I’m reading this new book by Bruce Bawer and I feel like a dilettante. Much of Europe is surrendering to Islam and what am I doing?
Bawer makes the point that the Ayatollah’s fatwa (death sentence) against novelist Salmon Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses should’ve served as a wake-up call to all those who value free speech that their cherished freedom were under assault from a growing threat called Islam. Instead most intellectuals have urged us to be sensitive to Muslim sensibilities rather than urging Muslims to be sensitive to our freedoms when they want to live amongst us.
The greatest moral struggle of our time is against Islam and what am I doing? Ong namo guru dev namo? Wahe guru indeed.
Instead of westerners getting mandatory education in Islam, perhaps Muslims need mandatory lessons in freedom of expression?
Bawer makes the point that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. The religion is inherently totalitarian. Some of its adherents may be tolerant, but this tolerance does not come from Islam. Moderate Muslims have chosen to put distance between themselves and their faith.
Bawer says the media help jihadists by sanitizing their violence and describing criticism of Muslims as violent.
Every time Muslims commit violence against the innocent, the media follows up by reporting on the fears of Muslims about a backlash.
Newspapers overflow with portrayals of Muslims as cuddly. They don’t get asked many tough questions about their positions on women’s rights, gay rights, or Islamic suicide bombing. Instead the reporters try to portray them as just folks.
Bawer writes on page 104:
It is chilling to think of all the developments in recent years that would never have gained international attention without [the internet]. Blogs have made possible the dissemination of news that media organizations like the Times have preferred not to cover. And they’ve provided a forum for the kind of open and honest discussion that the mainstream media have tried to prevent. …If the West is saved from jihad, it will be largely a result of the uninhibited nature of free speech on the internet.
John Phelan emails: "One aspect essential to the gradual loss of political and social control by white Europeans in Europe, North America, OZ and NZ is their freely choosing to employ birth control to the extent that they do. In many cases reality itself and not just external and arbitrary authority limits human freedom. If I freely choose to be in Texas, QLD, I am not free to be in Dallas, TX at the same moment in time. The peoples of white European background have freely chosen a rather intense limiting of births and this free choice will, it seems, gradually remove them and their values from control anywhere in the world. But it is a result of their practicing their highest value, freedom of choice. Birth control was supposed to save the world from starvation and maybe it has, but it will have unintended effects also."
