By Srdja Trifkovic – 23 October 2010
(Excerpts from a speech at Providence College, Oct. 21, 2010) – Two sets of fallacies have dominated the mainstream debate about the Ground Zero mosque – and before we go any further, let’s get this straight: it is a mosque, frantic insistence by the Qusling elite to use one euphemistic misnomer or another notwithstanding.
This means it is not merely a place of worship, but also a physical expression of the Mohammedan stake to a place at first, and eventually a symbol of Jihad’s triumph over the hated infidel – crudely visible in the prison bars of St. John’s Cathedral in Damascus and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
The gall of the project’s promoters is evident in its name, “Cordoba House,” which is not inspired by that old canard, the “Golden Age.” The mosque in Cordoba was built after the Muslim conquest of southern Spain. The invaders razed the Church of St. Vincent to erect their triumphal monument. And now a second Cordoba Mosque, right next to the scene of jihadist carnage, is meant to signify “bridge-building” and “interfaith dialogue.” Such idiocies are only possible in a society seriously, perhaps terminally diseased.
Most of those Americans who oppose this monstrosity do not deny the supposed right of the Mohammedans to go ahead with the project, but merely bemoan their insensitivity in insisting on the full exercise of that alleged “right,” and worry about the effect it will have on onter-communal relations. Those who support it – the current occupant of the White House and the controllers of the media and the academe – assert the claims of religious freedom, antidiscriminationism, human rights, tolerance, respect, and of course Islam’s peaceful benevolence. Both sides fail to grasp that the First Amendment to the Constitution of 1787 does not provide an abstract and absolute “freedom of religion.” The purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent the imposition of a centrally established denomination on the states, some of which had established churches of their own and all of which assumed “religion” to mean Christianity of some kind or another. The real issue, and the real debate we have not had thus far, is about the nature of Islam and about the deformity of the post-Christian pluralist society that postulates an absolute right of anyone to believe in anything, and to act accordingly. If Ground -Zero Mosque is built, we’ll know that this society is heading for swift self-destruction…
I am not going to waste your time tonight with yet another treatise on why Islam is not the Religion of Peace, Tolerance, Compassion, etc, etc. We are beyond that. Among reasonable people, the real score on Muhammad and his followers is well known. It has been known for centuries. That score, however, no matter how calmly stated and comprehensively supported, invariably elicits the howls of “Islamophobia” from the neoliberal elite class. Let us therefore look at the formal, legally tested definition of that word, the latest addition to the arsenal of postmodern “phobias.” It is provided by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights based in Vienna. It diligently tracks the instances of “Islamophobia” all over the Old Continent, which it defines by eight red flags:
1. Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2. Islam is seen as separate and “Other.”
3. Islam is seen as inferior to the West, barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
4. Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, linked to terrorism, engaged in a clash of civilizations.
5. Islam is seen as a political ideology.
6. Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
7. Discriminatory practices and Muslims’ exclusion from mainstream society are advocated.
8. Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.
This definition is obviously intended to preclude any meaningful discussion of Islam. As it happens, each of those eight “red flags” is a reasonable and valid position to take:
1. That Islam is static and unresponsive to change is evident from the absence of an internal, orthodox critique of jihad, sharia, jizya, etc. As Clement Huart pointed out back in 1907, “Until the newer conceptions, as to what the Koran teaches as to the duty of the believer towards non-believers, have spread further and have more generally leavened the mass of Moslem belief and opinion, it is the older and orthodox standpoint on this question which must be regarded by non-Moslems as representing Mohammedan teaching and as guiding Mohammedan action.” A century later his diagnosis still stands.
2. The view of Islam as the existential foe of Europe and its civilization – its outré-mer offspring included – is based on Islam’s own teaching and 14 centuries of blood-soaked practice. That Islam is utterly incompatible with Christian, European culture and civilization, and that it is “other” than our culture and civilization, is a fact that will not change even if the West eventually succumbs to the ongoing jihadist demographic and psychological onslaught.
3. Whether Islam is “inferior to the West” is a matter of opinion. That Islam cannot create a prosperous, harmonious, stable, creative, free and attractive human society is not. Whether Islam is “barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist” or not, its tangible fruits are so.
4. Islam is seen by so many as “violent, aggressive, supportive of terrorism” not because of some irrational “phobia” in the feverish mind of the beholder, but because (a) of the clear mandate of its scripture; (b) of the appalling record of its centuries of historical practice; and above all (c) of the timeless and obligatory example of its founder, an evil, violent, and aggressive man.
5. “Islam is seen as a political ideology,” and it should be seen as one, because its key trait is a political program to improve man and create a new society; to impose complete control over that society; and to train cadres ready and eager to spill blood. This makes Islam closer to Bolshevism and to National Socialism than to any other religion. It breeds a gnostic paradigm within which the standard response to the challenge presented by “the Other,” i.e. non-Muslim societies and cultures, is implacable hostility and violence, or violent intent.
6. Criticisms made of the West by Islam should not be rejected out of hand; they should be understood. But its chief “criticism” of the West – and of every other non-Islamic culture or tradition – is that it is infidel, and therefore undeserving of existence.
7. A priori hostility towards Islam should not be “used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims.” It should be a posteriori: an education campaign about the teaching and practice of Islam should result in legislative action that would exclude Islam from the societies it is targeting – not because it is an intolerant “religion,” but because it is an inherently seditious totalitarian ideology incompatible with the values of the West.
8. And finally, while anti-Muslim hostility is not a priori “natural or normal,” the desire of non-Muslims to defend their lands, families, cultures and faith against Islamic aggression is “natural and normal”; but the elite class is actively trying to neutralize it.
The EU definition of “Islamophobia” may seem somewhat too lax to President Obama; but it is merely one among many fruits of our leaders’ moral decrepitude. Both here and in Europe they impose a dreary sameness of “antidiscriminationism” and “tolerance.” Such weakness breeds contempt and haughty arrogance on the other side. Take Tariq Ramadan, who calmly insists that Muslims in the West should conduct themselves as though they were already living in a Muslim-majority society and were exempt on that account from having to make any concessions to the host-society. Muslims in the West should feel entitled to live on their own terms, Ramadan says, while, “under the terms of Western liberal tolerance,” society as a whole should be “obliged to respect that choice.”
If such “respect” continues to be extended by the elite class, by the end of this century there will be no “Europeans” as members of ethnic groups that share the same language, culture, history, and ancestors, and inhabit lands associated with their names. The shrinking native populations will be indoctrinated into believing – or else simply forced into accepting – that the demographic shift in favor of unassimilable and hostile aliens is actually a blessing that enriches their culturally deprived and morally unsustainable societies. The “liberal tolerance” and the accompanying “societal obligation” that Tariq Ramadan invokes thus become the tools of Western suicide. “No other race subscribes to these moral principles,” Jean Raspail wrote a generation ago, “because they are weapons of self-annihilation.” The weapons need to be discarded, and the upholders of those deadly “principles” removed, if we are to survive.
The alternative is the Westerners’ loss of the sense of propriety over their lands, evident in the Ground Zero Mosque non-debate. The neoliberal elite insists on casting aside any idea of a specifically “American” geographic and cultural space that should be protected from those who do not belong to it and have no rightful claim to it: America belongs to the whole world. We face an elite consensus that de facto open immigration, multiculturalism, and the existence of a large Muslim diaspora within the Western world are to be treated as a fixed and immutable fact that must not be scrutinized. In addition, a depraved mass culture and multiculturalist indoctrination in state schools and the mainstream media have already largely neutralized the sense of historical and cultural continuity among young West Europeans and North Americans. By contrast, the blend of soft porn and consumerism that targets every denizen of the Western world has not had the same effect on the Muslim diaspora in the West. The roll-call of Western-born and educated young Muslims supportive of terrorism confirms that failure…
There will never be, as there has never been, any synthesis, any civilizational cross-fertilization, between the West and Islam. Even the ultra-tolerant Dutch are beginning to see the light, pace Geert Wilders, but they are hamstrung by guilt-ridden self-haters and appeasers, whose hold on the political power, the media, and the academe is undemocratic, unnatural, and obscene. If we are to survive, they need to be unmasked for what they are: traitors to their nations and their culture. They must be replaced by people ready and willing to subject the issues of immigration and identity to the test of democracy, unhindered by administrative or judicial fiat.
The first task is to start talking frankly about the identity and character of the enemy and the nature of the threat, regardless of the threat of legal sanction. We know the enemy. We know his core beliefs, his role models, his track-record, his mindset, his modus operandi, and his intentions. We also know his weaknesses, which are many, above all his inability to develop a prosperous economy or a functional, harmonious society, his inability to think rationally and therefore to develop science, and his utter lack of creativity in any field of human endeavor. The main problem is with ourselves; or, to be precise, with those among us who have the power to make policy and shape opinions. Abroad, we are told, we need to address political and economic grievances of the Muslim masses, to spread democracy and free markets in the Muslim world, to invest more in public diplomacy. At home we need more tolerance, greater inclusiveness, less profiling, and a more determined outreach. The predictable failure of such cures leads to ever more pathological self-scrutiny and morbid self-doubt. This vicious circle must be broken…
Among reasonable, well-informed citizens the debate must be conducted on terms liberated from the shackles of the elite class. We should act accordingly, and never fear being subjected to the threat of legal proceedings by the neoliberal state – or to the threat of death, by those whom the neoliberal state continues to protect to the detriment of its own citizens.
Western leaders did not agonize over communism’s “true” nature during the Berlin air lift in 1949, or in Korea in 1950, but acted effectively to contain it by whatever means necessary. Yes, back then we had a legion of Moscow’s apologists, character witnesses, moles and fellow-travelers, assuring us that the Comrades want nothing but social justice at home and peaceful coexistence abroad. They held tenured chairs at prestigious universities and dominated all smart salons, from London and Paris to New York. They explained away and justified the inconsistencies and horrifyingly violent implications of the source texts of Marx and Lenin. They explained away and justified the appalling fruits: the bloodbath of the Revolution, the genocidal great famine, the show trials and purges, the killing of millions of innocents in the Gulag, the works.
Today their heirs in politics, the academy and the media act as Islam’s apologists, character witnesses and fellow travelers. They flatly deny or else explain away, with identical sophistry and moral depravity, the dark and violent implications of the source texts, the Kuran and the Hadith, the deeply unnerving career of Muhammad, and centuries of conquests, wars, slaughters, subjugation, decline without fall, spiritual and material misery, and murderous fanaticism.
The fact that many normal people don’t realize the magnitude of the problem works to the advantage of the traitors among us. Their ideas, which but two generations ago would have been deemed eccentric or insane, now rule the Euro-American mainstream. Only a diseased society can be told, without reacting violently, that Islam is good and tolerant, that “we” (the West) have been nasty and unkind to it over the centuries – the Crusades! – and that “terrorism” needs to be understood, and cured, by social therapy that is independent of Islam’s teaching and practice.
At the root of the domestic malaise is the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited them for generations, but to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment in time. The resulting random melange of mutually disconnected multitudes is supposed to be a blessing that enriches an otherwise arid and monotonous society. A further fallacy is the view that we should not feel a special bond for a particular country, nation, race, or culture, but transfer our preferences on the whole world, the Humanity, equally. Such notions have been internalized by the elite class in America and Western Europe to the point where they actively help Islamic terrorism.
Those among us who put their families and their neighborhoods and their lands before all others, are normal people. Those who tell them that their attachments should be global and that their lands and neighborhoods belong to the whole world are sick and evil. They are the Enemy and jihad’s objective allies. It is up to the millions of normal people to stop the madness.
The traitor class wants them to share its death wish, to self-annihilate as people with a historical memory and a cultural identity, and to make room for the post-human, monistic Utopia spearheaded by the jihadist fifth column. This crime, epitomized by Ground Zero Mosque, can and must be stopped.
The alternative is decline, collapse and death, moral and spiritual first. You’ll know, if the Ground Zero mosque is built, that we’re almost there.
In the interests of overcoming this attempt at censorship, please pass along the link to this article to everyone, especially college and university students, who might be interested in academic freedom, the Ground Zero Mosque issue, or the counterjihad in general.
