The Scandal in Vancouver
I am not alone in being utterly astounded by the fact that Dr. Srdja Trifkovic has been refused entry into Canada. This amazing decision is all the more scandalous in that it was taken ad hoc in response to the hate campaign by self-declared representatives of one Bosnian ethnic group carrying out a vendetta against another Bosnian ethnic group. Is this what you mean by “multiculturalism”?
The banning of a peaceful speaker is contrary to the democratic principles which the Western NATO powers, including Canada, constantly preach to the rest of the world. It would be reprehensible regardless of the circumstances. However, upon examination, the circumstances aggravate the case.
The hate campaign launched against Dr. Trifkovic by certain groups claiming to represent Bosnian Muslims is based on distortions, lies and glaring sophistries. I say this as one who by no means shares all of Dr. Trifkovic’s political analyses or religious convictions, but who recognizes that he defends his convictions with an intellectual integrity totally lacking in the attacks against him.
In particular, I tend to consider Dr. Trifkovic’s assessment of an alleged Muslim threat to the West to be misplaced or exaggerated. However, the treatment that he has received from Canada in response to the complaints of a Muslim lobby provides unexpected support to his argument.
One point on which I do agree with Dr. Trifkovic is precisely the point for which he is most fiercely attacked: Srebrenica. I wish to point out the ambiguities in the expression “genocide denial” used to characterize Dr. Trifkovic’s position on Srebrenica.
The ambiguity concerns the difference between facts and interpretation of facts. I must insist that everyone has the right to be wrong about both; Canada has no means to exclude from its territory all the people who are constantly misstating facts and interpreting them erroneously. But I wish to point to a difference.
On Srebrenica, the facts are partly established, partly disputed, and partly unknown. This is because material evidence is by no means as clear and comprehensive as the general public has been led to believe. Independent studies have been hard to carry out, but certain facts can now be considered established. There were a large number of Muslim casualties following the July 1995 fall of Srebrenica, some of them victims of executions, in violation of international law. These were massacres that took place in the context of a bloody three-sided civil war in which massacres were committed by all sides.
Description of the massacres that took place in Srebrenica as “genocide” is not fact but interpretation. It hinges on the disputed question of intention. To some observers, including myself, the crime of genocide implies intent to exterminate a population, and cannot be done by sparing women and children. The Serb forces who captured Srebrenica helped women, children and the elderly leave the war zone for safety. The execution of captured military-age men is more plausibly explained by revenge or by desire to weaken the enemy forces. This would indeed be a war crime, but not “genocide”.
The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, largely financed and staffed by the NATO countries which took the Muslim side in the Bosnian civil wars, found a way to describe Srebrenica as “genocide” by redefining the term. The three-judge panel accepted a sociologist’s theory that by killing all the men, the Serbs meant to commit a localized “genocide”, since in that “patriarchal” society, the women would not come back without their men. This is not what most people understand by the term “genocide”. The ICTY verdict has subtly deceived the general public, while providing a justification of NATO intervention in former Yugoslavia against the Serbs, stigmatized as responsible for “genocide”.
This stigmatization of Serbs as “genocidal” (which incidentally can be seen as amounting to incitement to racial hatred) is a major obstacle to genuine peace and reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, over fifteen years after the war was ended. It is deplorable that the Canadian government acts in a way that can only exacerbate dangerous tensions.
The “Bosniak” lobby takes advantage of widespread ignorance and confusion in NATO countries concerning the wars of Yugoslav disintegration to pursue a hidden political agenda under cover of “respect for victims of genocide”. In reality, their activism can do nothing for the men who died. Rather, it is intended to delegitimatize the Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, recognized by the US-sponsored 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the war. The purpose is to revise the accords in order to abolish Republika Srpska and create a centralized Bosnia-Herzegovina that would be under full control of the Muslim party, since Muslims are assumed to enjoy a narrow demographic majority. Since the Orthodox Christian Serbs of Bosnia remember their past as second-class citizens in the officially Muslim Ottoman Empire, they fear, rightly or wrongly, being returned to inferior status in a Muslim-ruled Bosnia.
Not being a Serb and not having shared that experience, I may find that fear exaggerated. But it is deeply hypocritical for the West to demand that Serbs must be the only Westerners to welcome Muslim rule over their own historic territory.
Entries(RSS)
A sober, judicious analysis of an indefensible act.
I am a resident of multicultural paradise called Canada. When I first arrived here many years ago the burning question of the day was separatism. Endless handwringing from the chattering class over Quebec and its intentions. Now chatter has, over the years, turned to mass immigration and consequences. What has happened to Dr. Trifkovic is a direct result of government policies which fund such groups like the one persecuting him. In Toronto we witness moslem groups marching often, all the while waving Palistinian flags and shouting anti-semetic remarks that everyone, save the mainstream media cameras and police officers, are able to hear. Tamils are able to shut down entire highways to major cities to display their displeasure with the inaction of Canadian government not reacting quickly enough to demands. Why is this happening? Reasons are many. Yes Ms. Johnson, Serbs are right to fear the rise of moslems. Several hundred years of experience dealing with the tender mercies of Islam cause us to be vigilant. Unfortunately most westerners have no such collective memory. More is the pity.
Canada has fallen into a one dimensional sterile secular libertarian ethos that is Anti-Christian. The Catholic Quebec of Blessed Andre' was destroyed in the much celebrated "Quiet Revolution." The jihadists of secular nihilism have captured the minds of the so-called educated class. Reading the Book of Leviticus out loud in public could end in arrest. A US with leaders that receive "Sanger awards" is only a half step away from the same secular-libertarian globalist monoculture.
"The execution of captured military-age men is more plausibly explained by revenge or by desire to weaken the enemy forces. This would indeed be a war crime, but not “genocide”."
And what if those men happened to be foreign mercenaries from the Arab world and Iran, whom happened to be all over place during the Bosnian conflict. Last I checked the Geneva convention does not apply to mercenaries, something never mentioned in all these so called "massacres".
There is a reason why the nationalist right is often called "reactionary", they are always trying to re-fight the present war as though it was the last war, and then they wonder why they keep losing.
The focus on Islam as a primary threat to Europe is an illusion. The Turks are not going to be knocking at the gates of Vienna again anytime soon, and the Albanian mafia is not interesting in religious dominance. The Iranian and Arab mercenaries who flew into Bosnia-Herzegovina were transported through airspace controlled by NATO, not the Organization of Islamic Conference.
It was not the Muslims who de-Christianized Europe, nor was it they who shredded the European social market economy and are feeding the remnants into the great derivatives maul. Mass Muslim immigration in the contxt of spiritual degradation and economic stagnation is but a symptom of Europe's submission to the perfidious power of globalized high finance. In other words, the main enemy is inside the highest corridors of power in the West, not in the suburbs of European cities.
The Nationalist right proclaims its opposition to the globalist oligarchy, and yet it obsesses over an imaginery Caliphate. Every nationalist politician who wants to rise in Europe has jumped onto the Crusading bandwagon and has gone off to kowtow at Yad Vashem. Presumably, once the European societies have been fractured after inter-communitarian civil war according to the Yugoslav model, the mass unemployment will evaporate, the churches will be filled to overflowing, and Christendom will rise again!
Fortunately, not every patriot in Europe has fallen for this mirage.
http://www.franckabed.com/video.php?id=29
Does anyone know what "Jonathan" is talking about? I'm sure I don't. He apparently thinks Diana Johnstone, a bona fide leftist who contributes frequently to the estimable Alex Cockburn's Counterpunch, is a rightwing nationalist. It is not that his overall perspective is wrong; it obviously reflects what some of us at Chronicles have been writing about for several decades, and it is good to see that our influence has spilled over into the consciousness of people who have never read the magazine or the works of its writers and contributors. But this is one of those canned responses that people make to anything they see on a website. Whatever goes wrong in the world is a reason to open up on Israel or the Muslims, secularists or nationalists or immigrationists--pick your favorite ideological enemy. One of the many troubles with the Internet is that it is a vast virtual corral in which everyone can ride his own hobbyhorse, preferably blindfolded. These people never actually have to read anything or to consider an argument, because like all ideologues--communists, libertarians, feminists, global-warmingists--they have their answer ready before any question is asked.
#5 "There is a reason why the nationalist right is often called “reactionary”, they are always trying to re-fight the present war as though it was the last war, and then they wonder why they keep losing."
This is complete nonsense of course, as is the rest of your post, which betrays a progressivist bend on the road to nowhere. There is no such thing as reactionaries", "nationalist right", "imaginary wars", "last war refault by those who cannot change" etc.. All these are nothing but the usual liberal cliches. FYI, how you reconcile your sense of progress with the postmodernist claims you make is your business to make sense out of. BUt for most of us on this site, and hopefully you will leave us alone from now on, the issue is whether the traditional Christian society will survive and how. And for last, a claim that Islam is not the biggest threat in all this, is an absurdity that can only be perpetrated by voluntary dhimmitude or its westernized sister liberal multiculturalism.
"Assailants purportedly sent by al-Qaeda and the Taliban killed the only Christian member of Pakistan's federal cabinet Wednesday, spraying his car with bullets outside his parents' driveway. It was the second assassination in two months of a high-profile opponent of blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.
The killing of Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic in his 40s, further undermines Pakistan's shaky image as a moderate Islamic state and could deepen the political turmoil in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied state where militants frequently stage suicide attacks.
In pamphlets found at the scene of the shooting, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban said they targeted Mr. Bhatti because of his faith and because he allegedly belonged to a committee that was reviewing the blasphemy laws."
To all Islamaphobes who frequent the pages of Chronicles,
Don't worry, be happy.
If I understand "Jonathan"--and I may well not--he is or thinks he is a Catholic monarchist who thinks it is not sufficient to oppose the spread of Islam on practical grounds if one is not upholding a traditional Catholic social order. I sniffed that out from his confused rhetoric, and my impression was confirmed by listening briefly to some part of the speech of Franck Abed to whom he linked. I was previously unfamiliar with M. Abed. Perhaps our friend in Paris NGPM has some knowledge. From the bit I listened to, his perspective is not new but it is good to see a rigorous royalist argument applied to contemporary problems. There are other French writers who have been saying much the same thing and who have made similar critiques of, for example, Charles Maurras. I quite understood how Mr. Bailey misinterpreted the post--if, indeed, he has. The problem arises from "Jonathan's" search for enemies among people who are probably closer to being allies.
Thank you, Dr. Fleming. It is a two headed monster that is threatening: A false ecumenism from within the remnants of a once Christian culture, and a deadly serious enemy. Our situation is like that of Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I am attacking.”
Dr. Fleming, it was also strange that Jonathan decided this was a "nationalist" "right wing" website, even though the words "right wing" or "conservative" or whatever don't even appear anywhere on the front page of the website. In fact, nowhere is it even mentioned that this is a political website; it says Chronicles: A Magazine of American **Culture**.
Now, I don't claim to read minds, but I reckon that the Chronicles staff has deliberately tried to remove all standard political epithets from the front page and most of its pieces in order that no one presume or misinterpret the more specific and nuanced stances of its writers.
For that reason, it's unfortunate that Jonathan already decided what the positions of Diane Johnstone and Chronicles editors are without even trying to give some fair time to them and prematurely made a rant about people here giving too much credit to a supposed Islamic threat.
On topic again:
The Canadian Parliament and government has apparently the free time to worry about every single human rights violation, atrocity, or genocide that happens across the world. Afterwards, it sees as important to use the public platform to denounce them and promise to punish foreign perpetrators in some way possible.
Case in point: Some police officer from Punjab had been rough with criminals several decades back. When he tried to visit Canada to unite with grandchildren and children living as farmers there, he was denied a visa for being a human rights violator. Whatever he may have done was probably wrong, but my goodness, who has the time to even worry about one ages old incident in the other side of the world? It turns out that a Sikh member of the Liberal Party of Canada sorely remembered that crackdown and petitioned for that to be called a human rights violation and for the people involved blacklisted.
Two thoughts come to my mind:
1) Canada is like a normally ignored woman who wants men to propose to her precisely so she gets the chance to reject them.
2) Every single minority in Canada seems to be petitioning to its government to recognize some genocide or oppression of their people in the ages past.
I get that Canada was always a non-country, but now it's even a parody of cosmopolitan culture, and I say this as one who doesn't entirely mind cosmopolitan culture.
#10. Mr. Fleming, my French being somewhat rusty these days, I had trouble discerning the Catholic Monarchist argument as the primary one. But what I understood from the monologue was about the failures of the European right and I accept that.
I may be wrong, but I felt that the poster Jonathan's remarks were belittling the challenge of Islam as being somehow a sign of the times and nothing more, which in fact seems like repeating the very error of the European right that he may be concerned about. However, Jonathan's rhetoric still seems way too progressivist for me to believe that he is in fact on the right.
Without a doubt, there is no profit in searching for enemies among those who ought to be allies.
Broad coalitions of social conservatives with economic conservatives always fail the former. It was the French right under DeGaulle and d' Estaing that weakened laws on abortion, divorce etc. Why Pope Pius XI threatened excommunication against the followers of Charles Maurras will always remain a bit of a mystery. A regionalism that left the Vendee and Brittany alone would seem preferable to monarchism.
Richard,
Real life seems always to be lived between the mysterious lines: "If they are not for me, they are against me; and if they are not against me, they are for me." I don't believe that the creature,"economic conservative", exists anywhere on God's planet except on the lying lips of carpetbagging globalists, hide binders and politicians attempting to form broad coalitions.
I am trying to make some relation between this article and following comments.
Talking about truth needs more common sense and simple logic than extensive philosophical studies. If we could stick to that idea, maybe we have a chance of fighting this Evil which rules the world.
Every minute counts.
Although I do not always agree with Ms. Johnstone, I do read her pieces and respect her work / opinion. This was a good article. Respectfully, I found a few points contradictory, in particular, when she admittedly finds “Dr. Trifkovic’s assessment of an alleged Muslim threat to the West to be misplaced,” but subsequently validates the clever (and successful) tactics used by the opposition to confuse the public on Srebrenica and influence Dr. Trifkovic’s ban from Canada. Didn’t she prove herself wrong?
In all fairness, I do not believe the doc’s assessment regarding the Muslim threat is specifically from a “Serbian,” but rather, an “historical” perspective. I believe the opposition cleverly uses his “Serbian” ethnicity as a warfare tactic in an attempt to discredit him. Competitive and strategic analysts see right through this ploy.
The “Muslim threat” to the West:
* Holy Land Foundation – 108 guilty counts for terrorist funding. This MB “Charity” has a 100-year plan to sabotage of the US - - - specifically replacing the US Constitution with Sharia
* President Obama’s appointment of “Dalia Mogahed” as leader of Faith-based Neighborhood Partnerships - - - a former CAIR spokesperson who shares the same ideology as the MB in Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan. (BTW . . . her office is IN the WH).
* Suhail Khan - - - a Bush senior political appointee who makes Jihadist statements and is associated with convicted terrorists. He facilitated the meeting between Bush and Alamoudi - - - an al-Quada financier. Oh, did I mention Khan cleverly labels himself as a Reagan conservative?
* CAIR’s involvement in the training of FBI (invited by the FBI’s General Council) and local law enforcement on cultural sensitivity and multiculturalism - - - after all, we do not want to be offensive. To be fair, local law enforcement caught on and I believe this has been suspended *locally.*
* Muslim Student Association (the first MB front group formed in 1963) - - - For example, the motto of the MSA at Cleveland State University: “The purpose of the Muslim Students Association is to preserve, advance, and represent the social, moral, and intellectual standards of Islam.” Hmmm. Did I mention there is a nice law school in the same University?
* State Dept: Former Direct of US Policy toward Islamist Regime of Iran (Dennis Ross) was replaced by John Limber - - - the mullah-regime’s N..I.A.C., Advisory Council member.
* Sunni petro dollars (starting in the 70’s) have made great strides across the US in building Mosques (staffed by Wahhabi Imams), circulating publications, and infiltrating M.E. educational centers across the US with rich endowments (of course, no strings attached). Where are these graduates going? The government employs them and they form their own NGO’s and think tanks that influence US policy.
* How about their MASS influence of the healthcare system (e.g., Cleveland Clinic System). BTW . . . was the financial system associated with the new healthcare law Sharia compliant?
I’m sure we are all perfectly safe . . .
Thank you for your spirited responses. They were unexpected, though Mr. Bailey's seem to be a tad sectarian. Surely you need to ask if my comments are accurate or not, rather than whether they sound "progressive" based on your understanding of what the Right constitutes.
Perhaps I should have better clarified my position. I made no criticism of Ms. Johnstone's article, nor did I write a criticism of Chronicles. Nor did I describe Chronicles as belonging to the "nationalist right".
Rather, I was responding by anticipation to two of the preceding comments which implicitly criticized Ms. Johnstone for being insufficiently harsh on the Bosnian Muslims and for failing to recognize (according to them) how the Bosnian Muslims represent the spearpoint of an existential threat to European civilization. Every article that appears on Chronicles dealing with the Balkans or the Middle East has a strong tendency to elicit a stream of comments that sooner or later clasps onto this Reconquista theme.
So yes, I am "belittling" the threat of Islam to Europe and the West in general. Do Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron fly to Istanbul to be invested with authority over their respective vilayets by Erdogan? When they leave elected office, do they parachute into a cushy job with some Gulf Arab foundation? Hardly. Likewise in the Yugoslav war of succession. The Bosnian Muslims were the weakest of all three warring factions in the Yugoslav war of succession. That is why they were the most amenable to the largely US-German strategy for dismembering that country. The Serbs were the strongest of the three factions with the most potential to chart an independent course in regional affairs. That is why they became the primary targets. Every piece of evidence used to show Islamic penetration of Europe is one where Islam has been artificially strengthened by Anglo-American support to render the Continent weaker and more dependent on its suzerain across the ocean.
Across Europe today nationalist parties are being welcomed back into the mainstream political space when they were feverishly denounced as "fascists" only a decade ago. Why? Because they have (almost) all happily signed onto the campaign to embroil Europe in the conflicts of the Middle East on the side of the US and Israel. The cadres of these nationalist parties believe themselves to be fighting the new Seige of Vienna (hence the part about "fighting the last war"). Their hearts may be in the right place. But such a strategy will do nothing to stem the decline of Christian civilization in Europe. Rather, it will only "Kosovosize" the entire Continent.
ps. I linked to Franck Abed's video because he is an example of an European rightist who does not fall into this trap. There are others, and they are not all Catholic monarchists. Nor for that matter am I.
@ #17 SB Alas a similar list can be drawn up of muslem influences in public and professional circles in Canada. Just one example.Zijad Delic, a Bosnian imam and executive in the Canadian Islamic Congress, as well as a listed "expert" with IRGC, was invited to address the RCMP on ways to prevent young muslems from becoming radicalized (!).
One does not know whether to laugh or cry.
PS apologies for misspelling Ms. Johnstone's name in #2.
Jonathan,
Thank you for your response. Yes, the wolves are gathering and the voice of Christian culture seems to speak more with a death rattle than with the confidence of "one speaking with authority." But do not mistake the hour of the night or the signs of the time, the cock always crows unexpectedly. France is the eldest daughter,some say a whore, and the english are like spoiled brats. Americans will come to their senses suddenly or not at all but the truths you speak of can not and will not be ignored forever.
#18.Sectarian??? Whatever. No, your statements are quite not accurate in addition to being progressivist. Again, there is no such thing as reactionaries, the wheel of history, irridentist wars, international conspiracies and other such progressivist claptrap. It may seem to you that there is an Angloislamic and Zionist conspiracy and that this somehow explains the way of the world. Conspiracy has always been a progressivist coup de faudre, but that is nothing essentially new and revealing to this readership for we believe otherwise. It is our Lord that rules the universe and our lives and He is always testing us. Not some conspiracy theory.
The threat of Islam is precisely in that it wins through a comedy of errors. It does not matter that Bosnian Muslims are the weakest or US the strongest. When the play is over, islamists are ahead because we let them. Likewise, it is false to claim that some form of Fascist Right is now admissible in polite society because they are talking Holy War, while this somehow serves the Zionist purpose. As for your argument, you noticed this, so now you are different and so yippie-do good for you and everyone else is wrong!
In fact it is otherwise. The right in Europe is on the ropes and will continue to be so. They will not gain significant support for a long time to come. This is because there is no will to fight the Islamic situational jihadists, because the Europeans love their welfare socialism and because they lack religious faith. This is their own choice, not because the Zionists want it that way. Nor it has anything to do with the international banking conspiracy. I would say, back to the drawing board, Jonathan.
Today's 8-1 Supreme Court decision in the Westboro Baptist case was a blow against America going down the same path as Canada and the European Union that prosecute persons for "thought crimes" against conventional wisdom. Opinion in America is handled in a much more subtle velvet glove way such as the neo-con push against Mel Bradford or being smeared by self- appointed private speech watchdogs.
"No democracy allows a minority to insult everything which is sacred for the majority." Russian historian- Natalia Narochnitskaya
Richard,
NN is aware that in Russia there're a good number of folks who crap on that country. This includes citizens of other countries who're allowed into Russia. Keep this in mind the next time the Canadian government criticizes the Russian government on internal matters.
"Democracy" could include a blend of different views. The Russian situation isn't quite what some make it out to be.
Touching on another point of discussion, the founder of modern day Pakistan wasn't known to be particularly religious. Yet, he felt compelled to support making a predominately Muslim state out of a portion of what was considered India. In Bosnia, many Muslims aren't particularly religious. This didn't stop many of them from supporting the fundamentalist Izetbegovic. The Jewish state of Israel includes many Jews who aren't religious - some of them being atheists.
The Christian peoples of southwestern Europe experienced a different history than others. I respectfully offer this point as an explanation for some of the trends evident there. On this particular, it's inaccurate to single out Serbia/Serbs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3590841.stm
Mind you, the above link pertains to what's referred to as the most "European" of former Yugo republics.
Mr. Averko,
As you know only too well, only nuclear nations can say or do whatever they want and be ignored. Today, only non-nuclear countries can be considered evil enough for annihilation.
Michael,
Slovenia, has a disgraced "Catholic bishop" that lost millions on a porn channel, vulgar atheists like Zisek, and are seeking the chains of the EU. If they want the autonomy to rule on mosque construction, joining the EU is clearly heading the wrong direction.
BTW, I support NN on South Ossetia, Abhkazia, and Moldova. Calls for Catholics and Orthodox to work together on a political front without false ecumenism dates back at least as far as Pope Gregory XVI in the 1830's. Without this, in the words of Patriarch Hilarion of the M.P., "Christianity would be reduced to the study of archeologists."
There is a right wing party in Hungary against adventurism in the Middle East, but of course they are labeled Fascist in the Western media.
Dr. Fleming, I've not heard of Mr. Abed but you are correct that such thoughts are not particularly original. To Jonathan, though, I would caution that it is important not to take the French royalist anti-alliance position out of it's historical context. Maurras and his followers were criticizing the faction known as "Christian Democrats" who supposedly followed the line of Pope Leo XIII in "reforming from within." In reality this meant "compromising," which meant gradually ceding their historical rights to remain Catholic and to ensure their children remained Catholic without drastic (and expensive) maneuvers to evade the fist of an increasingly encroaching government--specifically, a mandatory public school system concocted by atheist Freemasons. In so compromising Christian Democrats had lost sight of the need to rid society of revolutionary neo-pagan poison in order to allow it to function "normally" in the long run.
The problem is that the Islamic threat is going to kill off any trace of the society before it can be cleaned, and even if Jack Bailey is right on in arguing that we have largely created this disaster by our weak will, I am certainly among those who think the Mohammedan advance is urgent enough to pose is an excellent opportunity to sound the alarm and put some fear into people. If we're sufficiently astute it might even convince some people to rethink their meaningless consumer-driven democratic existences and search for something more perennial. Canadians, for example, should consider for whom their politically-correct thought-elite, in allowing Bosniaks to dictate tourist entry policy, is really working.
Jonathan does have a legitimate concern in the disturbing trend of extreme-right parties attempting to go "mainstream" and soften their images; often this amounts to intellectual castration in terms of opposition to revolutionary poison. (Side note: while this trend is certainly the case in France, it is dangerous to generalize to Europe as a whole.) Marine Le Pen, for example, uses a lot of rhetoric about "republican values" and "laicité" to qualify her criticism of the Islamic presence on French soil. In her more detailed interviews, however, one can tell that in her mind and mentality she really prefers the perennial France and its culture; still, there is reason to worry about the influence such discourse will have on the younger generation (my own) if she doesn't win a decisive mandate VERY SOON.
Finally, with regards to the image of the far-right in Europe, it is certainly becoming less dangerous to discuss one's voting preferences on the streets, but the governmental and journalistic machines are as iron-fisted as ever in their dealings with these parties, including those attempting to "soften" their image. Marine Le Pen does not get off much easier than her father did, which is why I say, "If you're going to get blamed for it, you might as well have the fun of doing it." (She could prove me wrong, but the history of the Christian Democratic movement pretty much everywhere in Europe does not inspire much confidence.)
Enough already. Back on Canada. I am outraged for Dr. T. I'm on holiday in the Alps this week, but when I get back to Paris I will attempt to spread the news of the outrage to as many good-minded folk as I can. The more people know and in more countries and languages, the better.
Thanks for the follow-up.
Sorry, in my last set of comments, I meant "southeastern" as opposed to "southwestern."
In the Russian republic of Tatarstan, Tatar-Slav relations are noticeably better than what's evident in Crimea.
Tatarstan has a lengthier period as part of Russia, whereas Crimea isn't as far removed from the Tatar Khanate in that region, which established a brutal slave trade against Slavs and others. In the West, some relatively influential sources distort the actual history of Crimea, in a way that serves to encourage Tatar extremists there. Truth be told, some of the "moderate" Crimean Tatars aren't so moderate.
Interesting piece:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:wx_eIRm6HbAJ:www.taraskuzio.net/media21_files/71.pdf+TarAS+Kuzio+Eurasia+Daily+Monitor+Crimea&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjp-Ivtf_WBuhx9tnU-xd48jVO2MIL4v7f98IKWBmgmgaxAupHJUf5MQFNtJvboY5fSQ3B2ke6sCkmgtWTHPYmlKf2V_thaKa-0q3wVEtV32RfSmCz50pnJ0Vl_bCrsvDVtEIAt&sig=AHIEtbSH1PNm3jQiUUVKtTP5Y0w9UZ5_zw
The Tatarstan example brings to mind a Muslim-Christian coming together of sorts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Alliance_of_Russian_Solidarists
Keep in mind the Muslims in Bosnia who opposed Izetbegovic in the 1990s - instead opting for cooperation with Serb and Croat opposition to the Muslim fundamentalist.
So who killed the man, the bullet or the trigger finger?
I find Jonathan's arguments interesting, not that I understand the particular content of all his statements. Allies and enemies can be hard to discern, and the course of action that much harder. I remember at least one Latin teacher saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Thank you to Ms. Johnstone for writing this piece, which was as powerful as it was poised. Thanks as well for the comments, which again tended to range beyond my knowledge of European goings on but were informative. I hope the good people here continue to find ways to distill these arguments into communicable bytes for Amuricans.
I first learned of Canada's lack of free speech when I read my first political book from Chomsky over five years ago. Like Ms. Johnstone (and Mr. Cockburn), Chomsky is capable of making honest observations and logical conclusions and in the process teaching a thing or two. Although lamenting our own media, he did point out that we at least have a decent legal platform to support the possibility of media freedom. He cited the time he had arrived in Canada to do a talk radio show, only to find out it was cancelled by order that morning because of sensitivities expressed by someone and exacted through that bureacracy of frozen coats. With tongue in cheek, might I suggest that the good Dr. Trifkovic find this whole debacle as some sort of northern compliment? Yaknow?
"Slovenia, has a disgraced “Catholic bishop” that lost millions on a porn channel,"
Now there is a genuine economic conservative if I have ever known one. A catholic Bishop, successor to the Apostles, acting like Judas Iscariot for thirty pieces of silver, and even that panning out poorly. He could have loaned the money at interest to some of America's bishops to pay off buggery charges and reduce diocesan deficits. Its getting where a guy can't even trust the shepherds with the sheep.
#5 Jonathan
The Turks are not going to be knocking at the gates of Vienna again anytime soon ...
Of course not, they are sweeping floors, driving buses, and on the dole -- by the compassionate tolerance of the nation-wrecking elite. The barbarians are no longer at the gate because they were invited to do "the jobs white people won't do." Couple that with a low-birth rate, materialstic populace which delights in casting off both manners and traditions, and you have a recipe for disaster.
#29 Etienne Gervaise
How long do you think the high birth-rate of the Anatolian countryside would maintain itself in European cities? When the Boers set off on their Great Trek they would be popping out 7-8 children per woman as well. How many kids do they have now? To a large extent, Europeans no longer have many children simply because both spouses are now working and so they cannot afford to have anymore. Christianity is more firmly anchored in Eastern Europe, and yet they seem to have the same demographic problems.
The Turks are, counting everyone with significant Turkish ancestry in Germany, 4-5 million people in a country of 82 million. They only seem like a lot more on account of being concentrated in urban areas. Furthermore, these Turks are, as you point out, shopkeepers, bus-drivers and the like. They are not the reincarnated warriors of Alp Arslan. The Turkish government does finds them useful as an ethnic lobby. Unfortunate for the Germans perhaps, but since Berlin has already accorded extensive deference to a certain other ethnic lobby, who can blame the Turks for wanting a piece of the action?
The danger then, is not of some slow-motion conquest, but one of inter-communitarian urban warfare where, contrary to the fantasies of every Londonistan grouplet, the Muslims in Europe would be completely destroyed. The native Europeans themselves would be gravely weakened in the process.
@Jonathan, re: fertility rates, forgive me, but you have exposed yourself as blissfully ignorant of European affairs. The fertility rate of the urban Muslim poor is astoundingly high in Western Europe. The Muslim population is YOUNG. Urbanization is not the only factor explaining the decline. Religious attachment and sociological mentality may be more firmly anchored in Eastern Europe but weekly religious liturgy attendance is low except in Poland. Even there, one large problem is that the clergy have neglected since at least the 1960's, possibly the 1940's, to insist more loudly on traditional doctrines on the family. It is rarely necessary for both spouses to work outside the home, especially with unemployment rates what they are; the economy could easily absorb the thinning of the work force. Finally, I know many traditionally-minded Americans and Europeans with large families, and in terms of occupation, lifestyle and location they are a far more diverse lot than sometimes made out to be.
Take it from one who lives here: Islam is a huge threat and a looming one. Islam is not easily sterilizable by secularaterialism the way Christianity is, because that is not a virus that attaches to Islamic cultural tissue.
You are probably right that Islam is not as "secularizable" as Christanity. Orthodox Islam is just not "individualistic" enough in that it cannot be easily banished to the private sphere from where it can then be diluted by consumerist distractions out of existence.
But about the demographics, the fertility rate in Turkey itself was 2.18 children/woman as of 2010.
In Algeria (more relevant for France), we see 1.76 children/woman as of 2010. Then there was 2.20 children/woman for Morroco.
Does their birthrate skyrocket once they hit European shores?
Perhaps the Muslim population in Western Europe is so young because it is the young who keep arriving from Muslim countries. In that case, the solution would be to halt that immigration entirely and the problem of cascading Muslim population growth would regulate itself.
The fertility rates were found at this link.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html
I just don't know about this overall:
"Islam is not easily sterilizable by secularaterialism the way Christianity is, because that is not a virus that attaches to Islamic cultural tissue."
"You are probably right that Islam is not as “secularizable” as Christanity. Orthodox Islam is just not “individualistic” enough in that it cannot be easily banished to the private sphere from where it can then be diluted by consumerist distractions out of existence."
I have known, met, worked with plenty of secularized Persians. That may be a self-fulfilling statement, as they are probably the only kinds we let through our borders now, but are they really just the exception that proves the rule? To the extent that Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, contains a diverse description of "Islam" indicates to me that if it can be blended with indigenous religions, it can be blended with secularism. Tremendous wealth can destroy any soul, either individually or culturally.
Not to say the rising tide of Islam does not threaten our way of life to the possible total exclusion of practicing Christians, just to say I don't know that impossible, impenetrable qualities belong to Islam. If we are "more secularizable" it may be because we are more successful, not because of the stark core differences in beliefs alone (even if those beliefs led to the success).
Johnathan (and the rest) the entire Srebrencia Science fiction was a massive fabrication which is only coming to light more by the day. You, or anybody else calling that tragedy (which it was for all three sides) a massacre is an ill informed person or an outright LIAR and a propagandist. In the Army of BH versus the RS Army there was some 1500 Muslim casualties (nobody says that corpses make good image for CNN and Christiana Amanpour, but if people remain quiet we are all in a pickle (unlike Dr. Trifkovic - and his words are coming more true by the day). We may also include that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." The use of the word "genocide" is completely inappropriate and illustrates either ill will or intentional falsehood. Here is a good reading for Johnathan: http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2566
Oh no, the Muslims (both Albanians and Bosnians behaved quite honorably during all those conflicts - as a matter of fact they didn't even use real ammo they just used plastic toy guns and never hurt anybody, except that now they started thanking their paymasters/liberators (complicit in the land theft from Serbia) in an odd fashion: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110302/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_us_airport_shooting
...and in closing: Oracle at Delphi: "know thyself"
William Shakespeare: To thy own self, always be true
Oh well, we went back only 500 years (and 2400 years, respectively) but we got to the bottom what truth is. "No big whoop" - Mike Myers (SNL)
Mr. Pavlovich should read more and attempt less telepathy. I did not express any opinion about Srebrencia and I referred to the Bosnian Muslims as the pawns of Western powers.
To #33 R. McCabe,
That is a good point, I have also met many such people.
Please allow me to expand on my perspective on this issue.
I certainly agree that Islam is very diverse and that it has syncretized with many civilizations, but I would still argue that there is a fundamental difference between those civilizations on the one hand and Western secularism on the other.
Islam and prior civilizations have merged in surprising ways throughout history. The non-Arab peoples conquered by the Muslim Arabs have often thrown off Arab rule in the name of Islam (usually of some heretodox variety). The Berbers for instance, after being Islamicized, rebelled en masse against the Arab Ummayad rulers in the name of the Kharijite interpretation of Islam. The Persians themselves rallied to the partisans of Ali in a similar manner. At the same time, Islamic history is also full of reformers who rail against existing Muslim rulers for having too deeply syncretized Islam with the pre-Islamic culture. But in the end, these reformers often end up rather enmeshed in the local culture in spite of themselves.
The aforementioned examples all deal with the encounter between Islam and other traditional civilizations. I think Western-style secularism would be a different matter. The aforementioned examples concern civilizations where the individual is generally seen first and foremost as part of the group rather than as being an atomized whole. In that sense, there is a great deal of common ground between them already. But in Western secularism, it is the individual uber alles. Christianity under secularism has been largely pushed to the private sphere and once stuck in that private sphere, without the element of community that religion usually brings (Tartufferie aside), it is far more difficult for most people to hang onto religious belief in the long run. Personally, I suspect that European and European-derived Christianity, especially in its Protestant forms with the decline of the role of the clergy, was always more prone to individualism than most other religions. Why precisely? I do not know except to say that there is a marked continuity between Christianity and the formally anti-Christian (or at least anti-Church) Enlightenment ideologies that followed.
Orthodox Islam appears to be different. While it has no formal clergy, it nonetheless very early on developed a voluminous body of religious jurisprudence to regulate the life of the Islamic community rather than just the individual Muslim. Orthodox Islam thus appears far more socially-oriented than most forms of European Christianity. Gathering five times a day in groups to pray seems to make a difference. Just compare France and Turkey. Both are formally secular, and both have been ruled for decades by deeply anti-clerical regimes. In France Catholicism seems relatively subdued and yet in Turkey one sees Islam hurtling back into public life. In France the secular Republicans were often Freemasons and thus deeply hostile to the Catholicity of France. But in Turkey the secular Republicans remained Muslims, bad Muslims perhaps, but whatever complaints they had about Islamic ritual and doctrine, and whatever romanticism they had for the pre-Islamic period of the Turkish steppe empires, they still saw the Islamic religion as the cement binding the Turkish nation together.
Now, it is theoretically possible that Islam might yet be "broken down" by the prevailing waves of corporate globalization and that we will see a “Vatican II” style event in Mecca , Cairo or Najaf where Islam is made to accommodate secular modernity. But generally that has not happened yet. The transcendent is much more real to people in the Muslim world than in the West. The French Catholic political analyst Pierre Hillard considers Islam to be the last great rampart against atheistic cosmopolitan consumerism.
ps. about the Persians...there we have something of a civilizational clash within the Persian world because the highest glories of the Persian civilization were arguably obtained before they converted to Islam. Furthermore, unlike the Egyptians (of whom the same could otherwise be said), they kept their Persian language and as such have a far closer relationship with their pre-Islamic past via such epics such as the Shahnameh then other converted peoples. That said, I am not sure how much this phenomenon is confined to the middle classes who are disproprtionately represented among Persians overseas.
#33 and #37. You are indulging in another progressivist mistake, trying to understand history by inserting a fraudulent notion of individualism. To claim that Chirstianity is "individualistic" and therefore easily secularized is false. In fact the way you define it, a pious Mohammedist would claim that he is more individualistic than the Christian. When the Muezzin recites the Adan and everyone shows up, while when the church bell rings and only a few come. The difference is that the Christians do not believe in their Church whole hartedly. But this cannot be so easily explained as "individualism"
@Jonathan: thank you for those statistics. Perhaps you are not as ill-informed as I had been led to believe. However, Dr. T is most definitely not an alarmist, nor a collaborationist/"Christian Democrat" and I remain a bit puzzled as to how and why you thought to interject a soundoff against those types in the context of this particular discussion. Still, it's good conversational material.
Mr. McCabe: I think Jonathan has explained it better than I could. Muslims who descended from devout tribes and turned secular, such as Attatürk, have practically spit upon their ancestors and asked their people to do the same. No wonder Turkey is re-Islamizing so efficiently. I would go so far as to suggest that Attatürk, in a sociological (most definitely NOT confessional) sense, found it necessary to convert to Christianity in order to become a proper atheist. As for the secularized Persians and Indonesians, they were never deeply "Islamic" in their mindset to begin with.
Now if only Bosniaks could be persuaded to cast off that foreign Turkish nightmare that's choked them down for the past few hundred years...
Tremendous wealth can destroy any soul, either individually or culturally.
Again, though, there is a very sinister postmodern assumption at work in your statement: that of the validity of all religious systems as channels of spiritual expression and personal salvation. We as Christians know that the soul of a Muslim is already in peril. It is pointless to talk of "corrupting" it with anything worldly. The truly Satanic worldview is the lie, and this most directly targets the Truth. That, not any sort of "individualism," is why Leftism is a disease indigenous to Christianity. The lie will lose in the end--no one may grapple with God and win--but along the way will seduce and destroy a great many.
Leftism is Satanism--express devotion to the lie and to the liar in deliberate opposition to the Truth (the Triune God)--even if its followers do not always bow down to their lord Satan while desecrating the Host in a Black Mass. (However, the more I learn about Freemasonry the more I wonder if perhaps there is not an overtly Satanic element to the craft... probably not, since honesty would seem to defeat the purpose of a lie--but it's probably one of the closest things we can find.)
Jonathan, thanks for the thoughtful and thorough reply. If you are trying to insist that some elements of Christianity lend ourselves to being more easily corrupted by the forces of secularization compared to Muslims because of some contrasting elements of Islam, then I believe you have done it. I can pose no composite argument to further the discussion in that sense. However, I believe you were being selective in your comparisons, as I can think of many examples of Christians praying and singing in choirs together, etc. and I also know individually devout Muslims who pray five times a day by themselves. Just saying that my original points were only to moderate what I thought were overly broad statements that in many ways elevated Islam to some extent above Christianity. Additionally, I remain unsatisfied concerning the nature of Islam in Indonesia.
Mr Bailey, I'm not sure why you include me in your recent comments.
NGPM, again thanks for the clarification and comments. I agree with the things you say as well, however I am not sure I need to consider the divinity of Christ in order to ponder gravity or biology. I am wary to make the kinds of mistakes you accurately warn of, but wealth is not of God's world, it is of Caesar's world. As I think broadly of some of the writing of Dr. Fleming's, et al, about the impossibility of understanding Western Christian history without understanding the Pagan soil it was planted in, I too wonder what could happen to the Muslims if they had not been planted in such poor sand. After reading many comments about the dangerous onslaught of Islam to the Western world, I sometimes have a moment's pause and ask, Are we talking about Islam, Middle Easterners, or Middle Eastern Muslims? I am not speaking of the divine or eternal, though again I think you are correct to point out is a dangerous and thin line to walk.
A Few thoughts and Quotes on Islam past and present.
"Islam still converts pagan savages wholesale. It even attracts from time to time some European eccentric, who joins its body. But the Mohammedan never becomes a Catholic. No fragment of Islam ever abandons its sacred book, its code of morals, its organized system of prayer, its simple doctrine. In view of this, anyone with a knowledge of history is bound to ask himself whether we shall not see in the future a rival of Mohammedan political power, and the renewal of the old pressure of Islam on Christendom ."
Hilaire Belloc writing from England in 1938
( For vivid evidence of this apparent truth read about Blessed Charles de Foucauld who was a French Catholic religious and priest living among the Tuareg in the Sahara in Algeria. He was assassinated in 1916 outside the door of the fort he built for protection of the Tuareg. )
“Islam is apparently unconvertible. The missionary efforts made by great Catholic orders which have been occupied in trying to turn Mohammedans into Christians for nearly 400 years have everywhere wholly failed. We have in some places driven the Mohammedan master out and freed his Christian subjects from Mohammedan control, but we have had hardly any effect in converting individual Mohammedans....”
The Great Heresies
“Muhammad’s monotheism began, no doubt, as a rejection of paganism; yet it was highly positive. It was, as he never ceased repeating, the monotheism of Israel. The god of Islam was Yahweh, without those truths about Him revealed by Christ. ... The Qur’~n denies the Incarnation: ‘God is one, eternal. He did not beget and was unbegotten’ (Qur’~n, 112.3). For Muhammad there was no redeemer, no need for redemption, no original sin.”
“But there is no hiding the fact that bin Laden, his lieutenants, and his foot soldiers have repeatedly stated their aim to impose their values of Islam on, first, the Muslim world and, then, the rest of the world. They want each country to accept or be forced into submission to their version of Islamic Shari’a law.... Their public statements, their strategy and recruitment, the notes and prayers left by the airplane hijackers, all show a deep religious commitment. They do not lament inequality; decry poverty, or call for democracy. They do not rant about globalization or consumerism or capitalism. They explicitly name and target Christianity, Judaism, and moderate Islam. By all means let us call this inauthentic religion, perverted religion, hijacked religion. But, at the cost of blinding ourselves, let us never forget that it is religion.”
– Islam at the Crossroads, 2002.2
@Mr. McCabe: thank you. However, no one was talking about "gravity or biology," as you put it, which in any case are simply material parts of God's creation and not in themselves rival goods to what God has ordained. An overtly false system of theology and morality, on the other hand, is. Julia Flyte, in Brideshead Revisited, touches on such "rival goods" as those things that finally push us over the edge. (Lady Flyte was referring there to the fact that she was about to enter into a [second] sacrilegious marriage and build the rest of her life and family in sin with the man she loved more than anyone in the world. However, her observation is easily applicable to the case of setting up one's life, family or society around a false belief system.)
Yes, material wealth is the treasure of Caesar and not of God, but that is precisely the point. Islam, insofar as it is false, is not of God, either and we should therefore not assume that a Muslim "loses his soul" in giving himself up to certain forms of avarice.
Mr.McCabe,
Thank you for your response.
You are right in that the prayer argument is not the strongest, though in a Muslim-majority context, I think that one often does pray in groups. Furthermore, I still think the France-Turkey comparison is telling.
Regarding the depth of Islam among the Persians, I would qualify NGPM's statement. Islam was deeply ingrained enough in Persia (despite the memory of pre-Islamic glories) for Persian Islam to constitute the primary form of Islam that spread eastwards to Afghanistan, Central Asia, India and China. The Bedouin Arab culture (seen as primitive and backward by many Persians throughout their history) is obviously not so well ingrained.
Regarding Indonesian Islam, there is an excellent summary provided by Philippe Raggi here
http://www.realpolitik.tv/2010/06/lislam-en-indonesie/
It is in French, and I do not know of a comparable video summary in English.
To summarize its key points:
1. Islam came to Indonesia relatively late, and by peaceful means via Muslim merchants from India and (to a lesser extent) from Chinese Muslims via the voyages of the famous Admiral Zheng He.
2. About 88 precent of Indonesians are officially Muslim, whose practice is heavily "localized" and of Sufi inspiration (whether Sufism is "orthodox" or not is a rather difficult question). Orthodox Muslims in Indonesia would argue that only 20 percent are Muslims in any meaningful sense. Indonesian nationalism is a kind of theo-nationalism where monotheistic belief is central to national identity. Other central principles include guided democracy and social justice (quite far removed than from Western liberal individualism). Islam is not the state religion (though some would like it to be), but is one of 6 authorized religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and (more recently) Confucianism.
3. Indonesian Islam is heavily fractured: traditionalists (a certain degree of syncretism), reformists (i.e. puritans), liberals (Westernizers), radicals, and "nominal" Muslims (those whose practice is so syncretized that the only thing Muslim about them is their designation on their national ID card).
4. The traditionalist and reformist wings are the most widespread. The traditionalist wing is represented by a movement called "The Renewal of the Scholars", historically associated with the countryside and with 45 million members. This movement has produced at least 2 post-Suharto Presidents. The reformist wing is represented by a movement called "The Muhammadiya", historically associated with the cities and with 13 million members.
5. Among the radicals whose numbers are much smaller, there are movements like the Indonesian wing of Hizbut Tehrir which focus on prosleytism (though not devoid of violence), those which try to focus on electoral politics like the PKS who score about 10 percent of the national vote, and those like Laskar Jihad which ran around killing Christians.
6. The Muslims of the Middle East tend to have a condescending view towards Indonesian Islam, but M. Riggi believes that the sheer size of Indonesia and its population along with its strategic location will ensure that that version of Islam remains extremely important in world affairs.
7. The reformists and radicals are both strongly linked to financing from the Arabian Peninsula.
M. Riggi does not discuss the liberal wing in Indonesian Islam, but I would imagine that that wing is so marginal that it was not necessary.
#42, robert, the quotes do help provide some perspective on the situation.
But instead of the paradigm of Islam vs. the West, I prefer the following hypothesis of three distinct but related conflicts:
1. Social dumping in Western countries organized by Western big capital to lower wages and break down social solidarity by importing large numbers of people from a very different civilization. Leftist intellectuals, either deliberately or on account of being useful idiots, praise this mass immigration as a process of human emancipation when in reality it is pure savage greed with all the attendant misery. From this immigrant population will then emerge lumpen elements: deracinated youths alienated from both country of origin and host country, who in a confused search for self-affirmation will often gravitate towards (in Europe) a combination of outward Islamic puritanism and inward American-style gangsterism. Tony Montana with a beard so to speak. To this Islamo-racaille (Islamo-scum) phenomenon one can add the manipulations of various external actors who are interested in either fashioning an ethno-religious lobby to rival the Zionist lobby (the task of various Muslim states and Islamist groups), or to simply stoke the fires of intercommunal strife so as to Zionize an increasingly exasperated European populace (the task of Israel and the US).
2. Relentless US-Israeli aggression against Muslim countries for a combination of economic, geopolitical and eschatological reasons. No method is beyond the pale. Blockade, assasinating scientists, and outright invasion are all par for the course. Satellite television creates a sense of solidarity between the immigrant Muslim populations in the West and their co-religionists back home that did not exist before. But these Muslims in the West find that all resistance to this aggression is denounced as terrorism and all sympathy for genuine resistance is denounced as "green fascism" or anti-Semitism, and all by the same media organs that had also praised multiculturalism and mass immigration as the wave of the future.
3. A sustained campaign within the Islamic world by jihadi groups to annihiate the indigenous Christian populations. This is a process often financed by oil money from the Arabian Peninsula and looked upon with complacency by the US and Israel, if not abetted by them. The Christians of the Arab world were the ones who articulated the program of Arab modernization and Arab nationalism. The annihiation of these Christians would deprive these countries of a well-educated and worldly strata of their population. The wealthy Gulf Arabs who bankroll this process do so to earn themselves religious legitimacy without having to confront the US-Israeli domination of their lands. The US and Israel benefit by rendering the resource-rich Muslim countries ever more divided and backward, hoping to eventually fragment them into smaller religiously or ethnically homogeneous statelets. Ralph Peters' infamous map of the Middle East is one such version of the desired outcome.
#41. Mr. Mccabe, I apologize. I suppose it was because I felt that engaging Jonathan in a meaningful conversation can only be construed as a victory for what I feel is his hidden agenda, which is to diminish our fears and the evil of Islam and spread us all over the map discussing peripheral issues. Sort of like arguing with Lyndon Larouche, if you get my drift.
#46
My "agenda" is very open and was announced in my first comment.
But I suppose losing one's fears can be awfully disorientating.
Jonathan mate, I cannot impeach the soundness of Mr Abed's politics, but in calling a man who is at least half if not entirely a Christian Lebanese not a Frenchman, a 'patriot of Europe' you are, albeit tacitly, serving to confirm the cosmopolitan nomadism which I expressly loathe and denounce.
Mr Abed talking about the conversion of Clovis, the luminous glories of the noble houses of de Ponthieu or d'Angouleme would be as ridiculous as me appropriating the Battle of the Red Cliffs from Chinese history as that of my ancestors and affecting to be a Chinaman. France is for French not Sarkozies, Zinedine Zidanes or Pascal Bruckners (an Ashekenazi not a Frenchman); one of the essential qualities of being French is Catholic Christianity, but not any Catholic or European can just hop in and re-invent themselves (all modern liberal tenets) as something he is not.
Amalgamationism, where all 'whites' (however you define that), 'Europeans', 'Christians', etc are unnaturally fused into a new artificial body, is an American and, alas, Australian, practice. I talk of Europe as it's a natural community in a limited sense, but also as it's commodious to collect many similar nations under that term - but there are particular differences. It's a pity that when dealing with persons of Cypriot, Lebanese, Armenian, Georgian extraction and the like, who are bravely Christian and 'white' (an ideological category as much as ethnological), one is attacked for pointing out that these places are not in Europe and have a different destiny from that of Europe.
By the way, America's destiny and that of Australia are also separate from Europe.
NGPM, let me clarify the way I was approaching this discussion in the first place, since it was already a branch off of the original article, and it seems we are branching again.
From a threat perspective to my family, overt secularism of our society is my gravest concern on a daily basis. Perhaps secularism needs an agreed upon definition, but I was operating under the assumption that it's a fade away from religion into a purely physical existence, with traditional functions of religion fading into more remote-controlled, usually centralized and government run, autocratic systems. To me this is possible because so many of the things we talk about here, for example changes in understanding of what charity is, become hard to grapple with over time for typical Americans. We Americans are relatively wealthy, no matter how you define that, and my belief is that relatively great wealth for a relatively low amount of work has catalyzed a transition into secularism. From this perspective, and with much agreement towards your statements, I was questioning whether Islam is as immune to secularization as you insisted or if it might also be the case we've never seen it truly tested.
Mr. Bailey, individualism may be a fraudulent belief, but that does not prevent a meaningful discussion of it as a real force (albeit as a peripheral to a different discussion). Fraudulent beliefs most definitely have consequences, which may be one of the ways we conclude they are fraudulent. I am perhaps too naive to discover people's hidden agendas.
Jonathan, thanks for the bullet points about Indonesia, very interesting. Robert, thanks for your quotes as well.
I perhaps owe a round of drinks to the table.