The post in
which I sadly stumble my way from a position of support for open immigration,
despite Islam, to a position that has to admit defeat in the face of Paris
reality.
The
Paris massacre has changed the way I think. And not just me: I’ve read many
analyses of how the attitude left in Europe on this latest atrocity, compared
to the Charlie Hebdo killings, is changed. Albeit the latter section of this
post clings to an alternative view, the grip is tenuous.
I
said in this earlier
post,
the answer to the violence and rights abuses within religions such as Islam, is
individualism (and classical liberalism [reason]). But Islam would kill every
individual before its barbaric verses are finally thrown onto the evil scrap
heap of what should be a long gone mysticism, so though that is the solution
long term, it won’t be in the lifetime of anyone reading this.
Which
is a problem, because it also won’t be without millions more – no hyperbole –
barbaric deaths.
The
free, peaceable and pluralistic society can only exist where those individuals
it consists of, and thus their belief systems, have as their central tenet, do
no harm. As a libertarian I believe individuals should be able to do
whatever they want, ingest whatever they want, determine the means of their own
death, et al, so long as the framework is always within voluntary consent, and
they do no harm. Thus after Paris, unfortunately, per my
questioning
of Anthony Green, Muslim Association of Canterbury, I have to admit reality,
finally, that Islam IS harm. Islam at a fundamental level is encoded to harm
within the very text of it. Even the oft touted notion that we have nothing to
fear from a moderate Islam – and we don’t - admits within its own terms that a
radical, harmful Islam co-exists in that religion and is inseparable – per some
of my reading, the following of this fundamental interpretation is anywhere
upwards of 15% of Muslims, a huge part of the world population.
So
Islam, by logic, cannot exist in its current form, if we are to keep our West
free and peaceful. By ‘current form’ I mean Islam needs a reformation to take
the weaponry and hate away from all those ghastly men, and the suicide belts
from their veiled women dying for their right to have no rights. While
acknowledging this cannot, and will not happen because to question the central
tenets of the faith (based on its script of psychosis) is apostasy, punishable
under Sharia by death – and there are plenty of deluded, violent young men
willing to carry that sentence out.
There’s
a word I’ve not read once in any article on the Paris slaughter: Sharia.
For
those of us who (have) promoted a moderate Islam, I think we were closing our
minds, or certainly our eyes, to Sharia (trigger
warning, that link is to a 19 year woman being stoned by a thuggery of old Islamic guys – misogyny,
‘real’ misogyny, rules in Islam - I don’t recommend you go there, like the
religion, it’s sick, but I will, regardless, prove my point by providing the
link [hattip SOLO] If you’re
interested, the victim was ‘accused’ of a premarital affair.)
My
mentioning of logic was a deliberate one, because that’s where this post
traverses to the Left Politick which has defeated reason to become the West’s
ruling ethic.
Previously
I’ve posted in this
blog
on the many contradictions of the Left which make the civilised society
impossible. Progressives who protest our spy agencies, while happily watching
the rights to privacy and being left alone of the productive sacrificed to the
almost unlimited powers of a tax surveillance state rivalling the intrusive
state of the Soviets, et al, now the tax surveillance state has gone global. A
tax surveillance state which exists to extend the dominion of the state, by
growing dependence to it. When confronted with the tax take, Leftists fall over
themselves running away from their Clayton’s angst over an individual’s privacy
or right to be left alone by the state, to the extent of it being
schizophrenic.
Chris
Trotter’s blog post of this week shows how the Left are in denial on the
evident harm which is integral to Islam. His ode to love all people despite
#Paris ends as follows:
We are leftists because, at the very core of our
values, lies an unshakeable belief in the worth of every human-being, and in
the right of every human-being to live his or her life free from exploitation
and violence.
Apart
from the usual deluded Left arrogance that they are better than all of us who
aren’t Leftists, no, Chris, as I said in my comment which never made it past
your moderation – and such wilful blindness is part of the psychosis diagnosis
– that sentence describes individualism, and it is the a priori claim Leftists
can never make. Read my blog. Better, read your own blog Chris – remember you
wanting our IRD to ‘squeeze
taxpayers until their pips squeak’? How is that respecting the right of a life
to be free from exploitation and violence? Leftism exists totally on the sacrifice of
the individual to the group. That’s why we have the vicious tax surveillance
states that now stalk and stake out our private lives in the West. Left
politics is NOT about the individual, it is about the collective; it is not
about the thinking, passionate, unique person that is you, it’s about how your
identity with a group (gender, race) determines you. The Left, as with the
Christians, and the Moslems, have turned over volition, thus their
responsibility, to an Other – the State, Christ, Allah. And on that, twentieth
century history shows that atrocity becomes quickly common-place, as
individuals were sacrificed en-masse to the good of the mob (volk, father-land
– name your collective poison).
The
proof Leftists don’t believe in the right
of every human-being to live his or her life free from exploitation and
violence is every Leftist Gulag and slaughter pit in history, every IRD
audit today, and even – in the minutiae – every public shaming by the identity
politick crowd on Twitter.
This
Leftist denial would be funny if it weren’t so serious, with its repercussions
from the collapse of free markets decades ago to central banked, command
cronyism which has destroyed capitalism, denying us all freedom and prosperity;
to the brand of multiculturalism which has viewed the superstitious beliefs born
of fairy tales and handed down fantasy, too often birthed in bloodshed and
violence, as equally good to the West which reasoned itself from our
Enlightenment to be the best civilisation humans have made for themselves,
ever. This Left view of multiculturalism is not what Montesquieu, the father of
multiculturalism, intended: while Montesquieu professed a delight in cultural
diversity, he always held that while all cultures might be equally valuable, they
were not equally good, thus underlying any celebration of cultural
diversity, there was (is) a justice that is an ‘eternal flame’.
Leftists
on my Twitter TL were almost universal in condemning Charlie Hebdo after that
initial attack on France: the line went those murdered in their offices brought
it on themselves with their satire; freedom of speech be damned. That was bad
enough, on top of the earlier cartoon fiasco, but to see the same trotted out
on the murder of diners and fun lovers simply going about their weekend, with
still no ownership that it is Islam itself which is the problem, is a delusion
too far.
Even
on RNZ this morning Toby Maguire
and Toby Morris continue to brow beat us this daily butchery is not about a
moderate ‘Islam’:
It is true that IS members are Muslims, but they are
not typical Muslims. These extremist Sunni Islamists, who rely upon hardline
and selective interpretations of Islamic scripture, have killed many more
Muslims than non-Muslims.
Yes,
I know, one tribe of Islam has killed more of the other tribes of Islam than
it has murdered ‘the rest’ of us, however, it doesn’t change the fact this is about Islam, and a refusal
to recognise reason and individualism, and do no harm, as the highest values.
Possibly
the most remarkable symptom of this psychosis the West has fallen in is
exhibited in the imponderably supportive attitude to Islam of fourth wave
(Marxist/identity) feminism, which excoriates middle age white men for offering
opinions, while proffering the victim blaming nonsense that the violence of Islam being
visited on the West is the fault of the West, not embedded in the text of Islam. Joe Hildebrand covers this well:
The usual excuses for terrorism are made. That it’s the West’s fault for
invading Iraq, even though 9/11 took place a year and a half before the
invasion. That it’s the West’s fault for supporting Israel, even though less
than a year ago France infuriated Israel by voting to recognise the Palestinian
state. That it’s caused by Islamophobia, even though the same people tell us
that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.
Sadly for the vast majority of horrified and peace-loving Muslims, their
spiritual leader has fallen precisely into this trap, as have countless
hand-wringing white and godless commentators.
In an official written statement, the Grand
Mufti of Australia and the National Imams Council sheeted the blame [for Paris]
not onto extremism but instead what Western society has done to cause it.
“These recent
incidents highlight the fact that current strategies to deal with the threat of
terrorism are not working,” the statement said. “It is therefore imperative
that all causative factors such as racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms
through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention
must be comprehensively addressed.”
Far from
condemning the terrorists, it appeared to condemn the nation for not bending to
their will.
This kind of
mass-level victim blaming would never be tolerated for any other crime. Imagine suggesting that we should combat
domestic violence by looking at what women had done to provoke it. Imagine
addressing the spate of coward punches by telling would-be victims to change
their behaviour. The outcry would be deafening, and rightly so.
Fourth
wave feminism’s construct of rape culture is used to tar every male with the
same hideous brush, and they want to reverse the
burden of proof for men, and the right to silence, yet they turn this blind
eye to an insane and offensive idea-set that not only treats women like cattle,
but which is slaughtering innocents on the manufacturing scale we reached in
the worst period fighting statism in the twentieth century, and is only trying
to outdo that scale by being more repulsively imaginative.
No
sorry, it’s worse than that.
Suggest
that a woman is raped because of how she is dressed, and as Chrissie Hynde found
out,
rightly, you will be persecuted mercilessly by this ruthless tribe of partisans,
as Hynde’s was, and yet at the same time identity feminism employs this same
logic – illogically - on behalf of Islam and thus excuses it while blaming the
victims: it’s not Islam’s fault the fun loving innocents of Paris were murdered,
they – the West - drove these desperate, dispossessed, alienated Muslims to do
it: sheer victim blaming. (And this because Marxist feminism always gets its
Marxist orthodoxy around the class war, that is, their hatred of the West, all
tits about arse with gender issues – but that’s another post into lunacy, and
I’ve written on it enough before.)
It’s
madness. How many ways can I say and prove insanity and madness on this scale?
For
the record these (Muslim) terrorists are not dispossessed and alienated youths,
in the most part. The majority of the terrorists who’ve operated in the West
are middle class and home-grown, such as Saturday’s Paris bomber
Ibrahim Abdeslam:
The ex-wife of a Paris bomber who killed himself in the Paris terrorist
attacks has called him jobless and lazy.
Ibrahim Abdeslam, 31, a trained electrician, blew himself up outside the
Comptoir Voltaire cafe in Paris' 11th district.
His wife of two years, Niama, said the man did just one day of work
during their time together. The pair split in 2008.
Speaking from her home in Moleenbeek, Brussels, Naima, 36 said:
"His favourite activities were smoking weed and sleeping.
Well
trained, well educated, middle class; no alienated youth here, just a well-off
layabout before the psychosis of Islam gave his life the purpose of ending
everyone else’s. What a narcissistic tosser. But proof the code exists within
the Koran to turn a layabout like this into a heartless, ‘Godless’, killer.
More; of the supposed ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, per the Press: 'Abaaoud was described as a happy go lucky student who went to one of the best high schools in Brussels.' Nope; not dispossessed ... possessed, maybe, but by nothing supernatural, just common garden psychotic lunacy picked up from the literature.
Finally
Sunny Hundal
further puts to bed
the notion that ISIS’s attack in Paris has anything to do with Western foreign
policy, and thus dispenses this inane victim shaming:
It seems as though every atrocity committed against
the West by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is followed by
claims in the media that such attacks are the result of our military
action against them…
Claiming that terror attacks such as those that
shook Paris on Nov. 13, are a “blowback” isn’t just offensive to its (mainly
Muslim) victims—it misreads the very nature of ISIL. It amounts to an excusal
of the terrorist group’s intentions, as if to say that ISIL would not have done
any of this if the US, UK, France, and company weren’t so meddlesome. This is a
convenient tale, which is told to push a non-interventionist foreign policy,
but it doesn’t reflect reality…
ISIL’s designs are not a reaction to imperialism. They are a mimicry of
it.
We can disagree over the extent to which US foreign policy caused the
initial chaos that led to ISIL. We can even disagree on what is the best way to
confront Islamic State (I favor an Arab-led force, as opposed to more Western boots on the ground). But there should be
no confusion about ISIL’s ambitions. The ultimate aim, according to its own
statements and publications, is global conquest through war. The idea that we
can avoid conflict if we mind our own business is utterly naive.
So
the change of tack for me, to get this back on track. I always knew Islam, like
Christianity, was gullible children believing in idiot fantasy, but unlike
Christianity, anymore, Islam is not benign to freedom, certainly for the poor
sod devotees sucked into its music-less, joyless vacuum, but also,
unfortunately, for the rest of us whom just want to be left alone to pursue our
rational happiness peacefully – which was our entitlement born of the
Enlightenment, before it was squandered by the beret wearing brigade.
What
are the implications of these thoughts on my notions of the need for open
immigration? I suspect it is, as Lindsay Perigo has said – read my final paragraph
– to ignore context.
So
I’ll be truthful: yes, I do believe in open immigration, but in context, vis a vis, not of a religion that does harm.
… Although
as a last ditch sop to a previous position I clung so long to, I’ll balance
this piece (for now) and admit there is an alternative viewpoint, which I held
until this weekend, and would’ve loved to into the future, that goes like
this
– it’s the ‘sell them coke, don’t drop bombs’ argument. For example, of Cuban
refugees to the US:
With the KKK at their head, some people rejected these refugees, labeling them
communists. One government official even
claimed that “85 percent of the refugees are convicts, robbers, murderers,
homosexuals, and prostitutes.” Anti-immigration sentiment ran high, and it
politically hurt then-President Jimmy Carter.
Since then, though, the thieving gay communist prostitutes have done
pretty well for themselves: Today there are approximately 2 million Cuban
Americans. They are a well-integrated part of American life. They
overwhelmingly aren’t communists or any of the rest. Which shouldn’t be so
surprising: They left because of
communism. And they came here because of economic opportunity, which comes from
capitalism.
The
trouble is Islam is a whole order of irrationality and psychosis beyond even
communism. It’s the difference between the reason and humanism of a secular
outlook, over the null-mind, unthinking faith-based savagery of a religious
one. At least the communists were scientific – one might say to a fault. (And not
to ignore that in the West Progressives are moving to ban coke sales as well.)
So
I find my closing position is not confused. I hope you’ve noticed this blog is
not about essaying; it’s simply the workings of my mind spewed out in real
time. I know where my mind is, helped in no small part by there’s something
else I hate out of all this.
What
terrorism always does, is grow the size and intrusive power of the State into
our lives. Look at France right now where Hollande is looking to re-write their
constitution to grant his office more powers – and perhaps what choice does he
have? For that, I hate, HATE, every terrorist, Muslim or otherwise. You bet I
do. Even here in little’ol New Zealand
my life is affected where it matters – in the day to day details. Thanks to MP Judith
Collins’ monstrosity of invasive bureaucracy, namely the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act,
after writing this piece I will be making an expensive (for my client) three hour
round trip to Ashburton to have my independent trustee’s signature witnessed by
a solicitor to make sure I’m who I say I am and not some Islamic numpty financing terrorism (for a
farm purchase when I have no beneficial interest in the property my client is
buying). Fucking ludicrous. Terror has won the day via the huge states growing in the West; states whose economic activity now reaches half of all activity in our command economies.
Balance
and counter-balance. Can’t resist: here’s the opposing, opposing view. Up until now I have been one of
Lindsay Perigo’s ‘useful idiots’ regarding pushing open immigration, without
context.
Paris
changes everything. I’m just a slow learner. This worm has turned, I hate to
say.
Footnote – Heart / Mind Dichotomy:
On
the record: I have pity and empathy for the millions of innocent Syrians trying
to escape yet another hell on earth created by religion – the only thing
religion is guaranteed to do. If I lived there I’d do anything to get my family
out. This is an horrendous catastrophe: I’m not hiding any of that.
I have no solutions to their dreadful plight - and no, we can't let them drown in the Mediterranean.
Two
things I hope to see in my lifetime are the first manned mission to Mars:
thanks to Western science, despite the West’s continual stumble into the abyss,
a real possibility. Another is to read of the death of the last ISIS, Al Qaeda,
Taliban, et al, psychopath. This will not happen.
"... yet another hell on earth created by religion..."
ReplyDeleteI'm sick of pointing out that the problem is one religion which clearly states it tolerates no rival, has a political solution for everything and will create its paradise at the point of a gun. The problem is Islam. I çare about the shambles it creates because it poisons existing tolerant cultures anywhere it goes and becomes big enough to flex its muscles.
3:16
Hi Mark
ReplyDeleteIt takes courage to change views that were once sincerely held. I deeply respect that. Obviously I'm delighted that we are moving closer to the same page on this issue in particular, albeit like everyone I'm distressed at the reasons behind it.
I have some good news. You wrote: "The free, peaceable and pluralistic society can only exist where those individuals it consists of, and thus their belief systems, have as their central tenet, do no harm."
'Do no harm' is the minimum expectation we must have of each other as individuals, and the absolute limitation we must place upon the collective actions of the State.
Christians however are encouraged to go one step beyond the passive 'do no harm' and to engage in proactively doing good for our neighbour:
"As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men." Galatians 6:10.
Proactively 'doing good' for our neighbour without expectation of reward has produced the kind of culture we enjoy daily throughout the Western world and that we so often take for granted. Hopefully after Paris, not any more.
I don’t know what to believe. Do you read Hornberger http://fff.org/2015/11/17/here-they-go-again/
ReplyDeleteHe does a good job of expressing the view that terrorism is a response to actions by the west. Its all very well to say that 911 took place a year and a half before US invaded Iraq – the US was meddling in the middle east well before 911.
Humans are similar the world over. I spent three years in the middle east, I was living in Pakistan till recently and I am currently in Viet Nam. The people you meet every day, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, almost all would subscribe to Galatians 6:10. America is Viet Nam's biggest trading partner. Think about that.
I thought too that Islam is the problem. But thinking about what Hornberger says (and I don't agree with all of it but the idea of generating conflict overseas to maintain power at home is not new) led me to wonder whether that line of thought was helpful.
We have difficulty understanding the motivation for terrorism. What was gained by the Paris attacks? But we have to demystify the problem before we can solve it. In the history of human conflict the range of motivations is surprisingly small. Using brainwashed suicide soldiers is not a new technique, nor is using guerrilla techniques when confronted with an enemy with greater firepower. I don’t think treating Islam as the enemy will get us anywhere. Islam is the tool used by our enemy. I think we need to look for simple motivations for this war and accept the possibility that ours were not always the most honourable.
David, after the Paris atrocities, Obama talked about it being 'an attack on the values we all share' - but we don't all share the values of liberal western pluralistic democracies do we?
DeleteSaudi Arabia doesn't share those values, Pakistan doesn't share those values, Iran doesn't share those values.
Sadly not all subscribe to Galatians 6:10, and believing they do is a delusion unique to the liberal western mind.
We need to get over ourselves, and start to view the world as it is, and not as we would like it to be.
Obama believes that denying present reality and maintaining the progressive liberal narrative will eventually create a new reality.
Would you stake your grandchildren's future on that expectation?
Brendan, I agree Saudi Arabia etc. don't share those values. I believe most people do. The problem is that how individuals think and behave and how groups think and behave is different. When I was working in Cambodia it was a delight to see how the people I worked with had overcome and forgiven the atrocities of only a few years past - and alarming at the same time to think it was probably people just like them that were committing the atrocities. A bit like grashoppers and locusts maybe. Having postulated that grashoppers only become locusts as a result of external stimulus, I don't deny that we have to address the problem of the locusts. But to do so we do need to understand the motivation.
DeleteWe can even disagree on what is the best way to confront Islamic State
ReplyDeleteNope- we can just nuke them and the rest of the middle east into gently glowing glass.
US Troop casualties: zero.
Maybe you can, but I don't think anyone from outside the region will. And you would still have Birmingham to contend with.
Delete" Islam IS harm. Islam at a fundamental level is encoded to harm within the very text of it."
ReplyDeleteYes, it is.
Anyway - **good on you**, Mark!
It takes *balls* to do what you have done and so big kudos to you!
As a little "gift" from me, here are several links to an *excellent* article by Dr. Bill Warner (appropriate name... ) called "Factual Persuasion" -
The introduction -
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Factual_Persuasion_-_The_Confusion_of_Islam
The next is about "Official Islam" - this is not the real Islam but the sanitised fairytale unicorns-flying-over-rainbows version that our PM, MPs and leftists believe -
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Factual_Persuasion_-_Official_Islam
And here is a link from the same article that refutes it -
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Factual_Persuasion_-_Refuting_Official_Islam
Cheers......
Great discussion above everyone. Thanks. I should be participating, but work overoad and stress just at the moment :)
ReplyDelete