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Islam and 'international Jihad'

Extract from Senator Bernardi's book, "The Conservative Revolution"

......Similarly we have the increasing indulgence of a totalitarian political agenda in the guise of the religion of Islam. The fact that the Islamic political and religious ideology is incompatible with Western culture has been demonstrated throughout history. Churchill wrote in The River War (1899): "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Brilliant a political leader that Churchill was, this was no original insight. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville reflected in his Democracy in America: "Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others."

It seems that with the embrace of a secular equality devoid of moral grounding, most of our political elite now find it impossible to draw what were once obvious qualitative distinctions between religious world-views and philosophies of life. No doubt this is the result of people's desire to avoid bigotry and 'discrimination', but what it has actually achieved is an impoverished political debate. Instead of being 'enlightened', political discourse has in fact become less able to tackle uncomfortable truths.

Tocqueville and Churchill had reason to make their observations about the nature of Islam, so many decades ago, but these reasons are with us today. It does say quite a great deal about the poor state of contemporary political leadership when merely acknowledging the obvious is considered 'controversial' or a sign of bad character.

Earlier I recounted Cardinal Pell's comment that our Western concept of human dignity is necessarily derived from our uniquely Christian cultural heritage. Pell made this observation by contrasting it with Islam: "It is frequently observed today in relation to events in the Arab world that democracy is not something that can be imposed; that democracy needs a certain sort of culture to make it possible. For the West, that culture is fundamentally Christian".

In considering Islam, it is important for conservatives to separate the edicts of Islam from the practice of many socalled 'secular' Muslims. These are the many Muslims who practise the spiritual aspects of their personal faith or adhere to daily customs in their life routines, but do not necessarily follow the teachings of the trilogy of Islamic texts (Quran, Hadith and Sira) which are dominated by matters perhaps better described as political, not spiritual. Often these are people who are Muslim by cultural practice and tradition rather than through strong religious belief. In considering these people as 'moderate Muslims', one must recognise that there is no such thing as moderate Islam because the Islamic doctrines are very clear.

This is apparent not only from the demands of the Islamic tradition itself, particularly in light of the absence from its worldview of any separation of religion and state, but also according to the pronouncements of modern Islamic political leaders. For example, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, forthrightly rejected the concept of a 'moderate Islam.' In August of 2007 he bluntly said: These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it.

These are not the words of an 'Islamophobe', they are the words of a Muslim head of state of a secular country where over 99 per cent of the population identify as Muslim.The Islamic doctrine commands Muslims to establish Sharia (or Islamic law) wherever Muslims settle in significant populations. The Sharia, based upon the Quran, Sira and Hadith (which are oral and recorded traditions used to interpret the Sharia), forms a code which dictates the life routines of its adherents to the smallest detail, even which hand a Muslim should use when greeting a 'non-believer.' Ultimately, it commands Muslims to impose Islam on the entire world and to use jihad (or holy war) in their quest for political domination.

Islam and the Quran are a blueprint for an ideology that seeks to create an Islamic super-state and dominate every detail of life in an Islamic society. It rules over what to eat and how to dress. Adulterers are to be stoned to death and homosexuals punished. Women are considered second class citizens. Non-believers are excluded from full membership of society and those who commit apostasy can be killed.

In his book Islam and the Jews, former lecturer of Islamic history at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, Dr. Mark Gabriel, himself a convert to Christianity, explained Muslim protestations that Islam is the religion of peace. According to Gabriel such claims can only be explained in one of two ways:
1. Wishful thinking [the devout Muslim] really believes that Islam should be about peace so he preaches the peaceful side of Islam. He sincerely believes he is practising Islam, but peace is not the final revelation of Islam.
2. Deception ... in Islam a Muslim may profess to deny nasikh [i.e., the abrogation of Sharia] if doing so is for the purpose of protecting the image of Islam and furthering missionary activity. This is particularly acceptable if the Muslim is living as a minority in a non-Muslim country ... But this denial must be in words only. In their hearts, Muslims must continue to accept nasikh and follow the full and final development of the Quranic revelation.

This may seem like an unnecessarily blunt assessment, but based solely on its own dictates and teachings, and judging by the recent history of its followers in the West since the terrorist attacks in New York, London, Madrid and against Australians in Bali in 2002, as well as the practices of its fundamentalist adherents in the major capitals of Western Europe, Islamic law does not seem to be particularly compatible with the values on which our society has been founded.

This has been legally affirmed by the European Court of Human Rights which ruled in 2001 that "[i]t is difficult to declare one's respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia".

A steadily growing body of recent literature, specifically addressing this problem as it is experienced in Europe, provides an insight to what we may expect here unless these issues are honestly and thoughtfully confronted by responsible policy. Likewise, a truly responsible government would be foolish to ignore the warnings of Ed Hussein, Christopher Caldwell, Melanie Phillips, Geert Wilders and the many others who continue to write about the Islamic reality experienced in the cities and streets where they live.

In his 2006 book "Girls Like You" Paul Sheehan illustrates that such concerns are not unfounded even for us in Australia. Ironically, it is the 'progressives' who should really be up in arms, as it is their radical 'freedoms' which will be the first to go if Sharia is ever practised in Western societies. Mark Steyn humorously writes in the prologue to his 2006 book America Alone:
"[L]efties always respond 'Oh, well, that's typical right-wing racism.' In fact, it ought to be the Left's issue. I'm a 'social conservative.' When the Mullahs take over, I'll grow my beard a little fuller, get a couple extra wives, and keep my head down. It's the feminists and gays who'll have a tougher time."

One may disagree with the following proposition, but an argument can certainly be made that Islam is a threat to our faith and our culture because it seeks to dominate and change the founding values of our society with those that are incompatible with the Western way of life: it has a concept of human dignity which is fundamentally different from ours, it does not recognise the separation of church and state nor the equality of men and women. The idea of freedom of speech and freedom of religion under Islamic rule is also vastly at odds with what we understand by those freedoms. And of course, it is no friend to 'progressive' social programs. The left often talks about the need to 'celebrate diversity' and how it can apparently enrich society, but not all differences are worthy of celebration because not all cultural values are compatible with ours, nor are all differences 'good' in the sense that they are beneficial to us.

The differences between the Christian and the Islamic worldviews are too radical to simply ignore. Unfortunately, they are ignored all too often, probably because our political leaders don't understand the importance of affirming the primacy of our own culture, and at the same time, they seek approval from cultural and moral relativists among the left. This is why we need a conservative revolution.


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