ENTER THE MUSLIMS

by Dota

According to a series of Pew surveys, Islamophobia is on the rise in Europe:

"Pew’s 2014 Global Attitudes survey, 26 per cent of us have ‘unfavourable’ attitudes towards Muslims in this country; compare that to 46 per cent in Spain, 53 per cent in Greece and 63 per cent in Italy."

The leftist BBC self righteously took pot shots at Greece as Athens was the only major city in all of Europe that refused to permit the construction of a Mosque. It seems that this will no longer be the case as plans for a new Mosque are being discussed.

As I watched the video in the above link I couldn’t help but notice that this hostility to Muslims stems not from religious prejudice, but xenophobia. This brought me back to an excellent point Bay Area Guy had made a while ago about how Muslims had become a legitimate target for pent up anti-immigrant frustration. I suspect this is also the case in Europe. Muslims are bashed especially hard because North American Whites and Europeans are not allowed to bash any other group for fear of being labelled racist.

While there is nothing objectionable about Westerners wishing to protect their culture and heritage, what I find disturbing about these trends is how Muslims are being treated as a race as opposed to a global religion. The Bishop of Piraeus (in the video) is apprehensive about Europe becoming Islamicized. I’m not even sure what that means given that there is no such thing as Islamic culture. The culture practiced by Muslims is a function of their ethnic origin. Indian Muslims practice Indian culture (depending on caste and region) while Malaysian Muslims have little in common with Sub Saharan African Muslims.

Turkish Muslim

Even dysfunctional Pakistan, the poster child of Islamic terrorism, is not fully Islamicized. As Aakar Patel notes:

"In Pakistan nobody has ever been stoned to death or beheaded or amputated, unlike in Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. The laws exist only to make Pakistanis feel more Muslim; to separate them from Indians, because otherwise very little does."

If Pakistanis cannot even Islamicize Pakistan, how do you expect them to Islamicize Europe and North America? Does this mean that Pakistanis are not a threat to Western culture? Of course not. However, the source of the threat isn’t Islam, but their tribal/caste collectivist South Asian culture that values group identity over universal principles. An influx of such immigrants threatens to degrade Western democracies by making the democratic process a numbers game (vote bank politics) as opposed to a healthy competition of ideologies. This is exactly the sorry state of Indian democracy.

What do Mexicans and Pakistanis have in common? Both of them vote liberal due to the Left’s commitment to lax immigration policies. Nobody in their right mind would think that Pakistanis and Mexicans harbor any love for feminists, gays, or any of the other Liberal pet classes. But why are Muslims treated as a race in mainstream discourse?

Analyzing Islam’s ritualistic framework

The Islam bashing industry has really exploded in the last decade. Daniel Pipes, Spencer, and others make a fortune selling books, DVDs, and lectures on the evils of Islam while pushing a pro Zionist narrative on the gullible masses. All of this becomes infinitely easier if Muslims are treated as one large faceless monolithic enemy. But I’m not going to bash the bashers as this article is dedicated to analysis and not vitriol.

Islam, like it’s parent Judaism, is a ritualistic religion. It’s rituals enabled the Muslim community to internalize certain ethical ideals (such as Charity) in addition to sentiments of solidarity (Salah/prayer ritual).

What do Islamic rituals have in common with Jewish rituals?

Recognize that a significant portion of the Old Testament was written during the Babylonian exile (~590 BCE) where Jewish elites were exiled and forced to live amidst an indifferent and possibly hostile majority. I suspect it was during this fateful period that Judaism began to take on it’s distinctive character which is all to familiar to those on the alternative right: A nation within a nation. Jewish rituals pertaining to intermarriage and dietary laws were designed to prevent Jews from mingling with their gentile neighbors. This would enable Jews to resist cultural assimilation in addition to being perpetually cognizant of their own special status as God’s chosen Master race.

Islamic rituals were not meant to segregate Muslims from non Muslims and the Quran allows Muslims to dine with Jews and Christians. However, like Jewish rituals, Islamic rituals were intended to remind Muslims of their special identity and to differentiate themselves from non Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad had once said that the distinctive Islamic prayer was the distinguishing mark of a Muslim. This ritual reminds the Muslim of his special identity while simultaneously signaling this identity to those around him.

Uyghur Muslim

As the vast majority of Muslims today are non-Arab, several Islamic ideas and values have lost their cultural context. The Islamic idea of “Gheera” for example (protective jealousy of one’s wife/sister/mother etc.) seems to be lost on most non Arab Muslims. I hadn’t even heard the term until I was 20. Yet Islamic rituals and practices make it easy to classify Muslims as a separate race because rituals in general have historically had an ethnic dimension. Confucian rituals are Chinese in character while Hindu rituals are Indian in character. Since Islamic rituals are traditionally Arab in character but are practiced largely by non-Arabs, Muslims have come to be in a class of their own. Leftists/Orientalists are quick to blame Whites for ‘othering’ the Muslim. However, as my analysis shows, Islam lends itself to ‘othering’.

How do you solve a problem like Islam?

Pat Buchanan has the answer: We must leave them alone. Stop invading their countries and put an end to non-Western immigration. Treating the diverse Muslim world as a monolithic race is reckless, counterproductive, and above all ignorant. The West (especially the US) needs to stop supporting Israel. As a sovereign nation, Israel is free to wage unlimited war in the Middle East and continue its plunder of Palestinian land so long as they do so on their own dime. The US and Canada need to reconsider the possibility of pursuing an isolationist foreign policy which discourages military intervention but encourages trade and commerce with the third world. We need to export good and services to the third world, not our values.

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