Sunday, January 10, 2016

Who's Afraid of Islam?

To my knowledge the Obama White House has not commented on the gang assaults on women in Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Vienna and the rest of Europe. As everyone knows by now, the violence is being committed by Syrian and other Muslim refugees.

You would think that an administration that regularly attacks Republicans for their war on women would take a stand for women. And, you would think that feminists who have been railing about rape culture would be denouncing the Arab and North African men who have brought this culture to the streets of Europe.

Had it been a question of using bad words or politically incorrect pronouns, the feminist matriarchy would have risen up to smite the oppressors. Had the attackers been Republicans they would have been marching in the streets. Had the attackers been white police officers the White House would have joined the chorus.

Alas, the White House and most international feminists have said very little about the attacks, beyond some perfunctory observations that the attackers were males from a patriarchal culture and that the fault did not lie with the attackers but with the attacked.

Now, the White House has made one significant gesture. It invited a Syrian refugee to sit with Michelle Obama at the President’s State of the Union address.

It takes your breath away. Again, the president is siding with Islam. He truly seems to believe, with his predecessor, that Islam is a religion of peace and that Muslim misogyny is an aberration, not the true meaning of Islam. Given the chance to take the side of the women who were assaulted in Europe, Obama takes a stand for Syrian refugees.

Because, America would be a kinder and gentler, a  more inclusive and caring place if only we had more Syrian refugees. Anyone who voted for Obama should hang his head in shame.

It sounds as though the Obama administration is reading from the same chapbook as the idiot mayor of Philadelphia. Recall that Friday evening said mayor watched, with all of us, as a self-proclaimed follower of ISIS gun down a Philadelphia police officer. Upon hearing that the perpetrator said that he was doing it for Islam, the mayor proclaimed that it had nothing to do with Islam.

Some American political leaders have passed beyond stupid. Theirs is the face of fear, even the face of terror. They are, obviously, phobic about Muslims. Has anyone else noted that Islamophobia means, fear of Islam… not hatred of Islam or Muslims.

In truth, some feminists have denounced what has happened. They have noticed that they are no longer free to move about on their own on the streets of Europe. These women might as well be living in Saudi Arabia where they are not allowed to go out alone at all or in Egypt where they are most likely to be sexually assaulted on the streets.

Two days ago the Daily Mail reported:

Security authorities are growing increasingly concerned by the rising number of sex attacks by gangs of migrants which appear to be spreading across Europe.

Finland and Sweden today became the latest European countries to issue warnings to women to be wary of the threat of sex attacks following fresh reports of sexual assaults in the last week, while the Viennese police chief adviced women not to go outside alone in Vienna.

The warnings come as reports emerged that Austrian and German police tried to cover-up the issue over fears of reprisal attacks on asylum seekers and damage to the countries' tourist trade.

Muslim refugees are turning the clock back on women’s liberation. And they are often doing it with the connivance and sympathy of feminists. One German feminist, Alice Schwarzer has stood up against the Muslim invaders. For her troubles she has been denounced by her feminist cohorts.

This, from a long story in Der Spiegel (via Maggie's Farm):  

Schwarzer is speaking the language of all the people who see the events of New Year's Eve as proof that sexual violence is an imported problem -- a result of failed immigration. Young German feminists see it differently.

They argue that sexual violence is not a migrant phenomenon at all, but a long-standing, societal problem. Young feminists like Anne Wizorek criticize that Schwarzer -- along with many others -- is using the New Year's violence to fuel racist sentiment. They also criticize that broad swathes of society are acting as though there wasn't any sexual violence in Germany before the refugees arrived.

Here we have another appalling incidence of moral equivalence. The difference is, let’s be very clear about it, that now women all over Europe cannot safely go out at night alone. In many instances, they cannot even go out accompanied by men. That is the difference. Riddled with fear, feminists do not see the difference. They have gotten back in touch with their feminine mystique and have muted their outrage.

In Germany, the silence of the feminists has become a story in itself. Der Spiegel continues:

Young feminists are being asked why they haven't been showing their outrage over the latest attacks as strongly as they did three years ago with the hashtag "#aufschrei," German for "outcry." At the time, a politician with the FDP party named Rainer BrĂ¼derle made a lewd comment to a female journalist and set off a wave of criticism on Twitter. Is it because many of the attackers this time around were migrants? Is that what they call political correctness?

Lewd comments, we cannot have that. Wrong pronouns, we certainly cannot have that. Yet, when women are sexually assaulted on the streets of Europe feminists are so completely terrorized—let’s call it by its name—that they cannot manage to show any outrage at all. Be clear, these feminists believe that empathy, sympathy and compassion will calm the fevered loins of Syrian and other Arab refugees.

A German writer named Anna Sauerbrey  has written an appalling column in The New York Times:

Integration will fail if Germany cannot resolve the tension between its secular, liberal laws and culture and the patriarchal and religiously conservative worldviews that some refugees bring with them. We cannot avoid that question out of fear of feeding the far right. But integration will also fail if a full generation of refugees is demonized on arrival.

The real question we should be asking is not whether there is something inherently wrong with the refugees, but whether Germany is doing an effective job of integrating them — and if not, whether something can be done to change that.

Again, this counts as pathetic. Sauerbrey is oozing fear. The problem is not with the refugees, but with Germany. The problem is not with predatory young males but with a lack of empathy by everyday Germans. Or perhaps, Germany has not given them jobs that they do not want and are not qualified to perform. Or, is it that Germany has not given them enough blankets and benefits? Anything, but blaming Islam. You must not demonize the Muslims, no matter what they do.

Why does Sauerbrey not know that these immigrants do not want to be integrated, that they consider assimilation a sellout? Why does she not know that all efforts to integrate them have failed and that the larger their number the less likely it is that they will be integrated?

She does not know because she does not want to know. She does not want to know because she is afraid. Terrorists target women because women are easier to intimidate.

Again, the feminist attitude is, that the fault lies with all men equally and that they all need a warm bath of empathy. These new refugees need to be unmanned in exactly the same way that Western men have been unmanned by feminism.

The problem here, as I have mentioned, is that these unmanned Western men are no longer willing to fight to protect women. And, strong powerful feminists do not want the protection anyway.

This morning in the New York Times Ross Douthat remarks sagely that it’s time for Angela Merkel to go. (It’s also time for the mayor of Hamburg to resign.) One notes that Doug Kass did predict this a few weeks ago in his list of surprises for 2016. Douthat provides an excellent response to Sauerbrey's drool:

If you believe that an aging, secularized, heretofore-mostly-homogeneous society is likely to peacefully absorb a migration of that size and scale of cultural difference, then you have a bright future as a spokesman for the current German government.

You’re also a fool. Such a transformation promises increasing polarization among natives and new arrivals alike. It threatens not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930s-style political violence. The still-imaginary France Michel Houellebecq conjured up in his novel “Submission,” in which nativists and Islamists brawl in the streets, would have a very good chance of being realized in the German future.

This need not happen. But prudence requires doing everything possible to prevent it. That means closing Germany’s borders to new arrivals for the time being. It means beginning an orderly deportation process for able-bodied young men. It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present.

It means that Angela Merkel must go — so that her country, and the continent it bestrides, can avoid paying too high a price for her high-minded folly.

4 comments:

Ares Olympus said...

Ross Douthat: It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present.

That's an interesting point in multiple ways. Under normal criminal activity, your ancestors crimes are not your crimes, but mass-murder is something different. There are surely many defense mechanisms to deal with such guilt, but perhaps all of them make people less rational, whether more gentle or more aggressive, less able to deal with facts at hand.

And strangely, Germany's economic successes has failed to convince people to have children. Immigration was supposed to be a partial solution, but also a frightening one if you imagine the consequences of rapid change of racial and religious demographics.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32929962 Germany passes Japan to have world's lowest birth rate - study
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-land-without-children-why-won-t-germans-have-more-babies-a-779741.html

Clearly conservatives have reason to be afraid. A person might even be considered rational these days to stab mayoral candidates in the neck with a pocket knife in hopes of making a point.

Marsh said...

Germany is lost. Even after what took place in Germany, half the population still believes assimilation is still possible ( and worth the effort).

UNLESS, the other half can rise up and throw Merkel out on her ass, and take her place, establishing laws that secure their borders and rid their land of rapeugees. What they need is a persuasive leader, who can lead them through this. They need a Trump.

Sam L. said...

My comment at neoneocon.com
January 10th, 2016 at 5:06 pm

Say what you will, but I’m convinced that multi-culti trumps feminism because leftists take it as a matter of faith that all kinds of what might be called “westernism” is hateful and must be hated. Feminism is a westernism, so multi-culti wins, and wins BIG.

Ares Olympus said...

p.s. Speaking of fear of Islam and "the president is siding with Islam", I saw Frontline has a history of the rise of Netanyah in Israel and then shows the hostile relationship between him and President Obama. It's almost 2 hours long, but worth a watch.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/netanyahu-at-war/

If Obama followers saw him as a Messiah, apparently Netanyah has a similar self-image, only he can see the danger that is Iran, so much that he bet his reputation with the United States to play partisan politics with the Republicans and their Evangelical base that sees Israel as the center of their second coming Messiah.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/john-doyle-always-at-war-a-hard-look-at-benjamin-netanyahu/article27996154/
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Almost the first words we hear are, “The PM has a messianic notion of himself.” They are spoken by former adviser Eyal Arad, who adds that his old boss believes he is “a person called to save the Jewish people.” Someone else says, “He wants to be the new Churchill, to stop Iran in the way Churchill stopped the Nazis.” And this, too: “He believes he will go down in history as the person who warned us all it would come true.”
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Hopefully the program makes it clear to all that Obama was naive over middle east peace talks, as well as being disrespectful towards Israel from the start. It is curious he still managed to get 69% of Jewish vote in his reelection.

And I can see how Netanyah gets his confidence, a certainty that no Muslim nation should be trusted in any circumstances, but its a big bet to make, and Israel has a lot more to lose by alienating the U.S. that we have in alienating Netanyah's far Right leadership in Israel.

On the other hand, it does seem like fear of survival makes Israel dangerous, and if the U.S. ever decided to abandon support for Israel, that Israel's paranoia might make it the first nation since WW2 to use their undeclared nuclear weapons. Of course it would require a dramatic moment.

Israel wants nuclear weapons for the same reason that North Korea wants it, and the same reason Iran wants it. The only difference is Israel is willing to leave their nuclear capability up to the imagination of their enemies.

How many Muslims could Israel kill with its 75-400 nuclear weapons?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

I wonder if this potential nuclear apocalypse is what the Evangelical Christians have in mind when they use their mythology for unconditional support of biblical Israel? But the scary thing is the U.S. Christians Right (and Left) are safely out of harm's way. The U.S. is WAY too geographically isolated to be a trustworthy ally whomever is leading.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/End-Times/On-The-Road-To-Armageddon.aspx
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Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible's prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America's 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel's best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.
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If we're looking for fear, there's lots bigger ones that a few dozen women getting groped and robbed on New Year's eve.