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Saturday, June 24, 2006
The Hour Of Decision, Continued
It's been said, and truly, that the first step in solving any problem, of any magnitude or kind, is admitting the existence of the problem. More, one must admit to the real problem ("I'm an alcoholic"), not merely to its symptoms ("I got drunk last night") or the difficulties they can cause ("I'm a pretty decent driver when I haven't been drinking").
Ace of Spades quotes a certain "Monty" on the subject of Islamic savagery:
It's not just Islam -- it's also age old tribalist behaviors that go back before Islam was even conceived. We are dealing with people whose mindset is cemented in a pre-modern (even pre-civilized) pattern. Unfortunately, Islam tends to reinforce rather than disrupt these patterns. It's no accident that our most dedicated foes in the Long War are scions of the most backwards tribalist societies in the world: Arabs, Pashtuns, and the many different Balkan tribes. Many are Muslim, but some are not (the Serbs, for example).
According to your Curmudgeon, this stops short of asking the critical question, the one that would admit to the real problem.
Islam is not merely consistent with brutal tendencies and patterns that existed before Islam came along. The savage tribes of classical-era Germany and the Slavic lands were no less brutal than the denizens of the Arabian Peninsula in the time of Muhammad. The two were touched by two greatly differing belief systems -- Christianity and Islam -- and they turned in greatly different directions.
Contact with Christianity set up a conflict in the barbarian psyche. He knew from experience that ranging about, raping, killing, and looting with abandon, could be a real good time. But the mustard seed of the gentle Christian ethos flowering within him pulled his attention insistently toward an entirely different mode of life -- a mode the Germanic and Slavic tribes eventually accepted, not at sword's point, but from the pressure of their own consciences.
Islam spread among the barbarous Arab peoples of the seventh and eighth centuries because it's a savage's creed, designed for consumption by savages. Rather than conflict with their pre-existent tendencies, it stamped them with God's seal of approval. Muhammad told them that their racism, their propensity for violence, their desire to rape, pillage, and enslave, their oppressions of their womenfolk, and their absolute intolerance for deviance were Allah's Will being done by their hands. He augmented the rewards for such behavior with the promise of a sybaritic Paradise for those who died in Allah's good graces -- especially those who died fighting to extend Dar al-Islam among the "infidels."
Anyone who understands incentives will immediately see the effects this must have on a primitive mind. More, anyone who understands social culling will see how the dominance of that mindset will have acted on persons who dared to dissent from it.
It's commonplace in Muslim lands for the "leaders" to exempt themselves from any asceticisms or constraints Islam demands of its followers. The mind-boggling self-indulgence of the Saudi princes is the best example. This, too, hearkens back to Muhammad and his ways.
The effect continues even in our time. Those nations dominated by Islam are uniformly marked by poverty, low average mentality, pervasive brutality and intolerance that American liberals would have no trouble condemning if practiced here, a complete lack of innovation and autonomous development, and the reflexive eruption of violence at any slightest challenge to their beliefs. Their rulers live lives of hedonistic splendor, and demand to be treated as demigods. When those rulers step outside their domains, they insist on being allowed to "take their domains with them," as for example when a Saudi prince demanded that the landing of his aircraft not be given to the supervision of a female American air controller.
Islam has made little penetration into First World nations, with the exception of Middle Eastern immigrants and prison populations. Those are perfect examples of sociocultural enclaves walled off from the surrounding world (in one case, literally). They also indicate the only terms upon which Islam and Western civilization can "co-exist:" complete quarantine.
Not all Muslims are seventh-century idiots, but all Muslim societies are seventh-century societies, regardless of whether their oil wealth has allowed them to purchase the fruits of Western civilization and enterprise. The correlation is too strong to be wished aside; it extends through too many peoples, and over too many centuries. It demands to be viewed as causal. Until we understand its power, we will be easily deluded into thinking that a "peace of equals" can be attained between Islam and the West. We will not adopt a technique suitable for dealing with the sort of mentality and social organization that correlates with Islam. And we will continue to damage our own interests.
Comments
I wonder why no one ever brings up the Islamic penchant for marrying first cousins as a reason for the low average mentality in those countries. It seems to me that after a few centuries of that we should all be surprised that the populations of many of these societies are still capable of bipedalism, much less coherent thought. I mean, I like my cousin Katy a lot, but the idea of actually marrying her is enough to give me the shivers, and at this point in my life it’s too late to learn how to play the banjo, much less duel with the thing.
Posted by akaky on 06/25/2006 at 05:52 PMNobody brings up the Islamic penchant of first cousins marrying because anything smacking of genetics is currently taboo. In my opinion, the article and the comment are dead-on right. Arab Muslims find it perfectly acceptable, if not desirable, that first cousins marry, and it’s been going on for centuries. There are very high incidents of otherwise very rare genetic disorders throughout the Arab Muslim world are a consequence. There’s no question in my mind that this contributes to their fanaticism and seeming inability to create functional societies. This topic continues to be off-limits at the present time due to Hitler taking it to a horrendous extreme, but won’t forever, because you can’t repeal the laws of nature. You and I may not be around to see it discussed frankly but, then again, we might—if there’s another 9/11-type attack that forces us to drop all niceties and deal with the harsh realities of life.
Posted by on 06/25/2006 at 06:19 PM
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