Saturday, April 29, 2006

Mark Steyn on Islam

Mark Steyn has a column in Canadian publication Macleans, in yesterday's Book section. It's about Oriana Fallaci's latest book, The Force of Reason. But it's also about the broader question of Islam in the world.

Over in Sweden, they've been investigating the Grand Mosque of Stockholm. Apparently, it's the one-stop shop for all your jihad needs: you can buy audio cassettes at the mosque encouraging you to become a martyr and sally forth to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" -- i.e. Jews. So somebody filed a racial-incitement complaint and the coppers started looking into it, and then Sweden's chancellor of justice, Goran Lambertz, stepped in. And Mr. Lambertz decided to close down the investigation on the grounds that, even though the porcine-sibling stuff is "highly degrading," this kind of chit-chat "should be judged differently -- and therefore be regarded as permissible -- because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict."

In other words, if you threaten to kill people often enough, it will be seen as part of your vibrant cultural tradition -- and, by definition, we're all cool with that. Celebrate diversity, etc. Our tolerant multicultural society is so tolerant and multicultural we'll tolerate your intolerant uniculturalism. Your antipathy to diversity is just another form of diversity for us to celebrate.

I remember Dennis Prager, on his radio show, saying that Germany learned the wrong lessons from World War II. It looks as though Sweden has also learned the wrong lessons from Muslim riots.

Oriana Fallaci, in her book, distinguishes between the different types of Islam, in what Mark Steyn considers the most valuable point she makes.

[O]ne reason why westernized Muslims seem so confident is that Europeans like Herr Genscher, in positing a choice between a generalized "Islam" and "the West," have inadvertently promoted a globalized pan-Islamism that's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, Germany has Turks, France has Algerians, Britain has Pakistanis, the Netherlands has Indonesians. Even though they're all Muslims, the differences between them have been very significant: Sunni vs. Shia, Arab Islam vs. the more moderate form prevailing in Southeast Asia.

Once upon a time we used to understand this. I've noticed in the last few years that, if you pull any old minor 19th-century memoir off the shelf, the en passant observations about Islam seem more informed than most of the allegedly expert commentary that appeared in the year after 9/11. For example, in Our Crisis: Or Three Months at Patna During the Insurrection of 1857, William Tayler wrote, "With the Soonnees the Wahabees are on terms of tolerable agreement, though differing on certain points, but from the Sheahs, they differ radically, and their hatred, like all religious hatred, is bitter and intolerant. But the most striking characteristic of the Wahabee sect, and that which principally concerns this narrative, is the entire subservience which they yield to the Peer, or spiritual guide."

Had William Tayler been around when the Islamification of the West got under way and you'd said to him there was a mosque opening down the street, he'd have wanted to know: what kind of mosque? Who's the imam? What branch of Islam? Old-school imperialists could never get away with the feel-good condescension of PC progressives.

Here's Tayler again: "The tenets originally professed by the Wahabees have been described as a Mahomedan Puritanism joined to a Bedouin Phylarchy, in which the great chief is both the political and religious leader of the nation."

Muslims are not all alike. And the more dangerous to the West appears to be the Wahabis, the sect of Saudi Arabia that is probably an even bigger export than their oil. We need to train ourselves to detect the difference, and then we need a plan to deal with the reality we face. I'm just not sure what that plan should be.

5 comments:

janice said...

Oriana Fallaci has been a great champion of pointing out the evil of islam and the threat it poses to the west.

The differences between muslims only matters to muslims, they have a saying we should all remember;
"The enemy of of my enemy is my friend"

An arab's concept of the world has been described as a series of seven concentric circles with the individual muslim at the center. Thus, he has his family, an extended family or tribe, an immediate geographic region, and then his country. It is within the family that the psychology of the muslim arab is formed.
An old Arab saying aptly describes this. "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world."

SkyePuppy said...

Janice,

I have to disagree with you that we're at war with all of Islam. The differences between Muslims matter to us, or what we're doing in Iraq was a stupid waste of time and lives.

If we're at war with Islam, then we should have hit Iraq with a neutron bomb and taken over the oil fields. And we should neutron bomb Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, and all the rest.

But we didn't do these things, because we're not at war with all of Islam. We're at war with the extremists. And our efforts in Iraq are, God willing, building a free, moderate Iraq that we can live in peace with.

We're already at peace (without much worry) with Libya, Morocco, Algeria, and Indonesia. We have cautious (from my perspective) peace with Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Iran, Syria, and the PA are problematic.

Domestically, CAIR is a menace, and so are a lot of the Wahabist mosques where extremist imams are masquerading as normal people.

When I was on a trip to Europe, back in the early 1980s, I stayed in a youth hostel in Geneva. A lot of men were staying there that I identified as "North African," though they may have been Middle Eastern. At any rate, they were Muslims, and my hackles went up so fast when I was around them that it took me by surprise. I didn't trust them as far as I could throw the Statue of Liberty. I felt unsafe every second I was around them, even though they never did or said anything worrisome. I have never felt that strongly that quickly about anyone.

Where I work now, and at previous jobs in this area, there are Muslims--primarily from Iran. And I never feel that same sense of mistrust or lack of safety when I'm around them. I would trust these people as much as I would trust any of my other co-workers. And I haven't noticed any lessening of the accuracy of my hackles in the last twenty years.

We must destroy the extremists and give the rest of the Muslims, like Mohammed and Omar at Iraq The Model, a chance for peace.

janice said...

Skye,
I hope you're correct. But, I think the extremist coupled with CAIR, the Saudi funded wahabist mosques are giving moderates a bad name. I hope Iraq the model is the norm and not the exception in the muslim world and they will choose peace over the mob mentaility of death and destruction.
I keep looking at Israel as the peace process has been stopped by the muslims. They could have had a state years ago, simply stop the killing of jews. Lead by hate mongers, they choose not to.
The moderate rhetoric needs to be amplified and change needs to happen from within. Muslims will change the "arab" mindset. They hold the keys to peace.
One question, what are your "hackles"?

SkyePuppy said...

Janice,

I had to look it up, just to make sure I wasn't misusing the word (I wasn't). It's the hairs on the back of your neck that stand up when you sense danger(like what dogs do).

It's that sense of alarm or creepiness--like when you know some guy is a lech or a creep and your hands want to go up while you say "back off," only you keep quiet but get away from the guy as fast as you can.

I hope I answered your question.

janice said...

Thank you, I am one who is not afraid to ask questions.
I can't wait till I can use it in conversation and impress my boss.
Thanks again