Just a few off-the-cuff thoughts on the putative “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islamic societies.
First, let me define what may be an idiosyncratic view of civilization that may find echoes of sentiment in some folks, at least. I recognize that “civilization” (a rather recent word in the English language, as such things go) was coined to refer to a society of “city dwellers” and that’s about it. But I would submit to you that any society that is truly civilized must recognize and embody certain fundamental principles. Leading those principles are:
1. Private property rights.
2. Rights of persons to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own goals, insofar as those goals do not infringe on the rights and property of others.
3. A government concerned with protecting these rights against outlaws–both within and without the society.
By any measure, one can see that is Muslims can be said to be civilized at all, it is a most crude, rudimentary and severely flawed “civilization” they own, indeed. Property rights? Islam is clear that property rights are first and foremost for Islamic men, almost to exclusion. Oh, dhimmis can own things in Islamic countries… as long as some greedy Muslim man doesn’t decide they want it instead (following Mohammed’s treachery, rape, pillage, butchery and enslavement of the Jews at Medina, et al.). In Islamic society, regardless the false protestations of “moderate” Muslims, it’s essentially a pack mentality where top dogs rule.
Of course, given human nature, Western societies have a degree of that sort of thing, as well, but property rights (well, until Kelo) were at least protected with a fair degree of evenhandedness under the law for most of the history of Western civilization. In fact, the progress of true liberalism in Western civilization can be fairly traced largely in the restriction of the greed of the powerful to legally “steal” from the weak.
And which civilization has striven to eliminate chattel slavery from its society? The history of the liberation of individuals from chattel slavery canNOT be traced in Muslim societies at all, and in fact, chattel slavery is widely and pretty openly practiced in the Islamic world. Not so in Western society, where the practice of slavery, which sadly still goes on, is at the very least viewed as a heinous crime (which is one reason dhimmi-western eyes are averted from Darfur, the most blatant example of slavery’s open practice in the Muslim world).
Enslavement of individuals goes far beyond chattel slavery in Muslim societies, though. Non-Muslims are severely-curtailed in freedoms (and their goods–the fruits of their labors) are always “in play” for any overly-greedy, powerful Muslim man who may want to “legally” steal them. Oh, and you may have noticed “man” and “men” italicized in a couple of places. That’s because property rights, individual freedoms and liberties, indeed life itself are all extremely circumscribed for women. Indeed, women in Muslim societies are most often simply creatures as good as owned by men as any slave.
And what of government’s commitment to the protection of individuals’ rights and property? Well, until the fake liberalism of the 20th century began to take hold, Western Civilization’s record was one of ever more responsible government doing its proper job of protecting the rights of individuals to live their own lives and own their own property relatively free of predation from outlaws within and without. Of course, now that the fake liberalism of the 20th century has become Western Civilizations consolation as it commits suicide (and a tip o’ the tam to James Burnham for the phrasing), the powerful are grabbing more and more from the weak… with the aid of an ever more grasping and greedy political class, so the advantage in true civilized values the West has enjoyed over the Islamic world is beginning to wane. *sigh*
Let me refer you again to Samuel Francis speaking on the growing threat of anarcho-tyranny.
“…What we enjoy in this country, and to a large extent in most other Western nations, is a bit more complicated than mere anarchy. It is, in fact, the unique achievement of the political genius of the modern era: what, in 1992, I called “anarcho-tyranny,” a kind of Hegelian synthesis of two opposites–anarchy and tyranny.
“The elementary concept of anarcho-tyranny is simple enough. History knows of many societies that have succumbed to anarchy when the governing authorities proved incapable of controlling criminals, warlords, rebels, and marauding invaders. Today, that is not the problem in the United States…
“…Yet, at the same time, the country habitually wallows in a condition that often resembles Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature–nasty, brutish, and short. Crime rates have indeed declined in the last decade or so, but violent crime remains so common in larger cities and their suburbs that both residents and visitors live in a continuous state of fear, if not terror. The most obvious sign of what would normally be called anarchy is the immigration invasion… The invaders–as residents of Arizona, where some 40 percent of illegal aliens enter the country, constantly complain–threaten the lives, safety, and property of law-abiding American citizens; depress wages; gobble welfare; and constitute a new underclass that is an object of demagogic political manipulation by both American and Mexican politicians… The federal government invaded Iraq, although Iraq never harmed or threatened us, but it does virtually nothing to resist the massive invasion (and eventually the conquest) of its own country and the deliberate violation of its own laws by Mexico… “
Let me here highly recommend that you read the entirety of Francis’ article.
Still, growing anarcho-tyranny notwithstanding, the West is so far more civilized than the most civilized of Islamic countries (say, Turkey, for example) that comparing the two as civilizations is similar to comparing a silk purse to the pig’s ear that could never become a silk purse.
Islamic societies can never become really civilized, no matter how many cities they steal from productive people or pay Westerners (or other peoples more civilized than Muslims) to build for them with proceeds of land-rape monies. They cannot, because they follow the precepts of a person who was a savage, brutal thief, murderer, liar and oath-breaker, Mohamed (who rots in hell forever). Absent a complete, total and absolute repudiation of The Butcher of Medina, the people dominated by his life and teachings will always be as he: fundamentally flawed as savage, brutal thieves, liars, murderers and oath-breakers (for an oath, contract, or promise to anyone a.) not a “believer” or b.) less powerful than oneself is easily disregarded by Muslim men).
Outlaws the lot of them, and should the Western world wake up and recognize that fact and proclaim its truth and act accordingly, it might have a chance to survive the Muslim threat, at least.
As to the threat of fake liberalism that seeks to bind all men with the chains of the State and steal from those who work to earn their living “by the sweat of their brows” to give to the indolent, the slackers and ultimately the powerful elite, well, Western Civilization has survived worse. (Though not much worse. Not even the Thirty Years’ War killed as many as the fake liberalism that embraced Rachel Carson’s lies, for example. Heck, Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Kahn, Adolph Hitler and all the most evil tyrants of history would have difficulty matching the killing spree of the fake liberals of the last fifty years or so.)
Well, as I said, a few off-the-cuff observations. Make of them what you will. Suffice it to say that I don’t believe the clash between Western Civilization and the Muslim world is really a clash of civilizations at all but more of a slow yielding of Western civilization (at the urging of fake liberals everywhere) to the barbarians at the gates, yea, even open invitations to the barbarians to come inside and rape and pillage and burn and ultimately enslave.
TB-ed to The Random Yak’s Midweek OTP
