Held Hostage by Desert Dogma
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party... Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In June of this year, surrounded by heavy security, street closures, and masked protesters, the Oxford Union hosted a contentious debate. The official motion was: “This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam”.
I know next to nothing about the key speakers or their motivations. I haven’t lived in the UK for well over a year now and I don’t follow their domestic politics. They could all be the worst people in the world, but that doesn’t detract from the points that were made. A broken clock and all that.
It’s worth a watch, but I’ll summarize it briefly here. During his speech, Laurence Fox produced a large manila envelope, claiming it contained a depiction of everyone’s favorite epileptic, child-marrying warlord. As he prepared to open the envelope, the interjections and Points of Order came fast and hard.
The fear in the room was almost palpable. In the Oxford Union, a bastion of free speech for 203 years, I saw the most craven reactions. They instinctively capitulated to the demands of a vile death cult.
Turns out, it was merely a rhetorical device. The picture inside the envelope was a caricature of Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. He made his point in devastating fashion.
This was a high-profile example of something I’ve been saying since I returned from the war in Afghanistan: Islam and the West are fundamentally incompatible.
Whataboutism
You and I both know it’s coming.
What about atrocities committed by [insert religion or political ideology]?
What about all the Muslims who have peacefully integrated in western society?
To the former, I’d say damn them too. You would be hard pressed to find an ideology that hasn’t been exploited to justify violence or personal gain. We’re human and we mostly suck. However, in the current era, it’s primarily the Abrahamic religions where the most despicable aspects of human nature are baked in. Islam is merely the culmination of that Abrahamic tradition, in which hatred and violence are a feature, not a bug.
As for the latter, the “not all Muslims” defense, let’s be honest. When push comes to shove, the fundamentalists hold the theological high ground because they quote the unvarnished literal text. Moderate or secularized practitioners lack the structural or scriptural authority to disarm fundamentalism within their own orthodoxy. That's a fatal flaw for which we all suffer.
Islamic apologists are quick to point out that the majority of Islamic violence is against other Muslims. That's not the defense they think it is. If an ideology treats its own heterodox adherents that way, what hope is there for a secular west?
No end in sight
I don’t think anything can be done at this point. We have this weird Christian nationalism thing happening in the US. Islam, driven more by migration and birthrates than conversion (despite the claims of the loudest da’wah dorks online), is successfully gaining footholds and demanding deference all over the west. Zionist Judaism has infected the highest levels of American politics.
We are all being held hostage by the cultists of an ancient desert deity. By and large, the courage to stand up for classical Western ideals – rational inquiry, individual autonomy, civic virtue – is no longer apparent.
Instead, our fear of causing offense is being exploited by ideologies that want to conquer, subjugate, and destroy.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
– T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men