Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

How the West Can Save Itself

After centuries of strife, the West has learned to separate religion and politics – to establish the legitimacy of its leaders without referring to divine command. There is little reason to expect the rest of the world – the Islamic world in particular – will follow.

We in the West find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men, stirring up messianic passions that can leave societies in ruin. We had assumed that this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that political theology died in 16th-century Europe. We were wrong. It's we who are the fragile exception.

Mark Lilla, professor of the humanities at Columbia University, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West (2007)

The twenty-first century belongs to Islam.

Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One, HarperOne, 2010

The twenty-first, and many centuries to come, as civilizations—if you can call them that—based on religious dogma can be quite resilient because of their ruthlessness in dealing with dissent.

The first civilization to be annihilated by the believers was that of the Arabs, and it’s been one after the other ever since, e.g. Persia. The Indian civilization survived, a much reduced entity, because there were simply too many that needed killing for refusing to submit to the Will of Allah, i.e., become Muslims; although the believers did give it a good try.

Based on Muslim chronicles of the period, and the demographic calculations done by historian K.S. Lal in his book Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, the largest known slaughter of an ethic group occurred during the Muslim conquest of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, e.g., modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Dr. Lal estimates that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million; meaning that for much of that period the death rate among Hindus exceeded their birthrate.

If the eminent historian’s estimates are even remotely accurate, this period would have witnessed the largest cold-blooded killing of an indigenous people in all written history. The immensity of the slaughter is even more impressive when you consider the most common weapon used to carry it out: a sword.

The Arabs realised that their civilization was at risk with Mecca’s surrender and mounted a resolute counteroffensive (see Chapter “Battle of Hunayn,” Jihad in the Koran, Boreal Books) but were unable to dislodge a now entrenched enemy and accepted the inevitable.

The death of us as individuals is inevitable as it seems is the death of civilizations. It does not have to be that way. The future does not have to be Islamic. Daoud offered the beginning of a strategy, that of persuading believers already here to accept Western values. That could prove to be an insurmountable task if we don’t limit the influx of “souls that need to be persuaded to change.”

THE CLEANSING OF MECCA AND AVOIDING A SIMILAR FATE

(Excerpt from Remembering Uzza, Boreal Books)

Bob: Uzza, is it true that when the Prophet visited the Ka'ba on the night Mecca surrendered, he destroyed the statues and relics of more than 300 religions^[304]?

Uzza: He did more than that. On the walls were paintings of prophets and other revered people. He had the walls washed and ordered everyone to destroy any statues and reproductions of the living and the dead they had in their homes.

Bob: Why?

Uzza: Allah, for a god who claims to be the most omnipotent of the omnipotent, is somewhat insecure in his omnipotence. He is afraid that people will be distracted by the worship of inanimate things like statuettes from worshipping his greatness. Any art that imitates life is also considered an act of creation, an infringement of a god's prerogative, and therefore must be destroyed.

Gerry: I have difficulty imagining a world whose art is confined to geometric shapes combining circles, lines, squares and triangles to avoid any representation, any resemblance, no matter how remote, to the human or animal form.

Uzza: I cannot imagine a world without Michelangelo and his David; the Mona Lisa of Leonardo de Vinci; the Greek statues celebrating the beauty of Venus and athletes of ancient Greece; the figures carved in stone in remembrance of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, not to mention the lion with the human face; the statues and art of the Roman empire; the paintings on the cave walls at Lascaux—and I AM MUSLIM.

Archie: Will you knock it off, you two? We get the message.

Uzza: NO, YOU DON’T! Soon the entire world will resemble Mecca after Islam. With the destruction of the so-called idols and most forms of art, the suffocating restrictions placed on women, the changing of the pilgrimages from a celebration of life to a celebration of death... from one day to the next all-embracing Mecca changed from a vibrant and welcoming community to a bleak and uninviting place.

Archie: Except for the believers.

Gerry: You didn’t say Muslims.

Archie: I am starting to understand what Uzza is getting at.

Uzza: The cleansing of the Ka'ba was followed by the cleansing of Arabia, bringing an end to the most enlightened civilization the Middle East has ever known.

Bob: Cleansing. That is a bit much isn't?

Uzza: NO, IT IS NOT! Cleansing is intolerance in action, whether it be intolerance for another race or intolerance of people of another religion or no religion at all. Muhammad’s actions at the Ka'ba and shortly thereafter when he decreed that all Arabs had to become Muslims within four months or face death or enslavement at the hands of the believers, speak for themselves.

Bob: But that is not like ethnic cleansing, like what was done by the NAZIs.

Uzza: The only difference is that the Jews could not change their race to save their lives. Your civilization is now facing its own cleansing. The funny thing is, it is your unthinking tolerance of intolerance, not unlike that of the Meccans, that has brought you to the brink of extinction.

Gerry: You're not saying that Western civilization should have indulged in a little cleansing of its own like the Serbs did at Srebrenica?

Uzza: NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! All they had to do was not let the intolerant in.

Bob: You mean a Muslim ban like Trump wanted?

Uzza: Again, NO! All you had to do was ask a few questions of Muslim immigrants as a first step to avoiding welcoming Islamists.

Archie: And those questions would be?

Uzza: 1. In the Koran, Allah says that "Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from him."

Do you agree?

2. In the Koran, Allah confirms that he sent Muhammad with what He refers to as "the guidance and the religion of truth, that He may exalt it above every other religion."

Do you believe that it is your duty as a believer, wherever you are, to do the same?

3. Prophet Muhammad said: "I have been made victorious with terror."

Do you believe that terrorism is a legitimate weapon in Allah's Cause?

4. In the Koran, Allah says it is okay to lie if it will further His Cause.

Would you lie to further Allah's Cause?

A yes to any of these questions would automatically disqualify a person as an immigrant or a refugee.

Archie: I would only ask one question: "Yes or No! Do you swear by the Koran?" That's it. Answer yes, and you don't get in.

Uzza: Somewhat simplistic, but better than no questions at all.

Bob: What is the second step?

Uzza: Deport anyone whose actions betray their allegiance.

Bob: I'll drink to that.

Archie: [raising his glass] And to the well-meaning pussies who gave up without a fight.

Uzza: The Meccans were not pussies, to use your derogatory term. And you will remember, it was a pussy who tried to get the men to resist (see Chapter “A Woman Who Slept Around Confronts Mecca’s Conqueror,” Remembering Uzza, Boreal Books). If they had had a leader like the one who rushed to retake Mecca from the believers instead of the cowardly Sufyan (see Chapter “Battle of Hunayn,” Jihad in the Koran, Boreal Books), things would have been a lot different.

Footnotes

[304] Narrated Abdullah:

When the Prophet entered Mecca on the day of the Conquest, there were 360 idols around the Ka'ba. The Prophet started striking them with a stick he had in his hand and was saying, "Truth has come and Falsehood will neither start nor will it reappear.”

Bukhari 59.583