From the comments at the Belmont Club, in response to news that the EU is withdrawing from northern Kosovo;
If the Clash of Civilizations occurring along Islamic fault lines is indeed the defining civilizational issue of the 21st Century then recognizing the extra legal independence of Kosovo is a major bonehead move.
Ultimately, the clash is between a world view that makes men Allah’s non-thinking automatons and women but 1/2 a man, and a world view that has raised the standard of living of billions of people to heights not imaginable even a few generations ago.
Ideas mean something. Every confrontational success or failure validates the ideas of one side or the other in a zero sum game. What do we benefit by handing a victory of any kind to Islam? There are many arguments that could be made about the vicitmhood of the Kosovors but the creation from nothing of a new Islamic state in Europe is the real story. How many times have we heard of the necessity to fight jihadism on many levels? How is shooting Taliban in Afghansitan while surrendering at the state creation level a good thing?
I couldn’t begin to count the number of posts I’ve read (and have written) about how the real danger to Western Civ is the loss of moral direction in the West – if only the Europeans, in particular, would take a moment to reflect on their Judeo-Christian heritage they would find the philosophical footing to stand up for themselves and push jihadism off the continent.
Well, those Europeans do exist in places called Ukraine, Georgia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Serbia, and in Russia too. Christendom – believe it or not is a word and concept still in use in the Orthodox countries. Christianity is very much alive in Central Europe and is very much a part of daily life despite the generational attempt of the Communists to bury it forever.
Life is rougher around the edges of the Islamic fault lines, and this where the Orthodox countries live. Politics are raw. Elected leaders can be thugs. Liberty can have the half life of a quantum particle. So what? I’ve paid up my touchy-feely dues and have turned in that membership card.
The Brits doll out to Muslim polygamists about $10,000 per wife. The Serbs put their own bodies on the line to build a wall against Muslim encroachment. We should be extending our palm to the people who have fought this fight for 700 years, and not be clucking in righteous judgment while giving them the back of our hand.
As I see it the USA is again trading its goodwill with the Orthodox countries, which are at least in a position to help put the squeeze on Iran and limit long term Islamic influence in the Caspian Basin, for the illusion of goodwill with Islam which has a proven value of exactly zero. In 1999 Sandy Berger admitted that NATO was intervening “for the Muslims.” What did that goodwill get us?
On the more personal level many Serbs consider Kosovo the birthplace of their unique Serbian identity. One of Huntington’s intriguing thoughts was that you could more easily grasp the concepts behind the Clash of Civilizations by overlaying today’s maps with a political map of Central Europe in the 1500s. What we are doing today is kicking the Serbs, and indirectly the other Orthodox countries, in the teeth to expand the Islamic empire. How does that make sense? Do we say “poor little misunderstand Kosovors” and just watch them start (continue) tearing down 1,000 year old Christian monasteries?
More here – “the wet noodle of European non-nationhood”.
in your face attacks on the u.s. has not alerted the liberal masses to the danger of islam and i don’t think anything will. i have said in the past that we will have to fight our own to keep our freedom and i stand by that statement.
have to say the guy makes a very good argument.The challenge is for the US to triangulate with both the Russians and the chinese – two countries with human rights issues – in order to stop fundamantalist islam and its radical offspring.
Camel-lot:
http://www.drudgereport.com/oa.jpg
http://www.drudgereport.com/cc1.jpg
(via free republic)
If you declare independence you have to be prepared to fight for it…simple concept…all these alliances and external interfering bureaucracies clout the issue at hand and escellate it into a war of attrition between culture and politics.
…it’s a really Fxxxed up world when these transnational progressive (read; international Fabian busybodies) idioms distort our perception and perspectives so grossly that we think some global bureaucratic body must rubber stamp every act of sovereign independence.
Similar views:
Melanie Phillips, Is this crazy, or is this crazy?
i said last week and i’ll say again that this initiative re kosovar is the introduction of a gaza strip into the soft underbelly of oh so soft europe……
i reckon 5 years or less before the Qasem rockets or worse are aloft…a new set of provocations will arise…a new appeasement will be essayed….and the haphazard yet organized muslim strategies will be in open play in a sovereign state in europe….and no doubt they’ll be given common market status within a year.
Two great reads side-by-side in last Saturday’s National Post:
George Jonas citing how the NATO screwed up in Kosovo and C Hitchens arguing that Serbia lost nothing when Kosovo declared independence.
I disagree completely with the idea that the Kosovo separation is an incident within the ‘clash of civilizations’. Indeed, I reject totally this idea of a clash of two religions: Christianity and Islam. It has nothing to do with either.
First, one must question why some people have knee-jerk reaction that a ‘state’ cannot be either broken up or merged.
Second, one must question what is going on in the Arab States and their postWWI and II movement into fascism.
Neither of the above have anything to do with religion.
Nations are political constructs; they aren’t organically natural. Their boundaries are man-made; therefore, they can be formed, unformed, new-formed. There is no essentialist requirement for Kosovo to be part of Serbia other than habit and economic agenda.
Nor is there any proof that Kosovo, being predominantly Muslim is fascist, as are the Arab oil states of the ME. Fascism is not identical to Islam.
The globe is moving into a new political organizational mode – the networked globe, a system where the old nation state that developed in the 15th c, that moved into the nation plus resource colonies in the 18th, is now moving into a very different mode where REGIONS are networked by economic links rather than by centralized national links.
That is, we are moving to a globally networked system of diverse environmental and economic regions. This is NOT a homogeneous communist globe, but a network of diverse nodes that share a basic infrastructure that enables them to economically and informationally interact.
The interactions are flexible and can be changed; you can have a contract with B-region to obtain minerals for ten years only; another contract with C-region to produce goods for five years; another contract..etc.
The basic infrastructure we are moving towards is one of global market capitalism and political democracy. It’s not an easy move, but it’s the only possible move for the size of the global population.
Technologically, we are advancing rapidly towards this state, for we have essentially made space and time factors almost irrelevant in our interactions. Our capacity to deal with massive data assists our capacity for interactions.
I am suggesting that the New World Order won’t be based around the 19th c notion of the Nation-State, but around REGIONS – federations of regions, which will have a certain amount of selfgoverning autonomy and yet, will allocate some tasks to a larger federation..and to a larger federation.
It is more akin to the EU, with the difference that each level of governance is elected and accountable. I suggest that N. America will be one federation – like it or not.
Therefore, the REGION of Kosovo is simply one part of this network of intimately connected economic and political regions.
The individual in this new world order is already being changed. We now have people who have dual and triadic and even more citizenships. More and more people work in different countries from their citizenship, they work during the year in several countries; their work covers activities going on in several countries. The old idea of one citizenship/natural country, is dissolving.
What is going on in the ME is completely different from Kosovo. The ME is moving out of its old economic-political infrastructure of tribalism and into a modern civic mode. It was entrenched in tribalism and a peasant agriculturalismm and was only moved into an industrial economy with the WW disovery of oil. Its social and political mode remained stuck in tribalism – which has led to Islamic fascism.
The ME’s tribal powers are fighting to retain their power, but, it can’t last. Why not?
A society’s basic variables include: its natural environment, its population size, the carrying capacity of the envt, the carrying capacity of that envt and population to keep that population healthy, the economic capacity to extract sustenance from that envt; the technological capacity to carry out a successful economy; the political capacity to enable the economy.
Tribalism can’t support the above variables. The ME must change. That means that its ideology, Islam, which is a social, political and economic ideology focused only around tribalism, must change. It will do so, from within, as this tribalism starts to decay because it can’t support the population.
It is, I suggest, a profound error to merge these two actions.
1)The necessary transformation of the ME from a tribal to a civic structure. This is what is going on in the ME. Part of the ‘force for change’ is that the West must reject multiculturalism and insist on its values of democracy, freedom, the use of reason, human rights.
2) And, the rapid transformation of our planet’s economic and political organization from a nation-state to a networked organization. This is what is going on in Kosovo.
These are two completely separate issues.
Nations of the Americas are political construct because those are made up of all different other nations and ethnic groups. Canadian nation is only a convenient way to describe grouping of people living in Canada that pretty much goes for all of the countries of the Americas.
European nations are not only a political construct; they are in fact natural groupings of like people. There are smaller nations and larger nations, they, from time to time cross boundaries.
Boundaries in Europe are in fact boundaries of nations that are of like people in a set of boundaries. While the boundaries are imaginary lines separating these nations, nevertheless they delaminate more or less where a particular nation lives.
Each nation in Europe has its own language, culture, psyche, temperament and so on.
Then as is well known they are divided into Romantic (I think that is the English term),
Germanic, Slavic, Finnish/Hungarian, Greek and so on.
ET
Your profound disagreement not withstanding Serbia was much more a region as it contained Montengrins, Albanians and Serbs as well as other smaller minorities. How with any rationality could you consider Kosovo as a region when its goal for the last 11 years has been to rid the area of churches, Christian shrines and most of all Serbs by whatever means necessary.(with the complicity of NATO). More so would have been the Republic of Yugoslavia which NATO also saw no advantage in salvaging for the sake of regionalism.
Jake
Perhaps I lack the finesse of ET, though I believe you get the drift of the argument.
Lev – the fact that societies can be defined as ‘natural’ groupings of ‘like’ people ignores that there is no such thing as a ‘natural grouping’.
Human behaviour and beliefs are a social construction, not a ‘natural’ or biological gene. What happens is that, over time, a collection of people living in a particular envt will develop HABITS of belief and behaviour. This is absolutely vital; otherwise, the population would be a random set of ‘homo sapiens’. You need to develop common beliefs and behaviour. These can take many years, even hundreds of years, to develop. They enable a strong community in that envt. This community becomes, over time, defined as a political region.
This will, and must, happen everywhere. Again, the reason is because human knowledge is created; we aren’t born with it. Knowledge is created by a community, not by individuals alone.
My point is that the era of the isolate and sovereign nation-state is over; what we are seeing develop in the new networked world is a situation where regions – which can be what is now a nation, eg, Denmark; or can be a smaller part of what is now a nation; will no longer be a subset of the centralist nation. It will engage in networking with other parts of the world, on its own.
The isolate, self-sufficient, self-defending nation-state, each with their own army, each focused only on enlarging their own control over other parts of the world – won’t work anymore in this global world. Instead, it will be economic regions that interact with other economic regions.
Jake – your focus is only on Kosovo’s defining itself as Islamic rather than Christian. So? Israel defines itself as Jewish rather than Islamic. So? That doesn’t and shouldn’t stop a state from constructive networking with other states.
No matter which way you cut it, an Islamic nation has been carved out of Europe. From where I stand, that isn’t a step in the right direction at all.
Melanie Phillips gets it right.
what a passel of naifs…
this new ‘state’willundoubtedly sooner or later bring grief to it’s own self first…then serbia the balkans europe and the west as a whole….these ‘kosovans’ are not as you or me….they are the clay of jihad…they will be propogandized or suborned or bribed or threatened into being a new front in a 1400 year struggle to remake the world in islam’s image….
anyone thinks differently is, as i stated, preturnaturally naive and/or suicidal into the bargain.
The Albanians might make dandy criminals, warlords and thugs but they’re no Islamist threat.
There are more Islamist extremists on the streets of Birmingham, UK and Toronto, Canada than in all of Kosovo.
ET – great comment. Couldn’t agree more.
If the EU is withdrawing then Putin arms the Serbs and the obvious happens…
hakkkaf….anyone want a list of the nationalities that jan sobeszki organized to deny the caliphate their attempt to conquer Wien..(Vienna) ?
anyone ?…mind you that was 300 years ago….how could any of you remember that…
the point being that WE have changed evolved grown but THEY havn’t !…not one jot.
I remain unconvinced that Kosovars are Islamic Jihadists. I am more hopeful, based on what I have seen in news reports, that Kosovars are the Muslim moderates we have all been hoping for. Islam is not the threat anymore than Christianity or Bhuddism is, it is the radical interpretation of Islam that causes threat. I haven’t seen that in the Kosovars. I have seen a very nasty streak in Serb nationalism, however, and we’re I a non-Serb in greater Serbia I’d be just a little concerned.
hakkkaf….anyone want a list of the nationalities that jan sobeszki organized to deny the caliphate their attempt to conquer Wien..(Vienna) ?
anyone ?…mind you that was 300 years ago….how could any of you remember that…
the point being that WE have changed evolved grown but THEY havn’t !…not one jot.
oh you rat…you dirty rat….you speak as though you intimately know the heart of every butcher baker and candlestick maker in Kosovo…and of course they are all as pure as the driven snow over Hans island when the polar bears are doing the backstroke towards Amity island.
don’t be so deeply stupid…don’t be such a useful idiotic rodent…yer holding history up from devolving as she will….
This is what I was trying to say in the other posts on this subject – no amount of goodwill, granting statehood, recognizing aspirations for nationhood, trade, etc. will change the fact that they see us as infidels/dhimmis.
As Melanie Phillips put it, “It was at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 that some 70,000 died to keep the Islamic Ottoman Empire from advancing further into Europe. What is the point of fighting the jihad in Iraq when we are cheerfully opening the door to it in that very same place?”
ET and others do not accept that this a battle of ideas between Christianity and Islam. Our enemies however, frame it that way. To be oblivious to this, is suicidal.
you speak as though you intimately know the heart of every butcher baker and candlestick maker in Kosovo
No, but I haven’t seen many burqa clad women, or modesty police, or women denied driving rights. I haven’t heard that Sharia law is being implemented, nor have I seen gays shot in the local soccer stadium. The fact that Kosovars are Muslim isn’t enough to get my panties in a bunch over an independent Kosovar state. Neither am I certain that supporting independence is in Canada’s best interest but that, again, isn’t because they are Muslim.
ET,
“Fascism is not identical to Islam.”
On the contrary, the Islamic ideology meets or surpasses the definition for ‘fascism’ according to Merriam/Webster.
Your statement that Islamic fascism started post WWII is also false. Would you like me to pull out the pictures of the Albanian Nazis doing the goose step? Now, lets talk about history:
According to Sir Jadunath Sarkar, the pre-eminent historian of Mughal India, “The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State. If any infidel is suffered to exist in the community, it is as a necessary evil, and for a transitional period only…A non-Muslim therefore cannot be a citizen of the State; he is a member of a depressed class; his status is a modified form of slavery…In short, his continued existence in the State after the conquest of his country by the Muslims is conditional upon his person and property made subservient to the cause of Islam.”
– Fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
“The Repetition of History”
by TGK
We are very fortunate in our readers. They supply us with information we wouldn’t get easily in other forms. In this case, the essayist is TGK and the subject is one he knows well: the roots of the current crisis in Serbia and Kosovo.
But this post is much more than that. TGK opens the door to the long history of the area, and the bloody borders created there by the influx of Islam so long ago. He says:
I would like to express how much I like your website. I am a writer coming from an Eastern Orthodox-Byzantine point of view and a Greek American and would like to share such an assessment regarding the new Islamist success in Kosovo over the past week.
gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/02/when-did-united-states-become-islamic.html#readfurther
Look, irwin daisy, you aren’t the expert and authoritative judge and jury of Islam, Islamic fascism or history. You are one person; I am one person. You and I disagree with each other. That’s as far as it can go.
I fundamentally disagree with your perspective and conclusions. OK? Stop trying to make me agree with you; stop insulting me (are you so arrogant, are you so condescending ..) because I don’t agree with you. I don’t.
I have previously given you suggestions of books on environmental analysis (eg, Emilio Moran, Netting); on structural societal analysis, on demographics (eg, Jared Diamond), on the rise of Islamic fascism in the 19th-20th c(Lawrence Wright); on the Byzantine expansion (Crone) and so on. I object to your claim that my theories are ungrounded and spurious. They aren’t; I have a thorough knowledge of the field.
You don’t agree. Fine. I have no problem with that. I’m not trying to insist that you agree with me, and I’d appreciate it if you would do me the same courtesy. You are being authoritarian in your insistence that I agree with you.
I don’t insult you; I don’t define you as ‘condescending, as arrogant’..So, I’d appreciate it if you would simply accept that NOT ALL PEOPLE WILL AGREE with you!! There is no need for such anger on your part against someone who doesn’t agree with you! There are other viewpoints than yours.
Nothing you’ve written leads me to abandon my theories, which are based on a thorough knowledge of societal infrastructures, economic modes, population demographics, and political modes – to accept your theory which is based only on ‘textual ideology’. I totally disagree with such a strategy of analyzing societal behaviour – your focus on the text.
I repeat:
1) Fascism is not identical to Islam. You disagree. Fine- that’s your opinion. A Miriam-Webster definition of fascism is not a definitive analysis of fascism nor is it also a definition of Islam.
2) Goosestepping marches are not a definitive attribute of fascism.
3) Replace your Sarkur quote term of ‘Muslim’ with ‘communist’ – same result.
4) There are plenty of other historical accounts that deny your accounts. You are utterly ignoring that these various fights are tribal; are not fascist and can be seen in other non-religious tribal conflicts just about anywhere else in those time periods – when ALL societal organization of the time, was tribal.
5) Jefferson did not create the US navy just to deal with Muslim pirates. By the way, piracy was a legitimate economic black market strategy of the time; it was eventually sidelined.
6)India has moved out of tribalism and is far further along the development of a civic mode than Pakistan.
Again, I’d appreciate it if you would simply provide your views, and allow others to provide their views. There is no need to insist that we all follow your opinion. I absolutely reject it. OK?
ET,
Finally, I agree with you. It is your opinion. You do not support it by showing evidence, yet you present it as the authoritative truth. Fact.
That’s rubbish.
There are other expert opinions.
Without getting into it, you have insulted me on at least as many occasions. For what its worth, I’ll at least apologise.
I have read Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns Germs and Steel.’ Interesting though it is, his emphasis on historical materialism, fails to explain the rise of the West and especially why English, not Arabic, Chinese, Sanskrit or Mayan, became the global lingua franca. This flaw, as well as his complete failure to explain how the ME went from being a center of civilization to being a center of anti-civilization. This was not caused by smallpox or because zebras are more difficult to domesticate than water buffaloes. It was caused by Islam. Yet he totally ignores the influence of Islam.
I have suggested authors for you to read as well – Bostom, Ibn Warraq, Huntington, etc.
As far as authoritarian is concerned, I might throw your own words back at you, “So, I’d appreciate it if you would simply accept that NOT ALL PEOPLE WILL AGREE with you!! There is no need for such anger on your part against someone who doesn’t agree with you! There are other viewpoints than yours.”
And I might use your point by point criticism as evidence.
None of which I agree with BTW. Other than perhaps noting that fascism is recent political description, but little does that matter. The Arab/Muslims did not even have a word for democracy until the end of the 19th century, I doubt they did for fascism either.
I’ll leave you with this:
“He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality… The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call Common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” –Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787. ME 6:257, Papers 12:15
I forgot to add,
“to accept your theory which is based only on ‘textual ideology’.”
is insulting. I have consistently based my opinion on the Islamic ideology, not ‘textual ideology,’ which includes the texts as a basis – their reference, I might add – however, their beliefs are the area of concern. This encompasses social norms, warfare, governance and jurisprudence throughout history.
Irwin – I DO support my theory with evidence. The fact that YOU don’t know anything about societal structures, ecology, demographics is not my problem and I am NOT going to fill up Kate’s blog with chapters and chapters on these fields. I’ve suggested a few books to you; that’s as far as I’ll go.
I present my views as my opinions. You are the one who presents your view as ‘authoritative truth’ and insists that I accept it. I don’t. I’m not angry at you for your opinions! I DO get uptight about your insistence that I accept your opinions. It isn’t that you just present your opinion and allow others to think about and accept or not accept them. You INSIST on their acceptance. That’s authoritative. I don’t insist on others accepting my view, but, I do insist on my right to my view. OK?
Again, your view of Diamond’s analysis – is your view. I happen to think his conclusions are more valid than yours. Oh, and by the way, it is vitally important that there were no animals to domesticate in Africa; it is vitally important that the soil was thin, that water from rainfall was inadequate..and so on. You choose to ignore these aspects; I consider them vital.
Equally, I consider types of agriculture, sustenance types possible in an area, the carrying capacity of an economy vitally important. Soil, water, temperature – all vitally important. Local diseases, animals, plants that could be domesticated, animals..etc.. You ignore all of this; I don’t.
You yourself have focused your opinions on the Islamic TEXTS. You’ve said it repeatedly. Their ideology, as expounded in their TEXTS. What’s insulting about that?
I disagree and will continue to disagree with you.
By the way – the West ‘rose’ because of its ecological richness; thick rich soil, regular water supply from rainfall, temperate climates. It’s the best biome in the world. Local animals could be domesticated, plants could be domesticated and made to yield more. That’s why it became dominant.
And why would you expect Mayan or Sanskrit or Arabic or Chinese to become the ‘lingua franca’ in a world formed by technological innovation – as created by the Americans, the British etc? (eg, electronics, cars, computers, airplanes).
So- I’ll disagree with you, and hopefully, you can totally ignore my views.
If you accept the rule of the people and the rule of law, then I think you have to accept the breakup of a country, so long as there has been a vote, a clear question, a clear majority and a fair process. Thus far, defense of democracy has been a critical principle in the war on Islamic fascism. If we don’t honor it, we give up an important base to fight from.
I think Canada is right to withhold approval because the Kosovars have fallen down on the fair process. A referendum in the midst of ethnic cleansing is not valid.
“The fact that YOU don’t know anything about societal structures, ecology, demographics is not my problem”
How do you know that? I suppose if I were to tell you that my job requires a thorough knowledge of demographics and that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent successfully based on my analysis and support wouldn’t matter then?
“I present my views as my opinions. You are the one who presents your view as ‘authoritative truth’ and insists that I accept it. I don’t. I’m not angry at you for your opinions! I DO get uptight about your insistence that I accept your opinions. It isn’t that you just present your opinion and allow others to think about and accept or not accept them. You INSIST on their acceptance. That’s authoritative. I don’t insist on others accepting my view, but, I do insist on my right to my view. OK?”
Wow. Is my opinion getting to you that much? Perhaps you should just agree. It would be easier on your keyboard.
“Oh, and by the way, it is vitally important that there were no animals to domesticate in Africa; it is vitally important that the soil was thin, that water from rainfall was inadequate..and so on. You choose to ignore these aspects; I consider them vital.”
Not according to the most recent theories based on digs such as Jericho – or the most recent geological findings in Egypt.
“You yourself have focused your opinions on the Islamic TEXTS. You’ve said it repeatedly. Their ideology, as expounded in their TEXTS. What’s insulting about that?”
I’ve addressed this in the previous post, regardless of what you’d like to repeat.
As for the rest, I was only commenting on the curious omissions in Jared Diamond’s book.
Regardless, ET, I appreciate your views and comments on most other topics, on this one I disagree.