Diana West

Up the Rebels

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:28:20 GMT

Happy Fourth of July

"Rule, Sharia--Sharia Rule the Brits"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:03:33 GMT

The most senior judge in England--Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips (oh, please)--tonight gave his most Lordly, Chief and Just blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Another reason to be glad we declared independence.

Welcome to the Forbidden Zone

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:51:50 GMT

Kathryn Lopez' Q&A with me this week at NRO probes places in The Death of the Grown-Up (the second, culminating half of the book) that the majority of reviewers ignored--from John Leo in the Wall Street Journal on pub date last August to Midge Decter in The Claremont Review this winter, with many in between. Whatever the reason (didn't read, didn't want to read), the debate over political correctness, infantilization and how they relate both to each other and to our woeful responses to Islam and Islamization was never joined. Here are Kathryn's excellent questions on the subject and my response.

Lopez: What is the real culture war?

West: “The real culture war” is the reason I wrote this book. We are in the middle of it, whether we know it or not.

Recall the academic “culture wars” of the 1980s and 1990s — a struggle that was, in large part, a war over cultural identity. Were we going to remain heirs to the Western canon, or become children of a multicultural world? Because that question was asked of a post-grown-up society exhibiting classic symptoms of “identity crisis,” the winning answer came decisively from the multicultural Left.

I didn’t realize the full extent of that victory until much later, beginning on 9/11, when the Multicultural States of America—a nation that had taught itself to believe, for example, that the complete works of Alice Walker and William Shakespeare were interchangeable, offering equal enlightenment and meriting equal study (giving Shakespeare the benefit of the doubt) — came under cataclysmic attack. Was it a real war, this time, not a culture war … or was it a real culture war?

And here we go again. Many of the same questions that drove the theoretical culture wars of the past came back in this more literally perilous era. What do we stand for, and, no less important, what do we stand against? Is the West itself going to remain intact, or is Western-style liberty going to be transformed by contact and conflict with, in this test case, Islam? These are the questions that the post-grown-up, multiculturalist society we have become is having trouble answering. It’s not just the mystery identity of “we” that’s problematic at this point. When a civilization defines itself by an eternally youthful pliance and infinite openness — just as its citizens define their personal lives, not at all coincidentally — it’s difficult to determine what, if anything, that same civilization can be definitively closed to. In this real culture war, the stakes are much higher than they used to be: that is, we’re not just discussing whether Rigoberta Menchu has a place in the canon alongside (or instead of) John Milton; we’re talking about whether Islamic law (sharia) has a place alongside (or instead of) Western law. Having caved on Rigoberta Menchu et al, it shouldn’t be surprising that we are also caving on sharia. I am hoping the latent grown-up in us all can put a stop to this.

Lopez: “Jihad is from Mars and Islam is from Venus”?

West: Ah — you have seized on my spoofy punchline about the extent to which the myth of Bad Jihad-Good Islam has become our conventional wisdom. Such “wisdom” requires us to remove jihad from Islam entirely, allowing us to frown on the former and embrace the latter. This is a dangerously misleading strategy.

I have come to believe that the Western way of life — which I’ll define in brief as life lived according to Judeo-Christian-evolved morality and liberty — is imperiled by the demographic spread and influence of Islamic ideology and laws. Notice I didn’t say the spread of “Islamism.” Or “Islamist-ism.” Or “Islamofascism.” Or just “Wahhabism.” Or “fundamentalist militant extremism.” Over the years, I have used most of these “ists” and “isms” in my column, trying them out one by one until I got to the point where I realized they were serving as a distraction, a form of verbal camouflage that turns our attention away from the ideology and laws of Islam itself. In the cause of not-giving-offense — the highest cause of Westerners-turned-multiculturalists—we have prevented ourselves from undertaking a hard-eyed appraisal of Islamic ideology as a whole, jihadism included, and engaging in a serious discussion of how to contain it.

Lopez: What should the war be called? The name matters, doesn’t it?

West: Yes, it most certainly does matter. For starters, the war should not be called “the war on terror,” which, as many have pointed out, is a tactic, not a nation or coalition or ideology. It is as if in 1941 the U.S. had raised an army to fight “the war on surprise attack,” or “the war on blitzkrieg.” “The Global War on Terror” isn’t any better on this count, just geographically bigger. And I don’t like The Long War, either. I don’t think this war would be a “long” war if we had the courage and clarity to identify the jihadist ideology and aims, and set our minds to protecting Western societies from both. I probably favor “war on jihadism.” Islamic jihad is what threatens us; and a war on jihadism suggests a war that is being mounted defensively to repulse an aggressive movement.

Worth noting is that poll after poll in the Muslim world indicate that Muslims believe the “war on terror” is in reality a “war on Islam.” Are they correct? As the war is currently designed, I would have to say yes, they are — although this is surely not the president’s intention. If, however, you understand that freedom of conscience and sexual equality, to take just two basic ideals of the president’s democratization strategy, are seen as antithetical to Islamic law, it becomes clear that bringing such freedoms to the Islamic world would certainly appear to Muslim believers as being part of a war on Islam.

Consider the overarching conception of “freedom” itself. The entry on freedom, or hurriyya, in the Encyclopedia of Islam describes a state of divine enthrallment that bears no resemblance to current Western understandings of freedom as predicated on the workings of the individual conscience. But multicultural “we,” rigorously trained to see all peoples and all cultures and all religions as ultimately wired in precisely the same way, persist in overlooking such distinctions. We instead regard our kind of “freedom” as being one-size-fits-all “universal” freedom — universally valued and universally desired. Then we scratch our heads when large swaths of the monocultural Muslim world regard it as an ineluctably Western (if not infidel) threat to Islam. Frankly, I don’t think that convincing Islam otherwise is where our security interests will be met, or even can be met. Me, I would like to see us get out of the high-end democratization business to concentrate more specifically on warding off Islamization in the West and jihadist terror via a “war on jihadism.”

Lopez: How are “dhimmi life under Islam” and “PC life in a multicultural world” similar?

West: For me, this pairing was something of a “eureka” moment in the writing of the book.

I would describe PC life in a multiculti world as being marked in part by self-censorship based in fear — fear of professional failure, opprobrium or social ostracism. I would also describe this same self-censorship as a form of childishness. During one lecture on The Death of the Grown-Up, I took a question from a man who wondered, in a rather agitated way, if I were actually saying that multiculturalism is juvenile. I hadn’t phrased things that way, but, on quick reflection, I told him that, yes, that was indeed what I was saying. The fact is, buying into multiculturalism — the outlook that sees all cultures as being of equal value (except the West, which is essentially vile) — requires us to repress our faculties of logic, and this in itself is an infantilizing act. I mean, it’s patently illogical to accept and teach our children the notion that a culture that has brought liberty and penicillin to the masses is of no greater value than others that haven’t. In accepting the multicultural worldview, we deceive ourselves into inhabiting a world of pretend where certain truths are out of bounds and remain unspoken — even verboten.

Our adoption of PC norms and multicultural speech codes, of course, came about independently of the historical conditions of the dhimmi, who, as Jews and Christians living under Islamic law, developed cultures of self-censorship and self-denial at a far remove from anything going on in the United States. But that doesn’t negate the comparison between what may be regarded as two cultures of self-censorship. Indeed, it helps explain the terrifying compatibility between the conditions historian Bat Ye’or has chronicled as “dhimmitude” and the multicultural mindset that flourishes in a post-grown-up world.

For death-of-the-grownup purposes, one aspect of dhimmitude has particular resonance, or, perhaps, non-resonance; and that is the silence of dhimmitude regarding Islam. Among dhimmi populations, it is the silence of an insecure, fearful, self-censoring society. In the West, it is also the silence of the post-adult, identity-less society, the one that never quite grows up into itself. And the similarities between the two are alarming.

Maybe this hush of dhimmitude fell over the West after the 1989 Salman Rushdie fatwa, when the notion of “protected” Islam — “protected” from criticism on pain of death—was first communicated to a wide Western audience. And now? It’s become a part of our world. In the nearly two decades since the Rushdie case, we have seen, to take just a few random examples, a British broadcast watchdog group note that “Islam was accorded far more respect on television and radio than other religions”; the EU racism watchdog shelve a report on antisemitism in Europe because it concluded Muslims and Palestinian groups were responsible for most of the incidents; a British Foreign Office minister apologize repeatedly for a line in a speech that called on British Muslims to choose between political dialogue and “the way of the terrorists”; and an American president end his “crusade” before it began and declare Islam a religion of peace. (I refer to President Bush’s early post-9/11 remarks: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.”)

Is this dhimmitude under Islam? Or PC life in a multicultural world? Or have the two worlds morphed? I try to answer these questions in the book.

Free Geert Wilders

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:26:45 GMT

This Fourth of July, light a firecracker for Geert Wilders--a true son of liberty.

From today's column:

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands -- Having run the polite-but-grim gauntlet of Dutch government security to gain access to Geert Wilders, I finally understood what the 24-hour security requirements of the man's continued existence really mean: To make the survival of Western-style liberty in the Netherlands his political cause, this Dutch parliamentarian has to live under high-tech lock and key.

This stunning paradox, with no end in sight, illustrates how far political freedom in the West has already eroded. Think of it: For writing about the repressive ideology of Islam, for arguing against the inequities of Sharia (Islamic law), for making a video ("Fitna") to warn about Islamic jihad, Wilders lives in his own non-Islamic country under a specifically Islamic death threat.

If it is politically incorrect to notice this, it is also indisputably true. True, too, is that, sans state security, this death threat could conceivably be carried out anytime, anywhere -- from the picturesque streets outside the Dutch parliament, to the house Wilders hasn't slept in since 2004. That, of course, was when, on an Amsterdam street, a Muslim assassin plunged a knife into Theo van Gogh's corpse, thus attaching the Islamic manifesto threatening both Wilders and his then-parliamentary colleague, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with death.

Not long ago, political debate in the Netherlands met with, well, more political debate. Now, however, with a growing Muslim minority -- and it's politically incorrect to notice this, too -- political debate sometimes meets with Islam-inspired political assassination. At least it has, traumatically, twice in recent years: once, with the 2002 murder of the anti-Islamic-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn by an animal rights activist who claimed Fortuyn was scapegoating Muslims; and the following year with the ritualistic Islamic murder of Van Gogh, director of "Submission," a short video made with Hirsi Ali about Islamic mistreatment of women. In all, such Islam-inspired violence has been enough to chill Islam-inspired debate.

And that's just the situation at home. This week, even as Amsterdam's chief public prosecutor, Leo de Wit, announced that no charges would be brought against Wilders for "discrimination" or "incitement to hatred" related to Wilders' writings or video ("We find Mr. Wilders' remarks were limited to Islam as a religious movement," De Wit said), Jordan announced it is bringing a "Fitna"-related criminal case against the Dutch parliamentarian.

In other words, Jordan will indict a Dutch politician according to Jordanian (read: Islam-inspired) law. "Jordanian authorities are not aiming to arrest" the Dutch leader of the Freedom Party, Radio Netherlands Online reports. "They say the decision to prosecute was taken in order to send a signal to the Netherlands."

A "signal"? How about a gag? Of course, like other Western peoples, the Dutch seem content to censor themselves, happily mouthing multicultural platitudes that effectively rationalize their own culture's Islamization. Not Wilders.

I recently asked the 44-year-old Dutchman what was stronger in his country: Islam or multiculturalism.

"Unfortunately, they are both strong," he replied, seated in his lightly furnished but heavily guarded office. "But cultural relativism is the biggest problem." He went on to explain: "Multicultural society would not be that bad -- I don't really believe in it -- but it would not be that bad if, at least, we would be strong enough to say that our culture is better and dominant. But when you combine multicultural society with a dominant sense of cultural relativism, you are heading in the wrong direction. You are committing suicide when it comes to your own culture."

He continued: "I am not advocating a monocultural society. I just want what the Germans call leitkultur (leading culture). I want our own culture to be dominant -- not the only one, but to be dominant. I have a big problem with the cultural relativists who say every culture is equal. I don't believe every culture is equal."

Hoping to preserve the primacy of Western culture in this Dutch corner of the West, Wilders advocates a halt to Islamic immigration. "I'm not saying that every Muslim in the Netherlands is a criminal or a terrorist," he explains. "We know the majority is not. Still," he continues, "there is good reason to stop the immigration, because the more we have an influx of Muslims in the Netherlands, the strength of the (Islamic) culture will grow, and the change of our societies will increase." He sees his efforts as "a fight against an ideology that I believe at the end of the day will kill our freedom, kill our societies and change everything we stand for."

He's right -- and, yes, it's politically incorrect to say that, too. Everything the West stands for, starting with freedom of speech, is already changing as our institutions, up to and including, for example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, increasingly proscribe critical references, or indeed, any references to Islam. While it's clear that the European manifestation of Islamic ideology has already killed Wilders' personal freedom in the Netherlands, the general impact on freedom throughout the West has yet to be fully appreciated.

"I have a mission," Wilders said. "I believe very strongly in what I say, and my party fortunately shares this view. And nobody in the Netherlands is doing (what I do). And somebody should. And I pay a high price for it."

What is the expression -- freedom isn't free? This is literally and acutely the case when it comes to this heroic and dedicated Dutchman.

Jordanian "Justice"?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:53:25 GMT

Jordan, trying to extend the reach of sharia (Islamic law) from the umma to the West, is actually bringing criminal "FItna"-related charges against Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders (whom I interviewed on my travels for this week's column to come). Alas, the Dutch government isn't reacting with the kind of "How dare you?" statecraft to stop this overreaching outrage in its tracks. So far, instead of setting off a loudly public round of righteous indignation and contempt, the Dutch government is promising a "diplomatic" response, and hasn't even summoned the Jordanian ambassador.

First, let's stop and consider what "justice" in Jordan means:

"Criminal" charges for freedom of speech abroad.

And basically misdemeanor charges for honor killings at home.

Wilders has been quoted as saying his charges show "how undemocratic the banana republic of Jordan is"--not to mention how immoderate. But what does the Dutch government reaction to his charges say about the Netherlands?

Talking About The Death of the Grown-Up with ...

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:19:56 GMT

...Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online.

Puppy Offensive

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:11:34 GMT

From the London Telegraph:

A police force has apologised to Islamic leaders for the "offensive" postcard advertising a new non-emergency telephone number, which shows a six-month-old trainee police dog named Rebel.

The German shepherd puppy has proved hugely popular with the public, hundreds of who have logged on to the force's website to read his online training diary.

But some Muslims in the Dundee area have reportedly been upset by the image because they consider dogs to be "ritually unclean", while shopkeepers have refused to display the advert.

Tayside Police have admitted they should have consulted their 'diversity' officers before issuing the cards, but critics argued their apology was unnecessary.

Naughty dhimmi.

Richard Cook, director of the Campaign Against Political Correctness in Scotland, said: "Britain is the greatest dog-loving country in the world.

"In our culture, dogs are a man's best friend. I don't think Andrex are likely to be dropping the puppy dog from their adverts and for the police to apologise is ludicrous."

Thank you, Mr. Cook. Now, back to Insanity-Land:

Rebel has proved a popular recruit for Tayside Police and is about to venture out onto the streets, having just completed his course of inoculations.

He was given his name after visiting St Ninians Primary School in Dundee where pupils put forward hundreds of ideas of what he should be called.

Not Mohammed?

But some Islamic scholars believe that dogs are impure--

Dare them to tell that to my pooches--

and therefore 'haraam' - or forbidden - except for use in hunting or farming, and that it is not hygienic to keep a dog in the house.

They say that the "impurity of dogs is the greatest of animal impurities", and anyone who touches one must wash the body part that has come into contact with the animal seven times.

That's rational.

Mohammed Asif, a Dundee City councillor who sits on the Tayside Joint Police Board, said the postcards had been raised this week with John Vine, the chief constable.

He said: "My concern was that it is not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards. It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities. The police should have understood.

"Since then the police have explained that it was an oversight on their part and that if they had seen it was going to cause upset they would not have done it.

Ah, Scottish backbone.

"People who have shops just will not put up the postcard. But the police have said to me that it was simply an oversight and they did not seek to offend or upset."

A spokesman for Tayside Police said that Rebel had proved "extremely popular" with children and adults since he joined the force aged six weeks.

He added: "His incredible world-wide popularity - he has attracted record visitor numbers to our website - led us to believe Rebel could play a starring role in the promotion of our non-emergency number.

"However, we did not seek advice from the force's diversity adviser prior to publishing and distributing the postcards. That was an oversight and we apologise for any offence caused."

I'm afraid that some civilizations may deserve to disappear.

Jihad in America Vs. Jihad in Europe

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:33:29 GMT

One question I was asked in Europe recently was why the US doesn't appear to suffer from the same Islam-related friction currently threatening social cohesion in European cities. We don't see car-be-ques blazing in American cities; nor we seem to battle over burqas with quite the same intensity. As for the threat of Islamic terrorism, the perception, despite 9/11, is a low-profile one. Do we have a better integrated Islamic population? Is there less strife due to a possibly higher, on average, rate of education among American Muslims vs. their European co-religionists? Clearly, the consensus is that Islam in America is something quite different from Islam in Europe.

To be sure, some Europeans have become far more acutely aware of the stark differences between Islamic and Western law and culture than most Americans. And they even have politicians bold enough to discuss these differences--something we do not have at all. This political difference could well be the natural outgrowth of the very differenty facts on the ground in Europe--a demographic situation in which practically every sizeable European city has a substantial Islamic population--as much as 25 percent (or more) in cities such as Rotterdam or Marseilles, 35 percent (or more) in Malmo, Sweden, and something like 10 percent in most other cities you can think of.

The main question, however, remains: Is there, as consensus tells us, less Islam-related strife and violence in the US than in Europe?

Daniel Pipes today demonstrates that this thesis--most recently presented in a new book by Marc Sageman that Pipes describes, alas, as "influential"--is wholly and dangerously false. In a slam dunk at Frontpagemag.com, Pipes shows the figures Sageman and others have relied on to be inaccurate and comes up with the following new equation:

Given that the Muslim population in the United States is about 1/7^th size of its West European counterpart (3 million vs. 21 million), using the figures of 527 arrests for the United States and 1,400 for Europe suggests that the Muslim per-capita arrest rate on terrorism-related charges in the United States is 2.5 times higher than in Europe, not, as Sageman asserts, 6 times lower. In fact, Sageman (who was offered a chance to reply to this article but declined) is off by a factor of about 15.

His error has major implications. If the United States, despite the much better socio-economic standing of its Muslims, suffers from 2.5 times more terrorism per capita than does Europe, socio-economic improvements are unlikely to solve Europe's problems.

This conclusion fits into a larger argument that Islamism has little to do with economic or other stresses. Put differently, ideas matter more than personal circumstances. As I put it in 2002, "The factors that cause militant Islam to decline or flourish appear to have more to do with issues of identity than with economics." Whoever accepts the Islamist (or communist or fascist) worldview, whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female, also accepts the ideological infrastructure that potentially leads to violence, including terrorism.

In policy terms, Americans have no reason to be smug. Yes, Europeans should indeed learn from the United States how better to integrate their Muslim population, but they should not expect that doing so will also diminish their terrorism problem. It could, indeed, even worsen.

Your Taxpayer Dollars: Not Only At Work But Also "Sharia-Compliant"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:37:12 GMT

This is a picture of Afghan Islamic leaders signing a letter to affirm that, as the USAID website featuring the photo puts it, the US taxpayer dollars being dispersed are "legitimate and sharia-compliant."

Phew.

Crop of Confusion

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:23:07 GMT

Please explain the "strategy" here:

The United States government issues sharia-compliant micro-loans to Afghan opium growers NOT to grow opium. This US-tax-dollar-financed capitulation to Western-subversive Islamic law--woo-hoo! anyone awake out there?--isn't exactly working, given that Afghans have produced more opium every year since the US invasion began. The Taliban, meanwhile-- who, not incidentally, practically eradicated the country's opium crop as "un-Islamic" while in power--skimmed $100 million dollars off the top of the 2007 drug crop alone, for example, to fund their sharia-inspired push to power against US and allied forces....

Wouldn't it be easier if the Taliban simply applied for some sharia-compliant US government loans and got done with?

Meanwhile...

U.S. troops in the south of the country are now instructed not to interfere with poppy crops, according to a report this week by the Associated Press from Helmand province, one of the prime sources of Afghan opium.

"Poppy fields in Afghanistan are [like] the cornfields of Ohio," U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Jerry Stover told an AP reporter embedded with his platoon in Helmand. "When we got here, they were asking us if it’s OK to grow poppy, and we said, ‘Yeah, just don’t use an AK-47 [assault rifle].’"