The recent murder of the Dutch filmmaker-columnist, Theo van Gogh (yes, related to the legendary painter, Vincent van Gogh) seems to have sparked off the usual wave of angry weblog entries. I don’t normally read a lot of blogs that have entries pertaining to the same incident unless a specific entry really engrosses me. As a departure from this habit, I tried to collect as many perspectives on this as is humanly possible, but eventually gave up.
Thanks first to Alan at Fresh Bilge to point me to a truly well-written piece about the tragedy. And for those seriously interested in more diverse opinions, here are some pointers.
Come to think of it, all those entries basically underscore a familiar point: the world–in this case, Europe–is in dire need to wake up to the real threat of Islamic fundamentalism. That it shouldn’t dismiss these increasingly-frequent jihadi attacks as the work of some mentally deranged people. Which is what I’ve been stating on this blog as well.
Ah! but over to the Captain now:
Europeans have faced off against Muslim invasions in centuries past, and Muslims still carry the memories of Islamic ascendancy on the Continent. That history drives the conflict in the Balkans to this day, and the long memory of Islam guarantees that any co-existence with Christian or secular Europe will necessarily be an uneasy one at best.
Well said. Especially the part about Islam’s memory and the co-existence with Christian and/or secular Europe. Europe has had its own share of violence owing both to Christianity–a bloody history, which is all but remembered–and colonialism. Its constituents matured and moved on, adopting secularism (not the Indian variety) whereas Islamic nations didn’t. Because Europe perhaps thought that Islamic immigrants (standard disclaimer: not all Muslim or other immigrants are fundamentalists) would share the same notion as theirs on secularism, they invited trouble by allowing these worthies a place in their respective countries without first placing them under a rigorous scanner. They further compounded the problem by adopting extreme political correctness, an overdose of friendliness, or, as the Captain says, “plain, old-fashioned cowardice,” or all of the above. Methinks the last bit is more appropriate.
Or perhaps, Europe has failed to learn from its previous colonial experience. How India became India + Pakistan thanks to the Benevolent Muslim League. Or in the not-so-recent past, the ugly battle in Yugoslavia, and now Andalusia and Kosovo.
If it wakes up to this fact sooner, it’ll be able to equip itself better to cut the Islamic monster to size. Else, we might see warring European Islamic nations in the not-so-far future, a la Arabia.
Postscript : I put a search to see if I could find an Indian newspaper that reported this ghastly incident. You’re right if you’ve guessed what I’m about to say. That the secular Indian media also indulges in suppression and/or non-reporting of certain incidents is well known by now. Apart from The Hindustan Times, The Hindu (surprising), and The Daily Pioneer, none of the other newspapers did report this fact.
And I didn’t check the Trash of India–it’s not a newspaper.
Tags: Commentary, History, Terrorism & Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens in Slate:
fighting words A wartime lexicon.
Bush’s Secularist Triumph
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, at 7:34 AM PT
Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. “Kerry won,” according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel “called” Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada. Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century.
Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the general moaning. It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week’s New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.
I step lightly over the ancient history of Wills’ church (which was the originator of the counter-Enlightenment and then the patron of fascism in Europe) as well as over its more recent and local history (as the patron, protector, and financier of child-rape in the United States, and the sponsor of the cruel “annulment” of Joe Kennedy’s and John Kerry’s first marriages). As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.
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But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.
So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda?
Sorry. I wished to post only the last couple of paragraphs above, but bad cut-n’-paste.
Here again, for emphasis’ sake:
—
But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.
So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda?
The moral is that Dhimmitude does not pay.
RR,
Agree with Hitchens. The left seems to be on the fast track to prove itself more Islamic than the Islamists themselves. It fits neatly into their ideology of a New World Order based on suppression of free speech and the rest.
JK,
Yeah, and Dhimmitude also ensures that it is the best route to Europe committing suicide en masse, if it continues along today’s lines, that is.
with a preconceived agenda if they need to be taken seriously. It is an open secret that denigrating Hinduism earns zillions today and that Hindus generally take it in all docility. In contrast, a documentary that exposed a very real problem of Islam cost a filmmaker his life. I don’t need to spell out what this mindset is called. Amardeep Singh himself betrays this mindset in varying degrees when he says Certainly the question should be asked: What about images that are specifically created to offend,
ISLAM A RELIGION OF PEACE-
In a nut shell Islam is about world dommination! this is a short and brief view of how the muslims intend to attain their agenda of islamification of the whole world and what is their motivation.Let me start by saying that most of us are ill informed about islam being a religion of peace and most of the muslims we know are the peace lovinging moderate silent majority, and the religion of is hijacked by radical elements .Well it is not so.There is no modrate islam & radical islamther is only one religion islam.TheWe will have to agree that the religion of the world have some point of time undergone this changes mentioned above,but none of the religions advocates the death for not sharing the same faith and,whatever excess and volience which was caused by the people of other faith were purely political and not religious, although some amount of religious intolerance is there in all the mentioned religions even today it is nothing compared to islam..FOR IN CASE OF ISLAM ,IT IS INTOLRANCE WHICH IS THE RELIGION,IT IS A BLUE PRINT FOR MASS MURDER IN A INDUSTRIAL SCALE WHICH TRANCENDS PLACE AND TIME,(meaning the project which was started almost 1400years ago is not complete until the world would be completely converted Islam)THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO STOP, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER ,OR ALL OF US HAVE CONVERT TO ISLAM THERE IS NO THIRD OPTION BECAUSE- The muslims ummah propgates expnasion of islam by all means ,First and fore most by the sword ,it is the duty of all the muslims to kill the non muslims it written. the koran state that there is no other god other than Allah and Mohammed is only true porphet,any one who beg’s to differ is a infidel and kafir so should be beheaded at once.It is said to them donot to be friend kaffir(the non muslims)! strike them when you get the chance..Any peace treaty with the muslims is invalid, as the koran say make peace treaty with the infedals, in the dead of the night go out kill them all . Every muslim no matter how he or she is educated in western value ’s DO NOT FOLLOW MULTICULTURE ethics it is evident in the way they dress, they live.It is a mere obligation that muslims pretend that they follows the law of the land(this is allowed in islam-Taqiyya-to be decitfull to confuse the nonbeliver) when they are minority!.If they become tha majority the rules of engagment is diffrent,Remember(jessiya the slave tax which give’s the non beliver right to live in muslim dominated country,persecution are many in islam yet it called the universal brother hood-) & who ever disagrees has to be beheaded.Polygamy is rampant in islam have any one every wondred why? the point is women in islam are sub-human without any rigths on their own ,they are only useful to reproduce their own, It is because polygamy leads to a lot of children .They breed like rabbits,And without a single short being fired one fine day in the near future (may be in another 50-75 years) the muslims will over run Europe by sheer numbers,this also a method of jihad, Might sound LIke conspiracy theory,?Here comes answer !as the muslims immigrant from pakistan,libya,morroco and the north afircan belt,middle east & sub continent come to Europe with the cloths on their backs and empty pockets & their peace full brotherhood they slowly change demograph of europe, as of now.,(More than 53 million Muslims live in Europe — 14 million of them in the European Union and growing.) in Europe. A Europe which dose not belive in any thing now(GOD, FAMILY VALUES,IDEOLOGY or,IDENTY). ,because of their hypocriscy, of being politically correct or because,widely held libral secular views or simply lack of will to act,The european’s way of life as we know it now will cease to exist. thank to our Muslim appeasing politicians who are only intrested in there votes because of their growing numbers,so they could hold on to power,These hypocrites look the other way when EUROPEAN WOMEN ARE GANGE RAPED,AND HUMILIATED , by these peace loving Muslims who consider themselves to be a invading islamic armies,Muslims aim is ISLAMIFICATION OF the whole world,but one step at a time.Like a parasite which kill its host slowly from within these peace loving brother of islam willAnnihilate any socity which dise not accept the so called superiority of islam this is what happened in Egypt almost 1300 yrs ago,after conquering the arabian peninsular by war ,the Muslims went on to conqure mighty egypt which was then a super power,which was a very advanced cosmopolitan culture,Rich in science,astonomy,mathematics and medical science(remember the LIBARY OF ALEXANDRIA a center of higher knowledge-no more) like that of present day Europe, the culture which we admire so much and fascinated,is now confined to the pages of histoy thanks to peace full islam and his prophet.The muslims from the arab heart land populated Egypt ,the native’s of this once ancient land became a minorty in their own land, Enslaved & Persecuted and heavily taxed and they vanished without a trace in less than 100 years .And yes the koran advocates this to be a form of jihad…………………..ethnic cleansing i would say!…can we still claim islam to a religion of peace!.i see europe going the same way ………..not far behind is America .it not to late…………….sit up and smell the coffee!.let us still not say that Islam is peacefull…it time the World ( the people, politicians& media) strat acting today tomorrow migth be too late for who ever who is not a muslim
regards
S.G.W