Saturday, November 17, 2012

Whose Side Is God On?

"Never go to a religious war without your religion." – Tom Kratman

The national news media are largely ignoring the largest and most ominous development of the past fifty years: the escalating religious war in the Middle East, which has outcroppings in such out-of-the-way places as Britain and Canada. Your Curmudgeon is, of course, unsurprised. After the recent display of "puppet fellatio" by the Mainstream Media toward The Won, the notion that they might ever report candidly on something that so dramatically contradicts the Obamunist narrative is absurd.

And it is a religious war. Disabuse yourself of any contrary notion. Islam is only "one more Abrahamic religion" in the minds of the uncritical. Its ludicrous theology is mere window dressing for a program of military expansion and totalitarian dominance of the world. Muslims are leaguing against Israel because it's a non-Muslim nation in the midst of what they regard as their Waqf. Incidentally, they regard Spain the same way. Fancy that.

Israel, as doughty as she is, cannot withstand the combined assault of all the Muslims in the Middle East without the assistance of the United States. Given Obama's demonstrated hostility toward Israel these past four years, would you be willing to bet that such assistance is forthcoming?

Now ask yourself why Obama would jettison America's most reliable Middle Eastern ally, and the only democratic state in that region. Might there be an influence, from somewhere in Obama's past, that has prejudiced him against the Jews? Might there be more than one?

Not much of a puzzler, this one.


An unfortunate consequence of the secularization of the West is a propensity to see religious controversies as weightless and inconsequential. This is not the case, has never been the case, and will never be the case. For the atheists and agnostics in the audience:

  • Every religion represents itself as the Divine Will for Mankind.
  • Every religion includes an ethos: a set of rules that define mandatory and prohibited acts.
  • To go against the ethos is to condemn oneself to Hell.
  • Cancer of the genitals is nasty, but Hell is worse and lasts much longer.
  • Some religions (e.g., Islam) attach extra afterlife rewards to particular deeds in life.

Thus, for those who adhere to one, there is no more potent motivating force than their religion -- and if their religion commands them to "do unto others until the rubble glows in the dark," that's what they'll do.

That the war in the Middle East is religiously animated principally on one side is particularly ominous. The Israelis have been secularized almost as thoroughly as the rest of the West. Many of them see themselves not as Jews defending their ancient and honorable faith, but merely as persons struggling to survive an onslaught from inexplicably hostile neighbors. What did we ever do to them? is a reasonable precis of the prevalent mentality. For combatants in a religious war, it is not enough.


"Soldiers in a holy war win or die. They do not seek new wars." -- Larry Niven

Your Curmudgeon will forbear to elaborate further about the religious character of the assaults on Israel. But he will note that the Muslim mindset is as hostile toward Christianity as it is toward Judaism.

Imagine, if you prefer and are sufficiently depraved, that the United States could buy itself a few years of relative peace by throwing Israel to the Islamic wolves. Imagine further, though it takes little imagination at this juncture, that the Obama Administration is willing to do so. What would follow in that train?

There are more Jews in the United States and Canada than there are in Israel.
Muslims have flowed into North America in large numbers these past thirty years.
And it is a religious war.

You will find very few mosques in this nation where hatred of the Jews is not preached continually and assiduously. You will find copious hate literature at every one of them, naming the Jews as "descendants of apes and pigs," as drinkers of the blood of Muslim children, as the architects of a scheme of world conquest of their own. You will find recorded sermons, in Arabic and English, from "respected" Islamic authorities in many lands, denouncing the Jews, the "Zionist entity," and the United States for the support it has lent Israel. Is it possible to believe, should Islamic madness succeed in destroying the Jewish state, that it wouldn't swiftly retarget onto Jews in Europe and North America?

You cannot argue a man out of the dictates of his religion without changing his religion. The only force that can countervail Islamic hatred of the Jews -- indeed, of everything not utterly conformant to Islam -- is force itself: the taste of defeat; the sting of the lash. You must not deceive yourself that persons whose convictions are in no way the fruits of reason or evidence can be persuaded by those things to change their ways. This is a religious war, and unless you're willing to see it that way, you will lose.

And you will not succeed in achieving the required mindset until you agree to "make war against a religion."


The ideas expressed in this afterword to John Ringo and Tom Kratman's novel The Tuloriad are congruent with the ones above.

5 comments:

Mark Alger said...

I do not call myself a Christian. For, although I subscribe to the Nicene Creed, I do not belong to a congregation, nor do I prosyletize.

Similarly, though one may subscribe to the Five Pillars of Islam, I wonder how a "moderate" can truly claim to be a Muslim.

M

Francis W. Porretto said...

You don't have to proselytize, nor immerse yourself in a congregation, to be a Christian, Mark. From what little I know of you, you're at least as deserving of the appellation as I am.

Not all of us are comfortable about proselytizing. Not all of us are comfortable with the acceptance of mutual support and responsibility that goes along with congregation membership. One can be a Christian -- and a good one -- even so, simply by remaining mindful of and obedient to a bare fifty words:

"You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your whole soul, and your whole mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

Jesus said it. You and I can rely on it.

Be not afraid.

furball said...

I remember going to a John Wayne movie back when I was very young and we went to movies in cars.

The movie was Jet Pilot and I had NO idea of deeper meanings but even at my young age of 5 or 6 or 7, I knew we were in some sort of "war" with the Soviet Union. . .

And I remember a REALLY DEEP feeling of shame and discomfort when Janet Leigh's character turned a gun on John Wayne and said "Yes, I love you, but I'll do this wrong thing because I believe it."

I REALLY DO remember that moment, even if I have the facts of the movie wrong, because it was the first moment I ever felt BETRAYAL.

It shamed me, even though it was just a character on a screen. How could you love John Wayne, but turn a gun on the society/nation/civilization that had produced him?

How could you be a pretty woman and turn a gun on John Wayne?

The movie had a simple ending. . . If I remember correctly, John Wayne convinced Janet Leigh that she loves him and she defects and they fly back over Alaska and eat steaks or something.
---------------------------------
I was similarly shamed to find that Catholicism had erred - or at least knights had erred at Jerusalem during the Crusades. And we all hiss at the Spanish Inquisition, though, between the years of 1452 and 1779, the Spanish Inquisition - for all the hyperbole - killed about 5,000 people. . . which is 5,000 too many but when idiots tell you that religion has killed more people than anything else, they are factually wrong. LEFTIST IDEOLOGY has killed millions more people than anything else.

But. . . anyway. . . I was shamed when I heard each of these things. I'm not a Catholic, but I was shamed to learn that the Crusades weren't as Holy as they were presented to be. I was shamed to learn that people could die IN THE MILLIONS for *any* totalitarian state. I was shamed to learn Hitler could convince or sham a country to do what he did, even as I was proud of my Dad for fighting him.

I'm shamed that 1400 years later, people who are at least as smart as I am can believe in the death cult that is Islam.

And I am incredibly shamed that people who grew up with all the great blessings of Western Civilization cannot make simple distinctions between a culture of family, growth and hope, and a culture of suppression, death and control.

I never put bumper stickers on my car. I was told in the Army that I had an IQ of 143, and I thought I was "smart." But I never chose sides. I don't know if that was out of confusion, dope or cowardice. But I thought there were "good" people on both sides and that I just didn't "really understand" the issues.

I'm ashamed of myself and my fellow Westerners. There is no issue but simple decency and the right to let people live while they grant you that same right.

I didn't stand up and speak out against haters, killers, takers and bureaucrats when I could have.

KG said...

Perhaps you're too easily shamed, furball. Unless we have different definitions of the word, I don't see how the actions of other people, particularly those actions
which which we can do nothing about, shame us in the least.
To think otherwise is simply a form of self-flagellating collectivism.
But I'm a simple uneducated soul, so if I have the wrong end of the stick here I look forward to finding out how. :)

Anonymous said...

furball, "shame" or not is not really for me to say, but I think KG has a point. Thing is, you've GOT it know and your voice is valuable.More power to you. mara