Our Swedish correspondent HL sent an email to us this morning with his observations about Sweden, and an idea about how the situation might be changed:
The other day I was telling myself that I need to take it easy with reading the blogs because I’m feeling utterly helpless and it really clouds my mind and spirit. Only a few hours after that, my girlfriend and I were walking down the main street of my little hometown of Växjö (about 70,000 people in the “greater city” i.e. county) and encountered a sight which jolted me.
A bearded Islamist came walking with his 9-months pregnant burqa-clad wife. It was unreal. It was precisely like something you’d see in the remote regions of Afghanistan.
The Islamization of Sweden is a fact when you encounter this image in a quaint little southern town. How in the world were they granted asylum? From whom could they possibly have been fleeing? The burqa and the man’s beard are a political statement and those people are the ones who are the oppressors. I decided it was time to get back in the ring and fight the good fight…
It made me want to share an idea of mine. It is a clever plan on how to make life miserable for all Islamists and at the same time wake people up to Christianity again.
- - - - - - - - -
Here in Europe the genre “Christian Rock/Pop” is unheard of. However, much of the music isn’t really “gospel” but rather uplifting and only has the encore revealing its Christian nature. Because the actual tunes are so catchy I believe most non-Muslim Europeans would embrace it without any concern.
Thus, if it would be possible to get the radio stations to start playing Christian Pop (like David Crowder for instance) the Islamists would have no way of avoiding it! The Christianity would be everywhere, like a stone in one’s boot, and I also believe many young people would embrace the religion if it came as this hip new “trend”.
What’s even better, the Muslims would have no way of countering it with Muslim music since the only true language of the Quran is Arabic, which no Europeans understand and can be influenced by. Therefore it wouldn’t catch on with the youth. Hence, if the Muslims then don’t want to simply keep quiet they’ll have use their “I feel offended” card to stop the Christian music, and which only would get more Europeans to wake up to the tolerance level of Islam…
Imagine if the Muslims try to take away the pop music from the kids, and what the reaction will be. It’ll be an outrage and they’ll be forced to wake up and get politically active in defending their freedoms.
To top it all off, because the Christian record labels don’t see Europe as a market or invest in it, I believe it would be fairly simple to sign a deal with them to allow an unknown entrepreneur to market some bands over in Europe, and that there only is a payout to the label/bands once all expenses have been covered etc. If it’s a “dead desert” in their mind why wouldn’t they allow some risk taker to try and turn it into an Oasis with some initial slack?
The only issue is to raise the finances to market a couple of bands on the radio etc. and who should do it. Perhaps you know of someone?
There would be a lot of monetary gain I believe since people over would respond to the music. Even if Europe is post-Christian, people are spiritually starving and enjoy “self help” tools. I find Christian Pop/Rock to be the perfect blend of those two.
32 comments:
I think HL is a nice chap but utterly naive. Christian rock? How's that ever gonna be marketed in Europe?
I agree with him on one thing though. Reading all this stuff is depressing. However, there can be no letup of the fight.
Michael, I think your question was answered by HL when he said:
"Thus, if it would be possible to get the radio stations to start playing Christian Pop (like David Crowder for instance) the Islamists would have no way of avoiding it!"
Admittedly, there is a pretty large IF in that sentence, but I think he is onto a good idea. I think there are some flaws in the idea, but I also think it has some merit. The biggest flaw I see is that the message of many of these "Christian Rock Groups" is not truly Christian, but if the right groups are chosen, this could do some real good. This would reach a large audience and it would be young people who would be reached. As he says, if someone objects, they are likely to react adversely. Overall, I like the idea and would like to see it pursued.
Dr. D, with all due respect, but I guess you hail from the States, where, I suppose, Christian Rock is cool to a segment of youth.
Not so in Europe sir.
I know the guys who run the youngster radios here. The idea that they would promote David Crowder is ludicrous.
Furthermore, what I totally fail to understand is how the islamists would have no way to avoid it. They'd "avoid" it the same wy I avoid al-Manar: by not tuning in to it.
I'll tell you a working strategy: have more kids. One of these days I'm gonna go for number three. It's talking my wife into it, slowly, slowly....
Outlaw Mike/Belgium
Much more basic approaches might be productive.
Everybody should own a dog. Muslims hate them and having to be around dogs would make them very uncomfortable.
No halal meals in the schools. The same style of food is served to everyone. Same thing for prisons and jails, no halal food their either.
Allow churches to ring their bells or chimes but prohibit the Islamic vocal call to prayer as disturbing the peace, especially if it is amplified.
Ban the burqa and niqab as being disguises that impinge upon the community's security. After all, having those cameras everywhere isn't going to help you when someone is wearing a burqa. Disallow entry into banks, schools and hospitals for anyone who is concealed in such a fashion. Demand photo identification and verify it physically at all times.
Identify any Muslim cabbies and arrange for people with seeing eye or service dogs, or people carrying unopened liquor and wrapped pork products to specifically hail those cabs. Make sure that they have their medallions revoked if they refuse to pick up such people. (This assumes that Sweden has similar taxi laws to the USA.)
Open butcher shops and liquor stores next door to or accross the street from mosques wherever possible.
Publicly oppose the building of all new mosques or Islamic academies. Seek court orders that expose where their funding comes from.
I'm sure others can think of more ideas like this.
Wonderful!
I'm a Pagan, but I'm game. If the music is catchy, I'll dance to it.
Why don't you also post to YouTube to start with. To open up the Market to begin with? Hoping to see ya there?
Allat
Zenster,
Yes, this is the way to go.
Pork has a pivotal position among Spanish tapas: all sorts of jamon, chorizo, lomo and salchicas. Guess how that tradition was started!!!
Now that's an intriguing idea.
Like Mosquito Deleto, but for people.
'I'm sure others can think of more ideas like this.'
i can think of a lot, some legal, some not so legal. my crazed fantasies to one side, however, it might be useful to distinguish those measures which require legal force from those that don't.
'ban the burqa' is all very well, but we can't do that unless we control the government, in which case we might as well just ban muslims. until that happy time, measures which can be taken by the public are where people should focus.
relatively prosaic options would include boycotts of muslim businesses. the idea of getting an anti-jihadist who happened to be blind to cut a swathe through the muslim cabbies of whatever area is one of uncommon genius, though.
zenster, i am hereby officially awarding you my evil genius award. the last time i awarded it, i had a different name on a different site, and probably a different personality as well, which goes to show just how difficult it is to obtain.
I remind the forum that the winners of Eurovision 2006 were Finnish band 'Lordi' - with a record 292 points - playing their single 'Hard Rock Hallelujah.'
"Members of Lordi are noted for their elaborate monster-like costumes. Lordi are also known as 'The Finnish Monsters' and 'The Monsters Of Finland.'"
Lordi's 2007 Christmas single was called "It Snows in Hell".
Gang:
Actually, y'all might be dead wrong.
I don't even pretend to know how your "Youth Culture" and it's "Youth Market" works, (I can barely understand what and how it works over here, what I can absorb of it without puking).
But if the US government and the "Movers and Shakers" tried a campaign that "Burkhas are COOL!" and "It's NEAT to be Muslim", that meme would die so fast that it's shadow would still be haunting us for weeks after it was dead and buried.
Maybe the answer is for your governments to not only embrace the RoP, but to try stuffing it down the kids' throats.
Make the Hajj compulsory for all children, Muslim or not, and pump their nuggets full of state-sponsored boosterism all the way there and back.
They just might pack the churches on ya in reply.
One thing I think will have a much better chance of success is the coolifying of Christian symbology. The Templars are cool, if for no other reason than the mystique oflegend. Holger Danske is cool; I don't know how many times I've been asked by kids where I got the bumper sticker...I don't think the message of current Christianity is particularly effective...combating Islam with a series of turned cheeks isn't going to do much...but reviving the Warrior Christianity of the ninth century; that's a project worth pursuing, it seems to me.
If we can remind the youth of the west that their men were once not feminized, that they fought and won the fights they fought...then we have a fighting chance...as it were...
I do recall one song that recently hit #1 in the UK was from an overtly christian rock group. I'm trying to remember what it was called. A butterfly was definitely involved...
So the idea isn't without merit.
You can't stop the Islamists without help from the rest of the Swedish population being committed to stopping them.
You might make some inroads and discourage a couple of thousand muslims from coming to Sweden but then some politician will have the bright idea of actually flying in thousands more muslims from foreign countries.
That might sound unlikely but is happens now under various refugee programs working with the UNHCR.
You might have wondered how some Somalis, Sudanese etc.. manage to make it to Europe and the answer in some cases is that the government actually provided the plane ticket from them to travel to Europe with the help of organizations like the International Catholic Migration Commission.
If you look on their site you'll see some of the stories of resettling refugees to Europe.
Have you been in contact with refugee resettlement programmes of European countries?
I have mainly worked with the refugee resettlement programmes of the US, Australia and Canada. In Europe, the only resettlement programme I was in contact with was the Finnish programme, which has offered resettlement to some Sudanese refugees out of Egypt. I remember that many of those refugees were first somehow reluctant and cautious about the idea of settling in Finland. But after a first group of refugees did travel there, positive feedback returned to the refugees still in Egypt and their opinion on the issue changed; the refugees were actually getting quite excited about the idea of going to Finland. It is of course important to have a good understanding of the resettlement criteria of the various country programmes in order to match cases with programmes in the best way possible.
International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC)
If you just keep pushing the stories about the dangers of Islamic migration perhaps more people will wake up and demand their governments stop flying in muslim refugees and granting asylum to the ones who travel to Europe on their own accord.
I'm not sure what happened to the link I posted
Here's the page of refugee assistance stories from the International Catholic Migration Commission's European Resettlement Network: Intrhttp://www.icmc.net/e/programmes_operations/europ_network.htm
El: the idea of getting an anti-jihadist who happened to be blind to cut a swathe through the muslim cabbies of whatever area is one of uncommon genius, though.
I evolved that particular gem in response to Somali cab drivers at the Minneapolis airport who were discriminating against blind folks and people carrying liquor bottles. All this, despite a local imam absolving them so long as they did not partake of any alcohol themselves.
The important thing was that any driver refusing a randomly selected fare had to go to the end of the cab queue which could be as much as a few hours long. I proposed assembling a team of counter-jihadis all conspicuously toting alcohol bottles or service dogs. Even if they were accepted as a fare, they only rode to the short term parking garage where there was a van parked at a prearranged spot to shuttle them back to the head of the taxi queue. This way, the Somali cabbies quickly got their earning eroded and would learn to avoid the airport, one of the most lucrative pickup spots.
zenster, i am hereby officially awarding you my evil genius award. the last time i awarded it, i had a different name on a different site, and probably a different personality as well, which goes to show just how difficult it is to obtain.
Mwu-ha-ha-ha-ha! Cheerfully accepted. What brought me back into the thread was thinking about my wolf-hybrid and the way he loves to howl along with passing fire trucks and ambulances.
People who live near mosques should train their dogs to howl whenever the muezzin (caller) begins the adhan (call to prayer). What more delightful and legal way to disrupt a Muslim service than to have the local neighborhood erupt into a chorus of howling mutts everytime prayers start?
Like I said, people, let's come up with some truly creative solutions. As Fjordman notes, the West must set about making itself Islam-unfriendly. Everybody pitch in now ...
Radical Islamic hip hop and rap are all the rage among Arab kids.
The idea that attractive music and anti-musical Islam won't mix is attractive and sensible and logical.
And unfortunatly untrue...
Perhaps it's time for Potbellied pigs to make a comeback. They’re easy to train and just love to take walks around the neighborhood.
Wearing t-shirts, etc. with pictures of dogs will have an effect, as I accidentally found out recently. I was wearing a sweatshirt with a doggie decal when I went for an oil change, and the muslim shop-owner was visibly uncomfortable. (Didn't know it was a muslim shop, I won't go back.) Also, why not play a recording of dogs barking, if you live near a mosque? I can't adopt a dog, my cat won't allow it.
I just realized something. What we need is not so much to intimidate muslims, as to empower ourselves and our neighbors. What if dog or pig t-shirts became a symbol of the resistance? No one could object to someone wearing a cute dog t-shirt, or a Porky Pig T, since Porky is an established cartoon character, hardly a symbol of intolerance.
This would be a safe way for people oppressed by speech codes to stand up to the government. Everyone would see how many of their neighbors supported freedom, even people who are afraid to talk to their neighbors about this for fear of being thought racist or whatever.
It would also have the advantage that one would not have to be a Christian to participate. I'm on the side of Christians, but I'm secular, and it would be a false gesture for me and others like me to pretend to be interested in any religion, for the sake of politics. By all means, promote Christian pop, but dog T's are more inclusive, plus you don't need permission from a radio station, you just print the decal on your own printer, if necessary.
I think tours of Muslim no-go areas for non-Muslims should be considered. Whole busloads of infidels in mini skirts and tank top -fish net- shirts for guys, remember those offencive belly buttons!
There has got to be some gay activists out there as well as feminists who want to protest against their own discrimination by sharia loving Muslims. Pehpaps the gay community would like to do a tour of their own as well?
Latte Island: Porky is an established cartoon character, hardly a symbol of intolerance.
Not usually, unless you're a member of the National Stuttering Project:
In 1991, the National Stuttering Project (NSP) of San Francisco picketed Warner Bros. demanding that they stop "belittling" stutterers and use Porky Pig as an advocate for child stutterers.
Well look, the point is that David Crowder for instance doesn't sound too blatantly Christian, but more like a regular rock band. At least from what I've heard. I agree it would be pointless to try and market a truly blatantly Christian band in Europe. It's like saying you're a devil worshipper in an American southern state. HOWEVER, if the music is good and catchy and not preachy but rather generally uplifting with a few hints of its roots, I don't see why the radio stations and people wouldn't listen to it. And no, the muslims wouldn't be able to ignore it if it's being played on the radio, on the TV, in stores etc. Think about it. What if Britney Spears would have been a Christian? Would you have been able to ignore her? No. Also, rather than trying to legislate about forbidding burkas and all of that, why not do something POSITIVE? I.e. market something people might actually enjoy! If people feel they dig it, they're gonna climb aboard. That's how you get a following. People don't go out and buy records because they dislike other bands, they buy the record because they like it. And there is so much Christian rock which beats out all the "normal" soul less pop in present day Europe. Until I spent several months in the US I had no idea about that, and would have dismissed the idea right of the bat. As for Muslim hip hop, the argument still stands. All they can do is spread hate... Because that's basically what hip hop does. So that way you'd at least better define Christianity and Islam through the music, life-affirming vs. hate and negativity.
There's always Miss Piggy. Also see
missing dog named mohammed
Michael:
I hear what you're saying, but that same argument could also have been made a few years ago about Country music being introduced on the European market. Few thought it possible! Now look at Shania Twain and Dixie Chicks etc. - Same thing being suggested... Although let people find out for themselves that it is Christian.
latte island -
I picked up a T-shirt in Las Vegas some months ago. It has a photograph showing a rather worse for wear cowboy slumped in the saddle, with his dog sitting in his lap holden the horse's reins in his mouth. The caption below says, "DESIGNATED DRIVER". Dog + drinking = double RoP discomfort!
I think HL has a good idea. The fact of the matter is this a culture war as much as anything and the good fight must be as multi-faceted as our culture. Every little push in the right direction keeps adding up. While I would consider myself something of a Christian Atheist, it is the final culmination of the Western traditions and heritage that I am proud of and, like it or not, that heritage is, by and large, Christian-Judeo.
It is interesting to note that the European Muslim youth are very into Rap music. Is there such a thing as Christian Rap?
Here's a photo of the designated driver....
http://kollarrow.blogspot.com/2007/12/texan-designated-driver.html
One does not need to insult or antagonise Muslims so that they can wave the "I'm offended" flag, and thus garner even more government legislated protection.
To make a real impact one needs to stick to only a couple of items, that even PC and MC people cannot help but supporting.
1. Freedom for women
2. The sentence of death in Islam for Apostasy.
A social and political atmosphere that comes about by such a policy, is essentially poisonous to Islam, and its survival. Its leaders will cry foul, or advise their adherents to seek refugee status in Islamic lands.
All ofcourse to be done with the softest, the most liberal and compassionate tone one muster.
Michael --
Gates of Vienna's rules about comments require that they be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum. Your comment violated the last of these rules. We keep a PG-13 blog, and exclude foul language, explicit descriptions, and epithets.
Use of asterisks is an appropriate alternative.
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Michael said...
holger: 'same argument could also have been made a few years ago about Country music being introduced on the European market. Few thought it possible! Now look at Shania Twain and Dixie Chicks etc.'
holger, I can of course not speak for other European countries, but I live in Belgium, and I guarantee you that country is rarely heard on the radio here.
If they play Dixie C***s it's only because the deejays here hate GWB and they know the Dixie C***s hate him too.
As for Shania Twain, is that country??? I'll tell you why Shania had success (I say "had", because it seems here hit days are over). Shania Twain had 1.) catchy songs and 2.) was hot as fresh lava. That's why.
Now if one could persuade her to sing gospel songs the approach suggested might have some succes, but I don't see her do it yet.
I think Zenster is spot on. These are ideas we should start spreading.
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