Some years ago, those pushing francophonie in Quebec — not because they were great lovers of La Fontaine and Montaigne, but because they simply wanted to suppress the anglophones of Westmount — had the bright idea of encouraging immigration into Quebec of large numbers of North African Arabs. These Arabs, you see, from Algeria (does the name Ressam ring a millennium bell?) would swell the ranks of those who spoke French. Thus they would be so much more welcome than, for example, people from Barcelona or Naples or Athens, who tended to want to have their children speak English.
It was an idiotic policy. Yet it remains, I am told, in place. For what those pushing francophonie coute que coute forgot was the little matter of ideology — the ideology of Islam, that is seldom sloughed off, and that causes its adherents to remain permanent threats to all non-Muslims. This remains true even if, in a position of what they regard as temporary weakness, they choose to hide or elide the inculcated hostility that is at the very heart of Islam, not as a religion (with its Five Pillars of worship), but as the geopolitical cult that it has always been, and to which it owes its seventh and eighth century origins.
Now it takes no great imagination to figure out that if St. Catherine’s Street, and St.-Laurent, become dangerous for American tourists, that those tourists will take their custom elsewhere. And it is not inconceivable that Muslims will make life unpleasant for those tourists, as they have for Canadian Jews in such places as Concordia University. Goodbye to the Festivals of Jazz and Comedy. Goodbye to the insectarium. Sorry, Montreal, and while we are at it, we can’t really risk Quebec City, or the Eastern Townships either. So the ball is now in the Canadian Court: do you recognize what you are creating for your own non-Muslim citizens (including some bringing capital and entrepreneurial flair with them), for those French would-be emigrants who will be fleeing the Muslims of France and should be made welcome in Quebec, and for American tourists who contribute a good deal to the Quebec economy?
If you haven’t given this some thought, start now. And begin, instead of dismissing the problem, by actually assigning government officials and members of the press the task of studying Islamic tenets and the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.
There are Canadians who come to this website. May they do all they can to alert others in Canada to visit and study the articles and informed comments as well. May they alert others to study the scholarly articles posted at www.dhimmitude.org and www. secularislam.org. The testimony of ex-Muslims both at the latter site and at www.faithfreedom.org, ought also to be widely read, understood, and assimilated — especially by those whose family members are, for reasons often of personal need or even desperation, thinking of marrying a Muslim, or of themselves converting.
If 100,000 Canadians would fully inform themselves about Islam — and not be satisfied with the antics of Irshad Manji — that would be enough. It is a race, an intellectual race with political, economic, and social consequences. Will knowledge of Islam — not apologetics — be widely disseminated in time to keep our lives from becoming even more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous as they necessarily will, from burgeoning Muslim populations? We know that the lives of the indigenous non-Muslims in France, in Holland, in England, in Italy, have become, and are becoming still more, unpleasant, difficult, expensive, and dangerous, precisely because of their burgeoning Muslim populations. They can handle diversity — Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, and so on. An alien creed is one thing; we can tolerate and accommodate it. What cannot be accommodated, however, is a creed that is not only alien but hostile — hostile in its very essence, its quidditas — to all who do not adhere to that creed. Islam owes its very origins to its usefulness as a geopolitical cult, justifying and promoting the conquest by formerly pagan Arabs of the Christians and Jews (and then Zoroastrians) who lived in Mesopotamia, Syria, Judea, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. Only by incorporating elements, often themselves distorted beyond recognition, of Christianity and Judaism, could the conquering Arabs hope to appeal to the more settled, advanced, rich, and populous Christians and Jews. (Those Arabs did not carry Islam with them out of the Arabian Peninsula — Islam itself was probably concocted in Mesopotamia, or in what is now Jordan, or possibly even by Abdel Malik in Damascus.) They could subdue those Christians and Jews by the sword, but they also wanted to subdue them permanently, through the spread of an ideology that would cause the subjugated peoples to collaborate willingly in their own subjugation.
Really, the problem in Canada is compounded by the unpleasant need of many (not all) Canadians to define the country as “not-America” — just as New Zealanders have a foreign policy far to the left of what it should be, in their intense desire to be “not-Australia.” But they should focus on the common threat. And if they do not want to look to Washington and the Colossus of the South for inspiration, then they should look to Western Europe and its people — those who have virtually no voice in controlling their appeasement-minded and desperate elites, especially in France, and whose way of life is now so endangered by the Muslim presence.
It will require not soldiers, but a great national or civilizational effort at education. Much depends on the scope of that education, on its thoroughness, truthfulness, and the speed with which it is accomplished.