caucus anyone
This presidential race illuminates just how far out of the bottle the genie has gone. Peel back the layers of President and Congress to reveal the massive federal, state, county, local, and special district bureaucracies – the envy of any socialist utopian – that forge ahead relentlessly to define and manage every corporeal and theoretical element about America and her people.
The electoral theater is in season, with many acts, many intermissions, and incessant analysis – all of it tracking to the myth of the constitutional consent of the governed. As if!!!
As if any one man (a President), or any consortium of men (a Congress) could even know what the American bureaucratic Leviathan does to us each minute of every day.
As if the millions of lines of written rules by all manner of governing body in America – a.k.a. The Rule of Law – could even be comprehended in any significant degree.
We are subjects to bureaucrats discretion now. Our consent is vestigial. Our Constitution is open to interpretation and we have no control over the interpreters.
These flourishes at the margin where individuals step into the limelight for a few moments to plant seeds of hope in the fertile soil of our founding ideology, just remind me of what will never be a reality for us again.
To get America back, the bureaucracy must be dismembered, amputated, discarded. There is no mending it. The people who recognize that truth are vastly outnumbered.
And that’s the nuts and bolts of it. All the rest – the ideological fights, the religious fights, the rights fights, the wealth fights, the health fights, the cultural fights, they’re all sideshows. Constant distractions to divert attention from the one hand in your pocket, and the other one wrapped around your spinal cord.
Going to caucus? Please….
Winter is Trumping
Mornin’
Reason, not force. Consent, not submission. Citizen, not subject.
Justice Scalia’s death is a litmus test for the nation. Everyone who justifies their position on the proper course of action for the President and the Senate to fill Scalia’s seat on the Court with an appeal to the will of the people is wrong. America was never intended to be governed by a political expression of the will of the people.
Justice Scalia fought an uphill battle to preserve the rule of law, not the rule of men. He agreed with the Framers that Constitutional law should only be changed with the safeguards of the amendment process in order to avoid judicial tyranny. But this process is far too slow for the Left who see the Court as the architect of social engineering in America.
That concept – social engineering – is the very antithesis of freedom. It makes lab rats out of free men. It just amazes me to see the Left, who are all so libertarian about their behavioral choices, chuck their free will aside and line up to conform with the latest politically correct gestalt.
And if it were only that, I could grudgingly accept it. But no. They’re driven to make law to govern and force me to accept their experiments too. And that’s where I draw the line – because I don’t sell my freedom cheaply. I expect to be persuaded and convinced, and the Left, generally, don’t make compelling arguments.
Antonin Scalia
“It seems to me that that is where we are heading, or perhaps even where we have arrived. Seventy-five years ago, we believed firmly enough in a rock-solid, unchanging Constitution that we felt it necessary to adopt the Nineteenth Amendment to give women the vote. The battle was not fought in the courts, and few thought that it could be, despite the constitutional guarantee of Equal Protection of the Laws; that provision did not, when it was adopted, and hence did not in 1920, guarantee equal access to the ballot but permitted distinctions on the basis not only of age but of property and of sex. Who can doubt that if the issue had been deferred until today, the Constitution would be (formally) unamended, and the courts would be the chosen instrumentality of change? The American people have been converted to belief in The Living Constitution, a “morphing” document that means, from age to age, what it ought to mean. And with that conversion has inevitably come the new phenomenon of selecting and confirming federal judges, at all levels, on the basis of their views regarding a whole series of proposals for constitutional evolution. If the courts are free to write the Constitution anew, they will, by God, write it the way the majority wants; the appointment and confirmation process will see to that. This, of course, is the end of the Bill of Rights, whose meaning will be committed to the very body it was meant to protect against: the majority. By trying to make the Constitution do everything that needs doing from age to age, we shall have caused it to do nothing at all.”
winter sunset
Arab Spring Stampede
The sound of the Arab Spring Stampede drowns out the pitter-patter of Clinton and Obama feet, tip-toeing away from their handiwork.
codependency
The Left and Islam have a strange codependency – each embodying and enabling what the other hates and loves the most.
The violence of the Safe Space
On 23 January Brendan O’Neill took part in a debate about free speech on campus at the University of California Irvine. These were his opening remarks.
The most striking thing about Safe Spaces on campus is how unsafe they are. How hostile and even violent they are towards anyone who has unpopular views, or who simply believes people should have the right to express unpopular views.
Safe Spaces are spreading across campuses in the US and the UK. They’re presented as happy-clappy therapeutic zones in which students, especially minority students, should not be subjected to gruff words or prejudicial ideas.
As one student union in Britain puts it, they’re spaces in which students must be “free from intimidation or judgement” and should always “feel comfortable”. These spaces are justified in inoffensive, Oprah-like language: it’s all about providing a space in which people can be themselves without fear of ridicule.
But in practice, Safe Spaces are ugly, authoritarian places. They’re propped up by menace. They’re fortified by a simmering threat of force against any transgressors of the new cult of psychic safety and moral conformism.
Consider some recent examples from Britain, where students have built what they call Safe Spaces but which look to me more like Unsafe Spaces for those judged to hold the wrong views or to have the wrong attitudes.
Last week at King’s College London, a meeting of pro-Israel students was invaded by anti-Israel activists. They smashed windows, set off a fire alarm, threw chairs around. They chanted “Nazis!” at the attendees of the meeting. Oh, the irony of activists shutting down a meeting of largely Jewish students while shouting “Nazis”: a serious self-awareness failure.
A key justification given by student radicals for shouting down pro-Israel meetings is that such events are “offensive” or “distressing” to certain students. That is, they violate the Safe Space. So in the name of maintaining safety on campus, certain events can be violently interrupted. It’s Orwellian: war is peace, freedom is slavery, violence is safety.
On two campuses in Britain — Cambridge and Goldsmith’s — feminist students have burnt the literature of far-left groups whom they accuse of rape apologism and of contributing to a hostile climate for female students. That is, these far-left groups make women feel unsafe and therefore their pamphlets must be publicly burnt. The use of fascistic menace to make students feel comfortable — the Orwellianism continues.
At a London university last year, the Iranian secularist Maryam Namazie was harassed by members of the Islamic Society who shouted at her: “You are violating our Safe Space!”
Namazie is a stinging critic of Islamism. Some big Islamist guys turned up to her talk and hectored her, switched off her powerpoint, and created what could really be described as a hostile environment. And their justification was that they were maintaining their Safe Space against someone with problematic views. We have the Kafkaesque situation where a bunch of blokes can physically intimidate a woman in the name of saving students from feelings of intellectual intimidation.
In 2014, I was prevented from taking part in a debate about abortion at Oxford, on the basis that I am a “person without a uterus” and therefore have no right to discuss women’s bodies. As it happens, I was due to make the pro-choice case, to say that officialdom has no business limiting a woman’s sovereignty over herself.
More than 300 feminist students said the discussion would harm their “mental safety”, so they threatened to turn up to the debate “with instruments” to disrupt it. They couldn’t see the dark, twisted irony of threatening the physical safety of a campus debate in the name of defending students’ mental safety. Shamefully, the Oxford administration caved to the students’ demands and banned the meeting.
And on it goes. Things are burnt, people are harassed, and books, newspapers and songs are banned in the name of “safety”. Menace, fire and threats are used to create “safety”. Discomfort is deployed in the name of comfort. Intimidation is used to tackle alleged intimidation. Violence is safety.
Student unions in Britain have crushed all sorts of things in the name of safety. Robin Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines” has been banned on more than 30 campuses because it apparently makes female students feel unsafe. Mexican hats are banned on some campuses because they create a hostile environment for Latinos. Some unions have banned the making of sexual noises in the student bar, because it makes women feel unsafe.
On American campuses we have seen professors being screamed at and journalists being manhandled by mobs of students rallying under the banner of the Safe Space. “You make us feel unsafe and therefore we will destroy you” — that is the perverted rallying cry of today’s student radicals.
That Safe Spaces can generate so much unsafety is revealing. It exposes the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks within the velvet glove of the self-esteem movement. It exposes the dark side to the cult of therapy and the idea that an individual’s feeling of self-worth should override other people’s right to express themselves as they see fit.
The motor of campus censorship is a profound feeling of psychic vulnerability among students. They see everything as a threat to their mental security. Statues of old dead white men, novels that feature sexual violence, pop songs… everything is considered potentially wounding.
This is best summed up in the idea of microaggressions, where even innocent, everyday conversation is reframed as a peril. The Oxford students currently trying to have a statue of Cecil Rhodes taken down describe the statue as an “environmental microaggression”. Even inanimate objects are experienced as an attack on the self.
This extreme psychic vulnerability confirms that we’re entering a new and quite terrifying era of censorship. Once we had ideological censorship, designed to elevate a particular political outlook by suppressing others. We had religious censorship, designed to protect a certain belief system through crushing blasphemy. Now we have therapeutic censorship — censorship which aspires to squash or at least demonise anything that any individual finds aggressive, uncomfortable, or wounding to their worth. It is a tyranny of self-regard.
This censorship is more insidious than the old censorships. It is vast and unwieldy and can turn its attention to almost anything: magazines, clothing, monuments, jokes, conversational blunders. It’s as if students feel they deserve their own personal blasphemy law to protect them from scurrilous comments or images or objects. We have a generation of little Jesuses, threatening menaces against anyone who says something that stings their psychic health.
Campus censors can’t be held entirely responsible for this therapeutic censorship. In fact, in many ways they are the products of a culture that has been growing for decades: a culture of diminished moral autonomy; a culture which sees individuals as fragile and incapable of coping without therapeutic assistance; a culture which treats individual self-esteem as more important than the right to be offensive; a culture that was developed by older generations — in fact by the fortysomethings and fiftysomethings now mocking campus censors as infantile and ridiculous.
Yes, we should mock these little tyrants who fantasise that their feelings should trump other people’s freedom. But we must go further than that. We must remake the case for robust individualism and the virtue of moral autonomy against the fashion for fragility; against the misanthropic view of people as objects shaped and damaged by speech rather than as active subjects who can independently imbibe, judge and make decisions about the speech they hear.
The Safe Space is a terrible trap. It grants you temporary relief from ideas you don’t like, but at the expense of your individuality, your soul even. If you try to silence unpopular ideas, you do an injustice both to those who hold those unpopular views, and also to yourself, through depriving yourself of the right and the joy of arguing back, taking on your opponents, and in the process strengthening your own mental and moral muscles. Liberate yourself — destroy the Safe Space.
These are comments Brendan O’Neill made at the conference “What Cannot Be Said” at the University of California Irvine on 23 January.
militancy without end
![tumblr_nj79yhsGur1s2wio8o1_500[1]](http://elbertcounty.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tumblr_nj79yhsGur1s2wio8o1_5001.gif)
Leftists and political Muslims share a successful strategy of umbrage politics – “Agree with me or I’ll get upset.” Each day news reports come in about the riots, demonstrations, occupations, marches, boycotts, and class actions underway by upset beneficiaries. You’d think that’s all that ever happened in America.
Leftist reporters saturate the media with reports about the struggles. The struggles never end as the numbers of beneficiaries and Muslims continue to grow. No degree of social justice, religious obedience, or equality can satisfy them, as if these things could even be quantified. No fixed amount of entitlement benefits can sustain an enlarging population. The struggles are designed to be unsatisfiable, unsolvable, unwinnable, and unending.
Liberal politicians keep putting more money on the table and unscrupulous beneficiaries keep lining up to collect. You can’t legitimately call either the politicians or the beneficiaries citizens because citizenship implies duties that neither one cares much about. They are gamers – gaming the system for personal benefit, be it preferential law or public money – and gaming the system for votes.
Who even discusses economic and political theories, reasoning, science, education, or even metaphysical foundations anymore? Why bother with intellectual baggage when numbers in the streets will get favorable laws written, favorable court cases decided, entitlement money allocated, criminal prosecutions foregone, constitutional protections denied, the power of the Leftist state and Muslim Sharia increased, and votes?
Conservatives are chasing their tails with volumes of sound and persuasive analysis about these social pathologies, but the groups who trade in power demographics don’t care about what conquered people have to say, except to the extent it identifies more opportunities to exploit.
Pure democracy is literally devouring America. Leftists and Muslims are leading the short walk to the end of our constitutional society. The tyrannies of the minorities are on the march while liberal vote-buying politicians eagerly fund and enable them.
The overwhelming majority of Americans who provide the real value to America that predatory Leftists and political Muslims feed on, are apparently too busy to stop it.
The Crying Game
A week in the San Francisco Bay Area
A short course in moral philosophy
What “Social Justice” Really Means
For much of my academic life, I considered the terms, “values,” “rights,” and “social justice,” to have equivocal meanings. When these terms were used without clarification, they disrupted any fair social order. Each of the phrases had two or more meanings that usually meant the direct opposite of each other. Conversations and legislation in which these terms were used almost always ended in incoherence. One group used a term one way; the next group used it in an opposite way. Both usages were found in the language with various explanations of how they came into common usage. Each usage had its own philosophical presuppositions.
“Value” was a term from Max Weber or Nietzsche that denied any grounding to our ethical lives. Whatever we choose as our purpose or end was all right. The term admitted no rational scrutiny, only arbitrary choice. “Science,” in this sense, dealt exclusively with the means whereby we might achieve our selected end or purpose, whatever it might be. To say “this is my ‘value’” meant simply that I “opt” for this or that desire. I have no intrinsic reason why one choice is better or worse than another. The word “value” was thus a function of relativism. To “guarantee” values, or agree on them, merely meant accepting whatever we willed, not on understanding and on being held to what is right or wrong, true or false.
The word “rights” caused even more confusion. Especially in Catholic social thought where it was equated with some objective duty. But the modern usage of the word comes from Hobbes. It means that no objective goods can be rationally comprehended. A “right” was whatever I thought that I needed to avoid violent death. A “right” was the intrinsic power to obtain it and keep what I decided.
The Leviathan state was contractually empowered to guarantee these “rights.” This guarantee meant, in effect, the state defined the “rights” that were allowed to exist. The “right” to life confronted a “right” to abortion. When people insisted on their “rights,” they were accused of denying the “rights” of others. Battle after battle to defend the “right” to life was lost because it was seen as a denial of a “right” to abortion. The rhetoric of “rights” was independent of the rhetoric of truth.
“Social justice” was purportedly a new addition to the classical legal, distributive, and commutative justice ideas found in Aristotle. It was rather connected with the Leviathan state. Social justice was based on the idea that what is “due” to people for their flourishing is what decides their good. It was not personal virtue that was at the center of moral and political life. Social and political “structures” determined virtue and vice.
So the “vocation” to “social justice” derived its nobility from “service” to the poor and down-trodden through promises to “re-structure” the state or economy. Oftentimes this renovation of society was promoted in revolutionary terms, because state and social “structures” determined the meaning of virtue and vice. “Social justice” always hovered in the shadow of totalitarianism. The state became the center of all human life. Social Justice received it’s self-justification from what it distributed to everyone.
II.
In this context, Michael Novak and Paul Adams have brought together in one concise consideration an understanding of “social justice” that does not arise from these “value-rights-justice” presuppositions found in the post Machiavellian understanding of modernity and the state. In Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is, they undertake a systematic re-reading of what is known as “Catholic Social Doctrine.” But their “re-reading” turns out to be directed to everyone, to social and political thought as such. The approach is unique and convincing. Initially it arises from the experience of Adams who has been involved in what we now call “social services,” that is, those efforts of the state and other bodies to meet pressing needs of the poor, disadvantaged, or otherwise needy. The theoretical issue is over what kind of analysis best deals with these issues, while retaining and expanding any real meaning of a civilization of love and reason.
As the family has come more and more into a crisis status, the growth of the state agencies to meet the result has been almost exponential. Chesterton said somewhere that if we stop doing things out of personal sacrifice, love, and generosity, we will soon find ourselves having to pay others to do the needed things for increasingly high wages. This same point is really what Benedict XVI argued; namely, that no bureaucracy could substitute for the kind of personal care and love that actual human beings require above minimum physical needs that can be purchased.
What is argued here is lucid and well-grounded. It is a much better explanation of both facts and vision than other approaches to basic world economic and political issues. Social justice is not, as too many maintain or imply, a revolutionary virtue whose object is the restructuring of the state, family, or society as the principal way to deal with modern problems. Rather it is an aspect of Aristotle’s understanding of justice and politics. It is a flushing out of the habit of virtue in all its implications. This virtue is located within each person. It is an acquired habit, the result of repeated and prudent acts.
This centrality of habit/virtue is where the discussion of human good properly belongs. Novak is particularly good in spelling out how this classic virtue is involved in those activities that are necessary, and even beyond necessity, for achieving the common good. The careful discussion of charity is a disciplined effort to acknowledge that into any social order something from outside of it may be necessary for its ultimate good. The classical idea of benevolence is the natural basis of the supernatural virtue of charity.
The “common good” is another basic idea from Aristotle and Aquinas that needs fuller restatement in the light of the centrality of personal virtue. The “common good” is not some grand plan to reform all of society to meet and eliminate every human ill. Novak is a realist when it comes to human evils. Any actual human common good must deal responsibly with this basic problem. Evils (vices) will always be present in any society. They will always need to be confronted with clear eyes. What is wrong in the world is mainly located in the human heart and relates to human freedom. We cannot pass down the virtue or vice of one generation to another because each generation of persons must itself decide whether it will be good or not in its concrete activities. Talk of reform of society that does not include talk of habits, of virtue and vice, is but another way of abandoning any real understanding of man in society.
The common good is an order of thought, habit, law, custom among acting persons in which the actual potentialities of individuals can and do develop. No human being or organization can foresee the varied goods of all types that arise out of the freedom and intelligence of human beings. The common good does not mean that everyone has exactly the same things. It is not uniform. Rather, it means that everyone develops different things. The total goods implicit in human potential and variety are allowed and encouraged to come forth. Thus, the common good will also include those differing institutions of law, police, army, and common sense that directly deal with the vices that also arise from their intelligence and wills.
III.
In many ways, this book is about America and its earlier tradition of law, free markets, federalism, and generosity as something new in the world, yet as something that continues and develops classical and Christian thinking of the good of mankind. The degree to which cultural America has deviated from its own founding on matters of sin and relativism is treated in detail. The Founding Fathers were often aware of the dark side of human nature and sought to counteract it, as some described in the Federalist.
But it is quite clear that America’s general contribution to the world’s fund of practical knowledge is a major accomplishment, particularly concerning issues of poverty and human dignity. The dynamism that exists in each human soul is fundamental to recognize. Man’s intelligence and drive are the real sources for meeting real needs of actual people. But they will not be allowed or properly developed by just any religious, ideological, or traditional mode of thought that impedes the basic place of virtue in human life.
Novak uses several initiatives or remarks of Lincoln to illustrate his point about how social justice properly understood works. He cites Lincoln’s remarks on the provision for patents that the American Founders put in the Constitution. Perhaps no single act has been more important in providing for ordered human progress than the law of limited patents. For this provision allowed individuals to use their own initiative to invent or write things that would step by step contribute to human needs and wants in growing and ever-more complex societies. Again and again, the activities and institutions between the individual and the state are emphasized as central to true social justice. No actual person is an isolated being. Rather he is a member of family and myriads of other associations designed to accompany human purposes through free and responsible human activity
We find here a particularly fine discussion about just what really does help the poor to become not poor. People need not be poor. The first step is to understand that wealth is not another commodity or property. The constant repetition of the statistic about 20 percent own 80 percent of the wealth implies that this is an obvious injustice. It isn’t. The statistic completely overlooks the cause of wealth production and the growth of entire economies including that of the poor. It is ultimately intelligence and the skill in applying it. The principal agent for dealing with poverty is not some foreign aid or rearrangement of laws or state structure. It is a recognition of the capacity of individuals, if given a chance, to deal with problems themselves in free concert with others.
There is an almost diabolical temptation in the souls of many politicians, clerics, and academics to want to solve someone else’s problems. Instead of thinking what people themselves can do to solve their own problems, the temptation is to think of ways to do it for them. This latter approach almost always ends up in emptying society of that individual and personal vitality that alone is able to vivify a society. Neither individualism nor socialism, or their variants, can show the record that a personalist-based approach to social justice as a virtue can achieve.
“It is not at all necessary that there should be poor people on this planet. The Creator of this world has made it abundantly fruitful for all, and has hidden within it huge resources for human wit to discover and put to use for all,” Novak wrote. This book was unfortunately mainly written before Pope Francis’ full comments on economics were clear. The tentative reflections here are based almost solely on Evangelii Gaudium.
If anyone from the pope to the bishops to college professors and students, to media, business people, and government cadre is looking for a succinct and far-reaching guide to reconsider how to think about the order of this world and its relation to the human good, it would be difficult to find a better book than this work of Michael Novak and Paul Adams.
By Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.
Rev. James V. Schall, S.J., taught political science at Georgetown University for many years. His latest books include The Mind That Is Catholic from Catholic University of America Press; Remembering Belloc from St. Augustine Press; and Reasonable Pleasures from Ignatius Press.
inflation under Obama
Money supply has doubled under Obama & cumulative inflation has only been 14% ?
Things aren’t adding up….
Roots of the Jihad
Deobandi Butchery in San Bernardino: 1977 Roots of the Jihad Carnage
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whistleblower Philip Haney made a startling series of revelations Thursday evening (12/10/15) on Fox News’ The Kelly File. Haney described how he began investigating scores of individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat. He maintained the groups were exploiting the visa waiver program to transport suspected jihadist operatives in and out of the U.S., thus he started tracking them, and recording these findings within a DHS database. Haney’s efforts (as summarized by Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller) were eventually noticed by the National Targeting Center (NTC), which operates as an umbrella organization in U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Haney was subsequently asked to work for the NTC and rivet his attention on these Deobandi-related organizations. Over the course of his investigation, Haney received an award for identifying more than 300 potential jihad terrorists with links to the Deobandi affiliates.
Tablighi Jamaat certainly merited the attention Haney was giving it, having been connected to a series of jihad terrorist attacks, which included targeting the U.S.: the October, 2002 Portland (Oregon) Seven, and September, 2002 Lackawanna (New York) Six cases; an Aug. 2006 plot to bomb airliners en route from London to the U.S.; attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, in July 2007; and involvement in the July 7, 2005, London bombings, which killed 52 and injured more than 700. French investigators have further estimated Tablighi Jamaat ideological indoctrination was associated with 80% of their jihad terror cases.
Haney’s fastidious investigations raised serious concerns about the San Bernardino Deobandi movement-affiliated Darul-Uloom al-Islamia mosque—attended by jihad-waging killer Syed Farook. In addition, Farook’s jihadist accomplice wife, Tashfeen Malik, attended a traditionalist Islamic education center in Pakistan, also connected with the Deobandi movement. Notwithstanding his patriotic, yeoman efforts, DHS shut down Haney’s probe, and revoked both his security clearance and access to the databases he compiled. Retributive investigations against Haney by DHS and the Obama Justice Department, however, revealed no wrongdoing on his part. Tragically, as Haney explained, had his probe not been terminated for alleged “civil rights violations” of jihad-indoctrinated Muslim followers of the Deobandi movement:
Either Syed would have been put on the no-fly list because association with that mosque, and/or the K-1 visa that his wife was given may have been denied because of his association with a known organization.
The Deobandi-linked jihad carnage that transpired in San Bernardino has much deeper roots, not only on the Indian subcontinent, but dating from at least 1977, within North America, as well.
The traditionalist Islamic Darul Uloom Deoband school was founded in conjunction with the mid-19th century Indian Muslim jihad against British colonial rule, becoming a hub of the broader global Caliphate revival movement centered in India after the humiliating Ottoman defeat during the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War. Mahmood Hasan (1851-1920), the first graduate of the Darul Uloom Deoband, was active in early 20th century jihadist activities against British colonial India, and he was also an accomplished Koranic scholar whose seminal 20th century commentary on the Koran (via his pupil S.A. Usmani) remains an influential work for Indo-Pakistani Muslims. Moreover, per a reverent biography of Muhammad Ilyas (1885-1944), founder of the Tablighi Jamaat, who was “infused with the spirit of Jihad,” Ilyas “took the pledge of Jihad at the hands of the Maulana Mahmood Hasan for that very reason.” Muhammad Ilyas in turn, formally mentored Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi (1914-99)
Nadwi was a founding member of the Muslim World League, a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now Cooperation), a member of the World Supreme Council for Mosques, and a member of the Fiqh Council of Rabita. He participated in a host of other activities under the umbrella of these, and other Islamic supremacist organizations and institutions, including, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). In India, during his “formative years,” Nadwi was associated with Maudoodi’s Jamaat Islami, in addition to Tablighi Jamaat founder Muhammad Ilyas. Nadwi later became president of the Academy of Islamic Research and Publications, which published his own 1983 hagiography of Muhammad Ilyas, who had written directly to Nadwi “perhaps the most detailed letters concerning the aims and principles of the [Tablighi Jamaat] Movement.” Most significantly, Nadwi served as rector of Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama [“Organization of Scholars”], sister institute of Darul Uloom Deoband, and a major disseminator of traditionalist Islamic, Deobandi teachings.
Gustave von Grunebaum published a brilliant analysis of Nadwi’s defining 1951 work, What Has the World Lost Through the Decline of the Muslims? Nadwi’s book invokes the words of the second “Rightly Guided” Caliph Umar’s [r. 634-644 AD] envoy to Yazdagird [III, d. 651], the last Sasanian king of Iran:
Allah has sent us so we can lead out those he wishes from the service of all the servants to the service of Allah alone, and from secular constraint into freedom and from the oppression of the (earlier) religions to the justice of Islam.
Arguing that the Muslim community (umma) is the only power with the ability to overcome the dominant, corrupting Western (European) spirit, Nadwi, as von Grunebaum observes, advocates “the transfer of leadership to the Muslim world,” because Islam’s message “holds as good now as it did in the seventh century.” Nadwi, in his triumphal exuberance, proclaims:
Behold the world of man looking with rapture at the world of Islam as its savior, and behold the world of Islam fixing its gaze on the Arab world as its secular and spiritual leader. Will the world of Islam realize the hope of the world of men? And will the Arab world realize the hope of the Muslim world?
But Nadwi also maintained that prior to re-assuming global hegemony, Islam must undergo a “spiritual revival” along traditionalist lines, while steeping itself in the sciences to master modern technology, commerce, and the arts of warfare. Von Grunebaum’s analysis concludes with this foreboding insight, all the more relevant today:
In his final chapter Nadwi calls on the Arab world to assume its traditional leadership of Islam. The religious importance of the Arabs is emphatically asserted. …For it is the Arab world to which will fall the generalship in the final ejection of Europe; its [Arab Islam’s] faith, the power of its message, and divine help will assist it.[O]ne realizes that his prescription for the world is simply an injunction to return to, or, as he would say, to resurrect, a golden age that never existed. Salvation by sameness, the implied belief that what worked once will always work, and the unconcerned readiness to forego the wider horizons that have been opened by man, and for the most part, by Western man, during the last centuries—one cannot help feeling both frightened and depressed by the appeal that Nadwi’s message appears to have for certain Muslim circles. [NOTE: That “appeal” has mushroomed in the intervening half century]. The ultimate impenetrability of one civilization by another is demonstrated, unintentionally it is true, but, for that, all the more convincingly. Even as, in the late Middle Ages, orthodoxy in self-defense was prepared unhesitatingly to narrow down the scope of the Muslim experience by pushing Hellenizing philosophy and the natural sciences to the periphery, in precisely the same way, although perhaps with still greater radicalism, Nadwi is throwing overboard the Western concept of science—the objectivization of experience and its interpretation as a rational system—whose philosophical and operational meaningfulness he obviously never realized. Needless to say, Nadwi shies away from any specific suggestion of how a victorious Islam would remove the illnesses that he diagnoses in our world. Rather, he does not shy away from the specific; it simply does not occur to him that the model of the golden age might not provide the required panaceas. Not a word, therefore, on the position envisaged for the minorities…
A decade later (1961), Nadwi wrote an essay for the Islamic Center of Geneva, Switzerland, titled, “Responsibilities of Muslim Young Men Proceeding to the West,” which extolled the Sharia, and promoted its universal application, including, by inference, within non-Muslim societies.
The preserved treasure of the Islamic Sharia is present, without any distortion or amendment, as it was left behind by the bringer of the Sharia, the Prophet himself. The Sharia is the most complete and the most perfect jurisprudential system in the world. It denotes an admirable blending of the ancient with the modern and can serve the needs of all ages and climes. It is also well established for the future. It possesses such wise and sound foundations that the edifice of a healthy society or civilization can always be built on them.
But it is during a series of addresses Nadwi delivered in the summer of 1977 to U.S. (primarily) and Canadian audiences that one sees his unabashed advocacy of Sharia supremacism—overturning “infidel” Western legal systems—by these Muslim diaspora populations. The speeches are open calls for Islamization by both non-violent proselytization, and jihad (spelled, as per the Indian Muslim predilection, “jehad”), even jihad martyrdom. Nadwi appeals to North American Muslims for patience, and unwavering forbearance, but also gives explicit sanction for jihad martyrdom violence—so “Islam be made stronger and brought into power and authority”—entirely consistent with the San Bernardino carnage wrought almost 40 years later by Syed Farook and Tashfeen Mailk.
Nadwi’s own introductory comments (reproduced in the speech collection, “From the Depths of the Heart in America,” 1978) outline the itinerary of this 1977 tour, which included not only mosques, and Islamic centers, but major U.S. universities, and the United Nations:
This is a collection of my speeches in the United States and Canada which I visited in the summer of 1977. I went there at the invitation of Muslim Students Association, mainly to attend its Annual Conference at Bloomington in Indiana. After the Conference, a tour was arranged by the Association which took me to almost all the important cities and educational, cultural and industrial centres of North America where a considerable number of Muslims drawn from India, Pakistan and the Arab countries live for various reasons. The original itinerary included New York City, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles in the States, and Montreal and Toronto in Canada, to which Washington was added later. In all, I addressed twenty gatherings, half of them in Arabic and half in Urdu. I had an opportunity of speak at five leading American Universities—the Columbia University at New York, the Harvard University at Cambridge, the Detroit University [sic; University of Michigan?] at Ann Arbor, the South Californian University at Los Angeles [sic; University of Southern California, or University of California at Los Angeles?] and the Utah University at Salt Lake City, and was, also, asked to give the Friday sermon in the Prayer Hall at United Nations Headquarters and in the Jami’ Masjids of Toronto and Detroit. Muslims who are studying in America or have taken up residence there took a keen interest in the meetings and came from far and near to attend them.
These preliminary comments introducing the collection of speeches also reaffirm Nadwi’s “constant endeavor” throughout his sojourn in North America to:
speak straight from the heart, without mincing the matters, and to offer some sincere suggestion to the Muslim brothers and sisters who have settled in the West, particularly in America. As for the Western Civilisation, it has been viewed from a height which Islam confers upon its followers and from which both the Old [Europe] and the New [America] Worlds seem narrow and empty, and their glitter false and unreal.
Nadwi brazenly elucidated Islam’s religious supersessionism in words delivered at the Muslim Community Center of Chicago, “before a large gathering of educated Muslims,” on June 19, 1977. Outlining what he referred to as the “Deputyship of Ibrahim” [Abraham of the Old Testament], Nadwi urged his Muslim audience to pursue their divine mandate to replace both Judaism and Christianity as the abiding North American faiths, with Islam:
This country [the U.S.] is an idol-hall in which the Azan [Muslim call] of Ibrahim has to be given, and this you, alone, can do. You are the real descendants of Ibrahim, not the Jews who have strayed far away from his path. Not the Christians who are the followers of the Christianity of St. Paul, not of Jesus. They have been divested of true Christianity. It was a colossal conspiracy that bore fruit. No religious conspiracy has,- perhaps, been so successful. It brought about a complete metamorphosis of Christianity. Now, whether Catholics or Protestants, they are the adherents of St. Paul. They have lost the claim to be the successors of Hazrat Ibrahim. You are his successor.
Finally, Nadwi delivered chilling speeches to Muslim audiences in Toronto (June 10, 1977), and again in Chicago (on June 20, 1977), which openly sanctioned waging jihad, and being martyred in North America as a paramount “responsibility for Muslim immigrants,” justified as endeavors at “protection of faith [Islam]” which “must take responsibility over everything.” Punctuated by Koran 2:193, Nadwi issued these clarion calls for jihad:
The Koran has alluded to it in these words: …. “Until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah. (II: 193).” What it denotes is that the state is reached in which Truth is triumphant and no battles are waged for the souls of men and they do not have to undergo the ordeal of deciding which way to turn: only Allah is obeyed and divine honors are paid to Him alone. There prevail justice and faith in Allah. For it is preaching, and the sanctioning of what is right and forbidding of what is wrong, and, if need be, even Jehad. For it is Islam to be made stronger and brought into power and authority so that even for the fainthearted people it might not become so hard to follow the path indicated by Allah that they gave way to despair and decided that it was beyond their endurance. …Allah may take from you the task of spreading the guidance in this land, and, one day, it might adopt Islam. It is not inconceivable…Your stay here is not only justified, but also a Jehad if you have made sure of the preservation of Islam for yourselves and your future generations and are carrying out the duty of the preaching and propagation of Faith and presenting an image of the Islamic way of life which is attractive to others. Look into your intention from time to time, and make it right. The aim and idea behind all your acts should be the propitiation of Allah and the service of Islam and Muslims. You will, then, InshaaAllah, earn the reward equal in value to that on Jehad, and, sometimes, even on martyrdom.
Nadwi’s invocation of a quintessential jihad verse from the Koran, 2:193, and his accurate assessment of “what it denotes” are consistent with the gloss on 2:193 by the early Deobandi ideologue Mahmood Hasan:
War against infidels is permitted for the eradication of wrong and oppression and for the prevention of the infidels from betraying other people from Islam and for the establishment of [an] Islamic system in the land…[Those] who are still active in spreading infidelity and barring others from Islam, they should be slaughtered of course.
Slaughtered of course, indeed. Jihadist butchers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik certainly understood this Deobandi, and hence authoritative Islamic, Koran-sanctioned method for “eradicating wrong and oppression,” so they “slaughtered” the “oppressive” San Bernardino infidels. When will our criminally negligent political and law enforcement leadership be held accountable for the consequences of allowing this mainstream, genocidal Islamic ideology—jihad—to be preached with impunity throughout the U.S.?
sunrise before the snow
the Christmas spirit
My Uncle Robert Garrett USN received military honors this past Monday at Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery. The schedule is tight at the cemetery. Time is meted out with military precision in small increments for final farewells and ceremonies. Those not engulfed in grief – the honor guard and officers – are eminently serious.
With the ceremony concluded, I retrieved my video gear, and walked out. I met the officer in charge of the honor guard and said, “Thank you sir.” He nodded a serious acknowledgment, and then he paused to say something. I turned to look at him, and his face broke into a massive smile as he said, “Merry Christmas!” It was unexpected and beautiful.
And I realized the ceremony he had just performed was his Christmas gift to our family, and his wish brought me right back into a warm and peaceful space from the most solemn one we had just witnessed. I wished him Merry Christmas too, and that was all for our exchange.
But there was a lesson in that moment. That’s why they do what they do – why the military go downrange to risk their lives to put down evils all over the world. Our culture is exceptional for its simple good things, Christmas among them. This officer knew what to protect. He wanted to come home and practice his exceptional Americanism – maybe wish a total stranger Merry Christmas and really mean it. He knew the cost in American lives it took to provide that safe protected space from the persistent forces around us trying to destroy, occupy, and diminish everything American.
The snowflake students talk about their spaces safe from microaggression, completely oblivious to what it costs men like this officer to create the environments where someone like them can waste oxygen on toy battles over petty insults.
Well, he wasn’t wasting his oxygen. He gave out honors, and then Christmas presents. It’s what real Americans do.
a rational survival strategy
“A man’s got to know his limitations,” said the character Harry Callahan. A community also has to know its limitations. What can a community do? It can hold meetings. It can pass laws and resolutions. It can collect and spend money. It can affect things within its domain.
The murderers yesterday lived in multiple community domains. At least one of their domains embraced religiously motivated mass killing of innocent people.
Meanwhile, the majority of people in the publicly visible community domains which the killers shared when they weren’t preparing for their murders, apparently did not know about the murders the killers were preparing to do. Whatever clues to their intentions the killers may have left in the world as they travelled internationally and assembled their murderous hardware were insufficient to trigger a response in the general community.
So, these calls for a community discussion and a community response to end gun violence, to the extent they don’t account for things that happen outside of the general community, seem naïve.
Ironically, to aggravate the problem, we’re governed by a true Islamophobic president who cannot bring himself to openly address the murderous sub cult within the Islamic community who have on numerous occasions killed innocent people in American gun free zones.
Realistically, Islamophobic leadership added to the list of inherent community limitations makes the outcome of more religiously motivated innocent killing foreseeable. It will occur again.
Attempts to control the hardware for killing in the general community won’t have any affect inside the murderous sub cult of Islam, just as it’s impossible to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.
Still, an individual can have a rational, instinctual response to the above set of circumstances, in the interest of self and family preservation. This is the position American individuals now find themselves. They can and must respond with anticipatory behaviors that will improve their chances of survival by reducing the set of their individual limitations.
Becoming more lethal, more evasive, more cautious, more mobile, getting in better physical condition, integrating defensive capacity into their lives, these are all rational responses for individuals to counter the risk of religiously motivated innocent killing that the general community limitations, by default, permit.
Different combinations are going to work for different people, but prudence would indicate that proceeding under the status quo until randomly harvested by a foreseeable threat is not a rational survival strategy.
little critter huntin’
