Posted on 03/15/2006 4:55:42 AM PST by SJackson
I recently spoke at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague, which focused on Europe’s growing immigration crisis and imminent Islamization; Bat Ye’or, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes, Douglas Murray and others were also featured speakers. The first night we were in The Hague there was a reception for us at the American Embassy. The new Ambassador, Roland E. Arnall, hadn't arrived yet, but I had a pleasant conversation with our host, Deputy Chief of Mission Chat Blakeman.
Blakeman introduced me to an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders. We began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim leaders she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only very few, but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I asked her if she had read the Qur’an. She told me no, she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it, she still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter what.
I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.
She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when cooperation was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you’re not getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is to be gained by pretending that it isn’t happening?
I don’t envy this articulate and intelligent young lady her job. But her remarks reminded me of a message I received not long ago, after I had criticized former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s bit of Wall Street Journal puffery about how Islam is really a religion of peace. A reader took me to task for “suggesting that Islam is irredeemable in some sense.” He asked: “if we assume this to be true, what is to be done. What would Mr. Spencer suggest that this or any American president do to deal with this reality. Wahid was thought to be a step in the right direction when he was president of the extremely large population of Indonesia, but if he is not much more than a ‘trumped-up counterfeit,’ where do we go from here.”
Where do we go from here? We go to reality. We stop deceiving ourselves and allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. If Wahid was being disingenuous about the teachings of Islam, then he doesn’t offer Westerners hope. He offers them a weak reed that will collapse when they need it the most. Why? Because Muslims who are attracted by the siren song of jihad will see through his pleasing platitudes and recognize how slim a case he really has with reference to the Islamic texts. Westerners can be fooled by him, and Muslims can’t. The young lady in the Dutch Ministry of Integration, despite her best efforts to ignore or deny this reality, kept coming up against it: she found that only a small minority of Muslim leaders in Holland were at all interested in working toward integration.
Eventually the Dutch Ministry of Integration and other administrative bodies in the Western world are going to have to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and with the implications of other facts about Islamic jihad that so far they have preferred to pretend did not exist. What would I suggest that the President do about this reality? I would suggest that he acknowledge it as a reality. That he address the nation and the world, and tell them that the United States is going to lead the resistance to jihad and Sharia supremacism in the name of equality of rights and dignity of all peoples. That any state that oppresses non-Muslims or denies them equality of rights in any way will receive no American aid whatsoever. That any state that allows the idea that Muslims must make war against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit to the Islamic social order will be no friend of the United States. That the idea that the U.S. Constitution should one day be replaced by Islamic Sharia, whether by violent or non-violent means, will be understood within the United States as seditious.
The Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference was one small effort to bring Dutch officials, and ultimately the West at large, to confront the realities of our world that the world is doing all it can to deny. Bat Ye’or spoke about how European officials themselves had brought Eurabia into being by encouraging immigration while eschewing assimilation at the insistence of the Arab League. Only now are Europeans realizing that their culture, their soul, has been sold by their leaders for oil, and the jihad is upon them.
It is a reality so bleak that it is no wonder that most officials prefer fantasy. But they won’t be able to maintain their comfortable illusions much longer.
the only good muslim is a dead muslim
I agree.
And the best mulim is a muslim that is good and dead.
Then he can kill no more.
Thanks for this.
I am aware of that. the one around here that I have personally run into are mostly muslim.
The Hindus run a Dunkin donuts..but thats it. all the gas stations and convenience stores in my neck of the woods is muslim owned.
They refuse to admit there is a problem because then they have to deal with it. The fact that the problem gets worse the longer they do nothing is another issue.
I wish I knew how to contact Robert Spencer.
He should point out to that woman of the Dutch Ministry of Integration that she is in a classic battered-woman's syndrome. The men she deals with clearly want to dominate, have no respect, and are barely kept in check by gestures of submission and appeasement.
Jihad on them??? What do you mean? They have been nothing but nice to those people, it's the evil Americans that are the problem. Why, didn't let those muslims know that we supported them on our great welfare program and if we were nice to them, they would only go after those meany American pigs???
I don't understand!
BTTT. Straight talk is needed. Head under the covers mealy mouthed appeasement is not.
Anymore about the car bomb in Paris? If you find anything, post it please.
Too late. Too little.
That would be a wonderful moment and is, in fact, the only possible strategy for dealing with this. Name the enemy and make the battle and its terms clear. This would also free up any Muslims who want to oppose "jihad" to do so.
Sadly, it's not going to happen.
I don't mean conversion to Christianity (or Judaism, or Hindusim, or . . .), but conversion to (lower-case) democracy. They must accept that infidels have all the same rights Muslims do. Since this would be a violation of the Koran, I describe it as "conversion," which is essentially the same term the Muslims use.
If they won't convert, then Dhimmitude is the next alternative, just as the Muslims offer it to Christians and Jews in Muslim countries. We need to rule the Islamic world in much the same way the British Empire ruled India. Let them have those customs that are harmless to us, or that don't violate basic human rights (like suttee), but otherwise just keep the lid on them.
If neither of those work, there is only one alternative left. And we'd better make it clear we mean it.
You really mean republicanism, not democracy. In a republic we recognize a higher authority than the State. (Our brand of repubicanism grows out of Christian freedom, but that is another discussion.)
Other than this criticism, this approach seems the only secular answer that has some chance of working.
Thanks for looking.
LOL Do you give me the look my wife gives me when she says that.
If that was true we would of made a treaty with the Germans in 1940.
Plus I have no idea how many Muslims you think live in Britain so here is the 2005 census just for you.
Total population: 58.8 million
Muslim population: 1.6 million (2.8%)
If you think 2.8% is too little too late hell what would you be like in a firefight ,if the odds were against us, running round screaming doomed doomed we are all doomed.
That's the easy part. Deporting those who are already there will be the difficult part.
Here, too.
Answer: Give them martyrdom.
BUMP
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