Søren Pind is the spokesman for Denmark’s ruling party (Venstre) on foreign policy issues. This is his
blog post from yesterday, translated into English by our Danish correspondent TB.
Islam, the tree and its fruits
A few years ago, I participated in a conference along with some of the world’s leading researchers and military strategists. A one-week intensive course, Chatham House Rules, as it was named.
The overall theme was the Middle East, and every day brought intensive descriptions of culture, traditions, and countries — and for each subject experts attended to whom I asked the question: Why should we not know the tree by its fruits? You know, how can it be that not a single Islamic country has democracy, respect for freedom rights, capitalism, and, on the whole, not even a tendency towards economic and political progress? Half of the wise men answered that there was a connection between Islam and the conditions; the other half refused — which was to me remarkable — to answer the question.
To me this is always the first sign that something is wrong. Completely wrong. When someone refuses to answer. A denial of the current state of affairs would have been liberating. But no. Instead a refusal to answer.
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That was very worrying. And maybe that’s why one sometimes these days has to cross the line between some of these so called provocations and the polite tone. I belong to those who think that one should not step on other people’s religion. I honestly did not like the way Jens Jørgen Thorsen [Danish artist, now dead] presented Jesus [which he did in a very vulgar way]. In my opinion he could do what ever he wanted to — but I did not like it. But no matter what, there are some questions which have to be answered.
The most important question is of course whether Islam — and no, I do not say Islamism because I know that Islamism is dangerous — is compatible with democracy and freedom? I ask into the open air. I ask because the answers I have got up until now were ‘No’ or silence.
Please save me from vulgarities from both sides of this question’s ‘borders’. But can anyone, please, give me a sober answer? Because if the answer does not exist, then the political reality will have to adapt accordingly. But not before we have tried to find an answer. One can choose to see Wilders as a provocateur, but if that were his mission then, however clumsy it might seem, it was worth it.
The question in short is: Should one know the tree by its fruit?
10 comments:
To begin with, one should look into Chatham House itself. I wrote something about it here:
"http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/12/you-say-mumbai-i-say-bombay.html#links"
The Heart of Islam is polygamy. THAT is why there is no ability for Muslim societies to progress.
Perhaps we Westerners should not be so proud, our massive freedoms, in all areas for women, are producing a "soft polygamy" that promises much of the same maladies for the West as has bedeviled Islam since the beginning.
China too faces a huge and destabilizing competition for women, one that promises to be very, very brutal.
Many religions, including but not limited to Chinese Marxism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and Buddhism, have made accommodations to the demands of modernity for male cooperation and "middle classness" ... but not Islam.
It is entirely the polgyamy. Get rid of the polgyamy, and within two generations the liberation of human capital entombed within it would be astonishing.
Think of the Mormons, and how quickly THEY changed when they abandoned polygamy. Or for that matter, the Jews. Who still had it during Jesus's day (though it was waning) and by the time of say, the 1200's were considered "smart" as a group.
We know the ancients descriptions of the polygamous Jews, from Egyptian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman sources. NONE of them considered the Jews "smart" as a group. Obstreperous and stubborn, yes. Smart, no.
Polygamy, while "stable" is simply incompatible with modern success. However near total freedom for women tends to re-inforce polygamy as a social attribute. Regrettably. But there it is.
The Qu'ran, ahadith and suna all call for the establishment of a world wide government with a caliph as head of state and an advisory council to help him rule. [Yes, him, forget about women as rulers or even serious participants in the political process]. This is supposed to be a theocracy based on sharia law and the koran. No liberty, no democracy, no freedom of much of anything. The individual is irrelevant; only the polity of the Islamic people counts. Marxism and fascism come close as Western counterparts. Sharia and Islamism would likely be worse. Just look at what is going on in Pakistan with the Taliban.
[H]ow can it be that not a single Islamic country has democracy, respect for freedom rights, capitalism, and, on the whole, not even a tendency towards economic and political progress?.
Few better explanations exist than the following. Consider this article about the now-dead but once close associate of Osama bin Laden, Yussuf al-Ayyeri :
What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a ''clean battlefield'' in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels ''secularist democracy.'' This threat is ''far more dangerous to Islam'' than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy's ''seductive capacities.''
This form of ''unbelief'' persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the ''unalterable laws'' promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to ''make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad.'' If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims ''reluctant to die in martyrdom'' in defense of their faith. He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. ''If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world,'' Al-Ayyeri writes. [emphasis added]
Al-Ayerri’s model for Iraq applies to Islam as a whole. Islam is so brittle that it cannot endure any form of progress. Consider how Saudi Arabia is attempting to ban all camera equipped cell phones.
Another good analogy would be how the Soviet Union had an absolute phobia against Xerox-type copying machines. As miniature printing presses, copiers were potent tools in the fight against Soviet ideological totalitarianism. Now try to imagine a regime like Soviet communism trying to function without convenient reprographic capability.
Islam is exactly the same in how it forcibly shuns many important advances because they pose even a mild threat to its hammerlock on free thought and speech.
One key factor in pulling down the Soviet Union was Internet access. Exposure to the disinfecting sunlight of accurate reporting and non-propagandistically skewed information had a substantial impact upon the average citizen's previously unquestioning participation.
Sadly, no such luxury awaits us in dealing with Islam. While Internet access may also pose an identical threat to the stability of Muslim culture, there is no relaxed time frame available for us to sit back and wait for it to crumble.
Far too many Muslims are actively seeking or building Weapons of Mass Destruction. This singular threat prohibits any sort of 'wait-and-see' mentality. The violent, apocalyptic and triumphalist nature of Islamic doctrine requires us to make a very bleak decision:
EITHER WE FIGHT AN ISLAM THAT HAS NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS RIGHT NOW ...
OR WE FIGHT AN ISLAM THAT HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS LATER.
This is the Islamic tree's ultimate fruit. Islam will impose its barbaric and retrogressive doctrine on all those who fail to aggressively prosecute it. That is its entire historical record and current modus operandi. Ignore it at your own peril.
They have all intent on imposing sharia on all of us. No exceptions to the rule here. Living under sharia would quite literary be Hell on Earth. If these fanatics get nukes it won't be pretty, of that I'm sure. Rest assured that these dirtbags won't be contended by seeing the flag of allah over Downing Street. Hell no! They want it over the White House, Champs Elysée e t c. These people are relentless. They have patience. If they have their way, we all gonna be slaves of allah or stone dead.
What is there to like about a homicidally-promoted totalitarian imperialistic theocratic tyranny?
The apologizing for this retrograde deathcult ~by the airheads in the West~ is like marxists and socialists and fellow-travellers excusing Stalin during the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
The contortions are pathetically ludicrous.
But still deadly.
The West's "seductive capacities" are proving pretty impotent compared to the certainties of sharia for a totalitarian mind set.
1) Many of the 9/11 bombers had extensive exposure to western ways from university education to visiting prostitutes before the big "graduation day". Obviously, the university education merely reinforces Muslim hatred of the West, especially America. (See! Even American academics know their countrymen are responsible for all the world's ills!! Chomsky's the man!! even though he's actually an ape as a Jew...) And apparently the whores couldn't compete with either the number of quality of houris these supposedly educated men expected to get from Allah.
2) The second generation of Muslim immigrants, those born in Europe are LESS assimilated than their parents.
3) Last but not least, there are hardly any Muslims speaking up for the West and wishing to conserve their western privileges against the sharia onslaught. For example, Arabs in Israel have more rights than Muslims in any Muslim country but they keep sawing away at the branch on which they are sitting.
All in all, we're much less pretty to Muslim eyes than we think we are or some of their leaders feared. All our blandishments are as dirt beneath their eternally sandy feet.
While Internet access may also pose an identical threat to the stability of Muslim cultureAs we can see, it doesn't. In fact, electronic media serves to reinforce Islam, not undermine it. Mass propaganda stokes outrage, creates and feeds resentments, and reinforces groupthink and conformity.
The spokeswoman for the other government party is even more outspoken: Islamism is the greatest danger of our time.
Unfortunately, it's in Danish.
Actually, Google translates it pretty well: Translated by Google
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