"It may be that Western culture will indeed go: The lack of conviction of many of those who should be its defenders and the passionate intensity of its accusers may well join to complete its destruction. But if it does go, the men and women of all the continents will thereby be impoverished and endangered."
– BERNARD LEWIS, Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery.

From NICK COHEN, "What's Left? How liberals lost their way" –

"The contempt for universal standards of judgment suited the liberalism of the late twentieth century which placed an inordinate emphasis on respecting cultural difference and opposing integration, even if the culture in question was anti-liberal and integration would bring new freedoms and prosperity. It fitted neatly with a form of postcolonial guilt that held that not only were we ‘wrong to force western rationality of western science down other people’s throats, but that their rationality or their science was every bit as good as ours.’

"The Islamist dream of a Caliphate [is of a] sexist, homophobic, racist, imperialist theocracy that would oppress about a billion Muslims.

"In 'How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the World', Francis Wheen said that the claims of a portion of the Left to possess a sceptical intelligence had been destroyed by its inability to look squarely at a cult of death.

"Human rights are universal or they are nothing. Relativists have to diminish their importance and say they apply only to favoured groups, races or classes.

"If the liberals and leftists are wrong, and there are good grounds for thinking that they are horribly wrong, history will judge them harshly. For they will have gazed on the face of a global fascist movement and shrugged and turned away, not only from an enemy that would happily have killed them but from an enemy which was already killing those who had every reason to expect their support. "

A good selection of opinions.

You are of course aware that Bernard Lewis also wrote:

"The emergence of the now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition." [Islam: The Religion and the People]

Here's his view on how *not* to address the problem.

"There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy."

I like Nick Cohen. But he is guilty of oversimplification with...

"It fitted neatly with a form of postcolonial guilt..."

"Postcolonial guilt" is a perfectly meaningless catch-all cliche. He's far more convincing on home soil

http://nickcohen.net/

"The Islamist dream of a Caliphate [is of a] sexist, homophobic, racist, imperialist theocracy that would oppress about a billion Muslims."

I'd be interested in the context of that remark. As it stands, it's just the alarmist view of the Islamist dream. Impossible to prove, impossible to deny, just somebody's idea of somebody else's dream.

>>Francis Wheen said that the claims of a portion of the Left to possess a sceptical intelligence had been destroyed by its inability to look squarely at a cult of death.<<

I'm a great fan of Wheen too. But seriously, since when has any group been able to "look squarely at a cult of death".

How "squarely" did the world view Pol Pot in 1976?

Some of Wheen's spotlight-on-PC-thinking aphorisms ring very true, though

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/feb/03/top10s.modern.delusions

"If the liberals and leftists are wrong..."

More conditional alarmism. What is it with these guys? Presumably it is how they get their jollies, tell the proles they're doomed. Just another bit of Hampstead macchiato journalism.

Hey, we all have a right to our opinions. These folk just as much as anyone else. For my part, I choose to disagree with their expressions of paranoid hysteria.

But none of this, Glorfindel, excuses your incontinent, inflammatory language.

>>Islam is a mental disease, a boil on the bum of humanity<<

At least the excerpts you provide us with avoid such gutter-talk.

You should try it sometime.

"The emergence of the now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition." [Islam: The Religion and the People]

It’s saying the obvious because the development of powerful explosives is of recent origin and not available during the 7th century.

“The sword has become a suicide belt, but the fighter is still a martyr. A famous hadith proclaims that "Paradise lies beneath the shades of swords" (al-Bukhari 4:73). Today, it lies beneath the shades of suicide belts.”
http://www.meforum.org/2478/suicide-bombing-as-worship

>>Islam is a mental disease, a boil on the bum of humanity<<

Very true indeed. Dr. Wafa Sultan was described by Times magazine as one of the top 100 most influential person. She is a professional psychologist and she says exactly the same thing . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdN234Bp9w

We’re all waiting for Pericles to say why Islam is a peaceful religion based on something more substantial instead of ad hominem arguments

Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam exalts violence and hatred. On sex, it is Freud in spades. Racism and slavery are endemic in the Muslim world. According to the Arab League Educational Cultural and Scientific Organisation, 75% percent of the 100 million people in the Arab World are illiterate.

A great article by SMH writer Miranda Devine, 23-1-10, describes cogently the enormous tragedy Islam is for the whole world -
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/frustration-fuels-acts-of-hatred-20100122-mqq2.html

ED HUSAIN, in ‘The Islamist’, chapter on Saudi Arabia, writes -

"The social structure that Saudis imposed on their foreign workforce had the following pecking order: Americans at the top, followed by Brits, then other Europeans, then Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Yemenis, and other Arabs, followed by the Sudanese. Asians (Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) were at the bottom, above only poor black Africans from Chad.

"After Syria, I refused to be pigeon-holed by Arab racism, to be seen as an inferior hindi, or Indian. In the racist Arab psyche, hindi is as pejorative as kuffar. In countless gatherings I silently sat and listened to racist caricatures of a billion people by Saudi bigots.

"The hallmark of a civilization is … how it treats its minorities. My day in [the suburb] Karantina … was one of the worst of my life. Thousands of people who had been living in Saudi Arabia for decades, but without passports, had been deemed `illegal' by the government and abandoned under a flyover. … While rich Saudis zoomed over the flyover in their fast cars, others rotted in the sun below them.

"It dawned on me that Britain, my home, had given refuge to thousands of black Africans from Somalia and Sudan: I had seen them in their droves in Whitechapel. They prayed, had their own mosques, were free, and were given government housing. How could it be that Saudi Arabia had condemned African Muslims to misery and squalor? …Muslims enjoyed a better lifestyle in non-Muslim Britain than they did in Muslim Saudi Arabia.

<MORE>

So if Saudi Arabia has some very unpleasant characteristics is that a religious thing, a cultural thing or a racial thing?

It sounds a touch like the Old South in the US, so maybe its a cultural thing and cultures can change with reform.

<Conclusion of quotes from ED HUSAIN, The Islamist, chapter on Saudi Arabia>

"All my talk of ummah seemed so juvenile now. It was only in the comfort of Britain that Islamists could come out with such radical, utopian slogans as one government, one ever-expanding country, for one Muslim nation. The racist reality of the Arab psyche would never accept black and white people as equal.

"Saudi racism was not limited to Karantina. It was an integral part of Saudi society, accepted by most. My students often used the word `n*gger' to describe black people. Even dark-skinned Arabs were considered inferior to their lighter-skinned cousins. I was living in the world's most avowedly Muslim country, yet I found it anything but. And alongside the racism and intolerance I was appalled by the imposition of Wahhabism in the public realm, something I had implicitly sought as an Islamist.

Since the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, two Wahhabi-educated generations have been busy imposing `Islam' on their society. But … the mainly Muslim 7-million strong immigrant workforce loathed life in Saudi Arabia and, given the chance, would prefer to live almost anywhere but there.

"Segregation of the sexes, made worse by the veil, had spawned a culture of pent-up sexual frustration which expressed itself in the unhealthiest ways. Millions of young Saudis were not allowed to let their sexuality blossom naturally and, as a result, they could see the opposite gender only as sex objects.

"My students told me about the day in March 2002 when the Mutawwa'een [religious police] had forbidden fire fighters in Mecca from entering a blazing school building because the girls inside were not wearing veils. Consequently, fifteen young women burned to death, but Wahhabism held its head high, claiming that God's law had been maintained by segregating the sexes. What sort of God was this?”