Monday, January 12, 2015 1:37:25 PM · by ilovesarah2012 · 64 replies
ca.news.yahoo.com ^ | January 12, 2015 | Andreas Rinke
Posted on 01/12/2015 12:29:02 PM PST by gortklattu
The jihadist murderers are dead, after killing five more Parisians, but many Westerners, long drugged by bad ideas and received wisdom, continue to sleepwalk through the war against jihadism. This means that after all the brave words and feel-good marches, little significant action will be taken to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
In the absence of clear thinking and recognition of fact, responses to this latest example of Muslim violence reflect ideological fever dreams. “Nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” as French president François Holland said of the attacks, is a perennial favorite. Such apologists invoke shopworn Marxist bromides like colonialism, or postmodern magical thinking like “Orientalism,” the two-bit Foucauldian invention of Egyptian-American literary critic and fabulist Edward Said. This was the tack taken by an American historian of Egypt who told a New York Times reporter that Islam was “’just a veneer’” for [jihadist] anger at the dysfunctional Arab states left behind by colonial powers and the ‘Orientalist’ condescension many Arabs still feel from the West.”
For many apologists, though, it’s just easier to call the jihadists “crazy.” Here’s Vox’s Ezra Klein, long-time purveyor of progressive orthodoxy, opining on the Paris murders. He fingers “the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn’t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.”
This repeats Jimmy Carter’s mistake about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he called a “crazy man.” But jihadists are not insane, and their violence cannot be dismissed so simply. They are proud Muslims, adherents of a 14-centuries-old faith that conquered its way to one of history’s largest empires, the warriors before whom a now dominant, arrogant West once trembled. Their faith preaches that Allah wills the whole world to be united under the rule of Islam and its illiberal, totalitarian law code. Those who resist and refuse to convert are defying Allah; they are the enemies of Islam, the denizens of the “House of War” who endanger the spiritual wellbeing of the faithful in the “House of Islam.” As such, the infidels are the legitimate objects of Muslim violence, conquest, enslavement, and dominance, an aggression recorded on every page of history. If you want contemporary evidence for the reality of jihad, look around the world today, where Muslim violence is endemic, and accompanied by theological arguments drawn straight from Islamic scripture, theology, and jurisprudence.
So contra Klein, the Paris jihadists didn’t do something “that almost no human beings anywhere ever do.” As we speak, plenty of Muslim human beings every day in Nigeria, Libya, Syria, northern Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to name a few venues of jihadist violence, are doing “horrible” things like murder, torture, beheadings, rape, sex-slavery, crucifixion, and all the other atrocities that are also copiously documented in the history of Islamic conquest and occupation. As a brave Egyptian critic of Islam, Ahmed Harqan, asked recently, “What has ISIS done that Muhammad did not do?” Thus it’s no coincidence that of the 7 global conflicts costing at least 1000 lives a year, 6 involve Muslims.
Yet progressive orthodoxy dismisses this evidence as Islamophobic bigotry. Unable to deny the reality of theologically inspired Muslim violence daily filling the international news, they resort to blaming Western historical crimes, or scapegoating Israel. Another tack is to invoke the tu quoque fallacy, charging that Hebraism and Christianity are just as violent as Islam.
This argument took off after 9/11 and has persisted among the jihad deniers. Historian of religion Philip Jenkins claimed, “The Islamic scriptures [about war] in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.” Rabid anti-Zionist and apologist for terrorists Richard Falk played the moral equivalence card: “The Great Terror War has so far been conducted as a collision of absolutes, a meeting ground of opposed fundamentalists.” Atheist gadfly Richard Dawkins complained about “fundamentalist” Christians who “fuel their tanks at the same holy gas station” as Muslim terrorists. Similarly, a few years ago, Salon ran a headline asking, “What’s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick.” This specious moral equivalence descended into the absurd after the attacks in Paris, when a guest on MSNBC equated “Islamic extremism,” which murders thousands a week, with preacher Jerry Falwell’s 1988 unsuccessful libel suit against Hustler magazine.
But even right-thinking people slip into this species of apologetics. A writer at Pajamas Media, in an otherwise perceptive analysis, wrote this as well: “Unfortunately, this civilizational friction between the west and Islam has ebbed and flowed across the centuries. It is nothing new. Islam threatened the gates of Vienna and the Crusades reached the Holy Land.” This smacks of the “cycle of violence” trope usually used against Israel. What it ignores is the fact that someone started the violence by serially invading and conquering the lands of others, and enslaving and oppressing their people. The siege of Vienna in 1683 was the last in a long history of Islamic military aggression against Europe and the centuries-long occupation of Western lands; the Crusades were an attempt to liberate from oppressive occupiers a land that had been Christian for centuries before being invaded by the armies of Islam.
Most important, however, is the simple fact that the violence in the Old Testament is, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, descriptive, not prescriptive. It reflects the brutal reality of its times, not a theology binding the faithful for all times. As for the New Testament, the only violent verses apologists can dredge up, as a New York Times article did last week, come from the apocalyptic predictions of Revelations, or these words of Christ from Matthew: “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” Grade-school catechumens know that this is a metaphor, not a call to jihad, like the Koranic verses instructing Muslims to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them,” or to “fight those who do not believe in Allah,” or to “kill them wherever you find them.”
The whitewashing of Islam’s violent prescriptions serves another fantasy, the idea that there are vast majorities of “moderate” Muslims whose “religion of peace and tolerance” has been “highjacked” by a tiny number of “extremists.” Yet most who make this case just assert it, rather than providing empirical evidence. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, for example, quoted one of the Danish cartoonists who had to go into hiding after being attacked at his home for drawing one of the infamous Mohammed cartoons. He is hoping for “a reaction from the moderate majority of Muslims against this attack [in Paris].” Noonan then responds, “That majority actually exists, and should step forward.” This call to moderate Muslims was also made in the Wall Street Journal by French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy: “Those whose faith is Islam must proclaim very loudly, very often and in great numbers their rejection of this corrupt and abject form of theocratic passion.”
But we’ve been waiting ever since 9/11 for moderate Muslims to “step forward” and “proclaim very loudly” that the jihadists have distorted their faith. A few apologists, brave critics, and duplicitous spin-doctors have spoken out, but the Muslim masses globally have been mostly silent. Of course, many Muslims have no desire to follow Islam’s precepts about waging jihad, and just want to live their lives in peace. But there have not been mass marches protesting those who murder in their name and who allegedly “corrupt,” as Eric Holder said in Paris, Islamic theology. Perhaps last Sunday’s rally of over a million Parisians will turn out to be an exception, assuming it included significant numbers of Muslims. But will there be any follow-through after the emotional high passes? Or will this moment of multicultural brotherhood dissipate, as it did following France’s 1998 World’s Cup soccer victory, when a million Parisians gathered in celebration?
This silence of the Muslim masses about jihadist terror has been the case for over a decade of such attacks. In 2004 after the brutal murder of Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam––another attack on free speech––only a handful of Dutch Muslims attended a public rally and memorial service. In the intervening years, after similar attacks––like the murder of 7 French Jews and soldiers in 2012, or the 3 Jews massacred in Brussels in 2014––we have not seen the kind of public, unequivocal, unqualified, mass condemnations of the jihadists one would expect if the latter were a fringe whose beliefs are so alien to traditional Islam.
What we have seen are thousands of Muslims celebrating in the streets after 9/11. We have seen riots and murders in response to Westerners exercising the right to free speech. We have seen rallies against Israel in which nakedly genocidal rhetoric is indulged––“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” is a favorite–– and temples attacked, as happened during Israel’s war against Hamas last summer. And we have seen polls consistently demonstrate that significant numbers of Muslims, including large majorities in the Middle East, continue to support an illiberal, intolerant shari’a law that codifies the attitudes and beliefs justifying such violence.
Our ancestors for centuries acknowledged the true nature of Islam, a simple fact proven by 1000 years of Muslim aggression. Alexis de Tocqueville, one of our most brilliant political philosophers, wrote in 1838, “Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. … The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels … [T]hese doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran … The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.”
But that was when our leaders and intellectuals, schooled by history and experience, their minds not blinded by fashionable self-loathing and incoherent cultural relativism, were “men of good sense.” Our leaders today have slipped into delusional dreams, in which people like Tocqueville or Winston Churchill––who in 1897 said, “Civilization is face to face with militant Mohammedanism”––are dismissed as ignorant bigots and racists who lack our superior knowledge and morality. Meanwhile, the bodies of jihadism’s victims continue to pile up, and Iran’s genocidal theocracy closes in on a nuclear weapon. And many in the West continue to sleepwalk through it all.
Best article on this zombie parade yet.
That useless march was as pointless as Neville Chamberlain waving around his silly little piece of paper.
Many good points are brought out in this article; check it out.
I read this earlier today - it’s excellent!
ping
Basically says what I’ve been saying, there is no “radical” Islam, there is only Islam, and these killers are only doing what their book tells them to do.
And any so-called “Muslim” who disagrees with what they are doing is an apostate.
Like Hollande, Obama and many others - these people are gutless pussies.
God turned over Israel to be ruled by oppressors after they turned their backs on Him. That’s exactly where we are.
Perhaps the French will listen to their National Anthem with new ears:
Arise children of France,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s bloody standard is raised.
Listen to the sound in the fields,
The howling of these fearsome soldiers.
They are coming into our midst,
To cut the throats of your sons and women.
To arms citizens!
Form your battalions!
March, march,
Let impure blood
Water our furrows.
They sang this quite a bit during the big demonstration in Paris.
They are coming into our midst,
To cut the throats of your sons and women.
To arms citizens!
____________________________________________
Oh, the dark bitter irony! “To arms citizens!”? If only. Even “if only” their gendarme were armed.
The Fundamental Muslims tell Infidels that, and prove it in deeds, but the vast majority of Infidels just won't face up to it.
I honestly believe the Infidels are handicapped by the girly boy religions they belong too, and can't grasp that there is a religion that wants them dead, their women raped and enslaved. - Tom
Please - spare me the Islam is not a religion or it is a cult stuff.
Words and Insults won't stop the Fundamental Muslims, and experience shows you praying for them to change won't do it either. - Tom
Not an entirely accurate quote, though it may be due to translation issues, if not originally in English.
The violent and sensual tendencies of the Koran are so striking, that I cannot conceive their escaping the observation of a reasonable man.
Leaving out the "and sensual" changes the criticism to simply one about violence, which it wasn't.
RE; Moderate Muslims.
Mr. President, can you tell us how many and please give
specific examples, instances of moderate Muslims
preventing terror attacks in the United States?
Can you give us examples of “moderate” Muslims
giving information that led to the arrest and conviction of Islamic terrorists and their support network?
Can you provide information on the work towards that
end that Muslims in your administration have accomplished?
Can you provide information on the work that Muslims
in your administration have done to alert
the various branches of our government to the danger of Islamic terror and specifically indicate the various centers of Islamic terror training in the US. that
have been shut down from these efforts?
Gotta wonder if the terrorists will hit a large demonstration like this. A million sardine-packed people scared for their lives would suffer incredible casualties. Tough & defiant talk often reconsiders when assault begins.
Its quite simple hit the left for patronizing Islamic fundamentalism. As of now we let the Left and the muslims easy accomadations in their political coalition.
Islam is a totalitarian, terrorist and genocidal ideology.
The fact that Western leaders and intellectuals are oblivious to its true nature doesn’t hide its essence.
Its the enemy of the free society. Quite simply put, the West and Islam cannot peacefully co-exist.
Any one who claims otherwise is deluded, a liar, a moron or a fellow traveler of Islam.
The current state of affairs with worldwide radical Islam (I repeat myself) is reminiscent of my oldest son’s encounter with a school bully years ago.
After several episodes of aggression, my son resported the incidents to his teachers and to us. My wife and the teachers launched into the school-prescribed bullying response mode (conferences, conflict resolution exercises, holding hands and singing Kumbaya, etc.). None of it worked, of course, as bullying is about power. I could see the kid that was bedeviling my son laughing his a$$ off over all of the people he was able to jerk around.
Finally, I told my son to lure the little turd off campus and, when he launched an attack, to give him a swift, sharp poke in the chops. It was essential that this occur off school grounds because self-defense on school property is not allowed (Sound familiar?). Anyway, my approach worked the very first time it was tried (no surprise).
Moral: Until someone delivers some swift, sharp pokes in Muzzie chops, this BS is going to continue and will only get worse.
When, oh, when (if ever) will the American left recognize this for what it is? Will they ever identify the atrocities as Islamic? Ever?
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