The Islamic World isn’t Weak

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One of the biggest obstacles in trying to educate a typical Westerner about Islam is the common Western tendency to view Islam, the Islamic world and Muslims as being ‘weak’, ‘poor’ and ‘third world’. This is an obstacle because of human nature. Excluding some pathological extremes, nobody likes mocking or ganging up on the poor and the powerless. It offends human esteem and is considered little more than bullying.

But is the presumption really accurate in this case? Are Muslims and the Islamic World ‘weak’ or even ‘powerless’? The answer is absolutely not.

It is no exaggeration to say that in combined economic and military measures, the Islamic world is on a par with the EU, Russia, China or America. It is a superpower, able to absorb and respond to violence without any aid. Let’s look at some facts.

Nearly one in four human beings are Muslim. In the course of this century, that portion may creep closer to one third. There are more Muslims alive today than there are Han Chinese, Hindu Indians, or White Europeans. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, with demographic growth rates far in excess of Buddhist, Christian or Hindu numbers. Added to this, most Christian demographic growth occurs in impoverished areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, while Islamic growth is occurring in economically competent regions such as Indonesia, the Gulf, Mesopotamia and North Africa. Islam has a presence in every major country in the world, including a quickly growing community in the United States. In the course of this century – barring radical action by the Moscow government – over one quarter of Russians will be Muslim. India and China, developing superpowers both, have very large Muslim populations of their own. On military matters, the Islamic world contains numerous states with military capabilities at or above European standards. These include the armed forces of Iran (unofficial estimates posit more than 2,000,000 soldiers), Turkey (1.300,000+ soldiers) Egypt (1,000,000+ soldiers), Pakistan (1,000,000+ soldiers), Indonesia (485,000+ soldiers), Saudi Arabia (250,000 soldiers) and the UAE (100,000+ soldiers). Two Muslim states have nuclear weapons – Turkey (200+ as part of the NATO nuclear sharing agreement) and Pakistan (120+). Islamic States with active nuclear power programmes include Egypt, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. Some of the richest countries in the world (per capita) have Islam as the state religion. These include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. Resource-wise, the Muslim Middle East has the largest oil reserves in the world, dwarfing Russia and the United States many times over. Economic growth rates in states like Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey are far in excess of the declining or hobbling prospects of Western powers.And so on.

It is important, vital even, to remember that in facing down the world (and culture) of Islam, we are not picking on a starving child, but wrestling with a behemoth, a monster of gigantic and terrible proportions. If any culture has reason to fear for its existence in this world, it is not Islam, but the West – once so high and mighty, and now so pitiably weak.

D, LDN

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Latent Vs Active: A Replacement Typology of Muslims.

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Christian, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Egypt, English Defence League, France, Islam, Islam by country, Lebanon, Multiculturalism, Muslim, Muslim world, No to Turkey in the EU, Organizations, Quran, Religion and Spirituality, Saudi Arabia, Social Aspects, Turkey, United States, World Muslim, Zombies

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the often proposed division of Muslims into ‘Fundamentalists’ and ‘Moderates’ is unconvincing to me. The distinction is obviously political in origin and obscures more than it enlightens.

I would like therefore to propose a replacement theory, or rather definition, to explain the real difference between the believers who merely pray, and the believers who hijack airliners.

There are, I propose, two distinct types of Muslim in the world; Those who are Latent, and those who are Active. (*There will always be a minority who elude definition).

The Latent Muslim is in the clear majority, accounting perhaps for three quarters of the World Muslim population.

This kind of believer is typically serene and apolitical. He is opiated by his beliefs, rather than stimulated by them. Devout though they may be (and unlike Christians) they often have little curiosity for the battle of ideas.

The Active Muslim – by contrast – is someone whose experience has engaged the less sedating aspects of his faith. He is inclined towards the excitement of violence, death, punishment, procreation and conquest.

These Muslims will fight you until you believe exactly as they do, and possibly even afterward.

Crucially, (unlike with the false Fundamentalist/Moderate antonymy) the Latent Muslim can become an Active believer at any given time. The two conditions are not opposed, merely different, and the Active state is always quiescent in the Latent.

The signature fallacy of EU/US leaders has been to assume that extremism and moderation are real elements of Muslim self-identification; that they are innate, unchangeable and permanent. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As Daniel Greenfield wrote:

“Politicians… wall off that vast majority of Muslims who did not actually come down to Woolwich and hack at a soldier with a machete and did not fly two planes into the World Trade Center from those who actually did. The hackers and pilots are extremists. The couch potatoes watching at home and cheering them on are moderates. That might be fine if we were discussing a gas station robbery in Cleveland. But to Muslims, Jihad isn’t an act of violence; it’s an act of faith.”

The Latent Muslim, as the name I have chosen implies, is not a moderate. He is unactivated. He lives quietly and habitually, enlivened only by foreign stimulus. It is this Foreign stimulus that tends to change the Latent into the Active. This explains for example, why those Muslims in 99% Muslim countries (Turkey, Saudi Arabia etc..) are largely Latent, whereas those in religiously divided lands (Lebanon, Egypt, Serbia/Kosovo, Britain, France) are more Active.

A more frivolous illustration would involve the mythology of Zombies.

Zombies (in some depictions) are unaggressive and docile among each other, but faced with a thinking human, become drones of monstrous conquest.

In the logic of Zombies, there is no ‘friend or foe’, but simply ‘fellow or food’. And as wrong-headed as we would be to negotiate with the undead, perhaps we’d do better to reconsider our approach with Muslims based on the criteria described.

D, LDN.

Stop Arming Turkey.

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Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Israel, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim world, No to Turkey in the EU, politics, Saudi Arabia, Soviet Union, Turkey, United States

The American Cold-War network of alliances is out-of-date. The power they were designed to deter – Russia – is no longer an aggressor, or at-any-rate, an aggressor capable of mounting a military threat.

Within the Islamic world in particular, US alliances were created with defensive politics in mind. The Soviet Union was a perpetual menace, and so to prevent its influence expanding, America shipped billions of dollars of advanced weoponry to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. These three advanced military powers helped repel the advance of socialism (Arab and otherwise), allowing America to secure critical access to the materials of the Gulf.

But times have changed since then, and yet the network remains in place.

Only one of these powers – Egypt – is it in America’s interest to arm. The Egyptian army has arguably proven its worth by removing the Muslim Brotherhood from power and tackling terrorists in the Sinai. The ‘alliance’ with Saudi Arabia meanwhile, as a matter of crude economics, cannot be ended until America becomes self-sufficient in energy. For that we will have to wait for ‘New Nuclear’ and Shale technology to be developed.

The remaining alliance however, that with the Republic of Turkey, can and should be dropped sooner.

For a long while, Turkey was a reliable and obediant cog in the American security complex, taking part in military drills with the Israelis, but otherwise keeping out of the politics of the Middle East.

But recently the Turks have reverted to type. A 99% Islamic country has become (once again) an Islamic state. The regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has single-handedly cancelled out decades of modernization and attempted (with great cynicism) to re-attach the country to the Islamic world.

But this is only natural. Despite what its aspirational elite might think, Turkey is not and has never been a European country. Considered thus, Europe is not strengthened but threatened by Turkish military prowess.

The Turkish Armed Forces are currently stronger than any of their European equivalents. Turkey’s Air Force has over 700 manned aircraft, including over 200 F-16s. The Turkish land army possesses over a thousand US and German-engineered battle Tanks. The Navy operates over 100 ships, and as part of he NATO nuclear sharing agreement, Turkey possesses over 200 Nuclear weapons.

In a war situation between Europe and the Islamic world, Turkey would blunt the European sword from the get-go. Similarly, should Germany ever decide to remove the Turkish, Kurdish and Arab Muslims currently within its territory, Turkey could threaten the country with annihilation. The same goes with France, Britain or any other country within the range of Turkish missiles.

America is doing its European allies no favours by continuing to pour weapons into the Turkish leviathan, and it would be nice if our leaders had the guts to say so.

D, LDN.

The Islamic Occupation of Constantinople.

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Andalusia, Constantinople, Constantinople Christian, Counterjihad, Istanbul, Istanbul is Constantinople, Muslim world, Northern Cyprus

The Muslim world loves nothing more than to talk of ‘occupation’. Of all the words in the English language, this is one that every Turk, every Arab and every Persian has memorised by heart. There is the ‘occupation’ of Iraq (which ended years ago), the ‘occupation’ of Palestine (which never began) and the occupation of Chechnya (which is arguably the only valid example, but which is nevertheless no excuse for the terrorism it inspires). Occupation, occupation, occupation…. Terrorism, beheadings, wife-beatings, all in the name of occupation.

But there are other occupations, besides those of Muslim lands by Christians. There are also occupations of Christian lands by Muslims. Two examples spring to mind. Firstly, there is the despicable and illegal occupation of northern Cyprus by the Turkish military. This is recognised by every international body as being illegal, and is reason enough (though there is another one) to block the ascension of the occupying state to EU membership.

Then there is a second occupation by the same force. This one is slightly older than that of Northern Cyprus. It began in 1453, the Islamic occupation of Constantinople.  

Christianity is not the faith of most Europeans by accident. The setting for its early spread through the Roman empire (then in terminal decline) was the reign of the deeply devout Emperor Constantine. After large swathes of this region had been Christianised, a city West of Anatolia, formerly known as Byzantium, became the de facto Christian HQ – Constantinople.

Constantinople was a city of spectacular beauty; a fusion of Greco-Roman and Jewish creativity. One can still see it today, in those faint outlines of ancient design, unhidden beneath the moss of age. You can still imagine how it must have looked beneath a white-hot sun, with Churches, Roman roads, and huge libraries shining under a spotless, blue sky.

But where is it now? Forgive me if this seems patronising. A lot of people (too many) actually don’t know. The city is now called Istanbul, and it is the economic and tourist capital of the Islamic state of Turkey.

It was seized by violence in 1453. Muslim armies besieged the city and within weeks overran it, killing thousands. Today, Constantinople (Istanbul) serves as a tourist trap with which Turks (ironically) lure Europeans to part with their excess cash. Mosques now dominate the architecture of the landscape and Muezzin calls ring out across the broad city squares.

So why am I bringing this up, you ask. Surely I’m not suggesting that Istanbul is still rightfully European, even after five centuries of Islamic rule?….

Well actually, yes I am.

Constantinople is not like Andalusia was to the Moors, or Konigsberg is to the Germans. The Moors (as Muslims) had Mecca, and could survive the loss of Andalusia. The Germans had Berlin, and could survive the loss of Konigsberg. European Christianity by contrast was historically anchored in the city of Constantinople. This was, along with Rome, the birthplace of the European Church, and the cause behind the unification of what we now call ‘Europe’ through the bindings of a common culture.

No Constantinople, no Christian Europe. No Christian Europe, no Europe.

The birthplace of Europe is in Turkish hands, and for no better reason than historic violence. Still alright by you?

Ok then, Say it was the other way about….

There is, helpfully, an Islamic equivalent of Constantinople, by which I mean a city that is not deemed to be ‘holy’, but that is nevertheless revered as a place of vital importance for the faith as a whole: Baghdad in Iraq.

Baghdad historically was the greatest seat of Islamic learning, and, alongside Mecca, provided the central focus of the Muslim world. Its libraries were widely revered and theologians of the greatest regard tended to reside there. This is partly why Islamic extremists took so unkindly to the American invasion of Iraq. I don’t want to get into a debate about the rights and wrongs of that war, but I’ll say that regardless of the moral questions, it was never intended to be a prolonged occupation, and the locals were informed of this from the outset. But say things had been different, and that America had (as Donald Trump strangely advised) simply annexed Iraq and taken it as a 51st state. Have we reached an equivalence?

Not quite. As you’ll know, Istanbul is not a mere annex of the Islamic state of Turkey, it also has a solidly Muslim population living in it.

Where did the Christians go?

I’ll leave it to the gruesome parts of your imagination to reason how this came steadily, bloodily about over the years, but let’s finally acknowledge that had the same fate befallen Baghdad even five centuries ago, we would still be attacked in the cause of its liberation.

Free Constantinople!

D, LDN