A Question of Civility

Submitted by Michael Devolin (Canada), May 10, 2007 at 09:32

From Magic City Morning Star
Michael Devolin
A Question of Civility
By Michael Devolin May 8, 2007 - 10:30:59 AM

Charles Dickens wrote, "My ideas of civility were formed among heathens." Similarly, the Western governments now accommodating Islam's followers are faced with the encroaching dilemma of discerning publicly and with appropriate civility between the so-called "moderates" and the "terrorists" of this loud religion. Who to condone and who to condemn? One problem is that the line between the moderate and the terrorist of Islam is blurred beyond recognition. Another problem is, how much civility should Western governments cede enmasse to those whose religion denigrates our Judeo-Christian, democratic way of life as corrupt and "satanic"? How to preserve the distance between state and religion when accommodating the followers of Islam, whose shibboleths forbid the dualism of the spiritual and the temporal that exists in Western style democracy? As Samuel P. Huntington wrote, "In Islam, God is Caesar." In Islam, there is only Islam. And if Islam's Muslim terrorists have their way, the Magna Carta concept of "the law of the land" adopted long ago by Western civilizations will be usurped by Islam's religiously enforced Sharia law-whether we like it or not.

Of course, the apologists and the multiculturalists will tell us that Islam should not be held accountable for the blood-letting committed by terrorists even though, without exception, the terrorists are Muslim. So how to accommodate Islam and its adherents when we cannot know until after the fact--when it is too late--who is the Muslim terrorist and who is not. In a document issued by Britain's Department of Education ¹ as guidance to enable university students and faculty to identify those Muslims with extremist views, the point is made that, "It can be entirely legitimate to hold a view that is radical or extreme...however, it becomes unacceptable when individuals develop extremist ties that lead them to espouse, advocate or even undertake or facilitate violent acts that deliberately undermine good campus and community relations." However, the imbroglio Islam has imposed upon the West is the reality that those Muslims who hold views which are "radical and extreme" are driven compunctiously by these same views to "undertake or facilitate violent acts." The proverb, "Give them an inch and they take a mile" is applicable to the perilous situation Western democracies now find themselves in as regards their Muslim immigrants.

Samuel P. Huntington writes that, "The intracivilizational clash of political ideas spawned by the West is being supplanted by an intercivilizational clash of culture and religion." Within the continent of North America (Europe is already Islam's downed and wounded animal), Islam is at the centre of this "clash of culture and religion." Islam's religious and political activists are slowly and insidiously transmogrifying the Judeo-Christian cultures of both Canada and the United States into a multicultural nightmare from which we may never recover. The National Post's Jonathan Kay opines (April 24, 2007) that, "The reason multiculturalism now seems like such a fraud is that experience has taught us that old-school racism has nothing on the sort of hatreds brought into this country by the immigrants themselves: hatred toward homosexuals, toward heretics, toward ‘loose' women and, most importantly, toward each other." He also mentions in the same article Farhan Mujahid Chak, a Muslim Liberal party candidate in Western Canada who, it was recently discovered, had written and published some very nasty statements about Israel, India and France. Mr. Kay goes on to say that Chak, "like all the rest of us, is a product of his cultural mix-which in his case includes a global Muslim culture that has become suffused with terror apologism, conspiracy theories and anti-Western animus. To the extent multiculturalism is supposed to preach ‘tolerance,' this unappetizing stew is what we're being asked to tolerate."

I'm not a pluralist, plain and simple, nor am I an advocate of the ecumenical madness promoted by the politically correct of this world whose so-called "experts" would have me welcome with open arms into Canada those whose religion (Islam) prohibits non-Muslims from the same privilege in Saudi Arabia. Such religious zeal and hypocrisy is described so succinctly in Louis Simpson's poem ‘Searching for the Ox': "They will send me off to Heaven / when all I want is to live here on earth." I refuse to condone a religion (in this case Islam) as being salubrious when its every manifestation-past and present-is one of violence and bloodshed. I do not condemn religion per se, but only those ideologies commanding its followers to throw stones at others (to borrow a phrase from Wafa Sultan). I despise those religions whose desired efficacy is to obviate a tolerance of all others. It becomes immediately evident in this light that even the best and the brightest of Islam are not qualified in the least to teach the non-Muslim world about religious tolerance, precisely because of the violence and bloodshed that seems to follow this religion wherever it goes; precisely because its best and its brightest, who should know better, have chosen Islam as their religion. Tolerance must be taught only by those whose history and religious traditions establish them as a tolerant people. George Eliot touched on this with his words, "The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision." It is my opinion that only the Jewish people and their Judaism are qualified for such a needful task. The Muslim world and their Islam are least qualified, obviously.

It is because of Islam and for no other reason that we are hearing so much in the news today, both in Canada and the United States, about "national security." What I'm driving at here is that in order to preserve our Judeo-Christian identity in North America, and to curtail the spread of Islamic terrorism within the continent of North America, we must begin to deny entry into our respective countries certain religious on the basis of their religion: Those who adhere to religions historically exhibiting violence, bloodshed, and parochialism without North America should be denied the opportunity to exhibit such uncongenial vices here, within North America.

I'm fearful for Canada and the United States, that we could become transmogrified by the invidiousness of Islam, as have so much of the continent of Europe. France is lost. England is lost. Holland is lost. Belgium is lost. So many European countries lost to the religious militancy and social upheaval common to Islam. And all because European countries tried, in good faith-imprudently, as it turned out-to accommodate the adherents of a religion who are notoriously unaccommodating to non-Muslims in those countries like Saudi Arabia where Islam is the predominant religion. I am fearful that the democracies of North America are in the process of making the same mistakes. May we have the presence of mind to preserve our Judeo-Christian culture and traditions. May we turn away the sophists and sycophants and apologists of Islam (and all other violent religious) with the words of that great American president Harry S. Truman, who said, "We believe in the unity of free men. We believe in the unity of great causes. We don't believe in the unity of slaves or the unity of sheep being led to the slaughter."

¹Guardian, November 18, 2006
© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star

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