A picture manifestly more grim

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Oct 17, 2002 at 12:55

I have read many of the criticisms of Islam contained on this noticeboard and I agree with the general argument that Militant Islam has contributed just about all that it ever will to the human race and now we are the victims of its decay. The authors of the various comments however have failed to take into account the very real flaws in the west today which have allowed Islam to perpetuate itself. As Islam blames us for its failure to effect a decent lifestyle so too there are those amongst us who are quite prepared to accept this blame. There are a group of people who for arguments sake I will label the "academic left" who propagate the same paranoia about American oil interests that every dry Islamic Academic interviewed on CNN utilises by way of apologetics for pervasive Islamic violence.

The "academic left" are also all too willing to accept the argument that the absence of a predominantly Islamic liberal democratic regime anywhere in the world is due to some form of dual American/Zionist (or Jewish) conspiracy. I myself am an Australian and I have been alarmed at the level of anti American sentiment the Academic left has been able to muster in my country even in the face of a recent Islamic militant suicide bombing in Bali, (an island of the world's largest Islamic state Indonesia) which killed some forty (confirmed but perhaps as many as 180) Australians. In the face of this senseless killing the academic left blamed our policy of supporting America.

From what I have been able to muster from my innumerable conversations with politicians and students who follow this particular perspective is that the academic left has the Vietnam War as their year zero: no history which occurred before is of any stand alone relevance and everything must be reinterpreted in the light of this momentous event which is the source of all modern wisdom, at least in so far as they are concerned. They forget completely for example that America was the only force that enabled Australia to remain free from Japanese occupation during the Second World War and probably saved the free world to boot. It is no surprise that these individuals are the main advocates of that philosophy which has come to be known as "politically correct," a philosophy which would sacrifice the freedom of speech of everyone who has posted a message on this website in the name of tolerence. Now against all common sense in Australia they have advocated tolerance of the obscenely intolerant. There are some 300,000 Muslims in Australia out of a population of 19.5 million. They receive Government funding to run schools which isolate their students from the wider community and preach all of the maladaptive doctrines neatly summarised in the messages that have already been posted. When challenged, this utterly self abortive policy is defended by a cluster of the academic left who proclaim anyone who contradicts them to be "ignorant" and a "racist."

This last remark I find utterly bewildering for having a large fraction of Arab blood running through me I would think they would deal with the paradox of a member of the said race being racist towards his own race by finally reaching the point where they might sensibly distinguish a legitimate objection to a religious philosophy (which cuts across a large number of races) from a derisive remark aimed squarely at someone's pedigree.

This was not to be. One of my especially clever acquaintances pointed out to me not so long ago that he had been reading an artfully assembled essay on how members of a race can be racist towards their own race. Truly remarkable intellectual acrobatics. Pulitzer prize winning stuff.

The recent upsurge in Muslim violence and aggression can be explained according to the academic left purely in terms of class warfare (ie they are poor, we are rich, they want a greater share ipso facto we should give it to them). They have apparently swallowed some choice portions of Marx's philosophy. This is directly contradicted by the standard of living in many oil rich Muslim countries; Saudi Arabia, for example, has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Of course it is also worth noting that this is the country from which the 9-11 hijackers hailed.

In conclusion I would be more worried about the West collapsing rather than the spillover effects from any prospective collapse of Islam. Our societies with their factionalism, openness and tolerence exist in a more delicate political state than any Islamic country with its singular religion, fanaticism and intolerence. We are divided against ourselves, where they proceed with cooperation and singularity of purpose. Our open society is about making money and living a decent lifestyle, not about security or waging war against people who are so brainwashed they are prepared to die for a most likely nonexistent satanic deity. Worst of all they have a back door in the form of the communities we have allowed them to form inside our societies and I wonder how long it will truly be before Islamic fundamentalist groups start tapping into this already deployed resource to subvert our countries from within.

I am, despite all of my sophistry, truly at a loss to suggest any real solution to this problem that has emerged and that we have created for ourselves. I hope someone who reads this does.

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