No, this isn't a review of some new movie starring Ben Stiller, Alec Baldwin and Diane Keaton. It concerns a white Western Christian father and daughter -- Stanley and Rebecca Skreslet (the latter perhaps appropriately surnamed "Hernandez") -- involved in Islamic studies apparently in a context of Christian missionizing, with a long and seemingly deep presence and base in Egypt going back several years (well before the Arab Spring).
I don't really have much to report about them, nor much to say (I just happened upon them in my Googling); except to wonder why the heck they are not patently anti-Islam. Reading their résumés and vitae, and looking at photos of their well-meaning starry-eyed white faces, one cannot help but surmise that they too, like the majority throughout the West, are neurotically (if not psychotically) myopic to the grotesque evil and danger of Islam. No doubt, they count many Muslims as their colleagues and "friends". And no doubt, of those Muslims they likely deem to be part of the safely moderate and reformable majority, they have never seen fit to ask -- politely yet firmly without accepting the usual cat-and-mouse sophistry -- the tough questions that would reveal the normative fanatic behind the mask of glibly politic charm and civility.
9 comments:
As far as I am aware, some people on this planet, professing to be genuine Christians above all, seem effectively unable in their missionary zeal, to regard Islam as none other than - let's say - "a monotheistic religion with a moral imperative more or less (but not quite) on par with Christianity". Which is basically what tends to explain their efforts in expunging the Muslim doctrine to the point that all of its core doctrines, "not compliant with the moral codes of Christianity", are eagerly glossed over in an attempt to "reconcile" the Muslim with the only true faith's (Christianity's) moral imperative. In order to harness themselves against the ugly truths of Islam, it is therefore better to regard Muslims as adherents of a false doctrine (having strayed from this path) in order to make them "see the light", and hence the omission of these facts serves as an incitement to support this uphill battle of proselytism. It is in fact the deliberate cultivation of profoundly - and in fact equally fanatical - naivety on the part of the profoundly Christian missionary that stokes this proselytizing drive. If they were to think in a distanced an rational - philosophical way about the Quran and Islam, they would be able to make abstraction of the doctrine and consequently conclude that Islam is a totalitarian doctrine which can not be reasoned with in anyway and has nothing in common with Christianity, and thus, all attempts to proselytize would turn proactively futile in their minds.
In essence, this type of Christian is far from rational, which is to be expected from them, and more or less inadvertently sustains PC MC mythology of "us having something in common with Islam" from a viewpoint that is inherently mealymouthed in its Christian rhetoric, and at the same time sustains PC MC based on a totally different precept than that of malicious leftwing PC MC doctrine.
Some Christians can be Islamorealist, others simply can't. Some secularists, like myself, can be Islamorealist while others simply can't. That is alas the way of world. Some people start out being fanatically naive and stay in this phase, for whatever reason known to themselves, others progress gradually into inherently disingenuous PC MC tactics, again for reasons known to themselves, and the truth of the matter is, that never ever have I felt I could actually understand why people - seemingly rational on the surface - will eagerly want to go this way. It is beyond me to some degree why people want to prioritize this way and cling to such blinding stupidity, but the damning truth is, there's no way of stopping them. They have to make their own mistakes until they'll turn out reasonable in the end, if ever. Some people are simply lost !
Anathematic, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. I would just add that everything depends on a certain number of Western fence-sitters changing their minds about Islam. I think they will inevitably change their minds and that change will put out the lights of Islam -- the only question is whether that change will happen before, or after, a million or more of us have to be murdered by Muslims in the coming century.
"the only question is whether that change will happen before, or after, a million or more of us have to be murdered by Muslims in the coming century."
I agree with what you are suggesting. A few decades ago, the then still intermittent trouble with Islam seemed to be very much contained to sprawling large urban centers in Europe. Gradually, over the course of 3 decades (and in some countries like France even more than 5 decades) the spread of Muslim immigration made its presence equally felt in rural areas, to the same damning effect.
I feel that this pattern is likely to emerge in America as well. If the city of Detroit (among others) can serve as an example, then I certainly believe that rural societies can no longer expect to be living in a type of "splendid isolation", if you like. The whole problem will be fanning out from the metropolitan areas towards the countryside.
In Europe, I have seen how the issue has gradually evolved over time: if any urbanite had direct contact with Muslim communities 30 years ago and subsequently had something negative to say about Muslim immigration, then he would simply be labeled racist. However, this didn't seem to be much of a priority issue for PC MC pseudo-intellectuals at the time, and neither for people living outside of metropolitan areas, who simply shrugged their shoulders, like "that's not any of our concern".
This is no longer the case today. It seems to me that the more people will find themselves besieged and threatened by Islam, the more the awareness of the doctrine's precepts will be growing. And consequently, the more PC MC politicians and media will invest in trying to totally crack down on the freedom of speech and continually trying to focus on distorting the truth that Islam is incompatible with civilized society.
I sense a fear among people who have gradually become aware of the problem (and who used to be relatively unaffected by Islam) to speak up about it, because more than ever the MSM, in tandem with PC MC politicians, want to downplay the negative tendencies they themselves have helped to create. The bigger the oil slick of awareness becomes, the worse things will get, simply because no PC idiot can live with the idea that he can be accused of any wrongdoing. After all, they think of themselves as do-gooders first and foremost. At this point in time, the chasm between disdainful MSM and politicians on the one hand and the general public on the other seem unbridgeable.
So I agree that things will become much worse before they will get any better.
In fact, this whole issue has reminded me of a debate I watched ages ago between Robert Robert Spencer and Peter Kreeft. Just a few examples of Kreeft's idiotic, self-deluding wishy-washy line of reasoning from this debate. The man is dithering all the way through this debate:
"Bob knows much more about Islam than I do. It is a minor interest of mine and usually when I say something about minor interests, even when it's true, I get in trouble. Especially about controversial issues, like the sexual revolution or homosexuality or Islam!"
"For the first time in 450 years, the Church has issued a universal Catechism. There is a paragraph in it especially about Islam - just one - but I think this quotation is just about the most important one we can use about Islam. It says, paragraph eight, verse forty-one, "The Church's relationship with the Muslims: The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us they adore the One Merciful God, mankind's judge on the Last Day."
"But if you look at all the other commandments, especially the one that characterizes our society the most: Thou shalt not commit adultery, I think you can see why the Muslims are being blessed. Why are they conquering Europe? They tried to do it by force of arms for a thousand years and they couldn't do it; now they're doing it, why? Well, because they found a weapon much stronger than swords: it's called mothers. They are having children. They are deferring gratification, they are paying forward, they are respecting families, and we aren't. There's the fruit of the Enlightenment, of rationalism, individualism, secularism. If I had to choose therefore between a Muslim and a secular humanist defender-of-the-sexual-revolution Enlightenment person, for instance a Boston College theologian I would certainly choose the Muslim. To say that Islam is more our enemy than the Enlightenment is to say that people who believe in, love, and worship the One True God, even though in ways that are defective and very seriously defective, are worse than people who don't believe in God at all: that doesn't make sense."
"To say that our fundamental enemies are people who on a very deep level believe in love and worship and try to obey the same God although in a much more primitive and a much more barbaric way and through a heretical communications network but ones who've borrowed enough from Judaism and Christianity so that the attributes of Allah, the ninety-nine names of Allah are all found in the Bible, to say that they are more are enemies than our own apostates, that strikes me as absurd."
"Who is Jesus's real enemy? Is it Caesar? Is it the Roman soldiers? Or is it Judas Iscariot? Once we get the Judas Iscariots out of the Church, I think we may be able to convert Muslims and I would love nothing better than to convert Muslims. But the way you convert people is by holiness, by sanctity. Now, if we could meet on a fair battlefield here, in which the weapons were not swords but hearts, if we could send saints to Muslim countries and they send their saints to our country and we tried to convert each other by the power of sanctity... that would be a wonderful battle because nobody would lose. And I think we'd win more hearts than they would."
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/12/kreeftspencer-debate-transcript-is-the-only-good-muslim-a-bad-muslim.html
Go back to sleep, Peter Kreeft.
As far as I am aware, secularization of Law and Order was instated mainly as a consequence of Europe trying to transcend doctrinal polarization among warring Christian factions continually being at each others' throats until well into the early 19th century, plunging the continent into constant disarray. The separation of church and state had to be instigated in order to guarantee civic rights to all people in a stable nation-state, erasing the previously legal discriminatory policies of one doctrinal majority over a doctrinal minority. This is exactly what makes modern nation-states stable and civilized in the first place, and had led to philosophical pluralism. The founding fathers of the American republic took proactive measures to transcend this polarization from the inception of republic, being very well aware of the European situation at the time.
Peter Kreeft is first and foremost a typical example of the ruse "there can be no morality without religion" who adheres to the self-delusional logic of flowery Christian concepts that are only valid within his alienated mind, and therefore he doesn't understand the basic concept of secularization. Plus, thus it becomes imperative to downplay or ignore Islam's core precepts with the intent to find some common ground with Muslims. And as a consequence he singles out false enemies AND sustains PC MC in this manner at the same time !!
The stupid idea boils de facto down to approaching Muslims "respectfully" by focusing solely on the supposed shared value of monotheism - and nothing much else - otherwise a Christian doesn't stand a chance of converting a Muslim !!
So there you have it, I'd rather rely on a Christian like Robert Spencer who makes a genuine and realistic analysis of Islam and consequently knows who the real enemies are.
Anathematic,
If you haven't already read it, you might be interested in my take on the Spencer-Kreeft discussion back in November of 2010:
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2010/11/christian-wilsonianism-continued.html
Thanks for the tip, I wasn't aware of it. I have read it now. Very astute by the way. Seems quite accurate to me.
Thanks Anathematic.
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