Is Ours a Defendable Culture?

George Rebane

Last Sunday the Swiss voted to ban the erection of additional minarets on the country’s mosques (here).  The vote was desperate, awkward, and overwhelming.  That small ever-neutral, obstinately independent country was seeking a way to say no to its colonization by Islam.  In every direction the Swiss have seen their neighbors with growing communities of unassimilated Moslems, and politically correct politicians competing in pants wetting competitions, powerless to slow the onslaught.  So the Swiss people went against their elected leaders and expressed their frustration in a vote that sends a clear but, most likely, an ineffective message.

The Swiss are saying we don’t want to become an Islamic country, we want to remain rooted in the western cultures that have sustained us for centuries.  Switzerland invented successful multi-culturalism that has demonstrated how people of German, French, and Italian descent, who retain their traditions and language, can live together under one system of governance.  Islam does not tolerate the peaceful co-existence of multiple cultures, especially if they don’t share a common sect of a common religion.  Islam has become a world-class pain in the ass from Indonesia to Canada, wherever it has set down its roots.

But what Islam has perfected is how to maintain and propagate its culture.  It does this by brooking no compromises in its ascent, and most certainly not in its ascendancy.  With this policy it has slowly, albeit with declared purpose, infiltrated Europe.  As most RR readers are aware, its colonization program is on track.  And the colonization will continue apace until a sufficient fraction of the countries are Muslim.  The next stage of takeover was again recently made plain by Omar Bakri, a British Islamic leader published in London’s daily Al-Hayat, who said, “Allah willing, we will transform the West into Dar Al-Islam by means of invasion from without.  If an Islamic state arises and invades, we will be its army and soldiers from within.”

European leaders, their countries already with 5% to 11% Muslim populations, have their heads stuck firmly where the sun doesn’t shine, and refuse to acknowledge the reality that is rising around them.  The aboriginal population is already so cowed that public attitude polls are useless.  The Swiss pre-election surveys gave no indication of what the true public sentiment was when expressed via a secret ballot.  No one wanted to appear politically incorrect and reveal their true sentiments to a clipboard wielding survey worker.  At dinners with our European friends, we have repeatedly witnessed the conversations become hushed and furtive whenever the topic of Muslim immigration came up – and this inside their own apartments and houses.  Europe is toast.

In the interval, our President Barack Hussein Obama preaches to us that "Islam is a religion of peace."  The man understands almost nothing (or everything, take your pick) of his proclaimed Islamic heritage.  A professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Fouad Ajami is one of the most respected observers and interpreters of Islam and the Arab world.  His views are constantly sought by both liberal and conservative media.  He recently summarized the Arab attitude toward Obama in a WSJ guest column ‘The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama’.

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.
 
The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.

America has yet to encounter its Islamic moment.  I wonder how we will respond when one day we awaken to minarets on every horizon.  Will our leadership then respond as today with the prosecution of Navy Seals who roughed up enemy combatants on the battle field, investigation of our CIA’s counter-insurgency ‘excesses’, and criminalizing the jihadist massacre at Ft Hood?

Many of us would like to think that our mood and resilience will be more accurately reflected by the anecdote about an old and weathered cowpoke who sat down near two young men in the waiting area of a small town airport in Montana.  The first young man, of American Indian descent, was lamenting, “We were once many and strong, but now we are few.”  The second young man was a Muslim studying in this country.  He sat up with pride and said, “Yes, your people were foolish and weak in the face of the white man.  We of Islam were once few, but now we are many.”  Looking at the cowboy, his hat low over his eyes, the Muslim prodded, “Why do you think that is so?”  The cowpoke thought a bit, tilted his hat back and looked the young man in the eye, “Mebbe it’s because we haven’t played Cowboys and Muslims yet, … , but I do believe it’s a’comin’.”

Comments

[Will]

George,

I want to thank you for the articulate, diplomatic way you convey the feelings so many of us share. What you say needs to be said, and nobody says it better.

[Bob Hobert]

I have read that 40% of births in France are now Muslim. Americans who fawningly admire European culture might do well to pay closer attention to the ongoing Islamification of Western Civilization.