Al Jazeera (English) Coming to a Station Near You!

Former editor-in-chief of CBC News Tony Burman was interviewed recently by the ever-adroit Steve Paikin of TVO (who I doubt will ever go to a Qatar station to make his point, and his career) about his new position of managing editor for Al Jazeera English. 

Burman is working on a possible new presence of Al Jazeera English on Canadian television. He appeared on the defensive during the whole interview, as though he was on an up hill battle to convince the Canadian public, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to include this channel on their viewing list. His anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Canadian stance is evident in these quotes I have provided from the interview.

But, what else would one expect from a former CBC employee?

Here are the quotes:

Anything [i.e. the Al Jazeera network] that is detested so much by Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney must have some redeeming merit to it.

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Our feeling is that we serve a wider interest than simply fawning after what the U.S. government does.

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We bring to the table a far more global, less parochial, less Western perspective.

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It was only after 9/11, when Al Jazeera had the temerity to actually report, that contrary to what was being claimed by the Americans, that civilians were being killed in Afghanistan, that Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney turned on it.

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That whole myth of an inappropriate relationship between Al Qaeda and Al Jazeera is nonsense.

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[Al Jazeera English’s] lens is very much of the perspective of the developing world. It tries to bring to the stage the voiceless, the peripheral part of the world, dare I say the majority of humanity, who often get ignored and marginalized by the centers of power.

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What it means…to a Canadian, or to an American, is that you have a far more comprehensive, a far more balanced view of the issues in front of us.

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It’s not biased, it is not ideological, but what it is is it is a greater reflection of the totality of this planet than you get in a narrow Western-centric, American-centric coverage that most of has have had in front of us for years.

I have to add that Burman's speaking style is mediocre and his words are at times undecipherable (just compare him to Paiken). And this is someone who spent the past 35 years or so as a leader in a national television and radio broadcasting service.

Muslims and Typhoid Mary

A reader sent me this link which compares Muslims with Typhoid Mary. It sounds like a harsh comparison, but this long article is actually a way the writer is trying to understands Muslim presence in Western countries.

Typhoid Mary, who tried to live a productive and useful life despite her illness, became a liability and a danger because she continued to infect people with this invisible disease.

Like Mary, Muslims have this invisible and dangerous disease, which is transferred to us by their presence here. They may be nice individuals, hard working people, pleasant friends. But, ultimately, everything that their religion brings with them will cause us harm, and even death.

The article is a little long, but it is worth reading for the unusual analogy.

Now Magazine's Unreliable Allies

Now's "Think Free" sign in the parking
lot across from Starbucks.
This was an unusual photo op.
Now's main office is just a few blocks up.

Ezra Levant's book, "Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights" is now fourth on the Globe and Mail hardcover best seller's list.

He writes about his first negative review, from Toronto's Now magazine entertainment writer Susan Cole. Her review admonishes him for publishing those infamous Mohammed cartoons, taking of course the standard "he hurt the feelings of Muslims" position which is what Human Rights Commissions were made for.

Now readers would have none of this, attacking Cole for attacking free speech. But, despite Now's slogan "Think Free", I still don't trust its readers (or its writers). If the HRC and the cartoon episode weren't such a blatant breach of journalistic integrity, Now readers would be as leftist as they come. "Think Free" really means, "Think Like Us Lefties".

Levant shouldn't be so pleased with their reaction. I doubt that in other issues, they would be on his side.

The Significance of the Cross

There are many ways to combat Islam. Some important strategies include: forming grass-roots and popular organizations; influencing government policies such as changing immigrations laws pertaining to Islam; writing about Islam both in an informative and analytic manner.

But, I don't think there has ever been a country that successfully defeated Islam without including religion into the equation. And of all the world's religions, Christianity has had the most success.

Western Europe, which only until a few decades ago was an unabashedly Christian entity, repelled Islam twice in its history. Even Islam occupied Spain managed to rid itself of all (at least superficial) Muslim influence. The East African Christian country of Ethiopia, after a devastating Muslim invasion, succeeded in regaining land and country in tact after only a few years of combat in the 15th century.

India, on the other hand, despite its valiant fight against Islam, is still overwhelmed by periodic internal invasions (or aggressions) by its resident Muslims. The Persians couldn't even sustain prolonged opposition to Islam and capitulated to the Muslims, even accepting Islam as their own religion. China seems to have been saved from constant Muslim aggression, unlike India, yet I would venture to say that their peace is brought about their very strict and stifling culture, which wouldn’t let any kind of dissent, let alone a religious one, into their country.

As well as using the many strategies to fight Islam I mentioned above, we cannot be ambiguous about the most successful one, which has been to include Christianity as a decisive force. That is why I have put the cross, the most recognizable and visible symbol of Christianity, on top of this blog. Even the Crusaders used it on their armor, their clothing, their shields and their flags. They knew they needed all the help they could get.

The Siege of Antioch, from a medieval
miniature painting, during the First Crusade.

ADDENDUM:
I should add that Muslims expressly use their relgious icons, symbols and texts in their mission to convert the whole world to Islam. I would think our correponding strenght would be to use our Christian symbols.

Muslim Immigrants (Again)

Upon re-reading my last post, I talk about immigrants (and specifically Muslim immigrants) in this manner:

That's the problem with immigration. We are forced to take people on a human level...

I should have written something like:

We are forced to behave towards immigrants in a humane way (meaning sympathetic, if not compassionate).

Of course all immigrants are human. But their very presence taxes our own human reflexes. Many people instinctively know, despite the MSM's assertion to the contrary, that Muslim immigrants are dangerous to our society. So, how should we behave towards individual Muslims, who are indeed many times nice people? Should we be antagonistic towards them? Sociable? Aloof? Generous? Tolerant?

This conflicting position in which they put us, negating our own humanness if we decide to treat them inhumanely, is brought about simply by their presence here. Our human nature tells us to be kind and respectful to people. Yet our survival instinct tells us that these are not people on par with us - they are not like us, and in fact they themselves wish our demise.

Responding to a Moderate Muslim's Arguments

I sent a link of my previous blog post Let's Get On With The Business Of Defending Ourselves Against Islam to Lawrence Auster with this email. I've posted his response, and my response to that.

KPA writes:

I spent a few days mulling over your debate with Supna.

The conclusion I came up with, which I have posted at my blog "Let's get on with the business of defending ourselves against Islam" is that like nominal Christians and reform/nominal Jews (maybe I should call them all cultural - add in the religion here), moderate/nominal/cultural Muslims are dangerous to society. All these groups almost always seem to be liberal, so besides promoting incorrect versions of their religions, they also push for liberal agendas.

I don't think Supna, despite her best intentions and pleasant personality, is able to bring anything forward in terms of moderate Muslims: no concrete and feasible ideas and no authoritative moderate group. As you say, most of her statements are wishful thinking, leading us down dangerous paths.

It is time to forfeit this group which has been called moderate, because even if it does exist, it is of no use to us, and is in fact dangerous in the long run in the fight against Islam.

I think this was the important insight I obtained from your debate.

Lawrence Auster replies:

Thanks for your thoughts on this. It's a tough issue. It's tough to say that the Supnas of the world are dangerous.

But two qualifications. First, Supna is doing something very positive in constantly bringing forward the true, negative aspects of Islam. For many people, hearing this message under the rubric that Islam itself is not bad may be the only way they can at present receive it. For observant audiences, her constant wishful thinking about the "good" Islam will not cancel out the negative things she says about Islam.

Second, we should understand there's nothing new or invidious in saying that certain people have a dangerous message. For example, Daniel Pipes, as I wrote at FrontPage in '05, is, at least half the time, an Islam apologist, meaning he's trying to make people believe that Islam is not the problem and threat that it really is. This makes him objectively dangerous. Supna works for Pipes and shares his basic outlook about Islam, so naturally she also is an Islam apologist.

Here is the section of my article (part one, second web page of four) in which I described Pipes as an apologist:

Pipes's ambivalence

Given Pipes's admission, in some articles, that moderate Islam has never existed as a concrete social and religious reality, and that "radical" Islam is therefore the historic norm of the faith after all, what explains his continuing insistence, in other articles, that radical Islam is only an extremist offshoot of the true, moderate Islam?

An opening into Pipes's contradictory thoughts on the subject can be found in remarks he wrote for an Islamic American magazine, The Minaret, in September 2000 (and which he repeated in the introduction of his 2002 book, Militant Islam Reaches America[2]). After praising Islam for the "extraordinary inner strength" it imbues in its followers and the great cultural achievements of its classical period, he said:

"I approach the religion of Islam in a neutral fashion, neither praising it nor attacking it but in a spirit of inquiry. Neither apologist nor booster, neither spokesman nor critic, I consider myself a student of this subject."

This is an odd comment for an intellectual to make. Since when does studying a subject preclude one from criticizing it? Since when does scholarship require non-judgmentalism? If Pipes were a student of, say, Soviet Communism, like his father the historian Richard Pipes, would he say that his scholarly approach to Marxism-Leninism prevented him from criticizing the Soviet Gulag, the millions of political murders, the enslavement of entire nations? Also, how can Pipes as a scholar expect his evaluations of Islam to be considered reliable if he announces up front that he will not render a negative judgment about it?

In any case, Pipes's personal motivations, whether for not wanting to be seen as a critic of Islam (which would be an understandable tactic of self-preservation given his exposed position), or for actually not wanting to be a critic of Islam (which would be harder to excuse), are not our concern. Pipes has already given us a meaningful and satisfactory explanation of his political motivations for avoiding a too searching critique of Islam: his fear that if we come to the conclusion that Islam is not and cannot be moderate, we will lose any basis for a constructive policy toward it and will be doomed to regard all Muslims as our eternal enemies. This is not a concern that can be lightly dismissed, and is probably shared by millions of Westerners. We will return to it in the second part of this essay.

What matters to us here is not Pipes's motivations, but the truth of his statements about the nature of Islam and about his role as a student of it. For a scholar in a field so filled with bloody controversy, there can be no such thing as the non-judgmental neutrality that Pipes attributes to himself. For example, Communist regimes, according to the most authoritative book on the subject, The Black Book of Communism, killed upwards of 100 million unarmed civilians in the course of the 20th century. If I speak this true fact about Communism, I am, perforce, a critic of Communism. If, conversely, I choose not to be critic of Communism, I can only do that by ignoring or minimizing its crimes, in which case I have ceased to be its student and have become its apologist. Therefore Pipes's claim that he is neither a critic nor an apologist is not true. As we have seen, sometimes he is one, sometimes the other. When he tells us that militant Islam is a fearsomely dangerous movement that threatens us all, and when he tells us that reformist Muslims falsely imagine the historical existence of a moderate and liberal Islam, he is being a critic. But when he tells us that only modern Islamism—not historic Islam—is dangerous, and that moderate Islam is the solution to radical Islam, he is being an apologist.

The false distinction between Islamism and Islam

Insofar as Pipes is a protector of Islam, the chief way he protects it is through his distinction between modern Islamism, with which he associates everything bad about Islam, and traditional Islam, which he describes, not neutrally, but in respectful, glowing tones....

KPA replies:

Yes, your point about Supna's contributions is well taken, given the fact that it is HER religion she is criticizing. I think many Muslims do really just simply want to live their own lives, and follow their own culture and religion. Maybe these do qualify as moderates in Supna's eyes. We cannot fault them for that. That's the problem with immigration. We are forced to take people on a human level, even if we know that ultimately they are dangerous and destructive to us.

Let's Get On With The Business Of Defending Ourselves Against Islam

I have written with interest, here and here, Lawrence Auster's latest presentation on Islam, this time his debate with moderate Muslim Supna Zaidi. I mentioned in my comments that this was probably the first time a moderate Muslim has debated someone who doesn't accept that terminology of Muslims, or if they do exist, their importance as a group.

And it was worthwhile following that event, illuminating for me something of this "moderate" Muslim who has been the subject of so many Islamic experts and scholars, and a qualifier that many Muslims have taken on.

Despite a full afternoon of presentations, debates, questions and even audience participation that tried to convince Miss Zaidi to the contrary, she still left with the idea that moderate Muslims are an authoritative group, and an antidote to the "radicals" and "Islamists" out there, and that they are allies of Western societies in combating the harm that (radical) Islam is causing.

Ultimately, nominal Muslims (perhaps that is a better term than moderate) are dangerous. They appear to be like the nominal Christians (and reform/nominal Jews), who tend to quote parts of their holy books to make their points, but who invariably lead societies down dangerous paths. For example, it is nominal Christians and Jews who use the biblical verses about helping strangers to validate illegal immigrants’ presence, thereby putting society in all kinds of dangers, both life threatening and other slowly encroaching problems such as affecting the economy.

There is also something of an elitism amongst nominal Christians and Jews, who find that their "fundamental" counterparts are callous and unduly harsh and unrefined in their approach to their religion and lives, making these kinder, gentler nominal Christians and Jews superior.

Miss Zaidi, and I assume her association (still to be formed) of moderate Muslims, seems to just want to live an unencumbered life maintaining her culture and what she perceives to be her religion. She even talks several times that religion (Islam, in her case) should be practiced privately. This is a glaring contradiction in the face of the very public and aggressive religion that Islam is. She keeps contrasting the aggressive Arab Muslims with the quieter (more moderate?) South Asian Muslims, despite her inability to put Pakistan in that category. Her point being that her brand of Islam – moderate and South Asian - is superior and less aggressive, and hence more in-line with Western societies, than the more primitive "radical" Islam.

I think ultimately, these nominal religious groups, elitist and pushing liberal agendas, are a danger to society. They use wishful thinking – as Mr. Auster aptly put it – to promote their version of the world, ignoring the realities and dangers which, in Islam’s case, is out to destroy all non-Muslim societies.

I think that we have given moderate Muslims, and their notion of moderate Islam, enough time to prove their points. As this interesting debate has demonstrated, they have nothing to show for themselves. There are no moderate Muslim groups and whatever splinters there are, they have proven themselves incapable of fighting off aggressive "radical" Muslims. Ironically, they may even be as dangerous to us as the "radical" Muslims they speak against.

It is time to forget about moderate Muslims and moderate Islam, and to get to the business of defending our societies from Islam, pure and simple.