Andrew McCarthy’s new book explains why Islamic Democracy will always be an oxymoron [Yes, I know y’all understand what an oxymoron is but this offered an excuse to link to a fun site. I’m glad someone went to the trouble to create this page. And no, I don’t think the eternal perversions of language by Islamic dogmatists — e.g., “Arab Spring” — are funny, but if we don’t laugh they win. Besides, somewhere or other Mohammed said that laughter was wrong because when you opened your mouth to laugh the devil flew in. That or may not be the case. However, since Irishmen are full of the divil, Mohammed may have been right].
The full title of Mr. McCarthy’s book is Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy and it’s available in a paperback and Kindle.
This is the paperback version: Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy
Both versions share the same reader reviews. I always go to the lowest-rated reviews of any Amazon product, just because that’s often where you find the strange people. Not all the time, mind you, but frequently enough to be interesting. These are interesting — I especially like the image of the person who explained herself in this 3-star review.
First I try to imagine why she bought this as a gift. Is she sufficiently attached to some Islamophobe that she has to get them a present?? Poor woman. She buys the book and then opens it, going so far as to read the first twenty pages. Suddenly she comes to her senses, realizing she has a bad taste in her mouth. The request for a review comes from Amazon and Rhonda feels obliged to put down the minimum wording. She says moans:
I started reading this but since I got it for someone else I stopped reading. I did not enjoy it.
Being a perverse laughing Irishwoman I grok Rhonda’s review. I know I’ll like this book way past her twenty pages. Sadly, though, I don’t give her relationship with the recipient of her copy of Mr. McC’s book a five-star chance. She may be suffering from Spring Fever herself.
Perhaps one of the comentariat could explain the linkage between the elevation of Tayyip Erdogan and his islamist crew on March 14, 2003 and the imminent campaign against Saddam, launched out of Kuwait March 19, 2003.
The Food-for-Oil scandal audit (Volker) discovered disturbing kick-backs by Saddam to high politicians — for those countries sitting in judgment on the UN Security Council.
(Russia, France, Canada (!) were particular stand-outs.)
Saddam even topped up Kofi’s son’s bank account.
So the cynic in me thinks that Saddam even sent big money to Anakara — as yet undiscovered. (Perhaps taken directly over the border in suitcases?)
Anyhow, it’s more than passing strange that Turkey entirely left the Karmalist path at that time.
Subsequently, Turkey’s military has been in turmoil — and profound political redirection.
Egypt figures to mimic Turkey. In which case, we’re compounding error by building up armies that have no ‘proper’ fight. Egypt’s army is now vastly oversized.
As for Turkey, it seems always oriented towards fighting Greece — a nominal NATO ally instead of positioning against the Syrians or Iranians — REAL trouble makers.
Talking about Egypt and the Arab Spring …
That’s a good essay, Nick. The part about identity cards reminds me of my mother’s stories re being a Catholic in Ireland. Before the Republic of Ireland wrested control back from the English of at least part of Eire, the rule was similarly oppressive – no Catholics need apply for jobs. As in Egypt for Copts now, in British-controlled Ireland then, Catholics were second-class citizens.
But the R.C. church in the Republic of Ireland was similarly oppressive to the Proddys. And everyone was suspicious of the Jews. As my mother said about arriving in America: “it was as though the weight of a thousand ghosts and untold shame slipped from my shoulders. I would make my new identity here.”
Well, despite this new freedom, which indeed stayed with her, she remained a good Catholic girl and kept the obligatory Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation as if the fate of her immortal soul depended on it. Which it did.
Not being Muslim in Egypt sucks even more now than it did under the old regime. Sad to say, the Copts pretty much sided with those folks when it was time to make Egypt as Judenrein as possible, by hook or by crook. Was the ginned-up disgust of their Copt neighbors a kind of survival for the Copts or was it real true hatred of Other? Bully tactics taken in with their mothers’ milk? The hope that sucking up (felicitous phrase, that) would spare them from the depredations of their Muslim neighbors in the end? I doubt anyone could separate it out.
I don’t *blame* the Copts as such. Living check by jowl with murderous barbarians who have a fierce tribal pecking order doesn’t bring out the best in any of us. However, the active persecution of their Jewish neighbors by the Copts, the avarice with which they took over abandoned Jewish homes and possessions…It’s so sad to ponder.
And to veer tangentially and backwards: Can anyone say third generation Japanese Americans in California during WWII without feeling the cringe factor in that sad history? We don’t need the lessons of slavery to know who we are. Nor do the black in South Africa or southside Chicago need to look far to see their own lack of moral high ground.
The concept of original sin is passé now, but I haven’t found a better way to describe the hellish things we do to one another under the pretense of proving oh, solidarity, and maybe neighborliness or even the superiority of our own clan. Jesus tried to get his thick-headed followers past their own prejudices by openly recruiting tax-collectors and hanging with – gasp! – Samaritan women of poor reputation.
But you know what? We at least understand remorse. And the whole Western idea of ‘progress’ leads right back to “love your neighbor as yourself”. There is no love in the Koran. None. There is obedience, permission to kill, and the right to take what you can from non-Muslims. A rudimentary kind of faith? Yes. But hope and love, or the peace that passes understanding? Or the soul longing for God as the deer longs for running water? Nuh uh.
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You said: “One of the first things Barack Obama did after he became President was travel to Egypt to give a speech. Obama’s words were supposed to bring about a new age of peace between Islam and the West. Since then we have seen a series of revolutions throughout the Islamic world. These were also supposed to usher in a new age of peace and understanding. It has not arrived.”
I say: BHO has known Islam up close and personal since he was a small boy. Despite his words, I don’t think he believes the blather he reads from his teleprompter. The man is smooth and shallow, but he’s not a fool.
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Fear, ignorance and prejudice have fettered democracy of the majority to the tyranny of the minority. Churchill made no secret of his cautiousness towards democracy, practicing that caution against the evil of a democracy mastered by tyranny in any of the 21st Century western democracies would place Churchill firmly in the anti-democratic wilderness.
That is the first time I have heard that quote from Churchill. He is right though. Here in Britain men got the vote in the 1880s, all women not until the 1920s. Democracy did not last long. Increasingly since the War it has become meaningless. My local mp is urging people to vote in the local elections on May 2nd as the vote for all was a hard won thing. At present about a third of the British only bother to vote. However, now all three main parties are culturally Marxist and as Nigel Farage has said, it is hard to distinguish between them. It will be interesting to see whether the electorate finally see sense and stop voting for them and vote for the minor, nationalist, parties instead, like his own.
Post-war democracy has led the electorate into having to suffer a much greater influx of people into our country than had occurred between 1066 and 1939. Opinion poll after opinion poll in the last 50 years has shown that this is something the electorate did not want and would not have voted for and think was a serious mistake. It has also lured them into the Marxist totalitarian EU. But this has occurred because democracy has failed and has been hijacked by a tyranny, a coalition of ideological fanatics of the capitalist – libertarian free market cheap labour globalizers – and the socialist – international socialist/Marxist – persuasions. The electorate does not want either ideology but they are powerless to change anything. The libertarians will tell us globalization and deregulation have benefited us enormously economically – that is why we are really in a triple dip recession and having to collect food for those who cannot afford to feed themselves. The left will tell us that their Marxist one world utopia is for the good of our souls and although we may hate living with people from all over the world rather with our own kith and kin it is God’s will for the world (even though they probably don’t believe in God and are rapidly marginalising Christianity). If we had wanted to live in Africa, India, Pakistan, the West Indies, Afghanistan, the Middle East or even Poland we would have gone and lived there. But we did not. We wanted to live in England with our ethnic English compatriots as we had been doing so happily and in a fairly stable way for hundreds of years.
As regards Churchill, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who usually talks a lot of sense, has told us he is having Churchill’s face put on the £5 note from 2015. He waxed lyrical about him. I am awaiting the backlash from the left in this country; and even from the Churchill-hating communist, Barack Obama. How he must hate Churchill’s anti-socialist stance. The left will quote Churchill’s scandalous words about muslims; his suggestion that there were outside influences to play in the Russian Revolution; his hatred of socialism; his determination in 1955 to keep Britain white and his ordering of the blanket bombing of German cities during the War. I have no doubt that the latter troubled his conscience but he saw it as the only way to hasten the end of the conflict. As regards the others, had he been able to over-ride democracy and an elected dictatorship then we would not have a muslim problem here, we would never have had so much crime and rioting, no balkanisation of Britain and constant racial friction, no honour killing, sharia law, halal meat, or the Hindu caste system, no Jamaican yardies and probably no gang of foreign billionaires in London swinging our economy and leading to homelessness; nor would the National Health System, our education system, housing supply and infrastructure be at breaking point. Nor would we or the rest of Europe be trapped inside the Marxist EU. His only equal in terms of intellect and common sense since has been Enoch Powell, another enemy of the Left. Sometimes I think that if we had retained a feudal aristocracy made up of Churchill and his equals we would have fared much better than we have with universal suffrage.
I haven’t read the mentioned book, just noting about the apparent issue: Why is “Islamic democracy” an oxymoron? It makes perfect sense. “Democracy” means “government by the people”. Democracy is not a philosophy or constitution, nor does it imply one. Democracy is a method of decision finding, nothing else. It does not mean liberty, rule of law, respect for different opinions, human rights, peaceful coexistence, or anything of that sort. It just means the majority rules, period. And that’s what Islam wants.
Inherent in Western ideas about democracy is the notion that there are differing factions who arrive at a decision re laws through various modes of discussion and voting.
In contrast, Islam has Sharia Law and that’s it. No discussion, just do what you’re told. Ahistorical because the Koran is “uncreated and eternal”. Thus, there is nothing to argue about.
The title of Mr. McCarthy’s book is “Arab Spring” – I picked out the subtitle to emphasize the impossibility of change or dialogue. The USSR had elections and claimed it was democratic but no one believed it. In English at least, the last letter, the ‘R’ stood for ‘Republics’. United Republics under the flag of a totalitarian supremacist ideology. Just like the OIC is a loose federation of democratic Islamic states, see?
Only our MSM and our current American administration ever believed (or pretended to believe) that there would be anything but a winter of famine after this purported “Spring”.
And so far the only thing we are reaping is Libyan anarchy and Benghazi murders of diplomatic personnel – at least one of those “diplomats” tasked with trying to retrieve all the weapons we strewed about during the takedown of Ghadaffi (or however you spell his name). G. was nuts, but he was no fool: he warned us what would happen if we toppled him. And it’s not over yet.
By the time this mess has receded, I doubt HillBill Clinton will be running for any office. Oh, wait: I forgot the MSM’s ability to brick up a cordon sanitaire around any story that doesn’t suit them. So maybe the stories will never come out, despite the Congressional Report which says she & BHO blew it big time.
The Administration’s Benghazi Errors
In America, being a Democrat politician means never having to say you’re sorry.