Wounded Beslan Child


Muslim Loathing, Failure, and Envy

To quote Bernard Lewis:

Muslims, too, had their religious disagreements, but there was nothing remotely approaching the ferocity of the Christian struggles between Protestants and Catholics, which devastated Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finally drove Christians in desperation to evolve a doctrine of the separation of religion from the state.

Only by depriving religious institutions of coercive power, it seemed, could Christendom restrain the murderous intolerance and persecution that Christians had visited on followers of other religions and, most of all, on those who professed other forms of their own.

Muslims experienced no such need and evolved no such doctrine. There was no need for secularism in Islam...Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship.

It did, however, accord to the holders of partial truth a degree of practical as well as theoretical tolerance rarely paralleled in the Christian world until the West adopted a measure of secularism in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

At first the Muslim response to Western civilization was one of admiration and emulation - an immense respect for the achievements of the West, and a desire to imitate and adopt them.

This desire arose from a keen and growing awareness of the weakness, poverty, and backwardness of the Islamic world as compared with the advancing West. The disparity first became apparent on the battlefield but soon spread to other areas of human activity.

Muslim writers observed and described the wealth and power of the West, its science and technology, its manufactures, and its forms of government. For a time the secret of Western success was seen to lie in two achievements: economic advancement and especially industry; political institutions and especially freedom.

Several generations of reformers and modernizers tried to adapt these and introduce them to their own countries, in the hope that they would thereby be able to achieve equality with the West and perhaps restore their lost superiority.

In our own time this mood of admiration and emulation has, among many Muslims, given way to one of hostility and rejection. In part this mood is surely due to a feeling of humiliation - a growing awareness, among the heirs of an old, proud, and long dominant civilization, of having been overtaken, overborne, and overwhelmed by those whom they regarded as their inferiors. In part this mood is due to events in the Western world itself...

(Lewis goes on to explain how anti-Western propaganda from the West combined with staggering commercial success bred both hate and resentment. How dare infidels rule the world over Islam.)

There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equalled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country - even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion - to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.

(Thus the modern Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or the riots and killing over cartoons.)

It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them.

This is no less than a clash of civilizations - the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both...





As for my view of Muslims, that is posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/65521 but will reproduce them here:

Submitted by Lewis Loflin, Nov 8, 2006 at 03:00 in response to another blogger:

"The stress on America's record in rebuilding Japan and Germany is a good start. Now we must show that we are not going to abandon Iraq, and rebuild it as we promised to do in the first place. If Iraq can follow in the footsteps of Japan and Germany, the sacrifice would've been well worth it for the generations of Americans to come."

There's a big problem with this. In WW 2 the US destroyed Nazi Germany and Japan, totally. We leveled cities, destroyed all war making capability, etc. We didn't put trade or foreign investment ahead of victory. We defined the enemy in no uncertain terms, and made no compromise. We certainly didn't play political correctness or have to deal with a leftist "fifth column" operating in our own country. We didn't allow Nazis to build schools and mosques to train more Hitler youth, and didn't allow them to lobby in Washington.

The absurd comment on Israel is one example of denying reality. Does anyone really believe that Muslim countries would embrace the west if Israel was gone?

So the question is, are we really going to conduct a real war? That means destroying these terrorist states including their cities, infrastructure, and yes disregard civilian casualties if they use them as human shields such the recent mosque incident in Gaza? Or killing the civilian populations that harbor and support these terrorists such as in Southern Lebanon?

I don't want these people integrated into the west. I don't want the west to conform to them in any manner if it's a violation of western traditions or laws. I don't want their medieval culture, brutal treatment of women, their social values, money or oil. I also don't want to kill a billion Muslims either.

Israel has the right idea; total separation. Build a wall between to west and Muslim countries. Cut off all immigration unless they renounce Islam and convert to another faith. Allow an open door policy for all non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahai, etc.) to immigrate to the west. Cut most diplomatic and trade ties, end student exchanges, etc. Protect Israel and the large Christian community in Lebanon, destroy any capability for any Muslim nation to project power outside their established countries. They are on their own. If they starve, I suggest they work on growing food and population control instead of jihad all week. If they want nothing to do with the west, fine, I respect that. But I will not accommodate a violent tribal culture in my own country.

As for Muslims already here, shut down all Wahhabi and other institutions with ties to any Muslim countries or are financed by them. Anyone found operating in behalf of terrorist organizations, charities, etc. are to be tried and if found guilty, deported after they serve their sentence. If they can put the US Constitution ahead of the Koran, they are welcome. Otherwise, get out. Those here illegally should be deported anyway.

We can continue to play this stupid game until one of them gets a nuke and uses it. Then what? How many millions will die? I don't want to see a billion dead Muslims, but that could well be the result. I don't want to hear about "moderate" Islam, I want to see it.

What will it be next? The Pope, Zionism, cartoons, or Walt Disney? Enough is enough. As for Iraq, let them butcher each other and get the US out.

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