Mark Steyn: They want to kill us all

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 10/19/2002 | Mark Steyn

[Black Agnes]

For Muslims, the world is divided into two parts. Dar-el-Islam, the house of Islam, and Dar-el-Harb, the house of war. You are either Islamic and in the house of Islam, or you are not Islamic and therefore in the house of War. Any country not Islamic is thus defined as the 'House of War'. They believe this and so should we!

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

This should be the West's message to Islam: Clean your house or will not have a house to clean.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Thanks-for-the-ping BTTT

[Steve0113]

I keep hoping, against hope, that the mantra of "Islam is a religion of peace" is the Bush Administration's way of saying "nice doggie" while we look for a big enough rock. . .

I've long suspected that's why they're doing it. They're too smart to believe it. People need to lighten up about that.

[jalisco555]

Reminds me of something Martin Scorsese once said about filmmaking: "Everybody steals from everybody".

[MeekOneGOP]

Mark Steyn: They want to kill us all

Excerpt:

The slaughter of hundreds is, relative to population, an Australian 9/11, with the same heart-rending details of people clawing desperately through the rubble in search of husbands, wives, children. When Osama’s boys hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the root-cause crowd, after some pro forma regret about the loss of life, could barely conceal their admiration for the exquisite symbolism of the targets, the glittering monuments to American militarism and capitalism. The New Statesman dismissed the victims as Wall Street types who made the mistake of voting for Bush rather than Ralph Nader.

If you had to pick anywhere on the planet where Bush voters are thin on the ground, Bali’s hard to beat. Lots of Aussie beach bums, Scandinavian backpackers, German stoners, braying English public-school types taking a year off to find themselves, but not many registered Republicans. This mass murder was clearly going to be harder to excuse, but the root-causers gamely rose to the occasion. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Margo Kingston fretted over ‘whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants.... Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people — foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians — make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is?’, etc., etc. Well, if the insensitivity of Western tourism is the root cause, Margo can relax: it’s not gonna be a problem any more. Whether or not, as Margo would say, poverty breeds terrorism, in Indonesia last weekend’s terrorism will certainly breed poverty.

< snip >

It’s the same with Bali. As a way of making a point about Zionist occupation of the West Bank, it’s a little convoluted, to say the least. If it’s intended to warn America’s allies off supporting Bush, it seems perverse and self-defeating to kill and maim large numbers of citizens from countries who haven’t supported him. So, instead of trying to fit square pegs into Islamic crescents, why not take the event at face value? It’s a mound of dead Australians and Scandinavians and the non-Islamic Indonesians of Bali: no problem, they’re all infidels. A Bush-voting social conservative from Mississippi or a gay peacenik from Denmark, they’re happy to kill both. If, as some of us maintain, the real ‘root cause’ of Islamofascism is Islam’s difficulty coexisting with modernity, we shouldn’t be surprised that an infidel-friendly, pluralist enclave in the world’s largest Muslim country would be an abomination to the Islamists, and the perfect target.

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[gcruse]

Undergirding the brilliant latticework of
Steyn's sparkling comedic accomplishment
is what is now tritely called an "out of the box"
perspective and analysis of world events shared
by no one else in the press, American or otherwise.
George Will, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Kelly, Robert
Novak, Camile Paglia, and Kathleen Parker all have
their occasional insights. Steyn produces them
as the sun produces neutrinos, and displays them
every bit as brilliantly. The man is a treasure.

[TomSmedley]

But I am saying that the degeneration of Western culture is hurrying up the process of radicalizing Islam.

I suspect that supercilious, vacuous secular humanism is on the Almighty's shit list, behind Communism and Islam.

[Taliesan]

But I am saying that the degeneration of Western culture is hurrying up the process of radicalizing Islam.

Your honor, it was her short skirt that finally broke down my resistance to raping her.

[STD]

In reality our President knows all of this. That's precisely why he is giving lip service to the muslims. If he again uses the word "Crusade" we would suddenly be at war with all of islam. He is much smarter than that!

Our war on terror will be won with awesome measured military action followed by rebuilding and restoration of human rights and dignity. President Bush is a wise man, he will not give legitamacy to bin laden and radical islam. Speaking in clash of civilization terms would be political and military suicide. Empowering every radical whabbist.

If he can marginalize the muslim theoracies around the world for the price of a few words, so be it!

Never believe that he's buying the whole charade.

[steve-b]

As Western culture becomes more degenerate, more moderate Muslims look at it and choose to go back to stricter observance. The Muslim women who are taking on the veil again -- after their mothers threw it off -- are doing it deliberately.
I'm not defending the Islamists.

Yes, you are.

I see no difference whatsoever between your statement and the looney left's bleatings that the US is cynically fomenting a war for purposes of imperialist greed. In both cases, the pathology of Islamofascist terror is blamed on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

[STD]

ping me m&m

[Brian Allen]

<< Whether or not, as Margo would say, poverty breeds terrorism, in Indonesia last weekend’s [Islamanazi] terrorism will certainly breed poverty. >>

Good one Pokes.

[STD]

FC

You are correct Sir!

[steve-b]

But I am saying that the degeneration of Western culture is hurrying up the process of radicalizing Islam.

What nonsense. It is precisely the success of Western culture that enrages these medievalist goons... and convinces them that they have to lash out at us now before Western Civilization completely undercuts their power and relegates their way of life to a folkway practiced by a few isolated communities in the backdunes.

[XJarhead]

Please add me to the Steyn ping list.

[junta]

Mr. Steyn is certainly (with good cause) harsh on the Islamicists, but I have a prediction for him; After we occupy Iraq all the neo-Liberals at places like TNR will turn up the volume on people like Steyn, Coulter for their supposed intolerance for the "good muslims" while his allies the neo-Conservatives will have better things to do than defend him (her), themselves looking for "good muslims." Such are the vagaries of Middle Eastern politics and woe to the people of the United States that such hucksters control our levers of power.