Monday, October 18, 2010

Islam and the West

by Conrad Black in National Review Online, October 14, 2010.

It is certainly time that the West considered systematically whether it has irreconcilable differences with Islam. The belligerence of many Islamic spokesmen and the unassimilable quality of many Muslim immigrants in the West, as well as the spectacular terrorist provocations of extreme Islamic groups, make this a very legitimate question. But it is not so easy to answer. Some passages of the Koran, and some of Muhammad’s more purposeful remarks, certainly incite the inference that mortal conflict is inevitable, an impression heightened by the neurotic obsession of a great many Muslims with the red herring of Israel. It is hard for Westerners to know what to make of Islam. It speaks through an infinite number of clerical and secular leaders, and in a range of vocabularies from fraternal to genocidally hostile.
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The less house-trained Islamists who now frolic in and degrade the United Nations and some of its agencies and commissions should be sent packing. Militant Islam should be recognized as an antagonist, and moderate Muslims should be courted, much more systematically than they have been; Indonesia should be treated as a major power in the world, despite having a (very talented) president who rejoices in the name of Bambang. The debate should not be between ourselves about how to deal with Muslims, it should be between Muslims about the unwisdom of provoking us all.


Good article but for the reference the that mythical beast the "moderate Muslim" - always appealed to but never defined - is it like a cook feeding the marching Napoleonic army - a moderate Frenchman? Or is it the Muslim who believes in the Donald Duck version of the Koran.

"If you tear the hateful passages out of the Koran, you would get Donald Duck.", Testimony by Wafa Sultan at the Trial of Geert Wilders

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