Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, “Every Hindu is a coward and every Muslim is a bully.”

Regular readers of Gates of Vienna know of our continuing interest in India’s position on the front lines of the Great Jihad. Fortunately, the amount of intelligent and literate reporting in English emerging from India is almost limitless, so the alert blogger will never lack for material.

For non-Muslim Indians, the problem of militant Islamism asserts itself virtually every day. In News Today of South India, V. Sundaram writes:

As a historian, I am overawed by the scrupulous concern for fidelity to facts shown by many Muslim historians during the last 1000 years. Nowhere have they tried to hide the fact that they came to establish Quwwatul Islam, which means the might of Islam, in India. What is notable is that various deeds of comprehensive brutality relating to desecration of temples were recorded by the Sultans themselves or by their Court Chroniclers.

These desecrations had a cruelly vicarious side to them. For, there is no record or mention anywhere that the idol of the presiding deity was removed and handed over to the priest concerned for taking it away to another temple. In fact, in many cases, there are gleeful references that the idol was destroyed and its broken pieces were placed below the entrance of the Mosque, so that they could be trampled upon by those who came for their ‘Ibadat’.

The assertiveness of the Muslim minority in India, like its counterpart in Europe, is driven by demographics. In an article in Organiser last year, Dr. D.P. Sharma wrote:

	Many European nations including Britain, France and Spain are facing separation threats from minority groups. Minorities are no more silent groups; they have gone to the extent of adopting terrorist means to achieve their separatist aim. Many nations on the globe are badly disturbed by these minority groups. So, a disproportionate population growth of any minority community above the national average is not in the interest of any nation, particularly when the minority community has a political ideology which is antithetical to democratic values, as we find with the Muslim fundamentalist groups, no matter where they are.
	Muslims in India are the largest minority group with a population larger than the Muslim population in Pakistan or Bangladesh. They are very united and reactive. They are an influential pressure group and they know the art of extracting the maximum benefits from the government. The growth rate of Muslims exceeds by 10 per cent over the growth rate of Hindus and it was even more during the previous decades.
	[…]
	Hamid Dalwai, an angry, young crusader against communalism, has candidly written on this issue. He writes:
	“All Muslim leaders unanimously complain that injustice is done to Muslims in India. However, they have a strange definition of injustice. They suggest, indirectly no doubt, that the very fact that India has a Hindu majority is in itself a great injustice to Muslims… A professor from Aligarh University was quite frank about this. He said: ‘Hindus cannot keep us permanently in a minority… This country will eventually be swept by an Islamic tide.’ The professor was quite forthright in expressing his views. There are other leaders of Indian Muslims who say the same thing although they couch it in clever phrases. They say, ‘Our religion does not permit family planning. Grant us the freedom to practise our religion’.”
	The Urdu newspaper Radiance, commenting on the report of the last Census in India, said, “In the last ten years the Muslim population in India has increased by 4 per cent more than the Hindus. Therefore, Muslims need not despair about their future,” (Muslim Politics in India, p. 63/6.)
	He further says that according to the Muslims, the only solution to their problems “is the establishment of an Islamic State in India. The Jammat-e-Islami has already a programme to achieve this objective. And if they fail to achieve it, then they would seek to establish within the sovereign State of India a sovereign Islamic society. This idea of a State within a State and society within society, appeals to them…the Majalis-e-Mashawarat has demanded that the Indian Parliament should have no power to legislate in matters concerning Indian Muslims. Salahuddin Owesi publicly suggested, ‘There should be a separate Muslim State within each state of India’,” (ibid, p.64).

It is clear that the Hindus and Sikhs of India face the same daunting task as do the Europeans. The Muslim minority in India is comparable to that of the Netherlands, and has had centuries to entrench its postion.

This throws into greater relief the recent discussions between President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concerning issues in which the United States and India have a common interest.

 
You have to feel sorry for the Iraqis. There they are under the gun to produce a constitution and have it up and running by October.

It is as though Uncle Sam is standing by, foot tapping and eyes raised to heaven, with outstretched hand, demanding, “Okay, where is it? What’s taking so long? Are you guys fighting again? Play nice, why don’t you?”

So twenty-five million people who have lived under the worst sorts of government for generations are all of a sudden supposed to sit erect, grab their pencils and start acting like gentlemen of the Enlightenment.

Western-style feminists are demanding equal rights and their conservative counterparts held their own counter-demonstration declaring for stricter rules for reining in the women folk. Meanwhile the Sunnis are off sulking because they’re not in charge anymore. The Kurds are pushing for a quasi-federalism — at least that’s what their detractors claim — while everyone suspects the Shi’ites will try to slip the Koran into the works and send the citizenry spinning back to the Middle Ages.

Not that anyone remaining in that country would say so, but oy vey. What a mess.

It would be salutary to remember at this point that our constitution was a very long process. From the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 to the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788 was a long and winding road. In the process, the question of slavery got shelved just so we could be done with it and get on to making a country. Thus our hurry and our fear led us to a bloody and ruinous Civil War seventy three years later. We are still feeling the effects of that “hurry-up” back in the years from the Declaration of Independence to the final states’ ratification. We left out Negroes because we were afraid and we are still paying for our cowardice.

So let’s back off, hey? The Iraqis can learn from our mistakes, including our sense of urgency and our failure of nerve. Three questions to ponder as the Iraqis scrabble to find a workable solution:

1. What would our country have been like had we been willing to duke it out with the South for a no-slavery clause in our Constitution instead of postponing the inevitable for seventy five years?

2. What would our country be like if the 700,000 people who died in the Civil War had lived out the normal span of their lives? Those were our best and bravest, weren’t they?

3. What would it cost us to let the Iraqis have more breathing room if they want it?

Just asking.

 
A quote in this morning’s CNN story about the Sharm el-Sheik bombings draws the eye:

	“We are trying to find out who committed these crimes,” [Egypt’s interior minister] Habib al-Adli told reporters while viewing the extensive damage at the Ghazala Garden Hotel in Naama Bay, a popular tourism area of the city on the Sinai Peninsula. “It is likely that they have some relationship to the Taba operation.”
	[…]
	Al-Adli said it was not yet known who was behind the Saturday attacks, “but whoever it is, or whatever groups they belong to, this is ugly terrorism, and there’s no humanity or values or feel of belonging in these acts.”
	Asked whether he thought the blasts might be related to Islam, he replied, “What Islam? This terrorism has nothing to do with any religion, because all religions do not allow aggression and do not allow killing civilians in innocence. Those don’t belong to Muslims. They are a gang of criminals.” [emphasis added]

Islam??

Me no see no Islam. Me no hear no Islam. Me no speak no Islam.

This week’s winner is a matched pair, at least in terms of subject matter. Here at Gates, the question was whether or not Britain is too decadent to survive, to wit:

	Charles Krauthammer put it best:
	“Decadence is defined not by a civilization’s art or music, but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself.”
	From your pen to the citizens of Britain, Dr. Krauthammer. Quit fiddling around over there. London is burning. It’s not the job of moderate Muslims to extinguish the fire; it’s their job simply to get out of the way while “the authorities” begin acting as if they had sufficient testosterone to take the hose in hand and start spraying down the conflagration.
	Enough with the Nero imitations.

Meanwhile, Norm Geras won the non-council vote with his post proposing that it is indeed time to take the hose in hand. However, being British and well-spoken, he was also more eloquent:

It needs to be seen and said clear: there are, amongst us, apologists for what the killers do, and they make more difficult the long fight that is needed to defeat them. (To forestall any possible misunderstanding on this point: I do not say these people are not entitled to the views they express or to their expression of them. They are. Just as I am entitled to criticize their views for the wretched apologia they amount to.)

You can see it all over at The Watcher’s Council, here.

 
In a comments thread on Little Green Footballs last night, I had an interesting exchange with commenter DP111. Here are excerpts from the thread, redacted and edited for spelling; the initial comment was a response to Fjordman:

	DP111
	I have stopped paying Jizya to the BBC. I can no longer watch BBC news commenters without feelings of revulsion, and don’t feel like paying to be sick.
	———————————
	What we are seeing in the West is the opening salvoes of the continuation of the Jihad against Christendom, that was brought to a close at Vienna in 1683. The new onset has come about as a direct consequence of allowing Muslim immigration to the West. Muslims are mandated to the Jihad and it is foolish of us to expect that they will refrain from doing so. It is our foolishness that gave them the opportunity to do so from within.
	Muslims and their religion are not yet ready to accept pluralism, democracy and free thinking. Democracy is in fact incompatible with islam, as many Muslim imams have openly stated. That is their interpretation of the Koran. It should therefore come as no suprise to us, that muslims in the West are waging Jihad against us. In their eyes, if we didn’t realise that this would happen, the fault lies with us and not them. I agree.
	I do not think our societies, geared as they are to free and open thought, can continue with this continuous assault on freedom. If this assault is not brought to a halt soon, then free society will start to perish, and with that the economy. It may not be evident immediately, but perish it will in the fullness of time. If the current trend of increasing conflict continues, then we are irrevocably headed in the direction of a major armed conflict with the Islamic world. This is also going to lead to a civil war within Europe of unimaginable proportions. Europe’s civil wars (WW 1 and 2) have not exactly been powder-puff affairs.
	Each day brings news of events that seem to bring us to that inevitable reckoning. We do not wish to fight for religion but we are being engaged in a religious conflict, quite against our will. Our politicians find it difficult to imagine that we are in a religious conflict. So passé – that sort of thing went out of fashion in the Middle Ages. It is all so pointless and avoidable. Time is short, and we need to act now to avert a human tragedy, which this commenter just does not wish to see.
	Separation recognises, that at this moment in time, Islam and democracy are irreconcilable. Thus a separation leaves hope for the future for everybody. This is important, as Muslims like all humans will reach a stage in their social development, when they do indeed welcome democracy and pluralism. It is just that at this stage in their history, they are not ready for it. A war, which is where we are headed, will stop their progress, as well as cause a split within humanity, that will be hard to patch up.
	The basic impulse of Islam is to expand into Infidel territory. Unable to do so, it will collapse quite quickly in historic terms, and thus release the 1.2 billion souls in its enslavement and bring about true freedom for them. What more can one ask for?
	Baron Bodissey
	DP111 —
	Boy, you sure do sound like us at “Gates of Vienna”…
	DP111
	I’m flattered.
	I have stated many times over the last couple of years, that we will easily win a full scale war with the Islam. What worries me is that in the event of a nuclear event in the West, we will rapidly go for the THIRD CONJECTURE option. Over the last two years I have stated on LGF and Jihad/Dhimmi Watch, that our inevitable large scale nuclear response, will also shatter the foundations of our own civilisation. Our Judaeo-Christian civilisation has a built-in guilt complex, and we will not be able to sustain the shock of our victory bought at such expense. That is why the war option is not really a good one unless.. unless we can re-define what this war is about.
	To state the obvious, there are two principles in any war. The first is that the home front is secured. The second is to carry the war to the enemy. However, if we do NOT carry the war to the enemy with a correctly defined moral and political purpose, we will not be able to have public backing for the war. The Jihad in the meantime will continue, for in the eyes of the jihadis and the Muslim world, they have a clear moral and religious purpose, and divinely sanctioned to boot.
	The question is how do we carry the war to an enemy whose ideology we recognise as a religion, while ours is multi-culturalism. You see the difficulty here. There is no way we can conduct a war, so long as we subscribe to either one of those two tenets. Even if we discard multi-culturalism, this in itself is not sufficient. This inevitably leads us to ask, can we somehow re-define Islam, in particular for a Western audience, not as a religion but as a political ideology, and one whose tenets are sufficiently evil, so that it merits destruction, much as Nazism. (Note here that I do not recognise that Islam is susceptible to reformation). This construct has to take place so that the Western populace sees it as justifiable to actually give the physical and moral support that is required for such a large scale venture. (In passing it is worth noting the political difficulty that Bush and Blair are having in Iraq in sustaining political support for the war, once they had proclaimed that Islam is a RoP — they had conceded the moral ground). They now have the same problem here in the West, as the bombs go off.
	The jihadis have a clear moral purpose, and thus we too have to define an even more powerful moral argument as to why our cause is more just, more moral and better — not just to our public, whose unwavering support we need, but to many Muslims around the world. Once we have such a clear moral purpose, then indeed we can go to full scale war and even respond to a nuclear attack in an appropriate fashion without being fatally afflicted by guilt.
	Baron Bodissey
	Your arguments are powerful. As you probably know, I’ve touched on this before in “The Enemy Within” posts (links 1 2 3 for those interested), and pretty much come to the conclusion that unless the West “gets religion” in some form, it can’t fight this war with a whole heart, the way the Jihad can. I don’t know what form this religion might take, whether it would be some kind of Jewish-Christian-Hindu amalgam that united the principle victims of the Great Jihad, or some new form that we can’t even imagine.
	But without something that resembles religion, we can’t stand up against our enemy and know that we are in the right. Just think how archaic and atavistic the word “righteous” sounds today; that’s how secular and anti-religious we have become. But righteousness is what we require if we are to win.
	I believe that the American heartland can hold on against it, but I grieve for Europe.

Fjordman expands on the same theme in a post today, “The Second Fall of Rome?”

…the population movements we are witnessing now are the largest and fastest in human history. In Europe, they can only be compared to the period often referred to as the Great Migrations, following the disintegration of the Roman Empire. However, during the 4th and 5th centuries, the total human population of the world was in the order of 200 million. Today, it is 30 times larger than that, and still growing fast. We also have communications that can transport people anywhere on earth within hours, and media that show ordinary people how much better life is in other countries. On top of that, the Romans didn’t have human rights lawyers advocating that millions of barbarians be let into their lands.

Fjordman and I are singing from the same hymnal: he concludes his post by quoting some of the same comments by DP111 that I have listed above.

And he is not sanguine about the prospects for Europe. In a comment here on yesterday’s “Preventable Evils” post, he said:

There will probably be a blood bath in Europe in the not-too-distant future, with massacres and ethnic cleansing across much of the continent. Some of the smaller countries, such as Norway, will probably be lost. Given the huge migrations we are witnessing now, I find it difficult to imagine my own country remaining a place where I want my children to grow up. Scandinavians will be persecuted minorities in our own land. “White Indians”, as one Muslim immigrant put it. In some ways, we already are.

If the rest of the world gets its ideas about America from the mainstream media, it may not realize that there is a vast beating heart in America, one that practices Christianity, is confident in its values, and bears a fierce and steadfast temperament. I live and work among these people every day, and know that they will not got go gentle into the night of dhimmitude. Long after the elite literati in New York, Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have paid the jizya, veiled their women, respected the Prophet, and muzzled their voices, the rednecks of the Heartland will be standing firm and reloading their shotguns as the waves of jihadis come over the barricades.

But grieve for Europe.

 
Jonah Goldberg’s column in yesterday’s NRO reminded me of Enoch Powell’s famous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968. There have been other reminders of it recently — one of the commenters here at Gates of Vienna mentioned it, and, as a result, people searching for “Enoch Powell rivers of blood” often wash up here at the Gates and are detected by our site meter. Apparently Enoch Powell is making something of a comeback.

Like the designation of Churchill’s famous words as the “Blood, Sweat, and Tears” speech, the shorthand “Rivers of Blood” for Powell’s speech is something of a misnomer — the eponymous sentence is actually this: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’”. But such are the vagaries of collective memory; people recall “Rivers of Blood”, so “Rivers of Blood” it is.

Enoch Powell was a Conservative member of Parliament when he gave the speech. I was living in England at the time, and I remember the occasion well. He was immediately reviled in the press and on the BBC, and lost his position in the Tory shadow cabinet as a result. The conventional wisdom loathed him, and he was depicted as a demagogue and a would-be Hitler.

But he was also ridiculed. I was a teenager in those days, and avidly read the satirical weekly Private Eye. In its pages he was mocked as a ludicrous throwback and a bigot. The editors enjoyed using file photos of him and adding silly graphics and speech balloons to make their points. Since he attracted a following among Sir Oswald Moseley’s heirs, all the derogatory labels tended to stick.

It is hard to look at the writings of people who have been declared beyond the pale. Presumably there are points worth noting in Mein Kampf and Das Kapital, but the verdict pronounced by history on their authors tends to prevent close scrutiny. Even so, it is worth revisiting what Powell said in the light of today’s events. His words were not those of a frothing madman, but an intelligent and carefully-chosen argument.

The key paragraphs of the speech were at the beginning:

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: “If only,” they love to think, “if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen.”

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician.

There’s the rub for an elected politician who also feels a duty to posterity: how to identify and deal with those events which occur now but will have significant effect so far in the future that it is politically safe to ignore them.

He goes on to describe an encounter with a constituent:

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country.” I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn’t last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: “I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

Notice that even in 1968 the reign of PC thinking had already taken hold; Powell knew that his words constituted a heinous thought crime in the eyes of the enlightened.

Notice also that it was the black immigrants from Commonwealth countries who were considered to be the great danger. It was to be another decade before Elvis Costello sang, “London is full of Arabs” (in a song mocking the successors of Enoch Powell). In 1968 the Arabs weren’t a danger. Why would the Arabs come? They were not in the Commonwealth.

But come they did, seeking political asylum to avoid persecution by their own governments for their dangerous versions of Islam. And, in even greater numbers, Muslims from Commonwealth member nation Pakistan immigrated to settle in Britain.

Powell went on:

What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking – not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history. In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

…It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

No matter how much it pains us to say it, we have to acknowledge that Powell was precisely right. Whatever his motivations, despite any racism or bigotry on his part, he was right.

And he hit other nails on the head:

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it “against discrimination”, whether they be leader writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same news papers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

These words can only remind 21st-century Americans of the unchecked flow of illegal immigrants across our borders, and of the bedclothes pulled up over the heads of most of our elected leaders.

Demonstrating that he was not your typical racist, Powell said:

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American negro. The negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service.

And then there is this, all too familiar to us in 2005:

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine.

Plus ça change…

And this one is uncannily prescient:

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population — that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population.

Powell concluded his speech with this:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”… Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Regardless of his racist motivations, regardless of any demagogic ambitions he might have had, Enoch Powell was right. He lived until 1998, long enough to see that much of what feared had already come to pass. In 1968 he was in the unenviable position of someone in 1931 warning of the danger that Hitler posed to the world.

But the timeline of Islamofascism is slower than that of the Nazis. It is not yet 1940 for us; it is still 1938 or 1939. There is still time. But is there any evidence that our leaders have the nerve and the wherewithal to deal with the preventable evils of our time?

 
Yesterday’s post about Tom Tancredo’s remarks provoked a lot of unexpected argument in the comments, with some excellent contributions by a number of people. To clarify my position, here is the text of an email I sent to Pastorius last night:

	Pastorius,
	I think we only disagree on emphasis and timing, and not on substance. My position is that a sword should remained sheathed until time to use it.
	And my main objection is to the idea that we would destroy Mecca because some subset of Islam attacked us. Until we know for certain that all of Islam is lined up against us, that is morally indefensible. And, since one of the features of this war is our enemy’s total lack of what we consider morality, it is important that we always act morally.
	That said, if we do end up fighting all of Islam, and the imams of Saudi Arabia declare against us, and jihadis set off nukes in a dozen of our cities, then a reasonable and appropriate response would be the destruction of Mecca. Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would shorten the war.
	Then, for the rest of time, we would be blamed for our awful deed, but so what? It would be the right thing to do at that point.
	But revealing this card now is a bad idea. We are not at that time yet, and with God’s grace we may never get there.
	As the Tao te Ching says, “A country’s weapons should not be displayed.” — Baron B.

This can be a jumping-off point for further argument, if anyone feels so inclined.

 
Hugh Hewitt has issued a challenge concerning Tom Tancredo’s remarks about bombing Mecca:

I want to be very clear on this. No responsible American can endorse the idea that the U.S. is in a war with Islam. That is repugnant and wrong, and bloggers and writers and would-be bloggers and writers have to chose sides on this, especially if you are a center-right blogger.

Mr. Hewitt, I agree with you. To assign all Muslims the blame for the actions of the Great Jihad is both repugnant and counterproductive. The extent of general Muslim support for the Islamofascists has not been established, since the “moderate Muslim” has proven so elusive, and has yet to condemn unequivocally the actions of his fanatical co-religionists. Until such support is demonstrated, it ill serves our cause to utter such inflammatory rhetoric.

However, you also say this:

Anyone defending Tancredo’s remarks has got to make a case for why such a bombing would be effective.

I am not defending Congressman Tancredo. However, the destruction of Mecca might be strategically quite effective. Since a devout Muslim believes that no action occurs that is not willed by Allah, and Mecca is Allah’s most sacred site on Earth, the act of destroying it might well deconstruct the basis of fanatic Islam: either Allah sanctioned the destruction of his holiest shrine, or Allah is not in charge. Either way, the Great Jihad would deflate.

But for the West to do so would destroy its own collective soul. Not doing such things is what distinguishes us from them.

Culturally and ideologically, fanatical Islam still resides in the 7th century. The proper 7th-century response would be for us to destroy Mecca and Medina, so that not one stone be left standing upon another, and then sow the ruins with salt.

No matter how appealing the idea is to the atavistic and rageful warrior deep within us, it must not be acted on. We are 21st-century Western Civilization, and we do not do such things. It’s as simple as that.

 
In an article in The Australian entitled Suicide bombings surge since 9/11, Tim Reid reports:

	SUICIDE bombings have become the world’s most common form of terrorism since the hijackings of September 11, 2001, and by far the most effective apart from weapons of mass destruction, a study shows.
	The pace of suicide attacks has accelerated so quickly that three-quarters of all suicide bombings in the past 25 years have been carried out since the 9/11 attacks in the US.

These conclusions are based on a study by the Rand Corporation. According to the study, there have been more suicide bombings in Iraq since March of 2003 than there were inthe entire world between 1980 and 2003.

The report identifies the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka as the inventors of the suicide bomb as a terrorist tactic in the 1980s. Since then the technique has rapidly spread to many other terrorist groups across the globe.

	In May, according to Rand, an estimated 90 suicide bombings were carried out in Iraq alone, almost as many as the Israeli Government has recorded in its conflict with the Palestinians since 1993.
	“With the exception of weapons of mass destruction, there is no other type of attack that is more effective than suicide terrorism,” Rand terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told The Washington Post.

Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, does not see Islamofascism as the primary cause of the increase of suicide bombing.

Instead, he argues that it is a logical military tactic against occupation “to compel the US and other countries to remove their forces from the Arabian peninsula”.

But Mr. Hoffman does not agree:

	Mr Hoffman and many others strongly disagree with Professor Pape’s assessment, noting that the bombers themselves are footsoldiers often motivated by religious belief.
	Mr Hoffman calculates that 31 out of the 35 groups that have used suicide bombings are Islamic.

If the potential future suicide bombers do not outnumber their future victims, over the long haul the tactic is bound to fail. Say the average suicide bomber takes out ten other people when he explodes. If only one in a population of 10,000 is a potential suicide bomber (a generous guess), then the trend will soon peter out.

Of course, the effectiveness of the bomber might be improved. Give a suicide bomber a dirty bomb, a vial of virulent pathogens, or a suitcase nuke, and the calculus of destruction changes considerably.

 

You bet it’s satire.

 
In a comment on a recent Belmont Club post, Jakita said:

	OK, I’m going to express a verboten idea—but what the heck, I’m anonymous.
	Today should be the beginning of the Age of the New Imperialism—or maybe, to be au courant—the Neo-Imperialist Era.
	Why do we have to take all kinds of crap from people from non-Western cultures (referring to Judeo-Christian cultures, not whether they are geographically in the “West.”
	It’s time to stand up and say to those who have barbaric values, “Stop what you’re doing. Or, we’ll make you stop.”
	I guess I’m a little annoyed at the jihadist atrocity in London. People should defend civilization, and not be so tolerant of barbaric customs.

This trepidation with which Jakita voices these opinions is nearly universal within the literate classes of the English-speaking West. For decades such thoughts have been almost unthinkable; the mind simply turns away from anything that is so evidently doubleplus ungood.

And so down the memory hole has gone the great poet of British imperialism, the bard of jingoism, the minstrel of European supremacy. I refer, of course, to Rudyard Kipling. Of all his politically incorrect poems, none violates more of the Ten Commandments of Multiculturalism than this one:

	The White Man’s Burden
	Take up the White Man’s burden—       Send forth the best ye breed— Go, bind your sons to exile       To serve your captive’s need; To wait, in heavy harness,       On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples,       Half devil and half child.
	Take up the White Man’s burden—       In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror       And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple,       An hundred times made plain, To seek another’s profit       And work another’s gain.
	Take up the White Man’s burden—       The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine,       And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest       (The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly       Bring all your hopes to nought.
	Take up the White Man’s burden—       No iron rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper—       The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter,       The roads ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living       And mark them with your dead.
	Take up the White Man’s burden,       And reap his old reward— The blame of those ye better       The hate of those ye guard— The cry of those ye humor       (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:— “Why brought ye us from bondage,       Our loved Egyptian night?”
	Take up the White Man’s burden—       Ye dare not stoop to less— Nor call too loud on Freedom       To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper,       By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples       Shall weigh your God and you.
	Take up the White Man’s burden!       Have done with childish days— The lightly-proffered laurel,       The easy ungrudged praise: Comes now, to search your manhood       Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,       The judgment of your peers.

If one moves past the conditioned response to Kipling’s politically incorrect tropes, this poem seems strangely apropos to our time. Replace “White Man” with “Anglosphere” or “America”, and it is not 1899; it is 2005, and the poem is our poem.

Examine some of the poem’s components. For example, Send forth the best ye breed: Anyone who has followed accounts of the Special Forces teams in Afghanistan or the Marines in Fallujah knows that there has never been a finer military than the one presently engaged in resisting the Great Jihad.

To veil the threat of terror/And check the show of pride: Coalition soldiers who helped pull down the statues of Saddam and now guard the thoroughfares of Iraq have done just that: the threat of Saddam’s terror is gone.

Fill full the mouth of Famine, /And bid the sickness cease; /And when your goal is nearest / (The end for others sought) /Watch sloth and heathen folly /Bring all your hopes to nought. Kipling might have been describing last year’s Christmas tsunami. Remember how American and Australian ingenuity expedited the delivery of resources and aid to the ravaged areas of the South Asian archipelago? Now, seven months later, much of the aid rots on docks and in warehouses. Such is the bureaucratic incompetence and corruption of “heathen folly”.

The ports ye shall not enter,/The roads ye shall not tread, /Go, make them with your living/And mark them with your dead. Our soldiers build schools, hospitals, power stations, and sewer lines; they encounter IEDs and their flag-draped coffins arrive at Dover AFB. Americans know well what Kipling has described.

And too well do we know this one: Take up the White Man’s burden,/And reap his old reward—/The blame of those ye better/The hate of those ye guard. The blame was going on for a long time before September 11, 2001, resounds now, and will continue indefinitely into the future. For forty years the United States stood guard over the democratic states of Western Europe, protecting them from a tyranny that would have enslaved them and sent their free-thinking literati off to rot in the camps. For that we have reaped the reward of an anti-Amercanism so virulent that it consumes the hearts of those who harbor such envious hatred for their liberators.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

Yes, the British were brutal in maintaining subjugation in their colonies. But compared to the other powers of the period — the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Russians, the Chinese, or the Turks — the British exercised restraint and humane governance. As a counterexample, consider the Belgian Congo: to be forced to labor in the mines there was a virtual death sentence. It is estimated that more than fifty percent of the colony’s native laborers died in the service of King Leopold in what was effectively a gigantic slave-labor camp.

When the time came for reform, when conscience asserted itself and insisted on the end of the slave trade, it was progressives within Britain who spearheaded the movement. No more enlightened social force existed than that of the literate classes of Great Britain. And, to twist the knife in the wound of modern politically correct sensibility, that force was driven by fervent Christian principle. It was the Christian evangelists who created what are now the universally accepted principles of human rights.

But we are in many ways different from our 19th century forebears. In Kipling’s time virtually everyone was what we would now call a “racist”. It was assumed that non-physical differences between the races — differences of intelligence, skill, emotional predisposition, creative ability, and technical inclination — were inherent. Thus the superiority of some races over others was unquestioned; the only dispute was which race rightfully deserved to be King of the Hill.

Victoria was the Queen of the 19th century, and the British Empire was the force of cultural and technological enlightenment spreading the benefits of Anglo-Saxon superiority to heathen peoples throughout the world. The duty of the Englishman in the colonies was to uplift the savage and civilize him to the extent that his race made possible. This attitude was typical of the times and no group was exempt from it.

The British Empire, like those of the other European colonial states, was commercial in nature. The genius of British commercial and imperial success lay in laissez-faire economics, enforcement of the rule of law, a small, decentralized administrative structure, and a relatively mild authoritarian rule. The British encouraged free trade, trained local magistrates and jurists, created a native civil service (this was particularly notable in India), and raised local governing bodies via a native franchise.

It was the commercial success of the Empire, along with the supremacy of the Royal Navy, that made the British pre-eminent in the 19th century. Economists have demonstrated that the Empire, like all the colonial empires, was not in fact cost-effective, that its costs exceeded its benefits. But economic growth and the success of the British masked that important fact until two world wars and the destruction of much of the Empire’s merchant shipping had made it inescapable.

So here we are, a century later, with the American Imperium standing in for the British. America’s empire, like the British, is also commercial in nature. But the difference is that it is even more decentralized — America demands neither full political control nor territory, merely that the “colonies” play by the rules of law, engage in open and peaceful commerce, and avoid threatening the United States’ vested interests.

The Great Islamic Jihad does not meet any of these criteria. Thus we Americans man the same ramparts across the world that our British predecessors did, leaving our blood and treasure in the same mosquito-infested foreign dungheaps as did our English forebears so long ago.

Today major areas of the world enjoy unprecedented peace and prosperity, the rule of law, full democratic participation, and the right of all citizens to pursue their own fulfillment. The question remains: why are these also the places which use English as a common tongue?

The burden is no longer that of a “white man”, as the work of Condoleezza Rice so eloquently attests. And those who carry it can no longer rely on the The judgment of [their] peers. Thanks to a century of Socialism and enlightened thought, the judgment of our peers has turned against us. We shall have to learn to get along without it.

—————–

Update: An enterprising Italian blogger has translated the poem into la lingua di amore here.

There is a new group in town: Unite Against Terror. One of the signatories puts his reason for joining hands this way:

We are witnessing one of the greatest betrayals by the left since so-called left-wingers backed the Hitler-Stalin pact and opposed the war against Nazi fascism. Today, the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values. While it deplores the 7/7 terrorist attack on London, only last year it welcomed to the UK the Muslim cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who endorses the suicide bombing of innocent civilians. These same right-wing leftists back the so-called ‘resistance’ in Iraq. This ‘resistance’ uses terrorism against civilians as its modus operandi – stooping to the massacre of dozens of Iraqi children in order kill a few US soldiers. Terrorism is not socialism; it is the tactic of fascism. But much of the left doesn’t care. Never mind what the Iraqi people want, it wants the US and UK out of Iraq at any price, including the abandonment of Iraqi socialists, trade unionists, democrats and feminists. If the fake left gets its way, the ex-Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists could easily seize power, leading to Iranian-style clerical fascism and a bloodbath. I used to be proud to call myself a leftist. Now I feel shame. Much of the left no longer stands for the values of universal human rights and international socialism.

Even though it’s only a symbol, this kind of standing up to be counted is important. It gives breadth and depth to the cry for a peace founded on strength and on the fundamental human right of liberty based on responsibility.

Please click the link and consider adding your name to the world of those who are saying “ENOUGH!” Enough of terrorism and especially enough of the “fake left” cited by Peter Thatchell, above.

Hat tip: Norm Geras

 
Jihad Watch has a link to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.The dateline is Leeds, England.

“We can proclaim peace as tolerance all we want,” said Mohammad Khan, a Pakistani-born shopkeeper who attended midday prayers at the mosque after walking around police barricades throughout the neighborhood of red-brick row houses in the Beeston section of Leeds. “But we are fighting something so big. Our young people always hear these calls of martyrdom and jihad in the name of religion. Some follow it, and I’m afraid more will, too,” he said.

“I think there was something we could have done to stop them. But what? How do you fight an enemy you can’t see; an enemy that resides in people’s souls?”

Well now. How hard can that be? This is not an invisible enemy, this is an education system that permits families to pressure children into wearing hijab to school. This is a culture that, in the name of free speech, allows seditious speeches by radical imams. This is old Nanny Britain, standing around wringing her hands and asking people to play nice. The same old Nanny that permits traitors to live on the dole while they cry for jihad in Britain… oops, sorry: not traitors because these people refuse to apply for citizenship in what they term “Hell.” Charles Krauthammer reveals the problem:

British Islamists had spoken of a “covenant of security” under which Britain would be spared Islamic terror so long as it allowed radical clerics free rein. Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, for example, a Syrian-born, exiled Saudi cleric granted asylum 19 years ago, openly preaches jihad against Britain. He is sought by the press for comment all the time. And, a lovely touch, he actually lives on the British dole — even though he rejects the idea of British citizenship, saying, “I don’t want to become a citizen of hell.”

So, Nanny, why are you handing out money to people inside your kingdom who are trying to destroy your kingdom? Is it intellectual dementia? A failure of nerve? Are the old Communists/socialists still pulling the strings? Just because the Soviet Union fell apart doesn’t mean that all the spores she released fell with her. A lot of them are alive and well in London.

	It is in places like this that “the real war on terrorism will be won or lost,” said Nadim Shehadi, an Islamic affairs specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
	“London is the real capital of the Islamic world,” Shehadi said. “It’s from here where ideas spread. If you can rob terrorism of its intellectual strength in Britain the impact of this will be felt all the way around the world from Chechnya to Uzbekistan, Iraq, Syria and everywhere.”

If that is so, if London is where the action is, then it behooves us to speak to London about its long, long history of playing footsie with the Arabs, permitting them to come play in England, drop their petro dollars into English banks, drop their Wahhabi poison into the public square, and keep the peace at home by sending their troublemakers abroad to live in London, Leeds, and Lancashire.

British authorities have squarely placed responsibility on moderate Muslim leaders to join forces or risk being left irrelevant as officials move toward tougher measures against those preaching anti-Western venom or groups seeking holy war combatants for places such as Kashmir.

If the the “British authorities” are going to “squarely place responsibility” anywhere, it certainly shouldn’t be on “moderate Muslim leaders.” To even attempt to do so proves that the authorities are either fools or quislings. No other European nation allows the kinds of “free speech” that Britain does; it may be that no other nation at all has the level of suicidal inclination that Britain is manifesting in its failure to rein in the terrorists in her bosom.

To see how it ought to be done, dear Queen Elizabeth, please speak to Queen Margrethe of Denmark. Or buy the book.

	Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II warned against the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Denmark and the world in a new book out on Thursday, saying people must on occasion “show their opposition to Islam”.
	“It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and very lazy.”

Charles Krauthammer put it best:

Decadence is defined not by a civilization’s art or music, but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself.

From your pen to the citizens of Britain, Dr. Krauthammer. Quit fiddling around over there. London is burning. It’s not the job of moderate Muslims to extinguish the fire; it’s their job simply to get out of the way while “the authorities” begin acting as if they had sufficient testosterone to take the hose in hand and start spraying down the conflagration.

Enough with the Nero imitations.

“You know, sometimes I honestly despair.”

So says the Sundries Shack, this weeks Council Winner.

	I listened this morning to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal – to the call-in portion of the show. I heard caller after caller after caller spouting absolute drivel until I finally had to turn it off. It actually made me angry. My hands were shaking. That bothered me because I’m not a man given to physical displays of anger.
	What made me so angry was not that those callers were in possession of the facts and drew a different conclusion than I. It was that their facts were so wrong. Not just that, but they were wrong about things that any elementary-school kid who can use Google could find out. They were wrong about facts that were so easy to verify, if they had only put forth a basic amount of effort.
	It was like listening to people condemning the voyage of the Queen Mary because they just knew it would fall off the edge of the world.

He’s right. It’s willful ignorance and unless we can change that, we’ll end up surrendering.

Non-Council Winner was The Winds of Change. By now, many of you have seen Al Queda Attacks: A Flash Presentation. Stuck as I am with a dial-up modem, even I let it load up the first time I saw mention of it. If you’ve got a neanderthal connection, too, just let it load while you go do something else. It’s worth waiting for:

The purpose of the presentation is to graphically demonstrate al Qaeda’s ability to conduct mass casualty assaults on a global scale. This presentation by no means documents every single al Qaeda attack. For example, the murders of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and USAID executive Lawrence Foley in Jordan were excluded, as have smaller impact suicide attacks and beheadings by al Qaeda in Iraq and elsewhere. al Qaeda’s butchery in Iraq can fill a presentation of its own. Also, planned or foiled chemical attacks against Jordan, France and England, the assassination attempts on President Musharraf of Pakistan and numerous other incidents throughout the world have not been documented.

The background music is Cat Stevens’ work.

Meanwhile, the rest of us participants are all over at the Watcher’s post here.