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Is our society so messed up, that Islam is better?
Brandon F. writes:
Things that don’t exist in Muslim societies:
open homosexuality
abortion
cross dressing
public suppression of prayer
homosexual priests or priestesses
homosexual military
open pornography
This list could go on. This country will have a leftist President who will allow a man who openly embraces a penis to give a prayer as part of the inauguration festivities and who seeks to let gays openly serve in the military. Our civilization pales in moral comparison with Muslim civilization.
LA replies:
The two civilizations are incommensurable, and therefore the comparison Brandon is making between them is not true or helpful in my opinion. In what real-world sense could we Westerners regard Islam as better? For us, Islam means the extinction of everything—good and bad—that we are. To suggest that Islam is morally superior to our society would tend to lead people toward an acceptance of Islam which would mean the end, not just of the specific depravities in our society that Brandon lists, but of our society itself—of us ourselves.
Therefore, what the present decadent West should be compared with for purposes of instruction and improvement is not the alien civilization of Islam, but our own civilization in a non-decadent state.
- end of initial entry -
QR writes:
Only two of the items on Brandon F.’s list are not about homosexuality. If you really think that homosexuality is the worst problem in the West, all I can say is, what city do you live in? I want to move there. I can think of far more serious problems with Western decadence, such as affirmative action, high crime rates, violence on school campuses, drug use, out-of-control taxes, welfare mothers…. If he had mentioned these things and homosexuality was just one or two items on his list, I wouldn’t argue, but making it five out of the seven problems he chooses to list is frankly silly.
Second, perhaps Brandon F. should read the Koran, where he will learn that along with the proverbial 72 virgins, Muslim martyrs are promised “pearl-like lads.” In the Koran and in their culture in general, Muslims have a rather schizophrenic attitude towards homosexuality; they condemn it and indulge it by turns. Do you know why Prince Vlad Tepes became obsessed with impaling his enemies on stakes? Because he spent his youth in a Turkish prison.
I despair so much of Western decadence that I sincerely wish I could regard the coming Islamic regime as something to look forward to. Unfortunately, the Mohammedans will be using my sons’ bodies as well as my daughters’ in their harems. Plus there’s all those pesky details about suicide bombing, Hitler-level anti-Semitism, dhimmitude, stoning pre-teen girls to death for getting raped, and of course worshipping a false and capricious god who is not, regardless of what apologists pretend, the God of Jews and Christians.
Muslim “civilization” will give us all of these lovely things and will practice sodomy with little attempt to conceal it as well, though the males being penetrated will usually be young boys or other powerless people, so at least they won’t be going around feeling proud of it. Muslim “civilization” won’t even have the one benefit to which Brandon F. seems to cling.
January 15
Charles T. writes:
Things that do exist in Muslim societies:
Justification of the murder of non-Muslims.
Justification of the rape of non-Muslim women.
Justification of the rape of Muslim women.
Justification of execution of Muslim women who have been raped
Refusal of Muslim courts to punish male rapists
Women who have been raped are blamed for the male’s crime
Women who have been raped have no advocates in Muslim countries
Children have no advocates in Muslim countries
Pederasty
Child Rape
Tolerance of homosexual activity as long as it is concealed
Poverty
Economic stagnation
Economic despair
Military and cultural conquest of non-Muslims
Suppression of religious freedom for non-Muslims
Suppression of speech freedoms for non-Muslims
Suppression of economic freedoms for non-Muslims
Use of children as shields in terror operations
Children and women are “owned” by the men and can be disposed of as property
Women are told how to dress in Muslim countries
Wife-beating
Child-beating
Beatings for anyone a good Muslim does not like.
Slavery
Excessive taxation of non-Muslims in Muslim countries
Lying and deception permitted by Koran when dealing with non-Muslims
Breaking treaties
Racism—tribal, cultural, religious
Most, if not all, of the above are sanctioned—either directly or indirectly—by the Koran and Muslim theologians.
Brandon F. writes:
All the points that were made in response to my list are valid. I was only trying to start a dialogue and admitted that there could be an alternate list.
QR seems a little reactionary about the homosexual thing (I said it was a partial list). I don’t think the creeping homosexuality in this country is any small thing. It brings all forms of sexual deviance to the forefront and creates a culture (now presidentially approved) of self satisfaction and moral relativism. (Is this the meaning of QR? Have you allowed a double spy to make comments, LA?)
Islam has other interpretations than the ones that you and your readers have. I know that is cliche but I have read much that turns me in that direction (Ibn al’ Arabi, Rumi, Hazrat Ali, Charles Upton and the giant Rene Guenon).
I don’t care to get into apologetics or create an impression I would rather see Islam rule, necessarily. I also agree with you in principle on the right of civilizations to determine their own identity. I do think I would rather be ruled by Islam and pay the jizyah tax than pay a form of that tax to a homophiliac president hell bent on culture war.
LA replies:
Who’s the one who now sounds like a double agent?
Sage McLaughlin writes:
I once had an Uzbek professor who, though he had spent much of his career working as a physicist for the Soviets, was a culturally conservative Uzbek. Now, this man has all the traits one often associates with minorities from traditional cultures living in America. He is polite and generous, humble, unassuming, quick to laughter, not at all prone to violence. His son, who was my tutor, was a very kind and similarly unassuming young man, whom I genuinely admired. They did not attend mosque, were not religious, but had obviously been formed by the Muslim culture into which they were born, especially with respect to their family ethic, which was basically admirable.
One day, my professor was explaining the meaning of a phrase which translates as “Please rescue me.” Suddenly, he started to chuckle to himself, and decided to share with us what he thought was a really funny anecdote. One of his neighbors, it seems, used to beat his wife brutally and regularly. The wife would often run through the street shouting “Please rescue me,” which struck my teacher as hilariously funny. He could barely get through his story, the ridiculousness of that woman’s desperate pleas so amused him. Once he composed himself, and went on with the lesson, and it was clear that there was no other real punch line coming, everyone in the room was horrified. He was oblivious to this fact. This moment removed any and all confusion I may once have had about the supposedly superior social and ethical tendencies within Islamic culture.
Islamic culture breeds a genuine hostility to passivity of any sort, a contempt for the weak, and a hatred for any person or group who serves in a receptive role, sexually or otherwise. In Muslim countries, homosexual behavior is rampant, but primarily as an assertion of dominance over other men. The man performing the “active” role is not actually viewed as being a “queer,” and is not held in the same kind of contempt as the man in the receptive role. Islam, which means submission, breeds hostility for the one who submits, as this is contrary to what is divine (the Muslim conception of divinity being largely an expression of the will to dominate, without requiring explanation or apology of any sort). I can recount endless anecdotes of people who I know, mostly women, who have been sternly corrected by Muslim men that God does not care for their suffering (an Arab doctor told my sister this while she was in labor), and who view divine reality as represented by Christ on the Cross—the God who submits—as the most singularly repellent inversion of God’s nature imaginable.
No thanks to all that.
Terry Morris writes:
I agree that the standard for conservatives is not Islam, nor is it modern Western society. The standard for Western conservatives is Western society as it once was, a society that embraced neither homosexuality, nor Islam.
Charles T. writes:
Brandon F wrote:
“Islam has other interpretations than the ones that you and your readers have. I know that is cliche but I have read much that turns me in that direction (Ibn al’ Arabi, Rumi, Hazrat Ali, Charles Upton and the giant Rene Guenon). ”
The other interpretations do not seem to have much influence in the Muslim cultures. The majority of Muslims practice a culture of domination/submission/violence as taught in the Koran. Also, note that Islam has bloody borders. Everywhere Muslims go, violence soon follows. The other intrepretations do not mean squat as far as Muslim behavior goes.
When you say that “I have read much that turns me in that direction,” do you mean that you believe that Islam at its core is peaceful? Or do you mean that the writers you listed above are convincing you to convert to Islam?
“I don’t care to get into apologetics or create an impression I would rather see Islam rule, necessarily. I also agree with you in principle on the right of civilizations to determine their own identity. I do think I would rather be ruled by Islam and pay the jizyah tax than pay a form of that tax to a homophiliac president hell bent on culture war.”
I do not want to be ruled by either one and neither should you. Such talk is foolish. Get involved and speak out against both. At least you still have a chance of influencing the culture around you.
Terry Morris writes:
LA wrote: “Who’s the one who now sounds like a double agent?”
Yeah. As in, Brandon has now joined the ranks of the subversive infiltrator Colin Powell.
N. writes:
Leaving aside all the discussion regarding Islam and homosexuality, Islam and women, etc. let us consider the comment by Brandon F. in a more abstract light. He suggests that certain social ills are much rarer in Islamic societies, and implicit in this statement is some degree of admiration for the security and predictability in such societies.
I suggest that this is significant. Islam is winning converts in the United Kingdom daily, especially among younger women, I am told by persons who travel there (any confirmation/denial from UK readers especially welcome). Islam is attractive to young men in some countries, such as Germany, although numbers are hard to come by; the Moslems always inflate their population count and conversion count. But clearly, the right to be unquestioned leader of the household is attractive, especially to young men who are tired of the “Cosmo girl.”
Could some of these conversions be a response to the increasingly nihilistic nature of modern civilization? Because one thing Islam offers is a form of security: say certain prayers at certain times of day, fast when required, go on a pilgrimage at least once, abstain from alcohol, etc. and your life will be “good.” The rule set as I’ve read it gets into absurd degrees of minute detail (“enter a house with your right hand and right foot first”) but again, such things can be comforting if the alternative is chaos. Consider the all too typical child of a single mother, whose male role model is a succession of “boyfriends” that come and go: what stability does that child have in the world at all?
Islam offers in a superficial way quite a lot to those people who are lost in the whirlwind of modern society. It would be ironic indeed if the “liberation” that liberalism has provided to the West leads in many cases to conversion to Islam, the most anti-liberal of all major religions. Talk about unintended consequences.
LA replies:
But in a sense what N. is saying is nothing new. Islam has ALWAYS had certain features that made it seem more attractive to some Europeans than Christendom and the West. Christianity has a very complex theology; Islam’s is very simple. Christianity tells man to contain his sexual desires; Islam arranges society deliberately to accommodate sexual desires (at least of the male). Christianity tells man to have faith in the invisible God, a difficult, doubtful experience; Islam simply requires its adherents to obey external rules. Christianity speaks of self-abnegation; Islam appeals to a warrior ethos.
The answer to these tempations coming from Islam is to get people to look at Islam as a whole, and to look at Christianity and the West as a whole. But if Christianity and the West are decadent, the argument obviously becomes much more difficult.
Charles T. writes:
N. fails to realize that Islam is authoritarian to it’s very core. The external rules—which supposedly give so much security—are enforced by the Imans—ruthlessly if necessary. Islam is a system of male domination; males over females and children and dominant males over less dominant males.
I see no security in this sytem at all. I see only slavery to a set of rules and merciless rulers.
Does N. fail to know that if a Muslim woman is raped by a Muslim male, she must produce four witnesses in court to prove she was raped? If four men watched a rape without stopping it, they probably also participated. If the unfortunate woman cannot produce the witnesses, then she is the guilty party, she caused the rape; the man could not control himself. Does N. find any security in a system like this?
N. writes:
Reply to Lawrence Auster: Comparing Islam to Christianity is missing the point. It isn’t young Christian women that I’m told are converting in London and other cities in the UK, it’s agnostic, beliefless ones, often the daughters of broken homes or increasingly from mothers who never married. They are not fleeing from Christ to Mohammed, they are giving up nothing. Literally, they are giving up no-thing, the life of nihilism, for some-thing, a very, very structured life that at least tells them where they stand, what they are to do, and not to do. They are giving up a freedom they find meaningless for some kind of security, so far as I can tell, and again I would welcome any insight on this, because I’m going on second hand information.
Furthermore, I wager that most of these conversions are emotionally driven rather than logically driven. Something similar is likely the case for young men who convert, in the vast majority of cases. Given a choice between a life of empty alcohol-driven partying leading to nothing, and a life of regimented something that offers security, some are clearly choosing the latter. [LA replies: Which suggests that if a vital, confident Christianity or cultural traditionalism were being offered in today’s society, it WOULD appeal to many people. But it’s not there. So people are left with the choice between some variety of nihilistic liberalism or an alternative like Islam.]
In short, I’m suggesting that some people in the West who are sick of the libertine nihilism will find some more structured life to be attractive, especially as the economy worsens. Because they have never been exposed in any meaningful way to any sort of self-control, structure, transcendence, then Islam with its structure and simplistic theology is attractive to them. Any practicing, believing Christian at this point should feel at least a little nudge of conscience …
Reply to Charles T. Please read more carefully, and avoid making unwarrented assumptions. Your critique is completely invalid.
Brandon writes:
My inclination at least to have a favorable opinion of certain interpretations of Islam in no way should be surmised as promoting it. I wanted to provoke with my idea and it seemed to do the trick. Lots of good opinions on this one.
As far as homosexuality is concerned, my policy is what I teach my son about it (unfortunately children in the West are forced to consider what it means to have homosexual sex before they are old enough to form a healthy sexuality).
1. Show compassion and kindness to homosexuals who struggle with their impulses.
2. Tolerate those who do not resist their desires but keep it private.
3. Resist any attempt by the culture or government to force the people to accept or in any way validate such behavior.
LA replies:
What Brandon has concisely stated is VFR’s philosophy as well, worked out in a discussion in 2003.
Mark P. writes:
I would say the main attraction that Islam would have has little to do with security or the fact that elements of Islam will always seem attractive to some disaffected Westerners. Islam’s main attraction is the potential “deal” it offers to those who are increasingly deemed unfit to live in a liberal society. Simply put, Islam inverts the dominant/submissive equation that currently rules liberalism. Instead of having a society ruled by women, homosexuals, ultra-leftists, feral minorities and others, Islam will deem these people unfit and force them into submission.
Consider the list that Charles T. provides of all the problems Islam causes. What is the common thread? They are easily avoided by those men who could easily convert to Islam. Islam is certainly bad … but it is especially bad for women, children, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, etc … these people would not be able to function well under Islam.
White males … least affected.
And white males will increasingly find this deal atractive as the West fades and liberalism becomes more intolerant. Islam’s modification of divorce law alone would be of great benefit to white men.
I don’t want this to happen, but I am really getting tired of hearing how the worst possible thing that could happen is the corrosive effects on women and children.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 14, 2009 08:57 PM | Send
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