Whiskey, Porn, and Cheeseburgers
stigandnasty919 is pleased that I salute the priests of Islam who deny their terrorist coreligionist a proper Islamic burial. He writes:
I confess I do not recall you ever voicing this criticism to me. Nor do I recall ever having written anything that would justify your conclusion.
On the other hand, it depends on what we mean by "taring all Muslims with the same brush." I am not one of those who says Islam is a religion of peace. I am not one who believes Islam is being hijacked by the Islamic Fascists among them, or, if it is being hijacked, I have yet to see a Todd Beamer rise up from his seat.
So to a degree perhaps I am indeed guilty of this, because I do indeed expect the followers of Islam to be loyal (if only tacitly) to the principles of that violent, simple, manly religion. (I also expect these infidels to be more pious than we are: I do not pray my rosary every day, much less pray five times a day, which is a norm in the Dar el-Islam.)
To a degree. I am sure there are peaceful Mohammedans, willing and able to coexist in peace with other religions.
I am also sure that those peaceful Muslims, if they speak out, run the risk of being murdered, them and their family, by the Jihadists.
But–
I am also sure those peaceful Mohammedans will make absolutely no difference whatsoever to how the Terror War plays itself out, and will make absolutely no difference whatsoever to the ultimate fate of their religion in world history.
They don’t matter. They don’t mean anything.
Consider the case of the silent majority of peaceful Germans in the 1930’s, or the silent majority of peaceful Russians during the 1950’s, or the silent majority of peaceful Colonists during the American Revolution.
About one third of the British colonists in the New World favored independence; about a third were loyal to the British Crown; a third were inert and neutral. The numbers of men who made history in the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or the Glorious Revolution in England, were far, far less than one third.
Silent majorities simply don’t matter.
This news report is a cheerful sign, but it is small, and, in terms of world events, meaningless. Only if the silent majority of the Dar el-Islam broke its silence and gave a full throated roar of disapproval, nay, hatred, horror, and disgust at the actions of the terrorists would they no longer provide cover for the terrorists.
But why should they? The secular, cynical, drug-taking, money-grubbing, perversion-loving culture of death that the West has become gives the faithful sons of the Prophet no reason to love it. Mars has never, before the modern age, failed to reward Islam each time Islam carried their Korans and crooked swords to every point of the compass. Unlike Christianity, which spread through the Roman Empire by peace, Islam historically has always spread by war.
Christendom, the culture of life that the West at one time was, also has given Islam no reason to love her. We have been deadly enemies since the hour Gabriel visited the Prophet, peace be upon him, and told him to go forth conquering and to conquer.
What happened in Christendom is that shipwreck of Christianity known as the Reformation (or, if you prefer, the liberation of true primitive religion from corrupt and materialistic Popery–take your pick) led to endless and horrific wars, wars as irrational as only religious crusades can be, where the goal is neither land nor honor nor self-preservation nor loot, but the conversion of souls. Wars without worldly goals cannot be stopped for worldly reasons.
These wars exhausted Europe. After centuries of horror, Christendom turned with disgust away from the Augustinian idea, until then unchallenged, that conversion by swordpoint was virtuous, and dogmatic conformity a proper exercise of the power of the truncheon of the bailiff. The toleration of dissent slowly became the norm, and then, by the time of the Enlightenment, became enshrined as a sacred political right.
The Islamic world has never lost a religious war, and does not, and realistically will not, renounce the sword as an instrument of conversion.
(The closest Islam ever came to losing a religious war was the humiliating defeat of Egypt in the Six Days War with Israel, and even there, the losers were not converted by the sword to Judaism. No Israeli Inquisition sought to destroy conversos with faggot and stake.)
So two parties fight. Islam is willing to use force to conform Christians to Islamic rules and norms, and to kill dissenters or heretics; but Christians are not willing to use force to conform Islamics to Christians rules and norms. Who will eventually win? Other factors might, by the grace of God, grant victory to us, but this factor is on a ratchet, and it favors the enemy.
(I leave aside the secular humanist segment of the Western world: their opinions and policies will make no difference whatsoever in the conflict. They cannot even bring themselves to recognize that a conflict exists. No one in his right mind would depart from even a deathcult heresy like Jihadism to join a deathcult heresy like hedonist socialist pro-abortionist pro-euthanasia secular humanism.)
So, your criticism, even if you never voiced it, is not entirely wrong. I do assume, until proven otherwise, that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are more likely to provide tacit or active support for the Jihadists than to provide support for the West. Admirable virtues like patriotism and religious zeal should, if nothing else, urge them to support the Jihad, even if it is only by dragging their feet in opposing it.
We have no right to claim that they should be loyal to us. Buying petrol and selling them whiskey, porn, and cheeseburgers is not a groundwork for making a moralistic claim that they owe us sympathy and support.
Maybe some few do indeed recoil from the dark deeds of their co-religionists. Fewer still speak out. Will they recoil so far that they would march shoulder-to-shoulder with us and against the Jihad? So far, I have not been deafened with the clamor of anti-Terrorists protests from the mainstream of Islam. Some few brave leaders and scholars of that religion indeed have denounced them. Many Islamic governments have aided the West against the terrorist cells among them. This is not nothing! But it is not enough to turn the tide.
I also do not expect, and indeed think it foolish to expect, Mohammedans living in the West to place loyalty to the West above their loyalty to God and their homelands.
I recoil in disgust at the foul-mouthed breast-flaunting harlot of Babylon our culture has become, with the blood and meat-bits of aborted infants steaming in her drinking horn. I revile our current culture, and I am a member of a denomination that does not disapprove of wine-bibbing, dog-fights, movie shows, or gambling. Catholics are not Puritans. And I am a man of the West, I would support this civilization no matter how bad it became, because it is my mother and I love her. So I cannot imagine what we look like to Puritans from an alien culture, cowed by our military supremacy, and envious of our unparalleled, plutonian wealth, and science-fictional super-technology, whose fathers for over a millennium have been our deadly foes.
And we smell of weakness and fear. Whenever they riot, we pay them a Danegeld. But these are Danes who do not want gold, but souls.
The silent majority of Mohammedans are not Jihadists. But why should they be more loyal to the Whoremasters of Babylon than to the Terror-Masters of Mecca?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
