Tuesday, April 27, 2010

How Western Liberals Helped Create Modern Islamism

John O’Neill’s latest essay departs from his usual themes to examine the cultural rot of the West, which is what has paved the way for the Islamic incursion.


How Western Liberals Helped Create Modern Islamism
by John J. O’Neill


I vividly recall, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, seeing a photograph of the Bin Laden family, or some of the younger members of the family, on holiday in Sweden. The year, I believe, was 1971. Osama was there, as were about fifteen of his brothers (and half-brothers) and sisters. All of them were dressed in typical “gear” of the time, bell-bottomed jeans and tight pullovers. Some of the boys had long hair, as did the girls. None of these were veiled, or betrayed in her attire the slightest hint of Islamic influence. They could have been a group of youngsters from any western country.

Many if not all the newspapers published this photograph, and the question they were asking was: What could have turned Osama from the easy-going modern youth of the picture into the sworn and fanatical enemy of everything modern and everything western? In the opinion of the present writer however the newspapers were asking the wrong question. What they should have been pondering was: What could have transformed not an individual, but a large section of a civilization, into the sworn enemy of everything modern and western? For the journey taken by Bin Laden in the years between 1971 and 2001 was taken also by many millions of his co-religionists throughout the Islamic world; and the thirty to forty years that have elapsed since the 1970s have seen one Muslim society after another systematically reject the modern world and turn the clock back to the seventh century. Whilst by the late 60s, women all over the Islamic world had adopted western fashions and lifestyles, the tide was dramatically reversed by the late 70s, when traditional Islam, with its strict dress code and social outlook, again bestirred itself. One would now be hard-pressed to find any Islamic country where the easy-going attitudes of the 1950s and 60s still hold sway.

What then has caused this cultural revolution? A clue, I believe, lies in the fact — almost universally ignored by commentators — that the West has experienced its own cultural revolution in the same period. But the West’s revolution has been of a very different kind. Whilst the Islamic world was regressing deep into the seventh century, the West was plunging headlong into an age of unparalleled license and sexual permissiveness. The fact that these two revolutions happened in parallel with each other is not, I hold, a coincidence: the two are inextricably linked. The revolution is Islam was in very large part a reaction to and against the revolution in the West.

Many commentators are aware of the story of Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian founder of the Islamic Brotherhood, a radical Islamic extremist who is now widely regarded as the spiritual founder of Al Qaida. Qutb spent much of 1949 in the town of Greeley, Colorado, where he studied educational theory and practice. He wrote about his experiences in his book, The America I Have Seen, almost every page of which gives expression to his abhorrence of American society. Most of all, Qutb was shocked by what he regarded as the open and flaunted sexuality of American women. Their mannerisms, their expressions, their dress, all spoke to him of a deep-seated depravity. But this was 1949, long before the permissive society of the 60s and 70s; long before Oh Calcutta and Woodstock. By modern standards, the America visited by Qutb was extremely conservative. Marriage was the norm. Women stayed at home and raised the children. Illegitimacy was unusual, and sexual promiscuity frowned upon. The cinema and the press were strictly censored. Yet Qutb found it all abhorrent. Even an innocent dance is a church basement was seen by him as an occasion of lewd depravity.

There is no question that Qutb was an extreme conservative — a conservative moreover coming from an unusually backward country, and from a cultural environment more restrictive of women than any in the world. There is no question also that Qutb represented a mode of thinking that could have been found in any century of Islamic history. In the early twentieth century, and before that, Qutb’s views would have been the norm. But it is important to remember that by 1949 Qutb was a voice crying in the wilderness. No one was listening: For while Qutb ranted and raved about western decadence, the whole Arab and Islamic world was moving to embrace the West as never before. From Casablanca to Jakarta, Muslim women began to abandon the veil, and as the 1950s progressed, western dress and social attitudes became more and more the norm. By the mid-60s it was possible to walk through Cairo or Tehran and see a clear majority of women dressed in western fashion. The power of the mosque, it seemed, and of the imam, was fading fast.

But what a difference a decade makes! Or should I say, two or three decades.
- - - - - - - - -
The West as a whole became aware of the new Islamism in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini made his historic flight from Paris to Tehran and began the process of turning a modern semi-industrialised society into a backward theocracy. This may have been the point at which the West took notice, but it needs to be stressed that much of the groundwork had been laid in the previous decade. Yet that groundwork was laid as much in the West as in the Muslim world: For it was in the late 60s and early 70s that the societies of Western Europe and North America finally severed the link with their Judeo-Christian past. This was the decade that saw the dawn of the Permissive Society. Within little more than ten years socialist or liberal administrations in almost every western country had legalized abortion, relaxed censorship, provided for easy divorce, and introduced legislation which essentially gave financial encouragement to single parenthood. This rapidly led to the decline of marriage and sky-rocketing rates of illegitimacy. A spin-off of the latter, not felt so much at the time, was social breakdown on an unparalleled scale.

These social and cultural changes were accompanied by the rise, amongst the intelligentsia, of a militantly secular culture, which seemed to lose no opportunity to “debunk” traditional Christianity, whether in the movies, on television or in the newspapers; and which promoted a culture of sneering condescension directed at the beliefs of practising Christians. Literature and art seemed to be overwhelmingly controlled by such persons, who were more than anxious to heap accolades and awards on any production that took a swipe at Christianity. Increasingly, Christians had to endure the most obscene fun being made of their faith in all kinds of arenas. God, the intellectual elite of the West proclaimed, was dead; and the Brave New World they were constructing was right out of Aldous Huxley’s famous dystopia of the same name. Sexual pleasure was the purpose of life, and if you weren’t part of it, you were worse than stupid.

Christians, being followers of a teacher whose primary injunction was forbearance, seemed prepared to take all of this, or to make their protests peaceful and law-abiding. The reaction in the Muslim world was rather different. It would perhaps be superficial to quote the plethora of writings emanating from the Islamic world during the 1970s and 80s (or from the contemporary world for that matter) decrying the decadence and godlessness of the West. The point is, that from the mid-1970s young Muslims began to listen to these voices, whereas previously they did not. And this is the situation that now prevails. The writings of Islamist radicals rage against the “godless” West; and statements of terrorist leaders and individual suicide bombers speak of the holy task they have set themselves in destroying the “enemies of God.” Islamist websites make it perfectly clear that they regard the intellectual leaders of the West, the radical secularists, as engaged in a war against God, and that they believe them therefore to be legitimate targets.

It is important to note here that the Islamist preoccupation with this topic is rarely reported in the popular media, especially the leftist media, which prefers to find what it wants to find in the Islamists’ motivations. We are constantly told, for example, in the pages of the New York Times and the Guardian, that the casus belli is “the War in Iraq”, “the Palestinian problem”, or “western imperialism.” Yet in the years leading up to the September 11 attacks there was no war in Iraq, and the Islamists of Sudan who during the 1980s and 90s slaughtered perhaps two million non-Muslims in the south of the country were not in any way worried by the situation in Palestine. Nor were the Islamists of Algeria particularly concerned with the Palestinian issue when they murdered perhaps quarter of a million of their own people during the 90s. And even after 9/11 the Palestinian problem hardly figured at all in the demands or statements made by Bin Laden and his cohorts. On the contrary, these statements were full of anger at the “atheism” of the “infidels” and the decadence of the West, which they vowed to resist. If western imperialism was the problem, then it was the cultural imperialism of the secular, anti-religious liberal elite. It is true, of course, in more modern times, the Islamists have on occasion used the language of leftist westerners for propaganda purposes — invariably for statements directed at western audiences. They have learned, for example, to use Blair’s intervention in Iraq as an “official” reason for attacks against Britain — no matter that Saddam Hussein, the man overthrown by Bush and Blair, was a great hater of Islam, and the murderer of more Muslims than anyone since Genghis Khan. If the Iraq War can be used to stir up internal conflict among the infidels, so much the better.

Yet can even the most doctrinaire leftist deny that modern Britain, with its spiralling crime, family breakdown, vulgarity and celebrity obsession, and general social disintegration, is an easy place to hate and a difficult one to identify with? And surely only the most wilfully blind would fail to see that the militantly secularist world-view promoted on television and the media is profoundly alienating to anyone from a traditional or religious background.

None of this is an attempt to “explain” radical Islamism as the fault of the West. Still less is it an attempt to in any way justify the beliefs or actions of these people. The Islamists do not occupy any kind of high moral ground and have no answers to the world’s problems. None of them are moral people, least of all in a sexual sense. The Paradise they aspire to, after all, is unmistakably sensual, where they look forward to being pleasured to the end of time with their 72 dark-eyed houris. And the ideology espoused by the Islamists is in no way new. It is not a creation of the West. The Islamists represent a revival of mainstream Islamic thought; a theology which has historically not only justified aggressive war, but regarded it is a moral duty. Yet until the 1960s this way of thinking, and Islam itself, was essentially on the way out. Throughout the Islamic world the West was admired and imitated. Western culture was on the ascendant and western attitudes viewed as morally better than what Islam had created in the past. An age of reason, a veritable Enlightenment, was on the point of being born. Yet the moral nosedive taken by western societies in the late 60s and 70s reversed everything. Hollywood movies, previously standard-bearers of western morality (think of Casablanca, for example), became, almost overnight, obnoxious vehicles of profanity and obscenity. Slowly but surely, as the West began to reject all forms of moral restraint, the mood in the Muslim world (and in other eastern cultures) began to change. The West, hitherto admired, was now regarded with horror. And this is the mood which still prevails. True, neither Buddhists nor Hindus (nor conservative Christians) strap bombs to their bodies and commit mass murder. Their faiths are too strongly pacifist for that. Yet in the Islamic sphere things were different, and once again people began to listen to the Sayyid Qutbs of the world.

I would be remiss if I ended without mentioning one or two of the ramifications of the present situation. Not only have the western liberals revived an ancient fanaticism in the Muslim world, but they have created — in several ways — openings by which this fanaticism has been able to reach the West and flourish here. Apart from the criminally-misguided policy of massive and virtually uncontrolled immigration from the Middle East (multiculturalism is a central plank of leftist/secularist thought), the policy of marginalising Christianity has also created a moral and spiritual vacuum of the most dangerous kind. A newspaper article in a British daily shortly after 9/11, titled “Islam’s Armani Army”, dealt with young middle-class professionals in England who had embraced Islam. The striking thing about these young people was that they all came from committedly secularist backgrounds — some of their parents were left-wing Labour Party members, others were Communists and Socialists of various hues. It was clear that these young people, completely cut off from their own cultural roots, had found in Islam a religious identity they had never previously possessed.

It is no exaggeration to say that the whole leftist response to the Islamist threat is loaded with irony. So, for example, whilst they profess to be the side most anxious to find reasons as to “why they hate us,” they are also the side most resolutely determined to ignore those reasons. There exists an almost surreal refusal on the part of the left to look at the facts or to even listen to a word the Islamists say, preferring instead to put into the minds of the Islamists concerns which are entirely their own. A striking, and obnoxious, example of this was seen in Michael Moore’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Why, he asked, had the Islamists attacked the people of New York, who had not even voted for George Bush? The assumption on Moore’s part that the Islamists had picked the “wrong” target was predicated on the notion that they were some kind of socialist movement concerned with the capitalist exploitation of their homelands. Not only did Moore fail to read a single line of what the Islamists have been saying for years, but he, along with the entire left, have failed to understand that they themselves are the primary cause of the Islamists’ hatred and contempt for the West. Thus whilst calling for us to “understand” the Islamists’ motives, they continue to promote ever more extreme secularist policies, such as gay marriage and gay adoption, which only further inflames the Islamists’ rage.

The policies pursued by the left (and I include here zealots like Richard Dawkins of no overtly political affiliation), far from creating a secularist utopia, are in danger of producing a theocracy more fanatical and more obscurantist than anything Europe has ever experienced. The modern left in fact constitutes an enormous fifth column placed right at the heart of the West; a fifth column actively and openly involved in undermining every attempt to defend the freedoms and humanitarian traditions it professes to believe in. There are many historical reasons for this, but that is not the subject of the present paper. What needs to be stressed here is that, should the left have its way, the Islamization of Europe and America is inevitable. Indeed, only two outcomes are possible: Either Europe will rediscover its Christian identity and survive, or the continent will become Muslim. The next decade will be decisive. Already there are signs, admittedly tentative, of a Christian revival.

This will continue, but whether it will be quick enough or strong enough is doubtful. If not, then the Caliphate of Europe beckons.


Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization, is published by Felibri Publications. For information, see the Felibri website.

36 comments:

. said...

So the answer to the fight against 7th Century absolutist fanatical dogma is:

A return by the west to some vaguely distant idealized past where men were men, women were women, children got beaten when they were bad, people in the "other" classification knew their place, and evolutionists were lucky if they escaped with merely a short jail sentence.

This kind of thinking does no credit to the anti-jihad case.

sheik yer'mami said...

The writer of this article discredits himself by his choice of language. Most of us have been around long enough to know that its not "Islamism" or "radical Islam" or any other phony euphemism, but Islam, just plain Islam.

The writer also uses terms like "extreme conservative" for a primitive barbarian like Sayyid Qutb, which makes him just like any, say Christian, conservative.

Sometimes I wonder whether those who should be on our side are not too far compromised by PC & MC to think clearly.

Clear thinking also demands clear language.

Jedilson Bonfim said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Jocke said...

There are two major flaws in this article:

"The striking thing about these young people was that they all came from committedly secularist backgrounds — some of their parents were left-wing Labour Party members, others were Communists and Socialists of various hues. It was clear that these young people, completely cut off from their own cultural roots, had found in Islam a religious identity they had never previously possessed."

No, I don't think that islamism primarily is a reaction to increased "western decadence". I think it is merely a seemingly new venue for the age-old hate of the West and Christianity. As John O'Neill points out the children of the Middle East left intelligentsia of the 60's and 70's are now "radicalized", but are they really ? Is it really possible to ignore the fact that the major political power opposing the West in the 50's - 80's and the ally and the military supplier of the whole Arab world, the Soviet Union and its allies, disappeared in 1990 ? Furthermore, before it did, it turned against islam in Afghanistan. That could never be forgiven or forgotten by the muslim clanspeople. Communism and socialism, therefore, could no longer have any future in the Arab/Muslim world.

On the other hand, Palestine still mattered as much as always, so although USA had come to aid in Afghanistan this support couldn't outweigh the "crime" of supporting Israel - as shown also by the fact that the support of Bosnia and Kosovo didn't improve the US position in the eyes of the Muslim world either.

The hate of the West needed a new banner to march under, not the red flag but the old green one. And the Muslim Brotherhood was already established since 1928 as an anti western force, by the way Qutb was an extreme conservative and traditionalist, but he cetainly didn't wear traditional garb. I think anyone trying to prove that Islam, or rather the thinking and the culture connected to Islam and the clans of the Middle East, lost its grip over the peoples of the Middle East by pointing out that more women abandoned the veil and more men wore western suits put too much emphasis on the meaning of clothes. I mean, in the 50's and 60's western women used to wear "veils" or scarves and turbans without thinking anything of it, didn't they ?

To conclude: The main reason behind the Islamic surge, I think, is the invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Soviet Union, which used to be the ally of the Arab world. The main enemy, the West, was still there but the old ally was gone. Muslims had to do it for themselves.

Jocke said...

continued:

The other major flaw is to suppose that the Left of the West continously "fail" to see the threat coming from Islamism. Actually, they have managed to attain the highest positions in the media and the social sciences. They are not stupid. They know very well what they do. They do not want to see it, or rather, they absolutely do not want everyone else to see it. All those who are the loudest voices, the most outspoken critics of western culture and western politics are no liberals. Their alignments are with the far left. Some may call themselves "liberals" just to confuse us, but everything they say and everything they do is somehow good for the enemies of the West and bad for us.

The traces of many of these people who are the most active in the cultural and political debate go back to the western support groups for Vietnam and the FNLs and for Palestine and the PLO and PFLP. The most extreme ones supported The German Red Army Faction and the Italian Red Brigades or any other of the red terror groups of the 70s. Those groups worked closely with PLO and PFLP. They also worked closely with the KGB, which gave the logistics support, weapons and training. Not least important was the training in psychological operations and propaganda warfare.

Many, perhaps most, of these extremists have never stopped hating the "bourgeois society" of their own countries. They have always wanted to overthrow it, at any cost. (The moral nosedive of the 60s and 70s was primarily not an action for something as much as an action against the Bourgeois Society.) If the strong ally of the Soviet Union disappears, what is more natural than to work with the new one that shows up ? Already in the 60s they absolutely dominated the student organisations, in the 70s they started to infiltrate the media, political parties, the legal system, the hierarchy of the universities and even in the Church. In the 80s they reached top ranks in each field, especially the media and the social sciences at the Universities. In the 90s and 00s the leading positions in these fields of the society has been reinforced and they have appointed their successors from their younger followers.

These groups have been teaming closely with the PLO, PFLP and the Hisbollah from the 70s and 80s and have been commuting between the continents all the time for reasons of "journalistic assignments", "research" or "relief work". Of course they have been fully aware of the wane of socialism in the Middle East and the rise of Islam!

Jocke said...

continued:

Especially from the 90s and onwards (actually, about the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the hope of a Soviet invasion in Europe) there has been a constant propaganda for the "Multicultural Society" coming from exactly these groups of people. That is no coincidence and definitely not a sign of good will. Most, if not all, Western converts to Islam have a background of support for extreme leftist groups. That is no coincidence either. The major evidence that the Lefts hate of their own countries is the major driving force is exactly that they are prepared to ally themselves with a power that is extremely feudal, extremely oppressing to women, anti-gay, racist towards blacks, so on and so on. In short, it seems to be the direct opposite to everything the Left has claimed to oppose. That doesn't count now, does it ? Now that the Left eagerly smells the World Revolution around the corner. The extreme left, the driving force of the left, is not for anything. It is and have always been not just "opposed" to the Bourgeois Society, but hated it. They have hated it so much that they don't care what is coming with the Revolution. No, that is really not important. What really matters is the utter destruction of Capitalism and the "so called Democracy".

Islam is really the extreme left's final solution to the bourgeois question.

That is why nothing at all that ever happen seem to be able to stir the circles of the "naive but well wishing" society builders of the Left. The rest of the main-stream liberals and the majority of the less high voiced "repeaters" of the multicultural propaganda are really naive, but I think that they are realising that they have been fooled and their support is quickly melting away by now.

Jocke said...

sheik yer'mami,

I think that you're very right.

Jocke said...

... and you too, The Poster Formerly Known as Gordon.

No, but the road forward is true conservatism, in the Winston Churhillian sense, truly democratic and inclusive to all who participate in the struggle, pitiful and helpful towards those who try but can't.

Jocke said...

By the way, this is just one example of how the tie between the extreme Left and Islamism might look like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_Ali

Baron Bodissey said...

Jedilson Bonfim, and others --

Enough with the "a***lifters"! I'm sick of that term!

It serves no useful purpose, and makes these comment threads look stupid and vulgar. Pick a less obnoxious word to express your distaste with.

----------------------

Jedilson Bonfim said...

Hugh Fitzgerald's analysis of why mahoundians started to "travel back in time" makes a whole lot more sense. In a nutshell, Dar al-mahoundianism was definitely on its way to the trash bin of history, weakened, demoralized, unable to ever recreate the A-rab and Ottoman conquests of the past and dirt-poor (as it should have been, due to mahoundianism's inherent inability to produce economic activity of any kind.) That lasted until the oil shocks of the 70s sent the price of crude skyrocketing and provided the [vulgar adjective] inbred bedouin savages with the money weapon that breathed new life into their jihad against the West, helping them start funding the building of madrassas, mosques and the pimping of pseudo-academics like John Esposito and Juan Cole. All that in addition to, obviously, a renewed sense of belief in their own failed political-ideology-masquerading-as-a-religion; after all, if the oil provided those waddling, wife-beating, cousin-screwing parasites with a lot of wealth without the need of getting off their rear ends to earn it, why would they keep any interest in emulating the West, where working is an inherent part of a human being's dignity and self-esteem?

Add to that the anti-Israel, pro-Arab/mahoundian policies started by De Gaulle and followed by the rest of Western Europe, especially the opening of the floodgates to the hordes of headbanging welfare parasites like those making Malmö's Rosengård district such a wonderful and family-friendly place, and it's not hard to see how things got where they're now.

Jedilson Bonfim said...

Sorry about that, Baron. Point taken.

Zenster said...

The author may be drawing incorrect conclusions from his analysis of Qutb’s work. Closer examination reveals that Islam simply is incapable of functioning in a modern environment. A useful comparison might be that of Julian Jaynes’ theory regarding mass abandonment of large Meso-America cities. According to Jayne’s explanation, proto-conscious humans relied upon a rudimentary consensus over divine authorization arising from mass auditory hallucinations of “God’s voice”. Although such a “voice” could be that of an actual king or high priest, once population sizes exceeded a certain critical mass, there was no way to maintain a sufficient continuity of perception and, as a consequence, authority along with civil infrastructure broke down.

It is much the same with Islam. The “strong horse” leadership Islam required along with shari’a law’s abundant strictures simply do not function in a modern milieu. More importantly, these ideological encumbrances categorically disallow a practicing culture the sort of technical advancement to where they finally would break down in such a manner to begin with. This is why the MME (Muslim Middle East), is and remains a total desert of innovation and technological wasteland.

Commonly accepted elements of modern living totally defy Islam’s cultural norms. The Internet’s social networking sites and even ordinary appurtenances like vision-enabled cell phones pose dire threats to Islam’s rigid autocracy. Its austere and puritanical mindset oppresses the freedom of thought required for scientific investigation or the development of engineering expertise. A sufficiently expanded mind cannot easily perform critical analysis while still embracing the cognitive dissonance necessary to accept so many of Islam’s basic tenets.

There also exists fairly copious debate about the role of petro-dollar riches with respect to Islam’s rejuvenation. If one examines the tremendous sense of predestination embodied in Islamic doctrine, it is not so much that this newfound wealth enabled its spread or facilitated jihad’s onslaught, but that it validated Islam’s own perception of itself. After all, every other culture is supposed to pay tribute to Muslim might. What more confirmation of this was needed than Allah positioning the MME over the world’s largest supply of light crude such that Infidel money flowed in at the rate of a million dollars per minute?

It is this almost absurd entrenchment of self-perceived infallibility that has spurred on re-adoption of affirming Islamic fundamentalism. Revulsion against Western immorality might even be a far more minor aspect when compared to the outrage of manmade laws supplanting those ordained by Allah.

Finally, as sheik yer'mami pointed out:

… it’s not "Islamism" or "radical Islam" or any other phony euphemism, but Islam, just plain Islam.

What more confirmation is needed than how jihadist terrorism flourishes best under the sheltering wing of unadulterated Islam?

Green Infidel said...

Let's think about the previous times the West was victorious over Islam... did this happen because our ancestors turned the other cheek or started allowing gay marriages? Or was this achieved through men being men, women being women, and perhaps even adopting a little part of the Muslim approach - the one that allowed the Muslims to advance so rapidly in the centuries beforehand?

And come to think of it, when has a society ever survived the type of extreme liberalism witnessed in Western countries nowadays? We are living in an experiment, and for all we know it could be doomed to end exactly the same way as the Roman Empire circa 200-500AD.

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

In hoc signo vinces

I also find this article a bit historically clumsy and well just sloppy thinking.

Watching Eagle said...

It is a very good article. Zenster says Islam is incapable of functioning in the modern world. However, the real issue is that Liberalism is unable to sustain the "modern world" (or at least the world as we know it).

One will not understand the Modern Left unless one realizes Lenin and Co. Theroem of "Western Imperialism prevents 'Worker's paradise'"

The problem was, that in the 1920's, none of Marx's economic predictions were working. So Lenin and two other theorists (One Soviet, one German)came up with the idea that "Western Imperialism" was preventing socialism from working.

Then, along came WWII, in which the Soviets and Americans each killed about the same number of Germans-- But the Soviets lost 25 to 30 millitary dead for each American millitary death!

The fact that the Germans believed in "white supremacy" lent further credence to Lenin's excuse that "White Imperialism stops the 'workers' paradise".

When the Soviets were defeated, the Leftists blamed "Western Imperialism". Thus, Multi-Culti 'accelerated to attack speed'.

Thus, the core of Leftist ideology is to be for "White Disempowerment", because this will 'make socialism work'.

Islamists will rise to dominance in the West, because the Left will see refusal of their demands as being anti-White disempowerment.

One can say that "White imperialism" has replaced "Capitalism" as the main enemy of the Left, since "Western Imperialism empowers Capitalism."

Thus, (unless the Left is driven from power), we will see cell phones, robots, etc. regulated in a Shariah-compliant manner in the West (to the extent that they are invented)

Check out these articles--

Struggle for the veil

Shariah in the West

and this one:

Western Guilt

We need to stop thinking that the West is invincible, and remember that the Reality Borg, has added the Persian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Turkish, etc. cultures biological and technological distinctiveness to their own.

Remember that other cultures have been assimilated, and their is ndoes not eliminate Leftism.o reason to believe that the West is exempt, if it does not remove the Leftists from power.

See how Belgium's government collapsed wilst they tried to ban the burqa.

leftists will work to impose Shariah --"the Way of Survival" on westerners, in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity"-- Not to mention the need for votes.

One_of_the_last_few_Patriots_left said...

If anyone hasn't yet read Mark Steyn's "America Alone," I would recommend it without reservation.
Steyn's thesis is simply that DEMOGRAPHICS is a major factor in the rise of Islam.
The "sexual revolution" of the 60's in the West has created a situation where birthrates are so low (as low as 1.2 children per couple in some European countries) that we Westerners are slowly dying out,
whereas some Muslim countries like Pakistan have birthrates as high as
5 or 6 children per couple. They can AFFORD to have some of their people blow themselves up as suicide bombers!
This is indeed part of the legacy of Western Liberals.

Steven Luotto said...

Formerly Gordon, never mind the "vaguely distant and idealized past," let's consider the real and hyper-idealized present.

Exhibit A.

GREETINGS FROM THE MAYOR of San Francisco

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the City and County of San Francisco, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 25th Annual Folsom Street Fair on Sunday, September 28, 2008.

I am proud to be Mayor of a city that has a long-standing history of being on the forefront of extending civil rights for all citizens. San Francisco is a city that takes pride in its diverse communities and neighborhoods. The commitment to inclusion and ensuring diversity makes this a thriving city and a popular destination for many visitors from around the world. My office is committed to supporting and recognizing the exceptional contributions of all our diverse communities.

San Francisco is a city of scenic vistas and natural beauty. With a reputation for charming ambience, top-rated restaurants, a dynamic arts scene, diverse shopping and friendly people, it’s no wonder that San Francisco is “Everybody’s Favorite City.” Our unrivaled attractions ensure that San Francisco has something for everyone.

To all organizers and attendees of the Folsom Street Fair, their families, friends, colleagues, and visitors from home and around the world, have a great day and enjoy the event.

With warmest regards,

Mayor Gavin Newsom


Let's re-examine all the hyper-wonderful positives of the letter.

1. forefront of extending civil rights for all citizens
2. pride in its diverse communities and neighborhoods
3. commitment to inclusion and ensuring diversity
4. recognition of exceptional contributions of all our diverse
communities.
5. unrivaled attractions

The letter was written at the kick-off of the 2008 edition of the event. In other words, with FULL AWARENESS of what actually transpired in the previous fairs. What happened at the 2007 Folsom Fair - in other words - the year previous to the Mayor's letter?

Warning - not for prudes or the fainthearted.

This is what happened:

So what do such glorious things as...

1. Forefront of extending civil rights for all citizens
2. pride in its diverse communities and neighborhoods
3. commitment to inclusion and ensuring diversity
4. recogniztion of exceptional contributions of all our diverse communities.
5. unrivaled attractions

...play out as in our tremendously MORE idealized and politicized present?

Fellatio out on the street, masturbation on top of people from open windows. Crowds cheering as men urinate on each other. Huge dildos fashioned out of the images of saints, prophets, holy figures and suchlike publicly inserted into rectums in front of cheering crowds.... and in the presence of children.
Now apply the "honesty" and "common sense" of the Mayor's letter to all matters political, moral, racial, military... even musical... and that is modern enlightenment culture.

The Observer said...

I must say that the liberals/leftists are a powerful bunch. Not only have they managed to squash “traditional” Christianity, introduced decadence to the west, facilitated an enormous mass migration of immigrants from the third world to the first world, brainwashed almost everyone in western Europe (and half of the people of America, those who voted for Obama that is) considerably brought down the birth-rates of western women, convinced the Islamists that Europe is theirs, managed to get one of their own elected as President of the USA and raised the awareness of environmental causes. That’s an impressive list.

Hmmm... Maybe the Lord just isn’t listening to your prayers?

Jedilson Bonfim said...

One thing about John O'Neill's argument for this e-mail that has just occurred to me is how it resembles Dinesh D'Souza's "explanation" of why mahoundians hate the West, which both Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald have torn apart several times. Fitzgerald's essay, Dinesh D'Souza's Book, even start with a quote from D'Souza along those lines:

In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11. … In faulting the cultural left, I am not making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.

And then Hugh proceeds to mercilessly expose D'Souza's ignorance of everything he claims to know so much about. Not that such a claim can be made about John O'Neill, who has written many other spot-on essays, but he truly seems to have dropped the ball on this one.

Lawrence said...

Despite numerous flaws in the article that others have mentioned, like speaking of 'Islamism' rather than Islam and the like, I do think we all recognise the fact that the Left are a massive fifth column within. Also this article gets to the point that is often overlooked, the Muslim fanatics make it clear what so motivates them, namely Islam itself and then the Left ignores this wilfully, inventing their own fantastical and sinister reasons that are reflective of the Left's own pathology, like their self-loathing, anti-Semitism etc.

I think there are factors in the West that do not attract the youth from Muslim countries and communities to assimilate and embrace our values, and abandon Islam in the process, that are not touched on in this article. There is excessive commercialism and consumerism in the West, all that matters is money thinking that doesn't just potentially alienate youth from Muslim communities, but our own. It sees Western youth react to this alienating consumerism by running to the poisonous embrace of hate and anger that is the Left and nihilism in general. The excessive sexual permisiveness and promiscuity of Western youth also sees other cultures recoil in horror, this has nothing to do with sexual repression. I have known Hindus and Buddhists from Asia who are shocked by the sexual licentiousness of Western youngsters. This promiscuity is itself a reaction to the legacy of sexual repression, the pendulum swings, it is also a reflection of boredom and meaninglessness in a society that is built on greed and an every-man-for-himself mentality, a Western society in which there is no intrinsic meaning in anything. As a result we have heavy drug abuse, alcoholism, easy empty sex and other ever increasingly inane escapisms, awful Hollywood movies and reality TV, stupid sporting festivals and the rest. In other words we offer nothing of real value and substance, not only to Muslim youth but to our own.

Is the solution a return to Christianity and traditional religion? I think not myself, since many of the above problems are reactions to the Church and its less than pleasant history and a dogma that has tended toward fundamentalism. Conservatives want to go back to a golden age that never was, you know a Europe straight out of fairyland where the elves and pixies tended the golden hair of beautiful princesses in their castles waiting for their handsome princes to arrive after battling the dragons and trolls across the bogs of neverneverland and where healthy well-fed fresh-faced peasants work in the fields. No Thirty Years War, two world wars, pogroms of Jewry and colonialism and all the other wars and persecutions and Inquisitions and witch-hunts and slavery, sieges, etc. The Left are not the only ones who ignore history, in their case it is the history of Islam, in the case of conservatives it is the real dark history of the West itself that we must not overlook.

We do need genuine spiritual values and a sense of the sacred, I feel that way at least, but the Church? This is like trying to revive a corpse. Perhaps we need to look further back into our pasts, prior to the Christian Age, for a sacred knowledge and values that offer genuine spiritual and societal renaissance.

Arius said...

Jocke, I agree with you that "Most, if not all, Western converts to Islam have a background of support for extreme leftist groups". Since the 1990's I have noticed this trend that has been increasing.

The Left is consumed with self-hatred. Their conversion to Islam closes the circle and locks them in the prison box of Islam.

Arius said...

Lawrence, you are right that we cannot return to Orthodox Christianity, in fact we cannot go back to any previous age.

The only way we can reconnect with spiritual values and the sacred is to reconnect with the archetypes that animated the religious of the past. That is the challenge of our time, to build on what we have inherited from the past, not with the resurrection of empty dogmatic forms but with a greater consciousness of spirit.

Those on the Left that convert to Islam have given up and regressed their consciousness. They are at a dead end. They will cause an immense amount of suffering and destruction but they are not the future of humanity. They have no future.

Green Infidel said...

kritisk - in a few hundred years perhaps the state of the world circa-2010 as you present it could be seen as a crisis of biblical proportions. But then God speaks in unexpected ways... maybe the extent of the current absurdities could also be a message from up there, leading to a totally-surprising conclusion? After all, since when has history been a straight, predictable line always going in one direction?

Zenster said...

Lawrence: This promiscuity is itself a reaction to the legacy of sexual repression, the pendulum swings, it is also a reflection of boredom and meaninglessness in a society that is built on greed and an every-man-for-himself mentality, a Western society in which there is no intrinsic meaning in anything. As a result we have heavy drug abuse, alcoholism, easy empty sex and other ever increasingly inane escapisms, awful Hollywood movies and reality TV, stupid sporting festivals and the rest. In other words we offer nothing of real value and substance, not only to Muslim youth but to our own.

This over-emphasis of the West's ills gives Liberalism far too much credit. As Rollory notes, it is not true that "... the liberals/leftists are a powerful bunch".

A close examination of Western culture will also reveal immensely powerful mechanisms that are largely taken for granted. The ability to perform critical analysis, the splendors of scientific endeavor and the emperical method, Constitutional liberties and a highly functional legal system are all legacies bequeathed to us from some of the most towering intellectual and philosophical giants in this world's entire history.

Yes, Liberals are busy undermining these incredible monuments to civilization but they are as termites to the great house that Intellect built. This is not to ignore that termites have one of the most significant cumulative body masses on earth but neither should we disregard that they can be controlled or that the foundations they gnaw at are awe inspiring in their beauty and profound aspect.

It is simply time to, once again, show some respect for what has been handed down to us. Demonstrating that respect may well require ejection from our society those who refuse to honor the system that has evolved from it. There are many challenges that await those who understand and appreciate what we already have.

None of this demands that we must tolerate the intolerable. There still exist a sufficient number of avenues whereby Free People can cement their values in place through the creation of a renewed polity along with a reinvigorated respect for the powerful tools that are in our hands.

It is not yet too late.

Profitsbeard said...

Islam will use every psy-ops trick to play upon the gullibility of the self-divided.

"You infidels are too promiscuous!" says the guy with four legal wives (and as many prostitutes he can manage when visiting Western countries without the wives).

"You infidels are riddled with drugs!" says the guy who grows poppies to sell to the Taliban, or the guy who sells hashish in Morocco, Lebabnon, Aghanistan, et al, in order to fund the Jihad.

Taking the absurd, calculated, disingenuous criticisms of your sworn, mortal enemy seriously is suicidally naive.

Especially when Islam is a tyrannical, intolerant, theocratic death cult... posing as an "Abrahamic religion" to sucker the infidel dupes who pay no attention to history.

Their own or Islam's.

We should be colonizing Mars and spreading to the stars.

Instead we have to fight a rearguard action, for our very survival, against a retrograde gang of deadly dimwits who delight in murderous violence to placate their dismal, Dark Age deity.

Self-criticism is healthy, but self-evisceration to please contemptuous maniacs is sheer insanity.

Nothing Islam has to say needs to be taken seriously.

Except tactically.

To defeat it.

Zenster said...

Profitsbeard: Taking the absurd, calculated, disingenuous criticisms of your sworn, mortal enemy seriously is suicidally naive.

Or, as colonial revolutionary fighter Ethan Allen said:

IT IS BAD POLICY TO FEAR THE RESENTMENT OF AN ENEMY.

Steven Luotto said...

Ciao Profitsbeard,

As the presence of Islam is entirely "our" doing, it is our "belief system" which requires scrutiny. Islam is a sort of natural calamity, like malaria or an earthquake... and like all calamities everything about is must be taken seriously.

Except we have no "serious" approach, because we have no serious common ground.

I posted the Mayor of San Francisco's greeting to the organizers of the Folsom Street Fair as emblematic of our condition. In that particular case it showed our "unshared" notions of common decency. For the liberals what went on at the fair was:

1. at the forefront of extending civil rights for all citizens
2. pride in its diverse communities and neighborhoods

etc.

But I could provide other documents showing similar unshared notions of race, human worth, family, education, health, enterprise, right on down the line.

The common ethos that once made defensive attitudes mostly unnecessary is gone. And this has very much to do with faith as opposed to freedom.

The strength of the Muslims is not in the quality of their beliefs (they are abysmal) but the fact that they DO HAVE a common set of beliefs whereas we do not.

We aren't able to deal with anything beyond the freedoms and rights of atomized individuals. And that means either single people or all of humanity as one. Families and cultures are OUT... even though, especially the former are what create responsible citizens.

Pointing out Muslim hypocrisy is useless. They are NOT hypocrites, because they are openly tribal and openly in a struggle for dominance. They have no ideals... and to be hypocritical requires ideals.

We instead are afflicted by over-idealization, which is really only hubris, because it's as if reality were entirely a plaything and all that mattered was freedom.

This is best exemplified by what's on our European money. Look at the Euro: no human beings, just bridges to nowhere and phantom buildings! A whole continent of civilizational greats... instead we get anonymous Europeanoid constructions ***that can be traversed or inhabited by anybody.*** Our people don't matter, our history and ancestors are worthless, our achievements meaningless.

Now what is the cause of this mentality? I don't know if you have a faith, but mine celebrates saints and has holy days of obligation. And celebrates all souls day... and calls for great meetings of family to celebrate baptism. communions, confirmations, weddings and funerals. It also has a leader and a hierarchy. For all its many shortfalls there are nevertheless calls for unity, appeals to history, an appreciation of the departed, an openness to those yet to come to the world and a central focus which is an integral part of our history.

What does the enlightenment offer: contraception, abortion, divorce, euthanasia (death), open markets 24/7, debt-based economies that need to expand and therefore require the importation of human beings, consumerism.

There will be no defense against Islam because "we" don't really exist. And consequently plenty of "our" cultural views are even more insane than those of the Muslims... yes, they might practice suicidal bombing, but nothing about their culture is suicidal compared to ours. They would never allow a Folsom Street Fair... a manifestation just as crazy - nay, even more crazy than a thing like the burqua.

Jared said...

The issues addressed in this article are important and valid. It is good to see a discussion online taking place acknowledging how the decline of Western morality has fueled the fire of Islamic extremism. Christianity challenges people to love one and other, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to aspire to charity, to be faithful to family commitments, and to do these things while using free will. Islam teaches compulsion to do what is "right" according to the religion while disregarding free will. Islam takes away individual freedom and binds religion and government in such a way that puts great power in the hands of few people. History shows that it is human nature to abuse power, and Islamic teachings are more fertile ground for the growth of tyrannical rulers than Christianity. If Christianity does not see an increase of people striving to adhere to its teachings, the religion is at great risk to the rise of Islam. Islam is not a tolerant religion. Ultimately it is an issue of freedom. Free societies can exist under Christian principles, but Islam is a great threat to world-wide individual freedom. Christianity teaches that true freedom is directly related to using free will to choose to live righteously.

Zenster said...

Jared: The issues addressed in this article are important and valid. It is good to see a discussion online taking place acknowledging how the decline of Western morality has fueled the fire of Islamic extremism.

Please explain what sort of "decline" in morality "fueled the fire of Islamic extremism" while untold millions were being slaughtered during Muslim subjugation of India in the first millennia CE, over 1,000 years before there were even Liberals to rebel against Western morals.

Morals, lax or otherwise, play no important part in Islam's hostility to all things non-Muslim. Just being different is more than enough to get you killed.

Islam is intolerant of all other creeds and cannot withstand the rigors of coexisting along side any other competitive philosophy. It is too brittle and inflexible to win any ideological beauty contests and must prevail through brute force at all times.

Why else is it that no nation in all history − where Muslims were not an emerging majority − ever voluntarily adopted Islam in favor of its native creed? Islam can only be spread and maintained by force. It is a tyrannous and barbaric ideology that is incompatible with modern civilization.

This is the real Root Cause of Islam's hostility. Its totally inimical character has almost nothing to do with Western morals and everything to do with bring a triumphalist, apocalyptic death cult.

Jared said...

Zenster: Thank you for the comment. I agree with you and I appreciate your observations of Islam. "It is a tyrannous and barbaric ideology that is incompatible with modern civilization." Islamic leaders use everything they can to stir up hatred against "infidels". Imams and Mullahs have used examples of immorality in American culture to fill their people's hearts with hatred and murder. This has been characteristic of Islam since its beginning and the days of Muhammad. As you said, Islam is hostile to all things non-Muslim. That hostility is stoked up in any way possible and it is very valid to say that as America has had greater problems with increasing immorality, Islam has used it to keep their people convinced that we are the "great Satan". That said, if America were to become a people that lived Christian morals at a much higher standard, it would not decrease Islamic hostility. At its core, Islam is not compatible with any other belief system.

Profitsbeard said...

loshkaFutz-

Ciao!

Our "belief system", if it were being taught with as much vigor as the Sharia Law and Koranic lunacies of Islam are being promulgated in madrassas and "regular" Muslim schools, would be undefeatable.

Something like J. Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" is a good place to begin any Western child's appreciation of our eon-long struggle for the development of Reason, Science, Morality, Philosophy, freedom of Faith, Human Rights and common decency, rising from superstition and darkness and cruelty and ignorance.

We infidels have the superior worldview, drawing on everyone from Sappho to Krishnamurti, Heraclitus to Ben Franklin, Hero of Alexandria to Edison, Hypatia to Mary Shelley, Buddha to Byron, Jesus to William James, Ptolemy to Copernicus, Epictetus to Einstein.

This wealth only needs to be transmitted with strength and defended with intelligence.

Islam's threat will ultimately galvanize the diffident the same way "being hanged in the morning tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully".
__________________________________

Zenster-

"I have not yet begun to fight"- John Paul Jones

Zenster said...

Jared: Thank you for the comment. I agree with you and I appreciate your observations of Islam. "It is a tyrannous and barbaric ideology that is incompatible with modern civilization."

You are most welcome. Glad to see that there wasn't any significant difference of opinion between us.

That said, if America were to become a people that lived Christian morals at a much higher standard, it would not decrease Islamic hostility. At its core, Islam is not compatible with any other belief system.

Which is why I continue to predict a terribly unhappy ending to Islam's tale.

Profitsbeard: Islam's threat will ultimately galvanize the diffident the same way "being hanged in the morning tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully".

I only hope the price of that actuation does not include losing a few major Western cities in terrorist nuclear attacks. Our world would not notice the complete and total absence of Islam anywhere near as much as just the loss of a single city like New York, Paris or London.

It is why the eventual prospect of a world without Islam grieves me not in the slightest.

"I have not yet begun to fight" - John Paul Jones

Nor have I, good brother.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the cause is simple. We are weak, we don't know who we are. They got stronger, they know who they are. Muslims didn't act like this before because we would have retaliated with our full force. These is how things go all the time. You either expand or you shrink, there is no such thing as a steady state. The weak adopt the norms of the strong. I don't remember who said it about states, but the strong always act like gangsters and the weak like prostitutes.

And no, the return to the past isn't the return to the Church. It's the return to the community - the church was just part of it. Obviously, this means excluding people, having societal mores and so on. And young people feel alienated not because of consumerism, which is a product of our monetary systems, but because their heritage has been defiled. And obviously you will fill alienated as a 15 years old British person in London when more than half of the people your age aren't Britons. Heck, I'm Romanian and I felt alienated in London since I expected to meet British people there. Basically, due to this immigration thing, it will be the same to me to live in Dubai or London since they'd be the same - bankrupt, diverse and with Sharia compliant crap.

One of the last patriots, the problem isn't the sexual revolution in itself, but the things that enable it to continue - misconcenptions, the welfare state and so on. In the same sense, I'm amused by people who mind that immigrants aren't hard working and so on, while supporting both immigration and the welfare state. Through doing both, you encourage the free riders to move there.

And as I said before, why should a British person care how London will be regulated 90 years from now, if it will be 95% Africano-Pakistanese? Can someone answer this question for me. For example, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't care.

Zenster said...

rebelliousvanilla: And as I said before, why should a British person care how London will be regulated 90 years from now, if it will be 95% Africano-Pakistanese? Can someone answer this question for me. For example, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't care.

You should care. Much like a wine has its terroir, so does a culture have its heritage. Part of that heritage are the legacies of place and their monuments.

While Britishers may flee the United Kingdom, they cannot take the Tower Bridge or the Westminster Clock Tower with them. There is a pride of place and "roots" that cannot be cut without losing something irreplacable for any given people. Move Britishers to a continent below the equator and you will not get more Brits, you'll get Aussies. It's how these things work.

British people with any sense of heritage care quite a lot about "how London will be regulated 90 years from now". As a thought experiment, try to imagine why reunited Germany once again moved its capital all the way back to Berlin from Bonn. For that matter, try to imagine why Germany went through the incredible cost of reuniting in the first place.

Many decades from now, much like with Germany's reunion, should Britain manage to preserve its own heritage as well, there will be historians who will be able to trace the survival of familiar British culture to its care and maintenance of their historic roots.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Germany reunited because East Germans were German, not Pakistani. Suppose that the Russians killed everyone in East Germany off and moved Russians there. Would West Germans still wanted to unite? Heck, Germany gave citizenship to the Germans living in my country in 1990.

Also, British people with any sense of heritage would do whatever they can to keep the UK British, not make it Pakistani, for example. And the roots thing is related to being among your own people and not among foreigners. For example, I support Romania reuniting with Moldova because the people in Moldova are Romanian, not because of the nice monasteries in it or whatever other reason. For example, I'm Romanian and I'd feel bad if I'd emigrate even if the CEC building or the Central University Library or History Museum or Atheneum disappeared tomorrow. These buildings would be irrelevant to me. Make Bucharest 95% Chinese and I'm moving out tomorrow, regardless of how much my parents starved in order to have their purchasing power spent to build the 2nd biggest building in the world.

Unknown said...

It could be that Islam has been reasserting itself at the same time the West has become increasing decadent and it is just a coincidence that the two are happening concurrently. Couldn't Islamic countries adopting Western manners and customs for a period just as easily be explained by the breakup of the Ottoman empire, the British empire, two world wars and the discovery of oil? Couldn't Islam reasserting itself be explained by those Middle Easterners with whom Islam has a deep psychological appeal outbreeding those to whom it doesn't?