Perhaps there are readers who are shocked, or at least puzzled, that I and all men of good will call for a Crusade against the Islamist enemy currently troubling the peace of the world.
Part of this is merely verbal disorder. A generation raised with no ability to read or speak the English language, and who use Orwellian Newspeak in lieu of thought, cannot apprehend the meaning of a common sense proposition because they cannot understand the meaning of ordinary words. It is for this reason that their masters (let us call them “The Conditioners”) have trained them.
To the properly conditioned politically correct leftist moron, the word “Crusade” means “Racist Genocide” and their every reaction, emotion and rational, to the common sense proposition is false to facts. They are shocked and astonished that anyone would be advocating genocide, when, of course, no one is; no one, of course, save the antisemites among the enemy.
Part of this, a more sinister part, is historical. We in the West enjoy all the benefits of Christian civilization, from classical art to modern science, from democracy to free enterprise to the academic freedom of the university system. The Left has made an astonishing effort over the last two centuries, an effort which has proved to be astonishingly successful, to hide the Christian origin and Christian nature of all these institutions from the modern generation.
The effort has been so successful that it is the default assumption of the modern day that Christianity opposes freedom of religion (when indeed it is the only religion that insists upon it and always has) and opposes science and academic freedom (when indeed it is the only religion that invented and promoted the university system, and the only world view in which modern physics mades metaphysical sense).
Christianity, in short, is Western civilization. Western civilization is Christianity.
This causes strange convulsions among the modern generations, all of whom have been taught that Christianity was a perversion of the enlightened and tolerant classical paganism, that the ascendancy of Christian faith was an age of darkness and superstition, and that the growth of all modern enlightenment was despite, and not because of, the Church and her deplorable obscurantist barbarism. The lie is admixed with sufficient truth to give it plausibility, at least to the ill educated, and is a more complex topic than can be addressed in a sentence.
For now, it is sufficient to say that the Revolutionaries of France and Russia who chopped off the heads and spread the Terror, and sent the innocent to gulags, and orchestrated the Ukrainian famine, were in rebellion against the moral authority of the Church, and not agents of an evolution from dim superstition toward scientific enlightenment. For now, it is sufficient to say that the American Revolution, which promoted the separation of Church and State, and defended the traditional Christian view of the freedom of the conscience, was not a return to paganism, but was a reaction against Protestant national churches, and a return to medieval de facto separations between the international Church and local barons and kings, none of whose powers were in theory absolute. But, this is a matter for another day, and these statements must be hedged about with exceptions and conditions too numerous to here recite.
The word “Crusade” does not mean racist genocide. It means the defense of civilization against encroaching barbarians or against encroaching oriental despotism. It is the opposition to those twin brothers, Tyranny and Anarchy. Crusade is the use of military force by the gathered princes and republics of Christendom against the mutual and indeed universal foe, the Dar-al-Islam, a Seventh Century heresy of Christianity that spread, unlike other heresies, among external barbarians, and which seeks, and ever has and ever shall, to supplant Christianity.
So when I call for a Crusade, for what am I calling?
Let me put it to you this way: it has been the policy of both the Obama and the Bush administration to fight the violent Jihadists supporting Sharia law, such as Al Qaeda, while supporting, sometimes financially, sometimes with gestures and applause, the less violent Jihadists supporting Sharia law, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the current Prime Minister of Turkey, Erdogan.
The rise of Shariaists (if I may coin the term) in Egypt and Turkey has been a disaster for Western policy. The West must treat Sharia law as it treated Communism during the Cold War, or as it treated Fascism during and after World War Two.
Now, to be sure, there are different brands and toxicities of Shariasm just as there are differences between Mussolini Fascism versus Hitler Fascism, or between Mao, Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, South American and Hollywood Screenwriter versions of Communism. But each member of the genus agrees on a core value. All Shariaists agree on the supremacy of Seventh Century theocratic law governing every aspect of human life, public and private. They may disagree on means to be used, and may disagree on whether the Umma follows the Sons of the Prophet versus the elected leaders of the congregation. But if they believe in Sharia Law, they are totalitarians who cannot live in peace with Western Democracies, and whose religions requires and demands and rewards them for intolerant hatred even to the point of suicide-murder of innocent bystanders of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other pagans.
There is a small, disorganized, and silent group of Muslims who are not Shariaists, and who are willing to forswear Jihad and live in peace and alliance in mutual toleration of other religions and other legal systems in the context of a modern Western democracy. They are not the enemy. However, until and unless they can stir the consensus of Muslim opinion against Sharia and toward a civilized version of Islam, they are also meaningless, as meaningless as the non-Nazis in Germany during World War Two, as meaningless as the non-Communists in Russia during the Cold War. They may from time to time be of small use in intelligence gathering, and they may, if the spirit moves them, begin to move the center of balance of the consensus in the Dar-al-Islam away from Sharia Totalitarian Theocracy. With them, if they beg us, we can make alliance. So far, the entire policy of the West has been to do overemphasize both the power and the importance of these liberal (I mean the word in its original meaning) Mohammedans, and to mistake the nonviolent Shariaists for them.
I am as worried about collateral damage to innocent Mohammedans as I am worried about collateral damage to German women and children during World War Two. It should be minimized except in cases where the Shariaists take advantage of our civilized squeamishness to hide behind them and mingle among them. In that case, they have the duty to distance themselves from the Shariaists among them and to cease providing cover and concealment for them. Otherwise, damage to them is laid at the feet of the Shariaist enemy they shelter, not at our feet.
I say we need a Crusade, because Islam cannot be tolerated as a political power. Islam can, if it reforms itself, be tolerated as a disestablished religion, but “Islamic Republics” must be smashed, if for no other reason than to protect the Christian minorities who lived in those nations since before the rise of this most violent and vile of heresies in the Seventh Century.
All those lands were once Christian, and should be placed under Christian princes or parliaments or republics again.
I am not advocating forced conversions: that is against Christian faith and was not what the original Crusades were about anyway. The original Crusades were about the political force of Christian princes of Christendom against the political force of Caliphs of the Dar-al-Islam to make lands groaning under Islamic oppression return to the bosom of civilization, and for the protection of pilgrims and travelers.
Again and again, when the common sense notion arises that we should treat our enemies like our enemies, the same suicidally stupid objections arise: just today another boneheaded troll was accusing me of advocating genocide because I do not advocate the preemptive surrender of civilization to barbarism.
The only real objection is that the enemy is irregular, that is, not in uniform, that the enemy has no centralized command structure, and that the enemy is motivated by a religion which our current laws and customs do not allow us to expel from the nation absent more.
These objections are the same as those raised against efforts to defeat Communism, and raised by the same parties and for the same reasons: because the objectors are fellow travelers to the enemy. They are in sympathy with the enemy’s goals and means, even if they are not in the enemy’s pay, and even if the enemy, given a chance, would saw off their heads.
These objections are not serious. One can make war against a decentralized enemy, as the actions by marines against Barbary Pirates or US Cavalry against Red Indians shows. One can halt religiously-motivated acts of war and acts of crime and terror without outlawing peaceful exercises of the religion: the worship of the Aztec gods in America is legal — no law forbidding verbal prayer to Tezcatlipoca would be Constitutional, for example — provided one does not commit human sacrifice. Collateral damage can be minimized.
When I call for a Crusade, for what am I calling?
I call for an end to all aid and comfort, financial, political and verbal to Sharia Law and the Jihadists who support it. Whether seemingly peaceful or openly violent, these are the enemies of our civilization who cannot live in peace with our civilization’s religion. There are no friendly, no, nor even neutral Jihadists.
I call for the downfall of Islamic regimes wheresoever situate, by military force and by whatever means of economic, legal, and propaganda warfare can be brought to bear.
I call for the public humiliation, shaming, and any legal sanctions limited by Constitutional provisions against those among us aiding and abetting and cheering for the enemy. The groves of Academia and the whorehouses of Hollywood and the halls of power, and the temple and the pulpit must be swept clean of those who promote and defend the enemy. During wartime, especially a war whose sole tactic is psychological war, it is not prudent nor moral to allow the bullhorns and silver screens of the most powerful propaganda machine in the history of man to remain in the hands of the Fifth Column.
Riots should be handled in the traditional British fashion of reading the Riot Act and opening fire on the crowds.
Despots in the Middle East who are not Shariaists should be handled carefully, at arm’s length, but where prudent and convenient be made allies, and against allegedly democratic reformers who are in reality promoters of Sharia Law Totalitarianism. (You fools, you make this mistake a generation ago, thinking that the Communists were democratic merely because they said they were. How can you be so lacking in perception?)
Sharia-based regimes must be attacked and destroyed upon the earliest legal casus beli, or for the protection of Coptic or other Christian minorities. The United States and other European powers must stand ready to retaliate in overwhelming force against the burning of a single church building in the Middle East, and destroy and kill any presidents, sheiks, parliaments, or regimes who do not or cannot protect the Christian minorities in their lands.
The protection of Christians should and must be a policy of the United States and of the West. The policy of aided and funding and abetting the destruction of Christians in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe must cease. It is madness.
Do I think any such Crusade will ever be declared, or even considered? I do not. Nothing I have said here could be repeated in polite company without being met by guffaws of laughter or supercilious sneers. The idea of Christian civilization actually, you know, admitting that it is Christian, acting civilized, or defending herself from her enemies is regarded not only as unthinkable, but, in the foetid, dank and lard-soaked minds of the intelligentsia, unconstitutional. To those whose lives are devoted to the avoidance of any clear, bright, or noble thought in their hearts or heads, the matter is literally unthinkable.
For that matter, the war is itself unthinkable. The idea that Dar-al-Islam is at war with Christendom is literally something they cannot think. And so they do not. They pretend the motives for the violence are something else. They blame themselves, they blame economics, they blame the United States, the blame the Jews. They pretend the goals, tactics, and strategy of the Jihad do not exist, or that these goals are other than they are.
The Jihad announces its goals. They seek the rise of totalitarian theocracy, Sharia Law, first in the Middle East and eventually, with the aid of Allah, across all of the Earth. Though this last claim is more rhetorical than real, it is akin to Communist daydreams of the socialist world state, or Fascist daydreams of a Thousand-Year Reich. They seek to undermine Western values, traditions, laws and customs and to impose their own, by direct and terrible violence where they are strong, by means more subtle, peaceful and legal where not. This is “law war” using an institutions own rule against it to subvert it; but it is a tactic of psychological war nonetheless.
They seek the genocide of the Jewish race.
Such are their strategic goals. Tactically, in the short term, this generation faces a Jihad hegemony in the Middle East and Indochina, and the division and destruction of Israel. This means the weakening of Western resolve, influence and interest in Middle Eastern and Indochinese affairs. This means they celebrate when Leftists will not announce that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, or when pompous idiots denounce the opposition to building a victory Mosque at Ground Zero in Manhattan, atop the soil soaked with innocent blood.
But the war is upon us, like it or no. Living in peace is not an option. The options are denial, which is tantamount to preemptive surrender, and fighting.
Therefore let us fight. We have so much to fight for.
Total and complete agreement. One of Dubya’s worst mistakes was when he backed off his original language of a “crusade” — he sacrificed the strong emotional resonance that this would have had among the Westerners who supported him in order to avoid offending Muslims who opposed him anyway. This is never a good idea.
It’s also a fight for survival. The Muslims are not yet strong enough to conquer or destroy us, but as long as we only fight half-heartedly, they can and will grow stronger, and eventually they will be able to conquer or destroy us — if we do nothing to stop them.
Finally, victory requires rollback. The original victory of the West over Islam, from 1689 through 1918, consisted of not merely preventing the Muslims from gaining territory, but also of taking territory from Islam, steadily reducing the Dar al Islam. Not only did this not result in a fanatical Muslim rebellion, it resulted in Muslim demoralization.
Islam, as a faith of war, can be demoralized by defeat on the battlefield and in the world, in a way that Christianity, as a faith of the spirit, cannot. We must begin to use our enemies’ weaknesses against them, and not demoralize ourselves by ascribing to them our own strengths, when they have them not.
Brilliantly said. Amen.
Admirably said, Jordan! Amen!
Sean M. Brooks
Dear Mr. Wright:
I absolutely agree with you. Unless and until TRULY “liberal” in the older sense Mohammedans can rid Islam of Sharia, theocracy, and jihadism, that “religion” will remain a danger and threat to decent people of any or no faiths. I hope the shades of Leo III the Isaurian, Charles Martel, St. Ferdinand III of Castile, Dmitry of the Don, Don John of Austria, and King John Sobieski of Poland read your words with approval! These are the kinds of heroes we need!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Bravo, sir!
It’s like you’re saying what we’re all thinking.
Crusade? Bah. The US and Europe is hemmed in on all sides by liberals and their encroaching rot that spreads so well in conditions of enforced crowding of the mental and physical spaces. And all the tactics and attitudes you speak of are those that only a few Americans with both free time and intelligence can implement, certainly not enough to manage every Islamic nation in the world at once.
Islam can, because Islam drains away individual initiative, imagination, and intelligence, leaving time only for the spread of itself and the suppression of dissent. They always have a surplus of dead-eyed effeminate young men to throw at a problem because their religion leaves them room for little else. Islam as an actual practical structure hates beauty, not women, it hates truth, not liberalism.
The young beauties behind the veil age rapidly into the faceless eyes and wagging tongues of a surveillance system far more effective and fanatical than any libertarian dreams of GOVERNMENT CAMERAS SPYING ON US. No wonder the aging US feminists swoon for them, they see themselves as the new advisors and observers to the sheikh.
And the men are introduced into homosexuality at an early age, having it seen as just something that more powerful people do to less powerful. Their entire society is run like a prison, from cradle to grave.
Monitor these people? Should Cortez have ‘monitored’ the Aztecs, when he saw them cutting open hearts on altars? Should the Puritans have ‘monitored’ the Pequot Indians, when they killed people indiscriminately and claimed no knowledge when asked, yet brought more bodies the next day?
The Catholic church, keeper of the great menagerie of nations, the great tree that once shaded Europe in a common culture, is now mostly bare of branch, its trunk remaining impressive, yet beneath those stone-barked cathedrals the once-living xylem and phloem is eaten away with the fungus of internal politics and worldly concerns.
The Protestant tradition, that chemistry lab that distilled the essences of American religious feeling, virtue, and practice in its purest and most powerful forms, has fallen into abandonment as the unthinking and spiteful smash the flasks and switch the labels around for fun or malice.
The Jews, those of the race with radioactive intellect, have leaked all over the world and decided that any old regulatory manual will do, forsaking the Torah in favor of various fifth-rate hackeries and ad hoc practice, with all the predictable results that implies.
They are broken, but not unrecoverable.
Islam? Islam is a slow-acting nanoplague that destroys the land, the soul, and the nation. Many fall away from it, but they fall away into get-along, go-along, atheism and agnosticism, because the practical difference between a God who’s too great and remote to understand or make himself understood and a God who doesn’t exist is, in practical terms, nothing. Everything else is just sharia law and sharia rules-lawyering.
Do not fight them, lest you become like them in fighting.
Do not deal with them, lest in understanding them you absorb their utterly bleak outlook on life.
Do not try to master them, for the master cannot help being influenced by his slaves.
I have been to their countries, seen what flat mockeries they make of Man, Nature, and Love, and can tell you that any other culture in the world would be preferable. Islam’s only claim to fame is as an effective selector of human traits that are amenable to its cognitive dissonance, as it removes any gene pool opposition with great efficiency and promotes those successful at playing its games with multiple wives and the reproductive opportunities therein to make the entire society uncomfortably alike. Oh, and they tend to marry first cousins.
Until I had grasped this, I had not understood why God would command the wholesale slaughter of groups like the Amelekites, or renegade Benjamites. Now I know. Evolution and natural selection is not the whole of life, but it is an inescapable part of it, and it is folly to release dangerous and parasitic human groups into the wilderness in hopes that they may acquire quietude. There are evolutionary plateaus from which no advancement is possible. There are moral hellholes that snap shut upon those who enter them. The only industries the Islamic world excels in is oil price-gouging, drug manufacture, and gay tourism for the most corrupt in the west.
Crusade? To save what? To save whom? It is to laugh. We need no Crusade, and this is not an issue of specifically Christian interest. Islam has made its claim against all nations everywhere, and this is its fatal mistake.
Make a multilateral agreement with Russia, China, Israel, and any European country not already spiritually dead to destroy all Islamic countries with the fire of the atom. Let any in the world who wish then immigrate to the now-cleared real estate. Until such time as we gain the ability to build colonies in space, this is the last, best hope for Christianity and Western Civilization. The Muslim parasites have staked their religion on patiently engulfing host nations through force and fraud until all are Muslims or slaves. They did not reckon on a man-made apocalypse from those who can see beyond the next day, month, or fiscal year.
Unfortunately, while I agree and applaud what you say, I must sharply rebuke your last paragraph.
As a Christian, and, indeed, a Catholic, I cannot countenance the use of indiscriminate atomic weapons against human beings made in the image and likeness of God, who are sons of Adam and therefore our brothers. Crusade a Christian can preach, and we have often been criticized for it; and Just War, a doctrine unique to Christianity we can preach, and have often been criticized for it.
But the extermination wholesale of heretics without offering them any chance to repent is a solution that is repellent to civilization and to the conscience of all men of goodwill.
It were better than I die, or you, or all of us, than that we imperil our immortal souls by turning to evil means and calling them just.
As a Catholic, I signed on to believe all that the Church teaches, whether I agree with her or not, I trust her judgment more than I trust my own. (And that for good reason. Looking back at my life, I see where I have been wrong terribly. Looking back at history, I see where the Church preached rightly, and has been wrong never. Even Borgia Popes who kept mistresses never taught that polygamy was licit. I am not speaking of a blind faith in authority; I am speaking of an experience tested faith as clear sighted as a man who turns to that instruction manual or wise teachers who has never steered him astray.)
And the Catechism says at paragraph 2314 “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.”
Even I, the most warlike Catholic I know, regard the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as justifiable only in that they were military targets primarily, and the intent was not directed at indiscriminate destruction.
So, firmly and with no equivocation, I condemn your final comment. It is perdition to speak so.
With the rest, of course, I agree, and thank you for speaking so clearly and passionately. Would that more men saw the corruption you witnessed, and know that where the shadow of Mohammad falls, the polygamist, the catamite, the slave, and the bloodthirsty fanatic arises.
What an offense it is, what an Orwellian, or better yet, hellish reverse of the plain meaning of words to call a suicide-murderer a “martyr.” A martyr is an innocent to who dies rather than renounce his faith. A Jihadist is one who commits the sin of suicide for the chance to kill those unarmed and unwarned innocents who do not renounce their faith. (The Jihadist also makes it his practice to slaughter faithful Muslims of his own religion in the process, an in droves and scores).
Dear Mr. Wright:
You are correct. I too should have paid more attention to Dystopia Max’s final paragraph. And condemned it. Genocide and mass murder is never right.
Sean M. Brooks
For different but related reasons I agree with you: I’d rather we conquer than destroy the Muslims. Basically, I believe that what destroying the Muslims would do to us as a culture would be unpleasant, possibly fatal to our prospects of further moral progress. I also believe that a whole civilization must have good things to offer us even now, and hence it would be bad to exterminate it root and branch.
It does need to be conquered, occupied and modified, because if we don’t do this, we will wind up having (or deeply wanting) to destroy it, at the point that it destroys several of our own cities.
We can’t share the planet with a lunatic who thinks it’s holy to randomly toss around hand grenades.
Dear Mr Wright, I, too, agree with you that while much of what Dystopia Max wrote is true, his solution is unacceptable. Unfortunately I fear that the left will continue to appease our enemies until that which “another boneheaded troll was accusing me of advocating genocide because I do not advocate the preemptive surrender of civilization to barbarism.”-will become our only 2 options: turn the Dar-al-Islam into glass or surrender ourselves. I pray we either wake up or our Lord Jesus returns before that choice is upon us
Someone once said all evils are sent into the world in pairs, so that a man, fleeing the one, will fall into the arms of the other.
Goodness is a balancing act. Rage and hate burn to our right hand, and a vacuous maw of indifference, stupidity, cowardice and surrender yawn to our left hand. Between the yawning gap and the realm of fire the path of sanity is as straight and narrow as a tightrope.
The Jihad can be defeated just as the Communists in Russia were, or, if God decrees victory for them, the Jihad can be fought with the resolve and persistence of Masada fighting the Romans. What is required is to recognize the nature and approach of the foe, his goals and tactics, and to expel the Fifth Column of the Left, which gives the Jihadists their power and persistence.
Yes. Truth is seen and beautifully written as per your usual. Do you have much hope that we will accomplish your last sentence? Or are we fighting the long defeat?
Good question. My answer is here: http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/09/the-prospects-of-victory-in-long-war/
Islam can, because Islam drains away individual initiative, imagination, and intelligence, leaving time only for the spread of itself and the suppression of dissent. They always have a surplus of dead-eyed effeminate young men to throw at a problem because their religion leaves them room for little else.
Yes, and this is also Islam’s tremendous weakness. Because it “drains away individual iniative, imagination and intelligence” it only has that technology which it can beg, borrow or steal from more inventive societies with which to attempt the “spread of itself and the suppression of dissent.” This has been true for a long time, since around the early High Middle Ages, when Islam turned away from rational philosophical inquiry at the exact same time that the West was discovering scholastic reasoning. Since then it has increasingly been a contest between “a surplus of dead-eyed effeminate young men” and a more advanced technology, and I’m betting on the technology.
Evolution and natural selection is not the whole of life, but it is an inescapable part of it, and it is folly to release dangerous and parasitic human groups into the wilderness in hopes that they may acquire quietude. There are evolutionary plateaus from which no advancement is possible. There are moral hellholes that snap shut upon those who enter them. The only industries the Islamic world excels in is oil price-gouging, drug manufacture, and gay tourism for the most corrupt in the west.
Islam is definitely caught in a cultural trap. I wouldn’t say a total one, because Islam still advances, slowly, but they’ve managed to make a society in which imagination and initative are scorned, competence is little valued, and ranting braggadocio is considered amongst the highest of virtues.
As things are now, those born competent in the Islamic world usually migrate elsewhere. If Islam somehow managed to become universal, some of them would retain enough sanity and find powerful-enough patrons that slow internal advancement would occur. But the result would be from our point of view an almost-stagnant society.
Crusade? To save what? To save whom? It is to laugh. We need no Crusade, and this is not an issue of specifically Christian interest. Islam has made its claim against all nations everywhere, and this is its fatal mistake.
I call this “screaming and leaping” by analogy with the challenge of Niven’s Kzinti, who repeatedly lost wars with Mankind because they kept attacking before they were ready. However, in the West the term for the sort of inter-cultural war we’ll have to fight is “Crusade” — if that term becomes discredited, we’ll simply wind up inventing a new one to mean pretty much the same thing. The Indians, or for that matter the Russians and Chinese (when they stop aiding and start fighting the Muslims) may call it by some other word.
But yeah: basically, one reason Islam will lose is because it is so aggressive and fanatical that it is very bad at restraining itself from attacking its non-Muslim allies. Another, of course, is that Islam is schismatic and has trouble restraining itself from attacking other Muslims of the “wrong” stripe.
What help might it be to take a technological and economic approach, rather than a military or ideological one?
One of the reasons I am breathlessly monitoring tech breakthrough blogs is because I firmly believe that if we can switch off petroleum as a transport fuel, the sharp contraction in the oil market that this would cause would cut immensely into the wealth that key Middle East regimes are able to funnel into jihadism. Such a development may not happen soon, and it would also not address issues such as extant assimilation-resistant enclaves already resident in Western nations, but it strikes me that it would be easier to rally support for than an actual military or proselytization campaign. I would much rather win the war by robbing the enemy of his ability to afford to keep on fighting at all, if possible.
I have heard many times that the breakthrough in drilling techniques, fraking, allow previously unexploited resources of oil to be exploited, here in America. We here, now, in this generation, can divest the Middle East of most of its oil wealth by producing more and more cheaply, if only the Democrat party were driven out of power and kept out of power, and the ruinous nonsense of the Green movement reversed.
I am and always have been a conservationist. Once our land and water and air is cleaner, and the acreage of forest more, than in precolumbian North America, as it is at this moment, additional environmental efforts are no longer aimed at conservation, but aimed against business. The moment the EPA declared itself to be able to monitor and regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, men breathing out, Congress should have abolished the agency forthwith, and had the bureaucrats thrown in jail for malfeasance of the power entrusted to them.
Dear Mr. Wright:
I fully agree with you and Stephen J. on the urgent need for the US and friendly nations like Canada to develop via fracking hitherto unexploited petroleum deposits. It would help reduce the need to import petroleum from hostile regimes like Hugo Chavez’s in Venezuela or regions controlled by jihadists or jihadist sympathizers.
But oil alone is not enough! We need as well to get SERIOUS about building new nuclear power plants. I advocate as well developing REAL solar power via satellites beaming down the sun’s energy to receiving and distributing plants.
A truly diversified energy market would liberate the US and other civilized nations from depending on imports from barbarians and tyrants for their energy needs.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
I am also an advocate of Nuclear Power, and deeply regret the Luddites and Greens among us who fear this safest and most efficient of energy sources. I used to live in Southern Maryland, and there is a nuclear station in Calvert County, which never produced the least pollution or danger, and which allows that country to turn an annual profit (due to utility income) whereas my county, Saint Mary’s, ran frequent to continual deficits.
John,
Your claim about the cleanliness of our land, water, and air is surprising to me, when I consider smog, landfills, and factory runoff. Admittedly, this is not a matter I have studied.
Could I trouble you for some references on this point?
Thank you!
I do not have a specific reference at hand, sorry. It is a conclusion to which I have come from reading many sources over many years, and doing stories for my newspaper. But the air quality index and other statistics gathered by the EPA are matters of public knowledge.
By the way, it’s difficult to grasp Obama’s restriction of American oil drilling save as either incredible incompetence, fanatical environmentalism, or an outright betrayal of American to OPEC interests.
This would definitely help. We’d still have to fight, of course, but the fight would be easier if the enemy had less funds.
Keep in mind though that not even America, nor even the West as a whole, is the sole purchaser of Muslim oil. Technological advance will weaken the Muslims (in this as in other ways) but it will not solve the problem quickly enough to eliminate the threat of Muslim atomic attack.
You were fine with his reference to Islamic people as a “parasitic human group?” You had absolutely no problem with his referring to a couple of billion people as an “evolutionary dead end”? Complete with references to ethnic cleansing? It was only when he advocated genocide explicitly that you said “Steady on!”? What on earth did you think he was talking about?
And what’s with the presentation of the religion as simply a sewer and nothing else? Come on. Islam has given the world great art, architecture, literature and science.
Yeah, yeah we’ve all heard the very common refrain -”Muslims gave us all the good stuff and we had nothing of our own until they gave it to us” and the propaganda used to assault Christian achievements. But it’s simply fact that Islamic Civilization has given the world great cultural achievements. You don’t have to like the religion, but it did (the Aztecs had great achievements as well- people admit that without fearing they’ll be mistaken for endorsing human sacrifice).
They’ve also been (on the whole) alright at toleration- if you’re Christian or Jewish (for polytheists it’s a different story). As Bernard Lewis pointed out, the position of the Jews in Islamic lands was never as bad as Christendom at it’s worst nor as good as Christendom at it’s best. Christians have been leaving the Holy Land in droves, but that’s a recent development. They certainly weren’t living the high life before the modern day, but they did live in relative (relative!) peace.
The idea of a united Christendom waging war against the House of Islam is great in fiction but it has no application outside of it. Most Muslims don’t like Al-Qaeda, violent extremists or war against the West, according to the polls. This doesn’t mean they’re going to embrace Western Civilization but it does mean that not every Muslim is waiting, with bated breath, for the call for Jihad.
It’s important to realize that the enemy is not a mass movement called Islam. The enemy is a disparate selection of bickering groups that find a lot to support their actions in Islam. Most Muslims are ordinary people just trying to get by- people like us. You have to see that, not just label them a monolithic group problem that can be solved by throwing Cruise missiles at it until it goes away.
EDIT: Bernard Lewis, it should be pointed out, freely admits that the doctrine of Jihad encourages Muslims to conquer the world for Islam.
Concerning the so-called tolerance and refined culture of Islam in its Golden Age:
“The Mohammedan temper was not tolerant. It was, on the contrary, fanatical and bloodthirsty. It felt no respect for, nor even curiosity about, those from whom it differed. It was absurdly vain of itself, regarding with contempt the high Christian culture about it. It still so regards it even today.
“But the conquerors, and those whom they converted and attached to themselves from the native populations, were still too few to govern by force. [...] Therefore a very large majority of the conquered remained in their old habits of life and of religion.
[…]
“But there was another and it is the most important cause. […] What ever was not Mohammedan in the immense Mohammedan Empire — that is, much the most of its population — was subject to a tribute … which furnished directly … the wealth of the central power: the revenue of the Caliph. […] The result was that which always follows upon a high concentration of wealth in one governing centre; the whole of the society governed from that centre reflects the opulence of its directors.
“There we have the explanation of that strange, that unique phenomenon in history — a revolt against civilization which did not destroy civilization; a consuming heresy which did not destroy the Christian religion against which it was directed.
“The world of Islam became and long remained, the heir of the old Graeco-Roman culture and the preserver thereof.”
Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies
It seems that the coating of civilization due to the wealth of the Caliphate decayed over time parallel to the waning of the tribute (there were no more non-Muslim left to pay it) and Muslim-dominated countries regressed to worse than their ancestral cultures and religions.
A bold claim, considering that they destroyed the Byzantine Civilization in that area of the world to do it.
But please name sixteen of them, without looking up something in a reference book or internet search. Just do it off the top of your head.
To get you started, and to show you what I mean, I will list the great cultural achievements of the Christian world, likewise off the top of my head:
Musical notation
Diatonic Music
Common Law
Independent Judiciary
The University System
Academic Freedom
Perspective in Painting
Realism in Painting
Theology
The Theory of Copernicus
Gothic Cathedrals
The Periodic Table
Heck, all of Physics since the days of Nicholas of Oresme and Albertus Magnus
Chivalry
The Romantic form of Ballad and Novel
Monogamy
So, give me your list of equivalent cultural accomplishments for the Muslim world, and do mean Muslim accomplishments, not the things done by their Jewish and Christian conquered peoples. I will help you:
The writings of Maimonides.
— Oops, excuse me, he is Jewish.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The 1001 Arabian Night’s Tales
The mathematical discoveries of the zero and the algebra.
There. Just write out twelve more without looking up some list somewhere.
Your revisionist history disgusts me. Peddle your falsehoods with the gullible.
I am puzzled each time someone leaps to the defense of the enemy in wartime, as if such behavior were righteous rather than the reverse. I am used to Lefties leaping to the defense of communist butchers and tyrants, because the communist butchers and tyrants the communists at least made the unlikely claim that they wished to care for the poor and to deliver social justice. They represented a future utopia. In this case, however, the butchers and tyrants represent nothing but a Seventh Century vision of theocratic totalitarianism, complete with all the rabid Puritanism and misogyny and tyranny the Left from time to time unconvincingly claims to oppose.
It is like someone who leaps out of his chair to explain how nice some of the Nazis were each time the topic of World War Two comes us, and wants to upbraid us for the excesses and evils of World War Two.
How do you not feel ashamed and embarrassed? What makes you think you have the moral high ground when you are sunk into a moral cesspool? You feel it is right and proper on a day when one of our ambassadors was tortured to death on American sovereign social to play the “tu quoque” game with Christians?
I would propose that the zero and the algebra should count as two, not one; they are each of major importance. That aside, let me see if I can fill up your list.
The Minaret style of mosque (matching Gothic cathedrals)
The institution of systematic scholarship
Algebraic geometry
The astrolabe (or if you prefer, spherical astronomy)
Biography (as opposed to hagiography, elegy, panegyric, and history)
Romantic poetry about courtly love (your ‘chivalry’ is a bit too broad; elements of it were borrowed)
Teaching hospitals and licensing of physicians
Lute, guitar, and violin
Music notation (not, to be sure, the one that’s used today in the West; but notation is notation)
Frequency analysis in cryptography
Systematic alchemy
Wars fought for religious purposes.
I fear your list is not entirely convincing.
Plutarch wrote biographies before Mohammed existed, and Augustine wrote an autobiography.
Teaching hospitals is a Christian invention, dating back to the mansion pauperum of Merovingian times, or the xenodocheia of Imperial times.
The institution of systematic scholarship is Christian and came from our University system. I do not deny that the Muslim had universities, particularly in places they had conquered. But they did not invent the University properly so called, and did not have the concept of academic freedom.
The astrolabe while often attributed to Arzachel but I believe it existed in Fifth Century Alexandria, if my poor memory serves me correctly, but the Muslims did indeed make mathematical investigations with it, and so deserve credit there.
As for alchemy, I can name Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and Isaac Newton and, thanks to Harry Potter, even Nicholas Flamel as famous alchemists. I fear I cannot bring to mind a single Muslim alchemist. So if your comment crediting them with the invention of “systematic” alchemy has weight, it is not common knowledge among folk like myself with more than average knowledge of this esoteric subject.
If the zero (a Hindu invention, actually) counts as different from Algebra, then Algebraic geometry (if you are crediting someone other than Descartes) count as the same.
I will grant you the Minaret. Beautiful bit of architecture. Its not original, like the flying buttress or the pointed arch, but it is an addition to world culture worth admiring.
Lutes and guitars are certainly admirable instruments.
So is that sixteen? And did you do it from off the top of your head, without looking something up on the Internet? I have lost count.
I have twelve, which added to your four (counting zero and algebra separately) makes sixteen.
Plutarch’s Lives are better understood as moral philosophy with anecdotes drawn from famous careers. They are not biographies in the modern sense.
These were hospitals, in the sense of taking in sick people whether they could pay or not. They were not teaching hospitals, in the sense of being used in the formal education of physicians.
Here you seem to be simply mistaken, or else we are talking about different things. By “systematic scholarship” I mean institutions dedicated to retrieving, translating, commenting on, and elaborating on Classical texts. Harun al Rashid created such an institution, the “House of Wisdom”, in Baghdad around 800, many centuries before any European university was founded.
Many instruments of various degrees of sophistication have been called ‘astrolabes’. Let me instead say that it was perfected by Islamic astrologers, partly because their mathematicians understood spherical geometry better than did the ancients.
Jabir ibn Hayyan, known as ‘Geber’ in European translations, predates the gentlemen you mention by several centuries.
I don’t see why that follows. The application of the techniques of algebra to the field of geometry was hugely fruitful – indeed this is often the case when someone realises that there are connections between two apparently-separate branches of mathematics.
I admit to a certain amount of help from la Wik; but I suggest that the constraint of top-of-the-head-ness is unreasonable. Of course we are more familiar with the contributions of our own tradition; that does not of itself demonstrate that they were more numerous or important. I bet you cannot name, off the top of your head, the Four Great Inventions of Norwegian history; this does not show anything about their importance.
If I made the claim that Norway has made significant contributions to Anglo-american culture, then, yes, you would be quite right to ask me, an American, to list some them off the top of my head. This would be doubly the case if I were living in the time, say, of King Alfred the Great, watching English monasteries being burnt and looted by Danes, and I was debating with some war hawk who did not want to continue paying the danegeld.
More to the point, you cheated because in your opinion the question was unfair. Even so, you cannot fill out the list except by adding uproariously false entries, such as the hospital which predates the heresy of Islam by three centuries, and by saying nonsense such as that Plutarch did not write biographies.
You have the habit of saying meretriciously anything to score points in a debate; and yet you act puzzled and hurt if I call such behavior dishonest. To say more on my part would be impolite.
Is it worth pointing out that Haroun’s “House of Wisdom” was initially staffed entirely by Syriac Christians (notably Hunayn ibn Ishaq and his family), since they were the ones who had the scholarship at that time? Or that the Hindu numbering system was mentioned by Bishop Severus Sebokht, of Kinnesrin, in the seventh century, almost two centuries before such mentions are found in Arabic sources?
This is the case in the Muslim world, today, as well, Andrew. Most hospitals are staffed by Filipinos and Brits in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (I know so many who have survived the ordeal only because of their education) In Libya, Bulgarian nurses became scapegoats for spreading AIDS and were tortured into confessing that they’d deliberately infected children with AIDS at a hospital in Benghazi.
My Filipino friends described working for the Muslims in Saudi Arabia as a hellish ordeal. On the one hand, it seemed that there are few skilled people in Saudi Arabia, or I should say, men, and that the people who are skilled are treated with contempt. Those they have to import, as they do with their domestic help.
Parasitic is an apt description for a culture that has no work ethic or culture.
Reread my post. I made precisely these distinctions you claim I do not make. You are making what is called a straw man argument, that is, arguing against a position I do not hold and did not imply. It is not only rude, because you should not talk when you will not listen, it is an informal logical error.
If this were the first, or fifth, or fiftieth, or five hundredth time one of your ilk has pulled this lame rhetorical tactic which even a sophomore could see through, I would be willing to believe it was a momentary slip on your part, an honest error.
Instead, since it is the standard operating procedure of all and every one of those who endorse a leftwing world view, I assume it is dishonest on purpose. I am taken aback you think me, or anyone, simpleminded enough to be fooled by a sophomoric rhetorical tactic. Come now, sir.
Alright, I’m going to make this as simple as possible.
I’m pointing out facts, alright? Facts that the vast, vast majority of historians will agree upon irrespective of their religious or political allegiance. And the cultural achievements of Islam and their tolerance are some of those facts. Bernard Lewis is not some kind of leftie traitor to Western Civilization- the very idea is beyond ludicrous. “Revisionist history”? Bernard Lewis is a man of the right- what on earth are you talking about? Do you know anything at all about the subject? Practically every historian of Islam agrees with him- and he’s considered to be anything BUT a revisionist.
Hey, here’s an idea- actually go away and read some books about Islam. How about you actually read his books before you put him into an ideological box?
In your post, you called for a crusade against Islam. As in the religion itself. You made absolutely no distinction between any of the various Islamist ideologies, thinkers or even sectarian groups. According to you there’s a minority of people who can live in peace with the West- when, as the actual data shows, most Muslims simply don’t care about the Clash of Civilizations and want to live their lives in peace.
My father was in London when the 7/7 attacks took place in his capacity as a policeman- he was fine, but I didn’t know that when the attacks took place. Please do the the most basic courtesy of treating me like an actual human being and not a member of the enemy.
And I’m going to say this just once so you can get it through your skull- I Am Not A Leftie. Alright? When someone disagrees with you, that doesn’t make them part of your most hated ideological category.
You also accused me of creating a straw man of your screed, and that you actually made important distinctions. You didn’t. You referred to a small minority of Muslims who can live in peace with the West, instead of the actual majority who simply don’t care about the Clash of Civilizations. The way you talk it’s as if there is a unified Muslim Front against a United Christendom. Those days are long gone. Calling for a Crusade against Islam is equivalent (linguistically) to someone ordering war against Protestantism. There is no nuance there.
You talk about “Shariasts” without ever defining who they are, what numbers they control or what the content of their creed is. Talk about actual people and facts- Qutb, for example. Don’t just start writing and expect everything you say to be right.
“But if they believe in Sharia Law, they are totalitarians who cannot live in peace with Western Democracies, and whose religions requires and demands and rewards them for intolerant hatred even to the point of suicide-murder of innocent bystanders of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other pagans.”
Well, no. It’s flatly false to state that in Sharia all pagans are treated the same. Christians and Jews get privileges, polytheists do not. Also, suicide and the murder of civilians isn’t allowed by the Islamic Tradition. It’s a recent development.
That’s not me saying “Islam’s great and Christianity’s awful”, it’s me saying “please use facts and not rhetoric.” Again, if someone can say that the Aztecs had some great cultural achievements I don’t see why I can’t point out the limited good in Islam.
Also, you challenge me to come up with a list of great people/achievements off the top of my head. I can’t unless I fish out my University stuff from last year, but in a general way-
Medical Science
Architecture
Astronomy
Clockwork
Art
Poetry
Science
Philosophy (Al-Ghazali, just off the top of my head).
Universities.
Mathematics.
Even the stuff you mentioned, on it’s own, isn’t nothing. You don’t have to like Islam to acknowledge some good that came from it.
And again, it’s not me saying this. It’s practically every historian, sociologist and anthropologist working in this field who says this- and quite a few Christians too. Tom Holland says this, even when he questioned the very origins of Islam. Bernard Lewis (the man you accused of “revisionism”, which is a bit like saying Hans Kung is a die-hard Traditionalist) says this. Montgomery Watt said it (though he was a bit enraptured by Islam he’s highly regarded). My lecturer said this, despite freely admitting the violence inherent in the faith.
Take it up with the academic world in general, if it annoys you so much.
“Come now, sir?” What is this, civility? You’ve called me a leftist (which apparently means, in your vocabulary, “people who disagree with me”), morally equivalent to an apologist for Nazism, a coward, a fool, a traitor to Western Civilization, a traitor to Christianity, “sunk in a moral cesspool”, using the death of an innocent mean as a means of attacking my own faith and dishonest.
If you can point out anything I said about you as a person – not your views, but as another human being- that comes close to the ugliness above, please, point it out.
And for what? To try and get you to see that the situation is more complex than you may think and that Islam has had some great achievements. Not “Western Civilisation should perish”, “You’re evil/stupid”, “Islam is a great faith” or “The Americans are getting what they deserve.” You may think these are my views but I can assure you this is not the case.
Let me make this clear- I am a Roman Catholic. I am proud to be a Roman Catholic. I am proud of the achievements of our faith. I am proud to defend it against Islam. I am not a “lefty”. I don’t think that Islam is all rainbows and sunshine. I don’t think Christendom stole all it’s good stuff from Arab achievements. I don’t think that Islam has been the standard bearer for moral progress- quite the opposite, in fact.
And the next time you feel the need to spit on my name please do me the honor of saying it to my face and not from behind a computer screen across the Atlantic Ocean.
You named ten things where you say the Muslim world make contributions to the culture, but I notice your replies are not only vague, you are naming at least some areas where they made no contribution at all.
And, not to pick nits, but I asked for twelve or sixteen.
I cannot think of a single artist, for example, who came out of the culture that strictly prohibits visual representations of any kind. So for you to post “Art” as a contribution seems like it does not match your claim.
The Muslim did not invent the Universities properly so called. That is a Christian invention. They were a literate people, and did have scholars, including some (I mentioned Arzachel) who made contributions to mathematics and astronomy. But they never had academic freedom, or anything like it.
As for poetry, I will help you again: Fardausi wrote the SHAHNAMAH, the epic of kings. I also mentioned Omar Khayyam. Anyone else?
As for the straw man argument, you are doing it again. I did define what I meant by “Shariaists”. I said it more than once: someone who supports the imposition of Sharia Law, which I called a totalitarian theocracy. You did not read what I wrote.
Except I did not say that, nor imply that.
Even if I had, nowhere did I call Jews and Christians “pagans”, nor does Islam call them pagans. The word means those who follow the classical polytheism of antiquity, or, by analogy any modern polytheist, such as a Hindu. Islam makes a clear distinction between “the people of the book” and polytheistic religions. You did not read what I wrote.
Straw man argument. Quote me back where I said this or implied it, or admit that I did not say it nor imply it, please? Or perhaps you did not read what I wrote.
As you like. If your claim is that the modern Academic world supports a given view which you are supporting, to convince me you would need to establish the authority of the authorities being quoted.
Do you think the modern Academic world is characterized by their bracingly honest objectivity, their loyalty to the West and the Academic freedom, and the clarity of thought on all matters related to Christendom and Christianity?
If you cannot name sixteen things off the top of your head that were contributions to civilization, I would say your claim that they made immense contributions is grossly exaggerated. That you can name three academics whose names I do not recognize to share the same opinion does not carry the argument. Have any of these men you name been dead for over a hundred years? Has their work stood the test of time?
I apologize without reservation for my ugly tone, and I hope you will forgive me. It was unbecoming and foolish of me to let my temper carry me away, especially over the internet, where the words have no emotional cues of inflection and tone. I am sorry.
Al-Ghazali is your example of Muslim accomplishment in philosophy? More like a cataclysmic disaster.
In fact the contrasting paths of Western and Muslim culture since Al-Ghazali’s time lies in Al-Ghazali’s rejection of Aristotle and Aquinas’ embrace of Aristotle. Or of the former’s rejection of reason and the latter’s championing of it.
And the facts are that, at certain times, in certain areas, the Mohammedans treated Jews and Christian under their power more nicely than Christians treated Jews and Mohammedans; but the facts are that in other times and places, it was not so. If you have read history, you cannot be unaware of this. I refer you to the Armenian genocide. I refer you to the Tenth Century.
As for the rest, I made the exact distinctions you called upon me to make. You did not read what I wrote.
You claim not to be a Leftist, and yet you repeat all their talking points without bothering to discover whether the person against whom you argue supports or opposes those points. That is typical Leftism.
It is unfortunate for you that the most radical of Leftists I know personally all claim not to be Leftists, so that when an honest man claims not to be a Leftist, one does not know, except by his tone and position, if he is telling the truth. Their typical method of speaking is the condescending flamewar style you have adopted here. Since that style here is a reaction to my own intemperance of speech, alas, I simply cannot tell.
If this were World War Two, or the Cold War, and you leaped to your feet to tell me of the contributions of the Germans to world society, or of the great accomplishments of the Russians, after agreeing that Beethoven and Prokofiev are great composers, when what I said is that we should take the war effort seriously, and destroy the political power and imponderable prestige of the Nazis or Commies, and after I said that not all Russians and Germans are Nazis or Commies, to what point do you insist on repeating in terms of wounded self-righteousness that not all Russians and Germans are Nazis or Commies?
Forgive my harsh impatience with you. I am wrong not to have treated you with more courtesy. But, why is it important to you that I mention the great works of Beethoven whenever I condemn Hitler?
You say you are willing to duel me, I assume with sword or pistol or fist, and I assume to fight despite wounds and pain and even death, over this issue. Tell me what, if you are not loyal to the Left and their works and their ways, it is important to you to the point of suffering pain and death to say it, that if I say we should defeat the enemy, and I say not all Islamics are the enemy, you take up your pen to inform me that not all Islamics are the enemy?
That not all Islamics are the enemy is a Leftist talking point I addressed in the original post.
Are you merely arguing that they are the majority rather than the minority? That point I will not dispute; it is not the numbers but the spirit that matters. The majority of Germans during the war and the majority of Russians during the Cold War merely wished to live in peace and supported their regimes only with lukewarm support, or none. If this peaceloving faction can distance themselves from their warlike brethren, and not give them aid and support, and shift the center of power away from Sharia Law and those who use Jihadist tactics both peaceful and violent to support it, then they can ask us to ally with them, and we should give them every support needed. I said this in the original post.
“…If your claim is that the modern Academic world supports a given view which you are supporting, to convince me you would need to establish the authority of the authorities being quoted….
Do you think the modern Academic world is characterized by their bracingly honest objectivity, their loyalty to the West and the Academic freedom, and the clarity of thought on all matters related to Christendom and Christianity?”
Watt’s work is six decades old, Lewis has been regularly pilloried by the Left as an “Orientalist” and Holland has gone so far to suggest that Islam didn’t start the way it’s adherents said it did- and was called Islamaphobic as a consequence.
You don’t know who these men are because you are not educated in the subject. It’s that simple. Learn about the subject, then you can smear authors you know nothing about.
“If this were World War Two, or the Cold War, and you leaped to your feet to tell me of the contributions of the Germans to world society, or of the great accomplishments of the Russians… to what point do you insist on repeating in terms of wounded self-righteousness that not all Russians and Germans are Nazis or Commies?”
Because the way you talk about it, someone could be mistaken that you think of Islam as an enemy nation. It doesn’t make sense. You cannot say “We are at War with Islam” because Islam is not a single monolithic thing. When we were at war with Germany there was a single country with a single army with a single government. Any attempt to make a comparison with a world religion with all it’s varying sects, prophets, leaders and peoples simply doesn’t work, and in fact is dangerous to make the attempt.
“Wounded self-righteousness”
Please don’t throw in any gratuitous and needless insults. Act like an adult.
“You claim not to be a Leftist, and yet you repeat all their talking points without bothering to discover whether the person against whom you argue supports or opposes those points. That is typical Leftism…”
Right wing people never do this? Check below, where you characterize BrownPundits as being authored by “a politically correct eunuch-of-the-mind defending the pious absurdities of our current Mandarin class, the intelligentsia.” In fact, the author says-
“It’s people like John C. Wright who give succor to the multiculturalist morons, because they meet them in idiocy.I actually agree with kernels of Westernophilia within Wright’s fecal mound of a jeremiad. The problem is that instead of standing up for what is right and true he degrades the cause by garbing it in lies and delusions. When you see people committing abominations against reality like this you do wonder as to the quality of their whole oeuvre.”
Someone who may have agreed with you was driven away by the manner in which you said it. And without bothering to look at what he had written, you characterized him as a Leftist.
Which is apparently something only a Leftist would do.
“It is unfortunate for you that the most radical of Leftists I know personally all claim not to be Leftists, so that when an honest man claims not to be a Leftist, one does not know, except by his tone and position, if he is telling the truth. Their typical method of speaking is the condescending flamewar style you have adopted here. Since that style here is a reaction to my own intemperance of speech, alas, I simply cannot tell.”
Words fail me. What on earth am I meant to say to this?
“No, I’m not a Leftist”
“Only a Leftist would say such a thing!”
Do you seriously think I’m some kind of left-wing spy who hides my political views just to attack you? What talking points of the Left have I re-iterated? The goodness of abortion, the horror of religion, the anti-clericalism? What?
Act like an adult. I don’t agree with you. I may have mischaracterised your views. In which case, I’m sorry. But don’t insinuate I’m a liar and really a Lefty. Again, do it to my face, not from behind a keyboard. At least, face to face, you might actually see me as your brother in Christ and not a shadowy agent of everything you hate. And that’s not me whining- that’s me trying to help you get a grip.
“And, not to pick nits, but I asked for twelve or sixteen…
I cannot think of a single artist, for example, who came out of the culture that strictly prohibits visual representations of any kind. So for you to post “Art” as a contribution seems like it does not match your claim….
The Muslim did not invent the Universities properly so called….”
But it doesn’t forbid artistic representation- and you can’t refer to Islam as “it says”, anymore than you can say “Protestantism forbids the doctrine of free will.” You can do a quick Google search and find many images of Muhammad made by Muslims in the Islamic Empire. Here they are-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
You asked me for examples off the top of my head- which I gave you, backed up with respected academic authors whose books you can read for yourself. I can, if you wish, waste both of our time by simple going to Wikipedia and making a list.
And the Islamic Golden Age did have educational centers that were equivalent to Universities. It was called a Golden Age for a reason.
Will you just listen to yourself? You pour scorn on academic figures whom you know nothing about and then say that nothing in academia could convince you because they’re all Leftists anyway. It’s Richard Dawkins on theology. There is literally nothing I could say or do to change your mind.
Would it help if I gave you conservative authors? What?
Not an honest someone.
I would happily accept your apology if you gave it not in the subjunctive. For someone as heavily influenced by the Left as you are, yet not yourself a Lefist, that is quite an achievement. I mean this sincerely. Now I begin to believe you are indeed a Christian.
Agreed. I shall not answer you further until we speak face to face. What time will you be arriving?
“Not an honest someone”
You compared the situation with Islam to the war with Germany. I assume you saw the conflict with Islam in the same way. You know, the way you compared it to the war with Germany. An enemy nation.
Why should I come to you? When have I compared you to Nazi apologists, liars, men sunk in a moral cesspit, traitors?
You’re the author. Hop on a plane to Wales and then we can talk about it like adults, without the risk of the discussion turning into a flame war.
“For someone as heavily influenced by the Left as you are, yet not yourself a Lefist, that is quite an achievement. I mean this sincerely. Now I begin to believe you are indeed a Christian. ”
Actually I don’t think this one needs much commentary. How do you know I have been heavily influenced by the Left? My favorite non-fiction writers are people like Michael Burleigh or John Grey. Do you want proof of my ideological views? What would convince you? Facebook? Give me a clue.
Today, I cannot afford to buy myself a cup of coffee. My pants are missing their button, and I went to mass with my shirt tails hanging out in the hopes that my fellows would not see that I cannot do my pants all the way up, and this is because I cannot afford to buy myself a new pair, at least until my next paycheck comes.
Your assessment of my meaning as about as accurate as your assessment of my wealth.
The ambiguities you claimed I did not see were mentioned in the original post.
I mentioned this previously, and you ignored it, and continued to recite your talking points, none of which were relevant to anything I had said. At that point, I am no longer willing to believe that your intention is what you say it is.
Looking back, I see that your first line in the current thread to me is this: ‘You were fine with his reference to Islamic people as a “parasitic human group?”’ Please note that, here and throughout, you simply assert that I said or believe something, and then argue against that position. Ditto with your saying I said Islam was a monolithic bloc. I never said it and don’t believe it. Ditto with your saying I think Islam is a nation to be attacked. I never said it and don’t believe it.
Ditto with your saying I think Islam made no cultural contributions — I mentioned Fardausi and Arzachel and Algebra and Omar Kayyam — but I also think the Germans made even great cultural contributions, but this has nothing to do with the wisdom of persecuting a serious war against the Nazis when they arose on the world stage. I adore the movie ALEXANDER NEVSKY, but this has nothing to do with whether or not the Left was correct to oppose the Cold War, and to aid and abet the cause of international communism.
I do think the cultural contributions of Islam as grossly exaggerated, a point you also made. Asking for a list of sixteen significant accomplishments from off the top of your head was my way of showing that the claim is exaggerated.
Part of the reason for my vehemence is that the Leftists I know, including faithful Roman Catholics who also happen to be Euro-socialists, argue in the same way, using this same simple rhetorical trick: ad hominem, straw man, argument from authority. They usually end up as you did, by denouncing those who disagree with them as being unlettered. I have a doctorate, but, alas, not in history: and no one you quoted was older than one hundred years, so I probably has not read any of them.
In any case, it is well known that Jews and Muslims were tolerated in certain Christian countries at certain times and seasons, and at other times treated abominably; and that the Jews and Christians were tolerated in Islamic countries at certain times and seasons, and at other times treated abominably. For you to repeat the Leftist bromide that Jews had a better life in the Dar al Islam than in Christendom is like repeating one of their bumper stickers. It flies in the face of known history. I mentioned the Armenian genocide and the Tenth Century, and your reply was to tell me that one of your history books supports your position. Again, you need to establish an authority in an argument before you rest your argument on it.
In any case, the argument is irreverent. I am not recommending a crusade on the grounds that in the Sixteenth Century Germany was worse for Jews than Andalusia in the Thirteenth. I am recommending a crusade on the ground that Sharia Law and Western Democracy are incomparable, and that as Christians we have a duty to defend with the edge of the sword the Coptic Christians in Egypt, the Orthodox in Greece, the Nestorians and other Eastern brethren of our faith from the ancient and recurring enemies of our faith.
I apologize a second time for my discourtesy to you, sir. If I am as evil a wretch as you say, I would welcome your prayers to the good Lord on my behalf. I will say a prayer for you. Since we are unlikely to meet face to face, let there at least be peace and goodwill between us.
I shall be on my better behavior hereafter. You have rightly chastised me.
Mr. Wright
I’m surprised that you aren’t at least passingly familiar with Dr. Bernard Lewis as many of your arguments mirror his own — though your solutions might differ. I’ve linked a famous article of his from 1990 that I think for the most part you might appreciate.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1990/09/the-roots-of-muslim-rage/304643/6/?single_page=true
Since he was born in 1916, he is on the threshold of being too young for me to read. I have not yet finished reading the works of Saint Justin Martyr, and I named myself after him at confirmation. Priorities.
That they are not a nation state in this case I believe I mentioned once, and twice, and again thrice at least, for I called them a decentralized enemy having an informal structure, ergo not a unified body, such as a nation-state. So in this respect, the two wars are different.
The two wars are very different in that no large group in America intelligentsia constantly spoke up in favor of the Nazis nor spoke continually and scathingly against the anti-Nazis, or regarded all pro-American sentiment with mistrust. The current war is more like the Cold War, where there was a persistent group speaking up in favor of the Communists and speaking slander against anti-Communists. Such Gnostic inversion of normal values and loyalties continues among the intelligentsia to this day. (Compare, for example, the 2001 movie THE MAJESTIC with the recent DC comics decision to make the most recent Green Lantern a Muslim.)
So, again, I will repeat my statement that no honest man can interpret my comments they way you are interpreting them. The kind of statement where you say “Since you likened the Jihad War to the German War, and the German War is against a nation state, you therefore think Jihadists comprise a nation state” — and you say it in scornfully, as if the error were mine, ignoring the balance of my essay where I made my point clear, and my statements where I repeated the point.
I think you severely underestimate how outrageously illogical this method of argumentation is, erecting a straw man and then blaming the opposition for being so unclear as to allow you to erect a straw man. It is irresponsible to the point of being dishonest.
I am not accusing you of lying, because perhaps you are only being grossly negligent. But a man who goes to trial where half his jurors slumber through the testimony, and think he said things on the witness stand he did not, such negligence is properly called dishonest.
Thank you for the apology.
The Genocide guy above was disturbing to me because you told him that you were fine with what he wrote up until the last paragraph- before that he called Muslims as a whole a “parasitic human group”, an “evolutionary dead end” and made some references to ethnic cleansing in the Bible. None of that was in the last paragraph- it all came before. You said to him-
“I agree and applaud what you say”
but not the bit about genocide, obviously. It seemed to me that you were in agreement with is characterization of Islam as a monolithic entity and people. You’re giving mixed signals- I accused you of treating Islam as a monolithic faith because you “agree and applaud” a man who says it is.
And then you attack me and historians as a whole for saying that Islam has given the world important contributions. And compare me to an apologist for Nazi Germany NOT for saying that Islamists are a great bunch who can be trusted with anything but for saying that Islam isn’t a monolithic thing and shouldn’t be treated as such. And you called me an apologist for the “enemy in war time.”
Can you see how I’m getting mixed messages?
Your essay does make important distinctions and divisions- and I really should have read it through properly instead of treating your views on the subject as coming straight from your agreement with the man in the comment section. But the way you talked to me about the subject was far different than the way you talked about it in the essay.
“Part of the reason for my vehemence is that the Leftists I know, including faithful Roman Catholics who also happen to be Euro-socialists, argue in the same way, using this same simple rhetorical trick: ad hominem, straw man, argument from authority. They usually end up as you did, by denouncing those who disagree with them as being unlettered. I have a doctorate, but, alas, not in history: and no one you quoted was older than one hundred years, so I probably has not read any of them. ”
We’ve all been subject to the “You can’t complain about Muslims, look what the Crusaders/Spanish Inquisition/various bad Christians did.” Manning’s Collary- see Karen Armstrong for repeated violations of this rule. It’s just that you appeared to dismiss pretty much the whole field as a bunch of leftie stooges. When actually there are some well respected authorities on Islam whose view on it is not an uncritical acceptance, who aren’t lefties and would be quite informative to you. Without any attempted left-wing brain washing.
“For you to repeat the Leftist bromide that Jews had a better life in the Dar al Islam than in Christendom is like repeating one of their bumper stickers…”
I didn’t say that. Not anything close to that. I quoted Bernard Lewis, who said that, in his opinion, the position of the Jews in Islamic lands has been a mixed bag- “neither as good as Christendom at it’s best nor as bad as Christendom at it’s worst.” That’s hardly the much repeated Party line that the Jews in Islamic lands had it just fine until the West got involved. And Bernard Lewis is not in any way a leftist. He’s a man of the right.
“If I am as evil a wretch as you say…”
I never called you that. I said that the way you insulted me was degrading and vicious. You never assumed I was merely wrong. I couldn’t be just wrong- I had to be evil too. That’s you on me. I never called you that or anything like it. So what was actually an alright Monday became a grueling experience of facing hateful slander off a man who in other circumstances I might have got along with quite well.
So in conclusion, here’s what I tried to say-
1) Islam isn’t one thing, and as such you can’t make war against it.
2) Islam has some good in it
I should have made more references to your essay and not just the comment section. Mea culpa.
Actually this whole conversation is pretty much identical to one we had about Hiroshima. But with more gratuitous insults.
As best I can tell, you want to argue with someone else in the comments section. Feel free. A general agreement with him does not make me his agent and counselor.
Since I agree with the assessment that the Jews under the Muslims were treated “neither as good as Christendom at it’s best nor as bad as Christendom at it’s worst” I see no further dispute here.
The Shariah Law is one philosophy, as much Communism was and is, and can be warred upon, or resisted peacefully where it uses peaceful means.
All heresies have SOME good in them, otherwise they would not be borrowing from Orthodoxy, or would have no appeal. The Faithful Mohammedan, for example, does not worship idols, avoids strong drink, and does not like Britanny Spears. However, Marxism has, on the whole, more good in it than Mohammedanism, but this does not excuse it from being properly the object of detestation and opposition and bloody warfare by free and Christian men.
So it would seem that we agree on more than it at first seems. I am pleased this ends happily.
Libyans storm militia building after giant protest in wake of attack on US consulate. The liberal Mohammedans are doing stuff!
Our Master told us, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” And the likely end of Islam, which lives by the sword, is that it will perish by the sword.
At present, the Muslim world is heading towards a terrible conflict between its Sunni and Shiite branches. India is in permanent conflict with Pakistan. As Russia extends its power southward and China westward, these great powers will engage in warfare with Islamists.
No doubt, the Crusade will come in its own time – for now, we should simply prepare. Christendom should engage mainly in defensive measures until these other nations are drawn in by their need to stabilize their peripheries. We should defend our values of free speech and religious liberty. This means defending blasphemers and Muslim apostates. It means protecting Arab Christians and Jews in the Middle East. It means withdrawing payments to nations run by the Muslin Brotherhood (Egypt) or other Islamists (Turkey). We must defend common laws for all, not community-based standards.
The new president of Egypt seems to be a formidable opponent. Morsi knows the US well. He had the impudence to present a list of his demands to the US in some Quisling newspaper today. After his Muslim Brotherhood orchestrated the riots at our embassies, he maintained control by cracking down at the time of his choosing. This is much more clever than the Persian takeover of the US embassy in 1979 – henceforth, he will trot out his mobs whenever he has a new demand, and the demands will be unending. Withdraw all payouts to him and let him concern himself with his country’s economics and not his Islamist phantasies.
You write :
“”"Christianity, in short, is Western civilization. Western civilization is Christianity.”"”
This is correct as a description of history. But is the western civilization of today really christian ? I don’t think so, I consider it a society with a new state religion of political correctness, feminism and whatnot.
The modern western world is actively hostile toward christianity. Should we really wage a crusade for this civilization ? Before we defend a christian society we should get one. We had one several hundred years ago, but at the present moment we don’t.
I consider likewise. Our civilization is postchristian, that is, postrational and postvirtuous. In and of itself, it is not worth preserving, any more than the civilization of late antiquity was worth preserving. Nonetheless, pious Christian men are commanded to be loyal to the worldly authorities placed over us, and pious Christian monks preserved the learning of antiquity as best they could in medieval scriptoria.
And, above all, this civilization is my own. The cult of Political Correctness is self-defeating, the same way the Abortions of the culture of death are self defeating. Our mission is merely not to be dragged down along with them, not to allow them to commit suicide taking us with them. The doctrine of preemptive surrender in the Middle East is exactly the type of thing a Crusade against the foe needs must target and defeat. This culture needs to be reformed, rectified, revolutionized, changed, and made whole again.
The alternative is an age of darkness to last a thousand years.
Now you’re getting to the heart of the matter. Your main battles now are not without, but within the lands formerly known as Christendom – perhaps now better called the lands of the”Great Satan.” The Western elite was infiltrated and taken over by Satanists long ago, and unless you can root them out there is no chance of any new Crusades to expand Christendom. The evil has reached your highest citadels and become the powers and principalities of your nations!
So rather than being loyal to these worldly authorities, shouldn’t you be rebelling against them? Shouldn’t you learn to fight diabolically and play hardball, just as the Leftists and Satanists have been fighting against you for so many years? Aren’t your Christian principles just making you weak and easily dominated by the forces of darkness?
Regarding your last point, it seems to me that the age of darkness has already begun. In any case, why do you place this arbitrary limit of 1000 years on it? What’s to stop the Age of Endarkenment from lasting until the universe itself has returned to the primordial Darkness?
“Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness.” –Thoth-amon to Conan
It is a sad day when I agree with a boasting Satanist about the dominion of antichristian ideas in Western lands, but, alas, truth is true no matter whether we agree with it or not, so we might as well agree with it.
Assuredly. I frequently refer to the current period as a Dark Age. It has all the characteristics.
Because the stars are pure above the smogs of Mordor, and this present darkness will destroy itself and pass away, either after a thousand years, or fifty, or five, as the Nazis in Germany passed away, and Soviets in Russia, and as the Communists in China will pass away.
This very day the ChiComs announced the end of their forced abortion policy. At least 20 of China’s 31 provinces have publicly published the policy to forbid all late-term forced abortions. This is an incredible victory that could only have been accomplished by the hand of divine Providence.
Pingback: When religious particularism turns people into morons | Brown Pundits
Ah. I get called a moron for writing a thoughtful article about how our civilization should defend herself from destruction. The concept of patriotism for Western Civilization is not just bizarre, but really bizarre.
I have not the patience to read the linked article. I invite any reader who cares to do so to grade my guess as to what it contains.
My guess is that the writer does not think about the war. My guess is that he is not a faithful Quaker upbraiding me for my warhawkishness, but a politically correct eunuch-of-the-mind defending the pious absurdities of our current Mandarin class, the intelligentsia.
My guess is that it consists of little more than ad hominem attacks on the grounds that such talk is doubleplus ungood thoughtcrime motivated by mental incompetence or moral corruption, but does not refute, nor even engage, what the argument actually is.
As I said in the body of the article, the idea of the war is literally unthinkable to people of this ilk. It does not fit into their theory. It cannot be made into a rebellion of the righteous proletarians against the exploitative capitalists, nor a revolt of women against the patriarchy, nor a mutiny of black slaves against genocidal white planters, nor a revolution of sexual perverts against the bigoted pharisees of decency. So it does not exist, not really; or it is somehow our fault.
Someone please tell me if my guess is accurate. I am sort of hoping I am wrong.
The article ridicules your assertion that Catholicism is the only faith that insists upon Freedom of Religion.
It has literally nothing to do with what you said about war.
Shouldn’t you read the man’s article before speculating on Razib Khan’s Quakerism? His complaint was about your “religious particularism.” Dr Khan’s dismay at your comment that Christianity is the only religion that insists on religious freedom is quite understandable. Have you never heard of Sikhs? Did not the ninth guru, Tegh Bahadur, sacrifice himself to a savage Muslim emperor to save the lives of Hindu scholars?
.
I am not aware of any pope who gave his life to save the Jewish rabbinate.
.
Also, Sikhism, although it preaches peace, is not adverse to a justified Crusade. The Sikh revolt under the tenth guru broke the Muslim Mughal Empire and liberated the Punjab.
.
You might be surprised to find much you agree with in Razib Khan’s views on Islam.
Not if the title has the word “Moron” in it, directed at yours truly. That is why I labeled it a speculation.
I am not a judge sitting on the bench, but a guy, deciding whether or not it is worth my precious and ever shrinking puddle of time in the arid desert of deadlines to click through a link and read a screed. If it is on a topic tangential to mine, correcting me for a single overbroad statement, then I will accept the correct humbly and wish him peace. I do admit I did not bring the Sikhs to mind before making my comment, since they do differ sharply from other Oriental religions.
Owain_Glyndwr said:
“I am a Roman Catholic. I am proud to be a Roman Catholic. I am proud of the achievements of our faith. I am proud to defend it against Islam. I am not a ‘lefty’.”
It seems you are unable to distinguish who in the Academia is a faithful Leftist because you are unknowingly one of them. A faint excuse is that you and your masters have never known any other history than the revisionist Protestant, then Leftist, one. However, refusing to admit reasonable assumptions against unreasonable ones is a symptom of the ear itching of those who prefer fables to truth.
Montesquieu predicted that in two centuries from his time Catholics would have become Protestants. His prediction came true at the exact mark (Montesquieu died in 1755). A Lutheran professor of religion history in a Catholic department of theology, here in Montreal, humorously said to André Frossard: “They really are, to the point of discouraging Protestants from becoming Catholics”.
The prediction has been surpassed since, as the next generation is composed of Leftists not knowing that they are.
Ms. Rousseau
Dr. Bernard Lewis, at any rate, is certainly not a ‘Leftist’ though he had Marxist sympathies early in his career–sympathies that he later disavowed. However, Dr. Lewis’s nuanced arguments might, when not read in full context, be used to bolster positions not his own. But then, this could be said of any writer.
Thanks for your remark, Darrell. I am no historian and I was not referring to any particular scholarly source but to University teachers in general. I agree completely that arguments taken out of context can always be used to bolster contrary positions, and we have a perfect example here: I just read an interesting article on Catholic Answers about Islam and jihad (http://www.catholic.com/documents/endless-jihad-the-truth-about-islam-and-violence) where they quote Dr Lewis in a way diametrically opposite to Owain_Glyndwr’s, thus confirming this person’s bias.
Ms. Rousseau
You might enjoy Dr. Lewis’s WHAT WENT WRONG?: WESTERN IMPACT AND MIDDLE EASTERN RESPONSE.
Here is a link to an interview between Dr. Lewis and Brian Lamb that might provide you insight into whether you’d find the book to be f interest.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1990/09/the-roots-of-muslim-rage/304643/6/?single_page=true
Wrong link, apparently I can’t remember to cut and paste appropriately.
http://www.booknotes.org/watch/167924-1/Bernard+Lewis.aspx
I liked very much the interview. The comments on the role of women with the metaphor of the half-paralyzed body gave me much food for thought. It is certainly an important symptom of the spiritual problems of Islam. I might add it is an important symptom of a big spiritual problem in the West, too.
Thank you.
“the default assumption of the modern day that Christianity opposes freedom of religion (when indeed it is the only religion that insists upon it and always has)”
ROTFLMAO!
From Emperor Theodosius to Pope Pius IX … all that, centuries and centuries, chucked right down the memory hole…
The memory hole is heretic and Leftist.
The Catholic Church is the civilization’s memory.
During all that time, the official doctrine of the Church forbade forced conversions, due to the Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will, an idea unknown both to classical paganism and fatalist Oriental faiths. I think you misunderstood my comment rather badly. I was not talking about separation of Church and State, which is an artifact of the horrors of war between Catholic stem and Protestant branch. Christianity insists that communion is and must be a free and voluntary act.
I could have made a similar statement about freedom of marriage. Christianity is the only religion that insists the bride give her consent.
I suspect the general reaction to this will be to point out the difference between what the Church teaches as official doctrine, and what many of the various Catholic and Christian potentates of history (some of them Popes) have in practice done. I have a much higher opinion of the Crusades than I used to — thanks in no small part to reading this blog — but even someone willing to defend the necessity of the First, Second and Third Crusades may have problems reconciling principle and practice when it comes to the sacking of Constantinople, or worse, the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars. And most of the mass “conversions” of Jews during post-Reconquista Spain (after the anti-Judaic pogroms of 1391) were only considered valid because the canon authorities decreed “involuntary baptism” to refer only to literal physical administration of the sacrament by force; consent under threat of death, torture or even economic penalty was still consent, as far as the Spanish bishops were concerned.
Likewise with marriage; I think I’ve remarked before on the fact that while it is true the bride must give her consent for the sacrament to be valid, it can be very hard to see any meaningful difference between the explicitly theologically justified right of command a Muslim father has to marry off his daughter, and the informal but equally acute and forceful cultural pressure typically brought to bear on women in mediaeval Europe to comply with the familial selection for their spouse — pressure which might well range up to excommunication, effective imprisonment or exile. To paraphrase Mr. Spock slightly in the vein of the progressive mindset, a difference that doesn’t make enough difference isn’t considered worth citing as a difference.
All this boils down to in practice, of course, is the unsurprising truth that we Catholics, whether as individuals or nations, are fallen sinners who fail to live up to the teachings of our Church; but people will only accept “Do as we say, not as we do” for so long and so far. What the Church teaches by her words has not always been the lesson imparted by her actions.
What the Church teaches has not always been imparted by her sons’ actions, not by herself as such. A Church teaching, to be called thus and to be morally binding, even if decreed by the Pope alone, must be agreed on at least implicitly by the bishops in communion. The contrary opinions and actions, be they of an overwhelming majority, prove these persons are not in fact in communion on the issue, so the said opinions or actions are NOT the teaching of the Church. It must be remarked also that not all official monitions are to be considered as Church “teachings”, specially as what regards ordinary government (matters other than faith and morals).
Would you likewise say that there was no difference between the American Constitution, which proclaimed life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness to all men, and the laws of Mandarin China, which make no such proclamation? After all, to be a black slave in the antebellum South was the same as being a palace Eunuch in the Forbidden City, was it not? Therefore the status of all men throughout colonial American and classical Chinese society was pretty much the same thing?
I recommend you reflect carefully on the role of women in the pagan world of Rome and Athens, and the situation of women in the Middle Eastern nations, and compare that to the role of such women as were saints, abbesses, and even queens in the West, women who could not be divorced nor thrown aside as their pagan husbands routinely did to them, before you make such an outrageous statement. I will mention only Babylonian temple prostitution, Greek heteratae, Turkish concubinage, the polygamous harem, and female genital mutilation for starters.
Outside of Christian lands, there are no figures like St Joan of Arc, or St Christina of Markyate. In twelfth-century England she read to her husband the story of St Cecilia, then jumped out of the window, fleeing from her marriage’s consummation, becoming first an anchoress at St Albans, then founding a monastery. So don’t tell me the doctrine that women had to voluntarily marry was a dead letter. If it were, the Christians would not make saints of the women who did not marry voluntarily, nor allow them to govern large abbeys and estates, or found congregations. There is no parallel to this in the ancient world.
The Albigensian Crusade is easily defended. We of the 21st Century recoil in horror at it because we take the Lockean-Rawlsian settlement of religious toleration for granted (and the wisdom of that is partly under debate here). But the Cathars were not just quirky dissenters, like Presbyterians. One might get some insight by considering why the northern French begged the Pope to take action — begged for years. They denied the sacraments. They denied procreation itself and discouraged childbearing. As Belloc points out, a man had only to show that he was married to be acquitted of the heresy. They attracted the petty nobles and formed the seed of political rebellion as well. The Church spent decades trying to dissuade them and gently re-direct them. Nothing worked, and finally Innocent III asked the French nobles to use force because everyone was threatened. And the nobles were not reluctant, they did not need to be persuaded by the bloodthirsty pope; on the contrary, they had convinced him that only a military solution was left.
We could all start by relearning history aright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y
The debate here is intense and profound. At least no one is citing Karen Armstrong as an authority on Islam. Although doing so would at least provide some comic relief. I did note the vagueness of the list of Muslim accomplishments. Musical instruments like the violin and guitar. Big whoop. Music is frowned upon in some of the more strident countries, like Pakistan, where they burn down shops that sell music cassettes and cds.
Poets? Does the vile murder of Asma Bint Marwan, a poet who mocked the prophet ring any sleepy bells?
There are things not on the list we should recognize as one of the greatest achievement of Muslims:
Taking credit for other people’s accomplishments.
Any serious study of Islam’s bloody borders is met with anger or outrage, at least among the easily offended, self-hating Western Europeans. You’d think they would remember the raids upon their shores and the missing white Europeans taken from their homes and pressed into slavery, especially sex slavery.
One of my Bulgarian friends, a young woman of only 25 years, becomes angry when she talks about the long and bloody history of Turkish raids in Eastern Europe, and the rounding up of Christian boys (little boys, too) to be converted into Muslims and then used as soldiers against their own kin in future raids. Credit Muslim ingenuity with such spiteful and devious practices. Yes, the Muslim world has much to teach us.
We are kind of like those janissaries of old. Consider Kosovo.
We were hoodwinked into forceably ceding part of one country to another, and now, the Christian Serbs in Kosovo get to enjoy the benefits of having their churches burned to the ground. Life is so much better for them there, now.
Thank you. The astringent mouthwash of comments like yours is needed sometimes to wash out the soapy and saccharine flavor of Politically Correct piety. A little bit of clear thinking is like the plunge into a cold mountain stream.
The problem is twofold. One is a category error. Political Correctness in a simplistic philosophy meant for stupid people who are enamored of simple and stupid ideas that flatter them. One of the simplest and stupidest ideas ever to intoxicate the West was Marxism, which divided the universe into two categories of beings: the evil and strong and diabolical oppressors whom evolution had condemned to destruction, and the weak and helpless and innocent and angelic oppressed victims whom evolution would save and vindicate: and between the oppressor and oppressed, there was eternal Darwinian war to be fought to extinction. Marx analyzed the system of peaceful mutual cooperation and specialization of labor known as economics using this binary matrix, and came to the conclusion that mutual benefit (economics) was mutual extermination (class struggle), and that peace was war. Instead of being sent summarily to the madhouse, the intelligentsia of that day and this paid close attention to the lunacy of Marx, and treated it and discussed it soberly.
This binary matrix was then brought to bear, by various writers following Marx, to other human relationships aside from employee-employer. The relation between the ethnic, religious and national groups was depicted by Nazism as a Darwinian struggle to extinction, as if the “races” of man (meaning different bloodlines) was the same thing as a “race” of animals (meaning different breeds or species). Again, radical feminists took the Marxist model to describe the relation between the sexes, which is the single most mutually cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship imaginable in the human condition, and described it as a biologically-driven system of oppressor and oppressed, a war of mutual detestation and irreconcilable and implacable enmity. In each case, the doctrine was one that justified and sanctified and called for mutual hatred.
The second problem is who is put in the category. Black slaves and Red Indians arguably have a grievance against Southern Planters and Western homesteaders who either enslaved them or pushed them off their land, and blacks arguably have a grievance against the Confederate States of America who fought to preserve the institution of slavery, and a grievance against the Democrat Party that for many years created and maintain Jim Crow laws in the South, or created and maintained the KKK. But no Muslim was ever enslaved in America, nor was any Muslim nation ever ruled as a colony by America, nor are there any laws forbidding the practice of the Muslim religion here in America. Their grievance against us is our maintenance of military bases in the Middle East during the Cold War and after.
So, here, the Political Correctors are required by their stupid binary system of angelic victims and diabolical oppressors to put the Islamic nations and kingdoms into the “oppressed” category, even while the Islamics are bullying a much smaller Israeli nation, uttering threats of blood-chilling antisemitism, and burning Christian churches, slaughtering Copts, not to mention oppressing women, homosexuals, and other minorities. The Islamic nations are doing everything the Politically Correct pretend to despise, but the thought-prison of Political Correctness does not allow any criticism of, or critical thought about, anyone who is a designated victim-class.
The terrorists follow a program even more bloodthirsty than the Nazis and Communists, seeking out innocent civilian targets in peace time, and having their soldiers commit suicide during their acts of bloody and indiscriminate mass murder. The strikes are meant only for their psychological and symbolic effect, and have no military value whatsoever. It is purposefully as cowardly, dishonorable and craven as possible, because the arbitrariness of a sadistic yet craven sneak attack against an unarmed group of women and children and civilians makes the prospect of further attacks more fearful.
The Politically Correct thinkers, or, rather, nonthinkers do not categorize reality into categories corresponding to any external reality. Things are categorized according to what might be called a “Gnostic” system. The Gnostics were an ancient sect that held that God was actually a devil, and the material world an illusion meant to trap and degrade innately pure and divine spirits; so, to the Gnostics, every normal law of morality is reversed. So too, here, Political Correctness is a form of modern Gnosticism, where everything normal is reversed. The more depraved and cowardly and sadistic is the Mohammedan, by PC logic, the more worthy he is to be defended, petted, upheld, and praised. The more reasonable and honorable our responses, the more blameworthy we are. Because we are good, so goes the Gnostic reasoning, we should surrender to them, and they are our superiors precisely because they are evil.
That is part of the reason. The other part is simply cowardice. The PC mock Christianity and Mormonism with works of “art” like ‘Piss Christ’ or musical comedies of vile slander simply because we do not riot and burn and kill; and the PC, like the Mohammedan himself, is a barbarian, who understands only force and respects only force. When he is in the ascendant, he is a swaggering bully, boastful and vainglorious and full of boasts; and when he is not, he is a whining and pitiful creature, self-pitying and eager to weep womanly tears.
The PC and the Mohammedan terrorist are allies because they share the same basic values and psychological type. Both are craven, dishonorable, bullying sadists who hate and fear civilization and its decencies and institutions. Both are rebels against Christ. Both are barbarians, eager to shatter the white towers and shining wall of civilization into overgrown ruins.
“Sharia” means Moslem law. You are just redefining it to use as a devil-label.
This is exactly on a par with calling the segments of Orthodox Judaism you dislike “Halakhists”, and ranting that “Halakhah” is an evil totalitarian menace, so Jews can only be tolerated if they give up their religious law. (I.e., become emin ha’aretz.)
Good grief, the above comment is a fine example of PC equivocation. Sharia means Moslem law, well, duh and all that entails! And what is embodied in Islamic law, naif? What are the rules that govern even which hand one’s ass is wiped with? Why would anyone demonize that, I wonder?
Sharia is considered by Muslims to be a divine law that can be extrapolated by man from the Quran and the Sunnah. Since there is no real concept of the separation of Islam and state, Sharia by definition must be the law of the land for Muslim legislators.
I cannot be redefining anything because I offered no definitions here. Is there some ambiguity in the use of the word? Look in a dictionary.
Shariah Law is indeed Mohammedan law, but it is a totalitarian, making no distinction between sin and civil disorder, proceeding without benefit of jury trial nor counsel, barbaric in practice, covering all aspects of life, and making invidious inequities between men and women, faithful and “dhimmi”. Sharia Law is what those who promote it say it is, and they are not shy about announcing their goals, nor are the effect not on prominent display in the current world stage.
Have you truly nothing to say aside from this lame strawman attack?
The proper response to this is unfortunately unsuited to mixed company, and dueling is illegal in all civilized nations, as well as being forbidden by my irenic religion. I will simply point out that you are uttering an unconvincing yet venomous lie, and leave it at that.
John, regarding your comment that all evils are sent into the world in pairs, so that a man, fleeing the one, will fall into the arms of the other, I read a quote from Borges yesterday that surprised me in its beauty and truth – it certainly makes sense of the Holy Trinity:
“Here appears the number three, which seals everything. Two is a mere coincidence; three a confirmation. A confirmation of a ternary order, a divine or theological confirmation.”
-Borges, “Blindness”
As I am converting to Catholicism, myself, I have had to dispose of a lot of Protestantism’s End Times, Badly Written Brain Baggage and start taking the ‘long view’ of these things. If anything, John, in the Muslim, we have an enemy for whom we must pray in earnest. As for fighting the long defeat, remember that the prophets of Baal always outnumber the faithful of God. God always wins in the end. Baal always loses.
What daring! What outrageousness! What insolence! What arrogance!
…I salute you.
–King Osric
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
This just in…
UC Berkeley’s cultural studies department just died of shock.
Hi Again, John!
First of all, I would like to compliment you in your pursuit of truth, and in your constant dialogue with those who read your work. Thank you!
Second of all, I would like to clarify something – if I have been “tainted” by the Left, which I don’t think I have been – I would certainly like to know. I say tainted in quotes, because I don’t think I have been, but if you have a sound reason for why this belief is leftist, than I will certainly publicly (as public as one can) apologize on this very blog.
OK, now that those are out of the way, I think you’re wrong in calling a crusade. Here’s why”27. Coming down to practical and particularly urgent consequences, this council lays stress on reverence for man; everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all His life and the means necessary to living it with dignity,(8) so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor man Lazarus.(9)
In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, “As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me” (Matt. 25:40).
Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.
28. Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them.
This love and good will, to be sure, must in no way render us indifferent to truth and goodness. Indeed love itself impels the disciples of Christ to speak the saving truth to all men. But it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions.(10) God alone is the judge and searcher of hearts, for that reason He forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone.(11)
The teaching of Christ even requires that we forgive injuries,(12) and extends the law of love to include every enemy, according to the command of the New Law: “You have heard that it was said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy. But I say to you: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you” (Matt. 5:43-44).
29. Since all men possess a rational soul and are created in God’s likeness, since they have the same nature and origin, have been redeemed by Christ and enjoy the same divine calling and destiny, the basic equality of all must receive increasingly greater recognition.
True, all men are not alike from the point of view of varying physical power and the diversity of intellectual and moral resources. Nevertheless, with respect to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent. For in truth it must still be regretted that fundamental personal rights are still not being universally honored. Such is the case of a woman who is denied the right to choose a husband freely, to embrace a state of life or to acquire an education or cultural benefits equal to those recognized for men.
Therefore, although rightful differences exist between men, the equal dignity of persons demands that a more humane and just condition of life be brought about. For excessive economic and social differences between the members of the one human family or population groups cause scandal, and militate against social justice, equity, the dignity of the human person, as well as social and international peace.
Human institutions, both private and public, must labor to minister to the dignity and purpose of man. At the same time let them put up a stubborn fight against any kind of slavery, whether social or political, and safeguard the basic rights of man under every political system. Indeed human institutions themselves must be accommodated by degrees to the highest of all realities, spiritual ones, even though meanwhile, a long enough time will be required before they arrive at the desired goal.”
Big document, right? It’s a document from the Catholic church – and I’m letting you know that you’re writing is not in line with Catholic teaching. Specifically in the areas talking about the dignity of humankind where it says that human life is sacred, and should not be taken. (I may be creating a false dilemma here, please tell me if I’m wrong). What I hear you saying in this article is that either A) those who follow Sharia Law are not human, therefore can be killed – Crusaded against- with impunity. Or B) Those who follow Sharia Law are human, but since they follow a belief system that is different from Christianity, they may be killed – Crusaded against- with impunity. In my logic class, they call that a constructive dilemma, but it really depends on the accuracy of the premises- please tell me if I have misinterpreted. Also don’t misinterpret this as political correctness, I simply want to have the clearest communication possible.
In addition, I would like to call to mind the following once more for emphasis from the Gaudium et Spes: “This love and good will, to be sure, must in no way render us indifferent to truth and goodness. Indeed love itself impels the disciples of Christ to speak the saving truth to all men. But it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions.(10) God alone is the judge and searcher of hearts, for that reason He forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone.(11)
The teaching of Christ even requires that we forgive injuries,(12) and extends the law of love to include every enemy, according to the command of the New Law: “You have heard that it was said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy. But I say to you: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you” (Matt. 5:43-44).”
Now I’m going to explain how calling for a Crusade is contrary to this, and if you can already see it – or have already rejected it – please disregard the following paragraph. The idea that a Crusade of physical violence is justified is directly contrary to the document. You are failing – in my reading of your article – to distinguish between people and their ideas. This is *not* Catholic. If I may repeat once more, you advocate and idea which, according to these documents, cannot even be condoned by Catholics. Which as a reader of your blog for a while, I found disappointing. In addition, a Christian and a Catholic should be prepared to die for their beliefs – but never kill. It is said in Matthew 26:52 that those who live by the sword die by the sword, and also said that you should “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you”. For this reason, I say that you calling for a Crusade against “Shariists” is wrong, both of a moral level and on a theological/Christian level.
This is, what they call at the seminary, fraternal correction. I want you to get to the Truth, but I think that you’re missing the boat. Again, if I have misinterpreted, please let me know, and if I was not clear enough – or even if I got something totally wrong – please let me know.
Your Brother in Christ,
Braden
Allow me to quote in return:
In light of these writings, your statement that what I am saying is not in line with Catholic teaching rather overstates the case.
Frankly, had you bothered to state your case is a balanced or non-conclusory way, I would pay it more heed and replied at more length.
Hey, I was looking for the truth, and I am more than happy that you have presented a contrary opinion- when (if) we hammer it out, we should get to the right conclusion, right? I’m sorry for saying that you weren’t in line with Catholic teaching – there’s a lot of teaching to be had out there, and it’s always good to be more informed about the Truth.
Now I’m not sure – please correct me if I’m wrong – but I don’t think that we have met the criterion for just war doctrine.
Let me explain: I don’t think that all the options have been exhausted. To enter into a deeper dialogue with even a Satanist could yield more fruit than killing one. Is this solid evidence? Frankly, no. I’m not an expert theologian – these are sort of my musings, too.
But John, and this is an honest wonder, how do we reconcile
“Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them.”
And
“as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.”
To be honest, I don’t know, and I’m sorry again for having come across accusatory.
I just question the soundness of an argument that says those who teach ignorance or untruth or evil must die.
It is hard to tell tone over the internet. I thought it was accusatory; I was wrong. I apologize.
On to the substance of the debate: what the Catholic Church, and, I believe, all sober may weigh in the decision to go to war is the precious, infinitely precious, value of the human lives lost if we do not fight versus the precious, infinitely precious, value of the human lives lost if we do.
In a war where nothing is at stake but worldly money, prestige, or power, the Christian can safely denounce without fear of contradiction. I submit that it is impossible to be a follower of the Prince of Peace and advocate an aggressive war against the innocent. That is to the one extreme. On the other, is pacifism, and the notion that it is somehow morally superior to disarm before an enemy, break your unbloodied sword over your knee, and watch your sons slain, your daughters sold into slavery, your babies brains dashed out against the stones, your life and liberty trampled by a contemptuous foe. That is on the other extreme.
The balancing point of judgment comes, I believe, exactly where the Church sets it: war is permissible to defend and restore justice, and the public magistrates have not only a right, but a positive duty, a duty it is wrong to shirk, to draw the sword of war when prudence and justice demands it.
Let us examine the criteria seriatim:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation must be lasting, grave, and certain;
Question: did the attack on 9/11 inflict lasting damage? Was it grave? Was it a single and extraordinary event, or does the foe was face make, and carry out, repeated threats of similar magnitude (Tube bombings in England, train bombings in Spain, Embassies attacked in Libya, attacks on ships and aircraft, acts of piracy, massacres in Bombay, etc.)? Has the enemy credibly promised to obliterate the state of Israel as soon as means, preferably atomic, present themselves?
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
Question: on what grounds does one negotiate with a terrorist whose purpose in life is to kill himself in an explosion in the mere hope, the hope, of killing and maiming innocent Jewish bystanders? You cannot give him anything, since he desires only his 72 Virgins in paradise. You cannot threaten him with death, for he seeks death. You cannot abandon the Jews, or the Kurds, or the Copts to them without being yourself complicit in genocide.
What other mean exist when the enemy is not a nation state, has no fixed boundaries or borders, mingles with the civilian population, seeks only nonmilitary targets of symbolic value, maintains no embassy, and is bound neither by laws, nor conscience, nor conventions?
Name one other means of negotiation or beleaguer which could be used, aside from war, to end these attacks? Is there even one?
- there must be serious prospects of success;
Considering that this is perhaps the most imbalanced war in history, the most imbalanced imaginable, I would say the success is utterly certain the moment we declare war and we prosecute it sincerely. We are not dealing with Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, whose military forces were the largest and most technically advanced in the world. We are dealing with cells of irregulars, scatter, without central organization, more akin to a Mafia or Communist cell conspiracy than any real army. Far from making success impossible, what this does is make the war little more than an exaggerated police action, a matter for spies and informant rather than ground troops.
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
Here is the gravest temptation we face. I think the use of predator missiles and drones to bomb poorly defined targets may edge into this criterion. But I think that the use of drone assassination warfare is caused by the political consideration that the war has not been declared, is not popular, and that the normal means of prosecuting the war, the civilized methods and usages of war, have been denounced by a traitorous press and leftwing hysteria. If they were ignored, or, better yet, arrested as traitors, and the public microphones taken from their hands by the stern reprimand of public opinion, the temptation to continue the war by remote control without taking prisoners would be avoided.
The disorders in the Middle East caused by the so called Arab Spring were caused precisely because, far from making war on terrorist groups, our administration actively aided and encouraged them to overthrow the aging dictators who hitherto have ruled. So, here, clearly the disorders would be less if the war were prosecuted.
Do you have a rebuttal that any of these points are not met?
Let me circumvent one objection. Some people seem to think that if the enemy is not a nation state, a nation state cannot lawfully declare or make war against them. This stance has no argument in law or logic or history. The wars against Indian tribes, against pirates, against rogue elements during a civil war, all involve regular troops being sent against irregulars. The actions in Tripoly under the Jefferson Administration, and against the Russia operative and dupes during the Cold War, including various proxy wars, and Pompey’s wars against Mediterranean pirates, show that the West has always known how to fight against non-state actors.
And in any case, the state which house and train and fund these groups are known and well known, and for reasons of political cowardice and financial bankruptcy, we cannot declare war on them.
I would question the soundness of that argument as well, if there were actually anyone who had made that argument.
Do not waste your time and mine on straw men.
“What other mean exist when the enemy is not a nation state, has no fixed boundaries or borders, mingles with the civilian population, seeks only nonmilitary targets of symbolic value, maintains no embassy, and is bound neither by laws, nor conscience, nor conventions?”
I guess I would think that there are – education and dialogue. This is definitely up for debate as to what is an effective means of combating Shariism, and I don’t know if it’s possible or not. I’m inclined to believe that most people can be reasoned with, and all people do what they think is right. If there is truly, and I mean truly no way to reason with Shariists, then I would say that incarceration would still be a better way than to kill them.
I guess a question that I have in addition is to whether a war over ideas (Shariism V. Christianity) can be solved by violence? Is violence an effective way to deal with a violent and hateful idea? I don’t know.
Now I do have a strong disagreement with the last point you made, that being that it is a straw man argument that “those who teach ignorance or untruth or evil must die”
(I know it’s hard to judge tone on the internet, and for this I apologize. I mean this with sincerity, not sneering, and with honesty.)
This is my line of reasoning for the statement, and if you would please point out my flaw – I mean it – is that
A)Shariism is an idea (religion, way of life)
B) A Crusade is a War
C) War means the killing of other human beings
D) The reason for declaring a Crusade is to combat the idea of Shariism
E) If we were to declare a Crusade on Shariism, we would be declaring war on/over an idea
F) If we were to declare war on/over an idea, we would be killing those who teach/follow/promote shariism.
G) This is killing others who have different ideas than us – rephrased a little differently, and I don’t see much of a difference in the phrasing: ” those who teach ignorance or untruth or evil must die” is the idea that is promoted by declaring a Crusade on Shariism
Now I beg of you to please find my error in reasoning here. But if there is not, I see two possible outcomes:
1) We deny the humanity of those who hold different ideas than us
2) We kill those who hold different ideas than us.
Again, I apologize, I don’t mean this to come across as accusatory, but I am confident that you will understand my concern that you *may* be advocating the killing of those who hold different ideas than us as Catholics. Again, if I have made any errors in my reasoning, please, please let me know, because I do not wish to be in error.
Thank you
Braden
Allow me to ask a question in return.
If the Just War Theory is not irrational, then there must be such a thing as a just war. In other words, there must be certain conditions, which, if met, make the conduct of such a war morally licit.
One of the conditions is that war is a last resort, once all other reasonable options have been tried and failed.
Obviously, if diplomacy could prevent war, it should be used. Logically, if there is no point after which diplomacy is not proved futile, then the Just War theory is irrational.
What is that point? What is your standard for judging when it is that an attacking man, or an attacking movement, or an attacking nation, demonstrates no willingness to negotiate? If not at that point, then at what point is diplomacy futile?
When is what you incorrectly call “education” no longer a reasonable option?
What conditions must be met such that a reasonable public magistrate can decide that further negotiation is futile, and his decision is moral and right? If you answer ‘never’, then your conclusion logically must be that the Just War Theory is false.
The brunt of your objections were answered in the original post, so rather than repeating myself, I suggest merely that you reread what I wrote previously: the idea of a war against an idea has little or nothing to do with what I wrote, since I was recommending a Crusade, which is a war in defense of Christendom against specific men with a specific goal. What the idea is that motivates these men is immaterial except to the degree that it influences tactics and strategy.
On the other hand, if you wish to condemn World War Two for being against the idea of Fascism, and the Cold War being against the idea of Communism, then you either would be defining all wars as what you wrongly call a crusade, and your definition becomes meaningless; or else you would be calling wars which we won as impossible to win, which would open your argument to an accusation of frivolity.
In any case, it ill behooves me to answer in more detail, or at all, until and unless you prove yourself able to answer the question I ask above reasonably. What does an enemy have to do for a reasonable magistrate to conclude, with no violation of the moral law, that further negotiation is futile?
War is generally against those who hold different ideas than ourselves. After all, if the enemy held the exact same ideas as ourselves, about what would we be fighting?
In this case, the hostile idea says “We have the right to dominate all those who disagree with us, and kill all those dissidents who resist domination.” This is why the war is self-defensive.
What alternative do you propose? If we submit to Islam, then the Muslims will conquer us, add our strength to their own, and continue their aggressions with our resources now under their control.
Oh, and killing a foe is not “denying his humanity.” Since we have as yet met no sapient aliens, nor have we fought full-scale wars against even Earthly nonhuman sapients, every war that humans have fought has been against other humans.