In an article in The Daily Beast, Nigerian activist and Nobel laureate for Literature Wole Soyinka is quoted as saying that England's openness to other cultures allowed Muslim extremism to flourish in Britain, and that this openness, a direct result of England's colonial history, evolved naturally into something resembling an insane tractability:
"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there."
"This is part of the character of Great Britain," Mr. Soyinka declares. "Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness." And so it is, he says, that Britain lets everyone preach whatever they want: It confirms a self-image of greatness.
Denmark's Torben Hansen sees France's importation of a large Muslim population as being similarly rooted in a notion of national greatness, albeit the French policy was borne not of a desire to confirm greatness but an insecure need to assert it:
French foreign policy, among other things, lies at the roots of our problems with the aggressive Islamic ideology. Charles de Gaulle had this idea that France should be a bridge between the West and the Arab world. This had to do with a French inferiority complex. They had been humiliated in WW 2, first by Hitler, and then by the US and the Brits who liberated them. So he cooked up this plan for a French-Muslim alliance…. The apparatus of the EU is in many ways a French construction.
Of all the consequences to European politicians' lack of foresight on immigration, national greatness isn't one of them. Sovereignty itself is being gnawed away at, most notably in France: in 2006 there were 751 Zones Urbaines Sensibles - or less euphemistically, "places...that the French state does not control." Europeans' right to speech is under assault: a Dutch filmmaker was shot and had his throat slit for making a film critical of Islam's treatment of women, and the Somali-born woman who provided the voiceover for the film was forced into hiding; in Denmark, a one million dollar bounty was placed on the head of a mild-mannered cartoonist.
Similar smaller instances happen on a daily basis. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian, asserts that this empowered prerogative of Islamists, not just in Europe but worldwide, can be traced directly back to one single event that happened in England:
"It all began when (Ayatollah Khomeini) assumed the power of life and death over the life of a writer. This was a watershed between doctrinaire aggression and physical aggression. There was an escalation. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world—as if someone had given them a new stature. Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere."
The effectiveness of the fatwa (Rushdie was forced into hiding, and briefly "converted" to Islam), the later success of Islamists in causing newspapers to self-censor in the case of the cartoons, the myriad attempts by Islamists since then to assert the predominance of their own laws on European soil -- all of these things are inarguably a direct consequence of European immigration policy in the past few decades. The historic, pivotal fatwa had such big teeth not because of the pronouncement of some foreign religious leader , but because his fellow soldiers in faith had Rushdie physically surrounded, on Rushdie's own soil. The West's putative generosity backfired, and it continues to do so.
Theodore Dalrymple, referring to an opinion piece in Le Monde that called for the abolition of prisons, coined a phrase that's stuck with me ever since I read it:
"There is in the article a moral exhibitionism, which is generosity of spirit at other people's expense. This, I think, is one of the sicknesses of our age, the desire to appear more-compassionate-than-thou."
Salman Rushdie, Kurt Westergaard, the families and friends of Pym Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, European commoners and editors and journalists who censor their public expressions for the sake of their own safety and comfort, civic police forces who don't dare enter "microstates" in the middle of what were, for many hundreds of years, their ancestors' own cities - these people surely understand better than most of the rest of us that the West's smug, self-satisfying "generosity of spirit" and openness - "accommodativeness", as Soyinka put it - can indeed come "at other people's expense."
Now, if we could just admit it, that would be great.
lemme guess. next time we hear about Soyinka they find his mutilated body?
No, no and no. I strongly disagree with this explanation. Complex issues don't operate within linear causality, and pinning the current European problem with middle east immigration, multiculturalism and with Islamic fascism in particular on single causes in England (English colonialism, arrogance and accomodation; and French feelings of inferiority)...no. No.
Generosity of spirit and accomodation aren't the causes of the problem.
First, there's the reality of Islamic fascism. I've tried to explain its cause many times and won't bore people again, but the cause is internal to the Islamic states, who are living in a tribal political mode that is dysfunctional in multimillion size populations. This leads to fascism as a way to deal with the lack of a middle class in control of their own economy and political agenda.
Second, a way to maintain dysfunctional tribalism from civil war is to set it up as theologically correct - this is religious fundamentalism, AND, to externalize it to other countries. That is, you blame the West for your problems rather than your own internal medieval 7th c mode of life.
Then, there is Europe which has no recent history of immigration, for it has instead, acted as a homeland of immigrants to America etc. However, after WWII, when the Islamic states began to industrialize and yet maintained their tribal political and economic mode, and thus failed to empower a middle class, people began to leave the Middle East for Europe.
But they were not an educated class, for a tribal mode leaves the majority uneducated. So, you had a 7th c. mindset coming to Europe and unable to technologically and socially participate.
AND, they formed an isolate population, working as low class labour in Europe. They not only failed to integrate and assimilate, but Europe's multiculturalism allowed them to remain isolate. Multiculturalism is a flawed policy of dealing with 'different people'. It is flawed because it essentially isolates them; this is actually a rejection of them; it freezes them in time and space - the time and space of the homeland.
Then there is Islam which has been radicalized by Saudi Arabia etc, as they attempted to retain a tribal political system and used radical Islam to externalize the peoples' unrest. So, rather than integrating with European ways, the migrants remained isolate and became more fundamentalist.
Australia has a good approach to these new migrants; it insists that the immigrant accept the political and social infrastructure, and language, of Australia.
Europe has to reject multiculturalism, insist that immigrants adapt and integrate to the established political and social modes - or leave.
I don't think the West has the guts to stand up to a rat, let alone a barbaric movement. Thats attacking us on three sides.
Besides what to fight for?
1) The right to kill babies?
2) The right to drug children in schools, with curriculum's made for slaves. Institutions designed to separate children from parents beliefs.
3) The right to keep Elitists in the comfort their used to with our taxes.
4) The right for bureaucrat Elitists to consider the voting public as imbeciles.Giving them the power to make us all adolescents but them. Mainly through tax theft.
5) The right to be persecuted by a biased racist censorship Inquisition you pay for. Filled with moral Ideological Marxist degenerates
6) The right to vote & pay your own money for parties to choose their own leaders & candidates.
7) The right of the Government or State to triage medicine & tell you when your going to die. No matter what. Unless your an Elite.
8)The right to let criminals run the prisons &
vote.
9) The right of the polity to tell you how to flush the toilet or use light bulbs.
10)The right of a crack ho, to destroy a business because producers are evil.
11) The right of the system to tell you how to defend yourself, or in this case turn us into pliable sheep. That means guns or even bear spray is a threat to police elitist jobs.
12)The right of the State to be more interested in dogma than the life or dignity of its citizens.
13) The right to kill the aged or handicapped, even the depressive.
14) forced to have no Religion or practice it in private unless your Islamic.
Yes, I can see how wild people abused by this would fight for its Relative moral basis.
JMO
ET, first question: Do you accept that there is currently a problem with militant Islamism in Europe, wrt no-go zones in cities, death threats against those who criticize militant Islam's aggression, self-censorship out of fear of what might happen to oneself and/or one's family, etc?
The article was pretty good until this snag: "all of these things are inarguably a direct consequence of European immigration policy in the past few decades."
-No. Immigration is never the problem; it is always good. Every nation needs more of it. The problem is the welfare/regulation state and multiculturalism, as well as an unwillingness to end states like Iran that support terrorism. These things have ruined immigration for Europe. In a way, the lefies are right: it is our fault. Western nations are what caused all of the above.
The West has to tell itself that it's okay to relegate the shame of the colonial era to history's dust bin. It has a civilization and a history that is worthy of respect and preservation and it is far from being the biggest evil on the planet nor is it the cause of all the world's problems.
Former colonies have been independent long enough that they can no longer blame the West for their failings. If they haven't pulled themselves up by the bootstraps by now, they've no one to blame but themselves. It's time for the West, Europe (including Britain) in particular, to stand up and say so. We have a right to exist. We're proud of our civilization and our history we're not going to let you destroy us.
Of course, for that to happen old slurs like imperialism, colonialism, racism, etc., etc., etc. will have to be stared down and we should no longer allow ourselves to be intimidated simply because we were once part of mighty empires. Indeed, we should be proud of the fact. (You hear that lefties?)
The European empires and their civilizations have left the world with a very positive legacy, not the least of which is democracy and the rule of law; a small handful three universal languages, at least one of which is spoken by almost everyone in the world, enabling us to communicate with one another as never before and, also, some magnificent technological and artistic advancements that have also become universal, especially in the area of medicine and agriculture and fields that improve the standard of living, life expectancy and quality. Enough of this guilt trip.
What Louise said.
ET, tomAYto tomAHto
What has taken root is the result of the West's tolerance.
And, by the way, I would say there is not a lot now to defend in the West. Morality is in the crapper, and freedom is being increasingly quashed.
The two (morality, freedom) may seem empirically to be mutually exclusive, however one should have a sound moral base combined with freedom - that's a perfect combination.
"Immigration is never the problem; it is always good. Every nation needs more of it."
Are you joking? I suppose you must be. Yes, I'm sure of it, you're just messing with us.
I have this vision of every country in the world, playing this massive game of musical chairs. Every time the music stops, there's a new political system, a new legal system, a new education system. Things just start to settle down, and the music starts again.
If every country needs more immigration, why would anyone emigrate?
@dp: Sorry, I should've been more broad. Every country needs freer movement of people. Your visual metaphor is interesting, but...makes no sense to me.
If you want a look at what happens when you ban immigration, look to Japan. DISASTER.
Oh, and Louise nails it all.
Is Japan a disaster? I didn't realize.
Is Switzerland's immigration policy a disaster, compared to France's?
I'm not following this line of thinking, at all.
"What has taken root is the result of the West's tolerance."
This sounds to me like an attempt to ennoble laziness tempered by a fear of being labeled a "racist".
Few in the West have to ever "tolerate" Islamic nonsense directly and personally: if and when they do they'll sing a different tune.
I've always sort of assumed that guilt over the Holocaust was driving Europe to suicide-by-tolerance; but that can't explain Britain's death-wish, can it?
Cyto - maybe if Western countries stopped "terminating" all those "potential humans", they wouldn't need to import a new population.
Yes, Japan is a demographic and economic disaster. They have a whole lot of old people and not enough young people to pay of their 180% GDP government debt, as well a national government that operates like a polite version of the Daley Machine. Economies been in the tank for decades. Disaster. They need immigration to pay the bills and change their society. Europe also need immigration to change its society away from collectivism. The whole islamification thing is just an unpleasant side effect in need of management. The Swiss vs France difference isn't made by immigration, but the superior economic and other policies of the Swiss.
cytotoxic
dp has it right vis a vis Japan. Like most of the industrialized world, Japan has a birthrate well below replacement level. Couple that with extraordinarily long lifespans and a virtual ban on immigration and you have the world's first geriatic society. If the Japanese don't start admitting people to run the place, there will be total economic and social collapse within a generation.
OOPS! I reversed the positions of dp and cytotoxic. Sorry, sorry, sorry, cytotoxic. I should have realized immediately that I had it bass ackwards, as dp almost never makes a rational comment.
I'm not the original poster of this, but I like Soyinka's words:
“We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space"
Me likey!!
Eric: I also like Soyinka's differentiation between those who feel "I'm right, you're wrong" and those who say "I'm right, you're dead."
The first group isn't so much of a problem.
Well, zog, at least I can make a comment that wasn't taken directly from the pages of some liberal think tank study. It's all a bunch of crap. Immigration is driven by corporatism, which wants immigrants for cheap labour. Too much immigration leads to a lower standard of living for the entire nation, along with the obvious social costs.
I don't need to rationalize anything to someone too blind to see what's really happening. You are incapable of recognizing the danger we face, from unchecked immigration.
Europe's immigration policies were shaped by the number of young men, who died in two world wars. Of course Britain needed workers. They lost over a million young men to German imperialism. France and the Netherlands suffered the same fate. So did Germany, herself. The fact that most of the immigrants are from the middle east is a testament to how little those people suffered, compared to the rest of the world. There wasn't much that could have been done to prevent the current situation. It's simply another casualty of war.
To continue with the same level of immigration, long after most nations have reached saturation points is something that can, and must be stopped. There are more immigrants coming to Canada, than there are available jobs. How can that be a good thing?
EBD your post was an excellent read, but I sometimes wonder whether the explanation isn't much simpler: I think France and England have simply given up, Canada is on its way there.
When you are weak, then whatever virus happens to be floating around at the time will get you - in our case it's Islam.
"The apparatus of the EU is in many ways a French construction."
Originally designed to protect Europe from the Germans.
"To ensure Germany could never threaten the peace again, its heavy industry was partly dismantled (See: Industrial plans for Germany) and its main coal-producing regions were detached (Saarland, Silesia), or put under international control (Ruhr area).[6] (See: Monnet plan)
With statements such as Winston Churchill's 1946 call for a "United States of Europe" becoming louder, in 1949 the Council of Europe was established as the first pan-European organisation. In the year following, on 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed a community to integrate the coal and steel industries of Europe - these being the two elements necessary to make weapons of war. (See: Schuman declaration)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_European_Union
TJ, Canada is in much better shape than Europe, and it's hard to say what's going to happen in the future. Maybe the Toronto 17 - or however many of them there were - should be considered a bit of a bellwether, but we certainly don't have anything like the no-go zones in France - Marseille in particular - that are effectively sovereign, hostile Muslim states where French law doesn't apply and the police refuse to enter. And I don't think there are any Canadians in hiding or under 24-hour protection because they criticized Islamism.
I don't know, maybe because we're such a (geographically) vast country compared to England and France, and that this makes the sort of ghettoization you see in many cities in England and Europe less likely. Or maybe our Muslim immigrants come from a wider range of countries, and are therefore less homogeneous.
Revnant Dream - what you wrote is the absolute truth and the way it is - well done, that should be posted on liberal boards everywhere - maybe it would wake one of them up to the fact they are being brainwashed and socially engineered - preprogrammed to act and believe according to a doctrine they would not endorse if those opposing powers and plans were not playing with their heads and ability to think critically long enough to see things as they are - not what others want them to perceive, so they can exploit them: sheep to the slaughter.
Revnant Dream...good post. I've thought those very thoughts. I sometimes wonder if the west is worth saving as it currently exists, but I have grand children. I worry about them. Me, not so much.
Never give up your guns. I can't see this going on much longer without bloodshed on a massive scale. Prepare for war, but pray for peace.
What de Gaulle said about the Muslims, before he took the decision of letting Algeria accessed toits Independance (trhough a referrrendum largely positiv ,75% of the votes for Algeria independance)
" Nous sommes quand même avant tout un peuple européen de race blanche, de culture greque et latine, et de religion chrétienne. Essayez d'intégrer de l'huile et du vinaigre. Agitez la bouteille. Au bout d'un moment, ils se sépareront de nouveau. Les Arabes sont les Arabes, les Français sont les Français. Vous croyez que le corps français peut absorber dix millions de Musulmans, qui demain seront peut-être vingt millions et après-demain quarante ? Si nous faisons l'intégration, si tous les Arabes et Berbères d'Algérie étaient considérés comme Français, comment les empêcherait-on de venir s'installer en métropole, alors que le niveau de vie y est tellement plus élevé? Mon village ne s'appellerait plus Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, mais Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées ! "
more of his thoughts here :
http://contreculture.org/AG%20De%20Gaulle%20id%E9es%20directrices.html
Multiculturalism ain't a french tradition, but rather an Anglo-Saxons'.
Our centralised system aims to integrate foreigners through authoritatian rules, this is why an anti-veils law, (and soon an anti-burqas law) was voted.
La politique Arabe de la France concerned only trades (like it is for the other countries), and the immigration policies only dated from Giscard d'Estaing who authorised the "regroupement familial" like it was recommanded by the other EU countries
I have to wonder if Japan's problems are in part due to the incredibly restricted life women led and still do lead if they have a child or children. They live in isolation in tiny cramped apartments while their husband goes off to work until very late at night (and often nightclubing which is expected). They are responsible for the intense preparation for the children to get anywhere in school - much more intense studies than here with Saturday school a must to get into university.
Once the women started to have jobs and careers they tasted freedom. Why would they give it up to go back to the home life?
Sorry for this long post but I thought this letter from a Corrections Officer in response to Dalrymple's article on the leftist's view on prisons well worth repeating.
"After 24.6 years of working in a large County Jail system with an average daily inmate population of over 5000 inmates I have personally booked, interviewed, and processed over 250,000 criminals into the system...Male and Female.
As I promoted up through the system my contact with the inmates lessened but I began to deal more with the problems of maintaining them in custody as will as keeping an accurate paper trail.
Even with the advent of computers, believe me, one does not want to delete the paper trail and those who call for it's demise haven't got much going for them and have not been ever caught in a bureaucratic maze.
I was a Manager but if I was not interviewing prospective employees or dealing with a number of human employee issues, I was resolving Inmate problems, on a daily basis. I don't even want to talk about irresponsible Lawyers, Judges and Court Clerical Staff nor the screw ups of the world the Probation Department. I appeared in Court on a regular basis fixing the bureaucratic screw ups of Civil Servants who could care less about the accuracy of their work.
I also grew to find Unions extremely distasteful, more distasteful than having to work with some of the most criminally insane and lowest morals of any group of people walking this earth. I have more respect for a common street Prostitute than an Democrat Politician or Union Leader.
But on with the guts of this tribute to the criminal mind. Basically Criminals are Lazy people. They want all that the world can offer but do not want to work very hard for those offerings. They spend hours upon hours developing criminal plans and enterprises that if they had put the same amount of time into School and work, they would have been very successful.
The average criminal thinks they are above average in intelligence because they get positive feedback from their criminal activities and are not the least bit bothered by the fact they may get their name and photograph in the Newspaper. They are proud of it in fact! They can count "Coup"!
There is even the counting of "Coup" in Prisons and County Jails by "Conning" an employee, guard or another inmate to doing something for them that is against the rules or for their own personal benefit.
Women are the biggest and sweetest target for them. They love females, guards, kitchen staff, nurses, psychologists, teachers, and visitors. They prey on and work the women’s vanity and emotions like a blood sucking leech, which they closely resemble. I have terminated nearly six times the number of female employees for being "conned" than men.
With women you can lecture them, show them movies, have tons of written material but they follow their heart. Often I have heard, "But I love him and he loves me." until you show them the line up of all the other women who he loves as well. He makes sure he spaces out his visit time with female Lawyers.
So after all these years of watching all the Liberals and bleeding hearts out there, and the Church Pastors trying to rehabilitate these people all I can say is they have made it worse. Again they all as a group have provided nothing but POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT for the criminal's behavior with all the attention and affection these do gooders bestow on these people.
Think of the criminal as a child. How do you change a child’s inappropriate behavior?? Spanking used to be a reinforcement tool parents used for centuries until the mindless Liberals took over. Now we have millions of spoiled brats and bullies. How about time out? Oh that works too, it is a negative reinforcement but again we have the Liberals who worry about the child’s socialization ego being bruised so we have more inappropriate behavior and children talking back to their parents and threatening their own parents with Child Protective Services. So again the Liberals have ruined the family structure.
SO what works? Negative Reinforcement has always been successful and a deterrent.
You cannot reward these people, or allow them to Count Coup which society and the Liberals, the Courts, and Lawyers and Probation Departments are doing now and it is a big failure.
But it is a big benefit of all of those above, because it provides them with jobs and LARGE Incomes!
If criminals choose not to follow society’s rules then you have to provide a Negative reinforcement in some shape or form to modify the behavior. That is very simple.
So why isn't it being done? To whose benefit is the Criminal Justice System being organized to benefit? There is the problem. So the Criminals are able to COUNT COUP ON THE ENTIRE SYSTEM while Civil Servants, Lawyers, Judges and Bureaucrats and Unions benefit!
Meanwhile, the common ordinary Housewife and hard working Husband and their children live in terror of becoming victims of the system instead of the Criminals being in terror of the system. A big thank you to all the Democrat Liberals out there who have spent the last 30 years creating this nightmare. Thank you."
EBD - in answer to your first question, yes, absolutely there is a very serious problem with militant Islamism in Europe. I agree fully with your description. I had minimally addressed its existence with my comments on non-integration, isolation AND the growth of Islamic fascism as the modern Islam.
That is, rather than reforming Islamic ideology to enable the individual to be a reasoning, self-motivated individual - which would enable integration into the new country, Islam has moved into fascism. Fascism is an isolationist ideology, a socialist ideology that considers the people as a collective with only one valid identity (Islam) and rejects individual entrepreneurship and freedom of thought.
The West has to reject fascism, and insist on integration. As I said, Australia has an excellent approach to immigrant, which tells them that there is an existent set of beliefs and behaviour in that country and the newcomer must adjust and integrate. Canada, under Harper, has just done the same.
Europe is starting to fight back with France's rejection of the headscarf and veil. But this is only a start; there needs to be a lot more rejection. Islamic fascism has cloaked its fascism, which is a political agenda, by hiding it as a religion. This has to be confronted and rejected.
The price of admission to the chattering class requires the substitution of testaments for testicles.
You must preach greenery, constantly apologize for the sins of your pioneering ancestors, and beg the forgiveness of your executioners as they lead you up to the gallows.
Dave,Thank You.I have made many of the same observations over and over again.The people who are benifitting most from the present system are those public employees who believe their entitlement should never end and a taxpayer who wont happily support the system borders on insane.What can we do?Disscusion is a good start,but we should also consider that the present system is so disfunctional nothing short of a new political movement is going to help.Harper is trying to finesse his way to a majority while simultaniously compromising all conservative principles.In my home constituancy almost half of elgible voters dont vote, and everyone else only vote for the party they hate the least.Why cant we do better?Its my belief we dont even know where to start.We should listen to those who are willing to take on the system.Canada needs people like Ron Paul and Debra Medina who challenge party policy and try to introduce the real issues to the public while changing the system from within.I believe there are such people waiting for the the opportunity to come forward lets encourage those who have vision and courage to take on the left,right paradigm.
dave - isn't your example of the criminal justice system an example of an elitist socialist style of govt, where a public bureaucracy feeds off the public, by defining that public as incapable of self-sufficiency and requiring public service?
And back to the article provided for us by EBD - isn't this analysis of militant Islamism as caused by the West's 'goodwill' and 'openness' just another version of Edward Said's 'Orientalism' which also blamed the West for the Islamic militancy?
Said blamed colonialism which ignores the fact that the Muslim history is also long on colonialism and imperialism - as is that of China; as is that of India - all of which subjugated and enslaved other peoples.
My point is that Islamism, or fascist Islam, is caused by the Islamic nations themselves. They and they alone are responsible for its rise and its current existence. Their elitist structure of govt, a hereditary tribalism, rejects the emergence of a middle class in political and economic power. The people, without power, turn to the Imaginary World of utopia, or fascism. And turn to the imagined walls against such a utopia, the West.
Nope- it's their own systems that are the cause. In the West, we must reject multiculturalism and not allow them the space to live in their imaginary world. We must insist on reality; if you live here, you adapt to the realities of 'here'.
It’s nice that in today’s western society that there is always a “magic negro” around every corner to set the record straight.
There is only one reason the world flocks to western nations – western gullibility.
Japan and Taiwan get a free pass compared to western nations of comparable GDP because they are non white nations, full stop. With all the so called advancements and economic development in India and China, both of which are expected to be the future world powers, where is the immigration? Nonexistent, because there are no handouts from the non-gullible, who refuse to be taken advantage of.
Like it or not we will all feel the boot of their social policies at some point in the future. Why not, after all we will be a resource rich, politically unstable collection of third world mini city states. We will have no personal wealth or voice in our society, and Islamic extremism along with a variety of backwater cultural differences will fight for the scraps. Remember that they are much better at it than us.
Posted by: Jamie MacMaster at February 16, 2010 10:27 AM >
You said it Jamie!
EBD it may be happening in slower more subtle ways in Canada.
For example, pick any engineering school in any university in Canada, list the Muslim professors, and in almost every case nearly all their graduate students, if not every last one, are Muslims. Nobody says a thing.
Further, what is taught to our children today in school is frightening. In essence it is taught that the to be a good Canadian is to put oneself second to other cultures - not even equal, but second. This is really what multiculturalism is about.
There are not many Canadians who perceive the threat, and those who do have been robbed on the tools needed to fight it.
A good first step for Canada, would be for the CBC to cancel the erroneously named sitcom - Little Mosque on the Prairie. Watched it once and was horrified. It's not a sitcom - it is a thinly veiled forum for Muslims to attack Canadians, especially Christians, with immunity. If I were to say the same things, or make the same accusations the Muslim writers do on this program about Christians, Canadians, and Anglo Saxons, I would be hauled in a nano second before the CHRC. But, all derogatory and blatant discrimationatory remarks toward the so called majority is allowed under the guise of leveling the cultural and religious discrimination playing field.
No-One, not that I hold any brief for Little Mosque, which they tell me is at least as bad as you say. (I've never seen it and see no reason to.) But I recall being told by the Toronto media, who despite their shortcomings are ususally good on CBC scuttlebutt, that no one who works on the show is actually a Moslem. It was created by a Toronto Hindu who was forced to earn her stripes at the CBC by toiling in Saskatchewan, and decided to vent her hatred of the place using Muslims as a foil. A game plan which the CBC took up with enthusiasm.
There are indeed far too many Muslims with poisonous attitudes in this country, but Little Mosques is not their doing.
No-one @ 3:19, I watched it once and came to the same conclusion. A half our of stupid cliches lined up in sequence, all of which portray Canadian small town prairie folk as rubes. To make matters worse, a lot of the scenes are shot in my home town, and locals are cast as extras, all of which makes the steady stream of insults rather too personal.
PRIVATIZE THE CBC NOW!!!!
However beastly colonialism has been for (for example) India, it has also left a somewhat positive legacy of railways, basic infrastructure, the English language (which has allowed its citizens to move more freely) and a political system akin to the British one. People are left with a bad taste in their mouths due to the obscene bigotry of British colonialism which is why they might forget the inadvertent trade-off. I am not forgiving the events of colonialism, just trying to explains its after-effects. Since 1949, however, India has been free from Great Britain so whatever problems it has now are no more Britain's doing than anything.
Japan has had somewhat of a xenophobic view of immigrants but that has changed over the past few years. Japanese men are marrying Filipino or Korean ladies and the immigration department has facilitated their entry and residency. It wouldn't be necessary had there been more restrictive policies on contraception and abortion and less suicide. Dare I say it that the proceeding are very bad for demographics, particularly for Japan.
Just my thoughts.
ET, yes it is a perfect example of the public bureaucracy as seen from one on the inside.
Thomas Sowell's book "Intellectuals and Society" is filled with examples of how the left and their media allies subvert our society to reflect their ideals.
The NP had a article yesterday on the bombing of Dresden and how brutish it was. Today, typically, a letter was printed today noting how terrible this was and also how many poor souls were killed by the nuclear bombing in Japan. No words were expressed in his letter on the million allied casualties in the proposed Japanese invasion!
One thing that Sowell stated that one of my lefty friends recently parroted was how the leftist intelligensia in the 30s praised Hitler and Stalin stating their countries were the closest ones to Marxism in the world. Once Hitler revealed his anti-semitism and militarism these leftists quietly began referring to Germany and Italy as right-wing and it seems to have stuck to this day.
We see the same cloud-dweller mentality in the AGW group today.
Excellent list Revnant Dream and so true. This should be posted in every classroom and public building in this PC crippled nation.
I like your post EBD.
Like you, Louise, I am horrified by the nasty, smug Muslims and the dunderstruck Canadians on that "little Mosque" thingie. I am hoping that the Estate of Laura Ingles Wilder (who wrote "Little House on the Prairie") will sue the produces for 'deflamation of title'.
ET - at the risk of being too glib and ham-fisted (I prefer to think of myself as pithy, naturally), isn't the question not so much "why are Islamic societies messed up?"- as it is "why are we letting them make it our problem?"-?
(BTW I think I invented a new punctuation-thing there.)
Dave,
a tremendous post. You have far too much experience and common sense to be taken seriously by our legal and prison bureaucracies.
In addition to the fact that most criminals are lazy, a significant number of them are sociopathic and psychopathic personalities.
(The difference between these two as I understand it is that there is a continuumn between the twowith organic factors leaning in the direction of the psychopath, and social factors leaning in the direction of the sociopath.)
As a consequence the vast number of professional criminals are not available to therapeutic measures or positive reinforcement inasmuch as their condition is simply not touched by those measures.
I also understand completely your point in respect to female prison guards being manipulated and used by prisoners. It happens sometimes that some female guard will cooperate with prisoners on some endeavor and then be blackmailed by those same prisoners for whatever concessions or illegal possibilities the prisoners want.
Wackenhut Corporation has run some privately owned prisons, but this too comes equipped with its own set of problems.
The solutions that you point out would work. But how on earth anyone gets the political establishment and the legal profession to go along with this is beyond me.
"Isn't this analysis of militant Islamism as caused by the West's 'goodwill' and 'openness' just another version of Edward Said's 'Orientalism' which also blamed the West for the Islamic militancy?" - ET
No, not even slightly, ET. To say that Islamism wouldn't be thriving on western soil if not for a misguided, poorly planned and overly generous immigration policy is NOT to say that this overly-generous and imprudent immigration policy caused militant Islam; Islamic militancy obviously predated Europe's wholesale importation of immigrants from Islamic countries.
To use a metaphor, ET, suppose you invite certain people to a house party, and they show up and trash your house - punch holes in the walls, set fire to the sofa, and assault other guests, etc. A morning-after acknowledgment that inviting them was an error in judgment on your part, is NOT an acknowledgment that your invitation created their behaviour, or that they wouldn't have acted that way if only you hadn't provoked them with your invitation.
Said suggests (albeit, often in a roundabout way) that militant Islamism is a natural reaction to western Orientalism, which is "fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient." I don't buy it in the slightest; western military adventures aside, there is nothing in the ideological underpinnings of western citizens that either makes them either desire to change the beliefs of someone living in Algeria or feel that they have a right to do so. Islamists in the West, on the other hand, who entirely disrespect the customs and tradition of the countries that graciously let them in, DO wish - demand - that those who invited them bow to the Islamist view of what life should be.
To say that there wouldn't be a problem with militant Islamists on European soil without the presence of Islamists on European soil isn't exactly going out on a limb, ET.
"My point is that Islamism, or fascist Islam, is caused by the Islamic nations themselves."
Exactly. A lax, misguided immigration policy based on cultural and value relativism didn't cause militant Islamism, it merely imported these enemies of the West onto European soil.
If it's true that the success of the fatwa against Rushdie encouraged and empowered Islamists worldwide, as Soyinka suggests - and I think it is true - that success was due to the fact that Islamists were in place, in a foreign country, to effect the threat. If Islamist soldiers in faith weren't present in large numbers on British soil the Ayatollah's statements would merely be tootheless words uttered by someone in another country thousands of miles away. It's a real stretch, ET, to say that the mere realization of this fact is the same as blaming the West - or more specifically in this case, its immigration policy -- for the existence of Islamism; I'm certainly not doing that, and neither is Soyinka.
Again, ET, I'm not suggesting that European immigration policy created militant Islam. It just brought large numbers of Islamists onto European soil, which, in my mind, is unquestionably a serious mistake borne of the West's culture's overly-generous view of the "other"; outside of the West, there are few or no countries that would import wholesale large populations who despise the values of said host country.
Finally, regarding your first comment, I neither said nor suggested that generosity of spirit, in and of itself, is a bad thing. What I said was that one's generosity of spirit can come at other people's expense, something I believe is undeniable. If one's generosity of spirit is directed to the lady who sell you bread, or to your family, or to strangers that you encounter, it's a good thing. If a government's, or a person's, generosity of spirit causes them/him to let into their/his country - or home - people who volubly and openly despise that country or home - its house rules, proverbially speaking - one's generosity is, in effect, a bad thing, in that it can - does, in this case - negatively affect other people.
One more thing, ET. You wrote:
""Europe has to reject multiculturalism, insist that immigrants adapt and integrate to the established political and social mores - or leave."
Two (entirely non-rhetorical) questions:
1. The most radical Muslims in England are the second and third-generation ones, i.e. they were born in England. If a western European government were to insist that these British-born Muslims who don't "integrate into the established political mores" "leave", which country/countries could they be sent to?
2. Do you believe that Islamists would be willing to abnegate the dictates of their faith if a western government demanded that they do so?
Dave thanks for the book reference "Intellectuals and Society". Looked it up on Amazon, looks like a good read, I'm going to get it.
In essence, the West has lost its ability to discern generosity of spirit, in inviting immigrants to our countries (because we need them and recognize that most immigrants stand to gain from our democracies and rule of law) from selling ourselves out to these immigrants via "multiculturalism."
Again, no one on this thread seems to be willing to grapple with WHY we don't stand up for ourselves, WHY we have lost our courage and OUR self-esteem while bending over backwards to encourage all cultures in the West except our foundational Judeo-Christian culture.
Our surrender-monkey tendencies can be attributed to our willingness to relinquish our spiritual legacy and relegate it to the dust bin, for what? "Enlightenment"? "Openness"? "Diversity"? "Tolerance" (which is actually acquiescence to the newcomers' way of doing things, even when that means diminishing returns for the rest of us -- and them, in the long run).
"Man does not live by bread alone." Although G*d is not dead, we in the West have thrown G*d out of our lives with a vengeance. We have turned our backs on the foundation of the democracy our forefathers' and mothers' built for us, on their strength and resilience which was their faith in G*d, their love of family, and their belief in justice, hard work, responsibility, accountability, and "loving their neighbour as theirselves."
Loving our neighbours as ourselves NEVER meant giving up all of our values in order to accommodate alien views of what it is to be human or in order to afford newcomers to our shores "rights" which we have, readily and with alacrity, denied ourselves. That's not loving our neighbour as ourselves, that's hating ourselves and elevating our neighbour, that's to become mean-culpa masochists -- all in the service of the "therapeutic" bureaucrats whose personal wealth is growing by the minute while the rest of us and our Western democracies are going bankrupt.
Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of G*d.
We trash this truth at our peril. This is one thing that the extremist Islamists totally understand. I give them credit for that.
Posted by: EBD>
EBD - “"leave", which country/countries could they be sent to?”
Knight - I suggest Afghanistan – there are no enforced immigration laws there at the moment and they will be in their natural element.
EBD - “Do you believe that Islamists would be willing to abnegate the dictates of their faith if a western government demanded that they do so?”
Knight - Nope! That’s why we need to deport them immediately to Afghanistan, before the next opium harvest preferably.
Why else are we wasting our time and money in Afghanistan if not to create a place to deport all these Islamic malcontents from our society? Now is the golden opportunity let’s not waste it EBD.
Not realistic, Knight. A western country is no more entitled to deport its citizens to another country than, say, Pakistan is entitled to deport its citizens to the US.
Many of the most radical Islamists in Britain aren't immigrants, but the children and grandchildren of immigrants. They're British, in other words.
EBD - since the radical Islamist, born in the UK, is a British citizen, then he can't be deported on the orders of a Western European or British govt.
He has to be allowed freedom of speech as long as his speech does not promote hatred of others or violence against others. If either, then, he must be prosecuted for doing that.
As for 'where to deport', since that is an irrelevant question, but one that you are asking with, I presume, an interest in which nation the radical would find himself most 'at home' - that has to be Saudi Arabia, the home of the wahhabi degenerate movement.
Do I believe that Islamists, by which I presume you mean Islamic fascists, would be willing to reject the 'dictates of their faith' - First, their faith as does any set of words, requires interpretation. If they refuse to interpret and modernize their faith and insist on living within a non-industrial perspective that is militant, violently hostile to the West, insistent on non-integration and special treatment, that's their choice. My point is that such cannot be done as a citizen or immigrant in a Western nation. Either integrate and get along..or leave.
ET - again - many if not most of the most radical Muslims in the UK are not immigrants, but first or second generation British citizens, so your suggestion that they "either integrate and get along...or leave" is entirely untenable.
They can't be deported, so there goes that "or else." Do you have any other suggestions?
I think it's a tragedy that the British government wasn't a bit more, erm, selective in choosing which countries they allowed immigration from, and in jurying prospective immigrants, but obviously there's little that can be done about that now.