Turkey's Africa Strategy Threatens to Breed Islamist Extremism | National Review

There's a big lessons here.  BREAKING: Saudi Arabia has been overtaken by Turkey and Qatar as the main exporter of hardline Wahhabism

My page of links, that I've had on Google for ten years has just been deleted by Google, for some unknown "violation of service".  Which is weird, as it's been there for ten years, and also all it does is keep copies of links that have interested me, none of them nasty nazi or anything approaching.  Just interest,ng articles. Go figure.

Therefore I'm putting a link to the Internet Archive and link to the pdf at Dropbox.

Snip: 

Saudi Arabia and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain may be authoritarian, but they do not promote and no longer tolerate radicalism. Turkey and Qatar, the world's only other Wahhabi state, are today the chief engines for Islamic extremism.

Mesut Ozil’s resignation airs a German political dilemma | SCMP

From today's South China Morning Post. The author, Hans-Georg Moeller, is professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Macau. 

While most ethnic Germans emphatically embrace a set of liberal Western values – partly to distance themselves from their nation's fascist past – a significant part of the immigrant population holds on to values attached to a commitment to specific ethnic, national, religious, or family affiliations.

The ensuing irony is that the liberal Germans (similar to other liberals in the "West") find themselves in the uneasy situation that their non-racist, anti-nationalist principles oblige them to unconditionally welcome all "foreigners", but the same principles also oblige them to condemn, or at least disregard, core values that many of these "foreigners" identify with.

I wonder why "foreigners" is in the scare (or doubt?) quotes. Are they not foreigners?  Well maybe not. Some may have been born and raised in Germany. But as we know from many studies(1) the later generations of immigrants and refugees to Europe can often become more religious, more pious, more extremist (take your pick) than their parents.

Professor Moeller resorts to weasel words in the first para-snip above. ".... values attached to a specific ethnic, national, religious, or family affiliations". 

We're not talking about different cuisines here, or different sartorial choices or different ways to worship. We're talking about Islam. Not Buddhism, Hinduism or atheism. We're talking about a very robust, very tough very self-confident, not to say righteously-arrogant ideology(2). An ideology that is, at core, misogynistic, homophobic, sectarian, supremacist and anti-freedom of thought. 

That many Muslims are fine and peaceable people is not at issue or in dispute here. What is at issue is Islamic ideology and not in dispute is that large fractions of its many votaries hew to its abhorrent values. A very much larger fraction — likely the large majority, according to many polls — are comfortable and supportive of its tenets. 

A thought experiment. Imagine it had been a different set of migrants to Europe. Imagine they'd been from East Asia — Korea, China or Vietnam, for example. These immigrants would have settled down, set up their Chinatowns, their Koreatowns, their Mini Saigons. Worked hard to send their children to college, to become second-generation professionals (and not religiously-obsessed, disaffected malcontents). How do we know this? Because that's what immigrants from those countries have done elsewhere, in the United States, in Australia. It's a cultural thing. It's not a racial thing. Some cultures are more attuned to success in this world than "martyrs" in the next one. Is it any wonder we prefer — and rightly so, or at least understandably so — one of those cultures over the other? To repeat: it isn't in the least racist to note these cultural differences. Nigerian Christians, Lebanese Christians, atheists form anywhere, fit in and are more successful in their adopted countries than are their Muslim compatriots. 

(An Australian government study in the mid nineties compared the success of Lebanese Muslims and Lebanese non-Muslims immigrants to Australia. The Lebanese Muslims had four times higher unemployment rates (20% vs 5%) and has created just one-third the family wealth of their non-Muslim counterparts. (Iirc). That's pretty much a perfect experiment. They were Lebanese, all ethnically the same, all given equal opportunities. The only difference was their belief systems. Ideas and beliefs have consequence,

as Sam Harris is fond of saying).

Professor Moeller is right to identify this as a German political dilemma. That is: Liberal western values versus the values of Muslim immigrants. (Moeller doesn't say "Muslim", but my point is that that's what it is, that's the problem, not the non-Muslim immigrants). 

How does Germany get over the dilemma? Moeller doesn't say. 

What I say is: Not by surrendering to cultural equivalence (all cultures are equal and must be equally respected) or being concerned at Mesut Ozil or his ilk's abandonment of their adoptive country. You should condemn, not just "disregard". You should condemn values inimical to those that the west fought centuries to secure. And phooey to those who bleat that to do so is "racist", "islamophobic", "xenophobic" (take your pick). These are just words intended to shut up defenders of decent, fair and liberal western values. 

Stay close to western values, oh Deutsche Folk! Stay firm! 

**************

NOTES:

(1) Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. Christopher Caldwell. 

(2) Islamic ideology: I use the term "ideology", because that's how Islam is described by its senior representatives, imams, mullahs, ayatollahs and the like. They stress that Islam, unlike other religions (all of which are viewed as lesser), is a religion for the totality of life. Everything is set out for the believer, everything personal, family, cultural, political, legal, as well as the religious duties. It is a total system for life. In short: an ideology. 

********

LATER: I just noticed that Moeller has put the "West" in scare (or doubt?) quotes., as well. Why?  Does he doubt that there's such a thing as the "west"?  That to have a concept of something called the "west"Is somehow risible?  A nasty concept of the Alt-right? 

His slip is showing.
Link: https://sc.mp/2Op50Ne

The “no true Scotsman” fallacy, becomes in Islam....

The takfiri-in-chief

... the "no true Muslim" fallacy.  That is, to divorce Islam from terrorism, you simply state that any terrorist, by definition, is not a Muslim.  Islam even has a word for this ruse: takfir. 
And Erdogan is a practiced takfiri.
Here he is in action, in Turkey's oldest English language newspaper, Hurriyet Daily News.

“Terrorist acts by herds of killers such as DEASH, Boko Haram, al-Shabbab, and the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization [FETÖ] have hurt Muslims and also give opportunities to anti-Islamic circles,” Erdoğan said.

“The innocence of Muslims slaughtered by those organizations is overlooked and our religion and the believers of Islam are held responsible for those atrocities,” he added 

Notice how he defines out of Islam any group that engages in terrorism.  By this ruse, Islam is cleared and anyone engaging in terrorism is by definition not a Muslim.  They may say they are, but they're not.  See the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.  These are "no true Muslims".

And in doing so, he certainly fools a lot of people in the west.  Many of whom wish to be fooled; for they wish, deeply desire, that Islam is indeed a "Religion of Peace".
But when you educate yourself about Islam -- when you read the Islamic Trinity of the Koran, the Hadith and the Sirah -- you quickly learn that it's not a religion of peace; quite the opposite, at its core it requires the actions of ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and the rest of the dozens of terrorist groups acting in the name of Islam.  It requires that Muslims fight the infidel, the kaffir, to establish the rule of Allah in the world.
ISIS set it all out in their glossy magazine, Dabiq, in a famous/infamous article in their August 2016 issue: "Why we hate you and why we fight you".  Here's a summary in Huffpo.  And here is Sam Harris reading from the magazine.  And btw, ISIS really is Islamic.  Don't believe me?  Read Graeme Wood, an expert on Islam and Islamism, here in The Atlantic, in March 2015

Mad Mutti Merkel sees sense: finally! | SCMP

Drink up Mutti! It's the right decision

It happens time and again. We islamophobes, xenophobes and racists call out some policy or other -- multiculturalism, cultural equivalence, the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East, Turkey joining the EU -- and the Left attacks us for being, well, all of the above. 

Then they realise that what we've been saying all along correct after all, so they pivot. With a straight face, unblushing, they then take up the issue we've been banging on about, with nary a hint of apology. 

And so with Turkey's joining the EU. We who are concerned about Islam have been warning about this for years, decades. And been called all manner of xenophobe and bigot for our efforts. 

And now hear Merkel:

Merkel said: "It is clear that Turkey should not become a member of the European Union."

NOW it's ok to say it because Mad Mutti Merkel has said it. 

Well, she may have taken a while to get to the right decision but at least she got there!

"We Remember"

Yesterday was ANZAC day, and as I watched the moving, live coverage of the ceremonies at Canberra and at Gallipoli -- this year to mark exactly 100 years to the day and hour that our boys landed on the beaches of Gallipoli, only to be mown down --  I thought again of my Grandfather, Bruce Anderson, my mother's father, who fought in Gallipoli. Bruce, 23.
He was a smallholder in New Zealand, born and bred there, plucked from his life and sent off to fight a distant war in a distant land.  He was wounded by shrapnel, seriously enough that he could not be mended and sent back to the trenches, and was, instead sent home. (He kept that piece of shrapnel, though I suspect it's now lost).
That was his one and only time he went overseas in his long life -- he died in 1989 aged 97.
I only met him once, in 1985, when he was already old.  I was with my elder daughter, then eight.  When first met him, he was sat in his favourite chair, the late afternoon North Island sun shining through the window behind him.  He was so old that his ear lobes had grown longer and thinner, and the sun shone through them.  It was the first thing my daughter noticed and she said to me "Dad, why is his ear transparent?".  Luckily Granddad's hearing was not the best so he didn't catch her wonder, but if he had, he'd have smiled, no doubt, for he had a sense of humour.
I'd asked my mother what I should take to him, and she suggested a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch.
When I presented the bottle to him he said "Lovely, thank you. The only problem is that when I drink a few glasses of this, I fall over!".   I said "I know the feeling, Granddad!".
There's a nice celebration of the ANZAC spirit, of Gallipoli, here at Harry's Place.
Note in particular the very moving, poetic thoughts of Ataturk -- the commander of the Ottoman Turkish troops at Gallipoli and the founding father of the Turkish Republic -- his "words of reconciliation", speaking of the Anzacs, and other allied troops (British, Canadian, Irish, Nepali amongst them) who were not as fortunate as my grandfather:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours.. You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

What a pity the modern Turkish state, as it drifts ever more to Islamism, doesn't have the openness of heart, the compassion of Ataturk.  Today, Erdogan's Turkey would view the Anzacs as infidels, to be reviled, never to be its "sons as well".
And a link to a lovely 1988 Anzac Dawn Service Address by the wonderful Clive James here.
By the way, I thought NZ PM Key's speech was sweet and poetic.
Our own Australian PM, Tony Abbott, spoke well, but at rather too much length, with details I think most could have done without. (summary here).
It was Key who ended by saying:

Usually at these commemorations we conclude by saying “‘Lest we Forget”.
But today, witnessed by all of you who have gathered here out of respect and remembrance, I will not say “Lest we forget”.
Because after one hundred years we can say, on this day
April 25, Two Thousand and 15,
“We remember”.

Erdogan: the Denier-in-Chief

Just in the last week Turkish President Erdogan got upset by the Pope (correctly) describing the mass killings of Armenians by Turks as "genocide".
Then, in a talk in Istanbul on 12 April, he claimed (as have Obama, Cameron, Kerry and various other Islamopologists), that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, that it is causing "devastation" to Islam, that it is the "greatest enemy of Islam".
No analysis by Erdogan of what it is, within the doctrines of Islam, that is driving the likes of ISIS, the sort of honest analysis, for example, of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
No, none of that.  Just some thoroughly duplicitous statements.
Take this, for example:

He [Erdogan]  explained that neither the Prophet Muhammad nor Muslims had ever used force and this was evident by the fact that no society had been forcibly converted to Islam.

In the official biography of Islam, the Sirah (link at left) written by Ibn Ishaq and accepted as canonical by all Muslims, Muhammad is recorded as having personally taken part in 27 battles, and having personally taken part in the beheading of hundreds of Jews.
Moreover, the growth of Islam in the years after Muhammad was all "by the sword".  That's official Islamic history.  So Erdogan's claim is simply false.
And this:

"We do not have a Sunni or Shia religion. We only have a single religion and that is Islam" the Turkish president noted, saying that not acknowledging this fact will result in more pain and suffering.

Well, the mind boggles.  That's just utter nonsense. If a non-Muslim were to make that statement they would be judged ignorant.
Erdogan is certainly not ignorant of these issues.
He is, quite simply, a liar.
To be fair to the man, he has said: "There is no such thing as moderate or immoderate Islam.  Islam's Islam and that's it.".
Which is pretty revealing and uncomfortable for those who insist on dividing Islam into the "tiny minority" of extremists, who have 'hijacked", or "misunderstood" Islam, and the rest of Muslims who hew to the "Religion of Peace".   
And recall that Erdogan has quoted approvingly a poem, that says:

The mosques are our barracks, 
The domes our helmets, 
the minarets our bayonets 
and the faithful our soldiers..

Hardly a recipe to live peaceably in this world....

Turkey Promotes Religious Schools, Often Defying Parents

And David Cameron wants this Islamising Turkey to join the EU...

The Turkish people don’t look favorably upon the U.S., or any other country, really | Pew Research Center

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/31/the-turkish-people-dont-look-favorably-upon-the-u-s-or-any-other-country-really/

Sent from my iPad

"Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak "

COPENHAGEN — When a would-be assassin disguised as a postman shot at — and just missed — the head of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist and former newspaper editor, this month, a cloud of suspicion immediately fell on Denmark’s Muslim minority.

I had just finished reading Andrew Higgins' article (lede above) in my morning's edition of the International New York Times (as the International Herald Tribune is soon to be known), and was going to comment here, on the moral equivalence therein. To wit: the moral equivalence of saying that the person who resists violent extremism and the violent extremist are two sides of the same coin, as the article explicitly suggests. That's complete nonsense of course.
Then I find that Robert Spencer has done the job for me, and much better, in his skewering of Andrew Higgins' own "odious" article on Lars Hedegaard, the Danish journalist who was nearly murdered last month by a gun-toting Danish muslim.
Harris' last para:

“There is no such thing as ‘moderate’ Islam, and there never has been,” Mr. Hedegaard said. “There may be shades of opinion among Muslims, but as a totalitarian system of thought, Islam has remained unchanged for at least 1,200 years.”

To this we're no doubt supposed to react with horror: Hedegaard is clearly "Islamophobic"! Problem is, it's true.  In 2007, Turkish PM, Erdogen made the same point:

"These descriptions are very ugly; it is offensive and an insult to our religion.  There is no moderate or immoderate [sic] Islam.  Islam is Islam and that's it." ( Milliyet, Turkey). [Ref]

"Islam is Islam".... And what it is, is in the "Trinity" of Islam's core documents.  It hasn't changed, as Hedergaard notes, and it can't, on pain of death for being a blasphemer.

So either the Turkish PM is an "Islamophobe" himself, or both he and Hedergaard are right. (hint: They're both right....)

************************

LATER (2 March '13): The reliable Bostom on the above: "The New York Times Demonizes Hedegaard" and "Spot the 'Xenophobic Butcher'"
LATER (8 March '13): Diana West's evisceration of the Higgins article, here.  Via here.

Jefferson's Quran

This is old, but so well worth reading, from the inimitable, the late, Christopher Hitchens.

And from the surviving Hitchens frère, Peter, in Istambul, on the growing repression in the heart of "Eurabia".  Also an old piece, but also well worth a read or re-read, as Brussels continues to flirt with the idea of allowing into a weakened Union, an Islamically resurgent Turkey.

(Cleaning out my old papers....)

Will Turkey pull through?

I mean: will it manage to build on some of the steps along the democratic path it's taken?  Or will it slip back to Islamism?
The New York Times is optimistic.  The constitution, it says:
"...should be replaced by a fully democratic charter. It must reinforce human rights, including free speech, a free press and equal rights for women and ethnic minorities and represent the full range of the country’s increasingly pluralistic society."
And Stephen Kinzer writing on the same day (15 June) concludes his article (which I can't find at the moment):
"Turkey is poised to become one of the most successful countries of the 21st century, a model of Muslim democracy and a pwerful force for regional peace.  Whether it will fulfill its potential depends largely on how Erdogan handles the mandate he has just won."
Erdogan has let slip his Islamist leanings. He has quoted the famous Turkish poem:
"The minarets are our bayonets; the domes our helmets; the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army".
He has also railed against the split some in the west make between moderate and "extremist" or "radical" Islam.  "Islam is Islam" he says.[*]
Indeed.  And there's the problem.
My prediction is that the arc tending to Islamism will win out.  I hope I'm wrong.  But I think that's wishful thinking.

********

[*]Speaking at Kanal D TV’s Arena program, PM Erdogan commented on the term “moderate Islam”, often used in the West to describe AKP and said, ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Source: Milliyet, Turkey, August 21, 2007 via Memri

Roger Cohen: "Turkey steps out"

Perhaps a better structure of the above sentence might be "Turkey out of step".  For it is out of step with European values and culture.  Whatever Cohen says.

RE: "Turkey Steps out"

Roger Cohen

International Herald Tribune (international edition of the New York Times) 26th October 2010:

Cohen shills for Turkey yet again: Turkey "can be the West's conduit to the Muslim world", if it is allowed to join the EC.But this is "wish as policy", just the same as British PM Cameron's, wish/hope that Turkey can form a "bridge".  To wish it to be so, does not make it so, no matter how powerful might be the bridge metaphor might seem to be, when you look at the map....

Moral equivalence: Turkish genocide equals killings on a boat....

Denis Macshane, Britain’s ex Europe minister, plays the moral equivalence game in "Stop the Blame Game", below.  He claims that Israel has not apologised for the killing of  nine “civilians” on the Gaza flotilla in June, just as Turkey has not apologised for the genocide of Armenians in the 1920s.

This is not only gormless equivalence of the world's first recognised genocide with accidental killings on a ship; it's also plain wrong.

"No" to Turkey joining the EU

There’s  renewed push to get Turkey into the EU.  Most recently, and shockingly – well, I was shocked – by David Cameron during his visit to Turkey.

Theodore Dalrymple, commenting on another issue, noted:

“An important feature of sentimentality – one that is disastrous in deciding policy – is the mistaking of a wish for the fact. “[1]

David Cameron mistakes a wish for a fact: he wishes that Turkey can be a bridge between the Muslim world and mistakes that for a fact, or an achievable fact.  But this is the sentimental fallacy: and one which, as Dalrymple notes, is disastrous for deciding policy. In this case, disastrous for Europe as well.  Let me explain...
[2 Aug postcript: Peter Hitchens (the younger Hitchens) on Turkey's joining, here.  (hat-tip to RH)].