Friday, September 14, 2007

Muslims and Jihad Watchers Agree


In a
story today on Jihad Watch, we are informed of a most recent, official view from one of the largest representative bodies of the Muslim world, the OIC (the Organization of the Islamic Conference): to wit, that the West is not de-linking Islam from terrorism.

Curiously enough, Jihad Watchers would agreebut mistakenly, I maintain. The erroneous disagreement of Jihad Watchers is not simplex, but duplex:

1) We the People, the vast majority of ordinary folks in the West, so say the Jihad Watchers, understand quite well the fact that Islam is directly linked to terrorism (and to jihad)indeed, that it enables, sustains and nourishes it now, and has for 1,400 years since its founder, Muhammad, first began terrorizing his neighbors in Arabia;

and

2) Only a small minority of elites in the West do not understand this linkage between Islam and terrorism (and to jihad), mostly out of corruption and greed as well as out of a persistent strain of Leftism in politics.

I have dealt with this issue in all its manifold variations time and time again on this blog and on my companion blog, The Hesperado. Suffice it to say here that both Jihad Watchers and the OIC are wrong: in fact, the vast majority of ordinary people in the West do not link Islam with terrorism (let alone do they even think, intelligently, to link it with jihad, not really knowing what jihad entails).

Furthermore, this vast majority of ordinary people are not at all disconnected from their
elites in Politics, Business, the Media and Academe. Rather, all combinedthe vast majority of masses of ordinary people and their elitesbreathe deeply, in and out, day after day, the atmosphere of Politically Correct Multiculturalism with regard to the Problem (or, rather, Non-Problem) of Islam. The overarching problem is not one of a concatenation of greed, laziness, corruption and Leftismwhich do exist, of course, and which do contribute to this problem.

The overarching problem is, rather, more of a diffuse and complex sociological phenomenon, a dominant and mainstream world-view connected in complicated ways with other ideas that have become dominant in the West, intimately tied to its ongoing liberal-in-the-classical-sense Progress, combining unhealthy and deleterious axioms with healthy and beneficial ones in a complex bundle difficult to tease out of its synergy of co-dependent inter-relations, whereby both Left and Right (and Center) all merge, at least certainly in terms of swallowing whole the PC Multiculturalist paradigm.


This is not to say that the situation is static, and that cracks are not beginning to show, and that a steady, albeit still pitifully slow and small, trickle of more and more people waking up to the Problem of Islam is not manifesting itself. Nor is it to say that some of those who partake of the vast PC majority are not showing, here and there in different ways, signs of incipient defensiveness about having to maintain, against the ever-burgeoning mountain of evidence to the contrary, their paramount Commandment of the PC Multiculturalist Paradigm: to wit, that:

Islam on the one hand, and Bad Things Some Muslims Say and Do on the other hand, Must Always Remain De-Linked.

(Implict in the above de-linkage, of course, is the complementary de-linkage of the vast majority of Muslims of the world who are, of course, harmless moms and pops just like us, from the tiny minority of extremists who are trying to hijack that forever de-linked and wonderfully peaceable Islam.)

Nevertheless, while Muslims represented by the OIC are exhibiting an irrational paranoia, Jihad Watchers are exhibiting, in mirror-image fashion, an irrationally inflated sense of self-importance, persistently and increasingly conceiving their awareness as some broad social movement when
there are no substantive reasons to suppose that the anti-Islamic movement remains, throughout the West, as anything more than a very small minority. For example, let us not forget the pathetically small turnouts recently at the protest against the Muslim Day Parade in New York City on September 9 (upwards of 150 people by the accounts of those anxiously wishing to hype the numbers) as well as the protest against the denial of right of assembly to stop Islamisation in Brussels on September 11 (again, roughly 150 people, by more accurate estimations)when, by contrast, thousands were able to be mobilized in dozens of locations around the globe to protest the ramping up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And let us not forget also that, six years after 911, there has not been a Million Man March on Washington, D.C. to protest the Problem of Islam and our Wests inability to deal properly with it. There has not, indeed, been any significant mass demonstration, anywhere. Pathetic. And apparently indicative of a glaring absence of a majority of those who get the problem and are, therefore, sufficiently alarmed about it to organize such demonstrations.

No. Both the Muslims of the OIC and Jihad Watchers are wrong. The West does, in fact, de-link Islam from terrorism. This de-linkage, as I maintain, is the pre-eminent shibboleth of the Wests guiding, dominant and mainstream PC Multiculturalism. Not only does the West continue to de-link Islam from terrorism in a variety of ways (not the least of which being the fact that the USA has thousands of Muslims in its military and even has Muslim chaplains and mosques on American soil to service their religious needs), not only has it sustained this de-linkage for at least the past 50 years, but there are no indications that it will not continue to do so for a few more decades. Granted, the ultimate outcome will likely not be as bleakly pessimistic as I may seem to be implying: during these coming decades, the obstinate machine of the PC Multiculturalist paradigm with regard to the Problem of Islam will likely continue to suffer its excruciatingly slow attrition in the face of the stillicide of facts that undermine it, finally to succumb to an epochal paradigm shift whichtragically, howevermight not occur without the additional, catalytic force of horrific attacks by Muslims on multiple Western targets during that same time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hesp,

If it takes as long as a few decades for the west to shake off PC MC, that's probably too late. By then, if present trends continue, there will be Muslim pluralities or majorities poised to take governments in many western countries, including, in some cases, at the national level. Where there are not Muslim governments, there will nevertheless be large blocks of Muslim voters who will ensure that Islam continues to be protected while the west continues to implode culturally and demographically.

The exceptions to this seemingly inexorable trend, as I've said before, are the U.S. and Australia. They may survive for another century before becoming Islamized (i.e., becoming Muslim majorities with Muslim governments). Meanwhile, there will be many dangers for them as former western countries such as Canada, France, Germany, etc., which will already have Muslim governments in the second half of this century, pressure them to conform to Islamic standards. Obviously, the pressure to conform to Islamic standards will not consist of mere idle statements from the OIC and UN, or riots on the other side of the globe. All the many forms of jihad (economic, immigration/demographic) will be focussed against the U.S and Australia, which by then will be isolated as the last major outposts of western civilization.

It is possible that PC MC may change in some ways, but its aspect that is most critical to the present discussion--i.e., blanket protection of Islam combined with fierce counter-attack against anyone who is critical of Islam--is most likely to be strengthened, not weakened. It is likely to be strengthened for the simple fact that the Muslim population in the west is growing rapidly. Moreover, I suspect that it is the case that birth rates are higher among the more devout Muslims.

I do not agree that a major terrorist attack, or even several major terrorist attacks by Muslims, will alter the views of the majority of the media, academics, and politicians. The reason for that is simple: Such attacks would be carried out by a tiny minority of extremists. Such attacks would simply confirm the PC MC world-view. After every such attack, there would be an outreach to "moderate Muslims", coupled with warnings to non-Muslims not to retaliate or discriminate against Muslims. No specific actions would be taken to curtail the spread of Islam, nor would any serious attempts be made to defang and declaw it. I say this on the basis of the fact that this is generally what has happened after each of the major jihadist attacks on non-Muslim civilians including and subsequent to 9/11. If anything, the trend is toward increasing PC MC on the Islam issue, a trend (not merely coincidentally) parallel to the trend of increasing Islamization and sharia implementation/reinstatement throughout the world.

Anonymous said...

"...the simple fact that the Muslim population in the west is growing rapidly."

...coupled with the fact that the population of cultural westerners is declining catastrophically just about everywhere except the U.S.