"Hello from Fjordman. I will run a multipart essay over the coming few weeks where I will explore whether Islam is compatible with democracy. This is published in cooperation with the Gates of Vienna blog. The various parts will be published at Jihad Watch first, and then the full essay will be republished at the Gates of Vienna, similar to the Eurabia Code. Here comes part 1:"
Occasionally I get annoyed over the fact that I am compelled to spend significant amounts of my time refuting Islam, an ideology that is flawed to the core and should be totally irrelevant in the 21st century. But then I try to see it from a positive angle: The good part about our confrontation with Islam is that it forces us to deal with flaws in our own civilization. It has already exposed a massive failure in our education system and our media, both filled with anti-Western sentiments and ideological nonsense. These legacies from the Western Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s have left us unable to recognize the Islamic threat for what it is. Thus, when we are confronted now with the question of whether or not Islam is compatible with democracy, we also have to ask under what conditions a democratic system is able to function.What are the strengths and weaknesses of a democratic system? What is "freedom" and "liberty," and does universal suffrage automatically equal liberty? Democracy could briefly be defined as the ability of the people of a state or political entity to genuinely influence the policies of their government by non-violent means. However, this is abstract; we need a more detailed definition to pin down the reality. In the Athenian city-state of ancient Greece, voting rights included all citizens, perhaps one tenth of the population of the city. Plato's description of democracy in The Republic is close to anarchy. He rightly points out some inherent weaknesses in the democratic model; no doubt influenced by the fate of his teacher Socrates. Socrates made many enemies by criticizing those Athenians who, by means of cheap rhetoric, used democracy to gain power. His courage in speaking out led to his trial, in which his accusers claimed that he was corrupting the young. Found guilty, Socrates was sentenced to drinking poison. This experience led Plato to conclude that Athens' democracy was an unjust form of government.
Plato envisioned a just government as one which was ruled by educated philosophers or by a philosopher-king. In his famous "Myth of the Cave," people are chained in a cave with a fire behind them. When others pass in front of the fire, they can see shadows on the cave wall, and falsely believe that these shadows represent reality. According to Plato, the purpose of the ruler should be to enlighten the masses and show them the truth behind these shadowy images.In The Politics, Aristotle, too, was critical of the democratic system. He described the various models of ruling thus:
"Of forms of government in which one rules, we call that which regards the common interests, monarchy; that in which more than one, but not many, rule, aristocracy (and it is so called, either because the rulers are the best men, or because they have at heart the best interests of the state and of the citizens). But when the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called a polity. And there is a reason for this use of language.
Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions are as follows: of monarchy, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of polity, democracy. For tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the common good of all. Tyranny, as I was saying, is monarchy exercising the rule of a master over the political society; oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands; democracy, the opposite, when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers."
Although the potential for abuse of power and tyranny is indeed there in the democratic model, this potential exists in other forms of government, too. What Plato failed to see was that it could be possible to institute constraints on democracy that would limit some of its potential downsides, although not eliminate them completely. The American Founding Fathers, too, were skeptical of "democracy" in the meaning of unconstrained direct democracy, which they, like Plato, perceived could quickly disintegrate into mob rule. They outlined a constitutional Republic with indirect, representative democracy defined by a constitution. Citizens would be governed by the rule of law, thus protecting the minority from abuse and the potential tyranny of the majority. John Adams defined this as "a government of laws, and not of men."
The Constitution of the United States was inspired by the French Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu, famous for his theory of the separation of powers into branches: The executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, with checks and balances among them. The USA has strong separation of powers, whereas many European countries typically have parliamentary democracies with weaker separation, since the executive branch, the government, is dependent on the legislature. Democracy strengthened by such constraints and individual rights has worked reasonably well, but like all other human inventions it isn't perfect. The system still has its critics. In How the West Was Lost, author Alexander Boot outlines what he thinks ails the modern West. It is a provocative book. I disagree with some of his criticism of post-Enlightenment civilization in general, but Boot is articulate and original; some of his points about the nature of the modern state are worth contemplating.
For example, he says, "The word 'democracy' in both Greece and Rome had no one man one vote implications and Plato used it in the meaning of 'mob rule.' The American founding fathers never used it at all and neither did Lincoln. (…) a freely voting French citizen or British subject of today has every aspect of his life controlled, or at least monitored, by a central government in whose actions he has little say. He meekly hands over half his income knowing the only result of this transfer will be an increase in the state's power to extort even more. (...) He opens his paper to find yet again that the 'democratic' state has dealt him a blow, be that of destroying his children's education, raising his taxes, devastating the army that protects him, closing his local hospital or letting murderers go free. In short, if one defines liberty as a condition that best enables the individual to exercise his freedom of choice, then democracy of universal suffrage is remiss on that score."
Boot also warns against the increasing prevalence of Politically Correct censorship through hate speech laws: "Laws against racism are therefore not even meant to punish criminal acts. They are on the books to reassert the power of the state to control not just the citizens' actions but, more important, their thoughts and the words they use to get these across. (…) A state capable of prosecuting one person for his thoughts is equally capable of prosecuting thousands, and will predictably do so when it has consolidated its power enough to get away with any outrage. (…) It is relatively safe to predict that, over the next ten years, more and more people in Western Europe and North America will be sent to prison not for something they have done, but for something they have said."
Lee Harris, the author of The Suicide of Reason, wonders what were the necessary conditions for the growth of modern reason. This was the question taken up by Johann Herder:
"What kind of culture was necessary in order to produce a critical thinker like Immanuel Kant himself? When Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, methodically demolished all the traditional proofs for the existence of God, why wasn't he torn limb from limb in the streets of Königsburg by outraged believers?"
Cynics would argue that they simply didn't understand his eight hundred page thesis, which isn't exactly light reading, as those who have attempted to digest his writings can testify. Although Kant had the freedom to do this in 18th-century Europe, he would probably have been killed had he attempted the same thing in the Islamic world, which is one of the reasons why the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions took place in the West, and not under Islam.
So how do we treat freethinkers asking sensitive questions in the 21st century West? In my own country, the Ombud for Gender Equality recently became The Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombud. Its duties include combating "discriminatory speech" and negative statements about other cultures and religions. If accused of such discrimination, one has to mount proof of innocence. In effect, this institution is a secular or Multicultural Inquisition: the renunciation of truth in favor of an ideological lie. Galileo Galilei faced the same choice during the Inquisition four hundred years earlier. The Multicultural Inquisition may not threaten to kill you, but it does threaten to kill your career, and that goes a long way in achieving the same result, whether your crime is claiming that the earth moves around the sun or that not all cultures are equal.
Has liberty regressed during the past two hundred years? How was it possible that Immanuel Kant, who lived in a German state without liberal democracy, could criticize basic aspects of religion in the 18th century, while in the West of the 21st century there are social and legal consequences for criticizing other religions and cultures? It is a mistake to assume that liberty (in the meaning of freedom of speech and conscience) derives of necessity from a democracy of universal suffrage. Do we need a new Enlightenment to fill the vacuum formed by the fall of Political Correctness?
I have made a list of suggested conditions for a functioning democratic system:
* There must be a demos. That is, there must be a group of people with a shared pre-political loyalty. This common understanding would include mutual identification and trust between leaders who implement policies and the general public. There must be sanctions in place to allow the demos to hold accountable or remove incompetent or corrupt officials. The growth of supranational institutions has weakened the connections between the members of the elite and the nation states they are supposed to serve. The demos has been attenuated by both Multiculturalism and mass immigration.
* In the demos, there has to be true freedom of speech. There have to be genuine debates about crucial issues. For a combination of reasons, this process is now severely curtailed in many Western countries. Activists on the Left demand formal and informal censorship of sensitive issues. Meanwhile, the media isn't functioning as a counterweight to the political elites because it frequently is in lockstep with these elites.
* In the demos, there should be no significant Muslim presence. Islam is toxic to a democratic society for several reasons, which I will explore later. One is the possibility of physical attack against anybody who criticizes the Islamic agenda. The fear thus engendered destroys any possibility of a free, civil public discourse. Another is the resentment generated by Muslim demands for separate laws and "special treatment," demands which are driven by an inherent sense of entitlement. Finally, there is the harassment of non-Muslims, even those who do not criticize Islam. This aggressive behavior is always part and parcel of Jihad.
* The territorial entity where the demos lives must control its own borders. A nation that fails to discriminate between citizens and non-citizens, between members and non-members of the demos, will cease to function.
What is disturbing about this list is that in the West — particularly Western Europe — few of these conditions remain. We are no longer citizens; we are subjects, mere spectators to destinies others have chosen for us. We are citizens only if we have genuine influence over how our tax money is spent. We are subjects when we just pay taxes while others decide what to do with this money.
The control of borders and the sovereignty of nation states are linked to the list above. Democratic decisions are meaningless if they can be overruled by an external authority. This notion of sovereignty is being challenged all over the Western world both through the United Nations and through the ascendence of international law. Sovereignty is clearly not present in much of Europe, where seventy percent or more of all laws passed are federal EU laws. Democratically elected national parliaments have been reduced to insignificance. It is thus possible to argue that Western European countries are no longer distinct democracies, nor are they part of the "Free World" in any meaningful sense. Europeans thus have universal suffrage, but we don't have genuine democracy and we certainly don't have true liberty.
Why is the European Union not democratic? One element is its sheer size; another is the massive bureaucracy that has grown up around it. As F.A. Hayek writes in The Road to Serfdom:
"Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the decisions rest with an organisation far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend. Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learnt and practised in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is awareness of one's neighbour rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows. Where the scope of the political measures become so large that the necessary knowledge is almost exclusively possessed by the bureaucracy, the creative impulses of the private person must flag."
It can't all be about size, since the system has worked somewhat better in the United States. The most important reason for this democratic deficit in Europe is the lack of any formal constraints on the power of leading EU organs. In 2006, for the twelfth year in a row the European Court of Auditors, the EU's official financial watchdog, refused to approve the EU budget because it was so full of fraud and errors. Half the project budgets approved by the European Commission were inadequately monitored.
This story of fraudulence was largely ignored by Europe's media. The powerful European Commission is the EU's "government," and thus the government of nearly half a billion people from Hungary to Britain and from Finland to Spain, yet it can release accounts with massive flaws for over a decade straight. Such lack of oversight would have been unthinkable in the USA. The EU Commission gets away with it because it is largely unaccountable to anyone and was intentionally structured to operate this way in the first place. Just like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the EU Commission is not subject to any real checks and balances.
It is obviously easier to establish democracy in a small and transparent nation state than in a larger one. However, Sweden — the Western country where people pay the highest tax rates — is also arguably the most politically repressed nation and has the least real freedom of speech. Sweden's problem is not its geographical size, but the bloated state apparatus. Perhaps limitations on bureaucracy, government influence and intrusion are crucial for a functioning democracy, too. In a traditional pre-modern state, the ruler might not always have ruled with your consent, but he largely left you alone as long as you paid your taxes. Not so in our modern democratic nations. Our schools are increasingly filled with courses disparaging our own indigenous cultural heritage while they praise Islamic "tolerance." We are barred from bringing up our own children and instilling in them our values. Is this liberty?
Øystein Djupedal, Minister of Education and Research in Norway's Socialist Leftist Party, stated in public that: "I think that it's simply a mistaken view of child-rearing to believe that parents are the best to raise children. Children need a village, said Hillary Clinton. But we don't have that. The village of our time is the kindergarten." Following public reactions, he later retracted this statement. Critics would claim that the government treats the entire country as a kindergarten. The Ministry of Education and Research in Norway is responsible for nursery education, primary and lower secondary education, day-care facilities for school children, upper secondary education and institutions of higher education such as universities. In other words, one bureaucracy controls everything Norwegians learn from kindergarten through the doctoral level.
There is a crucial reason why the European Union isn't democratic: There is no European demos. Most people in Europe identify themselves as Italian, Spanish, Dutch or Polish. The notion of being a European is at best a very distant second. In contrast, United States citizens consider themselves Americans, although Multiculturalism encourages dual identities, in which individuals are African-American, Asian-American etc. This tribalization represents a critical long-term challenge to the continued quality of American democracy. It is conceivable that the backlash could cause the country to fall apart if the white majority, too, decides to view itself as a tribal group of European-Americans.
Mr. Carl I. Hagen of the right-wing Progress Party criticized the choice of a foreign citizen to head Norway's immigration agency. Eva Joly, a Norwegian born French magistrate, known in France for her crusade against corruption, disagreed with Hagen: "To assume that nationality or citizenship have anything to do with being suitable [for a job] is a very old-fashioned way of thinking. We are no longer thinking in national terms, but in European or global terms. It is a duty to employ people from other countries," said Joly. She has been granted both Norwegian and French citizenship, but considers herself European.
When we elect people to important positions, we want them to take care of our interests, not ephemeral "global interests." How can we rely on
the people entrusted to work for us if they openly state that they don't feel any loyalty towards our country? According to British philosopher Roger Scruton, members of our liberal elite may be immune to xenophobia, but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is oikophobia, the repudiation and fear of home.
In his book The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat, Scruton believes that what characterizes the West is our idea of the personal state:"The personal state is characterized by a constitution, by a rule of law, and by a rotation of office-holders. Its decisions are collectively arrived at by a process that may not be wholly democratic, but which nevertheless includes every citizen and provides the means whereby each citizen can adopt the outcome as his own. Personal states have an inherent preference for negotiation over compulsion, and for peace over war. [The personal state] is answerable to its citizens, and its decisions can be imputed to them not least because they, as citizens, participate in the political process."
For this democratic process to work there has to be a loyalty and identity that precedes political allegiance. We must have a community that has primary common interests. This has no real counterpart in Islamic countries, where the ideal is the global Ummah and the Caliphate. Concepts such as the nation state or territorial integrity have no equivalent in Islamic jurisprudence, which helps explain why democracy is so hard to establish in Muslim countries.
Scruton notes, however, that the Western personal state is now under pressure from two directions. Supranational institutions are destroying the sense of membership from above, while massive immigration without assimilation is destroying it from below. The European Union, among others, "is rapidly destroying the territorial jurisdictions and national loyalties that have, since the Enlightenment, formed the basis of European legitimacy, while putting no new form of membership in their place." And although it makes sense for individuals travelling from Third World countries to settle in the West, they may thus unwittingly contribute to destroying what they came to enjoy the benefits of in the first place:
"The political and economic advantages that lead people to seek asylum in the West are the result of territorial jurisdiction. Yet territorial jurisdictions can survive only if borders are controlled. Transnational legislation, acting together with the culture of repudiation, is therefore rapidly undermining the conditions that make Western freedoms durable."
Scruton comments that for the first time in centuries Islam appears to be "a single religious movement united around a single goal," and that "one major factor in producing this unwonted unity is Western civilization and the process of globalization that it has set in motion." According to him, this is a result of "Western prosperity, Western legal systems, Western forms of banking, and Western communications that human initiatives now reach so easily across frontiers to affect the lives and aspirations of people all over the globe."
Thus we have the irony in which "Western civilization depends on an idea of citizenship that is not global at all, but rooted in territorial jurisdiction and national loyalty." By contrast, Islam, which has been until recently remote from the Western world, is founded on an ideal "which is entirely global in its significance." Globalization, therefore, "offers militant Islam the opportunity that it has lacked since the Ottoman retreat from central Europe." It has brought into existence "a true Islamic umma, which identifies itself across borders in terms of a global form of legitimacy, and which attaches itself like a parasite to global institutions and techniques that are the by-products of Western democracy."
Scruton raises some difficult questions: Does globalization make it easier for Muslims to realize the idea of a global Islamic community, which has always been an ideal but far from a practical reality? Does it also put pressure on the territorial integrity of coherent nation states? If so, does globalization strengthen Islam while it weakens Western democracy? These questions are difficult to think about, but for the sake of survival we need to ask them and find an honest answer.
Globalization doesn't necessarily mean that Islam will win. In the long run, it is quite possible that mass communications and the exposure to criticism will destroy Islam, but it could ironically make it more dangerous in the short term.
Is Islam compatible with democracy? Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner strongly disagrees with a plea for a ban on parties seeking to launch Islamic law in the Netherlands. "For me it is clear: if two-thirds of the Dutch population should want to introduce the sharia tomorrow, then the possibility should exist."
This dilemma can be solved by stating the following: Our goal is not democracy in itself, meaning elections and one man one vote, but freedom of conscience and speech, respect for property rights and minorities, the right to bear arms and self-defense, equality before the law and the rule of law - and by that I mean secular law – in addition to such principles as formal constraints on the power of the rulers and the consent of the people. Free elections may be a means of achieving this end, but it is not the end in itself. We shouldn't confuse the tools with the primary goal.
Two central concepts in sharia are the notions of "blasphemy" and "apostasy," both incurring the death penalty. These laws are incompatible with the ancient Western ideas of freedom of conscience and of speech. Thus, sharia is anathema to the goals of democracy. Sharia is also hostile to equality before the law, since Islamic law is based on the fundamental inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women, free men and slaves. Moreover, it does not provide any protection for minorities, since non-Muslims are supposed to be unarmed and their lives and property subject to the whims of Muslims at any given moment. Although Islam does contain the vague Koranic notion of shura, consultation, this has never been formalized or concretized, which means that there are no formal constraints on the power of the ruler under sharia. The only thing an Islamic ruler may not do is openly to reject Islam.
The answer is: No.
Fjordman brings home the bacon once again. I have to agree with him on all his points. And I'd say Islam and democracy can't be compatible. Just ask any Muslim "holy man"-they'll tell it to you in those simple terms.
Four or five years ago the Balochistan Post (which appeared to be a pro-Islamic newspaper) ran an editorial making the same case; that Islam and democracy were not compatible. I only wished I had saved the article - coming straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.
Islam in incompatible with democracy.
And human rights.
And common sense.
And progress.
And............ itself.
"Fjordman: Is Islam Compatible with Democracy?"
No.
Islam's compatible with Western style governance in the same way that matter and anti-matter are compatible.
What is "freedom" and "liberty," and does universal suffrage automatically equal liberty?
I used to wonder if people really appreciated liberty as a good in itself, or whether it was because of material abundance. In short, had the Soviet Union or Communist China provided full-employment and high living standards, would most Westerners have preferred that system even without individual freedom. I decided that only a minority, perhaps a large minority, would value freedom even if it meant they lived poorer than under dictatorship
In short many people do not know what to do with liberty and look for a master to sell themselves to like Dr Faustus - either by consuming drugs, being obsessed with money, or simply behaving like hippos in a mudbath. They cannot stand having to make decisions and take responsibility but prefer to be pampered like a kept-woman.
So much of modern society is geared to this fear of being alone with decisions; so entertainment is geared to sublimate this oppressive burden and alcohol to numb the senses. People do reckless things and look for absorption into cults and happiness in consumerism.
Islam is a cult which offers submission to the group, a system replicated by the Moonies and other copycat sects. Islam does not accept free will but absolves people of guilt for obeying orders and this liberates many, but causes others schizophrenic episodes as they fight what they are told is inevitable and predetermined.
Most of Western Society is fantasy today. The struggles of the past for food, work, and family have not gone away, but are overlaid with fantasy fabricated in TV studios, magazines, movies, as if it is all possible and in glowing technicolor. Effort and setbacks are for losers, the successful float to their pre-ordained success and have divine sanction to consume voraciously - no noblesse oblige, just gluttony.
That is why it is hard to know what we are defending. It is why people rant on incessantly about Adolf Hitler because it seems black and white which it was not at the time. Deaths always seem more worthwhile in the past and more pointless in the present when blood runs red rather than being a dried stain.
Islam is fake - it is 7th Century Scientology and Mohammed is L Ron Hubbard. The day his followers stop chanting and open their ears to reason the cult implodes, so they must destroy those who do not chant.
Islam may end democracy, at least as we know it. It will continue to strain the already shaky foundation underlying the social welfare system. As the masses will not vote for cuts in the benefits that they have become addicted to, taxes will be raised on high income earners. These productive individuals will choose to accept the invitation of citizenship in other, lower tax nations in increasing numbers.
As the tax base emigrates, the system will fail. The transition to whatever comes next may be violent, and it’s a good bet that Mohammed will have no part of it.
Fjordman,
The content is fine, but the style, structure and format need to be fixed.
I knew what you were driving at, only because I've read your stuff before. Others might not.
I'm a strong believer in introducing what you're going to say before you say it: Start with a summary paragraph that outlines the gist of your argument, like: "First we will examine the various philosophies of democracy, going back to Plato. Next, we will look at modern models of democracy, and how well they may or may not be succeeding. We will compare those to the Islamic law of sharia. Finally, we will close with some speculations on how globalization may be affecting both Western democratic institutions and Islamic institutions."
That way the reader knows what to expect, with arguments as long and convoluted as yours are.
That's how I used to write technical and scientific papers.
Silly question .....next ?
Fjordman raises an important issue that needs to be carefully reflected upon.
Iraq is unequivocal proof that Islam is incompatible with democracy. The fact is if we use the term "democracy" to mean consensual government, democracy only works when everybody has a certain fundamental respect for each other. If there are elections and the democrats win even by a very small margin, democracy requires everyone even those who have lost to respect the governance of those who one.
Respecting the governance of those who won does not mean murdering them or subverting them or undermining them. It also requires that there be periodic elections where a change in governance can take place.
Islam is incompatible with democracy because it claims sharia should be the law for everyone no matter how many people think otherwise. In this sense it is anti- democratic. It is illustrative how in Iraq if the Sunnite radicals are 10% of the population they will kill and maim and gore no matter what the majority will.
Significantly and somewhat complementing the Sunnites the shia Sadr radicals to the same thing. It does not matter the religious or ideological differences, the shia will claim the right to murder you in the name of Allah, the prophet and Ali.
Democracy cannot flourish where Islam of the general Sunnite ideology or Shia ideology prevail.
The other major defect with Islam being compatible with democracy is that today the term democracy applied to western governments includes in addition to some component of consensual government by the governed of fundamental rights. Thus, the majority is not allowed to have a meeting to decide to enslave the minorities. We invoke in the democratic west, fundamental rights sometimes mistakenly described as human rights. The fundamental rights are freedom of religion, speech, assembly, etc. Freedom of religion requires that every other religion respect that freedom. If it does not, it is inconsistent with democracy.
Islam is incompatible with democracy and will never be compatible. So long as it gives the individual no freedom to be of a different religion or it does not respect elections or the equality of people to be treated equally under the law it will remain a monstrous vestige of the Dark Age during which it arose.
F.A. Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty, reminds us that democracy is a means of determining what the law will be. "It is probably the best method of achieving certain ends, but it is not an end in itself." The tradition in which Hayek stood, and of which he was the greatest articulator in the 20th century, was primarily concerned with limiting the coercive power of government. This tradition began, I think, with the English Puritans (see Puritanism and Liberty), grounded in their reading of Scripture, and elements of the Christian tradition that encouraged, if not demanded, liberty of conscience.
There's nothing similar in islam, other than a few half-hearted gestures toward "consultation." The Puritans were able to appeal to Scripture for the ideas of liberty and parliamentary rule that gave birth to the American Constitution (and until recently, kept England free of nasty continental habits).
But what do you get when muslims appeal to their scripture? The institutionalization of jihad and all other nastiness associated with bedoiun life in the 7th century.
And the Europeans, by sheer cowardice, are at peril of having this forced on themselves through the mechanisms of democracy.
Fjordman gets a lot of respect from me - but I disagree with:
"Socrates made many enemies by criticizing those Athenians who, by means of cheap rhetoric, used democracy to gain power. His courage in speaking out led to his trial, in which his accusers claimed that he was corrupting the young. Found guilty, Socrates was sentenced to drinking poison."
Socrates chose death rather than banishment - he could have chosen life over death - but rather than leave - he drank the hemlock of his own free will ...
Death cult or what?
Socrates chose an imaginary "heaven" over life and the active propagation of his ideas in the living world ... do I need to draw the parallels further???
The roots of the current death cults are in the roots of history - Socrates was someone who was prepared to die to make his point ....
... does this sound familiar?
The roots of Jihadi terror are in the roots of all "Judaeo-Christian" religions - because the philosophies that dictate that the "imaginary world" is better than the "material world" are rooted in the Graeco-Egyptian notions of "sky" and "earth", wherein all "earthly matter" is lower than "higher matter" (i.e. "heaven")
"people of the book" - don't make me laugh - more like "as we reap we sow" ...
we are reaping 10,000 years of history and the religion of peace is just the latest manifestation of that ...
as they say "those that do not know the past are condemned to repeat it" ...
about time we dusted off some of those old history books then ... and started to learn a little ...
Sorry - I forgot to mention:
I will not submit
This is a simplistic, simple minded and moronic statement, no wonder we are losing to the forces of Islam.
You give a free pass to the profit motive, to corporate and personal greed, and to the psychosexual imperative of patriarchialsim which underlies and has underlied such thing as slavery, racial discrimination, and anti women attitudes such as evidenced in the so called Cultural Wars.. the wars started by "conservatives" and evangelicals against gays and women who seek only that which we demand of muslims.. sovereignty over their own bodies.
The "revolution" of the 70's (and it was the 70's not the 60's) was a justified reaction against the stifling patriarchial conformity that these children were born into.. they of course went overboard.. and a course correction was needed, but not a reversion to the past.. for the past is not much different than an Islamic society (from a secular, liberal and atheist point of view).
Until you bozo's stop blaming others (of your own society) for all of your problems, nothing will improve and indeed fjordman you ape the Muslim who blames the west for all of their ills, in your case you blame the seculars, the liberals, the baby boomers.
Benjamin Franklin said "A democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for
lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the decision."
Islam is thus not incompatible with democracy, per se. It may have serious problems with freedom, however, given its antipathy towards sheep with rights.
Voyager - I appreciate the way you put together your comment and am glad to see your ideas expressed so well and in an entertaining way.
Well done.
nariz, take your meds already. Your leftist histrionics are growing tiresome.
I agree with Alladinsane57: this is a rather silly question. It's like asking if Catholicism is compatible with atheism. Do we need a multipart essay to demonstrate the obvious?
"for the past is not much different than an Islamic society (from a secular, liberal and atheist point of view)."
Using mostly his own imbecilic words, we are presented with an excellent opportunity to illustrate what a complete and bankrupt ass this poster is:
If the "stifling patriarchial conformity" was "not much different than an Islamic society" then a so-called "secular, liberal and atheist" such as yourself would be DEAD. And he/she/it certainly wouldn't be posting at this site, for the internet and all which led up to it never would have occurred.
This poster's mind is poisoned. We consistently see his interminable witlessness -- and it doesn't stop with my paraphrases above. In conclusion the poster slanders Fjordman (A Westerner) who "ape[s] the Muslim who blames the west for all of their ills", while conflating the West, er, the "stifling patriarchial conformity" with "an Islamic society". Sounds to me like he's indicting the entirety of the West, along with its true defenders.
For the record, I'm an agnostic liberal Democrat, and I not only utterly repudiate the poster's nitwitted comments, but detest the fact that such persons hijack terms such such as "liberal" and "secular". The poster is a ranting anti-Western fanatic.
Fjordman is good, no doubt, but this is all a moot point. Why? European "native" fertility rates guarantee that Europe's ethnic population will be reduced by 70%+ in the next 100 years. Even if the idea of the "demos" were to be resurrected, there wouldn't be any Europeans around to enjoy it.
So, the issue really boils down to, what kind of society do Muslim Europeans hope to achieve. If it is the caliphate under Sharia law, then they will be poorer and less free. The ball is really in their court.
Drk and Nariz,
enjoyed your posts immensely. You're both a breath of fresh air against the stifling conservatisem here.
Another thing that I want to say is: Germany's actions against scientology could be used as a precedent on how to contain and stop Islam in Europe.
I'm looking forward to a European country stepping up to the plate, and treating Islam in the same way that France and Germany treats scientology.
Europe's ethnic population will be reduced by 70%+ in the next 100 years.
I’ll challenge the assumption that the European population is in an unrecoverable tailspin. Germany reportedly has the lowest fertility rate, ~1.4 kids per female, today. But looking at West Germany’s population counts after the war until the 1990s, a shrinking population seems to be a new phenomenon. Perhaps something like an Islam-induced societal shake-up might bring a renewed interest in passing on the world to the next generation.
http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Europe/germanwc.htm
Voltaire -- you insult the reputation of a great man by hijacking his name, nevertheless...
Let's examine what you "want to say":
Scientology = a few thousand served. Harmless idiotarian fools who have very little impact or presence on European soil. France and Germany, knowing full well these nutballs pose no risk and won't hit back take their "strong" stance against them. Kinda reminds me of France threatening to shoot down those Israeli jets, Grrrr! Or their indulgences in those never-ending frenzied orgies of anti-Americanism -- they insult only those who won't annihilate them in response. This is all idiotic enough, but now we're treated to demonstrable fools proposing that Europe treats "Islam in the same way that France and Germany treats scientology."
Compare to:
Islam = over a billion served. Tens of millions already present and breeding in thousands of enclaves on European soil. If you threw in all the Scientologists on Earth, (and planet Zingo or Zango as well...) the Muslim "ummah" spews forth more babies in one year in all those fine socialist Islamic Breeding hospitals across Eurostan than the entire global population of Scientologist combined. Add to this the fact that Muslims, er, 'disaffected youth' are already engaged in low level wide-spread insurrection, complete with lootings, burnings, and all manner of subversion, and Bob's your uncle.
I disagree. Muhammad is Charlie Manson!
Off topic from Arab News:
Bush Supporters Are Loonier, Says Study
Ummah News Links
This needs to stop. If you want liberals like me to step in and help you have to accept that we have different ideas from you; ideas which would equally get our throats slit by Muslims. Most of the posts here are quite right-wing and frankly untrue; though I have to admit it's because we don't have much of a presence in this debate. Most liberals just can't bring themselves to believe what Muslims plainly tell them to their faces. Having people like that on your side would be a feather in your cap.
Europeans aren't addicted to being lazy. There's no reason to spend an extra $150 billion a year on healthcare, for example, just to get a half-aced system that's proven beyond all doubt to be ineffective compared to what they have in Europe. Honestly, we can't complain that Europeans are strangled by their evil socialist overlords and then complain they'll fight tooth and nail to keep those oppressions operative.
Just remember: Clinton was slick when he helped the Muslims take over our ports, but the Bush family's been in kahoots with these people for years. There are plenty of skeletons in everyone's closets.
We must hang together, brothers, or we will hang separately.
All of that free love and pot smoking from the 60's and 70's must have really drove them muslims ape shit, i can't really blame them concidering what they had to work with then and now, a half assed book,some goats and a women? that rarely washed and lived in a bag.
pneumatikon~ Liberals like you, fine.
Liberals who spew hatred with every breath they take, can go hang.
Many secularist talk a lot of sense, however nariz would like to wage war against the very Christianity that underpins a good bit of Western Culture (any arguments about that, we can keep for another forum). Unfortunately for him there is a Real enemy out there and it ain't us.
Steven L. said: "The content is fine, but the style, structure and format need to be fixed."
His style is standard in European academic writing; what you suggest is standard in American.
Whether or not he needs to fix his structure and format depends upon whether Europeans or Americans are his primary intended audience.
Gee I can answer that right now off the top of my head: "No!"
Hard core ideologies such as Islam and Communism never are compatible with democracy.
Instead such ideologies rob their citizens/victims of virtually every choice that they can make in their lives. The person living under is
Democracy is never even given a chance as the only choice left for any society enslaved by Islam is HOW to implement Islamic ideology and how to adjust the finer points. No one ever gets to make such meaningful decisions as whether or not they WANT to be Muslims they are stuck with the totalitarian ideology and that proves that Islam will never be the least bit receptive to the democratic process.
Ironically, when Islamic societies have been democratized such as Indonesia has recently the result is NOT more liberty. The result is MORE Islam!
By the way, the Kuran has passages prohibiting the pdemocratic process anyway.
Islam and democracy? Forget it. It's not going to happen.
"Most liberals just can't bring themselves to believe what Muslims plainly tell them to their faces. Having people like that on your side would be a feather in your cap."
First, I suggest that such persons aren't "liberals" at all -- they're fantasists, fools, and fanatics. They are pseudo-liberals. They are often anti-Western anti-Christian anti-Jewish anti-religion anti-conservative zealots. Their motivation to fight against Islam is often motivated solely by a complete and irrational hatred of all religions -- imagining A. that all religions are roughly the same (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and B. that all religions are damaging and the source of most of the world's woes, and that C. if only all religions could be annihilated, all men would be brothers and there would be nothing to fight over. You know -- Brotherhood of Man without the Fellowship of God messing everything up...
Are they right? Has history borne their theories out in the slightest? Or has their decades long rampage through and against the West largely contributed to the precarious predicament we find ourselves in now?
Second, exactly why would it be a "feather" in anybody's cap to have persons who show a congenital inability to tell truth from fiction on their side, or to have their inane theories contaminate our defense? The burden of formulating this defense West is difficult enough without all the self loathing leftist, a.k.a. people who have their eyes fixed on the past but pretend to be focused on the future, a.k.a. people who have shown an eagerness to defame and destroy all which came before them in an arrogant rush to implement radical untested malarky, a.k.a. people who promise they deplore fascism, yet seem to eager to resort to doublespeak, disinformation, and political correct subterfuge to subvert discussion and serve their utopianist boondoggles.
Fjordman: Is Islam Compatible with Democracy? part 1
What is this? A rhetorical question?
The European Union, among others, "is rapidly destroying the territorial jurisdictions and national loyalties that have, since the Enlightenment, formed the basis of European legitimacy, while putting no new form of membership in their place."
Adolf would've been so proud :-) A large sozi-fascist Euro-State. Call it Euroland call it Germany as he would have.. it's all the same. We're all the same. Whatta shame!
Thought control and speech restrictions? BINGO!!
Adolf sez YES!!
Laws are passed over the heads of the 'loyal subjects'.
Adolf sez YES!!
Adolf knows best.
Looks like Adolf is coming right out of his grave and his spirits is beginning to manifest itself in Bruxxels.
Whoever it was that made the Clockwork Orange analogy: that was BRILLIANT!
Do you think the jihahd type guys will ban ABBA? If they do I'll be furious.
Fredrik Reinfeldt
"The "revolution" of the 70's (and it was the 70's not the 60's) was a justified reaction against the stifling patriarchial conformity that these children were born into.. they of course went overboard.. and a course correction was needed, but not a reversion to the past.. for the past is not much different than an Islamic society (from a secular, liberal and atheist point of view)."
1. Stifiling conformity as a justification for destroying the West:
What you call 'stifling conformity' is common across most cultures (patriarchal and otherwise) and--especially when that conformity is less stifling than most--does not excuse attempts to knock an entire, mostly well functioning, cultural framework to the ground. That sort of "revolution" is a revolution of ingrateful brats, and not one of care or wisdom or progress.
Fine tuning would have been wonderful! I'm not saying that there were no problems. The draft, for example, was a monstrous problem, and institutionalized segregation also horrible. But careful fixing of carefully identified problems, with concern for not destroying good things and concern for extended consequences, is NOT what the 1960s and the 1970s brought to the institutions of normative power (education, media). Not by a long shot. (And I still think the cultural and ideological developments behind the 1970s power developments took place in the 1960s. And they were related to the offshoots of the American Communist party, as is becoming increasingly openly admitted.)
2. Painting the serious work needed to undo the deep damage done through careless, destrictive rebellion as a total return to the past, warts and all:
Yes I want a correction of the flaws brought in by that era, and there are PLENTY, more than you seem to imagine. This isn't saying I want to bring back the previous situation exactly. I want to keep what gains were made (such as stopping the draft, and stopping segregation, and ther further opening up the workplace to women, and so on.)
3. Comparing our pre-1960s past to Islamic culture and government:
The past *was* very different from the Islamic situation. Even from an secular, liberal, atheist point of view.
Galileo had his say, and went through trouble for it, but had enough support to eventually come out on top. Kant had his say. Voltaire had his say. Women were voting well before the 1960s. Slavery was abolished a century before the 1960s; it is still not prosecuted in many Islamic nations.
And today, with the big bad Christians in the government and so on: Dawkins and Dennett and Wilson and Pinker all have their say. Goodness gracious! Could you imagine these folks keeping their heads long in an Islamic society, today?
4. "Until you bozo's stop blaming others (of your own society) for all of your problems, nothing will improve and indeed fjordman you ape the Muslim who blames the west for all of their ills, in your case you blame the seculars, the liberals, the baby boomers."
So, you intend to blame conservatives' reading of Coulter and the like for the fact that large sections of the Left are cozying up to Islamic fundamentalits, and are pushing for a governmental structure that stifles liberty?
Maybe conservatives, using ballot initiatives to prevent the redefinition of marriage to include people whose civil rights are otherwise not at all in question (no one is seriously saying that gay couples should be punished for living together), are so wicked in doing this that they are driving Leftists to make deals with people who want the death penalty for homosexual acts?
This is crazy. This is ugly scapegoating. Put responsibility where it lies.
Fjordman is pointing out that there are certain sorts of social structures and cultural principles necessary for maintaining a liberty in society. This is actually not news to the moderately educated; this is Western civ basics.
He is also pointing out the specific flaws he thinks exist in the European governmental system which make liberty difficult or impossible to attain. I suppose he is supposed to blame himself for those somehow? Big bad Fjordman shouldn't critique the structure of the EU, that might make the Leftists hate him, driving them to the Islamists. Instead he should go through and see how he might be the one preventing liberty in Europe by writing internet essays about conditions for liberty. Brilliant.
Your disagreements with religious Conservatives are petty. They are not trying to get the death penalty for people who live with a gay life partner. They are not trying to make women barefoot and stuck in the kitchen. The ID silliness is a result of lack of school choice, and forced payments, and will lose the bits of moral ground upon which it stands if governments give parents a tax voucher in the sum to which their taxes go to the school system, to be used on another school or on homeschool materials.
You might disagree with some of the laws conservatives would like, but they do support and abide by basic individual rights where their application is clear (it is not clear in something like abortion, without getting into very difficult issues), and they do intend to abide by the republican and democratic constraints and structure inherent in the Constitution.
I'm not a Christian myself (not even religious exactly; more like Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson in my beliefs in that area) but I indend to fight as long as I can for my rights, and for the culture and the other people which help me keep them. For whatever reasons, those other people are by and large religious, usually Christian.
The current crop of prominent atheists have, by and large, bailed on speaking out out in favor of what we should do to protect our rights in the long term. They've done this by by equating the Christians with Islamists. Christians have, in the past two or three hundrered years, historically proven an ability to build, maintain, and further systems which protect individual rights, including for atheists and women and homosexuals. To the extent that they have a problem with atheists and homosexuals and certain things women do, they are overwhelmingly willing to refrain from dealing with those problems violently; they're more likely to want to change people by talking to them. Islamists are vocally against such systems, and don't intend to deal with atheists by non-violent means where Islam becomes powerful. People who are serious about rights need to make this distinction.
Also, for the record, I've read more of Dawkins alone than I have of all of those on your list, from yesterday, of conservative authors (Coulter, Limbaugh, and so on). I think Leftists are working to do very bad things, but I'd probably be considered a moderate liberal by many people's standards, were it not for the Jihad issue.
Islam is not compatible with democracy.
Neither is postmodern liberalism.
Like what TS Eliot said about Liberalism:
"...That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination."
Ain't that the truth? What does liberalism offer, except to move away from a starting point, with no definite purpose?
Furthermore:
"...By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of "getting on" to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos."
Desperate remedy: Enter Totalitarianism.
Fjordman: a powerful mind at work. He writes so clearly. Doesn't get lost in the complexity yet never simplifies to absurdity.
Always a great read.
Steven L.: you don't like his style. I think Fjordman's style is as clear as a bright blue sky. Crystal clear. Whose style do you admire?
Islam is compatible with pig poo
That was interesting; thank you. I look forward to reading the rest.
Certain concepts (as they pertain to Islam and democracy) need to be explored. These terms include "universal", "global," "particular", "Ummah." Kant argued that only in-so-far as a principle can be universalized, can such principle be said to be "moral." So principles that pertain to only a specified group, by nature, cannot be "moral." Islam, ironically, embodies a contradiction. On the one hand it purports to be "global" (a similar, but misleading notion is to state that Islam is "universal"), yet at its core it is particularistic. It seems to lack over-arching principles that would apply to all peoples, for all times (the very essence of a Kantian morality). And, I further suspect that the inability of Islam to become truly universal (but to be forever grounded in the particular -- ie, many times enmeshed in a local, tribal identity with "majority" tribes attempting to overcome "minority" tribes, even when both are Islamic) is what prevents (in part) Islam from democratizing.
NARIZ: the "revolution you have mentioned is fictitious. What REALLY happened was that Socialists who taught in American schools went to work indoctrinating America's youth with Socialist ideology. In high school, I actually had a teacher who taught Comparative Government who in fact WAS a self-avowed Communist (and this was during the 1970s). Many socialists (or Communists) like Howard Zinn presently teach in US universities and continue to rewrite US history and brainwash multitudes of unsuspecting youths. I have been one of them and know from personal experience.
Americans had been just fine under the conditions that you claim led to the "revolution" of the 1970s. Remember, too, that America would be MUCH better off today if this so-called "revolution" had never happened. This 'revolution' led to the multi-culturalists who opened the US to the Islamic invasion and the rape of America by Mexico mentioned by americaningermany.
You say this so-called "revolution" was "justified." But the fact is this "revolution" cannot provide any tangible benefits with which to justify itself. America is worse off and far less secure in every way omaginable thanks to your "revolution." That was what its socialist-communist engineers had in mind, no?
I am still very irritated over the bull crap that Mr "Short Timer" Bush fed us in the early stages of this "War on Terror." It was a bait and switch scam from the beginning. We were sold the idea that Afghanistan would adopt an open, pluralistic democracy. What we got was Iranian style "democracy" where the Quran is the constitution and the imams and mullas are the arbiters. If we want western style democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will have to replace each and every one of the current inhabitants.
As for Iraq specifically, let the civil war commence and we can be entertained until next football season.
Fantastic! Can't wait for the next installment.
I am in agreement with American in Germany; Islam is not compatible with humanity.
Voyager - terrific post you wrote.
drk said:
Well, but that's not quite what happened. Socrates was found guilty by a jury composed of 501 Athenian citizens, who voted 281 to convict and 230 to acquit. Socrates' accuser had proposed the death penalty. The law required Socrates to propose an alternative penalty. Socrates proposed a fine of 30 minas of silver. Socrates, in deliberating before the jury what alternative punishment he would propose, considered several, including banishment, and gave a rational explanation of why he decided to suggest a fine. The jury of 501 then had to vote between the two proposals, and they voted for the penalty suggested by the accuser: death. Socrates' reasoning process and motives do not resemble those of a jihadi suicide bomber. Socrates died for freedom of speech and inquiry, and for the idea of a society governed by law rather than by men. He was about 70 years old and had lived a full life. I almost think you are pulling my leg.Yes, if they are to be convincing. Socrates says he does not know whether what follows death will be bad or good. Later he says says nothing after death can hurt a good man. In any event, you have no proof that heaven (whatever that means -- there are many conceptions of heaven) is only and solely imaginary. Yes. It reminds me of Robert Spencer, who is obviously willing to die for the sake of free speech, freedom of religion, and the dignity of the human person. What it doesn't remind me of is Jihadists, who die in order to kill others and are in the grips of a madman's mind-control machine. You are lumping together here four or five fairly distinct things: Judeo-Christian religions, ancient Greek philosophy, ancient Egyptian religion, and Islam. Overlap does exist among these outlooks, but their various attitudes, for example to matter vs. spirit, differ substantially.