{"id":8147,"date":"2015-01-16T09:43:19","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T17:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8147"},"modified":"2015-01-16T09:43:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T17:43:19","slug":"western-sleepwalkers-and-the-paris-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/western-sleepwalkers-and-the-paris-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Sleepwalkers and the Paris Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

After all the brave words and feel-good marches, what significant action will be taken?\u00a0<\/em><\/h3>\n

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/p>\n

\"paris_francois-450x280\"The jihadist murderers are dead, after killing five more Parisians, but many Westerners, long drugged by bad ideas and received wisdom, continue to sleepwalk through the war against jihadism. This means that after all the brave words and feel-good marches, little significant action will be taken to prevent such atrocities from happening again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the absence of clear thinking and recognition of fact, responses to this latest example of Muslim violence reflect ideological fever dreams. \u201cNothing to do with the Muslim religion,\u201d as French president Fran\u00e7ois Holland said of the attacks, is a perennial favorite. Such apologists invoke shopworn Marxist bromides like colonialism, or postmodern magical thinking like \u201cOrientalism,\u201d the two-bit Foucauldian invention of Egyptian-American literary critic and fabulist Edward Said. This was the tack taken by an American historian of Egypt who told a New York Times<\/i> reporter that Islam was \u201c\u2019just a veneer\u2019\u201d for [jihadist] anger at the dysfunctional Arab states left behind by colonial powers and the \u2018Orientalist\u2019 condescension many Arabs still feel from the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many apologists, though, it\u2019s just easier to call the jihadists \u201ccrazy.\u201d Here\u2019s Vox\u2019s Ezra Klein, long-time purveyor of progressive orthodoxy, opining on the Paris murders. He fingers \u201cthe madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn\u2019t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

This repeats Jimmy Carter\u2019s mistake about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he called a \u201ccrazy man.\u201d But jihadists are not insane, and their violence cannot be dismissed so simply. They are proud Muslims, adherents of a 14-centuries-old faith that conquered its way to one of history\u2019s largest empires, the warriors before whom a now dominant, arrogant West once trembled. Their faith preaches that Allah wills the whole world to be united under the rule of Islam and its illiberal, totalitarian law code. Those who resist and refuse to convert are defying Allah; they are the enemies of Islam, the denizens of the \u201cHouse of War\u201d who endanger the spiritual wellbeing of the faithful in the \u201cHouse of Islam.\u201d As such, the infidels are the legitimate objects of Muslim violence, conquest, enslavement, and dominance, an aggression recorded on every page of history. If you want contemporary evidence for the reality of jihad, look around the world today, where Muslim violence is endemic, and accompanied by theological arguments drawn straight from Islamic scripture, theology, and jurisprudence.<\/p>\n

So contra Klein, the Paris jihadists didn\u2019t<\/i> do something \u201cthat almost no human beings anywhere ever do.\u201d As we speak, plenty of Muslim human beings every day in Nigeria, Libya, Syria, northern Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to name a few venues of jihadist violence, are doing \u201chorrible\u201d things like murder, torture, beheadings, rape, sex-slavery, crucifixion, and all the other atrocities that are also copiously documented in the history of Islamic conquest and occupation. As a brave Egyptian critic of Islam, Ahmed Harqan, asked recently, \u201cWhat has ISIS done that Muhammad did not do?\u201d Thus it\u2019s no coincidence that of the 7 global conflicts costing at least 1000 lives a year, 6 involve Muslims.<\/p>\n

Yet progressive orthodoxy dismisses this evidence as Islamophobic bigotry. Unable to deny the reality of theologically inspired Muslim violence daily filling the international news, they resort to blaming Western historical crimes, or scapegoating Israel. Another tack is to invoke the tu quoque<\/i> fallacy, charging that Hebraism and Christianity are just as violent as Islam.<\/p>\n

This argument took off after 9\/11 and has persisted among the jihad deniers. Historian of religion Philip Jenkins claimed, \u201cThe Islamic scriptures [about war] in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.\u201d Rabid anti-Zionist and apologist for terrorists Richard Falk played the moral equivalence card: \u201cThe Great Terror War has so far been conducted as a collision of absolutes, a meeting ground of opposed fundamentalists.\u201d Atheist gadfly Richard Dawkins complained about \u201cfundamentalist\u201d Christians who \u201cfuel their tanks at the same holy gas station\u201d as Muslim terrorists. Similarly, a few years ago, Salon ran a headline asking, \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick.\u201d This specious moral equivalence descended into the absurd after the attacks in Paris, when a guest on MSNBC equated \u201cIslamic extremism,\u201d which murders thousands a week, with preacher Jerry Falwell\u2019s 1988 unsuccessful libel suit against Hustler<\/i>magazine.<\/p>\n

But even right-thinking people slip into this species of apologetics. A writer atPajamas Media<\/i>, in an otherwise perceptive analysis, wrote this as well: \u201cUnfortunately, this civilizational friction between the west and Islam has ebbed and flowed across the centuries.\u00a0 It is nothing new.\u00a0 Islam threatened the gates of Vienna and the Crusades reached the Holy Land.\u201d This smacks of the \u201ccycle of violence\u201d trope usually used against Israel. What it ignores is the fact that someone started<\/i> the violence by serially invading and conquering the lands of others, and enslaving and oppressing their people. The siege of Vienna in 1683 was the last in a long history of Islamic military aggression against Europe and the centuries-long occupation of Western lands; the Crusades were an attempt to liberate from oppressive occupiers a land that had been Christian for centuries before being invaded by the armies of Islam.<\/p>\n

Most important, however, is the simple fact that the violence in the Old Testament is, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, descriptive, not prescriptive. It reflects the brutal reality of its times, not a theology binding the faithful for all times. As for the New Testament, the only violent verses apologists can dredge up, as a New York Times<\/i> article did last week, come from the apocalyptic predictions of Revelations<\/i>, or these words of Christ from Matthew: \u201cI come not to bring peace, but a sword.\u201d Grade-school catechumens know that this is a metaphor, not a call to jihad, like the Koranic verses instructing Muslims to \u201cslay the idolaters wherever you find them,\u201d or to \u201cfight those who do not believe in Allah,\u201d or to \u201ckill them wherever you find them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whitewashing of Islam\u2019s violent prescriptions serves another fantasy, the idea that there are vast majorities of \u201cmoderate\u201d Muslims whose \u201creligion of peace and tolerance\u201d has been \u201chighjacked\u201d by a tiny number of \u201cextremists.\u201d Yet most who make this case just assert it, rather than providing empirical evidence. Wall Street Journal<\/i> columnist Peggy Noonan, for example, quoted one of the Danish cartoonists who had to go into hiding after being attacked at his home for drawing one of the infamous Mohammed cartoons. He is hoping for \u201ca reaction from the moderate majority of Muslims against this attack [in Paris].\u201d Noonan then responds, \u201cThat majority actually exists, and should step forward.\u201d This call to moderate Muslims was also made in theWall Street Journal<\/i> by French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy: \u201cThose whose faith is Islam must proclaim very loudly, very often and in great numbers their rejection of this corrupt and abject form of theocratic passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

But we\u2019ve been waiting ever since 9\/11 for moderate Muslims to \u201cstep forward\u201d and \u201cproclaim very loudly\u201d that the jihadists have distorted their faith. A few apologists, brave critics, and duplicitous spin-doctors have spoken out, but the Muslim masses globally have been mostly silent. Of course, many Muslims have no desire to follow Islam\u2019s precepts about waging jihad, and just want to live their lives in peace. But there have not been mass marches protesting those who murder in their name and who allegedly \u201ccorrupt,\u201d as Eric Holder said in Paris, Islamic theology. Perhaps last Sunday\u2019s rally of over a million Parisians will turn out to be an exception, assuming it included significant numbers of Muslims. But will there be any follow-through after the emotional high passes? Or will this moment of multicultural brotherhood dissipate, as it did following France\u2019s 1998 World\u2019s Cup soccer victory, when a million Parisians gathered in celebration?<\/p>\n

This silence of the Muslim masses about jihadist terror has been the case for over a decade of such attacks. In 2004 after the brutal murder of Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam\u2013\u2013another attack on free speech\u2013\u2013only a handful of Dutch Muslims attended a public rally and memorial service. In the intervening years, after similar attacks\u2013\u2013like the murder of 7 French Jews and soldiers in 2012, or the 3 Jews massacred in Brussels in 2014\u2013\u2013we have not seen the kind of public, unequivocal, unqualified, mass condemnations of the jihadists one would expect if the latter were a fringe whose beliefs are so alien to traditional Islam.<\/p>\n

What we have<\/i> seen are thousands of Muslims celebrating in the streets after 9\/11. We have seen riots and murders in response to Westerners exercising the right to free speech. We have seen rallies against Israel in which nakedly genocidal rhetoric is indulged\u2013\u2013\u201cHamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas\u201d is a favorite\u2013\u2013 and temples attacked, as happened during Israel\u2019s war against Hamas last summer. And we have seen polls<\/a> consistently demonstrate that significant numbers of Muslims, including large majorities in the Middle East, continue to support an illiberal, intolerant shari\u2019a law that codifies the attitudes and beliefs justifying such violence.<\/p>\n

Our ancestors for centuries acknowledged the true nature of Islam, a simple fact proven by 1000 years of Muslim aggression. Alexis de Tocqueville, one of our most brilliant political philosophers, wrote in 1838, \u201cJihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. \u2026 The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels \u2026 [T]hese doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran \u2026 The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that was when our leaders and intellectuals, schooled by history and experience, their minds not blinded by fashionable self-loathing and incoherent cultural relativism, were \u201cmen of good sense.\u201d Our leaders today have slipped into delusional dreams, in which people like Tocqueville or Winston Churchill\u2013\u2013who in 1897 said, \u201cCivilization is face to face with militant Mohammedanism\u201d\u2013\u2013are dismissed as ignorant bigots and racists who lack our superior knowledge and morality. Meanwhile, the bodies of jihadism\u2019s victims continue to pile up, and Iran\u2019s genocidal theocracy closes in on a nuclear weapon. And many in the West continue to sleepwalk through it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After all the brave words and feel-good marches, what significant action will be taken?\u00a0 by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The jihadist murderers are dead, after killing five more Parisians, but many Westerners, long drugged by bad ideas and received wisdom, continue to sleepwalk through the war against jihadism. This means that after all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[842,22],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-27p","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3825,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/not-a-time-for-wishful-thinking-about-egypt\/","url_meta":{"origin":8147,"position":0},"title":"Not a Time for Wishful Thinking about Egypt","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has occasioned all manner of democracy happy-talk in the West. From the Democratic White House to the neo-con\u00a0Weekly Standard, it is bliss to be alive at the moment that democracy is finally emerging in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3362,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/running-scared-of-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":8147,"position":1},"title":"Running Scared of Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. 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Thornton City Journal On November 18, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0ran a full-page ad entitled \u201cA Christian Response to\u00a0A Common Word Between Us and You.\u201d\u00a0A Common Word\u00a0is an October letter from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics \u201cto leaders of Christian churches, everywhere.\u201d It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1024,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/on-ewald-stadler-another-european-who-gets-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":8147,"position":3},"title":"On Ewald Stadler: Another European Who Gets Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce s. Thornton RightNetworks.com Those of us who are hard on Europeans for their cringing appeasement of Muslim aggression need to acknowledge and support the brave few who speak out against it. The late Oriana Fallaci challenged her fellow Europeans to recognize the threat that unassimilated Muslim immigrants and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5458,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/by-the-sword-ibrahim-and-spencer-unveil-the-truth-of-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":8147,"position":4},"title":"By the Sword: Ibrahim and Spencer Unveil the Truth of Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The\u00a0New York Times\u2019s Thomas Friedman is right on the mark most of the time in his analysis of the dysfunctions troubling the Muslim world and of our own failures in confronting them. Particularly important is his frequent criticism of our feckless disregard of our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5380,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/muslim-moderates\/","url_meta":{"origin":8147,"position":5},"title":"Muslim “Moderates”","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What's in a word? by Bruce S. 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