Category Archives: Islam

Prominent Neoconservative Admits Europeans Ahead On Multiculturalism

Affirmative Action, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Racism, Republicans

Which is what I said back in … 2005, in the column titled “Get With The Global Program, Gaul”. At the time, the famed Francis Fukuyama, Frederick Kempe, and Jonah Goldberg—neoconservatives all—had fingered the French for racism and snobbery in marginalizing their Muslims, who were running riot across France. All nonsense on stilts, naturally. The French simply rejected what we Americans embrace: submerging aspects of their identity for their mad-as-hell Maghrebis. As I wrote then:

“To her credit, France has no institutionalized multiculturalism. Integrating individuals, not communities, is how the French have approached their émigré population. They say their republican values proscribe affirmative action. But since America’s republican values haven’t hindered racist quotas here, says our neoconservative troika, the French should get with The Program.”

“Schadenfreude tinged with a sense of American superiority,” is how I characterized this neoconservatives response to the destruction Muslims visited across France. Their recommendations for the errant Europeans? Perfect yourselves by following us Americans; through affirmative action programs; through fashioning a spanking new national identity; do some “nationl building.”

Now, Dr. Daniel Pipes admits to finding the European anti-Islamist stance encouraging. Those of us who have family in Europe are well-aware that this position is widely shared by Europeans. In the Netherlands, for example, they vote in large numbers for Geert Wilders, an influential Dutch parliamentarian working against the spread of Islam in his country, and roundly condemned by most on the American “right” as a fascist.

Dr. Pipes’ is a welcome conversion, although he is simply lauding politicians for catching up with the people they are supposed the represent. Writes Dr. Pipes:

The stirring speech by British prime minister David Cameron on Feb. 5, in which he intelligently focused on what he called the “hands-off tolerance” of “Islamist extremism,” including its non-violent forms, exactly fits this pattern.
In similar fashion, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last October deemed multiculturalism to have “utterly failed.” A referendum in Switzerland about minarets manifested the concerns of that country’s population – and polling around the continent showed those sentiments to be widely shared.
The rise of respectable political parties primarily focused on the issues surrounding Islam – with Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands at the forefront – is perhaps the single most encouraging sign, compelling legacy parties like the British Conservatives to pay attention.

The Arab Street: Militant or Moderate?

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Islam, Israel, Middle East

The Arab Street has always been more militant than its leaders—that is if moderation is conflated, in the Arab world, with less religiosity and a less belligerent position toward Israel and the US. To some, this might be an arguable point. But as someone who lived in Israel when the heroic Anwar Sadat addressed the Israeli Knesset (and paid for it with his life), it seems a fair point to make: Sadat (a hero to many ex-Israelis like myself) was—and Mubarak is—more moderate than the pan-Arabists who preceded them (Google “Pan-Arabism before Nasser”).

The chants that rise above the fists punching the air in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria are often about—and against—Mubarak’s patience with “the Jewish State,” which, naturally, “controls the USA.”

I have no idea who’ll follow Mubarak, but if Lebanon is any indication, then the Islamist faction will be influential given its “persuasive” tactics.

This does not mean that the uprising in Egypt is not democratic and, as such, a legitimate expression of the will of the majority. It is also true, however, that Arab dynastic rulers have, for the most, been more moderate than the seething masses they’ve rules with an iron fist.

UPDATE II: “Inside [John Esposito’s] Islam”

Islam, Israel, Jihad, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Pseudoscience

Very little was said about sample size, data-collection methods and other crucial methodological matters during the screening, on PBS, of the documentary “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think.”

“We have the missing answers and statistics, gathered, parsed, and analyzed not by pundits but by professional researchers”: So goes a declamation on the website touting the program. This sounds a lot like advertising. You do learn that these stellar social scientists relied on the interview to collect this definitive information (which concludes that Muslims the world over are moderates). The interview is one of the least reliable tools in the social sciences. The questions asked and showcased, moreover, were most definitely leading questions. The answers people tend to give to loaded questions are usually bogus.

Other than Georgetown University Professor John Esposito, an A-list Islam apologist, “Inside Islam” introduced the viewer to emphatic, invested presenters of a one-sided view of the West as oblivious to Muslim opinion and aspirations.

I guess they had a valid point with respect to American foreign policy. You have to possess Olympian vanity to invade Muslim countries as America has done, with so little knowledge of the history of the people, the region and the outcome of prior such faith-based democratic missionizing.

However, the efforts of Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies (also an Obama appointee), to sanitize Islam became quite ridiculous when she contended that her faith specifies a series of inalienable rights designed to protect the individual against the state.

Come again? More than a religion, Islam is a fully developed political system.

Mogahed was commandeering the language of the American Bill of Rights to ingratiate Islam on her audience. What has happened to the social sciences? In my days you ruled out activists.

In the same spirit of “scientific” detachment, another self-styled social scientist, who spoke at length on “Inside Islam,” ventured that Israel was a piece of the West left behind in Muslim lands; a sore reminder of this occupation. Our impartial researcher was voicing the radical opinions of the Helen-Thomas School of Thought.

My old Afrikaner lecturers—the ones who drilled me in statistics—would have barred both Mogahed and her colleague from designing or partaking in a study for fear of biasing the results.

There is a good chapter on the death of the social sciences in “WE ARE DOOMED.”

The social sciences are most certainly doomed.

UPDATE I (Jan. 1): Stephen raises an interesting point about pathological sexual repression. Sexual deprivation accounts for the accepted practice of rampant homosexuality among heterosexual Muslims prior to marriage.

UPDATE II: Actually, Mercer (Who Eats Nails For Breakfast) had softened momentarily to the excuse-making, psychologizing, school of thought on Islam. Larry Auster keeps us focused: “It’s because they’re sexually repressed–no, it’s because they lack democracy–no, it’s because they marry their cousins–no, it’s because they were ‘left behind’–no, it’s because of Israeli cruelty–no, it’s because of … Anything But Islam.”

UPDATED: A South African Or A Somali? Who To ‘Naturalize’?

Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Racism, South-Africa, Terrorism

The arrest of 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, for planning to set off a bomb in Portland, Oregon, smacks of FBI entrapment; the FBI is notorious for the wickedly smart traps it lays for slow youth (such as the Miami Seven).

Even if the FBI has narrowly avoided the legal definition of entrapment in MOM’s case, it is rather ludicrous to hear media megaphones mouthing the mantra about this arrest providing proof, once again, that “they are out to get us.” Yes, it proves your government is out to get you—with its immigration policies.

Who let this guy in?

No one is saying—and the matter will remain submerged. Not even Google will give up MOM’s “immigration success story,” but you and I know that his folks are not plucky H-1B or O-1 visa holders. They’re probably visa lottery winners or refugees.

I had just blogged about the revocation of Brandon Huntley’s refugee status by the Canadian Court, which was “guided” by the Canadian Immigration Department, which, in turn, took orders from South Africa’s ANC goons. The latter oleaginous officials were backed by legions of house-trained liberals. “133 academics from 13 South African and 6 overseas universities,” all united to rob a man of a bit of luck; of some mercy.

What cowards!

Huntley is a South African (of the WASP variety).

In the Comments Section, another white South African gloated. Huntley had it coming. He isn’t a very nice guy. This is indeed the liberal mindset. The white, liberal man (even when he calls himself a “conservative”) is a deracinated creature, completely without the ability to see the bigger picture that is the South African reality.

It was argued that the Canadian government would have been “deluged by South African asylum seekers jumping at the chance to get into a country they wouldn’t otherwise have a prayer of getting into.”

Our reader never asks himself why it is that Canada and the US routinely reject (even deport) South African WASP immigrants, who are known for their wicked work ethic, happen to share the same ancestors and faith, and do not harbor Jihadi ambitions.

You are more likely to come upon a Mohamed Osman Mohamud in an American suburb than bump into a van der Merwe, in other words, a South African homie. But the liberal mindset (prevalent among most conservatives) forbids such inquisitiveness. Doesn’t occur …

Yes, Brandon Huntley was denied that meager thing called mercy because he acted like a bit of a blowhard, says one white bloke.

Yes, if Brandon had only been sepia tinged and harbored ambitions to blow things up, he’d have been a citizen of Canada or the USA already.

UPDATE: HORRIBLE HABITS (MORE LIKE TRADITIONS). It’s hard to make out if VDARE or someone else is the origin of the following: “Somalis are singularly unfit for life in North America, even if they remain (more or less) non-violent.” The hyperlinks lead here: “Somali Mom Asphyxiates Two Kids in Closet.”

And HERE: “Green Bay’s Dis-Americanization Proceeding Nicely.”

And HERE: Somalis “are unassimilated Muslims who follow violent sharia law, practice polygamy and slice off the private parts of their little girls (aka FGM, with a prevalence of 98% in Somalia).”

[SNIP]

So why are 85,000 Somali immigrants a good thing, but a “deluge” of WASP South Africans cannot be countenanced or coped with? Afraid the latter will work too hard for their money? Don’t we need more productive individuals in order to support all those Somalis?