Update II: The Dilemma Of The Dhimmi

Britain,Democracy,EU,Europe,Feminism,Islam,Jihad,Multiculturalism,Neoconservatism,The West

            

To condemn or not to condemn a “man [who is] behaving … just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six-year-old girl Aisha”—that is the question. An NIS News Bulletin, Via Jihad Watch, reports that the heroic Dutchman Geert Wilders—one of the few political leaders in the West to reject dhimmitude— “has compared the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.” What prompted the fearless leader of the ascendant Party for Freedom (PVV) to pipe up recently?

Over to NIS News:

Geert Wilders has seized on a news report from Saudi Arabia for peppery [sic] written questions to the cabinet. In these, he compares the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.

Wilders has requested clarification from Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen on a marriage in Saudi Arabia between an 80-year-old man and a 10-year-old child. The child had run away from her elderly husband, but was brought back to him by her father, the English-language website Arab News reports based on a Saudi newspaper.

Wilders asks the minister if he shares the view that “this man is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six year old girl Aisha.” The PVV leader wants Verhagen to summon the Saudi Arabian ambassador to express his repugnance.

ROBERT SPENCER ponders the dhimmi’s dilemma:

[T]his puts those who will condemn Wilders in a peculiar position. If they take issue with his characterization of Muhammad, they will either be excusing the Muslim prophet’s marriage to a six-year-old and declining to condemn those Muslims who imitate their prophet by taking child brides, or, if they say that Muhammad didn’t actually marry a child, they’re in the position of denying evidence that is in the sources Muslims consider most reliable. Yet as this incident with the 80-year-old and his 10-year-old bride demonstrates ( “my marriage is not against Shariah,” said the codger), many Muslims take that evidence quite seriously.

Update I (August 31): JP writes: Jamie, you cannot try an Arab in his homeland based on Western Laws.

This is a point well taken and worth making. It is clear to me that unlike, say, an America leader, whose admonitions to the Arab world may carry the threat of an invasion, Wilders is merely being provocative. His intention and consistent modus operandi are to expose the West’s self-immolating left-liberalism. I believe the same is the case here. Where are the Hildebeest-type feminists on this?

My mention of Daniel Hannan, the new-found darling of American conservatives and libertarians, in this context, is only tangentially related. Nevertheless, I’ve been meaning to bring Hanna up. Here’s what he had to say about Wilders:

It’s true that Geert Wilders is a controversialist, who takes pleasure in causing offence. He needs 24-hour protection, so serious are the death-threats he has attracted from jihadis. He revels in offending liberals as well as Muslims: his call for the Koran to be banned struck me as rather inconsistent with his stated commitment to civic freedoms. I wouldn’t vote for him if I were Dutch.

My Netherlands-based family are proud supporters of the heroic Wilders, the only man to understand the stakes. Hannan here is very much in the sneering mode of Mark Steyn, who lauds the manner in which America has dealt with fractious immigrant populations, and distinguishes between the American and European melting pots. I don’t know if he is one, but neoconservatives of the deepest dye do not allow for the questioning of immigration policy with respect to the future of western liberal societies.

In “Get With The Global Program, Gaul” I noted:

“When America’s news cartel woke up to one of 2005’s biggest stories—Muslims running riot across France—the response from many a neoconservative was to gloat.

The Schadenfreude was tinged with a sense of American superiority. It’s not happening here because we’re better. And why are we superior? To listen to their accounts, it’s because we’ve submerged or erased aspects of the American identity. …

Perhaps the threat to both homelands is overplayed. I sincerely hope so—for the French and for us. But even if France isn’t the proverbial canary in the coal mine, shouldn’t Americans be rooting for this once-magnificent European country?

Not according to some prominent neoconservatives, for whom the destruction of 8,400 vehicles, dozens of buildings, and at least one life by the Muslim community of France has served to focus attentions on… the ‘bigoted’ French.” …

[SNIP]

Hannan has generally condemned the hard-right parties of Europe and the UK as “fascist,” which is vintage neoconservatism. (It is possible that this “turn” in Hannan’s politics came about after the savaging he endured for citing “Powell, the Conservative minister who was cast into the political wilderness after warning that open immigration would lead to ‘rivers of blood,” as a major political influence.”) And although I too dislike the protectionism and economic socialism of said parties, they do address the indispensable immigration issue.

Undeniably “exceptionally intelligent,” the man speaks a superb English, something that seduced me initially too. However, I soon discerned that even Hannan’s pronunciations about American liberties sundered under Obama were somewhat shallow, or strategically tailored to his role as a star among Republican TV hosts.
Yes, he knows well and repeats often the principles of dispersion and decentralization of power inherent in the American system. But, like so many neocons, he conveys the false idea that up until recently those principles had been respected. Hogwash. Obama is continuing on the path of his predecessor, and Bush built on the wrecking Clinton did. And before that… well you know the story.

Update II: Via Jamie. It would appear that Hannan does subscribe to the neoconservative concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.”

12 thoughts on “Update II: The Dilemma Of The Dhimmi

  1. M. B. Moon

    Wow! Really revolting. The Christian Bible (NT) reports that the Hebrew Prophets were holy, I find no evidence in the Torah to the contrary:

    “… as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old … “ Luke 1:70

    “…whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.” Acts 3:21

    “… that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.” 2 Peter 3:2

    Christians and Jews often fail to meet God’s standards but we normally acknowledge their righteousness. I perceive a different approach in Islam.

    All quotes from Biblegateway.com

  2. Steve Hogan

    This is appalling. The “husband” is a pervert and the girl’s father should be in jail for child abuse.

  3. JP Strauss

    Jamie, you cannot try an Arab in his homeland based on Western Laws. This is but a red herring. What you should be focusing on is the theocracy that makes such laws.

  4. Gringo Malo

    Pardon me, ma’am, but what’s the point of all this? Does anyone really care what one Muslim does to another? If so, why? Millions of potentially dangerous Muslims run loose in Europe and America. This is a much more serious problem than child marriage in the sandbox, and protesting to the Saudis does nothing to address it.

  5. M. B. Moon

    “Millions of potentially dangerous Muslims run loose in Europe and America.” Gringo Malo (Bad Gringo?)

    Perhaps Europe and America should consider why they have low birth rates and need foreign labor?

    Could the need for two family incomes have anything to do with it?

  6. Jamie

    Many of the things Hannan has to say are refreshing coming from a European politician. But I too have problems with his attitude towards unfettered third world immigration. It is amazing to me he can hold this position when so many European cities that were once completely safe, day or night, now are full of no-go areas. Is this coincidence, or does unchecked immigration have something to do with it?

    This video pretty much confirms Ilana’s analysis of Hannan as a neocon. Pay close attention to what Hannan says at the 1:12 mark.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scXWYPp4DC4

    [Thank you for supplementing with more evidence.]

  7. Barbara Grant

    Wow, is he wrong on history! I’ve been studying WWI (“The Great War,” as the British call it) and it is true, young men from countries such as Australia and New Zealand joined up in droves to fight for Britain, but _not for the reason Hannan gives_, i.e. “values” or shared ideology. They joined up, according to my reading, because even though they were nationals of Commonwealth countries rather than the U. K., they still considered themselves “British,” long before the notion of “multiculturalism” had entered the English mind. Aussies and Kiwis of Irish descent shared cultural commonality with their British-derived countrymen, and volunteered as well. To paint a (relatively) modern European conflict in the tones of “shared values” and propositional nationhood does injustice to history, and to the men who gave their lives for Britain.

  8. H. Horse

    Basing a nation on values and propositions is a practical nihilism.

  9. Nebojsa

    Let’s not label people so hastily. Hannan is a Tory, and European politics are a fair bit different from American. Maybe he subscribes to the notion of a “proposition nation” but that makes him a starry-eyed idealist who still believes in what this country could have and should have been, as opposed to what it actually is. And I’ve never seen any politician dressed down the way he destroyed Gordon Brown in the European Parliament. So if he’s a bit soft on immigration, he sounds like a rational fellow, and can perhaps be persuaded otherwise. There’s no cure for the evil and the stupid that dominate the political system in which Hannan is a notable exception.

  10. Van Wijk

    Spot-on analysis of Hannan. Another one bites the dust.

    Perhaps when the immigrant thug comes to rob him, he can make an economic argument, or perhaps appeal to the universal and color-blind British values that he and the thug share. Eloquent man that he is, I bet he’d even get a full sentence out before the truncheon came down.

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