Turkey is the best we can hope for, and even after eighty-five years of ruthlessly enforced secular governance, Turkey is not a model Western-style democracy. It is teetering on the brink of resurgent Islamic fundamentalism.
The dilemma facing democracy enthusiasts is this: if an opportunity for truly democratic elections were to arise within the Islamic world, extremist illiberal Islamic zealots would be elected in various countries from Algeria to Pakistan. The ascendance of Hamas in “Palestine” is only the latest example of this trend; the success of the FIS in Algeria seventeen years ago showed the shape of things to come.
However, despite all the warning signs, there is no deterring the proponents of “Democracy for Everyone Everywhere, Right Now!” They push ahead with the goal of “free and fair elections” in societies that will elect the Muslim Brotherhood to power as soon as they are given the chance.
The latest issue concerns Egypt, where the Bush administration is dogmatically supporting equal opportunity for al Ikhwan in the upcoming elections. According to ANSAmed:
Egypt: US; White House Concerned Over Political Arrests- - - - - - - - -
WASHINGTON, MARCH 13 — The White House has expressed concern for what it defined as “a campaign of arrests” in Egypt, which targets representatives of the opposers of the government in view of the local elections next month.
More members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the only opposition force in Egypt, were arrested today, bringing to over 350 the arrested since the middle of February.
“We are concerned by a continuing campaign of arrests in Egypt of individuals who are opponents of the current governing party and are involved in the upcoming local elections,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday evening. According to the White House, “the people of Egypt should be permitted to choose freely among competing candidates”.
The White House spokeswoman called on the government of Egypt “to cease any actions that would compromise the ability of the Egyptian people to fully exercise their internationally recognized human rights and to participate in a free and fair election”. (ANSAmed).
Does the White House really prefer that the Muslim Brotherhood be in control of Egypt instead of Hosni Mubarak and his clique of corrupt accomplices?
Will we continue to hand over two billion a year to Egypt if the MB gains power?
If so, what will they use all those infidel dollars for?
If not, what will happen to a suddenly impoverished country governed by Osama clones? Where will it make up the shortfall?
There’s a good reason why our government sometimes has to support thugs and kleptocrats as leaders of Third World countries: the alternatives are worse. We conduct our foreign policy within the world we have, not the world we wish we had.
If only it weren’t de rigueur to refer to these caudillos and tyrants as “true friends of freedom”. If only we didn’t have to pretend that they were the noble and principled leaders of functioning states.
Then we could assert that we need people like Musharraf and Mubarak in charge of their respective hellholes, because their likely replacements would be far, far more dangerous to the interests of the United States and the rest of the Western world.
Hat tip: insubria.
15 comments:
if an opportunity for truly democratic elections were to arise within the Islamic world, extremist illiberal Islamic zealots would be elected in various countries from Algeria to Pakistan.
Well the recent parliamentary elections in Pakistan have produced less than ideal conditions. For example the second largest party, the PML-N led by former prime minister Sharif, is not so moderate as people think.
Sharif has been linked to Osama bin Laden while he was prime minister of Pakistan. Before Sharif was ousted by Musharraf he was about to implement shariah law in Pakistan.
Obviously, imposing democracy on Islamic countries is incredibly stupid. Anyone who would contemplate it is in dire need of a brain transplant. One can only how so many of the walking brain-dead attained positions of power in the U.S. government, including the highest position.
The dilemma facing democracy enthusiasts is this: if an opportunity for truly democratic elections were to arise within the Islamic world, extremist illiberal Islamic zealots would be elected in various countries from Algeria to Pakistan. The ascendance of Hamas in “Palestine” is only the latest example of this trend; the success of the FIS in Algeria seventeen years ago showed the shape of things to come.
However, despite all the warning signs, there is no deterring the proponents of “Democracy for Everyone Everywhere, Right Now!” They push ahead with the goal of “free and fair elections” in societies that will elect the Muslim Brotherhood to power as soon as they are given the chance.
A primary example of why democracy simply WILL NOT WORK in Islamic nations is the existence of shari'a law.
So long as politicians or the electorate of Muslim majority countries can possibly install this profoundly malign totalitarian system, democracy is rendered an irrelevant sham.
Without constitutional law as a preliminary given, there is no valid form of government to be carried forward, no matter who wins the elections.
I am now convinced that the MME (Muslim Middle East) is so lacking in fundamental liberties that the seeds of democracy simply cannot germinate in such parched and nutrient-free soil.
Far better that the West install brutal military dictatorships that forcefully impose specific prohibitions regarding the practice of shari'a law while gradually expanding personal freedoms in an incremental fashion.
The notion of benign self-governance is so alien and constantly abused by those who pretend at leadership in the MME that all further self-deception needs to end.
Either the spread of Islam is curtailed and eventually contained within its ancient borders or else we must resign ourselves to extermination of the Muslim world.
For those who have forgotten or never read El Inglés' well-constructed fiction, "The Danish Civil War", I give you his six observations about Islam and three concluding measures to defeat it:
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1 — Islam is a Totalitarian Political Ideology
Though we are regularly treated to the refrain ‘Islam is not a monolith,’ Islam is in fact a remarkably consistent and enduring set of ideas about the world and how human beings should behave in it. In Hugh Fitzgerald’s formulation, it is doubly totalitarian, both in terms of the demands it makes on the believer, and its claim to political dominance over the whole world. Given that no aspect of human life is left unregulated by Islam, and no human life considered outside its authority (as Muslim or as dhimmi), seeking to arrive at some modus vivendi with it is pointless and counterproductive. Its sway over law, custom, and the general mode of life in Europe must be reduced to nil.
2 — Islam is Unreformable on any Timescale of Relevance to the Problem
The Islamic world has occasionally played host to trends which we could consider to be reformist in nature. There have been times and places where freethinkers have flourished, and scepticism about the central claims of Islam permitted. However, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Muslims have been remarkably successful in extinguishing these movements in their attempts to protect orthodoxy, and their ability to do so is still something to be reckoned with, even in European countries. Moreover, Islam as a whole seems to be on a downward trajectory in this respect, with supposedly moderate Muslim countries seeing Shari’a law extend its authority (Turkey, Malaysia) as others dissolve into failed states dominated by psychotic theocrats (Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan).
As a result, the oft-discussed issue of Islamic reform is in fact wholly irrelevant to any discussion of the response to Islamization. There is simply no reason to believe that reform, if possible at all, could take place on a timescale which might affect the course of events in Europe. The lay of the battlefield and the forces arrayed upon it will surely be clear within twenty years. Those who believe that Islam, a protean force, and one of the most successful political ideologies of all time, will reform itself just in time to save us the bother of having to fight it are engaging in as deluded a bout of wishful thinking as could be imagined. This is not to deny that some nominal Muslims in Europe will drift away from it, but drift is not reform.
3 — Islam is Forever
Islam has an unmatched ability to hollow out that which it absorbs. Stripping away intellectual and artistic freedoms to replace them with a predilection for frothing, ululating, and burning effigies, having once taken possession of a stretch of the Earth’s surface, it admits no rivals to its dominion unless defeated by force of arms. Unlike an ideology such as Communism, it cannot be discredited by its material failures. It is not an economic policy that can be abandoned if it fails. One cannot try it on as one might try on a hat, free to take it off and try another if it fails to please. Once a majority of the people in a polity accept it, it will prove impossible to dislodge.
Islam is not a dark valley from which one eventually emerges after a period of struggle. It attacks too furiously and successfully the habits of thought that would be required to undermine it. For this reason, the battle with Islam must be considered existential in nature. To lose it would be to accept the utter destruction of one’s way of life and everything good in it.
4 — Demographics Favour Islam
If the Muslim population of a country were to peak at, say, 1% of the total, it could perhaps be ignored. After all, Nazism is also a murderous, totalitarian ideology, but its continuing presence in European countries does not appear to be an existential threat to them. However, as is well known, Muslim birth rates are significantly higher than those of non-Muslims throughout Europe. No pernicious ideology (Communism, Nazism, etc.) that has afflicted Europe in recent history has benefited from this dynamic. Yet it is a dynamic of massive implications.
Imagine if, by some means unknown, the Muslim population of the Netherlands as a fraction of the whole were to halve overnight, from 6% to 3%. This huge change would have no significant effect on the long-term trajectory of Islamization in the country. It would merely delay it by as long as it took it to rise from 3% to 6% in the first place, if one assumes identical growth profiles both times. This period, surely not more than two decades, would be a historical blink of the eye. Delaying the Islamization of a country in this highly unrealistic manner, though hugely beneficial in and of itself, does not represent a solution to the problem. Indeed, it ensures its continuation. As such, the Muslim population of a country seeking to avoid Islamization must be stabilized, and at a level low enough to remove Islam from the public sphere.
5 — Separatism is not an Option
There may be those who think that separatism is the most likely path for events to take. Can we not simply detach ourselves from our Muslim populations, letting them go their way while we go ours? One could envisage a population transfer in which Muslims and non-Muslims sorted themselves out in two geographically separate blocs. Might this not provide the best solution to our growing dilemma?
Not only is the answer to this question no, it is vital to understand that this would be one of the worst conceivable outcomes for European peoples, because it would solve nothing while giving the impression of having solved everything. Here we will demonstrate why this would be the case.
Assuming the validity of the above four points, we would, after partition, be faced with a viciously intolerant and supremacist Islamic mini-state, almost certainly led by extremist elements given the acrimony that would result from partition. This state would have to have been granted airports, ports, power stations, and other key infrastructural items to allow it to be viable at all. The chances of it being economically self-sufficient would, however, be virtually nil, so it would be obliged to extract some sort of subsidies from somewhere, presumably the parent state. Its fertility rate would still be higher than that of the parent state, which would create incremental increases in its demands for financial support and further pressures for new geographical concessions due to population increase.
The Muslim state would continue to represent a terrorist threat to the parent state, and would make continuous attempts to subvert and destroy it. It would be able to reinforce its position militarily in a way which would have been impossible if it had consisted solely of scattered Muslim ghettoes under the watchful eye of the original state. With control over its own borders, it could import the arms and equipment needed to build defences that would make it extremely hard to take by conventional assault, as per Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Lastly, there would always be elements within the parent state itself wedded to the belief that the granting of some list of concessions would enable peaceful coexistence. Such elements would represent an ever-present threat to the parent state, a threat which would presumably have no parallel in the Muslim state. There could even be Muslim elements within the parent state, ‘moderate’ Muslims who had been allowed to remain as they had ‘integrated’ so well. Given the track record of such people to date in Europe, it is impossible to dismiss the possibility of their continuing collusion with their co-religionists across the border.
Those who consider this prognosis too pessimistic should consider the case of India, which is illuminating in some, though not all, of these respects. Created in 1947 through the partition of British India into a Hindu state and a Muslim state, India had a Muslim population of approximately 8% at independence, with West and East Pakistan having Hindu populations of approximately 25% each. Over the course of the next 60 years, the westernmost part of the now-fractured Muslim state, Pakistan, would drive out or kill nearly all of this Hindu population, which now stands at less than 1%. The easternmost part would see genocide and ethnic cleansing force the Hindu population down to approximately 10%. This as Muslims clamoured for their fundamental human right to self-determination in Kashmir!
For its part, India would see its Muslim population grow from 8% to an official figure of 13%. However, mass illegal immigration from Bangladesh has swelled the actual figure well above this total, to an estimated 16%. India continues to be afflicted by endemic terrorist attacks, and faces the same existential demographic issues as does any other state with a Muslim minority. What will it do when its Muslim population reaches 25%? Repartition? Why would this repartition not then be followed by the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the new Muslim state once more? How would it avoid leaving an Islamic seed in the new, reduced India, to start the cycle over again? When and how does this process come to a halt for India? When Islam reforms?
We must not walk this path in Europe. If the problem must be dealt with, it must be dealt with permanently once the political will exists. Separation is defeat in the long term. Should it come about due to forces beyond the control of those fighting Islamization, it must be considered a temporary phase, to be addressed with all haste.
6 — Europe Owes Islam Nothing
Absurdly inflated claims to have invented virtually the whole of modern mathematics and science are routine from Muslims and their apologists. In fact, we owe Islam little in these respects, and nothing in any other. Immigrants who have come to Europe, worked hard, obeyed the law and done their best to integrate into their new homes must be considered valued citizens on a par with any others. However, Muslims can overwhelmingly be placed in one of two categories: those who are fiercely committed to Islamizing their host societies, and those who have vociferously rejected and opposed any critical examination of their religion by non-Muslims. None of these people are owed anything by those who see no good reason to have their way of life destroyed by a 7th-century war-fighting cult. There are billions of people in the developing world who would dearly love the opportunity to build a better life in Europe. Those who gain it, only to spit in the faces of those who have taken them in, cannot expect to be treated with particular consideration.
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Now, on to El Inglé's three conjectures from the foregoing premises.
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1 — Inducing Muslims to Leave of Their Own Free Will
The best solution for all concerned is would be that Muslims are persuaded that their future does not lie in Europe. Measures introduced to bring this about could include the following:
· Prohibition of Muslim immigration
· New legislation banning halal butchery
· Prohibition of new mosque construction
· Drastic restrictions on Muslim access to welfare benefits
· Punitive taxation on Muslims to fund security services
· Closures of existing mosques
· Closures of Muslim schools
· Banning the hijab/niqab/burka
· Criminalization of verbal support for Muslim terrorists
· Prohibition of public gatherings of Muslims on security grounds
· Prohibition of Muslim-Muslim marriage
The effectiveness of such measures, implemented in concert by an angry populace and a determined government, could convince many Muslims that Islam’s time in Europe was drawing to a close, inducing large numbers to leave. Given that they would no doubt be accompanied by a good deal of freelance hostility towards Muslims, they could be very effective indeed. However, there would almost certainly be many who would stay, whether due to a genuine attachment to their host countries, their appreciation of the hideousness of their own countries, or a desire to fight it out. After all, the growing hostility to Muslims in Europe does not yet seem to have dampened their desire to live there.
2 — Mass Deportations
The second way of reducing the Muslim population of a country would be to simply throw huge numbers of them out. As such a policy would be unlikely to be adopted all of a sudden, it would probably be implemented on the heels of the first option.
Let us consider some numbers. If a single passenger aircraft carries 250 people, then 4,000 flights can remove 1,000,000 people, approximately the Muslim population of the Netherlands. At ten flights a day, this process would take a little over a year, so the gross physical plausibility of the scheme is easy to establish. Furthermore, the legal issues involved in such a mass deportation are irrelevant, as any country embarking on a scheme of this nature would already be far beyond caring about such niceties, or about what derogatory comments might be made about it at the UN.
Unfortunately, the logistical difficulties would be fairly considerable, to put it mildly, and would undoubtedly necessitate the preparatory internment of the entire Muslim population. This could not be achieved without the massive application of brute force, and would be a process likely to spiral out of control given the numbers of people in question.
It also assumes that Muslim countries would be prepared to take in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of angry, confused, impoverished, sickly refugees. They would be acquiescing in the cessation of the flow of remittances the refugees would otherwise have sent home, and the loss of a considerable amount of political influence in Europe. It is therefore entirely possible that they would simply refuse to allow such deportations to take place, by closing their airspace and cutting all diplomatic relations with the countries in question. The attitude of the Arab world to the plight of the Palestinians, allowed to rot away in their filthy refugee camps as long as they are of some political utility there, is extremely instructive in this regard.
Which brings us to option three.
3 — Genocide
The final option consists of genocide, i.e. the intentional, physical destruction of Islam in Europe. Note that this would not necessarily consist of the killing of all Muslims. As Muhammad himself would be quick to remind us, one can simply kill off the men and claim everyone else as booty. Given the low regard in which slavery is justifiably held in 21st century Europe, it is difficult to see how the booty option could usefully be applied. However, bearing in mind that the threat of Islam lies essentially in its menfolk, in principle, Muslim women could probably just be absorbed into the nation as a whole, Islam itself withering away as a result of a zero-tolerance policy.
Though a discussion of this nature might strike some as being somewhat off-colour, it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not being advocated here. Rather, it is being observed that genocide has been an ever-present factor during history, not least the history of the 20th century. Irrespective of the existence of this document or the exact nature of its content, the cloud of lurking genocide will grow ever-darker over Europe as Islamization proceeds. It would be intellectually and morally negligent not to point this out.
In the Danish scenario outlined in the first section of the document, it can be seen that the Danes quickly progress from option one to something that would constitute a preparation for options two or three, or, more likely, some combination of both. It is highly improbable that any solution to the dilemma posed to Europe by Islam will come about as a result of strict adherence to a single one of the three options. Far more likely is a scenario in which they are messily superimposed on each other as events disintegrate, moving out of the realm of control or prediction.
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The foregoing is as vivid of a prediction regarding what is to come as I have read anywhere. Period.
Either the West sets about crippling political Islam now, or goes about exterminating it subsequent to far worse atrocities in the future. As is always the case with Islam, there is no middle ground.
Please, never forget:
iSLAM WILL NOT HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY.
Energy Independence, stop the foreign aid, stop the immigration, and Islam will implode all on its own. Goat herders are no threat to the west, and their population will self-adjust to the lack of funds or starve. There is no need to interfere with the domestic politics of Islamic nations. We must change our own domestic politics to undercut Islam world-wide, that's all it would take to make that entire 1/6 of the world irrelevant.
US foreign policy to help the muslim brotherhood...
insane.
Untold generations of cconsanguineous marriage are also a possible hindrance. For the worldwide prevalence of this see Global prevalence and a map
But first see Summary
"There’s a good reason why our government sometimes has to support thugs and kleptocrats as leaders of Third World countries"
Why do we have to support any of them? Why not let the people decide by their own, even if that means that they will get into civil war? Why not let the people decide and then interact with "the leader" just as a representant of the people? It doesn't matter how bad he/she is, it only matters that he/she is the one who was elected by the people.
Zenster,
Thank you for your post. To those of us who have thought seriously about the threat posed by Islam your post (I fear it will be removed and therefore I am copying it) strikes a concordant note.
Your observations are as unpleasant and uncomfortable as they are true. And anyone with the capacity for logical analysis cannot fail but to arrive at similar conclusion.
Finally, thanks for the link to the "Danish Civil War" post. I will read it with great interest.
Baron, please do not remove Zenster's post if you can possibly avoid it.
CM --
I've got no problem with Zenster. He knows the rules here and abides by them.
Oh yes: there are people who will tremble in fear of the thought police when they look at what he says. But that doesn't worry me.
There's nothing in what he says that can be construed as incitement, and much of it is true, albeit unpleasant.
Baron,
You are to be commended. I gave up on LGF the second I found this wonderful site and have never looked back.
Charles Martel: Baron,
You are to be commended.
Pleae permit me a hearty seconding of that motion.
Dear Baron, I cannot thank you enough for taking my comments in the exact light that they are meant. It would be splendid if there were some way of averting the coming unpleasantness. Tragically, almost every party of consequence that doggedly asserts how they are dedicated to peace and fellowship, instead, are hurrying our world to the brink of total catastrophe.
As always, Islam is foremost in its responsibility for this entire debacle. Second, only by a hair's breadth, is the preening Politically Correct Progressive Transnational Multiculturalist claque. It is becoming extremely difficult not to lump all of these pseudo-intellectual wankers into one vast Marxist horde of self-loathing anti-Western fifth column saboteurs.
At some point the West will probably need to abandon its sense of justice in dealing with Islam. Odd as it sounds, justice is not natural. Nowhere in nature is there any semblance of justice. It is kill or be killed, with mercy putting in the infrequent cameo appearance at best. Seeking a similar level of bestiality is Islam with its own brutal and mindless violence.
Even more abstruse is how Islam’s devouring of its young removes it yet a second further step from that brutish natural epicenter. Despite what is usually the case, this double negative does not cancel out. It only expands upon such viciousness and cruelty in a way that nature cannot hope—nor does it seek—to match. This is what makes the West’s efforts towards bringing Islam to “justice” so hopeless. At Islam’s level of operational malignance, there is no form of effective legal justice that can be applied.
As with so many other Western traditions like fair play, decency and humanity, all of them are weaponized and turned against us. So it is, too, with justice. While we never would think of firing in the air to ward off a lunging rattlesnake, somehow we delude ourselves into thinking that the threat of being brought to justice will dissuade our Islamic foes.
Simply put, if nature will not—and does not or cannot—respond to justice, how can there be any hope that an even further removed entity like Islam will recognize such a fragile child of the mind? Muslims cheerfully hurl their offspring into the roaring furnace. Even the animal world knows better than to routinely devour its young. How then can we hope that such a delicate notion as justice will possibly impinge upon minds so immune to pity, honor or civility?
Much as with World War II, our cherished traditions of conducting war in a somewhat gentlemanly fashion will have to be shelved, at least temporarily. Fortunately, technology has evolved where there will not be any return to the trenches. No such thing applies to destruction and killing on a sufficiently vast scale that it totally demoralizes the enemy. Disproportionate retaliation remains one of the only near-term measures with any hope of success. Furthermore, sufficiently delayed, disproportionate retaliation will decay in efficacy to the point at where it is only an opening salvo when it once might have carried the day.
Islam is so far removed from nature’s own relatively beneficent center, much less from the “unnatural” idea of justice—however sane such a concept might be—that victory is almost impossible to envision without abandoning the niceties that our enemy holds in such contempt. This is not some elaborate attempt at justifying brutality. It is a frank and honest appraisal of how Western legal, military and societal traditions have been turned against us by a ruthless foe whose sole objective is Global Cultural Genocide.
This we must not allow: Neither the turning against us of such noble time-honored traditions, nor Islam’s attainment of such a ghastly ambition. We deserve far better than Islam intends for our world.
Charles Martel, your encouragement is deeply appreciated. Yourself, along with the Baron, Whiskey_199, Charlemagne and several others here have my admiration for adamantly refusing to waste any lipstick upon the pig in question. While my own projections might seem rather unpleasant, I can only say that the alternatives go well beyond evil. Contrary to what our world’s political leaders may think or say, we rapidly are running out of options as Islam is allowed to paint us into the nuclear corner.
Islam is foremost in its responsibility for this entire debacle.
And one thing's for sure: They'll never, ever claim responsibility for anything like it. That is the last thing I'd expect from that side - Islam reads like a systematic abandonment of responsibility.
Second, only by a hair's breadth, is the preening Politically Correct Progressive Transnational Multiculturalist claque.
Fortunately, they make the nice gesture of collecting most of this in an institution called the European Union. When all these challenges to democracy and freedom have been met - and I think we're doing decently, at least in Denmark - we'll ask those people of fancy dinners and expensive limousines why they didn't keep their promises.
Zenster, I disagree with the notion that we'll need to drop the sense of justice dealing with this. I think it is exactly the sense of justices that drives us to take time to do this. Then, I do believe the sense of justice to be natural to man.
Actually, a couple simple items would go a long way to fixing everything:
Starve Islam for power and money.
Without that, its leaders wouldn't bother being leaders, and our societies would deal with the problems quite well.
Now, starving Islam for power implies that we'll not take 'holy' for holy, and make fun of what we think is not holy, such as violence, religious scams, rape, paedophilia, incest, and other criminal behavior. The better known and more discredited this religion is, the less power is gained from it.
Another source of power for Islam is terrorism. I can understand that Muslims are upset about us dealing with that, for without the ability to scare us into submission, they lose the best of their tools for expansion. We're doing OK on some accounts, but the absence of terror doesn't mean we've won, it merely means we should use this quiet to counter threats to our democratic institutions. That's a lot of work.
Cutting the money supply is in a way the easiest to do, as it doesn't spill any blood, and in a way the hardest, because Arabs are awash in oil money, and thus influence, and many possibly seek to redeem any 'sins' by donating extensively to charity. Sharia banking is the latest of such scams to profit from religion in a very concrete and possibly not very holy way. Fortunately, even some Muslims are standing up against this relative novelty exploiting their religion.
There's a job for everyone in this game. Note the variety of links above? Google makes research easier than it has ever been, which gives us an unique opportunity to actually do our own research and publish the results, or send them directly to relevant journalists and politicians. We need, as members of the civil society, to take back power to where it belongs, the citizens. Turning off our PlayStations and using our skills (like, 'reading' and 'writing') elsewhere is an excellent way to do that.
Henrik: I disagree with the notion that we'll need to drop the sense of justice dealing with this. I think it is exactly the sense of justices that drives us to take time to do this. Then, I do believe the sense of justice to be natural to man.
Perhaps you mistake my meaning. Your confusion is totally understandable in that I have only recently formulated this concept and am hammering out the details myself. My specific point was:
At some point the West will probably need to abandon its sense of justice in dealing with Islam.
This is strictly in relation to Islam. Under no circumstances should the West abandon its admirable construct of peer justice and constitutional law. It is only that this legalistic template in no way overlays upon Islam with even a few congruent points.
The huge mismatch involved makes it increasingly inappropriate for us to apply our values to those who seek only to destroy them. Nasty as it might seem, I believe that the Islamic world will need to be treated to a rather massive dose of its own medicine before it gets the least sense of exactly what they are imposing upon Dar al Harb.
Only when they must submit to an alien culture's dictates under penalty of summary execution will they have even a glimmer of understanding about how vile their own doctrine is.
Another source of power for Islam is terrorism. I can understand that Muslims are upset about us dealing with that, for without the ability to scare us into submission, they lose the best of their tools for expansion.
Agreed most heartily. Islam is horrified that the West has finally ripped away the Muslim mask of Peace and revealed the snarling beast that prowls our borders.
Returning to your other point about disempowering Islam: While ridicule and mockery are time-honored weapons against bullies and tyrants, these tools are not wholly adequate to the task. The stakes are simply too high in this conflict.
You are absolutely right about choking off the financial revenues of Islamic countries. I believe one of the best ways to do this would be by exposing shari'a law's numerous and hideous violations of human rights.
This should be used as a lever to force its practicioners out of the WTO and make them subject to severe economic sanctions. Imagine if wheat and other foodstuffs being sold to human rights violators were saddled with a 500% or 2,000% tarriff. What we should do is stop oil exportation from being profitable for human rights abusers. Make their mere survival so damned expensive that all the oil they can pump out of the ground barely keeps them fed. THEN, mercilessly ridicule them as well.
We need, as members of the civil society, to take back power to where it belongs, the citizens.
Again, agreed: While we still have in our hands this clarion of Free Speech, we must use it to alert the masses about what sort of threat Islam is to the civilized world. This same Free Speech also must be used to expose those who would stifle it as the foes of liberty and ensure their universal political disbarment.
Momentum is our friend. Denmark is a superb example of this. Dawning awareness has suddenly upended Islam's rotten applecart in this seemingly vulnerable little nation and made it a bulwark in the fight against creeping Islamization of Europe. The unification of Denmark's people against tyrany is once again serving as a rallying point, just as it did in World War II.
For a nation which so strongly opposed Hitler, it comes as a not-quite-ironic blessing that Islam has so much in common with the Nazis. Much less recalibration of Denmark's national consciousness will be needed to align it against this new invading enemy. Like a large magnifying lens collecting direct sunlight, the glare of public awareness must be focused upon Islam's dark intentions in order to shrivel it with the power of popular denunciation.
As this censure becomes more universal, so then shall the free world be more able to impose sanctions that will strip Islam of the financial and political means by which it currently achieves its nefarious ends.
Sadly, such a gradual process is too often glacial in its progress. I still remain immensely concerned that far more harsh measures will need to be applied with much greater alacrity in order to deter Islam from its intended goals. While this in no way precludes the usefulness of increasing our scrutiny of Muslim intentions, it needs be a parallel process if we are to have any hope of survival.
Finally, thank you for your thoughtful reply, Henrik. As a first generation American of Danish descent, your indefatigable efforts in protecting my matralineal homeland can only command truly deep appreciation. Recognized or not, you are a Danish national hero. Please accept my personal gratitude.
To control client dictators requires using bribery and threats.
The bribery part is obvious and apparent to all.
The threats have to be more nuanced. America cannot threaten a coup or fund a rebellion or invade, because they are clients. America needs to appear willing to throw the dictators to the wolves and the only way to publically enforce this is by advocating democracy.
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