Essays in Idleness

The siren call of Radical Islam is more likely to be heard by Muslims than by, say, Christians or Jews. It will be even more audible to Islamic converts, or “reverts.” Pat Buchanan, always worth reading for a view dissenting from the political establishment he believes to have gone insane, says something like this in a column I just read. It is in a list with other points made, defending a certain Donald Trump’s proposal for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the USA, while the political class sort out what they are doing. I think it is Buchanan’s most cogent point.

Trump I am happy enough to dismiss as a “fascist demagogue” — like all the previous U.S. presidents who declared or maintained such moratoria, to block one definable immigrant group or another. The United States would have ceased to be a Western country, generations ago, had these fascist demagogues not drawn a few lines.

Basic sovereignty confers this right on any national legislator. Trump’s proposal to “do something” about Muslim immigration, is thus hardly an innovation. Their failure to even consider such a measure is the single biggest reason “mainstream” political parties are losing their grip across Europe, too. I should think many of the people who declare Trump himself to be “a problem,” secretly exult in watching his rise. They want something done, and even if they don’t want Trump to do it, they enjoy his success in making elementary realities discussable again.

In fact, Trump is a typical liberal, and his moratorium a typical expression of asinine liberal thinking. That is to say: “Let us call a time out, while we find a way to fix this cock-up in our social engineering.” His views on everything are off the top of his head, but liberal premisses are the only ones he knows.

I think the chances he will become the next President are not high, but rising. He climbed another eight points after his moratorium suggestion. About ten more like that, and his bid is clinched.

Or put this another way. The “mainstream” politicians think the voters will swing back to them, when they realize how scary the “alternatives” are. One might describe this as the optimism of despair.

Or another. The liberal mind believes the present “Islamophobia” has been whipped up by demagogic politicians. The truth, as ever with the liberal mind, is the exact opposite. Demagogic politicians are, now as ever, exploiting what is already upwhipped. For after many tens of thousands of Islamic-themed terror incidents around the globe, Joe Public is not well disposed to Muslims, here or elsewhere. Verily, I would venture that in many places, even Muslims have become ill-disposed to Muslims.

The term, with the usual -phobia suffix, is misleading. I would go so far as to say that it is less fear, than loathing, and that it includes among many in Muslim countries a dangerously unpredictable self-loathing.

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I have lectured my poor gentle reader before on the primary issue, which has never gone away, and is thus unlikely to go away in the foreseeable future. Read your Koran, and you will find that the claims made by Messrs Daesh and company, to “speak for Islam,” are not entirely unreasonable. This is why the term “moderate Muslim” might have some relevance.

The great majority of Muslims, like the great majority of Christians today, do not take their religion that seriously. They prefer it watered down, often to homaeopathic doses. And yet there will always be revivals and, contrary to the hopes of liberals, the “core teaching” of each religion remains, ever awaiting rediscovery.

At the Reformation, Christianity was not “reformed.” It was jarred and split, but then it reassembled. The Catholic teaching did not go away. With time, even the most radically schismatic sects returned to something like the Catholic teaching, or left Christianity altogether. By comparison, Islam was apparently shattered, when it came into collision with European modernity. But it has been reassembling, ever since.

The idea of spreading Islam through violence is not a deviation. Indeed, the founder of that religion preached violence against all “infidels,” and set a personal example in spreading Islam through Arabia, by the sword. His successors continued thus, spreading the new religion from Morocco to India. Later Caliphs have honoured this precedent through fourteen centuries. Islam is not and has never been a “religion of peace.” It is a religion of war, and peace through conquest. Liberals may deny that anything in history really happened, but this is what did.

They may on the contrary insist, like the delusional Barack Hussein Obama Soebarkah, that Christians were sometimes violent, too. Darn right, but if he ever gets around to consulting his New Testament, he will find that this is not doctrinal. A Christian could remain doctrinally sound, and go through his whole life without killing, or even promising to kill should the opportunity arise, a single person. He might even proselytize, without uttering mortal threats. So could a Jew, for that matter; a Hindu, Buddhist, or Confucian — so far as I can see from my modest forays into comparative religion. The criticism is Islam-specific.

Which leads to the third liberal argument: that we are prejudiced against Islam. This is quite true in my own case, and that of every other observant Christian. But we also observe the Christian distinction between sin and sinner.

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Muslims, as all other humans, should be loved (which is not the same thing as “tolerated”). They should even be respected, as autonomous human beings, and left in peace if they do not threaten the peace. Those already in the West have rights, that must not be stripped without cause. To legislate retroactively is to behave like the Daesh. Christians must not go there. But if it was a mistake to let so many in, it does not follow that we must continue to do it.

Note moreover that I am not, as most pundits, trying to tell liberals and atheists what to do; or Muslims, for that matter. I think all these people should convert to Christianity, in its definitive, Catholic form. My current political thinking is directed to what Christians should do; or to what Christian governments might do, if we still had any. All others may go to Hell, if they so choose. If Jesus did not compel them to choose Heaven, how can I?

It is the religion, Islam, that we have always condemned, so fulsomely; not our Muslim brothers in the flesh. I have met many fine Muslims, especially in those countries where I lived or travelled among them. I have heard or read many noble attempts to interpret Islam in a Sufi, spiritual way. I have observed that, “We have a religion that is better than we are, while they are often better than their religion.” I have admired the many, extraordinary feats in science, philosophy, and the arts, done by great Muslims in centuries gone by. I have also noticed that these accomplishments were sooner or later disowned, within the civilization itself, as being in conflict with Islamic teaching.

We have seen this happen among Christians, too — bold acts of cultural self-immolation — when puritanical and iconoclastic factions have risen to power. The Catholic teaching has often been overthrown; sometimes restored; sometimes overthrown again. This tension between creative and destructive urges exists, likewise, in every other religious tradition. What makes Islam “special” among the world’s great religions is the puritanical and iconoclastic impulse, at its very core.

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Now, the difficulty for immigration departments at the present time, when vast numbers of Muslims are pouring out of the Dar al-Islam, and into what was formerly Christendom — mostly because their own countries are dysfunctional, and the West is an accessible honey-pot — goes like this. We want Muslims to be free to come, but on the condition that they do not take their religion seriously, and that neither they nor their descendants, once arrived, will ever be tempted to do so.

But again, we are governed by a liberal mindset, both post-Christian and post-logical. It thinks such a commitment could be guaranteed, or anyway should be taken at face value, whether or not sincerely professed. It thinks religions are capable of changing, even retroactively. No genuinely Christian mind, or even a moderately intelligent one, could abide such nonsense; and the whole idea of a “moratorium” is wrong. The ban should not be temporary.

Permanent settlement should be denied, though “safe passage” should be regularly granted to those visiting, or passing through. Long residence should also be granted, for purposes such as trade. There are precedents for all these things, after all (on both the Christian and the Muslim sides), and courtesies to be restored.

However, we should never have dreamed of letting probable followers of Mohammad settle in any significant numbers within the West. It could never end well, especially in a time when our own Christian civilization is weak, and their religion will encounter little resistance from our defenceless chicks. One does not invite the cuckoo to leave eggs in one’s nest.

Note that this view implies no animus towards Muslims, whatever. The Christian opposition is to Islam itself. I repeat this because, simple as it should be to understand, it is not understood by the liberal mind which, thanks I suppose to original sin, is extremely murky. People are born in Muslim lands, and into Muslim families; this cannot reasonably be held against them. And most people go with the flow; we should all know that. Our task cannot be to convert them at gunpoint. It is instead to inspire in them, by the use of reason and example, the realization that Mother Mary points not to Mohammad as the embodied saviour of mankind — but to her Son. If that is called proselytizing then yes, we are guilty as charged. But trying to save people involves no necessary “hatred” towards them.

These most recent refugees have made a claim upon our charity, in present and not past circumstances, and I for one do not hesitate to recommend the use of irresistible military force, to secure their safe return to their homelands. Most, anyway, express a desire to go home, and insist that they cannot do so. Indeed the majority, who are single, young, able-bodied males, might wish to volunteer as soldiers to help liberate their respective homelands. They could be enjoined to do so. (Under competent Western officers, of course, and after thorough Western training, with pay.) I would imagine them especially eager to do this, after the alternatives were explained to them. Those being: to be returned to whichever country they have claimed to be from; or to live permanently confined under guard in a camp at an obscure location.

These “armies of the displaced” would also include Christians (and others) who had continued to live, from time long before, in the lands of the Islamic conquest — and whose ancestral properties have now been taken away. In their case, too, I think decency requires us to annihilate their murderous oppressors, with their young, single, able-bodied males leading the charge. By such means, their lands could be recovered; and some Christian witness remain, in what were once Christian heartlands.

We have, after all — supposing that “we” to be Christian — the sheer military power to correct much serious injustice. For instance, beyond replacing evil governments, or quasi-governments, we could establish that there will be no more dhimmitude in the East, for Christians or any others; just as the Royal Navy once established that there would be no more slave trade on the world’s high seas. They did not accomplish this good work by “moral suasion,” to be sure — that only works on men who are moral — but by decisive military action, in the spirit of our old Crusades. By all means, let us revive that spirit.

But we are not sufficiently Christian; just post-Christian nancies; and so we allow terrible injustice to be done to the world’s most defenceless folk. Rather we should be real Christians, and real men.

Mercy and charity alike demand, however, that we look to the safety of our own, first. And Christianity requires that we should do what we can to convert those not already Christian, while we have their attention in our refugee camps — and this not only for the safety of Christians, but for the immortal good of their own souls. If these converts will be endangered on their return, then we have an obligation to protect or shelter them.

Saint Francis of Assisi could tell you all this. Genuine love for one’s Muslim neighbour requires us to seek his conversion, not merely to prevent his wrongdoing. And then, should he sincerely choose to convert, to welcome him joyously into the common safety of our homes, our Christendom. For he will now be a refugee, truly.