This is worth the price of admission right away: "David Cameron was in Turkey yesterday endorsing Turkish membership of the EU, as blogger Laban Tall says, 'doubtless driven by that grass-roots Tory pressure for a few million Turks to come to the UK.'"
But all of it is worth reading. Cameron has just joined the very long line of Western politicians who assume that Islam and the Qur'an are fundamentally peaceful, ignoring the huge chasm of cognitive dissonance that opens up between their statements to that effect and the repeated, consistent, and theologically detailed statements of the mujahedin explaining and justifying their actions in Islamic terms, with copious Qur'an references.
So on the one hand we have pious Muslims, including many Islamic clerics, insisting and explaining that Islam mandates warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers; on the other hand, we have non-Muslim politicians who have probably never opened a Qur'an, and maybe even never seen one up close, insisting without explanation that Islam mandates peaceful coexistence with unbelievers and mutual respect. Behind them are a small number of high profile Muslim spokesmen, ranging from smooth deceivers with Brotherhood ties who talk peace out of one side of their mouths and jihad out of the other, and some sincere reformers with eccentric theologies and minuscule followings among Muslims.
And in the middle we have a large number of Muslims who are not actively aiding the jihad but aren't doing anything to stop it. Which side will they come down on if it comes down to a choice they have to make? I don't think that is in doubt, given how much group loyalty is inculcated into this particular group. But no one in authority seems to care about the implications of that, either.
"Who is David Cameron to say what the 'real Islam' is?" -- Ed West asks that splendid and apposite question in the Telegraph, July 28:
David Cameron was in Turkey yesterday endorsing Turkish membership of the EU, as blogger Laban Tall says, "doubtless driven by that grass-roots Tory pressure for a few million Turks to come to the UK".Personally I'm quite happy for Turkey to have our EU place, if they really want it; or to be a fellow member of a new free trade area along EFTA lines, with restrictions on free movement until some point when its median income reach western European levels.
But until that happens membership of the EU is a non-starter, and everyone knows it.
And as well as being disingenuous about the EU, Cameron is also playing the disingenuous theologian. Rod Liddle points out that he criticises opponents of a Muslim country joining the EU by claiming:
"They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the values of Islam can never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures."
Cameron is falling into exactly the same trap as his predecessors, by trying to play the theologian. Tony Blair called the Koran a "progressive" book, while Jacqui Smith called Islamic terrorism "anti-Islamic" activities, while the phrase "religion of peace" has been used so much by well-meaning politicians that it is now used, exclusively, in an ironic sense by cynics.
Who on earth is Cameron to say what is the real Islam? If a fresh-faced politician from the Islamic world told us that the fundamentalist Christians who funded settlements in the West Bank because they believed in some crazy end times were not "real Christians", I'd be flattered that he recognised differences within a large and wide ranging religion, but I'd also think "Who are you to say?"
When politicians start claiming to have theological insight into Islam, it usually signals a ham-fisted, expensive and counter-productive attempt to deal with radical Islam. I pray not in this case. As Douglas Murray said last month, on the Government's disastrous "Prevent" agenda: "Government can't do many things very well... but the thing it definitely can't do very well is theology, in particular a theology it knows very little about, or is only starting to learn about."
The real problem, as no western politician will admit, is that Islam has no experience of secularism. I don't mean secularism in the secondary sense used by the National Secular Society, which aims to drive religion out of all public life as it was in the Soviet Union - that's Bolshevism, not secularism - but of a separation of church and state....
After having gone through several articles in which Cameron shows his ignorance, willful or otherwise, I have come up with a nick-name for the man. "Clueless" Cameron.
One by one all the white knights of the West turn out to be hollow men.
"Who on earth is Cameron to say what is the real Islam?"
Really! And how does he think SO MANY Muzlims "misunderstand" Islam? Come on now! Cameron's just playing possum to appease the Turks, but I'm not sure why.
It's the clueless Western leaders who are enablers of Islam and Muslims. If Muslims/Islam succeed in taking over this world,it will be due to the direct or indirect complicity of Western leaders(and non-Muslim leaders in other countries, e. g., Hindu leaders in India). It is sickening to know that these leaders could be so stupid!!!
"while the phrase "religion of peace" has been used so much by well-meaning politicians that it is now used, exclusively, in an ironic sense by cynics"
Right. No one says "rop" anymore with a straight face.
You got that, W? Sheesh. Thanks for proclaiming that lie 2 days after 9/11. Incredible.
The article is excellent, but the author still backs away from directly discussing the reasons for keeping Turkey out of the E.U., and instead suggests that when "economic development" gives Turkey a higher GDP and makes its citizens richer, then will be the time to give Turkey full membership with the right of free movement of Turks all over the E.U.
Here are some reservations:
Note that West himself writes as if Turkey can still be described as "Kemalist" but does not explain how Erdogan is undoing Kemalism. West writes as if "Ataturk's state" has not already been partly undone: "It is surely in Europe's interest that Ataturk's state survives the next few decades" (why only "the next few decades"?). Ataturk, recognizing that Islam was what kept Turkey backward, understood that he could not engage in a direct assault on it (an intelligently ruthless man, and a war hero, who benefitted from Turkey being in a stage of near-collapse, he nonetheless recognized the enduring power of Islam), but he could institute a series of measures that would constrain Islam as a political and social force. West does not tell Cameron, or us, that over the past ten years Erdogan and his men have been undoing Kemalism, and they have taken advantage of the E.U. requirements to do so -- that is, systematically weakening the power of the secularists, in the army the judiciary, all the while sweetly explaining that they are trying to "comply with the requirements for admission to the E.U." by giving Turks greater civil rights, while in fact the strong state that Kemalism requires -- for the hold of Islam on the minds of its adherents is very strong, and Islam is a permanent force, while Kemalism must be kept in place by methods people in the advanced West may not understand.
And again and again West himself comes back to matters of economic development, as if that is what would make a difference. He does it in several places:
"Personally I’m quite happy for Turkey to have our EU place, if they really want it; or to be a fellow member of a new free trade area along EFTA lines, with restrictions on free movement until some point when its median income reach western European levels.
But until that happens membership of the EU is a non-starter, and everyone knows it."
This jaunty tone of feigned nonchalance -- "personally I'm quite happy for Turkey to have our EU place" is inappropriate here. And West keeps coming back, not to Islam, not the ideology of Islam which is in the minds of a great many Turks,and moves them, but rather to the level of income.
He writes, for example, that in order for Turkey to become a a full-fledged member of the E.U. with no "restrictions on free movement" "its median income [must] reach ] western European levels."
And he returns to this business of economic development as the key criterion in his penultimate sentence:
"It is surely in Europe’s interest that Atatürk’s state survives the next few decades, and Turkey acquires western European levels of income; were to this happen, opposition to Turkish membership and free movement would recede."
That sentence is wrong. It is surely in Europe's intererst that Ataturk's state, that is the supporters of Kemalism, return to power in the next election, and not only re-impose all the constraints on Islam that Erdogan managed to undo, but that they learn the lesson that they must work to undermine Islam in the minds of Turks, to extend secularism by showing all the ways in which whatever "progress" Turkey has made has been a result not of Islam, but despite Islam,and because of Kemalism, for it is Islam that explains the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim states and societies.
And then West should have added: And whatever the Kemalists manage to achieve, they should not expect that the E.U. will allow Turkey -- ever -- to become a full-fledged member. The imperilled states of Western Europe -- where Muslim use of such effective instruments of the Jihad as the Money Weapon, propaganda, campaigns of Da'wa directed at the psychically and economically marginal, and demographiic conquest -- cannot allow in, as their most populous member, eighty million Turks, almost all of them identifying themselves as Muslims who, as they come into even closer contact with Infidels as they live in that very West, s they are, the evidence suggests, more likely to become less secular, and more self-consciously Muslim. This has been observed with Muslim populations all over Western Europe. The first generation may come, and work to stay alive. But the second, and the third -- they know all the tricks to wangle benefits, they have not even that residual gratitude that some of the first generation may have felt, or if not gratitude, at least an awareness of a certain degree of luck in being allowed to leave Muslim hell-holes for the advanced West, and thus felt an unwillingness to rock any boats, while later generations have no such inhibitions.
And what will Turks moving about the E.U. experience? Will life be wonderful for them in the E.U.? Will not the natural disapointments and resentments they will feel (as the least educated, and lowest, on the economic totem pole) come to be e viewed through the ready prism of Islam, which provides the permanent scapegoat of the offending Infidel, and thus make them, by degrees, more and more hostile to the circumambient Infidels among whom they are now permitted, without checks, to freely move, to freely settle?
When even someone in a piece that criticizes Cameron for his views on Turkey, one that takes him to task, rakes him over the coals, shakes and bakes him, nonetheless pulls back from declaring why opposition to Turkish membership in the E.U. and "free movement of Turks" should be on the fact of Islam, and the consequences to Europe of allowing a country that is 99% Muslim to become part of the European Commuihnity, giving eighty million Turkish Muslims (and who knows how many others might, as Muslims, be given Turkish citizenship by Turkish government officials if the price is right?) and instead focuses on the level of "economic development," then a problem of clarity, of seeing things right to the end, remains.
It would be better to say openly that Turkey cannot be admitted to the E.U. because of Islam. If, somehow in Turkey, after the next election that Erdogan loses, the secularists, having been given the scare of their lives, return to power, they must both ruthlessly and cleverly -- in the spirit of Ataturk -- work to diminish Islam, ideally -- it will take many decades -- to a cultural artifact, merely the penultimate layer in the palimpsest of Anatolian life, now in the hands of those promoting Kemalism on stilts, or Kemalism Plus, with that "plus" possibly including the open encouragement of a "search for roots" which will allow "the Turks" -- Muslim Turks -- to discover that many of them had ancestors who were Armenians and Greeks and Jews, turkicized and islamized in order to escape the burden of being treated as dhimmis, or in certain places and at certain times, forcibly converted. Perhaps the example of Emir Kusturica, born a "Muslim" in Yugoslavia, who a few years ago declared that he saw no reason to keep calling himself a "Muslim" merely because, several hundred years before, e his Serbian ancestors had, while enduring Ottoman rule, converted to Islam,, had himself baptised in the Serbian Orthodox Church. A few million Kusturicas in Turkey would do that country wonders.
One by one all the white knights of the West turn out to be hollow men.
White Knights? How did you find out about them?
'When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Sounds a little like Islam...
Yes, Ivan, the White Knights do talk backwards, but don't worry, the Red Queen will take care of them, as soon as Allah is willing...But it may take a while, he's indisposed at the moment...
As Jihad Watch's aim is to inform and educate its readers to better guard themselves against Islam, it would be interesting to read an article on the life of Kamal Ataturk and how he dragged Turkey out of Islam's slough of despond and forged a modern state.
The real problem, as no western politician will admit, is that Islam has no experience of secularism.
It's not just a lack of experience. Islam also has no theoretical basis. Christianity has the "render unto Ceasar" idea and Judaism has the three separate authorities (law, kingship, and priesthood), but Islam has nothing comparable. I cannot even imagine what kind of religious reformation could make it happen.
The only hope here is that Cameron is your typical non-truth telling politician, saying what he has about Islam and Turkish membership in the EU but not really meaning it, but knowing that soothing words may facilitate short-term British trade interests with Turkey and other Muslim states. That's it. The only hope. This is one time a sincere politician is not needed but rather a smooth liar. Let's hope Cameron is lying, though I fear he isn't. I think he really means the foolishness he spouts. Damn. Where's a good old-fashion lying pol when you need one?
Cameron made much of Turkey's "military" effort on the side of the West.
What is he talking about?
Is he referring to the 5,400 Turkish troops who took part in the Korean War, and Turkey was then rewarded with membership in NATO and all kinds of military aid and training as a result?
Is he referrring to the handful of Turkish troops now in Afghanistan, who are not serving in combat?
Does Cameron not know that in both cases it was not Turkey, but the Turkish military, that approved these -- quite small -- efforts, and that in any case taking part in the Korean War was seen as halting the advance of the Soviet Union, which in Turkish eyes meant Russia, the hereditary enemy of Turkey. In the case of Afghanistan, it is doubtful that Erdogn would have sent even the tiny Turkish mission that is there, so why mention such things?
Isn't it obvious that if the Return to islam under Erdogan continues, Turkey will not only be of no assistance should there be a conflict between NATO and one or more Muslim states, but Turkey cannot even be trusted -- has in fact become a security risk inside NATO, given Erdogan's attempt to decimate the Turkish military, an action that may be compared to what Stalin did in the late 1930s, when he went after Marshal Tukhachevsky and other professional soldiers in the Red Army.
Not only should Turkey not be admitted to the E.U. -- that cause for which Cameron says he "will fight" -- but it should be removed at least from the inner counsels of NATO, its personnel barred, for security reasons, from deliberations on anything to do with the Islamic threat, outside, and also inside, the NATO countries themselves.
Here's a piece on this subject:
Fitzgerald: Why is Turkey in NATO?
Quaere: Why is Turkey in NATO? Is Turkish membership of any value, or is it a danger to the effectiveness of NATO as that organization must necessarily turn its attention away from Russia to the threat from Islam worldwide, and especially to the threat, foreign and domestic, that Muslims who take Islam seriously pose to the West and to the West's most important military alliance, NATO?
Of what conceivable good, of what possible benefit, is Turkish membership in NATO to the other members of NATO? And why should Turkey be a member, and not instead a country that is of far greater value militarily and morally to that very West that NATO was originally established to protect -- that is, Israel?
Some still choose to describe Turkey, quite backdatedly (it's not the 1950s or the 1960s anymore) as "our NATO ally Turkey." Turkey is indeed a member of NATO. But the main reason for NATO's existence in the past was the military threat posed by the Soviet Union, and Turkey, which was happy to collaborate in efforts to contain its ancient enemy Russia, was a good ally. The Soviet Union was for the Turks their hereditary enemy, Russia, under a slightly different guise, and Turkey could and did offer troops (for the Korean War), and listening posts and airbases.
But who could imagine Recep Tayyip Erdogan offering bases today, or any kind of military aid, that would be part of an Infidel coalition against what would be understood to be representatives of Islam? Turkey today is in the control of a regime that is intent on undoing Kemalism and determined to make Turkey firmly part of the Muslim world -- even if, at the same time, the regime of Erdogan is outraged by any attempts by Europeans to keep Turkey out of the E.U.
How good an ally can Turkey be, with Islam in the ascendant and Kemalism under constant siege, if the main purpose of NATO is now or soon will be to protect Western Europe and preserve the Western alliance from those who, within Europe, are either Muslims or collaborators with Muslims? It makes no sense for the members of NATO to commit themselves to treating an attack on Turkey as an attack on themselves, when the Cold War is over, and a re-islamizing Turkey makes friends with Iran and Syria. Do the other members of NATO think that the Turkish military would come to their aid if any Infidel nation-state in NATO were attacked, from within or without, by Muslim forces? But NATO members are already under attack by the Muslims in their midst, who now constitute a grave national security risk, one at least as great as that posed by domestic sympathizers with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And they are under attack by Muslim forces, too, in Afghanistan.
Turkey is part of the very Camp of Islam that is the most dangerous threat to the West today, and to what is the Western military alliance, NATO. It makes no sense to keep this Turkey in NATO. It is no longer the Turkey that once was a fit member of NATO under different circumstances, with a different enemy.
It is especially maddening that Turkey, but not Israel, is a member of NATO. Israel is not merely an unshakable part of the West, but the Western world is, as all educated people used to know, not conceivable without the inheritance from Israel as from Greece and Rome. And now that Israel was re-established, after nearly 2000 years, in the ancient Jewish homeland, its disappearance would whet Arab and Muslim appetites, and would a deal a great blow -- understood by so few -- to the morale and to the continued existence of the advanced West, which is the world's best hope for a semi-decent model of existence.
As long as Erdogan and his associates, and those who effectively support them -- including Fethulen Gulen, spreading Islam through his "educational" efforts around the globe from the safety of suburban Virginia -- are intent on removing the constraints on Islam that Ataturk (intent on saving Turkey from Islam and the effects of Islam) so carefully and systematically placed on it, there is no point in thinking of Turkey as more than part, a non-Arab part, a partly-secularised part, but still a part, of the Camp of Islam. It should be treated most warily.
[Posted by Hugh on October 18, 2009]
This is the Turkey that Cameron loves so much:
Turkish immigrants cement Islam in Germany:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUu1VKUWyzU&feature=related
Turkey's increasing number of Islamic hotels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fm-bf79Rv8
Turkey's unsafe Christians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7MhLEC1o9o&feature=related
Christians Tortured & Brutally Murdered in Turkey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_nB9yszx-4&feature=related
Turkish neo-nazis in Germany (in German):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovtafmbPJoQ&feature=related
EDL folks:
Target Cameron with strong messages through e-mail, mail and outdoor demonstrations in front of 10 Downing Street:
"You have declared yourself a Zionist, Prime Minister, so don't act like a Neocon!"
"Stand with Jewish Zionists, Israeli and domestic! Do not associate with domestic Neoliberals and Neocons, Jewish and non-Jewish!"
Show up at his public appearances with large banners. Hold him up to his word that he is a Zionist. Educate him as to the difference between the heroic Israeli anti-Jihad Zionists and lowly, anti-Serb, Muslim-courting domestic Neoliberals-Neocons. Do not let Cameron lapse into Tony Blair evil.
Educate the general public, too, with slogans such as:
"Glory to Zionism! Down with the Neoliberal-Neocons!", and:
"Zionism and only Zionism can save England! Zionism and only Zionism can save Western civilization! You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist!"
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
I think Hugh is right in arguing that the Kemalists need to get back into power and extend secularism.
There are various tests that can be applied to Turkey to see whether it is really turning away from Islam: firm democratic processes, admitting the Armenian genocide, providing for true religious equality in Turkey.
If those tests are passed then there is in principle no reason why EU membership should be barred, although there issues relating to likely future migration that also have to be considered regardless of Islam.
Personally speaking I would prefer the UK to disbar itself from the EU!
And if this isn't bad enough, he was souring relations between the UK and Israel by lecturing the Israelis and treating them with contempt. Obviously Qassam missiles don't land in his well-to-do silver-spoon-in-the-mouth Witney constituency and get in the way of the lobster and champagne barbecues. Of course, he knows rather more about foxhunting than Islam and the contents of the Koran, sira and hadith. It seems as if Brown is going to be missed after all.
Cameron has probably not darkened the door of a Christian Church for years, and I'll bet he claims to "know" that Jesus was an advocate of the Sexual Revolution, Feminism, and the expansive Welfare state. This is how he can also claim to know what Islam really teaches.
To be a modern, Western politician is to be omnicompetent and omniscient; and if you have the major media on your side, nobody will ever show you how you are really pathetic and ignorant.
But, then again, the bulk of our people in the West don't want to be bothered to know that there are millions of people from Morocco to Mindanao, and even in our midst, who hate us more for what we are than anything we've ever done. Our people only want to have their sports, vacations, entitlements, and entertainments. That Islam hasn't conquered us yet shows only that Islam's adherents are the most incompetent bunch of Keystone Clowns on the face of the earth.
You are correct in your assessment of Turkey's current value to NATO. During the Cold War Turkey was a valuable member of the alliance for the same reason that Britain and France allied with Turkey in the Crimea, that a Turkish alliance helped contain Russian ambitions in the Black Sea region and, in particular, denied Russia access to the Mediterranean.
Russia is no longer a serious threat to NATO countries. Instead the main threat today comes from the Islamic world, of which Turkey is a part. Turkey is in no danger of being attacked by any Islamic country, and would not side with NATO allies against any Islamic state. The best we could hope for would be neutrality, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Turkey today is more of a security risk than an ally, an Islamic "fifth column" in NATO councils. Indeed in the light of the current world situation it would make more sense for NATO to ally itself with Russia against Turkey, rather than vice versa.
"Dhimmi Dave" Cameron has really excelled himself this past week. Not only did he tell Obama that Britain was "a junior partner in 1940", he has also grovelled before the Islamist Erdogan and managed to insult our genuine Israeli friends into the bargain. The full text of his obsequious speech can be found here
http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2010/07/pms-speech-in-turkey-53869
Dhimmi Dave just doesn't seem to understand the world we now live in. He talks about people who "see the history of our world as a clash of civilisations, as a choice between East and West". This is about the present and the future, not history, and it's not between East and West but between Western civilization and Islamic barbarism. We have no problem with India, China or Japan.
His worst offence is when he talks about "those who don’t differentiate between real Islam and the extremist version".
"They don’t understand the values that Islam shares with other religions like Christianity and Judaism that all of these are inherently peaceful religions. Nor do they understand that Turkey is a peaceful country, with a long history of religious tolerance. I will always argue that the values of real Islam are not incompatible with the values of Europe".
Oh dear! I hardly know where to start. Does he really believe that Islam is inherently peaceful? Does he know nothing of Islam's long history of naked aggression against its neighbours? I appreciate that they probably didn't teach very much about the Ottoman Empire at Eton; they didn't at my old school either, but I've learnt it since. To claim that Turkey has a long history of religious tolerance is beyond comprehension. Even if we ignore Hagia Sophia being turned into a mosque, just how many churches in Cyprus have been despoiled by the Turks since 1974? According to the Cypriot Embassy:
"In 1974 there were more than 520 Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches in the occupied area. There is information on the fate of 244 of these. Based on this information 100 were looted or vandalized, 68 were converted to mosques, 14 are used by the Turkish military, 11 are used as sheep pens/stables and one as a barn. The loss in terms of structures (including a number of churches pulled down), fittings and movable items, in particular valuable icons, is enormous in terms of both cultural and monetary value."
Most of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Cemeteries in the occupied area have also been destroyed, yet Cameron still believes that Turkey is religiously tolerant. Just where does he get his ideas about Islam from? How can he possibly be so naive? I quite understand that most people in the West know very little about the so-called "religion of peace", but they are mostly very uneasy in their minds about its excesses, its strident demands, and its growing presence on our streets.
Dhimmi Dave cannot possibly be unaware of these concerns, so why is he still spouting such nonsense as "the values of Islam are not incompatible with the values of Europe"? How can he not realise that they are totally incompatible? Europe believes in free speech, in laws passed by democratically elected bodies, in the right of individuals to choose and practice any religion, in the equality of all citizens before the law. Islam not only believes in none of these values, but is vehemently opposed to all of them.
Cameron is just the latest in a long line of Western leaders making statements about Islam when they obviously know nothing about it. I would suggest he does some background reading before he next pontificates. Some of Robert Spencer's books would be a good place to start.
Nice couple of paragraphs.