So what's wrong with Olympic Ceremony message?

What is it that disturbs me about the Olympic ceremony? What is wrong with celebrating the Industrial Revolution and the NHS? I can add to that list but what bugs me most is that the multi-culti utopia that they tried to portray in the ceremony is composed of blind fools who refuse to look facts in the face: the facts of economic catastrophe hanging over them; the facts of excessive immigration undermining society; the facts of Islam with an agenda to subjugate and destroy all the "progress" that they are celebrating.

Why Muhammad Ali to open the games? Easy. He's the biggest loudmouth in the history of sport, he's black, he is or was a muslim and he's called Muhammad. He ticks a lot of boxes.

I really wanted to find a religion of peace

Reading Dr Elsa Schneider's account of her discovery of Islam, I was struck by a statement she made: I really wanted to find a religion of peace. I was the same; I expected to find a religion of peace. It never occurred to me that a major religion could be an ideology of conquest.


I first became more closely acquainted with Islam when I became friends with a Muslim couple in the mid 1990s. From them I gained some understanding of what muslims do, what they believe and what some of their attitudes are. I learned about the Hajj (the pilgrimage that muslims are supposed to make if they are able to); the 5 daily prayers (these were diligent muslims and they never missed their prayers); refraining from drinking wine, not eating pork etc; opposition to figurative art and music; reverence for Mohammad; opposition to Israel and a dislike of Jews; a positive attitude to such places as Jordan and Saudi Arabia; the benefits of Sharia law, and the general superiority of the muslim way of life. Opposition to comparative religion and anything that might relativize Islam or lead to a questioning of its teachings. Also, a tendency to interpret everything from psychology to astronomy
as knowledge that is already contained in the Quran.

I also learned about some of the sectarian divisions within Islam: the Sunnis, the Shi'ites, and Sufis. I also learned about some of the muslim views on such things as the healing power of honey. What I did not get from these people was any insight into the nature of the religious texts and their interpretation. Nor did I get any insight into the character of Muhammad except that he was supposed to be a thoroughly likeable and pretty near perfect person. Given the thoroughly positive recommendations of these people, I became curious about the Quran and thought it would be interesting to have a look at it. I thought that I would find edifying stories and poetic parables with a peculiarly Arabian wit and character to them. I thought I might discover a very humane message that was tolerant of human weakness and indulgent of human pleasure. I think I might have gained this idea from reading the Rubayaat of Omar Khayyam, the only thing I had ever read with a vague connection to the Middle East that springs to mind.

On reading the Quran, I was rather taken aback to discover that it repeated the same sort of things over and over again. Moreover, these themes were not positive but thoroughly negative in character. For example, a theme that is constantly reiterated is the doom awaiting the non-believer. Lurid descriptions of the torments awaiting the non-believer in Hell followed by a comment such as "Lo! Allah is merciful, wise." are very, very common. The impression that I immediately got was that the Quran delighted in telling how non-believers were going to suffer followed by the rather contradictory message that Allah was compassionate. These 2 things are irreconcilable for me. But Islam is highly dualistic, it divides people very starkly into believers and unbelievers (kafir) I was disappointed by the way the Quran was written for I had expected it to be on a more elevated level. Instead it was repetitious, bombastic and faintly ridiculous. I spent some time searching the book for something different but to no avail. It was all pretty much the same.

Needless to say, withouta believer's mentality that this was the most perfect book ever written, nor a desperate curiosity to know more about Islam, I abandonned the Quran as a poorly written and rather nasty book. Some years later, after Sept 11th 2001, I again became curious about Islam and muslims. I remember, when the Twin Towers were hit by the planes, being in my kitchen listening to the radio when the news bulletin interrupted the broadcast. I rushed to the TV to see if it was covered there - it was. My initial reaction was not "this is the work of middle eastern terrorists or muslims" but rather "this could be the action of environmentalists protesting about the USA's dismal green performance." Having discovered that it was carried out by muslims, I again became curious about Islam, as many people did. In fact, following the attacks, Islam appears to have gained many western converts. This will remain one of the supreme paradoxes of the 3rd millenium. I had lost contact with my muslim couple so I did not turn to them for their account. Had I done so I might well have been diverted from the truth. Muslims seem to have a peculiar blind spot for the negative aspects of the religion. This may have something to do with the particular emphasis that Islam places upon the supremely serious sin of disbelief.

Many of us brought up in a non-muslim culture have been led to believe that the worst sin is murder. But for muslims this is not the case. In Islam the worst sin is disbelief. What the psychological effects of this are one can only imagine but it may go some way to explaining the intolerance of questioning and doubt that is frequently displayed by muslims. Anyway, having acquired access to the world wide web by this time, I decided to search for "critics of islam" on Google. One of the results of this search was a link to faithfreedom.org  This is a site developed by ex-muslims which aims to expose the dubious claims of the religion and in particular to debunk the prophethood of Muhammad. Needless to say the site's authors receive countless death threats and abusive, blood curdling emails. They also offer a challenge to anyone who can expose any untruth in anything on their site with an offer to pay them $50,000 if they can demonstrate that any of their claims are false. I spent of lot of time studying this website and I concluded that what they were saying is true. This site had a link to another website called thereligionofpeace.com. It was here that I found a day by day, blow by blow account of the atrocities carried out in the name of Islam all over the world. Likewise jihadwatch.org, where I became acquainted with the work of the great Robert Spencer. Robert Spencer was able to show just how closely the jihadists were following both the example of Muhammad and the commandments in the Quran.

I have tried to discuss with muslims the subject of Islam's justification for acts of violence and the atrocities carried out by muslims around the world. I have found that they are able to say things with great conviction that they have no way of substantiating. If I draw attention to the violence of the jihadists, they answer that they "are not real muslims. Islam does not support violence." So I show them the excerpts from the Quran such as, "Kill the unbelievers, wherever you find them." To which the response is, "that's taken out of context", with the implication that, seen in its proper context, the passage would mean something competely different. This is stretching credibility to its limit. So I ask them to show me the context in which this does not mean what it appears to mean. This they cannot do, so I can only conclude that it does mean what it appears to mean. Where do they go from here? Back to the belief that Islam is perfect, non-violent and entirely peaceful (and somewhat misunderstood).

Pressed on these matters and their inability to explain the discrepancies, I find they start to make excuses like "I am not an expert. I cannot comment." The fact is most muslims have had the message dinned into them since childhood that Islam is the true path, that those who disbelieve in it are committing the worst of sins and that those who commit such sins can expect no mercy when judgement day comes. This is a huge barrier to reasonable and responsible enquiry. Unlike my muslim acquaintances I have an enquiring mind and I have sought to find answers. I also have the advantage of coming from a culture in which free thought, sincere use of reason, and an openness to doubt have allowed people to view ideas and beliefs more dispassionately than muslim culture does.

You may wonder why I bother myself with such matters. The answer is that I care about the future awaiting my children and their children. I do not want them to be faced with a choice between the mental slavery that Islam offers, grinding oppression under a muslim state, or death. These have typically been the choices offered to non-muslims when Islam has arrived on the doorstep of unsuspecting peoples down the ages. I also care about other non-muslims, both in my own country and elsewhere. I must say I've discovered wells of empathy for others that I didn't know I had. I feel a genuine concern that as few people as possible will suffer under such religious totalitarianism. I am also a student of western culture and it would be the most tragic loss were Islam to trample down and devalue the achievements of the western world, as it almost certainly would. I also feel concern for other non-muslim countries and peoples that could also be obliterated by Islamic infiltration and conquest. If you want to know what a muslim culture does for (or should I say to?) its people, take a look at Pakistan.

If you think such fears are alarmist, do bear in mind that muslim birth rates are far higher than most non-muslim birth rates. Many countries now have a muslim population that is growing much faster than the indigenous one. Though the muslim population is still a minority at present, the time is not far distant where parity between the two will be reached and from there onwards the muslims will begin to predominate.

What effect will that have on those societies? That very much depends on how committed those muslims are to Islam. Where religiosity is greater, tolerance will be lower. That is a good rule of thumb. If you think that's exaggerating, just bear in mind that where the indigenous population will have a higher proportion of older people, the muslim one will have a higher proportion of the young. The energy and dynamism will be with the latter.

Tiger Mother challenges western orthodoxies

“Chua directly challenges the prevailing Western orthodoxies, in place since Dr. Spock, or even since Freud . . .The analogy of child-rearing to our national situation is clear enough: just as American parents are too concerned with self-esteem without basing self-esteem on an actual accomplishment . . .so our entire culture operates on some notion of natural rights that is no longer realistic. Chua' s point is that a delusional culture based on unearned self-esteem can' t for long be a realistic player in global competition for influence, power, and resources. Is it possible that we should mind our Tiger Mother?” — Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books

Our constant need for courage

Three quotations:

"Consience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience."

J.F.Clarke

"Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue, and renders a man in the pursuit or defence of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition, or contempt."

S.G.Goodrich

"Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fear of not accepting difference

Pious people are afraid of not accepting difference. They get involved in amazing inward contortions in their attempt to resist the natural urge to be a little wary of difference.

 

 

Also to the pious, hatred per se is bad. To be caused to hate someone or some group or some thing is to be tempted by the devil. To be caused to hate a person or group "of difference" is anathema. You can see why the new piety refuses to know that Islam and Muslims are extremely questionable. The contemporary pious are trying to train themselves to accept everyone; they have a woolly idealism which tells them that accepting everyone is good and will lead to world peace. In a totally reciprocal world this might be true, but the world is not reciprocal, it takes advantage wherever it can on many occasions.

The pious strive to eradicate what they call prejudice from their hearts but they overlook differences and threatening characteristics in the process.

Does western civilisation move inexorably towards a fate that has been inscribed into its cultural DNA by its Christian roots? Jesus died on the cross, forming perhaps the most potent cultural symbol to inform western consciousness for 2000 years. It is an image of self-sacrifice; of surrendering to one's own destruction in order to achieve the highest ethical position; of refusing to do what needs to be done to ensure self-preservation; to die so that others may live. These themes pervade the thinking of westerners in ways they are barely conscious of. They inform our responses to myriads of situations, including our response to alien and hostile forces.

Will we follow Jesus and suffer our own crucifixion in order to preserve our moral purity above all else? Has Jesus taught us how to exterminate ourselves?

The Left is submissive

I think I've gained an important insight into the Left's attitude towards Islam and Muslims: they are submissive. They want to show how accommodating they are towards those who are different. They turn a blind eye to the barbaric customs or try to pretend that these are nothing to do with Islam; they swallow whole everything that Muslims want them to believe about Islam; they show deference and respect towards Muslims' beliefs even though they know very little about them and daren't find out; they take as positive a view of Islam as they can and avoid questioning or enquiring - except from very whitewashed sources like Karen Armstrong; they display all the behaviours of submissive dhimmis and are ultimately Sharia-compliant.

Who is a bigot?

The Left, with its usual moral smugness fancies that bigotry is a sin of the Right. In fact, so far down the road of self-congratulation and self-serving delusion has it travelled that it equates bigotry with anything right-wing, and contrariwise it deems left-wing thinking to be the opposite of bigotry. Thus to hold left-wing opinions is somehow to be protected from the sin of bigotry. By holding the opinions defined as respectable on the Left, the Leftist feels guaranteed a place in the warm light of virtue. It is to be one of the blessed.

But bigotry properly defined and understood is simply the obstinate holding of an opinion despite countervailing evidence and sound reasoning. It does not matter whether the opinions are of the Right or the Left, it is the manner in which they are held and maintained.

So, the failure of the Leftist to revise his opinions and attitudes in the light of evidence; his pattern of discounting evidence and character assassination and discreditation; his unwillingness to question his assumptions; these are the marks of bigotry.

Given that the Leftist typically projects these qualities of obduracy onto his political opponents means that he develops a greater and greater blind spot to these failings in himself. This is reinforced by the Leftist's fear of crossing from the side of "virtue" to the side of "sin". Any shift in his opinions to the Right triggers the fear that he is siding with the devil. Hence, he resists information and argument that threatens to move him that way.

On my anguish at the inexorable advance of the virus

When the Obama administration moves from telling us that the Muslim Brotherhood would stand no chance in the Egyptian elections to telling us that the MB may do pretty well but that's OK because the MB are really moderate, pragmatic and will soon adopt less belligerent policies as they confront the electorate's demands for better public services they will have to be more accountable; then we hear the MB saying they will never accept Israel and never make peace and they will implement Sharia law and still the Obama administration keeps telling us they're fine and they send them 1.5 billion dollars in aid.

At this point, will all the other things going on in the muslim world and increasingly in the non-muslim world as evidence that Islam is gaining force and belligerence on a daily basis, the blindness of western elites drives me to despair. The complicity of the left drives me to despair. What planet are these people on? I feel like I'm in a nightmare where I'm on a ship sailing obliviously towards an iceberg and I'm trying to wake the passengers and get to the captain to tell him of the threat but the passengers are unwakeable and when I speak to the captain it's like talking in a vacuum: nothing is heard or understood; the captain just looks at me strangely.

In his book, On the theory of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Khun put forward the idea that science does not advance in an incremental fashion, adjusting and revising theories as new evidence challenges them. Instead, scientists strive to protect favoured theories and even to suppress evidence when it conflicts with these theories. But as evidence accumulates which throws the theory into greater and greater doubt, there comes a point where the theory has to be discarded in favour of a better model which explains the evidence more completely. A scientific revolution occurs.

Perhaps we can expect something comparable to happen with the mainstream view of Islam as "just another religion". As more evidence accumulates which the media and other elites find harder and harder to ignore and suppress, it will become harder to maintain certain viewpoints in the public domain. They will simply sound absurd. The media and other elites will continue to try and diminish evidence that runs counter to the official line; they will talk up examples which appear to validate it (they did this to begin with during the "Arab Spring"). But we can't be too optimistic, kicking the can down the road is a favoured stategy and thought crimes are going to be policed more and more strictly.

Wellington at Jihadwatch making perceptive comment on the Left

The modern Left has done so much damage. It's given us socio-economic excuses for crime, thus exculpating many criminals and removing the concept of personal responsibility. It's given us school curiculum changes which have dumbed down students in their native language, in history, in geography, in economics, in literature and even in mathematics, the sciences and logical thinking, all the while filling up young minds with PC/MC nonsense. It's given us victim-oriented thinking so that most anyone except white heterosexual males of northern European origin can claim some kind of victim status. It's given us speech codes on college campuses, an Orwellian development if ever there were one. It's given us hysterical assessments about impending environmental damage. It's given us moral relativism, thus revising in a trashy form the Sophists' challenge to Socratic absolutism. It's given us scathing assessments, riddled with ridicule and cheap caricatures, of traditional Christians and their belief system. It's given us foolish and false hopes that peace can be achieved without strength. It's given us junk that has been called art. And it's also given us what this article is about---deliberate courting of the Muslim vote in the West for short-term political gains with no view to long-term consequences, replete with continued excuse making for Islam's many pathologies.

Ah yes, the modern Left has done an enormous amount of damgage over the past half century and I write this as one who when young was a man of the Left. I know how the Left thinks because I use to think that way. No more. Forever.

Are there any compensations to the costs of awakening to the jihad threat?

I have definitely become far more miserable and pessimistic since becoming acquainted with the core imperialistic doctrines of Islam and discovering how these are being played out in the world today. I have become more isolated; more aware of the weaknesses of my fellow citizens; more hostile to Muslims and to those who seem determined to protect them at all costs; I find the sight of Muslims more and more unbearable; I dread the future and fear for that of my children; I feel that all that is most precious in the world is under increasing threat from the impending darkness of islamic cultural hegemony. So are there any compensations to this grim state?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes. I do feel more in touch with some core sense of personal integrity. I feel that I am at least trying to do something honourable for my children, my country and my civilisation; indeed, not just for my civilisation but for the very principles of civilisation.

I feel that I have a much better appreciation of what previous generations of people went through when they were faced with this threat. (I think this is something the Left just cannot see. They don't really believe in external threats, they appear to believe at some level that it is always we who are the threat to others.)  I think that facing up to the reality of the threat, however painful it may be, does take one a step closer to authenticity. All those people that I see around me who are relatively blind or naive do give me a sense of having greater awareness. Although that of which I am aware is not so great it is nonetheless awareness of something very important.

I also gain a tremendous sense of purpose from my opposition to islam. When you take the trouble to examine islam you begin to understand that it is not just another religion from which people derive meaning in their lives, you can see that it is a very twisted and tyrannical force that has millions of people in its grip; it is not really doing them any good because it is corrupting and reducing them as human beings; and, it threatens to do the same things to ever more of us. Opposing islam is to oppose evil. To have that clarity is to have a clear sense of purpose.

Galloway elected in Bradford

With the election of George Galloway in Bradford on Thursday, we have Britain's first islamist member of Parliament. In a letter sent to his prospective consistuents, Galloway used the following points to present his case:
1. He never drinks alcohol.
2. His opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not a view only held by islamists but certainly a position consonant with islamism.
3. He used the phrase "God willing" - to his Muslim audience that reads "Inshallah".

In a campaign speech he used exactly the same religious arm-twisting that the Tunisian islamists used to persuade Tunisian Muslims to vote for them, that is he said that if they did not take this opportunity to vote for a islamically sympathetic candidate this might go against them in the afterlife.

From Galloway's record in Bow, Bethnal Green and Tower Hamlets, we know that he furthers the cause of Islamism in Britain. We can see from the above points how he has sought to appeal directly to Muslims on the basis of their religion and employed the same technique as islamists in other countries. We therefore have our first islamist MP.