I am pleased to announce that Hugh Fitzgerald has accepted a position as Vice President of the Jihad Watch Board of Directors. I believe he is one of the most brilliantly insightful commentators on the scene today, and am honored that he has joined forces with my humble efforts. Here is Hugh’s take on an unsigned New York Times editorial today on the murder of Theo van Gogh.
One must read the editorial apropos the situation in Holland in today’s New York Times. It is a masterpiece of willful miscomprehension and sly mistatement.
First, the title:
Deadly Hatreds in the Netherlands
Note: Hatreds, in the plural. You see, all sorts of people apparently “hate” other people, and everyone is to blame, and no one is guilty, and…
Second, the text:
“Something sad and terrible is happening in the Netherlands, long one of Europe’s most tolerant, decent and multicultural societies….brazen murder…10-minute film…horrific violence that Msulim women can be subject to by family members in the name of religion.”
Stop right there: “in the name of religion” implies that the connection is factitious, not really there. They do things, bad things, not because their religion clearly prompts them to do them. No, they do them misusing that religion, falsely, wrongly, “in the name of that religion.”
A little further on:
“It’s just been a little more than two years since a Dutch extremist shot Pim Fortuyn, a rising populist politician who portrayed Muslim immigration as a grave threat to the nation’s traditions of tolerance.”
“Portrayed” — get that? He attempted to paint it, to depict it, as something it of course was not. There were many other verbs that might have used: Pim Fortuyn
“said that Muslim immigration was a grave threat” OR
“charged that Muslim immigration was a grave threat” OR
“warned that Muslim immigration was a grave threat” OR
my favorite,
“argued that Muslim immigration was a grave threat.”
But the Times won’t have it: Pim Fortuyn was a rabble-rouser (some “populist” he was, this cultivated and humorful man), and he “portrayed” something nice (Islam) in an unflattering light.
The Times then tells us that “urgent efforts are needed to better manage the cultural tensions perilously close to the surface of Dutch public life.”
Stop right there. “Cultural” tensions? What “cultural” tensions would those be, pray tell? Are the native Dutch inflicting terrible damage on the Muslim immigrants who have taken over whole swaths of cities, and are attempting to undo Dutch society, Dutch political, economic, social, and intellectual arrangements? This is not a “clash of cultures” — it is the workings out, in real life, of a belief-system whose elements can, if only the Times wanted to spare a reporter or two (what in god’s name does it take to get them to take Islam seriously, and to stop repeating their mistakes with Duranty on the Soviet Union, and their sickening, and murderous, inattention from 1930 to 1945 to antisemitism and Hitler’s war on the Jews? No shame, none, in the upper reaches of The New York Times. Secure in their own unassailable and unshakeable ignorance.)
There is only the “tension” that is created by an aggressively hostile belief-system — hostile to all those who dare to say a word about that belief-system that does not consist of apologetics.
Finally, the Times assures its readers:
“The problem is not Muslim immigration [millions of intelligent Dutch people beg to differ] but a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society.”
Look, and look again, and think, and think again, about that last phrase:
“a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society.”
What does this mean? Does it mean that the Dutch should reconcile themselves to surrendering, in the first place, the right of free speech, including the right to make a movie called “Submission”? Is that part of the “smoother transition” to a more “diverse” society that of course we all want so much to achieve?
If that “diverse society” means accommodating murder on the streets of Amsterdam, oh New York Times editorialist, sorry — no can do.
If it means refusing to study either the tenets of Islam, or the history of Muslim subjugation of non-Muslims, about which there are many studies, from what happened to the Hindus in India to the Zoroastrians in Persia, to the Greco-Buddhist civilization of Central Asia, to the Christians and Jews of Mesopotamia, Syria, Judea, North Africa, and Spain (the real Spain, not the Spain of Washington Irving or Maria Rosa Menocal’s dreamy fantasies), that to is something some Dutch people, and many Americans, are simply unwilling to do.
The Times vision of a “more diverse society” ignores the fact that Muslims do not believe in, or want, or have anything but contempt and hatred for, a “diverse society.” They want a society that is Muslim, from top to bottom. If they do not call for the immediate imposition of the Shari’a (and by the way, some do), if they do not all echo certain Muslim leaders, such as Jahjah in Belgium, for a total parallel society, governed by Muslim (i.e. shari’a) law within the lands of the Infidels, the Bilad al-kufr, that is only because — for the moment — they are not sufficiently numerous to impose their will. But if nothing is done, they will be.
Is it too much to ask the Editorial Board of the New York Times to study — I will be happy to supply a reading list — the history of Islam, and to familiarize itself thoroughly with what is contained in Qur’an, hadith, sira, and the major commentators? Is that really too much for them to bother with?
Oh, and if they can’t bear to come to this website, would the editors of The Times be willing to talk with Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina or any number of highly intelligent ex-Muslims, who have written a good deal on what Islam teaches its Believers to believe, and why, as Ibn Warraq has shown, this Total Explanation of the Universe-cum-Total Regulation of Believers’ Lives=cum-Blaming of Infidels for All Worldly Woes Whatsoever should be taken seriously, and the consequences of its unhindered spread, through migration, legal and illegal, and Da’wa (the Call to Islam), aided and abetted by hirelings of the Arabs and Muslims (a long list could be given here), including soi-disant “scholars” of Islam, but also including the truly ignorant, the truly lazy, the truly stupid — of whom, alas, The New York Times, one is afraid, is supplying its share.