Our endless, enervating debate about Islam

Ray G. writes from Dearborn:

As I’m sure you can see, our nation is consumed with endless dialog, debate and argument about the intricacies of Islam.

I’m exhausted just listening let alone, participating in it.

Ain’t it all grand?

LA replies:

You’re right. This endless, pointless “debate” with liberals (and with the liberals called conservatives) is boring and enervating. The ONLY debate I want is: what to DO about Islam. Of course, that debate can only begin once there is broad agreement about the true nature of Islam, as a tyrannical creed of war and domination bent on subjugating all mankind to itself. But I don’t think people come to an understanding of the true nature of Islam through debate. They come to it through reading and understanding the basic facts of the matter. The nature of Islam is not a secret. It is not esoteric. Understanding the nature and goals of Islam does not require that one be a scholar of Islam, any more than one needed to be a scholar of Nazism to have a sufficient understanding of the nature and goals of Nazism. There is no excuse for any reading person in the West not to know the true nature of Islam. If people don’t know it, it is because of the massive veil of illusion called liberalism. And no debate can break through that veil. People either see the evident truth about Islam, laid out openly in the Islamic texts and in 1,400 years of Islamic history, or they don’t. What will eventually lead liberals to see the truth about Islam, I don’t know. But debate won’t do it. The veil of liberalism needs to drop from their eyes.

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N. writes:

Actually it is not an endless debate, it hasn’t even been going on that long. Nobody really cared about Islam before the attacks in September of 2001 except for scholars and a few of us who could be derided as cranks. The attacks and the aftermath sent a whole lot of people looking for answers.

It is worth recalling how many people who now are coming to a conclusion about Islam were squishy “can’t we all get along?” types only a few years ago. Andrew McCarthy’s articles at NRO keep bringing up the unpleasant truths, but I’m certain that nothing like that would have been published in the 1990’s. That’s a step forward, to have a right-liberal magazine running articles with facts about Islam. Today, NRO, tomorrow—the “Atlantic”?

Some mailing lists I’m on had a lot of back and forth about Islam earlier this decade, but now the line is hardening as people learn more, many first hand from tours of duty in the Middle East, and make up their own mind regarding the compatibility of Islam and the US Constitution. People away from the coasts are making up their minds, one at a time, and I can see changes slowly happening.

Yes, there is a long way to go, but argumentation is having an effect. It has an effect in multiple ways; merely by saying that which is supposed to be unsayable, Geert Wilders gives aid to ordinary people who previously felt they were alone in their position. I have had arguments with people about Islam that over the course of a few years led them to do their own reading; sure, they wanted to refute what I was saying, it wasn’t altruistic. But as you note, there’s nothing secret or esoteric about Islam, and an honest person who seeks to prove me or you or someone else a bigoted “Islamophobe” who starts reading the history, the Koran, the dhimmi code, etc. can find themselves changing their position.

So while I agree the argument is tiresome at times, it’s still easier and cheaper to fight with words, now, than with other means later on. Therefore we all must continue to speak the truth about Islam whenever it is appropriate to do so.

LA replies:

Points taken. However, I am obviously NOT saying that people shouldn’t speak the truth about Islam, and that such truth speaking does not lead others to see the truth. That’s how we all have learned, by reading writings which informed us. I was referring to mainstream debates with liberals, in which the overpowering liberal lies make any advance toward truth impossible.

N. replies:

The mainstream debates with liberals also matter. Yes, there is an outpouring of ignorance, half truths and even lies that makes the debate difficult, to impossible, with individual liberals. But responding to all that garbage with reasoned debate, with facts quoted from openly available sources, has an effect. People who are watching but not participating are always present. Some of them will go and look for whatever sources are quoted, for example.

Sites such as VFR are a valuable resource for those of us who are engaged in the one-on-one debate, across the country. It’s the same “under the radar” approach that you recently cited in a different context. Bringing light into the debate one person at a time has a snowballing effect as more and more people reach conclusions. This kind of action goes around the media gatekeepers, rendering them ineffective and ultimately irrelevant.

Ray replies to LA:

Yes indeed. The Juan Williams story, the Ground Zero mosque, the Tennessee mosque, judges inching closer to incorporating sharia law in US jurisprudence—its all so exhausting. We have become a nation consumed with racial/ethnic/religious differences and the promotion of “celebrating” them.

We’ll never travel back to the moon or to the planets and stars because we have become so diverse, we have nothing in common, so lacking in the focus required to to pursue those hefty goals. The highest goal today is DIVERSITY along with not hurting anyone’s feelings. The historical American nation is being torn apart and replaced with something else, something new and global. Of course, never-ending mass immigration is one major mechanism for this transformation. Replace the historic American population with new people who don’t have the same traditions, values, customs, etc. Create a new electorate and they will be in debt to the politicians that “created them”.

LA replies:

All the factors you mention are deeply discouraging and seem to make our future hopeless. But there are positive forces at work too, though they are not always seen on the surface. The worst thing to do is to despair, as you are doing now. Despair closes you off from the positive that also exists.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 22, 2010 11:03 AM | Send