Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Why the Future May Not Belong to Islam

The Fjordman Report

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.



Canadian writer Mark Steyn thinks “The future belongs to Islam.” The main reason for this, according to him, is demography, with massive population growth in Islamic countries and low birth rates in infidel nations. He makes some assertions I agree with, such as that big government is a national security threat since “it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it.”

America AloneAccording to Steyn, “Four years into the ‘war on terror,’ the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: ‘the long war.’ Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower.”

Critics would claim that Mr. Steyn isn’t contributing to maintaining Western willpower by suggesting that we’ve already lost. Still, I shouldn’t be too hard on him. The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced his article as “Islamophobic, inflammatory and offensive.” If CAIR dislikes you, you know you must be doing something right.

But he makes other assertions I strongly disagree with, such as indicating that the United States should remain in Iraq to spread democracy: “What does it mean when the world’s hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet’s military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists?”

Here, Mark Steyn is wrong, which indicates that he doesn’t fully understand Islam. The entire project of “spreading democracy” was a mistake from the very beginning, because democracy cannot be exported to an Islamic country such as Iraq. It is stupidity to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on Muslims while Islamization continues apace in the West.

Steyn also does not fully understand the issue of demography. Islamic countries are parasitical. Even the massive population growth is only an advantage as long as Muslims are allowed to export it to infidel lands. Deprived of this opportunity, and of Western aid, the Islamic world would quickly sink into a quagmire of overpopulation. This is a long-term solution, to demonstrate to Muslims the failure of Islam.
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Defeating JihadAccording to Srdja Trifkovic, the author of Defeating Jihad, “The tangible cost of the presence of a Muslim man, woman and child to the American taxpayer is at least $100,000 each year. The cost of the general unpleasantness associated with the terrorist threat and its impact on the quality of our lives is, of course, incalculable. (…) There is a direct, empirically verifiable correlation between the percentage of Muslims in a country and the increase of terrorist violence in that country (not to mention the general decline in the quality of life and civilized discourse).”

Sooner or later, we have to deal with the implications of this fact. The best way to deal with the Islamic world is to have as little to do with it as possible. We should completely stop Muslim immigration. This could be done in indirect ways, such as banning immigration from nations known to be engaged in terrorism. All Muslim non-citizens in the West should be removed. We should also change our laws to ensure that Muslim citizens who advocate sharia, preach Jihad, the inequality of “infidels” etc should have their citizenship revoked and be deported back to their country of origin.

We need to create an environment where the practice of Islam is made difficult. Muslim citizens should be forced to accept our secular ways or leave if they desire sharia. Much of this can be done in a non-discriminatory way, by simply refusing to allow special pleading to Muslims. Do not allow Islamic public calls to prayer as this is offensive to other faiths. Both boys and girls should take part in all sporting and social activities of the school and the community. The veil should be banned in public institutions, thus contributing to breaking the traditional subjugation of women. Companies and public buildings should not be forced to build prayer rooms for Muslims. Enact laws to eliminate the abuse of family reunification laws. Do not permit major investments by Muslims in Western media or universities.

The SudetenlandIt is conceivable that some infidel nations will copy the Benes Decrees from Czechoslovakia in 1946, when most of the so-called Sudeten Germans had shown themselves to be a dangerous fifth column. The Czech government thus expelled them from its land. As Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch has demonstrated, there is a much better case for a Benes Decree for parts of Europe’s Muslim population now than there ever was for the Sudeten Germans.

Is that racism and Fascism you say? Muslims themselves in poll after poll state that their loyalty lies with the Islamic Umma, not with the country they live in. “I’m a Muslim living in Britain, I’m not British” is the sentiment. Well, if Muslims themselves state that their citizenship is not worth the paper it is printed upon, why not take their word for it?

David Selbourne, author of The Losing Battle with Islam thinks that “Islam’s swift progress is easily explained. For the West — but not China or India — is as politically and ideologically weak as the world of Islam is strong. The West is handicapped by many factors: its over-benign liberalism, the lost moral status of the Christian faith, the vacillations of its judiciaries and the incoherence of their judgments, political and military hesitations over strategy and tactics, poor intelligence (in both senses), and the complicities of the ‘Left’.”

Can the West defeat the Islamic threat? Selbourne states ten reasons why not, including the extent of political division in the non-Muslim world about what is afoot, the confusion of Leftist “progressives” about the Islamic advance, anti-Americanism and the vicarious satisfaction felt by many non-Muslims at America’s reverses, as well as the West’s dependency on the oil and material resources of Arab and Muslim countries.

According to him, Islam will not be defeated because “the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated.” Yet another indication that Islam’s advance will continue lies in “the skilful use being made of the media and of the world wide web in the service both of the ‘electronic jihad’”

I agree with him that the cultural weakness of the West is a major disadvantage, and has been one important reason behind the recent resurgence of Jihad. It was never inevitable that we allowed millions of Muslims to settle in our lands. This was the result of Multiculturalism and the weakening of our cultural identity, and in Europe with the deliberate help of Eurabians.

The impact of globalization and modern mass media is more complicated and has contradictory results. As one pundit at ex-Muslim Ali Sina’s website put it: “Rituals are important as brainwashing tools to instill discipline and loyalty. Islam’s focus on rituals remind me of the rituals in the military. (...) But what worked well for a medieval war machine is disastrous for Muslims in the modern world. The Arab war machine was supported by the blind obedience, brotherhood, courage, hatred and high birth rates inspired by Islam. (...) But these same qualities are handicaps for Muslims in the age of the microchip. Today they lead to poverty, belligerency, war and defeat.”

Islam was perfect for medieval warfare, but gradually lost out to the West, especially after the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, which could never have taken place in Islamic lands because of their lack of freedom and their cult of authority. Ironically, history has now gone full circle. Muslims are still useless in developing anything new, but as a result of migration, modern communications, the presence of Muslims in infidel lands and Arab oil revenues, they can more readily buy or expropriate technology from others. The Iranian Revolution was aided by audio cassettes of speeches by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Roger ScrutonIn the book The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat, Roger Scruton argues that globalization “offers militant Islam the opportunity that it has lacked since the Ottoman retreat from central Europe.” It has created “a true Islamic umma, which identifies itself across borders in terms of a global form of legitimacy, and which attaches itself like a parasite to global institutions and techniques that are the by-products of Western democracy.”

The “techniques and infrastructure on which al Qaeda depends are the gifts of the new global institutions. It is Wall Street and Zurich that produced the network of international finance that enables Osama bin Laden to conceal his wealth and to deploy it anywhere in the world. It is Western enterprise with its multinational outreach that produced the technology that bin Laden has exploited so effectively against us. And it is Western science that developed the weapons of mass destruction he would dearly like to obtain. His wealth, too, would be inconceivable without the vast oil revenues brought to Saudi Arabia from the West, there to precipitate the building boom from which his father profited.”

While Scruton gives some support to the idea that the Internet and modern communications technology have strengthened Islam, there are some contradictory views worth listening to.

Theodore DalrympleTheodore Dalrymple thinks that “Islam has nothing whatever to say to the modern world,” and states that “Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism. They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle, as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history, it is all or nothing. (…) Islamism is a last gasp, not a renaissance, of the religion; but, as anyone who has watched a person die will attest, last gasps can last a surprisingly long time.”

Although some of the tensions we are seeing now are caused by Western cultural weakness, part of it is also related to the impersonal forces of technological globalization. Previously, Muslims and non-Muslims could for the most part ignore each other on a daily basis. This is no longer possible, because Muslims see the Western world on TV every day. And if somebody in, say, Denmark says something “insulting” about Muhammad — which in the 19th century would have gone unnoticed in Pakistan or Egypt — thanks to email, mobile phones and satellite TV, millions of Muslims will know about it within hours. However, this can potentially be good for non-Muslims.

Contrary to what Selbourne claims, the Internet has in fact emerged as an important, perhaps crucial factor in the Western resistance, as author Bruce Bawer has noticed: “Thank God for the [Inter]Net. I tremble at the thought of all the things that have happened during the past years that I would never have known about without it. The bloggers have in some cases reported about things that the mainstream media has left out, and in other cases pointed out omissions and distortions in the media coverage. Frequently, the mass media has felt compelled by the bloggers to pay attention to stories they would otherwise have ignored. The blogosphere is a fantastic way to spread news. If an important event has been reported in just a single, insignificant local paper, one blogger somewhere will have written about it, other bloggers will have linked to him etc. so that the news story is passed on to blog readers around the world. If Europe is saved, it will be because of the Internet.”

Columnist Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post praises the blogosphere and states that: “The responsibility of protecting our nations and societies from internal disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty to protect our way of life.”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tale the Lord of the Rings is a story about the little people, the Hobbits, saving the day in the end. The most powerful enemy within in Tolkien’s story is the wizard Saruman. In the West now, Saruman corresponds to a whole class of people in politics, the media and academia. The Sarumans of the West are met with resistance from thousands of little hobbits in cyberspace, and they don’t like it. Pessimists claim that this era is merely the Wild West period of the Internet, which will gradually become tamed and censored. That is possible, but even if events should turn out that way, the Internet will still have given an important contribution to the Western resistance of our time.

Seaborne believes that many people are underestimating the strength of Islam. Perhaps, but some observers, including Mark Steyn and Mr. Seaborne himself, may be overestimating it. They overlook the fact that Islam has many weaknesses, too. Don’t underestimate your enemy. Muslims should be credited for making clever use of our weaknesses, but this “we’re all doomed and have already lost” theme is overblown.

We should implement a policy of containment of the Islamic world. I’m not saying that containment is all that we will ever need to do, but it is the very minimum that is acceptable. Perhaps the spread of nuclear weapons technology, the darkest side of globalization, will trigger a large-scale war with the Islamic world at some point. The only way to avoid this is to take steps, including military ones, to deprive Muslims of such technology.

We should restrain their ability to hurt us physically. We can’t prevent it completely, but we should limit it as much as possible. Muslims try to wear us down through terrorism. They should be worn down through mockery and criticism. We should also make clear that for every Islamic terror attack we will increase these efforts, which Muslims fear more than our weapons. It’s the new balance of terror.

Dr. Koenraad ElstDr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists, thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing.

Dalrymple is probably correct when he says that Islam is an “all or nothing” religion which cannot be secularized. The future may not belong to Islam, as Mark Steyn suggests. It is conceivable that Islam in some generations will cease to be a global force of any significance, but in the meantime it will be a constant source of danger to its neighbors, from Europe through India to Southeast Asia. The good news is that Islam may not be able to achieve the world dominance it desires. The bad news is that it may be able to achieve a world war. We can only cage it as much as possible and try to prevent this from happening.

33 comments:

snowpea said...

Good article . . . . Recently Mark Steyn, apparently having begun to consider the possibility of a failure in Iraq, has resorted to this defense of the "Bush Doctrine:" "Promoting liberty and democracy, even if they ultimately fail, is still a good way of messing with the thugs' heads. It's one of the few real points of pressure America and its allies can bring to bear aginst rogue nations. . . . In other words, even if it ultimately flops, seriously promoting liberty and democracy could cause all kinds of headaches for the mullahs, Assad, Mubarak and the rest of the gang. However it turns out it's the 'realist' option." Unfortunately he does not seem to acknowledge here that if such pressure is applied to the point of actually toppling the "thugs," it has failed in its purpose of "messing with their heads," i.e.(?), extracting what limited concessions towards liberal democracy are possible in the Middle East.

Don Miguel said...

I'd like to know how Trifkovic came up with the amount for the statement "The tangible cost of the presence of a Muslim man, woman and child to the American taxpayer is at least $100,000 each year."

Fjordman, while I agree that we "should completely stop Muslim immigration" and that "Muslim non-citizens in the West should be removed," the U.S. legal system would make a halt of immigration difficult and mass deportation virtually impossible except in case of an all out war -- and even then it would be very difficult.

X said...

I've heard it speculated that the current upsurge in islamic violence might actually be a historic last gasp. Islam as a religion is apparently dying, with as many converting out of it as in to it.

I've also heard it said tht the devil always overplays his hand. He's a boaster and a liar, and can't help but continue to exagerate his bluff. Islam is of the same sort of mould; lies and bluffs play a huge role in nearly every transaction made with Islam. They lie. They bluff, seeming to have all the power but then they reveal their hand too early and blow the game. That's how it'll be with Islam, I reckon. They'll set off a bomb too soon, or blow up the wrong thing, or just act stupid once too often on live television and that'll be it.

IMO.

kepiblanc said...

As always, a brilliant article by Fjordman. I agree with most, but not everything :

This "World War" scenario is nonsense to me. Islam is completely unable to fight a classical, military confrontation. Not only are Muslims lousy soldiers due to their lack of initiative and individualism, their built-in fatalism and general ignorance of everything, but they haven't the slightest idea of coordinated, flexible warfare. To say nothing of high-tech military hardware. Their one and only option is terror against civilians. Which they know very well.

Yes, even Muslims can use the Internet. But they don't have the faintest idea of the inner workings of same. One thing is to copy a few lines of code from a script-kiddie and whack some dumbed-down, Windows-boxes - another is to attack the backbone of the 'net', driven by all sorts of hardened Unix / Linux servers. And when it comes to defending themselves against a full-blown electronic attack from real 'hackers' they are completely clueless. We could take down the entire Islamic network in a heartbeat.

So, the Muslims have two options : out-breed us and terrorize our civilian populations. The first option is the most dangerous, but can be dealt with. The second - terror and riots - are easier : Presently, they see Iraq and Afghanistan as shooting galleries - and they are. We have to realize that 'exporting' democracy or even civilization to Islamic countries is futile. The soon our troops are out, they'll go into a killing spree on one another. Full-fledged civil war. Good. Then, their fifth columns in our countries will have to take action - which means urban warfare, riots, sabotage, arson, etc.. But they need a home base, a fortress. Now, they live within very confined areas with well defined perimeters. In large cities. Totally dependent on said cities' infrastructure, supplies and information from the outside. It only takes a few, tech-savvy resistance groups to cut off water, power, telephone lines, cell phone relays etc.. to these ghettos. Then, they're back in the 8-Th. century - where they belong. End of game.

In the meantime, let us exploit their weaknesses - of which there are plenty, first and foremost their lack of humor and reason. Let's ridicule, insult and humiliate them until they seethe and whine themselves into popping aneurysms. Or leave our lands.

Derv said...

As a self-professed nerd, I feel the need to point out that Sauron is the main bad guy in the Lord of the Rings trilogy; Saruman was just his little sidekick, and played no role in the last third of the book (or movie).

I definitely agree with everything in this article, though. I have heard a few responses to those survey results of "Muslim first, British (a distant) second" that at first seem legitimate. The main one is the obvious: ask most Christians whether they consider their loyalty first to their faith or to their nation, and you'll get much of the same results. You would from me.

The difference is, however, that Christianity is compatible with Western thought (though not with secular humanism), and Islam isn't. Christians are not strapping bombs to their chests to kill civilians, and Muslims are. We are not and most likely will never be at war with Christianity (unless you, the reader, are a lefty moonbat, since you guys have been killing us whenever you come to power).

I have heard that the Bolshevik revolution was caused by a mere 4% of Russia's population (along with massive general unrest, poverty, etc., which are necessary backdrops). If - or rather when - this war becomes an all-out war of the West against Islam (and their allies), at least 10% of France will be at war with the nation. The same situation is in many places in Europe to a greater or lesser degree.

I do not think that Europe will fall; I do, however, believe that WW3 will make the body counts of WW2 look like the Glorious Revolution.

Derv said...

Oh, and kepiblanc,

War with Islam doesn't mean conventional Clausewitzian conflict necessarily. We're talking 4GW tactics, social unrest and civil conflict, terrorism on a scale not yet seen, the collapse of the more secular regimes in Islam with Jihadists, nuclear conflict, and complete anarchy in the cities of much of Europe.

Muslims may be backwards, but they aren't stupid. They know that if they fight us by conventional means, they will lose in a heartbeat. So they won't do that.

You live on the Continent, do you not? I recommend you get yourself a gun if you don't have one.

truepeers said...

The problem with Fjordman's argument is that it assumes that Islam is something to contain on the model of the Soviets, until it collapses a la 1990. But Communism collapsed because there was a national and Christian structure in the Eastern European cultures into which it could collapse. Even if we set up a quarantine and say half the population of the Islamic world starve (but would we allow that to happen - could our own societies overcome their ideological divisions and just let that happen without own own societies falling into civil war over it?) what are they going to collapse into except tribalism which is entirely compatible with Islam - it's most unlikely that they would go back to some wholly pagan religion. So, as long as there is oil wealth in the ME and tribes in need of fighting and building states to control this wealth and power, the problem remains. Either we play along with the big men until we no longer need their oil, or we try to convert the people to Christianity and/or democracy and give them an alternative to Islam as it exists today.

And what would it take to mobilize a serious quarantine - much of the European and Asian world would have to come on board and commit to the blockade, even as everyone wants the oil. It seems to me more probable than that we could mobilize these many peoples on Islam's borders to fight, colonize, and convert. But obviously we are a long way from either possibility at the moment.

truepeers said...

The main one is the obvious: ask most Christians whether they consider their loyalty first to their faith or to their nation, and you'll get much of the same results. You would from me.

The difference is, however, that Christianity is compatible with Western thought (though not with secular humanism), and Islam isn't.


-the difference is more than this. Christianity has always been the religion of the western nations and was necessary for those nations first to come into being. The question remains open whether these nations can survive long with a post-religious culture. Perhaps what Europe is showing us today it that Western nations can only survive as long as they remain predominantly Christian. Perhaps a Western nation is nothing but a rather Judaically-inflected form of Christianity: Christianity with a Jewish sense of a national covenant.

Don Miguel said...

"Yes, even Muslims can use the Internet. But they don't have the faintest idea of the inner workings of same. One thing is to copy a few lines of code from a script-kiddie and whack some dumbed-down, Windows-boxes - another is to attack the backbone of the 'net', driven by all sorts of hardened Unix / Linux servers."

Kepiblanc,

Well, yes and no. I've worked with a few good Muslim programmers who are pretty damn good. On the other hand, all of them were serious and not Islamists. In fact, one of them complains about when he travels to the Middle East on business (he lives in Morocco), he’s always getting questioned on why he doesn’t go to prayers. But then being a Berber he doesn’t like Arabs questioning him about anything. :)

"Hunter" said...

Do I hear a little optimism out of you Fjordman? Keep up the great work and let the mockery begin!!!

kepiblanc- "Yes, even Muslims can use the Internet. But they don't have the faintest idea of the inner workings of same. One thing is to copy a few lines of code from a script-kiddie and whack some dumbed-down, Windows-boxes - another is to attack the backbone of the 'net', driven by all sorts of hardened Unix / Linux servers."

This is definitely true for those Muslims in the middle east. However don't underestimate those that have grown up in the west and are educated in our universities. There is a reason there is a full scale push to recruit at the university level. The "anti-authority" and "anti-west" view is a perfect incubator for those that are struggling to fit into the a culture less society. The left and Islam do make strange bedfellows indeed.

Harrison said...

>kepiblanc - I de.li.cious.ed this particular article which you may find insightful as well - but I'm not so sure if it's as relevant now as it proved to be in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982.

>chief dervish - agreed, but I would like to add, if you may, that conventional warfare is not necessarily a monopolised domain of Western military forces. If terrorism, social anarchy and human-shield tactics don't do the job, just take a look at how Hizbollah engaged head-on with the IDF with fully conventional forces in June/July. Bill Roggio elaborates - we might be seriously underestimating their capabilities and flexibility in adapting to the new arena of asymmetrical warfare.

First and foremost, Islamic fundamentalists hijack Western morality by pandering to sympathisers who blindly advocate "moral equivalence" - that Palestinian civilians who willingly and consciously harbour and tacitly support their fellow fundamentalists deserve the same treatment as Israeli citizens who are murdered in broad daylight, to note an example. They hide behind women's skirts and baby prams - as observed in the latest "human shield" tactic - and exploit the Western predilection for moral justification and legitimation. Their blatant disregard for human casualties on both sides, their embrace of the fatalistic, spiritual cult of death - all markers and bellwethers (in Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iraq) seem to convincingly point towards a long, protracted battle to the death.

The fundamentalists probably believe that with Muslim demographics surging upwards and the burgeoning appeal of radical Islam in disaffected nations wallowing in poverty - and that even in Europe with its highly segregated, internally colonised minorities in their decrepit ghettoes and enclaves - they are poised to emerge triumphant in this war of attrition, regardless of the number of lives they have to sacrifice. But are they really that confident of such an outcome?

I haven't seen Nasrallah, Osama, Ahmadinejad or any of those mullahs in Iran personally take charge on the battlefield and put their own lives at risk. Obviously, they don't appear to be as enthusiastic about martyrdom, even though their rhetoric is chockful of self-aggrandising, self-justifying soundbites about sacrifice and glory.

Not willing to put their own lives on the line, they are even more unwilling to risk conflict with the West by launching proxy wars: in Lebanon, Iraq, even Syria. Previously, with Hizbollah's blatant intentions of creating its own state within Lebanon, at least the international community could point out that it was an outright violation of Lebanese sovereignty and thus should be stopped - so should have Syrian complicity and clandestine infiltration in Lebanon's government. Now under the guise of legitimacy that has been foisted upon the continuing exploitation of proxies by Iran and Syria - Iraq and Syria engaging in talks to "stabilise" the region, or America believing that Assad's Syrian regime is a "force for stability" - these acts of terrorism are going to be rendered invisible as the West struggles with its own conflicted morality.

Communism is an ideology, but Islamic fundamentalism derives its frenzied, zealous support from the institution of religion. It's going to be much harder to speed up the collapse of such a movement, especially when it so effeectively permeates every social strata and every aspect of private and public life.

>chief dervish - I do not think that Europe will fall; I do, however, believe that WW3 will make the body counts of WW2 look like the Glorious Revolution.

Which got me thinking: can we be certain that this World War will ever erupt? Has it already begun? Does it necessarily require the formal declaration of war against the perpetrators - who are scattered in diasporas everywhere?

What it seems to me is that America and Europe are finding it diabolically diffcult to justify any sort of invasion or all-out eradication of the perpetrators and fundamentalist groups, partly due to the costliness in lives and money as seen in Iraq, partly due to the concerns with collateral damage, human rights and the need for broad multilateral support. Because of this general unwillingness and hesitancy to further confront Islamic radicalism, they are seeking a policy of appeasement with the Middle East regimes - their hands are tied with regard to the Iranian nuclear crisis, and they fear the collapse of Assad's regime would bring about civil war and an even more radical government, plus the need to accommodate powerbrokers like Moqtada al-Sadr and SCIRI in Iraq - in hopes that peace and security can be maintained at almost any price.

I believe that the West needs a rude wake-up call in order to respond effectively, but I'm deeply apprehensive about how severe this call should manifest itself to be: a nuclear/biological attack in one of America's cities, or on Israel? Recall that Chamberlain only decided to wage war against Germany when the latter invaded Poland - and that was after Britain and France allowed Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia through and through, as well as the calculated dismantlement of every aspect of the Versailles settlement. The West needs a crisis of similar proportions to deal with Islamic fundamentalism.

Snouck said...

Islam has been around for 1.400 years, so it will be around for longer I think.

Fjordman correctly states that the weakness of the West is the strength of Islam. If Westerners have to suffer enough they will quit liberalism and lash back at Islam. Our way of looking at society and war have to change before we can be successful. It took the Muslims about 80 years to find a way of war that was successful against the West. We will do it more quickly I think.

It will not take a big World War either. Those industrial wars are things of the past, as we have seen in Vietnam and the current war in the Middle East.

We need to clear our lands of Muslims like Fjordman says and isolate ourselves as much as possible from Islam. In the worst case we can use Serb style ethnic cleansing. It will be harder on them than on us.

Regards,

Snouck

Vasarahammer said...

I don't think Mark Steyn understands Europe when he says that Europe is lost and America will have to fight Radical Islam alone.

It is Europe that will first face up the concrete threat of radical islam and as a result there will be political changes. The nature of these changes will depend on the state of the society. If the public debate is not restricted by the straitjacket of political correctness, the problem can be solved within a context of democratic society like in Denmark.

If, on the other hand, the ruling elites deny the problem long enough, the result may be the rise of some kind of neo-fascism.

Mark Steyn seems to predict a scenario, in which the diminishing indigenous population will slowly emigrate and leave Europe in the hands of muslims. This, however, requires that the development is sufficiently slow and that there are no visible conflicts that the ruling elite can't ignore.

It was ímpossible for the Danes to ignore the cartoon crisis and it seems to me that racism and xenophobia can no longer exclusively be blamed for lack of muslim integration in the mainstream Danish society.

Unknown said...

Snouck: I don't think we should say stuff like that, it only hurts the cause. We need to do stop Muslim immigration as soon as possible, so containment can be implemented in a way that is as civilized as possible.

jillosophy said...

Baron, this was another outstanding article. Bravo and thank you! I linked to it on my blog jillosophy.blogspot.com.

I also blogged and sent you an article about Mexico and Iran's new deal to expand tourism between the two countries, which really worries me! Islamism is spreading, and the more it touches people, the more it will be resisted... like our illegal alien crisis.
Keep up the brilliant work!!

Chocolate Tennis Balls said...

I say we let China take care of the Middle East. China won't be bothered too much with 'human rights' and such niceties. They need the oil, let them manage the yahoos in Saudi Arabia: and manage them they will. The rest of the World should just let China do its thing and step back. Let's see how the imams make out when they've been sentenced to 20 years in the Logai camps in rural China. It'll make Guantanamo look like a 5-star Hilton. Of course, the rest of the World might have to pay a little bit more for their oil, but peace of mind and security come at a cost. It might even be less if the oil companies in the Middle East begin to adopt Chinese labour code standards.
With that problem in capable hands, Europe and America could then focus on their home soil and cracking down on radicals at home. The problem for the West though is that you have an alliance between the Left and Islam. Both have very similar outlook when it comes to economic theory. It isn't just Islam, it's the same old problem that it's been now for a long time in the West: anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-traditionalist forces. The Left figures that Islam can ultimately be reformed when the time comes, but in the meantime, they'll use it as their means to an end. The best thing that could happen is if one country in Europe topples and becomes Islamic: it would be nice if that were France. Then, the rest of the West would get a glimpse of what their threatened with, and take necessary measures to avoid a similar fate.

X said...

On the subject of christianity, I'd like to point out that we christians are quite clearly commanded several times to obey the government of the country we are in so far as it doesn't confluct with the word of God - i.e. the scriptures. Islam has no such command.

yngwie621 said...

The real danger in the West is not Islam. The real danger is the "Islamic enabler", the network of Leftists that operate at all levels of the government and society and that work to maintain and extend Muslim immigration and protect it from attack.

In America, the primary enabler is the Blue-State American. Therefore, the Islamic threat can only be dealt with after the blue-state American threat is dealt with. That will occur after a nuclear weapon goes off in New York City, the capital of blue-statism in North America.

That NYC nuke will so thin the population of liberals that it will then be possible to mount a genocidal war abroad while suppressing the balance of the Left at home. Only then can Islam be defeated.

Unless the fifth column is harshly dealt with, the West will lose.

Vol-in-Law said...

Fantastic article, with a much more realistic analysis than one normally sees.

"Seaborne believes that many people are underestimating the strength of Islam. Perhaps, but some observers, including Mark Steyn and Mr. Seaborne himself, may be overestimating it. They overlook the fact that Islam has many weaknesses, too. Don’t underestimate your enemy. Muslims should be credited for making clever use of our weaknesses, but this “we’re all doomed and have already lost” theme is overblown."

I think this is exactly right.
It must be recognised that the attack plan of the Muslim Brotherhood & co to destroy western civilisation through intimidation & demographics is rational, and does have some chance of success. But victory for the Islamists is far from inevitable, even in Europe, and depends more on European weakness than on Islamic strength. The Bush-Cheney "permanent offensive" strategy vs "Terror" has been disastrous, it totally misidentifies (and "misunderestimates") the enemy. But a defensive strategy of containment offers a high chance of success.

See: http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_strategic_defense.htm

Vol-in-Law said...

Glad to see Steyn on New Culture Forum says:

"I agree with Melanie, that if European populations get serious, there’s no need for them to lose their countries."

Vol-in-Law said...

truepeers:
"The problem with Fjordman's argument is that it assumes that Islam is something to contain on the model of the Soviets, until it collapses a la 1990"

Islam itself isn't going to 'collapse', as Snouck correctly points out. It's political Islamism that feeds off conflict, and that we most need to isolate ourselves from. This does require an end to Muslim immigration into the West so that Muslims here can assimilate, it also means a reassertion of Christian and Enlightenment values here (the two have been compatible for 300 years, and we need both IMO). It also requires that we do NOT attack Muslim countries and seek to convert them to democracy, human rights or any other Western notions. That plays right into the Islamists' hands. Buy their oil, isolate them - don't allow them to fund Madrassas, Mosques and academic departments in the West. And leave them alone.

Vol-in-Law said...

'View from the Right' has a very insightful critique of Steyn (and the Bushite neocon agenda of invade the world/invite the world) at:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006795.html#postcomment

"In my view, nothing Steyn says is truly serious. He’s a postmodern performance artist who has discovered to his amazement, delight, and profit that the conservative reading public is endlessly gullible to his tricksterism. Lately, he has found that talking about birthrates adds the image of “serious thinker” to his reputation as a brilliant mocker of leftist idiocies, and so that has now become his major scam.

Also, Gates of Vienna writes:

Critics would claim that Mr. Steyn isn’t contributing to maintaining Western willpower by suggesting that we’ve already lost. Still, I shouldn’t be too hard on him. The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced his article as “Islamophobic, inflammatory and offensive.” If CAIR dislikes you, you know you must be doing something right.

I don't agree. If it is your purpose to eliminate the possibility of effective Western resistance to Islam, what better device than to make arguments that would actually lead to Western surrender to Islam, while making the world think that you are a major enemy of Islam? Having Muslims attack him as an Islamophobe is Steyn's perfect cover.

This le Carré-esque technique is part and parcel of the entire Bush/neoconservatve agenda. Bush and the neocons gain a reputation as right-wing reactionaries for pursuing the utopian project of promoting democracy in Muslim lands, while they continue to support the immigration policies leading to the actual Islamization of Western lands. Yet people on the right are loathe to criticize Bush and the neocons for this, since, after all, the Muslims regard them them as Islamophobes, and, as Gates of Vienna puts it, if CAIR dislikes you, you must be doing something right."

Snouck said...

Fjordman:
"We need to do stop Muslim immigration as soon as possible, so containment can be implemented in a way that is as civilized as possible."

Snouck:
I agree that a civilized settlement of the struggle is preferable to the nightmare on Eurostreet scenario. However, it will be decades before the elites give up their infatuation with Multiculturalism and Islam. Any takeover by pro-wenstern groups will be opposed by leftist diehards and immigrant communities. So a messy scenario is highly likely.

I am as powerless to influence events as you are Fjordman, and am speculating on future events, using history as a reference.

I will avoid mentioning the EC nomenclature if you wish. Regular readers of my comments will know what I think when I refer to "Elmstreet".

If you want to know what influences my thinking, visit http://www.d-n-i.net regularly and read: "The Transformation of War" by Professor Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University.

Regards,

Snouck

Plastic Yank said...

'View from the Right' has a very insightful critique of Steyn (and the Bushite neocon agenda of invade the world/invite the world)

It would seem to me that the cited critique, and the following comments you made, are primarily characterized by personal animosity, and perhaps jealousy, rather than any sort of insight.

Captain USpace said...

Incredible article, great comments too! I feel that unless birthrates increase, Earth WILL definitely be an ever-increasing Muslim majority someday. I feel we owe it to our grandchildren and our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great,
great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren to help ensure that the Muslims are truly moderate, peaceful, modern and largely secular.


absurd thought -
God of the Universe hopes
Europe surrenders...

hate your proud Christian culture
blame yourself and just give up
.

Unknown said...

Ok... is the irony of some of the posters here being more fanatical and fascistic than the Islamists they abhor lost on anyone?

I don't know what background some of the posters here are from, but let me guarantee you that any government or society that enacts mass deportation of Muslims will NOT stop with just deporting Muslims. So I certainly hope that all of the posters who are advocating this line of action are pure-breed Whites otherwise you can be rest assured that right behind the Muslims will be the Jews, the Asians, then the so-called impure Whites (eg Italians, Greeks etc) then the gays, then the disabled and so on and so forth.

I am not saying that mass deportation per se is wrong or not, honestly I don't care what you do. I just hope everyone who posted advocating for this is fully aware of exactly what they are supporting here. Let's not be hypocrites, and let's take this to its logical conclusion.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

This is an excellent article to show who is really fascistic and who is the one who does not want to tolerate the other.
Kick the muslims out of the country, or even slaughter them all together let the whole world get rid of them!! Why? because they are the terrorists!!! they are fascistic! nad they are the ones who do not believe in human rights!!
You are saying that the muslims loyalty is to the Ummah, I am saying the muslim loyalty is to God,and when the loyalty is to God the whole humanity is united, when I live in Britain, USA, Germany or whereever I am a human being with morals that are put at their optimum, and manners that never allow us to deal with the other as you people do.

About terrorism and islam, go to www.islamway.com, and many other sites to read the verses from the Qur'an and the teachings of the sunna that completely condemn it.

Trust me, the world would be much better if it was without, both muslim pretending terrorist and people like you.

peace,

FluffResponse said...

Many have commented on this article, which seems to have been linked from many places, including Mark Steyn's page.

Is GatesofVienna -- the anti-Jihadi Radio Free Europe -- becoming more widely known? The site does what radio ought to be doing; beaming here and there (even into Muslim countries) messages like this: The world would be less violent and far more prosperous if the words of Mohammed were laughed at.

1389 said...

All I can say to this article is "Hell, yeah!!!

Zeeshan Khan said...

This article will only give you some temperory relif. but the fact is that islam will infact win on its merit and the people doing terrorism in the name of war on terror will definately loose since when truth is pitted against false or evil truth will prevail since truth is in nature to win.

/lasse said...

Islam is not a religion it’s a ridiculous thin mishmash about celestial fantasy revelations created by a Arabian caravan looter to fool and subject credulous Arabian red necks to obey and idolize him. A utterly farcical con game where there is one after the other of silly self-serving “revelations” so the “prophet” in a near childish way get “divine” support for his whims.

From the very beginning it has been kept together with extreme threat of violence and intimidation, and so it continues to this day to protect appearance and surface, the so called honor, of the caravan looter.

T Dalrymple:
all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism.

It’s the uncontested superstations in Islam and its rigidity to change and amendment that is the real threat to the modern western world. People that by terror want to change the world come and go, usually very manageable and can be fend of. They are not the real problem.

Christianity have been forced to change by science and knowledge and have modified to a personal belief with a more vague and mythical conception of God and Jesus. These days it’s probably hard to find even a christen priests that truly believe in virgin birth.

Islam and the Quran have to be debunked and put in an historical context, its an absolute necessity if should coexist in the modern world. We have to stop playing along with the charades that it is a true supernatural source.

contevlad said...

I wished to post the whole article but I don't know how to do it, therefor go to http://www.ippmedia.com/cgi-bin/ipp/print.pl?id=125526
...muslims are not stupid, you have to know your enemy if you want to win the war...Tanzania has a population of 40 million, with a muslim entity of less than 35%, now muslim clerics and corrupt politicians pretend to implement the sharia laws in the country...Late Presidet Nyerere(xtian) told me in 1991 (Tanzanian muslim population were at that time less than 28%), that"islam will conquer africa before grabbing europe"...he was optimistic, islam is trying to conquer the whole world at the same time