Or: Can there be a decent Islam?

And it’s fair to remember that the bloodshed of Christendom’s Thirty Years War was equally nightmarish to what’s going on now in the Middle East and that that scorched-earth conflict did, in fact, mark the turning point of the Reformation. As Catholics and Protestants fought it out in the loosely joined principalities of the Holy Roman Empire, the Great Powers of Europe rushed in to stake their claims and spread their influence. The result was a fight that lasted from 1618 to 1648 and laid most of the empire waste. When it was over, the survivors signed on to the so-called “Peace of Westphalia,” a series of treaties that recognized the sovereignty of nation states and the rights of those states to practice what religion they would like, with freedom for minority believers to practice their faiths in private. These tenets were the foundation of the modern political world.

Is that what’s unfolding in the Middle East?

The current chaos in the Levant did not just happen. It has its internal causes but no small amount of the horror can be laid at the door of Barack Obama too. From his re-establishment of relations with the tyrant Bashar Hafez al-Assad to his surrender of George W. Bush’s victory in Iraq, to his standing by with his thumb up his brain while peaceful protestors took to the Syrian streets and the country then descended into civil war, to his weak sauce bombing campaign, Putin stealing his lunch at the UN and Obama’s puny U.S. response — through it all, President Right-Side-of-History has been on the wrong side of every decision. And so yes, now, the current mess looks remarkably like the Thirty Years War with its religious underpinnings, warring states and over-involved mega powers. And so it does indeed raise the question of whether it will be the turning point in Islam’s reformation, leading to an enlightened Westphalia-style peace.

One can hope. But the tenets of Westphalia grew out of Christian thinking and Christian religion. Christians were appalled by the bloodletting of the the Thirty Years War precisely because it violated the central preachings of the Prince of Peace: Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you. The outline for modern statehood and separation of church and state were written into the Gospels: Judge not lest ye be judged; render under Caesar that which is Caesar and unto God that which is God’s, and so on.

Does the same hope lie in the tenets of Islam?

To ask the question is to answer it, for anyone who’s ever read any of the Moslems’ Little Murder Books or knows any of their history at all. Read all of it; I’d dearly love to include Klavan’s last line, but fair use disallows it.

Share

An idea whose time has probably come:

The question is: can the Europeans rediscover the Will to survive?

As of now, the future belongs to the would-be Eurabians. They have the Passion.

Two more questions arise…

How soon before the Throne of Charlemagne is blown-up?

Is there a modern Charles Martel or Alfred The Great out there?…or, as a last resort, Vlad The Impaler?

SIDENOTE: People like the Koch Brothers should really be forming paramilitary units for the purposes of rescuing what European Treasures they can, such as the aforementioned Throne, the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David and Pieta, Magna Carta, etc..

Steyn adds:

Given the number of actual flesh-and-blood people being slaughtered by ISIS, some folks say they can’t see the point of complaining about the destruction of architectural and artistic treasures. But there is method to the Islamic State’s madness. As part of its cultural totalitarianism, Islam has a long track record, wherever it sets foot, of obliterating the pre-Islamic past. Why? To ensure there’s nothing to go back to. There can be no return to greatness, because there is no longer any record of that greatness – only a void that Mohammed filled. In the past, there is desert. In the present, there is only Islam. And so, in the future, for want of any alternative, there can only be Islam.

Oh, there’s a method to their madness, all right. Which is all the more reason to stop them in their tracks–while we still can.

Update! Better have our modern-day Martel, should he ever arrive, get to work on protecting the Jewish trees too.

None of those things are obstacles to peace. If they were, surely the media would have told us so.

The real threats are the fig, palm and carob trees around a hiking path near Jerusalem. The true threat to peace comes from the pine trees that shade the kids playing in the water in a Ma’ale Adumim park.

The pine tree, you see, is a Jewish tree.

As anti-Israel activist Michael Davis accuses, “This foreign tree displaced the olive trees of the indigenous population.” The “indigenous” population he mentions were the Muslim conquerors while the “foreigners” are the Jewish indigenous population who were planting the “foreign” Jerusalem pine trees that are mentioned in the Bible by that notorious foreigner, the Prophet Isaiah.

The trees of Israel were displaced not by the Jews, but by the Ottoman Caliphate building a railroad to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Charcoal for Allah’s magic railroad consumed what few forests existed in Israel under Muslim rule and every tenth fruit bearing tree. Then the Zionists, in addition to planting trees, also thumbed their noses at the Caliphate and blew up its holy railroad.

No one cuts down forests for charcoal and the train no longer runs through Israel to Medina anymore.

 But facts, like trees, are obstacles to peace. And if we’re ever going to have peace, we need to do something about the Jewish facts and the Jewish trees. And the Jews who produce facts and trees.

Those darn pesky Jews. And facts. Read the rest; it’s an examination of one of the more bizarre eructations of idiocy from one of the premier sources of bizarreness and idiocy in the world today: Islam. And bizarre and idiotic as this tree business is, since it’s Islam, you know there’s room for expansion on the theme:

The Muslim resistance fighters of Hamas recently arrested a dolphin who was caught spying for the Jewish State. Hezbollah busted an eagle working for the Jews, Sudan took down a spy vulture and Egypt arrested a Zionist duck (or possibly a Zionist stork). Iran nabbed 14 squirrels for spying for Israel.

And with squirrels, it’s just a hop and a skip to the trees.

And from there to the loony bin, I guess.

Share

Matt wonders about the recent removal of The Other White Meat from prison menus:

The inmates just don’t like pork they claim.

Sure prison kitchens can probably manage to fuck up pork products to some degree but still. Consider me highly skeptical about this new stealth halal prison cuisine.

Well, I’d say there’s probably a lot of truth to the notion that most prisoners “just don’t like” pork. But there’s a perfectly logical reason for that too:

The statistics are staggering, and woefully out of date. One out of three African-American inmates in U.S. prisons convert to Islam while incarcerated.

This statistic is no longer limited to African-Americans in prison. The Huffington Post reported an estimated 35,000 – 40,000 inmates convert to Islam each year, and that 15 percent of the total U.S. prison population or 350,000 inmates are Muslim.

This is more than 18 times the national representation of Muslims in America, reported to be 0.8 percent. Prisons are churning out converts to Islam who are taught they are righteously entitled to control the religion, speech, and dress of family, co-workers and strangers.

And in turn, there’s a reason for that as well:

The key to conversion success is clear. Our government has been contracting and paying Muslim Brotherhood front groups, such as GSISS (The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences) and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) to screen and assign Muslim prison chaplains for at least 8 years.

While Egypt and Saudi Arabia have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, classifying it as a terror group, the White House, U.S. prisons, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security continue to work with Muslim Brotherhood groups.

But hey, in much the same fashion that Republicrats call for defeating the Democrat Socialists by “reaching across the aisle,” “working with the Democrats,” and looking for ways to make “bipartisan compromises” with them, our masters are certain that the way to win our supposed “war” against Moslem terrorism is by “working with,” umm, Moslem terrorists. The Moslem Brotherhood, like the Iranians, are our “partners in peace,” don’tchaknow.

Personally, I’d be fine with taking a page from Sheriff Joe and feeding them nothing but rancid, greenish bologna sandwiches and other “surplus” foods sourced from disreputable suppliers. If they eat, fine. If they don’t…hey, that’s fine, too. It’s prison, people. It ain’t supposed to be a holiday at the Ritz.

Share