A Contempt for Danger
by Michael Devolin
“Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.”
-Seneca
I’ve always been offended by the term “Islamophobia,” an asseveration adopted by Western journalists to calumniate anyone expressing second thoughts about what has now become Islam’s contrary and uncongenial presence in the Western hemisphere. My doubts about the compatibility of Islam with a democratic society are not based solely on fear but rather on my observations of the manifest failures of many of its adherents to adapt and accept Western mores. If anything, I feel distrustful of a religion whose esteemed apologists are seemingly incapable of admitting to Islam’s darker side, even when it seems impossible for them not to anticipate that this darker side might someday have adverse effects on the freedoms we in the Western world hold dear.
However, I also reflect that, should Islam become the preponderant religion in my country as it is in countries like Pakistan, or Syria, or Afghanistan, the patterns there of internecine violence and outright terrorism I can today observe from afar will tomorrow become an immediate reality in my world. If this reflection is a fear of Islam and Muslims, then I am not ashamed of such fear. I have found very little about Islam and the Muslim world that does not cause me to feel afraid. “A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice” wrote Edgar Watson Howe, and I believe the same. Anything that causes ordinary citizens of a democratic country to feel afraid cannot be good. And the greater part of this fear is the trepidation about leaving our children to such a dark future as the present nightmarish circumstances Islamist have bequeathed to the children of the Middle East.
Who can deny that, regardless how many million good Muslims inhabit the earth, their silent existence is rendered ineffectual by the comparatively smaller—and far more boisterous—number of Muslims we generally associate with religious intolerance and shameless barbarism. When I see a burka clad women sitting on a park bench in the middle of rural Ontario, Canada, I do not think of all the good things I’m told Islam has done for humankind. But rather I immediately recall to mind all the bad things about Islamists I read in the papers every day, about terrorism and the fact that every act of terrorism seems to be committed by Muslims. Do I blame myself for this uncomfortable knee jerk reaction? No. I blame Islam and the Muslim women wearing the burka. She makes me uncomfortable. “Only one Saudi Arabian is known to almost every adult on the planet, and regrettably he is neither a statesman, nor a scientist, nor a business tycoon, an author, or a scholar. He is a mass murderer…” wrote Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac.
The dictionary defines a phobia as “an anxiety disorder characterized by extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations.” So, according to Islam’s stalwart defenders, “every adult on the planet” has an anxiety disorder because we are cognizant of the fact that Osama bin Laden was a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a mass murderer and a Muslim. Likewise, in their opinion, those of us who feel discomposed about a mosque being built in our neighborhood are exhibiting “extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations.” I don’t think so. I think our collective mindset is the dire result not only of Islam’s failure to adjust to the modern world, but also a consequence of our witnessing, day after day, those revoltingly bloody images emanating from the bedlam this so-called “religion of peace” has created beyond our shores.
I do fear Islam and Muslims and their presence in my country. That fear, I believe, is justified and should be my right in a truly democratic country. This is not “extreme and irrational fear” but prudence: I am looking ahead. I want to save my country from being destroyed by a religion whose violent minority is even today in the process of destroying most of Europe. And the more I’m told it is wrong to be afraid of Islam and its violent minority, the more contempt I feel for them.
Michael Devolin has been a member of JDL Canada since the 1980s, and has served as the personal bodyguard to Meir Weinstein, National Director of JDL Canada, at several high-profile trials, including the Jim Keegstra hate crimes trial and the Imra Finta war crimes trial.