Not how many, but where
by Michael Devolin
“The Lacedemonians do not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.” — Agis
Our country, Canada, has just endured two separate attacks by Muslim terrorists. Both terrorists, as Islam’s apologists speedily pointed out, recently converted to Islam. We Canadians (those of us not “experts” on Islam) are to understand that their homicidal behaviour has nothing to do with the “pure Islam” and everything to do with mental illness and drug abuse.
Well, let me be the first Canadian to venture the thought that, in light of the history of this destructively peculiar religion, from its bloody beginning to its present day devastations, whenever you have a religious ideology in immediate need of guarding against “radicalization” from within its ranks, whenever you have a religion in immediate need of experts to exculpate its tenets from the sins of its adherents, you have an ideology contradistinctively insalubrious and dangerous to the rest of mankind. And the scariest aspect of this reality, from a Western perspective, is that we are averse to condemn this religion as dangerous to mankind, simply because of the fact that its followers are so many and their general existence so fragmented by sects, one antithetical to the other, but primarily because it’s a dangerous taboo to entertain publicly.
And I appreciate the acts of kindness the “infidels” of Cold Lake Alberta have shown the Muslim community there after villains broke windows and sprayed graffiti all over their mosque. But we have just witnessed two of Islam’s new converts murder two of our soldiers in cold blood. (A day after the second attack in Canada, we read that another “new convert to Islam” attacked two New York City policemen with a carpenter’s hatchet.) The biggest obstacle to ameliorating the scourge of “homegrown terrorism” in Canada (and in USA) is the failure to identify its source. The answer will not be found in attempting to “de-radicalize” those Muslims zealots who have already stepped beyond the bounds of civility and tolerance and have left for bloodier landscapes. I’m no expert in the process (who is?), but I remember reading that many of the hard-core prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay returned to take up again the jihad where they left off before their capture. As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.
Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were refused entry into Great Britain because, it was told them, their presence there would create a security risk. Albert Camus wrote, “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.” We must ask ourselves, who created the security risk? Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller? Or the Muslims who were poised to go stark raving mad had these courageous Americans been permitted to speak the truth in Great Britain? Britain’s government feared the burning car scenes the French were forced to endure on the streets of their Paris suburbs; they were forced to respect more the predictable violence of the Muslim community than the stinging weight of the truth about the religion always present behind the incitement of such violence and looting. Britain is lost. France is lost. Holland is lost. Any country kowtowing to the predictable and attendant violence of their Muslim communities is already compounding the ordinary societal difficulties they had endured before having encountered Islam’s religiously defined, imperialistic agenda. Such a country is doomed to an existence of trying to placate an implacable foe living within their borders. Example: the State of Israel and their foolish attempt at placating the Hamas monster by kicking Jewish families out of their homes and out of Gaza.
I wonder if these “infidels” of Cold Lake Alberta would still appreciate their Muslim neighbours as much had they ever seen the same apologetic and “moderate Muslims” of Toronto shamefully and publicly waving Hezbollah and Hamas flags across the street from the Israeli Consulate. Had they seen Muslim children dressed up like suicide bombers on the streets of downtown Toronto acting out the Quran’s anti-Jewish sentiment, would they be as eager to wipe away the graffiti and replace the windows of the Cold Lake mosque?
We Canadians know how numerous our terrorist enemies have recently become. The Islamic State (ISIS) made damn sure we know. What we should be more concerned about since the attacks in Ottawa is where those enemies reside. I will tell you where they don’t reside: not in Hindu and Sikh Temples, not in Jewish synagogues and not in Christian churches. And the hateful ideology giving birth to these enemies cannot be found in these places of worship either. Like old Agis, we must not ask how many the enemy are, but where they are.
Michael Devolin has been a member of JDL Canada since the 1980s, and has served as the personal bodyguard to Meir Weinstein, National Director of JDL Canada, at several high-profile trials, including the Jim Keegstra hate crimes trial and the Imra Finta war crimes trial.