The West is almost as in love with improving the world, as the Muslim world is with conquering it. These two contradictory impulses, the missionary and the warrior, intersect in the Clash of Civilizations. The Muslim world has two approaches to the West, underhanded deceit and outright terror. The former are considered moderates and the latter extremists. The West has two approaches to the Muslim world, regime change and love bombing. With regime change we bomb their cities to save them from their rulers and with love bombing we shamelessly flatter and appease them in our own cities.
Westerners worry a great deal over who runs the Muslim world. Muslims do not care very much who runs Western countries. They prefer weak liberal leaders to strong ones, but they do not overall think there is a difference between them. Even the emplacement of a Hussein in the White House has not improved America's ratings in the Muslim world. That is because Muslims are religiously and culturally antagonistic to the West. Whether John McCain or Barack Hussein Obama are in the White House-- America is still a non-Muslim country. It is and will the subjective of xenophobia no matter how much it flatters the Muslim world.
Westerners focus their animus on Muslim leaders, on a Saddam, a Gaddafi or an Arafat-- not recognizing that the hostility toward us comes not from the leaders, but from the people. We can remove all the leaders of the Muslim world and replace them with muppets, and it won't noticeably change the underlying sentiments on the Arab street. And very soon the muppets will also start chanting, "Death to America" because it's the popular thing to do.
Take the Neo-conservative's favorite Egyptian democracy activist Sandmonkey who has rediscovered that the best way to campaign is by accusing the other guy of being a Yankee-Zionist stooge. That's politics as usual in a country where everyone accuses everyone else of being a pawn of the Great and Little Satans. By linking the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia to Israel, he can accuse the Brotherhood of being stooges of Israel. Senseless but it's the default position. It's easier to campaign on who hates America and Israel more, than who has a workable reform program.
This is a snapshot of why regime change, whether by armed force or supporting democratic revolutions, won't save the Muslim world. You can't save people from themselves. Not without drastically changing who they are at the same time. But we can save ourselves from them.
The Muslim world is not backward by their standards, it is backward by our standards. It refuses to make the 250 year leap that the West did, but that is because it does not like the trade-offs that come with it. And that is its choice to make. Individualism, freedom and tolerance are not acceptable values in the Muslim world. And totalitarianism, theocracy and repression are not acceptable values in ours. The Muslim world has no obligation to accede to our cultural standards or tolerate us, but we accordingly have no obligation to accede to theirs or to tolerate them.
There is always a gap between civilizations, but rarely has the moral gap yawned so starkly as it does now. We are as eager to bring the Muslim world into the light, as they are to drag us into the darkness. And the momentum is on their side. We don't have the answers that we think we do. Democracy is not the solution. Neither is embracing Muslim culture with open arms. They don't have the answers either, but they have something better. Unrestrained violence and the desperation of a failed culture struggling against the tidal pull of that failure. Like a drowning man, if we try to save them, then they will pull us down with them.
We are not so wise and so perfect that we can claim to know how to save 1 billion people from themselves. Right now we are experiencing a good deal of trouble saving us from ourselves. We cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of reforming the Muslim world as well. Whatever spiritual or cultural redemption waits for them, must come from themselves. It will not come through a change of government or lavish praise. Only through a growing moral awareness that they need not subjugate others to feel pride and honor in themselves and their culture. There is no telling when or if such an awareness will come. There are animal rights campaigns in China and anti-rape campaigns in Africa-- but no progress on human rights in the Muslim world. It is likely that China will be vegetarian before non-Muslims are treated as equals in the Muslim world.
It has been made manifestly clear that Muslim violence against us, both individual and collective, will not cease any time soon. That further such violence is informed by the scriptures of their faith and a basic xenophobia toward people who are different from them. And that while some Muslim countries and individuals claim to harbor no violent intentions toward us-- such claims often prove false under the pressure of domestic unrest or growing religiosity.
If the Muslim world has raised up a wall of sand against freedom, tolerance and the recognition of our common humanity-- then it is best for their sake and ours that they remain on their side of that wall of sand. If they refuse to coexist with us, either locally or globally, then that is their choice. They may have their paradise of hefty-bagged women, towering mosques and cowering infidels-- so long as their bigotry and oppression remains on their side of the wall of sand. When they breach that wall, then we have the right to treat them as they would treat us, not according to our laws, but according to theirs-- as they do to us, so shall be done to them. It is not a pretty doctrine, but it is a just one. And it is an overwhelmingly fair code that men should live by the laws they make for others. There can be no hypocrisy or misunderstanding in such a code. And it teaches more finely than any other the consequences of evil.
But as we write and read, talk goes on of how to save 1 billion Muslims from themselves. Removing their tyrannies, some cry. But what will they replace them with? More tyrannies. Governments reflect their peoples, not perfectly, but as broken mirrors. No tyrant who does not reflect what his subjects prize in this world can long endure upon his throne. If 1 billion Muslims wanted to be free, they would be. The tyrants are expressions of their condition, not repressions of their moral will. The Muslim world does not differ on whether there should be tyranny, but on what manner of tyranny it should be.
Of course no generalization applies to every person in a country or a culture. But they do apply to groups that self-identify that way, proclaiming that the Koran is our Constitution, where popular will represses women and spews hate at religious minorities. How does one protect them from the damage that they do to their own character? And how does one save people from their own hate?
The most fundamental error of the West toward the Muslim world is that of condescension. Western governments may see Muslims as minorities, but they see themselves as majorities. And throughout the world they are majorities. Muslims in America, Europe, Israel, Canada or Australia do not see themselves as minorities, but as natural majorities who have the right to impose their will and their way of life. Unlike refugees who come from cultures where they are minorities, Muslims come expecting to have things done their way. And when the West accedes, that only affirms the Muslim sense of privilege.
The West condescends to Muslims, and Muslims condescend to the West. Both reassure the other that everything is fine. But the West's condescension is based on wishful co-existence, that of the Muslim world on progressive conquest. If diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice Doggie' while looking for a stick, then the West isn't looking for the stick, and the Muslim is. Therein lies the problem.
The West's missionary impulse toward the Muslim world is not only misplaced, it is positively dangerous. How can the West convince the Muslim world to believe as it does, when it no longer knows what it believes? The Muslim world lacks such weaknesses. It cannot be crippled by moral quandaries, ideological contradictions, philosophical crises or doubts about the future. Its members do not recognize contradiction, rather they embrace it, until those contradictions explode in violence. Western codes are black and white, Muslim codes combine all shades into one. When the Muslim world is confused or in doubt, it resolves these feelings with violence. The West does not resolve them at all. While the West broods, the Muslim world slits throats. The problems of the Clash of Civilization cannot be postponed much longer. They are our problem. We cannot save 1 billion people from themselves, but we can save ourselves from them.
Westerners focus their animus on Muslim leaders, on a Saddam, a Gaddafi or an Arafat-- not recognizing that the hostility toward us comes not from the leaders, but from the people. We can remove all the leaders of the Muslim world and replace them with muppets, and it won't noticeably change the underlying sentiments on the Arab street. And very soon the muppets will also start chanting, "Death to America" because it's the popular thing to do.
Take the Neo-conservative's favorite Egyptian democracy activist Sandmonkey who has rediscovered that the best way to campaign is by accusing the other guy of being a Yankee-Zionist stooge. That's politics as usual in a country where everyone accuses everyone else of being a pawn of the Great and Little Satans. By linking the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia to Israel, he can accuse the Brotherhood of being stooges of Israel. Senseless but it's the default position. It's easier to campaign on who hates America and Israel more, than who has a workable reform program.
This is a snapshot of why regime change, whether by armed force or supporting democratic revolutions, won't save the Muslim world. You can't save people from themselves. Not without drastically changing who they are at the same time. But we can save ourselves from them.
The Muslim world is not backward by their standards, it is backward by our standards. It refuses to make the 250 year leap that the West did, but that is because it does not like the trade-offs that come with it. And that is its choice to make. Individualism, freedom and tolerance are not acceptable values in the Muslim world. And totalitarianism, theocracy and repression are not acceptable values in ours. The Muslim world has no obligation to accede to our cultural standards or tolerate us, but we accordingly have no obligation to accede to theirs or to tolerate them.
There is always a gap between civilizations, but rarely has the moral gap yawned so starkly as it does now. We are as eager to bring the Muslim world into the light, as they are to drag us into the darkness. And the momentum is on their side. We don't have the answers that we think we do. Democracy is not the solution. Neither is embracing Muslim culture with open arms. They don't have the answers either, but they have something better. Unrestrained violence and the desperation of a failed culture struggling against the tidal pull of that failure. Like a drowning man, if we try to save them, then they will pull us down with them.
We are not so wise and so perfect that we can claim to know how to save 1 billion people from themselves. Right now we are experiencing a good deal of trouble saving us from ourselves. We cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of reforming the Muslim world as well. Whatever spiritual or cultural redemption waits for them, must come from themselves. It will not come through a change of government or lavish praise. Only through a growing moral awareness that they need not subjugate others to feel pride and honor in themselves and their culture. There is no telling when or if such an awareness will come. There are animal rights campaigns in China and anti-rape campaigns in Africa-- but no progress on human rights in the Muslim world. It is likely that China will be vegetarian before non-Muslims are treated as equals in the Muslim world.
If the Muslim world has raised up a wall of sand against freedom, tolerance and the recognition of our common humanity-- then it is best for their sake and ours that they remain on their side of that wall of sand. If they refuse to coexist with us, either locally or globally, then that is their choice. They may have their paradise of hefty-bagged women, towering mosques and cowering infidels-- so long as their bigotry and oppression remains on their side of the wall of sand. When they breach that wall, then we have the right to treat them as they would treat us, not according to our laws, but according to theirs-- as they do to us, so shall be done to them. It is not a pretty doctrine, but it is a just one. And it is an overwhelmingly fair code that men should live by the laws they make for others. There can be no hypocrisy or misunderstanding in such a code. And it teaches more finely than any other the consequences of evil.
But as we write and read, talk goes on of how to save 1 billion Muslims from themselves. Removing their tyrannies, some cry. But what will they replace them with? More tyrannies. Governments reflect their peoples, not perfectly, but as broken mirrors. No tyrant who does not reflect what his subjects prize in this world can long endure upon his throne. If 1 billion Muslims wanted to be free, they would be. The tyrants are expressions of their condition, not repressions of their moral will. The Muslim world does not differ on whether there should be tyranny, but on what manner of tyranny it should be.
Of course no generalization applies to every person in a country or a culture. But they do apply to groups that self-identify that way, proclaiming that the Koran is our Constitution, where popular will represses women and spews hate at religious minorities. How does one protect them from the damage that they do to their own character? And how does one save people from their own hate?
The most fundamental error of the West toward the Muslim world is that of condescension. Western governments may see Muslims as minorities, but they see themselves as majorities. And throughout the world they are majorities. Muslims in America, Europe, Israel, Canada or Australia do not see themselves as minorities, but as natural majorities who have the right to impose their will and their way of life. Unlike refugees who come from cultures where they are minorities, Muslims come expecting to have things done their way. And when the West accedes, that only affirms the Muslim sense of privilege.
The West's missionary impulse toward the Muslim world is not only misplaced, it is positively dangerous. How can the West convince the Muslim world to believe as it does, when it no longer knows what it believes? The Muslim world lacks such weaknesses. It cannot be crippled by moral quandaries, ideological contradictions, philosophical crises or doubts about the future. Its members do not recognize contradiction, rather they embrace it, until those contradictions explode in violence. Western codes are black and white, Muslim codes combine all shades into one. When the Muslim world is confused or in doubt, it resolves these feelings with violence. The West does not resolve them at all. While the West broods, the Muslim world slits throats. The problems of the Clash of Civilization cannot be postponed much longer. They are our problem. We cannot save 1 billion people from themselves, but we can save ourselves from them.
Comments
I have filed away 10 spot-on phrases out of your brilliant essay.
ReplyDeleteI'll certainly use them as citations to your credit, authorship-wise.
Many thanks for your work, from South America.
A very perceptive analysis. But our problems did not start with them. When Islam was comfortably tucked away somewhere else, Islam had many admirers in the West who would never dream of actually becoming a Muslim. Remember Afghanistan when Muslims were fighting the Soviet Union. They looked really good to a lot of Americans who were quick to laud the sudden disciplines of a religiously strict society.
ReplyDeleteWe have our own religious reactionaries who chafe at our own seperation of church and state. We need to confront Islam, but we are not safe from Christiandom either and especially the Catholic Church.
It is Islam itself that is driving the future confrontation. It has no choice in that it cannot compete against western culture and therefore cannot survive in a modern world.
ReplyDeleteIslam's violent precepts combined with the shame-honor culture of the ME make violent confrontation inevitable. To think otherwise is to support in principle, the view that if only the right words had been spoken, Hitler could have been dissuaded from his chosen path.
The vast majority of Muslims are not going to change. Nor are the very small minority of 'moderate' Muslims going to stand in the way of the religiously fanatical and ruthlessly ambitious who hold and will seize power and leadership in the Islamic world. The fanatics have the momentum, drive and ambition.
The Muslim world is moving toward the reestablishment of the Caliphate. Within 5 years we will be facing a nuclear armed Iranian/Muslim Brotherhood led alliance of Islamic nations, one that will stretch from N.Africa to Pakistan.
Russia is ensuring through active facilitation, the spread of nuclear proliferation to unstable, actively hostile third world nations. First Iran, last year Venezuela and now Syria. Russia is actively promoting nuclear arms to the rogue nations.
None of this is accidental.
The data and trends are obvious and indisputable.
Sooner or later, terrorist groups are going to get their hands on nukes. They're going to use them.
After we've lost a few cities, we'll retaliate. It's likely that the religious fanatics running the Caliphate will retaliate. If they do, we'll end it, turn most of the ME into a glass parking lot and end the problem.
Will that end our problems? No. Russia and China will remain and be stronger than ever, especially when compared to a nuclear devastated US.
In the US, near-permanent martial law, the most probable reaction to consecutive nuclear terrorist attacks, will pose a grave threat to freedom and the continuance of the republic.
When the left's machinations, the agenda driven distortions of the MSM and the liberal useful idiots naivete, inclinations toward pacifistic appeasement and moral cowardice are considered, the outlook is quite grim.
The potential for a new dark age threatens the world.
Paul,
ReplyDeleteImplying that our own religious reactionaries equate to Islam's is so over the top as to reveal your own paranoia.
Christendom does not seek another inquisition nor does it oppose religious freedom. You confuse your right to freedom of religion or none at all, with freedom from religion.
As for the Catholic Church, the Pope has no designs upon replacing or gaining control over the US, western civilization or the world. They're worried about your immortal soul, not your political affiliation. Mistaking a refusal to abandon their moral principles, such as opposing abortion is not the same as seeking to eliminate the separation of church and state.
It's only your paranoia that leads you to think otherwise.
They're a religious denomination which believes in certain religious precepts. If you believe that abortion is morally wrong, then of course you must oppose it. Under that premise, the mother's right to her own body does not extend to the child's body, which objectively true or not, is what their religious precepts maintain to be the truth of the matter.
Given The Catholic Church's religious premises, confusing that logically consistent position with a desire to abrogate the separation of church and state is a gross mis-characterization of the Church's position.
How is it that one-billion people can create the conditions for a Clash of Civilizations? It's the Koran, it's their culture! Why doesn't anyone ask why Mohammed was able to formulate and impose such draconian ideas on his initial cohort?
ReplyDeleteI suggest two sources of current custom that maintain hypersensitive and aggressive behavior and belief systems here. Both are unpleasant to contemplate, but are real and both revolve about women:
1) Polygamy produces an underclass of men who do not have access to mates. Thus, there is a need to acquire women for them through conquest, a key feature of Islam. Where practiced more openly, political aggression is more the norm. Where the practice has waned, the less confrontational is the local Islam.
2) The fear and loathing of women and thus their subjugation in Islam stems from a simple child-rearing practice. The use of maternal masturbation of fussy male babies. This widespread custom removes volitional control from babies and causes confusion. A child is hungry or sick or tired of its environment, but is forced to endure "comfort" through masturbation - a complete misunderstanding of the child's needs and an imposition that oversexualizes all early fantasy.
So much of Islam revolves around sexual interpretations of life's meaning that it is necessary to consider these two practices as contributory. Both practices can be modified, one through law and the other through education. Puff, predatory Islam disappears and the only thing left to produce cultural conflicts is the contents of the Koran itself. History, however, is not good at maintaining atavistic practices, which seem to disappear when their current reinforcement mechanisms disappear.
"How can the West convince the Muslim world to believe as it does, when it no longer knows what it believes?"
ReplyDeleteExactly. We have been to liberal to our own detriment.
There is an excellent piece about the Shame honour culture in Japan V Arab societies here:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9077/pub_detail.asp
The long and the short of it is that unlike the Japanese, Arabs cannot self-criticise, their whole culture is blame (I'm clearly not talking of individuals but the culture as a whole). Also Arab means mixed. The Japanese do have an ancient, culture whereas the Arab culture is many indigenous cultures which have been forced to be subordinate to Islam - it doesn't work because it is false and imposed.
So refering to the quote above .....Unless HaShem builds the house, the builders labour in vain T/P 127.......so we just know where the ME (Bar Israel) and the rest of the world is heading. kate b
The reason The west condescend to the Muslims is the cheap oil and Jewhatred.
ReplyDeleteThey love both of them.
Victor Davis Hanson had an article out in the aftermath of the butchery displayed in Fallujah, where the remains of four US security contractors were strung out like ribbons, asking whether it was Fallujah that made Saddam or Saddam that made Fallujah. If nothing else George Bush's useless and bloody misadventure has proved to all that have eyes to see, that it was Fallujah that made Saddam and by extension the barbarism in
ReplyDeleteMuslim societies is intrinsic, sui generis to Islam, in fact bred in the bone from the earliest days by that arch-criminal Muhammed. As long as this evil religion is given free rein one can be sure that any temporary diminution of hostilities is bought at the expense of the peace and wellbeing of one's children.
Ivan
A brilliant piece of writing...but, we now need to look for a brilliant solution to this 'clash of civilizations' before Westerners lose the battle.
ReplyDeleteJanSuzanne
The brilliant solution that you seek Jan is unavailable. Simply because the left and the millions of brainwashed, liberal 'useful idiots', won't allow the West to respond effectively with a 'brilliant' solution to the threat.
ReplyDeleteYou can't fight a mortal threat you refuse to identify as such.
Half (or more) of the West is just wishing the problem would go away and in complete denial as to the very nature of the threat.
That's because their world view would collapse if they faced the threat. People will hold on to their world-view until maintaining it, immediately and undeniably threatens their very survival. Even then, many would rather die than abandon their beliefs, which form their psychological foundations. Literally, profound depression and even insanity would be all that is left to them.
Given the media manipulation of the left's propaganda organ, the MSM... the general public won't wake up to the actual source (Islam) of the existential danger until we've lost some cities.
Tragically, millions will have to die before the West's masses will awaken. Just as, in the 1930's, pacifistic Britain did not awaken until Dunkirk, when the Nazi's, were at Britain's door.
And just as with WWII we can see the inevitable progression of the conflict, given the geo-political and psychological dynamics at play at the time, so too is the unfolding "history of today" predictable. The 'players' will have it no other way and 'history' will unfold, just as it must. Not 'fate' or 'the whims of the gods' but simple human nature is the culprit.
Lawrence Auster has an solution
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006854.html
In this exceptional and accurate exploration of the Muslim soul, I was struck by this statement: “Whatever spiritual or cultural redemption waits for them, must come from themselves.”
ReplyDeleteTheir “spiritual or cultural redemption” fundamentally cannot come from “themselves.” Historically, Muslims have been the looters of wealth and destroyers and thieves of freedom. Their creed commands that they be so. Today, they are looters or extortionists of the spirit. Our surrender to them on their terms “redeems” their irrationality, sanctions it, nurtures it, and gives it the illusion of the moral and the practical. But there is no “moral” to be found in the nihilism of Islam. Only a kind of living death. That is the nature of their “spiritual and cultural redemption,” or the satisfaction of being a zero, a nonentity, a manqué.
Free society burns Korans/Qurans to make a point but Islam takes it to the maximum and burns humans. Tell us all who the barbarians are now:
ReplyDeleteWatch the video of Pastor Terry Jones burning the filthy, dirty, hate-filled Quran at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F7b0EQ2dvU
Video of Muslims "burning" muslims:
http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/nigeria-burning-suspected-christian-witches-alive/
Geoffrey,
ReplyDeleteWell said. Please accept this virtual applaud, especially for your closing line.
We speak up, even though the foreseeable future remains just as inevitable, and just as bloody.
But a "brilliant solution" is not necessary. All that is necessary now, as in the case of the rise of Nazi Europe, is that we confront the lies they represent. And who are the first victims of those lies? The Jews.
ReplyDeleteThis time, we can nip this thing in the bud by simply sticking up for the Jews and especially Israel. Israel must be allowed to defend itself without interruption and obscuring or confusing that clear purpose.
It is wrong to view Nazi Europe and the rise of Islam in Europe as the same symptom in response to two different problems. They are the same problem with the same culprits and the same solutions.
"This time, we can nip this thing in the bud by simply sticking up for the Jews and especially Israel. Israel must be allowed to defend itself without interruption and obscuring or confusing that clear purpose."
ReplyDeleteYay! Right on.
Paul,
ReplyDeleteThanks to the media's incitement to violence against Israel with their twisted and distorted coverage of the news and Obama's latest R2P (responsibility to protect) excuse for investing in kinetic military action we now have the start with Turkey's prime minister wanting to bomb Israel and Norway's Socialist Party voting on a motion to bomb Israel
http://europenews.dk/en/node/41655
Therefore, the only way it can be palatable to bomb Libya for these morally deranged people is if Israel can be bombed too.
Here is the less than lucid reasoning behind the motion:
- The credibility of the world community in its confrontation with the Gadafi regime is undermined when there is no reaction against other states in the region
The bud is already opening.
Don't know if this video has been seen widely where Melanie Phillips states that the British media is creating the kind of hatred which is leading to mass murder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buu9zWPKCo0
Just one small point, Knish:
ReplyDeleteYou say, "When the Muslim world is confused or in doubt, it resolves these feelings with violence".
I beg to differ. ALL Muslim countries are dictatorial. All Muslim countries oppress, degrade, kill or torture, sooner or later, their "infidel" residents. All Muslim behaviors derive from the emotional level, never from the intellectual one.
So don't give them room by saying they're confused or in doubt. Even when they have what they want, and have clear thought, the thought does not drive them - their emotions drive them.
I elaborate here:
http://hezbos.blogspot.com/2010/08/psychology-of-islam-torah-analysis.html
Ibn Warraq in "Defending the West" points to three defining characteristics at the heart of Western civilization, all absent in Islamic culture: universalism, rationalism, and self-criticism. And there you have it.
ReplyDeleteUniversalism traces its roots to the Jewish concept that we are all made "in the image of God", equally deserving of respect. Islam distinguishes between the "believer" and the "non-believer". Rationalism at its heart presumes a universe governed by reason and natural law - "Chok natan v'lo ya'avor" as the Psalmist writes, "He has given a Law which is not transgressed". Yet a culture which believes that Allah is "not fettered", that things only happen "insha'allah", will not be winning Nobels for scientific work. Finally, a culture which cannot self-criticize will look outward for the source of their failures - to the "infidel" West, or colonialists, or "Zionists".
Finally, to the notion of raising a "wall of sand" between our civilization and theirs, I've mused about putting part or all of the Islamic world under quarantine. I mean, what besides oil, gas and troubles do we get from that world? I just can't see how we can do it, especially given established freedoms.
How is it that comparisons of evil force necessitate the use of Western examples? Doesn't that seem problematic to need to look to the West to find the words to describe these Islamic threats?
ReplyDeleteIf Islamic terrorists are the ones encroaching into the West with violence in the Clash of Civilisations, then why is it that the West are the ones with military troops occupying nations all over the world. Are the West not the antagonists displaying imperialist attempts at domination. It would seem that the Muslim world is merely responding to such threats.
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