The Magic of Free Trade

Mutual Understanding Not Enough

What causes wars?  An almost universal consensus (in the West) is that wars are the result of misunderstandings.  When wars break out it is widely believed that they could have been avoided if only the protagonists had a better understanding of each other.  Why do Muslim imams and religious leaders label the West with the sobriquet Great Satan?  It's because they do not understand us.  If they did, they would like us better and would not say such things.  A suppressed snide corollary usually goes with this cliche: Islamic misunderstanding is due to ignorance.  If they knew more, if they were better educated, they would like us Westerners better. 

As Jonah Goldberg put it

Letter From Australia (About the Religion of Peace)

Koran Justifies Murder

May 27, 2013
Paul Sheehan
Sydney Morning Herald columnist

The murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by a pair of psychopaths invoking the name of Islam has galvanised Britain and gained global media attention, but what about the other 176 or so people who were murdered by Muslim psychopaths last week?

Drummer Rigby was white, English and a soldier, so the gory, bizarre and provocative manner of his death garnered headlines around the world, but hundreds of families, mostly Muslim, are also in mourning because of the actions of psychopaths using Islam to justify their bloodlust. 

One of the men charged with the murder of Rigby, Michael Adebolajo, 28, was a thug long before he gravitated to Muslim fundamentalism. At high school he cultivated a gangsta persona, got into drugs, then armed robbery, and became known for putting a knife to people's throats and stealing their phones and money. . . .

It is instructive to consider the reaction to the murder from one of the clerics that Adebolajo followed, Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Peace in Our Time?

Not Likely, It Would Appear

The drive for peace at all costs can prove to be a dangerous illusion. British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis is a case in point. Before people start glibly talking about peace or longing for its transpiration, it behoves everyone to have a realistic view of what those involved in conflict (or the threat thereof) really think.

Above all else we must reject as hopelessly naive, idealistic, and arrogant the idea that "other people think as we do". The assumptions that people actually want peace and that given a chance they would support cessation of conflict can be utterly wrong and very dangerous.

In the seemingly perpetual conflict between Israel and Palestine the question of whether both protagonists desire peace and a peaceful outcome is moot. Recently some research was undertaken by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies ("FDD") on social media content in Palestine, according to a news report.

"FDD undertook this project with the assumption that online social networks provide important political insights–particularly in the Palestinian online environment–because they grant their users anonymity and freedom of expression,” the authors write.

One finding of the review of expressions of anonymous opinions found on social media sites was the continuing divide between Fatah and Hamas.

Once that was done, Schanzer said, it was time to find the trends. One of the first such trends they noticed, he said, was that “the Palestinian position on violence has absolutely not changed,” especially with regard to Hamas-affiliated authors or discussions taking place on Hamas Web sites, which still encourage violence against Israel.

The representations of Fatah, on the other hand, would not surprise many. “This is a faction that is in utter disarray,” Schanzer said. Additionally, Hamas and Fatah loyalists “sniped at each other incessantly.” There was not much support for rapprochement between the two parties, though Hamas members found a lot of common ground with the more radical Salafist Palestinians. The Salafist Palestinians are relatively low in number but maintain a “persistent, tenacious presence online.”

Secondly, there was a passive acceptance of Iran's influence in Palestinian territories; it was not regarded as nefarious.

On Iran, the trends were just as troubling. There was a noticeable absence of criticism of Iran, which Schanzer said is dangerous because it means Iran is finding at least passive acceptance and generating minimal anger for its meddling among the Palestinian factions. (Or at least not enough anger for Palestinians to “bite the hand that feeds.”)

Thirdly, the social website chatter showed next to no support for genuine political reform. There appears to be little interest in peace.

Discouraging signs could be found in talk of the political reformers as well. “The reform factions are simply not popular,” Schanzer said. He added that there is “not a lot of interest, not a lot of excitement” about peace, but “a lot of suspicion” toward working with the U.S. and Israel.

Insofar as these views are in any way representative--and the research is not yet deep and wide enough to be confident--they do not bode well for any peace process. It behoves the protagonists of that process (US, Europe) to be very clear and realistic about the beliefs, agendas, and aspirations of the parties--and not be guilty of gratuitous assumptions to the effect that "these folk" would think just like us, if they were given half a chance. We fear that this may well be the case.

Maori Language Week

The Harmony of the Universal and the Particular

T. S. Eliot in Christianity and Culture writes on how a nation, as part of a cluster of nations, can achieve real and lasting peaceful unity. Many who write upon such themes veer toward one of two extremes: either peace will be achieved by the suppression of differences (which are seen as the root cause of quarrels), or it will come through universal isolation and fracturing (where everyone is concerned exclusively with their own business). Eliot, however, argues that true lasting unity and peace can only be achieved if people are loyal both to general corporate values, while at the same time being loyal to the local and particular.

He writes:

The unity with which I am concerned must be largely unconscious, and therefore can perhaps be best approached through a consideration of the useful diversities. Here I have to do with diversity of region. It is important that a man should feel himself to be, not merely a citizen of a particular nation, but a citizen of a particular part of his country, with local loyalties. These, like loyalty to class, arise out of loyalty to the family. (T. S. Eliot, Culture, p.125)

This view captures an essential, Christian construct: the equal importance of the universal and the particular. This distinctly Christian doctrine is derived from the being and nature of God Himself. Our God is triune: within the Godhead, the particulars--namely the three Persons of the Godhead--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--are equally ultimate with the oneness of God. Thus, in the Being of God Himself, the one and the many are equally ultimate.

Unbelieving thought, captured by the machinations of a finite creature, will always drive toward either making the "many" absolute, or the "one". We see this tension everywhere in our modern Unbelieving culture. The libertarian or the anarchist absolutises the individual, seeing the collective as intrinsically dehumanising and destructive. The statist absolutises the one state. All diversity, when presented, exists only at the good pleasure of the social collective--provided it is within the bounds of the tolerable. So, the oneness of the collective squashes all diversity under the blanket of what is deemed politically correct.

The Christian position stands in sharp contrast to all Unbelieving ideologies and thought. "Oneness" and the "manyness" mutually co-inhere throughout the creation. Eliot illustrates this Christian distinctive by pointing to the essential power of local, regional languages to enrich a wider universally used language.

The question we may ask about such a language as Welsh, is whether it is of any value to the world at large, that it should be used in Wales. But this is really as much as to ask whether the Welsh, qua Welsh, are of any use? not, of course, as human beings, but as the preservers and continuers of a culture which is not English. The direct contribution to poetry by Welshmen and men of Welsh extraction, writing in English, is very considerable; and considerable also is the influence of their poetry upon poets of different racial origins. . . . But it must be remembered, that for the transmission of a culture--a particular way of thinking, feeling and behaving--that for its maintenance, there is no safeguard more reliable than a language. And to survive for this purpose it must continue to be a literary language--not necessarily a scientific language but certainly a poetic one: otherwise the spread of education will extinguish it.

The literature written in that language will not, of course, make any direct impact upon the world at large; but if it is no longer cultivated, the poeple to whom it belongs (we are considering particularly the Welsh) will tend to lose their racial character. The Welsh will be less Welsh; and their poets will cease to have any contribution to make to English literature, beyond their individual genius. And I am of the opinion, that the benefits which Scottish, Welsh and Irish writers have conferred upon English literature are far in excess of what the contribution of all these individual men of genius would have been had they, let us say, all been adopted in early infancy by English foster-parents." (Eliot, Culture, pp. 129--131)

In the light of this, let us make a few comments upon Maori Language Week. The preservation of the Maori language (and, therefore, culture) is commendable--as is the languages of all cultural groups in New Zealand (Polynesian, Asian, Middle-Eastern and so on). But this is something which must come from within Maoridom itself. We believe that Maori has probably made a classic blunder in attempting to make the language an official language, as if bilingualism would somehow contribute to the oneness and unity of our society.

Hanging the language upon the hook of co-governance, which in turn is based upon a spurious notion of Treaty "partnership" will fail to achieve the aims. In the long run it will bastardize the language--as is happening now. Maori is so full of neologisms that it is becoming increasingly swamped by a phonetic tsunami of English transliterations or clumsy verbal manufactures for English equivalents. Consequently its ability to preserve and transmit Maori culture is being lost.

If Maori language is worth preserving at all--and it is--it would be to preserve and keep alive Maori culture, history, and tradition (shorn of the evil of course--which is true of every language reflecting pagan roots and beliefs). But, that requires that the Maori language be intensely Maori! not a bastardized polygot of verbal confusion in a foolish attempt to modernise the language and make it quasi-universal. Above all we need Maori poets and writers steeped in the beauties of their own language who can also write powerfully and fluently in Maori, and who can teach Maori literature and arts to Maori. 

We also need these cultural icons to write in English so that we can all be enriched by Maori culture and made the better for it.

Letter from America

Obama's Ignoble Prize

Wesley Pruden

Pity Barack Obama. The last thing he needs is another comparison to Jimmy Carter. He could survive the endorsements of his Nobel Prize by Fidel Castro ("a positive measure"), from Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russia ("evidence of a realistic vision"), or even from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, aspiring Jew-killer and president of Iran ("bringing justice to the world order").

He's got enough with Jimmy Carter already. Mr. Jimmy called the president's prize "a positive development." But celebrating weakness in the face of a challenge and bowing to bullies in an abject hope that the bully will go easy will always turn a real man's stomach. It's the celebration of weakness that's so infuriating. The anger is not about Mr. Obama. Not yet. He hasn't done anything.

The Nobel panelists make it abundantly clear they expect value for money. The prize is worth $1.4 million this year, and it's scary that the president thinks he has to give the money to charity. We can hope that he doesn't tithe the prize to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., or share it with William Ayers. So far there's no word from the White House about who gets the loot, but Mr. Obama channeled money to Mr. Ayers in the past, and it has been a while since he has seen the Wright collection plate.

There's no uncertainty in Oslo about what's expected next. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as [Mr.] Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Nobel jury said. When incredulity dissolved in anger bordering on outrage, the chairman of the Nobel committee felt obliged to explain that the award was not only for great deeds the president hadn't done, but for great deeds that might one day come.

The Nobel panel's great expectations are not unrealistic, and the panelists, who made their selection shortly after Mr. Obama was inaugurated president of the United States (not president of the world, as the Europeans suppose), have no reason to be disappointed. His apology tour to the Middle East, his bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, his dithering with Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his blowing off Poland and the Czech Republic over missile bases to appease the Russians have already redeemed the bet the Norwegians put down on the American president.

The Alfred E. Neuman ("What? Me Worry?") strategy for dealing with despots, which is always the default strategy of the Europeans, inevitably leads to rape, regrets and ruin. The Nobel jury wouldn't have to look far for a caution. Norway tried to appease the Nazis, twice declaring itself neutral shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The Nazis invaded anyway, sending the royal family fleeing to London. Many Norwegians fought bravely in the resistance, but the most memorable Norwegian figure of the war was the infamous Vidkun Quisling, the head of a puppet government whose name became a synonym for traitor.

Nevertheless, appeasement is admired by the Nobel juries. FDR never got a Nobel Peace Prize. Neither did Harry Truman or Winston Churchill. Ditto Ronald Reagan. But Yasser Arafat won in 1994. And of course Mr. Jimmy in 2002. Few Americans, beyond those hopelessly in thrall of the politically correct, are any longer surprised by the silliness of the Nobel Peace Prize juries.

The Nobel Peace Prize was once thought to be the ultimate reward for selfless idealism, and if you're still in high school, maybe it is today. A decade ago four high-school girls in Kansas heard the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish babies from the Nazis. They wrote a play about her and sent letters to world figures, and this led to her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Miss Sendler, who died last year at age 98, smuggled the babies out of the Warsaw Ghetto in an ambulance over several months early in the war, hiding them in crates, burlap sacks and several times in coffins. She kept a barking dog to drown the cries of the frightened babies. The Nazis arrested her and tortured her severely, breaking her legs in a vise. She bribed a guard to escape a firing squad, and after the war retrieved the names of the babies from jars she buried in her garden, and reunited hundreds of them with relatives.

The Nobel jury was not impressed. They gave the prize that year to Al Gore for his slide show about global warming.

Islam III

Religion of Peace?

We turn now to a consideration of Islam as a religion of peace. This face of Islam has been eagerly seized upon in the West and readily believed because the West wants to see in Islam a kindred spirit. It wants to find in Islam the same values which are important to the West. The West is driven to find “peace in our time” because it believes in the fundamental goodness of man. Thus, war and enmity are always seen as a profound aberration in the secular humanist West, whereas in Islam they are seen as a fundamental necessity.

The “peace” of Islam is has a very different meaning to what the West means when it calls for "peace in our time." The peace of Islam is the state that results when all is submitted to Islam. Imagine an unruly household. The Western version of peace is to persuade all the household members to put aside anger and live in willing co-operative harmony with everyone else in the house. The Islamic version of peace is to impose force, or the threat of force, so that everyone in the household does what they are told.

It is the peace that comes from control and suppressing dissent, whereas in the West “peace” means tolerating and accepting everyone as far as humanly possible. Thus, the West has willed itself to believe that Islam is fundamentally like itself. It has resulted in one of the most amazing recrudescences of Chamberlain-esque “peace in our time” imaginable. Virtually all Western political leaders have bought into the fallacy of equivocation over peace. Like Chamberlain before Hitler who preferred not to see what the Nazi's were all about, the West before Islam is denying what is obvious in the desperate hope that it might not be true.

As Ayatollah Khomeini put it so acerbically, “Islam is politics or it is nothing”. Islam is all about gaining political control. When Islam gains political power, it always suppresses opposition. This is the peace of Islam. Muhammad created a political entity: he took political control firstly of Medina, then of Mecca: politics and political control was always inseparable from religious belief. Islam exists and extends by force. It always has. This was Muhammad's teaching and example.

Many scholars have pointed out the differences of Muhammad's teaching and practice when he was “one among many” in Mecca initially (?570—622), and when he gained political control in Medina (622—632). While in the first phase, Muhammad was more of a quietist, teaching toleration, acceptance, and respect of others and their religions. But once he gained political power—and it was political power he sought—the powers of the state were used to force Islamic beliefs and laws and practices upon others: those who resisted were terminated.

The goal of Islamic communities is to walk in the footsteps of the prophet. The founder of their religion took control of Medina and bequeathed to his followers a (city) state. The extension of Islam is to be effected by gaining and extending political control. As Lewis puts it:

In the universal Islamic polity as conceived by Muslims, there is no Caesar but only god, who is the sole sovereign and the sole source of law. Muhammad was his prophet, who during his lifetime both taught and ruled on god's behalf. When Muhammad died in 632 C.E., his spiritual and prophetic mission, to bring god's book to mankind, was completed. What remained was the religious task of spreading god's revelation until finally all the world accepted it. This was to be achieved by extending the authority and thus also the membership of the community which embraced the truth faith and upheld god's law. . . .

From the days of the Prophet, the Islamic society had a dual character. On the one hand it was a polity—a chieftaincy that successively became a state and an empire. At the same time, on the other hand, it was a religious community founded by a prophet and ruled by his deputies, who were also his successors.
Lewis, op cit., p.6 &9. [We have deliberately removed the upper case letter “G” from the word God, although Lewis does not.]

Thus in Islam there is no separation of church and state. There is no church. There are no (or few) checks and balances. There are simply the power structures of Islam which exert control ultimately through the Islamic State whose rulers are bound to follow Muhammad's example—which is to say, by force and by the sword--to extend the community of Islam. This is the “peace” of Islam.

In this regard, we need to be clear about the task and duties of jihad. The “struggle” of jihad can be a moral striving and struggle, or it can be an armed offensive. The word is used in both senses in Islam. Which is true? The West wants to believe that jihad as moral struggle represents civilised and educated and modern Islam. It sees the armed warfare version of jihad as belonging to more primitive times. Thus, the West views Islam thorugh the prism of its own history. The armed struggle of armed struggle is compared to the sub-Christian Crusades; the jihad of moral, rational, and intellectual striving is seen as equivalent to the Western Enlightenment.

This interpretation is aided and abeted by the self-portrayal of Islamic groups in the West. The face of modern Islam portrayed to the world is jihad as moral striving, not jihad as armed conflict. There is a reason for this: Islam is not yet strong enough to take up arms against the West. Lewis again:

In the Qur'an the word (jihad) occurs many times in these two distinct but connected senses. In the earlier chapters, dating from the Meccan period, when the Prophet was still the leader of a minority group struggling against the dominant pagan oligarchy, the word often has the meaning, favoured by modernist exegetists (sic), of moral striving. In the later chapters, promulgated in Medina where the Prophet headed the state and commanded its army, it usually has a more explicitly practical connotation. In many, the military meaning is unequivocal. . . .

Some modern Muslims, particularly when addressing the outside world, explain the duty of jihad in a spiritual and moral sense. The overwhelming majority of early authorities, citing the relevant passages in the Qur'an, the commentaries, and the traditions of the Prophet, discuss jihad in military terms. According to Islamic law, it is lawful to wage war against four types of enemies: infidels, apostates, rebels, and bandits. Although all four types of wars are legitimate, only the first two count as jihad. Jihad is thus a religious obligation. . . .

For most of the fourteen centuries of recorded Muslim history, jihad was most commonly interpreted to mean armed struggle for the defense or advancement of Muslim power. . . . The presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule.
Lewis, ibid., pp. 26—27

In other words, Islamic history is the exact reverse of the propaganda. The earlier more primitive form of Islamic jihad was the moderate, moral striving perspective. The later, more advanced expression was extension by the sword. Using force to extend Islam is the more advanced and superior state. Thus, one of the great provocations to frustration and anger amongst Islamic nations, and one of the great recruiting tools employed by Islamic fundamentalists, is the military weakness of Islam throughout the world. The only reason this is such an irritant and a shame amongst Islamic people is that they believe Islam is the rightful holder of political and military power in the world.

Islam's modus operandi is to organise to establish Islamic law within its own communities as long as Islam remains in a minority. It progressively insists upon its rights to Islamic law, traditions, marriage, and family life. As it takes over an area, a borough, a city block it then forces compliance of all within the locality it controls (for example, requiring that women, even those visiting, wear the burka). This is all part of jihad; it is the duty of every Muslim to engage in it. Once political control is seized, the sanction of the sword is added to the Islamic regime. Convert, comply, or death are then the only options to all citizens.

These things are not perversions of Islam. They are at the heart of all that Islam represents and teaches. It is what it means to follow the teaching of Muhammad. This is what Muhammad did, after all. The Islamic terrorists are thus much closer to the essence and heart of Islamic teaching than those Islamic rulers who are seeking to “westernise”, introduce democratic reforms, and so forth. Such regimes are seen as apostate—and worthy only of destruction. Their rulers must be killed. The “innovations” of terrorism (suicide bombings, killing women and children, declaring Islamic “collateral damage” to be involuntary martyrs, and so forth) are thus not fundamentally contradictory to the essence of Islam.

The West desperately hopes that Islam will “grow up”. It hopes that it will give up what it sees as primitive superstitions and behaviours. It hopes that it will morph into something less authoritarian, more accommodating of differences and diversity. This is a naïve and forlorn hope. It is not likely that this will ever happen. Or if it does, Islam will no longer be Islam as we have known it for fifteen hundred years.

Chamberlain's desperate and pathetic cry, "Peace in our time!" is increasingly becoming in the West a new chant: "Allah is great!" The peace of Islam is like the peace of National Socialism: it is the peace of the boot and the heel.