D'Souza Points Conservatives Toward Disaster (latest book)

Human Events ^ | January 30, 2007 | Robert Spencer

[Clintonfatigued]

Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, "The Enemy At Home," claims that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11” by spreading around the world “a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies, especially those in the Islamic world that are being overwhelmed with this culture.”

In response, D’Souza urges social conservatives to build a coalition with what he calls “traditional Muslims.” He acknowledges, however, that these Muslims have no theological differences with jihadists. Throughout his book D’Souza shows no awareness whatsoever of the jihad ideology. In fact, he asserts that “despite the religious enthusiasm of many suicide bombers, Islam has been around for more than a thousand years, and for most of its history it produced neither suicide attackers nor terrorists. It is only contemporary Islam that provides an inspiration for suicide missions and attacks on civilians.”

This is comforting, but false. Today’s suicide attacks are a matter of technological progress: It does not represent a theological divergence from traditional Islam. Suicide attack recruiters today point to Koran 9:111, which guarantees Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah. This was not added into the Koran by contemporary Muslims, and has been acted upon by Muslims in the past: John Paul Jones encountered suicide attacks by Muslim Turks in 1788.

As for attacks on civilians, they are not forbidden in all cases in Islamic law. And in Islamic history, attacks on civilians are numerous. Muslim raiders, who, from the 17th to 19th Centuries, kidnapped thousands of British men, women and children and sold them into brutal slavery in North Africa, believed they were warriors of Islam engaged in a jihad. In 1148, Muslim commander Nur ed-Din ordered the killing of every Christian in Aleppo. Terrorism? Certainly. Moreover, this was part of an imperialistic pattern

[KC_Conspirator]

“the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”

But there is some truth to the fact that the left laid the groudwork for islamonazi terrorists by lulling America to sleep all through the 90's.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

I can't accept the thesis of his book. It will be a long time before I read another of his books.

A perpetrator may see some action of the victim as sufficient reason to carry out the crime. However the perpetrator is fully responsible for the crime because the perpetrator committed the crime. The victim did not commit the crime.

Sometimes mental midgets use words like "his words caused me to get angry and kill him". They do not know the meaning of "Cause". It is not a cause.
The cerebrally challenged then replies: "I wouldn't have done it if he hadn't said what he said". True. But the victim's words are not the cause. The perpetrator's action is the cause.

Same reasoning applies when a rapist blames the victim for dressing immodestly. "Her short skirt made me do it". Bullfeathers. Nothing compelled him to do it.

It is common for leftists, by definition mentally deficient, to discard the idea of cause and effect, and of personal responsibility for one's actions.

This once-great author has fallen into the same trap. He is saying that the decadence in Western civilization provoked the jihadists to kill, maim, decapitate, blow up trains and airplanes, and generally act like savages.

We should clean up the decadence. We should not be proud of Brittney and Anna Nicole. We should be ashamed of them. But they are no excuse for the murder and mayhem.

[steve-b]

Yep. Also, the thesis is pathetically self-serving -- what an amazing coincidence that neither Dinesh D'Sousa, nor Jerry Falwell, nor Pat Robertson, nor Noam Chomsky, nor Michael Moore, nor anybody else uttered a screed alleging that the faction of America they previously agreed with was somehow responsible for 9/11....

[livius]

how few words would need to be changed to convert this "argument" into a screed against Ugly Amerikan Corporations that could have flowed from the pen of Noam Chomsky.

Too true. I honestly can't imagine what got into D'Souza, whom I used to consider very intelligent.

[Chgogal]

:)

Or when "Westerners" are hangin at a most lovely beach (Ao Nang) in a Thai province known as Krabi, which happens to be right on the border of the Thai Muslim Provinces and Europeans (in this case Swedish) were roaming around nude right in front of Muslim men. The Muslim men were upset and yet the "global" Swedes were insensitive to their hosts. Don't know what Uncle Noam would think about this or how he could blame Ugly Amerikan Corporations for this boorish behavior of the part of the Swedes. Granted roaming around naked in Sweden or Holland is fine, but not necessarily advisable in a Muslim country or province. Keep in mind that the Thai Muslim provinces are in a religious uprising - 28 bombs rust went off this past week.

[steve-b]

Too true. I honestly can't imagine what got into D'Souza, whom I used to consider very intelligent.

Agreed.

(Actually, rereading that quote, I realize that it's worse than I'd thought -- it could be seamlessly dropped into a Noam Chomsky screed against "Western Imperialism" without altering a jot or tittle....)

[Chgogal]

Just curious, have you been to Muslim countries? I don't mean this in a condescending way.

[Chgogal]

What I believe D'Souza is trying to convey in Marketing terms is market segmentation. He is trying to ween the moderates from the rabid. The Asian Muslims from the Mideast Muslims, the more temperate from the rabid so that the West doesn't have to fight all of them at once (if at all). The most interesting example he gave was an NGO passing out condoms to young teenage girls in backward villages of Bangladesh which of course pissed off the elders. These villages now identify condoms with the USA and that is all they know about the West. D'Souza hypothesizes that the Left is the imperialistic face of Western Culture and is trying to convert foreign countries to their philosophy, culture, etc. This understandably antagonizes not only remote villages but complete regions which become feeding grounds to the more rabid Imams of Islam.

Now would Uncle Noam attack the Left's pet projects? I tend to doubt that.

D'Souza's points that I found interesting:

1) Moderate Muslims (ones who have not yet become rabid) cannot identify with the West as represented by the NGOs, MSM and Hollywood.

2) After WW2 mainstream morality was internalized (the Me Generation - What I feel is right). Prior to that main street morality came from outside, i.e. common belief in God.

3) The US is disliked by a significant percentage of European elites because of her churchgoing morality and disliked in Muslim countries because of her lack of churchgoing morality.

4) The US should advertise her more traditional beliefs to help prevent the non-rabid Muslim population for becoming rabid.

It should be noted that D'Souza never defined radical Islam or how to deal with the threat. Nor did he admit or convey any knowledge of Islam's propensity to spread its way of life in its very special aggressive way.

[livius]

No, but I don't think it's relevant. He's talking about Muslims coming into western societies and their impact. But I must say that what I have seen of Muslim societies on television and the press hardly gives me a desire to visit them. I tend to agree with Winston Churchill in his famous assessement of what Islam has brought to the world.

[steve-b]

The US is... disliked in Muslim countries because of her lack of churchgoing morality free society, economic and cultural success, and support for religious liberty (particularly that of Jooooos).

Fixed it for you.

[MadIvan]

I'm disappointed with this. Liberty is the premier virtue of any country - how much of it is has. Yes, countries and people can use liberty to be thoroughly stupid in some ways, and the left exploits liberty - but it is far better than the alternative the radical Islamists have.

To conclude, I'd rather have a bunch of screaming, barking leftist moonbats than a bunch of radical Muslims who think that it's all right to beat one's wife. The former are idiots. The latter are murderers.

Regards, Ivan

[steve-b]

I'd rather have a bunch of screaming, barking leftist moonbats than a bunch of radical Muslims who think that it's all right to beat one's wife.

Indeed.

Frankly, it is incredibly dishonest of D'Sousa to pretend that what offends the Muslim world is the skanky behavior of a few screwballs like Paris and Britney. When they denounce the "libertine" and "immoral" ways of Western women, what they mean is "showing their faces in public" and "talking back to their men".

[Chgogal]

:)

Yes, I think we can all agree that Islam has brought poverty, cultural and educational backwardness and economic strife to all areas of the world. And now they wish to spread it to the West.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1790179/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1788343/posts

[Chgogal]

"Since politicians and neocons like to make themselves seem strong when responding to Muslim terrorism by joining themselves to the ghost of Winston Churchill, it would be appropriate to see what Churchill himself thought about Islam. This is from his 1899 book, The River War, written when he was 24 years old:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.…A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities ... but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome. [The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pp. 248-50.]"

[Chgogal]

Hi livius and steve-b,

This made me smile and I thought of you and steve-b. I just received an email from an Airman stationed in A-stan. He's one of our dear heroes far away from home missing his wife and children doing what needs to be done for us. Cool guy, huh? Well anyways he wrote the following:

"Are all Arabs or Muslims terrorists? Of course not….most are peace loving people. Are all American’s decadent and materialistic? Well, this is a little harder because if you read a magazine, watch a movie, or turn on the TV the answer you would see is yes. The reality is that most Americans are peace loving and also just want to live a good life. Why then do we continue to be so separated? What role does the media play when all you hear about his violence and death…by the way, this street is two way and both Western and Eastern medias are complicit in this story."

Hope all is well with you!

C