August 29, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

American Muslims and the Assault on Western Culture

[NOTE: Nearly two years ago I published an essay in The Remnant on American Muslims and what I termed the “assault on Western Culture.” While the essential outlines of that piece remain, I believe, valid, given the prominence these days of Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, I have gone back and reworked and added to that essay. And I offer it today. BDC]

I find it fascinating to watch the praxis of our progressivist multiculturalist establishment when it comes to Islam. You would think that those politically-correct elites would be, at the very least, offended by the tenets of the Muslim religion, if not wary of how orthodox Muslims and Muslim authorities have conducted themselves across the globe in recent years. But their insistent response to Islamism and Islamic violence has been, almost uniformly, to declare that “Islam is a religion of peace,” and that such manifestations as ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria and North Africa, or the Taliban in Afghanistan are aberrations which don’t represent the true doctrines of that faith.

Undoubtedly, there are some Muslims who do fall into that category of peace-loving, but they are certainly less obedient to the strict tenets of their faith than many of their co-religionists. After all, like Christianity, Islam is divided and subdivided into sects and branches. But orthodox Islam, if its tenets in the Qu’ran are to be taken seriously, is a religion that must advance, must spread its message, and must convert the “infidels,” or, barring that, suppress them, or at least suppress various modes of behavior inconsistent with Muslim dominance in any society that it controls (e.g., the Palestinian Authority recently banned LGBT activities in the West Bank at the same time that progressivist Representative Rashida Tlaib was seeking entry to that territory).

Since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and Ahmed Sekou Toure’ in Guinea, there has been a Marxist interest, even fascination, with anti-colonial, Afro-Asian and largely Islamic “liberation” movements—and the possibility of utilizing or co-opting them. Indeed, since the Bandung Conference (1955) and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Moscow made attempts to associate its Communist doctrines with anti-Western liberation. In particular, socialist-inspired economic “dirgisme,” or state control of the economy, was pressed throughout the “Third World.”

But, while the interests of Moscow were directed mainly at securing allies and continuing the cold war struggle against the West and at establishing authoritarian states and controlled economies allied with the Soviet brand of Communism, a second generation of post-Communist Marxists—the cultural Marxists—understood and emphasized much more the essentially racial and cultural importance of the struggle. While not neglecting economic questions, cultural Marxists possessed a near religious and universalist zeal which targeted specifically white European-American Christian civilization and history. Race became an underlying and central factor used by cultural Marxism.

As earlier Marxist revolutionaries such as West Indian-African Frantz Fanon (in his benchmark work of anti-colonialist ideology, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961) preached sixty years ago, the latest phase of Marxist warfare against the “West”—the extension of Marxist theory—is a cultural war of revolution largely by non-white populations against the “oppression by the historic colonial powers.”  And these “powers” are composed of white European and American Christians who have a long history of persecuting minorities, enslaving them, and depriving them of equality and their “rights.” Fanon’s theorization and the widespread cultural and educational legacy of other significant Marxist thinkers, including the influential Frankfort School, Michel Foucault and Saul Alinsky, have had an incredibly profound influence not only in American academia, but also in the media and in Hollywood, and in shaping and limiting the parameters of the political dynamic and outlines of political conversation in both America and in Western Europe.

No matter their origin or their views, as American Muslims are a non-white, non-European minority in a majority white, majority Christian country of majority European-descended citizens, they are immediately associated with other “oppressed” ethnic and religious peoples, specifically American blacks and, especially, illegal Hispanic immigrants. Thus, they are positioned and encouraged to assault the “camp of the saints,” to use novelist Jean Raspail’s famous dystopian terminology— thus, they become part of the new “Elect,” whose role it is to assist in overthrowing the dominant Christian Europeans, and displacing them. In effect, despite the blatant terror and violence that the more consistent and faithful of their number commit, they can do no wrong, they are exempt from most of the withering criticism directed at the so-called “white nationalists,” or “white supremacists,” those “racists” and “bigots” who would seek to preserve the historic society in which they live, the historic Western Christian civilization they have inherited.

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the Mainstream Media have reported on various instances of “violence and hatred” directed at peaceful American Muslims. Each occasion is relayed excitedly by television and the Internet as just one more example of white/European/Christian/far-right/fascist/Neo-Nazi/and so on, bigotry and prejudice which must be extirpated and cleansed from the nation. Then, as light follows night, come the voluble expressions and desires for “peace and love and brotherhood and dialogue”—of course, on bases and on a template pre-determined by the advocates of ideological multiculturalism and cultural Marxism.

Although spread about recklessly by such ideological manufacturers of “hate” as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), many of these accusations turn out to be fabricated or exaggerated. Nevertheless, they serve a purpose: once uttered and broadcast in tones of horror and disgust by the Mainstream Media, they are seldom corrected or modified when proven wrong. But they continue and bolster the narrative of a massive campaign by hateful “white nationalists” and “far rightists” who ignorantly and maliciously are “coming after” those poor, downtrodden examples of peace and believers in equality and brotherhood. A 2017 TV ad in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign sponsored by a group named Latino Victory exemplified this view: a white bearded man, driving a pick-up truck, flying a Confederate Battle Flag and sporting a “Don’t Tread On Me!” bumper sticker, is seen chasing down poor Hispanic children, who shout with terror in their voices: “Run for your lives!” Just another example of the longstanding narrative expressed by Frantz Fanon and a hallmark of the cultural Marxist assault on the historic West.

Down in North Carolina back in the Fall of 2017 there was a widely-reported incident of “hatred” directed at Muslim Americans, or, rather, at a Muslim American running for an at-large seat on the Raleigh City council. The election was Tuesday, October 10, 2017 and Pakistani-born Muslim woman Zainab Baloch was the candidate. As reported by both print and broadcast media, on Friday, October 6—four days prior to the election—she claimed that vandals spray-painted one of her election signs with the words: “Sand Nigger,” followed by a swastika, and then “Trump.” Since then for the four days leading up to the election, on every news cast and continually via the web and print media, Baloch and her supporters were interviewed, a local artist painted a new sign for her, and the candidate was granted ample time on-air to explain in lugubrious terms how this event had been “hurtful and traumatizing.” Her campaign quickly released a widely-publicized statement declaring: “Nobody should feel persecuted for their race, religion, beliefs, or gender identity. We must open a dialogue and discuss how we can do better as a city in protecting our marginalized communities.”

Can anyone envisage the same thing happening if this had—supposedly--occurred to a conservative Baptist or traditional Catholic candidate for city office?

This whole episode was extremely suspicious. The timing just four days prior to an election to which most people were paying no attention, the specific wording used to express the “hate” message, and resultant coverage, didn’t ring true. At the very least it should have triggered suspicions and doubts among local media; but it didn’t, and, in fact, it was met with deeply furrowed brows and anguished words of concern, plus the accustomed condemnation of “hate speech” and bigotry expressed against Muslims and other non-whites.

There may be a handful of rightist nut cases around who are capable of such actions—juxtaposing “Trump” and the swastika—but those numbers would be thankfully minuscule. Nevertheless, to link Donald Trump with the Nazis and Hitler has become increasingly a standard ideological narrative among many Trump and Deplorables haters. Did we not just see a major NBC commentator, national defense expert Frank Figliuzzi, using bizarre numerology, attempt to tie the president into Nazi symbolism, a claim that that should have been scornfully rejected by any rational person as absurd, certainly as broadcast by a major television network,  but was absorbed with rapt seriousness by far too many viewers.?

The question should be asked: How many Deplorables, or for that matter, how many convinced “Nazis” would even remotely think about conjoining such words and with a swastika? On the other hand, if I were a Leftist multiculturalist wanting to paint a picture of my supposed opponents—all those millions of perceived white supremacists and enemies over on the far right—how better to do so than by such an example that links Nazis and Donald Trump?

Did a real far rightist actually scrawl that message on Baloch’s political sign? Or, was this just an election stunt engineered to gain free publicity and potential sympathy just before an election where a candidate’s name—amongst seven running for an at-large seat—had hitherto gained almost no notice?

The incident didn’t pass the smell test. And, now, almost two years after the purported “hate crime,” no one has ever been arrested or charged for the alleged act.

In the end, whether real or just a stunt, the voters in Raleigh back in 2017 rejected Baloch, and she came in near the bottom of the candidates running for the at large seat.  But, in 2019 she is running again, and this time for mayor of North Carolina’s capital city. Social justice warriors just don’t fad away: their fanaticism is unending and unrelenting.

But beyond the Baloch case or the current controversies surrounding Muslim American Congressmen Omar and Tlaib, there lies another question, and a question that such luminaries who publicly and proudly proclaim their Islamic faith must, if they are honest, eventually address: in their belief systems which is the stronger—their faith in Islam or their commitment to cultural Marxism?

As noted Syrian-born Jesuit scholar, Fr. Henri Boulad—whose scholarly examination of Islam should be digested by all American political leaders—has stated: “Islam is an open-ended declaration of war against non-Muslims.” Our cultural Marxists may think they are using it to destroy the West (which they are), but they should remember what happened to the 100,000 Soviet troops once stationed in Afghanistan, or, even more, the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian Communists decades ago by Muslim insurgents…Muhammed will never cede his place to Marx or Trotsky