My acquaintance with the nature of Islamic fundamentalism began thirty years ago when I first read Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey by V.S. Naipaul. I’m now in the process of rereading the book, just to see what it looks like after sitting through ten years of Advanced Jihad Studies.

It’s an extraordinary book. Mr. Naipaul understood the Islamic revival long before any of the rest of us had even thought about it. And he managed this simply by traveling to Islamic countries and talking face-to-face with Muslims. He listened carefully to what they said to him, and took them on their own terms.

His first stop was Iran, in the summer of 1979, a few months after the Islamic Revolution. At that time the leftists had not yet been entirely eliminated from their prominent positions in the new government and society. Some of the purges of communist groups and publications took place while he was still in the country.

The following excerpt is from the end of Section I, pp. 81-82, just before the author flew from Tehran to Karachi. Behzad is the young Iranian communist who acted as Mr. Naipaul’s guide and translator while he was in Iran:

The plane that was to leave at 7:30 didn’t arrive until 10:00. We began to taxi off at 11:25 but then were halted for a further hour, while American-made Phantoms of the Iranian Air Force took off. I thought they were training. They were in fact taking off on Khomeini’s orders to attack the rebel Kurds in the west. Later, in Karachi, I learned that two Phantoms had crashed, and the news was curiously sickening: such trim and deadly aircraft, so vulnerable the inadequately trained men within, half victims, yet men that morning obedient to the will of God and the Twelfth Imam and full of murder.

To Kurdistan, following the Phantoms, went Ayatollah Khalkhalli, Khomeini’s Islamic judge, as close to power as he had boasted only ten days before in Qom. In no time, moving swiftly from place to place in the August heat, he had sentenced forty-five people to death. He had studied for thirty-five years and was never at a loss for an Islamic judgement. When in one Kurdish town the family of a prisoner complained that three of the prisoner’s teeth had been removed and his eyes gouged out, Khalkhalli ordered a similar punishment for the torturer. Three of the man’s teeth were torn out on the spot. The aggrieved family then relented, pardoned the offender, and let him keep his eyes.

It was Islamic justice, swift, personal, satisfying; it met the simple needs of the faithful. But we hadn’t, in the old days, been told of this Iranian need. This particular promise of the revolution had been blurred or fudged; and we had read, mostly, Down with fascist Shah. Only Iranians, and some foreign scholars, knew that when Khomeini was a child — while the Qajar kings still ruled in Iran — Khomeini’s father had been killed by a government official; that the killer had been publicly hanged; that Khomeini had been taken by his mother to the hanging and told afterwards, “Now be at peace. The wolf has attained the fruit of its evil deeds.”

In his advertisement in The New York Times in January 1979, when he was still in exile in France, Khomeini had appealed to “the Christians of the world” as to people of an equal civilization. It was a different Khomeini who said in August, on Jerusalem Day (the day the Phantoms were sent against the Kurds): “The governments of the world should know that Islam cannot be defeated. Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Koran will prevail all over the world.”

That couldn’t have been said to the readers of The New York Times. Nor could this, spoken on the last Friday of Ramadan (and a good example of the medieval “logic and rhetoric” taught at Qom — certain key words repeated, used in varying combinations, and finally twisted): “When democrats talk about freedom they are inspired by the superpowers. They want to lead our youth to places of corruption… If that is what they want, then yes, we are reactionaries. You who want prostitution and freedom in every matter are intellectuals. You consider corrupt morality as freedom, prostitution as freedom… Those who want freedom want the freedom to have bars, brothels, casinos, opium. But we want our youth to carve out a new period in history. We do not want intellectuals.”

It was his call to the faithful, the people Behzad had described as lumpen. He required only faith. But he also knew the value of Iran’s oil to countries that lived by machines, and he could send the Phantoms and the tanks against the Kurds. Interpreter of God’s will, leader of the faithful, he expressed all the confusion of his people and made it appear like glory, like the familiar faith: the confusion of a people of high medieval culture awakening to oil and money, a sense of power and violation, and a knowledge of a great new encircling civilization. That civilization couldn’t be mastered. It was to be rejected; at the same time it was to be depended on.

The theme of Islam’s simultaneous hatred of and dependence on the West is one that recurs throughout the book. This is an essential contradiction within Islam: it cannot do without Western products and services, even as it totally despises Western culture.

The heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, has died. According to unofficial reports, the 85-year-old prince was in New York being treated for cancer at the time of his death. King Abdullah is 87 and said to be ailing, so this leaves the succession to the throne uncertain, and may be a cause for concern within the kingdom.

In other news, the construction of the first stand-alone mosque on Prince Edward Island has begun in Charlottetown. Meanwhile, in the far west of Canada, author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is scheduled to speak at an event in Calgary on Tuesday evening.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, JP, LN, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Geert Wilders may have won his court case in Amsterdam, but the threats — ahem, I mean “warnings” — against him haven’t stopped.

The Ahmadis comprise a small Islamic sect that is considered heretical by mainstream Sunnis and Shi’ites, and is frequently persecuted in countries with a Muslim majority. On one issue, however, all three Islamic groups are in agreement: Geert Wilders is a very, very bad dude.

The Ahmadi umbrella organization Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat — headquartered in London, where else? — reports in a press release that its leader, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, issued a warning to Geert Wilders during Mr. Ahmad’s visit to the Netherlands:

World muslim leader sends warning to dutch [sic] politician Geert Wilders

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad also praises Queen Beatrix

During a recent visit to Holland, the world Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, issued a stark warning to Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician. He warned Wilders that if he continued to defame Islam and the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) then he and other like-minded individuals would be humiliated by God Almighty.

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad said that Wilders had exceeded all limits of falsehood and hatred in his opposition towards Islam. He said Wilders was motivated solely by a desire to further his own political ambitions and so the time had come to warn him about the consequences of his actions. He said that irrespective of whether Wilders gained further political capital in the short term, ultimately his antics would lead only towards abject failure and humiliation.

Addressing Wilders directly, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad said:

“Listen carefully — You, your party and every other person like you will ultimately be destroyed. But the religion of Islam and the message of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) will remain forever. No worldly power, no matter how powerful and no matter how much hatred they bear towards Islam, will ever succeed in erasing our religion.”

Mr. Ahmad was careful to emphasize that he was not predicting or advocating any violence against Mr. Wilders:

His Holiness explained that the destruction of such individuals would be achieved through prayer alone and not by any worldly means. He said:

“Always remember, that we can achieve nothing without prayer. We have no worldly power, nor will we ever use any worldly force. But the prayers of people whose hearts have been grieved are enough to shake the Heavens.”

He also singled out Queen Beatrix for special praise, based on her record of multicultural tolerance and inclusiveness:

During his visit, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, also took the opportunity to praise the efforts of Queen Beatrix towards promoting inclusiveness and equality.

Speaking about her efforts, His Holiness said:

“All Ahmadi Muslims should pray for Queen Beatrix because certain sections of the local society have turned against her, due to the fact that she has openly condemned the anti-Islam movement in this country. They are also angry because she advocates the right of Muslims to be treated as full and equal citizens, whose rights and feelings should be respected. Thus we must pray that all plans and schemes against the Queen completely fail.”

So which Islamic heresy will denounce Geert Wilders next? The Baha’is?

Vlad Tepes has uploaded two videos about the case of Mohammad Shafia, a Muslim Canadian who is on trial for murdering his ex-wife and three daughters to defend the “honor” of his family.

The first clip is from Ezra Levant’s program. His guest is Raheel Raza, a Muslim woman who was abused but managed to escape:

It take exception to Ms. Raza’s assertion that the mandate to abuse women is not in the Koran; it most emphatically is in the Koran. I quote from the most authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law, Reliance of the Traveller, Book P, “Enormities”:

p42.0 A WIFE’S REBELLING AGAINST HER HUSBAND (def: m10.12)

p42.1 Allah Most High says:

“Men are the guardians of women, since Allah has been more generous to one than the other, and because of what they (men) spend from their wealth. so righteous women will be obedient, and in absence watchful, for Allah is watchful. And if you fear their intractability, warn them, send them from bed, or hit them. But if they obey you, seek no way to blame them” (Koran 4:34).

p42.2 The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:

(1)		“Allah will not look at a woman who is ungrateful to her husband, while unable to do without him.”
(2)		“When a man calls his wife to his bed and she will not come, and he spends the night angry with her, the angels, curse her until morning.”
(3)		“It is not lawful for a woman to fast when her husband is present, save by his leave. Nor to permit anyone into his house except with his permission.”
(4)		“Whoever leaves her husband’s house (A: without his permission), the angels curse her until she returns or repents.” (Khalil Nahlawi:) It is a condition for the permissibility of her going out (dis: m 10.3-4) that she take no measures to enhance her beauty, and that her figure is concealed or altered to a form unlikely to draw looks from men or attract them., Allah Most High says, “Remain in your homes and do not display your beauty as women did in the pre-Islamic period of ignorance” (Koran 33.33)

As you can see, Islamic law — mainstream Islamic law, as accepted by devout Muslims all over the world — not only permits the subjugation of women, it requires it. Women are to submit to the authority of their husbands and fathers in all circumstances, who are instructed to hit them if they are intractable and cannot otherwise be subdued. The motive for the murders Mr. Shafi allegedly committed — that his daughters were immodest in their dress and behavior — also has firm Koranic backing.

One may sympathize with Ms. Raza’s views, and share her earnest desire that Islam be reformed, but it cannot be denied that the repression of women is right there in the Koran.

Islamic law, which guides Islamic political practice all over the world, is based directly on the Koran and the hadith, as evidenced by the above passages from Reliance. Therefore any reform of Islam in the direction most Westerners desire would require discarding much of the Koran, and also an extensive rewrite of the bulk of codified sharia.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that.

The second video about the Shafia case is from Charles Adler’s program, and features Anthony Fury:

Once again, I take exception to some of the analysis. I find the assertion that “Multiculturalism is working in Canada, except…” to be dubious at best.

All in all, however, these are excellent videos. Kudos to SUN TV for airing such politically incorrect commentary. Nothing like it can be found on network television in the USA, as far as I know.

Below is the third article in a four-part series on history, human development, and Islam by our English correspondent Seneca III. A slightly different version of this essay was previously published at Crusader Rabbit.

Previously: Part I, Part II.

A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night
Part III: Belief

by Seneca III

On a chill Thursday morning, February 17th in the year 1600, just sixteen years before Galileo Galilei barely escaped the same fate, the fifty-one-year-old Benedictine friar Giordano Bruno was led naked and with an iron spike through his tongue into the Campo de’Fiori in Rome, burned at the stake for committing “heresy in matters of dogmatic theology”, and his ashes dumped in the Tiber. His crime had been to comment on the work of Nicolaus Copernicus and suggest that there were infinite worlds in the universe with intelligent life, some perhaps with beings superior to humans.

[“I can imagine an infinite number of worlds like the Earth, with a Garden of Eden on each one. In all these Gardens of Eden, half the Adams and Eves will not eat the fruit of knowledge, and half will. But half of infinity is infinity, so an infinite number of worlds will fall from grace and there will be an infinite number of crucifixions.” — Giordano Bruno, ‘On the Cause, Principle, and Unity’, 5th dialogue.]

This was an extremely brave thing to do. Within the Roman Catholic Ecumene of the 16th and 17th Centuries — just as it is today within the Islamic Umma — it was invariably fatal to challenge the Church’s doctrinal power base, a fate Copernicus, a curate and Renaissance polymath, had managed to avoid by publishing his seminal work ‘On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres’ in 1543, only shortly before his death by natural causes at the age of seventy.

Whether the timing of its publication and his passing were planned or simply fortuitous is a moot point, although circumstances do point to the latter. But being the essential pragmatist that he was Copernicus may well have understood that the failure of the human mind to come to terms with the fundamental difference between faith and doctrine, between apostasy and heresy, has been a prime cause of conflict and atrocity throughout our history.

Bruno was also a cosmologist and polymath of high standing — his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of spatial paradigms of geometry to language are considered a classic of their time — but in other respects he was a very different kettle of fish to Copernicus. Recent examination of the background to the case indicates that another dynamic had just entered stage left, Renaissance Hermeticism. Bruno subscribed to the mysticism verging on magic that lay at the core of Hermeticism, esoteric beliefs originating in the ancient Greek writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and which to some extent still exist today within Rosicrucianisn, Freemasonry and Coptic scripture.

In this context it is worth noting the seventh of the eight charges that Bruno faced:

• Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
• Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.
• Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
• Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
• Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
• Believing in metempsychosis* and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
• Dealing in magics and divination.
• Denying the Virginity of Mary.

Faith, belief in superior beings, gods if you will, is a metaphysic probably as old as our species, and a very slippery one it is; in its purest form it is spiritual and personal but its fellow traveller, theology, or dogma, is temporal, a human attempt to explain the unexplainable and invariably it does so in what are the perceived best interests of a particular power elite, the priesthood or clerics.

Bruno’s statement about the nature of the Universe was clearly a challenge to the elite of his day. It undermined their theological position, their ‘raison d’etre’, it condemned him to a dreadful fate and caused his works to be placed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (along with those of Copernicus) for fear they would infect others. Yet today these statements do not even raise an eyebrow, they might even be considered passé in some quarters, and this must therefore beg the question “How was the ruthless power of the Christian clergy and the theological dogmatism that sustained it shattered, and hence why are Inquisitions and burning stakes no more?”

Broadly speaking, the short answer can be found among the headstones of those men and women who each walked their own small stretch of the long trail that began with the Renaissance in the 14th century, struggled through the devastation of the Thirty Years War — which ended in the predominantly secular settlements of the Peace of Westphalia — and culminated in the Enlightenment, an era of Western philosophy, intellectual, scientific and cultural life centred upon the 18th century in which reason was advocated as a primary source for legitimacy and authority.

However, that said, another question raises its ugly head “Why did the need arise in the first place and why, after all those centuries of blood and pain do we now face the prospect of having to do it all over again to an atavistic Imamate?”

One answer may lie in a subtle difference between the three major Religions that arose in the area of the fertile crescent — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — and those of the East such as Hinduism, Confucianism, Shintoism and that most humanitarian of them all, Buddhism.

These Eastern religions share several characteristics that are in essence quite different from those of the Western Triumvirate:

• They tend to be more ethical and philosophical systems and less the rigid practice of a set of clearly defined rules imposed from above.
• They do not insist upon monotheistic worship.
• In general, whilst they acknowledge the existence of gods, they do so without the overriding concept of sin and punishment that bedevils the Triumvirate.
• They are mostly older having evolved slowly, either uniquely or out of a precursor system, rather than springing into existence over a relatively short time frame.

They are not, of course, immune from sectarianism or internecine strife but, with the exception of certain caste systems, this sectarianism is overall more benign than malignant. Indeed, Shintoism wholeheartedly embraces Buddhism and many of its practises, and both systems ease along together in complete harmony.

On the other hand Judaism, Christianity and Islam are ‘revealed’ belief systems burdened with revelations, instructions cast in stone in the wording and in the light of the limited understanding of their time, the word of God delivered through the inadequate mouth of man out of the traditions of Hellenistic and Roman metaphysics, belief systems that were riddled with oracles, seers and prophets.

And, when it comes to prophets, predestination and reason meet at a Philippi both far more ancient and modern than the Roman one, one where, in an era of WMD, we should all be thinking pretty damn hard about what the future holds and what we are going to have to do if we want to hold onto it.

Offhand I can only think of two recent publications that have elicited a similar medieval response as did the works of Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo: The Bell Curve (1994, Hernstein & Murray**) and The Satanic Verses (1988, Rushdie). Both challenged established ‘dogmatic theology’, the former in the field of cognition, particularly its application within the politically correct constraints of ethno-social doctrine, and the latter in the swamp of Islamic revelation. Their authors also faced trial before a court of vested interests.

Although Rushdie has managed to survive the wrath of the demented ‘Slaves of Allah’, others have not been so fortunate. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was stabbed to death in 1991, and a few days later Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, was stabbed and seriously injured. William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher, just managed to survive an assassination attempt in Oslo in 1993.

Conversely the The Bell Curve did not generate any physically lethal fatawa, but as Professor Richard Hernstein died before the book was released, he was unable to defend his thesis during the coruscating ideological storm that followed. His co-author, Charles Murray, lived on through a long period of media and academic debate and comment, both pro and con, including some sustained attacks on the personal integrity and academic standing of the authors. This proved again that one diddles with dogma at one’s peril, and therefore one should not be that surprised that recently there has been a demand from the ‘Intelligent Design’ tendency for the teaching of this devious repackaging of Creationism as equal to and alongside that of Evolution.

If nothing else this illustrates that priesthoods continue to cling tenaciously to those simplistic, doctrinal explanations that have for so long sustained their sinecures. And, having only these to offer in support of their postulates, such clergy are by necessity reduced to negative campaigning where the rationale behind their premise pushes credulity to its limit by proposing that the Universe is far too complex to have happened by chance and, a priori, must have been ‘designed’.

Consequently, and irrespective of whatever my own metaphysic is or is not, I suggest that if the universe is too complex to have just happened and therefore must have been designed, then it is axiomatic that the Designer must be infinitely more complex than the design. Hence, compelled by the imperative illogic of the original premise, I must ask, “What, then, designed the Designer?”

There is, of course, no answer to be found in such an infinity of mirrors, and those who need to embrace their existence within the constraints of revealed belief systems could ease their pain by simply recognising evolution as the Designer’s chosen methodology. After all, who are they, mere mortals, to deny the gods — whom, one presumes, have all of time and unlimited options on their side — this particular tool of their choice?

Or, to put it another way, from what moral position can we set out to deal with the pre-medieval, unenlightened dogmatism of Islam whilst still burdened with the detritus of our own?

That said, let the floodgates open, but before they do I would dare to suggest that Intelligent Designers and the non-inquiring minds of the Islamic Umma might care to note Bruno’s reply to the Inquisition: “Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it” Wherewith he demonstrated that a human mind under the lonely lens of a rational microscope is a prime example of evolution in action.

Notes:

*		Metempsychosis is the belief in the transmigration of the human soul into the new body of the same or a different species. My personal take on the wording of this charge is that it is interesting in as much as it does not specifically deny the concept of human reincarnation, possibly because it might bring into question the matter of Jesus rising from the dead.
**		An interesting consequence of this publication was the subsequent modification of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (and test) into an acultural version (SB5, in 2003) — to my mind a classic case of rigging the game in order to achieve a desired result, a procedure not entirely alien to all belief systems.

Previous posts by Seneca III:

2007		Oct		13		A Letter to my People
				26		Another Letter To My People
2008		Oct		5		Excerpt From “Ere the Winter of Our Discontent”
2009		Oct		22		The Cultural Death of a People
				23		Do Star Chambers Serve a Useful Purpose, Or Do They Obfuscate the Issue?
		Nov		8		By the Rivers of Babylon
2010		Jul		2		The ‘Phoney War’ Is Over
		Sep		13		Musings on the Winds of Change
		Oct		13		The Fourth Dimension of Warfare, Part 1
2011		Jan		1		The New Year Comes With Ham
		Feb		6		My Yesterday in Luton
		Jun		17		The English Spring
		Jul		12		The Betrayed
		Oct		19		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part I
				20		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part II

The Norwegian state oil company has confirmed the discovery of a vast new oil field in the North Sea. The new reserves are thought to hold up to 1.5 billion barrels of oil. Meanwhile, Switzerland has passed Norway as the richest country in the world, based on the average per-capita wealth held by its citizens.

In other news, the United Arab Emirates are in the midst of a gasoline shortage. Despite having the sixth-largest oil reserves in the world, the government-mandated price for gasoline at the pump has caused the Emirates’ largest gasoline distribution company to operate at a substantial loss for the past year. This has dried up the flow of fuel to retail outlets.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Anne-Kit, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

We’ve reported previously about the “sharia-controlled zones” in East London. Now it seems the same trend has come to Denmark

In the video below, a Danish TV news reporter interviews a young man about his desire for sharia in his neighborhood, and also his insistence that Islamic religious strictures forbid Muslims from voting in elections. He is forthright in his view that Islam and sharia will eventually rule in Denmark.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

The Copenhagen Post has an article about the push for sharia-controlled zones in Denmark:

Islamists Seek to Introduce ‘Sharia Zones’

A majority of Danish Muslims distance themselves from small group of extremists

A fundamentalist Islamic group wants to set up zones in Copenhagen where Islamic Sharia Law should be upheld.

The group, ‘The Call to Islam’, belongs to a branch of Islam called Salafism, whose followers in the UK attempted to introduce similar Sharia zones in London earlier this summer.

According to Jyllands-Posten newspaper, the group is led by the imam Abu Ahmed, who has taught several people subsequently linked to terrorist activities. The Call to Islam intends to start patrolling the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Tingbjerg before extending into Nørrebro and eventually the whole of Denmark. Muslims found to be drinking and gambling would be reprimanded for breaking Islamic code.

The Muslimernes Fællesråd, an umbrella organisation representing over 40,000 Muslims from several organisations, has denounced the plans. “We should definitely take them seriously and enter into dialogue with them,” spokesperson Mustafa Gezen told Jyllands-Posten. “We should not ignore their extreme inclinations in our society. The problem is that many young people are susceptible to these beliefs. We need to start at the primary school level, to stress the importance of democracy.”

The deputy mayor for integration, Anna Mee Allerslev, told Jyllands-Posten Tueday that she was previously aware of the group and their plans. “A while ago I asked our employees to head out and intensify their work to engage with them,” she said. “But it’s important that we don’t talk it up too much because they are only a small group in Tingbjerg. But it’s important that we pay attention to the problem.”

Allerslev added that she had called a meeting with Islamic group Islamisk Trossamfund and the Muslimernes Fællesråd to discuss how to prevent the radicalisation of Islamic youth. She also stated that the City Council was in contact with the authorities in London who have many years’ experience dealing with similar groups. According to the City Council, there are nine Salafists patrolling Tingbjerg. The group has a core support of about 50 individuals in Copenhagen who are joined by several hundred additional supporters at study meetings.

Hat tip: JP.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.

And if the world were black or white entirely
        And all the charts were plain
Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,
        A prism of delight and pain,
We might be surer where we wished to go
        Or again we might be merely
Bored but in the brute reality there is no
        Road that is right entirely.

— Louis MacNeice, from “Entirely”

This morning we received an email from a relatively new reader who lives in Florida. He proposed a topic he would like to see addressed at Gates of Vienna:

The world is a busy place right now. I won’t blame you for not addressing this topic right away. Your articles on history have been very well done and interesting. As I’ve said in a comment I am not a good student of history like some of my fellows so those entries about Germanic, Scandinavian, and Norman peoples are good.

Primarily my praise is for the fact that you do not pretend to cover up the sins of America’s ancestors as many enemies in our world would love to accuse you of. But I wonder if you could spend some time discussing, for the benefit of any open-minded accusers out there, the difference between the views of the alert, EDL class, of groups out there and racism.

I know there is a difference and it is primarily to do with migration, adsorption, absorption, getting along in freedom. In other words why, Gates of Vienna, are you not an Aryan nationalist bigoted collection of white guys?

As I wrote out my reply to him, it kept getting longer and more involved. The essay below is a lightly-edited adaptation of it.

That’s a good question. My wife will probably answer it differently, since she and I come at the issue from different angles.

To me, race is not the important issue; immigration is. If we (the USA) or Australia or European countries stopped all immigration, or at least slowed it down to a trickle, in two or three generations race would no longer be an issue. This would especially be the case in countries that have not experienced a lot of mass immigration up until now. France is an exception — it has an Algerian population of long standing, going back more than a hundred years, so its problems will remain.

In addition to limiting immigration, two other policies would be necessary:

1.		Deport all criminal immigrants, revoking the citizenship of serious criminals if they are naturalized citizens; and
2.		Insist on assimilation.

These steps would keep race from being an issue in most countries. Unfortunately, no Western country is doing these things — Denmark comes the closest — so we are headed for catastrophe, probably within the next twenty years or so.

The United States is also a special case. Black people were brought here against their will beginning four hundred years ago. In my area (Central Virginia), the ancestors of many of the black people arrived on this continent before the ancestors of the most of the white people who live here now. Thus they have at least as good a claim to the territory as the whites. There can be no moral justification for solving the “race problem” here through forced relocation — we are going to have to muddle through with what we have now.

In my local area, which is rural, the blacks and the whites are split about 50-50, and the populations are mixed fairly evenly. Yes, there are clumps of each race, but those are small and interspersed among each other. There is also a lot of interbreeding within the lower class.

This means that radical ideas about racial separation — e.g. David Duke on the white side, Louis Farrakhan on the black — cannot be implemented in Central Virginia without massive, apocalyptic violence. People who have lived here for centuries and do not feel like moving will not easily be uprooted to satisfy the schemes of power-mad people in Chicago or New Orleans. If such a “solution” were attempted, the fabric of our society would be utterly destroyed.

Therefore I don’t view “white nationalism” as a solution to our problems, at least not in my little corner of the world. The situation I was born into will not be improved by such ideology; it will be made horribly worse. We will simply have to attempt to continue as we are, somehow, despite the fact that many blacks don’t like whites all that much, and vice versa.

But the mutual antipathy is not universal, not one hundred percent. My neighborhood is mostly black; I know a lot of black people. Some of them don’t like white people, and it shows. But most are normal, decent people, and some have been crucial friends to me.

There are many families here, black and white, that go back 100, 200, or 300 years. Some of those families have had relationships with one another since one of them owned the other as property. They know each other intimately. They are on good terms or bad terms, but are not strangers to one another.

This is a complex situation, just as conflicted relationships within families are complex. Race “problems” in such a milieu cannot easily be solved, and certainly not through ideological theories crafted by race-demagogues hundreds or thousands of miles away.

There are differences between blacks and whites. There is ill feeling. There are long-standing grievances. Yet these are my people; I was born among them. I will stand by them.

I don’t share the concern of the modern white nationalists with human biodiversity, but I have no quarrel with their work. They refer to themselves as “race realists”. My description above is also “race realism”. Those are the races. What I described is the real situation between them. Realistically, there is no “solution” to racial problems in my home country. We will simply have to get by, somehow, just as families do.

This is why I am not an Aryan nationalist.

The following video comes highly recommended by our Swedish correspondent LN, who has this to say about it:

Even though this short video is in Swedish, you must see it! Study the body-language — Kent Ekeroth [of Sverigedemokraterna] is debating immigration to Sweden with [Social Democrat] Mona Sahlin and a (I think) Kurdish immigrant, Dilsa Demibag Steen, who not without success has chosen to be a professional debater and writer.

Ekeroth is citing statistics and using common sense, and the ladies are dreaming about even more open borders, more diversity, and intensified Multiculturalism.

In Sweden every crook is getting asylum. Hitler, if he were fleeing from justice in postwar Germany, would today get asylum in Sweden, because there would have been a risk that he would be hanged back home.

Now all the Libyan pro-Gaddafi crooks will come to Sweden, fleeing from their imminent executions in Libya…

If I get a time-stamped translation of this video, I’ll see about a subtitled version. In the meantime, for our Scandinavian readers, here’s the Swedish original, courtesy of Sverigedemokraterna’s YouTube channel:

The debate took place at “Globala gymnasiet 2011” — which would translate roughly as “Global High School” — in Stockholm.

The video below from SUN TV concerns the blatant corruption and illegal behavior of Canada’s state television outfit, the CBC.

Watch Ezra Levant take the CBC apart in this magnificent expression of outrage at the overweening power and arrogance of a government-funded near-monopoly.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

The protests in Athens against the Greek government’s austerity program have turned deadly: a protester died of a heart attack while fleeing the violence in Syntagma Square. There were clashes between hooded protesters and police in the square, and with a communist brigade that was protecting the Monument to the Unknown Soldier and the parliament building.

In other news, a disabled French woman who was taken hostage by Somali kidnappers has died during her captivity. Her captors, who had demanded ransom while she was alive, are now insisting that her family must pay them for the return of her body.

Meanwhile, the Basque separatist group ETA has formally laid down its arms after thirty years of terrorist attacks. It now seeks to become a legitimate political movement.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Egghead, ESW, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Steen, Takuan Seiyo, Van Grungy, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The brief video below is a textbook example of the “banality of evil”.

Even with the hijab covering her, this young woman looks attractive and personable. Her voice is calm and pleasant. Watch her face when she is told that the bombing she planned killed eight children. Her smile is positively radiant!

A grinning skull would have been less horrifying.

The next time someone tells you that Muslims are really just like you and me, and have the same hopes and desires, show him this clip. People all over the world are not the same under the skin. That fallacy has now been permanently laid to rest.

Many thanks to E.J. Bron for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. (Mark 9:42)

Below is the second article in a four-part series on history, human development, and Islam by our English correspondent Seneca III. A slightly different version of this essay was previously published at Crusader Rabbit.

Part I is here.

A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night
Part II: Origins

Four and a half million years ago in the first few seconds of the early morning of our species the earth moved. Slowly but inexorably Africa subtended Asia, and Africa broke.

Africa, then, was an expanse of low, rolling, tree-clad hills stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, from the Inland Sea to the frigid southern waters. It was a quiet place; a comfortable, undemanding habitat where evolution appeared to have stalled and a relatively stable ecological balance had triumphed such that the daily demands of survival lacked the innate ferocity of the preceding Lower Tertiary period.

But this Africa would be no longer. The confrontation between one tectonic plate and another initiated an event that changed a small, rocky planet orbiting a minor star on the outer arm of an inconsequential galaxy — and it changed it forever. In a few short moments of geological time the shuddering continent heaved and buckled, its convulsions raising to the north a range of mountainous catchments that would feed into a great river basin in its centre and at the same time curtail the extent of the precipitation that had once fallen evenly across the land. Their north facing flanks and the hinterland beyond became a place of rain shadow, a dry, hot desert stretching to the shores of the Mediterranean.

Simultaneously, from the Northeast, there opened a deep wound in the earth’s crust as the mantle split and the ocean thundered into the fiery depths where magma turned the waters of a nascent Red Sea into superheated steam.

Southward, on land, beyond the boiling waters, a serpentine chasm speared into the heart of Eden reaching almost to the tip of the continent, slicing through the blanket of forest and coming close to cutting the eastern seaboard free from the rest of the land mass. Here molten lava welled up, bubbled and hissed, rose and roiled until finally settling to the bottom of the fracture, slowly solidifying, and with this cooling came a chain of undulations and cracks in the surface, embryonic lakes awaiting the fulfilment of their promise as they lay strung between sheer cliffs of basalt in the west and a vast wedge of land to the east.

This wedge of land, this protuberance, was the key player in the environmental and evolutionary drama that was about to unfold, for that part of the Africa plate upon which it sat was now semi-detached and had tilted along its north-south axis, pushing high up into the path of the easterly monsoon. Driven by the wind and Coriolis force the water-heavy clouds followed the rising slope into the cold upper air beyond the scarp and deposited the bulk of their contents into the open wound beyond, filling the lakebeds and greening the plain that surrounded them.

Soon vast herds of herbivores and their attendant predators would roam here, later to be joined by an arboreal omnivore that would adapt to the demands of life in the open in a strange and unique way.

Thus came into being the womb and cradle of mankind, the Great Rift Valley, where one day an anthropoid ape would lift its knuckles out of the red African earth and walk upright.

We are all out of Africa, and what a fascinating, wonderful journey it has been. It did not happen all at once of course, but to the best of our knowledge over a period from 200,000 to 15,000 years ago. Nor was it a single, linear exodus. There is evidence that shows there was more than one wave, perhaps several, each having a particular geographic and temporal dynamic, and at one stage our numbers became so small we came close to dying out altogether.

The fossil record, incomplete though it is, is only one part of the jigsaw. In recent decades the use of DNA analysis has enabled quite accurate delineation of the time lines and extent of our human Diaspora. For ease of explanation these can be compartmentalised into six phases. Briefly:

Into Africa

There is a consensus between paleoanthropologists and geneticists that modern humans arose in the Rift Valley close to 200,000 years ago and a fossil found in Omo Kibish, Ethiopia, does substantiate this hypothesis. (Sites in Israel hold the earliest evidence of modern humans outside of Africa, but that group went no further, dying out about 90,000 years ago.) In Africa fossil remains at a site at Klasies River Mouth in modern day Cape Province date from 120,000 years ago.

Out of Africa

Genetic data show that a small group of modern humans left Africa for good 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, settling first in the Arabian Peninsula and eventually replacing all earlier types such as Homo Neanderthalensis. All non-Africans are the descendents of these travellers who may have migrated around the top of the red Sea or across its narrow southern opening.

The First Australians

Discoveries at two ancient sites — artefacts from Malukunanja and fossils from Lake Mungo — indicate that modern humans followed a coastal route along southern Asia and reached Australia nearly 50,000 years ago. Their descendents, Australian Aborigines, remained genetically isolated on that island continent until recently.

Early Europeans

Paleoanthropologists long thought that the peopling of Europe followed a route from North Africa through the Levant. But genetic data show that the DNA of today’s western Eurasians resembles that of people in India. It appears possible that an inland migration from India seeded Europe between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago.

Expansion into Asia

Around 40,000 years ago humans pushed into Central Asia and arrived on the grassy steppes north of the Himalayas. At the same time they travelled to Southeast Asia and China, eventually reaching Japan and Siberia. Genetic clues indicate that humans in northern Asia eventually migrated to the Americas.

Through the Americas to Cape Horn

Exactly when the first people arrived in the Americas and the exact sequence of their dispersion or re-dispersion is still hotly debated. Genetic evidence suggests it was between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago when sea levels were low and a land bridge connected Siberia to Alaska. Ice sheets would have covered the interior of north America, forcing the new arrivals to travel down the west coast, leaving artefacts and fossils at Kennewick (9,500 Before Present Era), Spirit Cave (9,500 — 9,400 BPE), Clovis (13,500 BPE) in the north before reaching Monte Verde in Southern Chile 15,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The wonder is that we survived at all. Yet survive we did, and in the process of our migrations we have adapted to and colonised every biome on the planet where an air breathing species can exist. From arctic wastes to lush tropics, from vast plains to high mountain pastures, from cool, damp woodlands to sere desert we have set down our feet and in turn these environments have, particularly in extremis, shaped the way we think and act and go about the daily business of life.

With this in mind I shall, in a later essay, turn some attention to the remnants of the second phase, those who did not move onward and outward but remained in and colonised the Arabian Peninsula and its immediate environs. Here a harsh climate and demanding terrain forever shaped the minds and defined the way of life of a certain subset of our species — the Semitic peoples.

In the years prior to the advent of DNA analysis much was made of the fact that there were ‘missing links’ in the fossil record. True, there were, and they remain so to this day, but we couldn’t dig up the whole planet in the hope of finding something that may have conveniently died where the geoclimatic conditions were favourable to fossilisation. DNA analysis has now filled in most of the gaps, but in a sense there do remain missing links, not fossils but events that even DNA cannot answer — why did our distant ancestors come down from the safety of the trees and venture out into the dangerous open spaces beyond, and, having done so, what drove them to adopt bipedalism?

There are no definitive answers to either question, only speculation, and that is a fertile field indeed. Some biologists propose that when the primate family tree branched to separate the apes from the monkeys the former lost the ability to digest unripe fruit, which monkeys could harvest before the apes and so forcing the latter to seek other food sources. Others, behavioural anthropologists, may argue that it was simply a case of a species taking advantage of a new niche. Perhaps it was a combination of both and of other factors such as major changes in the forest habitat brought about by the climactic events that had created the Great Rift Valley. Whatever it was we will probably never fully understand.

The matter of apes adopting bipedalism (another seminal branching of the primate family tree) is one that offers a much richer seam of hypotheses for us to mine. Physiological and behavioural studies of modern apes have revealed some interesting clues, principally that apes are not true quadrupeds in the same sense as say an antelope or a lion or a meercat. Their long forelimbs evolved for climbing and swinging, and as a consequence when walking on four limbs apes have to ‘knuckle walk’, an ungainly and not particularly efficient gait. It locates their shoulders much higher than their pelvis, thus positioning them already part way to an upright stance.

Furthermore it is not unreasonable to assume that a habit of rising briefly upright in order to scan above the long grass of the plains for approaching predators was a necessary defensive mechanism. Thence over thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years those whose pelvic girdles had or had developed minor muscular and skeletal changes that enabled them to stand frequently and for longer would stand a better chance of survival and consequently have a better chance of passing on these small but accumulative mutations to future generations.

However it happened, this permanent freeing of two limbs from a locomotive function, limbs with an opposed thumb at their extremities, opened another evolutionary door which eventually lead to the crafting of tools and weapons, by which means these proto-humans came to manipulate their environment in ever more sophisticated ways.

In due course, possibly out of an intuitive need to cooperate effectively, there followed the development of language and an increase in brain capacity, although which came first is uncertain. What is certain is that their descendents, modern man, would arise slowly but inexorably through a long chain of distant relatives, Australopithecus, Homo habilis and many others, to become what we see when we look in the mirror today, Homo sapiens sapiens.

I remarked earlier that speculation on these matters is a fertile field. Well I too speculate, and as I have a tendency to anthropomorphise, sometimes mischievously, here, for what it’s worth, is my contribution to the academic debate:

[One day long after the Rift had settled into the steady rhythms a functional biome Mrs. Ugg came swinging through the trees, a child clutching tightly to her chest hair and several other older children following in her wake. She settled on a branch next to Mr. Ugg and eyed him malevolently for a few moments before speaking.

“Look at you, you great lump” she said “all you do all day is sit there on that branch sucking on the last of the ripe mangoes and watching those monkeys down there kicking a coconut from one end of a field to the other. And look at them! What on earth are they up to falling over and screaming ‘Referee!’ every time another one runs past them? You’re all bloody daft, and I’ll tell you this, the kids are hungry and unless you get off your fat, idle butt and get out there and find us some food you can give up all hope of ever again getting your hands on my butt, or anything else for that matter. So there!”

And so it came to pass that the exodus began. Ugg led his people into the new world, Mrs. Ugg relented and was again fruitful and the tribe of Ugg grew and spread over the land and prospered until…

…several Millennia later one of their descendents was out with his troop, foraging on the savannah. It was back-aching work bending over all day, bums in the air, scratching for edible roots and insects. Suddenly, impulsively, Ugg The Latest stood upright, placed the heels of his hands on his back and pressed them one on each side of his aching spine. Ahh! he murmured, as he stretched and sighed in relief. Then he looked around at the panorama before him and froze in amazement.

“Good God!” he said to himself, “look at all that Totty, I’m going to have to do this more often.” and then, after a short period of pleasant contemplation “Oh, hell, now I suppose I’m going to have to learn to count as well!”

And so it came to pass that Ugg began to spend a lot of his time in an upright stance, a stance soon adopted by all the male members of his tribe and then in quick order by the female members, but for an entirely different reason. Or so it is writ in the Book of Seneca III.]

In closing I submit that in the sublime moment of an ancient ape’s epiphany was born the eternal trichotomy — Belief, Recreational Sex, and Reasoning — and as the three have been uneasy bedfellows ever since, particularly within the Islamic mind-set, I feel they are worth examination in detail.

Previous posts by Seneca III:

2007		Oct		13		A Letter to my People
				26		Another Letter To My People
2008		Oct		5		Excerpt From “Ere the Winter of Our Discontent”
2009		Oct		22		The Cultural Death of a People
				23		Do Star Chambers Serve a Useful Purpose, Or Do They Obfuscate the Issue?
		Nov		8		By the Rivers of Babylon
2010		Jul		2		The ‘Phoney War’ Is Over
		Sep		13		Musings on the Winds of Change
		Oct		13		The Fourth Dimension of Warfare, Part 1
2011		Jan		1		The New Year Comes With Ham
		Feb		6		My Yesterday in Luton
		Jun		17		The English Spring
		Jul		12		The Betrayed
		Oct		19		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part I

If the early news reports are correct, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi (alias Moammar Ghedaffi, Muamar Khaddafi, plus more than 200 other combinatorial variants on his two names) has shuffled off this mortal coil. The “death photos” of Col. Kheddafi are too gruesome to post here, so I’ll just make do with an old photo of him from happier days.

I can’t say that the old thug deserved to live, but I will miss him. He was the most reliably entertaining head of state on the world scene. With his traveling Bedouin tent, his young blond Ukrainian “trainer” or “masseuse” or whatever she was, his annual practice of paying Italian hookers to come to Tripoli and listen to his sermons and convert to Islam — how could anyone not miss him? How could David Cameron or Nancy Pelosi ever compare with the Man of Many Spellings for sheer entertainment value?

Hugo Chavez runs a distant second, and if rumors are to be believed, he also is not long for this world.

According to CNN, Col. Ghadafi was shot by rebel forces while attempting to escape his hiding place in Sirte:

Reports Indicate Gadhafi is Dead

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Reports indicate deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is dead, the National Transitional Council spokesman said Thursday.

Revolutionary fighters attacked the house where Gadhafi was hiding, Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam told CNN. Gadhafi was shot while trying to flee, he said.

“Colonel Gadhafi is history,” he said, adding that interim council’s chairman or prime minister needs to officially confirm the death.

However, Gadhafi’s status remained unclear as a host of conflicting reports surfaced Thursday. None could be independently verified.

AbdelHakim Bilhajj, head of the National Transitional Council’s military arm in Tripoli announced Gadhafi’s death live on Al-Jazeera Arabic Thursday. It was also reported by National Transitional Council television station Al-Ahrar. It did not cite a source.

A grisly cell phone photograph distributed by the news agency Agence France Presse appeared to show the arrest of a bloodied Gadhafi. CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the image.

Gadhafi’s capture was also reported by Libyan television, citing the Misrata Military Council.

The U.S. State Department could not confirm any of the reports about Gadhafi’s capture or killing, a spokeswoman said.

Abubaker Saad, who served as a Gadhafi aide for nine years, said it didn’t really matter whether Gadhafi was dead or alive — as long as he was captured.

“As long as he was on the run he represented a very ominous danger to the Libyan people,” Saad told CNN.

[…]

Without foolproof evidence of Gadhafi’s capture, it was unclear whether Thursday would turn out to be the biggest day in recent Libyan history. Statements made by representatives of Libya’s new leadership in the past have not always turned out to be true.

The Lonely Conservative has a slightly different version, reporting that Col. Qhedaffi was killed when trying to escape a convoy that was attacked by NATO warplanes:

According to reports, Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was killed during a firefight in his home town of Sirte. The latest update from The Telegraph indicates he was shot in both legs and the head.

13:12 NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta has told Reuters that Gaddafi was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn this morning as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked.

“He was also hit in his head,” the official said. “There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.”

13:11 NTC Leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil is due to address the Libyan nation “shortly”, according to Free Libya TV station.

13:07 The Telegraph’s foreign correspondent, Ben Farmer – the only UK newspaper journalist in Sirte, describes the celebrations among NTC soldiers as the final Gaddafi stronghold is taken.

Other news outlets have not yet confirmed that Gaddafi is dead. According to the Washington Post, NATO also has not confirmed Gaddafi’s status.

Reuters reports that Gaddafi was fleeing the city in a convoy when NATO warplanes attacked.

[…]

If it’s true that Gaddafi’s dead, does this mean we can end our kinetic military action?

Update: Here’s the Reuters report. As of about 9:00 AM Eastern Time the US is still trying to confirm Gaddafi’s status.

Update 2: Mediaite has posted the “death photo” that all of the cable networks have been airing. It’s not pretty, and I’m a bit surprised that it’s been all over the news.

ABC News has yet another variant:

Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the most wanted man in the world, has been killed, the country’s rebel government claimed today.

The flamboyant tyrant who terrorized his country and much of the world during his 42 years of despotic rule was reportedly cornered by insurgents in the town of Sirte, where Gadhafi had been born and a stronghold of his supporters.

The National Transition Council said that its fighters found and shot Gadhafi in Sirte, which finally fell to the rebels today after weeks of tough fighting. Rebels now control the entire country.

Word of Gadhafi’s death triggered celebrations in the streets of Tripoli with insurgent fighters waving their weapons and dancing jubilantly.

The White House and NATO said they were unable to confirm reports of his death.

Al Jazeera aired video of what appeared to be the dead leader, which showed Gadhafi lying in a pool of blood in the street, shirtless, and surrounded by people.

Libya’s Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam told the Associated Press that Gadhafi was in a convoy when he was attacked by rebels.

NATO said that its jet fighters struck a convoy of Gadhafi’s loyalists fleeing Sirte this morning, but could not confirm that Gadhafi was in the convoy, the Associated Press reported.

Ave atque Vale, Moamar Ghaddafi! The world is a less entertaining place without you.

Hat tips: AC, Dymphna, and ESW.