(The following is the continuation of what I said in my user page:)
...or what Geert Wilders says in the same website about how the West is committing suicide with its multiculturalist approach to Islam. (Robert Spencer’s defense of Wilders is viewable as well, as is Pamela Geller’s interview.) The “clash of psychoclasses” has been discussed in the talk page. For a more conventional critique see Who’s Sleeping More Deeply — Europe or America? by Bruce Bawer or this article by Pascal Bruckner, and the section of Paul Berman’s long article in The New Republic after the first mention to Ayaan Hirsi Ali: an heroic woman who truly deserves a Taj Mahal if something ever happens to her...
Bruce Bawer edit
"While Sweden Slept" - this piece of journalism and the readers' debate is an eye-opener in line of what Roland Huntford wrote in The New Totalitarians, a study of Swedish socialism. But "An Anatomy of Surrender" is the most shocking piece by Bawer on the absolute lack of spine among Westerners in general and Europeans in particular. The article hits the nail about what is happening in Wikipedia on this subject due to its so-called "reliable sources" policy:
| “ | While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong's hagiography of Mohammed as "a good place to start" learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito "WANT TO UNDERSTAND ISLAM? START HERE" [...].
So it goes in this upside-down, not-so-brave new media world: those who, if given the power, would subjugate infidels, oppress women, and execute apostates and homosexuals are "moderate" (a moderate, these days, apparently being anybody who doesn’t have explosives strapped to his body), while those who dare to call a spade a spade are "Islamophobes."[1] |
” |
In the article Bawer also wrote:
| “ | These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission. |
” |
And what about this splendid example of Newspeak in same article?:
| “ | When, years after September 11, President George W. Bush finally acknowledged publicly that the West was at war with Islamic fascism, Muslims' and multiculturalists' furious reaction made him retreat to the empty term "war on terror." Britain's Foreign Office has since deemed even that phrase offensive and banned its use by cabinet members (along with "Islamic extremism"). In January, the Home Office decided that Islamic terrorism would henceforth be described as "anti-Islamic activity." [my bold-type] | ” |
And this one pretty much demonstrates that some Europeans are really idiots and criminals trying to destroy Europe:
| “ | Western legislatures and courts have reinforced the "spirit of appeasement." In 2005, Norway's parliament, with virtually no public discussion or media coverage, criminalized religious insults (and placed the burden of proof on the defendant). Last year, that country's most celebrated lawyer, Tor Erling Staff, argued that the punishment for honor killing should be less than for other murders, because it's arrogant for us to expect Muslim men to conform to our society's norms. Also in 2007, in one of several instances in which magistrates sworn to uphold German law have followed sharia instead, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim womans request for a quick divorce from her brutally abusive husband; after all, under the Koran he had the right to beat her. | ” |
Yeap. A Briton wrote that the governments of Europe want to wipe out the peoples of Europe, their history, culture and national identities with someone else. And this is from Bawer's article "Paradise lost in the Netherlands":
| “ | If there's anything in Europe today that's more alarming than the number of European Muslims who hold radically undemocratic views (40 percent of British Muslims would like to see Britain under sharia law), it's the feckless way in which government officials tend to respond to those views. Particularly if they include explosions of public complaints and protests. | ” |
In the scholarly article "Crisis in Europe" Bawer quotes Oriana Fallaci:
| “ | "I am very, very, very angry... I spit in their face" [wrote Falacci]. "They" being not only the terrorists, but aslo the European elite. | ” |
readers' comments edit
From Scandinavia:
| “ | Freedom is not only threatened in the Netherlands but all over Western Europe. The fusion of relativism /socialism, anti-Americanism and militant Islam has created a very dangerous beast. The mainstream society is still living in denial. Although wars have been fought with Muslim invaders since at least the 8th century a frank and honest discussion about the dangers of this enemy is more or less outlawed. Recently the bureaucrats of the European Union have drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements. A new deal also specifies one- to three-year prison terms be available for incitement to hatred "against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin" (i.e. an ambiguous and rather creepy formula "accidentally" evoked one year after the cartoon affair). | ” |
By Henrik:
| “ | It is so truly sad to see how Europe has lost the will to live... Everything that made us great is being thrown away [...].
It is just so tremendously sad. I nowadays live in the US and let me tell you, it is a fantastic country. On TV both sides are always represented, which is the complete opposite of how it works in Europe where you'll be called a rascist if you oppose mass-immigration, deconstruction of European values (in Europe) on behalf of Islamic fundamentalism. It is so sad. May they left burn in hell for what they have done. |
” |
Robert Spencer edit
The West seems to be sleeping in the Matrix. Just as in the 1930s Western Europe was committing suicide with its blindness toward Stalin and the communist threat, presently Westerners —including many wikipedians— are doing basically the same with the Islamic threat. While the prolific writer Robert Spencer could be an antidote for this generalized blindness, he's not being taken seriously. Spencer wrote:
| “ | The truth is there does not exist an identifiable body of Muslims, substantive in number or an outright majority, who could be described as "moderate" by their repudiation of Muslim extremists [...]. Consequently, what might pass for "moderate" Muslims, the large number of Muslims unaccounted for as to what they think, in practical terms constitute a forest within which extremists are incubated, nurtured, given ideological and material support, and to which they return for sanctuary.[2] | ” |
And in his FAQ page he stated:
| “ | It is not an act of hatred against Muslims to point out the depredations of jihad ideology. It is a peculiar species of displacement and projection to accuse someone who exposes the hatred of one group of hatred himself.[3] | ” |
The film Islam: What the West Needs to Know explains fairly what do we mean. (What Martin Gilbert said in the section "The Culture of Denial" in this video is also relevant.)
Ibn Warraq edit
In Free Inquiry Ibn Warraq wrote:
| “ | After this parade of quotations, some readers will object to my reliance on Western scholars, some firmly in the camp that bears the much-feared label «Orientalist.» Of course, the influence of charlatans like Edward Said—and the pernicious academic climate of relativism and multiculturalism that he did so much to engender—has made cross-cultural judgments well-nigh impossible. (For more on this, see my Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, Prometheus 2007.)[4] | ” |
Christopher Hitchens edit
From "Facing the Islamist Menace", a book review by Hitchens of America Alone:
| “ | Some denounced me as cynical for saying at the time that Osama bin Laden had done us a favor by disclosing the nature and urgency of the Islamist threat [...]. But at least the long period of somnambulism is over, and the opportunity now exists for antibodies to form against the infection [...].
The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives. |
” |