So this time, London is the European city in the news with a terrorist attack. Once again, a lone nutter, acting on his own by using very simple means, has caused a nasty blood bath. From what we know so far, the attacker claims to have acted in the name of Islam. ISIS, in their usual desperate attempt to be seen as the most cruel game in town, has already claimed responsibility for the massacre. It is however highly questionable that links between the attacker and the psychopathic proto-state in the middle east really do exist.
So far, none of the self proclaimed Islamic terrorists in Europe in the last few years could be shown to have lived a virtuous Muslim life. The vast majority lived as ordinary criminals until they discovered Islamic terrorism. This makes their Islamic motivation look questionable. And yet they are claiming to have acted in the holy name of Islam. Needless to say that the vast majority of Muslims strongly disagrees with their assessment. But surprisingly, these holy nutters get support from an unexpected group of people.
Hardcore Islam haters are a diverse coalition, ranging from fundamentalist atheists to white supremacist nationalists. These people take every opportunity to point out that it is ISIS who gets Islam right, and that all moderate Muslims are mistaken. I have never been fully able to figure out what drives these Islamophobes. I suspect, their motivations are diverse. Some are certainly driven by a strange desire to hate. Others seem to be truth fundamentalists, who believe the truth has to have priority over everything else. They therefore find it difficult to tolerate moderate, but inconsistent ideologies.
Nevertheless, whatever motivates them, they are a problem. They are a problem, not because they are necessarily completely wrong, but because they only get it half right. I am the first to agree that fundamentalist Islam is a nasty ideology. I would even go further than that. Every fundamentalist ideology, which claims to a have knowledge of the one and only objective truth is potentially very dangerous. That is because most people have the assumption that truth matters. From there it is only a small step to assume that not only does truth matter, it also should have priority over everything else. Once that conclusion is reached, and someone thinks he knows exactly what the truth is, it is only a small step to approve of violence in the name of that truth.
Islamists certainly follow this logic to the end, which is why they are dangerous. Where most Islam haters, particularly the ones that are most vocal about it, get it completely wrong however is that they assume you can kill a religion like Islam all together. Some even seem to think that you can defeat it with weapons. This is a terrible, and very dangerous mistake.
Religions like Islam cannot be abolished with the sword. In fact it is likely that they cannot be abolished full stop. Especially European history shows that trying to fight religions with physical force is a disastrous strategy. The best warning example of pursuing such a strategy is the thirty year war from 1618 to 1648, in which Protestants and Catholics fought over who had the correct faith. This war never saw a winner. It only ended because so many people had been killed that there were not many left to fight. An absolutely disastrous outcome.
Radical ideologies only get stronger in physical fights. That is because once human lives have been sacrificed for the truth, it becomes even harder to abandon it, as that means to acknowledge that all the sacrifices were for nothing. Another terrible effect of this strategy is that critiques are silenced. Most people will demand that you pick sides. Either you are with us or you are with them. Therefore, criticism becomes treason.
A much more fruitful approach to tame the dangers of religion was adopted after the 30 year war. It was simply agreed that there should be some tolerance towards other faiths. This allowed room for moderate positions to be hearer. It is precisely this support for moderate positions that in the end tamed Christianity. And no matter what people say, any Religion is up for interpretation, including Islam. It does not matter what the Quran or Bible says. Everything can be interpreted to mean something else. And we can indeed find a lot of interpretation of holy texts in every religion. Islam is no exception. A lot of moderate interpretations of the Quran already exist.
As a result of this strategy, Christianity in Europe has shrunk down to a fairly harmless and small fellowship. If it was not for recent immigrants from places like Africa, the numbers of true believers in a country like the UK would hardly be more than the numbers of a small cult. That is how it is done.
The Islam haters however are boycotting this strategy. They insist that Islam as a whole cannot be moderate and must therefore be fought all together. By doing that, they effectively become useful idiots for groups like ISIS and al Qaida who preach the exact same interpretation of Islam. And they sure appreciate the immense support they are getting from the Islamophobes. That is why Islam haters are part of the problem.
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“ranging from fundamentalist atheists to white supremacist nationalists”
You forgot to mention ex-Muslims who suffer under the tyranny of their former faith. Is Ayaan Hirsi Ali a “white supremacist”?
Please watch this clip to understand what happens when Muslims try to leave their faith (the punishment of death was proscribed by Mohammed himself in case you weren’t aware):
Can you please define exactly what you mean by an Islamophobe?
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I did not mean to give a complete list of Islam haters. It is a colourful crowd.
I think I have said who I think is an Islamophobe. But I am happy to repeat it here. An Islamophobe is someone who thinks that Islam in all it shapes and forms is unacceptable. That is because these people think there is only really one interpretation of it, and that is the interpretation of radical Islamists.
Not only are they factually wrong, as there are many moderate Muslims, even libertarian Muslims. They are de facto supporting the narrative of ISIS and co. And that is a problem.
But you somehow seem to think that I like Islam. I don’t, and I said so very clearly. It is precisely because I think Islam is potentially dangerous that we need to support the moderates and not stab them in the back, by insisting that they are wrong and ISIS is right. That is the only way to get rid of the Islamists.
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A large majority of Muslims in Pakistan favour the death penalty for critics of Islam (Pew research), many more favour lesser punishment. Where is this moderate majority exactly? You should study this subject properly before you write any more about it.
I never suggested that you like Islam, I didn’t even hint at that. You on the other hand accused me of being a “useful idiot” of ISIS just because I don’t believe Islam can be reformed (I explained exactly why). That’s quite a claim if you think about it. What I do think is that you do not understand much about the religion and that you are ignorant of the reality of what goes on in Muslim majority countries.
You have slandered a lot of very brave people who live their lives under constant threat of death simply for stating what they believe to be true. How is it wrong to hate a religion that calls for your murder?
In truth there is little the “Islamists” enjoy more than hearing non-Muslims irrationally attacking/slandering other non-Muslims who dare to criticize Islam. “Useful idiots” indeed, paving the way for de-facto blasphemy laws, later to be followed by the real thing. Don’t worry, of course you will not be in any danger from the “Islamists”, because you are the one making it easy for the next stage.
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All the intolerance you are seeing in the Islamic world against non-believers was once true for the christian world as well. There are still leftovers of blasphemy laws in many western countries, including Germany and Ireland. Why has Christianity lost its aggressiveness in its old home base? Because the moderate christians have won, who preach tolerance and not taking the bible literally.
There are many such forces in the Muslim world as well. In fact it is often Muslims who are fighting the likes of ISIS. And the Islamic world was already much more tolerant in the past. One of the main reasons the moderates have lost in the last few decades is, that the Islamists could spin the narrative that the west has declared war on Islam. Therefore, not supporting the Islamists is treason. It is the same reason, why you could not play a Wagner opera in London during WW2. That is why the moderates have really lost, since the west declared its war on terror after 911.
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Christianity became tolerant in large part because that was in fact the message that Jesus himself preached. During the reformation the ordinary Christians were for the first time able to understand the bible. A period of real craziness ensued because there is much that is contradictory between the old and the new testament. However in the long run the peaceful message of Jesus won the day, paving the way for the enlightenment and for real progress to begin.
Today the same is happening in the Islamic world, especially thanks to the publication of the Koran and Hadiths etc. on the internet. However instead of discovering a peaceful tolerant man at the heart of their religion, Muslims are discovering a brutal warlord who did all those things in the other comment I made here (which I noticed you didn’t respond to). A man who called for holy war against the disbelievers, who called for the jizya tax to be levied on people of the book (only once they were sufficiently “subdued” after the fighting).
You are making the same predictable error that so many in the West are making, assuming that Islam and Christianity are just 2 similar religions, that will follow the same path. Not only are they NOT the same, they are also not following the same path, in fact right before our eyes they are following a very different path. Everywhere in the Islamic world, the Islamic states (and yes they are all Islamic states), are becoming more brutal and extreme towards those who criticize Islam. This is the true Islamic reformation. The OIC is pressuring the UN to enact a worldwide blasphemy law as well. There are reasons for all this that cannot be brushed aside by wishful thinking.
Islam is set to become the most followed religion in the world before long. If nothing changes, if the West does not wake up in time, it will become the most followed religion in the West as well and eventually replace our current democratic way of life. Islam is not just a religion you see it is also a political ideology, a blueprint for a totalitarian dictatorship. When it does take over you and I will no longer be able to have conversations like this, because the religious police will be first battering my door down (later they will come for you as well just as Pastor Niemoller warned us). Those who dare to speak out against Islam are the canaries in the coal mine, you should not slander them, they are the bravest among us.
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You are not going to get rid of Islam any time soon, if ever. But if you want to get rid of Islam, you have to support the moderates. Absolute, one must speak out agains the radicals. Particularly, we need to support freedom of speech. But you are not going to turn over 1 billion Muslims into atheists. Most of them will have to become moderate Muslims first.
As far as I am concerned, religions are invented by humans. And what is invented by humans can be changed by humans. Islam is absolutely up for interpretation. The proof for that is, that right now there are plenty of moderate Muslims, who are not calling to kill dissenters and who are very much condemning radical Islamists. If all of the over 1 billion Muslims believed that non-believers should die, we would probably be dead by now. But we are not dead, because most Muslims have no interest in killing dissenters. By saying that Islam itself is a problem, you are sending the message that moderate Muslims either need to become radicals or stop being Muslims altogether. You are essentially declaring a war on Islam itself. If those are the choices, a lot of Muslims will become more radical, because you cannot ask people to give up their core believes.
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I think you’re proving Nico’s point.
It’s true that in later years Mohammed was a brutally effective Warlord. But there is the period before that, where he was fairly turn the other cheek. There is a good theological argument to say that the haditha about war should be confined to war, and the much more fluffy hadithas (like the one about Mohammed and the Jewish woman who threw rubbish over him every day) are the examples you should live by in the west.
Seeing as ISIS/extreme Salafist Islamic ideology explicitly states that they want to destroy the grey area where most Muslims in the west live between strict interpretations of Islamic theology and wider Western civilization, it seems stupid to do their work for them. That’s not to say that blasphemy laws should be supported, or that Islamaphobia is thrown out to stop legitimate criticism of extreme versions Islam, and Islamic culture.
I’m also suspicious of future demographic certainties about Islam, because they leave out things like the current exodus of Africans from Islam (google it) because of things like cultures which have centures of tradition based around music and dance, don’t take kindly to interpretations of religion which ban these. Much in the same way that the excesses of the Puritians (like banning Christmas) in the UK lead to Charles II being brought back in to rule.
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No “sigh” – the conduct of Mohammed and what he taught is clear (clearly bad). Nico seeks to deny objective reality – like someone who thinks he can run off a cliff and not fall, as long as he does not look down.
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It make’s sense to object ALL arrogant ideologies, picking on just one permits socialists to hit you with hate words like Islamophobia.
The world’s former two arrogant ideologies today are socialism followed by Islam. My objections to Socialism and Islam are they forbid thought beyond their own faith. They also operate on IN/OUT group hate (e.g. Jews, Men, White people, Conservatives, Management, success, gays, women)
‘SocLam’ is the enemy of wisdom.
Question: White political party has the largest LGBT Facebook community?
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“It does not matter what the Quran or Bible says.”
Religions would have no meaning or purpose if what is written within their holy texts “did not matter”. Sure, people can choose to live their lives in ways that are odds with their religion, but the incitements are there in black and white in the Koran for those who bother to read them.
Mohammed was a brutal warlord who had those who criticized him murdered in their beds, who enslaved the women and children widowed and orphaned by his victories, who had hundreds of defenceless prisoners beheaded after they surrendered. You cannot “reform” this religion without removing its central character and removing a large part of what is says in the Koran. A “reformed” Islam would be as meaningful as Christianity without Christ and the New Testament.
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“you are not going to turn over 1 billion Muslims into atheists”
I don’t advocate that should be a goal. What I do believe is that we must stop the growth of Islam before it becomes a majority faith in the West. A majority of people in all European countries want an end to immigration from Muslim countries. First we need to establish what we don’t have in Europe currently – the democratic will of the people and stop this immigration. Second we need to abolish the welfare state, which is a very large factor in the increasing presence of Islam in Europe (or at the very least stop child benefits for the unemployed and force Muslim women into work by time-limiting benefits). Both these goals ARE perfectly achievable, and the second is certainly in line with true libertarian principles. Third we need to defend freedom of speech properly not just by enforcing law and order – arresting violent attackers, but also most importantly by repealing all the de facto blasphemy laws that have crept into Europe (including the older ones you mentioned). Fourthly we need to arrest those who incite violence in a direct and credible manner, because that is our current law anyway.
All of which are completely achievable and this is all I am advocating. Over and over again I get these types of reactions from people who jump to conclusions about what I think. You see, I’m not really a “useful idiot” of ISIS at all, am I. Quite the reverse in fact.
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I agree with most of your policies, except the ban on immigration. To the contrary, we need to open the borders and let people in who are fleeing totalitarian regimes, including islamist regimes.
I did not write the articles to attack you. You yourself decided to be offended. Whether you are an Islam hater or not, is something you have to decide. But I stand by my opinion. Trying to fight Islam as a whole is madness. We need to support the moderates and show people that they can be a Muslim and part of a liberal order.
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Imagining that the migrants currently pouring into Europe are all refugees is a very dangerous and sad delusion. Have you not noticed that a majority of them are fit young men with money and smartphones in their pockets?? Do “refugees” really leave their women, children and old folk behind in life-threatening circumstances?? Of course they don’t. The genuine refugees are a small minority.
Thousands of hours of video footage of these migrants is now available on the internet, there is really no excuse for being ignorant of what is going on right now. There have been many attacks, many rapes and mass sexual assaults (e.g. in Cologne NYE 2015), many riots in Germany, an asylum centre was burned down by ungrateful migrants causing £1 million of property damage. Migrants routinely throw rocks at vehicles for no reason at all on the route into Calais.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/10/leaked-document-says-2000-men-allegedly-assaulted-1200-german-women-on-new-years-eve/?utm_term=.0a223107d488
If European societies were stable libertarian societies already, that allowed people to defend themselves properly, then open borders might not be so very dangerous. However we have all been raised to believe that whatever problems occur, the state will step in. We are not accustomed to defending ourselves. Yet, in the face of mass criminality in Calais, the French authorities do next to nothing. Finally they closed the camp after years of chaos only for new camps to spring up elsewhere. These migrants are not coming to Europe and starting work, they are relying on funds and European generosity. This is a weight that will bring European welfare states crashing down. Then what will happen? Widespread criminality in all likelihood, on a much larger scale than what is already happening, see this video:
Europe really needs to wake up. The result of the current open borders attitude will not be the emergence of some nice libertarian utopia, it will be a messy and probably very violent collapse of major European countries. A disaster of huge proportions is unfolding before our eyes. The EU will collapse and dictatorships and before long Islamic theocratic dictatorships will spring up like mushrooms in Europe, if we don’t change course. A demographic time bomb is ticking away all over Europe. Germany may be 10% Muslim today but this statistic belies the age difference between the indigenous population and recent migrants, and their birth rate. Also, when the 1-2 million refugees start claiming “the right to a family life” the numbers in Germany particularly could increase dramatically in a very short space of time.
We must protect the borders, our civilization is in very grave danger. This is not the time for ideological wishful thinking.
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Either they are refugees, or they are economic migrants. If they are the latter, then that is even better, because those are no problem at all. Real refugees, who leave their homes unplanned to flee violence, can be a real burden on society. Economic migrants on the other hand are a benefit for everyone.
A lot of the violence we have seen is because the government takes fundamental rights away from refugees. Like from the people in Calais, who have no right to seek a job or even rent a normal home. And then they are being blamed for what the government does to them. I am from Germany, I know what is going on there. And I am in the process of writing a blog post about it to debunk a lot of the propaganda we see in the alt right media.
And yes, absolutely, the welfare state is a huge problem. But there is nothing specifically problematic about the welfare state when it comes to immigration. The negative effects the welfare state has on immigration are the same that it has on the locals. There is no need to let the welfare state blackmail us into giving up our liberties to move and associate ourselves freely.
You are right, we do not live in a libertarian society. That is why we have the welfare state and that is why migration over state borders is in large parts outlawed. But that does not mean we should not advocate for a free society with open, or better no borders and no welfare state. If we can convince people to open the borders, we can also convince them to get rid of the welfare state. That also goes the other way around, if we cannot get the borders open, we also won’t get rid of the welfare state. To protect the latter is one of the two main reasons, why people support closed borders. The other is good old xenophobia.
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The problem with your ideologically driven viewpoint is that a great many of the people you are anxious to let in have a radically different ideology, and once they are in a majority then they will impose their ideology on everyone else including you. You also have a callous disregard for the lives that are being ruined by this obsession with open borders.
You are quick to blame the useless authorities for the violent conduct of many of these migrants, but its not the useless authorities who are perpetrating these violent acts, its those migrants. It is Juncker’s and Merkel’s fault that the migrants are in Europe, but its not their fault that they are mindlessly throwing rocks at vulnerable lorry drivers. Its the migrants’ fault, there is no reason or excuse for it at all, it is simply mindless. These migrants are not the productive workers you imagine them to be, they have a very low average IQ (see the Calais video for abundant evidence of this). That is clear enough from their mindless behaviour that you want to ignore. There have been street battles in Paris and Calais between different groups among them, another example of this. No doubt you also want to blame that on the West.
You seem to think that this migrant invasion will cause the collapse of current European states and lead to a libertarian utopia. Like the communists you consider the resulting body count to be a necessary price worth paying to bring your utopia about. Your thinking also seems to be in line with George Soros’s thinking in that respect, he also doesn’t care a fig about the lives that will be damaged and lost. This is a giant, reckless gamble and it will go horribly wrong for everyone if it is allowed to continue.
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I am worried about anyone imposing a lifestyle on me. The immigrants are competing with some very vicious locals in that respect. That is why I am so opposed to the state, which is the tool that these authoritarians use for their policies. And that is exactly why I don’t want the state to have the power to license people. Getting the state out of people licensing would be a huge success towards making it less powerful. Especially because then people can vote with their feed, which is the most effective vote there is. And in order to get to open borders, we would first need to convince people of the virtues of liberty anyway, which is what I am trying to do.
Your comment that I have a callous disregard for the people whose lives have been ruined by open borders is hilarious. What people are you talking about? You mean victims of crimes committed by immigrants? There are not that many, because most immigrants are not criminals. Those unfortunate few who have become victims of crimes committed by immigrants are just that, victims of crimes, not of open borders. Open borders says nothing about people being allowed to commit crimes. It is merely a policy of not interrupting people’s free association. Blaming open borders for crimes committed by individuals is like saying that the fact that we don’t lock up men between the age of 15 and 30, who are responsible for a major amount of violent crimes, is callous towards the victims of these men. It is all the fault of our crazy ‘letting young men run free’ policy. But if we were to lock up all young men it would be a huge violation of their rights. It would be collective punishment, which is unacceptable.
And it is exactly this collective punishment in the form of violently closed borders that is really causing a lot of victims. Tens of thousands of people have died unnecessarily in the last few years trying to flee shit holes and better their lives. And those are just the people that we can see and count. Lots more have died, staying and dying where they are, because they did not thing they had a chance to get in. Where is your empathy with those? Closed borders are one of the most destructive policies the state has to offer. It makes us all poorer and it strengthens totalitarian governments. Most importantly, it is a policy aimed against the weakest in the world, essentially kicking people who are already lying on the floor.
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“There are not that many, because most immigrants are not criminals”
You think that these people are all highly skilled? Many are not even literate. When you dismantle the welfare state there will be only one option for them. Already the crime rate is going up despite all the current generosity:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9229/germany-lawlessness
Maybe you can debunk all the claims in this article? When your authorities are clearly suppressing the facts you can’t even know what is going on. You clearly still haven’t watched the Calais Chaos video I linked you to where loads of mindless violence is inescapably going on right in front of your eyes. Lorries damaged, their drivers endangered, fences broken, this is CRIMINAL DAMAGE. Listen to the account of the Calais resident! You are also forgetting that they are entering Europe illegally which is obviously a crime. Think about it, all illegal immigrants are criminals by definition.
Anyway I am giving up on you and your blog at this point, you clearly are determined to ignore the reality.
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If you can read the German report that is the basis for the numbers in the piece you link to, it says that the fast majority of migrants do not commit crimes. A significant number of the crimes quoted were forging documents ( in connection with their migration) and dodging public transport fares. A lot of crimes are happening in the overcrowded detention centres, where the government forces the, in large parts, young men to lives in a small space together, while simultaneously prohibiting them from working. That is indeed a recipe for disaster and a direct result of the government people licensing.
The police always claims to be stretched to the limits. Unlike on a free market, you get rewarded with extra funding if you underperform as a state agency. And yes, the police does not a good job from protecting you from criminals, domestic or foreign.
There is certainly some political correctness in Germany that is influencing the media. German is not a good place for free speech at all. But for example, it is not political correct censorship if it is not allowed to share a picture wherever you like. Germany has very strong personality protection laws. This restriction applies to any photo of anyone.
As for the Calais situation. Why do you think these people are in a camp in Calais? There is only one reason for that. The government has declared them to be illegal. They are not allowed to live a normal live. Legalise them and the camp disappears over night. They will go, look for a job, and get on with their lives. That is why many of them want to come to the UK. You don’t have to register your place of living here and there are plenty of jobs on the black market to take.
Just because you break a stupid government law, does not make you a criminal.
And lastly, while I contribute to this blog, it is not my blog. There are others here who might be less pro immigration.
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Thank you Nico. You are most welcome to contribute as often as you like and are an important contributor.
I would never have prevented the article from being published. The delay was down to a full disk that for some reason did not show up in the monitoring solution, and left no room for the mandatory photograph.
I did anticipate this would be controversial. I was able to leave my time machine at home for that prediction 😉
On immigration I am much more skeptical than Nico. I am more liberal than Paul Marks but not by a great deal. I favour pay-your-way open borders policy, and am softening on ideological screening but find that an uncomfortable direction to be thinking in.
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Nico – your entire post contains (correct me if I am mistaken) no quotations from the Koran or the Hadiths – or from the life of Muhammed.
Apologists for Islam usually do better than you have done. Normally they have a few out-of-context quotes – for example “to save one life is to save the world” (without mentioning that in context this is about the Jews and is a quotation from the Talmud – how a Muslim should behave is explained after this line, and it is not nice). You do not even bother to produce out of context quotations.
As you do not even bother to produce any real defence against the charges made concerning the Koran, the Hadiths, and the life of Muhammed – it is hard not to conclude that you know nothing about the subject.
It is so much easier to just blame “Islam Haters” (oh those wicked people – such as Prime Minister Gladstone and Prime Minister Winston Churchill) – but you missed a trick Nico. You should have accused people of “Islamophobia” – medicalising-dissent (pretending that political dissent is a form of mental illness – “Authoritarian Personality”, “Paranoid Style of American Politics” and on and on) is a very effective Frankfurt School method. And “Islamophobia” (a term invented by the terrorist front organisation the “Muslim Brotherhood” back in the 1980s) is the good example of the use of this method in the modern world.
In reality Islam has been a serious threat to the West for more than a thousand years. This used to be common knowledge – but from the about the 1960s onwards there was a big effort to remove this knowledge from Western discourse.
That might have been nice – why live in the past? Why live in eternal enmity? Why not forgive and forget? The trouble is that Islam has a “Muhammed problem”.
When a Christian does terrible things (and many Christians have done terrible things) one can say “what would Jesus think of what you have just done?”. That does not work in an Islamic context – as if one says “what would Muhammed think of X terrible thing?” the person who has done it can turn round and produce many examples of Muhammed ordering such things himself – or doing such things himself.
In Islam Muhammed (although a man) is presented as the “model of conduct” – if Muhammed did something that is, generally, considered a good reason for other people to do it.
“We must support the moderates” – the trouble with that Nico is that Muhammed was not one of the “moderates” , indeed he had a special word for them. To Muhammed they were “hypocrites ” – people who claimed to be Muslims, but who hung back from killing the infidels and enslaving their women (making excuses not to attack) – Muhammed had ways of dealing with the “hypocrites”, very unpleasant ways. Muhammed was a political and military leader of genius – he knew that his movement (which he had built from nothing – by the power of his WILL, his will-to-power) depended on attracting young men – plunder and female slaves were vital to attract young men to his cause. It was NOT crude sadism on his part – it was a calculated military plan. The “hypocrites” threatened his plan (threatened the very survival of his movement) by their endless excuses, their unwillingness to attack and their efforts to convince others not to attack.
“Fighting Islam is madness” – the West defended itself against Islam for more than a thousand years. Sometimes there were terrible defeats (that is true), but there were also great victories. What is “madness” is not to defend against a hostile ideological force.
However, the most effective weapon may not prove to be bullets and bombs – it may be to expose Muhammed for what he was, and to expose his teachings (the Koran and the Hadiths) as false. Being a follower of Islam is not a matter of DNA – it is, in the end, a matter of choice (even though Muhammed taught that people who tried to leave Islam should be killed).
It is the mark of weak (dying?) civilisation that it does not try to CONVERT its enemies – rather than just kill them.
The West has lost faith in itself (it its core beliefs) – Islam has not. They smell weakness (weakness of belief) – and they are correct, the West is ideologically (culturally) weak. The present economic and military strength means nothing without real conviction.
And, no, it is not just a loss of religious faith – it is a loss of faith in all the central cultural traditions (beliefs) of the West.
It would be ironic if the Frankfurt School of Marxism (P.C. and all the rest of it) managed to destroy the West – but there was no victory for Marxism.
If the modern left just opened the door for another, and vastly older, enemy of the West.
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I don’t quote the Quran, because it is irrelevant what is in it. Everything can be interpreted. The Bible says that God created everything in 7 days. It says that Adam and Eve were the first humans. The official story of the Catholic church about this is that it has to be taken symbolically.
People who start quoting the Quran to proof how evil Islam is, and how it cannot be moderate are missing the point about why these religions are popular. They give people a sense of belonging and a purpose in life. Most people do not care too much about what is actually in these book. When they are being told that the Quran has a liberal interpretation, then that is what it is. And there are many Muslims who interpret the Quran very liberal. You will not find them being bothered one bit if you point out that that might contradict a passage in the book. People who are mainly concerned with truth and consistency usually become atheists.
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You can’t face it, you can’t look at the pictures because the reality doesn’t fit into the ideological straitjacket you are living in. No, absolutely everything the migrants do wrong is not the Western governments’ fault. When migrants commit crimes, it is the migrants’ fault. Sure, we can look at some of the underlying things that lead to those crimes, and we should, but that does not absolve the rapists and the murderers and the pickpockets etc. of guilt.
As for this blog I’ve followed it for a while and most of the posts seem to credit you as the author, so sorry but it does look like your blog.
Can you bear to look at this, and try and explain what is happening by blaming a state? Do you blame the West for this as well (look hard I will not answer any more of your evasive comments until you watch it all the way through, every moment). We should not have to see it but it seems its the only way of making people think, properly, as the brave people like AMW that you slander so casually know well enough:
http://shariawatch.org.uk/?q=content/tarrush-game
Which state ordered this pray tell? What are you planning to DO about this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fgm-in-sweden-school-where-every-single-girl-in-one-class-underwent-procedure-exposed-9552854.html
(from a very pro-Islamic deluded source just like this blog, that at least is not so afraid of looking at reality in the face).
What you are advocating is to create a vacuum in the West. Open the borders, dismantle the welfare state you say, but we are not prepared for the consequences and the welfare state has not been dismantled, or even downgraded. People will die in the ensuing melee. People will die. That is why we must do this in stages:
1. Dismantle the welfare state.
2. Allow the people to defend themselves with ALL MEANS NECESSARY i.e. relax gun controls. Defend the borders and VET those who wish to cross them.
2. THEN, and only THEN, could we possibly (I say POSSIBLY), be more relaxed about opening the borders. I am not sure it would be wise even then, given the demographic trends that are going on in the world right now, that you are so determined to ignore.
Unless of course, you do not care about the consequences.
Finally please read these two posts (both of them) before responding (I will not answer again until you have proved that you have – your readers will be able to tell if you have as well):
“Mohammed and Aisha – Why It Matters”
https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/mohammed-and-aisha-why-it-matters/
“Mohammed and Aisha – Answering the Apologists”
https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/mohammed-and-aisha-answering-the-apologists/
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Let’s get this straight. I do not support rapists, murderers and pickpocketers. Those are indeed criminals. But if you only count those crimes, migrants are not more criminal than Germans. Not every breaking of a law is a crime. There is a difference between a right and a state law. If the state takes your liberty away there is a good case for self defence.
And I am not pro Islam at all. I have always been an atheist. I consider radical Muslims to be a problem. That is why I don’t like it when Islamophobes are backing their ideology. The only way to tame a religion is to back the moderates.
I don’t know where this idea comes from that people will die if we have open borders. There seems to be no basis for it other than individual cases of criminal migrants. But these cases do not add up to an overall scary scenario. To the contrary, people are dying right now in the tens of thousands because of closed borders. So if people dying is your concern, then I don’t understand how you can support closed borders. Unless you value lives differently according to ethnicity.
With open borders, there would not just be Muslims coming. The majority would probably be Chinese. So the demographics would not change towards a Muslim majority.
It is a scapegoat to say that we can only start to advocate open borders once we got rid of the welfare state. Open borders, as a libertarian policy, can only happen, once people start believing in liberty. And if they do that, we can also get rid of the welfare state. So no need to hide a good policy.
And it really is not my blog. There are other authors here and it belongs to Simon Gibbs. And just so you know, he almost did not publish this blog post, as he thought it was to controversial. And that is why I am stopping this debate now. You can have the last word if you like.
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When I said people will die I meant people in Europe (of all ethnicities), now you are trying to suggest that I am racist! That is offensive and unfounded, you don’t understand my concerns at all. How many migrants crossing the Med will have to drown on a futile mission in unsafe overloaded boats to achieve your vision? There is no work in Europe for these unskilled people, turn off welfare and they will starve or resort to crime.
We have to look after our own societies first – if they collapse into lawlessness then we will be no help to anyone anywhere. I say people will die because I believe that eventually the conflict between Islam and Western Democracy will lead to widespread civil conflict. It already has begun in fact. Have you forgotten about Bataclan and Nice already? People HAVE died already! Then there is all the lower level criminality which you are determined to ignore. Rioting in Paris, rioting in Sweden, rioting in Germany with illegal fireworks going off right next to buildings in German streets. Its a fine way to show their gratitude for Germany’s kindness isn’t it!
https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/a-post-truth-era-part-2-a-fake-fake-news-epidemic/
You think that the welfare state will be destroyed by this migrant crisis, clearly, but it is European civilization that will be destroyed and replaced by a barbaric 7th century belief system if it is not brought to a halt. The only sensible way to stop the welfare state is by reasoning with people about the long term consequences and getting leaders elected who understand the longer term view.
You think you and a handful of other people in the West can “reform” this religion that apparently has 1.6 billion followers worldwide. There is no reforming it for the reasons I already gave which you ignored, Muslims are not going to listen to your opinions, or mine, we are not their religious authority. If Islam becomes dominant in Europe the human race faces a very dark future indeed. My aim is to wake up non-Muslims to the truly immoral and brutalizing nature of the faith.
The jews are going to be in grave danger in Germany once again, once the Muslims are a majority. Already there have been seen crowds of young Muslim men openly in the streets chanting such things “As jew pigs come out and fight” – I have seen the footage. You don’t want to see it.
I will wager you still haven’t watched the Calais Chaos video, and heard the complaints of the honest lorry drivers.
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Nico “everything in it can be interpreted”.
Stop with the Post Modern stuff Sir.
The Koran and the Hadiths and the life of Muhammed are what they are – and if you really think that they are can be “interpreted” away, then you are mistaken.
First we had a post from you, Nico, saying (in effect) that Israel, i.e. some six million Jews and anyone who sided with them there, should be wiped out. Now we get this post saying that “Islam haters” (i.e. people who tell THE TRUTH about Islam) are a “problem” – not Islam is a problem, but “Islam haters” are a problem.
Not a good post Sir – not good at all.
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Philosophically, I am in many ways a relativist. A lot of things just are not objective. But I am not even talking about philosophy here. I am just talking about a factual observation that people do not interpret holy text literally. Not even a solid institution like the catholic church is doing that. And we should be happy about the fact, that people take religion a lot less seriously than they pretend to. But for some reason, people like you are out there telling everyone that they are wrong to be a moderate and that they should be more radical if they want to be a Muslim. That is weird and it is a problem.
And I never, ever said anything about wiping out Jews. You are delusional, if you read that into my writings.
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I am sorry that you are moral relativist Sir – that is a profoundly mistaken philosophical position.
“People do not interpret a text literally” – Muslims are taught that the Koran is the direct word of God given to Muhammed by an angel. It is NOT the Bible – which was written by various people (over centuries) “inspired” by God, most of it is NOT the direct word of God.
“Interpretation” is much less available to a Muslim than it is to a Jew or a Christian – as they can NOT say “that man was inspired by God – but he got God’s intensions wrong, he misunderstood”. Muhammed was not “inspired” by God – he was told word-for-word what God said.
Hence the cry of Muslims in Arabia to Jews in the time of Muhammed – “raise your hand”.
It did not mean “surrender” (the Jews would be killed if they surrendered or not – although the women might be enslaved, including the Jewish woman who poisoned Muhammed for murdering her family) – it meant “stop putting your hand on the text of certain parts of the Torah”.
Talmudic Jews of that time did not read out certain parts of the Torah aloud and in public – for fear that people would actually stone women to death and so on – they put their hand over such portions of the Torah when reading aloud and in public. The Talmud is the “interpretation” of the Torah – a very long “interpretation” indeed.
That is exactly what Muhammed was AGAINST Sir – he made it very clear that he regarded such “interpretation” as an outrage. If God commanded X – then X must be done.
That is “Islam 101” – basic Islam. If you do not know that Sir – then you know nothing about the subject.
As for your claim not to have written the anti Israel post – well I remember someone with your name writing it. If I am mistaken then I apologise to you Sir. I humbly apologise to you Sir – if you did not write the anti Israel post.
What do you think the chant “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” means? That the Jews are going to go to the Moon or something?
It means six million dead Jews – and the deaths of any non Jew who sides with them (or is thought to side with them).
Again – if you do not know what the conflict is about, why write about it?
And a position of “Israel has no right to exist – but I do not want to kill six million Jews” does not work Sir. As if you commit to the first thing (being opposed to Israel) you are led to the second thing (killing six million Jews) – because the Jews are not going to leave Israel (alive).
And Islam does NOT just claim a little bit of land in the Middle East Sir.
Islam claims the whole Earth – on the grounds that the Earth was created by Allah. And if you accept their assumptions (their premises) that claim is logical. Infidels must pay the infidel tax and act in a humble way “feel themselves subdued”, then they may (may) be allowed to live. Islamic scholars (who are often highly intelligent and learned men) would point out that this was the position of the Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the 19th century – and that the Jews rejected this position (partly because of various massacres in the Islamic world), so that offer is no longer on the table.
Overall I must point out that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (the friend and ally of the Chancellor of Germany of his time) at least did not shrink from the logical implications of his words as you do Sir. He organised killing himself – and had done since the First (yes First) World War.
You are bit like the “Grand Old Duke of York” in the old verse – in that you make a case, but then you shrink from the logical implications of your own words and sort-of run away in an intellectual sense.
“The Grand Old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men. He marched them to the top of the hill – but then he marched them down again!”
I remember a conversation I had in a train (some years ago now) with a old man with a number tattooed on his arm (perhaps that will mean something to you – I hope so).
The conversation was about why so many people (by no means all – certainly NOT, but many) in a country between France and Poland hated Jews so much – going all the way back to Mr Martin Luther and on to today (although today there is the evasion of calling Jew hatred “anti Zionism”) when the Jews never meant them any harm (did NOT kill them) – yet support an open door to the forces of Islam (those who actually believe in the doctrines), who really do mean harm to the people of that country (and all “infidels” everywhere). Alas! We came to no firm conclusion. The Jews had done nothing – and were murdered. The forces of Islam intend conquest – and are greeted with open arms, indeed are invited in. An utterly irrational position – it makes-no-sense. As senseless as when the late Mr Luther demanded the Jews be attacked (in spite of them doing nothing to him – or to anyone connected with him), but declared that there should be no Christian resistance to the expanding Islamic Ottoman Empire – which actually was killing Christians (which the Jews were NOT doing). Although Mr Luther did modify his position on the Islamic Ottoman Empire after protests from his own supporters.
My father, the late Harry Marks, was less intellectually curious (although he could read German – which I can not). His positon was a simple one.
“I do not care WHY certain people hate me – I just care about killing them, if they mean to kill me”.
Harry Marks was perfectly sincere – he hated no group of people as such (not even those who sent his cousins in Holland to the gas chambers). He just believed in physically destroying threats to his life and to the lives of people he cared about. This was a policy he acted upon – with some success.
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Excellent comment, do you mind if I save your first two main paras for requoting as an explanation of the difference between Biblical and Koranic revelatory status?
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Well, Nico.
This is a can of worms that might have been better left unopened!!
The point is that all religion is insidious, not because it necessarily inspires adherents to coercive activity in its name but because religion is essentially anti-rational. At some point, in any discussion, the religious apologist will declare something true because they have “faith” – they believe it to be true but there is no empirical evidence to back up their belief.
Fortunately, Christianity, as practiced in the UK, poses little threat to the rational world debased, as it has become, to a few cosy and altruistic notions and traditions (with an optional sky fairy).
Islam, on the other hand, retains strong elements of anti-rationality augmented by the historical primitive barbarism practiced by several generations of immigrants to this country. It is no real threat to rational society but it should always be called out for the savage doctrine at it’s core.
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No, this can of worms definitely needed to be opened. As I said in the article, I think every world view that claims to hold the truth is potentially dangerous. As such, I am not a fan of religions. I have been an atheist or agnostic as long as I can think about these questions. But there is a need for religion. Not everyone has the ability to find their own answers to fundamental philosophical questions. There is a need for people to have a purpose and sense of belonging in life. Religion provides that service. As such it is not irrational at all. It might be not true, but that is not the same as to say it is irrational.
And the haters, that you can find not just in this comment section, but who are spamming every comment section on the subject on the internet, are a big problem. They are not helping to make religion more harmless. Instead they are aiding the radicalisation of it.
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Your position is gravely mistaken. Islam is not at all like Christianity. The former is in essence a cult of violence and conquest spread largely by the sword, with a basically exterminatory attitude to those who stand in its way, and massive demographic resources to back it, growing far greater still down the track. It also has a built-in resilience against reform, and a tendency to erupt in new waves of fanatical violence whenever things don’t go its way. In fact modern jihadism is ‘reformed’ Islam, with early Wahhabists even arguing they were the equivalent of the Protestants. The idea that it doesn’t matter what the Koran says is really foolish. Whilst there is some room for doctrinal disagreement within Islam, the Koran, ‘authenticated’ Hadith, and the example of Muhammad via his biography are the bedrocks of the faith enjoying absolute status which can always be used to shut down dissent and slaughter opponents in a way that is just not possible in Christianity, Jesus is presented in the core sources as a figure of peace not war, and respectful chastity not enslavement and rape. And Christianity has been neutered in a way that Islam has never shown any long-term or genuine tendency to submit to. What the Islamic sources say matters very much, because it is they that for almost 14 centuries have again and again directly supported the aggressions and atrocities committed in the name of Islam, whereas those committed in the name of Christianity were based on very blatant perversions of the actual Christian message, or just standard greed and power politics. The basic innate violence and aggressive will to conquest of Islam cannot in fact be interpreted away in any real, lasting, and general sense. Letting Islam continue to spread in the West will over time diminish freedom in the West not increase it, and lead in many cases to outright demographic and cultural replacement, in a one-way process, as Westerners are not spreading not Islamic lands, nor could they in any numbers. Whilst some ‘Islamophobes’ can go too far at times, rational Islamophobia is in fact vital, because it is the only thing standing in the way of the long-term conquest of our declining civilization and homelands by the (loomingly) far vaster and more vigorous (ie youthful and motivated) hordes of Islam, which will thereby fulfil an aim of almost 1400 years, with grave consequences for us and for the world. The more Muslims are let in, ‘moderate’ or otherwise, the stronger Islam becomes, and the harder it becomes to resist or expel. And, the greater its demands and ‘grievances’ become too. Subsequent generations can always return to ‘radical’ Islam. And far too many examples show that when Islam prevails, slaughter and tyranny soon enough follow.
Sorry but you are demonstrating the usual woeful ignorance of the real nature and history of Islam and childish wishful thinking in equating it and the sensible response to it with the case of Christianity. As such, it is your sort of thinking that is dangerous, and playing into the hands of the Islamists, of whom IS and AQ are just the more nakedly aggressive branches. We need to protect our endangered homelands from an ancient and recrudescent foe that means to conquer us or seriously risk losing them forever. And in doing so, we would be fully justified by reciprocity with islam which does not allow colonizing conquest so far as it is able to resist it.
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But there is a need for religion. Not everyone has the ability to find their own answers to fundamental philosophical questions. There is a need for people to have a purpose and sense of belonging in life. Religion provides that service. As such it is not irrational at all. It might be not true, but that is not the same as to say it is irrational.
I did not say it is irrational (though it is) but I said that religion is anti-rational. Increasingly the Western world has become dominated by science and technology which investigates the true nature of the world we inhabit and tries to improve it. Religion, by its dependence on faith is a rejection of this rational progression.
If a believer tells you Allah is great there is no attempt to proffer evidence to back up the statement. There might be some encouragement to read some dodgy medieval texts and some second rate philosophical structure but that;’s about it. And if you don’t accept this you are an infidel.
Similarly Christianity is nothing more than a rag bag of fairy stories and superstitions joined together to create a wealthy church which has been used to exert control over populations down the years. Suggested reading here.
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-nmqlMcOu-icCFhIe/The%20God%20Delusion_djvu.txt
So to summarise, Nico.
Not everyone has the ability to find their own answers to fundamental philosophical questions.
QUITE WRONG AND SURPRISED TO HEAR A LIBERTARIAN SAY THAT
There is a need for people to have a purpose and sense of belonging in life. Religion provides that service.
ONLY TO THE WEAK AND STUPID.
It might be not true, but that is not the same as to say it is irrational.
TRUTH AND RATIONALITY ARE THE SAME THING. BELIEF IN SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE PROVED IS IRRATIONAL.
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“ONLY TO THE WEAK AND STUPID.”
First, there are quite a few weak and stupid people. Second, there are quite a few very intelligent and strong people who are theists.
“TRUTH AND RATIONALITY ARE THE SAME THING. BELIEF IN SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE PROVED IS IRRATIONAL.”
Not at all. Rational just means that, given the information and the goals you have, you come to the, for you best possible conclusions. It is perfectly rational for children to believe in Santa Clause. And it is perfectly rational to tell lies at times. In the same sense it is perfectly rational to believe in something that you cannot proof, but that appeals to you, as long as you get something out of it. We all do that to some degree.
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Rational just means that, given the information and the goals you have, you come to the, for you best possible conclusions. It is perfectly rational for children to believe in Santa Clause.
No. Rational is defined as being something “based on or in accordance with reason and logic”.
It is perfectly rational for children to pretend to believe in Santa and, if you have empirical evidence that you can present to prove his existence I would be accept it. Without that evidence, however, belief in his existence is irrational (the arrival of presents on Xmas day is not, in itself, enough!!).
it is perfectly rational to believe in something that you cannot proof, but that appeals to you, as long as you get something out of it.
No, no, no. It can be perfectly rationale to tell others lies to achieve a particular objective (though I don’t recommend it) but lying to yourself can only ever be classed as self-delusion.
We should all aspire to be better than that.
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> No. Rational is defined as being something “based on or in accordance with reason and logic”.
Yes, that is what I am saying. But we all have very limited and distorted information about the world. Non of our worldviews are completely consistent with every data that we have. We make conclusions to the best of our knowledge according to our goals in life. And our goal is not always to find the one and only truth. Therefore it is perfectly rational to believe in a god, if you get something out of it.
> It is perfectly rational for children to pretend to believe in Santa
They are not just pretending, they really believe it. It makes perfect sense, given the information they have. The theory works.
> and, if you have empirical evidence that you can present to prove his existence I would be accept it.
Epistemologically, we don’t seem to have any method to proof anything. I cannot even proof that I have a left arm. Is it therefore irrational to believe I have one? It seems not.
> Without that evidence, however, belief in his existence is irrational (the arrival of presents on Xmas day is not, in itself, enough!!).
It is totally enough. The theory works. At that point it would probably be more irrational not to believe in Santa.
> but lying to yourself can only ever be classed as self-delusion.
But someone might not be lying to himself when he says he beliefs something. We all make assumptions that are unprovable. We believe them because they seem to make sense to us.
> We should all aspire to be better than that.
Most people change their mind, if their theories stop working. Whether someone should aspire being critical or not, is up for the individual to decide.
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I cannot even proof that I have a left arm.
Unless you are an amputee or were born with some congenital defect, it should be perfectly possible to obtain incontrovertible empirical evidence of the existence of your left arm.
At that point it would probably be more irrational not to believe in Santa.
So when someone tells you that a fat man with a white beard came down a chimney to deliver your Xmas presents you don’t feel the need to look for evidence? No wonder so many people believe the stories that 2000 years ago there was a Jew who could walk on water.
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> Unless you are an amputee or were born with some congenital defect, it should be perfectly possible to obtain incontrovertible empirical evidence of the existence of your left arm.
What is incontrovertible empirical evidence? There are already a number of assumptions in there, which cannot be proven and just have to be believed. The reason why I think I have a left arm is, because I don’t know of anything that would contradict that theory. So it seems the most reasonable thing to believe. But that is not the same as a hard proof. I cannot be sure that it is the truth. At least not if we define truth to be an objective absolute. It is of course subjectively true to me. But tomorrow I might discover something that contradicts that theory. I am basing my assumptions about the world on the best knowledge that I have. That is what it means to be rational. In other words, to be rational does not mean to be right, as in describing the truth.
And for a child the best information it has can very well point to the assumption being true that Santa exists. There does not seem to be anything contradicting it. It is therefore completely rational for a child to believe in Santa, until it gets information to the contrary. Rationality is not truth. If it was, then people could never have a reasonable disagreement.
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