Sean Scallon understands the appeal of Islam and Islamism to certain alienated subgroups on both the far Left and the far Right rather well:

[In the 21st century] growth in Islam will come from Third World immigration of course. But it will also come from white converts as well and they will come from two sources of thought.

Islam always has had an ideological appeal to those on the far left and right. To a cultural Marxist, Islam is the God that hasn’t failed (unlike Communism), at least not yet. Its diverse, multicultural following and the fact that it is the religion of the Third Word i.e. it was founded there and expanded there outside of Europe and the West, makes it a perfect vehicle for cultural upheaval and egalitarianism. Marxism derided religion which limited its appeal while Islam is a religion and has mass appeal. And within an adversarial culture, converting to Islam becomes the perfect vehicle to shock one’s parents and friends and peers. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre himself became more and more fascinated with Islam as the communist left declined in his later years. This has more of chance of happening with the nominal baptized or secular Christian than anyone else. Think of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County, California teenager who got fed up with empty secularist lifestyle of parents and neighbors and converted to Islam and joined the Taliban in Afghanistan, and you’ll understand the type. Since 9-11 and since George Bush II give Islam his stamp of approval by calling it a “religion of peace,” there’s been a growing study of Islam within in the media and with others who are curious to know more about it. Such study, no doubt, will increase the size of the pool of converts for Islam within the U.S.

On the other side, Nazis have always appreciated Islam’s marshal spirit and ascetic, non-bourgeois lifestyle along with its ability to submit the will of the mass towards one deity or person. They found it far superior to Christian piety which they found to be nothing more than religion for wimps, not the supermen they were supposed to be. Those who are not inclined towards Nazism still find these same qualities admirable, along with Islam’s male-dominated patriarchy. Women and men do not pray together. If you are a fellow who is unchurched right at the moment because you think the modern church in the U.S. is too female dominated and has no place for you, then Islam may be your scene. Think of [the] guy who used to attend Promise Keeper rallies in football stadiums and spent his time crying on the shoulder of another guy while being told what an awful person he was. When he realized the whole thing was nothing more than a religious version of 1990s male bonding without the tom-tom drums, campfires and war paint and when he realized his wife and her friends were laughing their heads off at him down at the solon, then you’ll know the kind of person I’m talking about. In fact the crisis of the maleless church has become such a concern that, according to religious news reports, that certain pastors have gotten to the point of parking Harley Davidson motorcycles out front of the entryways of their churches and putting on football uniforms and using football metaphors to attract males back into the pews again. But Islam’s call may be more enticing than that just more passing Christian fads.

Examples are fun, so here’s a couple more.

The alliance between Hezbollah (and Iran) and the far Left in Lebanon and around the world is a great example of the first trend described above.

A “story” (read: propaganda piece) in the Montreal Gazette, Dec 10th, by Maria Abi-Habib:

Ibtisam Jamaleddine stood in the room of her dead son, Maxim. Maxim was 18 years old when he was mistaken for a fighter and killed by an Israeli missile during this summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Pictures of Che Guevara and soccer players as well as a plaque dedicated to Shiite Islam’s most revered imam, Ali, adorn the walls of his room. They tell a story unknown in the West, of the complex nature of forces that fought Israel last summer.

During the war, U.S. President George W. Bush pitted the conflict as one fuelled by “Islamo-fascism,” pushed by Hezbollah, the Party of God. But fighting alongside Hezbollah was an older, more seasoned resistance movement - the Lebanese Communist Party, which allied with the Islamic party for the first time and showed its members that Islam and communism can complement each other.

For Maxim’s mother, the alliance of these two ideologies was natural and the pictures in her son’s room of a communist martyr and a Muslim hero attest to that.

She said her son wasn’t religious. She said she sees her son as part of a line of resistance fighters “that began with Imam Ali and went to Che and then to Maxim. It’s one lineage of struggle.”

The nature of forces and alliances in Lebanon may be complex, but this is hardly an example of that complexity. Communism and Islamism in bed together makes perfect sense, as both are totalitarian fantasies of a utopia, which, at every attempt at implementation turns into its hellish opposite. (Isn’t it hilarious when Muslims counter real-world examples of the failings of Islam by saying the examples don’t apply to “true” Islam because “there is currently no ‘true’ Islamic state in existance”? Gee, I wonder why?) Neither is the above alliance happening “for the first time”. Hezbollah and Lebanese Communist Party members have been running on voting tickets together in Lebanese elections ever since Hezbollah was forced to change its image from sectarian terrorist militia to a political party of “resistance” at the end of the civil war in the early nineties.

Here’s a couple of recent happy snaps of the happy couple:

“Supporters of the Lebanese Communist Party wave a party flag last Sunday during a peaceful sit-in organized by Hezbollah in Beirut.” according to the Montreal Gazette

Dec 2006, Hezbollocks-led protest in Beirut - A drop of Red in a sea of Yellow and Orange.

And if you think that a portrait of Che Guevara on the wall next to an Islamic one is an anomaly, think again:

Prime Minister of Chechnya is not a man to be messed with, especially if you work for him.

At the age of just 30, Ramzan Kadyrov counts the Russian President Vladimir Putin as a close ally, wields enormous power in his war-ravaged world-infamous republic, and is the object of a Stalin-style personality cult.

[..] He has advocated polygamy, banned gambling, and clamped down on the sale of alcohol - all policies that would cause a riot if implemented elsewhere in Russia.

[..]Inside, Kadyrov’s office resembles the boardroom of a multinational corporation, albeit with a few significant differences. The federal Russian flag stands alongside the green flag of the Chechen republic, and from one wall, a framed black-and-white picture of Che Guevara stares down. Kadyrov clearly identifies with the Argentine who made his name in Cuba, since his fan club (yes, he does have a fan club) often waves aloft stencilled posters of the Chechen leader wearing Che’s beret and adopting the same uncompromising stare.

[..]A colourful portrait of a woman wearing a headscarf adorns another wall, presumably Kadyrov’s mother, and I notice at least two likenesses of his benefactor, Vladimir Putin.

Through the window, the green-topped minaret of a newly built mosque reaches up into the gloomy Grozny sky, a reminder that Kadyrov has styled himself as a devout Muslim and adopted elements of shariah for his regime.

Yep, you read correctly, a chunk of Russia is now partially implementing Sharia Law. But don’t get too carried away with that one - this is an elaborate and cynical exercise in sock-puppetry, not a naive subjugation to a creeping Islamification. This is Russia, not Sweden, and the Russia Empire has centuries of experience with “self-governing” Muslim populations within its borders. More importantly it has several centuries experience of being governed by Muslims - an experience permanantly etched into the national psyche and untempered by Western political correctness and one Russia will not be repeating any time soon (”scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar”, goes a Russian proverb). And by soon I mean ever. I had a post on Islam and demographics in Russia in the works that I am thinking of posting in several smaller posts, largely in response to the “Russia is turning Muslim” silliness that swept the blogosphere recently. Chechnya is only a very small part of Russia, the Muslims of the North Caucasus are a very different breed to say the Tartars, who make up the biggest Muslim segment in Russia, and the whole Islamification-of-Russia line is a misfire. But I digress.

Now a quick look at the other end of the spectrum - the far right and Islamism. Its not called Islamo-Fascism for nothing, and if you need proof, look up the collaboration of Bosnian Muslims with the Nazis in World War 2. Look up the relationship between the Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler. Look up the list of speakers at the recent Holocaust conference in Iran.

I’ll throw in just one more example though, that relates directly to the “Promise Keeper rally enthusiast” types Scallon is talking about:

Turning Muslim in Texas

Praying in Texas
George W Bush may be backed by Christian fundamentalists but in his home state of Texas, Islam is the latest big draw. The Bible belt is transferring its allegiance to the Qur’an because, for many erstwhile Christians, believe it or not, the church is too liberal.

Eric was a Baptist preacher before he became a Muslim 14 years ago. Now he prays five times a day – even in the middle of watching a football game. His wife, Karen, also a convert, is covered from head to toe in the traditional Muslim burka. Islam, says Eric, ‘is everything I wanted Christianity to be’.

The Bible belt is not about to turn into the Our’an belt, any more than Russia is about to turn into Russiastan, so don’t take the “transferring its allegiance” baloney above too seriously. But do check out the video for the comedy. You can watch the full 24-minute documentary, “Turning Muslim in Texas”, on Google Video. Here it is:

See also my previous posts on Islam’s useful idiots on the Left.

The following article is from the LA Times, 26 May 1968

Israel’s Peculiar Position
ISRAEL - Held to Different Standards

By Eric Hoffer

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.

Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on.

There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews.

They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.

Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

Eric Hoffer was a Non-Jewish American longshoreman turned into a social philosopher. He was born in 1902 and died in 1983, after writing columns for newspapers, nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic.

The more things change…

Have a read of these great quotes from this remarkable man. Further quotes from some of his books here.

Here’s a few of my selections:

“Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.”

“How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization.” [TOD: One for the budding martyrs in the audience]

“Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.”“

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.“

“Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.”

“It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power—power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.”

“There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless. When hopes and dreams are loose on the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows, and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. Though ours is a Godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. Whether we line up with him or against him, it is well we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.”

“It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. St. Vincent De Paul cautioned his disciples to deport themselves so that the poor “will forgive them the bread you give them.”"

“He would rather “work, fight, talk, for liberty than have it.” * The fact is that up to now the free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning-from minding other people’s business-and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual’s sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman’s sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.”

“The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world”.

” All the ‘true believers’ of our time-whether Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Japanese or Catholic-declaimed volubly[..] on the decadence of the Western democracies. The burden of their talk is that in the democracies people are too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish to die for a nation, a God or a holy cause.This lack of a readiness to die, we are told, is indicative of an inner rot - a moral and biological decay. The democracies are old, corrupt and decadent. They are no match for the virile congregations of the faithful who are about to inherit the Earth.”

“Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.”

On a related note John Howard said the following at the Quadrant dinner last night:

Today, free and open societies face a new tyranny: the tyranny of Islamist terrorism, one with at least a family resemblance to the great struggles against forces of totalitarianism in the past. A Czech writer once wrote with great prescience: You can’t build utopia without terror and before long terror is all that’s left.

Terrorism is but a symptom of the problem. The problem is the “mass movement”, as referred to by Eric Hoffer above, of Islamism, or Islamo-Fascism, if you will. It is the same old tyranny.

update: I meant to note that the “Czech writer” John Howard is referring to is in fact Eric Hoffer, according to at least one source, and he is of course not Czech at all. I can’t find further confirmation of this, but it certainly very much sounds like something he would say.

“It’s a battle of ideas as much as it is a military battle.”
—General John Abizaid, January 29, 2004

So apparently we are losing the battle of ideas in the war against radical Islam. You know, the one that can’t be won with tanks and bombs and all that. And the problem goes well beyond PR disasters resulting from military misadventure, perceived or otherwise.

How can this be, you may ask? You’d think that after winning the Cold War this would be one aspect of the war the West would have down pat, right? After all, the same battle-hardened “ideas” that won then have been set to work now, so victory is in the bag.

Newt Gingrich, for one, certainly seems to think so:

“On the Sunday talk shows, former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been insisting that the White House pursue Mideast regime change and “use the kind of strategy we used” in Eastern Europe to encourage democratic revolts in terrorist states.”

The strategy used in Eastern Europe was to deploy behind enemy lines the implicitly secular ideas of individual freedom and democracy against the ideas totalitarianism and oppression. Lo-and-behold, the ultra-secular populace more than gladly capitulated and liberation was imminant. And if freedom can be measured by the number of nightclubs and shopping malls per capita, Moscow and Prague are poised to become freer than Paris and London by the end of the decade.

Apparently this is the strategy that Mr Gingrich has in mind for the White House. Ditto for President Bush, although her prefers to use subtler terms like “promoting freedom and democracy”. Thats President Bush who betrayed his absolute ignorance of Islam, let alone radical Islamism he is supposedly leading the free world against when, two month before the invasion of Iraq, he expressed curious surprise after members of the Iraqi opposition mentioned there being two kinds of Islam - Sunni and Shiite. This conversation allegedly took place when President Bush invited the Iraqis to watch the Superbowl with him, perhaps eager to show off one of the fruits of freedom and democracy and thus whet the appetite of the Iraqis for the coming liberation. (source: former US Diplomat Peter Galbraith in “Iraq: The Reckoning” documentary, nov 2005 )

Besides the folly of equating the ideological battleground of secular Eastern Europe, prostate beneath the boot of atheistic Communism, with that of the religiously conservative Islamic Middle East (and Islam in the rest of the world, for that matter), even one that is in parts beneath the boot of secular military dictarship, there are two problem with simply reapplying the Cold War approach. Both of them stem from the forces of globalisation that have reshaped the world since the Cold War ended. The first is the demographic Achilles heel the West has created for itself through irresponsible mass immigration. The second is the exponential multiplication of ideological battle fronts brought about by advances in communications technology.

As Mark Steyn wrote last week:

Our enemies understand “why we fight” and where the fight is. They know that in the greater scheme of things the mosques of Jakarta and Amsterdam and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., are more important territory than the Sunni Triangle. The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it’s not enough, it never has been, and it never will be.

That is the territory for which the battle of ideas, the famed battle “for hearts and minds” should now be waged in the West, as well as the Middle East - mosques, schools, universities, libraries, internet forums, the blogosphere and all other forms of electronic and print media. That is the battle being lost, that must be won and which has now drawn all of us in. Yet far beyond not “understanding “why we fight”, most people in the West are oblivious to the fact that there is a fight on in the first place.

Here’s a couple of examples from the weekend’s press that serve as both metaphor and example of why we may be losing.

Exhibit A: In Germany a group of Muslims have launched a new dawah initiative - a mosque on wheels. Presumably taking advantage of the current heat wave, the truck rolls around the cities of Germany, reeling kids in by playing the ice-cream truck melody familiar to children everywhere. “Would you like a Koran with that?” Ok, I am joking about the ice-cream. But the rest is true.
The “Islamobil” is touring Germany, with the goal of “informing Germans about Islam”, explains one of the tour organisers, Gülüzar Keskin. Well, it sure beats door knocking. One of the first things that comes to mind is what the response may be if a Christiamobil attempted a loop of Cairo, Tehran or Islamabad, but I won’t dwell on the obvious.

The tour has apparently going very well:

‘Many visitors have already asked us if we have addresses for mosques nearby, so that they can get more information about Islam.'’ Keskin said.

I am all for interfaith and intercultural dialogue and Westerners learning about Islam. But that is different from open-ended religious campaigning. A measure of a society’s instinct for cultural self-preservation must surely be also applied.

Exhibit B: Channel 4 is soon screening a program titled a “A Beginner’s Guide to Islam.” Fair enough, you may think, any education enquiry into one of the world’s great religions is welcome just about now. But wait, here are the details:

Sir Bob Geldof’s daughter, Peaches Geldof is to present a new TV series about religion for Channel 4.

As part of ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Islam’ Peaches will be moving in with a devout Muslim girl from Morocco and her family.

The house [sic] long programme intends to find out what the Islamic world makes of someone like mardy Peaches and disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation.

During the show Peaches will be witnessing the sacrificing of a sheep and attend a ‘taking the veil’ party…rocking.

A programme spokeswoman said to MSN: “The contributors will come face to face with three of the worlds most talked about religions, exploring their unfamiliar rituals and testing regimes.”

Other programmes in the series will feature Paul Nichols taking a look at Hinduism in India and comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli trying to find out what Scientology really is all about.

More details here:

Geldof sets out to prove that Islam does not deserve its “bad reputation'’.

The hour-long program will find out “what the Islamic world makes of this precocious London party girl'’, according to Channel 4.

17 year old Peaches Geldof (full name Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof), whom I wish the best of luck in her experience, is pictured top right.

Now, I understand that “the battle of ideas” is the furthest thing from the minds of the shows producers and that for them it is all about the battle of the ratings. Channel 4 is not the global Embassy of Western Secularism (perhaps that honour can be reserved for the culturally sensitive organisers of Kabul’s first fashion show). My point is rather that their attitudes and the recruitment of Peaches Geldof to present a “Beginner’s guide to Islam”, is representative of a misguided and naive championining of certain aspects of Western culture, beneath the banner of “freedom”, that have become the de facto frontline deployment in the aforementioned battle of ideas. A battle, that, as mentioned previously, has been globalised into a universality. ( Meaning that, by the way, whether they like it or not, Channel 4 ARE involved in the battle. And in that context, can you think of anything more idiotic than sending an over-sexualised teenager in a mini-skirt, accompanies by soft porn promo shots to “learn [and thus teach her viewers] about Islam”? Is the cult of youth, beauty and ratings obsession of the West so far gone that it is completely oblivious to the moral irresponsibility of this undertaking?) The aspects I am talking about are liberated sexuallity, adolescent self-determination, the cult of youth etc. - all of which, in this context, are examples of a degraded understanding of a great and noble idea of individual freedom.

The show will present yet another opportunity for Muslims to point out the moral depravity of the West, the lack of modesty in Western women, to lecture about parental irresponsibility, chastity, alcohol and drug use etc etc. Is it not mundanely predictable yet, “what the Islamic world will make of this precocious London party girl”? Is there a better vehicle for dawah? (Well, yes, probably the Islamobil, you might think). Peaches may be a perfectly innocent and intelligent young woman, but what matters here is comparative perception and reputation, which may or or may not have been caricatured by the gossip press.

Of course this would be at least in part a result of a deliberate baiting of controversy, a sure ratings winner. Perhaps for their next sensation they can send Tommy Lee to do a semester at Al-Azhar University. That sure fire hit would really be a service to Western civilisation.

In the Cold War years youth, beauty and mini-skirts may have screamed “freedom” to repressed masses stuck in the bland greyness of Communist totalitarianism. But for most of the deeply conservative and often bitterly alienated Muslims that radical Islam targets for its recruitment these same things only scream about Western depravity and godlessness. For many Muslims rather than being the personafication of freedom, Peaches will be a mini-skirt inch away from being a sign of the pending apocalypse.

A “Beginner’s Guide” may well do with dictionary and for that purpose I recommend Wolfgang Bruno’s Islamic Dictionary for Infidels”, which should perhaps be required reading for all our esteemed leaders:

Andrew G. Bostom, author of “The Legacy of Jihad,” notes that President Bush has repeatedly stressed the paramount importance of promoting freedom in the Middle East. However, Bostom points out that Hurriyya, the Arabic for “freedom,” and the uniquely Western concept of freedom “are completely at odds.” Hurriyya - “freedom” - is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master,” expressed it -“perfect slavery” under the will of Allah. Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Encyclopedia of Islam, maintains that:

“…there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West.”

Meanwhile, the German- Syrian scholar Bassam Tibi, a Muslim reformist, is warning the West against wishful thinking in its “dialogue” with Muslims. “The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other.”

..

(The whole essay is highly recommended reading)

It is wishful thinking indeed that Cold War strategies can work against an enemy ideologically alien to the previous one, on a ubiquitously redefined battlefield. And what could possibly examplify the “gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists” better than Peaches Geldof being sent to “find out what the Islamic world makes of her” and “disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation”.

We are taking damage in this “battle of ideas” and the source of the damage is friendly fire.