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Thursday, May 10, 2007
Authenticity 2: The Perniciousness Of Wishful Thinking
Whenever your Curmudgeon writes about the dangers to the West, and to America in particular, arising from the acceptance of Muslims into our Enlightenment-formed societies, he's certain to reap a full basket of irrelevant responses. Some of these will be defamatory and / or obscene, and will therefore be ignored. But the really troubling ones are those that "argue" roughly as follows:
- Islam is just a religion like any other.
- Adherents to every religion have committed terrible deeds.
- Millions of Muslims live in peace with their non-Muslim neighbors.
- Therefore, to demand that Muslims qua Muslims be denied ingress to Western societies is bigoted and unjustifiable.
If you've never before seen wishful thinking in the saddle, Gentle Reader, look long and hard upon the "logic" above. By the end of this essay, not one of its fibers will remain unshredded.
1. Islam is just a religion like any other.
The defenders of Islam recur to this statement in the confidence that they will not be contradicted. That confidence stems from Americans' reluctance to criticize one another's faiths. But reluctance is neither fact nor logic.
Among Mankind's major faiths, Islam is unique, easily distinguished from all other creeds in several striking ways:
- Its central scripture, the Qur'an, is deemed to be the inerrant and unalterable Word of God rather than a composition by men.
- Its central human figure, Muhammad, was a warlord, a voluptuary, and a notable practitioner of "do as I say, not as I do."
- It insists upon the unification of church and state -- an Islamic state, ruled by the Islamic shari'a law. Indeed, it denies that a non-Muslim may rightfully wield authority of any form over a Muslim.
- Its dictates are violently aggressive; the earlier, "Meccan" verses of the Qur'an that counseled tolerance of the "infidel" were abrogated by the later, "Medinan" verses that commanded conversion by the sword, deceit as an adjunct tactic, and the subjugation of the whole world under Islamic rule.
- Because it exalts Muhammad as the perfect man, worthy of imitation in all ways, both its scriptures and its early history militate toward aggression against other faiths and ways.
- By imposing special conditions and taxes -- dhimmi status -- upon non-Muslims, Islam regnant engineers the steady destruction of competing creeds.
There can be no serious contention against any of the above statements. All are embedded firmly in the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and the various ahadith. Essentially all that anyone can say to counter them is that "Muslims don't really believe that." That statement is easily refuted by the results of ordinary public-opinion surveys taken among Muslims, both by other Muslims and by "infidels."
2. Adherents to every religion have committed terrible deeds.
Viewed apart from all implications, this statement is factually true. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and atheists have all committed atrocities, sometimes against people of other faiths. Not all Christians, Jews, et cetera; that should go without saying. Similarly, not all Muslims have rampaged freely, raping and slaughtering.
But the statement is not meant to stand apart from its implications. The hearer is meant to infer that Islam itself is innocent of any role in the savageries committed by Muslims, regardless of whether they cite Islam as their justification and jihad as their aim. That inference is contradicted by Islamic scripture, by the teachings of the preponderance of imams, and by objectively reported events from every part of the globe.
A Christian who rapes or murders cannot cite any dictate of Christ in justification of his deeds. Neither can a Jew cite any teaching of Moses, Hillel, Maimonides, or any other Judaic thinker of note. (The commands of the Book of Leviticus to stone adulterers and homosexuals were abrogated long ago.) But the Islamic scriptures, including the Qur'an, offer much encouragement and support for anything a Muslim might desire to do to an "infidel." The rightlessness of an "infidel" before superior Muslim force would be implied by the doctrine of conversion by the sword even if Islamic scriptures and teaching said nothing else on the subject. Indeed, recent statements by Middle Eastern imams have even sanctioned the enslavement of "infidels" caught unprotected in Muslim-majority lands...as booty of war.
What C. S. Lewis has called the Law of General Benevolence -- that God commands us to wish others well as a default condition of our existence -- has no place in Islam. In this it stands apart from all the other creeds men follow today. It is therefore unsurprising that Islam's encouragement to jihad should be taken seriously by so many Muslims; the rightlessness of the "infidel," to whom the Muslim owes no duty of benevolence, opens wide a road to limitless savagery.
3. Millions of Muslims live in peace with their non-Muslim neighbors.
Like the previous statement, if shorn of all implication and context, this is factually true. But a few moments' examination will reveal its argumentative nullity.
First, as has already been explored, what (some) Muslims have done and are doing doesn't exonerate Islam for what it commands them to do, when they have the power. The scriptures and teachings are what they are, say what they say; that some self-nominated Muslims choose not to follow them in all particulars at all times doesn't change the doctrines themselves. And some Muslims undoubtedly do follow them in all particulars at all times, as many thousands of Islam-powered assaults on "infidels" attest.
Second, and more important, there is no Western country with an Islamic fraction above 5% where Muslims have not demanded special treatment, usually at cost to their host societies and their "infidel" neighbors. They usually get what they demand, owing to Westerners' tendency to defer to "religious" sentiment and our awareness of the demonstrated propensity toward violence of Muslims at a sufficient concentration. The process tends to escalate: small demands, once conceded, are followed by progressively larger ones. The early, small concessions tend to reduce resistance to the later, larger ones. Over time, Islam acquires a superior status, recognized in law and custom even if never explicitly named, and Muslims are considered exempt from requirements and constraints that bind all other persons.
Given how visible this progression has been in Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, would anyone care to argue that the behavior of the concentrations of Muslims in those lands is entirely disconnected from Islam?
The implication is clear if unpleasant: however they might behave at a low concentration, Muslims in sufficient numbers are prone to asserting themselves at the expense of their neighbors. The Muslim next door might be the best neighbor a Christian or Jew has ever had...until there are Muslims next door to him, and to them, and to them.
4. Therefore, to demand that Muslims qua Muslims be denied ingress to Western societies is bigoted and unjustifiable.
Since this "conclusion" is premised upon the earlier three assertions, one might think that, given that those assertions have been refuted, the "conclusion" should fall of its own weight. As ordinary logic this is impeccable, but the repeated, strident, successful use of accusations of bigotry and "racism" to counter ordinary logic suggests that additional thought is in order here.
"Bigotry" has an entirely negative cast. Denotatively, it means "obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them." Connotatively, it suggests hatred, contempt, and general revulsion, all maintained without foundation. To say that your Curmudgeon is "bigoted against Islam" is to imply that his desire that Muslims be kept out of the United States is arbitrary, based on irrational dislike.
But what of a word that's more precise in its meaning: discrimination? Were a detractor to say of your Curmudgeon that "he discriminates against Islam," would the impact of the statement be significantly different?
Well, for one thing, its connotations are not always evil. One may legitimately discriminate on the basis of objective differences; for example, we speak of an epicure as a man of discriminating tastes. Is it not justifiable to discriminate among creeds on the basis of their objective content? Don't we discriminate against Nazism, Communism, and Satanism on that basis? When an adult decides to adopt a particular religion, he's discriminated in its favor, against all the other religions about which he knows; is this somehow wrong?
The cleavage point is here: do we dare to discriminate against persons on the basis of their freely avowed beliefs? If a Muslim is a citizen or legal resident of the United States, is it somehow licit to treat him differently from non-Muslims?
American legal principles do not recognize adherence to or the rejection of any creed as an exemption from the law's dictates. The anti-discrimination laws command a certain degree of tolerance from public accommodations and employers; that tolerance must be extended to Muslims as to members of any other faith. This is as it should be; by our oldest and highest laws, once he's legally here, a man's privately held convictions and private religious practices are his own affair. But it is not required that we admit additional Muslims to our soil, especially in view of the havoc they've wrought in the other Western nations that have accepted them. A sensible immigration policy would discriminate against Islam just as it would against Nazism or Communism, as an attachment irremediably antithetical to American laws and standards.
It is no counter to claim that "Muslims don't really believe all that jihad stuff in the Qur'an." First, the statement is unsupported by objective evidence, particularly in view of the practice of taqiyya and kitman. Second, to be a Muslim, one must affirm, without qualification, that the Qur'an is the inerrant and immutable Word of Allah, revealed directly to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel and never to be edited nor reinterpreted. That's whence "all that jihad stuff" derives. Imagine the ludicrousness of an avowed Communist who claimed that he doesn't believe "all that stuff" about the labor theory of value, class warfare, and the dictatorship of the proletariat! Would it be sensible to accept such a disclaimer at face value? Third, Muslims who do accept the Quranic exhortations to forcibly impose Islam upon the whole world -- and if the surveys can be believed, there are many such -- would take such a heretic aside and, at minimum, give him a good talking-to, to assure themselves that he was just taking the "infidels" for a little ride, for the greater good of Islam. Militants, even when a minority, have always been able to whip their creed's more easy-going adherents into line. The coercive power that derives from the recognized willingness to kill must not be underestimated.
In sum, the "argument" for regarding Islam as just one more essentially harmless religion, and Muslims as fully as trustworthy ab initio as persons of any other faith, is an exercise in the deliberate avoidance of both facts and reason -- wishful thinking. Mostly it's powered by the desire to believe that there's nothing to fear. Everyone would like to believe that at all times, but persons determined to wish away contrary evidence to retain that belief are a serious danger to the body politic. They are the conduit by which that body is most likely to be infected beyond its capacity to heal itself.
Indeed, the infection analogy is pertinent. A small number of bacilli introduced into the blood of a healthy man will do him little damage before they're surrounded and absorbed by the antibodies he naturally produces, but a much larger number may damage him irreparably before his immunomechanisms can counterattack. Muslim immigrants to these shores, in the small numbers that have historically arrived here, have usually been acculturated to American norms to a reasonable degree. Trouble arises from large, dense concentrations of Muslims, which lead to doctrinal reinforcement -- and to targeting for recruitment by the militant organizations of the Middle East, some of which are supported by the rulers of Islamic states.
A sensible man doesn't deliberately court infection by a dangerous disease. Nor does a sensible nation.
Comments
Which brings us right to the Dix Six.
For although we, America, offered them and their brethren all the liberties,amities, and prosperities to be found here, they intended to demonstrate their ingratitude with murder. Again.
Enough is enough.
As we cannot allow the poisonous ideology of Islam to grow, we must stop immigration from all muslim countries, and all with muslim names (we can sort out the potential liars in due time), stop all visas - visitor/student/resident, revoke all present visas and deport any and all radical green-card residents.
If we can somehow pummel our leaders into doing that, convincing our bleeding-hearts to display a consistent refusal to offer ‘alternative accomodations’ such as foot-washing stations, non-pork-handling positions and non-alcohol/dog taxi driving might be easier to justify and insist upon.
Hopefully, these conditions will cause further voluntary attrition in muslim numbers.
I know you haven’t expressed such harsh prescriptions as these, Fran, but it’s time (past time for me) the idea start to more widely circulate. Our own governments are beginning to lay the groundwork to soon forbid such necessary speech as ‘hate’.
Posted by on 05/10/2007 at 06:52 PMGreat essay.
Posted by on 05/12/2007 at 09:31 AMLook closer and you’ll find that west’s “leaders” are themselves corupted by petro-dollars and muslim-votes. Thus, the very “leaders” who are suppose to protect the west, sell-out west, even putting the muscle of their government to:
- increased visas.
- appoint muslim-appeasers.
- erase every reference to Islamic terror.
- turn law-enforcement defunct with ‘sensitivity trining’.
- finally, repeating the lie ‘Islam is Peace’.And the enemy know these timid and corrupt “leaders”, well.
Posted by on 05/12/2007 at 10:10 AM
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