Category Archives: The West

Updated: The Barbarian West

Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, libertarianism, Terrorism, The West

What’s another bout with a 48-hour flu, my second this season, compared to the ordeal the heroic Kurt Westergaard—illustrator of the the 12 Jyllands-Posten cartoons, depicting the connection between Muhammad and the violence that disfigures the Muslim world—must live with day-in and day-out.

Satire is a highly civilized and refined way of exposing “folly, vice, or stupidity,” to follow the dictionary. For lampooning the connection between Muhammad, author of Islam, and the savagery and atavism that grip the Muslim world today, Westergaard’s life has been continually threatened.

“On Friday night, a 28-year-old Somali man, armed with an ax and a knife, tried to enter the home of Kurt Westergaard in Aarhus Denmark. Westergaard was at home with his visiting 5-year-old granddaughter when he heard the suspect trying to break in. ‘I locked myself in our safe room and alerted the police.'” (The Examiner.com.)

“Unable to smash the front door with his ax, the suspect was shot once in the knee and once in the hand by police. The wounds are not life-threatening.” [Why not?]

AND:

“Police were aware of the Somali suspect’s background from previous activities in east Africa and had a permit to live in Denmark.”

A pattern.

I’ve said it again and again: This is not a failure of Jihad; Jihad is doing just fine for itself, functioning as it ought to. Rather, attacks on the lives of the likes of the late Theo van Gogh, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Westergaard, and Wafa Sultan showcase the West at its miserable emasculated worst.

Contrary to some libertarian opinion, a free society is not one in which civilized courageous, peaceful human beings fear for their lives, but one in which such individuals thrive, as their assailants cower in dank corners, hunted and exterminated like vermin.

Updated (Jan. 4, 2010): A little timid for my taste, but well worth a read: “Heeere’s Muhammed!”

‘Geert Wilders Must Prevail’

Free Speech, Islam, Terrorism, The West

So says Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer:

“Free speech goes on trial in the Netherlands on January 20, when Dutch politician Geert Wilders appears before the Amsterdam District Court on charges of having ‘intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion,’ as well as having incited to hatred and discrimination.

What did Wilders do to warrant such charges? He told the truth about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, and their roots in Islamic texts and teachings, in his film Fitna and elsewhere. But nowadays truth-telling is at such a premium that those who still dare to engage in it are threatened, harassed and prosecuted.

“But Wilders is defiant: ‘On the 20th of January 2010, a political trial will start. I am being prosecuted for my political convictions. The freedom of speech is on the verge of collapsing. If a politician is not allowed to criticise an ideology anymore, this means that we are lost, and it will lead to the end of our freedom. However I remain combative: I am convinced that I will be acquitted.’

The very idea of trying someone for offending someone else is absurd – especially when the offended group is known to traffic in the PC multiculturalist coin of wounded feelings, so as to gain the political power that comes from victim status. That the Amsterdam District Court would aid and abet this absurdity and obvious manipulation unmasks the Wilders trial – even before it starts – as what it really is: an attempt by the nation’s political elites to silence one of their most formidable critics.”

Reading the complete column, Free Speech on Trial by Robert Spencer, is compulsory. You need to know that “In October the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize ‘any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.'”

'Geert Wilders Must Prevail'

Free Speech, Islam, Terrorism, The West

So says Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer:

“Free speech goes on trial in the Netherlands on January 20, when Dutch politician Geert Wilders appears before the Amsterdam District Court on charges of having ‘intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion,’ as well as having incited to hatred and discrimination.

What did Wilders do to warrant such charges? He told the truth about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, and their roots in Islamic texts and teachings, in his film Fitna and elsewhere. But nowadays truth-telling is at such a premium that those who still dare to engage in it are threatened, harassed and prosecuted.

“But Wilders is defiant: ‘On the 20th of January 2010, a political trial will start. I am being prosecuted for my political convictions. The freedom of speech is on the verge of collapsing. If a politician is not allowed to criticise an ideology anymore, this means that we are lost, and it will lead to the end of our freedom. However I remain combative: I am convinced that I will be acquitted.’

The very idea of trying someone for offending someone else is absurd – especially when the offended group is known to traffic in the PC multiculturalist coin of wounded feelings, so as to gain the political power that comes from victim status. That the Amsterdam District Court would aid and abet this absurdity and obvious manipulation unmasks the Wilders trial – even before it starts – as what it really is: an attempt by the nation’s political elites to silence one of their most formidable critics.”

Reading the complete column, Free Speech on Trial by Robert Spencer, is compulsory. You need to know that “In October the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize ‘any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.'”

Update II: Minarets No More

EU, Freedom of Religion, Islam, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, The West

The minaret is the quintessential symbol of Islam’s power. Not only is this structural spire an imposing eyesore, towering over 200 meters above, but it emits—by virtue of the muezzin’s ululations—noise pollution five times a day.

The Swiss have not rejected freedom of religion—Muslims can worship as they wish. What the Swiss have decided is to reject the architectural, auditory and cultural imposition that the minaret signifies and retain the western flare of their cities. Naturally, CNN has framed the plebiscite as the work of the far right:

Swiss voters on Sunday adopted a referendum banning the construction of minarets, seen by some on the far right as a sign of encroaching Islamism.

“The Federal Council respects this decision,” said a statement from Switzerland’s government. “Consequently the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted. The four existing minarets will remain.

MORE.

Update I (Nov. 30): On the meaning of the minaret, Islam scholar Andy Bostom quotes “the official Brill Encyclopedia of Islam”:

“It seems on the whole unrelated to its function of the adh?n [q.v.] calling the faithful to prayer, which can be made quite adequately from the roof of the mosque or even from the house-top. During the lifetime of the Prophet, his Abyssinian slave Bil?l [q.v.], was responsible for making the call to prayer in this way. The practice continued for another generation, a fact which demonstrates that the minaret is not an essential part of Islamic ritual. To this day, certain Islamic communities, especially the most orthodox ones like the Wahh?b?s in Arabia, avoid building minarets on the grounds that they are ostentatious and unnecessary. … It must be remembered, however, that throughout the mediaeval period, the role of the minaret oscillated between two polarities: as a sign of power and as an instrument for the adh?n.”

AND:

“The venerable Brill Encyclopedia of Islam (EOI) entry on minarets makes plain that minarets are a political statement of Islamic supremacism. Interestingly, given current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s provocative statement while mayor of Istanbul (the full statement was quoted in a NY Times story http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/nyt.html by Stephen Kinzer from 2/16/1998: ‘The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army’), cited by opponents of minaret construction in Switzerland—the observations from the Brill EOI about the Ottoman perspective on minarets are of particular note.”

MORE.

Update II: Diana West has rounded up responses from across Europe to the Swiss’s anti-Islamization declaration.