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Do You Think The Wrong Thing?!
by Douglas Murray
December 12, 2013 at 5:00 am
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Western democracies have a great and
serious problem: larger and larger swaths of people, when asked their opinion
on certain matters, keep coming back with the wrong opinion. Surely,
something must be done about this!
The other option is to de-link Islam
from violence by ensuring that people stop carrying out acts of violence in
the name of Islam; or to create ways for people actually to acquire quality
healthcare at affordable prices; or seriously to prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons, or to stop those in power from 'making up the rules as they
go along', which as Daniel Hannan puts it, "means, in short, that there
is no effective rule of law."
We must face up to it. The Western democracies have a great and serious
problem which appears only to be growing: the general public are developing
views highly questionable to those in positions of power. Larger and larger
swaths of people, when asked their opinion of certain matters, keep coming
back with the wrong opinion. Whether it is opposition to the EU in Europe, or
to Obamacare in the U.S., or to a hopeless deal with Iran to keep it from
producing nuclear weapons, something, surely, must be done about this!Take the latest example, a different matter that came to light with a school in Dundee, Scotland. The institution was recently forced to call in a crack-squad of head-scarf wearing Muslim women to help correct what the school felt was a "racist" view of Islam held by some of their students. When the school asked the pupils to say which which words came to mind when people talked about Muslims -- and the response included "terrorist," "oppressed," "a threat" and "scary" -- re-educating the pupils was found to be necessary. Some pupils even, outrageously, said "9/11." After the BBC and other media promptly picked up this disturbing story and asked what more can be done to "educate" Scottish youngsters, the school apparently corrected this problem. But what to do about the recognition that problems like these may well be more widespread? The reaction to the Dundee story was reminiscent to that which followed the publication of a poll carried out by BBC Radio 1 in June of this year. When it was released in September, it transpired that of 1,000 young people polled, 27% said that they did not trust Muslims, with 44% saying they thought Muslims did not share the same views as the rest of the population. On that occasion, too, the BBC and other media went into overdrive to work out what had gone wrong and how Britain could better "address" the problem that so many people thought this way. Conversely, when the same poll showed that 15% of young people did not trust Jews, 13% did not trust Buddhists and 12% did not trust Christians, those facts were not deemed figures of significance. As so often is the case today, a poll is carried out on public opinion and when it turns out that the public have the wrong views on whatever is the Dictate of the Day -- the question then is asked, 'What can people in positions of power do to ensure the public are made to think the right way?' What is striking, is that despite the attempts to re-educate and otherwise alter the attitudes of the majority of the population, the population continue to understand -- in ever larger numbers -- that the problems lie not with them but with what is happening around them. As Daniel Pipes pointed out recently, for example, across much of Europe, Islam appears not to be growing as fast as negative perceptions of it. As Pipes also cited, in Germany last year, a poll revealed that only 7% of Germans associate Islam with "openness, tolerance or respect for human rights." 64% connect it with violence; 68% with intolerance towards other faiths, and 83% with discrimination against women. A poll in France earlier this year revealed that 67% of people believe Islamic values to be "incompatible with those of French society," 73% view Islam negatively and 74 % consider it intolerant. If the problem of perception of Islam were limited to Dundee, that would be one thing. But the Dundee schoolchildren clearly perceive something which a growing number of people across Western Europe also perceive -- as other people do about other problems surrounding them. Of course, as some of us continue to try to point out, there are really only two ways to tackle these "problems." The first is to change the opinions of all of the public. This could be tricky. It would require suppressing stories, misrepresenting events, possibly covering over the occasional beheading, the nuclear cheating, the circumvented law, the cancelled doctor, the terminated insurance policy, the high-handed directive, the repeated deception, the unequal application of the law, the unworkable economic model, the contorted cover-up, the inferior product, the false accusation, and generally trying to ensure that the general public stop noticing what is happening in the world around them. Except that there is the internet of course, which is a nuisance. Although it is possible that some way could be found to shut down all social-networking and news sites and also persuade Google to bring up "daisies" and "recipes for apple pie" whenever anyone types "beheading" or "redistribution" or "uranium enrichment" or "Greece" into his search engine. That is the start of one option. The other option is to de-link Islam and violence by ensuring that people stop carrying out acts of violence in the name of Islam; or to create ways for people actually to receive quality healthcare at affordable prices; or to seriously prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, or to stop those in power from 'making up the rules as they go along', which as Daniel Hannan puts it, "means, in short, that there is no effective rule of law." Those options are not easy either, but they are far easier than the first option, and ever less frequently tried.
Related Topics: Douglas Murray
The Hunger for Power vs. Western Exhaustion
by Ali Salim
December 12, 2013 at 4:00 am
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friends to like this.
They probably believe that if they
put off a war in this administration -- possibly to have the world thrown
into an even more deadly and costly war down the line -- at least no one will
be able to say it happened on their watch. They are wrong. If and when Iran
becomes a nuclear power, as with North Korea, the event will go down in
history as the fault of the Americans -- and above all the crowning legacy of
the current administration -- in their retreat and flight.
Countries such as China and Russia
easily identified a historic opportunity when America abandoned sensitive
strongholds of great geopolitical value such as Saudi Arabian oil; the Suez
Canal; the Arabian Gulf markets for arms, technology and merchandise, and
spheres of geostrategic influence.
America's policy of strategic disengagement in the Middle East becomes,
every day, more apparent. Many countries in the region, which for years have enjoyed
American protection and resources, are being pushed aside: the Arabian Gulf
states, Egypt, Israel, even Turkey. This policy may well, in the long run,
domino into Europe, leaving the countries there to the tender mercies of
Iranian missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.America, apparently no longer interested in the Middle East's oil reserves, and focusing more on the far east and domestic issues, seems to be rushing to sign hasty but effectively meaningless agreements with the emissaries of the Ayatollahs. The concept of a Sunni Muslim alliance stretching from Saudi Arabia to Turkey appears to have been replaced with a naive and irresponsible gamble, especially considering Iranian president Hassan Rouhani's admitted record. The U.S. administration seems to believe that the Iranians, who invented the Shi'ite religious technique of targeted dissimulation (takia), could be trusted, just this once, to tell the truth. America's disengagement, reminiscent of its isolationism before the Second World War, cost not only the United States dearly, but the entire world as well. Every vacuum, including those in the realms of power and statesmanship, is always filled, and not always with correct or appropriate material: sometimes the resulting explosion is deadly. The international political vacuum of the 1930s was filled by the Axis powers and joined by other new revisionists, who threatened to enslave the world and divide it among themselves. Only the attack on Pearl Harbor forced America, at a very late date, to join the Allied war effort, by which time the forces of darkness had not only inflicted incalculable damage on Western and Eastern Europe, but were also six months into the invasion of Russia. Today's forces of darkness speak in languages different from those of the 1930s, but the underlying motives are the same -- namely the hunger for power and dominance -- and they seek to expand their influence in the Middle East. Countries such as China and Russia easily identified a historic opportunity when America abandoned sensitive strongholds of great geopolitical value such as Saudi Arabian oil; the Suez Canal; the Arabian Gulf markets for arms, technology and merchandise; and spheres of geostrategic influence with critical military importance and regional and global influence. Somewhere in Sunni Pakistan, the centrifuges whirl night and day to increase the stock of atomic bombs paid for by Saudi Arabia, presumably to be used after the the current American exodus. Sunnis and Shi'ites are already slaughtering one another in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain and Lebanon. Thousands of people throughout the Middle East are being killed in related religious and ethnic conflicts. The marginal, exhausting saga of Israel and the Palestinians appears to be a deliberate international ruse led by the United States to sweep the real regional issues under the rug. Before the so-called Arab Spring, we mistakenly thought that the Palestinian problem was what prevented the Americans from forming a united front with the Sunni Arab states, along with the myth that if that problem were solved, other problems would be easier to solve. It is now obvious that Palestine is a secondary issue with virtually no importance, especially for us Arabs. Thus it is unclear why the current U.S. government is so obsessed and determined to ignore the chaos in the Arab states and the massacre in Syria, trying to force Israel and the Palestinians into unrealistic, unprepared-for solutions instead of dealing with the genuine potential flashpoints that endanger world peace -- foremost, the Iranian race for a nuclear arsenal. It is clear that the United States is leaning towards violating its commitments and obligations to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. We have seen American fatigue and fawning before, reminiscent of its previous failure to keep North Korea from joining the nuclear club, and sad evidence that Americans have apparently learned nothing in the past fifty years. So far, it is only the French, whom we have become accustomed to regarding as generally opportunistic, utilitarian and egoistical, who have stood in the breach and made an effort to expose and curb Iran's fraud, while the representatives of the Western powers have subscribed to "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil." America has abandoned and betrayed its Middle Eastern allies. The Sunni Islamists say with immense satisfaction that Israel's fate will be like that of the Crusaders' "Palestine." Just as Europe sent the Crusaders to liberate Jerusalem and then left them to the swords of Saladin's army, so is the United States turning its back on Israel, while Europe is turning its back on itself. In the great wheel of history, the ancient powers rise from their ashes and, like the Roman Empire, America and its Western allies, exhausted and having lost all motivation, will find themselves beneath the wheel -- like the Crusader states in the 12th century, as shown in the vision of the 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who regarded history as cyclical. Without a doubt, the final American withdrawal from the Middle East will light the fires in the piles of enriched uranium deep within the Muslim mountains, and abandon the region to its fate. America and its Western allies are making a misplaced and immensely costly effort to ignore their responsibility regarding Iran's growing nuclear capabilities as they fool themselves into thinking that lifting the sanctions is "a good deal." They probably believe that if they put off a war in this administration -- possibly for the world to be thrown into an even more deadly and costly war down the line -- at least no one will be able to say it happened on their watch. They are wrong: If and when Iran becomes a nuclear power, as with North Korea, the event will go down in history as the fault of the Americans -- and above all the crowning legacy of the current administration -- in their retreat and flight.
Related Topics: Ali Salim
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