The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who’s behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?
For the answer, let us turn to a fascinating book called “Alms for Jihad: Charity And Terrorism in the Islamic World,” by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the scholar Robert O Collins. Can’t find it in your local Barnes & Noble? Never mind, let’s go to Amazon. Everything’s available there. And sure enough, you’ll come through to the “Alms for Jihad” page and find a smattering of approving reviews from respectably torpid publications: “The most comprehensive look at the web of Islamic charities that have financed conflicts all around the world,” according to Canada’s Globe And Mail, which is like the New York Times but without the jokes.
Unfortunately, if you then try to buy “Alms for Jihad,” you discover that the book is “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” Hang on, it was only published last year. At Amazon, items are either shipped within 24 hours or, if a little more specialized, within four to six weeks, but not many books from 2006 are entirely unavailable with no restock in sight.
Well, let us cross the ocean, thousands of miles from the Amazon warehouse, to the High Court in London. Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of “Alms for Jihad” and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining their reasons…
Two news flashes on August 1, 2007. First, the lawyers representing the so-called Flying Imams in their lawsuit against US Airways announced that they were not going after the unnamed passengers whose concerns prompted the men to be pulled off the Arizona-bound flight (here). I suppose that is good to know, now that the long-term policy implications of their lawsuit are about to justify (literally) an act of Congress. Second, Cambridge University Press announced that it was going to destroy all copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker (here).
Connected? Absolutely.
Read them both.
The problem here is we have terrorists amongst us but how do we know/tell the difference between the “good” and the “bad” muslims? Are there any “good” muslims? Why aren’t they doing their bit in EXPOSING the “bad” ones? That also makes the “good”, “bad”.
There are without question, muslim groups here in Canada raising the capital necessary for the terrorists to operate. Even some politicians seem to be on side with terrorist groups, … I give you paul martin and taliban jack ass layton.
Could a publication such as the mentioned be seen as “hate literature”?
We need to be drawing in the reigns of these terrorist junkies without fear of “offending” them and/or being called “racist”.
The “politically correct” be damned here, we’re fighting a war here and our very survival depends on us nipping nonsense like this in the bud!
I found a copy of this book in electronic form, I think it’s still avaliable here… for $21.34
http://www.ebookimpressions.com/products.asp?recnumber=336315
I know this is not the point, that the real story is the supposed glorious institution of Cambridge University falling on its sword so as not to offend the islamist front.
If Judges and lawmakers had any faith in the system that produced their independence as judges and lawmakers, then this would not be an issue.
Unfortunately, our legal system is only too willing to aid and abet an enemy that would eliminate our legal system.
If Judges and lawmakers had any faith in the system that produced their independence as judges and lawmakers, then this would not be an issue.
Unfortunately, our legal system is only too willing to aid and abet an enemy that would eliminate our legal system.
And the US is now supplying the same Saudi Wahhabi incubation chamber with billions worth of weapons which will ultimately be used against the Israelis (the lone liberal democracy in the ME) all to the delight of a future Islamified Eurabia.
Madness!
How can Iran, a country with lots of oil but not enough gasoline for domestic consumption pose a threat to the Saudis (rationalizing the arms sale) and even if they did with a little luck they could destroy each other and the world would be a better place.
Maybe I am getting paranoid after reading so many articles, and blogs like SDA but it seems everywhere now in Toronto I see muslims. It appears to have happened almost overnight. Muslim women in full veils was once a rare curiousity now an everyday occurance.
Could SDA and Kate be sued for libel by a bottomless pocketed muslim because of threads discussing their religion and forced to shut down because she couldn’t monetarily fight the suit?
I also live in Toronto, and I have to agree with David Hand. There are Muslims all over the city now. It’s almost like they’re actual people, going about their lives.
But we know better…
“…because she couldn’t monetarily fight the suit?”
Would you have trouble opening your wallet, David?
Steyn seems to feel that Muslim populations in the West will continue to rise, we’ll continue to capitulate and this scenario will continue until the West lets itself be destroyed.
I believe the Western response to Muslim aggression might surprise Steyn. I didn’t give Muslims a first thought before 9/11. I can’t imagine where I’ll be after the fourth 9/11.
I couldn’t help but notice the nice new Islamic school on Oxford street in London Ont , on the way back from the balloon festival yesterday. Some will say its just the same as a catholic school, but the worse I’ve seen a catholic do is vote liberal.
Reading stories like the one posted makes one think or at least should.
These writers have nailed our nihilistic malaise:
Y.B. Yeats in “The Second Coming”:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
and the writer of Chronicles in the Holy Bible:
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7: 14).
Without will power and the power of our convictions, as Mark Steyn points out in America Alone, and without God, we in the West are sitting ducks.
According to Atlas:
permalink to AS
Alms for Jihad is available as an E-book:
Alms for Jihad
-30-
Poor, predictable, misguided BATB. Here’s an op-ed piece that might be of interest (oh, and my first name is William, with a “W”):
***
What W. B. Yeats’s ‘Second Coming’ Really Says About the Iraq War
Adam Cohen
New York Times
Feb 12, 2007
The Brookings Institution, the prominent Washington research organization, just released a report on the Iraq war entitled ”Things Fall Apart.” When Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, took to the House floor last year to demand that President Bush present a plan for Iraq, he called his speech ”The Center Cannot Hold.” Blogs are full of the observation that ”the blood-dimmed tide is loosed” in Iraq these days.
These phrases all come from William Butler Yeats’s ”Second Coming.” Yeats’s bleakly apocalyptic poem has long been irresistible to pundits. What historical era, after all, is not neatly summed up by his lament that ”The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”? But with its somber vision of looming anarchy, and its Middle Eastern backdrop (the terrifying beast Yeats warns of ”slouches towards Bethlehem”), ”The Second Coming” is fast becoming the official poem of the Iraq war.
The pundits who quote it, though, are picking up on Yeats’s words, but not his world view. As Helen Vendler, the great Harvard poetry scholar, and others have pointed out, ”The Second Coming” is really two poems. The first eight lines are filled with the pointed aphorisms that pundits like so much, while the rest of the poem suggests the unpredictability of how history will unfold. This second, less quoted part is the one that speaks most directly to the grim situation in Iraq.
Yeats wrote ”The Second Coming” in 1919, an especially dismal moment in history. Europeans were shell-shocked from World War I, and deeply cynical. Yeats’s homeland, Ireland, was lurching toward civil war. The old order in Russia had just been toppled by a revolution that Yeats — who had a fondness for aristocracy — feared would spread across the continent and the globe.
Yeats’s perspective on the world’s troubles was not what many people who quote him today might suspect. For one thing, he was not a Christian. He dabbled in theosophy and the occult, and considered Christianity an idea whose time had passed. ”The Second Coming” is not, as its title and the Bethlehem reference might suggest, an account of the return of the Messiah. What is being born is nothing resembling Christ.
As for his politics, Yeats was hardly a democrat, and he did not care much for ”progress” — which makes him an odd choice for people who hope to turn Iraq into a vibrant democracy. Yeats was attracted to fascism, and he rebelled as a youth against the adults’ talk of progress by embracing its opposite. ”I took satisfaction in certain public disasters, felt sort of ecstasy at the contemplation of ruin,” he once wrote.
The first eight lines of ”The Second Coming,” as Ms. Vendler notes, are the philosophical part of the poem. A rational, thinking observer — a pundit, of sorts — is describing the world in definite, if foreboding, terms. ”The falcon cannot hear the falconer” paints a vivid image of the natural order coming apart. ”Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” describes an onslaught of destruction almost matter-of-factly.
But after those eight lines, the poem suddenly becomes, as Ms. Vendler notes, ”oracular.” Like the Delphic oracle, this Yeats speaks cryptically. ”Surely the Second Coming is at hand,” he says — but of course, ”surely” here means its opposite: what follows is not certain at all. Yeats goes on to announce ”somewhere in sands of the desert/ A shape with lion body and the head of a man” — an indefinite creature in an indefinite place.
The poem reflects, as Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic, says, Yeats’s belief that a ”change in god” was coming, ”and that the 2,000-year reign of Christianity was about to end.” But it does not reveal who this god will be. Its last two lines are a question: ”And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
”The Second Coming” is a powerful brief against punditry. The Christian era was about the ability to predict the future: the New Testament clearly foretold the second coming of Christ. In the post-Christian era of which Yeats was writing there was no Bible to map out what the next ”coming” would be. The world would have to look toward Bethlehem to see what ”rough beast” arrived.
This skepticism about predicting the future has more relevance to the Iraq war than any of the poem’s much-quoted first eight lines. The story of the Iraq war is one of confident predictions that never came to pass: ”We will find weapons of mass destruction”; ”we will be greeted as liberators”; ”the insurgency is in its last throes.”
The confident predictors who have been wrong in the past do not hesitate to keep offering up plans. That is true of President Bush, certainly: he talks about what his ”troop surge” will do as if he had never been wrong before. It is also true of the pundits. The co-author of ”Things Fall Apart,” the Brookings guide to going forward in Iraq, is Kenneth Pollack, who is — incredibly — best known for his 2002 book ”The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.”
It is bizarre to see shards of ”The Second Coming” appended to the Brookings report, or to any of the other plans and prognostications about the war in Iraq. Yeats, who grew up feeling ”sort of ecstasy at the contemplation of ruin,” did not just welcome whatever new order his rough beast was ushering in. He believed the only way it could plausibly be spoken of was in the form of a question.
fin
I was talking to a very well educated, usually knowledgeable, very left-wing, socialist–“Everything’s always the Americans’ and Bush’s fault all the time”–friend yesterday.
This person hadn’t heard of either “dhimmitude” or “jizya” (and had no idea about the undemocratic, arbitrary workings of our Human Rights [sic] Commissions). I made sure to give a good lesson!
The invincible ignorance of the left-wing power mongers in the West and their sheep-like followers is one of the most effective weapons of jihad. (Isn’t another word for these fifth columnists “traitor”?)
This latest example of surrender monkey treachery–grovelling and appeasement, via censorship–is despicable. Thank God for the Internet, where ideas are freely exchanged–at least for now. Any Canadians who still think we live in a “free dominion”, should have their heads–if they’re not completely empty!–examined.
I’ve never equated “predictable” with “poor.”
I simply have the power of my convictions, which doesn’t change. In my vernacular, that is equated with stability.
Whether or not W.B. Yeats (thanks for the correction, WB Yeats Redux) was a Christian is not the issue here. He summed up well the hopelessness and nihilism that many felt after WWI, and that many feel today.
My simple–does that translate into predictable?–point is that we in the West lack all conviction, which is tied to our vaunted Godlessness. The intellectual elites of the past century announced that “God is dead,” and the fallout from the masses parroting this phrase and delighting in the nihilistic anarchy then permitted in a Godless society has resulted in a Western World which is bloated, narcissistic, and sick in heart, body, mind, and soul.
Yes, and what rough beast, indeed…slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? One might well wonder. Perhaps “its hour come round at last” has something to do with our brazen, Godless arrogance which may well produce a Narcissistic, Marauding Monster intent on consuming us all. And will we lift a finger–or our voices in prayer–to do anything about it?
Gulf Arabs ‘must open up’ to combat stereotypes
…the reluctance of wealthy Gulf Arabs to draw attention to themselves is portrayed in the Western media as “secretive”, when it is merely an age-old cultural attribute, explains Cherif Sedky, Chief Legal Advisor to the Bin Mahfouz family of Saudi Arabia.
Since 9/11, Saudis have received a bad rap in the Western media for allegedly supporting terrorist groups, and a number of prominent Saudi businessmen have been accused in Western newspapers of having connections with dubious groups. Although more and more Saudis are filing libel suits against these newspapers, the stereotyping of Gulf Arabs continues, largely due to the “secretive” nature of Gulf Arab culture, says Sedky.
His client, Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, for many years Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank (NCB), won a libel suit against the UK’s Mail on Sunday, following an October 2002 article alleging he was the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, funded bin Laden’s terrorist activities and had been dismissed from the NCB for funding terrorism….
…Sedky stressed the importance of fighting in public through litigation, because if the matter is left unaddressed, it would give two impressions: “that the stories must be true; and even if not true, we’re not going to do anything about it”.
“Like it or not, litigation has to be used – and used fast,” he said.
libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=1208231
I disagree that Islamic fascism will ‘conquer the world’. The reason for my disagreement is that it is, like communism, a socialist or collectivist ideology that rejects individual enterprise.
That is, it rejects the middle class, a population set that is based around individual free enterprise.
In addition, it rejects the role of reason and science.
My question is: can such an ideology support, physically, the 6 billion plus population on this planet?
The answer is: no. Certainly, a collectivist ideology can support a no-growth population in the thousands – based around non-industrial agriculture. But, an ideology that rejects individual enterprise and reason can’t adapt, can’t innovate, can’t progress.
Like communism – which failed catastrophically in the Soviet Union – a society based around Islamism can’t support a multi-million size population – economically or scientifically.
The only reason the Islamic states have not collapsed is because they have a single resource, oil, which the WEST has harvested for them. Remember, it wasn’t and isn’t the Islamist who derived the technology to develop fuel-based technology of cars, planes, factories; it was the West who developed this technology. AND the technology to extract and process the oil. The entire process of oil extraction and processing has been achieved by Western technology. And the Islamic states are living on borrowed time because they have no other economy. And they haven’t developed a middle class –
So- the West has to fight this intrusion of a communist collectivist ideology and insist on the role of science, reason and the rights of the individual.
BUT – if the West ever was controlled by this new communism, the economy would collapse, worldwide, just as it did in the Soviet Union.
Will China succumb to dhimmitude? No way.
Will India? No way.
Will the US? Hopefully – no – though the Democrats would pull us down.
Canada? If the latte crowd Liberals/NDP have their way.
My point is that, functionally, Islamism can’t succeed worldwide, because it is economically and scientifically sterile.
I didn’t give Muslims a first thought before 9/11. I can’t imagine where I’ll be after the fourth 9/11.
I couldn’t agree more. One more Big One or a few little jihadi gutblowers showing up in a shopping mall here and the tolerance of the homicidal intolerant stops dead on a dime. Right now the jihadis are smart to wear us down with the strategy of the seemingly innocuous thousand paper cuts, those carefully crafted brushes and wins using our legal system and our pc lunacy to their advantage. But, they’ll screw up. Anything as rabidly hateful and violent as Islam defaults to 7th century Mohammed easily.
The Cartoon War demonstrated the spineless useful idiots that our alleged free press is at heart. They are models of dhimmitude.
I’m with irwin daisy in that mocking this beast at every turn is what we should be doing as free people.
“Cambridge University Press announced that it was going to destroy all copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England”
Astute business sense in avoiding legal liability or a display of moral cowardice?
Both/and, WL Mackenzie Redux (any relation, par hazard, to WB Yeats Redux?).
Astute business sense in avoiding legal liability often goes hand-in-hand with moral cowardice.
ET- Communism was a total failure, but, we never completely killed the beast ideologically at the end of the Cold War. It lives on in socialized Europe, college campuses, the lefty press, and with the Chavez’s of the world and in the core beliefs of many Dems/Libs here in NA.
The EU are goners, between the nanny state and Islam, those sheeple have yet to define the enemy which is both.
Islam doesn’t need to be inventors of technology, they simply need to extract from our efforts what tools are in their best interest, weapons, telecommunications, the internet, whatever advances the jihad. The Saudis deserve to lose those oil fields, they’ve done nothing useful for humanity with the revenues but fomment jihad and keep their feckless princes living large. In a perfect world, if we had European allies that actually had a military of substance, a combined western plan to neutralize the Saudis’ oil revenues by threatening to or actually taking their oil fields would have been a constructive thing. But, you have to have allies to do that.
Although it was clearly meant to, I don’t believe the exposition by WB Yeats Redux of “The Second Coming” at all contradicts what the reliable, perceptive BATB had to say.
First of all, poetry is an art form, which, like most others, can stand alone: beauty (or not) and meaning are ALLOWED to be in the eye/mind of the beholder. That’s one of the purposes and beauties of art, WBYR: if humans needed a complete annotation of every work of art before they were allowed to appreciate or interpret it, art would become the preserve of only the elite class, deemed worthy and qualified enough to make a judgement. (That sounds totalitarian to me!)
So, BATB’s interpretation of Yeats’ particular words, written at a particular time, in a particular context, do not necessarily have to mirror what he, himself, meant. However, it actually seems to me that both Yeats and BATB are on the same page in recognizing the anarchy he rightly predicted. That Yeats apparently somewhat relished the coming of anarchy, while BATB (and I) deplore it, is quite beside the point.
To use the fine imagery in this poem as a symbol of the fall of our civilization is not out of the ball park at all. Indeed,
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
describes very well the threat of secularism, socialism, untrammelled “rights” for all, the treachery of fifth columnists, etc., all of which, like termites in a building, are destroying Western society from within. (Then, from without, there are the beastly jihadists, somewhere near Bethlehem!)
Combine the disciplined, hard values of our Islamist enemies with the decadent, soft ones of the West and, as we are seeing right before our eyes, “the centre [is] not hold[ing]”.
Thanks, BATB, for the powerful, figurative language you added to this sad reality.
WB Yeats Redux – the Bookings Institute is very left leaning, I expect nothing less from them in their attitude toward the Iraq invasion and Bush.
Iraq was “a grim place” before the Iraq invasion, a reality not lost on Iraqis. Bottomline: the Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet. Had Saddam died of natural causes, the US never invaded, there was as much chance that the Baathist reign would have unravelled in a bloody manner and Iraq would have be reorganizing itself as it is now. That could be applied to Assad too. History happens. There is a much bigger picture to examine.
penny – my point is that Islamism cannot succeed as a dominant ideology in the world because it is a ‘no-progress’ ideology that rejects the basis of progress, namely, the use of reason and individual enterprise.
You mention its use of western technology – but that means that the west, with its focus on reason and individualism, must survive.
The world will always have an emotional longing for the utopianism of collectivist ideologies such as communism, socialism and Islamism. My point is that these must remain peripheral and cannot ever become dominant because they cannot, on their own, maintain large populations.
So- the ‘doom and gloom’ speculation that Islam will eventually conquer the world is, in my view, unjustified, merely because it has no capacity to support that world.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to fight it! And there’s no proof, as I’m sure you would be the first to admit, of your speculative scenario of ‘what if Saddam had died naturally, and..’ It could readily have been the same, or another tribal regime – rather than democracy.
Muslims have gained a foothold in Western Democracies and it’s rapidly gaining ground.
In Canada they have the perfect tools to become stronger and have some of their laws enacted,like “Sharia”. Our Charter of Rights and Multiculturalism are the tools, we will stand for nothing and lose all the values this country was built on.
Thank you Mr. Trudeau.
That Muslims/Islamists, whatever, are on a mission to take over Western Democracies is not far fetched, it’s becoming clearer by the day. What is also clear is we are sitting like fools and letting it unfold allowing more and more immigration from Muslim ‘countries’ and less from Europe.
It’s difficult to warm up to a people who live in our midst but isolate themselves, live in their own enclaves, go to their own schools etc. Many of the women of the culture are shunning us by wearing almost total disguise in our streets. That is not becoming part of our society.
Add to that,of those who are Canadian citizens and pooping out future generations in our safe secure environment, how many would go to war to defend their new land against terrorists?
It’s a total bad scenario, we’re just so damned nice we might just inadvertently give them the Country.
– “latte Liberals” : I love it!
– more Muslims in T-dot? Try Montreal!
– Steyn has overlooked the forces of globalization which have tamed many communist states and will tame these radical muslim ones… eventually. I agree with ET: “Islamism can’t succeed worldwide, because it is economically and scientifically sterile.”
penny
**** to neutralize the Saudis’ oil revenues by threatening to or actually taking their oil fields would have been a constructive thing. But, you have to have allies to do that. ****
we don’t need allies, whot we need is “attitude” ( read lifestyle change), and as we reduce our dependance on the almighty OIL, the ME regimes will fall under the weight of their own stupidity
I think Steyn hits the nail on the head when he talks about the flood of Saudi/Wahhabi money fuelling the radicalization of Islam worldwide. The virulent strain of Islam espoused by the Wahhabists is becoming more and more dominant, supplanting the more traditional, moderate practice of the religion. Saudis pay 80% of the mortages of mosques in the U.S.
Its ironic the moderate Muslims seeking a better life can immigrate to North America or Europe and see their children brainwashed and radicalized right here.
The problem isn’t Muslim immigration. The problem is that we are allowing a dangerous and murderous ideology to fester in the form of Wahhabism.
Painting all Muslims with the same brush is counterproductive, and will likely drive more into the arms of the Wahhabists. The smart way to fight this war is to drive a wedge between the moderates and the Wahhabists. Every effort should be made to shut down these so-called “charities” and choke off Saudi funding of their virulent strain of Islam.
Maybe I am getting paranoid after reading so many articles, and blogs like SDA but it seems everywhere now in Toronto I see muslims.
maybe?
GYM – I couldn’t agree more, but, it will take a decade to get back into smaller cars and improvise alternatives. Fossil fuels aren’t going away any time soon. Count on our politicians to screw that process up, subsidizing the wrong alternatives(ethanol which can’t be pipelined, wasting fuel to get it to the pumps) at the expense of the better ones, and, happening now in the US, taxing the big oil companies instead of taxing prices higher at the pump to aid conservation. The fools refuse to let the free market determine the alternative energy winners at a price point that only markets fairly determine.
The dumber than rocks Democrats in Congress are capable of all manner of screwing this up. Their Energy Bill is the first of their follies.
A little perspective. Counterterrorism Blog lists a bunch of Muslim libel suits – but acknowledges that all were dismissed in favour of the defendants (except for one case which dated from 1935).
Likewise, the bearded Cassandra has to admit that this kind of stunt actually works only in Britain – because of their paternalistic and outdated libel laws.
The Islamic war on information – in the age of the Internet, no less – would appear to have a bit of a ways to go.
To answer the question of the first post.
Muslims = Those who follow the tenets of the Law of God.
Mohammedans/jihadists = Those who emulate the prophet.
Al Arabia recently reported the conversion of about 1,000 Muslims to Christianity in Morocco.
The real ‘moderate Muslims’ are the ones trapped within this inhuman cult of murder by birth and these courageous Moroccans have realized it is better to follow the true Religion of Peace and emulate the Prince of Peace.
The news report articulated a list of people in occupations in which reasonable intelligence is a requirement.
It cited one 30-year-old Arab who was questioned by the local police about his conversion.
To me, this is an example that the so-called ‘moderate Muslim’ has realized the true nature of the cult he has been imprisoned in since birth and they have taken the path of courage, freedom and peace.
As I have said here many times before, the enemy lies within. The real threat to our civilization is not and never will be some flavor of the month terrorists or religious group. Look directly at the leftist appeasers that will give anything away, including their own freedom, THEY ARE THE ENEMY. They are but thieves looking for the first unlocked opportunity to steal power for their childish and Camelotian views of the word and will accept anything or anyone in that endeavor. Anything, as long as they don’t have to do the fighting and can escape the perseverance and hard work needed to get there.
The real fight begins within, and at home.
Set you free: “Muslims = Those who follow the tenets of the Law of God”
Correction: You must mean the Law of Allah. Allah is not the God of the Bible.
Last I heard, there were 350 thousand Muslims in greater Toronto and surrounding area.
It is simple … we are being colonized as it the rest of the world.
We are doing little to protect our culture. Any culture that won’t protect itself deserves to die out.
What are you prepared to do to protect your culture? … Or do you do you still think you have one to protect?
Western Canadian, you have a lot of fellow travellers on that one. The West has the means to conquer the jihadists, but too many head- in-the-sand lefties just don’t have the will.
And they, with their acceptance of decadence and government-sanctioned perversions of truth, morals, and endeavour, will be the first to feel the heavy boot of Sharia. Dolts!
Re ET’s thesis that, in the end, Islam CANNOT enslave and preserve hegemony over the world. I believe there’s some logic to that: because such experiments as radical feminism, communism, and Nazism betray human nature, they eventually implode. However, this is no cause for complacency (which I know ET doesn’t sanction): think of the horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of these “isms”.
In the end, the jihadists may not triumph. But, I believe there will be hell on earth before they’re banned to their proper place. And the longer the West dithers, the more hell there’s likely to be.
Cults have always existed. Communism, Jihadists, Kyotoists, Nazi’s, some Christian sects. The names and motives may differ but they are all cults. There will always be people that are vulnerable to their tactics.
The problem I see is that our society does not seem to be able to differentiate between the benign cults and the dangerous cults. For reason of political correctness the most dangerous cults among us seem to be immune to the normal processes designed to control them. Expose, denounce, infiltrate and prosecute.
Organizations like the MSM and academia are not traitors but instead are hopelessly blinded by their own ideologies. Passivity, multiculturalism, political correctness, victimhood politics, western guilt, anti-capitalists. In fact, most of what is deemed “progressive”. Unfortunately, there seems to be no remedy for that.
Just checked the Calgary Library website,no ‘Alms for Jihad ‘listed. But there is ine that is about charities that collect for terrorism.
“, WL Mackenzie Redux (any relation, par hazard, to WB Yeats Redux?).”
Not bloody likely. William lyon Mackenzie was a republican and a libertarian…a self made, self educated man who rid Upper Canada of corruption by nepotistic cabals fostered representative democracy in Canada.
OTOH Yeats was a cloistered academic artsy fartsy who couldn’t figure out who he was from radical nationalist, to classic liberal, to reactionary conservative, and millenarian nihilist…he lived and died confused. IMHO
LynnH, I agree with much of your analysis.
However, with respect, I don’t agree that “[o]rganizations like the MSM and academia are not traitors [because they] are hopelessly blinded by their own ideologies”. By that logic, Hitler would be exonerated for his treachery re German Jews because it was “just” (my quote) the result of “[his] own ideologies”.
Ideologies have concrete consequences, often horror stories, for which the people who hold those ideologies need to be held to account. Again, think the citizens who lived close to the concentration camps and refused to admit their existence. It may have been by omission—not something one can say about the MSM or the academy, whose motives are definitely not benign in any way—but these Germans surely betrayed their fellow citizens.
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines a traitor as “person who is . . . disloyal, esp. to his or her country”. In their extreme antipathy to the Judeo-Christian culture—against which they’re rebelling—which built the West, the academy and MSM are, willingly and even enthusiastically, aiding and abetting the enemy in the most egregious manner. If that’s not treachery, I don’t know what is!
(Actually, by trying to let academics and members of the MSM off the hook, you infantilize them. They’re thinking ADULTS and need to be held to account as such.)
lookout – my point is that utopian collectivism is an ideology that is and will always be, extremely attractive to a large number of people. Whether this is communism, socialism, fascism (and we are now experiencing Islamic fascism) such engineered societies attract people.
It removes doubt, it denies the reality of inequality and unfairness and suffering as a legitimate part of life, and removes the burden of individual responsibility. You are assured by the ‘wise men’ – and these ideologies always have Wise Philosopher-Kings as leaders – that if you just follow the regime’s orders – the result will be perfection. eg Animal Farm.
But as a socially engineered society, it insists on homogeneous belief and behaviour – and because nature is not and can never be, homogeneous, the regime rapidly moves into authoritarian repression of freedom.
And then, the Wise Philosopher-Kings, as leaders, then become corrupt and enamored of power.
So- inherently as a structure, a collectivist ideology is intrinsically unstable and can’t last for longer than a generation – and even then, it requires massive repression.
The only society in which a collectivist system can function, is the most basic no-growth non-industrial agriculturalism. It can’t support massive populations, can’t enable change and adaptation, and collapses rapidly when faced with new pressures – because it rejects the individual and thus, the ‘location of new ideas’.
My point is that in our current global situation, with its 6 billion and rising population, the ONLY societal mode possible is capitalist and democratic – because this mode promotes the individual.
But, the collective utopia, which operates as an idyllic irrational emotive mindless dream, will always emerge and re-emerge in our world.
We have to fight it and keep it to the periphery. And I agree with you – it’s going to take a lot of suffering to defeat Islamic fascism. A lot of this suffering is due to the leftist attraction to utopian socialism – another form of fascism. The left, and its rejection of democracy, capitalism and the individual, in favor of social engineering – is making the current rise of Islamic fascism ‘relatively easy’.
However – it can’t succeed. By the way, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that one important nation that will help the world reject Islamic fascism is China, which is just now emerging from its own era of utopian social engineering – and its people don’t want to go back there.
By ‘help the world’ – I mean by sheer numbers and weight of ‘doing the opposite’ – ie, capitalism.
Again – the West has to fight this fascism, both militarily and intellectually.
GYM 11:16 said:
“we don’t need allies, whot we need is “attitude” ( read lifestyle change), and as we reduce our dependance on the almighty OIL, the ME regimes will fall under the weight of their own stupidity”
Unfortunately the Chinese and Russians would likely fill void as customers of the Saudis…
Just as in the years prior to WW2 the problem is apathy and ignorance. Very few people are aware of the threat of Islam and those who are are don’t have much of an audience. Some of my best friends, even conservatives, couldn’t care less about international politics. They are too busy enjoying the good life.
As to cults, sure we have always had them but have we ever had one the size and power of this one? I’m very pessimistic about our chances when I see what’s happening in Europe where there is much better media coverage of the problems of Islam. Just last night in Holland an ex-muslim socialist MP was attacked by muslims. Won’t make any difference, it’s too late already.
ET wrote, and I agree with every word of the first paragraph: “We have to fight [collective utopia] and keep it to the periphery. And I agree with you – it’s going to take a lot of suffering to defeat Islamic fascism. A lot of this suffering is due to the leftist attraction to utopian socialism – another form of fascism. The left, and its rejection of democracy, capitalism and the individual, in favor of social engineering – is making the current rise of Islamic fascism ‘relatively easy’.
“However – it can’t succeed.”
Herman wrote, “I’m very pessimistic about our chances when I see what’s happening in Europe where there is much better media coverage of the problems of Islam.”
I find myself really torn here. I’d like to think Islamic fascism can’t succeed–and maybe, in the long run, way down the road, it won’t. But in the short run, like the next few decades, there’s going to have to be a whole lot of “blood, sweat, and tears” if victory’s going to be ours.
And, as both ET and I’ve pointed out, the jihadists are being powerfully aided and abetted by the lefty fifth columnists in the West. The longer they hold out with their perverse mind set, the longer, the more difficult, and the more violent will be the struggle. I’m very pessimistic about the struggle ahead, which, I believe, is going to cost us all very dearly.
the muslim population is somewhere around 2.5 % of the population in canada. the vast majority live in the GTA so you westerners can relax.
perhaps our new muslim overlords will introduce some discipline into our eastern canadian lives. i thought you’d all be pleased.
no one’s biting davidson, change your bait/crank-up the flamethrower.
And let us the first things we do let us hang all the lawyers
it may be true that the muslim world can’t take over the world with their rejection of science and logic etc, but with the help of the sheeple on the left whose political correctness necessitates being oblivious to atrocities happening eveywhere I see us being pulled down to their level i.e. England, Holland.
However, an evil empire like China gets a pass from the progressives so they are not required to play the pacifist to muslim agression as we are.
ET wrote: “Again – the West has to fight this fascism, both militarily and intellectually.”
I agree, but that is only the partial answer. Spiritual weapons must also be used but, of course, most will guffaw at this and call me “poor,” “predictable,” and hopelessly “naive” to bring faith into the equation.
lookout understands the enormity of what we in the West are facing, and many here have commented on the fact that we may already have lost the battle.
The great tragedy of the West is, that having been the benficiaries of the spiritual mothers and fathers who have gone before us, meaning those who espoused Judeo-Christian values in the founding of our democracies, values which engender a political, moral, and ethical ethos of “love your neighbour as yourself,” we have turned our back on these values and now spurn and ridicule those who wish to remind us of where we have come from.
Those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it, and that goes for our spiritual legacy, as well.
There is no inevitability, as ET asserts, that the West “with its focus on reason and individualism, must survive” and that “Islamism can’t succeed worldwide, because it is economically and scientifically sterile.”
If Islamism creates violent and murderous chaos in the world, as it’s been quite successful in doing, and we (Democrats, Librano$, Dippers, Red Tories, the MSM, the West’s chattering classes) refuse to fight back and, furthermore, continue to aid and abet the enemy, what’s to say that Western Civilization will not go down? What’s to ensure that we have the moral or physical strength to maintain what, until recently, was a vibrant, diversified culture?
Culturally, the West is in a sorry state, with crucifixes in urine, Virgin Marys in elephant dung, dead and preserved human bodies engaged in all manner of pursuits, considered “art,” sexed-up and drugged-up skanky girls and Peter-Pan boys all over the landscape, etc., etc., ad G*d-I’m-depressed…
Without the will to fight, without the conviction that there is a culture, a belief, a way of life worth fighting for, why would we bother?
Sadly, I think that’s the thinking of the traitors in our midst.
We shall see how smug Jeff and his latte sipping friends are when Johnny Jihad Jr. self-detonates on Yonge Street on a busy Saturday. Or maybe it will be a running gun battle at the Scarborough Town Centre. Hopefully none of my friends or relatives will be collateral damage.