Common Folk Using Common Sense

Trackbacked at Agora, Michelle Malkin, Stop the ACLU, Blue Star Chronicles:

Here is the mainfest of Salman Rushdie and 11 other European intellectuals at the Jyllands-Posten regarding the Danish cartoon controversy:

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

I, like the Blue Star Chronicles and Stop The ACLU, might have some small differences of opinion with every word of this document. Like Beth I believe that we are in the midst of a clash of civilizations, and that Islamists desire to dominate the world and will destroy the rest of us to do so.

But for the most part I stand behind what is said in this document. Islamism is a global threat, akin to Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, and Communism. The difference here is the absolute joy Islamists derive from killing innocent people – much like the Nazis against the Jews, but this time with a much wider infidel victim pool.

This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. That said, we must be prepared to use whatever arms are necessary, whenever they are necessary, and without guilt, in order to buy us enough time to work on our ideologies.

Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. One time, back in the Middle Ages, Muslim civilization stood high above the rest of Europe in language, in science, in mathematics, in philosophy. But Islam held their civilization down, emcumbering it, allowing Europe not only to catch up but also to fully surpass, anything the Arab culture had developed. Europe, in the Middle Ages, was trapped in deep-rooted religious dogma, supersition, and worship. But Europe pulled itself out of it and became the birthplace of modern civilization, while the Middle East fell backwards driven by the words of Muhammad. Today Europe and the West are rich, educated, healthy, and powerful, while so much of the Middle East languishes in Third World conditions. Islamism takes those fears and frustrations and ferments them into pure violent rage.

I do have respect for cultures and traditions, but not at the expense of accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values, and not at the expense of apologizing everytime they kill an innocent person outside of their own group. What the world has been blindly watching, and accepting, happen to Israel is now happening on our own doorsteps.

To the other bloggers out there:
I have no ego, so I’m not asking you to necessarily link or trackback to this post. If you want to – fine. Or you could just as easily link to the Blue Star Chronicles or Stop The ACLU. Or you could link to the source, to Jyllands-Posten themselves. I don’t care. But, felow bloggers, take these words and put them on your blog. Get this word out. Make the Apologists Media be forced to take notice.

And support Denmark.

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