Leftists and Islamists--Allies in an Epic Battle Against Western Civilisation

An unlikely champion of western civilisation, Hirsi Ali is nevertheless "walking point" for the rest of us. Leftists and Islamists both hate Hirsi Ali--both have her in their sights--and at least the Islamists would like to see her dead. We understand why Islamists wish to destroy the west--they are shamed by the west's success and Islam's failure. Understanding the left's antagonism toward western freedoms of thought and economy may be harder for some to understand, but it is critical to understand this alliance of hatred and intolerance toward Hirsi Ali and the enlightenment traditions she has embraced.

In television debates she criticized Islamist family patriarchs, genital mutilation of young women and forced marriages...By criticizing Islam for promoting these injustices in the name of Allah, Hirsi Ali launched a war on two fronts.

Her attacks drew criticism from Islamic fundamentalists as well as leftist Western intellectuals, who accused Hirsi Ali of discriminating against, offending and stirring up resentment among Muslims across the board.

...She's discovered, she now says, that even those who claim to be fighting outdated dogmas are quick to impose their restrictions on thought....there was no doubt the Dutch had turned a blind eye to the horrors some of their Muslim neighbors were inflicting on their wives and daughters. "Teachers, the authorities, politicians and even the media looked the other way when girls didn't return to school after the summer vacation, because they had been married off in Morocco in the meantime." All the talk about respect for the identity of immigrants and their culture, Hirsi Ali says, is "nothing but thoughtlessness, laziness and fear of openly addressing human rights violations."

...As an adolescent she had already suffered every humiliation imaginable. Her mother beat her, and her grandmother condemned her to the painful ritual of female circumcision. The more she was oppressed, though, the stronger her will became to escape her environment. When her father planned to send her to Canada for an arranged marriage, she fled. She worked as a cleaning woman in the Netherlands, learned Dutch quickly and was soon attending political lectures.

...She wants to fight for Muslims to free themselves from the psychological stranglehold of a religion that treats all of its doctrines as absolute, says Hirsi Ali -- and its followers as slaves.

Source

Muslims as slaves? Well, of course. Any religion or ideology that wraps its followers to tightly within itself becomes indistinguishable from mental shackles. That is where too many islamists and leftists find themselves in the modern world. Shackled by dysfunctional ideology.

That is why leftist feminists overlook the honour killings, the genital mutilations, the arranged marriages, the third-rate existence of women within Islam. That is why leftist activists ignore the ubiquitous muslim abuse and murder of homosexuals, the lack of human rights and intellectual freedoms that westerners take for granted.

Leftists find Islamists useful in their own fight against a western civilisation that has largely rejected the failed economics of state socialism and communism. While leftists are currently ascendant in the academy, media, and popular culture of most western countries--and hold onto their ascendancy with an iron intolerance that would make Pol Pot proud--the real power somehow continues to slip through their fingers.

While the left holds dictators such as Kim and Chavez in a pathetic embrace, at least embracing socialists and communists makes a type of sense, comfort in the company of losers. Why should leftists also embrace dictators such as the Iranian leadership? Particularly when the monkey-mullahs and apish Ahmedinejad execute homosexuals (while denying their existence), feminists, even leftist activists. Such a betrayal by the left of those it pretends (in the west) to protect and champion, is disgusting.

Nevertheless, that is where the left finds itself--without any principles or mores. It is what it says and does--at the moment. Tomorrow may be different.

Although Hirsi Ali has left the Netherlands, Geert Wilders continues to confront the abomination that is European Islam. Leftists and Islamists might like to see Wilders dead as well--like Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh.

The Freedom Party leader describes Islam as a dangerous, intolerant and fascistic religion. He says the Qu’ran should be forbidden and Muslim immigration banned....Geert Wilders...says he should be able to speak his mind in parliament, especially since his ideas have the support of half a million voters.

Source

Wilders, and other free thinking European politicians, would like to see European culture and civilisation survive the current onslaught of a human wave of religious violence, intolerance, and backwardness. If Islam can be reformed, all well and good. But most evidence points to the contrary.

Time to wake up.

Sent to Subdue the World, With Minds Full of Hate

Islam is not, strictly speaking, a "religion" as we in the west define religion. It is a totalitarian socio-religio-political system from the middle ages--with grand ambitions of world conquest. The Muslim Council of Britain--financed by UK government grants and contributions from Saudi Arabian Wahabists etc.--is considered a "mainstream" religious organisation, and attempts to maintain a public face of peace and tolerance. But what is really going on behind the benign public face of the MCB, inside the UK's mosques?

Books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques, according to research seen by The Times.

Some of the fundamentalist works were found at the bookshop in the London Central mosque in Regent’s Park, which is funded by the Saudi regime and is regularly visited by government ministers. Its director, Ahmad al-Dubayan, is also a Saudi diplomat and was among those greeting King Abdullah when he arrived in Britain last night for his official state visit.

Extremist literature, including passages supporting the stoning of adulterers and waging violent jihad, was also found on sale at many other mosques regarded as mainstream institutions.

Times Online

While some scholars claim that Wahabism is marginalised as a force within Islam, the Wahabi money trail tells a different story. It is not only in Britain and Australia that Saudi oil money is used to finance the warping of young minds toward fanatical violence and destruction. The trail of blood leads back to the primitive sands from virtually every western and third world country with an appreciable population or strategic location.

Islam has bloody borders, and the responsibility for that blood lies mainly with Wahabi supporters in the Sunni gulf states, and with the oil sponsored theocracy of Iran.

When otherwise intelligent people attack non-violent Christianity and Judaism, while giving the bloody, violent Islamist movement a free pass, the message sent to Islamist fanatics is that the west is so involved in attacking its own weakened belief systems that it has no time or energy to defend itself from an outside attack.

When Osama bin Laden confidently predicted that the Americans would be quick and easy to defeat in Afghanistan, should the US ever think to attack Al Qaeda in its Taliban protected stronghold, he was expressing the timeless view of the primitive and vital toward the sophisticated and decadent. When a more advanced nation or civilisation becomes so decadent as to continuously attack itself without regard for dangers from the outside, it makes itself appear to be easy prey.

The western world has achieved a momentum in world affairs that cannot be completely explained by natural resources, geography, national cultures, relative intelligence, exploitation of the primitive world, tropical diseases, or just luck. The pre-eminence of the western world can certainly not be explained by divine guidance, genocidal mania, or alien intervention.

Just a few more decades and humans will have the keys to significantly longer and healthier lives. We will stand at the doorway of augmented minds and senses. The universe itself appears to wait on the decisions of humans, for the future. Can we hold off the wolves that are nipping at our heels (from within and without) long enough to achieve the level that allows us to begin our long journey?

Arab World Plans Large Science Infrastructure: What Are The Odds?

the Arab world has stagnated. Per capita income in Arab countries grew at an annual rate of just 0.5% during the last quarter century - less than half the global average. Despite being blessed with massive quantities of "black gold," Arabs have seen their average standard of living decline relative to the rest of the world. The combined GDP of all Arab countries ($531.2 billion) is today less than that of Spain (a country that Arabs once ruled).

SourceAccording to the best studies by intelligence researchers, the mean IQ for the arab world is near 85--exactly that of the african-american population in the US. While the Arab world reaps many billions of dollars yearly from oil and gas revenues, the scientific and educational levels of the Arab world are dismally low. Is it theoretically likely that a larger monetary investment in a Science Education/Research infrastructure could raise scientific achievement in the arab world up to western levels?

Earlier this year, the 22 nations of the Arab League approved a 10-year plan to boost scientific research. It calls for member states to raise their allocation to science twelvefold to 2.5 percent of GDP—more than the average 2.3 percent spent by developed nations.

...Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates recently launched a new pan-Arab foundation with a monumental endowment of $10 billion—one of the largest charitable donations in history. The foundation's stated mission is to "develop world-class knowledge" in the Arab region, and many are hoping it will foster broad-based scientific research.

...With a $1.5 billion annual allocation to science in a country with a population of less than a million, Qatar is intent on reform. Education City is Qatar's new university system—a 2,500-acre campus that is home to branches of five of the world's top universities, including Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. The Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) has enticed foreign labs and international companies by offering top-notch research facilities. The country is bringing in foreign expertise to achieve a long-term vision—to make Qatar a knowledge-based society. "QSTP is a 20-year program," says director Eulian Roberts, "but we're working hard now so that we can achieve a change in culture, a change in mentality."

Source

Oman and Saudi Arabia plan to join Qatar and the Emirates in their aggressive thrust to build large new scientific infrastructures for education and research. We know that the Arab world is proficient at "bringing in foreign expertise." That is how the oil and gas fields were developed, how the modern urban infrastructures were constructed and maintained, how the entire Arab civilisation keeps from falling apart. But the key question that any knowledgeable person is forced to ask in connection with this new putsch for Arab science is: Where will they get all the promising young math, physics, chemistry, biology students?

Good science, math, and engineering students at the university level do not spring up from thin air. They come from good programs at lower levels of education. They come from families that typically encourage curious young minds to explore. Where will they find this type of family, this type of K-12 education and top notch undergrad training? In the muslim world--particularly the arab muslim world--curiosity is too often beaten out of young minds, and too many questions are forbidden to children and youth. Women are seen as second-rate minds and third-rate citizens, which eliminates half of youth intelligent enough to pursue a scientific career. Much of science conflicts with rigid Islamic teaching. Where will the religious police be during all of this buildup?

The chart above comparing a population with mean IQ of 85 with a population with a mean IQ of 100 (SD 15) indicates the relative portions of the two populations with enough intelligence for the different careers. While this type of chart has its limitations, it is useful as a broad guide.

Is this type of promotional thrust yet another example of "cargo cult science and education?" I suspect so. "If you build it, they will come . . ." If you build the huge and expensive universities and science/engineering labs, the students and professors will come, the researchers will come, the international regard for homegrown science and technology will come . . . or will it?

While the faculty and researchers for these new institutions can be imported from abroad, the students will have to come from home turf--if the program is to have any meaning at all. And once you do train world class Arab youth in science and technology, how do you keep them from emigrating to Europe and the Anglosphere? That is always a perennial problem for the third world.

How Much Longer Will Muslim Women Keep Popping Them Out Like Cluster Bombs

The population of muslim countries has tripled in the past 50 years. But there are signs that even in the backwater muslim countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, muslim women are beginning to rebel.

Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States.

Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry young men.

....While Islamic countries tend to have very low levels of education, especially for women, the introduction of satellite television and DVDs has enabled even illiterate women to learn that there are other options. Ignorance is an excellent form of control, but when the ignorance is lost, so is the control.

....Losing control of the women is something that makes Islamic conservatives very angry. Murderously angry. This is a vicious, lethal battle taking place largely out of the media spotlight. But, long term, it is destroying the source of Islamic terrorism.

Source

Of course, by the time Islamic violence and terrorism have been trimmed by more civilised birthrates, very few non-muslims may still be alive. But then, that may be what Allah intended, and it is certainly what most muslim clerics intend. Keep killing the infidel to the last drop of muslim blood, or so it goes.

Palestinian muslims and Lebanese Shias seem particularly vicious and bloodthirsty--willing to make babies for the sole purpose of training them to be suicide bombers. That cultivated perverse hatred will only get them into trouble. It is not clear how much blame should be placed on the backward culture, and how much blame to place on the religious clerics who keep the hatred constantly inflamed.

One way or another, things will change. The level of violent hatred and violence coming from Islam cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Selling Iran Short

First a key Iranian official defects

Next,Russia starts getting tougher with Iran on uranium enrichment

Then, Iran seizes 15 British sailors and marines

Next, the UN Security Council strengthens sanctions against Iran

Will the next move be for bombs to fall on Iran in April?

Update 1 April 2007: See here

The corrupt Islamic government of Iran is under assault by its own citizens. You have the teachers in revolt. You have the Kurds. You have a large number of other ethnic groups verging on the edge of revolt against the tyrannical theocracy.

But probably the group that represents the greatest danger to the brutal and bloody dictatorship in Teheran is the women of Iran.

Let us see what atrocities the fundamentalists have committed against women in Iran.

In truth, the people around the world have been informed of a very small portion of the tragedy that has affected women in my country. As you might know, misogyny is distinctive to the fundamentalist ruling Iran.

No one but Iranian women have experienced body and soul this misogyny.

The mullahs' rule came down on women's rights, liberties, culture, family and private lives like a huge avalanche.

- Executing thousands of female opponents, which is unprecedented anywhere in the world;
- Torturing tens of thousands of women political prisoners;
- Executing pregnant women, the torture of mothers in front of their children;
- Degrading women's social and economic standing to second class citizens;
- Imposing gender apartheid;
- Controlling women's presence in the streets;
- Imposing compulsory veiling, controlling the color and forms of women's attire;
- Lacerating and splashing acid on women's faces because of their clothing and make up.
- Systematic assault on women in prisons;
- Denial of the right to divorce and the right to custody of children;
- Promoting polygamy and temporary marriage, justified by the mullahs' disgraceful Sharia;
- Applying medieval and painful punishments such as stoning, whose victims are primarily women;
- Injustice and discrimination in economic participation, employment and education;
- The sale of small children by impoverished families and their trafficking to other countries by the mullahs' criminal gangs in a country as rich as Iran;
- Selling innocent girls' body parts due to impoverishment, hunger and many other calamities;

Indeed, these are only parts of the tragedy women have been experiencing under the rule of the fundamentalists. I must emphasize that these come at a time when the Iranian Resistance movement has been waging a relentless struggle against this regime for 27 years. Imagine what the fundamentalist mullahs would have done to women if this resistance did not exist.

Source

An invasion of Iran by a western coalition would be absurd. But clearly the current brutal Iranian dictatorship is pushing the limits of what the civilised world will tolerate.

Clearly the people of Iran are suffering badly under the mad mullahs and the prancing monkey Ahmadinejad. But many westerners, out of political motives, appear to be turning a blind eye toward the suffering people of Iran. Even western feminists seem to be jumping in bed with the patriarchy of Iran.

It is common for many journalists and bloggers to downplay the very real Iranian threat--out of hatred for US President Bush! They may feel that propagating a falsely benign image of Iran to the public will minimise the chances that Bush will attack or invade Iran. But a falsehood is a falsehood, regardless of motive. The thing that concerns me is that they may be fooling themselves!

Why Are Radical Feminists As Helpful to Oppressed Muslim Women As a Screen Door on a Submarine?

Today's radical feminists arrived at the party after the excitement was over. Women had already achieved the right to vote, the right to own property, and virtually all the other equal rights women under Islam could sorely use right now--long before today's radical feminists arrived on the scene. The women who won those rights were nothing like today's pampered "radicals."

But there is still time for these "legends in their own minds" to achieve something great for women--but they refuse! I am referring of course to the largest group of genuinely oppressed women in the entire world--women suffering and dying under the oppression of Islam. Why won't the radical princesses help them?

Sommers: I am becoming involved in the struggle of Islamic women to secure their basic rights. The United States of America is not a patriarchy--but places like Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia certainly are. There are broadly two sorts of women’s rights movements in the Muslim world. One is led by observant religious women who are trying to find sources of liberation inside their own religion. The other, much smaller, is led by women who are non-religious and who want to bring the Enlightenment to their societies. I sympathize with both groups and I believe that American equity feminism has a lot to offer both.

But remember, the American feminist establishment is currently dominated by gender feminist radicals. They believe that America is, in its way, as oppressive as any Muslim country. So most of their effort is taken up with “liberating” American women (especially college women) from the ravages of patriarchy. That leaves them almost no time to help oppressed women in other countries.

Even if they want to help Islamic women--their antipathy to traditional religion makes them useless to religious Muslim women. Their animus towards men, feminine beauty, and romance will alienate vast numbers of liberated, Enlightenment feminists in the Muslim world. (Their rejection of the free market capitalism helps no one.) Conservative, moderate and libertarian American women are going to have to find an appropriate and sympathetic way to make common cause with Muslim women--but we will have to work around the feminist establishment to help them--not with it. Anyway, I am planning to write a long essay or a short book to sort this out.

Chapin: I still consult both of those books along with your articles on the subject quite regularly. Have times changed over the course of the last decade? Do you think that the radical feminist (or gender feminist) viewpoint is no longer as dominant among our elites and the media as it once was?

Sommers: As I said, journalists are no longer under the spell of orthodox feminists. In fact, no one seems to find what they have to say all that relevant or appealing. But hapless college students can’t escape them. Ardent, fire-breathing true believers are ubiquitous on the modern campus. They describe American society as a “patriarchy,” and they inveigh against capitalism. They see President George W. Bush as more of a threat than Osama Bin Laden. That worldview is not dominant in the media--nor almost anywhere else that you can name. The one exception is the feminist classroom.

Source.

Pampered radical princesses sit on their thrones inside the castles of Women's Studies, on all large university campuses. They rule mercilessly over their students, and anyone else unfortunate enough to fall under their power. In the real world, they would be laughed at, if not for the many journalists who still willingly consume the excrement flowing out of the sewer drains of the castles.

For a humorous look at what happens when the Vagina Monologues meets the Penis Monologues, read this report.
If you are a student, you'd best follow the lead of the radical princesses--and don't you dare think or do anything at all that could be construed as politically incorrect. The modern university is in no mood for intellectual diversity.

Arab Illiteracy and Other Omens of a Stormy Future

The causes of Arab underdevelopment identified in the report are lack of freedom, marginal participation of women in public life and educational backwardness.Arab people enjoy least freedom compared to any other region in the world — less than even the countries bordering southern Sahara. Civil rights are mostly ignored though they are incorporated in constitutions and legislations in those countries. There are several impediments for the free functioning of the agencies that are supposed to ensure these rights. Arab women get the least opportunity to participate in the economic and political activities compared to any other place in the world. The level of education among Arab women is the lowest in the world. More than 50 percent of them are illiterate. One of the most alarming facts revealed by the report is the backwardness of Arabs in the field of science. The level of education in the region is falling while the per capita spending on scientific research and development is the lowest in the world. In 1996, it was 0.4 percent of the GNP which is one-third of what Cuba spent on scientific research. In 1994, Israel allocated 6.35 percent for the GNP for research programs while in Japan it was 6.9 percent. Naturally, the educational backwardness increases the rate of illiteracy among Arabs. More than 65 million people, which accounts for 43 percent of the Arab population, are illiterate.Source.

* Islamists who do not recognize that humanistic ideas can serve as a basis for society. In their view, everything has existed in the past, and is present in the holy text [the Koran]. The present and future are not in our hands, but in the hands of a force that propels us like puppets. According to these Islamists, the proper way to live is to return to the times of our forefathers, in the seventh century, and to adopt the principle of the Shura [the consultative council] of early Islam.

When it is argued that the Shura never convened in the early Islamic era, that its representatives were appointed and not elected, that the idea of a society like that of the forefathers is imaginary with no basis in historical fact... they have no answer except to curse those raising these questions and to accuse them of heresy.

Al-Houni concludes that there is no point in arguing with Islamists so long as the starting points are different. The Islamists consider the past to be the pinnacle of humanity, whereas Al-Houni's starting point is human experience and history as an unending process.Source.

Arabs seem to be caught in their own traps of illiteracy and primitive modes of thinking. There may be no escape whatsoever. Sadly, the younger generation of arabs is not only huge, but illiterate, and oddly drawn to violent and irrational strains of Islam. It does not look good for the arab world, and anyone who must deal with it.

Of all the sins Bush is guilty of, over-optimism in dealing with the arab and muslim world may be his greatest.

Islam in Europe: Clash of Cultures--Which Will Last?

A recent opinion poll in Germany points out a growing distrust between the native German population, and the muslim immigrants whose culture is so different, and in many ways, so violent. Given the growing feelings of antagonism between the modern indigenous people of Germany, and the growing numbers of mostly third world immigrants from primitive cultures, it appears inevitable that serious conflict looms in the future for Germany.

Germans' esteem for Islam has been falling since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, with 83 percent of the 1,076 Germans questioned in the survey agreeing with the statement that Islam is driven by fanaticism. That amount was 10 percent higher than two years ago. A majority, 71 percent, said they believed Islam to be "intolerant," up from 66 percent.

When asked what they associate with the word "Islam," 91 percent of respondents connected the religion to the discrimination of women, and 61 percent called Islam "undemocratic." Eight percent of Germans associated "peacefulness" with Islam.

It is not only Germany that is affected, of course. Everywhere modern European cultures are hosts to rapidly growing numbers of culturally primitive immigrants, conflict appears, and crime rates increase.

....While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.

...68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

....The number of rape charges in Sweden has tripled in just above twenty years. Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six - 6 - times as common today as they were a generation ago.

...in more cosmopolitan centers like Paris and Australia, the game is blossoming. It consists in the ritual gang rape of white women by non-white immigrants....The ritual is known as a “tournante,” meaning “Take your turn,” and it consists of a black male becoming “friendly with” (seducing) a white female, preferably a teenager. Once they’ve become chums, the male lures the girl to a location where his buddies in the gang “take their turns” with her. Look here for links to above stories.

There appears to be a pattern of sorts, where young immigrant muslim males are placed in close proximity to more liberated European young women. There is very little cultural common ground, for peaceful interaction. You may blame this group or that group, this nation or that nation, this politician or that politician--but in the end the tragedy continues growing. You have not solved anything, you have only dispensed your blame.

It would seem extremely prudent for immigration authorities to confront these patterns of growing distrust and violence between the two cultures, and to halt new immigration from these cultures that are proving incompatible with native European cultures. Any other course of action clearly leads to worsening conflict, and perhaps genocidal violence.

Academics, think tank authors, and government bureaucrats who study these issues can take all the time they wish to issue their "authoritative reports," so long as the underlying cause of this growing violence is curtailed. Some cultures cannot coexist in the same time and place. Face the fact. Admit it. Do something about it.