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Will the call to prayer sound again from the Mosque of Cordoba?
Jihad is over, if you want it. Will the eventual reappearance of Al-Andalus be just the beginning? From the Asia Times (thanks to Jack DeLowe):
Radical Islam has scored its first unambiguous victory against the West, and it should have been visible at a long distance (Why radical Islam might defeat the West, July 8, 2003). Winston Churchill's quip that the appeaser hopes the crocodile will eat him last does not apply when the prospective victim expects to be in another world before the crocodile comes around.Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party crushed Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party in Spanish elections on Sunday. US commentators expressed consternation that Spanish voters would reject America's ally in the Iraq war after al-Qaeda's apparent act of retaliation last Thursday, March 11.
Spain's death-knell sounded long before the train bombings in Madrid, however. No country in the world is more determined to disappear. The country's fertility rate of 1.12 live births per female is the lowest in the world. As recently as 1975, at the death of strongman Francisco Franco, the fertility rate stood at 3 births per female in 1976. By 2050 Spain will have lost a quarter of its population. Germany and Italy, whose fertility rates fell earlier than Spain's, will lose a third, according to economist Anthony Scholefield.
Half a millennium after the Reconquista, when Spanish Catholicism expelled the country's Muslims and Jews, Spain has no choice but to ask the Muslims to return and take possession of its land by stages.
Every Spanish worker in 2050 will support one pensioner, which is to say that the pension system will be bankrupt. According to one academic study, 5 million additional immmigrants must be working in Spain in 2050 to save the pension system, out of a projected population of 37 million - and that assumes an immediate recovery in the fertility rate to 1.5. At this point, it hardly matters what future fertility rate Spanish demographers might project. The demographic catastrophe of the past 30 years puts the pension system on a crash course toward bankruptcy, unless Spain attracts an army of immigrants.
Except for a trickle of immigrants from Latin America, North Africa provides most of Spain's immigrants at present. Two hundred thousand Muslims now reside in Spain, and they have built 100 new mosques in the past 10 years. Unless Spain were, most improbably, to attempt a recolonization from Latin America, it cannot do without more Muslims.
Socialist voters may not have worked out the arithmetic; Jose Zapatero's supporter in the street simply does not want to be burdened with America's distant wars, especially if they draw fire at home. It all amounts to the same thing. Countries too lazy to produce their next generation will not fight. Who will lay down his life for future generations when the future generations simply will not be there?
Like other former strongholds of Catholicism, Spain has made an abrupt and terrible shift away from traditional family life toward egregious hedonism. Alone among Europe's great powers, Spain nipped Protestantism in the bud, avoiding the terrible religious wars that ravaged France during the 16th century, and killed off perhaps half the German population during the 17th century. By expelling its Jews, its Inquisition cut off access to the Hebrew language and Bible translation. By burning several thousand heretics in public, it offered a terrible object lesson to prospective dissenters. Not until 1936, when Catholic generals rose to overthrow the communist-tinged republic, did Spain finally have its religious war, with half a million deaths, of which one-quarter were from executions.
The victorious General Francisco Franco kept Spain firmly in the Catholic fold until his death in 1975, after which Catholicism shriveled in Spain like a vampire exposed to the light of day. Along with church attendance, the birthrate fell from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the world. That already has been the fate of other Catholic strongholds, such as Canada's province of Quebec. There the fertility rate dropped from 4.95 children per woman in 1961 to 1.57 in 1996.
Old Europe's people, religion, culture and fighting mettle have imploded together. The Europeans are not so much defeatist as resigned to extinction.
Posted by Robert at March 15, 2004 4:59 PM
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"Jihad is over, if you want it."
Good Lord. I'm trying to imagine who the Islamic equivalent of John Lennon would be. Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam? That's a pretty poor substitute. And let's not even start in with Yoko.
I can almost here it now. "And so this is Ramadan . . ."
Posted by: Allah at March 15, 2004 5:09 PM"here" = "hear". Yeesh.
Posted by: Allah at March 15, 2004 5:09 PMWow, we've heard from the rock himself. Allah, are you in the United States? Your e-mail address hook up is very interesting, so are you in the States Homey?
Posted by: D.C. WATSON at March 15, 2004 7:00 PMAllah is everywhere, Satan!
Posted by: Allah at March 15, 2004 7:14 PMThis is a remarkably sharp article. Eurodemographics are pointing to inevitable Islamization. Europe has been "dying" in terms of population decline, and a stagnant, broken social welfare system, for years. The Spanish socialist party, like the French, will use anti-American feelings to avoid the real issue, which is the end of European culture. There are 15 million Muslims in Europe, and their birthrate is three times higher than non-Muslims.
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/fellows/taspinar20030301.htm
When Spain surrendered (and it certainly did), in the face of mass murder, it sent a message to every terrorist group in Europe. Attack the state, and the state will surrender. Al Qaeda has scored its largest win ever, and the Europeans blame America. Churchill must be turning in his grave, because he knew the result of appeasement. But Europeans seem eager to forget the lessons of Churchill, to forget their own past. A vastly different response to Spains' 9/11 than the American response, and one which they will bitterly regret.
No government in the world has been able to appease the crocodile of Islamism. Sadat was assassinated for peace gestures, Musharraf is in constant danger. Europe can now expect more attacks, regardless of whether they leave Iraq, because the Islamists can always find another grievance. Head scarves banned in France? Make threats and bombs. Sharia too slow in coming to Belguim? Follow the Spanish blueprint. Which European country will have an election without a monstrous attack a few days before, to punctuate the terrorists' demands? Europe is selling itself into slavery. The land of kings and poets is fading.
Posted by: basil at March 15, 2004 7:15 PMSatan? you punk ass. You didn't answer the question. You don't want to say where you are? Howcome? Simple question, are you in the U.S.?
Allah is everywhere? He should be, he's a figment of Muhammed's imagination. Mass murder, especially the chicken shit way the Islamic Jihadis do it, is the true work of Satan. You idiots have no 72 virgins waiting for you. 72 Virginians maybe. How ignorant. Atta wanted to be buried on his side facing Mecca. What did he want buried? his imagination? He barbecued his lunatic ass in a hijacked plane.
Nevertheless, I found your link so interesting, I've decided to share it. Trash talkin' wannabee.
Posted by: D.C. WATSON at March 15, 2004 8:05 PM
Umm, DC, not being a smarta$$ here, but whoever is posting as allah in this thread seems to be engaging in satire and is on our side!
Posted by: Doug at March 15, 2004 8:09 PMRead the take on this at Belmontclub. The socialist joy of appeasement will be short-lived in the extreme, in Spain, and especially France.
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/
Posted by: basil at March 15, 2004 8:20 PMDoug, did U click on the link? If I owe an apology I will offer one.
Posted by: D.C. Watson at March 15, 2004 9:19 PMDoug, please click on Allah Junior's screen name and see where it takes you.....Actually, everyone ought to check this out.
Posted by: D.C. Watson at March 15, 2004 9:32 PMThat's because Allah IS Satan.
Posted by: Hal at March 15, 2004 10:58 PMEverything written by Oswald Spengler in the Asia Times is worth reading.
Posted by: A Berman at March 15, 2004 11:01 PMThe socialists of the world STILL think it's the cold-war. They are completely clued out as to what is going on. They fail to see that the bombings in Madrid and the bombings in the south of Thailand, and the bombings in Iraq are all fingers of the same hand.
I am afraid the west just doesn't care enough to stop what's happening.
I hope I'm wrong.
Posted by: LDT at March 16, 2004 2:22 AMGlad to read that others also read the Belmont Club, Spengler, and Allah. Of course they can't trump Churchill who was writing in another problem, or was it. Appeasement is always the same no matter the time period or the antagonist. The antagonists always take appeasement as the tacit approval of the appeasers for their aggression. The Spanish, and I fear the rest of Europe, have surrendered to Islam. Islam is with them and of them now.
As Islam is also among us. We have yet to make if of us. Their experience should be an object lesson for us. it pains me to see the incipient march of Islam in the United States. The slow,, methodical decay from within.
The universites, the state bureaucracies, even the State Department's website, are some examples of that decay.
We must make our voices heard. Even if we are too late, we must at least try. Perhaps of countrymen will now listen because of what is happening in Europe,
Posted by: epg at March 16, 2004 4:25 AMI hereby predict that within 5 or possibly even 3 years, we (meaning the US with GB and maybe some others) will be forced to obliterate Mecca (and Medina).
We have given the Saudis more than enough time and warning. We have to take it to them, directly. They are responsible and must pay.
If we do nothing, they will attack us, so we must do something, and it must send a very clear message: "if you love death, here it is!"
Posted by: Budd at March 16, 2004 9:20 AMPeople tend to forget that American Muslims voted for Bush in a bloc in the last elections: as natural social conservatives concerned with the encroachment of the state on their religious rights, they're a natural Republican constituency in many ways. If objecting to Janet Jackson's tit and bitching about taxes are prime indicators of the mood of the American mainstream, our Muslim American neighbors are right there with us. Like the waves of immigrants of the 19th century, they eat that whole civil liberties and economic opportunity spiel right up. Throw a neighborhood watch coffee klatch and the nice Muslim couple down the block will make a point of showing up and bringing baklava. And unlike, say, the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're generally hip to that social convention of ours that views religion as a conversation killer. Start a neighborhood merchants association and the Egyptian from the deli will kick right in for your graffiti abatement program and tree-planting plan. If anything, Muslim Americans are the ones who will spread the conservative gospel of the minimal secular state to their countries of origin. They're our best hope for a group that will serve as a vanguard of the democratic evolution of the Islamic world. In France, the government, following the culture-war strategy of the JW to a tee, now forbids them the right to wear their traditional garb. Here in the U.S., they can do whatever the hell they want that doesn't infringe on the rights of others. Does the hijab infringe on my God-given rights to ogle babes or the Muslim woman's right to shake her booty? Not. There's still plenty of Steve Madden and little black cocktail dresses to be seen along Park Avenue South. I'm not worried about the fate of the American bikini industry or the sales of a sequel to Bridget Jones' Diary.
We have a chance to win the war for hearts and minds by taking our own tradition of civil liberties back from the Ashcroft security state and demonstrating that our war is against criminal acts against basic human rights, not the straw man of a diverse global faith that pompous idiots like the Jihad Watcher have egregiously misrepresented, either out of ignorance or malice.
The Jihad Watcher should be forced to watch Ali: Fear Eats the Soul a thousand times over with eyelids surgically peeled back in the manner of A Clockwork Orange. His worst sin against reality is furthering the absurd and pernicious prejudice that this atavistic vision for the restoration of the Caliphate, harbored by a miniscule rabble of mountain-dwelling, cave-squatting, goat-fucking, Stinger-wielding, until-recently-CIA-supported, nostalgic Bedouin-wannabe, Wahhabist fanatics, financed by the spawn of a tiny clique of cousin-marrying Saudi princes whose genetic futures index itself is probably due for a Darwinist market correction itself (speaking of eugenics), stand for the mainstream of the Muslim outlook on the world. And his own ill-informed view of history shares many of the same assumptions that underlie this view of the world, in fact.
Posted by: Colin at March 16, 2004 10:13 AMColin:
Nice sneering, but thin on facts.
Cordially,
RS
Colin,
You have seen A Clockwork Orange too many times. Be a good droogie and lay off the amphetamines.
Posted by: basil at March 16, 2004 10:49 AM What I find most disturbing in this country, is what we are not hearing from the leading clerics of the so called, " peaceful religion." Has anyone ever read that a muslim cleric has stepped
up to rally against the terror that is taking place around the world, from these Islamic followers. I haven't.
I'm going to buy a gun and learn to use it.
Posted by: cubed at March 16, 2004 11:30 AMJeez Colin, try drinking de-caff.
Posted by: D C Watson at March 16, 2004 2:19 PMI'd love to hear from ANY cleric that is of the moderate persuasion. I would love to read a true condemnation of the actions of the "cave-dwelling rabble" bomb throwers. I don't consider any missive with the words, "I regret the actions…" as a condemnation. We all regret their actions, but it seems, only those of us that are not Muslims seem to condemn them.
I appreciate peace-loving people that mind their own business, but from what I see has happened, once radical clerics get posted in mosques, the peace loving Muslim down the street is likely to become the next bomber at the insistence of a murder contractor, a radical cleric that issues a fatwah requiring their obedience on the pain of death or Hell.
Prove me wrong.
Posted by: epg at March 16, 2004 8:21 PMwhile some of the idealized sentiments of colin's are very nice -- and admittedly, harbored in my own hopeful mind -- i would like to point out that his lack of respect for the strength and influence of the enemy shows that either he has come to new york after 9/11, or he reads the new york times editorial page too much, or he has forgotten that day. there will be no lemon's on park avenue south for him to ogle the rear ends of drunk girls fetching free drinks off of exuberantly optimistic and loudmouthed stockbrokers if the enemy has its way.
as a point of order, i would like to point out that i am a proponent of putting anti-aircraft guns on top of our manhattan towers.
Posted by: ted at March 17, 2004 3:01 PMAs has been revealed in the last few days, the "Jihad" movement has been in motion for decades. Why 9/11/2001? Obvious. They've been waiting for the leftists of the U.S. to force the American people into an acceptance of "Political Correctness." That was achieved, in full, during the Clinton administration. That is why the attack is viewed through the media and leftist politos as simply a showing of frustration by a, so-called, oppressed minority/religion instead of the truth. The Koran itself calls for the murder of all Jews and Christians and a takeover of their property/land/countries. Americans are supposed to view terrorist attacks, thanks to political correctness and leftist politicos in the U.S., as something like an earthquake or tornado disaster that could have been avoided instead of the truth. And that truth is that the the knife of Islam is at the throat of every nation, especially the U.S., that supports freedom and/or anything other than total Islamic control. The Koran states that it is an honor to lie to Jews and Christians in order to achieve these goals. Will the leftists in power let us stop this B.S. before it's too late? Who knows? After all, we sure wouldn't want to offend the Muslim animals in their attempts to kill us now, would we?
Posted by: Doug at April 9, 2004 11:50 PM

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