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Strategies of Denial Revisited (Part I)

Jun 25, 2015 11:10 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

boat from Africa to EuropeSix years ago I delivered a talk I titled “Strategies of Denial.” As it did not appear at Jihad Watch but at another site, New English Review, many who come here may not have seen it. And since what I noted at that time does not date, I am taking the liberty of reprinting it here, in segments, with some updated comments interpolated throughout. There is really nothing new to say about Islam; it demands of commentators that they keep repeating themselves, in slightly different words, to put into context each new manifestation of Islamic behavior, whether it be an attack on Infidels, or something less dramatic. There are new attacks, new outrages, but there are no new explanations of Muslim behavior. Each new attack bears mentioning, and each new attempt to explain it away as “un-Islamic” deserves comment, but the generalizing about the subject — the overview — does not need revision, merely constant repetition and, where appropriate, new application.

My reason for breaking up the piece is simple: the new material throughout;  I have expanded on what was given in a somewhat lapidary fashion, appealing more to our common experience of what is happening all over the West today. And I would like it not to overwhelm or burden the readers at this website, but to be read.

Now let’s go to the original introduction to “Strategies of Denial”:

Strategies of Denial –the title is ambiguous. Possibly deliberately. What might it mean? It might refer to Muslims, and to all the ways that adherents of Islam, “slaves of Allah,” especially those living in the West, have managed so successfully to distract or confuse or intimidate, morally or intellectually or physically, so many non-Muslims, managed to keep those non-Muslims from finding out too much about what Islam inculcates, and to achieve this despite the fact that the Islamic texts —  Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira – are easily accessible, no more than a mouse-click away, and their meaning discussed at thousands of Muslim websites. And though not always a mouse-click away, there is the long record of Islamic imperialism, of the conquest through violence and the subsequent subjugation, also through violence and the threat of violence, of non-Muslims, which had always been known throughout the Western world, discussed by its outstanding figures (see John Quincy Adams, see Tocqueville, see Winston Churchill), and noted as a matter of course by Western travelers to Muslim lands, whose own experiences revealed the clear hostility of Muslims toward them (and toward all non-Muslims). When the great mass of Christians in earlier centuries thought about Muslims at all, they never doubted that those who had studied Islam and those who had encountered Muslims must surely be right: Islam was a ferocious and fanatical faith – for “faith” and not “religion” was the word used until the past century. It was American writers of books for children who first began to use that leveling phrase about “the world’s great religions,” and not until recent decades that the soothingly misleading phrase about “the three abrahamic faiths” began to be used. Never before in the history of the Western world would such a phrase have been invoked, never before would it have been taken seriously or used to convince non-Muslims that there was some kind of shared faith and shared traditions which bound Christians (and Jews) to Muslims. People once understood, even if they could not site sura and ayat, the Muslim injunction to “take not Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other.” And even if Sura 9 and a hundred other Jihad verses in the Qur’an had not been read, and the hundreds or thousands of malevolent anti-Infidel hadiths were unknown, inhabitants of the Western world – the chief obstacle to the spread of Islam for a thousand years – did grasp, in the main, the nature of Islam.

But in the last few decades, the very decades in which the political and media elites of Europe have permitted millions of Muslim migrants, in an act of civilisational heedlessness and historical amnesia, to settle within their lands, those same elites failed to reconsider their earlier presumptions and negligence, failed to meet their solemn responsibility to study the texts and tenets of Islam, and their observable effect over 1350 years, from Spain to the East Indies, on the behavior of Muslims. They have instead avoided such study, and still worse, have attacked those who have engaged in such study and, armed with the knowledge of the meaning, and therefore the menace, of Islam, have begun to sound all kinds of tocsins.

It’s an amazing feat, really: the ability of millions of Muslims to settle within the non-Muslim lands, what in Islam is called Dar al-Harb, the House or Domain of War, where the writ of Islam does not yet run, and Muslims do not yet rule, and yet those Muslims have been able to prevent, to stave off, to deflect, any serious and widespread study of Islam, and hence to prevent the understanding of the threat that a large Muslim population unavoidably presents (for a handful of apostates, and a slightly-larger handful of those who become “cultural” Muslims or “Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims, do not relieve us from worrying about the 90% or more of Muslims who remain True Believers and Defenders of the Faith).

And as of now — late June 2015 — the movement of Muslims into Europe has reached flood tide. They come from North Africa, but not all of North Africa. Their main point of departure is Libya, where the overthrow of Qaddafi meant that no one despot could control the flow of population, as he was willing to do for the right  payment, as from the Italian government under Berlusconi. Even if a Western power wanted to pay someone today to prevent Arab and sub-Saharan Africans from leaving in those boats that head toward Lampedusa (the Italian island where these boats often are taken, or the smugglers easily arrange to have then taken — deliberate sinking or half-sinking of vessels by the smugglers is a common tactic) who, exactly, would he pay? No one controls the coast of Libya anymore; at best, some militias might control in Benghazi, or in Misrata, but even they are so fractured, their leaders so changeable, the ability to make sure that a deal that is struck kept so difficult, that Libyan immigration cannot be stopped unless the boats themselves are destroyed, as has been suggested should be done, but for reasons one cannot fathom, this elementary measure of self-defense has not yet been taken.

And then there is the Syrian, Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani migration. All of these nationalities, by all reports, are jumbled together, but all of them — all of those Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians, being Muslims, bear Islam in their mental baggage. And these arrive not from the South, but from the East. All kinds of Muslims find that Turkey is a place to regroup, and then to be smuggled through Anatolia to Bulgaria by land, or to Greece by sea. And thence they continue on, because it is not so much “Europe” that they seek, but those countries within Europe that offer the most benefits. Who wants to stay in Greece when he can be in Sweden?

It is amazing that this clear choice of destination, based on the amount of free health care, free education, free everything that is made available, is not discussed more. Instead, if you listen to NPR or the BBC, you hear endlessly about “immigrants” who are “seeking a better life.” That last phrase is so appealing, and it evokes in others, the descendants of other kinds of immigrants, warm feelings of sympathy. Or if not real sympathy, then at least a feeling that “who am I to deny someone else the right to do what my grandparents or great-grandparents did?” A moment’s thought might have prevented that easy identification. The better life that earlier immigrants sought, remember, was the life in countries that offered no benefits at all to compare with what is now on offer. Why be sentimental about people who “seek a better life” if what that really means is that they  seek better benefits?

And the countries they choose to go to demonstrate this truth. They are not satisfied, when being processed in Lampedusa, to remain in Italy, where the benefits are low. Or if they come on the eastern route, no one really wants to remain in Bulgaria or Greece, unless absolutely necessary. The goal is always the same: it’s the United Kingdom, it’s Germany, it’s France, it’s above all the Scandinavian countries. That is the “better life” being sought. While obvious to you and to me, it is not obvious, apparently, to any of the announcers on NPR and the BBC, who almost never discuss the careful choice, by these immigrants, of destinations based on these benefits. Why? Because that would spoil the story that these immigrants are just like those of the old days. But they are not. They are not “seeking a better life” based on their own work, but are going to lands known for their bountiful welfare, where you may not have to work at all. It’s an incredible confusion of immigrations old and new. I have watched on television illiterate and seemingly ill-informed migrants telling the interviewer all about the benefits he knows exist, and in which countries they are to be found.

And there is one more thing. The NPR or BBC reporters always call them “immigrants,” but never “Muslim immigrants,” even though that adjective is a key to understanding the future behavior  and permanent attitudes of those immigrants toward those into whose lands they have been, or will be, permitted to settle. Why is this? Don’t listeners deserve to know what  kind of immigrants are flowing into their countries, as they try to decide what it all means, and what immigration policies they would support? The vague phrase “immigrants” should be replaced by “Muslim immigrants,” but that would be disallowed by the radio and television censors, or at least has been until now. Perhaps it will change as it becomes so much more obvious: these are Muslim immigrants, not immigrants of all kinds, from everywhere.

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Filed Under: Eurabia, Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, immigration, journalistic bias, willful ignorance Tagged With: Lampedusa


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Comments

  1. Charli Main says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 11:30 am

    There are an estimated half million economic migrants, almost all Muslims, living on Libyan beaches, waiting for the opportunity to get on any plank of wood that will float.
    The European ” hug a Muslim ” brigade are actually demanding that European navies land ships on the beaches of Libya to ” rescue ” these ” refugees” and bring them to Europe on ” humanitarian grounds.
    A Somali Muslim woman, when interviewed by a BBC reporter, said that she would get into the UK regardless of how long it took because she ” wanted to learn English”.

    A simply rule of logic appears to be beyond the comprehension of the dimwits running the European Union—-the more you take, the more will come, and there are another 1.5 BILLION waiting in the wings.

  2. jihad3tracker says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 11:39 am

    I am indebted to Mr. Fitzgerald for the insight, thinking, preparation, implementation, and updating he has done for this post.

    EVEN THE ITALICIZED INTRODUCTION STANDS ON ITS OWN — WITH A CONCISE LUCIDITY THAT RARELY IS MANIFEST UNLESS THE WRITER COMPREHENSIVELY UNDERSTANDS ISLAM.

    • Angemon says

      Jun 25, 2015 at 1:16 pm

      My feelings exactly.

      • EYESOPEN says

        Jun 25, 2015 at 2:00 pm

        And mine as well. Thank you Hugh!

    • Westman says

      Jun 25, 2015 at 3:03 pm

      Excellent piece.

      It reaffirms my own conclusion that Islam creates muslim-ruled societies that must be subsidized by warfare or handouts due to the low productivity caused by its own excessive Sharia regulation. Only oil-rich and secular-ruled muslim countries can escape this eventuality.

      I only see one main difference, the warfare for spoils, between Islam and Communism. Islam takes the Zakat principle of Communism, adds the Caravan Robber element of Jizya and war booty, and creates the dystopia of a Mad Max World.

  3. Michael Copeland says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 11:46 am

    The vocabulary available for this subject is inadequate.
    The word “immigrants” used to mean those who went through the proper channels and paperwork, that is to say, they were lawful. “Illegal immigrants” is rather too much of a mouthful for news entertainers.
    The word “migrant” is, for the time being, neutral.
    “Asylum seekers” prejudges the issue, and wrongly upgrades the bogus.
    Many of these are not refugees but economic-migrants-who-are-not-obeying-the-rules. They are thus unlawful immigrants, gate-crashers, invaders.
    Boat after boat, swarm after swarm over the fences, all are failures of modern governments, whose duty it is to protect their own citizens. The medical requirements are trampled underfoot. The USA is acquiring diseases hitherto unknown or previously eradicated.

    Uncompromising insistence on legality is needed. Unlawful boatloads need to be taken back, as is done in Australia.
    The most effective measure is for welfare eligibility to be greatly changed. All the populations would be in favour of this. The EU, though, is instructing governments to keep providing welfare. The EU has an ulterior agenda which is nothing to do with the usual dishonest claim, “economic benefit”.
    See EU Nation-Breaking at LibertyGB.
    http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/6352-eu-nation-breaking

    • tilda says

      Jun 26, 2015 at 10:53 am

      Israel has started using the word “infiltrators” for some African asylum seekers. See for example the following article about Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers being deported by Israel to Uganda and Rwanda (there seems to be some kind of aid arrangement with the receiving countries):

      http://europe.newsweek.com/israel-deport-eritrean-and-sudanese-infiltrators-rwanda-and-uganda-319065

  4. Paleologos says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 12:09 pm

    Since Robert is doing a little “muslim history in the world, and why they are so friendly,” … may I point out one of my favorite presidents?

    … Thomas Jefferson …

    … the answer to the trivia question … “Who is on the $2 bill?”

    … liberal morons will be quick to point out he was a slave owner

    … muslim morons, (really … is there any other kind?) will be quick to point out Jefferson kept a copy of the koran in the White House

    But Jefferson was probably the first U.S. President to really “get” islam, and square off against it … sending marines to Tripoli to battle the “pirates of Tripoli” … gee, nothing has really changed; has it?

    http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_urbanities-thomas_jefferson.html

    R/

    Paleologos

    • Red Bee says

      Jun 26, 2015 at 6:02 am

      John Adams, the president before Thomas Jefferson, did have a translation of the Koran. See the link in the Links section on my website.

  5. dsinc says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    Thanks Hugh, have saved it to read later. Thanks also for the short title which makes saving possible on my ancient XP.

  6. WhatsUpDoc says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 3:38 pm

    There will be a point when Muslims are going to ask for anotonums regions or division of the country. Perfect example is partition of India.

  7. Gart says

    Jun 25, 2015 at 6:54 pm

    It’s getting tougher and tougher to defend my own position. it’s a hard reality to face, but the uncomfortable truth just might be unavoidable.

  8. Wakeup says

    Jun 26, 2015 at 5:09 am

    Re the autonomous muslim areas just look at Luton.

  9. Red Bee says

    Jun 26, 2015 at 7:08 am

    Mr. Fitzgerald writes it is amazing the flood of Muslim immigrants and their motives are not discussed. Apparently they (politicians, journalists, etc.) did not make the effort of taking a closer look at what Islam is. This of course marks them as incompetent at best and lazy, irresponsible, stupid, gullible, non-thinking conformists, etc.

    The general public is not aware of the true nature of Islam either; this is understandable because it is not easy to get a reliable picture. Most people do not have the time, energy and skill to do their own research and probably formulate their opinions on the basis of their place on the political spectrum. Thus the western electorate stays as it is on the question of Islam: divided.

    The true nature of Islam is not obvious to the casual observer. This may seem strange to people who did take a closer look at it, but it is a fact we must reckon with in my opinion. From my own experience I can say it is quite difficult to decide on what to think of Islam. I did my own research and made a website about it (click my name for the link).

    —

    Is Islam a threat?

    In the summer of 2014 I felt the need to decide what my position on the question of Islam should be. Is Islam a threat to the west?

    In the Netherlands we now have a third generation of Muslims. I thought that under the influence of western culture, prosperity and education, the role of the (Muslim) faith would become less important to the children of immigrants and they would assimilate. History proved me wrong on that one; the opposite seems to be happening. The younger generations become more devout than their parents and often choose segregation.

    I gathered information on Islam, mainly from the media and internet. The amount of information is enormous and I found it very hard to decide what information is valid. In my paper I mention the protocols of the elders of Zion as a propaganda tool. I know this is a forgery made by the secret police of the tsar. I did not verify this myself, but I “know” this because all the scholars who I think are reliable sources agree on this. Joseph Goebbels knew this as is indicated by his diaries. Unfortunately, reliable sources in the media and on the internet disagree on the nature of Islam and I can’t verify the validity of the information they present.

    I decided to do my own research and before deciding on how to do that it is logical to first study the things Islam is all about. Though everybody says the Koran is a difficult book this seems to be the most logical point to start. To my surprise the Koran is not difficult at all. It may be difficult from a theological or historical perspective, but it is not from a psychological point of view. It is conditioning (classic: Pavlovian). If you make people, especially children, recite these verses you are conditioning them, using normal, healthy fear responses, thus creating an emotional framework that will make them come into conflict with neighboring groups.

    This provides the answer to my question: Islam is a threat to the west.

  10. dumbledoresarmy says

    Jun 26, 2015 at 9:31 am

    hi, Hugh.

    Nice to see you here again.

    So pleased that lots of new folks who’ve come on board while you were away will now be able to get to know your work. (Not everybody follows recommended links; I did what I could to point people to where you could be found).

  11. Xero_G says

    Jun 26, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    The mysterious Hugh Fitzgerald reappears! I’ve missed your essays and inimitable wordsmithing here at JW. There were rumours years ago (never confirmed or denied) that you were a pen name or alter ego of Robert Spencer himself. Have the two of you ever appeared in public at the same time and place?

  12. Robert Swindells says

    Jun 26, 2015 at 5:10 pm

    What do you expect from a BBC that has appointed a Muslim as Head of Religious Broadcasting!!!!!!!!!!??????????????

  13. Uncle Vladdi says

    Jun 26, 2015 at 6:01 pm

    Re: “But in the last few decades, the very decades in which the political and media elites of Europe have permitted millions of Muslim migrants, in an act of civilisational heedlessness and historical amnesia, to settle within their lands, those same elites failed to reconsider their earlier presumptions and negligence, failed to meet their solemn responsibility to study the texts and tenets of Islam, and their observable effect over 1350 years, from Spain to the East Indies, on the behavior of Muslims. They have instead avoided such study, and still worse, have attacked those who have engaged in such study and, armed with the knowledge of the meaning, and therefore the menace, of Islam, have begun to sound all kinds of tocsins.”

    YES – AND THEY DO IT BY SLANDERING ALL WHITE ANCESTORS AS HATEFULLY BIGOTED RACISTS.

  14. sidney penny says

    Jul 3, 2015 at 5:20 pm

    “But in the last few decades, the very decades in which the political and media elites of Europe have permitted millions of Muslim migrants, in an act of civilisational heedlessness and historical amnesia, to settle within their lands, those same elites failed to reconsider their earlier presumptions and negligence, failed to meet their solemn responsibility to study the texts and tenets of Islam, and their observable effect over 1350 years, from Spain to the East Indies, on the behavior of Muslims.”

    This passage reminds me of this book ans this passage from the book

    The Calcutta Quran Petition by Sita Ram Goel

    http://voiceofdharma.org/books/tcqp/

    The Calcutta Quran Petition by Sita Ram Goel

    http://voiceofdharma.org/books/tcqp/pref1.htm

    The real issue raised by the Petition was not what Muslims believe about the Quran but what behaviour patterns the Quran inculcates in its votaries vis-à-vis the unbelievers.

    8. The offending expressions contained in the Koran and quoted in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 above are not so offensive in their translation in which they are so quoted as they are in the original verses in Arabic or in Urdu, the very sound of whose inimitable symphony not only sends the Muslims to tears and ecstasy but arouses in them the worst communal passions and religious fanaticism which have manifested themselves in murder, slaughter, loot, arson, rape and destruction or desecration of holy places in historical times as also in contemporary period not only in India but almost all over the world.

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