Posted on 05/01/2007 6:07:49 AM PDT by Pokey78
from National Review
On the day the Royal Navy’s hostages were released, I chanced to be reading a poem from Reflections On Islam, a terrific collection of essays by George Jonas. The verse is by Nizar Qabbani, and it is his ode to the intifada:
O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness
Or as the larky motto you used to find on the wall of the typing pool put it: You don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps. For the madness of the intifada and the jihad and Islamist imperialism is calculated, and highly effective. There is, as Jonas sees it, method in their madness.
Do you remember that little difficulty a few months back over the Pope’s indelicate quotation of Manuel II? Many Muslims were very upset about his speech (or his speech as reported on the BBC et al), so they protested outside Westminster Cathedral in London demanding “capital punishment” for the Pope, and they issued a fatwa in Pakistan calling on Muslims to kill His Holiness, and they firebombed a Greek Orthodox Church and an Anglican Church in Nablus, and they murdered a nun in Somalia and a couple of Christians in Iraq. As Tasnim Aslam of the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad helpfully clarified, “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.” So don’t say we’re violent or we’ll kill you. As I wrote in National Review at the time, quod erat demonstrandum.
But that’s a debating society line. Islam isn’t interested in winning the debate, it’s interested in winning the real fight – the clash of civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla. That’s why it doesn’t care about the inherent contradictions of the argument: in the Middle East early in 2002, I lost count of the number of Muslims I met who believed simultaneously (a) that 9/11 was pulled off by the Mossad and (b) that it was a great victory for Islam. Likewise, it’s no stretch to feel affronted at the implication that you’re violently irrational and to threaten to murder anyone who says so. Western societies value logic because we value talk, and talks, and talking, on and on and on: that’s pretty much all we do, to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just something else to talk about interminably. But, if you don’t prize debate and you merely want to win, getting hung up on logic is only going to get in your way. Take the most devastating rapier wit you know – Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward – and put him on a late-night subway train up against a psycho with a baseball bat. The withering putdown, the devastating aphorism will avail him nought.
The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation. I’m personally very happy to defend my columns in robust debate, but after five years I’m a bit bored by having to respond to Muslim groups’ demands (in America) that I be fired and (in Canada) that I be brought before the totalitarian-lite kangaroo courts of the country’s ghastly “human rights commissions”. Publishers like hate-mail; they’re less keen on running up legal bills defending nuisance suits. So it’s easier just to avoid the subject – as an Australian novelist recently discovered when his book on a, ah, certain topical theme was mysteriously canceled.
That’s the advantage of madness as a strategy. If one party to the dispute forswears sanity, then the obligation is on the other to be sane for both of them. Thus, if a bunch of Iranian pirates kidnap some British seamen in Iraqi waters, it is the British whom the world calls on to show restraint and to defuse the situation. If an obscure Danish newspaper prints some offensive cartoons and in reaction Muslims murder people around the planet, well, that just shows we all need to be more sensitive about Islamophobia. But, if Muslims blow up dozens of commuters on the London Underground and in reaction a minor talk-show host ventures some tentative remarks about whether Islam really is a religion of piece, well, that also shows we all need to be more sensitive about Islamophobia. Do this long enough and eventually you’ll achieve the exquisite sensitivity of the European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. In 2003, their report on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe found that “many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups”, and so (according to The Daily Telegraph) a “political decision” was taken not to publish it because of “fears that it would increase hostility towards Muslims”.
Got that? The EU’s principal “fear” about an actual ongoing epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could hypothetically provoke an epidemic of hate crimes against Muslims.
And so the more the enemies of free society step on our feet the more we tiptoe around. After the release of the Royal Navy hostages, the Right Reverend Tom Burns, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Armed Forces, praised the Iranians for their “forgiveness”. “Over the past two weeks,” said the Bishop, “there has been a unity of purpose between Britain and Iran, whereby everyone has sought justice and forgiveness.”
Really? In what alternative universe is that? Maybe the insanity is contagious. As the columnist Jack Kelly wrote, “The infidels Allah wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.” And so these twin psychoses – Islamist rage and our determination never to see it – continue their valse macabre on the brink of catastrophe.
The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation.
******
This needs to be learned by our elected Republicans. Both parties have been operating under different principles in Congress. Dems use the intimidation approach constantly, and we (some of us) keep thinking that logic can prevail. Logic canot beat feelings.
What is most modern Biblical scholarship but a refusal to defend the rationality of Scripture?
Yet there are plenty of Catholics, sadly, who believe their ancestors were monkeys.
And the way that switch back and forth between talking about Adam and Eve and the Fall as theological truth (on the one hand) and defending evolution as scientific truth (on the other) is about as rational as "we didn't knock the towers down and we're glad we did!"
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
*
thanks for the ping.
Got in late, finished up the ten pin bowling season this afternoon. Each Province has it's own Human Rights Commission. The two most fearsome are in Ontario and British Columbia. A first class instance of their work or influence is in the Mark Harding case. Five years ago, Harding gave out pamphlets outside a high school. The tracts called Islam a religion of violence.
Harding was hauled up before a judge. He got the option of six months imprisonment or take instructions from an Imam. He appealed and lost. He suffered a heart attack. He had to drive 3 and a half hours to take instruction. There was an Imam within his area. The Imam forced him to read passages derogatory to non-Islamic people. He refused and was told "you do it, or I will send you to jail". They broke this man.
I live just off the trans-Canada highway. For years the smaller motels have been subject to a tactic. A person books a single or a double room. Later they sneak in other travellers. The native people had travelled to a convention locally. They were welcome of course to a room. Then the clerk found over seven extra people each,ensconced in some of the rooms.
Sure, just a little money saver. Granted they did not see it as wrong. Next day the clerk took out all their property and demanded they register properly. Safety regulations of course demanded this. The natives complained and via the Human Rights Commission, the motel got the wrong end of charges of "prejudice".
To humiliate them further they had to put up a plaque. It stated that this establishment welcomes native people, or words to that effect. Bottom line though is this:
The Human Rights Commission is absolutely deaf as to fiery statements by Canadian based Imams. Statements calling for suicide bombers - in OTHER countries of course.
Ah, cowards. So it goes
The withering putdown, the devastating aphorism will avail him nought.
Short, sweet, and to the point...
The problem with this article is that, like the societal weakness it seeks to expose, all it offers is more words.
Of course, that goes for this post, and to any responses thereto. :)
Ping
Islam-list
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
Steyn does with words what Mozart did with musical notes.
Love the picture.
Just as the dems refuse to ‘get’ the message that Iran is sending the US and Israel [they want to destroy us], we are very slow in recognizing demspeak [their words means nothing relative to a constant truth]. We must do so if we are going to beat them at their game.
BUMP!
I know of a preacher that passed out leaflets exposing Islam a few years ago. He was arrested for a hate crime. I don’t recall the full sentence, but part of it required him to sit under the teaching of an imam for a period of time.
Tks for the ping.
Steyn, devastating as usual.....
The smart GOP Prez candidate hopeful will spend a decent part of his campaign funds on hiring Steyn as his speechwiter and communications director, I tell ya......
I think it boils down to us KILLING THEM ALL , THEN talking about it .. I agree but it wont happen . We’ll talk and talk and the Islamic monsters will litle by little take over .
I give the US 6 to 8 years tops before we are a 3rd world toilet of a country .
I think it boils down to us KILLING THEM ALL , THEN talking about it .. I agree but it wont happen . We’ll talk and talk and the Islamic monsters will litle by little take over .
I give the US 6 to 8 years tops before we are a 3rd world toilet of a country .
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