Talented Muslims and Israeli Settlers
Some respondents to my post on Fr. Schall question my comment that there are plenty of talented Muslims who would contribute to America as immigrants. Maybe they’re posting from bunkers in northern Idaho. It’s hard to work in any quantitative field without encountering large numbers of extremely smart and well educated Muslims. I hired plenty of them when I ran research groups on Wall Street.
I urge these posters to visit Israel and tour the settlements. No-one is more convinced of the talents of Arabs (not to mention Turks, Pakistanis and others) than my Israeli friends. Especially the settlers in Judea and Samaria. I wrote some weeks ago (under the title “Israel, Ireland and the Peace of the Aging”):
5,800 Palestinians are working at technology companies on the West Bank, and the booming Israeli software sector is outsourcing to the West Bank, with a third of Palestinian software companies filling orders for Israeli firms, Bloomberg News reported March 15.
And the top school for Palestinian computer science students is Ariel University in Samaria, in the midst of a settlement near Nablus. “Administrators at the Ariel University Center are proud to have the Arab students, saying their enrollment is an example of loyalty and equality among Israeli citizens. For their part, the Arab students seem not to feel uncomfortable attending the college despite its reputation and location,” wrote the Chronicle of Higher Education.
“On campus the fact that we are in occupied territory is irrelevant – it doesn’t affect us at all. We leave all the politics outside,” the Chronicle quoted Manar Dewany, a 20-year-old student in math and computer science who commutes each day from the Israeli Arab town of Taybeh. “I never even considered it a reason for not coming here,” Ms Dewany added. “I have no problem with it. Why not come here? This place is full of Arabs.”
No one outsources computer technology to Egypt, where very few of each year’s crop of 700,000 college graduates meets world standards. The education that young Arabs receive at the settlers’ university on the West Bank is better than anything available among Israel’s Arab neighbors. In a quiet way, the settlers of Samaria may do more for peace than the diplomats.
In May 2010 I gave a speech at a conference at Ariel sponsored by my friend Richard Landes. It was the first time I had visited the “settler’s university.” The first thing I noticed was that there were girls with headscarves everywhere. The Samaria settlers work with local Palestinian officials to recruit talented Arab kids and bring them to Ariel. And that’s outreach, not affirmative action. The Arab kids are smart and work hard. Something similar, by the way, is going on at Israel’s music conservatories.
The settlers of Samaria are doing the right thing. And they live directly under Muslim guns. America is founded on the principle of the sanctity of the individual, which comes from the Torah that the settlers observe. As individuals Muslim are owed the same rights and respect as the rest of us.
Mr. Goldman:
I do not question their talent.
I do question their tolerance. When they become too numerous, they will threaten the well being of American Jews, just as they threaten the Jews of France, and indeed all of Europe.
Twenty years ago, if you had told the Jews of France that within 15 years they would face no future in France, that they would be afraid to wear a kippa in public, and that virtually the entire political and cultural establishment would turn on them, they would have thought you mad.
After all, they were, like American Jews, wildly successful and influential out of all proportion to their numbers. However, now badly outnumbered by Muslims (and by a leftist elite scared of those Muslims and sympathetic to them at the same time), they are doomed if they stay.
I do not want that to happen here.
The problem is utterly depraved and evil Islam.
Once Arabs are free from this cursed lie, they will live in real peace with Jews.Not this phony peace crap the world is pushing on the Jews once again.
***
“We must not resist,we must not fight back and we must ignore these attacks as if they never happened ,just ignore them and carry on with your lives. That is the answer.That is the answer.”
Ehud Barak after a young devoted Muslim on a mission and his encounter with Jews in Tel Aviv last night.
“Stay on the Road Map and don’t worry about the Muslim murderers ,that’s their way of peace and showing their love for infidels.
You must offer more goodwill gesture and release more prisoners.
Trust US and your quisling’s Netanyahu and Barak and like them do not resist and go silently for our glorious peace process.”
Quartet of Final Solution Peace Process
‘Lets look at the tree and ignore the forest’
David Goldman,
The Jews of France no longer are a viable community. Those that have not left, should. But the reason they are not viable is NOT because Muslims attack them, but because the French tolerate the attacks. France never confronted its own anti-Semitism, unlike the Germans, who had their faces rubbed in it.
There is another dimension: French Muslims overwhelmingly belong to the underclass. I am against allowing in ANY immigrants (except in extremely rare cases for humanitarian reasons)who do not have strong qualifications to contribute to the US. Now, there are highly-educated Muslim terrorists, to be sure, and screening always is a challenge, but economic immigrants with PhD’s in chemistry are not going to be beating up Jews on the street.
“The Jews of France no longer are a viable community. Those that have not left, should. But the reason they are not viable is NOT because Muslims attack them, but because the French tolerate the attacks.”
I’m sorry, Mr. Goldman, but responsibility for a crime lies first with those who actually commit the crime. Secondary blame lies with those who tolerate it. If it were not for the crimes being perpetrated by these young Muslims, what would the French be turning a blind eye to? Let’s not excuse them; they’re the ones whose crimes are destroying French Jewry in the first place.
“Now, there are highly-educated Muslim terrorists, to be sure” – many of the 9-11 hijackers had college education; and Al-Alawki (on top of being American-born and raised), had an engineering degree and a Ph.D. Sami Al-Arian had a Ph.D. in engineering and taught at an American University. I venture that a lot of well educated and productive Muslims are sympathetic to the Jihadist cause. I venture you would see some pretty impressive educations on the resumes of those at CAIR. The Islamists will recruit from the talent pool available to them. If what they have are the highly educated, then that is what they will use. In this they are no different from the far-left; it was the educated who joined groups like the Baader-Meinhof and the Red Brigades, not the underclass.
Eric,
1. One reason the French counter-terrorism effort is as good as it is because of the participation of Muslim, ethnic Berbers.
2. I don’t mean to in any way diminish either the significance of educated Muslim among the ranks of Jihadists or the difficulties involved in the Muslim world ever becoming modern and “moderate”, but you should also consider the fair number of educated (sometimes religiously observant) Muslims who, often at great risk to themselves and their families) aid US CT efforts domestically and US CT and COIN operations overseas, both as employees of the USG, as foreign allies, and as sources and court witnesses.
Some of my relatives in Israel are the children and grandchildren of the founders of a kibbutz near Nazareth. The kibbutz was founded with a secular/socialist/pioneering ethos (fortified watch towers to protect against Arab raiders, children’s dormitory, communal kitchen, etc., the young men tended to serve in the elite para regiment or the Air Force ). It is now an entrepreneurial/ high tech paradise with partnerships and investments with a well known US firm and big business with India and Latin America. Local Arabs operate some well regarded private repair shops and work-shops on the kibbutz.
Finally, the homes all now have kitchens and the former communal kitchen is now a private cafeteria … a kosher private cafeteria.
There were some extremely talented Nazis and Imperial Japanese. But we thought it prudent to exclude them from our nations while they waged war upon us. Islam is explicitly triumphal, and explicitly genocidal, as were the ideologies which animated Japan and Germany in WW2. I take Islam seriously, I take Muslims at their word when they promise to harm, murder, and destroy us. A few feckless denials by so-called “moderate Muslims” count for nothing in this age of unlimited terror and unlimited weaponry. Only when the ideologies of Germany and Japan were crushed, and their citizens they abjured them, did we consider their cases, one by one for emigration to America.
Spengler argued that Islam was fragile, I argued that Islam was robust when it had ample opportunity and means to wage Jihad. Trillions in unearned oil wealth and tens of millions in the Islamic fifth column guarantee that opportunity and that means – escalating Jihad will continue indefinitely unless we recognize the danger and act to reverse the means and opportunity Islam currently enjoys.
I never argued that there were no competent or even brilliant people within the precincts of Islam. We know many of them conducted 9/11 with the fervor and genius of super-fiends. But the idea that 30,000,000 Muslims must remain, or perhaps millions more arrive so that the west might enjoy the services of a few thousand brilliant surgeons or scientists is as asinine an argument as I have ever heard.
Further, Spengler chose to resort to ad hominem attack, and chose rather to concentrate on the minor issue of brilliant Muslims rather than address the argument that Islam is robust and dangerous. I expect more from a talented writer and thinker.
You nailed it, Morton. For a Muslim, loyalty to Islam trumps everything else. No matter how talented or well educated they will be Muslims first.
“perhaps millions more arrive so that the west might enjoy the services of a few thousand brilliant surgeons or scientists is as asinine an argument as I have ever heard.”
Actually, both you and Spengler are forgetting that it’s not the poor and uneducated Muslims we should worry about.
A common trend among the 9-11 guys and the al-qaeda leadership is they went to Europe or America and went to college, and on some level gained a feeling of revulsion for western decadance which was nurtured by fundamentalist Islam and
blossomed into a willingness to attack the culture that had provided them with advanced educations.
Exactly right.
Eric R/Morton,
1. One reason the French counter-terrorism effort is as good as it is because of the participation of Muslim, ethnic Berbers.
2. I don’t mean to in any way diminish either the significance of educated Muslim among the ranks of Jihadists or the difficulties involved in the Muslim world ever becoming modern and “moderate”, but you should also consider the fair number of educated (sometimes religiously observant) Muslims who, often at great risk to themselves and their families) aid US CT efforts domestically and US CT and COIN operations overseas, both as employees of the USG, as foreign allies, and as sources and court witnesses.
Clearly there is a difference between Jihadist murderers and Muslims who assist us in anti-terror. I would ask if those Muslims who assist us are Muslims for identification purposes only. But we can’t really know that, can we? There have been hundreds of terrorist attacks conducted by trusted Muslims who first winnowedntheir way into our trust and then chose to observe the exhortations within Islam to slay the infidels where they find them. Many murdered American servicemen, including intelligence officers, even top officials, have been exterminated because they trusted Muslims who took their Islam seriously.
Are you wise enough to know the difference between Muslims who take the explicit exhortations within Islam for terrorism, murder, and Jihad, from those who do not? Are you able to tell when those Muslims might chose to stop being “moderate” and become Jihadists? of course not.
Further, it is only insane boondoggles like bringing democracy, (our latter-day mission civilitrice), to the barbaric Muslim lands which forces us into tenuous and fraught reliances on the kindness of Muslims. We would not be in that compromised position if we understood the nature of the nightmarish ideology which makes every Muslim nation a veritable hellhole of backwardness, tyranny, corruption, terror, and all the rest.
Here’s my problem with the “let’s expel the Muslims” sort of rhetoric.
Islam is dangerous, but not robust: it is crashing and burning as it encounters the modern world. I’m much less worried about the strength of Islam than about America’s deficiencies. That’s the difference between me and Mark Steyn, whom I admire enormously. Mark beats up his enemies. I beat up my friends. If we had a clue as to what we were doing, we would wind this problem up rather easily. Our worst enemy is our own stupidity and indolence.
Consider this: Britain managed to rule India with only 3,000 regular army officers, most of whom spoke local dialects and donned local dress.
Unlike the British, America has little aptitude for manipulation. Americans believe that everyone is like them and that all movies have happy endings. To start with, Americans don’t learn languages. According to the Modern Language Association’s (MLA’s) 2006 survey of instruction in foreign languages, American universities enrolled only 2,463 students in Arabic at the advanced level. Of those “advanced” students, perhaps one in 10 would become expert. Apart from immigrants, whom intelligence agencies employ only with great caution, the prospective hiring pool of advanced students in Arabic is measured in the hundreds.
Among other languages spoken in Muslim countries, the MLA reports the following number of students (but does not tell us how many are “advanced”): 0 Albanian, 94 Bengali, 243 Farsi, 301 Indonesian, 5 Kurdish, 5 Malay, 103 Pashto, 4 Somali, 624 Turkish, and 344 Urdu.
Now, that’s pathetic. How are we supposed to be a superpower when we can’t profile prospective opponents in their own language? Israel has more Jewish Arabic-speakers than the intelligence services can employ; I’ve argued in the past that we should outsource to Israel and India while we train up the people we require here.
The issue of brilliant Muslims is not “minor.” It’s a matter of American principles: the dignity of the individual (see Deuteronomy 23:7). We also need to protect ourselves by doing unto Iran before they do unto us.
When it comes to intelligence services, the issue of finding a “politically reliable” Arabic speaker is going to be thorny. It would seem that your best bet is to find Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Maronites, or Iraqi Chaldeans who either fled Muslim persecution, or whose parents did. And even they likely would not be reliable in translating material that might be involved in helping Israel.
Indeed…
A few years ago I talked to a Persian Jew, who was a little surprised that no effort was made to recruit them for translation or intelligence. Thousands of Persian Jews fled the revolution, and many of them still return to Iran to visit family. But the army and intel agencies have 0 interest in them. bizarre.
It’s been reported that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, someone in government looked into recruiting Sephardi Jews, many of them born in Arab lands or Iran, as translators. Scores of them were interested, including some who had served in Israeli intelligence. But none of them made it through the recruitment process. Not a single one. The Israelis, for example, were expected to renounce their Israeli citizenship. And the rest? Well, perhaps the fact that most of those currently engaged in translation work in the FBI are Muslims had something to do with it.
I hardly think Deuteronomy appropriate in the context of arguing for the dignity of the individual. Why so strongly exclude bastards? (27:2) And who cares about innocent women and children? (3:6)
“Islam is dangerous, but not robust: it is crashing and burning as it encounters the modern world.” Islam has survived and grown for over 1400 years. It survived the Mongols. It survived European Imperialism. Your “let’s not deport the barbarian invaders because they’re crashing and burning” is rubbish. First, I have no desire to watch them crash and burn in my country. Second, you’re probably wrong. In which case, your position allows for the continued growth of a dangerous fifth-column – the Mohammedan ummah.
The West is dying a slow death in our time as it did during the decline of Rome. The Mohammedans are nothing more but far more virulent and evil Visigoths for our time. The libtards also existed back in the day: “There is the familiar figure of Orosius, defending the barbarians with the argument that when the Roman empire was founded it was founded in blood and conquest and can ill afford to throw stones at the barbarians” (Eileen Power “Medieval People”).
Your “argument” is like those Roman emperors who fecklessly allowed the barbarians into the empire based on vague hopes that they would become Roman. Moslems are not Germanic tribes. Mohammedans conquer in the name of a vicious, intolerant dogma. There is not reason to believe they are going to change in our lifetime.
Deport the barbarians. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. It’s a matter of self-preservation.
MarcH,
That’s exactly right. And you don’t get that kind of cooperation by preemptively branding every Muslim an enemy.
My own view is that Israel-Palestine should be a federation; that is, two nations united within one economic and political infrastructure.
Each would have control of their own education, social services, local services etc, but the economic, fiscal and political would be a federation.
Israel is not going to give up control of the W. Bank, because it wants control of the aquifers – water is a vital resource in the ME, and a completely separate Palestine would be swallowed by Iran in a nanosecond.
The Islamic nations are uninterested in the well-being of Palestinians and have merely used the I-P friction to divert attention from their own dysfunctional governments…which are dysfunctional because they, being tribal (two class) lack a free private-sector middle class economy.
I agree that ‘being Muslim’ does not exclude you from intelligence and the will to work as an individual, and I also agree that ‘being Muslim’ does not mean that you are, by definition, a terrorist and even, anti-West.
Islam itself, as an ideology, is dysfunctional, lacking any capacity for adaptive change, and essentially is primarily an ideology based around a non-industrial socio-political tribal mode of 7th c peasant agricultural life. Its current problems are because the nations where it has been dominant have moved beyond the organizing capacities of tribalism…and must modernize and permit a middle class.
Without a middle class economy, the Islamic Middle East nations reduce their populations to poverty; they cannot support them with a state-owned single resource (oil).
The militants are found, heavily, in the West, because Muslims there are supported, almost as parasitic, by the welfare capitalism of the West and do not realize that their ideology of fundamentalist Islamism is economically incapable of supporting them! The people of the ME, however, are beginning to realize this – and are demanding, first, economic and political changes to give individuals more power. The ‘religious’ ideological changes will follow – as happened in the West from the 13th-16th c.
You cannot isolate a people in our globally networked world; you cannot declare ‘no Muslims may immigrate’. You can, as the author points out, insist that immigrants must be skilled and self-supporting (ie. not move into the welfare status)..and also, as does Australia, insist that ALL immigrants and Visa entrants, sign an agreement acknowleding the supremacy of Australian law, language (English) and various cultural attributes of equality etc.
NO WAY!
Israel must remain an independent state. The whole point is that Jews could determine our own faith and not rely on the too often non-existent good will of others to determine it for us.
And the Judea and Samaria issue has nothing to do with water. The solution for Israel’s water problem is desalination. This is not a fantasy, it’s in the works. I’m not sure about the time table, but in the not very far future the majority of Israel’s agricultural water needs will be supplied by desalination. So it has nothing to do with water. This short video demonstrate the crucial security issues involved in Judea and Samaria.
In 2000/1 Israeli PM Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian Arabs 90-95% of Judea and Samaria plus land swaps. Arafat rejected it and started a war. In 2008 Israeli PM Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinian Arabs 95-97% of Judea and Samaria with the rest in land swaps. Abbas suddenly remembered he had an urgent engagement in Jordan and said he will call back later. He never did. He and other Arabs said the Israeli proposal proves Israel isn’t serious about peace.
The Arabs demand that in a final peace agreement the descendants of the refugees (and “refugees”) from the 1948 war that they started will be settled inside Israel. That means Israel will immidiately become a binational state and within a couple of generations, due to the much higher Arab-Muslim birth rate, another Arab-Muslim state. The refugee problem was a result of Arab aggression. The other refugee problem – that of Jews who were expelled from or fled Arab and Muslim countries – was also a result of Arab aggression. The majority of the Jewish refugees were resettled in Israel (without recognition or help from the UN, nor any fuss about it from the world, though the number of Jewish refugees was actually higher than the number of Arab refugees). The UN definition for Palestinian refugee is unique – anyone who lived in Israel at least 2 years prior to the war – that includes foreign workers and also Arabs from the surrounding Arab states who were not refugees, but registered as such to get UN aid – and their decsendants – both criteria are quite unusual. And the UN didn’t run serious checkups at the time of everyone claiming to be a refugee since no one anticipated the refugee problem would last so long since no other refugee problem lasted so long. The Arab states don’t give them citizenships since they want to use them to destroy Israel. The UN has two agencies for refugees – one dedicated solely to the Palestinian Arab refugees and another for all the other refugees in the world from all the war zones and natural disasters everywhere. So you can see, this is a very special case for some reason.
In other similar cases the refugees and their descendants were resettled among their own people in the aggressor state (the Sudete Germans for instance). In cases of population swaps, no matter who the aggressor was, the refugees were resettled on the other side of the border. For instance, in the war following the division of India there were far more refugees on both sides – the Hindus resettled in India and the Muslims in Pakistan. In a final peace agreement the descendants of the Arab refugees should be resettled in the new Arab state and other Arab states, just like the Jewish refugees were resettled in Israel. But instead the Arabs demand to settle millions of Muslim Arabs inside Israel. Their purpose is quite obvious to anyone who has eyes to see.
I guess we’ll have to ‘agree to disagree’.
I don’t agree that the water problems in the ME and Israel can be met by desalinization. The aquifers in the W Bank are absolutely vital in my estimation. And I don’t agree that the desire for control of the W Bank is only about self-defense; it’s land and water.
As for Israel not being an independent state – I’m not suggesting anything other than this – but – I’m suggesting a federation, which is made up of two separate domains, Israel and Palestine, where each state has separate and independent powers over some areas of governance…and…work together in a federal govt over some collective issues. The separate issues are religious, education, health care, social services etc. The federal issues are economic, currency, resources, borders and defense. I see no other solution and totally reject your suggestion that the ‘refugees’ be taken in by other arab states – who don’t want and never did want – Palestinians. This is the opposite of the Jewish refugee situation, where Israel was openly and intentionall increasing its population by its open door policy to all of Jewish descent.
You are, with your comments that a ‘refugee is someone who lived there two years’ ignoring that the real refugees are those whose families lived in that area for centuries – under both the Ottoman and British rule, owning land and property. I’m not suggesting a return, but I am suggesting compensation.
The refugee problem was not the result of ‘Arab aggression’. As you yourself acknowledge, Israel does not and never did, want its citizenry to be made up primarily of Muslims. They ensured that the Palestinians left in 1948..and did not return.
The Barak and later offers were not for a ‘state-like’ governance, but only for municipal governance of the local Palestinians towns. All resources, roads, communication, air space, borders, etc, were to remain in the control of Israel. That’s not what I’m talking about.
When you refer to ‘the new Arab state’ – are you suggesting a separate Palestinian state? Made up of what land base? If you conclude that Israel must retain the W Bank for ‘security reasons’ and I say that it will never give up that area for ‘land and water control’…then, what land base are you referring to for this ‘new Arab state’?
My suggestion to deal with the problem, of both water resources AND the imperialist agenda of Iran – is that federation of Israel and Palestine. Both democratic, both economically entangled – but- with separate powers over separate issues of interest to each. The other arab states, I suggest, wouldn’t like to see a democratic Palestine! The other arab states, which are tribally organized politically and economically, are fighting to retain tribalism..and of course, are losing this battle..
I can’t even read your entire comment due to all your factual errors, so I’ll just respond to some.
- Both Barak and Olmert proposed an independent Arab-Palestinian state in Gaza and nearly all of Judea and Samaria plus land swaps making it 95-100% (depending on the proposal). And a division of Jerusalem, though not according to the 1967 armistice line – the Jewish and Armenian quarters and Jewish neighborhoods will go to Israel and the Arab neighborhoods to the new Arab state. Olmert proposed that the holy basin will be under international gurdianship.
- The refugee problem was a result of Arab aggression. The Arabs didn’t leave nor were expelled when the Zionist pioneers started developing the land that was indeed mostly desert and swamps and sparsely inhabited if you actually look at the real data, the real numbers and the real land at the time. Quite the contrary – Arabs looking for job opportunities migrated into the lands the Jews were developing (lands bought and paid for by Jews who bought them from Arab and Turkish owners), although some of the vassals lost their jobs after the Jews purchased lands they were going to farm themselves. The Arabs did not flee nor were expelled when partition was decided in the UN. Nor did they leave or were expelled when Israel declared independence. The Arabs fled or were expelled as a result of starting a war to destroy Israel. If they hadn’t started the war they would have remained. They are also recorded examples where the Jews asked the Arabs not to leave. In Haifa they begged the Arabs to stay – this is on record. The Zionists of the time expected Jewish mass immigration of most world Jews after the British would leave and the state’s independence declared, and the difference in birth rates were not as significant then. Middle Eastern Jews had as many children as Muslims, and Ashkenazi Jews also had a significantly higher birth rate than they do today. As things turned out the majority of Jews didn’t immigrate to Israel and Jewish birth rates dropped with time, but that wasn’t ancticipated the day Israel declared independence, and it was attacked by Arab neighbors the day after (and by locals plus thousands of infilrators from the surroundings for a long time before).
- Israel offered as part of the agreement compensation for the lost property of the refugees (though I’d say similar compensation should be paid to the Jewish refugees from Arab states – they also lived there for centuries, many predated the Arab-Musilm conquest of the Middle East, Jews who go back to the Roman era and even the Babylonian era). The Arabs demand both compensation and resettling the descendants of refugees in Israel. It’s the heart of the matter really. They don’t accept a Jewish state in any borders – that’s the heart of the matter and that’s why they demand they’ll be resettled in Israel. After all if your family lived in, say, Haifa, and after the war you found yourself across the border a dozen miles from Haifa this isn’t such an enormous change if you were given citizenship in Syria and compensation for your lost property in a peace agreement. But they didn’t get citizenships nor were the Arabs willing to reach a peace agreement.
- Some of the refugees were of families who lived here for centuries, others were not, and some were not even real refugess. The point is that by registering also people who were not even permanent residents and people who just claimed to be refugees the number of refugees registered by the UN was inflated, and now they want the descendants of all those people to settle here. But either way none of them should be resettled here. It would become a blood bath worse than Lebanon.
- The solution to Israel’s water problem is desalination and buying water. That’s what’s happening on the ground even if you say otherwise.
- A fedaration means Israel won’t be fully independent. I reject it totally and so would all sane Israeli Jews.
Look, I can’t possibly imagine how would I feel if instead of being surrounded by Muslims we were surrounded by Hindus. I can’t imagine a conflict with India about a tiny piece of land would last that long because I’m sure both Jews and Hindus are each capable of reaching a compromise with a non-fanatic neighbor, and Jews have really very limited aspirations compared with Muslims, and were always willing to make far reaching compromises. The Jews didn’t go to war when the Brits gave the Arabs 78% of the Palestine mandate (but rather reached a peace agreement with the emir Abdallah). The Jews didn’t attack when the remaining 22% were partitioned between the Jews and the Arabs. Nor did Israel attack to conquer Judea and Samaria or east Jerusalem (from which the Jews were expelled by the Jordanians, as well as from places in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and Jordan, parts of our ancestral homeland). And Israel gave back the entire Sinai for peace, and offered Judea and Samaria and Gaza for peace. I’m quite sure if those were Hindus instead of Muslims they would have compromized on Israel keeping that tiny bit of mostly desert land left after all the partitions rather than continue the conflict for generations upon generations, getting tens of thousands of people killed on both sides. And I have no idea how I would feel then about things like federations or whatever.
I came to the conclusion some time ago that I simply can’t imagine what it’s like to live your entire life among generally moderate people with which you can generally or potentially get along. I can imagine what it’s like to live in peace, but I can’t imagine what kind of a person you become and how your mindset develops when you grow up in a place where your neighbors don’t want to destroy you. The Arab culture is full of hatred and violence and extremism and fear and delusions and conspiracy theories, even if the rest of the world doesn’t want to believe it. Jew-hatred is rooted in their religion, and they were also deeply influenced by the Nazis and later by the Soviets (who disseminated antisemitism as part of their anti-American propaganda), and they absorbed all manners of antisemitism from Europe too – the blood libels, delusional demonization, all antisemitic literature, seeing the Jews as the source of all evil in the world and so on. Jews and Hindus get along well and have more in common than meets the eye, and neither aspire for their religion to dominate the world. Maybe a similar situation with Hindus would have started out with war, but we’d probably be able to solve it, and then there could be all kinds of mutually benefitial and prosperous cooperations and ties. There are already, but imagine if we were neighbors to each other instead of the Arabs and Pakistan. I can’t possibly know how I would think and feel then about many things. But just like I can’t really imagine what kind of life you have growing up in a peaceful place where your neighbors are not constantly plotting to destroy you, often talk about massacres and extermination and so on, so are you incapable of imagining what it’s like to grow up like me with our kind of neighbors. So you simply can’t see how delusional and ridiculous is your fantasy about a federation with people who hate us as much as the Nazis hated Jews. In many ways all those well intentioned (if you are well intentioned) Westerners are like Beverly Heals teenagers giving advice to people living in Harlem. You might have visited Harlem and spent some time there and think you know it, but as an outsider you don’t really know it and understand it like someone who actually lived there their entire lives trying to survive. Your life don’t depend on accurate knowledge and you don’t have the right instincts.
Nope – I don’t agree with your views – and strongly dispute your ‘facts’. We’ll have to leave it there, as I see no rational way of moving past your blinkers.
ETAB wrote:
“You are, with your comments that a ‘refugee is someone who lived there two years’ ignoring that the real refugees are those whose families lived in that area for centuries – under both the Ottoman and British rule, owning land and property. I’m not suggesting a return, but I am suggesting compensation.
The refugee problem was not the result of ‘Arab aggression’. As you yourself acknowledge, Israel does not and never did, want its citizenry to be made up primarily of Muslims. They ensured that the Palestinians left in 1948..and did not return.”
Most of the assertions here are at least partly bogus, and the final one is entirely so. There is *no* evidence of an Israeli attempt to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian Mandate of Arabs. Quite the opposite. The Arabs tried to exterminate the Jews, and some civilians left in the process. This occurred primarily due to Arab propaganda. Even President Abbas has said so regarding his own family.
The comment regarding “land and property” is particularly egregious. Let’s take the Gaza Strip as an example – one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in the autumn of 2005, the PA government decreed that “97.5 percent of these lands were state-owned lands,” meaning of course that there were no private claims of ownership. That’s in GAZA. Wrap your mind around that stat for a minute.
( Here’s the link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=26759 )
The simple fact is that most “Palestinian” “refugees” (yes, both terms really demand scare quotes, as they are inherently ridiculous) were landless peasants who immigrated into the Palestinian Mandate *after the advent of the modern Zionist movement*, partly due to British imperial machinations.
Conversely, the majority of Israeli Jews are *not* from Europe, but from Muslim countries, from which they were forcibly ejected (viz. Egypt), fled from fear of violence (Iraq, etc.) and had been living literally for millennia as a notably wealthy minority. Their assets are worth at least hundreds of millions in modern dollars. The “Palestinian refugees” on the other had, didn’t have squat. Anyway, they caused their own problem. Jewish resettlement in what is literally their tribal lands didn’t displace them. Neither did Jewish self-defense, with a few small exceptions, easily justified by the Arab violence of the time.
The “Palestinian” Arabs don’t deserve compensation any more than Germans who lived in what is now Poland deserved compensation. When you try to exterminate your neighbor and fail, you don’t get rewarded. They have no legal, moral or historical right of return. Sorry.
And yes, they are responsible. They were not merely victims of foreign governments, Arab, European or otherwise. Major pogroms against Palestinian Jews perpetrated by local Arabs predate the invasion by Arab armies. Over a thousand Jews were murdered in the year prior to the official onset of the war.
Since I’m on the subject, anyone who supports giving “East Jerusalem” to the Arabs is a supporter of ethnic cleansing – the Arabs have no other claim to it than the fact that the Jordanians forcibly murdered and expelled the resident Jewish population in the ’48 war, and “East Jerusalem” only existed as a discrete entity until 1967, which isn’t even a footnote on the millennia of Jerusalem as a Jewish-majority city. There are Ottoman documents going back to the 1840′s showing that this was so even in modern times.
The ideas you propose are perverse, grounded in nothing but fantasy, and morally execrable. Educate yourself before you do more harm.
“They have mouths, but they cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot speak.”
If only. Nowadays, those who do not see nonetheless do not stop speaking…
(And some have keyboards, but cannot type what they mean to. Sigh.)
Yes: how do we know who is sincere, and who is worming their way into our confidence? It’s never easy, but there’s a basic starting point. When we preach politically-correct multicultural baloney, we invite infiltrators to take advantage of our stupidity. But when we ask citizens of Muslim countries to help us because of what WE represent, that is, American exceptionalism, we have a chance to recruit people to our side.
Otherwise, we need intelligence officers who know the culture of Muslim countries, Muslim languages, and so forth in enormous depth–officers like Lawrence on the British side, or Musil on the German side of WWI. In the meanwhile we can outsource some of the surveillance to India and Israel.
David,
Great thread. I would have liked to have commented further tonight but must run. I do have one side bar question for you: from where do you know that most of the British officer corps in India spoke local languages reasonably well (for example good enough to do their own spoken translation on moderately complex professional matters)? The impression I’ve received from a little bit of related reading is that most British officers focused on polo and gin (nothing wrong with that, they were a fine army) and an officer such as Richard Francis Burton was the exception. Even Winston Churchill, a very energetic and studious junior officer in India, apparently didn’t learn Hindi or any other local language beyond the basics.
I agree that languages are a big problem with our current security efforts, esp. in the Muslim world. In my experience, local languages have been a big speed bump for us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hiring native Arabic speakers (both US and local nationals) worked out ok in Iraq but the situation is different and very difficult in Afghanistan (not enough educated Afghans and multiple languages in Afghanistan (most educated folks speak Dari but rural folks often only speak the langue of their tribe/group (Pashto, Hazara, Uzbek, etc.).
Best,
MarcH
My source is Sir John Keegan’s book on intelligence and war.
Thanks.
I was not familiar with this book by Keegan. It looks interesting and I ordered it.
The theme of combat operations facilitating intelligence collection as much as intelligence collection facilitates operations strikes me as valid. I think you made a similar point in some old Asia Times column (Red Harvest?).
“Here’s my problem with the ‘let’s expel the Muslims’ sort of rhetoric. … If we had a clue as to what we were doing, we would wind this problem up rather easily. Our worst enemy is our own stupidity and indolence.”
The trouble is that we don’t have a clue, and that many in the West seem to be willfully blind. You (and your new colleague Richard Fernandez) respond in a relatively urbane and dispassionate manner and try to educate us. Others who have seen the warning signs ignored for years now become frantic and start advocating extreme solutions.
So Israelis did not build a massive WALL, to keep Muslims out? So Israelis did not hold Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees who wish to migrate into Israel in refugee camps, and later expel them? So Israel did not fire upon Syrian and Palestinians massing on the Golan Heights border, trying to cross en-masse. So Israel does not have very restrictive border controls that don’t let in masses of Egyptians, Gazans, and the rest who wish to cross into Israel proper?
This view expressed by Mr. Goldman is both directly opposite to the REAL experience of Israel (building massive walls, keeping Muslims out, along with all sorts of non-Muslim African refugees) and indicative of “SWPL” (the website and book by Christian Lander delusions. The idea that since a few highly educated Muslim men refrain from cutting off heads while in the presence of well paid colleagues, all Muslims are like that (see: Atta, Mohammed, Civil Engineer; or Al-Zawahari, Ayman, Physician, or Bin Laden, Osama, construction manager) is laughable.
Nor is “Islam weak.” Islam has purposefully rejected the sorts of things that are required for technological innovation, betting on mass of people being the way to “own the future.” As Mark Steyn notes, the future of Europe is ISLAM. Those will be the people “owning” the Continent because they will be nearly all the young people. And they are hyper-aggressive, already Anjem Choudary has set up Sharia Controlled Zones in the UK with no government response. Who rules large swaths of Britain? MUSLIMS. And it is according to Sharia not English/British law that all must obey.
The price for Muslim immigration, seen ALREADY IN THE UK AND FRANCE, is car burnings, mass crime waves, Sharia controlled zones, police/Native no-go areas, no alcohol, unveiled women, gambling, “offensive” images and video, Jews (of course) and dogs. All are prohibited. Muslims don’t need uber-smart scientists if they have masses of young men able and willing to use violence against an outnumbered West more afraid of being called “racist” than defending their own nation, people, culture, religion, and values.
I agree with Zionism, and want nothing more for the West than to copy Israel. Realize that Muslims (particularly in Europe) outnumber Westerners in the Med/Anatolian region, are very hostile, mostly illiterate, mostly violent (see Egypt) and need to be kept out the way Israelis keep out all those who wish to simply descend upon them en-masse.
And no there is no easy answer. Manpower counts. So too does the NATURE of Muslims. In no society have Muslims NOT proved a threat to non-Muslims. This is not true in China (where Uighurs wage a deadly terror-jihad against the Han), or in India, or in the UK, or in France, or in Italy, or in Germany, or in the US (where sudden Jihad syndrome strikes every few weeks).
Goldman wants the world to be the utopian reflection of working at big Hedge firms, where everyone cares about the money they make. Memo to Mr. Goldman — society is not like a Hedge Firm.
The future is already arriving. Ultimately Egypt will “solve” its problems by simply conquering a weak Greece or Italy, and taking what it wants to feed its poor and impose Sharia upon the conquered. THAT will provoke a counter-reaction, because Muslims cannot and have never lived peacefully side-by-side with non-Muslims. They always fall into Jihad because Islam cannot secularize to develop technology, so it must simply conquer through mass manpower.
Goldman equating the highly intelligent Muslim men he’s worked with is like judging the Caliphate by Averroes (who as memory serves, had to flee to … FRANCE).
Whiskey, 20% of the Israeli population are Muslims. And no-one on Israel’s political spectrum proposes to “keep them out.” And they don’t work at big hedge funds, most of whom are losing money and shutting down, and don’t constitute a utopian world. Egypt is not going to conquer anyone. It is imploding. And if you want to keep posting here, mind your manners.
Actually 20% of the Israeli population are Arabs, 16% are Muslims.
Whisky is impassioned but not impolite. Islam is a passionate issue for me as well. I don’t have the energy or the talent to write the well documented posts that so many have here, but I can offer my personal experience.
Like the president, I was raised In Indonesian, and worked there as young man, and have been in and out of the country all my life. Now I have retired in Hindu Bali.
And in this time, I have watched a fascinating multi ethnic national culture gradually decline in favor of an increasingly orthodox identity. People whom I have known for 40 years and who used to take a drink, now sport zabibahs. The majority of women now wear headscarves and shapeless muslima garb, so that it looks here the same as Malaysia, or turkey, or parts of Brooklyn.
Even after working in Saudi Arabia , and even after 9/11, I still had good things to say about Islam, until I read the texts, and connected them to what was happening around me.
For the last ten years, I worked in Java preparing students for advanced education in UK, the US, Australia and New Zealand. Yes, Mr Goldman, many of them are hrd working, personable, bright eyed and friendly, but they hate Israel, extol Ahmineajad and Chavez while they take our scholarships. And it is nothing new: my ex-wife recently told me that she had been taught jew hatred in West Java, in the 70s, the difference being that then it was just after school lessons; now it’s dead serious,
I couldn’t take it any more, quit and retired to this island that has always resisted Islam. Ask the Balinese. They know.
«Averroes (who as memory serves, had to flee to … FRANCE)»
Your memory obviously failed, Whiskey: Averroes was banished from the Court of Cordoba (Andalusia), not from the country; and he was rehabilitated short before his death (likely at Marrakech, 1198). But in the meantime all his books in Arabic had been burned. Only the translations in Hebrew and Latin survive.
I said your memory “obviously” failed because classical (strong) Islam almost NEVER put to death dissenters and heretics. That’s mainly a behaviour of modern (weak) Islam, and of ancient Christianity. Classical Islam banished dissenters abroad in order to conquer new lands: “Umayyads” in Spain, Sufis in India, Janissaries (i.e. former Christians) in the Balkans… That’s why, in the long run, modernity could not survive in the core of Islam, and the external conquests turned inwards, as internal “conquests”: expulsion of religious minorities from the core of Islam.
Judeo-Christianity survives modernity because the latter is, essentially, a product of the former, and the survival of Averroes’ books only in Hebrew & Latin translations is a highly symbolical event.
I don’t propose expulsion, but an end to Muslim immigration.
Like others here, it’s not their talent that I question. It’s also not the real issue for you. If the issue was just wanting talented immigrants then there are plenty of talented people everywhere in the world. There must be tens of millions of geniuses among the billions of non-Muslims in East Asia and the Indian subcontinent, for example. The issue is that for many Americans and Westerners in general it is unthinkable these days to fully recognize there’s a problem with some religion (except their own parents’ religion), emphasis on religion, as supposedly opposed to ideology. It’s a psychological inhibition due to cultural conditioning. Of course you mean well, but you deny reality and by that you’re just delaying the inevitable.
You say not every Muslim is an enemy – of course not every Muslim is an enemy! Of course some help us in the fight against terrorism. Do you know there are Muslims even in the Israeli army? But according to a poll 50% of Israeli Arabs believe the holocaust never happened, which means Jews invented it to manipulate the world and control the world’s academia and media to perpetuate the “hoax”. These people grow up in Israel, study in Israeli schools and universities, yet half of them hold neo-Nazi beliefs, and who knows how many hold Islamaist beliefs and want Israel destroyed or turned into a Muslim state. Some of them say it openly, but others don’t, so how can you tell who’s who? And the situation in Israel is still good compared with people who grow up in Muslim states where they are brainwashed with state sponsored Nazi-like propaganda. How can you deny there is a problem?
It doesn’t matter if it’s just half the Muslims who have ideas opposed to the American constitution, or even just 30%. 30% of 1.5 billion people are 450 million people! And it’s far more than 30%. According to polls conducted in several Muslim countries majorities in these countries want the death penalty for apostasy. I don’t know how many want it in Indonesia, but if in places like Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan it’s something like 70-80% or more, then in Indonesia and Turkey it’s probably 40-50%. Let’s say “just” a half of all Muslims want the death penalty for apostasy – that is 750 million people. You say those people should continue immigrating to the West. Isn’t capital punishment for leaving a religion opposed to the American constitution? Does freedom of religion in America include the freedom for a religion to impose itself by force? Or should that kind of a religion be left out?
You’re so desparate to cling to your American faith that you even deny the responsibility of the Muslim perpetrators of crimes against Jews in Europe. The case of French Jews is doubly tragic since half of them immigrated to France from North Africa. Many fled Islam to France. Now they face Islam in France. Two French Jews were already brutally murdered for the sole “crime” of being Jews. One of them, Ilan Halimi, was tortured to death for weeks – they beat him up, raped him, stabbed him, broke his bones, cut off his ear, poured acid on him and burned him alive – calling his family for ransom, making them hear his screams of pain while reciting passages from the Quran. Muslim neighbors came to watch and didn’t call the police or act to stop it. The same gang attacked other Jews as well. The other victim had his throat slit by a Muslim neighbor and his body mutilated, his eyes gauged out. Other Jews were attacked, beaten up, harassed, shouted at, spat on, had things thrown at them. Yet you blame the French. The real problem is French Jew-hatered, you say, and not Islamic Jew-hatered. The attacks by Muslims are NOT (you emphasize NOT) the problem. Their ideology is not the problem. The problem is obviously the French. So maybe you should stop French immigration to the US. You don’t want to import violent antisemitism to America. Didn’t some French men already send a bomb to a Chicago synagogue? Oops, sorry, the bomb was sent from Yemen. But I bet the real culprit is some French antisemite. And if you’re gonna have tens of millions of French in America some of them might decide to deliver the bombs personally. You know how the French love their virgins in the sky.
Is that even sane? Or is it denial? You’re a Jew yourself. Aren’t you scared when you see things like that that are broadcasted on mainstream TV in the Middle East? Or is that too the fault of the French? Why is it so easy for you to blame the French of antisemitism, yet so difficult to recognize the single gravest antisemitic threat in the world today?
So you say you’ll screen the immigrants. How exactly? Will you employ telepaths that will read their minds? And clairvoyants that will tell their children’s futures?
But Islam will soon collapse, you say. How soon? Will that happen before or after France becomes a Muslim state?
This a nonsensical conversation for the simple reason that no religious restriction on immigration is conceivable, on Constitutional grounds. But for the sake of argument:
I doubt France will become a Muslim state. Even the Senegalese stop having large families once they move to France (the British have more to worry about from the Pakistanis, whose fertility does not seem to decline). My point was that if Muslims were attacking non-Jewish Frenchmen on the streets, the French state would come down on them like a ton of bricks. It’s not merely the Muslims but French anti-Semitism that leaves French Jews in the lurch. But France isn’t my concern. Europe probably isn’t salvageable, Muslims or no Muslims. We aren’t looking at a stable “Eurabia” but at a chaotic century or two of social breakdown with no clear winners–8th century stuff.
The broader issue is that modernity is hollowing out Islam–starting in the most modern Muslim countries, namely Iran and Turkey (we’re not talking about Yemen or the KSA). The encounter between Islam and the West cuts both ways; the West wins by recruiting the best and brightest and most likely to reject fanaticism. That accelerates the the hollowing-out.
You don’t need telepathy to screen people. Every terrorist or prospective terrorist, from the 9/11 bombers to Major Hasan was an obvious risk. Tough-minded, systematic intelligence work unencumbered by political correctness will catch 99.9% of potential problems.
Ah, but by importing “the best and brightest and most likely to reject fanaticism”, are we not delaying the possibility of any change in their home countries?
“This a nonsensical conversation for the simple reason that no religious restriction on immigration is conceivable, on Constitutional grounds.”
This is theoretically true, but tyrannous behavior by the likes of Andrew Jackson, FDR, or Dubya was enabled by the power of executive orders, and an impotent Congress. America’s two party system makes impeachment virtually impossible even when it is absolutely justified. Obama could squeeze the country like a vice if not for gun ownership. Not the theoretical second amendment and the sheet of paper it’s written on; it’s the actual guns that matter. Bibles and guns.
Post-Lincoln America is tolerant of tyranny anyway, for practical and existential purposes. Constitutional primacy might only be a factor in a Ron Paul presidency or some other kind of Tea Party revolution. Even then, an angry anti-Muslim mob probably would not be denied.
History would be very, very different if all 50,000 people died in 9/11 instead of 2700ish.
“I doubt France will become a Muslim state”
In all seriousness, I would love to see you debate Mark Steyn on this issue. He does not share your viewpoint, and the intra-right debate would be fascinating.
Perhaps Roger can get both of you on Hugh Hewitt to hash this one out.
My book, “How Civilizations Die,” will be out Sept. 19. Rather than a Muslim demographic inundation, I focus on the Muslim population bust in progress. It is a somewhat different perspective. There is considerable danger of Islamification of European countries–more in England than in France, judging from the data, because the fertility of Pakistani immigrants does not fall much, in contrast to Algerians or Senegalese.
“…that no religious restriction on immigration is conceivable, on Constitutional grounds.” Are you kidding? When was the Immigration Act of 1924 declared unconstitutional? Do tell. Although, not banning groups based on religion or ethnicity, it achieved the same results by limiting emigration based on national origin. Simply, bar emigration of OIC members, which makes sense since it’s at war with us anyways. Or, simply pass a Constitutional Amendment, if required (which I doubt), identifying Islam as a hostile idealogy (much like Communism or fascism) and making its adherents ineligible to emigrate. You seem to be looking for excuses for not doing what obviously needs doing.
Also, last I checked the United States is a sovereign power and as such has an absolute right to control who and what crosses its frontiers. Mohammedans can be declared undesirable aliens (which they are) then be legally disbarred for invading, oops, emigrating into the US.
I’m just curious, Mr Goldman, if yo have lived for extended periods among Muslims. Not dog and opny shows on short visits. If you have, please discuss your experiences.
Pnina – I’m going to disagree with your axioms of ‘an end to all Muslim immigration’. That’s because it’s a circular argument which is, in itself, invalid.
Your premise is that IF you are Muslim, THEN, you are by definition, a criminal, i.e., a jihadist. Such a generalization is invalid (modus ponens). The statement of IF you are a jihadist, THEN you are a Muslim, is true, but not that reversal.
The agenda should be to enable Islamism to reform. It is correct to say that Islam has self-defined itself as sacred dogma and not open to reform, but, there ARE scholars in the Islamic world who question the texts, the interpretations etc. I suggest that this will increase as the ME is more exposed to capitalism and democracy. Remember, Islam is less a religion, having very little to say about the metaphysical, and is primarily an economic, societal and political infrastructure. This infrastructure might have worked in the 7th c; in a non-industrial primitive agriculturalism. It can’t work in the modern world.
I strongly believe that a societal ideology is closely aligned with the economic robustness of that society. Islam emerged in the 7th c as a pastoral nomadic reaction to the takeover of lands and trade by the expanding settlements of the Roman-Byzanine-Christian economies of the ME. It began as a militant defensive ideology..and moved into areas whose economies were similarly peasant, local, no-growth.
As an ideology devoted to stasis, to retention of an old way of life (local peasant animal horticulture ) capable of supporting only minimal populations at basic sustenance levels – it has NO capacity to adapt to larger populations and no capacity to develop industrial and scientific technology.
The post WWII movement into oil had to be technologically developed by the West; the Islamic nations had no, and continue to have, little technological ability. BUT, this revenue enabled the ME nations to remain in an out-dated tribal infrastructure (two class: Rulers and Ruled) and prevented the devt of a middle class private economy.
The tribal mode is dysfunctional in large multimillion size populations; it cannot economically support that size, and it cannot, politically, repress that size of a population and prevent dissent and questions.
The rise of Islamic fundamentalism has been the attempt by the Islamic Rulers to restrain and constrain their populations. It is not working.
The immigration of Muslims to the West HAS fostered Islamic fascism and fundamentalism, because these people moved, primarily into the welfare roles, of these nations..and were catered to by the disastrous policies of cultural relativism, multiculturalism..This situation meant that the Ideology was SEPARATED from the economy. This is a vital point.
The people did not have to adapt their beliefs to function in the western economy…because it supported them on welfare. This is disastrous.
The Australians, in 2009, developed a policy where all immigrants and visa entrants MUST sign a document that affirms their acceptance of Australian law, cultural norms and language. [Obviously, if you breach these, you can be deported]. That is, Australia is rejecting multiculturalism. And welfarism.
My point is that Islam, as an ideology, MUST change its concepts when its economic mode..in which it originated…becomes ‘out of sync’ with those societal beliefs. When your tribal beliefs of a rejection of reason, rejection of individualism, of questions, of science, inequality of gender, reliance on the state..etc..no longer function in an economy that REQUIRES individual entrepreneurship, individual inventions and technological innovations…then, the beliefs must change.
The way to enable Islam to reform – and after all, it’s a man-made doctrine, no matter how ‘godly’ you think it is – is to assist the economic mode of the Islamic nations to move into a capitalist mode, i.e., to enable the growth of a middle class private sector economy. The middle class is made up, always, of individuals in private entrepreneurship – who must engage in dissent, questions, innovation…the opposite of the passive ‘leave it to god’ motif of the peasant agriculture.
And – prevent the separation of Islamic ideology from economic lifestyle in the West, by allowing in only those Muslims who are skilled workers, and, and, importantly, using the Australian Values Statement that must be signed by all visa and immigrant applicants. And..end multiculturalism.
I read just your first couple of paragraphs because I just don’t have the time now. Must go in 10 minutes. So I’ll respond just to that for now because I can’t resist, and maybe I’ll read the rest and respond to it later.
You wrote:
“Your premise is that IF you are Muslim, THEN, you are by definition, a criminal, i.e., a jihadist. Such a generalization is invalid (modus ponens). The statement of IF you are a jihadist, THEN you are a Muslim, is true, but not that reversal.”
That is a straw man argument. In all my comments here and elsewhere I wrote once and again that not all Muslims are a threat. In a comment to a previous post I wrote that the majority of Muslims are, of course, not terrorists, so this is the opposite of generalization and of the claim you falsly attribute to me that a Muslim is by definition a jiahdist – I said the exact opposite – that most of them are not terrorists. In a comment to this post I explicitly wrote that of course not all Muslims are enemies, and there are even Muslims who help fight terrorism, so again this is the opposite of what you attribute to me. I did write elsewhere that the majority of Muslims are fanatic by my definition since to me anyone supporting capital punishment for apostasy is a fanatic and polls show that majorities in several prominent Muslim states do, but this isn’t the same as claiming all of them are jihadists, and it is also grounded in fact. Of course you might disagree that supporting the execution of people who lost their faith is fanatic, but then we have very different defintions of fanaticism. A capital punishment for apostasy means forcing the religion on people (on those who leave Islam), so this idea is also opposed to the American constitution – these are also facts. I also wrote antisemitism is very widespread among Muslims which is a fact. In all of my posts I wrote that regrding any Islamic threat (like wanting Sharia law to govern the state or whatever) it doesn’t matter that it’s NOT ALL MUSLIMS because even just a half or 30% or 15% of 1.5 billion Muslims are hundreds of millions of people. So again I explicitly said NOT ALL MUSLIMS. I just said even 30% of them are too many people.
In short, your claim that my premise is that if you are Muslim then you are by definition a criminal or a jihadist is a false claim. Nowhere did I say that or anything that implies that.
I did say there are problems with Islam, and there are. Such as majorities supporting the death penalty for apostates and adulterers, majorities in many Muslim states supporting stricter Sharia law and even a caliphate, substantial numbers in several Western countries supporting Sharia law to replace the current democratic order (for instance, according to a poll 40% of British Muslim students or youth), widespread genocidal antisemtism, widespread hostility towards “infidels”, violence towards gays (anything between harassing lesbians in Amsterdam and hanging them in Iran), various violent phenomena such as terrorism, killing people for making “blasphemous” films, caricatures, books or pop songs (lookup RAI and the various “chebs” who had death fatwas on their heads, some were murdered even after fleeing to France), horror killing, unusually high rates of rape, FGM, and various other problems. Of course, the majority of Muslims don’t act violently, but it exceeds by far the rate of any similar crimes by other groups. And it’s not a coincidence – it’s related to the perpetrators’ beliefs and ideology.
I don’t propose halting Muslim immigration because ALL Muslims are jihadists – nowhere in my posts did I say anything of the sort. I propose it on the following grounds:
- Even if a minority of Muslims are involved in hostile activities and have hostile ideas this is still much larger than any other group. The more Muslims you have the greater the risk because 15% of 100 million Muslims are more people than 15% of just a million Muslims. According to various estimates 5-15% of Muslims are willing to participate in terrorism. If you’re gonna have 50 million Muslims in Europe how do you suggets they’ll deal with an army of 2.5-7.5 million potential terrorists? But as I said, terrorism isn’t the only problem.
- More importantly, with the combination of continued Muslim mass immigration and their far higher birth rates they will sooner or later become a majority and than the state will become a Muslim state. Westerners (or Hindus or Japanese or Argentinians) don’t want to live in Muslim states because all of them are not as free, democratic and tolerant as western states (I’m understating because I know you’ll bring up Indonesia, but very few Westerners would like to live by the standards of freedom, democracy and tolerance of even Indonesia).
Of course, things can change – Islam might collapse, it might reform, Muslim birth rates might drop, Western birth rates might rise, or whatever. But let’s wait until that happens. We don’t know if any of these will actually happen, so for the meantime let’s not condemn future generations to the grim prospect of an Islamic fate.
I’ll repeat my view – that your opposing immigration of ALL Muslims is indicative of an evaluative judgment that IF one is a Muslim, THEN one can be a jihadist. Even using the ‘potential’ (can be) rather than ‘actual’ (is) tenses, this remains an invalid argument.
You won’t deal with fascism in our global world by forbidding a set of people who believe in it from entering one area of the world. You have to deal with the causes of this fascism and you ignore this.
No, I’m talking about statistics and probabilities, about the portion of a group that poses a threat. If you like to put it in individual terms like you do then my premise is that if one is a Muslim the chance of him being a threat physically or politically is much higher than if one belongs to any other religious group. I’m talking of threats that are motivated by one’s faith, not of, say, common criminals that just happen to belong to a certain religious groups. The chance of a Buddhist or a Hindu being a threat in the US (for religious reasons), for instance, is smaller than the chance of a Christian being a threat (it’s more likely that some Christian will blow up an abortion clinic than a Hindu or Buddhist blow up anything for religious reasons), which makes them less of a risk than the existing population, so immigration of large numbers of Buddhists and Hindus doesn’t increase the level of threat to the US (actually the Hindus are the richest and best educated religious group in the US, so it’s a net gain). The chance of a Muslim being a threat in the US is greater than the chance of a Christian being a threat, so immigration by large numbers of Muslims increases the level of threat in the US.
Of course, you would say this is illogical and factually wrong like you said about the facts I stated in my other comment above, but I don’t expect to have a rational discussion with you (let alone convince you of anything).
Actually, I’d agree with you that IF one is a jihadist, THEN, one is a Muslim. It’s easy to say that one doesn’t find such agendas in other religions, because, no religion other than Islam has a militant ideology.
But, the world cannot deal with this by simply isolating them from contact with the modern world. As I’ve tried to point out, such isolation is the reason for ‘homegrown’ Islamist militanism in the West. I think one has to understand the reasons for both the original militanism of Islam and its current fascist phase…which, of course, has nothing to do with poverty.
I’ve tried to explain my view of the origin of Islam, as a socio-economic-political ideology (almost nothing religious or metaphysical in it) based in a 7th c economy that was stressed by the advances of a DIFFERENT economic mode (settled agriculture) that was expanding into its land base.
And the modern origin of Islamic fascism as a reaction to the refusal of the Islamic nations to modernize, move out of a tribal sociopolitical system (two class) and enable a civic three class economic and political mode.
Isolating Muslims, either in the West or in the world, won’t enable their modernization and will instead, increase their fascist fundamentalism. I think it’s this basic infrastructure that has to be addressed; change comes from the ‘infrastructure’ not the ‘superstructure’; from the economic reality not from words.
Pnina – Must disagree with your statement about Islam being a faith (i.e., religion). It’s a totalitarian political ideology clothed in the pretense of religion.
Pnina – Indonesian as the poster child for mmslim tolerance should be wearing a bit thin by now, clearly you have been reading the news. Many haven’t. I live there.
Byzantine encroachment on pastoral Arabs? That’s anew one for me. I would like to read more.
Again, my own life experience intrudes – not empirical of course, but there seems to me to be far more to this than economic determinism. Religion is powerful, and its resurgence is a surprise to many, including me.
There are plenty of talented Muslim immigrants in the U.S. I went to school and have worked with some of them.
A fascinating conversation here, thank you Spengler.
But, all of you are outsiders, you see Islam & Muslims from the outside, your vantage point makes it difficult for you really understand the vast psychological differences between Westerners & those raised in an Islamic environment.
I would raise a few points.
Educational level has little to do with what you call ”radicalization” ….
In fact, it is often the case that the best educated are the most radical.
It is a question primarily of how much Islamic education a person experienced when young plus family tradition, primarily the father.
Another point is that you must separate the practice of Islam as a folk-religion from the ideology-oriented ”official” religion.
I would further add that far more Muslims than you think are not thrilled with Islam & were it not for legal enforcement, family & peer pressure, & the intense desire for conformity in Muslim society, many would happily abandon Islam.
Dear Mr. Goldman,
You are in error when you say 20% of Israelis are Moslem. The real stats:-
Jewish 75+%
Decline to state (mostly Russian) 4%
Arab Moslem 16%
Arab Druze 2%
Arab Christian a little less than 2%
Arabs 20%
Respectfully, Parchellan
P.S. Suggestion: Why do not write a blog about the IQ’s of various groups.
I believe you had a discussion of this issue when you were Spengler.
P.P.S. I have to rate you as one of the 10 best pundits (from the Sanskrit pandit) in the world.
IQ doesn’t vary by ethnic or religious group. Knowledge, however, does vary by cultural and religious group…and certainly, the knowledge bases are not equal and must be open to evaluation. The belief system of a primitive peasantry is not as objectively valid and rational as that of a western scientific belief system.
“IQ doesn’t vary by ethnic or religious group.”
No?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence
re “Knowledge”, it seems to me that one of the common threads among Muslim terrorists is an advanced western education. 9-11 was engineers and pediatrician sending a group of middle to upper class Muslims with college or professional educations, led by a german educated urban planner, to murder people who made these educations possible.
see also http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/akhwaja/media/madrassa/NYTimes.htm
It appears that the “primitive peasantry” are not the threat, but the guys who come to Europe or the US for college are. Perhaps because of their experience in western education they saw that the knowledge base of their culture was totally inadequate for the modern world, and grew to hate the west since it revealed their own shortcomings.
No, intelligence in our species isn’t an evolving gene; it’s an ‘averaging gene’ which means that in a population, over time, the IQ will average 100.
So, a wikipedia article (no disparagement to the source, for it can be valuable)..doesn’t prove that one group has a higher/lower IQ than another group.
What DOES develop, however, is the knowledge base, and the European Jews were focused on knowledge…as was most of Europe. They were operating in an industrial economy, in a civic rather than tribal mode, and thus, the focus was on individual achievement, questioning, analysis and knowledge development.
I accept your point about the peasantry not being the threat but could I add my analysis and clarification?
The peasantry in the ME are trapped in a ‘lack of real knowledge’ (not lack of IQ)with no means to develop a robust MODERN rather than primitive knowledge base. So, enabling the devt of a middle class isn’t easy – BUT – you can’t ignore the urbanization of the ME over the past few decades. This urban set is the ‘seat of the new middle class’…and their focus is on the economy and their political power. Not jihadism.
As I pointed out, the problem with fanaticism in the West, is that the West’s utterly stupid, ignorant, dumb…etc..insertion of multiculturalism as its basic treatment of immigrants led to the detachment of these Islamic immigrants from the REALITIES OF THE ECONOMY. That is, they were moved into economic isolation, maintained by welfare, and thus, not required to collaborate, assimilate, interact, function as entrepreneurs and individuals. They were set up in isolate ghettoes and actually encouraged and enabled, by grants, to continue on ‘as they were in the old land’…rather than assimilate.
This detachment from reality..enabled and encouraged jihadist utopianism. Remember, this ideology is in itself, detached from reality – not based in any economic requirements, not based in any political realities (votes), and based only in WORDS and RHETORIC..That’s why I’m advocating getting rid of this disastrous multicultural policy, rejecting political correctness, insisting on assimilation…using the Australian example of the ‘Values Statement’.
And the tribal leaders in power in the ME brainwash their youth into blaming all problems on ‘the West’..and..on industrialism. (Wright’s book, The Looming Tower is a nice analysis).
ETAB said: No, intelligence in our species isn’t an evolving gene; it’s an ‘averaging gene’ which means that in a population, over time, the IQ will average 100.
Sorry, that’s nonsense. The 100 is not something that is reached “over time.” The average IQ of a population is 100 by definition, unless the distribution is significantly skew. This does not mean that an IQ-100 individual in one population is equally intelligent as an IQ-100 individual in another population. If you treat the two populations as one, some individuals will have lower or higher IQs than they had in their original population.
Mr. Goldman, it is ambitious indeed to bet that Islam will be hollowed out by the modern world at a faster rate than the modern world is being hollowed out by the left.
Mr. Wilson,
That is exactly my point: we have more to fear from the left than we do from Islam. We had a lot to fear from the Soviet Union, which was a world power that put a man in space before we did. But Iran? They are a different order of danger. I want to put matters into perspective. If the idea is to rally the troops against the left by shouting, “The Muslims are coming!,” count me out. We need to hit Iran hard and fast to preempt nuclear weapons development — I’ve been arguing this all along — but let’s be clear about priorities.
I think there are number of issues that are entangled in a complex situation.
First, is the issue of a tribal mode of governance vs a civic mode. This is, I think, the key issue of the conflict.
The ME has operated in a tribal mode for its entire lifespan. A tribal mode is two-class, both essentially hereditary and inflexible: Rulers and Ruled. This stable mode is functional only in a no-growth, non-industrial population and economy. It is a collectivist ideology with rejection of individual actions and a focus on group stability. It has no capacity to adapt; its strength is stasis. Post WWII, for various reasons, particularly population size and the growth of industrialism, this mode has become dysfunctional in the ME. It must switch to a civic mode.
The civic mode is three-class, with the upper elite losing power; the lower losing population ratio..and the emergence of a middle class. This class, non-hereditary, is flexible, adaptive to change, engaged in the private small and medium economy. Politically and economically, power must move from the elite to the middle class.
Second, what we see happening with the growth of Islamic fundamentalism and fascism, is an attempt by the tribal Rulers to prevent the freedom and growth of a civic mode, and the growth of a middle class. The idea is that IF ONLY we can return to some mythic Pure Past, THEN, all poverty and problems etc will disappear. Of course, this is fiction, but..it exists.
Third, the Rulers of the tribal ME have made use of The Evil West in their attempt to divert internal unrest to the West. This is no longer working in the Islamic states. BUT – it IS working in the West…because..
Fourth, the West has made a serious error in its post WWII policy of multiculturalism. It allowed immigration without also insisting that the immigrant adapt and assimilate into the host country. AND, it enabled this rejection of assimilation by its welfare statist policies, where immigrants were, instead of being forced, by economic pressures, to work and develop small businesses…kept on welfare by the state. This isolated the immigrant group, and moved them, ideologically, into radicalism. That’s why the Western immigrant is more radical than the ME –
Multiculturalism must end, and immigration must function with a requirement for skills..and..a written acceptance of the host’s laws, language and norms. This is absolutely vital; the political correctness and spineless reaction of the West to Islamic demands – must be rejected. Beliefs can and must be evaluated and judged – rather than accepted.
Fifth – what we cannot ignore in the ME and Africa are the tribal cultures of the areas. These are thousands of years old, and frankly, have little to do with any intellectual understanding of Islam or theocracy. The hatreds and hostilities are tribal rather than purely religious – and this includes those in Israel-Palestine as well as in the other Arab and African countries. It isn’t ‘Islam’ per se; it’s tribal beliefs and behavior…and the only way to deal with these is to move the people out of a peasant agriculture into an industrial economy…which is, therefore, a civic mode.
Sixth – Iran is imperialist. Its agenda is political not religious. It wants control of the whole ME area – and poses an enormous threat to the region and world. The Iranian people, however, want freedom – and I still remember, with disgust, Obama’s ignoring and rejection of their fight for democracy.
Mr Goldman, and how about Pakistan with more warheads than Britain( less megatonnage, I’m sure.
David P. Goldman: “You don’t need telepathy to screen people …” – That is well put. It can be complicated but it is not rocket science.
For some reason there is an element in the conservative blogosphere that holds that a Muslim must be either a zombie with a default mechanism which is always at risk of switching to violent Jihad or a “Muslim in name only” or “Muslims for identification purposes only”. To reiterate from my comments above, I don’t deny the great problems in the Muslim world, I just know from experience that there are many folks who are sincere Muslims and who are also willing to fight for a liberal world order.
Morton @ #5 above asked, “Are you wise enough to know the difference between Muslims who take the explicit exhortations within Islam for terrorism, murder, and Jihad, from those who do not? Are you able to tell when those Muslims might chose to stop being “moderate” and become Jihadists? of course not”.
It is complicated, but it is not rocket science. In the real world, Muslims, like other people, respond to a set of carrots and sticks which vary based on their personal situation, family ties, finances, career goals, honor/shame, tribal affiliation, ideology, and also religion. One evaluates them, as with any other person, by how they behave and respond to carrots and sticks.
Finally, it is interesting that there are a fair number of cases of the commanders and senior NCOs of US combat units in Iraq who subsequently sponsored their local national interpreters for US citizenship. These experienced U.S. combat soldiers had a chance to live and work alongside these Iraqis for a year and that was their verdict.
As a side note, based on media accounts and personal observation, I would say that a majority of the cases of Afghans turning firearms on US or NATO staff are not cases of a “sleeper agent” or the “Jihad switch” suddenly flipping, but dysfunctional personalities and stressful situations.
Today we have a perfect example of how the Islamic invasion of the West works. It is a trivial example on the surface, but significant. In NY there is a famous amusement park called Playland, and there is a rule banning headgear. This rule is to prevent injury and possible strangulation and such preventable accidents on the rides. Today When a bunch of Muslim women were told they cannot ride unless they abandon their headgear, 30-40 Muslims start a riot. The police AR called in. The Muslim Gestapo like CAIRO get involved.
Again, this is a trivial example, but telling. Here’s how it works: When our “infidel” laws contradict the imperious dictates of Islamic sharia habits, mores, sensibilities, and stricture, OUR laws must make way for the Muslim’s laws… OR ELSE.
Fools who assert that moderate Islam will win the day would gladly pay on Tuesday for the hamburger they eat today. So David P. Goldman attacks those who suggest that the inimical and deadly culture of Islam does not belong in the West and calls them bigots, “stupid”, etc. But there is plenty of evidence that we are correct to be worried, and little to prove that his airy opinion is correct or safe.
As Muslim increase in the West, those so-called “moderate” Muslims on which the David P. Goldmans base their dangerous opinions will yield to the cancerous forces of Sharia and violent Jihad. What happened in Playland today was, simply put, Jihad to defend Islam. Sure, on some level it’s a pathetic laughable joke… but the violence is deliberate, part and parcel of Islam’s mechanism to advance the influence and power of Islam. And Islam, once advanced, will continue to assert Jihad, including violence and the threat of violence to maintain and hold conquered territory.
This is what is going on wherever a Muslim sues or throws a tantrum because our infidel laws and customs “violate” their religion, or “offend” their sensibilities. We must prove to them we are “tolerant” of their intolerance, so we yield.
Do we really want an escalating future where Muslim demands gradually give rise to riots, car burnings, and hundreds or thousands of Muslim “no go zones” like we see in France today? Do we really want a future where Muslims wage riots in amusement parks until the infidels yield to their violence and Sharia sensibilities, or where 1000 infidel children are forced to eat “halal” meat prepared by an imam because one or two Muslim pupils “demand” it? Do we really want to live in an America where Muslim triumphalists, abetted by idiot apologists, rape our decency and our tolerance and our Constitution to insinuate their religion into every aspect of our existence? Do we really want to see an America where Muslims promote and expand their intolerant totalitarian filth through lawfare, riots, terrorism, and the like???
Do we really want a future where Muslims implement sharia restrictions on what “infidels” can say about Islam? Where Muslims sue bloggers and American citizens for daring to challenge their hideous murderous legacy of Islam, or where those who call for the expulsion of Muslims before it’s too late are marginalized as “stupid” by Islam’s apologists? Oh wait, that’s already happening. It ALL is happening, but fools refuse to see with the eyeballs in their heads.
Yep. It’s guys like me who are intolerant and stupid, not guys like David P. Goldman who apparently is fine with the intolerant Muslim marauders and invaders.
Well said, Morton. Unfortunately, your argument is lost on the likes of Goldman. They’d rather quote the Bible and turn their other cheek(s) while watching the barbarians gut Rome – oops Western Civilization.
May we review?
First, I do not believe in “turning the other cheek” as a general principle; I am Jewish, and I read the phrase in the context of Lamentations 3:30, in a very different way than the usual Christian presentation. I believe in doing onto others before they do unto you.
There are roughly 1.5 billion Muslims. Their civilization is crashing. Saudi Arabia has enough money to keep the Magic Kingdom going for some time, to be sure, but Iran is headed for national ruin — the end of the Persian nation after three thousand years. And they are past the point of no return, in my judgment. Turkey is not far behind. The non-oil-producing Arab states mostly are in chaos; Egypt imports half its caloric consumption, and is going broke. We are watching a catastrophe, to coin a phrase, of biblical proportions. We don’t have to worry about the building coming down. That’s going to happen one way or another. We do need to worry about falling on our heads.
What do we do about it? Waving ones arms and shouting, “Keep them all out!,” is childish. We are dealing with a disaster involving a quarter of the world’s population.
First, we don’t try to fix it. That’s not within our power. No more nation-building.
Second, when there is a threat, we preempt it. Five years ago a surgical strike might have neutralized Iran’s nuclear program. Today, that might require hastening Iran’s national ruin, but we need to do it nonetheless.
Third, we need to deal with Pakistan, which we can’t do by playing carroty-sticksy with the ISI. I’ve advocated an open alliance with India (and managing China will a complex and difficult job, because China can neutralize anything we do about Pakistan if it is sufficiently motivated to do so).
Fourth, we cooperate with the Arab states that for whatever reason align with our interests–including Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s least likable regimes.
In this context, we reach out to individual Muslims who are trying to save themselves from the catastrophe around them. We need friends and collaborators to deal with this mess. That ought to be obvious.
Now, there are a lot of other things we might do; consider, hypothetically, if US universities funded Koranic criticism rather than apologetics in their Middle East studies departments. That’s just hypothetical, mind you. If Terry Jones could get the whole Muslim world riled up by threatening to burn a Koran, imagine what possibilities are out there.
I’ve often thought that the final examine for doctoral candidates in theology should be to invent a heresy for some other religion (and it should include a lab). There are all sorts of things to do, but they shouldn’t be talked about, except hypothetically.
Now, if you want to huff and puff about how dreadful Islam is and how dangerous Muslims are, go right ahead and let off steam. But if you look at the world map and the relevant demographics, it should be obvious that a degree of thought is required. And out of 1.5 billion Muslims, there will be millions whom we want to win to American principles. And among them there are many millions of very good people, whom it would be monstrous to write off (collateral damage is another thing — no way to avoid that).
It’s fact that the US never recruited a single Soviet-zone agent; all the important spies were walk-ins. If we could win Russian (and Eastern European) Communists to our side, all the more so should we expect to win support of many Muslims.
David – your worst mistake in this analysis is assuming that a successful Islamic society would look anything like our own. It needn’t, and wouldn’t. Further, by just about any metric, Islam is on a roll compared to a mere 40 years ago. Islam, I I’ve said before, had run out of plunder and prospects, and was still reeling from the utter collapse of the last Caliphate under the Ottomans… But then oil was dicscoved, and the spigots of Jihad began at first to trickle again.
Today Muslims are healthier and better fed than they’ve ever been before.
Muslims have more and better access to Western technologies than they’ve ever had before to convert to whatever means they see fit – unfortunately this almost always ends up being Jihad, whether through direct violence, or simply through the birthing of more Muslim babies – babies who will eventyally become foot soldiers. They have nukes, and nukes are proliferating among the Muslims. They will eventually use these nukes – ON US.
It’s just possible that the ignorance, filth, and bad plumbing across the arc of Islam is a feature, not bug, of what happens when Islam asserts itself and is functioning on all cylinders. Within Islam they have little concept of the plight of the little man – it’s all for Allah, and that means tyrants and high priests get most of the loot. That’s how a vibrant Islam looks. Lots of nasty super rich bosses, and lots of pissed off peons.
Also, as a measure of success, Muslim populations have exploded over the last four decades – so much so that in addition to exporting dates, terrorism and oil, Muslims are sending their excess populations to establish new beach heads for the umma. Not only are there now more Muslms alive today, there are more Muslims residing in as-yet unconquered territories than ever before.
40 years ago, almost no Muslims existed outside the moribund precincts of Islam; many other cultures still had toe-holds in those Islamic precincts. Today, through Jihad, aka ethnic cleansing, Jihad, aka terrorism, Jihad, aka forced conversions, genocide, and the like, Islam is expressed more virulently and forcefully than it has in centuries.
Islam doesn’t need to be a neat well run operation according to your standards and yardsticks. I’d argue that Islam thrives on billions of illiterate, hungry people who still get enough to eat so that the population is always reaching skyward.
To reiterate my point which you ridiculed, if given the opportunity and the resources, Islam will exploit them to wage Jihad. They are stronger today, richer today, better armed today, and more numerous today, they are more well situated today, with unprecedented access to the means and opportunities to wage Jihad.
But you imagine Islam is collapsing. It is an incoherent conclusion to arrive at, given the facts.
Interesting point about Lamentations 3, within which “turning the other cheek” seems to be a prescription for enduring oppression and punishment from God, while awaiting the outpouring of His lovingkindness.
But I don’t think such an interpretation conflicts with the Christian one. Apostles, as persecuted vessels of His lovingkindness, are simply required to apply this rule constantly in this life.
Jeremiah referred specifically to Israel’s acceptance of Babylonian rule, in contrast to the disastrous Egyptian alliance of King Jehoiakim. It does not make sense to me that Jesus proposed to turn the other cheek to all enemies under all circumstances; otherwise Christians would be constrained to be pacifists. To me, it makes more sense to read Jesus’ remark as a warning against a prospective uprising against Rome. The Christians opposed the revolt when it finally came in 66 C.E.. along with most of the Pharisees.
Read my book.
David – I couldn’t link to your reply to Norm, so I have linked to your stand-alone about your forthcoming book. In any event, you made a statement in the comment to Norm about most Pharisees opposing the rebellion in 66. I don’t think that is entirely accurate (although I will check further on that). The reason I say so is that one major Pharisee, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel the Elder was killed by the Romans, suggesting that at least some Pharisees were in favor of, and took part in the rebellion. I also note that Josephus, who in his Vita claims to be a Pharisee, initially took part in the rebellion until he figured out that the Romans were too powerful to defeat.
As I see it, Mr. Goldman’s argument boils down to the problem not being with Islam, but with the absence of an adequate response to it because the left is preventing that.
Like many of the commenters here, I have immersed myself in HBD, including the odious Razib, and antijihad spheres, and am coming to this from a similar angle as they are coming from. There, explanations can be found for what is going on, that cannot be found elsewhere.
But like others here I have also been following Mr. Goldman’s work, and for example actually read Rosenzweig’s work.
I have to say that Mr. Goldman’s arguments are starting to persuade me.
I moved my family from Northwestern Europe to the US because of islamic anti-semitism, among other reasons, and the realization that it would be impossible for my children to have a normal life there as adults. I agree with Goldman that those areas are beyond saving.
But once in the US, it became hard for me to reconcile the fact that my oldest son is about to go to the Naval Academy with the election of Obama and the persistence of hard-core leftism in the American public.
If I think that my muslim co-citizens are as dangerous as Al-Quaeda, there is little hope. However, if I see that radical muslims are only dangerous because we allow them to be – as argued above because of leftism – there is hope, at least in the US.
Maybe, antijihad sites show those problem as they are, just as HBD sites show those problems as they are.
But for me solutions cannot be found there. For a workable society, HBD needs to be merged somehow with justice and the US constitution. For a workable society, stopping radical islam has to be merged somehow with justice.
In other words, the primary problem is not that some muslims are out to kill me, or that some populations have lower IQ than others.
The primary problem may indeed be that leftism prevents us from dealing adequately with these problems – firstly, by denying that these problems exist, and secondly, by taking the tools to battle these problems from us.
Looking forward to the book, which will certainly lead to heated debate
I am confused. I am arguing that Islam is in a civilizational tailspin because it cannot confront modernity. How does that equate to the idea that the problem is not with Islam? Radical Muslims are dangerous. All Muslims are not dangerous, and we cannot engage a quarter of the world’s population in the midst of its existential crisis without dealing with many of them personally.
“How does that equate to the idea that the problem is not with Islam?”
-> I argued the contrary.
If the primary problem is Islam a) I will want to completely study and understand this and b) we are clearly losing.
If the primary problem is a lack of adequate defense because that is disallowed by multiculturalism, we need to tackle that, and there is no need for me to be very much interested in Hadith Sahih Muslim, 41:6985.
Compare it to measles. If anti-modernity, rife in leftist circles, stops parents from vaccinating their children so they are killed by that virus, the primary problem is the ideas that lead parents to think that way, not the measles. To be clear, this is not to compare one to the other, just to explain the parallel concept of primary problem and defense.
My wife is Jewish, though her father was a muslim from Indonesia, and half my inlaws are Muslim. So I fully agree with the idea “we cannot engage a quarter of the world’s population in the midst of its existential crisis without dealing with many of them personally”.
In general the Pharisees did not favor the rebellion. Once the rebellion became a national matter, though, the Pharisees joined it, but it was the Pharisee leader Yochanan ben Zakkai who left Jerusalem (by tradition, smuggled out in a coffin) and persuaded the Roman commander and future Emperor Vespasian to allow him to found a yeshiva at Yavne. That is why Judaism survived. The Pharisees had already established synagogue life before the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and maintained the continuity of Jewish life after the Sadducee Temple elite was destroyed.