| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald evokes the great Cole Porter in reflecting on the dhimmi stance recently taken by the Venice Biennale:
Statues, like paintings of any living creature, are forbidden in Islam. If the Bamiyan Buddhas managed for centuries to survive in Islam, it was only because the technical wherewithal was lacking. Once the Taliban acquired enough Western-produced explosives, they could finish the job.A little booklet, possibly the most pathetic guide to an art museum ever published, is the "Guide to the Kabul Museum." I have a copy, published in 1964, long before the Taliban arrived on the scene to see Islamic justice done. There are a few dozen pages, a handful of photographs. It is clear that the ancient Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan, and of all other non-Islamic civilizations, were reduced mostly to rubble -- the flying rubble that we see whenever we see pictures of Afghanistan.
For in Islam, the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic artifacts are of no interest, no valuable. They can be destroyed, they should be destroyed. The tens of thousands of Hindu temples destroyed by the Muslim invaders, a partial list of which was compiled by Sita Ram Goel, are perhaps the best-known example. But what of everything that might have gone into that Kabul Museum but never made it?
The greatest destruction of art works in human history is that wrought by Muslim conquerors on the non-Muslim lands and peoples they invaded, conquered, and subjugated.
What will happen in Europe if it is islamized? If there are already people removing statues, however banal those statues may be, from art expositions now, what will happen in 10 years? In 20 years? Already statues have been vandalized or destroyed by Muslims -- in the Piazza del Popolo, and in a church in northern France (a statue of Mary and Jesus). Muslims have been recorded discussing their plans to destroy a celebrated fresco in Bologna that depicted Muhammad in Hell. What else is happening, and is being suppressed from us by worried European governments, whose elites, having been responsible for permitting millions of what are clearly enemy aliens, a classic fifth column, behind our own lines, cannot bring themselves to recognize the problem, and instead are intent on hiding the full truth from their own populations -- populations that are getting fed up?
In France, one out of every three babies born is now a Muslim. In 20 years, one out of every three 20-year-olds will, therefore, be a Muslim. What is to be done? Anything? Nothing?
In 1946, the most advanced and tolerant government in Central or Eastern Europe, a model of right-thinking, the government of Czechoslovakia, issued the Benes Decree. By that decree, because of their actions in the recent war (taking the enemy's side) 3 million ethnic Germans (many, but not all, had been supporters of Hitler and Deutschtum) were expelled from lands that had been populated by ethnic Germans for 600 years. No one in the Western world dropped a tear or uttered a protest. Everyone understood. Everyone still understands today, save for a handful of German revanshisty (as they used to be called in Krokodil cartoons).
When will the Western world begin to realize it faces a mortal threat, small now but growing, and growing precisely to the extent that its Muslim population grows, learns the local languages, learns to present itself with all the cunning suavity of Tariq Ramadan, to ensure the constant confusion and fear that is easy to spread, apparently, among Infidels -- all too willing to deny the evidence of their senses.The Venice Biennale has long been one of those places that prides itself on its daring, its refusal to kowtow to the narrow-mindedness of entirely imaginary bourgeois prejudices. It has long been the butt of jokes for the kind of stuff it has sometimes put on display.
The most famous mocking of the Biennale occurs not in some ArtForum magazine, or one of those that Catherine M. (of "La vie sexuelle de..." fame) ran or runs in Paris, but rather on the silver screen. In "Le vacanze intelligenti" Alberto Sordi, playing a Roman pizza-maker, and his plump wife are sent off by their presumptuous three children (who pay for the trip) on a kind of cultural tour, when all they really want is to lie around and stuff themselves (as, in the end, they do). Among the most memorable scenes is one at the Biennale, where the fat wife slumps, exhausted, in a chair. As she sleeps, a guide comes by with his docile herd of visitors to the exhibition, and they stand solemnly in front of the dead-to-the-world wife, as he discusses her as one more of the art objects to be found.
So here we are, sans Sordi, sans wife, sans anything humorous at all. And the Biennale, with all those people -- the same kind who take the contents of the Saatchi collection, or that of Eli Broad, seriously -- who are delighted to mock, oh -- the Americans, or the benighted Vatican, or some such obvious target. But the mere hint that "Muslims" might be offended -- ah, those "tolerant" and "peaceful" Muslims we hear so much about -- and this piece must be quickly taken away.
Let no one, ever again, in the so-called Art World start prating about "transgressive" art. They are complete cowards when it comes to any real transgression, the real misbehavior -- in this case, the greatest transgression or misbehavior in the Western world is to do anything, anything, that might offend Muslims.
Well, let's misbehave.
Posted by Robert at June 23, 2005 11:03 AM
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I know that Mohammed hated music and that music is forbidden in Islam, even though Moslem music lovers do interpret that prohibition loosely. And I know they would not approve of the Gospel being taught to the young. So I and my friends have just spent a hot afternoon misbehaving with a vengance, telling a Bible story to a group of toddlers and Mums, teaching them the Lords prayer and playing songs and nursery rhymes for them to sing to.
Although my version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the piano accordion is maybe stretching the definition of music to it's outer limits....
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 23, 2005 11:19 AM
Picture this:
A "Quran in the toilet" series of photographs reminiscent of Andy Warhol's "Campel's Soup" series. Now that's a courageous art!
Posted by: Andrei Rublev at June 23, 2005 1:41 PM
In Holland there's a Moroccan artist called Rachid Ben Ali who made paintings of imams with shit coming out of their mouths and people with Qu'ranic verses written on their bodies. The man was threatened by Muslims and had to go into hiding.
We all know Submission which was made by Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Dutch director Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was slaughtered, nearly decapitated, by a Muslim.
Last year, Dutch artist Tjalling Houkema saw how his drawing of a Qu'ran splattered with blood and with a gun inside was removed from an exhibition in a library in The Hague after Muslims complained and made threats.
A Swedish museum dedicated to world culture had to remove an erotic painting plastered with verses from the Qu'ran, from an exhibition about AIDS after Muslims complained it was obscene.
Posted by: Leveller at June 23, 2005 1:59 PM
With apologies to the peerless Mr. Porter:
We could keep enjoying our pleasures,
And we should;
Yes we should.
But the seethers tell us “STOP”.
Our pleasures
Are no good.
If we want a future, darlin',
We’ll have to get past the past
'Cause that fateful moment's comin' at last...
They say our art and statues
Are offensive.
Now we’re defensive—let’s misbehave!
No vin rouge ‘til you’ve blow up like a martyr.
It’s in their charter—let’s misbehave!
Give ‘em an inch and in a pinch
They will berate us.
Try to dictate us—let’s misbehave!
If we’re not careful
Chicks’ll soon be wearing burkas.
It’ll be no circus—let’s misbehave.
So let’s go scrarf some ribs,
Toss back a brewski.
Act like a Jewski
LET’S MISBEHAVE!
at June 23, 2005 2:21 PM
Can't give you a statue, but how about a song?
http://www.terrorists-suck.org/fight/winds_of_jihad.html
http://www.terrorists-suck.org/fight/the_shoe_bomber.mp3
Posted by: Terminator at June 23, 2005 2:21 PM
Hugh-
Perfectly put!
A few suggestions for any artists-at-large:
1) AN "INSTALLATION"- called: "Gilded (S)age"
Naked women and men, viewed/photographed from above and prone on the floor of any world-class museum (with a balcony), who would be painted gold and arranged to form the Arabic word "Submission" (AKA "ISLAM")
2) The name "MOHAMMED" stamped very officially in black on an American football (dark brown 'pigskin') and placed dead-center on the bloodied shoulders of a decapitated (manikin/ realistic) statue of a "man" in an orange jumpsuit seated on a white plastic chair.
Entitled: "Hail Mary Play".
3) A tooled black leather and gilt letter inscribed toilet seat lid- fitted onto a regular-issue porcelain john, and arranged upon a black marble pedestal on the floor of any sculpture gallery (-as an "R. Mutt" urinal lineal descendant-)- with the word "Al-Koran" (in English) niftily inscribed in a fancy flourish of gold calligraphy at the center of the black leather oval.
With the modest nameplate on the pedestal saying:
"The Ineffable in Pursuit of the Unspeakable"
Artists are supposed to be creating new visions, not kowtowing to the dead eyeballs of the dogmatists.
Ars vincit omnia!
Posted by: BigSleep at June 23, 2005 2:26 PM
So, in preparation for some upcoming taxpayer funded art exhibit, let’s submit the following work of art for consideration:
Andrei’s ‘A Quran in a Toilet’.
The exhibit staff either agrees, and the world will understand Muslim rage.
Or they refuse. In which case, future 'Piss Christ' exhibits at such facilities will be more difficult for them to justify.
And consider, too, why paintings of living beings are prohibited in Islam, but photographs are not.
at June 23, 2005 3:21 PM
All jokes aside. When will they begin to evacuate the "offending art" to places of safety? Soon, I hope, as the European Muslim population is expanding exponentially.
Posted by: epg at June 23, 2005 3:45 PM
Scaramouche -
Wow! What great work - quick too!
BigSleep,
Great suggestions.
The limits should be tested in this country at all times. We should sponsor (If we had the resources, that is) some type of provocative art show in NYC. If Robert's talk is any indication, the folks there have fallen asleep. They have no idea of the level of hatred out there for themselves and all they hold dear.
I mean, if that guy in Germany could put an ad in the paper for a volunteer to be eaten....surely we can find someone who is willing to die for art!? Science? Anyone...??
Love you folks,
Rebecca
at June 23, 2005 4:37 PM
Leveller
Thanks for pointing out Rachid Ben Ali for us. I had never heard of him before and just did a google on him. Here is what I found:
Rachid can not safely walk the streets of Amsterdam any more, without body guards. Last Sunday he left his house and went to stay in a hotel. That night he was pursued by Moroccan youth, but he managed to escape. From that moment on, he received protection. On the internet he received in past threats addressed to him from extreme right groups and Moroccan websites.
But the recent threats are most likely linked to his latest exposition: gay imams making love, imams who shit from their mouth, Mohammed nailed to a cross and on one of the paintings can be read: "You can threaten me, but I still make this"
http://dutchreport.blogspot.com/2005/01/rachid-ben-ali-in-hiding.html
Now this is a great artist, an important and brave artist. You can see his paintings here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonie/3697172/in/set-92933/
People like Rachid Ben Ali, Ataan Hirsi Ali, along with Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq....these are the truly great and truly brave thinkers, artists and writers of our time. We need to support Rachid Ben Ali with everything we have in our power, not bend to the twisted bigotry that stalks him with death threats, as the Labour government is currently doing in Britain with its wretched 'religious hatred' legislation.
WE are living in interesting times. Lets see if we can organise a gallery exhibition of Rachid's paintings in England...when the legislation is passed by the dhimmi cowards who proposed it, and the wicked and intolerant Islamic politicians and spokesman rub their hands with glee, the truly brave and great like Rachid will be persecuted even more.
Posted by: Zico at June 23, 2005 5:13 PM
More on Rachid:
His work is hot and is bought for important collections. Two years a go Rachid was attacked by young Moroccan-Dutch because he was on the cover of Dutch largest Gay magazine "Gay-krant".
According to AT5, a local TV station from Amsterdam, he made the paintings for this exposition, right after the slaughter of Theo van Gogh. In the exposition Rachid wanted to show "how he thinks about Islam", he sees Moslems as hypercritical and narrow minded. His exposition includes painting in which fucking Imams shit in the brains of people. Also seen are naked men and woman with Koran texts on their bodies in a stream of blood and violence.
Strong stuff. But stuff that is needed.
at June 23, 2005 5:16 PM
Sorry. The link for the last quote was from here:
http://dutchreport.blogspot.com/2005/01/rachid-ben-ali-in-cobra-museum.html
Posted by: Zico at June 23, 2005 5:17 PM
A Goya or Hogarth for our times. Just please no one ask Sister Wendy to comment on them - I still haven't forgotten her admiration of Stanley Spencer's nude.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 23, 2005 5:34 PM
What are you hinting at Hugh... deportation?
Hmmmm.... sounds good, let's czech it out.
Posted by: Timbo
at June 23, 2005 6:03 PM
"In France, one out of every three babies born is now a Muslim."
King: Didn't France conquor and occupy most of Islamic North Africa, Lebanon & Syria and create a lot of the mess we now see when power vacuums were left once the French were driven out? Don't many folks from the previously French colonies speak pretty damn good French, making France a perfect place to go to find work?
"Read more...."
Tens of thousands of settlers from France, Italy, Spain, and Malta moved across the Mediterranean to farm the Algerian coastal plain and occupy the most prized parts of Algeria’s cities, benefiting from the French government's confiscation of communally held land. People of European descent in Algeria (the so-called Quick Facts about: pieds-noirs
Quick Summary not found for this subjectpieds-noirs), as well as the native Algerian Jews, were full French citizens starting from the end of the 19th century; by contrast, the vast majority of Muslim Algerians remained outside of French law, and possessed neither French citizenship nor the right to vote. Algeria's social fabric was stretched to breaking point during this period: literacy dropped massively, while land confiscation uprooted much of the population.
In 1954, the Quick Facts about: National Liberation Front
Quick Summary not found for this subjectNational Liberation Front (FLN) launched the Quick Facts about: guerrilla
A member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassmentguerrilla Quick Facts about: Algerian War of Independence
Quick Summary not found for this subjectAlgerian War of Independence; after nearly a decade of urban and rural warfare, they succeeded in pushing the French out in 1962. Most of the 1,025,000 pieds-noirs, as well as 91,000 harkis (pro-French Muslim Algerians), or about 10% of the population of Algeria in 1962, fled Algeria for France in just a few months in the middle of that year.
Algeria's first president, the FLN leader Quick Facts about: Ahmed Ben Bella
Quick Summary not found for this subjectAhmed Ben Bella, was overthrown by his former ally and defense minister, Quick Facts about: Houari Boumédiènne
Quick Summary not found for this subjectHouari Boumédiènne in 1965. The country then enjoyed almost 25 years of relative stability under the one-party socialism of Boumedienne and his successors.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/A/Al/Algeria.htm
http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/delta/druse1925.htm
Posted by: KingTolerance at June 23, 2005 8:09 PM
King, for once you and I agree on something.
There were a number of countries that did the colonialism thing in the first half of the last century- but France seems to have made the Worst of pulling out of those countries. Correct me if I am wrong, but the countries they were in do seem to have fared much worse than the ones England held.
Posted by: Gary at June 23, 2005 8:28 PM
Gary: "King, for once you and I agree on something."
King: I think you'd find that you and I agree on a lot - we just do so in completely different ways (thankfully).
Indeed, France's colonialization of North Africa and parts of the Middle East proper has not only left a mess, but it also links France directly to it. For this, I say "What goes around, comes around." If people want to immigrate to France because of economic reasons, they will. Algerians, Tunisians and some Moroccans speak French so the language is not a barrier.
Arabs blame England for F-ing up the whole Palestinian deal:
"In 1917 England issued a declaration in which she expressed her sympathy with the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine. When the Arabs knew of this they protested against it, but England reassured them by affirming to them that this would not prejudice the right of their countries to freedom and independence or affect the political status of the Arabs in Palestine. Notwithstanding the legally void character of this declaration, it was interpreted by England to aim at no more than the establishment of a spiritual centre for the Jews in Palestine, and to conceal no ulterior political aims, such as the establishment of a Jewish State. The same thing was declared by the Jewish leaders."
"When the war came to an end England did not keep her promise. Indeed, the Allies placed Palestine under the Mandate system and entrusted England with [the task of carrying it out], in accordance with a document providing for the administration of the country, in the interests of its inhabitants and its preparation for the independence which the Covenant of the League of Nations recognised that Palestine was qualified to have."
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html
Posted by: KingTolerance
at June 23, 2005 9:20 PM
The French colonial experience in the Muslim world was of short duration: Morocco from 1912, Tunisia from 1914, for about fifty years. There was nothing to exploit as there was in black Africa; the French instead helped to bring what civilization there was, and is, in both places.
In Syria and Lebanon, with the League of Nations Mandate given to France, the French for a while undertook to protect the local Christians, especially the Maronites. In Syria, they trusted the Alawites, who are not regarded as Muslims by those who are real Muslims (they worship Mary, and most Alawite dwellings have a picture of her displayed on the outside of the house); that military caste still controls Syria, still lives in fear of Muslim retribution (think of the 82 Alawite cadets at a graduation ceremony murdered by Muslim Brotherhood members back around 1980).
It was only in Algeria that the French remained for more than a fleeting half-century. After years of negotiatons and treaties over the constant raiding by Algerian corsairs (a kind of legal piracy, sanctioned by the Dey of Algiers, for potential prey had to be listed by the corsiars before they left port), after the famous refusal of the Americans to pay ransom and bribes to the Barbary pirates ("Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute"), the French found their own shipping under attack, and the only way to end it was to conquer Algiers. They did so in 1830, and found an underpopulated place that turned out to be suitable for French vineyards and other agricultural vineyards. Frenchmen, and others (Spanish, Italians, and so on) also arrived. Whatever civilization North Africa has possessed since the original Muslim invasions, can be said to have been brought with, and largely left with, the French. And not a few intelligent Arab refugees from the horror of Algeria will admit perhaps not quite to that, but something close. The French establsihed universities, spread their language, engaged in as much of their mission civilisatrice that a recalcitrant population could accept. It had its effect. But not enough. The French left, and Algeria reverted to type. Morocco and Tunisia, a little less so. The authority of the Sherifian monarchy made it largely immune to threat -- though the enlevement of Ben Barka at the Brasserie Lipp (back in the days when Johnny et Sylvie were a constant item in Le Parisien) shows that the king did have some would-be enemies to worry about (see the memoir of the Moroccan lady who spent years in a Moroccan jail because of her father -- a tale crafted into publishable form by a certain M. Fitoussi).
The French did not "leave a mess" in North Africa. They made it a far better, saner place than it was before their arrival, or since their departure. They have plenty to apologize for in black Africa. In North Africa, nothing.
As for the idea that maghrebins have some kind of divine right to move to France -- this is absurd. No one has such a right, and the presumption of Muslims, who do not wish Infidels or their societies or their political and social arrangements well, and have express designs on those lands and peoples, as laid down in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, means that of all the immigrants who can now be welcomed in Europe or America, the very last to be welcomed, the very first to be kept out, are Muslims. There is no obligation for Infidels to admit into their midst those who cause their own lives to be far more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous than they would otherwise be.
A proposition that is very easy for all Infidels to comprehend. And that is all that matters.
Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2005 10:07 PM
ban the islam
kick them all out of the country
70% of the prisons of France are filled with muslims, say enough
zero tolerance
My hero in France is Brigitte Bardot
Posted by: Morghodius at June 23, 2005 11:56 PM
Hugh-
You misunderstand King Tut Tut.
Once you have done anything wrong in the political past, your nation must commit suicide to atone to any offended Muslims.
As the skywriting said in the Wizard of Oz:
"Surrender [your country's name here]".
Of course, the Muslim invaders, who started this whole process, circa 620 A.D., have a lot of 'splainin' to do (as Rickey "I love Lucy" Ricardo would have put it).
When they give back Egypt, North Africa, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Qatar, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangaladesh, Indonesia, etc. and return to Saudi Arabia, they can get as uppity as they like.
Ah, but it's always a one-way street with Islam. Whose millenium-long bloodthirsty 'colonization' doesn't count.
Why?
Because no one ever calls them on it any more.
Not since the history departments in the West have been eviscerated by p.c. lickspittles of the Crescent Revisionist Claptrapology.
See how simple it it when you know the code?
(Just adjust your secret ring to "Submit"... bend over, and smile.)
Posted by: BigSleep at June 24, 2005 12:42 AM
One in three french newborns is muslim...
absolute insanity.
Are they/we f....d !
One of the few reasons to be pleased to be 'no longer young'. I really do not want to live in an islam dominated western world.
Posted by: dby at June 24, 2005 4:45 AM
Writing to the subject, yes, we must misbehave, as in, use our rights to free speech, while we still have them, to show how repugnant islam is, to shove that message in the face of muslems whereever and whenever we can.
Posted by: dby at June 24, 2005 4:49 AM
"England reassured them by affirming to them that this would not prejudice the right of their countries to freedom and independence or affect the political status of the Arabs in Palestine.."
-- from a posting above
As history, this is nonsense. "Their countries" did not exist prior to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. "England" did not "reassure" them [the Arabs]; rather, the Arabs insisted that a statement by Sir Henry McMahon supposedly guaranteed to them that the Arabs would possess territories that later formed Mandatory Palestine, set up by the League of Nations for the express purprose of establishing, not "two states" but the Jewish National Home that would, in time, become a Jewish state.
This constant reference to a supposed remark by Sir Henry MacMahon has been put paid to so many times that it is tiresome to have to go through it once again. MacMahon, in the first place, explicitly exempted from possible future Arab control, various vilayets (and the names of these vilayets, such as the vilayets of Beirut, Homs, and so on, included -- despite their names (one would have to carefully ascertain, as has been done many times) what it was that was being exempted), including all the territory that was included in Mandatory Palestine (once the British had lopped off, to the horror of the Mandates Commission, all of Eastern Palestine, and instead handed that over to Abdullah to form the Emirate of Transjordan, now upgraded to the Kingdom of Jordan).
Second, Sir Henry MacMahon was in no position to commit the government of Great Britain to anything. He was not high enough in the pecking order (imagine if some Congressman, visiting let us say Zimbabwe, were in a fit of enthusiasm for the local despot Mugage to insist that the United States would give the country $50 billion in aid -- would that commit the American government?) to do so.
Third, the Arabs during the 1920s and early 1930s kept up a steady stream of ahistorical nonsense, referring to this MacMahon "promise" which 1) did not mean what they took it to mean, and the English kept telling them that and 2) could not have had any legal weight had it been made.
Finally, Sir Henry MacMahon himself, tiring of the nonsense and lies of official Arabs, set the whole record straight in a famous letter which was published in the London Times in July, 1937 (on the 29th, I believe, but I may be off by a few days), in which he explicitly set out the fact that he had never promised the Arabs any of the territory that formed part of Mandatory Palestine, and that their continuing to pretend otherwise was infuriating (MacMahon, by the way, was no Zionist, but had the usual prejudices of English officials at the time, save for a few remarkable people, such as Wickham Deedes, Josiah Wedgewood, Richard Meinertzhagen, and of course Winston Churchill, who was until 1939 a mere M.P.).
Anyone who wishes to put paid, in his own mind, to the nonsense being retailed in the comment above should take a look at Elie Kedourie's famous study from the diplomatic archives, The Anglo-Arab Labyrinth, and the essay about the MacMahon-Hussein correspondence. It will end any doubts, once and forever.
But that does not keep Arabs from repeating the nonsense, and as they so often do, believinig deeply or pretending to, in their own lies -- like the souk merchant who tells you what a wonderful rug this is, and what a fantastic bargain he is giving you because he immediately took such a shine to you -- and for all the customer knows, that rug-hawker may come to believe it.
This is the Middle East.
Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 7:15 AM
The comparison with the Sudeten Germans is apt. Europe faces two choices: succumb to Moslems, or evict them.
Posted by: Seymour Paine at June 24, 2005 11:41 AM
Hugh: "the French instead helped to bring what civilization there was, and is, in both places."
King: Well, this is how YOU see it. Those who were occupied did not see it this way.
Hugh: "The French establsihed universities, spread their language, engaged in as much of their mission civilisatrice that a recalcitrant population could accept."
King: Recalcitrant??? You just said that the French "spread their language" and "engaged in as much of their mission..." This rosey glow you try to cast on what amounted to nothing more than an occupation is not intellectually honest.
Let us reverse this scenario and see how you recoil [fade to dream sequence]...
"Muslims invade [your country here], upset the balance, topple the existing government, establish schools, spread their language, and engage in as much of their mission that the recalcitrant population can accept."
Then the Muslims are forced out after 50 years or so, leaving a shambles of what once was and varying, polarized groups and sects jockying to fill the power vacuum. This is the real story, Hugh. This is what planted the seeds of ill-will, distrust and radicalism in the Arab world. There's been about 90 years of foreign policy mistakes to water those seeds, now we see the results.
Posted by: KingTolerance at June 24, 2005 1:15 PM
Of all the peoples who endured so-called "colonialism" which is so wrongly presented as an undiluted evil, the people who suffered the least,and gained the most, were the Arabs. It was not the Arabs who freed themselves from the Turks, but the Allies, chiefly the British. It was the French who actually protected Arab interests, and especially protected the Christian Maronites, in Lebanon and Syria when they held the League of Nations Mandate for Syria.
The family-named "Saudi" Arabia never had any colonialism. The sheikhdoms of the Gulf, similarlly, never suffered from colonialism. There was nothing there, in any case, before the discovery of oil. The British never went into the hinterland of Arabia. They established a trading entrepot at Aden, and Aden was a stop on the way out to India. The British were in Egypt from 1882 to 1922 (and after that continued for some decades to be influential, and during World War II British troops were in the country to fight the Nazis, and to imprison such pro-Nazi locals as Anwar Sadat), and they went only to improve the civil service. For more on that, and the impossibility of eliminating corruption (though during that period Egypt's per capita income was relatively the highest it would ever be), read Edward Cecil's "Memoirs of an Egyptian Official." It was a classic in its day. Its epigraph from Kipling could be inscribed on the front entrance to the Pentagon:
"Here lies one who tried to hustle the East."
No one can "hustle" the Arab East. They are past masters at hustling. That is what they do. That is what they are good at. We are babes in arms, compared to the Iraqi officials, or Egyptians, or Jordanians, or Saudis we are apparently forcing ourselves to deal with rather than to lay down the law. We cannot hustle the East -- they will always end up hustling us.
As for North Africa, a poster above implies that there were, prior to the French, real schools which French schools supplanted. Nonsense. There were only those madrasas -- the same madrasas that, attached to the mosque in Timbuktu, have been misdescribed as a "university" or "the first university in Africa" or, still more absurdly, the "first university in the world."
The French created schools, and did not replace them, so the little fable comparing what they did to Muslims coming here, and replacing our schools with their madrasas, is a false analogy. It is only the French speakers in North Africa who, through that Western language, have real access to modern science and civilization. Teaching that language was not merely an act of linguistic imperialism, but a means of allowing people who were locked in a language that even Arabs admit is not fit for describing modern developments in science or in political thought, or in much else, to unlock their linguistic prison. Besides, for the Berbers it was liberating in another way, for they had been condemned before the French came, and again after the French left, to forced arabization, and the loss of their own tongue, Tamazight. Why do you think there have been riots all over Kabylia over the past 20 years? Why the disturbances in Tizi-Ouzou? Why do you think that the writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber, refused to write in Arabic and described the Arabs as the "worst imperialists" of all, and that that sentiment has been echoed by a great many non-Arab Muslims and non-Muslims (start by googling the name "Anwar Shaikh" and see if you can find his book on Islam as Arab Imperialism).
There are memoirs -- written in French, by intelligent exiles from Algeria, who are old enough to remember what it was like under the French, and know just how awful it has been since, under the corrupt generals left over from FLN days, and with the vicious fanatical Muslims who seem to be the only other possibility in benighted Algeria. The French presence in Algeria was Algeria's one chance at civilization. Now the only way for Algerians to live in a civilized society is to move to France, or elsewhere outside the Muslim world. Many of them are trying to, but unless they are prepared to check their mental weapon -- Islam -- at the door, I'm afraid they cannot be let in. So many of them fail to make the connection between the ideology of Islam and the political and other failures that they recognize, but can't quite attribute to Islam. It would be too earth-shattering, too disturbing. But they are born into Islam, and many of them seem stuck with it, out of filial piety.
We Infidels, who do not have that problem, can afford to make what should be an obvious connection between the tenets of Islam, and the attitudes engendered by those tenets, and the political, economic, social and intellectual failures of Islam over a very wide area, and over more than a thousand years of history. The evidence is just too compelliing and too similar wherever one looks, in time and space, not to convince the fair-minded.
Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 3:36 PM
This site is like a harbour after wrestling with the lefties at Harry's Place. Why oh why can't lefties get it about Islam? But the counter-dawa goes on. Nihil desperandum.
Colonialism was not the evil it is always made out to be. One country, unjustly excluded from the news until recently, demonstrates that: Zimbabwe. Once the breadbasket of Africa, now the basket case. Even the lefty apologists can no longer solely blame the West for the disaster that is Zimbabwe (and Africa generally).
I'm sure Hugh is under no illusions about motives for colonialism, or many of the horrors that went with it. But 'motive' is overrated, what counts are results. The fact is that, particularly where Islam held sway, countries were incapable of becoming civilised and needed to be pushed.
In any case, get the hell over it. Vietnam was a colony and is now, like a lot of South East Asia, on the up. America was a colony too, but that's different...
Posted by: Interested at June 24, 2005 5:51 PM
The fact is that, particularly where Islam held sway, countries were incapable of becoming civilised and needed to be pushed.
Yes, Islamic countries were uncivilized, barbaric, a la Hunnic barbarism. Largely, many of them still are.
Posted by: Loxias at June 25, 2005 1:18 AM
The fact is that, particularly where Islam held sway, countries were incapable of becoming civilised and needed to be pushed.
Yes, Islamic countries were uncivilized, barbaric, a la Hunnic barbarism. Largely, many of them still are.
Posted by: Loxias at June 25, 2005 1:18 AM
The fact is that, particularly where Islam held sway, countries were incapable of becoming civilised and needed to be pushed.
Yes, Islamic countries were uncivilized, barbaric, a la Hunnic barbarism. Largely, many of them still are.
Posted by: Loxias at June 25, 2005 1:20 AM
The fact is that, particularly where Islam held sway, countries were incapable of becoming civilised and needed to be pushed.
Yes, Islamic countries were uncivilized, barbaric, a la Hunnic barbarism. Largely, many of them still are.
Posted by: Loxias at June 25, 2005 1:21 AM
America was a colony too, but that's different...
Good point. Not to mention Australia.
at June 25, 2005 3:23 AM
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