Interesting commentary on Marxism versus Islam
From Greg Burch:
Marxism is a set of assertions about the world and how people should arrange their lives and relationships with each other based on a materialst philosophy that, at least in theory, accepted the rational scientific method as the final arbiter of truth or falsehood. Marxism made predictions about the material world and, most importantly, promised specific material results in the material world to a broad group of people (the proletariat).
Islam could not be more different. It rejects science as the arbiter of truth and makes no very specific promises to improve the material conditions of life for its adherents. Instead, it projects the reward for submission to Islam in an imaginary afterlife. The truth of this assertion cannot be inspected or tested for accuracy. After 60 years of communism in the Soviet Union, Russians could make a determination that Marxism wasn’t delivering on its promises. But when the reward for adherence to an all-consuming world-view is placed beyond the ability to test or question, real conditions in the world cannot be used as a yardstick to check whether one is being sold a bill of goods.
This difference makes the nature of the protracted struggles faced by the West against these two fundamental challenges very different. In many ways, there was a basic premise inherent in the policy of containment taken against the communist world: Wait long enough and the truth of the superiority of liberal societies will become apparent to the world. But a policy of containment against Islamic imperialism cannot hope for such eventual success. Since Islam does not make any ambitious proposal to improve the lot of its followers in the real world, but only in an imaginary afterlife, no amount of waiting can undermine its claim to truth.
It’s a point well taken. The success of Western mores in science and prosperity give rise to assertions that the birthrite of Muslims has been stolen by some sneaky conspiracy, not that their worldwiew is wrong. But it is only half the story. Beyond the realm of theory is the way that people live their lives; we recall radical British Muslims stating that their greatest enemy was semi-dteched housing, two cars in the garage and nice holidays. Part of what we are facing today comes from the fact that revolution and zealotry are the province of the young, and there has been that huge Muslim baby boom, emphasis on “boom.” If we can make it through the next twenty years or so, we might just make it out alive.
UPDATE
On the other hand, Brussels Journal points out that we — particularly in Europe — might not have twenty years for things to straighten out. Excerpt:
In France, Muslims already have many smaller states within the state. Criminologist Lucienne Bui Trong wrote that: “From 106 hot points in 1991, we went to 818 sensitive areas in 1999.” The term she used, “sensitive areas,” was used to describe Muslim no-go zones where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms) was routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails. The number was 818 in 2002, when the French government decided to stop collecting the statistics.
In some of these areas, the phenomenon of gang rape “has become banal.” Violence against and pressure on women is part of daily life in the suburbs, where boys can dictate how girls should dress. Pressure is mounting for Muslim women to wear veils. In 2002, a 17-year-old girl was set alight by an 18-year-old boy as his friends stood by. The support group “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises” (“Neither Whores nor Submissives”) says the number of forced marriages has risen in recent years, with roughly 70,000 girls pressured into unwanted relationships each year in France. A leaked study conducted between October 2003 and May 2004 under the auspices of France’s inspector-general of education, Jean Pierre Obin, described an educational system where Muslim students regularly boycotted classes that concerned Voltaire, Rousseau and Moliere, whom the students accused of being anti-Islamic. Orbin’s report cited Muslim students’ refusal to use the “plus” sign in mathematics because it looks like a crucifix