FoxNews has this AP story about Muslim gangs, the increasing violence they are producing in France, and the growing re-assessment of post-modern multiculturalism occuring there and elsewhere. The particular incidents are awful, but the resulting “awakening” might be the best thing to happen to France and many other European nations in a long time.  Modern man (who does not think that mere “ideas” are worth dying for — little is) just cannot understand why or how people would fight for such notions, especially religious notions (we are now Enlightened folks — wars were for the medeival Church barbarians who just wanted to plunder and control, right?).  He had better wake up. 

A portion from the article:

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

One small police union claims officers are facing a “permanent intifada.” Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.

….

More broadly, worsening violence in France testifies to Europe’s growing struggle to integrate its ethnic minorities. Some mainstream European politicians — adopting positions previously confined largely to far-right fringes — are suggesting that the minorities themselves are not doing enough to adapt to European mores.

In Britain, former Foreign Minister Jack Straw, now leader of the House of Commons, this month touched off a wide debate about the rights and obligations of Muslims by saying that he asks devout Muslim women to remove their veils when visiting his office. Prime Minister Tony Blair said Islam needs to modernize.

In France, a high school teacher received death threats, forcing him into hiding, after he wrote a newspaper editorial in September saying Muslim fundamentalists are trying to muzzle Europe’s democratic liberties.

Ethnic integration and violence against police are both becoming issues in the campaign for the French presidency. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading contender on the right, said this month that those who do not love France do not have to stay, echoing a longtime slogan of the extreme-right National Front: “France, love it or leave it.”

Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.

“Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of ‘Allah Akbar’ (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned,” he said in an interview.

continues to spread its love around the globe.

In the latest in the totally irrational response to the Pope’s “remarks,” a large group of Muslim clerics has recently demanded the Pope’s removal. Obviously, this group does not understand the nature of the Papacy, the Church or its governance. The group says:

Benedict “should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths” and “making insulting remarks” against Islam, said a joint statement issued by the clerics and scholars at the end of their one-day convention.

The “pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). … If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences,” it said. (more…)

Take it away, Mark:

“Muslims *have* to express their anger.” They just *have* to. If they don’t, they’ll just *bust*. And don’t you dare put your western categories on me! If I want to freak out because I’m too ignorant and thin-skinned to grasp a university lecture and take a little criticism, then I will shoot more nuns, call more people “Hitler” and kidnap more priests. The problem is Everybody Else. Not me or my tribe.

Courtesy of Joee Blogs.

Maybe it’s just me, but I got a chuckle out of this news story. Take a look at the picture included with the article, and then consider this quote:

“The late Pope John Paul II spent over 25 years to build bridges and links with the Muslim community. He showed the world that its perception of Islam was false and that we are peace-loving people.

Now, I could be wrong, but flying off the handle (e.g., burning people in effigy, rioting, issuing death threats) any time someone says something you don’t particularly care for (or say draws a cartoon that you find deeply offensive), doesn’t strike me as the hallmark of a “peace-loving people.”

O.k., I am off to ND’s law school to give my talk. Wish me luck. 

On Fox News “Special Report” tonight, the panel was discussing Russ Fiengold’s objection to President Bush’s use of the term ”Islamic Fascism” to describe Al Qaeda terrorists.  Mort Kondracke stated that while he thought the label accurately described the nature of our enemy, he agreed with Senator Fiengold that it was too offensive to Muslims and that the president should therefore stop using it post haste, noting, “I want to do whatever it takes to win this war.”

To which, Fred Barnes quickly replied, “I want to do whatever it takes to win this crusade.”

More treasure from the comments to this post at The Belmont Club, this time from “whit“, who links to this article at FrontPageMag.com by Mark D. Tooley, which in turn quotes from this story by Sharon Sheridan of the Episcopal News Service. Of those, the thing to read is Tooley’s article. In it, he compares and contrasts the ridiculous self-flagellation of the outgoing chief bishop of the Episcopal Church in America over the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 61 years ago to the remarkably clear-eyed understanding of the import of that same event expressed by another Episcopal bishop, one Joseph Noriaki Iida. As between the two bishops’ reactions, that of Bishop Iida’s is probably entitled to just a tad more respect, as Iida wasnot only an eyewitness to the event but was a student at the imperial Japanese naval academy when it happened.

Bishop Iida’s reaction has, I believe, tremendous relevance to the current geopolitical situation. Read the following, and you’ll find it impossible not to see the analogy between imperial Japan and the Iranian theocracy:

In contrast to the surreal observations of the American bishop, a retired Japanese bishop spoke of Hiroshima with greater historical and spiritual perception. Bishop Joseph Noriaki Iida, as a teen-age naval academy student, was a witness to the atomic blast and understood what caused it.

“At that moment, I felt I deeply understood that we had chosen the way of death three years ago,” when Japan declared war on America, Bishop Iida recalled to the Episcopal News Service. Viewing a charred Hiroshima from atop a hill 61 years ago, he remembered the Scripture: “Today I lay down two ways: the way of life and the way of death; the way of blessing and the way of curse.” The glowing mushroom cloud over Hiroshima also reminded him of the pillars of cloud and fire that protected and guided the Hebrews out of ancient Egypt.

Iida said the atomic blast at Hiroshima was a cause of jubilation for the Koreans, Southeast Asians and American soldiers whom the Japanese were killing. But even for the Japanese themselves, the bombings provided freedom from totalitarianism, militarism, colonialism and racism, he said. The bomb “was God’s judgment and God’s mercy at the same time.”

Remembering a blackened Japanese history textbook at the time, in which only sentence fragments remained, Bishop Iida compared it to his realization that what he had been told about his country by Japan’s militarist dictators was “totally wrong.” After learning of Japan’s atrocities and of the Nazi Holocaust, and absorbing the Japanese Emperor’s denial of his own previously professed deity, Iida considered turning to communism.

Iida read the Bible so that he could refute Christianity. But instead he succumbed to the “love of God.” While communism had urged hatred of the bourgeoisie, he said, the “Bible said unconditional love, love against those who persecuted you, who hate you.” The Japanese bishop concluded: “Christianity is superior. That’s why I became a priest of the Anglican Church.”

Christianity is superior over communism? Do not look for such triumphalism from any U.S. mainline church official, least of all from an Episcopal bishop. Unlike the U.S. bishop, the Japanese bishop has no multiculturalist illusions or inflated notions about humanity. In a fallen world, where choices are often between bad and worst, the U.S. chose to end World War II and Japanese fascism with an atomic weapon. “God can use not only the good thing but also bad things to do his will,” Bishop Iida observed.

Amen, Bishop Iida.

If you’re not reading The Belmont Club, the online home of blogger wretchard, then you’re not as informed as you should be about Islam’s war against the West. While you’re there, don’t skip the comments, as they are frequently as interesting as the posts themselves. Today’s post by wretchard, in which he traces the connections among and between many of the events of the past 36 hours, illustrating one of his conclusions with a reference to, of all things, The Great Gatsby, drew this comment from “allen”:

I don’t know about you, but I’d feel more secure if Muslims were barred from flights instead of toiletries.

Obviously, if we just must permit travel by Muslims, other than by foot to concentration camps, how about installing special screening for admitted Muslims and stereotyping the scofflaws. Stereotyping!? You bet. Stereotyping has impeccable evolutionary credentials.

The pictures I’m seeing are more of the same nonsense. Perfectly harmless European, American, and Western travelers are discarding their person property, docilely, so the governments of the West don’t have to admit the obvious: Muslims are not to be trusted unattended in airports any more than an uncaged Rottweiler.

Security should be looking for young men of obvious Muslim descent. And if we really want to be diverse, add young Muslim women to the mix as well.

Some will immediately scream, “That’s not fair!!!”

They are so right – so what?

And did I say “concentration camps”? Yes, I did. What I did NOT say was death camps.

Since Muslim families and the Islamic “community” cannot police themselves, society must take up the burden. These people have to be constantly watched and supervised. I’d prefer that happen somewhere other than in the airport, freeway, mall, and arena.

For those unwilling to accept Western accommodations, I suggest a mega-garage sale and a return to place of origin.

What do you think?

A New York Sun editorial points out that the recent arrest of 17 Canadian terror suspects flies in the face of the theory that Islamic fundamentalists target America primarily for our support of Israel and our involvement in Iraq.  The editorial points out that:

“Canada sent no troops to liberate Iraq. Our neighbor to the North so opposed the Iraq War that at least one American deserter fled there for safe harbor, as draftdodgers did during the Vietnam War.  And while Canada is mildly pro-Israel, and more so under its new conservative government, its arms sales to the Jewish state are peanuts compared to America’s, and at the United Nations on key votes it’s likely to abstain rather than join the America, Micronesia, and Palau in voting with Israel.” 

ME:  So why did these radicals want to target a liberal country like Canada?  The fact is that Islamic extremists hate us (the West) for our freedom, prosperity, and religious diversity.  They will always hate us and there is nothing we can do about it other than to hunt down those that commit acts of terrorism against us and to punish severely those nations that support such terrorists.  Hat tip to James Taranto at Best of the Web.

I always enjoy running across something that reminds me of my true identity in Christ…..that is, reminded of those things that are supposed to make Christians different from pagans, democrats (just kidding) and (for the purposes of this post) Muslims. We know that God met Hagar in her distress and was promised a blessing…a line of people from Abraham that God also promised would be a pain in everyone’s butt. Now, I’m not a theologian, I just play one on the internet….but, the two lines of Abraham do seem to stand in stark contrast as a cosmic lesson as to the identity of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.

In an essay, “Jesus and Muhammad on Wealth”, James Arlandson says, in part, at The American Thinker ….

…Muhammad is the one who promised his jihadists heaven if they died, and plunder if they lived. If anyone had the “love of desires,” it was the Prophet of Islam.

This slippery path sets the genetic code of Islam. Muhammad and his successors conquer the known world, plunder its wealth, and impose its politics of an authoritarian Caliphate, modeled after the Prophet’s own authoritarianism. ….

…Jesus never chased women and then claimed revelations about having them. He was never a slave trader, even though it was a lucrative business. Finally, He never spent his whole life searching for and accumulating as many material things as he could grab by bloody wars.

This good path set the genetic code for Christianity, established at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and follows freedom from worldly entanglements. He turned down Satan’s big offer to conquer the world. Christians are in the world, but not of it (John 17:14-18). Jesus and his Apostles offer freedom.

So, what is a Western nation to do if it is going to engage Muslim culture? Is secular engagement hopeless? Perhaps not if you think the Muslim world will soon embrace secularism in its governance. How about Judeo-Christian engagement? Hmmm….In that scenario prepare to send waves of martyrs into a tough missionary field.

At a minimum our diplomacy must engage the religion and with our system of seperation of church and state we have no model for that. Islam will not yield to secularism. Yes, they may adopt our market systems, media and fashion but their fundamental view of the world will stay the same unless it is transformed. Religion can only be answered by a better religious answer. Religion is at the core of the Arab identity. [Recommended--"The Diplomacy of Religous Freedom" by Thomas Farr, First Things, May '06]

This speech is the most sobering thing I’ve read lately about the War on Terror. Its theme of the weakness of the relativistic West in facing militant Islam is familiar, and Murray’s point of view is distinctly European, but in reading it I could not help but worry about just how far relativism has eroded the self-confidence of America’s elites, and their willingness to defend American values over the long term. Certainly the recent actions of their European counterparts, as explained by Murray, has been cowardly and appalling. An arresting excerpt:

Relativism has one over-riding consequence, and that consequence is the history of Europe over the last forty years. Giving equal attention and respect to all-comers, not only can relativists (the politically correct) not defend their own, they end up drawing a parity across cultures, faiths and behaviours which diminishes the good, and elevates the malignant. When we stare in disbelief at tolerance of the intolerable and the slow turning of that tolerance into acceptance and then acquiescence in evil, we are seeing Europeans acting out the last stages of nihilist philosophy. It is a way of looking at – and acting in – the world which will ruin Europe if we do not rid ourselves of it. Ridding ourselves of our rotten thought-world is the first step (and one in which everyone can take part) towards protecting ourselves from the threats which face us. It is one of the practical ways in which citizens can fight a war which is so far waged and triumphed in only by our military.

Murray closes with some recommended changes in European public policy, including this: “All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.”  Here’s a question for discussion: What would be the reaction to such a proposal in terms of immigration into the US?

(If you’d like to read more of Murray, click here for a short talk on neo-conservatism he gave last fall to the Manhattan Institute.)

The media reports that Austrian prosecutors have indicated that they have to act over a fresh denial of the Nazi Holocaust by jailed British historian David Irving.  The new denial came in interviews with several British journalists in his Austrian prison cell, where he is beginning a three-year sentence.

On February 20, Irving was jailed for three years in a one-day trial in which he was accused of falsifying history and claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.  The Austrian law makes denial of the Holocaust–or even minimizing its magnitude–a crime.

There’s not much good one can say about David Irving.  Denying the Holocaust is foolish, stubborn, and just plain wrong.  However, imprisoning someone for holding a view or for voicing an opinion about a historical matter makes a mockery of liberty.  European defense of free speech in the wake of the cartoon riots in Muslim lands seems less than sincere when men are jailed for beliefs.  The market place of ideas has more than demolished the revisionism of Irving and his ilk.  The marketplace is not perfect, but there is absolutely no need to give the Irvings of the world more attention in 2006 by jailing them for denying historical events. 

To quote Holmes, defending free speech is never more important than when it is ”the speech that we hate.”

The Choice of a New Generation (of Jihadists).

(via Andrew Coyne)