For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries.
"They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.
"The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory.
"It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent."
Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.
"It is already starting to happen - and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."
For someone with such strong and uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South America, and attended a madrassa there.
"But Islamic instruction was very different in the 1950s, when I was at school," he says. "There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."
Dr Sookhdeo's family emigrated to England when he was 10. In his early twenties, when he was at university, he converted to Christianity. "I had simply seen it as the white man's religion, the religion of the colonialists and the oppressors - in a very similar way, in fact, to the way that many Muslims see Christianity today.
"Leaving Islam was not easy. According to the literal interpretation of the Koran, the punishment for apostasy is death - and it actually is punished by death in some Middle Eastern states. "It wasn't quite like that here," he says, "although it was traumatic in some ways."
Dr Sookhdeo continued to study Islam, doing a PhD at London University on the religion. He is currently director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. He also advises the Army on security issues related to Islam.
Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.
So his claim that, in the next decade, the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr Sookhdeo has proved his prescience.
"The Government, and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, are fundamentally deluded about the nature of Islam," he insists. "Tony Blair unintentionally revealed his ignorance when he said, in an effort to conciliate Muslims, that he had 'read through the Koran twice' and that he kept it by his bedside.
"He thought he was saying something which showed how seriously he took Islam. But most Muslims thought it was a joke, if not an insult. Because, of course, every Muslim knows that you cannot read the Koran through from cover to cover and understand it.
The chapters are not written to be read in that way. Indeed, after the first chapter, the chapters of the Koran are ordered according to their length, not according to their content or chronology: the longest chapters are first, the shorter ones are at the end.
"You need to know which passage was revealed at what period and in what time in order to be able to understand it - you cannot simply read it from beginning to end and expect to learn anything at all.
"That is one reason why it takes so long to be able to read and understand the Koran: the meaning of any part of it depends on a knowledge of its context - a context that is not in the Koran itself."
The Prime Minister's ignorance of Islam, Dr Sookhdeo contends, is of a piece with his unsuccessful attempts to conciliate it. And it does indeed seem as if the Government's policy towards radical Islam is based on the hope that if it makes concessions to its leaders, they will reciprocate and relations between fundamentalist Muslims and Tony Blair's Government will then turn into something resembling an ecumenical prayer meeting.
Dr Sookhdeo nods in vigorous agreement with that. "Yes - and it is a very big mistake. Look at what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew that London was becoming the centre for Islamic terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet nothing was done.
"The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops.
"It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book.
"Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both."
Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.
They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism.
"For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.
'Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is their aim to achieve this.
"That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.
"Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."
That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law.
"There's already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.
"Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.
"The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government's record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that."
Dr Sookhdeo's vision of a relentless battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the vast majority of the interactions between the two communities.
"Well, it isn't me who says Islam is at war with secularisation," he says. "That's how Islamic clerics describe the situation."
But isn't it true that most Muslims who live in theocratic states want to get out of them as quickly as possible and live in a secular country such as Britain or America? And that most Muslims who come to Britain adopt the values of a liberal, democratic, tolerant society, rather than insisting on the inflexible rules of their religion?
"You have to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed leaders," explains Dr Sookhdeo. "I agree that the best hope for our collective future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up here have accepted the secular nature of the British state and society, the division between religion and politics, and the importance of allowing people to choose freely how they will live.
"But that is not how most of the clerics talk. And, more significantly, it is not how the 'community leaders' whom the Government has decided represent the Muslim community think either.
"Take, for example, Tariq Ramadan, whom the Government has appointed as an adviser because ministers think he is a 'community leader'. Ramadan sounds, in public, very moderate. But in reality, he has some very extreme views. He attacks liberal Muslims as 'Muslims without Islam'. He is affiliated to the violent and uncompromising Muslim Brotherhood.
"He calls the education in the state schools of the West 'aggression against the Islamic personality of the child'. He has said that 'the Muslim respects the laws of the country only if they do not contradict any Islamic principle'. He has added that 'compromising on principles is a sign of fear and weakness'."
So what's the answer? What should the Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage with the real Muslim majority, not with the self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with them.
"Second, the Government should say no to faith-based schools, because they are a block to integration. There should be no compromise over education, or over English as the language of education. The policy of political multiculturalism should be reversed.
"The hope was that it would to ensure separate communities would soften at the edges and integrate. But the opposite has in fact happened: Islamic communities have hardened. There is much less integration than there was for the generation that arrived when I did. There will be much less in the future if the present trend continues.
"Finally, the Government should make it absolutely clear: we welcome diversity, we welcome different religions - but all of them have to accept the secular basis of British law and society. That is a non-negotiable condition of being here.
"If the Government does not do all of those things then I fear for the future, because Islamic communities within Britain will form a state within a state. Religion will occupy an ever-larger place in our collective political life. And, speaking as a religious man myself, I fear that outcome."
#4
It's amazing to watch the plan for Eurabia unfold with the inevitability of a new ice age descending. The French Muslims have shown the way - the banlieu's are de facto states within a state.
As this situation gets worse, freedom-loving Brits will emigrate, the politicians and dhimmi masses will remain and allow Sharia take hold. For them any solution other than appeasement is unthinkable.
#5
If the majority of Britain's Muslims do not support the clerics, and are amenable to integration into British life, why are they forming ghettoes? A handful of radical clerics cannot keep them from integrating, nor force 40% of them to publicly support imposition of sharia.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/20/2006 9:18 Comments ||
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#6
the secular basis of British law and society.
That is a ridiculous statement given that at the apex of both sits the Defender of the Faith.
#7
The people of the United States welcome the political development of Islamic communities (Ummah) within Western Civilization. They represent the tasty fruit of our multiculturalism, and we welcome all those yearning to be free. Muslim beneficiaries of Secular welfare benefits are best able to populate the West, and restrain racist elements within. In France, 35% of all babies born last year were of either Arabic or African origin. Eventually, a majority of the French will be Muslim, and they will inherit that countries nuclear arms. Similarly, Muslims are breeding like flies in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and elsewhere, bringing the West more adherents of the noble faith. America's cup runneth over with Muslims, and we welcome any future claims to sovereignty in America. If 20% of Americans are loyal to Mecca, then they will balance our still existent Secular constitution, which has allowed our hospitals to transform into abortion factories.
Posted by: State Department ||
02/20/2006 16:50 Comments ||
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#8
Had enough? Lol. Prolly got a book of this inane boilerplate with [insert issue here] and [insert target here] points.
February 20, 2006: A German court ruled that a hijacked aircraft could not be shot down to prevent it from crashing into a stadium full of people. The court said that the rights of the passengers on the hijacked aircraft took priority over attempts to prevent greater loss of life in the stadium. The ruling came as Germany was organizing security for the soccer world cup. There will be a no-fly zone over the stadiums, but because of this ruling, the fighter jets patrolling the air space will not be allowed to shoot down aircraft threatening the thousands of people in a stadium. The games will be played, in twelve different stadiums, between June 9 and July 9. Germany will try to come up with another way to stop a hijacked aircraft, or seek another legal solution to the prohibition on shooting down attacking aircraft. Do the arithmetic, Fritz
#1
This is what happens when you fixate on one aspect of a terrorist action (peoples' lives on the plane) and you refuse to look at the big picture (everyone's lives on the ground).
The government refuses to deal with the problem of a hijacked aircraft, so they will let the terrorists solve the problem for them by crashing it into a full stadium of people.
This is madness, because:
(1) The terrorists achieve all of their goals.
(2) The government winds up protecting nobody but the terrorists, and looks like impotent dhimmis dummies.
It is a perfect lose-lose solution. TGA, are you out there? Do you have a connection to the top people to get their heads out of their collective a$$es?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/20/2006 18:05 Comments ||
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#2
The Germans better hope Jack Bauer is flying the F-104 when the order comes from the ocurt to stand down.
#4
PERFECT example of the difference between western values and muslim values.
trust me. there'd be no such debate if the shoe was on the other foot. and there'd be no way that shoe ever would change feet.
our problem is we apply western values to muslim issues. unfortunately, compassion is seen as weakness. compromise is seen as the first steps to submission. and on and on.
so we anguish over shooting down a plane. muslims laugh.
In Minnesota the Democratic Party has undertaken a campaign to suppress two advertisements giving voice to the sentiments of Iraq war veterans and Gold Star Families who support the war. Brian Melendez is the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party. This past Thursday Melendez called a press conference and condemned the first of the two advertisements -- the one featuring the veterans -- as "un-American, untruthful and a lie." Check it out - multiple links there, including to the ads the Dhimmis are so a-skeered of...
I've seen the ads. Very powerful. Ads like that get into the mainstream, look out.
#4
If you are not a democrat and happen to live in a Midwest Blue State there is a positive angle to this story. This is another example of how the “Progressive” element has increasingly taken control and has become a detriment to the party. To be sure, the overriding reason why the Midwest has consistently voted democrat is because of Organized Labor. And for that reason the gurus arrogantly believe that their faithful will automatically cast a vote for any of their candidates on the ballot as long as a “D” follows their name. But ask the rank-and-file, out of earshot of their shop steward, about other issues of concern. How does the democrat platform regarding affirmative action and illegal immigration square with their interpretation of fundamental union by-laws? Listen to what the majority of Blue Collar workers have to say regarding issues like animal rights and gun control legislation. Are they pleased with the Granolas in their party successfully saving a “precious” ten out of hundreds of thousands of acres even if it eliminates the potential for hundreds of jobs? There are numerous other examples of divisions within the party that currently exist. The shrill voices of the “Anti-War-Anywhere” segment just may be the tipping point.
#7
I guess if your anti-Democrat your anti-American? I can see where Mr Melendez can get confused: the faces, the Names, Ranks, and Branch of service of the speakers is clearly shown. They can only attribute their ?argument? to unknown or unnamed sources. I wish them "Bon Chance" with their latest campaign. I guess next they will attempt to stop the Military from voting or having their votes counted. Clearly they need to stop these radicals from voting for another neoCon, racists, Hitlerite (ie a Republican).
#8
Looks like the group behind these ads is a worthy place to donate a few bucks. It did wonders for Swift Boats at a similar time in their attempts to get their ads out.
#9
I guess next they will attempt to stop the Military from voting or having their votes counted.
Next? Hell, Al Gore tried to do exactly that as the very first act in contesting the Flordia count. Get as many military absentee ballots thrown out in the count.
#1
Hamas isn't even trying to say that they will moderate. They are saying that since the last pullout by Israel, their system obviously works and now they are going to pour it on. I don't know where Carter gets this "moderation" stuff from.
#2
I lived in Atlanta when Carter was Governor. Remember Lester Maddox, the pickaxe-handle-swinging restaraunt owner who didn't want to seat blacks in his place?
Maddox accused Carter of using the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to spy on him. Carter carried on an argument with Lester for a long time, in the press. I lost a lot of respect for him then. Except now he doesn't argue with crackpots - he agrees with them!
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/20/2006 17:40 Comments ||
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#3
Worse than that, Bobby - IIRC, Maddox relented in his later years (don't know if he really changed his mind, or just saw the handwriting on the wall).
So Maddox was more mature - and in the end less bigoted - than Cahtuh. Having lived through those times, I can say that's truly pathetic.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/20/2006 22:24 Comments ||
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Bill Clinton called them "totally outrageous" and an "appalling example" of stereotyping. He was talking about the Danish cartoons that sparked the rioting and killings throughout the Islamic world. Similarly, Sen. John Kerry was appalled by the cartoon depictions of Mohammed -- one, for example, showing the prophet in a turban shaped as a bomb. "Inflammatory images deserve our scorn," he said.
French President Jacques Chirac, likewise, urged caution in regard to upsetting anyone's apple cart, especially if it's a faith-based cart: "Anything liable to rub the wrong way the beliefs of others, particularly the religious beliefs, must be avoided."
Fighting the same rub, the Vatican said that no one has "the right" to hurt anyone's feelings when it comes to religious commentary. We can think it, declared the Vatican, but we can't say it, write it or draw it, lest some overly delicate believer might take umbrage. From the Vatican's statement on the Danish cartoon fallout: "The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
Really? What if you're an agnostic Inca who thinks the tossing of virgins into the mouth of a volcano won't produce a better crop? You shouldn't say anything for fear of offending the true believers? Where's the morality in that, particularly from the virgin's point of view?
What about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Lutheran pastor who became involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler? An avowed pacifist, Bonhoeffer nonetheless came to believe that killing Hitler was less evil than doing nothing and watching the trains go off to Dachau and Auschwitz.
Should Bonhoeffer have done nothing, said nothing, written nothing, so as not to ruffle the religious feathers of his neighbors in Nazi-occupied Europe who obediently and piously rounded up and loaded millions of Jews, "race-mixers," gays and other "undesirables" into the trains, seeing their task as particularly pleasing to God? Should Bonhoeffer have said nothing when Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus called Hitler's rise to power "a gift and miracle from God"? Should he have muzzled himself when swastika flags began to decorate the altars of German churches?
So as not to make his fellow churchmen uneasy, should he have kept quiet when they said nothing about the arrests of Jews and the trashing of their storefronts during Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass"?
On April 9, 1945, Bonhoeffer, at age 39, was hanged at Flossenburg concentration camp by his Nazi captors, 11 days before Allied troops liberated the camp.
Today in Denmark, armed guards protect Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that originally published the Mohammed caricatures. His wrap up of the entire episode: "My guess is that no one will draw the Prophet Mohammed in Denmark in the next generation -- and therefore I must say with deep shame that they have won."
In New York City, former Mayor Ed Koch echoes a similar concern, noting that only a handful of major newspapers in the United States have reprinted the Danish cartoons, even though the caricatures are a key part of their front-page stories.
Washington Post executive editor Len Downie says he won't publish the cartoons because of "general good taste." The New York Times, which daily trumpets "All the News That's Fit to Print" on its front page, finds the cartoons unfit to print because they're "so easy to describe in words."
Koch sees a replay of Neville Chamberlain: "When the greatest, most important institutions in the land -- the free press -- get frightened and surrender, as the German press did under similar assault in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, I worry about the final outcome."
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has condemned the cartoons as "insensitive." Franco Frattini, the European Union's justice and security commissioner, says the EU is setting up a "media code" to encourage "sensitivity."
In France, from Chirac: "I condemn all obvious provocations which could dangerously fuel passions." And what if a woman's bare arms "fuel passions"? What if a man is viewed as offensive if he's flying a kite or humming a tune? Do we cover ourselves, muzzle ourselves, to avoid offending, to keep the peace?
At the Al-Omari mosque in Gaza, a cleric laid out the bottom line regarding the cartoons and retribution: "We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible."
#1
The hypocrisy and weaseliness is just breathtaking. Just imagining Slick Willie or Skeery claiming they're "appalled" is hysterically funny - and completely absurd on its face.
Any sense of provocation is in the mind of the "offended". A few ink lines, or words, have only that meaning which we assign to them - and that is the sole responsibility of the viewer / listener. Letting someone else push your buttons is an individual's choice. The "sensitivity" claims are obvious intimidation plays upon the gutless and cash in the bank for mealy-mouthed opportunists. Worms.
That this entire wave of idiocy is manufactured bogus bullshit - and everyone of the gutless turds baring their bellies in apology knows it - makes this one of the most astounding examples of cowardice in modern times. Fuck them and fuck the faux-offended.
The only benefit is the exposure of Islam for what it is - implacable and incompatible. I hope regular folks are getting pissed off - and seeing clearly the cowardice of these so-called leaders.
By Brigitte Gabriel [Editor's Note: Below are selected excerpts from Brigitte Gabriel's speech delivered at the Intelligence Summit in Washington DC, Saturday February 18, 2006].
We gather here today to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is not merely cold hard data about numerical strength or armament or disposition of military forces. The most important element of intelligence has to be understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim extremist perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
02/20/2006 06:50 ||
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"Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection. It earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes. Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamists are leading us to our demise."
#1
..and then marched to Miami's Freedom Tower to protest a proposed federal law that immigrant groups say would criminalise the nation's 11 million undocumented workers.
Seems to me that someone who is "undocumented" is already a criminal.
#2
Actually, it seems to me that people who have illegally entered this country should be considered terrorists and treated as such. We're at war, so either this invasion is either an act of war on the part of their home countries, or if they disavow them, then they are terrorists. So any remittances they try to send should be seized and they should be deported immediately with extreme vigor.
#2
I wish I could - life is indeed to short. Unfortunately, I have a number of art studenty / left right on friends, and I cant stand being cornered by the argument, which I use myself with regards cartoons, etc:
"Why dont you watch the film before you judge it."
THE PHOENIX is Boston's leading ''alternative" newspaper, the kind of brash, pull-no-punches weekly that might have been expected to print without hesitation the Mohammed cartoons that Islamists have been using to incite rage and riots across the Muslim world. Its willingness to push the envelope was memorably demonstrated in 2002, when it broke with most media to publish a grisly photograph of Daniel Pearl's severed head, and supplied a link on its website to the sickening video of the Wall Street Journal reporter's beheading.
But the Phoenix isn't publishing the Mohammed drawings, and in a brutally candid editorial it explained why. ''Our primary reason," the editors confessed, is ''fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history."
The vast majority of US media outlets have shied away from reproducing the drawings, but to my knowledge only the Phoenix has been honest enough to admit that it is capitulating to fear. Many of the others have published high-minded editorials and columns about the importance of ''restraint" and ''sensitivity" and not giving ''offense" to Muslims. Several have claimed they wouldn't print the Danish cartoons for the same reason they wouldn't print overtly racist or anti-Semitic material. The managing editor for news of The Oregonian, for example, told her paper's ombudsman that not running the images is like avoiding the N-word -- readers don't need to see a racial slur spelled out to understand its impact. Yet a Nexis search turns up at least 14 occasions since 1999 when The Oregonian has published the N-word unfiltered. So there are times when it is appropriate to run material that some may find offensive.
Rationalizations notwithstanding, the refusal of the US media to show the images at the heart of one of the most urgent stories of the day is not about restraint and good taste. It's about fear. Editors and publishers are afraid the thugs will target them as they targeted Danny Pearl and Theo van Gogh; afraid the mob will firebomb their newsrooms as it has firebombed Danish embassies. ''We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," an imam in Gaza preaches. ''Whoever insults a prophet, kill him," reads the sign carried by a demonstrator in London. Those are not figures of speech but deadly threats, and American newspapers and networks are intimidated.
Not everyone has succumbed. The Weekly Standard reproduced the 12 cartoons, and some have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Sun, and even Spare Change News, a Boston biweekly sold by homeless people. But there has been nothing like the defiance shown in Europe, where some two dozen publications in 13 countries have run the cartoons, insisting that they will not allow thugs to decide what a free press can publish.
Journalists can be incredibly brave, but when it comes to covering the Arab and Muslim world, too many news organizations have knuckled under to threats. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, a veteran foreign correspondent, admitted long ago that ''physical intimidation" by the PLO led reporters to skew their coverage of important stories or to ignore them ''out of fear." Similarly, CNN's former news executive, Jordan Eason, acknowledged after the fall of Saddam Hussein that his network had long sanitized its news from Iraq, since reporting the unvarnished truth ''would have jeopardized the lives of . . . our Baghdad staff."
Like the Nazis in the 1930s and the Soviet communists in the Cold War, the Islamofascists are emboldened by appeasement and submissiveness. Give the rampagers and book-burners a veto over artistic and editorial decisions, and you end up not with heightened sensitivity and cultural respect, but with more rampages and more books burned. You betray ideals that generations of Americans have died to defend.
And worse than that: You betray as well the dissidents and reformers within the Islamic world, the Muslim Sakharovs and Sharanskys and Havels who yearn for the free, tolerant, and democratic culture that we in the West take for granted. What they want to see from America is not appeasement and apologies and a dread of giving offense. They want to see us face down the fanatics, be unintimidated by bullies. They want to know that in the global struggle against Islamist extremism, we won't let them down.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/20/2006 00:17 ||
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#1
the Muslim Sakharovs and Sharanskys and Havels who yearn for the free, tolerant, and democratic culture
#2
When that execrable website "we're sorry" came up after the election, one of the photos consisted of some leftist woman in Texas holding up a sign that read "Pleeeeeease don't bomb Tarrant county", an enclave which voted Dem.
Other similar evidence of this attitude abound. A couple of months ago an article was published in a British newspaper (I forget which one) regarding British women in their forties who simply wanted to live like college students forever, and one of the interviewees came out and flatly said that she was an atheist and a solipsist and didn't give a damn what happened to humanity after she was gone, that all that mattered was her own happy not-too-stressful existence continue. The article said, or at least implied, that this attitude was becoming mainstream there.
WIth this sort of information being available, it should have been obvious to everyone all along that with very rare exceptions, opposition to the war against the Islamicists and attempts to defeat W in general were not a function of lofty, principaled, intellectually consistent idelologies but rather naked or barely clothed fear of losing one's life as a result of the give and take of a war for to help assure the continuation of our civilization.
When you're part of the postmodern thing, you generally believe that your own life - your na- a-a-a-a-rrative - is the reason for the universe. There is literally nothing (in their minds) in the universe more important than one's own continued existence - not our civilization, not our freedom, nothing. Many of these folks simply don't believe in an afterlife and don't care about humanity and its status after they pass on.
Therefore, anything at all which creates risk to your life must be avoided, at all costs to one's dignity and decency. If eliminating the risk (ie, WoT) rather than avoiding it incurs some additional risk to life and limb, that's unacceptable as well. The concepts of bravery and taking a risk to maintain a noble ideal are looked upon as foolish, backwards, anti-progressive, etc., but all of these adjectives, deep-down, are a smokescreen put forth to cover up cowardice.
The editors of the Phoenix can be reviled for their lack of honor and their foul cowardice, but they do provide a valuable service by giving us a window into the "soul" of the postmodern left and confirming the true motivations therein.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/20/2006 7:01 Comments ||
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#3
Darn no mo uro, you're stirring up my freedom-loving blood. I played my part in the WoT, but am retired now, but sometimes I wish I could just do something!
#4
no mo uro, i took the liberty of reproducing your comment at my website (with attribution of course). A brilliant and insightful commentary on a phenomenon that I have noted, but had problems putting into words. Food for thought.
#5
OT, but I've seen this headline in two places today (here and at jewishworldreview.com), and both times I read it as "When Cows Fear the Media" on the first glance.
Moo.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/20/2006 9:17 Comments ||
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#6
Thanks all for the kind words.
Identifying the fear and naming it is important, in the manner of shining lights on cockroaches. When the true motives are revealed, then and only then will real progress, perhaps even persuasion, be possible.
If we are spared the phony platitudes which cover up the fear, we can get straight to the heart of the problem.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/20/2006 9:38 Comments ||
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#7
This one - particulary no mo uro's comment belong in the 'Classics' section!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries.
"The Government, and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, are fundamentally deluded about the nature of Islam," he insists. "Tony Blair unintentionally revealed his ignorance when he said, in an effort to conciliate Muslims, that he had 'read through the Koran twice' and that he kept it by his bedside.
So what's the answer? What should the Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage with the real Muslim majority, not with the self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with them.
In Minnesota the Democratic Party has undertaken a campaign to suppress two advertisements giving voice to the sentiments of Iraq war veterans and Gold Star Families who support the war. Brian Melendez is the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party. This past Thursday Melendez called a press conference and condemned the first of the two advertisements -- the one featuring the veterans -- as "un-American, untruthful and a lie."
