“How strange and foreign monotheism must have seemed to the Romans,” James Lileks writes:
I can understand you having your own god, my good man, but to exclusion of all others? Really? Nothing left for the rest of us, then. Well. I would really like to study it more, because I have this suspicion that the effective and practical members of the Roman political class were mostly social believers and private agnostics, indifferent to the supposed whims of the gods and unconvinced of their agency in human affairs. There’s a nice moment in the HBO series “Rome,” where the young Octavian – later the God Augustus, of course – casually dismisses the prospect of divine intercession, but admits the possibility the existence of a Prime Mover. Seems apt for the character, both in fiction and history. Deists make good rulers. Discuss!
Flash-forward to 2010 AD. As April Gavaza writes, some European women believe they know “which way the wind blows:”
There are so many things I could write about this story, but I am tired and in the midst of a Psych marathon. Stories of upper class European women converting to Islam are becoming common, and while I don’t begrudge anyone a religious experience or two, it’s so much more complicated than that. The author of this article was raised Muslim, and I believe she handles the subject well.
The explanation given by several of the women — that the decadent, amoral lifestyle we’ve been told we’re supposed to aspire to is soul-destroyingly empty — just proves that the human heart longs for something more than this world can offer. Can that something be found in Islam? As a Christian and a woman, I find it highly unlikely. (Which exposes my intrinsic bigotry and blah blah blah.) But the point is that even when a society does its best to erase God, the longing remains. We need something beyond this shitty world where everything seems so pointless and random.
And besides, these ladies can be the first to make Hermes hijabs all the rage.
Responding to Kathy Shaidle’s take on the temper tantrum by the Canadian press, when the multiculti citizens of Toronto failed choose poorly at election time this week in the eyes of their media betters*, Mark Steyn writes:
In the very year that Toronto became a “majority minority” society, a liberal homosexual (and married gay parent) goes down to a far greater defeat than any of the Trudeaupian establishment predicted.Well, who do you think voted against him, geniuses?
A few months after 9/11, I was strolling along the Boulevard de Maisonneuve in Montréal. Across the street there was an “adult” shop with its window full of very explicit gay sex paraphernalia. Struggling past it, laden with shopping bags, was a Muslim woman covered from head to toe. It’s not hard to figure where we’re going:
In ten years’ time, the Muslim woman will still be here, along with many others. The gay sex shop will be gone.
April is right though: “Even when a society does its best to erase God, the longing remains.” Islam is one choice to fill that void; this is another, along with this prominent subset. (Notice who squares the circle.)
* Fortunately, America’s elite media is both much smarter and much more tolerant of dissent to make that same fatal mistake, right Katie?
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