Sigmund, Carl and Alfred

It’s supposed to be the war in Iraq that has been at the root cause of the latest round of Islamic fundamentalism. We’re told it is American foreign policy that has been the growing medium for Al Qaeda and we are told that Israel is the cause of the failures of Arab Muslim societies and cultures. We are actually going through the charade of a debate on whether or not we should take on the mad mullahs of the Iranian regime, as they develop a nuclear program. We sidestep the issue out of fear of an undesirable Islamic response.

The incongruity is spectacular. If Saddam Hussein had an nuclear program identical to that of Iran, the entire Iraq war debate would be moot. Nevertheless, here we are, pretending to go through a ‘debate’ of sorts, over how to handle the Iran situation- as if an Iran with an unfettered nuclear program is a realistic option. Does anyone really believe that a nuclear armed Iran would shut down production of nuclear materials and give up WMD’s, even if Israel were obliterated? Does anyone believe that a regime that amputates limbs, stones women to death and executes children, will ever find itself in accordance with the literati in the salons in Paris or on English polo fields?

The Danish cartoon incident caused greater outrage on the Muslim ’street’ than did the invasion of Iraq. Those cartoons (distasteful as they were) proved one truth now beyond argument- that for many Muslim clerics and ‘leaders,’ Islam has now dispensed with debate and discussion in favor of violence as an immediate response. Violence is now an act of first resort.’ In carefully crafted manipulation and deceit, a 21^st century ‘iron curtain,’ with all the darkness that implies, is descending upon the Muslim world.

The vast majority of Muslims are not that much different than anyone else. They work, want the best for their families and would be more than happy to just blend in and participate in our society. Just as clearly, those who speak loudest for Islam and in the name of Islam, are violent. They are the face of Islam today. It is also true those voices are not challenged by individuals. It is also true that most, if not all Muslim mosques and organizations have been co opted by radicals or those who passively support a more radical agenda.

Like most Germans in prewar Germany, most Muslims aren’t looking for a confrontation or violence. Like the Germans in the prewar period, many have succumbed to the barrage of racial propaganda and hatred, but for the most part, they aren’t ready for outright violence, absurd ‘Muslim street’ outrage.

None of that matters of course, because those who spoke for Germany were not peaceful and no amount of appeasement would change that. Notwithstanding Hitler’s pronouncements of, ‘All we want is this or that, and no more,’ the wiser amongst the Europeans knew differently. It was only the dreamers and fools that were surprised by the evil that was to come. We wrote in Speaking In Tongues And Other Political Realities, that

An enemy is someone with whom we, as individuals and as a community, have fundamental differences. An enemy has values and beliefs, that are very different than out own. An enemy wants to deprive us of our beliefs and values, because that enemy finds our beliefs repulsive or threatening to their own. Enemies will fight to the death, should they choose to engage us or we choose to engage them.

There are people who believe that enemies are opponents- that is, they can reasoned with and rationalized with and common ground can be had. Believing that an enemy can be an opponent is what led much of Europe to appease Hitler, in the beginning. Herr Hitler, it was believed, was after all a European. Surely he could be reasoned with. Surely he would respond to the rational idea that war was catastrophic.

There is one reality that must be dealt with. In dealing with the Islamists, we are not dealing with opponents- they do not share our values and morality. For an Islamist, violence and the threat of violence, plays a leading role in reacting to a provocation and in attempting to extract a desired response. The mere threat of violence unleashed, it is understood, is a blatant attempt to cow civilized society into submission. It worked for Genghis Khan and it is working for the Islamists. One only has to look at the violent responses to the publication of cartoons, to understand the implications.

In western culture and civilization, violence is the option of last resort. The United Nations was predicated on that premise (contrast that with the Arab League’s Khartoum Declaration, announced that only violence was to be used in dealing with Israel. No negotiation, no recognition and secure borders. To this day, Arab violence is the Sword of Damocles hanging over the Jewish state. That hatred is taught in schools and preached from the pulpit). In the Arab and Islamic world, hate, rejectionism and violence are part of every school curriculum.

Iraq was invaded because Saddam ignored international law for over a decade. He invaded two neighboring countries and butchered well over a million people (the final number has yet to be tallied). Had western sensibilities and repulsion to violence not been so great, it is safe to say that many of those million plus victims of Saddam would be alive today. The same applied to Darfur. If westerners were of one voice and  really believed that the lives of the Rwandans and Darfurese were more important than ‘diplomacy,’ many of the two million butchered in Sudanese and the million plus Rwandans slaughtered, would be alive today. It is clear that for many, who is doing the slaughtering often determines involvement of indifference. For the darlings of the left, there are no crimes against humanity. Ever.

Dr Sanity, in “Perfect” Totalitarianism, Imperfect Freedom And Biological Fantasies:

 …biological fantasies of the leftist utopians; and the delusional fantasies of communists and socialists and all their 21st century heirs, have lead to incalculable levels of human suffering all over the world, as the proponents of these theories have tried to force humans to evolve into some sort of “ideal” state. All such systems have failed the real-world tests in the last century; and all current versions of these ideologies will also eventually fail and fade away. To the extent that they attempt to incorporate some aspects of “human nature” into their failing system, they may last a bit longer as they slowly chip away at the human spirit and work to extinguish it; but it is actually much more likely that human nature will transform the perverse ideology than that the reverse will happen.

What we see in the Middle East today is the re-assertion of human nature after years of being crushed under the oppression of yet another social system that has attempted to rebuild humans along the lines of a religious “ideal”, spiked with totalitarian fantasizing. For all the opposition to giving democracy and freedom a chance in Iraq in Afghanistan, the seeds have been planted and there is little doubt that those seeds will grow as healthy human nature reasserts itself after decades of oppression.

Ask yourself how many deaths will it take before despots like Kim Jung Il with his theory of pine needle tea will be wholly and unequivocally discredited in the minds of those pathetic socialist teachers/oppressors at Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle? Oh, they would be so shocked!shocked! at the idea that their little exercise in “social justice” lays the moral foundation for a social system quite indistinguishable from Kim’s paradise, where all structures belong to everyone and no one; where the individual means nothing and his desires and needs are subservient to the state; and where nothing is special and everything is “standard” (except of course for Dear Leader who looms rather large).

How much human misery and oppressive injustice will it take before the social engineers of today’s neo-fascist left abandon their attempts to force human beings to adapt to their fantasies? When will their “moral awakening” occur?…

“Utopias cannot be created without imposing tyranny.

More often than not, who is doing the slaughtering determines involvement or indifference. 

Muslims have every right to be offended at cartoons they find repulsive and outrageous. Nevertheless, they do not have the right to claim violence as a legitimate response to that offense. They claim to stand for higher ideals, even as Islamic newspapers and media portray other faith in the most obscene and obnoxious ways.

Today, when Christians or Jews respond to provocations with violence, we all understand that to be an aberration. When we see radical Muslims reacting violently in the streets, we see that as expected behavior.

When Hamas refuses to renounce violence toward Israelis or racist and bigoted ideologies directed at Jews and Christians, we aren’t surprised. When we hear that Islamic ‘leaders’ threaten cartoonists or writers they don’t like with beheading, no one is really surprised. The fatwas calling for the death of those cartoonists Muslims found offensive, were threats we took seriously, as well we should. Call for violence are acted upon. The Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie’s book was murdered.

In the Judeo-Christian ethic, violence is tolerated (and even mandated) for self defense only. That’s it. There is no other reason to kill or threaten another human being.

If violence were an acceptable response to blasphemy or religious insults, the US would have bombed the anti religious Soviet Union to smithereens. If violence were an acceptable response to blasphemy or religious insults, bigotry and hatred, then Israel would have been well within her rights to blow the Arab world into oblivion.

That in turn highlights another reason why present day Iran, under the tyranny of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s heirs, must be precluded from developing and having nuclear weapons. As long as violence and the threat of violence remains an acceptable part of Islamic expression, that cannot be allowed to happen.

To be clear- violence is not a part of the average Muslim believer’s experience. The reality is that the religion has morphed into something very dangerous- and another reality is that the vast majority of believers have remained silent, and that silence is the true desecration of Islam- not the publication of a few cartoons or opinions that are not shared.

When the Israelis build a fence to protect themselves from suicide bombers and those who choose to celebrate such events, it can be referred to as an ‘Apartheid’ barrier, because it is a barrier built to keep the institutionalized hate and violence that define apartheid, out of their society.

Like the Israelis, all of western culture rejects the apartheid of radical Islamists that calls for death, destruction and hate. Israeli and western rejectionism  is a reaction to events foisted upon them. It has never been about a particular ideology, bigotry or hate.

Radical Islam, left unchallenged, is the perfect petri dish from which a plague no less dangerous than the Black Death or smallpox will emerge. The world is a living organism, and at some point, when under attack, organisms fight back.

Unimpeded violence will never be assimilated into the organism that is human society and culture of today. That kind of society died out a long time ago and will not return. Humankind has come to far to accept barbaric and Neanderthal, jungle like behavior as part of our reality. Progress, not regress, is the yardstick. Societies, cultures and religions are judged on what they build and create, not by what they destroy.

Rejectionism is an ethical response, when what is rejected is antithetical to the morality and values that celebrate and ensures the dignity of freedom democratic expression for all.