Do as the adherents of the Religion of Peace™ do, and either react to cartoons lampooning your religion as intolerant and violence-prone by sending out gunmen to hunt down Westerners who are only in your country to support you and your fellow believers to begin with, or, if you're not on your home turf but happen to be living right amongst the infidels whose ridiculous fascination with "free speech" so grates on your nerves, why not reward the hospitality of your hosts by sending out a fatwa advocating the killing of anyone who insults your beloved prophet?
The Jyllands-Posten articles are supposedly offensive because of their equation of Islam with violent extremism, but given what Muslims across the world have done and said to date in response to it, what room is there to doubt that this equation is anything but the unvarnished truth? I hope Muslims can be proud of what their exceedingly precious sensibilities have managed to achieve, as they've managed to drive me into company I never thought I'd find myself amongst: I am now convinced that not only is Islam fundamentally incompatible with Western-style liberal democracy, but so is the very presence of Muslims themselves in large numbers, and everything within reason must be done to bring all further Muslim immigration to the West to a complete halt. To do otherwise would, I believe, only serve to store up trouble for the future, by allowing the growth of a fanatical fifth-column which will not hesitate to subvert the very order which made its new home so attractive in the first place, just as soon as it has the critical numbers. In fact, if it were even possible to somehow repatriate a substantial number of the Muslims who find themselves within Europe's borders, I'm afraid to say that I'm not at all sure that I'd really be against it, as revoltingly Powellite as such an idea is on the face of it - that's just how grave a peril a continued substantial Muslim presence in Europe has come to seem. Well done to all the eternally-angry Muslims of the world for making me think like Jean Marie Le Pen!
PS: I know as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow that what I've just said will draw all sorts of remarks about betraying libertarianism, "racism" and all the other expected guff, but you know what? At this point I simply don't care. I already have quite a bit of experience of what it's like to live in a society in which those of the Religion of Peace™ run the roost, and I'm simply not of any mind to repeat the experience: either Europe stops importing Muslims - who repeatedly fail to show the slightest evidence of a willingness to absorb the most important of Europe's values - or the day will eventually come when amputations, stonings and the checking of women's abayas by officially-sanctioned zealots will be the norm in London, Paris and Berlin.
Abiola, check these out:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004448.htm
Posted by: Pearsall Helms | February 04, 2006 at 02:08 AM
Ajak.. I like your observation and insight to regarding of Islam and western enlightenment..
You know after colonialism most of the middle-east countries started heading in the direction of secluar style socialist countries whose leadership had a disdain for religious extremists..
However, once those country's dysfunctional governments did not deliver people started turning to religious fundamentalist...
I wonder if religion would have played a major role the middle-east societies if those countries were economically successful?
Posted by: Josef | February 04, 2006 at 05:30 AM
Ajak.. I like your observation and insight to regarding of Islam and western enlightenment..
You know after colonialism most of the middle-east countries started heading in the direction of secluar style socialist countries whose leadership had a disdain for religious extremists..
However, once those country's dysfunctional governments did not deliver people started turning to religious fundamentalist...
I wonder if religion would have played a major role the middle-east societies if those countries were economically successful?
Posted by: Josef | February 04, 2006 at 05:31 AM
[In your considered view was it more the detente or the long term economic failure of Communism that caused more Cold War progress]
The long term economic failure of Communism caused the end of the Cold War.
The low birth rate in the Communist countries caused the long term economic failure of Communism.
The fact that Communism was a really shit system to live under caused the low birth rate in the Communist countries.
And "detente" both prevented the Communist countries from keeping their citizens' morale up by patriotic appeals, and _stopped_us_all_from_dying_in_a_nuclear_war_ , which last one I considerto be quite a significant benefit of detente.
I don't generally argue with Reagan cultists - they're entitled to their views but I don't share them - but I will say that if you think that Powellite ranting about deporting all the eevil Muslims puts you in the tradition of Ronnie, you're crazy. Also note that if you look back to some of the detail of your hero's policy with respect to Iran and Iraq you might not be all that impressed with what you see.
And no, Chuckles, I am not high and I maintain that anyone who thinks the tolerance of Western society is a sign that we are weaker than we were in the 1930s, is making a bad joke.
Posted by: dsquared | February 05, 2006 at 12:50 PM
"but I will say that if you think that Powellite ranting about deporting all the eevil Muslims puts you in the tradition of Ronnie, you're crazy. "
? oh, that Powell!
I agree with your pint that Communism fell of its own weight, just that our military build up helped by putting a final intolerable burden on the sytem. After all, our system was strong enough not to crumble under the strain they put on us.
Posted by: Jim | February 05, 2006 at 11:32 PM
"I don't generally argue with Reagan cultists - they're entitled to their views but I don't share them - but I will say that if you think that Powellite ranting about deporting all the eevil Muslims puts you in the tradition of Ronnie, you're crazy. Also note that if you look back to some of the detail of your hero's policy with respect to Iran and Iraq you might not be all that impressed with what you see."
I think that Reagan did lots of great things, and was very helpful in hastening the fall of Communism, but both comments are correct. He would not have been a fan of deporting Muslims--he was very welcoming of immigrants who became fully American. He didn't do that well in the Middle East. I partially forgive both Reagan and Carter for their missteps in the Middle East--they both had to worry about the USSR. I'm not so forgiving of Bush I (giving new life to Arafat may have been the stupidist thing in decades) or Clinton.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | February 07, 2006 at 08:26 AM
Welcome Abiola to the land of the sane.
The fact that the West eventually triumphed over fascism should not be cause for complacency. Or have we forgotten what a close call this was, how many lives it cost, how it led to the Communist enslavement of Eastern Europe for half a century, etc. (This was all avoidable: Hitler could have been crushed when Germany was still weak.)
I think, though, there is a danger that when the extent of the Islamic threat is finally generally realized, the pendulum will swing far too violently, to the side of neo-fascist nationalism. Our mainstream politicians, having led us into disaster, will be completely discredited, and this will leave neo-fascists as the only organized anti-Islamic political voice with credibility with the public. (See Wolfgang Bruno's blog on this subject.) We need anti-Islamists who value liberal traditions. This would mean, for example, preserving all the legal rights of innocent Muslim citizens while excluding new Muslim immigrants (except for Ahmadis, bona fide pro-Western refugees, etc.) as a completely unnecessary risk to national security.
Posted by: snowpea | February 09, 2006 at 11:13 PM
To take your statement ''Josef'';
''I wonder how catholics in Spain and Italy would react if papers started showing the POPE molesting little kids''
How would you and/or other muslims react if I portrayed ''muhammed'' engaged in sexual relations WITH A NINE-YEAR OLD GIRL?
That would, in fact, be an accurate depiction of what is stated in the koran.
But I doubt Catholics would be openly in the streets demanding bloodshed and even massacres of people for ''showing the POPE molesting little kids''. Click here, scroll past the cartoons in question (and note that NONE of them represent ''muhammed'' ''molesting little kids'') and look at the photos (from London) yourself.
I don't need to portray muslims or islam itself negatively. All I have to do show you how they represent themselves...
Posted by: NewsVeiws | February 11, 2006 at 09:57 AM
“We are at a crossroads of something very deep,” said Professor Tariq Ramadan, a visiting Islamic scholar at Oxford University. “On both sides there are fractures.”
Crossroads is right but what cheek to suggest that the fractures are on both sides. There is no fracture in the islamic world, the fracture is in the West, as we still do realise that multiculteralism is death to a nation state.
The reason that this has come to pass is the belief that multiculteralism is good for the nation. Yet we forget that the very concept of a nation is based on people founding a community/nation of shared language and culture. It is for this reason that we have several European nations. Though we have the same culture, the languages are different.
And now we have imported a large group of people who do not even share the culture that they have come to. Moderate or radical islamists are not the issue. Muslims by the very fact that are muslims, cannot be part of the culture of a Western nation. As such they become an irritant growth in the host body. I write this in no disrespect of muslims or their culture. It is simply a fact.
I can see no way that muslims will let us live in peace in our nations in the West. The "peaceful" demonstration in London yesterday is simply a holding operation as the muslim population, which by the way is more then 5 million in the UK rather then 1.6 million as oft quoted, grows till they are able to enforce islamic values in society.
After so much pain, we in the West had finally found a way to live in peace with each other. Was it really necessary to import muslims and disturb the peace?
Posted by: DP111 | February 12, 2006 at 03:18 PM
Abiola:
Great article BTW.
Posted by: DP111 | February 12, 2006 at 03:20 PM