Christianity and Islam - the differences

The difference between the Christian and Islamic systems is that the former has had a Reformation, and the latter hasn't. During the course of the schism in Christianity (dating roughly from Luther in 1517 and Henry VIII in 1538 when the Dissolution was ordered) the texts were gradually re-examined over the next couple of centuries, and the Old Testament was largely consigned to the dustbin. Sam Harris (End of Faith) expounds upon this point with his usual enthusiasm.

Islam neither allows any such re-jigging of its texts (that's blasphemy), nor any withdrawal from the Ummah (that's Apostasy). Both have severe penalties. That's why most rational thinkers regard the whole edifice as an oubliette - easy to get down into, impossible to get out of, thus to be avoided. 

This then is the main root of the disquiet about things Islamic: it cuts right across Enlightenment values of self-determination, personal freedom within a polity, and rationality. To be sure, as long as adherents stay within the guardrails set by the wider non-Islamic society, no issues. But unfortunately for that happy prospect, there's the uncomfortable fact that the Islamic texts regard that wider society as infidels, to be converted if possible.

We've largely abandoned Christian evangelism because of its long history of abuses, mis-steps and ultimate futility. So we are not about to embrace a newer, evangelistic, and intensely patriarchic imperialism......

Another cold-eyed but well-argued Spengler piece

In this magisterial article, David P Goldman argues that America has bungled everything for a decade-and-a-half, and is frankly now incapable of affecting much in the world.  Worse, and this has been an emerging theme, the USA has so burnt its old allies, from the Saudis through the EU to the UK, that it will find out about stuff after the deals have been struck, and after the events have occurred.

No-one could have walked into the Oval Office in 2001 and told then president George W Bush that his job was to manage the inevitable decline of Muslim civilization: to humiliate the Iranians, to hobble the contending parties and to leave as much power as possible in the hands of abhorrent military or monarchical governments. No-one could have gone to American universities and recruited the soldiers, spies and diplomats to execute a plan which preferred the slow and inevitable spread of human misery to a cataclysmic alternative.

In another thread from his recent thinking, he argues

It has become nearly impossible in America to ask the question: Which cultures are viable and which are not? Individuals of all cultures are viable Americans, but that is not necessarily true of the culture they left behind. 

This question, of course, is one that NZ must increasingly ask itself, as we are confronted with visibly destructive (albeit and mercifully, not widely geographically distributed) cultures.

Spengler's view is simple:

It is a fool’s errand to stabilize them; the best one can do is to prevent their problems from spilling over onto us. 

Arab hunger

Spengler, once again, nails the essence of what is really going on in MENA. Implosion, in a word. These countries will simply become flyover territories. But short-term, they're gonna generate a world of refugee pain for the Eurozone and any other country unlucky enough to border them.....

Has Bin

'Spengler' pulls another superb grain of wheat from the mass of chaff being talked about OBL's demise. To precis: the poor old chap was thrown under the bus - a victim of the various Arab upheavals which have yet to run their course.

AQ had been more use to the Iranian cause of late, and the Saudis took a dim view of That, as the Yemeni buffer zone to their south is visibly disintegrating by the day. And as the Saudis both spawned and bankrolled OBL, they were certainly in a position to decide when the thread holding the sword over his head, should be snipped.

Yer won't hear much of this in the MSM of course. They're still veering between horror and delight. And there's no body, so the conspiracy theories are already running hot. Panem et circenses....

By the Shadow of our Hand

A chilling but essential read for all who harbour Pollyanna thoughts about the Long War. Belmont Club has always turned out excellent analysis, and the comments thread is simply breathtaking. Especially Zenster. Plus there's a link to dear Steven Den Beste, on Triage.

Compare this thread with the pathetic namecalling on, say, DPF's comments threads. Pick almost any one. Sigh.

Columbia to Ahmadinejad - you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.

At last, a univeristy type with a backbone. This is Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger's address to the hapless Iranian. Mr President, I'll second that.

Z's dead, baby

This line is part of a now-classic sequence from Quentin Taratino's movie: Pulp Fiction. The context:

"Who's bike is that?"
"It's not a bike, it's a chopper"
"Who's chopper is that?"
"That's Z's chopper."
"Who's Z?"
"Z's dead, baby, Z's dead"

After reading the muted local response to Zarqawi's JDAM supper (Z's dead, baby, geddit?), the overseas stuff looks, as always, to be better informed and more measured in it's assessment. There is no doubt that a massive roll-up of parts of his network has occurred, due to intel confirmed during the operation, and that a chilling effect on recruitment and general enthusiasm for the jihad, will have temporarily descended. But that's a bit like the winter snowstorm currently blanketing points south of here: a week's disruption, then business as usual.

It's not as though li'l ol' NZ has a benign strategic environment any more: Timor Este and the Solomons should have put paid to that sweet foolish hope. And the unceremonious deportation of our very own Fly-boy Of A Certain Religious Persuasion may well indicate that our woeful Gummint has seen something of the light. Or had a gruelling focus group encounter on the topic of National Security.

Well, whatever. It was the right thing to do. The Fly-boy, I mean. And, of course, "Z". Didn't even need, as in Pulp Fiction, to get mediaeval on his ass. Z's ass was mediaeval to start with.

Greens lack a Defence policy (quell surprise...)

A defence policy, people, resources and equipment to do the dirty deeds, and training etc is just what I expect my hard-won and reluctantly surrendered taxes, to fund, as the very first duty of Gummint. So, you (Greens) are quite correct, not having such a policy shows a fundamental unseriousness about Governing.

And your own straw person (Lord help me, I’m using the same woolly language) is the ‘illegality’ of Iraq. You’ll need to keep a careful eye on the documents now being released: the ‘Blessed July’ aspect alone (see, for example this) would make a Londoner think twice. The point is that ‘legality’ applies only to a Westphalian nation-state weltanschauung. And we’re definitely not in that Kansas any more, Dorothy.

New Zealand is strategically irrelevant to the new Great Game - the Western Enlightenment against the Third Caliphate, but does pose a security risk to the rest of the Anglosphere: our laughably lax immigration and citizenship attitudes, mean that we are seen as a ’soft touch’.

So a useful start to a Green defence policy might be to ponder awhile on the ’sustainability’ of this stance.

And this goes far beyond the electoral considerations. When you consider that the Reggie Krays of the world can now purchase submarines, aircraft carriers and crude nuclear devices (read William Langwiesche on A.Q Khan in recent Atlantic Monthlies) as well as the usual run of weaponry, and that NZ has the longest and certainly the least defendable coastline in the Pacific, all sorts of unhealthy scenarios swim up from the depths.

And Reggie, to those who knew him, had one persona that was utterly charming, urbane, philanthropic and which took in more than one ingenuous reporter. But then he also had his Little Moments.

We, of course, don’t want to be a pawn in someone else’s game. Fair enough, the quiet life and all. But then, as Trotsky noted, ‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you’.

Better to heed and prepare.

Dem 'Toons

Lots of heat and little light in our own benighted and multi-culti-infested media warrens.

Antidotes hereby prescribed:

Belmont Club has a good set of posts on strategies, and notes that the orchestrated 'toons controversy is likely to derail radical Islam's designs on Europe by engaging it on two fronts simultaneously: not something the lead-from-some-cave-somewhere kriegmeisters had probably figured on.

Mark Steyn has a deliciously sardonic article on the topic: read it and laugh.

And just watch the hapless creatures over at FrogBlog, caught in a quagmire of cultural quailing, uneasy defence of a Press they would love to regulate, disdainful dismissals of religions as relics of irrationality, and general thrashing about while slowly sinking. Friends close, but enemies closer, that's the deal.

Great read for strategic minds

In stark contrast to the woolly-headed claptrap encountered in most comments about grand strategy, this piece hits the spot quite nicely. Fasten your seat-belts. Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily.

Cronulla comments

Mark Steyn does his usual pithy take on what's going on here. And a genuine Aussie sheila has her say as well. And Keith Windschuttle. And the good Prof Bunyip.

No prizes for guessing what's at the heart of this matter: a bunch of self-marginalised young Muslim gangsta males with quite inexcusable attitudes to women. Not that you'd read that in the dead tree editions, anytime soon.

But then our own dear Froggie has a try. Swing and a miss, I'd say. Stick to saving albatrosses, they're less complex ecosystems.