Dreher, having had a meeting with Muslims, further considers Separationism

At his Crunchy Con blog, Rod Dreher has a follow-up to his previous post on Separationism (discussed here). He says that his reservations about my idea that the West must separate itself from Islam is based on his not wanting it to be true. But, he admits, “Wanting something to be true, or untrue, doesn’t make it so.” The main basis for Separationism, he continues, is my point number 4, that Islam cannot be assimilated. He says he doubts Islam can be assimilated, “but I hope it can, because if not, I see no reason why Auster’s conclusion is wrong.”

Dreher then gives an eye-opening account of a meeting between a delegation of the Muslim community of Dallas and the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News in which the Muslims complained at length about critical coverage they had been getting from the paper (most of it written by Dreher, the paper’s assistant editorial page editor). In the course of the meeting, under questioning from Dreher, the Muslim representatives would not dissociate themselves from a single pro-sharia position, nor would they admit to anything radical in disseminating the works of Sayyid Qutb (pronounced KUTub) at the Dallas Central Mosque, the largest mosque in Texas.

Dreher’s account underscores the most basic and important fact that must be understood about Muslims, but that keeps coming as a big surprise to liberals like Dennis Prager: Muslims are Muslims. They believe in Islam.

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Paul Nachman writes:

That Dreher blog item about the meeting with the Muslims is fantastic!

Andrew Bostom writes:

One more point that folks even well-intentioned folks like Dreher miss entirely: Qutb’s magnum opus, “In the Shade of the Qur’an” deviates NOT ONE IOTA in its commentaries, for example on the jihad or the inveterate loathsomeness of the Jews, compared with the great classical Koranic commentatoprs who helped CREATE mainstream Islamic beliefs, such as Tabari, Zamakashari, Ibn Kathir, Baydawi, and Suyuti…

I wrote an e-mail to Rod Dreher:

Rod, I very much appreciate your taking these ideas seriously. Would that more people would do so.

Your editorial board’s meeting with the Dallas Muslim delegation that you describe is just unbelievable, yet exactly what we would expect. The key to it is: they have no American/Western notion of mutuality. Everything is for Islam. Everything outside Islam has no rights to anything, and at most is accommodated on a purely tactical basis.

I explain this further in the opening three paragraphs of my article, “The Centrality of Jihad in Islam”:

All thoughts of pacifying Islam by assimilating it into the global democratic system must fall down before a simple, terrible fact: Jihad—holy war against all non-Muslims—does not represent a mere excess or defect of Islam, but its timeless core. According to Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi (quoted recently at FrontPage Magazine), “Muslims are religiously obliged to disseminate the Islamic faith throughout the world…. If non-Muslims submit to conversion or subjugation, this call can be pursued peacefully. If they do not, Muslims are obliged to wage war against them.” World peace, according to Islamic teaching, “is reached only with the conversion or submission of all mankind to Islam.”

Moreover, continues Tibi, when Muslims disseminate Islam through violent means, that is not war (harb), as that word only describes the use of force by non-Muslims. Islamic wars are acts of “opening” the world to Islam. “[T]hose who resist Islam cause wars and are responsible for them.”

In other words, simply by the act of existing, the entire non-Islamic world is equated with war. That is why Muslims call it the Dar al-Harb, the Realm of War. Yet when Muslims wage jihad, they are doing it to bring about the peace of universal Islam. So whatever Muslims do, is by definition peace, and whatever infidels do, is by definition war. This explains, by the way, why “moderate” Muslims almost never admit that Muslim terrorists are terrorists. It is because jihad itself is not war, but a way of pursuing peace. By such manipulations of language and such massive double standards, Islam reveals itself as a closed system that precludes any critical thought about itself, as well as any fair and honest dealings with non-Muslims. [Emphasis added.]

I figured this out from reading about Islam, and from watching Muslim spokesmen on television, without ever having had a meeting with Muslims. Now you’ve had such a meeting, and you know it from experience.

Larry Auster

Russell W. writes:

I have two contrasting reactions to Dreher’s comments, one negative and one positive.

The negative one is that I think Dreher actually privately reached this conclusion (perhaps even unconsciously) before he wrote the first post wherein he agreed with the 4 precepts but balked on the conclusion, and that his two posts on the subject are a kind of kubuki theater that he feels (perhaps rightly) is necessary in today’s climate in order to publicly say he agrees with separationism. It may yet be possible, at least for someone considered quite conservative (in the mainstream sense), to say that Islam is itself the problem and we must extricate ourselves from it, and for that person not to be completely exiled from the currents of public debate. But I’m guessing Dreher probably thinks that in order for that to happen, he has to go through this public process in which he expresses how tortured he is over the fact of his conclusion, manfully resists arriving at it, and then accepts it only reluctantly and with great regret. The fact that this is necessary is the negative part of all this.

The fact that he himself comes to the conclusion, and that it is possible for him to do so publicly (even with the attendant breast-beating), is the positive part.

LA replies:

Well, there’s nothing wrong with a person in a public position saying, “I don’t want to believe this negative thing about this certain group. I wouldn’t feel good about this being true. But the evidence is that it is true.” Remember, my position that he is tentatively agreeing with is an extremely radical position by today’s standards.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 16, 2006 11:08 AM | Send