Is the Ground Zero Mosque back? According to Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (who helped get it nixed almost a decade ago), a Muslim "cultural center" is once again in the works just a few feet from where their coreligionists killed 3,000 people and left a smoking crater. The principal evidence is a sentence at the end of a report on a neighboring property:
Construction has also yet to begin on 51 Park Place, which is slated to become a 71-foot-tall, 16,000-square-foot Islamic cultural center.
On the other hand, the developer - Sharif El-Gamal - is said to be debt-riddled, with $10 million in unpaid bills and crews no longer prepared to swallow the assurance that the check's in the mail.
If that's the only obstacle, then the mosque will be built, albeit after a cash injection from some obliging Saudi or Emirati. The mosque will rise because what started on September 12th 2001 as a politic euphemism - "the war on terror" - has become a form of self-castration: unless you're flying a plane into a skyscraper or riding your rental vehicle up onto the sidewalk, almost any other Islamic provocation is not only unobjectionable but has to be actively encouraged. That, after all, is how it went last time round. Recall that both the President of the United States and the Mayor of New York City were all in favor of the Ground Zero Mosque. From my book After America:
Nanny Bloomberg went to the Statue of Liberty of all places to tell the plebs he has the misfortune to rule over to shut up. The man on whose watch Ground Zero degenerated from a target of war to a victim of bureaucracy was there to lecture dissenters that the site of the 9/11 attacks is a "very appropriate place" for a mosque. The people of New York felt differently, but what do they know?
"To cave to popular sentiment," thundered Nanny, "would be to hand a victory to the terrorists - and we should not stand for that."
We used to hear this formulation a lot in the months after 9/11: If we do such-and-such, then the terrorists will have won. But this surely is the apotheosis of the template: If we don't build a mosque at Ground Zero, then the terrorists will have won! You're either with us or you're with the terrorists – and apparently the American people are with the terrorists.
As is the way with the Conformity Enforcers, Nanny Bloomberg pulled out all the abstractions. "It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11."
Really? That's not what Osama bin Laden said. And my increasingly hazy memory is that it was actual buildings and large numbers of people that were attacked. But, if we put away our abstract generalities and listen to what the enemy is actually telling us, then the terrorists will have won! For a fellow so open and accepting, Nanny Bloomberg seems awfully dogmatic and strident.
How do you think he'll be this time round? Or his successor Bill De Blasio? And the Islamophilia has gotten a lot worse over the last eight years - and those who stand against it are under far greater pressure to shut up.
Historically, Islam has always understood the power of symbolism - which is why it builds mosques on the sites of Islamic conquest, from Istanbul to Samarkand. A mosque at Ground Zero is an absurdity, but, as Osama bin Laden would put it (at least when being channeled by would-be President Bloomberg), our eagerness to build a mosque on the burial pit of victims of Islamic terror attacks is exactly the spirit of openness that prompted Osama to give us such a big burial pit to build it on in the first place. But don't worry: If someone self-detonates in a shopping mall, the authorities will see if he has "links" to Isis. As I wrote in National Review eight years ago:
The designation of the "war on terror" was the first equivocation, and one that hobbled its strategists: For, in the absence of "terror," where was the "war"? As I note in my new book, over the course of the decade, the more alert the security state was to shoe-bombers, panty-bombers, implant-bombers, and suppository-bombers, the more indulgent it grew of any Islamic initiative that stopped short of self-detonation.
What, after all, is al-Qaeda's end game? They want the West to live under Islamic law. Hey, take a number and get in line. So does Imam Rauf, the Ground Zero Mosque guy, who was in Scotland the other day at a "Festival of Spirituality and Peace" arguing that sharia should be incorporated into U.K. and U.S. law. He's such a "moderate Muslim" that he's subsidized with your tax dollars: The State Department bought thousands of copies of his unreadable book to distribute at U.S.-embassy events throughout the Middle East, and they paid for his book tour, which they've never offered to do for me. Flying Imam Rauf to the United Arab Emirates to talk to other imams apparently comes under State's "multifaith outreach" program.
Wait a minute: He's an imam, they're imams. Where's the multifaith? If we have to have taxpayer-funded multifaith outreach to imams, why can't we send 'em Jackie Mason, or that gay bishop the Episcopalians are hot for?
But don't worry, he's "moderate..." In Edinburgh, Imam Rauf was at pains to reassure the crowd that his plans for sharia-compliant common law wouldn't involve any stoning and whatnot. On the other hand, on page 58 of his 2000 book Islam: A Sacred Law, he says that with sharia you can't pick and choose: It's the set menu, or else. So Imam Rauf largely shares al-Qaeda's goal.
But why hold that against him? So does the Archbishop of Canterbury, who's argued for the incorporation of sharia into British law. And so does Piet Hein Donner, the Dutch cabinet minister who said he would have no problem with sharia if a majority of people voted for it. And, even if they don't, the French de facto acceptance of polygamy in les banlieues, and the UK Department of Pensions' de jure recognition of polygamy for the purposes of widows' benefits, and the American Academy of Pediatrics' proposal that its members meet female genital mutilation halfway by offering to perform a "ritual nick" on Muslim girls, all suggest that, as long as you mothball your Semtex belt and don't rush the cockpit, the Western world will concede almost anything in order to demonstrate its multiculti bona fides.
A few months ago, I walked at sunset from downtown Malmö to Rosengård. The gaps between Nordic blondes grew longer and the gaps between fiercely bearded young men grew shorter, and finally I was in the heart of Islamic Sweden. No blondes in sight. All the women were covered, including those who'd never been so back in their native lands: That's to say, they adopted, perforce, the veil only when they moved to Sweden. Sweden! Land of arthouse erotica: I Am Curious (Yellow). These days, they're yellow, and not so curious. Like the Israelis in Gaza, they're trading land for peace, and unlikely to retain much of either.
No one flew a plane into any buildings in RosengĂĄrd. No one had to. Islam's good cop proved cannier than its bad: The losers holed up in the caves want to nuke us. The shrewder Islamic imperialists want to own us. Ten years on, stealth jihad is proving a better bet.
And so the Ground Zero Mosque goes quiet, but it never quite goes away. 9/11 was "the day that everything changed" mainly in the sense that the urge to self-prostrate became pathological: precisely because America was attacked in the name of Islamic supremacism, it is no longer acceptable to object to Islamic supremacism.
~Mark will be on the radio today, Wednesday, at 5pm Eastern with Toronto's legendary John Oakley, and back here shortly after with the latest Christmas story by L M Montgomery in Tales for Our Time.
The above includes an excerpt from Mark's book After America, autographed copies of which are available at the SteynOnline bookstore. (If you're short of gift ideas this Yuletide, we have bargains galore among this year's Steynamite Christmas specials.) If you disagree with Mark and you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, then feel free to have at him in the comments.
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Our adversaries have two things going them. The first is that they know that they are adversaries and lay their plans accordingly. The second is endless patience. It cant have escaped the notice of the Muslim world and China that we have "voluntarily" hollowed ourselves out from the inside. Institutions such as marriage, childbirth, academic rigor, basic definitions of males and females and a unifying sense of history have been ground down to powder. And, as Mr. Bloomberg so vividly demonstrates, it is considered in bad taste to even mention that there are those who wish us great harm. Our ADVERSARIES recognize this and it now constitutes a formidable weapon in their arsenal. China is separating American business from any hint of Americanism. The Muslim world has realized that they can play the victim card all the way to guilting us in to accepting sharia and mass cliterectomies.all they need is patience.
The various wars (War on Poverty, War on Terrorism, etc.) never come with winning battle plan if they come with any plan at all. These are just cover slogans applied to intractable problems where we lack the capability, resources or political will to confront these problems and achieve meaningful results or, in some cases, even to produce a yardstick by which to measure success.
The actual phrase "war on" has defeat built in.
We didn't have a "war on Nazis" or a "war on Imperial Japan". It was a war, and our leaders and soldiers were in it to win it.
Very acute observation, Laura. The language gives the game away, doesn't it.
This move doesn't surprise me. To them, white supremacy is a greater threat than Islamic supremacy. They remove Confederate statues because they "honor" racism and slavery yet in the same breath embrace radical Islamic terrorism that wants death to America and to the west. It's clear that white America is now the "settled enemy" and Islam is the "settled victim" to the progressives.
Pamela Geller fought the Ground Zero mosque like the magnificent tigress she is. Robert Spencer, also, God bless that man. Geert Wilders spoke at the protest rally held against almost overwhelming opposition. And Donald Trump offered to buy the property for 6 billion. Which was refused by he that I refuse to name. This was one of the most crazy-making events post-9/11 for me. Sick with rage.
Pamela Geller: "The Ground Zero Mosque project was and is a middle finger to the American people."
A mosque would deliberately dishonour the dead: the 3,000 people murdered in an act of Islamic worship.
Trump (the real estate developer) obviously understood that. Perhaps this time he could make a presidential pledge to "Keep America Great" by ensuring it doesn't proceed.
She is one ballsy broad!
I have plenty of time for Pamela. One of the (admittedly many) reasons I despise Theresa May is that, as Home Secretary, she banned Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from ever entering the UK. Later, Lauren Southern was banned, too. By that time, May was Prime Minister, but the authoritarian/appeasement footprint was unmistakably hers.
Perhaps it is time we banned ourselves from vacationing in countries that do not grant the right of free speech. It would be interesting to send a letter to an Embassy or State Department equivalent expressing an interest in visiting contingent on the State's stance on freedom of expression. I held my nose going through Canada but that was for the Mark Steyn Cruise and I kept telling myself: "I am just passing through".
I don't vacation in the United Kingdom. I live here.
I agree that this Mosque project is a reprehensible idea, but doing what you suggest - considering that tattered old Constitution keeps protecting property rights and stuff - might be problematic (dare I say Impeachable). Even worse, then both the takers on the Left AND their nut-bar Islamic bosom buddies could feel they've made their own particular forms of "progress."
Someone just needs to feed Bloomie the idea that making all of Manhattan a dog park will please PETA and their Leftie friends; win - win.
People are conditioned to self-censor rather than exercise their First Amendment rights. Dennis Prager's documentary - "No Safe Spaces" - in cinemas now!
PS. Good to see you back, Mark. You need to comment more often (as discussed on the cruise).
A passing reference to the plan at his rallies - in the context of Keep America Safe - should be enough to bury it. A mosque at a jihad mass grave site would be Ground Xerox (to borrow Mark's recent usage). Sickening.
PS. Keep up the comments, Larry. We need diversity here!
Don't put it past him. I doubt he will let this happen while he is President.
File this whole thing in the "civilizations too stupid to survive" file.
You would think that someone in the nominally Christian establishment would notice that Islam succeeds when it sells hellfire and brimstone. Of course, it is able to do this by hiding in plain sight - few westerners understand the language of the Muslim invaders, and they send their apologists into the media and government.
So whilst Christendom has embraced 1960s Californian self-love and fusion "caring" (Jesus Loves You), and the Wee Frees have accepted modernization, the Muslims have re-discovered Death and Glory as a way to win membership.
It helps them that Islam means submission - it's not like they are selling a self-improvement course, like the Scientologists or Buddhists.
While some of the further-flung outposts of islam, such as Bangladesh and Chechnya, have certainly practised a more sharia-compliant version in recent decades, having previously had a reputation for laxity, there is no place for a re-discovery as such. The koran has not changed and never will. The mediaeval Arabic is unreadable to all but a tiny fraction of the people on the planet, so interpretation of the text is entirely in the hands of a small number of people, who have no interest in flexibility, or any kind of reformation.
Despite all of its absurdities and contradictions, muslims insist that their holy book, the one which most of them can't read, was dictated by an omniscient deity. That would be the omniscient deity who chose an illiterate barbarian as his scribe. Probably aware of these flaws in his back-story, Mohammed was careful to insert two clauses into the muslim contract:
1) if you don't join us, we'll kill you;
2) if you try to leave us, we'll kill you.
Unsubtle, but remarkably persuasive, over the centuries. It's not a question of death and glory, just death.
I worry about the women suicide murderers - they surely get 72 virgins as part of the deal. The poor gals are going to have to teach 72 premature-prone nerds how to make with the double-backed beast. Every time. Forever.
There is disagreement about the author of "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." But, whoever the author, the statement was true when it was first uttered. It is no longer true because soft (and soft-headed) men command that rough men be brought into our midst to visit violence upon our heads. It is a great mercy that the valorous warriors of preceding generations, who broke themselves to deliver us from tyrants, are no longer witness to this betrayal.
"It is a great mercy that the valorous warriors of preceding generations, who broke themselves to deliver us from tyrants, are no longer witness to this betrayal."
Very true, Paul. As Walt notes, "We lost the war because we simply are not serious people with real values anymore."
Mark Steyn and a handful of others are lone voices on the Islamisation that has occurred in plain sight since September 11. We have been fully complicit in our demise, as Owen Morgan has outlined: it's an "inside job" in that sense. As long as our assimilation with Islam is relatively smooth - with only the occasional terror attacked - not many people seem to mind. Or even notice.
We prosecute the rough men for exceeding the rules of engagement.
It's true, Walt, and a disgrace.
Thank you, Kate. What you, Walt and Owen say is true--heartbreaking, but true. But if surrender is taking place around us we don't have to be part of it. You already know that I think good people of good will must toughen up. All of us must toughen up spiritually and mentally, and those who are able must toughen up physically as well. There is a mindset that is indispensable: We are all going to die. Why not live in strength and joy so as to be ready to go at any moment?. There is nothing so dangerous (for Good or Evil) as a man or woman who is not afraid to die. Our enemies already know this and have used it against us. This is not to live apocalyptically, as they do, but to live practically, accepting that the world is more and more dangerous every day, ready to act with bravery whatever comes, be it a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or even a traffic accident where we may be called upon to act with courage and resolve, for our sake or others. The point is to be ready, able and willing to act, even in the face of danger.
While writing this my mind went back for a moment to when I was twelve and became a Boy Scout. I took this oath, as we all did:
On my honor, I will do my best,
To do my duty, to God and my Country,
To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake, and morally straight,
To help other people at all times,
And to obey the Scout Law.
The Scout Law was this:
A Scout's honor is to be trusted.
A Scout is loyal.
A Scout's duty is be useful and to help others.
A Scout is a friend to all, and a brother to every other Scout.
A Scout is courteous.
A Scout is a friend to animals.
A Scout obeys orders.
A Scout smiles and whistles under all difficulties.
A Scout is thrifty.
A Scout is clean in thought, word, and deed.
Such stuff, huh?
Another beautifully written, inspiring and optimistic message, Paul... something we should all strive to live up to!
That's a good point. How many times has that happened by now? We put men in danger, tell them to fight with one hand behind their backs - and then prosecute them, anyway. Yet again, this is a problem both sides of the Atlantic.
Can you imagine the same rules of engagement applied to RAF Bomber Command, or US 8th AAF, or to the troops who went ashore in Normandy, at Salerno, or on Okinawa?
Unfortunately, I can, in an insane world. This is an insane world.
Kate your comment "As long as our assimilation with Islam is relatively smooth - with only the occasional terror attacked - not many people seem to mind. Or even notice." It is to weep.
I think there's also something more sinister. A lot of people perversely welcome it.
Truly evil.
Such magnificent sentiments. No wonder the left has destroyed the Boy Scouts among its other targets.
Thank you, Laura. It's true, the Left said Boo! and the Boy Scouts caved. I used to support the local BSA troops with payroll contributions. The organization was already changing from Baden-Powell's original mission of teaching boys to be manly men: Strong, Brave, Kind, Virtuous--and handy (think of all the outdoor skills historically inherent in the program -- camping, survival in the wild, first aid, knots, etc. I learned many such things in the Scouts that have benefited m all my life). Instead, they were trying to validate their existence to the Left with projects on the woke side of environmentalism, climate-change, blah, blah. I received a "thank you" letter for my support from the guy in charge on official letterhead with "A Tradition of Caring" at the top. I sent a note back saying that if he wanted something pithy on his stationery he should remove that nauseating sentiment and replace it with the first three words of the Scout Oath: "On My Honor." That went nowhere and, needless to say, I no longer support the Scouts based on their disastrous change of direction.
Thank you, Kate. I know when push comes to shove you will have my back.
You raise a great point, Kate. This civilizational ennui has been building for a while, and we keep our heads in the sand at our peril.
Many years ago I decided to go to Ireland, whence my great-grandfather had emigrated in the 1920s. My family still had contact with relatives, so on a whim I decided to surprise them with a visit. During this best vacation ever, my cousin Eddie (who appreciated my appreciation of a generous dram) introduced me to every pub between Belfast and Bally-Something-or-other, where he lived in a thousand-year old stone farmhouse. A cousin several times removed – he had about fifty years on me – Eddie filled me in on family lore and local points of interest along the way - at one point, after showing me what was left of a recently car-bombed street, he said in his jovial manner "See if you can spot the police station on the next block." In a commercial district, it was the only building that was sandbagged to the windows - with a manned machine-gun nest on the roof. He actually laughed at the look on my face; apparently I had "gawped" (an expression new to me).
During one of our many conversations, I mentioned that I was puzzled by people's seeming insouciance in the face of the ongoing "Troubles" - I'd noticed pedestrians stepping around the scaffolded, shattered buildings with no more concern than avoiding a puddle. He explained that in Ireland the Troubles were more like an extra dimension of weather – people were so inured to the intractability of the warring parties and the inevitability of violence that they were seeing at as fact of life, and life goes on – after all, there's nothing anyone can do about the weather. "But listen here son," he said, "It's no f[really strong brogue]ing life. Be sure it doesn't happen the other side of the pond."
How sad it is that those were such comparatively simple times - the good old days, as it were – and we're still asleep at the switch when we need to be alert and ready to roll.
Larry Robinson
Jasper, Alberta
Thank you for this, Larry.
As Mark has often noted, those on the Left will make very good Muslims.
Paul, I'm just exceedingly grateful to the "rough men" such as you, Walt, Roy and others.
A passage Mark wrote years ago often crosses my mind: "We are all flawed, and most of us are weak, and in hellish moments, at a split-second's notice, confronting the choice that will define us ever after, many of us will fail the test."
I think we all dread failing the ultimate test (I certainly do), but you've outlined how we can at least do our best - every day - to prepare for it. I've put your comment away for safe-keeping.
Very interesting observations, Larry, including the weather analogy. It's not only the extreme (terrorism) events but the day-to-day cultural climate: most people are resigned to the change, and many haven't even noticed it.
In an age of moral crusaderdom, as this most assuredly is, moral crusaders of a feather flock together. The left adores Islam because Islam is a mirror of their own beliefs; absolutism, intolerance, enforced conformity, the belief in an all powerful collective authority which no can or may escape, founded on an oligarchy of the "superior". Throw in the pathological hatred of Western civilization and what's not to love? Every dead Western victim of Islamic terror is one less enemy in the way of Utopia. Bloomberg and company are vying for the position of head of the global police state they long for, not the United States they actually despise. Islam is helping them get to the former, by attacking the latter. They'll sort out the messy details of who gets to be in charge later.
Richard-your point "Every dead Western victim of Islamic terror is one less enemy in the way of Utopia." is very chilling. It certainly would explain why devout leftists behave, in their grief, so unconventionally (I'm being diplomatic here) when their own children are murdered.
"The left adores Islam because Islam is a mirror of their own beliefs."
Very true, Richard.
9/11/2001 marked the day we lost the war on terrorism. Screening at the airport started in the late 60's but really ramped up after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (right along with the Arab Oil Embargo.) In those days the Federal Aviation Administration put a fig leaf on it and required the airlines to privately put all their passengers through metal detectors. After 9/11 the Transportation Security Administration was created to take over security. Last year the Federal TSA violated the 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures over 800 million times. Even worse those searches are deliberately ineffective by not profiling passengers and instead searching Grandma after her hip replacement. The less charitable among us think they do that because a real terrorist would be a lot more dangerous to the Thousands Standing Around.
One of my pet conspiracy theories is the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 out of Kennedy in NY in November 2001. We were told it had nothing to do with terrorism before the flames died down. Then we were told it crashed because of heavy turbulence and the pilot stepped on the rudder too hard causing the vertical stabilizer to fall off (first and last time this happened to any plane.) I think it was the first Shoe Bomb attack. We have been taking off our shoes ever since.
Mark in his books has pointed out the rate of Muslim immigration increased greatly after 2001. Government panders to Islam while really cracking down on anyone who is alarmed by the invasion, especially if you're Christian. We said we would never let terrorism change the way we live. Well we did change the way we live. We fled in terror at the prospect of being called an intolerant, religious bigot. We lost the war because we simply are not serious people with real values anymore.
"We lost the war because we simply are not serious people with real values anymore."
Hard to argue with that.
I could make a case that we lost the "war on terrorism" in 1967. That's when the Israeli victors "gave" control of Judaism's holiest place to the Muslim Waqf setting a dangerous precedent for the entire civilized world.
Why can't Episcopalians play chess?
The can't tell a Queen from a Bishop.
;-)
The first Ground Zero mosque was built at Temple Mount.
How did that work out?
Good point, Perry.
OH MAH GAWED PERRY
That is one the best comments ever. Ever ever EVAH EVAH.
I'm totally going to repeat that. Everywhere.
PS: Jews are amping up the praying at the Temple Mount (see Arutz 7), trying to undo some of the clusterfark made by Moshe Dayan in 67.
Laura, years ago I was on the Temple Mount grounds looking for certain points of scholarly interest. I had an archaeology book open and was reading when I was approached by one of the Arab groundsmen or patrolmen, or whatever. I had no Arabic and he didn't speak English or German, but it was clear that he was moving me along. I found out later that the mosque guards watch out for, and are prepared to prevent, anyone praying on the mount for the Messiah to come.
Yes, the Waqf guards i.e sharia mutawa are very, very vigilant in their search for Jews praying there, or drinking water from the fountains. Or breathing there.
Wow. Comment of the year.
To answer your rhetorical question: the Ummah has never stopped growing since, and it's enthusiastically chipping away at yet another empire - ours.
The real national shame here is that Mark Steyn stands almost alone now on the national stage when candidly discussing Islam. Please don't misunderstand the following - but I had the greatest respect for Osama bin Laden as one should when facing a formidable enemy. He correctly read the lack of will and self loathing in the west in the same manner Hitler knew that when his troops marched in and took back the Rhineland in 1936 that France and England would do nothing even though it was an act of war. Four years later France and the rest of western Europe fell in less than two months. I also grudgingly respect Anjem Choudary for his honesty in telling the western infidels the unvarnished truth of what a true devout Muslim thinks of them. He used to appear on Hannity and every ugly thing he said was backed 100% by the Qur'an.
I doubt that even 1 American in 200 has any idea or interest in what this holy book contains. Choudary has been silenced for his truth telling and no one should celebrate that any more than how Pam Geller and Robert Spencer have been effectively silenced in the national media including Fox News.
Isn't that the truth, RAC!
How many Americans know about this holy book, indeed?
Thanks for staying the course, Mark Steyn!
There are others: Andrew Bostom, Anni Cyrus, Brigitte Gabriel, Jamie Glazov, Ibn Warraq, Raymond Ibrahim... I agree, though, they are a beleaguered group, for which, again, we can thank Saudi, Qatari and muslim brotherhood penetration of culture, academia, media and government in the West.
In both Britain and the United States, closet jihadis were able to identify themselves as the leadership of the respective countries' muslims and to be accepted as such without question. When a government minister in the UK wanted a generic muslim opinion, somebody from one of these favoured organisations would pop up to provide it, unchallenged. One such even managed to be appointed deputy chairwoman of the Conservative party. Similarly, broadcasters seeking commentary went to exactly the same people. Their motives and authenticity were never investigated.
If anything, things were (and are) even worse in the United States, where islamic organisations with demonstrable terror links (CAIR and others) were invited to sit down with the FBI, the Pentagon and CIA, with the result that training and policy documents were purged of vocabulary which the muslims declared offensive. To extend RAC's analogy, France would have fallen even more quickly in 1940, if the Allies had been forbidden to use the words "German" and "Allemand," but that's how crazy the American policy was and remains.
Meanwhile, censorship became widespread in the media, of all types. On-line comment sections routinely close down any discussion of islam. Reporting on acts of terrorism, journalists will ransack Roget for any word other than "terrorist." Often, the authorities will help out, by blaming "mental instability" for the latest atrocity. The social media corporations play their part. Try quoting accurately from the koran on Twitter and see how long your account stays up. You can even be banned for repeating a post which has previously been allowed to stand. It's not even what you say any more, but whether you say it for an acceptable reason.
Then there is the role of academia. There are two aspects to this. One is the way in which campuses generally have been taken over by extreme ideology, nothing to do with education, including virulent anti-Semitism. This ideology is replete with internal inconsistencies, forcing supposed feminists to excuse burqas and FGM, for example, or militant atheists to make common cause with dogmatic muslims. In the identity-era, it seems, islam trumps everything else.
The other role of academia is specific to the faculty side. Several British universities (Oxford, Exeter and UCL, certainly), some French ones and quite a lot of American ones have pocketed big endowments from Middle Eastern sources. Any research into islam, or muslim history, emanating from these institutions is compromised, but, crucially, is not treated as such. Government agencies and timid media outlets will treat these bought-and-paid-for echo-chamber hacks as dispassionate experts and so islamic infiltration just gets ever more ingrained.
And the end result, for now, is that the site of the single worst terrorist attack on American soil is to be desecrated with a triumphalist mosque, because all of these threads will come together and make it impossible for this not to happen.
I also *respect* the honesty of the likes of Choudary. Ironically, he is silenced because he does *not* do taqiyya: religiously-endorsed lying is a better fit with our "Diversity" mantra.
And even Fox News has been bought.
PS. Keep up the comments, along with Owen, et al.
Very sobering, and powerfully expressed, Owen.
Kate, I agree with you completely. I like my antisemitism straight up and I also take the word of the likes of Choudary, Sultan Erdy of Turkey etc, as the "gospel". They are telling it like it is. I believe them more than I do those who emit the 'religion of peace, diversity, blah blah' stuff.
Brilliant entry Owen - A very comprehensive summary of where the west stands today. Not that most Americans really care much about any of this.
Thanks Kate - he has been silenced for precisely that reason. The two reform minded Muslim's that routinely appear on Fox news are likely wonderful people and well meaning but they are selling complete nonsense. These reforms require tossing out the Koran and somehow starting anew. Islam would collapse like a house of cards. Ain't gonna happen so why does Fox waste our time?
It's ex-Muslims - whose very lives are in danger - who should be given these platforms, I agree. There's a recent video from the UK of a live TV audience in which an ex-Muslim (male) basically tells an outspoken, hijab-wearing woman that (of the two of them) she is not the victim. Very compellingly. There's still a role for genuine reformists (impossible as Islam is to reform) in terms of "disruption": if reformists are being criticised by fellow "moderate" Muslims, they're doing something right.
Top-notch! The current POTUS needs to read this given his shameful Saudi suck-up following the jihad at the naval base in Pensacola. Only 3 people murdered - not 3,000 - so it's understandable that the priority was to bolster the mutual "love" between the American and Saudi people. All is forgiven - including next time! Because love-bombing via twitter is the appropriate response to suicide bombing in the real world.
PS. Any update on the Saudis who filmed the shootings, and the bigger group that attend the pre-jihad snuff movie night?
Considering how long it took to do anything at all with Nidal Hasan, I'm not holding my breath regarding the other Saudis at Pensacola.
The update is "nothing to see here". You're welcome!
I'm guessing they have been or soon will be quietly jetted back to Riyadh, probably at tax payer expense
I don't see any material changes to policy until they either run out of oil or oil becomes worthless
Everything is at the taxpayers' expense. Why, even this disgraceful farce of an impeachment of President Trump is at the taxpayers' expense. The voters need to kick the dems butts out of the Swamp this next election. None of them deserve to ever hold office again. They're the Bottom of the Swamp Suckers. Every single one of them who got up to speak today sucked up to poop-in-your-streets Pelosi, nap-on-your-job Nadler, and shift-those-swivel-eyes Schiff. What a display of deceit, pomposity and sanctimony from every last one of them who voted to impeach. Up theirs!
We didn't even bother to bill the Saudis for refueling their fighters on the way to bomb Yemen. What's a couple hundred million?
"To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists."
Outside the weird, alternative universe which is Michael Bloomberg's head, those words simply do not go together. Only Bloomberg, with his obsession for banning everything, could equate public opinion with terrorism. And this man wants to be President. Stand by for him to say, "For the election to decided by people's votes would be to hand a victory to the forces of Beelzebub."
Andrew McCarthy has written about the way in which mosques are used in the United States to dominate neighbourhoods. As Mark says, putting a mosque on top of your enemy's sacred place is as old as islam; try to look at a photograph of Jerusalem without spotting the obvious example. According to McCarthy, who cited several instances, muslims would put in a planning application for a very big mosque in a locality with hardly any muslims. The application would be rejected, but appealed, at which point Eric Holder's DoJ would weigh in on the side of the mosque, no doubt darkly accusing opponents of "islamophobia." The mosque would duly be built and the town's character irrevocably changed, because that was the point all along.
Propagandists of islam dream of re-purposing two locations in particular for mosque construction: St Peter's, Rome, and 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps, Bloomberg, during what remains of his presidential bid, should wonder why that is. As for de Blasio (and I have to admit that I had almost forgotten his presidential run), his repeated willingness to pander to islam was all too evident in his reaction to the Jersey City attack. I don't imagine he will raise any objections to the Ground Zero Mosque. That would take principle and I am pretty sure he has none.
Just as concerning as the direct, identifiable funding of ideology is the funding of everything else: media, political parties and politicians, think tanks etc. And we wonder why Islamisation has been so rapid and effective - beyond the impact of immigration - in under two decades: "Islam's good cop proved cannier than its bad: [...] stealth jihad is proving a better bet." The Saudi Swamp is very deep.
Extraordinary to think that Mark Steyn understood - and predicted - all this within just months of 9/11:
https://www.steynonline.com/9319/dont-mention-the-jihad
Yes, extraordinary, Kate! I guess you lay down a gauntlet or you lay down a doormat.
Polls say 5% of Americans would like to see Bloomberg as President. This has increased my level of paranoia so that I am constantly using my counter-terrorism training to stealthily check if I am being followed. If you are in a supermarket the odds are good that at least one one of these crazy people are in there with you. This is called situational awareness. Then after watching all those Democrat Congresspeople during the impeachment hearings I know there are plenty of other threats too. And then I think about the legalization of pot ... My only comfort is knowing that even paranoids have real enemies.
Sometimes I wish Mark, that you got things wrong. Completely wrong. Alas...
I was thinking something like that, too, Laura.
Nanny Bloomberg is just one example of what certain of our elites think of Western Civilization. Saint Greta is now qualified to graduate from anti-Western primary school this spring. She'll then be officially in the pipeline to social and political advancement. Maybe she'll marry David Hogg. How do embrace such loathing of your own civilization? High school peer pressure must be far worse and long-lasting than we actually thought.
The first few paragraphs reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Steyn columns: The Tolerance Enforcers. As much as I'd love to quote the whole thing, I have to get this one out there: "In Mayor Menino's Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he'll run your homophobic ass out of town. But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he'll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony."
Methinks the Irony Age will be short-lived compared to the Iron Age.
"Never Forget" is the slogan for the slugging we took on 9/11 and reality's the complete opposite. The injunction is not to be aware. Anti-ribbons all round.
A much better idea than an Islamic cultural center would be an ahistorical center, 16,000 square-feet or "blockheads" of empty space. Don't become aware of the cause and effect of 9/11. Not knowing anything is the new enlightenment. Putting anything in the space will result in shadows.
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.
But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure your self and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
~ Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
I'm surprised that there's no federal grant program for mosque building—probably specifically targeted to mosques within a few hundred feet of Ground Zero. Yesterday, the Chicago City Council delayed implementation of legalized marijuana sales because there were no blacks looking to set up stores. Well, what do you know, there's a federal grant program that helps minority entrepreneurs fund such start ups. I continue to stubbornly insist that anyone who takes the money isn't an entrepreneur, just a useless sponge. But then I never seem to get the officially approved lesson from such stories.
Just wait.
I'm sure that legal dope businesses is JUST what that community needs to lift itself out of poverty and crime. What could possibly go wrong?
/hits head on keyboard
I guess we are Catch Up Europeans.
I think it is time the "Religion of Peace" made at least a token effort to reciprocate. Here in the UK, there were (in 2017) allegedly 1,700 mosques.
When there are (let's say) 170 Christian churches peacefully welcoming congregations in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Iran and celebrating 'diversity', come back and we'll further discuss it.
Mark replies:
I would bet that 1,700 is lowballing it, Martin.
Islam actually is moving the other direction. There are no Christian churches in Saudi. Christians in Iraq were decimated after our liberation. The last Christian church in Kabul burned to the ground on our watch. Our Egyptian allies have made Copts an endangered species. The Pakistanis just blow up Christian churches.
There is plenty of that, too, in countries where Christians comfortably outnumber muslims. Infamously, there was the savage murder of Father Jacques Hamel in Rouen, in 2016. There have been numerous less lethal attacks on churches in France, Germany, Austria and Italy. In Africa, Father Hamel's fate is rather more commonplace. Not content with slaughtering Christians in northern Nigeria, boko haram has now spread to Christian-majority Cameroon. Across the continent, another jihadi offshoot kills parishioners and destroys churches in both Uganda and Kenya.
It took a thousand years for muslims to become the majority in Egypt, but the jihadis didn't have high-explosives and AK-47s, back then.
In his 2006 review of America Alone, Christopher Hitchens demanded there be "an end to one-way multiculturalism"... "This creeping Islamism must cease at once [and] we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices."
It was up to *us* - not Islam - to act, and we failed. There won't ever be a token effort by Islam because intolerance is its strength. Meanwhile, we pursue the hollow religion of DIE (Diversity-Inclusivity-Equity) thereby accelerating its advance in the West. #Submission
And the slaughter of Christians by devout Muslims in African countries goes unreported.
Great observation Kate...they are convenient to ignore.
The kind of reciprocity to which Hitchens referred will, of course, never happen, as I think he knew. He was entirely right to want to stop the influx of wahhabism into the West. We pay for Saudi oil already. How, exactly, does that oblige us to admit their propaganda, too?
Incidentally, we still have, under Britain, an ocean of fossil fuel. There is a curious alliance between the Greens, who purport to favour solar and wind power, and Middle Eastern suppliers of gas and oil. Both want to keep British fossil fuels in the ground at all costs.
As I have said before, the Saudis send their sons to elite universities to party with the children of our politicians, support friendly foreign policy experts at think tanks and throw the most marvelous parties in London and Washington mansions. So yes, we are obliged to embrace their wahhabism. It is the religion of peace, you know.
Yes. Very disturbing accounts (eg Baroness Cox) of the "religious cleansing" in northern Nigeria. But it would be "Islamophobic" for the MSM to report on the targeted massacre of Christians.
As I mentioned earlier, boko haram has already extended its murderous operations from muslim-majority Nigeria to Christian-majority Cameroon. There can be no doubt that the southern, Christian half of Nigeria is already in boko haram's sights.
And boko haram is exactly what governments in the West should be defending us against. It's very name advertises its desire to issue in a Dark Age. "Boko" is a corruption of the English "book." "Haram" means "forbidden" in Arabic, making it an antonym of "halal." Possession of any book, other than the koran, will get you killed in northern Nigeria.
Hillary Clinton refused to cite boko haram a terrorist organisation.
"Western education is forbidden" is a version of what's screamed by white liberals on campuses, every day. They were very successful in blocking degree courses in Western Civilisation in several Australian universities - with the support of faculty members. Protests were often violent.
Which is why the Left turns a blind eye to seemingly unrelated events elsewhere.