An article from Australia’s Quadrant magazine by John Stone seemed to me to be downright Austerian.He should be added to the VFR list of Separationists. In “The Muslim Problem and What to do About It,” Stone calls for the near-halting of Muslim immigration to Australia. In addition, at the end of the article Strong suggests the eventual appearance of a political movement called the No More Muslims Party if common sense does not prevail in Australian immigration policies.
Here are a few excerpts:
“We need to understand that the core of the Muslim problem—for the world, not merely for Australia—lies in the essence of Islam itself. It is the problem of a culture that, for the past 500 years or so at least, has failed its adherents as its inward-looking theocracy has resulted in it falling further and further behind the West. It is that sense of cultural failure, that sense of smouldering resentment that fuels the fires so busily stoked by the more extremist Muslim teachers. Fiercely exclusive rather than inclusive, Islam holds that church and state are inseparable; that women, while respected so long as they stick to their appointed place in the Islamic scheme of things, are less than equal to men generally; and that even the most extreme violence is justifiable when applied in pursuit of approved Islamic ends. Until all that changes—and it can only be changed from within Islam itself, if indeed it can be changed at all—the Islamic culture will never reside in harmony with others.”
And:
“There is an old adage that, when you are already in a hole, stop digging. The entry into Australia of Muslim immigrants over the past thirty-five years or so means that we are now in a hole. The first thing to do, then, is to stop digging. We should curtail very sharply, to the point of virtually halting, the further entry of Muslims within our immigration programs. That will be attacked as “discriminatory”, and so it is. We have every right to discriminate against the admission to Australia of people of any culture that we believe will be incompatible with the peace, order and good government of our country.”
Also, on a different point, here is an excerpt from Fjordman that raises an interesting question: To what extent is mockery both an assimilative device and a form of cultural preservation?
“We should restrain their ability to hurt us physically. We can’t prevent it completely, but we should limit it as much as possible. Muslims try to wear us down through terrorism. They should be worn down through mockery and criticism. We should also make clear that for every Islamic terror attack we will increase these efforts, which Muslims fear more than our weapons. It’s the new balance of terror.”
I’m sure we can all remember a time in our lives when we were mocked, even by friends, for our dress or a bad haircut. Sometimes this mockery actually gets us to change a self-limiting behavior. For example, if a person is mocked for dressing poorly at their place of employment they will possibly, even probably, try to dress more for success, as they say. Mockery, while painful for the individual, can have a beneficial personal and societal effect.
A man who finds out that he lost a job because he wore a polyester suit or a clip-on tie will only make that mistake once if he is smart. Such criticism should serve him well in the long run. Fjordman’s suggestion in favor of criticism and even mockery of Muslims is in direct contrast to D’Souza’s call for less criticism of Muslims. Fjordman sees such behavior as an expression of self preservation while D’Souza sees them as a form of self defeat. In Fjordman’s world the polyester suit guy learns from experience; in D’Souza’s world he goes on wondering why he can’t get the job he wants.
In a liberal society where the eradication of all discomfort to privileged minorities is paramount, this healthy form of criticism and mockery is neutered, and other such assimilative devices are, in general, themselves seen as hateful. Liberalism alters the natural ebb and flow of everyday life, tradition and common sense and actually serves as a prophylactic towards the attainment of the progressive society that liberals themselves would desire, namely, the color blind society, the discrimination free society, and so on. Liberalism actually keeps alive the petty hatreds and grudges that it claims to want to eliminate.
But taking up Fjordman’s point about mockery in real life terms—what is the proper traditionalist reaction, for example, to a group of Muslim females decked out in burka style swim gear at the beach? Is mockery or disgust the proper, maybe even the mandatory, response?
(Comical aside: I once watched in disbelief as a Muslim woman tried to eat a hot dog (must have been all beef) while wearing a burka complete,of course, with a full facial veil. And a friend was stunned to see a woman cutting her lawn in a burka one hot summer day last year. These are the sights that makes you ask yourself if we have lost our collective mind.)
I realize that you might say, “ask Fjordman,” but he’s in Europe and I’m interested in what you think about this tactic for our American brand of traditionalism in relation to Muslims.Why should the left have all the fun? I could envision a form of conservative, or right wing ,”street theater” mocking Muslim affectations such as the burka. the kafiyeh, etc. It strikes me as really mean-spirited and highly unlikely, but…