RSS Feed MenuThe editor of FrumForum, David Frum, has a great column in the National Post in which he identifies the real origins of terrorist bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
No, Abdulmutallab wasn’t radicalized in Nigeria, Yemen, or the Middle East. He was radicalized, instead, in London — and specifically London’s University College, which, apparently, indoctrinated him into the ways of radical Islam. Explains Frum:
The village that lost young Abdulmutallab was not some unpaved, grass-thatched Nigerian country town. It was the city of Dr. Johnson and Charles Dickens.
Abdulmutallab joined University College’s Islamic Society and was soon chosen president. The London Times reports that Abdulmutallab ‘is the fourth president of a London student Islamic society to face terrorist charges in three years. One is facing a retrial on charges that he was involved in the 2006 liquid bomb plot to blow up airliners. Two others have been convicted of terrorist offences since 2007.’
As Melanie Phillips and Michael Gove document in their important books Londonistan and Celsius 7/ 7, Britain has incubated a Muslim terror culture. Four British Muslims detonated themselves on the London Metro system on July 7, 2005, killing 56 and wounding about 700. Two British Muslims attempted suicide bombings in Tel Aviv on May 1, 2003, killing three victims.
Polls of British Muslims reveal the most radicalized community in Europe.
About one-sixth of British Muslims look with sympathy on terrorist acts. According to British police, about 3,000 British Muslims passed through Osama bin Laden’s Afghan training camps. More than 80% of British Muslims consider themselves Muslims first, British second — by far the least patriotic score of any European Muslim community. (French Muslims were the most patriotic: 42% considered themselves French first.)
Worse, in Britain non-Muslims often add their voices to condone and excuse Muslim violence. The ideology of Muslim victimhood is propounded by many of the most respected institutions in British life.
In other words, we have met the enemy and he is us: we in the West, and specifically our cultural elites who cannot summon the intellectual and political courage to articulate and explain what it is about the West that is great, special and worth defending — and worth defending unto our death.
This problem seems to be especially acute in British colleges and universities, which, says Islamic specialist Ruth Dudley Edwards, are “breeding grounds for Islamism.” Indeed, Edwards reports on
a steady stream of evidence about the university background of notorious jihadists like:
- Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the murderer of Daniel Pearl (London School of Economics);
- the London bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan (Leeds Metropolitan);
- Kafeel Ahmed (Cambridge), who blew himself up at Glasgow Airport; and
- Omar Rehman (Westminster) now serving 15 years for conspiracy to blow up several UK and US targets.
There are close to 100,000 Muslim students in the UK, and extremists are swimming among them. In the work of radicalisation, the agents of the controversial Hizb ut-Tahrir — which works to set up a global caliphate — infest the campuses of Britain unchecked.
Radicalized American Muslims seem, by and large, not to be college graduates. However, the same radicalization campaign that is being waged at British colleges and universities also is being waged on American campuses, and with more limited but still deeply troubling success.
FrontPage magazine, for instance, has reported on the terrorist connections of the Florida Atlantic University Muslim Student Organization and two (one former, one current) FAU faculty members, Drs. Mohammad Khalid Hamza and Bassem Abdo Alhalabi.
FAU-affiliated activities, FrontPage notes, include sponsoring websites that solicit funds for Hamas and Hamas-backed suicide bombers, providing advanced high-tech equipment to terrorists in Syria, and bringing actual terrorists and terrorist supporters to lecture on campus.
“Radical Islam,” writes Hudson Institute analyst Alex Alexiev,
made its first appearance in America in 1963 at the University of Illinois, with the founding of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), by [a] group of Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin) immigrant activists…
In the 1990s, this network was augmented with a number of other radical-Islamist organizations affiliated with the Brotherhood, such as the Muslim Political Affairs Council (MPAC) and the above-ground incarnation of the clandestine Brotherhood, registered in 1993 as the Muslim American Society (MAS).
What they all had in common was adherence to the hate-filled Wahhabi-Salafi Islamist ideology and a visceral dislike for America and the West, leading at least some of them to see their ultimate objective as ‘destroying Western civilization from within,’ as an internal Brotherhood document put it succinctly…
The MSA, which openly lionizes Osama bin Laden, now boasts over 1,000 college chapters in North America.
Unfortunately, radical Islam has found a hospitable home in the American academy, which, in too many instances, has been captured by a far-left ideology that is noteworthy for its animus against the West. Indeed, what Edwards says of British college universities is equally applicable to American colleges and universities:
Academics tend towards the Left; and, for a variety of perverse reasons, the Left has allied itself with radical Islam, choosing to ignore the brutality, the oppression of women, the stifling of dissent, and many of the other repellent aspects of countries ruled by Sharia law.
These reasons may be perverse, but they are not inexplicable. To the contrary: The radical Left’s hatred of the West and its corruption of the academy have been well documented and explained in a series of books published in the past two decades:
- Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (1991);
- Roger Kimball’s Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (first published in 1991 and updated in 2008);
- Thomas Sowell’s Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (1991);
- The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses (1999) by University of Pennsylvania professor Charles Kors and attorney Harvey A. Silverglate; and
- Author David Horowitz’s One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy (2009).
Anti-West bias at colleges and universities manifests itself in different ways. In its more benign form, it simply inculcates guilt and shame in Western students for the alleged sins perpetrated by their forefathers. Students are hectored about supposed Western colonialism and mistreatment of minorities.
Like most heresies, this one has a grain of truth which it distorts into untruth. Colonialism and mistreatment of minorities are, of course, historic problems which have afflicted many peoples in all parts of the globe. But leftist academics to the contrary notwithstanding, Western colonialism was anything but an unmitigated disaster. Colonialism, in fact, was a medical, educational, and economic boon for most colonized peoples.
Moreover, what makes the West so special and unique is the degree to which it has forthrightly addressed and remedied its problems and misdeeds. The West, for instance, abolished slavery in the 19th century; yet slavery is still practiced in parts of Africa, including Niger and the Sudan. What’s more, slavery and the slave trade existed in Africa well before any European ever stepped foot there.
Nonetheless, both Presidents Obama and Clinton have apologized to the world for what they perceive to be America’s historic misdeeds. This is not surprising since both Obama and Clinton are products of the American academy, with liberal arts and law degrees from the Ivy League’s dominant liberal-left precincts.
Indeed, whatever intellectual influences Obama and Clinton have had seem, by all accounts, to stem from this formative experience at liberal-left Georgetown, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale. This surely helps to explain why Obama, like Clinton before him, finds it difficult to embrace his role as commander-in-chief.
If, after all, you were taught to believe that America and the West are guilty of a multitude of historic sins, and that peoples the world over have legitimate grievances against us, and that America and the West have had a pernicious influence on the world, then you are bound to be instinctively reluctant to wield American power abroad.
This is a serious problem, because in fact, the safety and security of peoples the world over are critically dependent upon the exercise of American power overseas. So too, of course, is the safety and security of the American people. Witness, for instance, the 1990s, when Clinton was president and did very little to prevent the amassing of Jihadist forces prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.
Or consider World War II, which was eminently preventable had America and the West acted to stop Hitler before he could and did transform Germany into a Nazi military menace. In short, America and the world have paid a horrific price for American military inaction and for our nation’s refusal too often to lead.
Still, the greatest danger inherent in the radical tilt of Western colleges and universities lies not with the indoctrination of American students. Our students, thankfully, have myriad other influences — from family and peers, churches and synagogues, and other social meditating institutions — which can and do shape their political and social outlooks.
No, the greatest danger inherent in the radical tilt of Western colleges and universities lies with our visiting Muslim students — and especially, it seems, visiting Muslim students from affluent families.
Indeed, their Western “education” seems too often to pollute their minds and destroy their souls. It seems to inspire a visceral anger and hatred of the West. It seems to motivate at least some of these students to enlist, quite literally, in Jihad against America.
The late great University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom didn’t realize how prescient he was when, in 1987, he wrote his bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students.
Bloom was talking about American students, but his message has greater salience, it seems, for a new generation of Muslim students, who have journeyed west to study at elite colleges and universities in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States et al.
In 1961, a young American president said to his fellow countrymen: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Today’s American president — who, significantly, is himself a former academic — should ask the same question of colleges and universities throughout the West. “Ask not what the West can do for you; ask what you can do for the West.”
Posing that question alone, and planting it firmly within the public dialogue and debate, might do more to win the War on Terror than all of the military strikes now taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan.
sinz54 // Jan 11, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Kanzeon: The question of whether the West has done more harm than good, or vice versa, isn’t objectively true or false.
It’s objectively TRUE that the West has done far more good than harm.
We’ve cured or prevented dozens of communicable diseases that used to be deadly. Farmers in the West feed the whole world. The steadily rising world population is testament to the fact that you can now live your life without starvation or smallpox or plague or polio.
The literally billions of lives saved thus, dwarf any deaths in war.
sinz54 // Jan 11, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Mandos:
Egypt is not a Western nation.
sinz54 // Jan 11, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Mandos: I frankly have no obligation to denounce a figure who has had no effect or relationship to my life.
Your religion is now firmly connected with anti-American terrorism.
I’m sorry if you don’t see that.
sinz54 // Jan 11, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Mandos: So why doesn’t the USA concentrate its resources on doing *that*—what it does best, and despite its growing internal dilapidation *still* does very well—rather than projecting military power in foreign countries?
The U.S. didn’t put troops in Saudi Arabia, until Saddam conquered Kuwait and threatened to keep marching right on into Saudi Arabia. With Saddam now gone, those troops are now being withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. didn’t bomb Serbia until the Serbs started massacring the Albanian Kosovars, many of whom are Muslims. U.S. military action put a stop to this ethnic cleansing, after which the U.N. took over.
The U.S. didn’t put troops in Afghanistan until after 3,000 American citizens were vaporized by Muslim fanatics from training camps in that country.
Bush sent troops to Iraq because he firmly believed that Saddam had a hand in this atrocity against America. He was wrong, tragically wrong. But those troops are now being withdrawn, as Bush, Petraeus, and Obama have all agreed on a troop withdrawal plan. In their place is being left a true republic, in which the Iraqi people can vote in free elections for their choice among a multiplicity of parties. How many other Arab Muslim countries can make that claim?
Shall I go on?
Osama bin Laden is reportedly worth $300 million.
Why doesn’t he use HIS money to pay for schools, doctors, etc., in the Muslim world?
Instead of funding suicide-bombers?
Here’s a simple deal:
osama bin Laden gives himself up, and agrees to order al-Qaeda to lay down their weapons and stop fighting.
In exchange, U.S. withdraws its troops from Afghanistan and stops its drone war in Pakistan.
How’s that?
Mandos // Jan 11, 2010 at 1:24 pm
sinz54: Re Egypt, trivial distinction,. “Western” is a very fluid term. The Egyptian government at the time was highly influenced by Western ideas. Qutb hit the trifecta: he had visited the “conventional” West and was then jailed by a secular government, and repeated an ideology that bears no small resemblance in structure to Western revolutionary theories. That’s not an accident.
My religion is a very disparate—ideologically and geographically—collection of sects which have no authority over one another. I very well understand the terrible PR that is generated people who bring bombs onto airplanes, and the way it allows people hostile to Muslims to scapegoat a billion people, myself included. Consequently, I suggest solutions to the problem, as I have above.
(I had a lot of difficulty getting onto the FrumForum so I’ll get to your newest comments shortly. This post seems to have fallen off the front page, though…)
COProgressive // Jan 11, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Geez John, I don’t know where to start. At the beginning you talk about “Radical Islam” and the “radicalization” of young Muslim students and then go on to blame Western education and the “Left-leaning’ universities and colleges.
While I agree that some of these students do become radicalized while attending Western schools, I don’t think the blame rests with the schools as much as it rests in the schools environment of open discussion and free thinking as a whole. These students, being at a susceptible age for radical thought and easily molded minds, the same reasons the military selects recruits, are ripe for radicalizism and it is the seeds brought in to the openminded discussions that grow into “Radical Islam”.
Left to fester alone, the radicalized student’s minds reel with the false notions planted there. What needs to be done is to confront them early, to break up the hidden secrecy and bring these radical notions to light for thoughtful discussion. It’s the hiding of their radical doctrines away from those who might mitigate the anger and bring back these students from the edge. It is only clear open discussion of what they are being told and bring the falsehoods to light that will defuse their misguided anger.
When first I started reading your piece, my first thoughts were of the Columbine shootings back in ‘99 where the actions of Harris and Klebold were the EXACT actions of “Radical Islamic” terrorist. The ONLY difference being the introduction of religion into the equation with radical islam. The other factors were/are the same. The secrecy, the young delusional minds, the lack of intervention and the two, in the Columbine case, young men feeding off one another with neither having the intelligence to back down and say this is crazy.
Those who would foster radical islam are looking for just such young men, young men that can speak English, young men who are easily lead, young men who can be given a grievence and be allow to run with free with misguided notions to do the bidding of those who would harm us.
It’s not the Western schools. It’s not the professors. It is young pliable minds willing to please and do the bidding of those who are looked up to as authorities. Now whether those young men are taught by radical Islam, the US military or Buddhist priests, the problem is in what those young minds hear and what those young minds are lead to believe.
Think of the damage being done to young minds in the radical Islamic Madrassas around the world and compare that with what your piece is about.
You are looking at a world-wide problem with the blinders of “Western Exceptionalism” and are only seeing a very small problem with Western Left-leaning schools and saying “See there’s the problem!”
You are wrong.
COProgressive // Jan 11, 2010 at 1:48 pm
sinz54 @ 29 said;
“Bush sent troops to Iraq because he firmly believed that Saddam had a hand in this atrocity against America.”
sinz, that is a stretch of the truth and a ding to the historic record.
Greenspan was a whole lot closer to the truth when he wrote;
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” – Alan Greenspan
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I think anyone who does not observe a distinct brand of self-loathing throughout academia is in denial. The pop culture goes to the opposite extreme: self-adulation and encouragement of hedonism.
The West has always been inquisitive, but tended to be unkind towards totalitarians. It seems that after the bloodiest century in history (20th century) we aren’t so confident our society is worth salvaging in its current form.
It’s shame. To take away the lesson that the fundamentals of Western civilization – Greece, Rome, Judeo-Christian religion, pursuit of knowledge vis-a-vis the scientific method – were responsible for the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is a gross misreading of history.
One would be better served by investigating the collectivist phenomena of the 20th century, whether it be Nationalism, Socialism, Communism, or Fascism. This was the true departure from tradition; the false identification of the collective as something more than the sum of individuals.
Part of the reason may lie in the West’s great technological achievements, which of course lead to more destructive weapons. Considering that the Western world nearly destroyed itself (along with the rest of the world) in the 20th century, and that up until now the Islamic states have not possessed the technology, it’s no wonder we view ourselves with skepticism; the Islamic world, which cannot boast an equivalent standard of living, protection of women’s right, or level of technological achievement, can still gaze West into a frightful future, where technology leads to total war.
I’ve always been curious as to what Westerners abhor most about their modern culture. The decadence? The post-modern atheism? The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest? The fact that almost no topic remains taboo, and as each year passes we are told to accept more and more aberrant, if not downright immoral, behavior as normal?
Or is it our mounting ignorance of human history, philosophy, and the humanities that Allan Bloom pointed to?
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Also, hasn’t Victor Davis Hanson and his friend Bruce Thornton written about the decline in Classics education?
Arch // Jan 11, 2010 at 3:22 pm
The post-modern atheism?
If the world were only all atheist our problems might be smaller.
Personally I think of myself as a post-romantic neo-athiest.
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Arch, being that nearly all Communist states are officially atheist, to the point of suppressing worshipers, I don’t really understand your point. No, of course being an atheist does not make you a mass-murderer or an advocate for communism, but the claim that atheists are somehow more peaceful… well, that doesn’t hold much water in my opinion.
Kanzeon // Jan 11, 2010 at 3:43 pm
sinz54:
“It’s objectively TRUE that the West has done far more good than harm.We’ve cured or prevented dozens of communicable diseases that used to be deadly. Farmers in the West feed the whole world. The steadily rising world population is testament to the fact that you can now live your life without starvation or smallpox or plague or polio. The literally billions of lives saved thus, dwarf any deaths in war.”
Let’s see your math on that. Here is a list of the body count of the 20th Century (I can’t verify it’s accuracy, but the author seems to make this a hobby):
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm
15 million for WWI
9 million for the Russian civil war
20 million for Stalin
55 million for WWII
Then we have the question of Mao. He’s at 40 million, but is that the fault of Chinese culture or Western ideas?
Western culture has slaughtered people on an unimaginable scale.
Then, for many a technological advance, there’s a downside. We produced nuclear weapons, for example, and chemical weapons, as well as medicine.
Google won’t tell me how many lives penicillin or other medical advances have saved. But, I suppose you could legimately observe that worldwide population has risen, not declined, so it’s a net plus in terms of bodies on the planet. But much of the world lives in hunger and squalor, in part because of the increase in population. Is allowing more people to eke out a miserable existence objectively a boon for the human race?
1.3 billion people live on less than a dollar a day. I think it is probably much worse to live in most of Africa than it was to live in feudal Europe by almost any measure. It would take some researh, but I doubt that historically so great a percentage of the world population has lived in such misery. And the drama isn’t over: there is still a real possibility of a nuclear or environmental catastrophe from Western technology.
Kanzeon // Jan 11, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Arch
“If the world were only all atheist our problems might be smaller.”
If people were all ANYTHING, our problems would be smaller. Diversity has its disadvantages.
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 3:53 pm
kanzeon,
“It would take some researh, but I doubt that historically so great a percentage of the world population has lived in such misery. And the drama isn’t over: there is still a real possibility of a nuclear or environmental catastrophe from Western technology.”
actually, if you consider that at some point, ALL world lived in what we now consider 3rd world conditions, I’d say Western culture and technological achievement has gone a long way. besides, you cannot blame technological progress and the increase in population for the problems spawned by 3rd world dictatorships.
what are you, a Luddite?
Kanzeon // Jan 11, 2010 at 4:10 pm
WillyP:
Actually, no, all of humanity did not live in modern third world conditions. There is a great deal more to quality of life than technology. I don’t think Aristotle or Aquinas endured the miseries that attend the poverty that exists in Africa, although they lacked electricity and modern medicine. They didn’t starve, and they participated actively in functioning culture.
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 4:17 pm
True, our ancient and medieval ancestors may not have lived in the complete squalor that many Africans now do, but this only buttresses the case that Western civilization has always been more accommodating to civilizing life for commoners.
As for whether the 4th century B.C. in Athens (Aristotle) or 13th century France (Aquinas) would be considered 3rd world by modern standards, I have to insist they would be.
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 4:22 pm
“There is a great deal more to quality of life than technology.”
Yes, I agree – we are talking about culture, after all. I would argue, however, that the evaluation of a cultural tradition (such as Western culture) should take into consideration how welcoming it is to innovation and material progress. While you may prefer to live as an ascetic, we don’t need to commission any further research to recognize that most prefer wealth to poverty.
Kanzeon // Jan 11, 2010 at 4:33 pm
WillyP:
“but this only buttresses the case that Western civilization has always been more accommodating to civilizing life for commoners”
I don’t think so. There have been great civilizations, with great philosophy and literature , for millenia. The one thing that sinz has focused on is technological advances of the late nineteenth and twentieth century. I see they may have increased the population, but I don’t think it’s a given they’ve increased the quality of life.
I don’t think that a comparison as to the good of the species can be made by counting the number of breathing bodies and their tools. Would you rather be a pre-colonial Indian, or a peasant under Louis XVII? Would you rather work in a mine in 1850 or be a mason in 1600? Would you rather live in Tibet before the Chinese invasion, or be in a Dubai construction labor camp?
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Are you insinuating that the East has been more thoughtful of the individual commoner, of womankind, than the West? Again, I don’t think we need to commission any research to know that your argument is specious. The West, particularly Christianity, has a rich history of venerating the individual (through is relationship with Christ) and women (byway of the the holiness of Mary, and any number of female saints). Even Russia, which is culturally Eastern in many ways, has felt the deep effects of Christianity.
Yes, of course there have been great civilizations that were not Western. Of all, perhaps none surpasses Chinese civilization. But it was also backwards looking and ossified under a reactionary and highly systematic bureaucracy by the turn of the 19th century. The ancient Egyptians were extraordinarily progressive and advanced, but I doubt very much you’d like to spend your life building a pyramid for your “godlike” ruler.
The Persians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Ottomans were all advanced. But again, they were certainly NOT the forerunners of the industrial revolution, which was the true rise of the common man. For this, you truly do have to look West, and acknowledge the service provided by a rich philosophical history tinged with humanism that was not found in the East.
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 4:46 pm
err, philosophical heritage… not history
Kanzeon // Jan 11, 2010 at 5:39 pm
WillyP
“Are you insinuating that the East has been more thoughtful of the individual commoner, of womankind, than the West?”
Depends on the individual culture, but I don’t think either culture has been particularly thoughtful of commoners. We have slavery in the United States until the mid ninteenth century. We have colonialism long after that. Add to that the slaughter of innocents in the twentieth century (I’m inclined to add Mao and Pol Pot to that list, though some would differ).
“The West, particularly Christianity, has a rich history of venerating the individual (through is relationship with Christ) and women (byway of the the holiness of Mary, and any number of female saints).”
I am not sure if we want a religious discussion, but I don’t think the status of women in Christianity is uniquely high. The Jews probably take that honor. Women have always had equal spiritual status in Buddhism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Buddhism
As to individualism and Christianity, I am not sure it is uniquely individualistic. I view Christianity as a religion of radical sacrifice. I think most religions have an ethic, at least in theory, of respecting all people equally. Christianity has great deference to authority (particularly the family), a commandment to leave one’s worldly possessions, and an admiration of martyrdom, none of which seem individualistic to me. If you want to find statements expressing radical individualism and rationality, look to Zen. This quote from the Buddha expresses modern Western values much more than Christ ever did:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
“The ancient Egyptians were extraordinarily progressive and advanced, but I doubt very much you’d like to spend your life building a pyramid for your “godlike” ruler.”
But how do we determine what is better for the average person? For example, I don’t know – maybe no one knows – how many Egyptians were slave laborers v. farmers v. nobles. But if – just making up some numbers – 20%of Egyptians were slaves, and 50% had it pretty good, and 25% were pretty poor and the rest were very wealthy, is that society more or less just than the American South in 1840? There are always people who have it lousy, and on a worldwide basis, I’m not sure that industrialization has changed the percentages very much. I have an idea that being a wealthy Egyptian would be pretty cool, but maybe I’ve watched too many movies. I would definitely prefer to be a member of the Egyptian middle class than the average African – or at least I think I would.
Kanzeon // Jan 11, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I’ll take back my statement on Judiasm. My personal observation of that issue, I think, probably conflicts with doctrine, which seems to put women in a greatly subservient status.
WillyP // Jan 11, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Without engaging in a religious discussion (really), the Christian conception of “conscience” could not be any more explicitly personal, though it certainly is not hyper-individualistic, to the point of being atomistic. Certainly the religion would teach one to sacrifice their own desires for the greater good. I view that as something very different than collectivism, which says that the individual lives for the collective (a position which, to me, is nonsensical).
The point I am trying to make is not theological in essence, but political. It has to do with how one applies force – what the state exists to do – in a political setting. Clearly, as a Westerner, I believe that people should not live in fear of religious persecution. The same cannot be said for the majority of Middle Eastern countries.
GOProud // Jan 12, 2010 at 7:18 am
Nothing more need be said. Here’s the fix:
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, (D-London) At this rate, the Democrats will probably make him an honorary intern’l member of the Democrat Congressional Caucus.
Mat_Hansen // Jan 26, 2010 at 9:06 am
Hello from London,
I absolutely agree with observation that in the UK we have serious issues with Islamic extremism. Most profoundly. I do however fail to see how this relates to universities in the United States where you concede there is far less direct Muslim extremism. The link is not there. Muslim students are not going to mainstream university classes in the United Kingdom and coming out as extremists. Muslim students are being allowed far greater freedoms to create unhindered and largely independent organisations on university campuses whereby extremist is breeding. Political correctness and a fear of Orwellian big brother like government intervention means that these organisations are appeased more here than they would be in France for example. In France they are having a political debate about whether or not to ban the Hijab. In the United Kingdom this debate could never even exist under the current weight of political correctness. Academics within the university system have very little to do with Muslim extremism in the United Kingdom.
Many of my friends graduated UK universities with one thing in common – the ability to binge drink! This is facilitated by university life, by the various campus organisations and activities that everyone participates in at some level. The ability to down a pint is certainly not facilitated by the far left hippie lecturers that congregate in the staff rooms of UK universities. The reasons for leftist leaning universities are far less subversive than you have us all believe. I was once told that “if you are not a liberal at 20 you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative at 40 you don’t have a brain” – students are not products of left leaning universities but conversely, universities are products of their young innocent students expressing their views at a time in life that precedes their bleeding hearts being crushed by the real world. For that reason, universities become a Mecca for all of those people who still subscribe to those views even under the weight of the real world. It makes sense for them to stay within institutions that value and reward those ideas. If conservative academics decided to stay within universities rather than joining think tanks and other institutions, universities would not be less idealistic, they would just be more hostile places – conservativism will never be learnt in the classroom and it will never be embraced by the majority of young people, conservativism a product of real world and real life experiences and reflection.
This is my view of conservativism from the outside and I admit that I am not a conservative but nor am closer to 40 than 20 so I suppose ‘watch this space’.
Mathew, London.