The Return of Ethnic Nationalism

Feb 26, 2008, by Patrick J. Buchanan:

In Africa last week, President Bush deplored the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, defended his refusal to send U.S. troops to Darfur and decried the ethnic slaughter in Kenya.

Following a fraudulent election, the Kikyu, the dominant tribe in Kenya, have been subjected to merciless assault. People are separating from one another and butchering one another along lines of blood and soil.

According to a compelling lead article in the new Foreign Affairs, “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,” we may be witnessing in the Third World a re-enactment of the ethnic wars that tore Europe to pieces in the 20th century.

“Ethnonationalism,” writes history professor Jerry Z. Muller of Catholic University, “has played a more profound role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to recur elsewhere.”

Western Man has mis-taught himself his own history.

Writes Muller: “A familiar and influential narrative of 20th-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the post-war decades, Western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union.”

Muller contends that this is a myth, that peace came to the Old Continent only after the triumph of ethnonationalism, after the peoples of Europe had sorted themselves out and each achieved its own home.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were three multi-ethnic empires in Europe: the Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian. The ethnonationalist Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 tore at the first.

World War I was ignited by Serbs seeking to rip Bosnia away from Austria-Hungary. After four years of slaughter, the Serbs succeeded, and ethnonationalism triumphed in Europe ...

At the end of World War II, Europe’s nations were more ethnically homogenous than they had ever been, at a horrendous cost in blood.

After 45 years of Cold War, the remaining multi-ethnic states – the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – broke up into more than two dozen nation-states, all rooted in ethnonationlism.

As Muller argues, ethnonationalism may be a precondition of liberal democracy. Only after all the tribes of Europe had their own ethnically homogenous nation-states did peace and comity come. And what happened in Europe in the 20th century may be a precursor of what is to come in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

In China, Uighurs, Mongolians and Tibetans all resist assimilation. Tatarstan may be the next problem for Russia. In the Balkans, it is Kosovo. Serbs there and in Bosnia may emulate the Albanians and secede.

Americans, writes Muller, “find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that this is a product not of nature but of culture. …

“But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away.”

Indeed, we see it bubbling up from the Basque country of Spain, to Belgium, Bolivia, Baghdad and Beirut. Perhaps the wisest counsel for the United States may be to get out of the way of this elemental force. Rather than seek to halt the inexorable, we should seek to accommodate it and ameliorate its sometimes awful consequences.

And we should look to our own land. According to Pew Research, there will be 127 million Hispanics here by mid-century, tripling today’s 45 million – and almost 100 million new immigrants. No nation faces a graver threat from this resurgence of ethnonationalism than does our own.

Look homeward, America.

Via NPI

Gotta love common sense. Give everyone their own space. What a crazy idea. Enough with diversity. OK, so some people do like diversity: I declare them a unique species in need of their own space too. Of course, this may involve giving away parts of your country - but better to cut your losses than to proceed with the demographic takeover and inevitable conflict. And some nations will end up with feral neighbours. But that's the best we can do, I reckon.

Unity is an essential asset to nuture for self-defence, and that is best done in isolation. So if your neighbours do turn out feral, at least you're defending from a position of strength.

Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

26 February 2008, BBC News:

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

'Reformation'

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology.

An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says.

"You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."

The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for various forms of social control.

Leaders of the Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad himself.

Revolutionary

Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.

But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent. Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example.

"There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine.

"But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons."

The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.

Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone".

So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.

Original spirit

Yet, until now, the ban has remained in the text, and helps to restrict the free movement of some Muslim women to this day.

As part of its aggressive programme of renewal, Turkey has given theological training to 450 women, and appointed them as senior imams called "vaizes".

They have been given the task of explaining the original spirit of Islam to remote communities in Turkey's vast interior.

One of the women, Hulya Koc, looked out over a sea of headscarves at a town meeting in central Turkey and told the women of the equality, justice and human rights guaranteed by an accurate interpretation of the Koran - one guided and confirmed by the revised Hadith.

She says that, at the moment, Islam is being widely used to justify the violent suppression of women.

"There are honour killings," she explains.

"We hear that some women are being killed when they marry the wrong person or run away with someone they love.

"There's also violence against women within families, including sexual harassment by uncles and others. This does not exist in Islam... we have to explain that to them."

'New Islam'

According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy.

He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam.

"This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.

"Not exactly the same, but if you think, it's changing the theological foundations of [the] religion. "

Fadi Hakura believes that until now secularist Turkey has been intent on creating a new politics for Islam.

Now, he says, "they are trying to fashion a new Islam."

Significantly, the "Ankara School" of theologians working on the new Hadith have been using Western critical techniques and philosophy.

They have also taken an even bolder step - rejecting a long-established rule of Muslim scholars that later (and often more conservative) texts override earlier ones.

"You have to see them as a whole," says Fadi Hakura.

"You can't say, for example, that the verses of violence override the verses of peace. This is used a lot in the Middle East, this kind of ideology.

"I cannot impress enough how fundamental [this change] is."

Robert Spencer:

Could this be what we have all been waiting for? Possibly. It will be interesting to see its content, and what reception it receives from Islamic authorities outside of Turkey. My guess would be that that reaction will be hostile, because to accept this would be to assume that Islam has gone drastically wrong almost from its inception -- militating against all the claims of Allah's careful protection of his umma. But we shall see ...

Certainly Muhammad never uttered a significant number even of the ahadith that are generally considered sahih, or reliable. Whether the Turks will be able to convince any significant number of Muslims of that is another matter ...

"Controversy" is understated ...

It is refreshing to see an Islamic authority admit and confront that. For pointing that out I have been called an "Islamophobe" and worse -- which name-calling, of course, does absolutely nothing to end the widespread Islamic approval of the practice ...

This is where it really starts to get silly. The Hadith is, for better or worse, the core of Islamic tradition. And since the ninth century, after Bukhari and Muslim and the rest made their efforts to winnow out the false from the true and published their collections, there has been a broad consensus (whether or not it was in fact correct) as to which ahadith were genuine and which weren't -- although there is serious disagreement about some. So to say that this whole process represented a "hijacking" of Islamic tradition is tantamount to saying that the whole thing was "hijacked" from the very start, before it even got off the ground.

Of course, that may be the only way of selling the idea that ahadith considered authentic should be junked ...

Hugh Fitzgerald:

Those waiting with bated breath should keep carefully in mind that a rearrangement, as to assigned rank of authenticity, of the Hadith, is the easiest of the tasks of those who would make less dangerous the texts of Islam.

But since the Hadith were spun, quite naturally, out of the Qur'an, it is the text of the Qur'an itself that will need changing. Eliminating the doctrie of "naksh" or abrogation will soften the many blows delivered, in the Qur'an, against Infidels, but the dangerous passages will remain. The task will still be that of somehow managing to interpret such passages as 9.29 -- unambiguous passages -- so that their clear meaning is made only "symbolic."

And then there is the figure of Muhammad himself, the Model of Conduct, uswa hasana, the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil. Just how will those scholars bent on reforming Islam by changing the texts manage to eliminate so much of what is recorded as being part of Muhammad's life. Will they declare his participation in the decapitation of the bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza to be a fiction? The attack on the inoffensive farmers of the Khaybar Oasis? The seizure of loot, and the women of those whom he and his followers killed? The murders of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Akaf? The marriage to little Aisha? Will all of this somehow disappear?

And even if these Turkish scholars manage to re-assign levels of authenticity, presumably through their own study of the isnad-chains, there is a question of authority and of acceptance. How many of the world's Muslims are likely to accept what these latter-day Bukharis and Muslims suggest, rather than to stick with what, in history-haunted fossilized Islam, was decided long ago, by the real Bukhari, and the real Muslim, and the other celebrated muhaddithin whom presumptuous twenty-first century moderns, in still-Kemalist Turkey, dare to re-arrange, dare to second-guess?

De Gaulle's laconic comment on another proposal for a similarly large undertaking:

Vaste programme, monsieur.

It all sounds so wonderful, until you realise its one small step in front of a mountain - so you have to question how serious they are.

UPDATE: for an insight into the mindset of those calling for revision of Islamic texts, see Mustafa Akyol:
- Welcome to Islamic Reformation 101
- A Feminist Islamic Reform in Turkey
- A Case For Islamic Renewal

SEE ALSO:
- Turkish project aims to give Muslims guidance
- Turkey in radical revision of Islamist texts
- Turkey strives for 21st century form of Islam:

Under the guidance of Ali Bardokoglu, the liberal Islamic scholar who heads the religious directorate and was appointed by Erdogan, the Ankara theologians are writing a new five-volume "exegesis" of the Qur'an, taking the sacred text apart forensically, rooting it in its time and place, and redefining its message to and relevance for Muslims today. They are also ditching some of the Hadith, sayings ascribed to and comments on the prophet collected a couple of hundred years after his death.

UPDATE:
- Turkey's big Islamic reform - Never mind:

Turkish Islamic authorities got some people's hopes up just a few days ago, when they announced a major reevaluation of the Hadith. But never mind: "No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage." Oh.

- Hugh:

... both a re-assigning of "rank of autheniticity" to the Hadith, and a challege to "abrogtatoin" would do little if the Turks involved in such reform could not convince more than a billion Believers to accept their authority, to prefer what they do to Bukhari, to Muslim, to other Islamic scholars of the hallowed past.

And how likely is that?

A more accurate report is here:
- Turkey “not reforming Islam, but itself” with hadith review:

Ali Bardakoglu, Turkey’s top religious official, says his country’s effort to purge the hadith of sexism and superstition is not an attempt to reform Islam but to change the Turkish way of practising it ...

Bardakoglu, who is chairman of the Department of Religious Affairs, told the daily Sabah: “A team of 80 are scanning all existent hadith. For example, words humiliating women are attributed to the prophets. We are combing through such interpretations. We will publish six volumes. However, what we are doing is not reform on Islam… we are not reforming Islam; we are reforming ourselves, our own way of religiosity.” ‘

His deputy Mehmet Görmez told another daily, Zaman, that the BBC’s interpretation of the reform as a “radical modernisation” was wrong, saying: “We are going to take the appropriate legal measures for redress.”

What’s up? Are we talking about a revolution in Islam here? Well, not quite. The aim is to publish a revised collection of hadith to be used in Turkey as a reference work for fatwas and other work of religious interpretation. The scholars are using modern methods of interpretation of the hadith to assess their validity, an approach that conservative scholars reject. But this is not a reinterpretation of the Koran, the absolute centre of authority. Islamic exegesis gets revolutionary when it is turned towards deconstructing the Koran, which Muslims believe is the literal word of Allah.

This project is not going there. It follows in a tradition of assessing and classifying hadith that dates back to the early days of the faith. So Bardakoglu and Görmez had no problem saying the project was not reforming Islam. The rejected hadith will not disappear; they’ll still be on the books in many other Muslim countries. But Turkey’s state-approved religious establishment won’t use them ...

Ali Eteraz, who has written a lot on reform in Islam, has trashed this effort as “fool’s gold” because he sees it mostly as the state meddling in religious affairs: “In my mind, this initiative has more to do with Turkey’s AKP party trying to get into the European Union. “Look, we threw out all the bad hadith,” it seems to be saying. “Now let us in! … Ultimately, this entire hadith affair represents an attempt on the part of Turkey to “nationalise” its Islam. Nothing more.”

Turkey's 'creeping Islamisation' divides nation

15/07/2007, Telegraph UK:

It could have been a scene from any beach in Turkey: a cluster of young women reclining on sun-loungers, soaking up the midday rays, thumbing through novels and smoking cigarettes, while fellow holidaymakers splashed in the sea.

Yet there was not an inch of bare flesh on them; these sun worshippers were clad from head to toe in headscarves and cover-all swimsuits. A couple of girls strolled past, their skimpy bikinis fighting an unequal battle against their contents. A teenage boy gawped, but if the other women noticed, they paid little attention.

A holiday complex on the gulf of Antalya seems an unlikely frontline for a clash of cultures that is dividing a nation. But the question of whether these two very different ways of living can co-exist, or whether one must inevitably impose itself on the other, holds the key to Turkey's future.

Next Sunday the country goes to the polls. Opponents of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, fear that the Right-wing religious conservatives at the helm of his ruling AK party are set on diverting Turkey from its fiercely secular traditions down a path of creeping Islamisation. Educated liberals in cities such as Istanbul and Ankara look askance at rural incomers and what they consider to be their backwards-looking religiosity.

At the upmarket Bera Alanya hotel, a little way down the coast from the fleshpots of Alanya, middle- class religious conservatives are voting with their wallets. Most guests come from cities in Anatolia, while the rest are generally Turkish expatriates, and they have chosen the hotel for a reason: it has a swimming pool for women only. Every room has a copy of the Koran, a prayer mat and a sticker pointing towards Mecca. The bar serves no alcohol.

"It is better for my wife because she is a strong Muslim," said Mustafa Ekina, a 43-year-old furniture salesman from Rotterdam, staying at the hotel with his wife Nuriye and their 13-year-old daughter.

Mrs Ekina, resplendent in elegant silk headscarf, had packed both a bikini and a hasema, the two-piece swimsuit reminiscent of a shell suit with a close-fitting hood. The hotel shop sells the top of the range version for 120 Turkish lira (about £45). The makers claim it is possible to achieve a tan through the material.

"I have a hasema to swim in the sea and a bikini to swim in the women-only pool," she said. "Our beliefs say only our men should see our bodies, not everybody."

Her daughter is unconvinced, however. Eschewing a hasema, she had taken herself off to the pool in her Western swimwear. "My children don't like hotels like this," said Mr Ekina. "My daughter is more European. She wears a bikini. She can choose, however, when she is older. I will talk to her and tell her my beliefs. But I will never say to her what she must do."

People had the wrong idea about religious conservatives, he said. "We are strong Muslims but we do not want terrorism or a fight, we want only a holiday." This is certainly the view of the ruling AK party's leaders. The government claims the secularists are worrying about a threat that does not exist ...

"People ask 'Why do I see more women in the street with headscarves?'" said Egemen Bagis, Mr Erdogan's foreign policy adviser. "The answer is that in the past they were ashamed to go out. Now they are saying that the prime minister's wife wears it, so why should they be ashamed? I defend a woman's right to wear a headscarf as much as I defend her right to wear a miniskirt. We are against central government telling people how to live their lives." ...

"People want a secular country, but if you look at the lifestyle of the prime minister, it is not a modern lifestyle," said Sinasi Oktem, a candidate for the main opposition party, the Left-leaning CHP, in the Umraniye -district of Istanbul. They were just biding their time, he said. "With the AKP, Turkey is in danger." ...

A solicitor, Hatice Kacmazoglu, her long red hair uncovered, said: "I'm modern and open minded. They don't force me to cover my hair. If the AK party thought like that, I don't think I could be a member." She giggled nervously. "It's not going to be like Iran."

No, its not like Iran now. But, over successive generations of liberated Islam, there will be a perpetual danger that each generation can rediscover the brutality of the Koran. And we in the West know only too well how each generation reinvents itself. Made all the more likely by the religious baby boom, compared with the secular. And then you will have an Iran [he giggled nervously].

Mean streets of Melbourne

Feb 23, 2008, The Age (slideshow):

DEEP within Melbourne's new all-night party zone — a dangerous city precinct one senior policeman concedes has become "alcohol-fuelled anarchy" — is Alluva Bar. It boasts a "great atmosphere" in the "heart of Melbourne" and says its Saturday night, C'est Noir, is "an innovative urban experience".

On the Australia Day long weekend last month, the night's promised ambience was ruined when Alluva was the starting point of a street brawl calling on the resources of 60 police and, depending on whether you believe the official or unofficial version, involving between 30 and 100 warring Sudanese and Pacific Islander patrons.

The brawl was sparked by a fight between two women at 3.20am that spilled outside onto Bourke Street, near the corner of Queen Street. Police used capsicum spray eight times. Bottles, chairs and tables were thrown and belts were used as weapons. Six people were charged.

It was, says the same concerned senior policeman, who spoke to The Age on condition of anonymity, "completely out of hand … calling it a riot would not be overstating things".

This new CBD party precinct — a small area overrun with bars and clubs based around Queen Street between Bourke and Collins streets — was, he says, "bloody feral". Police nearly lost control that night, he says. The air was thick with capsicum spray. Yet, says the policeman, it was "just another night in the CBD these days".

Last weekend Alluva blew up again. A fight between two men inside the bar over a woman — one was glassed in the side of the head — escalated quickly. The police response, extraordinary but prudent in the circumstances, was to use riot-control techniques to round up then disperse the mob.

It was 3.25am on Sunday morning. Peak-time for the CBD party people. About 50 police patrolling the precinct swooped on Alluva equipped with long batons and capsicum spray. There were five divisional vans in the street and a MICA ambulance.

Police ejected most patrons from the bar. The man with the bleeding head stumbled across Bourke Street's footpath. A bouncer with a cut forehead emerged. A man with blood splattered on his clothes tried to prevent The Age's photographer from taking pictures on the street. There was an air of danger and anxiety.

The mob was herded onto Bourke Street. Police then gathered behind them in formation, extended their long batons and started marching, shouting "Move! Move!" in unison, escorting them away towards Lonsdale Street, away from the hot spot and away from trouble ...

Police say a significant number of the CBD attacks are around Queen Street. They have also noted a trend towards ultra-violent, relentless and unprovoked incidents ...

The demographic mix of venues around Queen Street also seems to foster a sense of tribalism and territorialism. Basemint nightclub, for example, is for Pacific Islanders; Alluva attracts Africans; Element markets itself towards Asians. CQ Bar largely attracts white Australian patrons, yet due to its massive size they're from all backgrounds, all rubbing shoulders — sometimes uncomfortably — with each other ...

Police are more of a target. Acting Senior Sergeant Stephen Cooper says he has been assaulted twice recently. Once he was spat at by someone with blood in their mouth. Another time he was kicked "in certain areas where it hurts. It doesn't take a lot of provocation with these people to start a fight," he says.

Intensive-care paramedic Lindsay Bent says Friday or Saturday night in the CBD now involves an average of 15 assaults. They are so common, he says, that ambulance officers "roll their eyes" when another call comes through.

"It's happening more and more in the streets," he says, and it is getting more violent.

He says paramedics reported to him that they increasingly needed to chemically induce comas in patients on the scene — in the gutters and laneways and city roadsides — because head injuries were so serious, the trauma so severe, that the victims were unable to breathe.

City residents, including those living in the plush apartments around Queen Street, tell grim tales of bashings, stabbings and screaming in the night.

Glenn Hunter, 52, lives on the corner of Exhibition and Lonsdale streets. Two weeks ago he was woken and looked down from his apartment. "This bloke walked up to another bloke sitting down and delivered about 10 rapid punches to the head without any provocation."

Fiona McLeod works in the city as the state's energy and water ombudsman; she lives above Queen Street. Her neighbours have seen the fire brigade hosing blood off the street at dawn.

On a recent Monday night, she says, 60 people were "screaming and smashing bottles" outside a laneway bar called Murmur. "The fights are so regular you forget the specifics," she says. "This is a terrible image for Melbourne." ...

State Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said yesterday that the Premier "must now acknowledge that there is a frightening wave of violence across Victoria, not just in the CBD or along Chapel Street, and put more police on the streets to stop violent crime spiralling out of control".

There are two issues here. One is to do with crime, and some kind of cultural shift leading to more of it, and one is to do with licensing. So what happens next? What is the solution? ...

She says the problem involved a "different generation" who started their social life after midnight and often didn't wrap it up until 7am or 8am. The main problem is the new and unresearched type of violence being dished out, she says.

"I'm reluctant to use the word 'gang' but they are opportunistic gang-type assaults, mobs of guys who tend to keep hitting and kicking even when their target is down.

"We don't know why this happens. Is it more violence on TV or in video games? Is it a lack of respect? If you are a victim or you have seen or heard about this happening in your world, maybe it becomes the norm. Maybe this type of behaviour is pre-programmed now." ...

Finally, something other than alcohol gets a mention:

- kicking even when their target is down
- relentless and unprovoked incidents
- it doesn't take a lot of provocation
- a sense of tribalism and territorialism
- from all backgrounds, all rubbing shoulders — sometimes uncomfortably

It sounds like a lot of people walking around angry and uncomfortable, why might that be? Why aren't they celebrating the diversity? Surely something as simple as rubbing shoulders wouldn't spark violence? How can that be when diversity is strength?

Must be the white folks' fault. We must have done something wrong. Yep, not enough Barney the Dinosaur songs ...

Aristotle: "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it".

Diversity is not strength and the sooner we reject the idea the better. We stretched our tolerance to the max with European and Asian immigrants. And now with Islanders, Africans, Middle Easterners, Muslims, etc - that tolerance has snapped.

This is Melbourne at night: 'anarchy'

Feb 23, 2008, The Age:

ALMOST three-quarters of Melburnians think the city is becoming more violent, an Age/Nielsen poll has found.

And as concerns grow about alcohol-fuelled assaults in the CBD, the Australian Hotels Association has taken the unprecedented step of calling for a freeze on new bars and nightclubs in the city centre.

The Police Association is also demanding its members be armed with Taser stun guns to combat a sharp rise in assaults on police. And health experts are calling for a review of Victoria's drinking laws, which have paved the way for the development of several "super clubs" such as CQ Bar on Queen Street, which is licensed for 6170 patrons.

Police Association assistant secretary Inspector Bruce McKenzie said the force was under siege and increasingly forced to use capsicum spray to quell brawls in the city.

"As far as capsicum spray goes, I don't know what our members ever did without it, because we use gallons of the stuff," Mr McKenzie said ...

The Age poll, taken over the past week, found 72% of Melbourne residents believe violence is increasing in the city, while 12% think it is decreasing ...

Police have regularly complained of "alcohol-fuelled anarchy" in Melbourne's crowded late-night strip, which has angered city residents and caused regrets for the architect of Victoria's drinking laws, Professor John Nieuwenhuysen.

"This is definitely not what I had in mind," he said. "I was looking to promote a more European, civilised style of drinking, but we seem to have been swept away by a wave of binge drinking. 'These places that disgorge thousands of people onto the streets are inherently dangerous." ...

The AHA's Mr Kearney said there was growing violence among young people as late night crowds in the CBD soared past 300,000 each weekend. He said most assaults occurred outside premises when people were refused entry.

He said there was recently a riot near Alluva Bar in Bourke Street, involving more than 60 people. Violence erupted in front of the bar again last Saturday night, when more than 20 policed dispersed an angry crowd after a brawl inside the venue ...

National Drug Research Institute data reveals that the rates of alcohol-related hospitalisations in Victoria have tripled over the past decade and violence was a major contributing factor.

"Melbourne and Victoria are always used to support the deregulation argument, but the state has gone from the second lowest in terms of alcohol attributable hospital visits to three times the national average," said the institute's senior alcohol policy researcher, Dr Tanya Chikritzhs.

Over the past financial year there were more than 2000 assaults on Melbourne's streets — a 17% jump from the previous year and a 24% rise since 2003-04, according to police data.

There has also been an alarming increase in the number of assaults against police. This has led to far more compensation claims by officers in Region 1, which includes the CBD and several inner-city suburbs. More than 270 police in Region 1 took 8229 days off because of injury and stress last financial year.

Inspector Stephen Mutton identified several hot-spots, including Flinders Lane and Queen and King streets. "Alcohol is a huge problem for us, not just in the city, but the whole community," he said. "Responsibility has to start with the individual." ...

Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. Three Age journalists and they still couldn't acknowledge the obvious that Neil Mitchell stated: "There have always been drunks and thugs. But the mood has changed.". The Age: three journalists and a one-track mind. They're not even interested in what has changed the mood. Wakey, wakey, take a look in your photo: angry black kid.

Melbourne: blood spills in our city of fear

By Neil Mitchell
Feb 26, 2008, Herald Sun:

ON a wet Friday night your city smells of booze, blood, anger and fear.

And it reeks of danger. It's too late to moralise. It's time to look urgently for answers.

But first, a snapshot of what unfolded four nights ago as I spent the night on Melbourne's streets with ambulance officers:

Image 1: a middle-aged man from Echuca is standing in the heart of town, opposite Flinders St railway station.

He, his son and three friends have just been bashed. It is approaching 1am and the man's emotions lurch from fury to helpless wailing.

He is bouncing one foot up and down, agitated. His whole body shakes. He has a nasty wound to the back of his head, a bruised face, and blood all over him. But he is lucky.

A few minutes earlier he was on the ground, semi-conscious, as a gang of 12 black men kicked him and smashed large pot plants around his head.

He could have died, which seems to dawn on him as he begins howling. Then the anger hits:

"The nigger will die!" he says. A black African man arrives to remonstrate, calling him racist.

The ambulance officers retreat, expecting more trouble that does not come.

The man's son is taken to hospital. The man claims they had not provoked the attack.

"Never, ever would you come back to this s---hole," he says.

"This used to be a beautiful place."

Image 2: ... A man in his late 20s is slumped on a chair. He wears suit pants, a loosened tie and two gashes across the top of his head.

He has been bleeding profusely and has a large green plastic rubbish bin in front of him into which he will later vomit in spectacular fashion ...

He is taken to hospital with no idea what happened. A mate will insist later that he slipped and fell while in the bathroom. The ambos are sceptical.

Image 3: ... Dozens of drunken people are on the footpath, most in their early 20s. "Skylarking" is a gentle description of their behaviour ...

People lurch in front of cars. There's a real sense that the scene could turn sour and violent within minutes.

Stark images and all come from a night the experts say was comparatively quiet ...

The cricket crowds, the football crowds, even the protesting Serbs were not the problem.

Alcohol was. That and the stupidity of youth, a culture of aggression and the inevitable anger of white v black.

This city is so familiar, but the atmosphere is not. There have always been drunks and thugs. But the mood has changed.

The police agree, and Assistant Commissioner Gary Jamieson says his people are only "treading water" as they try to address what is happening.

The ambulance officers say the violence and drinking is much worse and even some of the nightclub operators warn it is out of control ...

But the time to be appalled has passed. It is time for everybody involved to argue this out and do so in public ...

The State Government has previously commissioned reports on the drug culture and the road toll.

What is happening in our town now is equally important.

Melbourne is kidding itself if it really believes it is one of the world's "most liveable" cities.

At night, at the weekend, it is a dangerous disgrace.

Don't dodge facts. There is an air of menace about our town and until it is cleared, it will keep decent people at home.

At home, like turtles. If that black versus white anger is inevitable, then it is inevitable that whites want to stop black immigration and live apart from them. No need for an expensive report, just a bit of politically incorrect honesty.

The answers are there in front of you: "this used to be a beautiful place". No need for a report to tell you that foreigners moved in, whites moved out, and Christian values became unfashionable.

See also: Herald Sun journalist tells of his son's bashing

H/T: Oz Conservative

Vic: solo white guy bashed; a sign of the times

Feb 25, 2008, Herald Sun:

VIOLENCE on Victorian streets has shown no sign of abating, with a host of recent attacks adding to the state's unruly reputation under the cover of darkness.

In the latest bloodshed, a 17-year-old was knocked unconscious and a 19-year-old suffered a fit after being attacked by a gang of seven at Flinders St railway station about 11.45pm on Saturday.

A 17 and 18-year-old were arrested over the brawl and were expected to be charged.

In another incident, five men were arrested after a fight in front of the Men's Gallery strip club about 7.45pm on Saturday, bringing the number arrested that day to 28.

The men face charges ranging from assault to being drunk in a public place.

That followed a vicious attack by 11 men on a 17-year-old man in Kealba on Friday night that left the teen fighting for his life in Royal Melbourne Hospital with critical head injuries.

Four teenagers were charged with attempted murder over the attack, which occurred about 11.45pm in Stenson Rd. The teenage victim remains on life support in an induced coma.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walsh denied Melbourne was at the mercy of gangs, but conceded alcohol-fuelled violence was an emerging problem ...

The Herald Sun last week revealed that Victoria had witnessed a dramatic rise in assaults over the past five years, with Melbourne and the outer suburbs hardest hit ...

Across the state, assaults climbed from 21,939 in 2000-01 to 31,020, an increase of 41.4 per cent.

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said binge drinking and drug use had become run-of-the-mill instead of being identified as anti-social.

(Via Oz Conservative)

Yep, that dreaded alcohol is all to blame. No other factors at play.

Dear comedian Ted Baillieu: for something to be anti-social you need to have a society. Maybe you should start looking for that, cause I think we lost it somewhere in the melting pot. Maybe start looking somewhere between immigration and multiculturalism - I heard it was last seen getting its backside kicked by the both of them.

The above picture does tell a story: solo white guy cops a beating. Time for the white folk to wake up to the need to act collectively in our own interests.

Lawrence Auster on the millstone, or milestone, of a potential Obama presidency - in regards to the decline of white Anglo-European influence:

But when it comes to matters of substance, either there's nothing there, a lot of folderol, or else what he says is foolish or even calamitous. On foreign policy he sounds like Carter reincarnated. I've never heard a person put forth more emptiness and more folly with more plausibility and in such a pleasant, digestible, and confident manner. The man has extraordinary talents.

... he could very well represent the undoing of America, but not because he's a Mugabe-type monster. He could represent the undoing of America, because the "post-racial" America he is expected to bring about really means a post-white America, an America that has lost its historic white identity; and a country that has lost its historic identity (however its identity is defined) has committed suicide, because it has been sundered from its own past which is the basis of its very being as a nation. An Obama election could thus represent the culmination of the developments I've been writing about since The Path to National Suicide, the symbolic and actual undoing of white America, which means two things: the undoing of white America, and the undoing of America.

And the reason he could bring this about is not that he's a monster, but that he's nice.

On the other hand, the sundering from our own past has already been going on for almost a half-century. In that sense, Obama would represent nothing new. Even without any Obama, a catastrophe has already occurred in America and throughout the West, the delegitimization of the West's white identity and of the white race itself, the delegitimization that has made it impossible for Western countries to put any limits on their continuing transformation into non-white, non-Western, Islamicized, Hispanicized, Mestizo-ized, Africanized, Asianized countries. So, with or without Obama, the job of Americans who are loyal to our historic nation and civilization is the same: to re-assert and re-legitimize America's historic Anglo-European character and culture, as the only way to form a counterforce against the continuing browning and Third-Worldizing of America. In that sense, an Obama presidency would not change anything essential. It would, however, make our already very tough job that much tougher.

Melbourne's gang menace

February 24, 2008, Herald Sun:

A TEEN bashed with a tomahawk was fighting for his life last night as youths warned of a Cronulla-type gang explosion in Melbourne.

Sunshine Hospital was forced to call police and shut its emergency department as about 100 youths descended, angered by the brutal attack on their friend.

In another unprecedented escalation of gang violence, a molotov cocktail was hurled on a suburban train last week.

More attacks were pledged as part of a bitter conflict between two of Melbourne's biggest gangs that has seen 10 youth stabbings ...

Four men were charged with attempted murder and serious assaults last night over the savage attack on the Delahey youth, 17, on Friday.

The teenager's family was keeping a vigil after he and four friends were "pulverised" in the St Albans attack.

Their assailants -- one 16 -- used a tomahawk, baseball bats and hockey sticks in an orgy of violence destroying their car and hospitalising the five men.

One of the teens caught in the attack said the violent onslaught had been triggered by them being on someone else's turf.

The teen, who would not give his name, had facial bruising and injured ribs and described the attack as ruthless and against innocent victims.

As well as being territorial, he said the attack was carried out for fun.

Police, social workers and even gang members told the Sunday Herald Sun gang violence was flaring across Melbourne's suburbs.

The Police Association -- representing 11,000 officers -- said the youth gang crisis demanded a regional taskforce on youth crime and anti-assembly powers.

"They're under-18 and they're coming in from the outer suburbs and causing mayhem in the city and the inner suburbs," assistant secretary Bruce McKenzie said ...

The association was expected to lobby Premier John Brumby for anti-assembly powers to break up big groups of teens and expressed a desire for British-style portable walk-through metal scanners ...

In an escalating stoush between two of the city's biggest gangs, an Arab coalition from Melbourne's north was seething over a rap song released by enemy gang South-East Boys, threatening "another Cronulla".

The song, Lullaby, derides the Dandenong gang's Arab enemies as "pussies" and threatens a local Cronulla-style race clash.

Gang members said the rivalry between the north and south gangs had already led to 10 stabbings.

"Give it tomorrow, give it a year. We will hit back 10 times harder," said Ronni, leader of northern gang ASAD or Arabian Soldiers Arab Defenders.

Gang members are aged 17 to 26 and brawl with machetes, bottles, poles, knuckle-dusters and knives.

The North-West Boys, who have a distinct double-fist handshake, are made up of gangs including ASAD, which has spread from Newport, and The Clan ...

The North-West Boys said their opposing gang, based around Dandenong, was a mix of white "Aussie bogans", Sudanese, Afghans, Italians and Greeks.

"We were hunting them for almost seven hours," The Clan leader Hash said.

"If the South-East want war, then so be it."

The gangs have sophisticated fight strategies and youths are attacked if they stray into another gang's side of the city.

"Something in the future is going to happen to them," Ronni said ...

Smell the cultural vacuum, smell the self-determination, smell the no-go zones. When the white man leaves, when Christianity leaves - what fills the vacuum? Little Kosovos in the making. Just keep fueling the conflict with increased immigration and high birth rates and watch it explode like France, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, etc. And just like the UK with 170 gangs on the streets of London.

Mark Steyn:

... when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of ... cultural relativism – nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are "mean and nasty" to us, it's only because we didn't sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them – in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.

Via Oz Conservative

NT: 'Sorry' excuse for mob violence

20 Feb 08, NT News:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd's national apology to the stolen generation has sparked a spate of racial violence in Darwin.

Five people had to be admitted to hospital after one brawl. The Caucasian men were attacked by a group of 10 Aboriginal men, who demanded that their victims "say sorry".

A 28-year-old Territory woman watched helplessly as her friend was king-hit and kicked to the ground outside a Darwin 24-hour eatery on Sunday morning. She said three men ran at them from across the road, when they looked at the group yelling at two women.

"They just started king-hitting him. They got him on the ground and then two others came over and started kicking him," she said.

"They kept screaming that we were not sorry at all - 'Say sorry to us'. You just couldn't stop them."

The woman said three more men grabbed another Caucasian man and punched him in the middle of Smith St.

"That's when I called the police. He managed to roll into the gutter but they kept on kicking him," she said.

They and her friend ran to the Mitchell St police station, where they met up with other victims of the racial attack.

"The police officer said since the sorry apology on Wednesday, it had been completely out of control."

The woman said there were four other victims of racial violence in the emergency room at Royal Darwin Hospital. Her friend had fractured ribs and bad bruising. Others had head injuries and bruises.

"I don't know why they did it," she said. "They're just making it worse for everyone. It was gutless. It doesn't have to be this way."

Another big brawl occurred at Fairway Waters in Palmerston on Saturday night ...

Did the story make the big newspapers? Only Andrew Bolt picked it up after he was told about it by a reader.

Recent examples of Aboriginals wandering in a cultural vacuum:

- Aboriginals riot on Christmas Day (video here)
- Racial tensions behind weekend street brawl
- Rival Aboriginal gangs riot in NT
- 200 Aboriginals riot in remote community
- Aboriginals riot in remote community... again ...
- 31 people arrested over outback riots
- Six Aboriginals arrested after two days of riots in remote community

Full Video - What the West Needs to Know

23 Feb, 2008, Jihad Watch

The full-length of the documentary video 'Islam: What the West Needs to Know' is now available online. Apparently with the blessing of its creators. Click on the image below to watch the video:

What the West Needs to Know

An examination of Islam, violence, and the fate of the non-Muslim world.
98 mins

Main Idea

Virtually every major Western leader has over the past several years expressed the view that Islam is a peaceful religion and that those who commit violence in its name are fanatics who misinterpret its tenets. This claim, while widely circulated, rarely attracts serious public examination. Relying primarily on Islam's own sources, this documentary demonstrates that Islam is a violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the destruction or subjugation of other faiths, cultures, and systems of government.

Content

The documentary consists of original interviews, citations from Islamic texts, Islamic artwork, computer-animated maps, footage of Western leaders, and Islamic television broadcasts. Its tone is sober, methodical, and compelling.

Outline of the Documentary

Introduction

We hear from prominent Western leaders that Islam is peaceful and that those who commit violence in its name are heterodox fanatics.

Part 1: 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet'

Our interviewees affirm their belief that Islamic violence is entirely orthodox behavior for Muslims and stems directly from the teachings and example of the Prophet Muhammad and the commands of the Koran. We learn that the example of Muhammad is one of a violent warlord who killed numerous people. The Koran - the verbatim words of Allah - prescribes violence against non-Muslims and Muhammad is the perfect example of the Koran in action.

Part 2: The Struggle

We learn that jihad, while literally meaning 'struggle', in fact denotes war fought against non-Muslims in order to bring the rule of Islamic law to the world. Violent death in jihad is, according to the Koran, the only assurance of salvation. One of our interviewees tells of his personal involvement in terrorism and his leaving Islam.

Part 3: Expansion

Following the death of Muhammad, his 'rightly-guided' successors carried his wars to three continents, fighting, enslaving, and massacring countless Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others. Islam did not spread through evangelism or through its natural appeal, but through aggressive wars of conquest. The Crusades were largely a belated response on the part of Christian Europe to rescue Christians in the Holy Land suffering under Muslim oppression. The Muslim world today, while no longer the unified empire of the Caliphs, is exceptional for being responsible for the vast majority of conflicts around the world and for almost all of international terrorism.

Part 4: 'War is Deceit'

A great problem with Western efforts to understand Islam is due to the Islamic principle of 'religious deception', which enjoins Muslims to deceive non-Muslims in order to advance the cause of Islam. Muslim groups today in the West employ deception and omission to give the impression that 'Islam is a religion of peace', an utter fiction.

Part 5: More than a Religion

The most important characteristic of Islam not understood by the West is that it is more a system of government than a personal religion. Throughout its history, Islam has never recognized a distinction between the religious and the secular/political. Islamic law governs every aspect of religious, political, and personal action, which amounts to a form of totalitarianism that is divinely enjoined to dominate the world, analogous in many ways to Communism.

Part 6: The House of War

Islamic theology divides the world into two spheres locked in perpetual combat, dar al-Islam (House of Islam - where Islamic law predominates), and dar al-harb (House of War - the rest of the world). It is incumbent on dar al-Islam to fight and conquer dar al-harb and permanently assimilate it. Muslims in Western nations are called to subvert the secular regimes in which they now live in accordance with Allah's command. Due to political correctness and general government and media irresponsibility, the danger posed by observant Muslims in the West remains largely unappreciated.

More: www.WhatTheWestNeedsToKnow.com

Turkey: cometh the hour ...

Cometh the men in headscarfs!
They get an 'A' for effort, but it's sad that men have to resort to this to protest against creeping Islamisation. If Marcia Hines was asked for a comment, I think it would be:

"You go, girl!"

A Turk with a head scarf joins tens of thousands of Turks demonstrating in the capital, Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008 to protest against the Islamic-rooted government as the parliament voted to amend the constitution to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves at Turkey's universities, despite fierce opposition from the secular establishment.

Click an image to see source.

Not to be outdone in humility, the scarf girls don't see the irony that putting a paper bag on your head is not much different from the burqa - which is brought one step closer with the 'liberty' you seek ...

Women with Islamic head scarves, with one of them wearing a paper bag to shroud her features, protest against a ban on the wearing scarves in Turkish universities in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008. Some 125,000 flag-waving Turks denounced the Islamic-rooted government over its plan to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves in universities, a move the foreign minister said would expand Turkish freedoms.

Secularism: voted out in Turkey

Turkish parliament gives nod to divisive headscarf reform
Feb 6, 2008, AFP:

Turkish ministers vote during a debate on a constitutional reform

A general view of Turkish parliamentarians attending a debate

Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) votes during a debate on a constitutional reform

Turkish parliamentarians argue during a debate on a constitutional reform

Islam and democracy: a temporary partnership.

Just thought it was a moment worth preserving in pictures ...

In Complex Times, Turkey Seeks a Reassuring Face

Jan 16, 2008, NY Times:

ANKARA, Turkey — Looking dapper in a bow tie and a crisp suit, the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, stared fiercely into a dark room. He was made of wax and standing in a museum, but for some visitors last week, he might as well have been alive and breathing.

“If they let me I would kiss his hand,” exclaimed a middle-aged man with a bushy black mustache. “My heart is burning.”

Almost 85 years after Ataturk formed the modern state of Turkey from the remains of the Ottoman Empire, millions of Turks still flock to the mausoleum that contains his grave here in the country’s capital. So many that 2007 was a record year for visitors, according to the Web site of the mausoleum, called Anitkabir.

Last year, a total of 12.7 million people visited the monument, a figure lifted by a large demonstration in the spring, but still a 50 percent rise over the previous year and more than in any other year in the 54-year history of the monument, according to the Anka news agency.

Why the surge in visits to the grave of a man who died in 1938? For one, Ataturk is no ordinary man. He is referred to as the “immortal leader and unrivaled hero,” in the preamble to the Turkish Constitution. Insulting his memory is a crime in the penal code. The entire nation stops to mourn on the minute, each November, when he died.

Perhaps more to the point, 2007 was one of the more turbulent years in Turkish history, with secular Turks standing off against the rising power of a pious class of politicians, and people may have been reaching back to what was familiar. A political crisis over the selection of a president paralyzed the government and prompted an early election. The military seemed on the verge of carrying out its fifth coup. And the religious politicians now control the Parliament, the government and the presidency.

“There are some people in Turkey who sincerely believe the republic is coming to an end,” said Guven Sak, managing director of the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, a private organization here.

In these confusing times, Ataturk is apple pie, Washington and Jefferson all in one. A brilliant military strategist, he led the Turkish uprising against occupying European powers at the end of World War I, driving them from the land they had seized from the dying Ottoman Empire.

He was also a statesman, imposing a radical secular revolution on a poor, devout country. He changed the language, dress and even the cultural habits of his compatriots, severing ties with the Muslim world ...

Turkey is in the midst of a broad transformation. An economic boom has jolted prices. Plans are under way to enter Europe. Some secular Turks are suspicious of the devout politicians now running things. In this atmosphere, nationalist fervor has gained momentum ...

Liberal use of the thesaurus there: 'complex times'? More like 'threatened times'.

Turkey lifts university headscarf ban

Feb 10, 2008, AAP:

Turkey's parliament voted to lift a ban on female students wearing the Muslim headscarf at university, a landmark decision that some Turks say will undermine the foundations of the secular state.

Parliament, where the ruling centre-right AK Party has a big majority, approved the constitutional amendments by 411 votes to 103 ...

But underlining the powerful emotions the headscarf evokes, tens of thousands of people waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans staged a protest rally against the changes just a few km from the parliament in central Ankara.

The headscarf issue cuts to the heart of Muslim but secular, Western-oriented Turkey's complex identity.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party, which has Islamist roots, says the headscarf ban is an unfair denial of individual rights and religious liberty in a European Union candidate country where two thirds of women cover their heads.

Erdogan's wife and daughters wear the headscarf, as do those of President Abdullah Gul and many AK Party ministers.

But Turkey's old secular elite, which includes the judiciary, university rectors and army generals, regards the headscarf ban as crucial for maintaining a strict separation of state and religion.

Crucially, the government had the support of a key nationalist party, the MHP, to push through the reforms. The staunchly secularist, main opposition CHP opposed the changes, saying they presage a slow slide towards an Islamic state.

"We are not here today to discuss developments on the headscarf issue. We are here to discuss how the republic will be destroyed by putting a headscarf on it," female CHP lawmaker Bihlun Tamayligil said before the vote.

At the anti-headscarf rally, the second in Ankara in a week, feelings were running high as protesters sang patriotic songs and waved pictures of Kemal Ataturk, revered founder of the modern secular Turkish republic.

"We are against lifting this ban; we do not want to live in a religious state," said Ebru Okay, 32, who had travelled from the Aegean city of Izmir to join the rally in Ankara.

"They (the government) want us to become like Iran; they want to bring (Islamic) Sharia law to Turkey," said Okay.

The headscarf ban in universities dates back to the 1980s but was significantly tightened in 1997 when army generals, with public support, ousted a government they deemed too Islamist.

The army has remained silent during the latest debates, although senior judges and university rectors have condemned the planned changes as "unconstitutional" and dangerous.

The secularists tried last year to block parliament's election of the AK Party's Gul as president, forcing Erdogan to call early parliamentary polls that his party comfortably won.

Gul is now expected to sign the amendments swiftly into law, but CHP leader Deniz Baykal has said he will appeal to the constitutional court to block the changes.

The government must also amend a law governing the body that supervises higher education before the headscarf ban is lifted.

Opinion polls show a majority of Turks back an easing of the ban. Even after the reforms, women professors as well as civil servants will still be prohibited from wearing the headscarf.

The irreconcilable differences roll on ...

Declaration of cultural independence

Lawrence Auster
The Coming War? Feb 11, 2008:

The below story makes me realize that there may be no escape from the coming war within the West:

"AMSTERDAM, 07/02/08 (Netherlands Information Service)--The city of Amsterdam has developed teaching material warning children against the politics of Geert Wilders, newspaper De Telegraaf yesterday reported. Wilders calls the campaign "sickening".

The newspaper quoted from a letter that the city council has sent to three hundred primary and secondary schools in Amsterdam. Primary school heads believe that the letter is intended to anticipate the anti-Islam film that Wilders, MP and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), intends to release in March.

The letter, which the newspaper claims is intended as teaching material, contains cartoons of Wilders, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and a white family that wants nothing to do with a polite Islamic boy. The text reads: 'If you say bad things about someone, they will feel hurt. They may not dare to say anything in return, because they are afraid of being hurt even more. Then there is not much left of freedom of speech,' according to De Telegraaf. [cont.]"

Here's what this story says to me. Modern Western liberals want the West to surrender to Islam, or, at best, they are unwilling to resist that surrender and oppose Islam. Therefore the moment that any prominent figure such as Geert Wilders takes a serious stand against Islamization, the left will declare open war on him; it will undercut him at the very moment he is seeking to prevent some Muslim power grab. Imagine, then, what the left--which still controls all cultural institutions--would do if an entire political party opposing Islam and seeking the restoration of Western society took power or was close to gaining power in a Western society. Would the left quietly accept the end of the liberal order? No, it would freak out and fight back with everything it had.

I've said many times that for the West, the historic West, to have any chance to live, the rule of modern liberalism must die. I've said that liberalism might die as a result of liberals losing faith in it, or as a result of liberalism being discredited by the disasters it has brought about, or as a result of Islam gaining power in the West and destroying much of liberal society along with its liberalism. But there is one scenario that I have never really discussed, because it is so terrible to contemplate. Liberalism might die--or, the West itself might die--in an all-out civil war within the West, a war to the death between those who believe in the West, and those who seek its destruction.

Have We Lost? Feb 12, 2008:

It's possible I've said things like this before, but there is this feeling over the last week or so that we've passed some threshold, that we've decisively lost, or, rather, that the loss, which has been occurring for a long time, is becoming manifest. It seems to me that the primary thing must cease to be criticism and warning (something perhaps that I've been guilty of), because all the criticism and warning in the world will not stop Western suicide. The West is set on suicide, and nothing we say is going to stop that. We can't stop it from happening. What we can do, or strive to do, is build up something within and among ourselves, build up a real alternative to the liberal insanity, and present it to the world, while constantly warning people where liberalism is leading. And then when the liberal system crashes, people will be looking for something else, and they will turn to this alternative. We cannot defeat or stop liberalism by direct assault. It's too powerful, too ingrained. We can only wait for liberalism to destroy itself.

... it's not enough not to be crazy and self-destructive like the liberals and neoconservatives. We must practice the opposite virtues to their vices.

This is the work that true conservatives need to set for themselves. Do the actual conservatives who are alive today have the ability and knowledge to carry out such a project? I don't know. Do we even know where to start? I don't know.

But we must try.

Declaration of Cultural Independence, Oct 2002:

In June 1999, I was among the participants at Paul Weyrich’s conference on cultural separation held at the headquarters of the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C. Most of the approximately 40 people attending were evangelical Protestants, which gave the discussions a distinctive flavor I hadn't expected beforehand. While the meeting did not result in the initiation of a cultural separation movement, it did produce this interesting document, drafted by Paul Weyrich’s associate William Lind, which lays out the principles and some possible specific goals of a cultural separation movement. The conference also resulted in a Declaration of Cultural Independence—a Declaration for a movement that doesn’t now exist, but may some day. Since it’s often said that traditionalists complain too much and don’t lay out any positive ideas, these two documents may at least serve as a springboard to creative thought and discussion.

Free Congress Foundation, June 1999
Declaration of Cultural Independence:

Our 18th century forefathers declared political independence in order to maintain their liberties, liberties they saw threatened by an increasingly assertive government in London. Today, an increasingly assertive ideology, the cultural Marxism known as "multiculturalism" or Political Correctness, coupled with general moral decadence threaten our historic Western culture. In order to preserve that culture, should we emulate our ancestors and formally declare our cultural Independence? ...

All these are classic, age-old signs of a culture that is self-destructing. A growing number of Americans know how to read these signs. They realize that, despite economic prosperity, America is becoming a foreign country, foreign to everything that once defined Americans as a people. Indeed, as Political Correctness demands, we are no longer one people. "Multiculturalism" has changed our national motto into ex uno, plura: from one, many.

What is to be done? When a man finds himself in a sewer, his first objective is to get out of it. In a culture that has become a sewer, our first objective must be the same: to get out of that culture, and to create an alternative to it.

Until recently, the objective of cultural conservatives ... was to retake existing cultural institutions ... primarily through politics ...

Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that this strategy has not been successful. Despite some political successes, the culture has continued to deteriorate. In part, this is because some of the people we elected abandoned their principles once they were in office. But the larger reason is that culture is more powerful than politics. The tide of cultural degradation and decay is simply too strong for any political barrier to stem.

When one strategy fails, the proper response is not to surrender but to adopt a different strategy. We, the undersigned, therefore pledge ourselves to a strategy of cultural Independence. We hereby declare our Independence from the decayed, modern or post-modern culture and pledge our efforts toward creating new institutions built upon the values of our traditional, inherited Western culture.

We seek nothing less than the creation of a complete, alternate structure of parallel cultural institutions ...

The task is a vast one. But the talents and energies of Americans who still adhere to our traditional culture are also vast. When mobilized effectively, in the late 1970s and 1980s, they had profound if temporary effects on our nation's politics. Now, the challenge is to mobilize them again, not in hopes of evanescent gains in politics, but in service of a more solid goal, the goal of creating our own institutions and through them recovering our identity as a people.

To that task we pledge our talents, our treasure, and our abilities, to work on scales small or great as our circumstances allow. Out of the wreckage of the country once called America we will build a new, moral and pleasant land.

Free Congress Foundation, June 1999
Independents' Forum:

Who are we? We are Independents -- individuals and families that have declared Independence from the dominant, decadent culture. Most of us are Christians, some are Jews, some accept the Ten Commandments and the traditional morals of Western culture from a non-religious viewpoint. Our objective is to build new institutions of every variety where we and others who share our beliefs can secure what remains of our traditional culture and, through the power of example, restore that which is good ...

What are our objectives? We seek to create a wide network of institutions that are supportive of traditional Judeo-Christian culture, institutions where people who want to live according to the old rules of our civilization can find comfort. We intend to build that network to the point where it constitutes an alternative society, still part of the United States of America physically, economically and politically, but culturally separate. Our vision includes providing Judeo--Christian alternative institutions in the areas of government services, education, news and other media, books and libraries, entertainment, arts and music, health care, conflict resolution, and everyday family life. It is possible that a growing cultural Independence movement might see the development of neighborhoods, towns, even small cities where people who adhere to traditional morals and culture might live among others like themselves ...

Letter to Conservatives
by Paul M. Weyrich, Feb 1999:

I am very concerned, as I go around the country and speak and talk to young people, when I find how much of the decadent culture they have absorbed without even understanding that they are a part of it. And while I'm not suggesting that we all become Amish or move to Idaho, I do think that we have to look at what we can do to separate ourselves from this hostile culture. What steps can we take to make sure that we and our children are not infected? We need some sort of quarantine ...

Again, I don't have all the answers or even all the questions. But I know that what we have been doing for thirty years hasn't worked, that while we have been fighting and winning in politics, our culture has decayed into something approaching barbarism. We need to take another tack, find a different strategy.

That seems to be the road ahead. To borrow a misdirected quote from Andrew Bolt: we've got work to do folks, all of us. That is the challenge, to build up a real alternative.

What is the best way to warn people of an impending flood? Start building an ark. Then they might take notice.

UPDATE:
- Lawrence Auster has a list of related posts on the Western Crisis.
- Needed: A new conservative apologetics By Alan Roebuck
- comments over at A Western Heart