Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Islam is Incompatible with Classical Liberalism

 "It's time for the tolerance of intolerance to end" -- Abigail Esman

Name a liberal Muslim country

Ha Ha!  That was a trick question!  There's no such thing.  First, some definitional clarity:  The word liberal has taken on negative connotations here in the US, largely because of the loud doctrinaire authoritarian statists who call themselves liberal.


Classical Liberalism is a good thing, and traditional Islam is incompatible with it

The Western World was founded upon a Classical Liberalism that celebrates a diversity of thought and speech.  Our Constitution enshrines its values by denying the state the power to squash things Christian conservatives have a great distaste for, like homosexuality and atheism.  But we believers are also free to believe, speak out and worship, so it is a true marketplace of ideas.

The same could be said of Europe up until a few years ago.

What do Abigail Esman, Pat Condell, and Christopher Hitchens have in common?

They're all European liberals, classical liberals who love and celebrate European culture in all it libertine glory.  What else do they have in common?  Unlike the pseudo-liberals in this country, they have taken notice of the sinister forces of Islam snuffing liberty in every corner of the world they infest, and they are ringing the alarm bells. 

Unlike American Dhimmicrats, these liberals know that Islamic "culture" is a threat to human rights and Western values wherever it casts its dark shadow.

Abigail Esman writes movingly from a liberal perspective about how Islamist bigots have wrecked Holland's traditional freedoms and changed the society for the worse. Theo Van Gogh was killed for insulting Islam, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali barely escaped with her life.

Liberalism let them in, and is now suffering a slow death because of it. European liberals are horrified to find themselves caught between far right nativist parties and hordes of foreigners determined to destroy traditional Dutch society.
Europe hosts some 15-20 million Muslim immigrants and their descendants, and they are radicalizing at an alarming rate. The children of immigrants, born on European soil, are eligible for visa-free travel into the United States (Forbes - Abigail Esman)

We have been blessed with a good Muslim community here in the US.  The vast majority are living the American dream as doctors, military officers and business owners.  How long will it be before their radical cousins from across the pond reach a critical mass here and wreck it for everybody? 

Here's Abigail in her own words.  It's only a few minutes long and it's definitely worth a listen...


12 comments:

Fredd said...

One only has to go down the list of 'crimes' as they are detailed in sharia law.

Islam is a nasty business, and we are seeing it first hand with this latest outrage, the Ground Zero mosque, and Raof's suggestion that if it is forced to move elsewhere, the Muslim world will erupt in anger.

Leticia said...

I shutter at the thought of being overrun by Muslims in our nation and if we don't put a stop to all this amnesty and keeping our borders wide open, it will become our future.

And may God have mercy on us.

Jersey McJones said...

"The same could be said of Europe up until a few years ago."

What??? Do you know anything about the modern history of Europe? If anything Europe is far more "classically liberal" than it was a few years ago! The whole Western World is! And it's been, quite predictably, an unmitigated disaster. It's not the social implications of classical liberalism that is the problem, but the economic impact.

All the proof you need that Islam is not in and of itself "incompatable with classical liberalism" is the the historical fact that when Christian Europeans were living like dogs in the woods during the Dark Ages, the Islamic world was living in a brilliant economic and cultural rennaisance.

Enough said.

JMJ

tha malcontent said...

SF, the big problem is that nobody in this administration cares or is paying any attention to how many of these extremists there are in this country and how fast they are multiplying, and about the damage that they are doing. The arrogance of the Imam Mosque in New York who is lecturing America about Free Speech is overwhelming. He has just about told us that he is going to build it, and we are going to tolerate it, like it or not! Yep, this just the beginning.

By the way, thanks for your support.

Most Rev. Gregori said...

It is sad that so many refuse to see the truth, even when it comes right up and slaps them in the face.

I don't know if you watch the O'Rielly Factor, but the other evening, he was saying how he believes that Obama had no knowledge of Imam Rauf's close connections to radical Islam. Well, either Bill O'Rielly is the most naive person on earth or he is a liar. Bill says the same thing when it comes to all of the communists that Obama has appointed to his cabinet and as czars.

Either way, be it that O'Reilly is naive or lying, he is doing a great disservice to America because Obama IS very much a communist himself and has very close ties to Islam. Also, what Obama is doing o America is not because he is incompetent, but because he knows exactly what he is doing.

Silverfiddle said...

No Jersey, not "enough said!"

Europe is civilization, and the muslim world has been in retrograde for over 1000 years.

You are also wrong about Europe being more liberal. They are not.

You can come here spouting that stuff, but we'll just laugh at your ignorance unless you bring the facts to back it.

Finntann said...

To say that the whole western world is more "classically liberal" is only indicative of a complete lack of understanding of what classical liberalism is:

Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism and laissez-faire liberalism) is a doctrine stressing the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitations of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill,, Montesquieu, Voltaire and others.

As such, it is seen as the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of a few basic public goods that the market is seen as being incapable of providing.

The qualification classical was applied in retrospect to distinguish early nineteenth-century liberalism from the "new liberalism" associated with Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, which grants a more interventionist role for the state. Classical liberalism is not to be confused with the ideology that is commonly called "liberalism" today in the United States, as classical liberalism is actually closer to being a tendency of "conservativism" in the U.S.

Nuff Said?

LSP said...

Well said, Silverfiddle. Europe is the Faith.

Enjoyed 'Dhimmicrats'...

Mustang said...

SF —don’t worry about Jersey backing up his statements with verifiable facts. There aren’t any. He is spouting revisionist history —and if he does it long enough and loud enough, it may even become his truth. Even that doesn’t change the facts. The individuals responsible for most of the so-called Islamic renaissance were Assyrian and Armenian Christians; the Arabs themselves accomplished little more than conquering and subjugating damn near the entire ‘old world’ before Charles Martel stopped them dead in their tracks. Eventually, Christian forces pushed the mongrel scum out of Spain, but not before they polluted that peninsula so horribly that it has never recovered, not even to this very day.

Sam Huntington said...

Islam is an affront to humanity.

Abigail Esman said...

I want to thank you for posting this and for your kind words about my work. And since you permit trolls, I am hoping you'll permit me to plug my book - Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy In the West. An excerpt is available at Forbes.com (blogs.fobes.com/booked) and Amazon has a "search inside" feature set up.

But really, I just was thrilled to find that you had posted this, and am honored.

Silverfiddle said...

Abigail: It is my pleasure!

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