ISLAM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Some excerpts below from a talk by eminent Australian, John Stone:

We need to understand that the core of the Muslim problem-for the world, not merely for Australia-lies in the essence of Islam itself. It is the problem of a culture that, for the past 500 years or so at least, has failed its adherents as its inward-looking theocracy has resulted in it falling further and further behind the West. It is that sense of cultural failure, that sense of smouldering resentment that fuels the fires so busily stoked by the more extremist Muslim teachers. Fiercely exclusive rather than inclusive, Islam holds that church and state are inseparable; that women, while respected so long as they stick to their appointed place in the Islamic scheme of things, are less than equal to men generally; and that even the most extreme violence is justifiable when applied in pursuit of approved Islamic ends. Until all that changes-and it can only be changed from within Islam itself, if indeed it can be changed at all-the Islamic culture will never reside in harmony with others.

This is where all those comfortable (one might even call them "lazy") assumptions about our own Muslim community break down. Contrary to those assumptions, I do not believe that this latest body of newcomers amongst us will emulate the examples of their predecessors from Italy, Greece, Poland, the Baltic states, or more recently Vietnam, Hong Kong and China. How can it be possible for them to become part of a united Australia, when any Muslim woman who wishes to "marry out" risks not merely social and familial ostracism, but outright violence, even death by way of "honour killings", by her father or her brothers? Almost without exception, the only marriages occurring in Australia today between Muslims and non-Muslims involve conversion to Islam of the latter.

The high priests and priestesses of multiculturalism should not be surprised by this. It is after all a product-admittedly, an extreme one-of policies they have been espousing with such religious zeal for thirty years or more....

Academics, and timid politicians seeking excuses for their inactivity in addressing the Muslim problem, may therefore continue to dance on the points of philosophical needles about those supposed differences between "moderate" Islam and "extremist" Islam. And it is true that it often seems as though there are as many hostilities between different Islamic sects-the Shia and the Sunnis, to name only the most topical example-as there are between Islam and non-Islam. Nevertheless, as Father Paul Stenhouse has reminded us in a typically scholarly but also extremely pointed article in the March issue of Quadrant, all followers of Islam, "moderate" or otherwise, divide the world into two areas: the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. The former, the house of submission, is that part of the world where Islamic governments and Islamic law prevail: the latter, the house of war, is the rest of the world. Australia, to all Muslims, is part of the house of war.

In May this year Quadrant printed a thoughtful paper by Cardinal George Pell arising from his recent study of the Koran. He distils a clear distinction between the revelations Mohammed claimed to receive (via the Archangel Gabriel) while in Mecca, and those which followed his later move to Medina. During the former period he was "without military power" and was still seeking to convert the non-believers by way of proselytising. During the latter period, proselytising had given way to the ravages of the sword. In Pell's words, "the spread of Islam through conquest and conversion began".

Cardinal Pell notes that those passages from the Koran that are often quoted by those seeking to show the "moderate" nature of Islam are all drawn from the earlier period, whereas the Koran of Medina is replete with the most blood-curdling injunctions to kill all infidels wherever they are found. As Pell notes, just as in our own legal system a later law overrides any earlier one to the extent of any inconsistency between them, so it may not be unreasonable to assume that the Koran of Medina overrides the Koran of Mecca where any inconsistencies are concerned. That is indeed the view taken by the scholars of fundamentalist Islam.

There is another point relevant to this debate about "moderate" versus "extreme" Islam-namely, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya. This has been the subject of two most interesting articles in National Observer in 2005 by Andrew Campbell. Without going into detail, taqiyya is the doctrine whereby any lies, deceit, or other forms of treachery may be justified in the cause of defeating the infidel. It is "a cloak for the believer" that provides a religious dispensation for such things as "friendship with unbelievers" and other subterfuges "in defending oneself from one's enemies". I suggest that, when one reads the soothing words of our own Islamic "moderates", the doctrine of taqqiya should never be far from our minds.

It is clear that, in Muslim countries throughout the world, the forces of extremism are winning the battle within Islam. (Of course, the usual apologists would undoubtedly argue that that is all our fault because of such things as our support for the continued existence of Israel, or the US-led coalition's invasion of Iraq; but let that pass.) In many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, those forces today are held back and driven underground by the present regime's security apparatus; but then, the same was true of the Shah's Iran until 1979....

More generally, and while I am open to correction, I believe the evidence is incontrovertible that Islamic and Western cultures are today, within any single polity, incompatible. Certainly, I know of no example that can be cited to the contrary.

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ELSEWHERE

Growing antisemitism in Britain now recognized: "A sinister alliance has developed between far-Right groups and Islamist extremists who are united in their hatred of Jews, Israel and Zionism and are contributing to increasing anti-Semitism in Britain. A report criticises police forces for failing adequately to monitor anti-Jewish incidents. It calls on the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate why fewer than one in ten reported incidents leads to a prosecution. The report was published after The Times revealed that conflict in the Middle East had led to a surge in anti-Semitism. It says that Britain’s 300,000 Jews are “more anxious and more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer”. It refers to “anti-Semitic discourse”, defined as a “widespread change in mood and tone when Jews are discussed, whether in print or broadcast, at universities, or in public or social settings”. But it expresses particular concern about a new, “symbiotic” relationship between the traditional perpetrators of anti-Semitism — the far Right and some Islamist extremists — who are united in their hatred of all things Jewish... Of particular concern to the inquiry was anti-Semitism on campuses, with literature being distributed that called for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel."

The fallacy of open immigration: "Nothing is more common than for well-intentioned people to believe that if everybody just does what is right (as they see it), nothing but good can possibly result. Libertarians have always been skeptical about that assumption. They know, for example, that wars have always been fought for causes believed to be right. The vast fabric of the modern welfare state was created to ensure proper care for the poor and needy. Yet very terrible things have resulted from the impulse to assert the right through warfare and to create the right through social engineering. This, more than anything else, has caused thinking men and women to look for ways of limiting, rather than increasing, the power of the state and, with it, the bad effects of good intentions. But libertarians themselves have not always succeeded in resisting the allure of good intentions, the assumption that there will be no unfortunate consequences of our good ideas."

Happy Labor Day: We're all workers! "Marx, of course, was wrong and the implications of Labor Day were wrong as well. There is not a separate class of individuals called 'worker' who are opposed to other economic classes. To begin with, without entrepreneurs, investors, managers and, in general, capitalists, workers would have no factories in which to work or those factories would be as inefficient as those in the Soviet Union and the workers as poor as those under communism. Entrepreneurs, investors, managers and capitalists are all workers. Further, as the great Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out, economic roles are artificial."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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