Lately, my reaction these (great) writings has mostly been "so what?" Jihad Watch doesn't need to convince its readers, and multiculturalists will always have some sort of explanation for everything. I suppose they would write this off as biased propaganda or complain about judging the majority because of a few rotten apples. Then again, maybe I'm just cynical. Maybe this isn't completely in vain.

Posted by: Jesus Christ Supercop at June 20, 2006 5:56 PM

In a related un-development, the Canadian PM (a conservative) wants more immigration, including Muslim immigration.

Where will we live?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060620.wxharper20/BNStory/National

Posted by: StillBreathing at June 20, 2006 5:58 PM

Makes for a great letter to the editor. Read for example, the reports, go ahead, find out. Another brilliantly provocative article, thank you, Hugh.

Posted by: eloivsdiablo at June 20, 2006 6:12 PM

Hugh says,

One wonders what poor, wretched Afghanistan is doing with such top-of-the-line fruits of Infidel science and technology as ultrasound.

The rich Islamic countries utilize Infidel science and technology as well. And, they flaunt it as if it were their own innovations:

Kuwait to build Pakistan refinery

I'm sure there will be plenty of American and European 'advisers' working on that project.

As far as Islam's legacy to Europe?

Half of French Prisoners are Muslims

Ummah News Links

Posted by: ummahnewslinks at June 20, 2006 6:32 PM

These days, we hear claims that we in the West owe so much to Muslims because they preserved and passed on Greek knowledge to the West, without which there would have been no Renaissance. The funny thing is, nobody seems to ask the Greeks about how good Muslims have been at preserving their cultural heritage. They might disagree......

Last time I looked, the Greek heritage didn't die when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, it lived on in the Eastern Roman Empire, later known as the Byzantine Empire as it was more Greek than Roman. It lived on there uninterruptedly until the 15th century when it was finally destroyed by, well, Muslims. Muslims also wiped out Greek communities all over the Eastern Mediterranean for more than one thousand years, a process that continued in countries such as "Turkey," the formerly Greek-dominated region of Anatolia, and Egypt even after WW2.

If this is how Muslims "preserve Greek heritage," I hope they will never be in the position to "preserve" mine.

Posted by: Fjordman at June 20, 2006 7:00 PM

The Internet has its advantages, and its disadvantages. Among its advantages is the free flow of readily accessible information into the public domain about the dark side of Islam.

Among its disadvantages is that it fosters islands, or even slender archipelagos, of like-minded communities whose individuals can become hypnotically comforted by the perception that their view is really taking hold among the majority. Jihad/Dhimmi Watch paradoxically exemplifies this tendency, when its readers and essayists simultaneously decry the prevalent dhimmitude out there in the "real world" while declaring that most people are agreeing with them ("people are finally seeing the problem"; "people are getting fed up with Muslims"; "those damned 5% of our population, the elites, are preventing the other 95% of us who have woken up"; etc.). Dhimmi Watch, taken by itself without the pollyannaish rosiness of frequently appearing addendums, would take a dim view of such optimism yet.

Posted by: Television at June 20, 2006 7:13 PM

Hugh-

Well said!

And the most important core truth of all that you note here is:

the effect of the Great Unspoken Tax [crypto-"jizyah"], AKA:

every absurd accomodation to the Masses of Intolerance flooding from Islam into the West.

Courtesy of the corrosive Koran.

The melting pot become a witch's cauldron.

Television-

Add links to you postings to such places as you think those who you feel are voicing too rosy a view here at JW/DW should see, visit, protest in, and learn further from.

http://www.wae.org/islam/free-islam.htm

might be useful to check out.

One thing I try to do to, sub rosa, in order to bring new eyes here is: include items in postings (specifically quotes from famous figures- Churchill, Hypatia, etc., popular arcana topics [JFK assassination], etc.) that could bring people doing unrelated-to-jihad searches, to this site. And spread the dread.

I see few posting here who have a polyanna-ish view. More often, it is hair-pulling despair, disbelief and disgust at the general level of popular nescience about the only subject that will prevent the New Fall of Rome: penetrating the bodyguard of lies surrounding Islam.

Meanwhile, I find you posts consistently cogent, literate, and useful for sharpening the debate.

Thanks.

Let us not forget what the "great Muslim hero" and "perfect" exemplar of Allah's "compassion", the Mohammedan warrior Saladin said:

"Accept Islam, or die!"

(As noted in "Arab Historians On the Crusades".)

Hapless college history students or hardcore junior jihadis, looking online for Saladin stories, could find their way, through "salting the mine" like this, to Jihadwatch/Dhimmiwatch.

As the Dutch say: "Hoe meer, hoe beter."

[The more the merrier.]

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 20, 2006 9:09 PM

One of the more prevalent distortions offered by Islamic apologists is to cite the glories of Muslim Spain. It is true that for its time it was an advanced civilization with significant achievements, particularly in literature. What is often glossed over is that that "Golden Age" was destroyed not by the Christian reconquista, but by new waves of Muslim conquerors, the Almohad and Almoravid dynasties, who replaced the Umayyads.

The new overlords were ethnic Berbers, fanatical in their zeal to prove themselves at least as Muslim as the Arabs. The "Golden Age" ended a couple of centuries before the reconquista really gained steam, and the strict imposition of dhimmi laws led to the exile of non-Muslim scholars such as Maimonides.

Posted by: materialguy at June 20, 2006 9:53 PM

"include items in postings...that could bring people doing unrelated-to-jihad searches, to this site..."
-- from a posting above

The noun-dropping is often prompted by that. Especially useful in bringing in those who, never having visited the site, and having assumed that no intelligent or decent person could possibly desire to do so, will google a proper name (e.g., "Balthus" or "Tiutchev" or "Andre Chenier") or a phrase (e.g., "Douce France" or "Defenestration of Prague") and one of the hits will be an alluringly-turned phrase at this site. He clicks. He arrives at the site. He reads. He reads some more. He finds that much of it makes disturbing sense. He finds that just possibly his preconceived ideas are wrong. He finds all kinds of strange things -- for example, a website that is full of alarm about Islam that, nonetheless, contains article after article deploring the continued American presence in Iraq, and that makes suggests, offers reasons, for leaving Iraq, presented with inexorable logic, and appeals to history, that can be found nowhere else. Even now. Cause for further confusion, and then further thought. Some of it sticks.

Method. Madness. You know.

Posted by: Hugh at June 21, 2006 12:22 AM

Hugh-

Great likes think amind.

_________________________________________________

As Vlad the Impaler (AKA Dracula) [i.e.- Nosferatu] once put it:

"Rifra bien qui rira le dernier."

(He who laughs, lasts.)

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 21, 2006 1:26 AM

There was no golden age in Spain, Muslims simply fed off the cultural knowledge and energies of the Visigothic and Greco-Roman native populations, who knows what better contributions these populations would have made if not under the Islamic yoke.

Muslims entered the Iberian península when its culture was in flux, newly arrived Visigoths had not yet consolidated and solidified their union with Spain's Roman populations. Things were just beginning to be sorted out when Islamic armies swept in.

Spain's character was formed by the reconquista, for better or for worse. Medieval Spanish towns created many democratic institutions (fueros) and enjoyed a lot of local control, because of the need of monarchs to foster military support caused them to offer liberties in exchange for fighting the Moors and setting up new towns in re-conquered lands.

One wonders what greater contribution to Western Civilization Spain would have made if the tremendous energies needed to expel Islam would instead have gone to internal development as happened in Italy.

This resistance, tremendous energy and sacrifice was evident from the start both by from the Visigothic nobility (Pelayo), and later the Martyrs of Cordoba.

"The city of Córdoba was the setting for an unusual historical drama that unfolded between the years 850 and 859, when forty-eight Christians were decapitated for religious offenses against Islam. More striking than the number of executions were the peculiar circumstances surrounding them. For one thing, as the sources unambiguously demonstrate, the majority of the victims deliberately invoked capital punishment by publicly blaspheming Muhammad and disparaging Islam."

"The Christians of Córdoba were without a doubt subject to regular taxation. Eulogius complained of a "monthly tribute" that constituted a financial hardship for the Christians. Similarly Alvarus wrote of an "unbearable tax" that weighed heavily on Christian necks. There is little doubt, given the tone of victimization that both men adopted when speaking of the levies and the regularity with which they were collected, that tributum, vectigal, and census were simply Latin synonyms for the universal dhimmî tax, the jizya.

The Cordoban authorities also prosecuted Christians guilty of blasphemy. In the spring of 850, a priest named Perfectus was arrested and later executed for publicly expressing his opinions about the errors of Islam to a group of Muslims. Months later a Christian merchant named Joannes suffered a severe lashing, public humiliation, and a long prison term for invoking the prophet's name as he sold his wares in the marketplace.

" Christian funeral processions passed through Muslim neighborhoods. Interestingly enough, though these acts provoked no official censure, they did at times become a target for public derision. Eulogius complained that the "clang of the reverberating metal" evoked Arabic curses from the Muslims who were within earshot. Alvarus expressed his shock that priests were often subjected to verbal abuse or even pelted with rocks and dung when taking the dead to the cemetery

from "Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain " by Kenneth Baxter Wolf

http://libro.uca.edu/martyrs/martyrs.htm

Posted by: El Cid at June 21, 2006 1:28 AM

The Leftist Two-Step when applied to demythologizing the "Golden Age of Andalus":

The Leftist Two-Step is a spasmodic reflex, reacting to a politically incorrect statement:

Politically incorrect statement: The supposed Golden Age of Islam in Spain was in reality a horribly oppressive and violent regime.

Leftist Step #1: "No it wasn't, you idiot! It was a shining beacon of civilization which the West should have emulated! You're an Islamphobe!"

The politically incorrect person then lays a gigantic pile of data on the table substantiating his initial politically incorrect statement.

Leftist Step #2: "Well, the Christians weren't any better, with their Crusades, Inquisition and witch-burnings!"

Regardless of the merit or lack of merit of the particulars in his Step #2, I would ask the reader to notice, most importantly, how Step #2 flatly contradicts Step #1.

This Leftist Two-Step would not be terribly remarkable or significant were it not repeated incessantly, often even by the same person. And it is repeated in response to all sorts of different politically incorrect statements.

What motivates this odd behavior is a nebula of confusion, incoherence, semi-conscious need to deceive, and -- to the degree the Leftist is lucid -- a Gnostic Contemptus Mundi. The only rational part of this nebula is the Leftist's linkage between the Mundus (the World, the Cosmos, the cultural "canopy of meaning" as Peter Becker put it) and the West.

Posted by: Television at June 21, 2006 3:32 AM

In Australia we have quite a few overseas born Muslim doctors:mostly GPs but some as specialists and we are also seeing a massive influx of medical studnets for whom English is NOT a first language. This latter is the benefit of the left wing controlled universities and PC multiculture aura that pervades such that the white australian with no family political pressure (to gain access to a medical school) is almost an endangered species unless he is vry good at obtaining marks.

This is because the specialist colleges restrict the numbers of medical students in Australian universities by NOT pressurising the government to fund more places in the medical schools.

While there is a relative shortage of specialists (controlled by these colleges) specialists can charge whatever fee they feel suits them due to the lack of competition(almost none bulkbill).

So to enable the supply of doctors we have to poach from overseas third world countries and while some of these make perfectly good doctors and are of all religions, we have an increasing group of Muslim doctors. Most are Muslim doctors rather than doctors who are Muslims. Thus defrauding the system evokes no shame as it is kaf'r money anyway and giving fellow muslims "a helping hand" via false sickness benefits, medical cerificates and fraudulent compensation claims is regarded as an allah given right( one of our Guantanimo bay inmates visited Afghanistan 8x while on Australian sickness benefits...what did he have? ?shellshock).

So here the greed of professionals plus the shortsightedness of politicians is skewing medicine in this country and allowing in a group of professionals whose ethics and honesty can only be judged by the Koran and woe betide the kafir patient in the future!!

The extremely rich and powerful do not give a damn about muslim immigration, so long as it supplies workers for their industries. If it all caves in they can remove to their island home.

Like all history: the working classes fight and die; the middle classes defend their property and die, but the rich move to their overseas estates and be rich persons there also.

We are not just fighting islam but the corporate and individual greed of the plutocratic wolf
hiding behind the democratic lamb's fleece.

.

Posted by: Zathras at June 21, 2006 4:59 AM

“These days, we hear claims that we in the West owe so much to Muslims because they preserved and passed on Greek knowledge to the West”.

This is another myth that has to be debunked. How could they preserve something they were (and are) totally uninterested in? In fact, we “owe” them quite the opposite, we owe them the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 640 AD, which housed the most complete collection of Greek and Roman books. Many works of geniuses of the past were lost forever, because there were no other copies.

The attitude of Islam towards culture is exemplified by the instruction given by Caliph Omar regarding the fate of the Library of Alexandria. He gave the order to burn all the books because "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."

Islam has never amassed, let alone studied, any ancient text, as these are all, by definition, works of pre-Islamic ignorance. The works of Greek and Roman literature, science and philosophy have survived only because, in the Middle Ages, Christian scholars studied and copied these texts, which were respectfully stored in the monasteries all around Europe.

If I remember it correctly, the UN report on the Arab countries noted that the number of books translated in Arabic each year is minimal. A world which has no respect for culture and art as the highest human achievements will never preserve culture, let alone contribute to them. A world in which the highest achievement is the memorisation of the Koran, and the greatest aspiration is complete submission to the will of God, will never flourish.

Compare this with the patronage offered by the Popes to the great artist of the Italian Renaissance.

Posted by: Laura at June 21, 2006 6:42 AM

The study of Greek philosophy and literature in Europe, contributing to the Renaissance, was given a crucial boost by the Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453 which sent clerical refugees and scholars, amongst others, scurrying into the west carrying the ancient Greek texts in their baggage. These had been preserved in the Orthodox monasteries of the East and were not rated as a loss by the Ottoman Muslims who, of course, were already in possession of all the knowledge necessary for the perfection of man and society, in the form of the Qur'an and the Sunnah.

Posted by: fieldvole at June 21, 2006 11:42 AM

An excellent article Mr. Fitzgerald however in the last paragraph I would substitute for Spinoza and Hume, Tomaso D'Aquino and Chesterton -- just a personal preference from an Italo-Am Roman Catholic gal. That name dropping might get some Catholic web surfers to drop by for a look at Jihadwatch. I have an infuriating time arguing with my so-called "fellow R.C.'s" who are really just post Vatican II syncretists. "It's all the same God, just different paths" is their mantra.

Posted by: bevc at June 21, 2006 11:50 AM

profitsbeard,

Check out the first two comments from the recent DC Watson post in the Jihad Watch section. That's the type of unwarranted optimism I see quite a bit in the Comments sections here at JW/DW, and not a few times expressed by Hugh himself in terms not of "we should be doing X" or "let's hope we start seeing X", but in the "we are now seeing X" sense.

Posted by: Television at June 21, 2006 12:24 PM

"I would substitute for Spinoza and Hume, Tomaso D'Aquino and Chesterton..."
-- from a posting above

Substitute away. As long as "Balthus" is not replaced by "Hummel figurines."

Posted by: Hugh at June 21, 2006 12:32 PM

TV-

As a pragmatist in this battle, I'm not heartened by the general level of awareness in the U.S. about the real nature of the Mohammedan threat to our free world, although I see the P.C. disguise that Islam has worn, since 9/12 (thanks to enablers like Bush), cracking at every corner. Falling to pieces, and the grim Koranic deathmask beneath showing through more clearly with each act of cruel lunacy shown to the West by Muslim fanatics.

If some people posting here are heartened by something that seems illusory to you, counter it with something equally heartening, but factual.

There can be no victory without good morale.

We don't need false hopes, but we have a Civilization so rich in protean victories (scientific, philosophical, cultural, artistic) that there are endless sources of real encouragement to draw on. Bedrock brilliances to inspire us to oppose the stultifying cult of the pedophile "prophet", and his mesmerized minions.

As a good man once put it:

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to give them the real facts." - Abe Lincoln.

(I'm hoping the political purveyors of the Fantasy of Islamic Peacefulness will be voted out of office in 2006 and 2008. And am working toward that end. )

A.N. Whitehead put a deeper point nicely:

"One thing that I draw hope from is my knowledge of the inherent instability of evil."

A cult may rage, but endless rage ultimately sours even the most dogmatic stomach, and eventually (even if it takes 1350 years) will be spit out by the human instinct for natural joy.

My optimism is organismic. The animal beneath the brainwashing sees through all anhedonic, irrational, unnatural, man-made bullsh*t.

I'm hoping it breaks through the chains on its brains.

And leaves the Koran an historical curio like the Popul Vuh.

One more grim footnote to the human adventure.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 22, 2006 1:58 AM

Hugh,
Can you provide references for "the reports -- some long suppressed -- of inspecteurs, prepared for the Ministry of Education?" Are they online somewhere?
Thanks,
Martin

Posted by: Martin 665 at June 22, 2006 10:22 AM

"an historical curio like the Popul Vuh."
-- from a posting above

The creation-epic Popol Vuh is much more than a "curio," historical or otherwise. The Koran willnever be a "curio" for the belief-system it embodies, ant the texts woven from it (the Hadith) have already been responsible for inspiring, promoting, and justifying the conqust of large parts of the world, transforming the largely Christian world of North Africa and the Middle East, damaging ("wounding" in Naipaul's phrase) the indigenous civilizations of Persia and India, and bringing an inevitable artistic shrivelling and mental desertification, in the long run, wherever its Believers conquered or otherwise prevailed.

Posted by: Hugh at June 22, 2006 10:33 AM

profitsbeard,
there is a small good sign. "Human rights watch" is backing away from its support for the Hamas version of the Gaza beach incident of two weeks ago. That may mean that the Israel govt is now better able to handle these inventions than it was in 2000 with the Muhammad al-Dura story. Added to this is the influence of all sorts of media watch and critical-of-Islam sites on the Internet like JW/DW. So maybe we're having an impact.

Posted by: Eliyahu at June 22, 2006 2:52 PM

Hugh-

Outside of a very small circle of religious scholars and cultural archeologists/anthropologists, the Popul Vuh is about as well-known as the "varieties of meteorite types" or Hero of Alexandria's invention of the world's first vending maching (a cunningly-simply coin-operated "holy-water dispenser").

My point is that one hopes the Koran, one day, will be as irrelevant to the daily life of progressing humanity as any other bit of specialist arcana. Meat for the mind not poison for the soul.

But, if we, as a world, were to one day hold a yearly ceremony to memorialize the Calamity for Civilization that was Islam, I would be more than happy to be among those solemnly laying wreaths at that cenotaph.

Historians will dissect the Scourge of Islamic Terror for centuries, of course. And one hopes that the general public will eventually only 'know' it as we now 'know' the effects of the Nazis*. As one more "bad era" in history.

That kind of cheerful indifference would be an incalculable improvement over having worry when the next plane is going to be flown into an office building, nuclear reactor or chemical plant. Or when the next sucide bombing group will blow themselves up- along with hundreds of civilians- on some mass transit line.

I wish for an Islam tamed into a museum piece.

As Joyce put it:

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken."

One can dream, meanwhile.

__________________________________________________

(*although let's hope there will never be a "Hogan's Heroes" take on the tidal wave of blood and scorched earth that the Mohammedan Onslaught resulted in for our species... although mockery of a higher caliber, blending the acid of an Aristophanes with loopy joy of a Mel Brooks, would be richly deserved).

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 22, 2006 6:49 PM