Arab Spring update

I have a rendezvous with Dhimmitude
When Arab Spring comes round again this year,
And “Allahu Akbar” fills the air—
I have a rendezvous with Dhimmitude
When Arab Spring brings back blue days and fair.

Daniel S. writes:

Where are all the neocon and liberal supporters of the Arab Spring who assured us that the removal of secular, largely pro-Western Arab dictators would usher in an age of liberal democracy in the Middle East? I ask because the Muslim Brotherhood (the same group that spawned Hamas and other militant groups) in Egypt is proclaiming itself the victor in recent presidential elections in that nation. The Salafi\Muslim Brotherhood political dominated parliament bodes ill not just for the Coptic Christians (already the target of terrible violence and persecution), but secular Egyptians and Sufi Muslims, who tend to be, relatively speaking, more moderate and apolitical.

In Syria the “opposition” (i.e. gangs of terrorists and brigands) continues to threaten violence against the ancient Christian community, leading to many Christians fleeing in large numbers from their homes. Christians are routinely kidnapped and murdered in Syria by the rebels and churches are desecrated, with those wanting to arm the rebels remaining silent and indifferent to the Christians’ plight.

Meanwhile, in “liberated” Libya one rebel faction continues to detain a female representative of the International Criminal Court, tribal and political violence abound, and Libyan weapons are finding their way into the hands of al-Qaeda militants in Somalia.

Melinda Taylor, ICC lawyer under house arrest in Libya. This is
whom the West sends alone into a semi-barbaric Muslim country

* * *

The lines at the beginning of this entry are a paraphrase of Alan Seeger’s beautiful World War I poem, “I Have A Rendezvous with Death”:

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ‘twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear …
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger. 1888-1916

This was the kind of poem that was commonly read when I was in junior high school and high school, in South Orange, New Jersey in the 1960s. Now South Orange is the kind of town that officially celebrates people who have had sex change operations.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 21, 2012 10:03 AM | Send