ninme

(Book reviews are fun when the right person writes ‘em)

MacLeans Books - You can’t believe your lyin’ eyes: The Islamoschmoozing has gone into full gear. What’s the harm? This is how nations die. by MARK STEYN

After the London tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:

“British Muslims fear repercussions over tomorrow’s train bombing.”

An adjective here and there, and that would serve just as well for much of the coverage by the Toronto Star and the CBC, where a stone through a mosque window is a bigger threat to the social fabric than a bombing thrice the size of the Oklahoma City explosion. “Minority-rights doctrine,” writes Melanie Phillips in her new book Londonistan, “has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a ‘victim’ group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the ‘oppressive’ majority.” If you want to appreciate the forces at play among Western Muslims in societies enervated by multiculturalism, Londonistan is an indispensable read. “It is impossible to overstate the importance — not just to Britain but to the global struggle against Islamist extremism — of properly understanding and publicly challenging this moral, intellectual and philosophical inversion, which translates aggressor into victim and vice versa.”

That’s true — although I wonder for how long even our decayed establishments can keep up the act. After the London bombings, the first reaction of Brian Paddick, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was to declare that “Islam and terrorism don’t go together.” After the Toronto arrests, the CSIS assistant director of operations, Luc Portelance, announced that “it is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethnocultural group in Canada.” Who ya gonna believe? The RCMP diversity outreach press officer or your lyin’ eyes?

So, Mark Steyn is telling us (I’m paraphrasing) that if we keep bending over backwards pretty soon we’ll be lying down and our countries will be gone. Or, not physically, obviously, but culturally, politically, socially, characteristically…

…the more rubbish spouted by officials in the wake of these events, the more the averagely well-informed person will resent the dissembling. In that sense, Mayor Miller, M. Portelance, commissioner Paddick et al. are colluding in the delegitimizing of the state’s institutions. That doesn’t seem like a smart move.

Except as far as I can tell, European institutions don’t represent Europeans, so when that happens, it seems to me, people give up on the institutions and go do it their own darned selves. Which is why Cardinal Pell says things like:

[Interviewer:] Oriana Fallaci and others warn that Europe may become an outpost of Islamic civilization. Do you think that goes too far?

I do. I don’t think that’s the more immediate danger at all. The greater danger is that there would be white fascist reaction. I think both dangers are remote at the moment, but between the two, the danger of an anti-Muslim reaction is greater. I don’t think Europe is going to go Muslim at all, but I would be frightened of the turmoil if things got out of hand.

And hey, why not. It’s been ages since we’ve had a good old fashioned religious war in Europe.