Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Steyn: 'Stewardship of the earth' will belong to Islam
Insight ^ | 11/27/2006 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 11/28/2006 2:21:24 PM PST by El Gato

Commentary by Mark Steyn

Have you seen a movie called Four Jills In A Jeep? Don’t worry, it’s not at the multiplex. It came out in 1944. It was a wartime movie, about the contribution of the gals to the big existential struggle. Great title, and downhill after that. This column is, metaphorically speaking, four Jills in a jeep: it’s about a quartet of ladies who provide useful glimpses of where we’re heading.

The first is Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar, a 57-year old grandmother who had a livelier Thanksgiving than most gran’mas. She marked the occasion by self-detonating in the town of Jabaliya, and, although all she had to show for splattering her body parts over the neighborhood were three “lightly wounded” Israeli soldiers, she will have an honored place in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes: She was, according to the official statistician from The Hamas Book Of Records, the oldest Palestinian suicide bomber ever. And, naturally, her family’s pleased as punch.

“We are really happy,” her son Zuheir told Agence France-Presse. “She told us last night that she would do a suicide operation. She prepared her clothes for that operation and we are proud. ‘I don’t want anything, only to die a martyr.’ That’s what she said.”

Awww, bless the sweet l’il ol’ biddy. She wouldn’t have wanted to die a long lingering death in some old folks’ home. This is the way she wanted to go: quick and painless, except for any Zionists in the immediate vicinity.

Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar gave birth to her first child at the age of 12. She had eight others. She had 41 grandchildren. Keep that family tree in mind. By contrast, in Spain, a 57-year old woman will have maybe one grandchild. That’s four grandparents, one grandchild: a family tree with no branches.

Which brings me to our second Jill: the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to run a national division of the Anglican Communion. Bishop Kate gave an interview to The New York Times revealing what passes for orthodoxy in this most flexible of faiths. She was asked a simple enough question: “How many members of the Episcopal Church are there?”

“About 2.2 million,” replied the Presiding Bishop. “It used to be larger percentage-wise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations.”

This was a bit of a jaw-dropper even for a New York Times hackette, so, with vague memories of God saying something about going forth and multiplying floating around the back of her head, a bewildered Deborah Solomon said: “Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?”

“No,” agreed Bishop Kate. “It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”

Now that may or may not be a great idea but it’s nothing to do with Christianity, only for eco-cultists like Al Gore. If Bishop Kate were an Episcogorian, a member of the Alglican Communion, an elder of the Church of Latter-Day Chads, this would be an unremarkable statement. But, even in their vigorous embrace of gay bishoprics and all the rest, I don’t recall the Episcopalians formally embracing the strategy that worked out so swell for the Shakers and enshrining a disapproval of reproduction at the heart of their doctrine.

Which brings me to our third Jill in the jeep: Scarlett Johansson. Like every other sad middle-aged loser guy, I fell in love with Scarlett’s fetchingly pert bottom in the opening of Lost In Translation, and it pains me to discover she’s no different from Bishop Kate’s generation when it comes to being in thrall to the cobwebbed pieties of the 1960s. In a bit of light Bush-bashing the other day, she attacked the president for his opposition to “sex education.” If he had his way, she said, “every woman would have six children and we wouldn’t be able to have abortions.” Whereas Scarlett is so “socially aware” (as she puts it) she gets tested for HIV twice a year.

Well, yes. If “sex education” is about knowing which concrete condom is less likely to disintegrate during the livelier forms of penetrative intercourse, then getting an Aids test every few months may well be a sign that you’re a PhD (Doctor of Phenomenal horniness). But, if “sex education” means an understanding of sexuality as anything other than an act of transient self-expression, then Scarlett is talking through that famously cute butt.

Here’s the question for Bishop Kate: if Fatima Omar has 41 grandchildren and a responsible “better educated” Episcopalian has one or two, into whose hands are we delivering “the stewardship of the earth”? If your crowd isn’t around in any numbers, how much influence can they have in shaping the future?

Well, the Episcopal head honcho and even Scarlett Johansson are not the most powerful figures in the world, so let’s usher on our fourth Jill: Condoleezza Rice. “The great majority of Palestinian people,” said the Secretary of State to Cal Thomas the other day, “they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don’t believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that’s what people are going to do.”

Cal Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: “Do you think this or do you know this?”

“Well, I think I know it,” said Dr. Rice.

“You think you know it?”

“I think I know it.”

So many of our present woes are due to thinking we know things. To our four Jills in the jeep, let’s add one Jim, apparently back at the steering wheel in the current war: James Baker, renowned foreign policy “realist” and the man Beltway wags are currently referring to as “the acting Secretary of State.” The “realists” think that “containment” and “stability” are wise strategies. In fact, they’re the absence of strategy. The fertility rate in the Gaza Strip is one of the highest on earth. If you measure the births of the Muslim world against the dearth of Bishop Kate’s Episcopalians, you have the perfect snapshot of why there is no “stability”: with every passing month, there are more Muslims and fewer Episcopalians, and the Muslims export their manpower to Europe and other depopulating outposts of the West. It’s the intersection of demography and Islamism that makes time a luxury we can’t afford.

We can argue about exactly what this trend means, but not that it means nothing. At the very minimum, I’d suggest, it means the Episcopal Church is irrelevant to “the stewardship of the earth” and that Scarlett Johansson will end her days on an earth whose stewards regard being tested for HIV twice as a sign of many things, but not, on the whole, “social awareness.”

- Mark Steyn is a nationally syndicated columnist


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: culture; islam; jihad; steyn
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-58 last
To: El Gato

An excellent, excellent commentary and so very true.

Educated Americans have been contracepting or aborting away their offspring for forty years now...ever since Paul Ehrlich wrote his dismal tome "The Population Bomb".

The Arabs, who never read it, will go on popping out all the babies they can, and Steyn's column will turn out to have been prophetic.


41 posted on 11/28/2006 5:06:18 PM PST by Palladin ("Open a new window; open a new door; travel a new highway.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: El Gato
The fertility rate in the Gaza Strip is one of the highest on earth

In an article on FR just a day or two ago it said the average (or it might have been median) age of Palestinians was 15.2.

42 posted on 11/28/2006 5:06:26 PM PST by Northern Alliance
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kinoxi

I have no link to Isaac Asimov. And, I don't understand the connection in any case. On the other hand, the link to Steyn is imbedded in the header. You can link to his book America Alone on Amazon. It's worth a read, and better than science fiction.


43 posted on 11/28/2006 5:16:27 PM PST by John Valentine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: John Valentine

I find it good reading but occasionally alarmist. I do not consider him a prophet therefore I inherently doubt the veracity of his statements concerning the future. If you think the guy is a prophet then go ahead, enjoy. I reserve the right to disagree.


44 posted on 11/28/2006 5:20:55 PM PST by kinoxi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: El Gato
According to this month's Esquire magazine, Scarlett is the sexiest woman alive. What a shame she's not passing on those genes.


45 posted on 11/28/2006 6:13:56 PM PST by AZLiberty (In Hillary's view they're not Illegal immigrants and convicted felons, but disenfranchised Democrats)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: caseinpoint

one grandfather had thirteen natural siblings,

How many unnatural siblings did he have?


46 posted on 11/28/2006 6:37:58 PM PST by Chickensoup (If you don't go to the holy war, the holy war will come to you.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Victoria Delsoul

120 Proof Steynahol PING!


47 posted on 11/28/2006 6:41:27 PM PST by HitmanLV (Rock, Rock, Rock and Rollergames! Rockin' & Rolling, Rockin' with Rollergames!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chickensoup

Wise guy!


48 posted on 11/28/2006 6:45:47 PM PST by Palladin ("Open a new window; open a new door; travel a new highway.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: Chickensoup

Well, there was Aunt Sadie . . . . LOL


49 posted on 11/28/2006 6:58:55 PM PST by caseinpoint (Don't get thickly involved in thin things.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: AZLiberty

"According to this month's Esquire magazine, Scarlett is the sexiest woman alive."
The editors at Esquire need to get out more often. I can go to downtown Ft. Worth at lunchtime any day of the week and see several ladies that are sexier, prettier and that actually have brains.
Big brains.


50 posted on 11/28/2006 7:12:36 PM PST by Abcdefg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: kinoxi
If you think the guy is a prophet then go ahead, enjoy. I reserve the right to disagree.

I certainly have never applied the term "prophet" to Mark Steyn, nor would I be likely to.

As to your right to disagree, disagree away: with me, with Steyn, with whomever. Knock yourself out.

I find Steyn intersting and thought provoking. That's really all I ask of a political writer.

51 posted on 11/28/2006 9:47:24 PM PST by John Valentine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: John Valentine
You scare susceptible people with your presentation.
52 posted on 11/28/2006 9:51:48 PM PST by kinoxi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: tarheelswamprat

The Brits in control of Ireland would call him a Borg, but his name was 'Quintus', latin for 5.


53 posted on 11/28/2006 10:32:51 PM PST by SFC Chromey (We are at war with Islamofascists, now ACT LIKE IT!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: SFC Chromey
The Brits in control of Ireland would call him a Borg, but his name was 'Quintus', latin for 5.

I'll bet 'Sextus' was the wild one of the bunch... /grin

54 posted on 11/28/2006 10:50:28 PM PST by tarheelswamprat (So what if I'm not rich? So what if I'm not one of the beautiful people? At least I'm not smart...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: El Gato

global jihad bump


55 posted on 11/29/2006 11:29:59 PM PST by Dajjal (See my FR homepage for new essay about Ahmadinejad.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: My2Cents
Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar, a 57-year old grandmother: She was probably caught selling herself to younger males to provide for herself and was offered the choices of having a son kill her, to committ suicide, or to become a homicide bomber. I doubt this was done willingly.
56 posted on 11/30/2006 11:25:57 AM PST by attiladhun2 (Islam is a despotism so vile that it would warm the heart of Orwell's Big Brother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: El Gato

bttt


57 posted on 11/30/2006 11:40:50 AM PST by PogySailor (Media bias? What media bias)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: attiladhun2

Who says that Islamic cultures don't offer their people choices!?


58 posted on 11/30/2006 2:39:54 PM PST by My2Cents
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 56 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-58 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson