Dhimmi, dhimmi, smiling damn'd dhimmi
The Rt. Hon. Chris Patten, the European Union's External Relations Commissioner, is ready to acknowledge that there may indeed be a clash of civilizations going on — but of course, it's the West's fault. He engages in every kind of moral and theological equivalence, trashing the West's history while exalting Islam's. Of course, he never deals with the theology and legal structure of jihad and dhimmitude, which threatens the West today, and for which there is no parallel in Western religious traditions.
Part of Patten's problem is that he seems to think that one cannot and must not fight a moral evil if one can be convicted of any evil in turn. But that would have made it impossible for Britain to resist Hitler; the Nazis could and did point to the sins of British colonialism, hoping to steal the moral high ground. They couldn't, because the society they built was objectively evil, regardless of the sins of others. Of course the West should clean house, but becoming a conglomeration of Sharia states is not the way to do it. Both reform and resistance can and should be undertaken.
From a speech he gave last Monday at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, with thanks to John Eibner:
If Samuel Huntington were a share, he would today be what market tipsters call a strong buy. That is bad news, because the clash of civilisations, which he predicted in his essay for “Foreign Affairs” in 1993, at the moment casts a gibbet’s shadow over the prospects for liberal order around the world. Depressingly, witlessly, we have to a great extent shaped our own disaster-in-waiting. ...Oh, to have been the publisher of Professor Bernard Lewis, sage of Princeton. I admit to a personal debt to his scholarship. I have enjoyed, and I hope, learned from a number of his books.
But I have started to worry as I read on from “What Went Wrong?” to “The Crisis of Islam” that I am being carefully pointed in a particular direction, lined up before the fingerprints, the cosh, the swag bag and the rest of the evidence. “Most Muslims”, he tells us in “The Crisis of Islam”, “are not fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists are not terrorists, but most present-day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such”. Well, yes - and it’s a sentence that resonates in parts of the policy-making community in Washington. But what if I had tried a similar formulation on some of these same policy makers just after the IRA bombed Harrods in London: “Most Catholics are not extremist Irish republicans, and most extreme republicans are not terrorists, but most terrorists in Britain today are Catholic and proudly identify themselves as such”. I suspect that it is not a sentence that would have increased my circle of admirers in America, not because it is wrong but because it is so loaded with an agenda. Anyway, what we have been taught is that there is a rage in the Islamic world - in part the result of history and humiliation - which fuels hostility to America and to Europe too, home of past crusaders and present infidel feudatories of the Great Satan. Clash go the civilisations.
There are many ways of coming at this issue, but I wish myself to be rather prosaic. I will not therefore deal with the religious arguments, leaving them to retired archbishops and other distinguished theologians, only noting in doing so that according to a “Sunday Times” survey in January, more Muslims attend a place of worship in the UK each week than Anglicans. ...
Oh! Well, in that case they have the moral high ground!
As for the present religious, ethnic or civilisational nature of our European club, there are probably about 12 million Muslims living in Western Europe, approaching four million in France, two and a half million in Germany, one and three quarter million here. Their religion is the fastest growing in the world. They practice it in Europe in a union of nation states formed out of the bloody wreckage of the 20th century. Our recent history of gas chambers and gulags, our Christian heritage of flagrant or more discreet anti-Semitism, do not entitle us to address the Islamic world as though we dwelt on a higher plane, custodians of a superior set of moral values. Our prejudices may be rock solid but our pulpits are made of straw.What of this Islamic world which allegedly confronts our own civilisation? It is sometimes forgotten that three quarters of its 1.2 billion citizens live beyond the countries of the Arab League, in for example the democracies of Malaysia, Indonesia and India. Asian Muslim societies have their share of problems, not least dealing with pockets of extremism, but it is ludicrous to generalise about an Islamic anger engulfing countries from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific shores.
If we focus on a narrower range of Arab countries - the Magreb, the Mashreq, the Gulf, the countries in the cock-pit of current struggle and dissent - what do we find? In 2002, the Arab Thought Foundation commissioned a survey by Zogby International of attitudes in eight countries - Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. They questioned 3,800 people and their results confirmed other similar if not identical surveys, for example by the Pew Research Centre. What is pretty clear is that, like Americans or Europeans, Arabs are most concerned about matters of personal security, fulfilment and satisfaction. Perhaps it is a surprise that they do not appear to hate our Western values, and their cultural emanations - democracy, freedom, education, movies, television. Sad to say their favourite T.V. programme is “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Other survey evidence underlines this point about the most significant values. The Second Arab Human Development Report published in 2003 - I shall return to its predecessor later - quotes from the World Values Survey which shows that Arabs top the world in believing that democracy is the best form of government. They are way ahead of Europeans and Americans, and three times as likely to hold this view as East Asians.
There is not much sign of a clash of values here. The problem seems to be rather simpler. The Arab world does not mind American and European values, but it cannot stand American policies and by extension the same policies when embraced or tolerated by Europeans. So the Arab world holds very negative opinions of the United States and the United Kingdom (even while holding, according to the same survey, positive views about American freedom and democracy). Why is the U.K. in this pit of unpopularity? Partly I suppose because of what we are seen to do, and partly because of what we are silent about. I don’t know how widely St Thomas More is read in Arab lands but “qui tacet consentire videtur” is true everywhere. Perhaps it cheers us to discover that France comes best out of these surveys, scoring very positive ratings, as do Japan, Germany and Canada.
Of course, Patten plumps for Palestinian rights, with apparently no awareness of the fact that many decent people have been soured on this issue by the relentless suicide bombings and targeting of civilians.
The treatment of the Palestinians is one of four areas of policy where the approach we pursue in America and Europe could abate or exacerbate Arab hostility, and build rather than burn bridges between the West and the whole of the Islamic world. ...
He also so thoroughly misunderstands the causes of terrorism that I wonder if he has ever read a single communique from Osama bin Laden, a single line of the Qur'an, or any other pertinent material:
Today’s terrorism by Islamic groups, able through the advance of technology to shatter civilised order through terrible acts of destruction, seems closer to the anarchists than to the gun-toting politicians, for instance the ones I myself know best who were notorious for their ability to carry both a ballot box and an Armalite. The ideas that sustain Usama Bin Laden and those who think like him, not all of them the members of a spectacularly sophisticated network of evil, but nonetheless fellow-believers in a loose confederation of dark prejudices, can hardly be dignified with the description of a sophisticated political manifesto. They do not travel far beyond the old graffiti “Yankee, Go Home”. But they do represent a form of political, social and cultural alienation, which we should seek to comprehend.
Etc. etc. etc. Ultimately, you see, it all comes down to Western policy. If we would just be nicer to them, if we would just give them what they want, all this terrorism will stop. Alas, Neville Chamberlain thought that too. Maybe sometime, somewhere, during the Ottoman conquests of Christian land after Christian land, some forefather of Chamberlain and Patten thought so too, and ventured out boldly to make a deal with the invaders. If so, his name is not recorded for history — such a man would only have ended up dead or numbered among the humiliated, anonymous dhimmis.
Patten states: "The ideas that sustain Usama Bin Laden and those who think like him, not all of them the members of a spectacularly sophisticated network of evil, but nonetheless fellow-believers in a loose confederation of dark prejudices, can hardly be dignified with the description of a sophisticated political manifesto."
Note not only the ignorance here, but the condescension.
Let's be charitable. The man wants a new job (the new Europe only needs one Foreign Minister). Here's an idea. This is the man who handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese. Since that obviously fired an ambition to hand Europe to the muslims, let him have some on-the-job training.
Let him be appointed Foreign Minister (acting) of Yorkistan. Don't know where that is? Dont worry, you will when the Eurabian Union redraws the regional map of Europe (again):-
Capital City - Bradford
Population - >50% muslim immigrant
Native population - reducing, in flight!
For a trial period (not less than 5 years), he can experience at first hand the quality of family life in a "mixed" community (in-city residence compulsory). A period of in-your-face contact with real Euro resident moslems will tell him much more
about the reality of the culture than a list of dumb answers to dumb questions.
To hell with "surveys" Mr Patten: if you like it, live in it! Then feel free to preach at us all you like.
"What is pretty clear is that, like Americans or Europeans, Arabs are most concerned about matters of personal security, fulfilment and satisfaction." Probably true. The only problem is how they plan to achieve these goals.
Sad to say their favourite T.V. programme is “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Probably not. From comments from my Saudi coworkers, "Baywatch" is. They have a difficult time believing me when I say it pretty much died in the US due to lack of interest.
"I shall return to its predecessor later - quotes from the World Values Survey which shows that Arabs top the world in believing that democracy is the best form of government." WHAT?? Why then do so many Arab countries have autocratic governments?
"Perhaps it cheers us to discover that France comes best out of these surveys," Watch things change if France does indeed tighten up on her Muslim minority.
Enough.
jay
"There is not much sign of a clash of values here"
Excuse me......In the very countries to which he refers, men are allowed to have four wives and to beat every one of them.
In the United States, men are allowed to have 1 wife and it is illegal to beat her.
I see a clash of values. Why can't he?
What is this amazing tripe. What happened to the British, who taught them to hate their own history? They founded 4 stable and prosperous countires: the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. They helped give birth to five stable democracies: the foregoing list plus India.
Where does this debilitating, self-hating tripe come from?
As to the "Christian" roots of Hitler. Excuse me again, If anyone actually reads Mein Kampf you will see that Hitler rejected Christianity's message of peace along with Judaism. Hitler was not acting out Christian theology.
Again, Western civilization is not perfect, but, it has learned to correct itself. Islamic civilization is stagnant. No self-correcting mechanisms.
Perhaps Chrissie could explain why it is that Islam doesn't only have "clashes" with Western or Judeo-Christian Civilization, but with Hindu and Buddhist Civilizations as well.
Funny thing, that. One side of the equation is variable and one side is always fixed. A logical person would hone in on the fixed side of the equation.
A list of cultures that Islam and its adherents don't get along with:
Eastern Orthodox Christianity -- Russia, Central Asia and the Balkans.
Jews -- Israel.
Buddhists -- Thailand.
Coptic Christians, Maronites -- Middle East.
"The West"
Hindus and Sikhs -- the Indian Sub-continent.
Animists and Black African Christians -- Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan.
Themselves, including non-orthodox sects like Ahmadis, Shiites, Alevis, and Ismailis who are persecuted and killed in Pakistan and other parts of the Dar al-Islam.
But who said Chrissie was logical?
Whoops! I left one out
Catholics -- The Philippines.
So many places to remember where Muslims can't get along with other people -- no wonder I forgot one or two.
Susan,
You forgot the Chinese. And if there were more geographical contact, you could add the Japanese also.
jay
Jay -- you are right. I forgot the Chinese. They can't get along with them either. LOL!
Is there any civilization or religion which Islam can co-exist with?
And comparing it with the (christian) IRA is wrong. When the IRA commits an act of terrorism it is roundly and loudly *condemmed* by the other christians -- when Muslim terrorists commit an act of terrorism it is, for the most part, roundly and loudly *applauded* by the other muslims....
There is a little difference....
I wonder, do those who speak up for islam and tout it's "peaceful nature" understand that if the muslims take charge of any country or area that they will be the first to be singled out to die. Like the communists, the muslims will begin a purge of all the teachers and politicians and anyone of authority. Any persons with the ability to teach or spead any word other than that of islam will be murdered as an infidel. Any person that is not a true muslim will be inslaved or murdered. The radical among the islamic culture are power hungry animals that use the word of the prophet as an excuse to act out what ever sick impulse that comes to ther sick perverted little minds. Because those actions will be commited against "infidels" it is deemed acceptable to the little piglets that follow them.
So next time all you moraly twisted media and scholarly types speak up keep in mind that you will be amungst the first to be beheaded because they find you to be a threat.
Sharkey
Screw Patten! Scary thing is: He is one of the most likely candidates to become the new head of the EU commission, after Prodi. The EU is really the DU, the Dhimmi Union.
the Euros...in surrendering themselves
to their bureacratically concocted "euro constitution" have already demonstrated their love for dhimmitude,albeit of the socialist variety.
many of them have little idea of what they are submitting themselves to and apparently don't care.
it has very little in the way of what i would consider the *rights of the citizen*.
no wonder Mr Patten looks like the
a viable candidate.
-doc
People like Patten and John Simpson of the BBC are the product of the english public school education of the Sixties.
i think both were educated at St Paul's school then in Hammersmith west london.
This school was at the forefront of new " liberal thinking " in the UK and had high academic standards. It had made a U turn from the right wing elitist pre war agendas.
The terrible sins of Western Imperialism were well taught and apologism to the third world were on the menu.
it's easy to see that this would have led to the sickening mindset that they exhibit today towards islamic terror.
It is the mindset thar infect the media world wide and prevents us from recognising the threats to western democracy.
I've noticed that many people are now facing this with a new set of spectacles (well in advance of the media).
However they are still sticking to the idea that this is the work of extremists who do not represent the good "muslims" who just wish to live in peace amongst us.
The infiltration of various institutions -- the U.N., where Edward Mortimer, the admirer of Khomeini ("quite the most glorious morning in the history of mankind" was how he began his report on Khomeini's arrival to take power), and antisemite (for only an antisemite can enthusiastically endorse the sinister charge that "Zionists and Nazis" collaborated, a charge made by one Lonnie Brenner in a book to which Mortimer's enthusiastic review is now appended), the BBC (where John Simpson, the friend of Peter Hounam, now under arrest in Israel, and author of an antisemitic calumny, Operation Cyanide, which purports to show how Israel plotted carefully its "premeditated" attack on the USS LIberty, that staple of antisemitic conspiracy theorists -- a book with an introduction by John Simpson), the ACLU (google "Nancy Murray" and her daughter "Rebecca Murray" to see who is in charge, in Massachusetts, of the "disinterested" campaign by the ACLU to eviscerate the Patriot Act). The EU, however, is a different and much larger affair. Its decline into Eurabia began just after the Yom Kippur War, and the quadrupling of oil prices. The Europeans were under the impression -- a completely false impression, one caused by smoke, mirrors, and an inability to think clearly -- that they had to succumb to Arab demands in order to make sure oil would keep flowing. They did not realize that OPEC countries were simply one large gas station. I am not in the habit of doing special favors to my local Texaco or Shell beyond paying the price posted -- are you? But the EU signed a series of agreements, many of them not publicly known (but Bat Ye'or's forthcoming "Eurabia" will lay it all out, in all its horrible idiocy), by which it effectively accepted the demands for the spread of Arab "culture" and Arab political views and Arab propaganda throughout Europe. It is no accident that the BBC and Canal Cinq and the rest have engaged in several decades of vilification of Israel, of misstatement after misstatement, omission after sly omission, that querulous and nasty tone that, if you have heard Judy Swallow, or Robin Lustig, or Lyse Doucet, you know all too well -- the BBC World Service, under John Simpson, who in turn is directed not by the regular BBC overlords, but by the Arabists of the Foreign Office. And we all know how successful they have been in keeping prices down, and winning hearts and minds in the Middle East. Every possible kind of sentimentalism, from the noble Bedouin, hawk on hand, to the beauty of the Arabian sky, to the wonders of the Empty Quarter, every bit of hand-me-down Lawrentian crap, can still be found in certain English quarters, from the obvious left of Harold Pinter and John Pilger and the inimitable mythomane (who, according to many English journalists, often reports from places that he simply hasn't been in) Robert Fisk) to the professional anti-Israel rightists, beginning with that father-and-son team of Ian and David Gilmour. Well, I'll leave it to you to discover the full truth about Ian Gilmour, and now that David Gilmour has found his niche in literary studies, we can leave him to the soft Italian.
Patten is, like Romano Prodi and Javier Solana and the rest, part of the EU phenomenon. A monstrous conspiracy of stupidity and hypocrisy, the EU's foreign policy has adopted the cause of the recently-invented "Palestinian people" as its own. It ignores the nature of Jihad, and the tenets of Islam that fatally vitiate any possible treaty signed between an Infidel state such as Israel and the forces of Islam. The Pattens, Solanas, and Prodis long ago gave up even a semblance of any fairness toward Israel.
But what is even worse, perhaps, is how, in their deliberately avoiding the real nature of Islam, how they are permitting the destructionof European self-confidence, of Europe as an idea, of Europe as a demographic reality, from within. If Patten is right, and there is nothing to worry about except American policies -- ah yes, America the imperialist power that has behaved so wickwedly toward Europe in the last 100 years, and continues to threaten it with its mad policies. Patten should leave one speechless. He is essentially stupid -- note his comment on how the Arabs consistently show a greater desire for democracy than any other people. What? What does he think the word "democracy" means when Arabs are asked "Do you favor democracy?" Does it mean "democracy" with full human rights for women, and non-Muslims and apostates from Islam? Of course not. It means something to them quite different -- shorthand for, I want the corrupt and cruel government that runs this country (fill in any damn Middle Eastern name of a Muslim regime you care to here) gone, I want democracy. How stupid can Patten be? And how simpering a spaniel for his audience of Muslims at the Oxford Center for Islamic thisandthat -- with the usual PLO groupies from St. Antony's no doubt out in force.
One would really have to be ont he spot to see just how corrupt the EU panjandrums are, how singularly unappealing and unimporessive they are. Here is Prodi, the good law professor (sounds impressive, no? And when that law professor was Spadolini, that plump bibliophile, the description was impressive). Prodi is the dullest functionary imaginary, even without the slight mordancy that occasionally made that complete crook, Andreotti, amusing. Solana -- what can one say? Not El Cid Campeador, not even Las mocedades del Cid. Nothing, niente, nul. And now there is Patten. While he was in Hong Kong, did he ever learn the Chinese phrase ta-suan (you know: "swan pan" or abaucs), which means, Pinyin or Wade-Giles, the entirely admirable ability to plan, to calculate ahead, as one should.
Has Patten that gift? Can he see beyond next week? What will Europe look like in five years? Ten years? Twenty years? What exactly does he think is going to happen to the ever-increasing Muslim population in Europe? It will be so grateful that the state of "Palestine" exists that everything will be hunky-dory? Is he paying attention to northern Nigeria or to the southern Sudan? Does he think the Buddhists being massacred in Thailand are paying for the putative sins of Wolfowitz, or Abu Ghraib? What about the 2,300 churches that the Barnabus Fund records as the low estimate for the number of churches destroyed in 2003 alone, in Indonesia? Did that reflect dismay with G. W. Bush and American foreign policy? How about those Hindus being raped and killed in Bangladesh, or the Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, or those Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir, all by Muslim murderers? Again, disenchantment with John Ashcroft? Unhappiness with the Patriot Act? Despair over the failure of Donald Rumsfeld to resign?
What makes someone able to continue in office when he is so clearly idiotic, as Patten is, so wilfully ignorant of what is happening all around him, so absurdly blind in his comments on the belief-system of Islam? How can he not be laughed at, everywhere he goes? The only explanation is that the stupidity and hypocrisy are even worse than they were in the 1930s. For at the end of it all, the English, and the French were prepared to fight. But Islam is winning, from within, and slowly corrupting through the very organs of the press and television, such as the BBC, and of the political class, such as the EU bureaucracy which contains only little Chamberlains and petits Daladiers, with nary a Churchill in sight.
I'm thinking of going into the real estate business, taking as my niche market those Europeans who wish to buy land in America as a hedge against that future when they will have to flee. We were lucky once, with all those physicists and art historians and nuclear scientists fleeing the Nazis. And lucky twice, with all those computer engineers and biochemists and mathematicians and artists fleeing the Communists. It looks as if we are going to get lucky (and Europe unlucky) again. Meanwhile, let's get that real estate company going. Anyone care to back me?
Hugh, Some radio conservative, I think it was Bill O'reilly, said that if the immigration laws were changed, America would be flooded with EU persons to escape European Socialism.
I know this to be true from the two years I was in Germany. German girls would marry much less educated American GI's just to go to America, because they knew that only those Europeans with very special skills the US needed could ever hope to gain permanent residency in the US otherwise.
Actually, apart from Xinjiang, where most of the Muslim population is Turkic rather than Chinese by ethnicity, Islam manages fairly well in China, whenever the government is willing to tolerate a minority religion. When Chiang Kai-shek was in power, he boasted that China was 10% Muslim (would've been 40-50,000,000 at the time); and when the grand total for historically Muslim ethnic groups in China fell far below that number in the 1950's, Chiang's government (then in Taiwan) accused the Communists of genocide.
At one point, Gen. Omar Bai Chongxi was Taiwan's minister of defense. His son, Bai Xianyong (Pai Hsien-yung) is one of Taiwan's foremost novelists.
Chinese-speaking Muslims (Hui) are scattered over a lot of China, but especially concentrated in Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi, and Yunnan (also Niujie in Beijing). Around 50,000 live in Taiwan. In the early 1990's, there was a major riot in Qinghai over a book asdsociating Muslims with pigs (since the Muslims don't eat pork, many Han Chinese assume they regard pigs as sacred). The rioters pointedly avoided their traditional enemies, the Tibetans; and were even nice to visiting Americans they knew to be under-the-table Christian missionaries--but they burned the Communist Party hq and police station.
In Taiwan, however, there has been something of an attrition of Islam. The pre-1949 Muslim community (settled from Fujian since the 17th century) was always small, and identified by their refusal to offer pork to the ancestors.
NICk
the more evidence we have that Europe "sold its soul to the devil" by trading oil for immigration the better.
I had always believed that the gradual islamification of Europe was due to the ideology of imperialist guilt for which we atoned blindly in the name of multiculturism.
Now it seems that there is a lot more to this ideology than just "mea culpas"
It would not be a bad idea for Christians from around the world, especially those who realize what a blow civlization based on Christianity -- will suffer if Muslims are allowed to conquer the Holy Land, actually moved, temporarily or permanently, to that area, to maintain a real Christian presence there -- and not the "Muslim" Christian presence of the local Arabs who, from decades if not centuries of dhimmitude, and out of the sense of the umma al-arabiyya that surpasses any religious qualms, so that many "Palestinian" Christians aid and abet the Jihad (as Maronites never would, given their clear understanding of the nature of Islam). Perhaps young Christians could come for a 1-2 year rotating stay, helping the Israelis in Judea and Samaria (farming, archeological digs, and so on), but living in villages that are permanent, and whose inhabitants will be Christians do oppose, unlike the handful of Arab Christians left, the local Jihad against Israel, and the world-wide Jihad against all non-Muslims.
More details on Islam in China, taken from Mildred Cable's "The Gobi Desert":
"being a Moslem, he will buy nothing from a kaper (infidel)..." (p. 160)
"A few paces behind there walked a pathetic figure whose face and form were completely covered with a thick black veil woven from horsehair. Over the head ws thrown a long black coat with its empty sleeves hanging at the sides. Something moved vaguely where the arms should be, which revealed this shapeless mass to be a woman with her baby n her arms. It was an Uzbek family party, and illustrated the humiliation of women and the degradation imposed on her in that Moslem state." (p. 158)
"A very few years after the death of Mohammed (A.D. 632) the Arabs, carrying the Islamic religion, became prominent factors inthe life of Central Asia. Their creed was a militant one and they set out to exerminate other religions and substitute their own. When Islam reached the old trade-routes its followers moved up and down the great arteries, and at the close of the sixteenth century established their first chiefdom in Kashgar.
"This religion had come, and come to stay. It was not a constructive force, but a disruptive one, which has always been a cause of revolt and bloodshed. Though not opposed to lieracy, Islam in eastern Turkestan has helped the development of neither art, literature nor ethics, but has rather proved destructive of the civilising influences of neighborly intercourse, and has established the deplorable tradition of the periodic Moslem rebellions which take place every thirty years." (pp. 205-206)
At pp. 220ff, in the chapter entitled "The Moslem Rising of 1930," one may find out about Ma Chung-ying, who came to "help in the holy war" and who "planned to found an empire which would bear the proud name of Islamistan and of which he would be the unquestioned ruler...Matters, however, took a very different turn from that which he had expected, and this long and fierce Tungan rebellion was destined to join its predecessors onthe pages of Chinese history as yet another of the revolts that failed." (p. 231)
There is no contradiction in feeling sympathy for the Tibetans and no sympathy at all for Chinese Muslism. The Tibetans represent no threat to anyone, and possess a distinct language and culture. The Chinese Muslims represent, as part of the world-wide umma al-islamiyya, a distinct threat to all non-Muslims, and therefore, whatever sympathy one has for them must remain inchoate. And in contradistinction to the Tibetans, Chinese Muslim culture does not represent anything outside of Islam -- for anything pre-Islamic, or non-Islamic, is simply deemed to be of no worth -- hence, for example, the Pakistani indifference to the civilzationi of Mohenjo-Daro. And were it not for tourist dollars, there are plenty of Egyptian Muslims who are indifferent to the pyramids. The vast Roman ruins that have been despoiled, or ignored, throughout the Muslim Middle East -- but not in Israel's Caesarea, and not in Lebanon either, when the Christians still held great power in the government.
Mildred Cable details the destruction of Sogdian, Tocharian, Mandean, Nestorian ancient texts by Muslims indifferent to everything but Islam. For Believers, Qur'an and hadith are virtually all ye now on earth, and all ye need to know. That is why they keep, automaton-like, coming back to the same phrases, the same passages, the same hadith -- that is their entire mental universe. The rest is just vocational training.
I would like to thank the prompters of this posting, Mr. Henry Insomnia and his wife Jane.
I've too lived in Germany. The majority of German girls weren't marrying guys for passports. They were marrying black guys for ... well, you know. (I don't mean at all to be racially offensive. Sorry.)
On no less than five occasions, I've tried to ask German girls questions - the time, directions, for a bookstore, etc. The response before I finished my innocent inquiry: "I'm sorry, I only date black men.
I also know Cable and French's book (it dates from the 1930's), and am aware of the downside to Chinese Islam. However, at least its Sinophone component is able to get along with the wider society in which it lives--at least when its liberty to refrain from pork and pray five times daily is respected. As for Xinjiang, I note that uighur-l on Taklamakan.org has posted articles on Communist persecution of Christians as well as of Muslims.
A very large part of the problem facing China vis-a-vis Islam is that China is determined to uphold the ideals and political style of 20th century totalitarianism--itslef one of the great political diseases that simply cannot tolerate any questioning.
BTW, as a Christian, I don't hold a candle for Islam. However, where Muslims have a clear and evident grievance (Mao forced those people to raise pigs and even now, giving ANY religious instruction to a minor can get you 10 years in prison), I can feel some sympathy.
Ben F.: That condescending note is one I have seen in far too many liberals.
Kepha, it would be a mistake to show pity to an Islamic cult group, for instance, those in China who are kept under thumb.
There is only one effort of pity to be made, and that is to the newly born. To make the effort to educate them properly befor Islamic brainwashing and mindless repetitive chanting begins.
Remember, you aren't "born a muslim" it's a condition inflicted apon ones mind. Once the mind is consumed, it's difficult to reverse it. It becomes hard wired.
Naturaly, as in every walk of humanity, there are minds which can resist this brainwashing and conditioning, What Islam does to those is call them apostates, and kill them, Elevating the fear factor of the cult.
The Islamist often point to Hitler, and says "he was a Christian". No, he was never a Christian. His parents were.
Muslims need also be reminded that Hitler was and still is a "hero" to the Islamic cult.
Hitler hated Christians, Priests, the church. This is why he murdered many of them, tossed over 900 priests in death and work camps, and burned and looted over a thousand churches, Monasteries, and Nunneries. As Hitler did with the protestant churches, namely appoint his ss popes within, whereby violating the separation of church and state rule, he failed in this attempt with the Catholic church, PiosII rejected this, which caused Hitlers wrath to fall on the church. However, Hitlers own men had some faith left, and weren't too anxious to carry out orders in many cases, half heartedly in others. Despite constant raids, inspections etc. the church managed to function as an underground, Saving as many as possible. Many a priest died for doing so.