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Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Just a Few Questions for Richard Dawkins and Sulome Anderson

Aug 27, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Richard Dawkins, the retired Oxford evolutionary biologist, whose best-known books are The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, is a celebrated atheist routinely critical of all religions, but is known especially for his severe criticism of Islam. He has noticed that Islam is treated with kid gloves by many of his “liberal” colleagues, who are reflexively defenders of that faith, privileging it above all others: “My love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.” He has insisted that “Islam is the greatest force for evil in the world today.”

Some time ago Dawkins criticized Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei for adopting a law that would mandate death by stoning for those convicted of being homosexual in his largely Sunni Muslim country. Noting Brunei’s adoption of the Sharia death penalty, Dawkins tweeted that it was in order “‘To obey Allah’s command as written in the Quran.’ So you’d better not object or you’ll be accused of Islamophobia & Cambridge will de-platform you.” [This was a reference to the withdrawal by Cambridge of an invitation to Professor Jordan Peterson, merely for having been photographed next to someone wearing a t-shirt that read “I’m proud to be an Islamophobe.”]

Dawkins frequently claims that Islam is the sole object of his criticism, not Muslims, and those  who label Islam’s critics, such as himself, as “bigots,” are failing to recognize the distinction he makes between Islam and Muslims. Some may think Dawkins is too soft on the adherents of Islam, as he depicts them as victims of brainwashing; he claims endlessly that Muslims are the “greatest sufferers” from Islam as a way of justifying, quite unnecessarily, his criticism of the faith; over the past 1,400 years, on the receiving end of Muslim aggression and murder, many Infidels would disagree. Does one find fault only with the ideology of Nazism and give members of the Nazi Party a pass, as victims of brainwashing who do not deserve criticism?

“I hate cancer,” Dawkins tweeted after being criticized for his first tweet on Brunei. And he continued: “Aha, so you hate cancer sufferers. Bigot! The principal sufferers from Islam are Muslims. Especially women and homosexuals. Muslimophilia can inspire and justify Islamophobia.” He is comparing Islam to cancer; we don’t blame the sufferers, he says, but only try to eradicate the illness. The analogy is a poor one. Victims of cancer do not choose whether they get cancer or not. But there is an element of will in those who “suffer” from Islam. Those born into the faith still have the freedom, when they grow up, to exercise moral choice and if appalled by the teachings of Islam, can choose to become merely “cultural” Muslims or, if they live in the West where they need not hide their apostasy, even to leave the faith altogether; according to a Pew Report, about a quarter of adults who were raised Muslim (23%) in the United States no longer identify as members of the faith. Those who remain Muslims, or convert to Islam,are not innocent victims; they choose freely to belong to the faith that Dawkins calls the “greatest force for evil in the world today.”

Dawkins has no need to claim that what he wrongly mischaracterizes as his “Islamophobia” is justified by what he calls  “Muslimphilia.” Apparently, it is mainly because he hates the way many Muslims suffer from Islam that he opposes the faith, not because of what Islam has meant for Unbelievers over the past 1,400 years. Dawkins accepts the  word  “Islamophobia,” the same term used by apologists for Islam in order to shut down all criticism of Islam. It is disappointing that Dawkins has not questioned such verbal mendacity. Dawkins himself is not guilty of “Islamophobia.” He does not exhibit a “baseless fear and hatred of Islam.” He is, rather, an “islamocritic” and a valuable one; neither Dawkins nor any other islamocritics need to justify themselves by claiming to be “Muslimphiles.’’  He has a perfect right to describe himself as severely critical of Islam, and therefore to be deeply distrustful of, and hostile to, those whose minds are in thrall to that same faith. No defensiveness (“I’m a Muslimphile”) is necessary.

Among the replies to the tweet where Dawkins compares Islam to cancer was one from Sulome Anderson, a Beirut-based journalist:

“Mr. Dawkins, Islam is not a cancer any more than other religions,” replied Beirut-based journalist Sulome Anderson, author of The Hostage’s Daughter: A Story of Family, Madness, and the Middle East (2016). “The real cancer was colonialism and neocolonialism that economically and politically exploited Islamic countries for centuries, killing democratization and progress—and white saviors like you were the carcinogens.”

“The real cancer was colonialism.” What can Sulome Anderson be thinking? When does she think European “colonialism” began? What “Islamic countries [were] economically and politically exploited [by Europeans] for centuries, killing democratization and progress”? For more than four hundred years it was the Ottoman Turks — Muslims — who ruled over most of the Middle East and North Africa. Europeans did not arrive in the area until Napoleon entered Egypt in 1798. There were no European “colonies” in the accepted sense of that word; that is, a place both with a large influx of settlers from the colonial metropolis and economic exploitation of that colony, anywhere in the Middle East. North Africa has a slightly different history.

We need only go down the list of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, to see how little they suffered from what Sulome Anderson describes as “colonialism.” Iran never suffered from European colonialism; it has been a unified and independent state since the rise of the Safavids in the 15th century. As for Iraq, the modern state was created by the British, who remained there for little more than ten years, from 1921 to 1932, as the Mandatory authority, not to colonize, but in order to help shepherd the country that had been created from the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, to full independence. In Lebanon/Syria, the French played the same role, that of the Mandatory authority, helping guide the local Arabs to independence in two nation-states, Lebanon and Syria.

In Egypt, the British did not come as colonialists, there to exploit the country’s (non-existent) riches, and to settle in large numbers; they arrived in order to put the country’s finances on a firmer footing and to end the inefficiency and corruption in the civil service. This was, of course, partly to assure the smooth workings of the Suez Canal. Lord Cromer appeared in 1877 to assume both tasks and had remarkable success. By 1922 Egypt, which had since December 1914 been a British protectorate, was declared by Great Britain to be fully independent. For the British, Egypt had not been a source of revenue (revenues from ships using the Suez Canal accrued to the Suez Canal Company), but a drain on resources. The British were happy to pull out, though because they wanted to ensure the continued security of the Suez Canal, they left a small contingent of army officers and civilian officials, who remained as advisers to the Egyptian government for several decades. The closest thing to true “colonialism” that Egypt endured was that which began in 1517, when the Ottoman Turks defeated the Mamelukes, who in 1250 had themselves defeated the Ayyubid dynasty founded by the Kurd Saladin. Under the nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule Egypt remained immobile; it was the British who helped to reform the civil service along modern lines and install a semblance of efficient government.

As for the Arabian peninsula, there were no European colonies in what became Saudi Arabia; infidels were not permitted, on religious grounds, in Arabia. That rule was strictly observed, for a long time, in Saudi Arabia. Nor were there European colonies in the places that were, or later became, known as Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. Only in the entrepôt of Aden was there a British crown colony from 1937 to 1963; before that it had been administered by the Government of India. Aden was important as a refueling and re-provisioning stop for ships on the England-to-India route. Even in Aden, there were only a handful of British military and civilian officials; Aden had no colonists and no resources to exploit.

For many hundreds of years the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa had been subject to imperial rule, varying in the degree of its immediacy and severity, of the Ottoman Turks. It was the Europeans who freed them from their subjugation to the Ottomans. This does not fit Sulome Anderson’s version of history. She wants us to believe that all the ills of the Muslim and Arab world have come from Europeans, the self-appointed “white saviors” whom she describes as “carcinogens”; the “cancer” is “colonialism.”

The vast interior peninsula of Arabia (renamed after the Al-Saud family in 1932), as noted above, was never subject to European colonial rule. The British did, however, intervene in the Gulf in two ways, both praiseworthy. First, they used their naval power to end the Arab slave trade in black Africans; second, they established a modicum of peace between the constantly warring Arab tribes on the Gulf coast, including stamping out their piracy, for this threatened the sea route to India and the East. And that was about it. There were a few small British garrisons established at Aden and in the “Trucial States” (so named because they had signed truce treaties with the British); they were there only to maintain the peace. The British treated the Trucial States collectively as a protectorate, not a colony; these included the six emirates of  Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, and Fujairah, which joined in the Act of Union to form the United Arab Emirates in December 1971; the seventh emirate, Ras Al Khaimah, feeling threatened by Iran, joined the U.A.E. in February 1972. The British never settled in the Emirates  as “colonists,” nor did they economically exploit the U.A.E. British troops were completely withdrawn, in fact, in 1971, because of their expense; Her Majesty’s Government could no longer afford to keep the peace in the upper Gulf.

There was no large-scale settlement by Europeans in these Middle Eastern countries (always excepting the special case of Israel, which was hardly a case of “colonialism”), nor were there riches to exploit. Oil was discovered in the region, and produced, only much later, when the European presence in the Middle East, always small, was already much diminished, and the oil-producing states were independent. In Lebanon and Syria, where the French Mandate lasted from 1923 to 1946, the French did two things which helped them project soft power for decades to come. First, during the mandatory period, they protected the local Christians from Muslim mistreatment; the Lebanese Christians have felt a bond with France ever since; second, the French spread the use of the French language by both subsidizing,and supplying French teachers to, French-language schools and  universities; by supporting French-language newspapers and publishing houses. The Christians of Lebanon still use French, often preferring it to Arabic. One suspects Sulome Anderson would manage to find something sinister about this cultural mission of the French, just one more aspect of “European colonialism.” The Lebanese Christian beneficiaries of France’s mission civilisatrice would doubtless disagree.

In Iraq, as the Mandatory authority, the British not only managed to create a country out of those three Ottoman vilayets, but during the Mandatory period, they protected the Christians; before leaving the country, they extracted a promise from the Iraqis that they would not harm the  Assyrians. However, within a year of the British officially leaving, Muslim Arabs and Kurds carried out a pogrom against the Assyrians at Simele, and several thousands were killed. Can Sulome Anderson find a way to blame the European “colonialists” and American “neocolonialists” for that attempt, by Arab and Kurdish Muslims, at genocide? What does she make of the attacks on Lebanese Christians during the Lebanese civil war? Or the attacks on Copts in Egypt that began after the British withdrew in 1922, and that have continued up to the present? Or doesn’t she think the mass murder of Christians by Muslims is important enough to mention?

North Africa presents a slightly different picture from the Middle East. In Libya, after the Italian conquest of the country that began in 1911, there was an effort to colonize the vast, underpopulated country. About 100,000 Italians eventually moved to Libya. The Italians were there to farm, and to build. They introduced modern systems of agriculture — crop rotation, irrigation, new kinds of fertilizers — that allowed what had become desert to again flourish; knowledge of these methods were freely shared with the Arabs. The Italians built 4000 kilometers of roads, 400 kilometers of railroad lines, bridges, ports. They built a modern highway all the way from Tripoli to Tobruk. They plowed large sums into these projects; they wanted Libya to flourish and it did so, as it had not done since the days of the Roman Empire. These projects (roads, railroads, ports), and the improvements to agriculture, were for the benefit of all the people in Libya, not just Italians. Most of what one now sees of lasting worth in Libya’s infrastructure was built either by the Romans two thousand years ago, or by their descendants, the Italian builders and craftsmen who came to Libya during the period 1911 to 1939. Sulome Anderson might visit Libya and take a good look, before she concludes that “European colonialism” is everywhere A Bad Thing.

Huge improvements to agriculture and infrastructure were not the only benefits of Italian rule.

The Italians also introduced their own legal code to replace the rudimentary Sharia of the Arabs. Comparing how Libyans fared under the Italians with how they fared during the rule of  King Idris, or Muammar Qaddafi, or most recently, during the period of the half-dozen warring militias still fighting for power since the fall of Qaddafi, it is hard not to see the Italian rulers as the best of the lot. This was “colonialism,” but it was not the resource-draining sort, and it provided a better life for the Libyans than any they had experienced before.

France effectively ruled Morocco from 1912 to 1956, and Tunisia, from 1881 to 1956, both considered administratively not as colonies but as protectorates. Were the French ruthless colonialists as the Turks had been? Did the French government move hundreds of thousands of its own citizens into Morocco and Tunisia as colons, colonists? No, they did not have such a policy; they did not prevent French people, as individuals, from moving to those two countries, which is a different thing. The French who settled in Morocco and Tunisia did so only by the tens of thousands.

Did the French, if we accept Anderson’s view that in North Africa they were everywhere  “colonialists,” ruthlessly exploit these soi-disant “colonies”? No. The French built the first modern hospitals and universities in North Africa, built school systems where before there had mainly been madrasas, supplied a constant stream of teachers from France to the schools and lycées of the Maghreb. They introduced modern methods of agriculture which increased crop yields, including those of olive trees, and introduced vineyards, too. Despite Islam’s ban on alcohol, Morocco and Algeria are now major producers  of wine. Most significant, perhaps, was that these supposedly exploitative “colonialists” offered the maghrebins the gift of the French language, which made the advanced West — its culture, art, politics, science, medicine, higher education — all now accessible to the Tunisian and Moroccan elites.

Only in Algeria was there a deliberate large-scale transfer of French citizens into the region. Like Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria had been under the suzerainty of the Ottomans; unlike Morocco and Tunisia, when under French control Algeria was administratively ruled from Paris; it was treated as part of metropolitan France. Hundreds of thousands of French colonists moved into Algeria. By independence, in 1962, Algeria had more than a million people of European descent.

Clearly the journalist Sulome Anderson wishes to blame the ills of the Arab and Muslim world on European “colonialism and neocolonialism that economically and politically exploited Islamic countries for centuries, killing democratization and progress.” When we look closely at the recent history of the Middle East and North Africa, we see both what little actual effect European “colonialism” had on the region, and when it did have an effect, the benefits to the Arabs always outweighed the burdens. A mandate is not “colonialism.” A protectorate is not “colonialism.” Only in Algeria and Libya were there real “colonies” with substantial numbers of “colonists.” But instead of being “economically and politically exploited” by the Europeans, these Arab territories were the recipients of large investments. We saw how in Libya the Italians built the infrastructure of the country and modernized methods of agriculture. The French did the same in Algeria, but also built hospitals, universities, and a secular school system with many teachers sent from France..

Anderson also claims that the Arabs endured “centuries” of Europe colonial rule. Her history is wrong. Only one Arab country, Algeria, was under European rule for more than a century, from 1830 to 1962. The Arabs endured a harsh imperialism for centuries, it’s true, but the imperialists in question were not Europeans, but their fellow Muslims, the Ottoman Turks.

The Europeans never colonized Iran, which maintained its independence throughout the centuries. Britain held the League of Nations mandate in Iraq, and France held that for Lebanon/Syria. These were examples not of colonialism, but of its very opposite; the holders of the mandates were responsible for guiding these inchoate countries to full independence. The interior of the Arabian peninsula was never penetrated by the Europeans. Britain did describe Aden as a “crown colony,” but it was hardly that; only officials and soldiers, not ordinary Britons, lived there. It was important only as a base for refueling ships going to and from India.

Egypt had its civil service revamped by the British, and put on a sound footing; that does not constitute “colonialism.” Libya became a colony of Italy, in the sense that large numbers of Italians, by the hundreds of thousands, settled there. But instead of being exploited by Italy, the Libyan economy was greatly improved by the Italians, through their massive investments in infrastructure (roads, highways, railroads, ports) and in improvements to  agriculture.

Arab Muslims suffered far less from European colonialism than did any other people in the soi-disant Third World — far less than those in sub-Saharan Africa, in Central and South America, and in southeast Asia. Indeed, it might be argued, and has been, by such non-Arab ex-Muslims as Anwar Shaikh (in his Islam: The Arab Imperialism) that the most successful imperialism in history has been that of the Arabs, who exploited Islam as a vehicle for arabization, especially of the cultural and linguistic kind.

So great was the prestige of the Arabs within Islam that non-Arab converts often took Arab names and assumed false Arab lineages. It’s not surprising. The message of Allah was transmitted to a 7th century Arab, and in his language, Arabic. Muslims when they prostrate themselves in prayer five times a day turn toward Mecca, in Arabia, and recite their prayers in Arabic. It is also to Mecca that Muslims make the hajj, if able, at least once in their life. Believers ideally read the Qur’an in Arabic and memorize its verses in the original. No wonder many non-Arab Muslims adopted Arabic names and even false Arab lineages.

Arab imperialism in the newly-islamized Middle East and North Africa was followed by the imperialism of the Ottoman Turks, who for four hundred years ruled the Middle East and North Africa. Unlike the Europeans later on, the Ottomans did not invest in the lands they ruled over, and instead squeezed what they could out of their subjects. It made no difference to them if those subjects were Arabs, and thus fellow Muslims. Sulome Anderson fails to mention the four hundred years of Ottoman rule. Has she forgotten about it, or does it get in the way of her anti-European (“white men are the carcinogens”) narrative?

Whenever the word “colonialism” is flung at the West, there is an immediate impulse to apologize. There is no need. We should be ready to recognize the benefits that colonialism could, and often did, bring to many peoples. The Arabs, in particular, benefited economically in North Africa from the modernization of agriculture and the massive investments made in infrastructure, education, and hospitals. They benefited politically, too, from the Mandatory authorities, France and Great Britain, who created the conditions that allowed Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, formerly lands under Ottoman rule, to independence. In Egypt, the British so improved the civil service that after eight years (1914-1922) of being a “protectorate” Egypt was deemed ready for full independence, and received it in 1922.

Sulome Anderson claims that “colonialism” managed to “kill democratization and progress” in Muslim states. The opposite is true. Democracy is alien to Islam; for Muslims the legitimacy of a ruler depends on whether his rule follows the will of Allah, as expressed in the Qur’an. He may be a despot, as long as he is a good Muslim. The idea of democracy was brought to the Arabs by the very West that Sulome Anderson blames for “killing” it. The elections held in Iraq have been reasonably fair, thanks to the Americans; elections have at various times been held, and their results sometimes honored, in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, Syria, “Palestine.” Even the family despotism in Saudi Arabia now allows elections at the local level. The very notion of elections was an alien import from the Europeans. The West did what it could to promote, not “kill,” the idea of democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

As for Anderson’s charge that “colonialism” killed “progress,” this is the very opposite of the truth. The Europeans, unlike the Ottomans, tried to promote, not stifle, economic progress in the Arab lands. In Libya, the country which conformed most closely to being a “colony,” the country was transformed by the Italian colonists. Roads, highways,  railroads, and ports built by the Italians served Libyans as well as Italians. The modern methods of agriculture the Italians introduced were also shared with the Libyan Arabs. In Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia the French, similarly, built the first hospitals, universities, and school systems. They modernized agricultural methods, built networks of roads, the first railroads, and ports — all of these being  needs the Ottoman rulers had ignored.

Progress had long been limited in Muslim lands because of Islam itself. First, the hostility in Islam to bid’a, innovation, which was originally aimed at suspect “innovation” in matters of faith, became a wider hostility to any new way of doing things. Thus did Muslim peoples prove naturally refractory to the idea of progress; it was the Europeans who imposed what progress there was. Second, the fatalism of Muslims, expressed in the one word “inshallah” or “God willing,” naturally diminished the Muslim will to strive. Why bother if, in the end, Allah will decide who succeeds and who fails? Europeans brought with them the idea of progress, and demonstrated in all that they created the obvious benefits of active effort over Inshallah-fatalism and passivity. The European presence in the Middle East and North Africa was, by any fair-minded standard,  a godsend, politically and economically.

If there is to be any apologizing for colonialism, it should be not to, but by, the Arabs. For they have been the most successful colonizers in history, who managed to convince those they conquered to forget or despise their own pre-Islamic histories, as representing the Time of Ignorance, or Jahiliyya, before the arrival of Islam, and to identify instead with their Arab conquerors. Every aspect of Islam reinforces the prestige of the Arabs. The Qur’an, the Word of Allah, was delivered to a 7th century Arab, and in his language, Arabic. Muslims turn prostrate in prayer toward Mecca, in Arabia. They must make the hajj, if financially able, at least once in their life to that same Mecca. Even if they are non-Arabs they recite the daily prayers in Arabic and, ideally, should read the Qur’an in Arabic. That is why so many non-Arab Muslims take Arab names, and assume false Arab lineages. Islam has always been a vehicle for Arab imperialism.

The next time Sulome Anderson, or others of that ilk, snarlingly attack the malignant “white saviors” of the West for a “colonialism” that, it is claimed, over the  “centuries” was responsible for “killing democratization and progress” in the Islamic world, have ready a series of questions for them:

First, for how long were the Arabs ruled by the Ottoman Turks, their fellow Muslims, and what benefits, and burdens, resulted from that rule?

Second,  exactly where, and for how long,  were the Arabs ruled by Europeans? Which Arab states did the Europeans help bring to independence under the League of Nations mandate system? Which states were “protectorates,” whom the Europeans guarded  from possible outside aggressors, and from internecine strife? Which states were “colonies” in the generally accepted sense of that word?

Third, which Arab states were exploited economically by the Europeans, and in what way? in which states did the Europeans invest far more than they received in benefits?

Fourth, what was the effect in North Africa of the massive European effort to build transportation infrastructure (roads, highways, railroads, ports), to set up schools, hospitals, universities? What was the effect on the local Arabs of the French government disseminating the French language in both Lebanon and in the Maghreb, by sending French teachers and supporting French-language schools and media?

Fifth, in what ways did Europeans bring modern methods of agriculture to Libya and Algeria?

Sixth, what political changes did the Europeans help bring about in the Middle East and North Africa? In what countries did they encourage democracy, and in which countries did they manage to “kill” democracy?

Those are some of the questions to which we deserve answers. Richard Dawkins is free to use them, the next time, during one of his many appearances, that he is confronted by some Defender of the Faith claiming that European “colonialism and neocolonialism” have been responsible for everything that ails the Arab and Muslim world.

And Sulome Anderson should certainly be asked these questions, which were prompted by her own resentful blame-the-infidel (“white saviors”) remarks. But as for her deigning to answer them — well, don’t hold your breath.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Richard Dawkins, Sulome Anderson


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Comments

  1. Gary Hamilton says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 10:16 am

    R U related to Angelina Jolie?
    You look as foxy as she is!!😍😋😎

    • william carr says

      Aug 28, 2019 at 12:48 pm

      “The analogy is a poor one. Victims of cancer do not choose whether they get cancer or not. But there is an element of will in those who “suffer” from Islam. Those born into the faith still have the freedom, when they grow up, to exercise moral choice and if appalled by the teachings of Islam, can choose to become merely “cultural” Muslims or, if they live in the West where they need not hide their apostasy, even to leave the faith altogether”
      Dawkins analogy is not poor though it may be slightly inappropriate. Muslim do not choose to be Muslim any more than Catholic children choose to be Catholic, They are branded like calves at birth. Then they are subjected at their most impressionable years to intense indoctrination. Aside from the misguide people who convert to Islam for some mysterious reason. Fitzgerald misrepresents the ‘freedom’ that they have to renounce Islam as most of them live in Muslim communities where ‘stepping out of line’ can be very difficult and even fatal. Remember the Muslim young people who have been murdered by their families for being too ‘Western’ and even not wearing the hijab. Exercising moral choice as he puts it is not as easy as he thinks. Apostates even in the West live in constant fear of retribution.
      Fitzgerald oversimplifies the situation egregiously to a high degree

  2. Shirley Ann says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 11:18 am

    In every Western Country, the Ruling Elite & Upper Classes Support BOTH Muslims & Islam, under the Guise of Progressive Thinking. Once Islam (Muslims) were invited into a Country, they became the PETS of the Establishments.
    We will never be free of them in the U.S. They are already in our Governments, turning American Law Against Americans, Thanks to U.N.,Pope Francis & the BUSH/CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA REGIME!

    • Savvy Kafir says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 4:21 pm

      We will be free of them one day, Shirley. Once enough people realize the danger that Islam poses to the U.S. and other Western societies, Muslims will be deported or driven out. They will not be allowed to remain.

      The survival of the free, civilized Western world is too important for us to capitulate to the most savage, retrograde colonizers the world has ever known. Many people would rather die fighting than allow that to happen.

    • Ed DeLauter says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 9:48 pm

      “We will never be free of them in the U.S. They are already in our Governments, turning American Law Against Americans…”

      You refer to citizens of our country. Are you advocating for the repeal of the 1st amendment? “E pluribus unum” I believe is still our national motto, right?

      • Michael says

        Aug 28, 2019 at 12:12 am

        Wrong. “E pluribus unum” was never the official motto of the United States. “In God We Trust” became the official motto by an act of Congress under Eisenhower in 1956.

      • Angemon says

        Aug 28, 2019 at 12:43 pm

        E pluribus unum – out of many, one-. That only works when all of the “many” are aboard the same boat. See how long “e pluribus unum” lasts when purveyors of identity politics start fragmenting the “one” into “many”, each with their own separate “safe space” and a victim-claim to special treatment…

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 28, 2019 at 10:28 pm

          Spot on, Angemon. You need to have values in common.

  3. Older Canadian says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 11:21 am

    One of the best Fitzgerald has written. He and Richard Dawkins know the ills of our past and present. But our political correct progressive liberals and democrats have completely opposite views. Our politicians present more of a danger to us and our future than any country or terrorist group of any stripe.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 4:55 pm

      Yes–a fine piece.

  4. CogitoErgoSum says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 11:24 am

    The last Crusade ended around the year 1300 AD. The next period of European encroachment into the Middle East did not begin until around 1800 AD. That’s a 500 year interval. During that time the Christian Europeans increased their knowledge and technology. The Muslim world fell behind. I wonder why? What held them back?

    • JM says

      Aug 28, 2019 at 10:08 am

      Their rejection of anything new, e.g. the printng press, scientific advancements, etc.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 28, 2019 at 10:29 pm

        The only thing Muslims tend to enthusiastically embrace is new weaponry.

  5. Wellington says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 12:42 pm

    Excellent summation by Fitzgerald of the bogus contention that Western colonialism retarded growth in the Islamic world. Anderson has it, in fact, ass backwards. Westerners aided those under the colossal stupor which the Islamic world creates wherever it eventually is done parasitically feeding off its non-Muslim host and thereafter any progress that has occurred comes only once Muslim polities use Western technology which they themselves would have never created (e.g., extraction of petroleum reserves—does anyone think a country like Saudi Arabia minus Western technology would have done this on its own?)

    Pointing to Western colonialism as the culprit in the inability of Muslim nations to create free polities is so off base that it is risible in the extreme. Islam and true democracy (which requires liberty) are polar opposites of one another and one knows this or should know it. Anderson apparently does not. She has put forth a woeful excuse masquerading as an argument for the Islamic world being as desultory as it is. The root cause of this malaise is Islam itself.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 4:56 pm

      +1

  6. Angemon says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 1:02 pm

    Bookmarked and sent to Pocket, for future reference 😉

    • roberta says

      Aug 28, 2019 at 7:47 am

      Same here. Great work.

  7. Angemon says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 1:09 pm

    [This was a reference to the withdrawal by Cambridge of an invitation to Professor Jordan Peterson, merely for having been photographed next to someone wearing a t-shirt that read “I’m proud to be an Islamophobe.”]

    Dawkins himself had been, in 2016, deplatformed from the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism for tweeting a “highly offensive” video:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-dawkins-vdeo-twitter-necss-event-feminism-a6841161.html

    The “highly offensive” video:

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 4:59 pm

      Yes–this is a brilliant animation by Sye Ten Atheist.

  8. Lydia Church says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 1:20 pm

    And to claim that God does not exist is: “The Atheist Delusion.”

    • FYI says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 3:57 pm

      If it is the case that God gives you Reason{as christian Theologians believe} and if an atheist has convinced himself using his God-given reason that God cannot exist, then all he has done is deluded himself.

      There is a difference between knowledge and Wisdom:it seems clever to say God is a Delusion but it is not very wise.

      It could be argued that if God is a delusion so you could argue that the belief that God is a delusion could itself be a delusion{The God delusion delusion}

      The Scientific Method isn’t going to resolve that.

      Interestingly enough,I was thinking about this God delusion idea {as an atheist} when I read this in
      2 Thessalonians 2 v 10-11 “And so God sends the power of error to work in them so they believe what is FALSE”.Why?”Because they do not love and welcome the truth to be saved”

      That explains why someone converts to islam:they reject the Gospel Truth for a false creed and they are allowed to do so{by the power of error} thus revealing them to be false.

      It also explains why someone might think God is a delusion….by rejecting the Truth,they convince themselves that is all nonsense.I used to post on atheist websites{as an atheist} and the fury of the militant atheists when it was pointed out that there are philosophical,theological and psychological objections to the God delusion {other things that needed to be considered} was something to behold..

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 5:01 pm

      Do you have a problem with Richard Dawkins for speaking out against Islamic savagery?

  9. RodSerling says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    Always educational to read Hugh’s pieces.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 5:07 pm

      Hear. hear!

  10. Geoffrey Britain says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    Sulome Anderson is just another liar interested in advancing Islam. She is an enemy of any fact that contradicts Islam. Taqiyya, it’s what Islamists do…

  11. RodSerling says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 1:46 pm

    Dawkins, by the way, suffered a stroke a few years back. He hasn’t been the same since. He was advised then by his doctor to avoid stressful controversies. Still, when he makes the occasional remark about Islam, the “controversy” comes to him.

    • Mark Swan says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 3:32 pm

      Thank you Mr. Fitzgerald, very much needed and appreciated article.

  12. lebel says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 2:43 pm

    “He has a perfect right to describe himself as severely critical of Islam, and therefore to be deeply distrustful of, and hostile to, those whose minds are in thrall to that same faith”

    Why being anti-Islam should lead to being anti-Muslim succinctly explained (and justified).

    • CogitoErgoSum says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 2:56 pm

      It’s sort of like hating Christianity leading to hating Christians.

    • Wellington says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 3:39 pm

      Well, lebel, while there are many Muslims who don’t themselves enforce the many heinous dictates of Islam (examples being death for apostasy and severe punishment or death for criticizing Mo or that silliest of religious works, the Koran), no Muslim should be considered a non-confused human being. Besides, many Muslims do enforce a bevy of Islam’s iniquitous instructions (and just out of curiosity, can you name a single Christian instruction which is iniquitous?).

      Yes, ultimately what should be judged is the ideology in question, but adherents of malevolent ideologies or organizations simply cannot be left off the hook. Would you desist from criticizing Ku Klux Klan members all the while criticizing the KKK? Ditto for Nazism and Nazis, anarchism and anarchists, Antifa and Antifa members, Marxism and Marxists, et al.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 27, 2019 at 5:12 pm

        Spot on, Wellington.

        lebel is always trying to pretend that if you oppose the horrors of Islamic teachings and law that you ergo hate and are out to harm all Muslims. Really, he’s got nothing else.

        • James Lincoln says

          Aug 27, 2019 at 5:32 pm

          Absolutely true, gravenimage.

          You always know exactly what lebel will post even before it’s posted…

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 28, 2019 at 10:34 pm

          True, James.

  13. Flake says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 3:56 pm

    There is an easy answer to these questions and to many others and once you hear the truth the scales will fall from your eyes and you will understand much that before appeared seeming inexplicable.

    There is a lot of money in the Middle East – an awful lot of money. Aside from spending this on ostentatious frippery ever since the Oil crisis Saudi and its close neighbours have been spending trillions of dollars / pounds on the promotion of Wahabist / Salafist Islam. This policy even has a wikipedia entry – petro Islam.

    To this end Saudi almost bankrupted itself spending ‘astronomical’ sums promoting its religion. It is the second largest funder of UK universities after the UK government donating £25 million pa each to Cambridge, and Oxford, with lesser amounts to other universities – that is why Dawkins colleagues are so nervous around Islam. The ‘donations’ come with strings attached as might be expected the promotion and protection of Islam being part of that.

    But it runs far deeper than that with Saudi, Qatar, Abu Dhabi etc etc buying Western politicians regardless of their political colour.
    You wonder why we get involved in wars in the Middle East? Ask yourself what Saudi wants in that situation and you’ll be pretty close to the answer.
    Trump is winding up Iran because of the proxy war it is fighting in the Yemen against Saudi which has become protracted and which Saudi does not appear to be making any progress in.

    There’s so much information about this I could write a book – far too much to put here, but start spreading this about and soon the elites won’t be able to deny it.

  14. Mark Swan says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 4:42 pm

    Hating any Human being is wrong, yet, hating their wrong behavior is not wrong.

  15. gravenimage says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 4:53 pm

    Just a Few Questions for Richard Dawkins and Sulome Anderson
    …………………..

    What disingenuous claptrap from Sulome Anderson. She has also blamed “Islamist terrorism” on white supremacy. Never mind that Islamic terrorism predated white supremacy by many centuries.

  16. jewdog says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 6:27 pm

    My letter today from the Jerusalem Post is more germane to Hugh’s last post on Kashmir, but I print it to acknowledge that I used the statistics he provided:

    In the op-ed, “Indian-occupied Kashmir: A new American dilemma,” August 25, Quanta A. Ahmed denounces Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dismantling of Article 370 by bringing Kashmir under greater Indian control.

    Missing from her analysis is an honest discussion of the decades of Islamic terrorism against innocent non-Muslims in Kashmir, which led to this action. Once those provocations are examined, a sympathetic parallel between India and Israel should help guide American and Israeli policy.

    While there have indeed been outrages committed by Hindus inside India, such as the Gujarat riots, statistics show that Hindus have gotten the worst of it by far. According to Human Rights Watch, between May 2015 and December 2018, a total of 36 Muslims were killed in 12 Indian states. During the same period, hundreds of Hindus and Sikhs were killed by Muslims.

    In addition, there was the Mumbai massacre of 2008, which resulted in 166 Hindu (and Jewish) deaths. As for Kashmir, it is instructive to recall that the Hindu Pandit population of Jammu and Kashmir in 1990 numbered between 300,000 and 600,000, but now numbers around only 3,000 thanks to Muslim atrocities.

    Finally, observe how the Muslim population in India has increased from 9.8% in 1951 to 14.5% today, while the Hindu population of Pakistan since the 1949 partition has shrunk from 15% to 1.5%. The trend is similar to the disappearance of the Jewish population from the Arab countries contrasted with a substantial Arab population in Israel.

    The lesson here is that despite the hysterical accusations by Muslim apologists, Modi’s actions are justified as he has rightfully concluded that enough is enough. His actions should embolden Israel when it comes to the disputed territories and help guide American policy as

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 27, 2019 at 6:32 pm

      Good letter, Jewdog. Thank you for sharing it.

  17. ntesdorf says

    Aug 27, 2019 at 7:23 pm

    This is another excellent article by Hugh Fitzgerald exposing the false portrayal in the Leftist adherents of the effects of European colonisation on the growth of economics and injection of civilisation into the Islamic world. He clearly reveals all the failings of Sulome Anderson’s view of history.

  18. sidney penny says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 5:08 am

    “Dawkins frequently claims that Islam is the sole object of his criticism, not Muslims, and those who label Islam’s critics, such as himself, as “bigots,” are failing to recognize the distinction he makes between Islam and Muslims.”

    Koenraad Elst the Historian and Author of numerous books insists ” that the problem is not Muslims but Islam.”

    Like Dawkins, Koenraad Elst strongly denies the charges of him being an anti-Muslim.

    http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2018/mar/13/islam-and-the-lies-of-historians-1786304.html

  19. Chand says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 5:34 am

    Dawkins: “The principal sufferers from Islam are Muslims. Especially women and homosexuals. Muslimophilia can inspire and justify Islamophobia.”
    Fitzgerald: He is comparing Islam to cancer; we don’t blame the sufferers, he says, but only try to eradicate the illness. The analogy is a poor one. Victims of cancer do not choose whether they get cancer or not.

    Richard Dawkins is exactly right.
    Muslims have absolutely no choice as humans when born, to choose, obviously. They ARE like cancer victims.
    Also quitting Islam or being only ‘cultural’ Muslims and such never occur to most Muslims. In this they are like most other people. Very few humans consider converting from their religion. If they don’t like it or are uninterested they just don’t spend time on it and remain disinterested. Most cannot even comprehend what it means to quit one’s religion or how to go about it.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 28, 2019 at 10:40 pm

      Islam also has the death penalty for those who do leave.

  20. jca reid says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 7:17 am

    It’s true that in the West Islam is treated with ‘kid gloves’. Scared of being called ‘Racist’., where Islam is NOT a Race, but a Fascistic, Desert Nazi Ideology. Dawkins should know that TARIQ RAMADAN was a lecturer in Islamic Studies in Oxford. The Authorities colluded to hide his sexual predation on female students there. He is currently in a prison in Paris, whether his trial is still on going, or he has been sentenced, I do not know. He was undergoing trial for sexual offences against female students in France & Spain. It is also seriously alleged there were similar offences carried out by him in Switzerland. Enough is enough. There needs to be a clean out of these weak kneed, spineless, gutless politicians. They only serve themselves. Not their Peoples nor their Countries!

  21. Gamaliel Isaac says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 10:26 am

    There is a good web site called in Defense of Benevolent Imperialism that relates to this. http://thoughts-everything.com/shelp/poldefenseimperialism.htm

  22. Brian K says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 12:24 pm

    I am impressed with the facts, but it does not change the reality that Arabic culture is one that does not accept responsibility for it’s own failings. How do you deal with that?

  23. UNCLE VLADDI says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 6:16 pm

    Re: “Dawkins frequently claims that Islam is the sole object of his criticism, not Muslims, and those who label Islam’s critics, such as himself, as “bigots,” are failing to recognize the distinction he makes between Islam and Muslims. Some may think Dawkins is too soft on the adherents of Islam, as he depicts them as victims of brainwashing; he claims endlessly that Muslims are the “greatest sufferers” from Islam as a way of justifying, quite unnecessarily, his criticism of the faith; over the past 1,400 years, on the receiving end of Muslim aggression and murder, many Infidels would disagree. Does one find fault only with the ideology of Nazism and give members of the Nazi Party a pass, as victims of brainwashing who do not deserve criticism?”

    Funny – that’s the exact same critique I often have to make of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

  24. strambotik says

    Aug 28, 2019 at 8:25 pm

    Starting in the 16th century parts of Oman were occupied by the Portuguese, who used it as a naval base for their Indian ocean fleet.

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