Every so often someone writes a post that makes me channel Jack Black and go “You bastard! That’s so good – that should have been mine… ” Seriously, there are very few blog posts I wish I’d written – and this is one of them.
So shout out to Chester, and click over and read this:
Is Islam compatible with a free society?
This is the key strategic question of our day.
…
Is Islam compatible with a free society? A ‘yes’ answer offers a far different set of strategic imperatives than a ‘no’ answer.
(ht – Instapundit…)
So you think Bush is ill-informed when he goes around saying that “Freedom is on the March” in the Middle East?
Perhaps he thinks no more deeply about things than you do.
Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone of such limited capacitites only had access to keyboards instead of Armies?
“Memorable Quotes from Patton (1970)”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0066206/quotes
[On outmaneuvering Rommel]
Patton: Rommel, you magnificent bastard. I read your book.
Wizener – I don’t think Chester (or I) believe that feeedom for Muslim nations is impossible. +He’s asking people who believe that it is – who think that they can’t accept freedom – to think through the consequences of that belief.
An exercise I think we should all do.
A.L.
The issue here isn’t whether *all of Islam* is incompatable with freedom.
It is
1)*How much is,* and
2) What the *American public* thinks about it.
The Bush Administration’s grand strategy envisions giving freedom to Muslims everywhere as the answer to the root causes of terrorism.
Much of that work is being opposed by Saudi oil money funding Islamist nutballs world wide, but that may be a self-solving problem outside the Arab world when the Saud regime goes down.
The problem boils down to this:
_”Real Freedom” include the freedom to fail, and the freedom to choose not to try._
What happens next if Kuwait or Egypt make the same free election choice as the Palestinians did with Hamas?
What happens when Islamist extremists get a country like Egypt that has 20% Coptic Christian population that has no chance to run.
AL,
I think that the answer to the question is no. However, I completely disagree with both you and Chester that answering “no” leads inevitably to genocide and other heinous over-reactions.
If islam is incompatible with Western liberty and freedom, then the solution is to firmly and patiently stand up for our own principles and to logically expose the roots of the problem with islam without fear. We must use our freedom of speech to evaluate and criticize any islamic ideas that muslims attempt to introduce into our society.
They have just introduced two at once and hardly anyone put up a fight. The ideas are basic islamic ideas that all muslims would agree with because these ideas are at the heart of their religion and were established from its beginnings. The first is there is no difference between the public sphere and private spheres and that the public sphere should accomodate the strictest believers in society and the second is that religion should be off limits from offending behavior in the public sphere in order to maintain order and avoid incitement.
If the decent reasonable and moderate muslim majority is a fact and not a myth, then they will eventually be persuaded by the moral logic we employ and will come to agree with the idea that islam is not perfect and all sufficient and they will abandon or greatly modify the incompatible concepts.
If this majority is in fact a myth, then their reaction to our free-wheeling criticism of their faith will reveal that fact and not a moment too soon. If once we have tried to reason with them and they fail to be convinced that they should not attempt to force society to accomodate and unreformed islam more than it does other religions and those with no religion at all, then we will know that we will have to do something.
Even then, I dont think we will see an over-reaction. After trying to deal with them reasonably and in the spirit of kindness and helpfulness I dont think we are going to turn into beasts towards muslims. I think that people in the West are more than capable of separating the value of the individual life from their ideas. I think the result of this outcome will simply be that we will have our eyes opened to the facts about islam. We will be immune to any suggestions that we should modify our society to better reflect its ideals. We will simply stop listening. Those people who cause trouble when we stop courting them and defering to them will be duly arrested and or deported. Those who remain peaceful and mind their own busines will remain free to live according to their beliefs to the same degree as anyone else.
Islam must be defanged with the truth. Once it is, then everyone, muslims included, will live in peace in a free society where no one religion has any more advantages than any other. We must realize that the answer is “no” and combat it not with violence or oppression but with the unvarnished truth and with the power of reason.
PS I want to add to that last sentence something important.
Perhaps the most important weapon in our arsenal against islam is to be totally committed to our own values and our own successful definition of tolerance. We must apply these values equally to all without special favor to anyone. This more than anything else will guarantee that the worst will not happen to anyone, least of all muslims. We must have total confidence in the sufficiency of the values that we have come to embrace the hard way. If we teach these values and allow no compromise of them, everyone will be better for it.
“Here is commentary on how events of the last 12 hours”:http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/nuclear_deal_si.html show a big difference between the behavior of Muslims in Pakistan vs. Muslims in India.
Truly a magnificent post in articulating a monumental turning point. I was ready to hustle over here and find a place to post a link when I noticed Marc’s trackback; thanks!
The central question stands by itself, but there is another that is not entirely independent:
How long do we (and I include Muslims) have to decide?
It makes a difference. It took Christianity centuries of warfare and inquisition to finally tolerate its internal divisions, and then tolerate other religious viewpoints. And that was with the assistance of a new, vibrant Enlightenment movement and North American colonies as refuges / dumping zones for the dissidents.
We don’t have that time. If nothing else, the clock is set by the availability of bioengineered pathogenic WMD at prices affordable to nongovernment actors. Or the pace of events on both sides of the potential divide may govern: Cartoons, mosque bombings, port ownership controversies, Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Trent’s right, the answer of the American public counts just as much as any ‘Muslim street’, both in the final answer, and in deciding when the clock has run down. For those of us who desparately want the answer to be ‘yes’, it’s been a discouraging past few weeks. Parts of the right giving up on the Wilsonian approach, the left and media falling into xenophobia as tactic.
It’s easier to find historical examples of benign Islam than contemporary ones.
The 600-year Ottoman Empire, for all its faults, coexisted peacefully with the West for long periods of time. Its treatment of religious minorities was better than any Islamic republic or kingdom today. It was under the Ottomans, of course, that Jews began to return to Palestine in numbers.
And it fostered the growth of constitutional democracy in the Young Turk movement, albeit with an assist from Western universities. (They wouldn’t get that kind of help today, would they?)
So we need to ask if Islam is really the problem, or is it all the things that modern Islam has been wedded to: Marxism, anti-Americanism, fascist nationalism, Hitlerist racism, leftist terrorism, and a whole plethora of militant notions that go around disguised as “post-colonial” thinking.
Glen,
I would hardly call the Ottomans an example of peaceful islam. If they were peaceful at any point its because they werent strong enough to be otherwise. They nearly overran Europe at one point. Under the Ottomans the numbers of Christians in Turkey began free-fall ending in the Armenian genocide. The first act of the Ottomans was to steal The Church of St Sophia from the Christians to convert to a mosque so that Christians would be properly humiliated. The Ottomans exacted a tax of the first born male of Christian families only and brainwashed these poor kids into converting to islam and making of them muslim soldiers to fight against any uppity Christians at home and to fight against other Christian nations.
I wouldnt even call them a relative example of a peaceful example of islam. They were no better than anyone else. The results are plain to see in a country that has almost no minorities all their minorities having fled at the first reasonable chance. Christians fled by the thousands as soon as there was any viable alternative to living under the Ottomans. The Ottomans had their ups and downs as much as happened in Christian lands.
Here is another thing to think about as well. Who did the Ottomans conquer? For all of their faults, it was the influence of the cosmopolitan Byzantines, more than islam, that accounted for the moderation (at times) of the Ottomans. You will note that no examples of “moderate” islam arose apart from contact with other large and well established cultures and faiths. No moderate example of islam arose in the heartland of islam where it has long been the only game in town. Where islam is undiluted by any other influence that is where is it the most militant, intolerant and oppressive. If the an empire like the Ottomans had arisen independently in Saudi Arabia rather than on top of a large population of Greco-Roman Christians, then you could say that it was islam had the resources as is to be peaceful and tolerant. But it doesnt. It always needs some other influence. The whole trouble today stems from muslims living by a purified islam alone. We dont have to just count those who resort to violence in that number. There are millions besides that use every other trick in the book besides terrorism in to subvert freedom. They want credit for being peaceful, but they are just as much bullies in opposition to liberty as any terrorist.
What happens when islam has no other influence to emulate? What happens when it swallows every last host? I think we need to think through the implications of that and to expose it now before things get any worse.
Which Islam are they talking about? There are several different versions and translations of koran and many different interpretions of it. To try to make some general statement about Islam is not possible.
Peggy,
Consider that you have just described the difference between Arabs and all other Muslims.
Tom,
Consider that islam alone was not able to make much out the Arabs. If it had powerful and sufficient resources of its own, wouldnt the Arabs be shining example? Wasn’t mohammed an Arab?
I was going to say this anyway, but consider what happens to any nations where the muslim population reaches almost 100% Take Turkey for instance. As the host population dwindled, so did the Ottomans deteriorate. Now look at Turkey. They have a 99% Muslim population and they are steadily sliding backwards. As any area becomes completely dominated by islam it also devolves. Any nation with an overwhelming islamic dominance is only peaceful so long as nothing disturbs it. Any threat to that dominance real or perceived brings out the ugly other face of islam every single time. The consistency of this ugly defensiveness is perfect. Its as real a part of islam as any other as islam’s success is dependent on the elimination of competitors and its peace is always dependent on everything going its way.
You seem to have ignored one of my points as well. How do you explain how it is that moderate islam can only be found where it had prolonged contact with other more civilized cultures and faiths? It can only be found in its moderate form where there are other large populations to counter it as in India? You might be tempted to say that islam taught its practioners to emulate a good thing when they see it. But I call that the in-born universal human trait of practicality and pragmatism. It remains a fact that where there is no other influence and where there is no other large cultural group to counteract it, islam shows that it doesnt have the resources on its own to accept liberty. Democracy, maybe. But only as a means to implement islam which is incompatible with genuine liberty.
Finally, consider what Christianity, for just one example, made of primitive, isolated and very violent peoples like the Vikings.
Or are you saying something racist about Arabs? Are Arabs somehow consitutionally hopelessly barbaric and primitive? Are they alone somehow specially immune to the power of islam?
The Arabs have had islam longer than anyone else. It arose in their culture. They have been largely isolated from the rest of the world until just relatively recently. It could be truly said that they have had islam alone for almost 1400 years. And yet look at them. It isnt their culture. It isnt in their genes. Its that islam alone has done them no good.
Peggy,
Islam was created to, among other things, civilize the quite barbaric Arabs. A considerable body of opinion holds, with a fair amount of evidence, that Islam fails to the extent that it is dominated by the tribal Arab culture. That has certainly been true over the past fifty years.
I have held since 9/11 that the major question concerning America’s victory in the on terror is how many Arabs will survive the experience.
And you haven’t addressed my answer to your question – that “moderate” Islam has historically been found far away from the Arabs. The closer a Muslim state has been, geographically, to the Arab heartland in the past @ 800 years, the more backward it has tended to be. Modern communications and oil income-based funding of Islamic extremism have changed this simple geographic relationship.
Note Trent’s confidence here that the collapse of the Saud regime will result in such a tidal wave of refugees as to collapse the smaller Gulf Arab oil states, and end most of the funding for Islamic extremism.
The problem here absolutely is the Arabs’ tribal culture. It is being shattered by close contact with the rest of the world created by technology and oil income. Arab leaders have shunted the Arabs’ civil war at Israel and at us.
The most frightening part of John R. Bradley’s Saudi Arabia Exposed is his depiction of how historic tribal affiliations/bonds among its non-Saudi tribes are fast dissolving. This poses demographic catastrophe there when the Saud clan loses power. There won’t be successors with political legitimacy.
In addition to the implications of this for us when we take over the oil-producing areas on the south side of the Persian Gulf. It will be anarchy ruled by force – our force. The political legitimacy conferred by the ruling individuals/clans of the smaller Arab states there will die with them when those are overwhelmed by the millions of refugees from Saudi Arabia.
With all due respects to Marc and Chester, this is one of the dumbest questions I’ve heard in a long time.
On one side of the question, we have a large, diverse group of people which the only common characteristic is that they identify with the word “Muslim”
On the other side of the question, we have an absolute — is this word compatible with free society or not?
Well color me green, but ask the same question about anything — Do Christians believe in baptisim by immersion or not? Are fat people ugly or not? Are Jews wealthy or not? Are Americans selfish or not?
Come on now, certainly we can see that any group of a billion people is going to interpret any type of label in myriad ways. To attempt any sort of absolute answer engages in the worst sort of stereotyping. Are Christians today the same the world over? Are they the same as they were 20 years ago? How about 200 years ago?
We are being attacked by crazy people, and it is only human nature to want some easy kind of label to stick on these people: nazis, communimsits, muslims, whatever. In this particular situation, where the bad guys don’t wear cool black boots and have a strange salute, we had better make our qualifiers pretty damned accurate. The word “muslim” isn’t even close.
Dan the actual world as it is totally negates your argument.
While Islam is not incompatible with elements of Democracy to settle power-sharing agreements through elections and peaceful means instead of who has the most AK-47’s (see: Mali, Turkey, Malaysia, a few other places) that’s as far as it goes.
If you look around at ALL Muslim countries you see at best Oil Revenue supporting a corrupt kleptocracy with a few pitiful drops of money trickling down to the people. For the rest of Muslim countries; Islam as the marker for the majority of the population correlates nicely (like, r=1) with a complete lack of world-class companies and non-petroleum exports.
It’s in world-wide markets that you see the strength of a nation, and Muslim nations lack it. Turkey? What does it produce? Guest workers and that’s it. Indonesia and Malaysia? Sweatshop workers producing Nikes; unlike Vietnam or Thailand or the other Tigers, these Muslim nations have been unable to break out into value added products.
Free societies depend on free and open intellectual discourse, emphasis on science and technology, secularism in the government, a “technocratic” approach to government, relatively open laws, information, and markets, equality under the law, and so on. This makes Finland (Nokia); Japan (Sony and Honda and Toyota and Panasonic and so forth) or even South Korea (Samsung and Hyundai) and Italy (Ferrari and Lamborghini and Ducati and Moto Guzzi) profoundly different than Pakistan or Bangladesh (to take two non-Arab Muslim nations).
No, Islam is NOT compatible with free and open societies because Islam is a complete and total way of life that requires a way of living that is incompatible with a free society, and more over requires use of force, violence, or threats to destroy free societies.
I am hopeful that we will not have to resort to genocide to whack the Ummah upside the head to see the utter futility of trying to destroy the modern world; but it will get down to killing lots of people. Because Muslims worldwide since the Modern World intruded on them (basically, after 1945) have reacted with violence to keep it at bay in their homelands and violence abroad to achieve submission of the infidel. Due to the Cold War we’ve had lots of “submission” to Islam instead of forthright head-smacking so it’s only gotten worse. But at a certain point interests can’t be compromised. What if Morroco implodes with ugly Berber-Arab violence and the regime makes a play for Spain (all or part of the “Al-Andalus” so quoted by bin Laden)? What if Turkey makes territorial demands on Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and the rest of the Balkans? Or the Libyan’s of Sicily?
The Muslim world has an unhealthy record of resolving internal disputes by finding a foreign enemy to conquer or fight against, where even a lowly man who can’t marry (polygamy results in many men without wives) can conquer the infidel and take slaves. THAT lovely dynamic has not changed.
Christianity has adapted to VERY rapid societal change; so has Buddhism and to an extent Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc. Islam remains much as it was at 1100, that’s the basis for the ongoing conflict.
#3
Guess what?
A lot of us went through this, and other, “excercises” 3 years ago at the dawn of the era of Bush/Neocon imperialism (i.e., prior to the Iraq invasion).
We call it critical thinking. It forms the basis for rational, evidence-based views.
And on this basis, we predicted, even then, that the war in Iraq was unjustified, unlikely to achieve any of the stated goals, and would be a huge mess.
Looks like we were A LOT more on target with our pessimistic predictions than the rosy views taken by those like you who think we can solve problems with random acts of violence.
That bits and pieces of rationality are creeping into minds like yours certainly is not something to be ignored, but forgive me for being a little more than skeptical that you will be able to assemble these “exercises” in insight into any meaningful (or rational, humanistic, or moral, for that matter) philosophy on how to best deal with terrorism.
I just don’t think you, or anyone who views the war in Iraq on the terms you do, is capable of that.
I think the simple way to put it is: Too little, too late.
Wizener, that’s one of the most silly comments I’ve seen in years of seeing silly comments.
The question Chester raises is whether – as some people are suggesting in reaction to the UAE/Ports deal, and the cartoon intifada, the entire Muslim world cannot join the free world. Many people who opposed the Iraq war made such arguments – thye suggested that Iraqis were incapable of democracy, that they didn’t care about freedom, that those who thought they could and were were foolish or deluded.
The problem, as I saw it in 2003 and as I see it today, is that we have to find a way for the Muslim world to join the free world – probably in ways different than Switzerland or the U.K. or the U.S. does – or else.
Chester does an excellent job of pointing out what the ‘or else’ looks like, something which I believe many – on both the Michelle Malkin and Atrios sides of the dence haven’t thought out.
I’d question whether you have either.
A.L.
Jim #18
I’m not making an argument. I’m simply pointing out the question was inane.
If you want to talk about which political system is more capable than another, that’s a different question. Don’t confuse the two. And yes, I understand that some muslims confuse the issue as well. Doesn’t make that kind of thinking workable.
If you want to talk about the current world geopolitical situation vis-a-vis Islam that’s great. It’s also a separate issue. The history of the region and the reasons for totalitarianism. Also a different subject.
The USA has millions of mulsims now living here. Are all of these people plotting against the government? Come now, be reasonable about this. Wide sweeping statements are almost always false. It does little justice to the discussion to talk at extremes.
You’re arguing grand philosophy. It is I, not you, who is talking about reality. Do all catholics heed the pope? Hardly. Is the definition of the word “jihad” taught the same in every mosque? Not at all. Are muslim nations currently flawed to a greater degree than others? Absolutely. But calm down and take heed: you’re responding exactly the way the Islamists say you will. That’s never the right thing to do in a fight.
My opinion only.
“And on this basis, we predicted, even then, that the war in Iraq was unjustified, unlikely to achieve any of the stated goals, and would be a huge mess.”
Indeed. You people predicated 25 out of the last 5 catastrophies. Bravo! Everything from the flood of Iraqi refugees, to epidemic and famine, to the oil wells burning, to Hussein unleashing his WMDs that you knew he didnt have (smarter than all the intel services in the world, amazing!), Iranian invasion, Turk invasion, Syrian invasion, ring of fire around Baghdad, and of course the perineal favorite- DU poisoning the entire population. Your advice is sooo compelling when it is always the same: anything a Republican suggests will unerringly result in the Worst of the Worst possible outcomes. Very useful. Particularly when you are so superior as to feel above anything so pedestrian as a ‘useful alternative’. Thank god you sanctimonious harbingers of doom!
“You people predicated 25 out of the last 5 catastrophies…”
ROTFL
This is a great thread! Thanks Trent, Peggy (lots – fantastic posts!), and others.
Chester presents a clear choice between Islam being compatible with democracy and it not being compatible with democracy. I don’t think it’s quite like that. Islam doesn’t demand the death of every infidel, it demands their subjugation or else death. There is some play in the system.
Islam is not against votes either – though some radical Muslims are – provided you vote for the right things, and provided the position of Islam is lofty and triumphant and the infidels feel themselves beaten and subdued. So “Muslim democracy” is viable in the long run, as in Egypt where the position of Coptic Christians is bad, or in Iraq where Assyrian Christians I’ve spoken to got out because things are bad and there’s no future for them there, and so on. In free Muslim societies, if you’re an idol worshipper the majority’s freedom won’t protect you even though you would normally think that “freedom” would imply that. Muslims in France are free, part of a free society, but that does not imply it’s safe to be a Jew where Muslims dominate.
This applies no matter who says what, no matter who promises what. You can promise the neighbours that your tiger will become a happy and healthy vegetarian, but your pet tiger can’t keep that promise. George W. Bush can say what he likes about the peaceful religion of Islam, but Muslim “struggle” – jihad – cannot end.
We can have a multicultural, multi-religious petting zoo, with Christian sheep and Wiccan wallabies and Buddhist boomers all grazing nicely together. That’s what we do have, thanks to American style Christianity and its belief in religious freedom for all. But if you insist that “tolerance” means including everything and put the tiger in the same cage with the other animals, after a while the only other animals are going to be those that can fly or are small enough to cower in some sheltering hole, if they can find one.
I want as much diversity as can be practically achieved and maintained – but only that much.
Chester paints a terrible picture of the consequences he says would follow if we did not believe Islam was compatible with freedom. It seems like this is so we’d say: oh no, that’s terrible, we can’t behave like that, we can’t allow that, so to prevent that we’ll believe in the goodness of Islam. He says: “A no answer, on the other hand, might first start with Islam as anathema to free society, then move to other religious creeds, seeing them through a lens of general suspicion.”
I think this is scaremongering.
If you are full of concern for tiny religious minorities – like a conservationist saying “save the fluffy-tufted pagan!” – here’s my advice: protect yourself first. That’s the best thing you can do for them.
I have talked to many believers in “alternative” religion – mostly polytheistic, often reconstructionist. The view is common, though definitely not universal, that “we alternative religions have to stand together against intolerance” as represented by George W. Bush and Christianity.
“Alternative” includes Islam. “Together” means unilaterally supporting Islam, as Islam will not support polytheism. Saying that, and quoting the Koran, other sources and Muslim history for what Islam does imply for powerless polytheist minorities, means you are a bigot and have to leave the group. In other words the answer “Yes! Islam is compatible with (our) freedom!” is mandatory.
I think this is insane.
It’s helped me to understand how well-established, large, successful, reasonably tolerant polytheistic civilisations got shredded by aggressive, intolerant, proselytising monotheisms in the first place.
To the point where I’ve come to the conclusion that the safety and dignity of modern polytheists depends on the continuing superiority and strength of tolerant Christians, who protect everybody including those too stupid to protect themselves or even say thanks.
Keep that tiger out of the damn zoo. And if there is no fence between us and it, act on the assumption that the tiger will get hungry and it will act accordingly. Because it will.
The issue is not what fate we would be choosing for Islam. The issue is what fate we are choosing for ourselves if we refuse to see the obvious, terrible truth.
“The problem, as I saw it in 2003 and as I see it today, is that we have to find a way for the Muslim world to join the free world – probably in ways different than Switzerland or the U.K. or the U.S. does – or else.”
Laughable.
“We” have to “find a way”, eh?
“Or else.”?
Are you now trying to run away from YOUR previous solution to this, which amounts to trying to force “Democracy” on them at the point of a gun? (I put this in quotes because I doubt you’ve given much thought to what this means, in different contexts.)
THAT is what many opponents were most strongly, and credibly, against wrt the Iraq war. Not that “muslims can’t join the free world” because they simply don’t understand how dangerous Islam can be.
Heck, all three of Abrahams children have way too much blood on their hands. Incompatibility with Democracy? Pick me up off the floor….they’re incompatible with humanity fer Chrissake.
To base your thinking on such obvious caricatures and straw men indicates you are living in the Land of Oz, not Kansas.
And with that, I think I’ll board my balloon and take leave of this fantasy land populated by midgets impersonating men.
“trying to force “Democracy” on them..”
I’ve always had a problem with that rant. I mean, think about it: how could you force something that is a natural part of life? The sovreignty of people isn’t something that can exist separately from the people themselves. You cannot “force democracy” on somebody any more than you could “force existance” on them, or “force being” on them.
People can and do live in situations where they have little control of their government, but they own it, nonetheless. There is a social contract ratified by the natural legislative powers of the population. Democracy never “goes” anywhere to be brought back. It’s always there. There isn’t any one country or system of beliefs doing anything to anyone. Iraqis will decide who runs their country, even if Saddam was still around. We can try to make the process easier and more peaceful, but nobody is imposing anything on anybody.
I think Islam is compatible with democracy – it can win elections, and would have in Algeria as well if not stopped – but it will never cease fighting everything that is not Islam. (Though the fight will have lots of pauses and slack periods mainly when success seems totally out of reach for the time being.) It also has a permanent victims list, and it can never lay this down. The inequality of believers and non-believers is irreformable. Muslim aggression and obsession with superiority and humiliation, with the latter to be inflicted on prescribed groups, is irreformable.
What then?
– Is Europe doomed? Yes. If you’ve accepted a large and dynamic Muslim population, given that there is an absolute taboo on kicking out the Muslim colonists, and given that tigers and sheep can’t remain stabled together indefinitely – Europe can only die. Fast or slow, the contest can only end one way if only one side can fight to win. My advice to Europeans is: get out!
(However, if there was time and the demographics added up, Europe could be saved. And I take Joe and Miracle Max’s point about the difference between “mostly dead” and “dead”.)
– Should we stop Muslim immigration to prevent the latent suicide pact implicit in our absolute moral taboos from activating? Yes.
– The delicate euphemism for Muslim democracy, “not like Sweden,” should be dragged out of it’s hidey hole and examined. How much “not like” what Sweden was will Muslim democracy be? Radically unlike, with fear and humiliation for the permanently oppressed. Not worth defending. Not worth living in. Not worth ones children or ones grandchildren growing up in.
– What we are building in Iraq also needs a straight look. Working in Muslim countries means accepting Muslim terms. Does this mean turning a deaf ear to religious minorities being ground to powder? That’s exactly what it means in practice: Muslims would not tolerate us protecting Assyrian Christians and others they feel disposed to intimidate and oppress.
(Assyrian Christians I’ve talked to who’ve fled from Iraq to Australia are exceedingly unconvinced on how beautiful and accepting Islam is. This seems to be something Westerners passing through Iraq quickly see; they never saw it like that in their whole lives there.)
– Does that diminish the value of democracy-building in the Muslim world, on Muslim terms, if it means tacit complicity in slow ethnic cleansing? I say it does, radically.
– Does that mean in future, as possibly in Iran, the idea must to get in, smash what has to be smashed, and get out? (Rather than trying to rebuild the whole society as free but on Muslim and therefore inherently oppressive terms.) Yes, that’s exactly what it means.
– I also think we will need a “grand scuttle” of the arsenals of Europe before they are turned against us. A continent that’s made its peace with Islam – that is submitted in reality – has agreed to join in hostility to the Great Satan and the Lesser Satan and their allies. There is no way around that. Consequences follow. If we don’t act, we will be acted upon.
– In general, should we accept Muslim terms, or at least take them as a reasonable basis for discussion? (Is female genital mutilation OK? Are forced marriages and honour killings OK? Should cartoons of Muhammed (pbuh) be banned? Should Salman Rushdie die? We can say there are reasonable points on both sides…) No!! We should insist on our views, uphold our own values (as in the Italian manifesto (link)) and delegitimise contrary Muslim views unreservedly and with scorn.
– That means ultimately treating Islam as if it was Communism, doesn’t it? Yes, that’s exactly what it means.
– We’ve habitually pretended to be blind and deaf about what Muslims are doing to non-Muslims globally, especially to followers of native religious, such as African Animists, and Dayaks. If they’re not Christians we totally ignore it, and if they are Christians we practically ignore it. This is totally wrong and immoral, but it’s the price of making nice with Islam, especially moderate, respectable Islam that insists on silence regarding anything that might touch on it’s good name while being totally OK with jihad and genocide. It’s wrong, and I want us to treat it as wrong, and I want us to help the victims whenever we can. We should not be more reluctant to help people who are under the threat of jihad than we were to help people menaced by Communist aggression.
There are two big points I want constantly emphasised.
1. Freedom must mean freedom leave Islam. We must protect every Muhammed and Fatima who wants to be an ex-Muslim (whether because they want to become Christians or for any other reasons) as refugees with a well-founded fear of persecution, just as we did with refugees from Communism.
Islam must be stripped of it’s closed marked maintained by fear, and made to compete in an open market for religious identities, where if girls feel that they get a better deal as Christians, it’s up to the mullahs to change the deal so that Islam makes them a better offer than Jesus, or else lose them.
That’s how I say we should win this war. I think we can, and it’s a noble path.
Alas, it will take a lot of time to work, and Europe doesn’t have a lot of time.
By the way, this model is obviously incompatible with the hateful racial prejudice and genocide model that those who refuse to see Islam as an enemy are trying to smear anti-Islamist with. If you make it that you can never be accepted as an ex-Muslim because you are still Javanese/Arab/Persian/etcetera, that removes my winning endgame and brings back the “closed market” but enforced from the outside, not the inside of Islam.
2. We must actively make it too painful for Muslims, including the highest authorities in Islam, to threaten our people with the fate of Theo Van Gogh. They have to be made to not attempt to intimidate our “heroic” free press, because we know that if they do it will work. There is no reason to think our intellectuals are any braver. The balance of fear has to change so that these indispensable cowards are not covertly intimidated, and when that means us making war, it means us making war on the people who issue fatwas that matter.
Will that bring on the dreaded “clash of civilisations”? No, because it’s already here and they’re already fighting it – and beating us because we’re not. There is no “peace” to lose, there are only habits of passivity and defeat to shake off.
Given the Muslim obsession with subjection, humiliation, indignities and so on – with these to be inflicted on non-Muslims and never on (lofty and triumphant) Islam or Muslims, Muslims will, inexorably, inevitably, try to make our lives miserable and not worth living unless we convert to Islam. They will succeed unless we put up a shield wall and keep those who remain Muslims on the other side of it. When, thanks to a shrinking world that puts everywhere in reach of everywhere, they succeed in sending at us such a hail of virtual missiles (or actual planes) that passively imitating the tortoise doesn’t work, we have to lower our spears to the level and march forward.
Chester suggested that we must believe in that Islam is compatible with freedom, because if we don’t we’ll do things like …
And even some extreme measures if free societies find the above moves to be failing:
-forced conversion from Islam, or renunciation;
-colonization;
-extermination of Muslims wherever they are found.
I think that’s outrageous, since I’m saying only that Islam should be treated as if it were Communism, and we didn’t set up an American or Australian genocide program for all Communists. Suggesting that we have to deny that the enemy is the enemy – that we have to believe that the enemy is not the enemy – because if we did see Islam as an enemy we’d behave genocidally – is just wrong.
Armed Liberal and other can reasonably say: if you won’t say what you would do, why shouldn’t I take it that you would do what Chester suggests? It seems to me I’ve said over and over what I think has to be done, particularly points 1 and 2.
Anyway, I’ve said it again.
Now, have I answered the question, or not? Do I get to be judged on my own proposals, or on someone else’s, crafted to be as unacceptable and repugnant as possible?
Dan —
“The USA has millions of mulsims now living here. Are all of these people plotting against the government? Come now, be reasonable about this. Wide sweeping statements are almost always false. It does little justice to the discussion to talk at extremes.”
The record of Muslims in the US is NOT encouraging.
The Nation of Islam’s head, Louis Farrakahn, made a speech recently that was openly anti-Semitic and anti-gay; to the point that two members of the State of Illinois Human Rights Commission resigned, rather than serve with Farrakahn’s aide (causing a crisis for the current Governor).
Numerous Muslim terror cells were broken up by the FBI inside the country; by surveillance of contacts with known terrorists. AFAIK NO Muslim groups have stepped forward to inform the FBI of these cells, rather they’ve denounce arrests made and complained of Islamaphobia.
When UCI yesterday had conference on the Cartoons and Cartoon Jihad, Muslims tried to shut it down (the same Muslim student groups wore Hamas headbands at graduation and sponsored Hezbollah speakers on Campus).
NO Muslim organization in the United States stood up for Free Speech in relation to the Cartoon Jihad. Nor did they condemn violence. Muslim organizations were extremely tardy in condemning 9/11 and raised … zero dollars for the victims.
Muslims are not Catholics. David Blue’s comments say this much better than I could.
Moreover, according to the US State Dept, about 80% of US Mosques are run and funded by Wahhabists from Saudi. Hatred of Jews and Christians and contempt for Western Law are the rule of the day in most mosques here in the US.
So yes, the same definition of Jihad is taught in almost every US mosque, and it’s the same world-wide.
The record of Muslims in the UK and the US would show that Islam is simply not compatible with a free and open society; the difference between the US and the UK is that political correctness and multi-culti nonsense has not run wild here, so you don’t get things like Muslims getting Piglet banned in UK government offices or the Union Jack in prisons or defacto Sharia in Muslim neighborhoods.
At no point in the West has any substantial body of Muslims accepted Western Norms, see the riots in Cronulla over attempts by Muslims to enforce Sharia on Australians on their own beaches.
This doesn’t mean genocide any more than the Cold War did. It does mean however a general ass-kicking is in the future at some point. The only question is if we choose the place and time or they do.
Darn – over-long, over-emotional and under-edited … but in sum I still stand by what I said.
Working down Chester’s list…
-detention of Muslims, or an abrogation of certain of their rights;
No more abrogation of rights than with Communists. There are certain jobs that Communists were not wanted in and that Muslims should not be wanted in, and apart from that your rights are untouched.
As for detention – of floods of illegal Muslim immigrants or to be blunt colonists – yes. To put a stop to it. I thought this was inhumane and wrong when the Howard government started doing that. Now I support it.
-forced deportation of Muslims from free societies;
If they are illegal colonists, yes.
Otherwise, we simply can’t do that, which means European nations that can’t survive without doing that have to die. (Which I think is very sad.)
And I remember there were no mass expulsions of Communists either.
-rather than transformative invasions, punitive expeditions and punitive strikes;
Yes, this one is right, because we’ve hit our limits. Muslim demographics and Muslim hate are too powerful for us We can’t invade and transform states like Indonesia, Pakistan and Iran. Do you think that we can?
On the other hand, we do have to punish. Putting out fatwas on Westerners has been the world’s safest blood sport. Nobody ever gets punished for doing this, but our society is being subtly moulded by fear and dishonesty.
It has to be more dangerous to put out a fatwa of death than it is to have one put out on you. You should need to go into hiding for the rest of your life if you do sign a bloody fatwa. Since Islam takes the side of the intolerant Muslim aggressor, not the infidel or apostate victim, we have to be the ones to create that danger.
Yes, even if this is something like Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini putting out a fatwa on Salman Rushdie – in fact we should be more concerned to hit people who put out the most dangerous and effective fatwas.
-extreme racial profiling;
No. Was there “extreme racial profiling” against Slavs because we were up against Soviet Communism? There were plenty of anti-Communist Russophiles and there’ll be plenty of anti-Islamists who have no interest in or respect for a “raghead” rap. (In both cases, this is my own attitude.)
-limits on the practice and study of Islam in its entirety
Yes, particularly the exploding on a school bus bit.
But in general, Muslim indoctrination should be about as welcome as Communist indoctrination. It’s a Bad Thing, and we should limit it in every fair and legal way consistent with free speech.
And even some extreme measures if free societies find the above moves to be failing:
-forced conversion from Islam, or renunciation;
No.
And is this a good time to point out that a lot of the offensive items on this list are characteristic of how our enemies, whose bloody dogma is allegedly compatible with freedom, do business right now?
-colonization;
No. We can’t. We wouldn’t, but more to the point we can’t, because we’ve got a major demographic collapse and Europe is dying. (But not dead.) We don’t have the people!
Rather, it’s Islam that’s colonising us – rapidly.
This one seemed so out-of-this-world that it was the one that made me think maybe these items were made up just to be offensive and to associate that offensiveness with the view that Islam is hostile.
-extermination of Muslims wherever they are found.
No. I believe the guy who laid down that you should fight and kill the polytheists wherever you find – and scores of other instructions of similar character- them was Muhammed (pbuh).
–
I wish to make some totally off-topic remarks, because I don’t see a thread handy where they would be on-topic.
Since Iraq came back into an approximation of balance in a couple of days, is it reasonable to ask now that:
1. This should be remembered against Lee Harris’ record. His uninformed, historically ignorant piece on Iraq coming apart and nobody, no outside force being able to intervene in a (gasp!) tribal war!! – how prescient was that? Not very, right?
2. Can we at least call for hawks and conservatives to stop buying into every panic and bit of media fluff that comes along? I think there are really scary things happening in the world, but they generally have long lead times. A different scary thing that conservatives ought to be screaming about doesn’t happen every time some mainstream media guys decide to beat up a panic about a war that’s been going on for years with fair success, and that features one of the best armies in the history of the world – ours. This is not a situation that’s ripe for any kind of instant, total collapse, and you’d think people would remember that.
3. I think people seen as hawks and conservatives should get less of a free pass over being panicky and silly on the war and for showing that they never read anything on the topics where they are pontificating as experts. The standards seem too low, and someone has to really start howling at the moon, like Andrew Sullivan over gay marriage and Abu Ghraib, before it gets noticed. I would like people who are in some sense conservative to show as much awareness of weakness on this side of the fence as Armed Liberal does of weakness on the Liberal side.
Lest we forget: stop sending “aid”, better known as tribute, to Muslim states.
David, you’ve put a lot of thoughts down here. consider hammering them into one coherent post – or possibly two (with the lead-in being “Protecting Polytheism”).
“The USA has millions of mulsims now living here. Are all of these people plotting against the government? Come now, be reasonable about this. Wide sweeping statements are almost always false. It does little justice to the discussion to talk at extremes.”
The Chicago Tribune has had a number of articles about the Bridgeview Mosque, whose members clearly want their preachers to be extremist, hate-mongering fanatics.
A.L. #20
bq. Chester does an excellent job of pointing out what the ‘or else’ looks like, something which I believe many – on both the Michelle Malkin and Atrios sides of the dence haven’t thought out.
Actually, Tom Holsinger and I have actually said a great deal on the hard realities of “No” option A.L.
You just run screaming every time we bring them up.
The last time we went really deeply into those realities was in the threads for posts in reaction to Beslan, when we discussed the history and ultimate fate of mass movement death cults.
Check out this post by Jim Geraghty on his NRO blog:
http://tks.nationalreview.com/archives/091508.asp