The hearts and minds movement that is currently bending the UK over backwards in readiness for a damn good seeing-to should ponder some questions and come up with some solutions instead of simply …labeling people as racist..
Having a view about Islam as a homophobic, misogynistic, anti-human, blood-thirsty cult is perfectly legitimate - it is in no way racist. Only the disingenuous, mis-informed or un-educated would argue so. Tell me, would having a view of the Branch Davidians as apolocalyptic nutters be racist? I think not - so why do you so many disingenuously or naively persist in labeling people with a rationally deduced position as racist when it is largely not the case.
For the sake of argument, I happen to believe two things about Islam.
1. It is a religion which, in its current form, is fundamentally and irreconcilably different to other religions and
2. It is a religion which is at a fundamentally different and less benign stage in its development than other religions.
Is this a racist viewpoint?
I believe its laws and customs are a codification of the barbaric and tribal way of life of 7th century
Racist?
No, simply that the way of life as set down in the Koran is not compatible with a modern society.
A racist viewpoint? If you think so, explain why and if you can't, then move on.
Those who believe the
1. Do you think we would be having this discussion if Charles Martel had decided to try and win hearts and minds instead of fighting in the year 732?
2. Do you think the Spanish should have worked more on winning hearts and minds or concentrated on the reconquista instead?
3. Do you think the Crusades were really wars of aggression or defensive campaigns which followed 300 years of unprovoked, YES UNPROVOKED, Islamic aggression?
4. Do you think the Islamic armies were turned back from
If so - wake up and get real.
As for the present, instead of crying racist can you please begin to offer some solutions and debate real issues.
Answer these questions:
1. Do you see a connection between the current pattern of European demography and the phrase "Live like Lambs until we can live like Lions"?
2. Would you be happy living in a country where your female friends and relatives could be ordered to wear a headscarf so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities?
3. Would you be happy living in a country where your homosexual friends and relatives could be persecuted and punished for their sexuality - see
4. Do you honestly believe that if
5. Do you seriously believe that every Islamic grievance originates because of the creation of
6. Do you honestly believe that if we change our foreign policy and remove ourselves from
7. Have you ever pondered the historic notion, clearly felt by every single nation to have lived alongside an Islamic nation, of 'Islam's Bloody Borders'?
If you rejoice at the prospect of a continuing and un-ending increase in the influence of Islam on the way of life in the
Again, if you agree with Islamic agenda you have no problem - we are heading in your direction.
For the majority of us, white, black, yellow, brown whatever, we need to be honest and grasp what is happening, not taking a gamble with our future. Despite its imperfections, we actually have a way of life worth hanging on to, we should make sure the time doesn't arrive when it's too late to call for a debate on what we can do to preserve our hard-won democratic and humanist freedoms.
So, lets be clear, just like with Catholicism at the time of the Inquisition, its not racist to say there is something wrong and unacceptable with Islam in its current form.
If the tipping point comes, unless you're happy with the Islamic way of life, you will be up shit creek without a paddle. I guess you could always try discussing your grievances with your friendly religious policeman - not your local bobby I can tell you. My guess at a response? Perhaps a lesson in the true meaning of racism.
7 comments:
AT A guess Islam is just at the beginning of /its/ Renascence. As Chesterton said, 'history does not rhyme, but it puns.' For Mahometans it is something like the early 14th century. For the rest, of course a little child weeps when one takes it to the doctor for a protective injection. So, likewise, one may expect the grown-up and vastly pre-diabetic children of all ages, and of an exhausted western metaphor, to whine like a basket of poisoned pups at the very suggestion that Tesco's is shutdown and so they should perhaps get back on their clothing, and once-and-for-all look ahead. As Marianne Faithfull points out, they've plenty of fucking, footer and Tee Vee, so naturally 'they think they are all so effing free'. And, to be sure, they are -- of everything but themselves.
FREEDOM All by itself /is/ a mere bagatelle.
IN The evolution of creative human possibilities which altogether shall carry us beyond human being at some point, periodicaly the detritus must be swept up. One may, of course, choose out of sincere emotion and love, of familiar scenes and persons, to expend energy in vain resistance to the future -- and, all that lies /beyond/ -- or one may make another choice, an /explorer's/ decision. In Islam are concealed immense profound imtutitive and imaginal riches which will, when properly received, both renew /our/ worn-out scientism and, indeed, transform human beings themselves into /dinn/ and veritable magicians. We cannot see it because /work/ is involved, first of all on ourselves, and, together with fear and anger, greed and lust, /laziness/ and not the Mahometans, is the great enemy of us all.
OR Does anyone still pretend that Mr Bush and Mr Brown alike would not be lots better off both toiling away humbly as night-janitors in Denver, USA -- and saving /their/ pennies for the Mecca-trip?
Freedom is not a mere bagatelle. It is the difference between having choice and not having choice.
With freedom to choose comes individual responsibility - a burden that most human beings find too heavy to bear, so they sell their souls [assuming for the moment that they have souls] to some god or 'ism. They become other-directed zombies.
Islam, just like any religious or mystical tradition, doubtless has many valuable truths to impart to humanity. These, however, will be worthless if they are imposed at the point of a knife or barrel of a gun.
It is all very well to sneer, as Emmett frequently does, at the degenerate state of Western civilization, but it is still the best we have got and I, like 'Creamster', am not prepared to trade it in for the physical - and even more importantly - mental servitude that the warriors of the Caliphate seek to impose upon the world.
'TIS True, alas, I /do/ sometimes lay it all on with -- an axe!
BUT, To paraphrase Idries Shah (who was writing in the 1970s about 'spiritual' people desperate to find Sufi-teachers in the last decades of the late-modern age & even though they warn't /ready/), people do also seem to get the Moslems they deserve on some level or another....
NOR Is that always so doleful a circumstance when you think it through carefully:
AS A convert to Islam in the Old Spanish Mosque in Fes, in 1979, I /am/ more-or-less the Snuggery House Mahometan; and, "happy to be here!" in the Mr Garrison Keillor-phrase; and (not unreasonably, I think) I /do/ take pride in the fact that what I do mediate to all /usually/ (!) is the gentle & literate, faintly mocking & sweetly ironic, above-all /cheerful/, Islam of some five centuries from now. Our material existence here is not describable as to delight, and as well now back there where I am making a sojourn among you, I know that the outward aspect of everything is just vile.
IT /Is/ exquisitely horrid, but you may be sure on my say so, the word of your friend Naml al-Haddad (which is what 'Emmett Smith' means in Arabic), that we in the 26th century (Old Style) in fact /are/ taking steps to abate these horrible quack /ulema/ who throw young kids wrapped in bombs -- they /are/ hysterics & disgusting.
NOT Least, they have inveigled loads of podgy /other/ old men in the World there with you; old hounds too scared to actually go and 'do' some kiddie porn for themselves; or smoke opium; all of them hounded by frustration into 'sublimating' their unredeemed lusts in /policy/; and, in the same violent way as 'their' terrorists; to wit, /messrs/ Rumsfeld, the hen-pecked Blair and all of that gentry....
I Know that the numerous disjuncts of time, which only a mathematician such as I am /not/ can unravel, are such that 'it don't seem like it, Alf!' (as Dusty said to his mate whilst they lay under the warehouse, listening for shovel-noises in the Blitz.)
BUT, I give you my word, we are digging to beat Hell & you /will/ see us soon -- el-Wook min al-Mostaqabal
Wow- very powerful. Please forget me fo hijacking this post in it's interily. It's to good to be overlooked!
Yes, I've read Idries Shah, and many Sufi tales, with enjoyment and benefit. But somehow I think today's Wahabbi'ists would give him short shrift. [Indeed, they would give everyone who isn't a Wahabbi'ist short shrift, if they could].
One of the people I would give short shrift is Dubya - whose spiritual home is Guantanamo Bay - but he does have a point when he calls that brand of Islam "Islamofascism". And unless it can be contained from within the larger world of Islam, it will grow increasingly dangerous.
Unfortunately, we live in the 21st century - not the 26th. Interesting times for the Chinese; menacing times for the West.
ACTUALLY, 'Islamofascism' is semantically loaded; and, worse, it is inaccurate. If one is after /analogy/, and since Islam like New Cunt-conservativism is of a 'globalising' pretension, then a less-inapposite verbal sleight would be to label the whole boiling two rival forms of --trotskyism! A corporate /vs/ a mullah version.
AFTER The Hitler horror, certain more-determined of the Zionists and their allies, not unreasonably on the emotional side of things, have decided to load the whole loathing in some quarters for 'Jews' off onto these other semites -- and, of course, such are the latent pay-offs in 'persecution' that these God-damned fool mullahs are playing tag. Silly OLD cunts /a la/ Bush & The Shits, sending out the young to be blown up!
ALL-In-all, then, except for certain counter-revisionist moves against holocaust-deniers & such gentry, the 'islamofascist' racket is a non-starter to anyone who has acquainted themselves with semantics.
REALLY, Mussolini and some of these North Italians was fascists -- but, the Mahometans are neither Wops nor do they fancy gaudy uniforms. It would be better to call them 'islamomonists' or 'islamolemics' or something. but, of course, neologism requires a comparative literacy and does not satisfy my ageing-hippies generation's need to re-do their folks in some half-ashamed late way!
THERE Are lots of motives of denial & so forth, all driving these dishonest rhetorical tropes, and that, I suspect is my larger point:
ALTHOUGH The historical time has changed, I am an american Libertarian and hold the documents of anglo-saxon liberty in at least as high esteem as do you, yourself, Mr Y Doodle or anyone else. However, as an historian, I realise a distinction it is important to share at this point, and that is this:
ONE May never accurately judge either the values and actions of the past by the present, nor the present in a past light.
TWO Countervailing trends surge & batter, and human nature in its organic, and lustful & fearful, bases has for long time been the same -- /that/ is our bond with our forebears. Whereas human behaviours, the derivatives of Nature, the protean motives & purposes, all of that has been as variable as languages, penis- and brain-sizes and societies.
IT Comes down to acknowledging a plain fact, namely that the american founders were /not/ 'just like us', nor as to values really are we at all near to them any more, neither in temper nor inclination. The terror of time into the bargain carries us farther apart daily. In light of these circumstances then, when I say to you that I vote Libertarian here, I do so merely as one would water an obscure shoot of something in a greenhouse. I value the freedom this type of thinking represents, and know that at some interval in the future it /may/ again be workable & desirable in certain types of societies -- the sort, alas, that can most easily come back into existence for a time only after a major population-holocaust of some sort.
THE Irony is that only as the late-modern age recedes at an accelerating speed may we begin to understand more deeply and thoroughly what political liberty was, and democracy and the republican counterpoise. One thing is that populations in the most interesting democracies are low, perhaps a few score thousands (the Greeks & viking farmers) to no more than 3-4 millions (New Zealand, Switzerland, Minnesota). In that context, and because either populations were homogenous or /physical/ room was available for difference, it seems especially clear to me that is small states such as the icelandic farmer-republic or the swiss cantonal republic really offered an optimal experience of freedom to a viable nuumber of members. Yet as against that, people were more collective both as to their necessities (co-operation at food-production!) and consequent personality-types. Also, on the way up & when their stories are the most dynamic and intriguing to the historian, most democracies and, certainly, the republics have had severe /limits/ on the franchise.
IT Is the palpable unfairness of /that/ last which drove the whole late-modern nation-state swindle, from the american Civil War & 1871 at Versailles; and, made politicians almost 100 % liars-for-
votes. In the L B Johnson 1964-version this was explicitly naked, in keeping with the march to the respectability of all pornography::
"NOT Only can the sonofabitch BE, but THE state SHOULD be, all things to ALL of you jackoff American layabout God-damned do-nothing sonsofbitches -- so vote fer ME you stupid dumb bastards and I'll build yew some fine NEW schools full of MORE liberals! Plus vote fer me yew DUMBBELLS and git yer FREE stuff TODAY! And I'll pacok all of the REAL assholes off to God-damn VEET NAM! I'll have the FREE shit right out there in YER hallway tomorrow so git yer ASSES in gear NOW!"
TA, Ta,
el-Wook
PS: We of course do NOT imaginally live 'only' in the time in which a physical body may be centered; it is good to learn this, and the books by Miss Barbara Hannah & Mlle Marie-Louise von Franz contain exercises that can help the individual to become proficient -- actually -- at changing the times.
Thanks for the essay, Emmett. I agree that 'fascism' is too frequently bandied about - especially on the Left as well as by Bush - as a sloppy shorthand term for 'totalitarianism'. If you check out Tyger's latest post, "Fascism is still rife within the Republican right", you will see that I redefined the [atrocious!] article he cited as 'exceptionalism' rather than fascism, and Tyger retorted that exceptionalism is 'fascism with apple pie.'
What do you think of that?
Post a Comment