread and take appropriate (rule of law) measures. In addition to rule of law measures, use publicity, pressure and suasion against the offending organization. Both East and West – actively promote local voices of moderation and religious tolerance, with a universal values emphasis.
Recruits/Perpetrators:
Create mentoring programs for newly radicalized youth (before they go to train and operationalize), coordinate intelligence efforts across agencies/borders for those who are trained and operationalized, implement smart screening of vulnerable points (airports and ports).
Leaders/Organizers:
Track down leaders while they are still in a pre-operational phase, pressure other nation-states to deny leaders entry or arrest/extradite those that are in their borders, promote intelligence sharing across agencies/national borders.
Indoctrinators:
Create and encourage alternative voices of religious tolerance – especially in mass media. Be willing to strongly enforce bans on hate speech and incitement in pubic venues. Deport and bar entrance to U.S. as needed – in a ‘better safe than sorry’ mode, pressure other nation-states to deny inciters media access, promote vigorous pressure on internet sites that allow incitement to violence.
Supporters:
Monitor financial transactions, promote transparency, freeze assets, coordinate action against criminal networks that supply cash to terror groups. Encourage local voices against the support of violence.
State Sponsors:
Pressure other nation-states to implement human rights and rule of law (adherence to rule of law for leaders as well as citizens), actively pressure nation-states to seal borders against extremism in both directions, use coercive and punitive diplomacy as needed against nation-states that actively fund groups or allow them to operate in their borders, pressure states to deny media access to extreme voices.
Observer/Targets:
Be willing to use coercive measures against sponsoring nation-states, limit over-emphasis on military solutions that play into extremist’s hands, implement local programs in coordination with local groups and leaders, be willing to commit resources in early and preventive measures – i.e, pro-active, not just reactive. Develop policies that are consistent across election cycles, address ideas and issues, not just individual perpetrators.
Systems that seem as if they have changed overnight (like the communist system, or the adoption of the Internet) have actually accrued decades of slow changes and adaptations. These are not apparent to the observer because they take place in small measures and are often under the surface. Under the surfac e means that, for example, attitudes can change, but those whose attitudes have changed can be afraid to openly voice these changes until they feel safe to do so – and this can take many years (like in the Soviet Union under Communism). Another example of ‘under the surface change’ is that the technology that created the Internet happened many decades before it became a worldwide phenomenon. To think in terms of changes over few years is an error. The best policy changes must be enacted consistently and maintained over many years – even decades – until obvious change is apparent. It is not a ‘waiting game’, however it is a game of patient, coordinated measures that are sustained over the long haul. As long as it took for the terror system to develop – decades or more – so it will take almost as long to have a significant effect in changing the system.
“We are not afraid of economic sanctions or military intervention. What we are afraid of is Western universities.” – Ayatollah Khomeini (1982)
“Those who oppose the mullahs oppose Islam itself; eliminate the mullahs and Islam shall disappear in fifty years. It is only the mullahs who can bring the people into the streets and make them die for Islam – begging to have their blood shed for Islam.” – Ayatollah Khomeini
“All of Western logic is based upon the law of contradiction — if two things contradict, then at least one of them is false. But Islamic logic is dualistic; two things can contradict each other and both are true.” – Bill Warner
________________________________________________
If the mullahs are on Western payroll, they can be persuaded to replace Islamic logic with Western logic. When the Muslims accept the Western logic, they can recognize the fact that the Koran is full of internal contradictions, scientific errors, and historical blunders.
There are two major approaches towards Biblical studies. The first approach studies the Bible as a human creation and is also known as Biblical criticism.
The other approach is the study of the Bible as a religious text, where it is assumed that the Bible has a divine origin or inspiration. This approach is a branch of theology, and is also known as Biblical interpretation. Koranic equivalent of the Biblical criticism is highly desirable from the Western point of view, but it is a blasphemy punishable by death in many Muslim countries.
I’m with Akatsukami. I remember the Mohammedan boys from Iran at U.S. universities on the Shah’s dime. The ones who partied the most, played the most, womanized the most, and drove the flashiest cars were the loudest in their support of the Ayatollah Khomeini (and were quickest to call their dates whores behind their back).
I think this is ultimately true, except for the fact that there is an unseen power behind each system. Where do you think the enemy of mankind, the enemy of God has been and what has he been doing? Waiting around with pitchforks to give Christians flat tires? No, he is busy playing god to 1.5 Billion (or whatever the current number) and setting up societies that reject God outright. How do you explain centuries of persecution of Jews, “the apple of God’s eye”? The invisible malevolent power (being) at work for all this time, with personal and and ongoing anger against the One who treasures them and the law they bore to mankind. Is Israel hated? Yes. Is America hated? Yes. Neither innocent lambs by any means, but such vitriol, such hate and desire to anniliate is not coincidence, it is the result of an unseen and brutal being, filled with hate. Hold on to your seats; it is about to escalate.
Both systems WILL fall, but not before there is a clash between those who trust in the real, and the freedom He gives, and the followers of systems captive to tyranny. It is a real battle over good versus evil. When you have Freedom flanked by tyranny through religion on one side and tyranny with no religion on the other side, you can bet that an assault is in the works, and Freedom in the middle is the target. Two targets: Israel and America, with Israel and the Church in the crosshairs. If America, or Freedom worldwide will not fall from the outside, he will continue to try to cause her to fall from the inside. It is a good thing that he is not the Creator, or we would be in serious trouble. Instead, we are in for a terribly bumpy ride, but we will prevail. Freedom wins in the end. (hmmm my post turned into a sermon….oh well, it is a good one, and will play out to be true)
Islam is the way of the future, I mean, it allows people to avoid bathing, thus letting people enjoy the aroma of perpetual B.O. while simultaneously preventing women from enjoying sex, thereby forcing men to partake of rape and other behavior to perpetuate the new world order.
So…what’s not to like? (sarc)
Yeah. Fragile like Communism. 140 million murdered (not war) and 70 years, and still kicking in the heart of so-called Capitalism.
Yeah. Fragile like the First and Second Caliphates, billions lived and died in a crucible of Dark Age Inquisitions, echoed today in Latin American dictatorships (oops! democratically elected dictators, of course).
So we shouldn’t worry about the Third Caliphate, Father?
Nuts.
It may be so, but in this day of nuclear madness, it would be well to remember that many a soul has had a hand taken off by a caught “dead” shark.
Weakened creatures do the most desperate and dispicable of things.
Father Schall is right that Islam as a faith is quite fragile within its own contradictions in the Koran. But I seriously doubt that this will have any influence whatsoever on the treets of any Islamic stronghold in the Mideast or even in Europe where angry, disenfranchised and jobless young men linger about.
And that the hugely important replacement birth rates inside both Iran and Turkey are projected to be so low is most encouraging. But in Europe where the secular left is in fact aborting itself into oblivion compared to their newly arrived Muslim neighbors, their future can only be described as horrifying.
Islam may indeed one day collapse on itself and become a minority or a curiosity. But before that happens – IF it even happens – I fear that we have not seen the worst of what this repressive faith has to offer. And it will never be a “religion of peace” until the overwhelming majority of its “moderates” stand up against and actively engage to eradicate the extreme elements within its own ranks. And for that, I’m not holdng my breath.
The Saudi establishment is afraid of the Bible to the point of banishing it. How is that for an indication of brittleness?
Socialism/Progressivism/Liberalism is also fragile. I give it about 14 months in the US.
“Koranic criticism yet may turn out to be the worm in the foundation of radical Islam,” but leaves one wondering how it will start, and by whom, given the abundant illiteracy and ignorance in the Islamic world while the Western World is being subjected to PC censorship prohibiting people from questioning the characteristics of Islam.
Certainly the clowns produced by the media to declare democracy in Tahrir Square are not numerous enough and have no real voice to take on the radical side. If they are sincere enough then they will have to battle courageously get sufficient numbers of clerics on board otherwise they will appear as apostates.
We may only have a limited view of the long road ahead, but from our present vantage point, islamisation appears to only go in one direction. Too often, irenic, moderate muslims accommodate, excuse and apologize for the hard core “vanguard” in their midst. When the attacks start, they either co-opt the monsters by becoming more like them, or give them yet another “semi-autonomous zone,” or simply fade into the background like the moderates in Pakistan after the (very illuminating) assassination of Salman Taseer. However bizarre it may seem to the rest of us, the solution to the obvious flaws and depredations of islam for muslims always seems to be more islam – and once this process starts, it never seems to reverse itself. You may be right over the very long term, Spengler, but the century ahead is looking pretty pretty darn bleak and bloody to me.
I agree with your assessment of moderate Muslims. I think they do abhor the behavior of their more violent and fundamentalist co-religionists. However, as I understand it one of the central tenets of Islam is that is the Umma against the rest of the world. No geniune, lasting compromise with non-Muslims is either possible or desired. I think moderates are simply reluctant to out-and-out reject the fanatics because the fanatics, at least, are Muslims and not unbelievers. It’s a terrible dilemma. They genuinely want to fit in, to benefit from modern Western society, politics, and technology. But I think there’s always a little voice in their heads saying “Don’t go there – don’t side with the infidels against your Muslims brothers.” I think there’s also a tendency – found in all religions – to have a nagging feeling: “What if the fundamentalists are right? What if they really are doing the right thing according to God? What will God think if we criticize them?”
In the USA all large Muslim organizations are linked to Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabis. The only non-violent Muslim organization in the USA is tiny American Islamic Forum for Democracy. The only non-violent Muslim organization in Canada is tiny (0.19 percent of Canadian Muslims) Muslim Canadian Congress. (I am not counting Ismailiyahs and Ahmadiyyas because they are small sects and because it is not clear if the Ahmadiyyas are Muslims.)
So far there have been two Muslim, anti-jihadist rallies in the USA. The first rally took place after the 9/11 attack in Washington, DC. A Muslim named Kamal Nawash organized the rally. Islamic organizations condemned the rally. About 50 people showed up, mostly Jews and Christians. The second rally was held in front of a Detroit courthouse on January 8th, 2010. It was organized by Majed Moughni. A dozen Muslims held up signs reading ‘Islam is against terrorism’ and ‘Not in the name of Islam.’
polkadot,
What you say is correct regarding Sunni Islam.
But Sunnis are only half the US Muslim population.
(Roughly 0.3% of the total US population)
The other half are mostly Shiite,
and in most parts of the country well-integrated,
with more passion for Persian poetry than for their religion.
Shiites have committed no acts of domestic terror since 9/11.
I can’t recall any from the 1990s.
There were a few domestic incidents in the 1980s.
Mostly assassinations: such as the attempted the bombing of the car
of the wife of the captain of the USS Vincennes.
Shiite states ain’t angels, don’t get me wrong.
But they tend to wage their jihad in the old country.
All militancy in the US since 9/11 has been Sunni.
Even among Sunnis, the mosque leadership
(ikhwan brains and Saudi dollars)
does not represents the entire Sunni community.
Apart from NOI, African American Muslims are almost entirely Sunni.
There have been some militants from among them,
but most of them treat their Islam more like a form of Protestantism.
They have to. Most have family and friends outside the world of the mosques.
Of the rest, about half of Sunnis don’t even go to mosque.
Even fewer do so on a regular basis.
And for good reason, they’re either not religious,
or the leadership is too radical for them.
The problems we have in the US are well localized.
It’s the Sunni mosques, their leadership (largely Arab), and their Gulf funding.
In terms of numbers, that’s around 1,200 mosques, most quite small.
The FBI is doing its job, and there will be prosecutions of the groups you mention.
Above all, one day NAIT will do down.
When that happens, every single mosque they own
will become federal property.
Hopefully, a way can then be found for the moderates in those mosques
to take control, or in many cases, to retake control.
You’re absolutely right to recognize the depth of the problems in American Islam.
I’d only suggest that the problems are not beyond fixing.
The problems are all relatively new.
They date from the Saudi buy out of the Sunni mosques.
That’s something that began only in the second half of the 1970s.
I’m convinced the damage done can be fixed.
Interesting stats. In general, Iranian Shiites have been some of the most intellectual and secular Muslims I’ve met or worked with. I never delved into their backgrounds. Did they come to America just looking for education and business opportunities, or were they supporters of the Shah who had to bug out following the revolution?
Bugs,
I’ve never seen a good breakdown of the US Shiite population.
I can only give you my impression.
(1) Largest wave of immigrants was composed of folks fleeing Iran’s revolution, or its aftermath.
Secular, educated, and fully integrated.
One of my favorites: Ms. Anousheh Ansari.
Astronaut, engineer, entrepreneur, Texan, and quite a lady.
http://www.youplusdallas.com/stories/anousheh-ansari
The Iranian Revolution did the US at least one good deed:
they made a gift to us of all their best scientists, engineers, and physicians.
And we didn’t have to change their diapers, deal with their teenage angst, or pay a penny for their tuition.
Best deal in the world.
(2) A second wave from Lebanon was smaller. My sense is that most arrived in the late 1970s and early 1980s, fleeing south Lebanon during the war. They were poorer and less well educated. There are some Hizbollah supporters in and amongst them.
(3) Lastly, there’s been a still smaller wave of Shiite immigrants from Iraq, some arriving in the 1990s, others in the last decade. My impression is that they’re a mixture of religious and secular, educated and uneducated.
Numbers? Just a guess: 75%, 15%, 10%
(I’m always surprised how often I meet Iranian families living in rural parts of the US.
If a county can support a hospital, almost guaranteed to be a few Iranian families
somewhere in the neighborhood.
They strike me as the most integrated Muslims in the US –
apart from a Sunni wave that arrived in the US shortly before WWI.)
Islam + Intimidation = Islamidation
It may be true that “a country immured in backwardness cannot survive in the globalized world”. It was also true that Japan could not defeat the U.S. in 1941, and that this was obvious to anyone who could read a map by 1944. Unfortunately, it was not obvious (or acceptable) to the Japanese military leaders, so the war continued to a catastrophic conclusion. Deluded cultures seldom recognize their own delusions, and are often willing to die to preserve them – as many Islamists are already doing.
NO DOUBT ABOUT IT , ISRAEL WILL EXIST AS LONG AS LONG AS OUR UNIVERSE EXISTS !
According to Mr. Goldman 2% of the Iranian population attend Mosque religious services and the birth rate is 1.5/capita as it is in Turkey. But one of the more disturbing arguments about efforts at the Islamization of Europe and around the world is the Muslim practice of polygamy, its acceptance in multicultural societies and the resulting explosive growth of the Muslim populations within predominantly Muslim enclaves which are spreading like a black plague.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/08/occupation-without-tanks-or-soldiers-no-go-zones-for-non-muslims-proliferating-in-europe.html
This is not evidence of a looming implosion of Islam.
Father Schall may ultimately be proven correct but I suspect that to avoid catastrophic devastation and bloodshed in the interim, the West will have to defend itself with military force. For now Europe and America seem determined to remain mired in a liberal, multicultural funk while the fervent ideology of political Islam grows increasingly intense. I suspect they sense eventual victory. Unlikely but that does not make them less of a threat or less dangerous.
Father Schall may ultimately be proven correct but I suspect that to avoid catastrophic devastation and bloodshed in the interim, the West will have to defend itself with military force.
True. I’ll add that just because the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics imploded in 1991 doesn’t mean that America’s military force opposing the USSR was unnecessary or wasted.
P.S. If the containment policy that was a big part in the demise of Soviet Socialism is to be applied to the ME (Mohammedan Enclave), then the addiction to ME oil of our so-called European allies must end.
How western in thought! we can only hope.
This fragile muslim world is subsidized on welfare from the West. The Progressive’s fear to condemn any act because ‘who are we to judge’ is the only thing keeping these sick muslim societies alive. Thousands will turn our to boo and destroy a western neighborhood because someone voices disdain for gay marriage but those same rainbow warriors fall silent about muslim enclaves in their cities, even in some of the most progressive cities in western Europe. Billions of tax dollars go to NGO’s in the muslim world but nobody cares to note their rejection of foudational belief in freedom of religion. We feed our enemies at our own peril. Until the West embraces judging a society on the basis or black-letter documents, specifically the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, we will continue to let businessmen, ivy league educated NGO leaders, and tyrants spent our tax dollars in support of their anti-democratic agenda. Buhbye West. Hello Islam. On the other hand, demanding First Amendment support before sending aid or visas would lead to starving Egyptians leading their government to acknowledge individual freedom should come before feeding China’s pigs.
The evil of islam will NEVER go away, it must be replaced by reason and/or force. They are not afraid to light off nukes if need be because the men will have their perverse sexual fantasies fulfilled with all the virgins they’ll be getting in paradise. Islam is THE threat to the entire planet.
Interesting information about the impending demographic collapse of Iran and Turkey. One would hope this would inform national policy regarding those countries. No doubt, Little Lenin is including that data point in his brilliant ciphering.
Why don’t we get this kind of real and important information from the make believe media?
(just kidding. Of course, we know why)
The fastest way to break the Islamic Empire is to bring it to shame. We do this by demanding tribute from them. They believe themselves entitled to conquer the world and demand tribute or conversion from everyone else under pain of death, so to be forced to pay tribute to the US under pain of letter of marque would be the ultimate way of shaming them. They will be forced to bow down and serve us. If they refuse to pay us tribute for protecting them, they are the enemy, and we shall issue a letter of marque against them, authorizing our mercenaries to raid their oil tankers going out and their cargo ships coming in. When they see that Allah cannot free them from our yoke, they will abandon Islam in droves. Of course, our leaders don’t have the guts to do this.
Greetings:
Thinking that my character and intellect could still use some fine tuning, my father sent me off to a university run by the Society of Jesus (S.J.) in the Bronx of the mid-’60s. His enticement, or perhaps caution, to me was that the Jesuits, as they are more commonly known, were God’s Green Berets. Father Schall does his order and his religion proud. I wish tat there were more joining him in this struggle.
One of my great disappointments in this period of seemingly Islamic ascendency is the failure of our culture’s leaders to step forward and confront the ideology, under the guise of religion, that Mohammed inflicted on the world. What he developed is no more than the globalization of the zero-sum Arabic tribal culture of the seventh century, Anno Domine. Authorizing one segment of humankind to lord over and terrorize the rest is a long way from the concept of religion with which I’m familiar. Yet, too few seem willing to take up the banner of a free society.
As one adherent of the ‘religion of peace’ succinctly put it, “Behead those who insult Islam”. I don’t see how a ‘religion’ rooted in evil could serve as a good model for civilization. Muhammad was a pedophile, poligamist, plunderer, rapist, torturer, liar, and all around bad man. Yet, according to Islam, he was the perfect man. Like all totalitarian systems, Islam will indeed fall, but at what price to the world?
Unfortunately, I do not see how a religion that has been around for 1,389 years, and has 1.5 billion adherents (and growing rapidly) can be seen as fragile, especially when it probably has tens of millions willing to commit suicide for it in conquest. I think that Judaism is fragile due to its small numbers, and Christianity is fragile due to its decreasing birth rate and an increasing proportion of adherents who don’t really adhere anymore.
As for comparing Islam to Communism – Marxists tended to have an instinct for self-preservation that Jihadists don’t have.
Tiny Israel outnumbered and outgunned was attacked again and again by her Islamic neighbors and lost every war. That was beginning to cause the followers of allah great shame,pain and self introspection.
If allah were the true God how could they keep losing to the inferior ‘infidel Jews’ whom they greatly outnumbered.Then along came the US to rescue the defeated Arabs kept at bay by a deterrence Israel had built up over the decades with their bogus peace scheme.
Using their counterfeit peace to restrain Israel and make sure they never defeat another Arab army as we saw with Hizbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2009,the Muslims are again encouraged to finish off Israel once and for all.
When the combined Islamic armies are again defeated this will end ISLAM once and for all as they will come to the conclusion that their god allah is a loser.
In the meantime, the U.S. wil pay dearly for her treachery and betrayal.
You did very well until your last two sentences, Marcel.
First of all, nothing is going to “end ISLAM once and for all”. Dream on.
Secondly, Bush’s mistakes in 2006 and 2009 were not due to “treachery and betrayal”. It was due to sheer stupidity. George W. Bush did not hate Israel.
Get your head out of [fill in the blank], Marcel.
‘George W. Bush did not hate Israel’
I didn’t say anything about hate,it’s about an agenda.
It’s tragic that so many in the US elect stupid men(as you say)to lead them again and again,must be something in the dikewater ?
Mr. Skull n’ Bones really conned the naive voters especially the Christian voters twice.
You see Dikehopper,the evil globalist cabal,the CFR types and Skull n’ Bones,the ,US,UN,EU figure that a great error was made by the UN in the creation of Israel in 1948 and the counterfeit peace process is their way of ‘fixing’ the problem in stages while Amdinejad is less patient.
Like Bush ,they(US,UN,EU)ARE not stupid but devious and crafty and know that the Muslims do not have any real desire to live in peace with ‘da jooze’
and this is why they only put the pressure on Israel and never their partners in crime.
You have forgotten about the Illuminati, the Silvers and Grays who escaped at Roswell, Area 51, Bigfoot, the Freemasons, Golda Meir’s pact with Hitler, and the secret Amish plan to control the world, Marcel. Why do I have to explain this to you?
Rubbish. I don’t know where you people get your facts from. Those of us who know the *real* truth are aware that Bush was the result of a planned genetic mutation caused by fluoride in our drinking water, put there by Hitler’s brain.
: Islam itself is “as fragile as communism
it is difficult to agree with these conclusions when one does not agree to Schall’s premise quoted above:
Before we saw communism become “fragile” enough to fall- we, and Schall at age 83 certainly SAW it’s “fragility”. Communism gave us purposely starved millions, citizens imprisoned and banished to Siberia, millions re-educated and assassinated in China, people still imprisoned and victims of grinding poverty in Cuba, Vietnam and more. And lessons not learned by a shocking amount of EU and US citizens who are still enamored and fight for it’s resurgence.
FRAGILE?? not hardly, like weeds, you can cut them down but oops, a month or two later- back as strong as ever.
While I do agree that the theology of ISLAM is weak and easily de-bunked as madness & lies of Mohammed- the forces keeping it strong have not changed- yes advances in communication and contact with the free socieites afforded by travel, internet and oil money may have turned a few of their heads to freedom of thought, but for the majority of Muslims, this is not the case. They are enveloped in a closed loop, uneducated, illiterate, poor, and being indoctrinated, marinated, stewed, hypnotized in fear and hate 5x a day, in places where any dissent will bring deadly repercussions.
Much as I would like to think ISLAm will implode I dopnot see it will happen and certainly not by substitution of Catholicor Christian theology. I have spoke with so many Muslims, no fact, no history, no ideas outside what they have been taught are ever greeted with curiosityor doubt. It just makes them doubly defensive and stronger advocates of Mohammedism.
Insha’Allah, Brother David, Insha’Allah.
Islam thrives and expands of late because the West is debauched. Any healthy culture would attack and destroy islamism like the disease it is. Destroy it anywhere and any time it raised its suppurating head. Allowing this culture of death and murder to adulterate the planet is like allowing pedophiles to walk our streets.
I have been saying for some time that Islamic Culture is moribund, that the violent acts Moslems are performing are the death throes of a dying culture. It is American nation building in Iraq that has given those Islamic Cultures hope, and given us the Arab Spring, where frozen and stagnate Islamic cultures crack and thaw. But cultures change at glacial speeds so don’t expect to see western style Democracies any time soon.
Dikehopper,
I didn’t realize I was conversing with a nut.
Good luck on the dike hopping.Try not to get your aluminum foil hat wet.
["Islam is as fragile as communism."]
What a silly premise!
Islam is the ['religious doctrine'] of submission to God and to Muhammad as the chief and last prophet of God….the second largest reiligion of the world today!
Communism on the other hand is a theoretical ['economic system'] characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.
No wonder Americans today are so misinformed!
Having minored in Arabic and taken most of the history of the middle east classes at UVA long before it was fashionable, y’all definitely underestimate the power of ignorance. Islam is not a separate sphere, but taints every aspect of the societies it occupies. Yes, support and “belief” in it is tepid as compared to true Christianity, but only in the religious sphere. Its comprehensive quality should not be underestimated. Put another way, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison and while Communism lost because it clearly did not deliver its promised utopia (and its core elite knew this best), within Islam there is an expectation of continuous struggle (jihad) and all the historic examples of sacrifice. Islam may be an inch deep but it’s a mile wide and the situation is neither as good nor as dire as most believe. The one aspect I’ll agree on is that like with Communism, a doctrine of containment will serve us well over time. We just need to confront the whole “religious freedom” lie because Islam is not a religion, it is a governmental system that is incompatible with democratic government.
@Evanston2
If I had a ‘like’ button, I’d have pressed it for you.
There is a global insurgency being waged by religious folks in the name of Islam.
And it needs to be fought, by the Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps.
And it’s hard to see how it’s gonna end until those participating
are either dead or too scared ever again to trouble us and our way of life.
There are three levels to this insurgency.
(1) This insurgency is being fought by a small portion of Muslims.
Maybe 1 or 2 percent.
(2) Muslim states provide various types of support to the insurgents,
using them, when they can, as proxy armies in their wars against their neighbors
and against those who support their neighbors.
(3) The insurgency enjoys, as well, the moral support of the majority of Muslims.
Most Muslims would never themselves fight.
But they like it that their people are getting some.
Put an end to the men doing the actual fighting –
the more nastily, quickly, and ignominiously, the better –
states supporting them will mend their ways (as they’re mostly rational),
and those clapping for the home team will go back to the misery of their daily lives.
There’s no need to talk about killing all Muslims.
It also a monstrous thought, any way you look at it.
But say one wanted to kill each and every Muslim.
How would one do it?
Seriously, what weapons?
What troops?
60 million died in WWII.
How would one kill 1.5 billion?
That’s 25 times the number who died in WWII.
That’s 250 times the number of Jews killed by the Nazis.
Who’d do it?
Folks in the US military would not obey that order.
And rightly so.
It’s illegal.
Mr. Lamoreaux, I agree that its best to view Muslims as prisoners of Islam and to try to set them free through ideological insurgency. I’ll also repeat that “freedom of religion” as enshrined in the U.S. and other countries really does not apply to Islam. It should be treated in Western legal systems as a competing system of government (akin to communism or national socialism) as attempts are made to push it into the public sector. Spengler is over-optimistic in my judgment regarding the present reality of Islam because it creates its own insular ghettos in the west. We need to shut down immigration based on familial ties. Yes, welcome the educated, productive Muslims he touts but stop allowing the genetically and mentally inbred to inundate your country. Exactly when immigration becomes invasion is a matter of numbers and time. Spengler may feel morally superior to those who advocate violence but then he should feel particularly alarmed when Muslims congregate in numbers, because that’s when they go mazzo. The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact and we need to view Islam as “the other” — not out of ignorance, but because it is indeed “the other.” Our best hope is the natural indifference of mankind to false religion and the fact that much of Islamic power comes from declining oil revenues/reserves. No need to outright kill them: contain them and let them kill each other as they have always done in the past.
In order to redefine Islam out of the sphere of religious freedom we would have to rewrite the Constitution. And that isn’t going to happen, and shouldn’t happen. Even Avigdor Lieberman, in the very vulnerable State of Israel, thinks that a loyalty oath would be sufficient for the country’s Arab citizens. To proposal a general expulsion of Muslims is a monstrous, and patenty un-Constitutional idea which I find abhorrent. That said, Muslim immigrants to the US require special security attention.
David – What good is a loyalty oath? Muslims can lie to the infidel (that’s us). I do think, though, we need to keep an eye on the mosques and the schools where hatred of the West, in general, and the US, in particular, may be spouted. I think, though, at some point we’re going to have to come to grips with what seems to be the case, that Islam is a political ideology that is incompatible with residence in the West. I agree, it would be monstrous to have to expel them, but sometimes, pikuach nefesh (saving lives) trumps all other considerations.
I depends what kind of Oath. Study Islam, there is one kind of Oath that a Muslim must keep with an infidel and can’t break it. If you make them do that, then it would be safe.
I’m just against loyalty oaths because that opens the door to a potential day if Liberal once again hold congress and the White House with the supreme court, such Oaths can be used against us conservatives. We don’t want to open that pandora’s box
Ah, do you know your history? You appear to be suggesting an American Inquisition.
Mr. Goldman, I reject your contention that we need to “redefine Islam.” What we need to do is re-examine Islam. From its very birth it has been a system of government. It should be treated in the public sphere as such. To assert that this “isn’t going to happen, and shouldn’t happen” is just that, an assertion. Our treatment of Communism and National Socialism (Nazi-ism) is the pertinent model here. Your closing comment that “Muslim immigrants to the US require special security attention” is a self-acknowledgement that we’re not talking about the First Amendment here, we’re talking about new laws being imposed at gunpoint (that is, not immigration but invasion) once the numbers are sufficient. I do hope to God (sincerely) that I’m wrong but there is no reason, historically or based on present trends, to cross your fingers and passively hope that things work out for the best.
T. T. Thomas (@42), you yourself seem to be woefully misinformed as to how to build a logical argument.
Sue….You think so? Thats the problem with your generation! You’ll argue till a cow jumps over the moon that apples are really oranges. For one to build some dialogue around the fragility of a religious doctrine then of course it would be ligetimate. Likewise, if one were to build some dialogue around the fragility of a theoretical economy, that to would be legitimate. A religious doctrine is NOT an economic system!
However, a religious doctrine can only at best, have some influence on an economic system. Lets say the religious doctrine doesn’t allow for drinking alcohol or driving automobiles or borrowing money. Then of course, one could build a dialogue around how such religious doctrine influence an economic system.
An economic system versus another economic system may well have been the better argument! Islams “economic system” is defined by a network of rules called the Shariah. Their views of economics is different but, it has not influenced their viability on this earth since 610….some 1,400 years by a Christians calendar.
Schall rambles on about birth rates and individual commitment to Islam of as if it has never before experienced such factors. In short, Schall’s agrument is anti-Islam and has litte if anything to do with Communism or economics.
Islam, the worlds second largest and fastest growing religion isn’t going to disintegrate any time soon…nor will their basic tenets of belief around economics.
If you want a fundamental insight of how they believe and will continue to believe, maybe read: http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/277/viewall/
By the way, the fundamental beliefs of Christianity are not to far different except its followers live up to their taught faith in hypocracy. The corruption and greed that befalls capitalism is not a really ‘good’ influence for Islamic economic revolution today….is it?
Not much of an improvement, I fear. The haste with which you compose your comments result not only in numerous typos but also in a lack of coherence.
If you wish to argue that contra the original post Islam is not fragile, go ahead and do so. But stating that Islam and Communism are different is hardly much of an argument; one suspects that even ol’ Schall is dimly aware of that. You need to demonstrate that their differences invalidate Schall’s analysis. The fact that apples are not oranges does not ipso facto invalidate arguments made regarding the current state of the American fruit market.
By the way, do you really believe that Communism was nothing but an economic system?
Self annointed intellectuals are an amazing study! For most of my 83 years I’ve been observing the likes of you Sue, and not in a single instance has the intelligence you represent ever done anything to advance the societies of the world. Your only game is massaging your ‘inflated’ ego in public forums for some self serving sick and twisted motive. Maybe in the real world you’re ignored, I don’t know but, rest assured you’re impressing this old gent!
A correction: the 2% mosque attendance figure is from a single journalist who did a BBC feature. I can’t verify it independenty. But it makes sense.
Jack in Silver Spring,
As Islam disintegrates, tens of millions of bright and talented people will be looking for a better life, and the US can use them. I don’t want to get into details of security screening methods (and I was not proposing to adopt Avigdor Lieberman’s plan–simply indicating that even Lieberman does not want a Muslim-free Israel!).
No sir. Those Muslims, educated or not, “moderate” or not, will bring their genocidal Jew-hatred with them. If this country was reluctant to let in white Afrikaaners because blacks feared their racism, then we have a right as American Jews to defend ourselves by keeping out those who would seek to exterminate us.
And I do not limit that fear to Muslims. Frankly, I think we should keep a lot of Europeans out for the same reason – Western Europeans with their “new” brand of anti-Semitism, and Eastern Europeans with their “old” brand of it.
Also, such immigrants would destroy democracy as they would invariably become Democrats, and turn America into what California has become – a bankrupt, one-party Socialist state where multiculturalism rules and American culture is vilified and destroyed.
Has blindness,darkness descended upon the intelligentsia of the right as it has on the left? Wake up!
The ‘I have a dream’ of Islam in no co-existence but decapitating the ‘great satan.’
Because the West is under the final phase of the crumbling process they will accomplish this long before their demise.
David’s observations are astute, but like all else in this world, incomplete. His insights on the weakness of Islam have already been recognized by deep Leftists. The failure of Islam is something to be taken advantage of by those who would seek Leftish hegemony in the world. Just bring on-board the disaffected Muslims who still retain an anger at Western civilization.
Islam has been fragile right from Muhammed’s time. The fragility is pyschological. Anyone alive today would be called a pyscopath if today they did what Muhammed did. Of course a religion started by a pyscopath is going to be fragile. No wonder the Muslims take offense at the drop of a hat. Their egos are fragile.
Reading this article by David Goldman and given the wisdom of Father Schall about Islam, I think both of them completely overlooked the mass immigration of Muslims from the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia into North America, Europe, Russia, and southeast Asia (like Indonesia). While the demographics of Muslims in the central Islamic civilization may be declining, Islam will somehow find a way to survive among the growing Muslim populations in the West and find a way to supplant itself to replace long-established Judeo-Christian institutions and standards by gradual and social pressures of the Muslims.
You let the cockroaches in by not doing a thing to them, you let them grow unchecked, will eventually overwhelm, endanger, and crush all of us in the process. The final victory of Islam over the West is within its grasp.
The “liberation movements” in the majority of the Muslim countries have begun with the national socialist slogans.The weakness of the nationalists and the communism`s collapse,globalization and oil money have opened the road for Islam.I agree that it is as fragile as the other totalitarian ideologies like nazism and communism in today`s World.The earth is still too big for them.
In 1400 years only Spain and Portugal have managed to free themselves from izlamic enslavement on their own.
izlam is a cancer that destroys the host and once destroyed it is nearly impossible to recover.
Many of the comments above are reprehensible. As this blog is new to Pajamas Media, I am allowing almost everything in for forensic purposes: I want to know who the readers are, including ones who hold views that I find repulsive. Expel Muslims from the United States? By what legal means? The idea is just as childish as it is brutal and evil.
What motivates people in apparent possession of their senses to propose such things on public fora?
For those of us who lived through the Cold War, Communism was an enemy a thousand times as frightening as Iran. The Russians could annihilate us; Iran at worst might detonate a few small nuclear devices in American cities (and that is by no means certain). There were really frightening times back then. Dealing with Iran would not be that difficult, once we decide to do it.
Why the rage, the utter bloody-mindedness of so many comments? They bespeak a deep self-doubt, a festering sense of impotence, a loss of direction.
@David P. Goldman “Why the rage, the utter bloody-mindedness of so many comments? They bespeak a deep self-doubt, a festering sense of impotence, a loss of direction.”
Rubbish. We’re simply annoyed, but not nearly as annoyed as we will be if this becomes yet another whining complaining blog with no ability to listen and learn.
How many replies stated that Islam is not a religion, but a treasonous political system? Yet I don’t think you noticed and you immediately started to slap commenters down with the constitutional argument. As a plan of direction for a new blog, this doesn’t look good.
There is an ambiguity in Islam: to be a faithful Muslim, does one have to believe in the ultimate conquest of the world by Islam and the imposition of Sharia in all political venues?
The correct answer is: let Muslims worry.
America has a right to require of prospective immigrants that they support our institutions without qualification. Most Muslims who come to America know perfectly well that they can’t make their daughters wear headscarves or marry cousins as at home, and that they can’t expect a Sharia court to hear their complaints. Perhaps they are en route to becoming former Muslims by virtue of this acknowledgement. In that case, American institutions will be subverting Islam by robbing Muslim countries of their most talented people. Perhaps some form of Islam can abandon political ambitions (the Catholic Church did not abandon its political ambitions until Vatican II). On purely theological grounds, I doubt that this can happen — Christianity can be a personal religion of private conscience but not Islam — but one cannot make policy on the strength of theological judgments. As I said: let them worry.
Now, America requires close scrutiny of immigrants from countries that sponsor or tolerate terrorism, or with a large presence of terrorist organizations (and that’s most of the Muslim world). And that scrutiny will be annoying to Muslim immigrants with no hostile intentions. Too bad. We need to protect ourselves.
David P. Goldman
1400 years of muslim expansion prove you wrong.
gray man,
While Muslim states have expended largely via conquest,
the majority of territory was acquired in just the first few centuries.
Since then, in Western Europe, Muslims fought defensively, and lost:
being expelled from Spain, Sicily, and Italy.
Additional progress by Muslims — long and hard fought –
was made on the eastern borders of Europe.
That, too, could not be held.
Further east, conquest of Russia was followed by expulsion.
For the last 500 years, whatever meager advances Muslim states have made,
cannot compare to the expansion of the West.
At present, Muslims inhabit roughly the same territories they held in 1100AD –
sans Andalusia.
It’s imaginable that further advances might be made
in Central Asia as Russia’s influence declines.
It’s hard to see territories being won elsewhere.
In Africa, Islam faces a church militant.
And it would be suicidal to mess with African Pentecostals.
The border with India is immovable.
More than 10% of China is already Christian, and conversion continues.
Western China can perhaps hope for independence, but little else.
There’s really no place for Muslims to conquer.
And beside, they’re too poor to field modern militaries,
and they’re getting poorer.
When the easy oil is gone in the Gulf,
the whole region will likely turn into a dusty and violent backwater
ruled by the types of characters familiar to us from Mad Max.
There has thus not really been 1,400 years of expansion:
more like 300,
followed by loss after loss after loss,
likely to be followed by societal and cultural collapse.
In short, we won. Be happy.
David – The reason I think people are saying what they are saying here is that they have a palpable fear of Islam as a political ideology. (This is a point Larsen E. Whipsnade made to you, in rather strong terms.) If Islam were Christianity, which can be rather benign without the power of the state behind it, there would not be this fear. Unfortunately, Islam is a militant political totalitarian ideology bent on world domination. Almost everywhere there are Muslims, there are problems, all the way from Morroco to the Phillipines. The fear is that once there is a critical mass of Muslims in the US, there will be an attempt to subvert our system, most likely by violent means. And just because the immigrants are bright and talented doesn’t mean they won’t be jihadists. If memory serves, most of the 9/11 terrorists were middle class-types who were rather well educated. You would have to make an argument that they are the exceptions, but I think it is easier to make the opposite argument.
Islam has exterminated about 300 millions of innocent people and destroyed the great civilizations of Egypt, Syria, Persia, and India. The genocide is still going on, at the rate of about 10 people a day. Those who understand Islam try to warn the ignorants about the true nature of Islam, but it is nearly impossible to publish an article or a book critical of Islam in the West. Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik said that he turned to terrorism in response to media censorship.
____________________________________________________________________
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy
“It [Islamic State] seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity… In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect, the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.” – Sheikh Abul Ala Maududi (a very prominent 20th century Muslim scholar)
SIGNS OF ISLAMIC IRAN GOING THE WAY OF THE SOVIET UNION
The trajectory of Islam since the high Middle Ages has been downhill. The last Islamic caliphate is long gone never to be restored. Islam is more than half way into the ash heap of history, but it is still a dangerous force for discord and war as millions of Moslems cling to Mohammed’s vision of world domination. As for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the last hurrah for restoring Islam as a great world power, the providential signs of its going the way of the Soviet Union (but with much violence) are manifold. These signs are covered in my work, The Coming Iranian Civil War and the Violent End of the Nuclear Mullahs, found at my widely linked blog (click my name above).
I’m adding this comment with a fuller name as I’m dismayed to find my shorter name also associated with fairly vicious comments against Muslims at large.
As indicated, I’m a supporter of the Islam vs Islamism distinction, most notably advanced by Daniel Pipes and Barry Rubin (among non-Muslims) and by Salim Mansur and Zuhdi Jasser (among Muslims). Goldman doubts – “on purely theological grounds” – that Islam (faith) can release itself from Islamism (political ideology). These two aspects of Islam are closely aligned with what the late professor of comparative religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith discussed under the heading of “faith and belief”. To this reader at least, it is clear in his writings that he had a great respect for the Islamic faith while staying steadfastly within his own Christian tradition. He envisaged a time (in the next century or so) when humanity would successfully tackle the difficult intellectual (and theological) challenge of finding mutual understandings and meaning among the many religions but especially between Christianity and Islam. I share his faith.
And because I share this faith, I reject the idea that it is simply up to Muslims to sort this thing out – “let Muslims worry”. We now live in a global village and it is for each and every one of us to worry this thing through. As long as we cringe from this daunting task, the blood will flow.
I can see the political factions aligning: the left with the Islamists against the capitalists, the Jews with the Christians against the Islamists (and even Islam itself), the ex-Muslims with the atheists, secularists and the left against all religion, and so on. But like it or not, we need to all get together and work out a vision that takes the best from each faction and melds this into a vision for the future that is honourable to all sides.
Bashing Islam at the same time as defending ourselves from Islamism is a potentially very bloody way to go.
Anne – Look at what’s happening in Europe, or as Bat Ye’or calls it, Eurabia. More specifically, look what’s happening to the UK where Islamists are demanding and getting their way. Remember the business about a British bank give away Piggy banks? Well, that just offended the sensibilites of Muslims and the bank ended stopping the program. Unfortunately, just about anything done in the West offends the sensibilities of Muslims. That should be your ‘test tube’ of what might/can happen here. That is empirical reality on the ground, so to speak. So, while it would be nice if we could disassociate Islam from Islamism, I don’t think we can.
Somehow there was a mix-up in name. This was from Jack in Silver Spring.
Jack, poor you! Even you get to be labelled “Anne” here!
But everything you have written relates to Islamism and not to Islam (as faith). Be mindful of the fact that Muslims that are uncertain in their faith will turn to Islamism and wreak the kind of havoc that Bar Ye’or has so competently reported on.
You say, in your fear and confusion: ” it would be nice if we could disassociate Islam from Islamism, I don’t think we can.”
Oh please, please, make the effort! Write comments to Mansur and Jasser and get the ball rolling.
While you write within your fear and confusion, they will answer with silence. So please, please, get over your fear and confusion. Only you can do that. Sure, it’s a rationally justified fear and confusion but still … only you can work yourself through it. Once clear, you can make a difference.
So please, please, make a difference!
Anne – The reason I do not differentiate Islam from Islamism is the experience of Europe. As a Jew, there are places where I cannot enter in Europe, such as Malmo, or some areas of Paris. Look, too, at what’s happening in the Netherlands: Theo van Gogh murdered, Geert Wilders under guard, Hirsi Aliyh exiled. Where is the Islam you think exists that has denounced such things? I find its silence deafening, suggesting to me that it is either too cowed by more violent Muslims, or that it does not exist.
Then, when you say in response to truepeers: [Islam] ” … is a faith that wants the human world united under one God, one set of values, one vision,” you seem not to realize that there are others who have a different vision. I for one don’t share that vision. IMHO Jews have withstood too much abuse for too long (the last 1700 years) to want to share the vision others have of God and values. We withstood Christian persecution in Europe because we did not accept Christianity’s triune God, and we withstood Muslim persecution in Andalusia [a/k/a Spain] and North Africa because we could not accept Islam’s Allah.
I do not disagree that Islam is bent on wanting ‘the human world united under one God …” but I think they are intent on achieving that through the most violent means possible.
Anne, I think Spengler is right about “let Muslims worry”. While it’s true that every student has a right to an opinion about what Islam is – ideally taking into account both subjective Muslim self-understandings and a wider, comparative understanding of various religions/political ideologies – what Islam can/cannot become in future is a question only those committed to the name of Muslim can fully engage.
As for the Islam/Islamist distinction, it is misleading because Islamism, or the revival of scripturally literalist Islam in the modern world, is not something wholly modern at odds with the larger Islamic tradition. I think the distinction that clarifies things a little more is that between folk and high Islam. For most of Islamic history, most Muslims were/are illiterate, did not read classical Arabic and hence the holy texts, did not understand what words they said/prayed in mosque and consequently developed all kind of local pecularities in their religious practices – local saints, shrines, etc. that appealed as much to their general humanity as to their Islamic scholarly non-credentials. “Islamism” is a sign of growing literacy and interest in direct scriptural guidance. It is not radically different from the high Islam and Sharia schools that were the practice of the small Ulema elite in traditional Islamic society. It is rather the attempt to claim high Islam for the modern urbanizing, increasingly educated (in degrees) masses, at the expense of the traditional Ulema.
This is what makes Spengler’s calls to screen immigrants to allow only the educated dubious. It may be that Chemistry PhDs are not prone to engage in street violence. But there is plenty of evidence that they are prone to engage organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and its “moderate” approach to Islamic ascendancy and supremacism. What’s more, it is so often not the immigrants but the second generation that turn radical. There isn’t really any sure way to screen prospective immigrants to divine who will and won’t become enamored of the Islamist mission to attract people with identity crises caused precisely by having achieved a foothold in the modern world.
We need to admit that there is no safe way, especially for Jews, to live alongside large numbers of Muslims with their presently insane levels of antisemitism and with Western leftists willing to appease and encourage this. But equally, there is likely no safe way to isolate or quarantine Muslims – I think if you reflect on what would follow from any attempt to quarantine, you discover that the idea is likely genocidal and that is what Spengler rightly finds appalling. If we try to isolate the Islamic world, moderate Islam will surely not be the outcome. Rather, power will surely go to those who can do anything to attack the West across the wall. And the harder we hit back in return, while keeping the quarantine intact, the more extreme Islamic figures will hold sway until the situation escalates and the “solution” of genocide becomes frankly aired.
And it is that possibility that is, implicitly, so feared in the West and that is fundamental to the White Guilt that is part of the suicide of the West Spengler bemoans. What kind of killers might we become? Can we trust our own leaders with our own freedom if they can do mass murder to Muslims? Unable to face such questions, the choice for many is appeasement and cultural collapse.
Given that there is no good choice when we look at the question by pursuing the current situation to logical extremes of openness or closure to Islam, we need to develop a faith in the human capacity to develop a new situation by taking steps with uncertain outcomes: towards some kind of reassertive Occidentocentrism that does not try to quarantine the Muslim world, but recognizes its weaknesses and dangers and makes corresponding demands of it, that limits it without totally closing the door to it. If we can’t find the courage and civilizational confidence to do that, then I think Spengler is right that we are in a suicidal spin downwards. But I think he could do more to be frank about the dangers from Muslim immigration and the the near impossibility of screening for potential radicalism in immigrants or their children. We take the risks because we can’t face the likely outcome of a quarantine. We need to be more adept at spelling this out and getting out of the internecine squabbles at blogs like this.
What you have described in specific terms is a general case of fragility in which a state of systemic equilibrium is given to frequent failure and requires a great deal of energy to maintain. It is as though the West’s interaction with Islam is akin to balancing on the point of a pin. Without constant input of energy, war of some sort constantly breaks out. The war could be short or long, intense or mild, verbal or physical, personal or between nations, with shorter or longer periods between incidents. Nonetheless, it is as the Muslims view it, Dar es Harab (the dwelling place of war). It is the Islamists who are defining the terms of engagement.
Just this evening a 20-year old Muslim from Ram’Allah stole a cab in Tel Aviv and crashed it into teenagers at a party. Seven injured, no one killed, one angry Arab yelling Allahu Akbar – not easy to ignore and let “them” worry about it.
Sorry, truepeers, but I had trouble wading through your reply to my post which was twice as long as the original by line count but felt like at least three times the length in tediousness. It’s quite clear to me that you’ve made not the slightest attempt to connect to Islamic faith. It is a faith that wants the human world united under one God, one set of values, one vision. So long as it is tied to 7th century Arabian Mohammedan values, it cannot succeed. But once it hears the clear divine message and understands the relevance of the Mohammedan version of it – in the context of previous divine revelations in Christianity and Judaism – then it will succeed and it will achieve world dominance. But at the price of having to acknowledge its own sin in failing fully to integrate the messages of Abraham and of Jesus.
It will be hard for all sides but the centre will prevail … with or without much bloodshed.
I wrote a longish spiel in answer to you, truepeers, but it’s gone missing and I can’t be bothered doing it all over again. Sorry. May we meet elsewhere and get further somehow.
@Anne aka OzArizona
Salim Mansur and Daniel Pipes believe that the distinction into Islam vs Islamism is meaningless – see their quotations below. Zuhdi Jasser gets lots of money from the kafirs, but all he gets from the Muslims are death threats.
“There does not exist an identifiable body of Muslims, substantive in number or an outright majority, who could be described as “moderate” by their repudiation of Muslim extremists. Violence has been an integral part of Muslim history, irrespective of whether it is sanctioned by Islam, and Muslims who unhesitatingly use violence to advance their political ambitions have created a climate within their faith culture that any Muslim who questions such practice is then deemed apostate and subject to harm. Consequently, what might pass for “moderate” Muslims, the large number of Muslims unaccounted for as to what they think, in practical terms constitute a forest within which extremists are incubated, nurtured, given ideological and material support, and to which they return for sanctuary.” – Salim Mansur
“The fact that terrorist fish are swimming in a hospitable Muslim sea nearly disappears amidst Western political, journalistic, and academic bleatings. Call it political correctness, multiculturalism, or self-loathing; whatever the name, this mentality produces delusion and dithering.” – Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes talks the odds. The chance that immigrant Muslims and indigenous Europeans find a way to live in harmony? Five percent, says Pipes. The chance that Europe becomes Eurabian, part of the Muslim world? Forty-seven-and-a-half percent. The chance that Europeans reassert control over the continent? Forty-seven-and-a-half percent, once more — and Pipes says it won’t be pretty. source: http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=YTg3ZTAxYzQxZmIxZTcxN2NhMjNiYzI0NWM2NjMxYmY=
One strong argument in favor of Spengler’s hypothesis on the fragility of Islam is Iran. Iran is exactly the kind of Islamic republic that the Sunni Islamists want to create. Yet, today’s Iran has more vice, that the Islamic republic was created to eliminate, than it did during the Shah’s time. The most significant is the ubiquitous prostitution by Persian ladies and a drug (narcotics) addition rate rivaling that of China during the time of the Opium Wars, not to mention the low birth rate. Both the prostitution and drug addiction represent a severely dysfunctional society, not to mention the complete failure of the Islamic republic to eliminate such vice. Prevention of vice is considered one of the top priorities of Islamism. Failure to do so shows the complete failure of the religion/ideology.
I see no reason to doubt that a successful implementation of Islamic regimes in the Arab world will produce results any different than that of Iran.
Quite true. Many hard line Sunnis admire Iran’s Islamic theocracy. But Iran is a failed state and an economic basket case. If Sunnis believe that Iran’s theocracy is a failure beacuse it’s Shia not Sunni then let them establish their Sunni theocracies and learn the hard way that Islam is the problem not the answer.
OMG, I don’t get it. Now my earlier post appears after all. I give up on whatever software/moderators are driving this insane comments thread.
NATIONAL SECURITY AND EMIGRATION FROM MOSLEM COUNTRIES
Given the threat of political Islam (aka Islamic Supremicism) to our free way of life the national security interests of this country require that we radically change our immigration policy toward Moslem countries. Cutting off all immigration from these countries, as some propose, is too extreme and seemingly xenophobic. The middle course between indiscriminate immigration (like we practically now have) and no immigration from Moslem lands would be to limit emigres to those who are suffering oppression and persecution in those lands: Christians, Jews, Bahais, Sufis, secularists, reformed Moslems (those who have given up political Islam and privitized their faith) only these should be allowed entry into this country. Moslem fundamentalists, those who believe in the inerrancy of the Koran and that Mohammed (the freedom hating religious and political tyrant of Medina) is God’s model human being, should be barred from this country. These Moslems are the enemies of freedom, progress and peace and should be denied the privilege of living here.
As for Sunnis who suffer oppression in Shia countries, and Shia who suffer oppression in Sunni countries, let them emigrate to Shia and Sunni lands.
response to John C. Lamoreaux from gray man.
I am retired military and have been training foreign militaries to fight islam for several years, both in the middle east and africa. With all do respect, we haven’t won. The battle is going to be long and hard.
gray man,
With respect, it may be that you and I agree,
but are using terms differently.
If we’re speaking of a war of civilizations,
the mortal blows were stuck in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Western civilization conquered the world and set itself on the road to modernity.
Islamic civilization did not, and still has not.
The coup de grâce was delivered in the decades either side of 1900.
The body’s still twitching, to be sure. Gases and such are being expelled.
But it’s over.
Meanwhile, Muslims in Cairo or Teheran keep themselves alive with western medicines,
grow crops designed in American universities,
drive cars not of their own making,
attempt to learn weapons systems they cannot maintain,
are bombarded on every hand by the vitality of a civilization they cannot master,
and every year tumble faster and faster toward the bottom of the development ladder.
Muslim responses to their failure have been as irrational as they have been ineffective.
They rail against Pepsi as a threat to their daughters’ virtue,
tell stories about the perfidy of their enemies,
and lament what once they imagine they were.
At the same time, they’ve failed to create a generation of young people able to compete,
they’ve produced not a single modern manufacturing facility,
they’ve not been able to fund and staff even a single university
capable of competition with a second or third tier American college.
I’ve no doubt that the US will continue to suffer from Muslim terrorism,
some of which may be worse than what we’ve experienced thus far.
Surely, too, the US will be fighting jihadis long after you or I are dead.
Such things do not presents a mortal threat to our nation.
Ottoman troops will never land in Florida.
Barbary Corsairs will not trouble Yankee traders in the Atlantic.
As a practical matter,
a single American modern infantry battalion, or Navy cruiser, or fighter squadron,
can do more damage than all the jihadis of the world.
@John C. Lamoreaux
Ottoman troops will never land in Florida, but a Hamas fishing boat loaded with Iranian nuclear bomb may land there. Barbary Corsairs will not trouble Yankee traders in the Atlantic, but Muslim Somali pirates ravage shipping in the Gulf of Aden. Saudi petrodollars control Western governments and universities. Western media and most Western political parties support Muslim invasion of their homelands. Most European countries have anti-Muslim political parties, but these parties are opposed by all the other parties, so they cannot join a coalition government. There is no reason to believe that Muslim invasion of Europe will be thwarted by peaceful means. A civil war in Europe is certain. The sooner it begins, the more likely is kafir (non-Muslim) victory. No matter what the outcome, European democracy will not survive the civil war. The future Europe will be either Islamic, or Nazi. USA will not help European Nazis, so European Muslims may win the civil war.
A nuke on a fishing boat — We’d take the hit and learn from it. Casualties? Comparable to a bad afternoon in the civil war. It’d be the last mischief Iran makes, though. I’d only start to worry when Iran can buy lots of nukes in adult caliber, with proper delivery systems — which’ll be never. Read Cordesman http://goo.gl/RBO2S especially the section on “Why Yield Matters”.
Somali pirates — Nothing new. Easily fixed. For the moment, in terms of cost, it’s cheaper to pay the ransom than to hire security. Robert Young Pelton runs the numbers here: http://goo.gl/o54Si Avast, if we’d like to kick some pirate dungbie on the cheap, Letters of Marque and Reprisal are the way to go. I know some Cajun boys who’d hunt abdominal piraticals for free. Laisse les bons ton rouler!
Saudi petrodollars control Western governments and universities — They buy PR like everyone. No one believes it, least of all those in charge of our national security. And we still keep their money. It’s a win for the US. Let’s take all we can, as they’ll be out of money in a decade or two, and be buying our made-in-America oil. We’ll be holding the oil sword over Saudi heads for a change. It’ll be fun! The future’s bright.
Western media and most Western political parties support Muslim invasion of their homelands. — Left would support the devil himself — but that’s only because they hate Bush more than they love life. Otherwise, that’s crazy talk.
A civil war in Europe is certain. — Maybe. Wouldn’t be the first. Surely not the last.
European democracy will not survive the civil war. — Survived the two big ones in the last century. Lost the peace. But really, who cares about Europe? Apart from the UK, they’re not our people or our friends — except when it comes to taking our money. Let them stew in their own waste for a while. It’ll do ‘em good.
Welcome to the reality.
This is the way it’s always been and is supposed to be.
It’s irrational to expect otherwise.
sigh. quit hating on the illiterates. mp3′s and ipods and cassette tapes work just fine when someone desperately wishes to learn. Translation software and voice recognition software works brilliantly. I’m seeing it used by functionally illiterate women to hear Twilight, the book series. They then use translation software and voice recognition software to post online, worldwide.
you can flick cigarettes at the poor, benighted illiterate women in the way of your perfect world, or you can use the tools your technologically advanced world has blessed you with to explain how and why you got this way, and how and why you think this way, or that. I’d rather hang out with the charming, caring, humble teachers who work with the women so excited about a story that they will use anything in their power to converse and learn with all the other women in the world. And- oh, yeah, some of them learn to read and write, in the process.
I’m glad that someone taught you to read. I’m glad you have an education in western logic. Now, please humble yourselves enough to explain ideas and thoughts and “of courses” so that other people can learn of what you take for granted. Please.
Islam is NOT fragile. Kemal Ataturk and Joseph Stalin tried to replace Islam with modernity. They failed. American Muslims are much more educated than average Muslims, so they are not representative of average Muslims. Average Muslims are barely literate, incompetent, believing in outlandish conspiracy theories, and hating kafirs (non-Muslims). The best way to deal with Muslims is not to deal with them at all – let them rot in their Islamic hellholes.
Muslim Conspiracy Theories: http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Conspiracy_Theories
Every aeons ago in a while we select blogs that we read. Listed under are the latest sites that we determine