The End is Nigh?

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America, American Liberty, BBC, bbc bbc, Boris Johnson, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, Facebook, Islam, Islamisation, Islamisation of London, london, Mayor, mayor mayor, mayor of London, Multiculturalism, muslim mayor of london, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, sadiq, sadiq khan, sadiq mayor, Twitter

The news that Sadiq Khan (the Muslim son of a Pakistani bus driver) has been elected Mayor of London hasn’t exactly gone down well with the British people. Here is a representative reaction cropped from the comment section of a popular right-wing newspaper:

“Bye Bye London. It was nice knowing you. Can’t believe what’s happening to this country.”

Here’s another – “We’re doomed. This is the end. We knew it was coming. Shame on those who did nothing to stop it. I used to love visiting London as a kid. I won’t bother doing that now. Tragic.”

And here’s one more – “Hardly surprising. There are no English people left in London. It’s part of Pakistan now. Used to be such a lovely city.”

It would be easy – and conventional – to label such responses hysterical and exaggeratedly doomly. That is exactly how they are being framed by the liberal press. But are they really an overreaction? The answer is complex.

As Mayor of London, Mr Khan will have very little political power. The position of Mayor is almost entirely bureaucratic, with the functions of the office largely confined to issues like transport, museum fees, rubbish disposal and recycling. Despite that, few positions are more symbolic than the Mayoralty of our Capital.

When the man or woman who replaces Barack Obama visits London, he or she will be required to meet with Khan as a matter of tradition. There is no way around it. For the President to refuse this meeting would be loudly condemned by both ends of the spectrum of political acceptability. And this applies to all foreign leaders who visit the UK, including the premiers of China, France, Israel, Canada and India.

Mr Khan will often be the first living thing a foreign leader will encounter upon visiting the United Kingdom. He is the welcome mat; the red carpet; our best Sunday suit. This is one reason to be worried, for being an official representative of a major nation provides Khan with enormous ‘soft’ power.

Should Donald Trump enter the White House this coming November, he will be expected by his electors to follow through on promises he made over the election season. And most notable among these promises, at least for people of our political persuasion, was the promise to close the borders of the United States to all practitioners of the Muslim faith. While this policy was and is enormously popular with the American public (and the British public, for that matter), it will be very difficult to enact without setting off an organised wave of condemnation from leaders across the world. As to whether this makes any difference to President Trump depends to a large extent on how influential Muslims are in other Western countries. It matters little or nothing if the Sultan of Brunei decries the President from his little, irrelevant fiefdom. But it does matter if a certain Mayor lobbies the UK government to bar the US President from London, a city which hosts a massive proportion of the world’s economic and political get-togethers.

As Mayor, Mr Khan will have high-level access not only to the government, but also to the monarchy. The Queen herself will be expected to meet with Khan on occasion to discuss all manner of topics, ranging from economic matters to the status of foreign leaders. While the Queen, like Mr Khan, occupies a largely ceremonial position, it is nevertheless invested with considerable emotional importance. The Queen’s viewpoint (expressed, for example, in the annual Christmas Day speech) is taken a million times more seriously than the view of a commoner. Will Khan seek to influence the Queen? It isn’t exactly far-fetched to predict that he will.

Finally, we must also consider the effect that a Muslim mayor of London will have on our national-cultural identity. London is the most important site in the British Isles – the place where the economic, political and cultural elites reside and make their decisions. Though citizens of other areas might begrudge the idea, London still leads the way in setting the cultural tone for the rest of the United Kingdom. In what way will having a Muslim mayor change London’s cultural self-concept? Again, we don’t know, but this must be considered.

I do not personally believe the election of Sadiq Khan means Britain has succumbed to Islam. It is simply a sign that London’s British identity is slipping further into the multicultural gunge. I’d love to suggest a way of halting this decline, but I’m not entirely sure there is one.

D, LDN.

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The De-Saudification of the Middle East.

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Arabian empire, Britain First, Civilisation, Coffee, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Gulf, Gulf Monarchies, Iran, Islam, Islamisation, Modern, Modernism, Modernity, Muslims, OPEC, Qatar, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Imperialism, United Arab Emirates, Wahabbiism, Wahabi, Wahabiism

After Hezbollah’s last war with Israel, swathes of Lebanon lay in heaped ruins. Proud and distinct, the country quickly set itself the goal of rebuilding – a goal it met with staggering speed. Within months, there were office blocks, shiny new transport hubs and large, well-equipped schools. Where did the money for this come from?

Excepting Western aid, the money came from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and it came with a price-tag. In exchange for the flow of cash, Islamic institutions designed to cater to Lebanon’s small Sunni community were erected, most of them set up to preach the uniquely hateful brand of Islam that is Saudi’s most notorious export.

Similarly when Pakistan hit dire economic times in 2010, having been struck by natural disasters and waves of terrorism, Saudi money poured in like never before. New schools, Mosques and madrassas were built on the banks of the flooded plains, all of them designed to adhere to the Saudi religious tradition.

And in Europe, a large proportion of the new ‘Mega-Mosques’ sprouting up in Berlin, London and Paris are likewise funded by Saudi money, the same kind of theology central to their intended operation.

With the power and influence that naturally comes from limitless financial resources, the Saudi royal establishment has radicalized much of the modern Middle East, and from that base, now seeks to Islamise the world.

The motivation behind this project is obvious. Saudi Arabia, being the birthplace of Sunni Islam and in control of its holiest sites, aspires to be the executive of the Muslim world, with Riyadh as the Islamic capital, Saudi wealth funds as the Islamic bank, and the Saudi military (best-described as the world’s largest arms-dump) as the Islamic armoury.

You would be wrong to think that the rest of the Middle East approves of this arrangement. Far from it in fact. The Saudi elite are generally recognised for what they are; a corrupting influence holding restless millions back in a savage, unworkable past.

If you type the words “We are not Arabs” into google or facebook (and manage to scroll past the Iranian websites and blogs) you will find the same protest from Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, Algerians, Moroccans and even Palestinians. The ‘Arab world’ is an empire of language, held together by the influence of the original Arabian nation, now called ‘Saudi Arabia’ but best described as simply ‘Arabia’.

And it’s certainly accurate that little loyalty binds a Moroccan to a Sudanese, a Syrian to a Yemeni, or a Lebanese to an Algerian. Little if anything at all. Understood this way, Saudi Arabia is the head of an ’empire of the imagination’, and this means the West has considerable leeway to fragment a hostile bloc and diminish its collective power.

It is often pointed out by the Islamic world’s apologists that prior to the Iranian revolution in 1979, Muslim countries enjoyed a very long period of docility and reform. Before that unwholesome climacteric, Egypt, Syria, Iran and even Afghanistan were taking steps to democratise, liberalise and secularise. There are photographs of women wearing Western dress in 1920s Iraq, 1940s Afghanistan, 1960s Egypt and 1970s rural Pakistan. Multi-sex schools of Western design used to peacefully operate in places now fully segregated by Islamic custom. Music, even Western music, used to be played openly in Afghan villages. Locally brewed beer used to be a significant Egyptian export. And for most of this period, Socialism not Islamism was the main repository of popular discontent.

Something changed all this. Something served to derail it. It is easy (and conventional) to blame the Iranian revolution itself, which certainly ruined a lot of progress both in and outside the sphere of Iranian influence. But this is not enough to satisfy.

I think it more likely that the Saudi regime, having recently demonstrated its economic power in the 1973 oil boycott, took over at this point as the Islamic world’s political kingpin – and soon after, as the premier source of Islamic theology.

How might we encourage the de-Saudification of the Middle East? How might we wind the clock back to the period of slow but real modernisation that was interrupted by the growth of Saudi economic power?

One answer to this may be fracking, a method of energy extraction that will see America go energy independent in this decade and could provide a similar liberty for Europe.

Only Environmental concerns (often misguided) are preventing the West from unlocking the full benefits of this technology. The protests from Saudi and Russian officials are inevitable and loud but can be safely ignored if we redevelop our confidence.

I believe that by sinking Saudi we will not only liberate ourselves, but also the third world from a demonic monopoly, a regressive authority and the leading cause of violent Islamism.

D, LDN.

Who Knew?

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Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, decadence, Defend the modern world, Detroit, Facebook, Imam, Iran, Islamisation, Islamism, masturbation, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, sex, sex and, sexuality, Turkey

According to a Turkish Imam, when men masturbate they risk impregnating their hands.

Once again… According to a Turkish Imam, when men masturbate they risk impregnating their hands.

Now, before you jump to any rash conclusions about the scientific basis on which this claim is made, I must inform you that the hands are only impregnated in the afterlife, and this explains the lack of earthly evidence with which the Imam might back up this theory in the present, terrestrial domain.

Though he has not been pressed much further on the matter, the idea he imparted has great implications for those who hope to survive death, and such people are understandably desperate for certain clarifications. For example, if the hands are pregnant, from what part of the body does the child emerge? Is morning sickness in the wrists?

It’s very easy to laugh at Islamic madness. Despite that, I thoroughly recommend it.

D, LDN.

The Clash of Sexualities.

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American Liberty, Britain First, cab driver, ceri, ceri linden, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, EDL, English Defence League, Islam, Islamisation, masood, masood mansouri, Multiculturalism, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, Protests, Rape, Rotherham

One night last August, 20 year old Ceri Linden stood waiting for a taxi at the side of well-lit street in Broughton, Cheshire, having spent the afternoon with friends. Finding none to be available, she then walked to a car parked near-by with its lights on, assuming it to be a private service. Inside the car was Masood Mansouri, an Iranian migrant.

Linden was promptly welcomed inside and asked where she wished to go. Whatever she said after that was ignored and Mansouri drove her instead to his house, some miles away. There, she was violently raped and dumped back out onto the street.

Traumatised almost beyond words, Ms Linden later contacted local police and agreed to record a video statement to be used in court. Less than 48 hours after doing so, she committed suicide, swallowing an overdose of prescription pills.

This story, expounded in detail in the national press last week, has shocked and saddened the entire country. People are asking questions like ‘why?’, ‘who would?’ and ‘how can?’

But despite the heart-breaking details of this tragedy (and its enormity in the perspective of Linden’s family), it is but a microcosm of a continent-wide horror show; the clash of the barbaric and civilised sexualities.

Civilised sexuality, predominant in Europe, East Asia and America, involves a fair contest of emotions, courtship, charm and tact. Barbaric sexuality, predominant in the world of Islam, involves power, and nothing else. Whoever can overpower a woman thereby wins the right to have sex with her. The fundamental incompatibility of these moral systems is barely worth remarking upon, but remark upon it we must, if this long, gruelling trend is to be in any way abbreviated.

It is my belief that western women must be taught (from a young age) what the real danger is, where it comes from, what it looks like. To fail to do so is to leave them unprotected against the worst kind of experience imaginable.

Since we at war, a ‘war mentality’ must be developed, complete with wartime hyper-vigilance. The enemy is predatory, committed and unhindered by regular moral consideration. He lurks where women are plentiful and men are few. To face down the sex-jihad women must therefore become manly, adopting virtues from the heroic; virtues like sheltering the weak, providing comfort and protection to the vulnerable, giving offence where necessary and using force when required.

Remember that this wave of rape is distinctly political. It is committed for political ends, even in the micro. Civilisations don’t have to be weakened by atom bombs. Papercuts can do as much damage when numerous enough. With enough small incisions, the body is veiled in sheets of blood. Whole civilisations may perish this way.

For evidence, just look at Rotherham, a formerly proud and important industrial town, famed for its working-class brashness, and yet now seeming so emasculated, bruised and tamed.

The enemy is not going away any time soon. It is high-time our national resolve made an appearance.

D, LDN.

Bad Rubbish: If ‘Brits’ Go to Syria, Let Them Stay There.

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BBC, Britain First, Brits deported, Brits going to ISIS, Defend the modern world, EDL, EU, ISIS, Islamisation, Jihad, Jihad in Syria, Jihadi John, Jihadis going to Syira, london, Paul Golding, Syria Yazidi, The Beatles Terror Cell, Traitors, Turkey, Turkish border

Yet again, Muslims with British passports have sought to cross the Turkish border into 6th century Syria with the intention of joining the international jihad.

According to the newspapers, these three ‘youngsters’ have now been apprehended by the Turkish authorities and are now awaiting deportation ‘back’ to the United Kingdom, where they will be treated (bizarrely) as ‘traitors’ and be tried in a court of European law.

This is obviously ridiculous, and all the comments beneath the articles in question are willing to say so.

“We don’t want the cretins back!” – said one.

“Keep them there. They’ve made their decision. If you make your bed, you lie in it!” – said another.

And this is altogether the right way to think about these matters. If you, a passport-holding British citizen, are willing to join a society filled with headless dissenters, thumbless thieves, invisible women, raped Yazidis and crucified Christians, you are not welcome, you were never welcome, and you will never become welcome in this United Kingdom.

D, LDN.

Islamophobia, Class, and ‘Pinstripe Nazis’.

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Bayern, Berlin, Dresden Bombing, East Germany Unemployment, German protests Dresden, Germany, Germany Turks, Islamisation, Marches, Munchen, PEGIDO, Pinstripe Nazis, Police, Turkmany, Turmany

Last month (December, 2014), more than 15,000 people amassed in the German city of Dresden to sing Christmas carols. While that description makes it seem rather pedestrian, the event was in fact organised and intended as a cultural protest. The group behind it is called Pegida (Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes – or in English, ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West’.)

Given the high turn out and evident success of the demonstration, the German press was dutifully quick to label the protestors as little better than … go on, see if you can guess …. Nazis.

Actually the specific phrase they coined was ‘Pinstripe Nazis’, a reference to the allegedly paradoxical gentility and ordinariness of those gathered. You see, these were not the skinheads or ruffians of the English style. They were typically older, more orderly and uniformly sober. If you look up photographs of the event on google, you might think many of them were off-duty bank managers, soldiers, polizei and civil servants.

You might well be right.

That is what is truly new about Dresden. It has demonstrated that a sentiment previously regarded as belonging exclusively to the ‘Lower Classes’, seems to have found agreement in the Middle Class.

The importance of this development really cannot be overstated. Whether we like it or not, class divisions do exist and can greatly retard the construction of a national consensus. To allow Islamophobia to dwell amongst the stupid bigotries of racism and anti-Semitism has rendered it unnecessarily toxic. Though I appreciate (and have often supported) the activities of the EDL, I am keenly aware that the manner of its demonstrations plays into an ingrained snobbery in the public at large. The conduct of the gathering in Dresden, and the wonderful decision to sing Christmas carols, shows us a new and better way forward.

Of course, I must admit it seems regrettable that Dresden was chosen as a venue. As is well known internationally, the city occupies a hallowed place in the imagination of Neo-Nazis. Choosing the site of a (so-called) Anglo-American war-crime made the hatchet jobs of the mainstream media pathetically easy. Let’s hope the next event won’t be held in Wannsee or Nuremburg…

On the whole though, we should take immense encouragement from Pegida. Opposition to Islam is a duty so serious that it must transcend any consideration of category or class. If these demonstrations remind us only of this, they will have been worthwhile.

D, LDN.

How He Became Islamophobic.

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Defend the modern world, Demographics, Email, England Islam, EU, Islam and Racism, Islam is not a race, Islamisation, Islamisation of Norway, Islamisation of Sweden, Islamophobia, Islamophobia is not racism, Misogyny, politics, race, Sweden, Team America, Welcome to Sweden of Today

Last week, I received an email from a visitor to this blog that I think is too interesting to remain private. I have asked the sender (who wishes to remain anonymous) for his permission and so have reprinted the message below. The similarities between our journeys to cognisance on the Islamic issue are striking and his insights are well worth reading. To avoid the charge of narcissism, I’ve excised the portions of the text which talk kindly of my own writing.

“I’m roughly the same age as you and for the past few years I’ve been living in Scandinavia but I was born and raised in a Lancashire mill town with a high Muslim population. Like you and many of your readers, I grew up harbouring a prejudice about Islam that was, if anything, positive. I absorbed the multicultural relativism dished out in school RE lessons and sanctimoniously corrected my octogenarian grandma for saying “paki” instead of “asian” and generally assumed that Muslims were not in any significant way different from Jews or Sikhs or Catholics such as myself.

“But even then, if I’d been a little bit more self aware I might’ve noticed that my tolerant ideas were overriding an opposing instinct. Because I always hated going through the Muslim areas of town, I found the – to borrow your phrase – thoroughly de-gentrified character of those areas thoroughly depressing, I was repelled by the sight of women walking around in tents with eye slits, and I dreaded being stuck on a bus with Pakistani school or college kids and having to listen to their soul-crushing prattle. To the extent that I acknowledged these feelings of acute aversion – which was hardly at all – I attributed it to some deep, shameful racism within me that I could eventually suppress to death.

“It wasn’t until I was college age and started to work weekend jobs with Pakistani and Bangladeshi colleagues who would lecture me on how the Jews did 9/11 and how Osama bin Laden was really a swell guy unfairly maligned by the western media – as well as listening to their endless, hypocritical bragging about their brothers and cousins who were big time gangsters and prostitute users and had white girls here, there and everywhere – that I began to realise my instincts were right, that these people were just awful, and if that made me racist or Islamophobic or whatever, then so be it.

“As you’ve touched upon in some of your posts, I think you get a double whammy of awfulness nowadays with young Muslims in western countries, because without any sense of shame they combine the psychotic intolerance and hair-trigger ideological rage of their faith with the hardcore, swaggering, labels-and-gadgets materialism of “gangsta” culture. It’s about as bleak and anti-human a combination as possible and it trains, to paraphrase another of your excellent formulations, a gunsight on everything worth living for.

“The depressing thing for me is that when I met a Swedish girl, got married, and decided we would move to her country, for a brief moment I thought “Great, that’s the last I’ll have to worry about the influence of Islam for a while…” How wrong can you be. I think this country is second only to France in Muslims as a percentage of population. Incredibly, Sweden takes the highest number of asylum seekers annually in the EU, not just as a percentage of population, but in real terms. This year they’re expecting 89,000 asylum seekers plus about 50,000 “family reunions” – primarily from Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Eritrea. In other words, a hit list of the world’s most horrendous hell holes. Of course, if these people were genuine refugees seeking shelter the heart would soften, but less than 5% of them are found to have genuine refugee status and most of them are lying about their age and country of origin.

“Anyway, I admire your straight talking on the subject. Once upon a time, I considered writing about it too. Partly out of subconscious fear of repercussions, but also because I was still genuinely moderate and ambiguous on the subject, I thought that the correct way to write about it was in very measured, careful, painstakingly qualified terms – you know, the euphemistic journalese favoured by the “respectable” broadsheets? “Increased immigration from non-western cultures poses challenges to integration…” and all that kind of thing. But now, after a certain amount of close up experience with these people both back home and here in Sweden, my heart is hardened and I’m convinced only a Steyn or Condell type frankness about the issue can really capture the true nature of it.

“Equivocal, nuanced, careful discourse is a virtue when discussing a lot of things, especially complex technical subjects like state finance, but on certain issues it’s just a kind of obfuscation and cowardice. In the west’s confrontation with Islam, I think the only clear moral position is to state robustly and directly that Islam is a system of thought and belief that, to borrow the succinct language of Team America, just wants to shit all over everything.”

D, LDN.

Second Thoughts on the Veil.

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Ban the Burka, Burka, Burka prison, Defend the modern world, Feminism, France, Guardian, Hijab, Imprisonment of women, Islamisation, Liberal Feminism, Liberalism, liberty, Niqāb, veil, West, Western Feminism, Western world

A few months ago on this blog, I wrote that I could not support a move to ban the Islamic veil in Britain. The reasons I put forward in support of this stance were straightforwardly libertarian:

“It’s true that the Burka (actually called a ‘Niqab’) has no place on English streets, and it’s also true that the veil is impractical and hazardous in many social contexts… But that said, I don’t want to live in a country where the government can decide what people may wear… Should we concede to government the power to choose how we dress, there would be no turning back. The outlawing of the veil could soon become the outlawing of hoodies, baseball caps and any other item of clothing which obscures identity.”

Well, I’ve changed my mind. There has been no particular catalyst for this, or at least not one I can identify, but I regard the reasoning quoted above as adolescent and knee-jerk. Those who objected to my post were correct. The veil is a revolting garment, an affront to women and a moral stain on the standard of our whole society. It should be outlawed across the continent of Europe.

In the same post alluded to above, I went on to say that a ban – as well as being undesirable – would be difficult to enforce. This is now an argument that can be turned the other way. A confrontation with Islamic misogyny in England is just what we require, and the more aggressive, public and discomforting to the multicultural idea it is, so much the better.

D, LDN.

The Middle East Without Islam.

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Conquest of Iraq, Conquest of Persia, Conquest the Mahgreb, Defend the modern world, DTMW, Invasion, Islamic Conquests, Islamisation, Levant, Muslims, North Africa, Pre-Islamic, War

It has been said that Counter-Factual history is academically useless since it dedicates itself solely to what might have been, and – more often than not – cannot be. This is mostly true, but not in all cases. Used correctly, the technique can wire us to the pulse of historical movement and expose the cost of non-resistance to the forces of our opponents.

To this end, let’s imagine a very simple distortion of the past: What would have become of world history had Muhammad never been born, or had his message never been well received? As questions go, few are of this global importance. For the sake of brevity though, we’ll limit our enquiry to the region most immediately affected by the initial spread of Islam – the greater Middle East and North Africa.

Israel.

The differences possible to Jewish history had the Islamic settlement of Palestine never taken place are potentially transformative. Some of the most morally expensive disasters in the history of the West could have been avoided had the Holy land remained hospitable for Jewish culture. Indeed, the most deadly of these – World War II – can be blamed on a crackpot theory which caricatured Jews as ‘rootless’ parasites, innately hostile to the nation-state. Had the Jews never been dispossessed of their ancestral land in the first place, such views would have been impossible. Israel would flower today on a bed of centuries, undisputed and at peace.

Without Islamisation, the wars today convulsing through the Levant would also be buried beneath the weight of time. No lethal divergence in cultural content would separate the Phoenician Lebanese and Nabatean Jordanians from the Israeli Jews, or at least no more than today separates the Sikhs and Hindus of India, who – though diverging on matters of theology – nevertheless recognise a common history.

Egypt.

In America, where Islamophobia is known to bubble over into anti-Arab sentiment, the myth that Ancient Egypt was populated primarily by Negroes has become disgracefully well-accommodated. Indeed the references, throughout mainstream African-American culture, to ‘black’ heroes like Cleopatra and the Pharoahs no longer tend to elicit either comment or surprise.

The truth is very different of course. The ancient Egyptians were a Semitic people, and they live on today in diluted form within the same national boundaries. The legacy of Kemet has naturally been corrupted and Islamised over time, but it has not been extinguished.

And that should greatly depress any secular descendant of that society. Without the Islamic invasion, or had that invasion been repelled, the Egyptians could well have today enjoyed an Italian, Cypriot or Greek version of modernity. They could have been a wine-making, Mediterranean café culture, furnished with and supported by an ancient renown. An Egyptian passport could be amongst the most prized in the world, with resentful foreigners chasing the sunlit grandeur of Alexandria and the kingly opulence of Giza.

As it happens, only a madman would exchange European life for the cities of the Nile, and religious developments alone are equal to explaining this.

The Maghreb.

Few cultures made a more direct contribution to the creation of Christian tradition than the territory now called the ‘Islamic Maghreb’. This region, now the theatre of much disquiet, was the birthplace of Augustine of Hippo (Saint Augustine) and the scene of the first significant (and voluntary) European-African point of contact. Up until the 6th century therefore it was Roman – not Arabic – influence which predominated here and which served to foster an atmosphere of relaxed scholarship and quick development.

When Islam achieved its critical mass, almost every cultural edifice was torn down in a matter of decades and cultural nuance (the most vital ingredient in cultural sophistication) was replaced with an indistinct religious colony.  

A counterfactual approach here is fascinating in other ways. There is a very real possibility that had those conquests never occurred, the world of the Berbers would have been integrated (racially and politically) into Europe. North Africa, and no doubt by extension much of the Sahara, would have also provided a base for the Christianisation of the African continent, leaving the door open for an earlier – perhaps more humanistic – colonisation than that which later occurred.

Iran.

It is a concept well promoted by Iranian secularists that the degeneration of Persia into modern day Iran is rightly a cause for global – and not parochial – mourning. Ancient Persia, an empire with extremes in the Levant and Indian subcontinent, invested the world with many of its most celebrated advantages.

Persian culture was jealously noted for its social complexity and military talent. It was for many years a serious rival to the Empires of the West, and that the Islamic conquest put so inglorious an end to this happy tradition has never been forgotten by Iranian nationalists.

The most obvious focus for our counterfactual here is that without the Islamic invasion of Mesopotamia, there would be no Sunni-Shia war to appropriate the attention of millions of potentially gifted people. People would not be blown up in Iraq over dynastic quarrels. Iranians would be free to record music videos without fear of arrest. Bahrain wouldn’t be torn apart by the competing gravities of ethnicity and religion.

Lebanon.

Lebanon is a famously divided country, the Muslim and Maronite populations having dwelled uncomfortably with one another for many centuries. It is in the Maronite areas that we can best appreciate what Lebanon (ancient Phoenicia) would likely have become without Islam.

If you’ve been to Lebanon or have seen photographs of pre-civil war Beirut, you can appreciate how quintessentially ‘European’ this country once was. A photograph of old central Beirut with the Arabic script signs removed could be readily mistaken for Israel, Southern France or Greece, with bars, nightclubs, theatres and a young, relaxed, liberal population furnishing the well-built streets.

Conclusion.

The march of Islam has swallowed up (and destroyed) many of the greatest cultural achievements of our collective human history. Though the Middle East seems so congenitally barbed with troubles, this should not mislead us into thinking it couldn’t have been a fascinating, pricelessly rich area had the circumstances been different. Recognising this should also inform us of a very important truth. Those who doubt that England, Italy or Germany are somehow too ‘impressive’ to fall to the same force are deluding themselves.

D, LDN.

Kill it Before it Grows.

Tags

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Al-Qaeda, Amputations, Beheading, Bin Laden, Bomb, Bombardment, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Islamisation, Jihad, Missiles, Muslims, Saudi Arabia, Sharia, Syria, Violence, War, WWIII

Talking of the Middle East, the conquest of this region by the Stone Age lunatics ‘ISIS’ continues apace.

An Islamic caliphate has now been officially declared and the loyalty of every Muslim in the world formally demanded. The shaggy beatnik ‘Caliph’ of this empire (Abu-Bakr Baghdadi) announced these initiatives in a public speech in which he also justified a global war aimed at making the borders of his hell-state globally circular.

“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you” he stated “…God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience… so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge… This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries.”

Despite the hypocritical resistance of states like Saudi Arabia and Iran, this is actually the logical endpoint of Islamic politics. Consequently, it will find a worryingly large audience if left to advertise itself with this kind of propaganda.

It is my view that we must act and that it is better to act now.  

The New Caliphate, although already notorious for its cruelty and martial zeal, is small and poorly organised; it has no economy that couldn’t be torn down by the most elementary measures, and – most vitally – it is surrounded by states who (officially at least) answer to our leadership.

Little stands in the way of action except cowardice.

So, as a Fox News anchor was stupidly ridiculed for suggesting, bomb them. Annihilate them from the air, not only to cripple this threat in its youth, but to prepare a message for those which may appear in the future.

Since 9/11 we have become so wearily accustomed to the spectacle of bearded revolutionaries prophesying our death or enslavement, that we no longer seem especially concerned by it.

More often that not, our strength justifies this indifference, but it may not forever. A Caliphate encompassing the angry youth of the Muslim world is not something to be brushed off from the imagination like a threat from the glorious military of North Korea. These people are closer. Much closer. Via Turkey, they can very easily infiltrate our continent.

To allow the enemy a base of operations and training only miles from the EU is a death wish, and many lives can be saved by acting sooner rather than later.

D, LDN.