Explosive: Must read

Ray · 02-08-2007, 04:16 AM

Quote:

CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND
- The thrill of saying something vile
MUKUL KESAVAN
mukulkesavan@hotmail.com

Hitchens: bringing up the rear

For an Indian, one of the most instructive things about the response of the West to 9/11 is how swiftly large sections of its liberal establishment circled their wagons against Muslims. Instructive because this manoeuvre illustrates the extent to which Western democracies are based on majoritarian assumptions, assumptions that override the liberal values that in easier times are invoked as the distinguishing features of countries like Britain, France and the United States of America. Even more interesting is the way in which the case for the illiberal, coercive and even punitive treatment of Muslims is made, the way in which the demonization of Muslims as a matter of public policy is presented as a properly liberal project for all but soft-headed, bleeding hearts.

A short essay that illustrates this tendency perfectly is Christopher Hitchens’s review of Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It which can be read online at this url: City Journal 17_1_urbanities-steyn.html.

Steyn is a hawkish right-winger who argues in his book that the West, with the exception of the US, has surrendered to the jihadist tendency within Islam. Europe, in particular, with its doctrines of multiculturalism and its declining birth-rates, is doomed to be taken over by fast-breeding immigrant Muslims who see its woolly tolerance for the weakness that it really is.

Hitchens, who started his political life as a Trotskyist, decided after 9/11 that he had found a political project worthy of the rest of his life, namely, unrelenting opposition to the menace of fundamentalist Islam for which he coined a term, “Islamofascism”. He supported the American invasion of Iraq for many reasons, one of which was Saddam Hussein’s alleged alliance with al Qaida.

Hitchens likes Steyn’s book, agrees with its main arguments, finds it admirably tough-minded, and praises Steyn for his pioneering work in making people aware of the menace of Islamism. For Hitchens, Steyn makes an “immensely convincing case” for the imminent swamping of European civilization by Muslim migrants who breed much faster than the local white population. This quote from the book (chosen by Hitchens in his review) summarizes Steyn’s argument from demography: “Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out — as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosn-ia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.”

Hitchens has a few reservations about Steyn’s conclusions: it’s a reductionist explanation of the Bosnian violence because it doesn’t account for Croation irredentism, and Steyn makes a Muslim-European clash seem inevitable because he mistakenly sees Muslims in Europe as a single monolithic community when, in fact, immigrant Muslims are hugely various. But Hitchens’s differences with Steyn are minor ones: he agrees that Muslim birth-rates are a portent of disaster because Islamists publicly proclaim their intention to take over Europe by outbreeding the natives and these statements feed the paranoia of far-right parties and their adherents. Hitchens is persuaded by Steyn’s main point that demography and liberal guilt (cultural masochism in Hitchens’s words) “are handing a bloodless victory to the forces of Islamization”.

Western liberals who can’t see this, argues Hitchens, are disabled by a knee-jerk, politically-correct reflex: “Any emphasis on the relative birth rates of Muslims and non-Muslim populations falls on the liberal ear like an echo of eugenics.”

The problem with this is that the reason the liberal ear responds the way it does is because Steyn, Hitchens’s hero, explicitly makes a eugenic prescription: “The Serbs figured that out — as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ‘em (italics mine).”

To an Indian, this isn’t language that even the Bharatiya Janata Party would use in public. It’s the rhetoric of explicitly fascist parties: the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Shiv Sena, the Bajrang Dal. This ideological convergence in the ideas of the muscular European liberal and the militant Hindu fascist isn’t an aberration.

The one real disagreement that Hitchens has with Steyn, is his dismissal of Martin Amis as a Western surrender monkey rabbiting on about global warming, when the main threat to the world is overheated Muslims. Hitchens defends Amis’s credentials as a liberal soldier in the war against Islamism by offering the following quote from an interview with Amis in the London Times: “There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation — further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children... They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs — well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.”

This little manifesto for persecuting Muslims is, for Hitchens, an admirable ability to think outside the liberal box. With that “Don’t you have it?” Amis is enjoying the thrill of saying something vile and simultaneously reassuring other white, non-Muslim people that it’s okay to think this way. But Hitchens sees this as a sign of intellectual courage, a recognition that extraordinary threats call for extraordinary responses.

To single out Muslims for special attention is fine because religious profiling is not the same as racial profiling. Muslims are a religious community not a race, the adherents of an “often ideological religion”, so it’s okay to want to do the things that Amis ticks off. Liberals shouldn’t make the stupid mistake of equating Muslims with dark-skinned Third-Worlders. Except that the man Hitchens has just quoted, Amis, makes an explicit connection between race and religion: you can’t start “strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan” without a racial profile or two in your head.

Towards the end of the review, Hitchens offers the West a ten-point programme for resisting Islamism. High on the list is this suggestion: “A strong, open alliance with India on all fronts, from the military to the political and economic, backed by an extensive cultural exchange program, to demonstrate solidarity with the other great multi-ethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism.”

In Hitchens’s bizarre world, the world’s largest pluralist democracy, home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world, would make common cause with the likes of Amis and Steyn whose prescriptions for saving civilization include systematic discrimination against Muslims, collective punishment, deportation and strategic “culling”. Hitchens argues that it’s important for liberals to stake out this rhetorical position because he doesn’t want anti-Islamism (his term for being anti-Muslim in a respectable way) to become the monopoly of fascists. Muscular liberals like Amis and Hitchens would deny them that space.

By a grotesque ideological sleight of hand, Hitchens would join the West to this great “multi-ethnic democracy” using arguments that are only used in India by parties that would, if they could, create an ethnic, Hindu supremacist state. This convergence is not an accident: by making prejudice respectable, by short-circuiting due process, by presuming collective guilt instead of affirming the presumption of individual innocence, Hitchens and Amis have become what they pretend to pre-empt.

It’s not a nice picture: Milosevic, Le Pen, Nick Griffin, Bal Thackeray, Praveen Togadia, Narendra Modi, Mark Steyn, Martin Amis and Hitchens bringing up the rear. Captions occur to me: Group Portrait with Rabies, perhaps, or Christopher and his Kind.
The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion

I wonder what you have to say of this!

Archer · 02-08-2007, 04:36 AM

No offence intended to you sir for bringing this article to our attention, but Mukul Kesavan needs to get his head out of his posterior and the Telegraph needs to be less of a commie flagpole.

Chris Hitchens is a died in the wool leftist who finally left his intellectual perch and took a stand against Islamism. That now makes him infra dig to the lofty minds in the Indian Left.

Mark Steyn - well one can agree & disagree with several of his statements, but the basic facts are thus. The US has a far lesser % of Muslims & hence they can afford to talk tough or be "non PC" or "insensitive". Our mixture of dhimmitude and political compulsions based on demographics dont allow us to do the same. Mukul Kesavan should realise the compliment offered by Mr Hitchens, namely India is a country that is being attacked by Muslim fascism from Pak & Bangladesh and has managed to fight it without alienating its own Muslims (for the most part). Unfortunately, he displays the typical scalded rabbit reaction of most Indian commentators- any mention of Islam in a non syrupy light, and either the critique is a fascist (see how he lumps Steyn & Hitchens as those) or a hindutvadi fascist (there we have Modi, duly mentioned), but nary a criticism of Islam accepted and any critical oblique reference to Pak reflects on Islam and hence Indian Muslims. A leap of logic!

Dhimmitude cent per cent, and then we wonder why we cannot often handle security issues.

Srirangan · 02-11-2007, 01:40 AM

How many friends and relatives has Mr. Kesavan lost to the Jehadis?

Karthik · 02-11-2007, 06:49 AM

Religious profiling is not the same as racial profiling? What was the difference between those butchered by the Nazis and those who got massacred in Rwanda?

Looks as if this article was written by this commie with his mind on dinner.

Ray · 02-11-2007, 06:57 AM

Religious profiling is not feasible without distinctive signs being displayed like a goatee beard or a shaven head with the little string of hair hanging like a tail or repeated kissing of the Crucifix as the aircraft takes off!

Samudra · 02-11-2007, 13:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

Religious profiling is not feasible without distinctive signs being displayed like a goatee beard or a shaven head with the little string of hair hanging like a tail or repeated kissing of the Crucifix as the aircraft takes off!

I'm told there is one more 'feature' for Moslem males.

Tronic · 02-11-2007, 15:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samudra

I'm told there is one more 'feature' for Moslem males.

one more? I think Ray sir just described a Muslim, Hindu and a Christian..

woops... religious profiling? lol...

Karthik · 02-11-2007, 23:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

Religious profiling is not feasible without distinctive signs being displayed like a goatee beard or a shaven head with the little string of hair hanging like a tail or repeated kissing of the Crucifix as the aircraft takes off!

I was reading a book on yoga, which said religious attire and demenour is good and that too much association with secularists was bad!

T_igger_cs_30 · 02-12-2007, 00:31 AM

Quote:

Europe, in particular, with its doctrines of multiculturalism and its declining birth-rates, is doomed to be taken over by fast-breeding immigrant Muslims who see its woolly tolerance for the weakness that it really is.

Whether one agrees with the document as a whole, or the writer,you cannot deny some of the statements are or maybe will become fact. Haveing seen instances of this in area's of my home city in the UK, and surrounding cities, where groups of immigrants have overtaken whole area's by simply this means.............It is a problem.

Ray · 02-12-2007, 02:24 AM

Quote:

fast-breeding immigrant Muslims

The syntax reminds me of the fast breeder nuclear reactors!

Srirangan · 02-12-2007, 02:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by T_igger_cs_30

Whether one agrees with the document as a whole, or the writer,you cannot deny some of the statements are or maybe will become fact. Haveing seen instances of this in area's of my home city in the UK, and surrounding cities, where groups of immigrants have overtaken whole area's by simply this means.............It is a problem.

Sad to say but Europe & U.K. is bound to be 'Pakistaned' by 2050. Irony..

T_igger_cs_30 · 02-12-2007, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Srirangan

Sad to say but Europe & U.K. is bound to be 'Pakistaned' by 2050. Irony..

Ya think?

Srirangan · 02-12-2007, 02:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samudra

I'm told there is one more 'feature' for Moslem males.

What would that be sir?

MaxiBig · 02-26-2007, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Srirangan

What would that be sir?

hmm....hmmm... I think that 'feature' would be 'circumcision'.

Correct me i am wrong.

02-08-2007, 04:36 AM	#2 (permalink)
Archer *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 10-13-03 Posts: 2,888	No offence intended to you sir for bringing this article to our attention, but Mukul Kesavan needs to get his head out of his posterior and the Telegraph needs to be less of a commie flagpole. Chris Hitchens is a died in the wool leftist who finally left his intellectual perch and took a stand against Islamism. That now makes him infra dig to the lofty minds in the Indian Left. Mark Steyn - well one can agree & disagree with several of his statements, but the basic facts are thus. The US has a far lesser % of Muslims & hence they can afford to talk tough or be "non PC" or "insensitive". Our mixture of dhimmitude and political compulsions based on demographics dont allow us to do the same. Mukul Kesavan should realise the compliment offered by Mr Hitchens, namely India is a country that is being attacked by Muslim fascism from Pak & Bangladesh and has managed to fight it without alienating its own Muslims (for the most part). Unfortunately, he displays the typical scalded rabbit reaction of most Indian commentators- any mention of Islam in a non syrupy light, and either the critique is a fascist (see how he lumps Steyn & Hitchens as those) or a hindutvadi fascist (there we have Modi, duly mentioned), but nary a criticism of Islam accepted and any critical oblique reference to Pak reflects on Islam and hence Indian Muslims. A leap of logic! Dhimmitude cent per cent, and then we wonder why we cannot often handle security issues. __________________ Karmani Vyapurutham Dhanuhu My bow is stretched for its task

02-11-2007, 01:40 AM	#3 (permalink)
Srirangan *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 08-06-04 Location: New Delhi Posts: 3,030 Country:	How many friends and relatives has Mr. Kesavan lost to the Jehadis? __________________ I rant, therefore I am.

02-11-2007, 06:49 AM	#4 (permalink)
Karthik Seeker of Rivendell *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 12-15-04 Posts: 1,569 Country:	Religious profiling is not the same as racial profiling? What was the difference between those butchered by the Nazis and those who got massacred in Rwanda? Looks as if this article was written by this commie with his mind on dinner. __________________ "There is no excellence in all this world that can be separated from right living." - David Star Jordan My Blog

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Read this and laugh. Then cry.	Bluesman	Political Discussions	10	09-21-2006 01:19 AM
One of the very best articles I've ever read. EVER.	Bluesman	Warfare in the Modern Age	14	02-06-2006 10:49 AM
Dark Waters - must read book!	magic-spaceship	Naval Forces	6	07-14-2005 15:14 PM
Joint Strike Fighter vs. Eurofighter	Praxus	Military Aviation	93	12-22-2004 19:45 PM

02-11-2007, 06:57 AM	#5 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 27,248 Country:	Religious profiling is not feasible without distinctive signs being displayed like a goatee beard or a shaven head with the little string of hair hanging like a tail or repeated kissing of the Crucifix as the aircraft takes off!

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)