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Monday, September 3, 2012

Book Review, Why the West is Best, by Ibn Warraq, Part Two

Self loathing contra-reality and modern politics.

by StFerdIII

 Cultural Marxism, wrapped up in 'scientism', constructivism, or rationalism [which is of course irrational]; is a self-loathing exercising in which history gets rewritten. For the grinning fantasy-creating cultural Marxist, the 'West', itself a collection of ideas, histories, frameworks and developments, is not the best, but simply an expression of the worst. If Moslems attack and kill Christians and crucify apostates following Sura 5:33, the victims are to blame. If the West 'invents' a tool, we will soon learn that some other culture 'created' it first, usually hundreds if not thousands of years ago. If the West extols its magnificent middle ages, the cultural Marxists will rename it the dark ages of totalitarian suppression. High living standards in the West are, in the fervid mind of the Marxist -Globalist, simply the result of endless plundering and resource rape.


 

Cultural Marxism is a mental disease and self-loathing is a tragic psychopathy.


 

Nothing in life is equal, relative or even fair. No one is the same as someone else. No culture is the same as another, and no civilization is exactly the same as another. Cultures are different, and these real variations will lead to; or obstruct; the creation of a civilized culture state.


 

Warraq places the locus of Western superiority in its curiosity. The curiosity to build ships and sail the world; to explore and conquer lands, to use new ideas from different cultures, to understand science; to comprehend divine rules; to get close to the idea of a God; to invent, to improve, to articulate, to write, to laugh, to investigate the inner and outer world of human existence. Like the Roman state from Tiberius to Aurelius, any concept that made sense, was embraced and acted upon. Only in the West is knowledge and curiosity so highly prized. Nothing like this cultural curiosity has ever existed in Islam. This is one reason why Islam is such an abysmal failure. It is a total system, time began with Muhammad. It ends with the Koran.


 

[Westerners began the] study of Persian and Turkish, resulting in critical editions that laid the foundations of classical Orientalism. This scholarly activity was partly connected to the needs of diplomacy and commerce, as Lewis points out, but also reflected “the boundless intellectual curiosity unleashed by the Renaissance.”50 In the Islamic world, by contrast, Lewis finds “not the slightest sign” of interest in Western literature or languages. “We know of no Muslim scholar or man of letters before the eighteenth century who sought to learn a Western language, still less of any attempt to produce grammars, dictionaries, or other language tools.” The few translations known to have been made were of works with practical purposes, and the translators were converts or non-Muslims.51 Otherwise, Muslim scholarship was limited to “the monuments of their own faith, law, and literature.”


 

Moslems have never had an interest in other cultures. They deem them to be inferior, criminal, pagan, polytheistic, or simply uninteresting. This leads to a poverty of outlook which is reflected in a practical poverty of social organization and outcome. There is little to nothing that Islam has invented:


 

If it were not for the accomplishments of the West, our lives would have been barren. I only look objectively and value justly what I see and express it honestly. Whoever does not admire great beauty is a person who lacks sensitivity, taste, and observation. Western civilization has reached the summit of science and technology. It has achieved knowledge, skills, and new discoveries, as no previous civilization before it. The accomplishments of Western civilization cover all areas of life: methods of organization, politics, ethics, economics, and human rights. It is our obligation to acknowledge its amazing excellence. Indeed, this is a civilization that deserves admiration. This hearty encomium does not come from a Westerner, but from Ibrahim al-Buleihi, a member of the Saudi Shura Council.5 He added that “The horrible backwardness in which some nations live is the inevitable result of their refusal to accept” the abundance of Western ideas and visions;...”


 

Even a hard core Sharia Moslem must face the obvious fact that the West is and has been superior for a very long time. Part of that superiority is a respect for truth, facts and the past.


 

Since Islamic countries have systematically suppressed knowledge of their pre-Islamic past, we can help fund museum exhibits both in the West and in the Islamic world to celebrate the ancient civilizations of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and North Africa. We need to recognize and support the non-Islamic and non-Arab peoples who live under Islamic rule—such as Berbers, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, and Zoroastrians...”


 

Moslems don't allow archaeology. They don't want the 'West', who are the world's most avid seekers of truth and facts, to understand the origins of Islam, and its real historicity. They block any attempts to strip away the myths of Islam and look for proof in the ground of Moslem development. Thus insane lies that Baghdad had 5 million people during the 10th century 'golden age', or that Cordoba had over a million people at its height, make their way into the mainstream as 'facts'. Archaeology tells us that Cordoba was a Visigothic city of some 40.000 people and never grew in size during the Moslem occupation. Nothing of note was built. Baghdad never grew past 100.000 people, a shadow of Roman and later Christian Alexandria which did indeed have a million people by 200 BC and grew to probably 1.5 million by the time of Christ. Simply put, facts do not support much if any of Moslem claims around their civilizational development.


 

What is certain is that Islam is a late Bronze Age cult, with the state married to theology. People are merely slaves of the state cult, with free-will resting only in the state idol or Lord. The Koran is very clear on this, as it is on the slave-status of women, Jews and Christians:


 

But as long as religion is joined to the state, Islamic fundamentalism will remain a source of violence. Freedom of conscience can be guaranteed only in a secular state, where religion is a private matter. Secularization in the West began with the application of critical reason to religious dogma and to the Bible itself, which led to de facto religious pluralism and eventually the realization that conscience cannot be coerced. Once tolerance was granted to particular groups, it could not be restricted to those groups, as Owen Chadwick explained. “You could not confine it to Protestants; nor, later, to Christians; nor, at last, to believers in God. A free market in some opinions became a free market in all opinions.”


 

There is little of a free-market in any sphere within Islam and no tolerance for inquiry. Question the Koran or Muhammad and the yelps and cries from Moslems turn quickly into violence. Shias and Sunnis may kill each other over blood-lines, oil and power. But there is a remarkable consensus within Islam that the cult of Muhammad is superior, divinely inspired and dialectically assured of world domination. No need to investigate. The dialecticism of Islam has much in common with the 'scientism' of supremacist theologies such as National Socialism and Communism.


 

The lack of Moslem inquiry and free-will leads directly to slavery. The dogma of Sharia is both pagan and barbaric, leading to misogyny and other evils:


 

Sharia is totally incompatible with Western liberal democracy and with human rights in general, because it is a totalitarian construct designed to control every aspect of the life of Muslims and even non-Muslims. It discriminates against women in many ways: their testimony in court is worth half of a man’s testimony (Surah II.282); they inherit half what men do (IV.Ⅱ); they may be beaten by men (IV.34); they may not marry non-Muslims (II.221). Sharia prescribes amputation of hands for theft (V.38), crucifixion for spreading disorder (V.33), stoning to death for adultery (Reliance of the Traveller, p. 610), execution of homosexuals and apostates (XXVI. 165–66; Reliance, pp. 109 and 665).23 In other words, Muslims want to reintroduce practices that we in the West long ago deemed barbaric.”


 

True enough. But in today's Dhimmi world, Moslem immigration is extolled as beneficial and the cult of Muhammad branded as a superior non-Western and non-White theology. The racism imbedded in such a belief is hard to miss. Within the Moslem world Christians, Jews and non-Moslems are attacked, crucified, and exiled. Little MSM mention is made of this reality. Moslem states have signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights and routinely ignore the charter as they persecute non-Moslems. Western politicians are accessories to this disgrace:


 

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) codifies freedom of conscience this way: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief.” But in speeches to Muslim audiences, President Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, have taken to using the expression “freedom of worship,” a narrower concept than “freedom of religion.


 

By denying non-Moslems their basic human rights, and by yet again, redefining worship or religion, Western politicians are inherently complicit in the destruction of non-Moslems within the Islamic world. Dhimmitude has its consequences – and very real effects on very real people. Cowardice is not a Western virtue.


 

This book is medicine for the soul of common sense. Warraq presents historically valid and coherent reasons why the West is Best. As an apostate Moslem, it is quite surprising that he has lived this long to tell his tale. It helps that he lives in the USA. Even so the number of death threats from Moslems and Western cultural Marxists are common and barbaric enough. John wrote that the truth can set us free; but for Moslems and atavistic Western primitives, the truth is not the truth but simply a construction of relativity, without any merit, without reason, without importance and inferior. Warraq's book proves why this is utter nonsense.