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Odd bedfellows are often found in politics or war, but is the secular Left’s lovey-dovey relationship with the anti-Semitic, genocidal Hamas fanatics in Gaza and, indeed, Islam generally, really such an odd pairing? We are entitled to speculate because there appears no limit to what it would take for the woke Left to say, along with a majority of other Australians, ‘to hell with Hamas, to hell with Islam’. Neither the bestial nature of the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the imported Jew-hate that consequently erupted here in Australia, nor the Muslim teen jihadi’s stabbing of a Sydney bishop, have proved to be a threshold too far for the modern Left.
No matter what depths of depravity are reached by Islam, it remains ring-fenced by the impregnable force-field of ‘Islamophobia’, one of the top sins in the Woke catechism and zealously enforced by the Left, even though ‘Islamophobia’ should more accurately be called ‘Islamo-awareness’ rather than an ‘irrational’ fear of Islam. Whilst Islamo-Fascism has a long history (one common enemy in particular united both the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Fuhrer, for example), Islamo-Leftism is a relatively new phenomenon in a Left which has traditionally been wary of, indeed hostile to, ‘radical Mohammedans’ (in Trotsky’s words) and their milieu.
So, what is going on with the infatuation of the Left with the barbaric, Jew-killing, gay-hating, women-raping, head-lopping religious fundamentalists of the Islamic faith, and their often silently supportive, more ‘moderate’, brethren?
Islam’s demographic march
Like the rest of the West, Australia is beginning to undergo Islamicisation. In 1966, Muslims made up fewer than one in a thousand Australians (Islam did not statistically reach even the 0.1 per cent population needed to warrant its own religion category in the Census of that year). From that invisibly low base, however, the acceleration has been rapid. By the 2021 Census, Muslims in Australia had reached a population of 813,392 or 3.2 per cent of the total population.
Muslims have now reached critical social mass in Australia and exert an outsize influence on the culture and politics of the host country. In particular, they have shot up the identity politics league ladder curated by the Left, which has never seen a minority, especially a ‘non-white’ one, unworthy of being honoured as victims of a perennially racist Western and imperialist culture. Islam has consequently undergone a reappraisal by an historical materialist Left which, in the olden times, had no philosophical truck with any religion. Atheism was de rigeur for socialists, old and new, whilst Christians, although not actively excluded from left-wing parties, were exceptionally rare (I can not recall a single one in the three decades I moved in Left circles). The scalpel of ‘scientific socialism’ was wielded against not just Christianity but any system of religious thought. Indeed, there was a major political kerfuffle in one of the Trotskyoid grouplets I used to inhabit (I can’t remember which one – Socialist Action, or Socialist Alternative, or Socialist Alliance, or the International Socialists – they are sort of interchangeable even down to their similar and unoriginal names) when one article was published which included criticism of even the Rainbow Serpent and other myths of the Aboriginal Dreamtime religion, a woke sin which no number of Hail Marx’s could expiate these days.
Now that Islam has received favoured status amongst the religions that dare not be challenged by the woke Left, the creed’s many decidedly unprogressive social pathologies are also necessarily granted a sweeping immunity.
Islamic Terrorism
Top of the list for critical exemption is Islamic terrorism, which receives much special pleading by the Islamophilic Left in order to downplay or excuse it. Multiculturalist ideologues fervently believe (when they aren’t apologising for, or justifying, the ‘inevitable’ Islamic terrorist blowback against the wicked White West) that there really, truly is a ‘Religion of Peace’ which is followed by billions of pacific Muslims. As for what apologists present as a tiny, violent but inconsequential ‘non-Islamic Islam’, the Left would have you believe they have nothing to do with the religion whose more bloodthirsty counsel they follow.
This is fanciful thinking. For starters, the Islamic terrorists are perfectly clear about their religious motivations, as evidenced by their battle cry of Islamic supremism, ‘Allahu Akbar’. There are some 109 verses in the Koran commanding violence, often graphic violence, by Muslims against nonbelievers. The Koran is crystal clear that Muslims are the “best of peoples” (verse 3:110) and that ‘those who disbelieve are surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight” (verse 8:55).
As for Muslim terror being frowned upon by nearly all Muslims, numerous surveys have given the lie to this. Trevor Phillips, a former British Labour politician of African heritage who served for a decade as head of two impeccably woke liberal bodies (the Commission for Racial Equality, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission), and thus was one of the high priests of the politically correct ‘diversity’ elite, conducted a large survey (What British Muslims Really Think) in 2015 investigating British Muslims’ beliefs. He found that 32 per cent refuse to condemn those who ‘take part in violence against those who mock the Prophet’, whilst just one in three (34 per cent) would report to the police a fellow Muslim ‘involved with people who support terrorism’ (the other two-thirds, one gathers, would stay shtum). Most Gaza Palestinians, too, were head-over-heels delighted by the vicious Hamas assault on Israeli Jews last October.
Other Islamic social pathologies
Savage terrorism, of course, is the most acute symptom of Islamic pathology but terrorism, despite its spectacular grisliness, is far from Islam’s sole flaw. Islam is fundamentally incompatible with a broad gamut of political and social values, not least equality, tolerance, secularism, pluralism, religious freedom, free speech and democracy — principles to which the Left once pledged itself in theory if not in practice.
In both its ‘radicalised’ and ‘moderate’ forms Islam advances values alien to what has long been taken for granted in the West. The Philips survey found an alarmingly high percentage of Britain’s three million Muslims do not want to integrate and that their views aren’t remotely enlightened. Besides having a soft spot for terrorist violence, the survey found
♦ 52% of Britain’s Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal;
♦ 39% think Muslim ‘wives should always obey their husbands’;
♦ 31% think it is acceptable for a man to have more than one wife;
♦ 34% do not condemn Muslims who stone those who commit adultery, and
♦ 23% support the introduction of Sharia Law in the UK.
It is far worse, of course, in such fundamentalist Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq but it also exists in spades in so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim countries such as Indonesia, where a 2006 poll found 58 per cent of respondents in this model ‘moderate Muslim’ nation believe adulterers should be stoned to death (cited in Mark Durie’s Islam, Human Rights and Public Policy). In 2010, Pew Research found that 84 per cent of Egyptians, 86 per cent of Jordanians and 76 per cent of Pakistanis supported the death sentence for apostasy. So the problem with Islam is not just its active jihadists but also with ‘traditional’ Islamic beliefs and activities. Clitoridectomies, honour killings and throwing sodomites off tall buildings come immediately to mind.
Anti-Semitism, of course, looms large at the core of the Islamic belief system, but it is not just Jews who cop unhinged Muslim ire. As much as the Islamo-Left might pretend otherwise (nowhere better illustrated than by Turkeys for Christmas, otherwise known as Queers for Palestine), Islam has no tolerance for women’s rights, gays, Muslim apostates, Christians and followers of all other creeds.
And socialists too. Geoffrey Robertson in his 2012 book Mullahs Without Mercy notes how the Islamists who usurped power in Iran following the 1979 popular revolution against the dictatorship of the Shah turned their mass-murdering ways first upon 7000 jailed members of an Islamic-Marxist party, followed by thousands more of their godless socialist peers whose atheistic thought-crimes and refusal to adopt the religious rituals of the new theocratic state condemned them to whippings, torture and murder. No Islamic regime has ever lived peaceably with any left-wing domestic political parties, which makes its woke West allies all the bigger fools and suckers. All this Islamic animosity to the broad swathes of non-Muslim humanity should give the Left pause, but the woke imperative of supporting favoured victim groups (in this case, Muslims) must always take precedence.
Islam’s pernicious foundational flaws have proven remarkably resistant to reform since the territorial conquests in the seventh century AD by the Muslim warlord and self-proclaimed Prophet Mohammed. Islam’s contemporary problems are rigidly cemented in its unchallengeable texts — the Koran (purported to be Allah’s verbatim words transmitted to Mohammed via an angel and complete and perfect for all time), the Hadiths (the Prophet’s alleged sayings and deeds) and the Sura (the canonical biography of Mohammed by Ibn Ishaq). These three texts embody the mores and cultural values of seventh century society in the Arabian Peninsula and are, to say the least, a poor fit with modern Western civilisation.
Any attempt to textually cherry-pick the more ‘liberal’ references in these foundational sources has to confront the sheer weight of the ‘perverted’ bits such as:
♦ the divinely-ordained killing, enslaving and subjugation of Jews, Christians, ex-Muslim apostates or doubting Muslims,
♦ the abundant homophobia,
♦ the condoning of women’s oppression (wife-beating, under-age marriages, marital rape, genital mutilation, child marriage, forced marriage, polygamy, ‘honour killings’, etc.).
Mohammed is both the religion’s founder and the heart of his creation’s problem. Revered by all Muslims (whether hard-line or ‘reformist’), Mohammed is far from a model for all Muslims to follow. The “perfect man” began his religious-political career as a highwayman raiding desert caravans and, as a ferocious and highly successful warlord, he fought constant battles, beheaded 600 Jews in a single afternoon, pillaged towns, raped the widows of his victims, had fifteen wives (the youngest aged just six), sanctioned spousal necrophilia, and ordered the stoning to death of adulterers, apostates, homosexuals, blasphemers and anyone who personally insulted him.
All Muslims, nevertheless, are obliged to believe their Prophet is the ‘Model of Conduct’, and have no difficulty with the modern-day moral standards set by someone who deflowered a nine-year-old, ordered the torture of a man to make him reveal where he had hidden valuables and had him killed when he did so, who commanded three assassinations for the ‘crime’ of mocking him, who himself took part in the killing of up to 900 prisoners of a rival tribe, and who declared ‘I have been made victorious through terror’. Given this example, the moral compass of the average Muslim, not just the extremist, is seriously off-kilter, even if latent most of the time.
If this Mohammed of the sword were to be cleansed from the holy texts to make them relevant to the 21st century, with a more peaceable and devout replacement cobbled together from a special and quite limited reading of the Islamic texts, this would, blasphemously, reduce the Prophet to a quite minor role and demolish the very foundations of the entire religion of Islam. Embrace Islam as it stands and you embrace Mohammed’s vices and unpleasant personality, recasting them as virtues and attributes to emulate.
Christianity’s Jesus, on the other hand, has subsequently, in various rewritings of the Christian canon from the time of the much-later-penned Gospels themselves, evolved into a harmless dispenser of moral maxims that secularists could easily live by, but Mohammed has shown no propensity for such ethical evolution.
Sharia Law
Sharia law is a Koran-authorised way-of-life instruction manual which micro-manages public and private life under Islam through over six thousand laws. Some of these Sharia laws prescribe, for example, religious observances such as worship, fasting, prayer and pilgrimage. They cover financial dealings, taxes, trade, banking and finance. They specify rules for marriage (including polygamy), divorce, child custody and inheritance. The mandate specific funeral and burial rituals. They include dietary laws such as the prohibition on pork and alcohol. They prohibit gambling. They include animal slaughter requirements which are incompatible with those used in the West.
They mandate a dress code, especially for women, who are considered second-class citizens. It is mandatory (verses 24:31, 33:59) for Muslim women to wear some headgear equivalent of a bin-liner to at least partially cover their hair and face to ensure the concealment and self-effacement of Muslim women. Muslim females’ head-and-body-covering attire are religiously justified because a psychotic seventh-century warlord designated women as vessels of sin designed by Satan to tempt men.
The hijab and the other black, shapeless ‘modesty’ garments of Islamic culture, are not simply a fashion choice for Muslim women, as feminist apologists for Islam assert. In strict Sharia-ruled Muslim countries, their wearing is imposed under penalty of arrest or worse. In the West, the Muslim wearers of these archaic garments are sending out a conspicuously visible message that they are not interested in integrating into wider, secular, non-Muslim society or interacting with non-Muslims. A Muslim woman’s headwear is anti-social, a big ‘screw you’ to her fellow Western citizens whilst, for the more left-wing of these, including in the ABC, a hijabbed Muslim is mandatory to illustrate ‘diversity and inclusion’ in every story.
The hijab and its female clothing cousins are totally at odds with female dress autonomy in the West. If any other community was forcing its women to dress in discomforting ways, there would be justified uproar by progressive opinion centres but when it’s the Muslim community treating their women as chattel, and dressing them as men decree, the West’s feminist elites, cloaking their approval under the rubric of ‘cultural sensitivity and respect’ and turn away, saying ‘Hands off the hijab! It’s part of their culture. So shut up’. Thus do woke feminists advertise their all-round moral goodness against the dark forces of the nativist, nationalist, populist right and their Trumpian Svengali.
The feminist betrayal of their Muslim sisters has been stark. Not so long ago, the feminist liberal intelligentsia was passionately opposed to the burka and the other variants of Islamic veiling. Now, however, they are silent because to voice support for, say, courageous protests against the veil by women in Iran would be ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘racist’. Yet, there are Muslim women in jail, tortured and dead, for refusing to obey the legal requirement to wear the hijab. There are also raped and murdered Israeli women, the victims of Hamas, whose brutalisation silently testifies to the weird double standards of the Western feminist left who are only too happy to #MeToo men of the non-Muslim kind into woke villainy.
That leftist women get their knickers in a knot over Islamic misogyny may not be so surprising, however. The way that ‘progressive’ women, who claim to value female dress and bodily autonomy, took to the state-imposed Covid mask with religious fervour should be a red flag. When it comes to the ‘progressive’ Left, don’t expect consistency of principle.
The Western, woke left is happy to go along with all the socially regressive tyranny of Islam and the ‘vibrant diversity’ it brings t the West. But be careful what you wish for, ‘progressives’, because you will be just a tasty entrée for the Islamic glutton when Sharia law and an Islamic caliphate come to a place near you.
We should all nod along with John Cleese who recently said: ‘Some cultures are superior to others, and we shouldn’t be frightened to say so’, adding that ‘a society that goes in for female genital mutilation is abhorrent and I happen to think that if people come to live in Britain, they should accept and adhere to our values’.
It’s hard to disagree, unless your politics are left-progressive.
We have the Uniparty to thank for the Muslim presence in Australia. Dutton, in his budget reply, said that a liberal government would reduce immigration but by a paltry few thousand. No doubt many of them would come from Islamic sources.
This is national suicide in slow motion. So who benefits, apart from the rug sniffers ?
The Libs are about as helpful as a wet lettuce leaf at a bonfire. Immigration needs to be reduced to an economical level of less than, about 100k pa. It needs to favour people with a British or compatible heritage, while not excluding incompatible cultures in small proportions. It needs to develop family-friendly policies (not more handouts), but better taxation treatment, perhaps tax deduction on home repayments.
“Muslim females’ head-and-body-covering attire are religiously justified because a psychotic seventh-century warlord designated women as vessels of sin designed by Satan to tempt men.”
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And three cheers to that -and here we are!
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Sounds like the misogynistic inference of the Koran is that women are there to bring pleasure to the lives of men (man’s helper).
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Pleasure unlike joy being a sin. No need now to cancel my cocktail party schedule..Mr Happy is illustriously unavailable for sinful temptations until further notice all correspondence shall be forthwith directed to Mr’s Greedy, Cranky, Tickle and Snow.
From Muslim Votes Matter website:
“The Muslim community is the largest, and among the fastest growing, minority groups in Australia. Our collective voting bloc is the most valuable, yet underutilised, asset we have.
Muslim Votes Matter unlocks this highly influential tool which requires significant organisation, forward planning, and community mobilisation.
There are over 20 seats where the Muslim community collectively has the potential deciding vote.
Doesn’t sound like much? Well, it is… in the last 25 years no federal government has been elected by a margin of more than 15 seats.
This means:
1. We are in a strategically powerful position to elevate those who bring our issues to the forefront.
2. We are in an equally powerful position to oppose those who take us for granted and ignore us.”
Australians have been warned. Do any care?
Re Muslim Votes Matter – what exactly are the ‘issues ‘ which Muslims want to push in Australia? Do they spell them out, or is it a question of -‘Well, you know what we are talking about, but let’s not be open about them in public yet, until we have the people we want in power, then it will be easier for us to use the clout we have gained to intimidate the infidels.’ Exactly what’s happening in Britain now.
Maybe it’s time they were given a constitutionally-enshrined voice to parliament? Where’s Albo when he’s needed?
They already have. Muslim elected members of parliament are swearing their ‘oath of allgience ‘ on the Qur’an. Ah, ain’t that nice. And these Australian politicians are swearing on a book that from chapter 1 says Jews and Christians are inferior and, elsewhere in their book, that at the end, those who have not converted to Islam will be destroyed.
The Left loves Islam because…the issue is never the issue, the issue is always (the revolution) power. So Islamism will help the left unseat the current power elite and displace it with the Green-Left crowd, until that reaches a critical size, then Islam will be dropped (or drop the Green Left, whom Islam would probably despise) as the Green-Left will be able to impoverish and enslave us by themselves.
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This all started with that genius Fraser letting in refugees from a war he didn’t understand, of a religion he didn’t understand, thinking, I guess, that Islam at its core is like the CofE but in Arabic. Not so, of course; it is a totalising political-military supremacist death cult.
On the question of wives obeying husbands:
“Love, cherish and obey” was the wedding vow of women in the Anglican church when my parents married.”Love and cherish” for men. There’s a reason for this arrangement and it is healthy in a marriage for the man to be in in charge. If the marriage has been well considered he should be worthy to instruct his wife and to set policy for the family with her input. If she does not think she can honour a promise to obey him then she has picked the wrong bloke. I don’t think anyone expects a wife to be always obedient but obedience ought to be the default setting or he will become a doormat and she will quickly lose respect for and interest in him.
If women are loved and cherished ,which I think is all they really want is to be appreciated-vulnerable; in general they’ll happily let men take the lead- as long as they feel secure. Any guy worth his salt wouldn’t want to subjugate someone he truly loves. The wife empowers the husband and the husband in turn recognises the forgiving nature in a good Christian wife – one/ won – obedience to / in Christ- thy kingdom come-the obedience is shared – given.
God I’m fed up with discussions about Islam that are nothing else but a walk around the bottom of the garden. Face the facts. Islam is an ignorant religion, taught by ignorant people for ignorant people. Don’t talk about Islam in you haven’t read the Qur’an. Don’t talk about Muslims if you don’t understand their mentality. Where to begin? Read the first chapter of the Qur’an. It’s a prayer to Allah. It says Allah is tops and Muslims are tops and Jews and Christians are beyond the pale. And if a Muslim observes the 5 prayer sessions a day, he/she will recite this 17 times a day.. Result? A sense of superiority and intolerance. And based on what? A completely man made book from beginning to end claiming divine origin. And angry adherents of this nonsense are now, having infiltrated the West, and are doing so in Australia, are flexing their muscles, working the politically correct system, and aiming for, and achieving, dominance. And I tell you, they are going to succeed. Why? Because we’ve lost confidence in our identity and western civilisation. Cultural Marxism and Islam are walking hand in hand.
I wish Penny Wong and her wife would walk through the main drag of Lakemba holding hands and see how far they got without being abused. Or fellow travellers from the Labor left or Greens.
The left-wing radicals must suffer terrible whiplash from the number of times they flip their ideology.
You are dead right Mr Shannon, not long ago my high school teaching (2004) was the mantra ‘don’t judge a persons skin colour or race – we are all equal’. Now they have changed to ‘ judge me by my skin colour, I am a victim – we are all different’. They are never short of hypocrisy.
It is frightening to hear of these young fanatics being touted as Australia’s future ‘leaders and influencers’.
I must run the gauntlet of several barber shops and kebab cafes before I can get into my local IGA. Our dear cocooned university and government ladies, would you like to be leered at by these non-working men? They won’t step aside for you! It’s no wonder middle and upper-class women are increasingly shopping online, too scared to be out in Australia’s’ so-called ‘wonderfully vibrant’ diverse community I wonder hmmm?
Common-sense Australians, please do not vote for radical Muslim women (or any radical Labor, Green or Teal) at the voting booth.
Ten years ago I met a woman who had moved interstate from Lakemba, NSW. “I got tired of being spat on in the street when I went shopping. ”
I lived for nearly 4 years in ‘tolerant’ Islam majority Indonesia. Come Christmas and Easter Christian churches had to be checked for bombs. But mosques on their festivals? Never. A young fellow wrote on Facebook that he did not believe in God. Three years in prison. A woman went to the mosque near her house and asked them to turn down the volume of the microphone. Three years in prison. There were times when I thought to myself, ‘ This is something like it must have been to live in Nazi Germany. ‘
No doubt about it, IMHO: Islam today is entry-level fascism. Islamic education does not follow the Greek model by encouraging independence of thought and critical thinking: skills; BTW absolutely necessary in the education of scientists, engineers and technicians of all kinds. In the interests of its Islam’s clerical caste, education is mainly koranic. Consequently, what Muslims offer far sale in the markets of the world are mainly resources (eg petroleum) and traditional craft items (eg Persian carpets.)
There is that famous statement by some modern Arab: “My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a plane. His son will ride a camel.”
It was not always thus. We in the West owe thanks to the Muslim world for preserving the classics, particularly of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, through what modernity refers to as ‘The Dark Ages’ following the fall of the Roman Empire.
It is interesting to raise the matter of Petroleum found around the Persian Gulf, or the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago for that matter. Although Petroleum from natural seeps has been used by humans from pre-historic times, and widely used in ancient Mesopotamia for brick making and boat building (think of the Tower of Babel and Noah’s Ark), it was not till the 19th century that Europeans came to the Middle East with their knowledge of geology that Petroleum was drilled for and commercially exploited. It was the First World War that brought about the strategic importance of Petroleum, with the advent of tractors, trucks and armoured fighting vehicles on land, aeroplanes in the sky and the superior performance of oil-burning warships at sea. For the British, then, it became imperative to secure this now vital resource. The Ottoman Turks being vanquished, Mesopotamia and the Gulf now became under the control of the British, who drew up borders and installed puppet rulers willi-nilly in order to facilitate the exploitation of those subterranean Petroleum resources. With the advent of de-colonisation post-WW2, the Sheiks and Sultans of Arabia took control of the resource and finally the Shaw of Iran was toppled by anti-Western revolutionary Islam. Now we are actually empowering the rise of Islam, globally, with every purchase of THEIR oil! Another blunder from the West was the American project to liberate the people of Afghanistan by overthrowing the secular/socialist Soviet-backed government via the military support of Islamic proxy militias, among which was the young Osama bin Ladin!
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The point of this comment being that it was the now diminished Western powers that created this present situation of rising Islamic influence. Perhaps this is evidence of Allah working in mysterious ways?
The Muslim world preserved the classics? I think you’ll find the Byzantines led the way in that endeavour.
See https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CKHG-G5-U4-preserving-classical-civilization.pdf
It is safe to say that, in general, Westerners are more ignorant of Islam than they are of Christian Bible. For those who do want to understand Islamic doctrine by reading the Quran they find it a frustrating experience and usually give up and go further down the path of ignorance of Islam. That’s probably because the standard Koran is arranged by length of the chapter, not chronologically. The longest chapter is at the beginning and the shortest chapters are at the end. This makes it confusing and difficult to understand.
According to the Center for the Study of Political Islam International “51% of Islamic doctrinal texts is about politics. The goal of these politics is the submission of all people to Mohammed and Allah”.
In order to come to grips with the Quran to facilitate your educational experience I recommend reading Bill Warner’s A Simple Koran: Readable and Understandable (The Islamic Trilogy Series, Vol. 3). As an aid to gaining a further and necessary education. I also recommend Bill Warner’s website: Center for the Study of Political Islam International. Under ‘Maps’ it shows an intersting and allarming fact about the growth of Islam in Australia. According to the map, Islamic organisations have grown from one in 1954 to over 300 by 2020.
Here is the link to the Center for the Study of Political Islam International:
https://www.cspii.org/
I am reading The Critcal Qur’an: explained from key Islamic commentaries and contemporary historical research by Robert Spencer. Bombardier Books. It is a readable translation of the Qur’an with explanatory detailed footnotes. I recommend it. It is not polemical, sneering, dismissive or disrespectful. I’m half way through chapter 3 and already certain things are apparent because they are repeated over and over. One – the defensive stance of the Qur’an and two, the threats.
Gee, Phil, don’t you like all the Middle Eastern food that we’ve been blessed with, thanks to all our Muslim immigrants? But seriously, Islam, as practised in many parts of the world, remains mediaeval, as was Christianity for much of its history. Its apologists plead for more time, seeing it’s had 700 years less than Christianity to modernise, although that’s misleading. Christianity evolved not from the simple passage of time, but through immersion in the upheavals of the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and modern science. Islamic societies could freely observe these developments, but chose to resist them – with the exception of exploiting modern (“Western”) technology. Otherwise, fundamental Islam remains hardly changed, and shows no signs of changing — indeed, seems to be regressing.
The main reason for Islam’s irrational appeal to leftists now is that it attacks Western Civilisation, especially in what is seen as its pinnacles, the USA and Europe. September 11th was a peak of its anti-Western achievement, but while Israel exists, Islamism will remain a leftist love-child. This, of course, arises from a pervasive, ingrained anti-Semitism, now bubbling to the surface and over throughout the West. The chameleonic Greens have been awakened, revealing their true colours.
The word “Islamophobia” is seriously misleading, if not ambiguous. The affix “phobia” refers to a pathological fear, not a hatred, of something. Perhaps this does reflect the truth: while its current use implies hatred of Islam, many in our community actually fear it, or at least its devout, aggressive exponents. However, this fear is not pathological, but based on solid grounds. What other explanation could there be for the craven behaviour of our university chiefs? I’d guess our Labor politicians, and PM, could be excused on the basis of electoral necessity, which is simply pathetic – placing their own electoral survival ahead of national integrity and security. Interesting times — or simply dangerous?
“This, of course, arises from a pervasive, ingrained anti-Semitism, now bubbling to the surface and over throughout the West.” … So why is the USA and other Western countries, including Australia, sending unending amounts of weapons to the Judaic State, a State that claims sovereignty over all the land from land on the East Bank of the Jordan River to the Sea in the West! Why do American presidents pray at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount? anti-Semitism?
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It is true that people in the West are growing tired of Israel, and are starting to realise that the creation, recognition and support of the Zionist/Judaic State may have been a naive and misguided endeavour. To garner support, the anti-Semitic victim rhetoric is being cranked-up; “Kristallnacht”, the “Holocaust”, “October 7”, and all Goyim are now expected to bow their heads in respectful sorrow! The fact is most people don’t care, and don’t want to be made to care!
Christianity was mediaeval for nigh on a thousand years depending on how one delineates the period. There were highs and lows of prosperity and gradual improvements in art and magnificent architecture but Christianity held Europe together politically and allowed the reconquest of Iberia and the comversion and pacification of the Northmen.
Of course I meant “conversion” although Scandinavia has sadly undergone something of a “comversion” in recent decades.
I noticed this yesterday from American Thinker The Fall of the Universities Began in Vietnam May 16, 2024
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/the_fall_of_the_universities_began_in_vietnam.html
This sort of highlights my thesis that the Leap to the Left we experience globally started in the universities in the 1970s when the Marxist Leninists, Trots, Maoists, etc who were leading the anti-government anti Vietnam war movement from the university lawns … graduated, left the universities, and BECAME the government – the politicians, the bureaucrats, the academics, the lawyers, the teachers, the journalists …
My thesis continues with the observation that, following that precedent, the current round of anti-Semitic students will soon graduate and leave the universities and become the NEXT Government – the politicians, the bureaucrats, the academics, the lawyers, the teachers, the journalists …
The future does not look bright for Australia.
There may be a complexity though if it is in fact the Chinese who are funding the Anti-Semitic movement in the universities. In that case, the NEXT Government could well be Chinese puppets, rather than Islamic puppets?
see … “CCP Funds Anti-Israel Protests” … Wentworth Report yesterday.
https://wentworthreport.com/2024/05/17/ccp-funds-anti-israel-protests-in-u-s/
At the time of the Iraq War (2003-2011) many people on the Left came out reflexively against the Americans, having opposed in a rather massive way the American assault on pot-WW2 revolutionary Vietnam. But whereas in Vietnam the US was fighting to prevent democracy (later acknowledged as such by Robert S. McNamara, US Secretary of Defense at that time) in Iraq the US was fighting one of the worst tyrants in all human history, Saddam Hussein. So street demonstrations in the West against the American ‘shock and awe’ campaign in Iraq rapidly fizzled out. (For the record, having opposed the Vietnam War, I publicly supported the American campaign in Iraq.)
This brought the late and great Christopher Hitchens (with whom I never found myself in disagreement, over anything) to discriminate between the ‘pro-totalitarian Left’ and the ‘anti-totalitarian Left.’ I found that to be a most useful distinction. Needless to add, Hitchens was on the anti-totalitarian side.
Aren’t you omitting the uncomfortable fact that the USA was a great supporter of Saddam Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq War, and you can find a lovely photograph on the internet showing Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, warmly shaking hands!
No politician is blunder-proof.
Ian, I agree with you re. Vietnam, where it was fighting a true war of independence, in which the USA had been given an early opportunity to assist by Ho Chi Minh, but chose not to (for reasons I still fail to grasp). This impression is confirmed by the fact that Vietnam today remains fiercely independent, refusing to fall into the camp of China, its long-term, traditional enemy.
Iraq is something else. Sitting in a historical battleground of tribal warlords (one of whom started a new religion almost 1400 years ago), to survive in political leadership, you had no choice but to be a total arsehole, which Saddam Hussein certainly was. A less brutal leader wouldn’t have lasted in power there a week — and anyone taking his place would survive only by exerting the necessary brutality. Dreams of democracy in such a place were seriously misguided, founded on extreme naivete and ignorance of its history and sociology, and certainly not manifested by the people who actually lived there. If I recall correctly, the dominant excuse was “weapons of mass destruction”, which so many of us knew even before the invasion to be completely fictitious. I still can’t help thinking the ulterior motives rested with Cheney and Rumsfeld, with their ties to Halliburton and other military contractors. Tragic, given the predictable outcomes, and unforgivable. Iraq remains a basketcase with no clear future, while Vietnam is a thriving economy, despite the ideology of its leaders.
pmprociv: Going back to WW2, FDR was very much opposed to the concept of European colonial control of foreign lands and people, whereby the European powers had derived their wealth. Little help, if any was forthcoming from the US when the post-WW2 uprisings and revolutions started in India, Africa and Indonesia. French Indochina was an exception to that, and that was probably because the Communists had driven out the pro-western KMT in China, and the Soviet Union was busy installing Communism in the many countries it had “liberated”, as far west as the Elbe river in Central Europe. This was the start of the Cold War, and the “domino effect” of nation after nation in South-East Asia falling to Chinese backed Communism looked a certainty. That was most likely why the US gave military support to the French in Vietnam. After Dien Bien Phu, France threw in the towel and Vietnam was divided into a Communist North and a “Free”, “Democratic” and US-backed nation of South Vietnam, but soon became Cold-War Hotspot.
I think Saddam Hussein would rank in the top five of the most hated upon (by the ever-so-truthful Western media) dictators of the twentieth century. You tend to get that when the American deep state has decided to invade. His country has only ever been ruled effectively by strong men. He was a strong man and his rule was effective. It took two wars, both with highly dubious pretexts, to bring him low. it’s pretty clear that Iraq is not better off for his demise.
Saddam kept the lid on the Sunni-Shia brawl that has been going on among the faithful since the day after the death of The Prophet. (PBUH.) And according to Nigel Cawthorne, he ranked with the likes of Hitler and Stalin as one of the 100 worst tyrants in all of history: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1032574.Tyrants_History_s_100_Most_Evil_Despots_Dictators