Here are a couple of quotes I came across on a martial arts forum, of all places, about Josef Stalin, another avid fan of brutalist architecture.

From Malcolm Muggeridge’s accounts of a conversation with Svetlna Stalin, from the book “Can Man Live without God”, by Ravi Zacharias:

“On one occasion Stalin called for five live chickens and proceeded to use it to make an unforgettable point before his henchmen. Forcefully clutching a chicken in one hand, with the other he began to systematically pluck out its feathers. As the chicken struggled in vain to escape, he continued with the painful denuding until the bird was completely stripped. “Now you watch, ” Stalin said as he placed the chicken on the floor and walked away with some breadcrumbs in his hand. Incredibly the fear-crazed chicken hobbled toward him and clung to the legs of his trousers. Stalin threw a hand full of grain to the bird, and as it began to follow him around the room, he turned to his dumbfounded colleagues and said quietly, “This is the way to rule the people. Did you see how that chicken followed me for food, even though I had caused it such torture? People are like that chicken. If you inflict inordinate pain on theme they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.”

Every chicken has its day:

Stalin’s death fits Aristotle’s thought that ‘a tyrant is of all persons the man who can place no confidence in friends, as every one has it in his desire and these chiefly in their power to destroy him.’

Some of Stalin’s colleagues certainly had reason to hope for his death. He was preparing another purge and had also indicated that he was thinking of removing Beria from his post as head of the secret police. The night before his stroke, he had kept his colleagues up until four in the morning. He had said that some of the leadership thought they could get by on their past merits. Some of them may have been chilled by his further remark that ‘they are mistaken’.

All the next morning, Stalin did not appear. His staff started to worry at midday, but they knew better than to enter his room unless they were sent for. They first went in at eleven o’clock that night and found Stalin on the floor, conscious but unable to speak. The called Malenkov and Beria, but Malenkov would not come without Beria. At three in the morning, Beria arrived and said Stalin was only sleeping.

Under Beria’s instructions, no doctors were called. Beria and other leaders came back at nine a.m. The doctors followed.

Beria had delayed medical help for perhaps a whole day after the stroke had occurred and it seemed clear that Stalin could not live. Khrushchev described Beria at the bedside: “Beria started going around spewing hatred against him and mocking him. It was simply unbearable to listen to Beria.”

But Stalin regained partial consciousness and pointed to something on the wall. Stalin’s daughter noted how Beria changed: ‘Beria stared fixedly at those clouded eyes, anxious even now to convince my father that he was the most loyal and devoted of them all, as he had always tried with every ounce of his strength to appear to be.’ Khrushev says that Beria then ‘threw himself on his knees, seized Stalin’s hand, and started kissing it. When Stalin lost consciousness again and closed his eyes, Beria stood up and spat.

– Jonathan Glover; (1999); from ‘Humanity A Moral History of the Twentieth Century’

UPDATE: Stalin not a John Wayne fan.

Continueing on the theme of Francis Fukuyama’s essay I posted yesterday, there is quite an interesting ongoing debate on the issue of Multiculturalism and Muslim integration (or lack thereof) in Europe on signandsight.com (a site that “gathers voices from across Europe on a variety of topics, aiming to foster trans-European debates and the creation of a European public space”):

Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Are the rights of the group higher than those of the individual? With a fiery polemic against Ian Buruma’s “Murder in Amsterdam” and Timothy Garton Ash’s review of this book in the New York Review of Books, Pascal Bruckner has kindled an international debate. By now Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek and Paul Cliteur have all stepped into the ring.

The departure point for the debate is the book “Murder in Amsterdam” by Ian Buruma about the murder of Theo Van Gogh and a review of it by “English journalist and academic” Timothy Garton Ash. In the book Ian Buruma voices his disagreement with Ayaan Hirsi Ali over her persistant criticism of Islam and Garton Ash, who Bruckner calls “the apostle of multiculturalism” and Bruce Bawer recently termed “official-expert-on-Europe”, then goes on to call her an Enlightenment fundamentalist.

The first installment by Pascal Bruckner defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the subject of much debate and media attention this week, as her new book “Infidel” was released on Tuesday, concluding:

It is astonishing that 62 years after the fall of the Third Reich and 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an important segment Europe’s intelligentsia is engaged in slandering the friends of democracy. They maintain it is best to cede and retreat, and pay mere lip-service to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Yet we are a long way off the dramatic circumstances of the 1930s, when the best minds threw themselves into the arms of Berlin or Moscow in the name of race, class or the Revolution. Today the threat is more diffuse and fragmented. There is nothing that resembles the formidable peril of the Third Reich. Even the government of Mullahs in Tehran is a paper tiger that could be brought to its knees with a minimum dose of rigour. Nevertheless the preachers of panic abound. Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude – dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today’s directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!

Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash fire back with weak replies about “tolerance for cultural diversity” (Ash), because “a free-spirited citizen does not tolerate different customs or cultures because he thinks they are wonderful, but because he believes in freedom.” (Buruma).

After that comes the good part. First comes the Turkish German author Necla Kelek’s excellent response to Buruma, then Paul Cliteur takes on multiculturalism and relativism:

[..] Think of the principle of free speech. The answer of postmodern cultural relativism is: refrain from criticism. Be reticent to comment on unfamiliar religions. Let reform come from within and avoid provocation and polarization.

[..] What remains a mystery is why many intelligent people stick to the postmodern frame of mind, even though so many intelligent writers – Terry Eagleton and John Searle, to name just two – have thoroughly deconstructed its tenets. I think this has to do with the postmodernist conviction that an attitude that they see as relativistic and pragmatic would help in the struggle against religious terrorism. They hope that, if we abstain from radical criticism of the terrorist mindset, we can pacify the most radical elements.

[..] Buruma thinks he knows why terrorists hate Van Gogh, Ellian, and Hirsi Ali: because religious terrorists have a conflict with “radical Enlightenment.” Buruma and many other postmodernists labor under the delusion that once we reject radical Enlightenment, and thereby radical critique of religion and provocation, we can pacify the terrorists.

There is a final reply from Buruma, which is barely worth mentioning, following by some links to further articles relating to the discussion, including Fukuyama’s article and reviews of Hirsi Ali’s book.

I’d add to this collection Bruce Bawers review of Tony Judt’s (the other “official-expert-on-Europe”) book “Postwar”, a history of Europe after world war II from the Winter 2007 issue of the Hudson Review:

Judt knows a great deal about how Europe renewed itself after being devastated by one totalitarian ideology and how it survived the nearly half-century-long domination of its eastern half by another totalitarian ideology. Today Europe confronts a third totalitarian ideology. In two world wars, it committed suicide; now it’s doing so again—and this time it may not rise from the ashes. Yet Judt either can’t accept it or won’t admit it. He’s not alone, of course: most of today’s academic “Europe experts” are utterly useless on this subject. Some don’t even dare mention the elephant in the room. Predictably, Judt concludes that the real problem here is “Islamophobia” (this is one word he doesn’t put in scare quotes) and the rise of “far-right,” “anti-immigrant” parties.4 For all his flagrant denial of reality, however, one is still astonished to see him conclude on a note of sheer fantasy, insisting, in his closing sentences,
on Europe’s right “to offer the world some modest advice” on how to live and suggesting that “the twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe.” More likely, Europe will by the end of the century belong, in whole or in part, to the Islamic world, and will be governed, in whole or in part, according to sharia law. Yes, this disaster may yet be averted; but only if people like Judt—that is to say, the teachers, professors, politicians, writers, artists, and journalists who shape government agendas and public attitudes—summon the courage to face difficult challenges and speak uncomfortable truths before it’s too late.

I’ll round the post of with one more article that draws on material from both Bruce Bawer and Ayaan Hirsi Al – “Appeasement takes hold again in Europe”, by Paul Sheehan, from Monday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Faced with the rising tide of bomb attacks, plots, threats, demands and belligerent victimology from a violent, ignorant and sexually repressive subculture, the centre of European civilisation appears to be doing exactly what it did the last time blackshirts were on the march in Europe – appeasing, denying and capitulating.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has a letter for Keith Ellison, currently the only Muslim in the American Congress. It is a challenge to Rep. Ellison to speak out on behalf of women in predominantly Muslim countries.

I hope he reads it. I hope he gets it. I hope he acts on it. I also hope he realises that the issues raised in the letter are at least in part a result of the adherence to the Koran and Sunnah.

Why? Well, yesterday Robert Spencer posted some reasons why his book “The Truth About Muhhamad” was banned in Pakistan for “objectionable material” about Muhhamad, and reasons 3 and 4 relate directly to the answer. Here’s a couple of reasons why the government of Pakistan can’t handle the Truth, that relate directly to the treatment of women in Islamic cultures:

3. Also in The Truth About Muhammad I discuss Muhammad’s marriage to little Aisha, which is specifically addressed in the hadith collection Sahih Bukhari (generally considered by Muslims to be the most reliable such collection). According to several traditions recorded by Bukhari, “the Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88; see also 7.62.65; 7.62.64; 5.58.236; 5.58.234).

It is quite obvious that many Muslims take very seriously and act upon the material on which I depended to write the book. Imitating the Prophet of Islam, many Muslims even in modern times have taken child brides. In some places this even has the blessing of the law: article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”[i]

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight.[ii] Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”[iii]

Time magazine reported in 2001:

In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys. The law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move. An attempt by conservatives to abolish Yemen’s legal minimum age of fifteen for girls failed, but local experts say it is rarely enforced anyway. (The onset of puberty is considered an appropriate time for a marriage to be consummated.)[iv]

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that over half of the girls in Afghanistan and Bangladesh are married before they reach the age of eighteen.[v] In early 2002, researchers in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found half the girls married by age thirteen. In an Afghan refugee camp, more than two out of three second-grade girls were either married or engaged, and virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. One ten-year-old was engaged to a man of sixty.[vi]

This is the price that women have paid throughout Islamic history, and continue to pay, for Muhammad’s status as “an excellent example of conduct” (Qur’an 33:21).

Of course, in this as with the other instances I have adduced, other Islamic authorities differ. Some claim that in repeating the traditions from Bukhari, I am perpetuating misunderstandings – despite the manifest fact that these “misunderstandings” are quite widespread in the Islamic world. If they are indeed misunderstandings, the problem lies with Sahih Bukhari, which is very ancient and essentially canonical, not with my book, which has been available for less than three months and will be forgotten before too long.

But is Sahih Bukhari banned in Pakistan? Of course not.

4. Finally, in my book I explain why it is today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. False adultery accusations against Aisha led ultimately to the requirement that four male Muslim witnesses must be produced in order to establish a crime of adultery or related indiscretions. In cases of sexual misbehavior, four male witnesses are required to establish the deed — in accord with a revelation that came to Muhammad to exonerate his youthful wife (Qur’an 24:13).[vii] This requirement allows unscrupulous men to commit rape with impunity: as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery.

That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.[viii] Several high-profile cases in Nigeria in recent years have also revolved around rape accusations being turned around by Islamic authorities into charges of fornication, resulting in death sentences that were only modified after international pressure.[ix]

Because they’re rooted in Qur’anic dictates, such abuses are extraordinarily resistant to criticism and reform. Witness the recent situation in Pakistan, the same country where my book has just been banned. The new Women’s Protection Act has reclassified the crime of rape so that it can be prosecuted according to modern standards of evidence and testimony, without relying on the four male witnesses required by the Qur’an. But Muslim hardliners have staged protests against the new law, calling it “un-Islamic, immoral and unconstitutional.” And they have a case, based on Qur’an 24:13 and the story of Aisha’s exoneration.

And thats all even before we get to:

• The stoning of women for adultery – a tradition abrogated from the Koran, but preserved in the Hadiths.
• Honour killings – a cultural degeneracy, unmitigated by Islamic tradition due to its misogyny.
• Female genital mutilation – another cultural degeneracy OKed by Muhhamad, as long as you “don’t cut too deeply” or “don’t overdo it”.
• The instruction to beat one’s rebellious wife in the Koran.

The first two reasons that I omitted in Robert Spencer’s list above, by the way, relate to the 3 stages of Jihad, as directed by Muhhamad (“conversion to Islam, subjugation without equality of rights with Muslims under the rule of Islamic law, or war”) and abrogation in the Koran, the consequence of which is that the later “war verses” override the earlier “peaceful” verses.

I’d love to hear Rep. Ellison’s views on all of the above. Which camp will he belong to? Will he say its all just a big misunderstanding? Claim ignorance? Or flatly declare that the example of the Prophet Muhhamad was perfect and the instructions of Allah are not open to interpretation? Will he fade away in embarassment perhaps or explode in outrage? All heard and seen before. All going pretty much nowhere.

Drawing attention to the letter to Rep. Ellison is a 910 Group campaign and was originally the of idea of No Apology.

A must read op-ed in the LA Times, by Raymond Ibrahim:

[..] when Muslims beat infidels, it’s just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords’ rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.

[..] If some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until Islam dominates the globe, they are only being true to Islam and its doctrines as they understand it. However, in that case, where the world is divided into two warring camps, Islam and Infidelity — or, in Islamic terms, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — how can these Muslims expect any concessions from the international community? The natural conclusion of the view that “might makes right” is “to the victor go the spoils.”

[..] But perhaps Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting special treatment, as well as believing that jihad is righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out of its way to confirm such convictions. By criticizing itself, apologizing and offering concessions — all things the Islamic world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged status in the world.

[..] Muslims’ zeal for their holy places and lands is not intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there’s something to be said about being passionate and protective of one’s own. Here the secular West — Christendom’s prodigal son and true usurper — can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West concedes ideologically, politically and especially spiritually, Islam will be sure to conquer. If might does not make right, zeal apparently does.

So anyone going demand an apology for court ordered Bible burning in Uzbekistan? Can we get a little outrage at Christians, including priests, beaten and their Bibles burned in Kyrzystan? Christian priests brutally tortured and murdered in Pakistan and Kurdistan? Christians not being allowed to repair their churches in Egypt or churches demolished in Pakistan and Malaysia or burned in Nigeria? Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia (their parents said they forgave the killers)? Any imams, muftis, sheikhs out there apologised for any of this yet?

Raymond Ibrahim, an assistant in the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, has a book coming out called “The Al Qaeda Reader” which will be published April 17th 2007. The book contains “translations of religious texts and propaganda”, tracing “the origins and evolution of Al Qaeda” and “revealing an ideology that calls for a relentless jihad against non-Muslim “infidels,” repudiates democracy in favor of Islamic law, stresses the importance of martyrdom, and mocks the notion of “moderate” Islam.”

You can find more great op-eds from him on Victor Davis Hanson’s site.

(h/t Snapshots)

Below are some extracts from the Sufi teacher Abdullah Dougan’s book, “40 Days: An Account of a Discipline” that give considerable insight on the nature of the Islamic religion today, as well as the culture of its epicentre and birthplace, Arabia. These observations were made in 1974, as Abdullah travelled to Arabia on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam that every practicing Muslim must complete. Abdullah travelled to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan with his student Abdul. Before being allowed entry into Arabia the two men had to swear before an Afgani High Court that they were Muslims, following which the judge told them “with a straight face” that now they were Muslims, by Koranic law they could be killed if they decided to return to being Christians. On entry into Saudi Arabia the customs inspector confiscated a book Abdullah had by the Hindu guru Ramdas, because it was “against their religion”. Abdullah observed: “This action on the part of the customs was typical of the bigotry of many Muslims, who observe only the outside part of their religion.”

I am posting this because you’d be hard pressed to find such honest and direct descriptions of a Hajj experience anywhere else, for reason that will soon become apparent, as well as a continuation from my last two posts. The Hajj is also presently a somewhat more orderly experience (or not?), perhaps because the Saudis have been embarassed into action by foreign visitors and governments, so it is important to capture this instructive bit of recent history.

Anyhow, I found reading the stories below to be a fascinating insight.

Abdullah on the meaning of the Hajj:

There are many explanations of the Hajj, by Muslim theologians, most of which follow a very literal line, as is customary in the Muslim world. Anything in the Hadith or Koran is held to be true, no matter how far-fetched to objective reasoning. The Koran, like the bible, has inaccuracies caused by the ego of writers intruding into universal truths.

On his experience at Masjid El Noor ( Mosque of Light), where he and Abdul stayed in Medina:

[..]The people who ran the school where part of the Tablig school, traditionalists trying to keep the clock back in the days of the Holy Prophet, who would slavishly follow many of the injunctions given in the Hadith or traditions of the Prophet.

Muslims maintain there are no monks in Islam, but this type of situation belied the assertion. The borthers lived the life of a monk at MAsjid El Noor, grting up at 4:30am for prayers, doing their ablutions at a cold tap which was the merest trickle and on a few occassions not even that so they would have to store water to use out of one of the spouted pots. Prayers were going on constantly as well as the five communal prayers. In between, someone was always lecturing others. There was a continual stream of visitors from among the pilgrims, for the Tablig school are the missionaries of Islam. They call themselves the Jumat (brothers) and go to other mosques to waylay people and harangue them constantly, trying to influence them back to their religion. They also attempt to convert any infidel they find interested in Islam. They are all most sincere, trying to live life to the Koran, and most are very feaful and superstitious. [..]

The Holy Prophets ideas on cleanliness wre a thousand years ahead of his time, for when the people of Europe were having baths only once a year, if at all, the Prophet had his peolpe bathing once a week. However the Law of Seven [TOD: an esoteric concept governing the atrophy of processes devoid of conscious guidance] has cought up with this, and now the Muslim people must contend for first place among the dirtiest races in the world. At El Noor there was never any hot water for a bath, and most people used no soap; this applied for wuzu, the ceremonial washing of hands and feet before prayers. Often there was no water at all because the town was so overcrowded the system could not cope. There were no flush toilets, but pans let into the floors with an adjacent tap, and even when there was water about half the users would not wash away their stool. To add to the lack of hygiene the cookhouse was adjacent to the toilets.

Most of the people there very pleasant and friendly. Many came to talk to me, some to learn, others to teach me the right way as they saw it through the Koran and Hadith. I formed the opinion that most were [overly] identified with sex and [the] devil, for these usually came up in conversation. As has been said elsewhere, Muslims are obsessed with reward and punishment, and much of their attitude towards sex is very archaic. The penalty for adultery is stoning to death, and in recent years a Christian at Jeddah killed a Muslim he caught in bed with his wife, so the Muslim’s friends and relatives killed the Christian by running him over with a truck. Most who spoke to me had not the slightest idea of sex psychology, still believing women to be the instrument of the devil. One young South African Indian who came each night for a chat summed up his primitive conception of sex when he observed that “women are the trouble”. Much latent homosexual behaviour noticed among Muslim friends stemmed from sexual frustrations. The South African Indian friend told me with a very straight face that the devil was in the toilet and you should always cough before going in left foot first, being careful to wear your hat. Whoever told him about the devil must have been referring to masturbation – it wasn’t clear why he had to keep his hat on.

[..] Having lived for 16 days with these brothers, I had become more aware just how hard it was for anyone to wake up to the inaccuracies of the exoteric teachings of Islam. The branwashing was, and is, constant.

Abdul, whom the brothers earnestly lectured about subjects of utmost importance such as in which hand one should hold a teacup in and where the right foot should be placed in prayer noted that Tabliah Jumat’s “appointed task seemed to be the emphasis of the irrelevant”.

Abdullah on Haram Sharrief, which houses the Prophets tomb:

Muslims do not believe in idols, and wherever they have conquered have destroyed priceless works of art by breaking off the faces; but unfortunately they have made idols of their shrines, with people fighting to touch a sacred place. A great deal of the pushing and shoving at Haram Sharief is attributable to this idolisation. Objectively watching people around the Prophet’s grave, one could only come to the conclusion that they have created an idol here. Nearby are some of the Prophet’s wives’ graves, and the crying and touching of the walls is no different from what goes on in Catholic countries.

In Saudi Arabia the classic Muslims law prescribes the cuitting off of the right hand as the penalty for stealing, but Abdul had his white gown cut at the pocket and the money he was carrying taken. Other people told of similar experiences. During the Hajj season the prices for everything where exhorbitant, as the shopkeepers had no conscience about profiteering.

On the other Haram Sharrief, which contains the Kabah in Mecca:

On the Friday before the Hajj started, we went to the Haram Sharrief with over a million others to do the mid-day prayers, or Jumuh. We saw armed guards tossing people off the main entrance to the mosque to make room for the VIPs who arrived hours later than the waiting pilgrims. I couldn’t get into the mosque proper, but remained in the street with thousands of others. The conditions outside were chaotic. Nearby was a truck with a machinegun mounted on its back direcred towards the main door and I wondered what would happen to the congregation if the gunner had to fire it. These precautions were taken to give protection to King Faisal and his ministers.

Mina, 5 miles from Mecca, first day of the Hajj:

[..] Many people died, and at one time the Egyptians [friends of Abdullah] counted ten dead stacked in an ambulance [TOD: they were staying opposite a hospital] Conditions were archaic, and very little water and only one hundred public toilets for one and a half million people. A great deal of time these toilets were closed through lack of water, and under guard. The streets became a quagmire of extreta and urine, especially behind the parked vehicles.

Day 2, going to Arafat and staying at a mosque called Masjid-I-Namdaram.

[..] All the passageways soon became occupied, causing complete chaos, with real fights all over the place.

As the hour of prayer drew near, peopel appeared to to become quite mad in their endevours to gain a place in which to pray. [Abdul and I] made room for two old Turks by squeezing together, but this didn’t stop two others pushing in, thus making it almost impossible for the Turks to find a place to put their heads in prayer. The hysteria of these people had to be seen to be believed. I observed to Abdul that one could easily see the mis-use of sexual energy in all these irrational actions.The Saudi government had no organisation to cope with the vast horde of people, so there was no crowd control in the mosque at all, unless they wanted to make way for some personage. The whole Saudi nation appeared to be concerned only with making money from the pilgrims, whom they exploited to the fullest limits. Every commodity was at least double the usual price, according to the friends who lived in Medina.

The pelting of stones at idols at Mina:

It was impossible to get near the idols unless you were unconcerned about getting hit by the flying pebbles, and there was such a crush within a hundred feet of the idol that you couldn’t get your hands above your head. Before attacking the situation [our friends] the Egyptians tied Ehram sheets tightly around their money and possessions, because they knew that thieves operated in the vicinity of this idol, taking advantage of the fact that if a person had his hands above his head there was no way of checking on purses. Abdullah made a token job of pelting and returned to the rendezvous. When it was Abdul’s turn he was pushed over by a group of negroes who charged him down, and lost his watch. The behaviour was completely stupid, again with no direction from the authorities, who could easily have controlled the flow of people.

By now Abdul and I were completely disgusted with this type of conduct so decided to leave Mina, although most people stay there for three days to throw the pebbles and also sacrifice an animal, which both found repugnant for several reasons. They clipped their hair.

After Arafat, back at the Kaaba Abdullah had his shoes stolen. Finally the animal sacrifice at the end of the Hajj:

The whole street where the vehicles were parked was one great cesspool with filth everywhere When [we] came down the mountainside [we] found pieces of animal along with extreta and tents. The Egyptians were cutting up a leg of camel, which seven of them had shared in the sacrifice, and had some ram and goat meat as well. They gave [us] some, which [we] took back to Mina and made into a soup.

And now Abdullah’s somewhat less patient and forgiving companion Abdul’s description of the same journey:

Rampant commercialism of the most spiritually destructive kind was widespread in Mecca, to the extend that the Holy of Holies of all Islam, the Ka’aba, was but an adjunct to the main motive for the modern survival of the city – the systematic removal of every last cent a pilgrim might have brought with him. It was typical of the attitude of the Meccan Arabs to the Bayt-al-Haram (Haram Sharrief) that when the new building was constructed a large shopping cetnre was incorporated in its strucrture. The only thing that could be said for the Meccan merchants was that their greed was if anything “bettered” by their colleagues in Medina, who sent their children into the precincts of the Prophet’s last resting place itself in order to tout their wares – to the exctent that the main courtyard of the mosque often looked like a marketplace rather than a place of worship.

Trenchant Muslim critics of the Hajj seem to be few and far between, perhaps because fear is such a strong force in Islam as it is practised. We found plenty of degrading spectacles to warrant comment. Men fought for places in the front prayer rows of the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, caring little if they forced out of place men who have been sitting there for four hours or more. The shoving, punching and kicking that went on wherever “two or three are gathered together in My Name” was aa consistent feature of the Hajj and nothing was done to control it by the Saudi authorities, with the odd ineffectual exception.

The culminatinf riot, for it could be called little else, took place around the Shatan stones in Mina, several miles outside Mecca where I, for all my size and weight, was knocked to the ground and had my watch removed by a band of Central Africans who bludgeoned all before them in an insensate forced passage through the packed crowd. Twenty people were trampled to death that day, we were told, and the report was easy to believe. Certainly no nation in the throng would have taken honours in politeness except the South-East Asian Muslims whose small size and good manners made them easy victims of the crushing crowds. It was no surprise to discover that the Indonesian government had warned the Saudis that unless measures where taken to police the crowd during the next Hajj season, they would not be allowing any of their own nationals over the age of 40 to travel to Arabia.

Ideally, the pilgrims slept at least three nights at Mina but after the first night we were in little mood to continue the punishment. The Mina streets ran with urine, and the diarrhoeic turds which lay everywhere, due to the almost complete lack of any toilet facilities, gave the lie to the proud Arab boast that they never suffered from dysentery. The only public toilets, for some classic Arab reason, were locked at night and at any rate, although newly built, were a squalid uncleaned mess giving point to the blunt British phrase to describe incompetence: “They couldn’t even run a public shithouse!” To cap it all, fresh water taps were few and far between, and invariably had a heaving scrum around them.

We returned to our sleeping place on the roof of the mosque I was already calling “Hellfire”. On the second day of the Shatan stoning we journeyed out to Mina, more as observers than anything else. I had begun to come to terms with the fact that there was a much bigger thing behind this pilgrimage of ours than I had earlier thought, that related directly to the course which Abdullah’s teaching would in the future. Personally, I knew I had to be bludgeoned between the eyes in order to learn something, and the Hajj was the blunt instrument to teach me the crucial lesson of Islam which I might never have learned for some time, had I not embarked on it. I learnt that a dead religion can take a long time to decompose. The stench of of its rotting was most penetrating at the slaughtering grounds outside Mina, where hundreds of thousands of animals, from sheep and goats to camels, are ritually slaughtered in commemoration of Abraham’s original sacrifice. In the Prophet’s time the sacrificial flesh was used to feed the poor, but Muhhamed could never have foreseen the day when two million Muslim fundamentalists would follow in his footsteps. What I saw made me angry and disgusted at man’s stupidity. I could understand something of the mentality behind the flashing knives of the peasant folk in the blood-lusting crowd, but what contortions of rationalisation were going on in the minds of the more informed Muslims who were part of the twentieth century, to explain the anarchy that reigned all around us? My companions, one a well-educated Egyptian, seemed quite at a loss to understand why one should object to the gushing blood, squirming and gasping animals, and the dehumanized people participating in the whole macable carnival. In the central compound, where the largest (qurbaanee) animals are slaughtered, carcase was being butchered on top of carcase. Bulging entrails, shit and blood squelched everywhere underfoot, and I begun to feel the gulf which separates this insane expression of religious fanaticism from the subtle workings of the Spirit. No wonder so few Muslims we met could grasp the inner meaning behind their religion, if a display such as this could them still still contented.

As I left the grounds, workmen were throwing ammonium chloride onto heaps of carcases shovelled together by bulldozers from the previous day’s carnage. It could have been symbolic.

“O Ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean. So let them not come near the Inviolable Place of Worship after this their year. If ye fear poverty (from the loss of their merchandise) Allah shall preserve you of His bounty if He will. Lo! Allah is Knower Wise.” (Surah 9, v28, Koran, Pickthall trans)

Recent examples confirm not a whole lot has changed in Arabian attitudes in the 30 plus years since this was written.

Abdullah’s comment on Adbul’s description:

“In reference to Abdul’s remark about Islam dying, I would like to say that all organised religions must come under the Law of Seven in their outer manifestations. The inner parts of all religions usually say the same truth.”

As I said previously, I hope something of the inner teachings reamerge to guide Islam back into life once the present process of decay is complete, realistically, in decades to come.

One person that agrees with the assertion above that Islam is a dying religion is Theodore Dalrymple. From a recent essay by Fjordman, “Why the future may not belong to Islam”:

Theodore Dalrymple thinks that “Islam has nothing whatever to say to the modern world,” and states that “Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism. They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle, as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history, it is all or nothing. (…) Islamism is a last gasp, not a renaissance, of the religion; but, as anyone who has watched a person die will attest, last gasps can last a surprisingly long time.”

From the same essay, the view of Belgian orientalist, Dr Koenraad Elst:

Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists, thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing.

And some final words from Fjordman:

“The impact of globalization and modern mass media is more complicated and has contradictory results. As one pundit at ex-Muslim Ali Sina’s website put it: “Rituals are important as brainwashing tools to instill discipline and loyalty. Islam’s focus on rituals remind me of the rituals in the military. (…) But what worked well for a medieval war machine is disastrous for Muslims in the modern world. The Arab war machine was supported by the blind obedience, brotherhood, courage, hatred and high birth rates inspired by Islam. (…) But these same qualities are handicaps for Muslims in the age of the microchip. Today they lead to poverty, belligerency, war and defeat.”

Islam was perfect for medieval warfare, but gradually lost out to the West, especially after the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, which could never have taken place in Islamic lands because of their lack of freedom and their cult of authority. Ironically, history has now gone full circle. Muslims are still useless in developing anything new, but as a result of migration, modern communications, the presence of Muslims in infidel lands and Arab oil revenues, they can more readily buy or expropriate technology from others. The Iranian Revolution was aided by audio cassettes of speeches by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, a former Soviet spy currently in intensive care in London after being poisoned with thallium, was granted asylum in the United Kingdom in 2001. A few months later he released his book “Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within”:

In this book Litvinenko alleged that the FSB was responsible for the apartment block bombings in Russia that were blamed on Chechens and became the pretext for the second Chechen War. I have not read the book myself, although it has been sitting in my Amazon Wish List for a couple of years now, but the reviews and the cover suggest the book’s thesis is that the FSB used acts of terror, abduction and contract killings to influence public opinion in Russia, using fear and nationalism to steer the country under authoritarian rule. The book has just shot to the top of my reading list.

(h/t Noisy Room)

Mark Steyn talks about his recent meeting with President Bush (in the context of his usual topics of course), Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 29: “Only choice on war is to win or lose it”

I was on C-SPAN the other morning, and a lady called in to complain that ”you are making my blood pressure rise.” Usual reason. The host, Paul Orgel, had asked me what I thought of President Bush and I replied that, whatever my differences with him on this or that, I thought he was one of the most farsighted politicians in Washington. That’s to say, he’s looking down the line to a world in which a radicalized Islam has exported its pathologies to every corner on Earth, Iran and like-minded states have applied nuclear blackmail to any parties within range, and a dozen or more nutcake basket-case jurisdictions have joined Pyongyang and Tehran as a Nukes R Us one-stop shop for all your terrorist needs. In 2020, no one’s going to be worrying about which Congressional page Mark Foley is coming on to. Except Mark Foley, who’ll be getting a bit long in the tooth by then. But if it really is, as Democrats say, ”all about the future of our children,” then our children will want to know why our generation saw what was happening and didn’t do anything about it. They will despise us as we despise the political class of the 1930s. And the fact that we passed a great prescription drug plan will be poor consolation when the entire planet is one almighty headache.

Serge Trifkovic reviews Robert Spencer’s “The Truth about Muhhamad”, for Human Events, Oct 30: “Truth About Islam’s Founder Revealed”

His [Muhhamad] kinsmen and tribesmen were prone to war by custom and nature, accustomed to living by pillage and the exploitation of settled populations. Theirs was an “expansionism denuded of any concrete objective, brutal, and born of a necessity in its past” (Ibn Warraq), but Muhammad provided a powerful ideological justification for those wars—a justification that was religious in form, global in scope and totalitarian in nature. In the space of a decade, the “warner in the face of a terrific punishment” morphed into a vengeful warlord, slayer of prisoners, murderer of political opponents and exterminator of Jews (chapters 6-9), his every move duly condoned by “revelations” from on high. From Muhammad’s second year in Medina on, Islam combined the dualism of a universal religion and a universal state, and jihad became its instrument for carrying out the faith’s ultimate objective by turning all people into believers. As Spencer explains, Muhammad postulated the fundamental illegitimacy of the existence of non-Islam, and mandates permanent “rejection of the Other” —to use a fashionable term—by every bona fide Muslim as a divine obligation. To a Muslim, Jihad does not necessarily mean permanent fighting, but it does mean a permanent state of war.

Even the cornerstone statement, “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet,” goes beyond a declaration of monotheism and implies the radical division of the world into two camps. Antagonism toward non-Muslim religions, societies and cultures is certainly not the trait shared by all Muslims, but it is an attitude mandated by Muhammad to all true Muslims and prevalent among most to this day. Thanks to its founder, Islam has emerged as a quasi-religious ideology of cultural and political imperialism that absolutizes the conflict with other than itself, and knows no natural limits to itself.

L. Brent Bozell III, in Pittsburgh Live, Oct 29: “CNN: Terrorists’ sock puppet”

On the Oct. 18 edition of “Anderson Cooper 360,” CNN aired a story by reporter Michael Ware, an Australian correspondent renowned for his contacts with terrorist groups. The story showed video filmed by terrorists calling themselves the Islamic Army of Iraq. From the very start, the viewer sees this for what it is: enemy propaganda. The grainy video shows Islamic terrorist snipers time and again shooting and presumably killing American soldiers. (CNN, bless its heart, cut the footage just before each bullet found its mark, but not before the sound of the rifle fire that launched it.)

Here’s what CNN also aired, without editorial comment of any sort, as “news”: The translator has the terrorists saying they should wait to shoot the American soldier since there are innocent “people” around. Later in the report, the shooter claims to be trying to target an American soldier, not Iraqis. Since when have these murderers cared about killing Iraqi soldiers or civilians? They’ve massacred thousands with remorseless regularity.

The video is sickening. Imagine being the mother or father, sister, brother, wife or child of that American soldier murdered so brutally.

So why did CNN air something that cannot be defended as newsworthy? That video was given to CNN by terrorists in order to demoralize the American people about the hopelessness of Iraq just before midterm elections. And CNN did exactly what the terrorists wanted, and CNN knows it. In his introduction that night, Anderson Cooper said, “Insurgents” — never terrorists, mind you, always “insurgents” — were “delivering a deadly message, aiming for a global audience.” CNN is the terrorists’ messenger service, FedEx for the fanatics who want us dead.

John F. Cullinan in the National Review, Oct 30: “Instead of Burning Effigies”

A group of Muslim scholars composes a noteworthy response to the pope’s Regensburg speech.

An authoritative ad hoc group of Islam’s most senior clerics and scholars has issued a detailed public response to Pope Benedict XVI’s September 12 Regensburg remarks. This remarkable document, dated October 12, has largely escaped notice, at least in the English-speaking world, apart from references this past week by Sandro Magister, the veteran Vatican-watcher, and David Warren, the estimable Canadian columnist.

It is a pity that this document, published in English on the website of Islamica Magazine, a small American quarterly, has received so little attention so far. For it marks a welcome and promising step toward properly focused inter-religious dialogue, as well as an authoritative refutation of some regrettably common views in the Muslim world on such pressing issues as religiously motivated violence and the denial of religious freedom.

Richard Halloran, RealClearPolitics.com, Oct 29th, “Australia Sees U.S. as Its Most Crucial Ally”

In Canberra, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia said something about America recently that is not often heard these days: “None of the security challenges we face can be met without American power and purpose.”

Asserting that Australia’s alliance with the U.S. was the cornerstone of his nation’s defense, the prime minister told the Australian Strategic Policy Institute: “For the foreseeable future, no other country in the world will have the spread of interests or strategic reach of the United States.”

The plain-spoken Australian evidently sought to convince several audiences that his nation’s reliance on the U.S. for security served not only Australia’s national interests but those of other countries in the region.

PC David Copperfield (no, thats not really his name), Britain’s recent celebrity cop, and author of the book “Wasting Police Time: The Crazy World of the War on Crime” on “the eternal search for youths”:

Whenever we attempt to intercept juveniles it’s always helpful to know who we’re looking for. Unfortunately, the descriptions given by the public are almost always the same: hooded top, baseball cap, tracksuit bottoms and white trainers. As soon as we arrive, if we’re lucky enough to get there quickly, the crowd run off in all directions, leaving only the fatties and the girls who “don’t know nuffink” to answer our questions.

Sounds like the British public has been drinking the same water as the Sydney Morning Herald.

His book don’t sound like no fatty though:

‘WASTING POLICE TIME’ is his hilarious but shocking picture of life in a modern British town, where teenage yobs terrorise the elderly, drunken couples brawl in front of their children and drug-addicted burglars and muggers roam free. PC Copperfield reveals how crime is spiralling while millions of pounds in tax is frittered away, and reveals a force which, crushed under mad bureaucracy, is left desperately fiddling the figures.

His reasons for writing it:

to give people “an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence our police are plumbing, how thousands of officers are struggling to keep their heads above a sea of paperwork while their money is wasted and the crime books are cooked in ways that would make Gordon Ramsay proud”.

His blog is well worth checking out too:

The police blog of “PC David Copperfield” is an anonymously written internet diary detailing the life of a real officer based in a rundown but unidentified neighbourhood somewhere north of Birmingham.

It began in April 2004 with the entry “I hope to give you an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence the British police can plumb”, and PC Copperfield has not let his audience down. The site has since attracted 500,000 readers and the diary has been made into a book.

And you can read an extract from his book here. Humble common sense abounds. And an anecdote for every occassion. Read it, its sure to be therapeutic.

Ah, what the hey (see, no swearing, occifer!), here’s one more quote from the Cuntstable’s blog:

We’ve discussed the problems of inner city deprivation before: South Central LA, Tower Hamlets or the “banlieus” of Paris have all seared themselves upon our collective consciousness.

This week though, it’s the turn of Brackley, Northants to take centre stage. For those of you not familiar with the area, things in Brackley are now so bad, they’ve had to come up with an operation; it’s called “Operation Viking”. So that officers can familiarise themselves with the concept of “Viking”, Northants Police have provided a politically-correct definition of a viking: “Courageous Explorer, Determined Pathfinder”. For the rest of us though, the word Viking means “Rapist in a novelty hat.”

One more statistics post. This one is about Australia’s populous neighbour to the north.

Zachary Abuza at the Counterterrorism blog commenting on a recent Indonesian opinion poll:

In their most recent poll, the very well respected and independent Indonesia Survey Institute polled some 1,092 residents from across Indonesia from late September to early October – the “bombing season” in Indonesia – and found that 17.4 [% of ?] people supported JI’s use of violence to establish an Islamic state. A similar number, 16.1 percent, actively supported the Mujihidin Council of Indonesia (known by its Bahasa acronym MMI). The MMI is the overt-civil society organization of JI’s spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir. Other top JI members have concurrently held positions within the MMI, which is committed to establishing sharia law in Indonesia. Other top JI leaders, such as Abu Jibril, who was released from prison in October 2004 after a token sentence are also active in the MMI leadership.

Most alarming is that when asked if they supported the actions of Imam Samudra, who is now awaiting a firing squad for his role in the Bali bombing, 9 percent of the respondents said yes. According to the pollsters: “They approved the bombings conducted … in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam.” “Jihad that has been understood partially and practised with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims.”

These numbers are also discouraging because of some positive improvements in public opinions about violence in 2005. The Pew Center for People and the Press’ polling data also sheds some light on this issue. In their 2005 poll, support for violent jihad had fallen from 27 percent in August to 15 percent, while those who said violence can never be justified grew from 54 percent to 66 percent. These numbers appear to be rising again. But the Pew survey had one fascinating number that few analysts have latched onto: the number of Indonesians who believed their religion is “under attack” grew from 15 percent to over 80 percent. This is the key figure. Dr. Christine Fair and Hussain Haqqani have done the regression analysis of the pew data and found that the single greatest indicator as to why people support suicide terrorism is the degree to which people believe their religion is under attack.

In the past few years, the Indonesia Survey Institute, has tried to assuage concerns that Islamists are gaining a foothold. Previous surveys have put support for Islamists at 15%.

One important factor needs to be mentioned about the “positive improvements” in 2005. The reason for the positive improvements was the American response to the Dec 2004 tsunami that struck Indonesia along its Western coastlines, killing an estimated 167,736, injuring thousands more and displacing over a half million.

Here’s some numbers from a February 2005 poll:

In the first substantial shift of public opinion in the Muslim world since the beginning of the United States’ global war on terrorism, more people in the world’s largest Muslim country now favor American efforts against terrorism than oppose them.
This is just one of many dramatic findings of a new nationwide poll in Indonesia conducted February 1-6, 2005, and just translated and released.

In a stunning turnaround of public opinion, support for Osama Bin Laden and terrorism in the world’s most populous Muslim nation has dropped significantly, while favorable views of the United States have increased. The poll demonstrates that the reason for this positive change is the American response to the tsunami.

Key Findings of the Poll:

• For the first time ever in a major Muslim nation, more people favor US-led efforts to fight terrorism than oppose them (40% to 36%). Importantly, those who oppose US efforts against terrorism have declined by half, from 72% in 2003 to just 36% today.
• For the first time ever in a Muslim nation since 9/11, support for Osama Bin Laden has dropped significantly (58% favorable to just 23%).
• 65% of Indonesians now are more favorable to the United States because of the American response to the tsunami, with the highest percentage among people under 30.
• Indeed, 71% of the people who express confidence in Bin Laden are now more favorable to the United States because of American aid to tsunami victims.

Which goes to show popular opinion in a Muslim country is as fickle as any, and just as the perception that their religion is under attack can drive people to support terrorism the perception that the Great Satan is a generous humanitarian can drive people back to supporting the US-led anti-terrorism effort.

No cause for celebration, to be sure, but a lesson to be taken on board for future opportunities. Now back to the cold, hard reality – Michelle Malkin examines the above statistics and looks at a few more with a reminder that in a nation of 220 million a percentage point or two can constitute a tsunami of its own.

Now for Aussie readers wondering just how these numbers can translate in terms of an actual threat, I highly recommend checking out Paul Gray’s book “Nightmare of the Prophet: Why the next century could be the most violent yet”. Paul Gray is a Herald Sun columnist. His book came out in 2004 and is, by the way, a book that Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer recommends and says that he agrees with its thesis, so it may give you some insight into the ideas that are driving Australia’s foreign policy as well. Gray argues that Islamism should be looked at as a mass movement like Communism, an ideology that could well spark revolution in one or more Muslim dominated countries, creating a nation base for a global scourge. Islamism may already be a global scourge, but he convincingly argues that it would be many times more dangerous if an Islamist regime had control of a populous nation commanding vast resources, territory and military capabilities. He also argues that far from what most people assume it is not necessary that such an Islamist movement even have majority support of the people for a country to fall under its control. For example the Russian Bolsheviks did not have popular support when they took control of Russia in 1917 – they simply ceased an opportunity when the country was already weakened by World War I and politically unstable following the abdication of the tsar and the installion of a democratic, but weak, government, a few months prior.
As Gray put it “The confusion of the period favoured those who where not confused”. For a current example simply look at Somalia.

I know an Islamist Indonesia seems like a far-fetched fantasy to most people, but it is far less so now than when the book was written a couple of years ago. How a couple of years have changed things. And I assure you it won’t seem quite so far-fetched if you read Gray’s arguments. What seems far more silly now in fact, is this naive review of the book also from a couple of years ago:

Radical Islam is certainly a dangerous ideology. Whether it is as dangerous as was Leninist Communism, as the author insists, is much more doubtful.

Much less doubtful now, I’d say.

Now about that Mark Steyn book. If, like myself, you haven’t gotten around to ordering it yet, here are some extracts and reviews for your smirking pleasure. Continueing on exactly where the previous post left off, in fact.

EXTRACTS:

“A Dark Globalism: How Islamist terror spread its tentacles worldwide” (NY Post)

THE dragons are no longer on the edge of the map: That’s the lesson of 9/11.

When you look at it that way, the biggest globali zation success story of recent years is not McDonald’s or Microsoft but Islamism. The Saudis took what was not so long ago a severe but peripheral strain of Islam – practiced by Bedouins in the middle of a desert miles from anywhere – and successfully exported it to Jakarta and Singapore and Alma-Ata and Grozny and Sarajevo and Lyons and Bergen and Manchester and Ottawa and Dearborn and Falls Church. It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop.

And now, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalized insurgency.

[..]

“THE COMING OF AGE: Births vs dearths” (marksteyn.com)

The single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged. A society ages when its birth rate falls and it finds itself with fewer children and more grandparents. For a stable population – ie, no growth, no decline; just a million folks in 1950, a million in 1980, a million in 2010 – you need a Total Fertility Rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That’s what America has: 2.1, give or take. Canada has 1.48, an all-time low and a more revealing difference between the Great Satan and the Great White North than any of the stuff (socialized health care, fewer handguns, more UN peacekeepers, etc) that Canucks usually brag about. Europe as a whole has 1.38, Japan 1.32, Russia 1.14. These countries – or, more precisely, these people – are going out of business.

[..]

Added 25/10: “The future belongs to Islam”

The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It’s the end of the world as we’ve known it. An excerpt from ‘America Alone’.

Sept. 11, 2001, was not “the day everything changed,” but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you’d said that whether something does or does not cause offence to Muslims would be the early 21st century’s principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.

This is about the seven-eighths below the surface — the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.

[..]

REVIEWS:

Austin Bay today on Townhall.com:

Europeans are reproducing below the “replacement rate” — thus the average age of their populations is increasing sharply. If current trends continue, by 2050 one in three Germans and Italians will be over 65 years old. In the United States, only one in five will be so gray.

As a result, the Europe of the European Union (Steyn disdainfully calls it “Eutopia”) faces economic decline and risks systemic change. Steyn writes: “Tax revenues that support the ever growing numbers of the elderly and retired have to be paid by equally growing numbers of the young and working. The design flaw of the radically secularist Eutopia is that it depend on a religious-society birth rate.”

Japan faces the same “gray threat.” Even China has a birthrate below the demographic replacement rate. Among the modern industrial nations, only the United States (and possibly India) has the knack for reproduction.
..
Europe’s Muslims, however, are multiplying — but they are not integrating culturally. Steyn argues that if European nations fail to culturally integrate Muslims, Europe faces profound political changes.

“As fertility dries up,” he writes, “so do societies. Demography is the most obvious symptom of civilizational exhaustion, and the clearest indicator of where we’re headed.”

Mona Charen in the National Review: “Steyn at the Bridge” Read this book

I’ve never read such an amusing book about such a grim subject. Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is in deadly earnest — our civilization is facing a crisis of confidence and demographic vigor just at the moment when a jihadi world movement stands poised to upend us. And yet Steyn’s inimitable wit enlivens every page. As NR readers already know, he is the Errol Flynn of commentators, finishing off opponents with a single flick of his rapier. Whether that rapier will finally be silenced by a scimitar is the story of this book.

Steyn is not the first to tackle the theme of Western pusillanimity in the face of Islamic barbarism — While Europe Slept, Londonistan, Eurabia, and others have plumbed similar themes — but he is undoubtedly the most stylish. Here is his rejoinder to an Episcopal priest who told his congregation after the London bombings “There are no Muslim terrorists. There are terrorists.”

“It’s not the perfect fatuousness of the assertion so much as the meta-message it conveys: we’re the defeatist wimps; bomb us and we’ll apologize to you.” Later, he warms to the subject: “Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left political clichés, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an ‘Arms Are for Hugging’ sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.”

[..]

Mac Johnson, on humanevents.com: “Western Culture Must Regain Its Will to Survive”

With its elites adrift in a philosophy of self-loathing, post-Christian multiculturalism and its citizenry numbed by the narcotics of hedonism, entitlement and perpetual adolescence, the West has every means to fight back—and even conquer—but lacks the will to do so. Who will defend societies, he asks, run by those who detest their own cultural inheritance and peopled by those who believe their culture consists primarily of the right to “free” stuff from the government and the freedom to engage in personal consumption unmolested by the grand forces of history? No one, it would seem.

Apparently, Hottentot history month, paid leave, prescription drug benefits, gay marriage and Coldplay haven’t nearly the power to inspire men to take up arms and risk death as does belief in things as passé and primitive as God and Country and a conviction in the superiority of one’s own culture.

Only in America (within the West) does any sizeable portion of the population still believe in such things—albeit a declining portion. America alone then, Steyn posits, has any real potential to emerge intact from the current century. The other nations will succumb to their internal pathologies and be assimilated into more confident cultures, primarily globalized Islam.

Steyn argues that this process of Islamic assimilation will be aided above all by demographic forces, especially the modern collapse of European birth rates. This factor is not unrelated to the collapse of cultural confidence. Declining birth rates (and the concomitant dependence on large scale immigration), Steyn proposes, are merely symptoms of the loss of will brought on by anti-nationalism and the eternal childhood of life in the welfare state.

Added 25/10:
Random Jottings blog: “Obsessing over Global Warming is a way to avoid facing the big problems…”

Added 25/10:
David M. Kinchen for Huntington News:
Witty, Pun- Filled Look at Why Canadian Mark Steyn Believes U.S. is World’s Last Best Hope Before a New Dark Age of Repression

INTERVIEWS:

Kathryn Lopez for National Review: “Mark this down”

Linda Frum for Canada’s National Post: “The man who likes to poke the world in the eye”