This message from Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald was, as you can see, intended for subscribers, but in view of the season I decided to post it for the delectation of all.
Robert,
When you asked if I had anything to put in the Christmas stockings of subscribers, in this season for bearing gifts and travelling afar, I went to the cupboard, but was chagrined to discover that I hadn’t a thing to bear. I quickly scrolled down through the last few days of posts, plucked out a few items among those that were less sober, and more high-spirited — as befits the season of eggnog and B-minor masses. I tied them up with a sprig of festive holly, and one synecdochic twig of Balsam fir and I’m enclosing them with this note. Perhaps, if you get a chance, you can slip them in among the oranges and walnuts and small rubber balls that I assume you will be putting in the stockings again this year.
And we all know about Christmas mail, so I better to get this to you sooner rather than later. Things being what they are, it can’t be rain nor snow nor sleet nor gloom of night that stays the email courier from his appointed rounds. But something does. I’m beginning to think that Dr. McAfee and Dr. Norton are right; there is a new virus going around. Well, if you do manage to receive these tokens of the season, and can distribute them in the nick or even St. Nick of time, please add my to your Merry Christmas.
So here are Hugh’s gifts to you. Watch for oranges, walnuts, and small rubber balls later.
UK: Police forge links with Muslim community
One hopes that the Birmingham police in fact “do the police in different voices” and that the appalling effort reported above is part of a carefully-crafted campaign of pretend-yielding, cunning efforts to let the local Muslims think that the Infidels are remarkably innocent and stupid.
And then one looks at the evidence in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and all over Europe, where the tone of appeasement is set, both from the top down, and from the bottom up, and even sideways, in chanceries and in local police stations, in the Vatican and from the local priests and ministers, in ministries of education (the new syllabi that carefully include units on Islam and the “Islamic contribution to Europe” etc.) and in the acts of individual teachers (time to celebrate the Birth of Little Red Riding Hood, etc.).
It is everywhere, on all sides, from all directions. Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty provides a gloss on “Jabberwocky” (“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe/All mimsy were the borogoves/and the mome raths outgrabe.”), and this is the way, I recall, that the word “wabe” was explained: it is the area around a sundial, you see, because it is “a way before, and a way behind, and a way beyond in both directions.”
Dhimmitude, pre-emptively assumed or pushed or yielded to all over Europe, is like that “wabe” –“a way before, and a way behind, and a way beyond, in both directions.”
In this fantasy-land that is being constructed by the fools who rule us instead of instructing and protecting us, who could do it all greater justice than Charles Dodgson of Christ Church and Christ Church Meadows?
Lewis Carroll, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
___________________________________________________In one French translation of “Jabberwocky,” the word “wabe” was, I recall, translated as “alloinde,” as Humpty Dumpty says, “parce que c’est loin devant, et loin derrière, et loin de chaque côté.” So, for the French contingent, the same observations remain, and in the silent-film version, with the girl flailing about in the water, the title will come on as the piano-roll furiously turns and the keys go up and down: “Monsieur Lewis Carroll, au secours! ou Marianne sauvée des eaux,” which waters, mind you, are those of the Mediterranean that is in the crazed world-view of Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy, D. de V., Le Monde, RFI, Canal Cinq, the only thing standing in the way of the natural harmony of Europe and the world of Islam (beginning with the Maghreb), the “deux rives” of which we hear so much, and which will be united in holy matrimony by that welcome and enriching and altogether wonderful growing Muslim presence, fixing to make this marriage of convenience, as the Muslims see it, the ticket to a permanent carte de sejour in the Bilad al-Kufr which will, in turn, become more Muslim, more full of mosques with minarets, and madrassas, and Qur’an-maddened imams.
Before pronouncing a couple “man and wife,” the minister looks around the room and asks if anyone objects to this alliance, and ends:
“Speak now or Forever Hold Your Peace.”
Well, many may want to object to this marriage of Europe and Arabia. Poor little Europe is allowing itself to be railroaded into it, and doesn’t know how, at this point, to say no. But the guests are moving about uneasily, shuffling, coughing, talking among themselves. Now one hears a French-inflected voice — Bat Ye’or in the back. And over there, wearing the clothes of an Anglican minister, and with English that betrays subcontinental origins, is Patrick Sookhdeo. And here is Hans Jansen speaking in Dutch. And some fiery high-cheekboned Italian woman, in a torrent of Tuscan : Oriana. And now Charles Moore, and Will Cummins, and the Parisian delegation — Alain Finkielkraut, and Claude Gilliot and Yvan Rioufol, and Alexandre del Valle — now the whole room is becoming noisy. Everyone is objecting, except the smoldering bridegroom and his family, all of them sitting in one corner, the women all wearing hijabs and the men bearded, and just look at how the expression on Tariq Ramadan’s face has changed from that fixed smile to barely-suppressed and murderous fury.
Pandemonium has broken out. This ceremony will not take place. There will be no wedding after all. There has been a last-minute change of plans. Yes, enormous changes at the last minute.
_______________________________________________________Turkey will be Islamic “Trojan horse” in Europe: Kadhafi
Truth from Tripolitania!
This just in. Muammar Khadafy, the man whose Homeric epithet is “mercurial,” and who not infrequently, in his interviews, will offer up truth and fantasy in equal parts, has told a hom e truth abroad. Or rather, two. In the first place, he said that there is “not room for two viable states” between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (we’ll ignore his “Israstine” solution, which is simply a prescription for the final subjugation of the Jews of Israel, pushed back into the status of dhimmis, by the overbreeding and overbearing “Palestinian” Arabs).
But it is his second truth, accidentally spilled, that needs to be focused on: that the admission of Turkey to the E.U. is devoutly wished for even by the Arabs who hate the Turks, because they regard it, rightly, as a major step in the islamization of Europe, or put another way, the takeover, by adherents of the belief-system of Islam, of the land mass which gave rise to, and possesses still all the cultural treasures of, Western civilization.
Qaddafy is “mercurial” just as much as Odysseus is “wily” or Athena “grey-eyed” or the dawn “rosy-fingered.” Now he is the great leader of the Arabs of the Maghreb, a new Abd el-Kader. And now he is the Great Libyan Leader of His Grateful Libyan People, with his Little Green Book, and his unorthodox view of Islam, and all the rest of the trappings of perfection and greatness, primitive third-world style. Now he is the clever weapons man, outsmarting the West, putting his chemical weapons plant deep underground, and covering up his frantic but futile nuclear project with that supposed Great Man-Made River Project. And now he is the leader of the Arabs, the only honest man among them, and the bane — and even the would-be assassinator of — the corrupt members of the House of Al-Saud. And now he is no longer the Great Leader of the Arabs (wasn’t that Saddam Hussein’s role, and before him, that of Nasser? Who is the latest Great Leader? Hard to keep up with them, they rise and fall so fast), because he, Muammar Khaddafy, is fed up with the people he calls “the Arabs,” and has become — an African, the Great Leader of Africa (including the Africa that provided such a nice steady supply of black slaves for Muslim Arabs, and still does, and who except an occasional reporter for the Corriere della Sera is going to report on the persecution and murder of black immigrants in Libya, or even remember when, during the anti-African riots a decade ago, the hanging of a black Chadian diplomat on the street in Tripoli? I mean, who can remember that sort of thing?). Libya is in Africa, Khaddafy runs Libya, so of course Khaddafy now has a message, and a meaning, for all of Africa.
Great Leader of Libya, Great Leader of the Arabs, Great Leader of the Africans (take your pick). But then why, when we look at him, does only Ozymandias and “desarts vast” and blowing sands come to mind?
But remember that Khaddafy does, occasionally, drop into the truth. And among the nonsense and silliness of his words to that Italian interviewer (Khaddafys, father and son, would, on the whole, rather be in Philadelphia — I mean, Perugia — instead of in Tripoli or anywhere where there are Muslims and Arabs. In fact, not only Perugia, but even the smallest Italian hill town contains more culture, more humane behavior, more places of interest, more humor, more wit, than all of Libya or indeed, than all of the Maghreb. And that is because of what a certain belief-system does to people.
Turkey’s future entry into the E.U. (which will NOT happen) is, Khaddafy points out, seen as a stalking-horse, or Trojan horse, or horse of a different color (green), and that entry is earnestly desired by other Muslims, even by Arabs who do not like the Turks. For those Arabs, and other Muslims, see Turksih entry into the E.U. as both a way to facilitate the illegal entry of other Muslims through Turkey (which of course it would be), but more importantly as a way to push the E.U. completely into the arms of Islam. For as 70 or by then, 80 million Turks join the E.U., Turkey will be the most populous country in the E.U., and five or ten million of those Turks, in a country with huge unemployment, the highest in that E.U., will fan out across Europe, for work or for study, they will build mosques. They will build madrassas. They will become more, not less, fervent in their Islam — just as the Turks in Germany have. For in their physical baggage will be, not the works of Ataturk, but the Qur’an. And as they meet, as inevitably they must, as all people do, with difficulties, as they feel, as all immigrants must, a certain homesickness and longing, they will turn for comfort to Islam, to its teachings, to its constant message that You, Believers, Are the Best, and You, Believers, Deserve to Dominate and Not to Be Dominated. What a wonderful message, how soothing, how uplifting, and what a comfort in days of despair or loneliness or any kind of personal or professional désarroi or disappointment.And those Turks will not help to “unite” Europe, but rather, will keep the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, who deserve a chance to improve their own lot after four decades of rule by ideological puppets and agents of the Soviet Union. For instead of hiring Bulgarians and Hungarians and Rumanians, some of whom might wish to start as workers in France or Italy, both to be trained, or to acquire know–how that can be used at home, or simply to earn money some of which would undoubtedly be remitted home, all of that work will be taken — in this new market that is built not with any regard for Europe as a civilization, as a matter of culture, of thought, of art and science, but purely as a place where homo economicus rules.
What is the E.U. but the most extreme example of a Midwestern Chamber of Commerce, where business and boosterism for business are everything, and nothing else matters.
And as those Turks take the low-paying jobs (but what is the real price of those workers, what is the price that is not internalized or shown in their wages?), and the long-suffering peoples of Eastern and Central Europe cannot find work in the west, even though it is they who would without difficulty integrate, for in their mental baggage they bring no belief-system, as the Turks do, and will even more to the Lands of the Infidels, a belief-system that that only lead, inevitably, to a way of life for the indigenous Infidels that is much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous, and which will lead — has already led — to some Infidels simply packing up for the U.S., Canada, Australia. All of which, of course, are also, simultaneously, under assault from Islam without and within.
Perhaps the last act of Khaddafy might be, as suggested afew days ago, to get dreams of grandeur that paint him as the great “Berber leader” of North Africa, so that he might use Libyan money to re-berberize those who over the centuries have come to believe that they are Arabs when in fact they are Arabic-speaking Berbers. If “the Arabs” can be reduced to their essential presence in the peninsula, that can only help in the containment of Islam. Khaddafy’s rhetoric over the years suggests he has a problem with the whole idea of “the Arabs.” They, in turn, have anathematized him. Imagine all those “Arab” Algerians or “Arab” Moroccans realizing, perhaps through the irrefutable work on Berber and Arab DNA in North Africa (see the work of G. Semana and other French investigators in Rennes on the genetics of the Berbers and Arabs in Tunisia)– that they are “proud Berbers,” and starting to speak Tamazight, and meeting with their friends and reading Kateb Yacine denouncing Arab imperialism, and all the rest. There could even be secret Berber meetings, in Paris, Marseille, and Algeria itself, in the Kabylia.
And this campaign for Berberia would provide Khaddafy’s son, by the way, with a much-desired opportunity to get involved with Italian cinema as he already has with Italian soccer teams. He could produce a movie all about the re-awakening of Berber consciousness in North Africa, financed by Libya. Shot — well, in Morocco, or if things get too hot, in Arizona.
Now, as I see it, the main problem we have is what to call that movie about the Great Berber Uprising that will follow upon the Great Awakening of Berber Consciousness, financed in part by the Great Self-Appointed Leader of the Berbers, Muammar Khaddafy?
So here’s my suggestion, especially fitting because Khaddafy fils is no doubt a big Fellini fan.What about: Notti di Kabylia?
__________________________________________________________Fadlallah urges Vatican to join forces with Muslims
Fadlallah now calls on the Vatican, which has been so appreciative of his efforts to help the Maronites of Lebanon, to reciprocate by helping Muslims oppose those carrying on what he calls a “campaign” against them, and further declares that
“This campaign against Islam is part of a prefabricated plan to create an enemy for Westerners, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
It has come down to this: when the Fadlallahs of this world have learned to prate fashionably about the “creation of the Other” (“to create an enemy for Westerners”), the whole wide world has gone off its rails.
But why, really, should anyone be surprised by anything anymore? The distance, morally and intellectually, from Fadlallah to many of the members of MESA (the Middle Eastern Studies Association of America) is not very far. And apparently, when not sending fatwas, which become rockets, Israel-wards, he likes nothing better than to sit down with a little Foucauld or Derrida, and one French agent reported back to headquarters that Fadlallah was once caught furtively reading through Emmanual Levinas’ “De l’existant à l’existence” after he had seen it mentioned in Le Figaro Litteraire, and then read soon afterwards a glowing omnium-gatherum review of Levinas” works in the TLS — which, by the way, happens to be Fadlallah’s favorite weekly.
When Fadlallah is eventually invited to the United States to deliver his inaugural address as the president of MESA (rumor has it that he is even now the clear front-runner to succeed Laurie Brand as head of that association of disinterested scholars), one good way to share his travel costs between two proud sponsors would be to invite him, at roughly the same time, to speak at the annual meeting of the MLA. Fadlallah has been known to galvanize audiences, especially in Lebanon, with his well-known observations, which might so easily be recycled for an American audience, on the subject of, as his last talk was called, “When Demonizing the Other is a Duty: Paul de Man and Roger Garaudy on Speaking Truth to Power.”
As his spoken English is not perfect, possibly Rashid Khalidi or Rami Khoury or Fawaz Gerges can render Fadlallah’s words into passable English, and then those words can be rendered back into something appropriately incomprehensible for the MLA by the inimitable Hamid Dabashi.
A spectacle not to be missed.