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The Tolerance Surplus

If you ask American, Israeli and European liberals and leftists what the key problem with Islam is, they will answer that there is a lack of tolerance. Not of course a lack of tolerance on the part of the throat-slitters, car burners, gang rapists, car bombers and hate preachers of Islam. On the contrary they will assert that there is a great tolerance deficit on the part of Western nations toward Islam.

In a rational political calculus, we take for granted that the people blowing up synagogues, stabbing their sisters to death for wearing jeans, and kidnapping and beheading people they don't like, are the ones suffering from a tolerance shortage. But to a progressive brutal violence by a minority is always a symptom that they are being oppressed, rather than that they are the ones doing the oppressing.

Since progressives tend to define minority status as proof of oppression, violence is simply another way that the minority responds to being oppressed. So if a pair of well off middle class Muslim professionals drive a car bomb over to a Scottish airport, clearly they were reacting to a whole boatload or planeload of oppression. Perhaps they were outraged over a terrorist being downed by a drone, or saw the name of Allah in an ice cream cone, or maybe it was all the unveiled women. Those are just details in the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is that every First World nation is oppressive and racist. Muslim violence is comeuppance or blowback, and the only solution is to be more and more tolerant of Muslims.

Having classified Western nations as always being in the wrong, and Muslims as being always in the right, where reasonable people see a failure to fight terrorism, progressives see a failure to fight intolerance.

Given a mandate, conservative governments will try to get to grips with violent Islamists. Liberal governments will try to get to grips with anyone who criticizes Islam. And naturally it becomes a good deal more difficult to point out that Muslim violence is a serious problem, when you've passed laws prohibiting anyone from making any mention of Muslims and violence in the same sentence.

This has the convenience of making it illegal to point out the stupidity of progressive policymaking, which is something that their fellow People's Democratic regimes routinely do, at least until everyone begins starving to death. Tens of thousands dead in America, Europe, Israeli and Australia has not done much to chip away at the insistence of multiple governments that Islam is a religion of peace. And even conservatives have adopted the liberal mantra that Islamic violence is something carried out by splinter groups, in response to not being tolerated enough. The solution being more cowbell, or more tolerance. But so far the "Hug them until they love us" approach has not yielded any dividends, except more bombs and bullet holes, and bodies in morgues.

The progressive insistence on a black and white worldview, and on locating the locus of evil within their own society, has made it impossible for the vast majority of them to even consider the possibility that the violent, reactionary, patriarchal and misogynist ideology they should be fighting is Islam, not Christianity or Judaism.

But the problem with expecting people to think outside the box of their beliefs, is that it's simply easier for them not to. For progressives the problem remains not Islam, but people who aren't tolerant enough of Islam. Which creates a rush to feed the "intolerant ones" to the Muslim Crocodile of Peace, in the hopes of being eaten last.

So, Israeli leftists offer up the settlers as the problem. Europe offers up Israel as the problem. European leftists offer up European conservatives. America offers up Europe, Israel and anyone it can lay its long foreign policy mitts on. The Crocodile of Peace grins, chews and demands more.
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The shocking truth though is that the problem has never been a tolerance deficit, but a tolerance surplus. Tolerance is all very well good, but there are some things that shouldn't be tolerated. Murder, rape, car bombings, airplane hijackings and Imams preaching all of the above under the green flag of Islam top the list. The more the tolerance surplus grows, the worse the violence becomes.

Urban policymakers found this out the hard way when they tried to tackle crime by blaming society, not the criminals. Prisons became revolving doors. Cops became social workers. Crime became rampant. It took a new generation of conservative politicians to pass mandatory sentencing laws, victim rights bills, restore the death penalty and stop coddling criminals. And so the tolerance surplus was closed.

Until the tolerance surplus with Islam is closed, the violence that Islam brings to our shores will continue.

Comments

  1. Until there's a major 9/11 terrorist attack on either California or Tel Aviv I doubt the liberals will abandon their tolerance for Islam and its evils.

    It doesn't have to hit close to home it has to actually hit their homes and families.


    If Israel or the US can be compared to lions liberals can be described as vets who want to extract their teeth and declaw the lions making them non-threatening...all in the wishful, delusional hope that these nutured, de-fanged, declawed lions pose no threat and Islam will back off.

    Islam doesn't work that way, though. Harmless innocent victims are fair game.

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  2. Anonymous13/7/09

    Liberals need to live as a member of a minority in a Muslim-majority country. A few will "go native" - especially those with serious mental health issues. But the majority, after a few years, will develop an extreme antipathy to anything to do with Islam or Muslims. I guarantee it.

    Terry

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  3. I read your blog all the time, but rarely comment. You have great insight and I enjoyed this one on tolerance and the related George Washington piece. When I read your blog, I'm usually nodding my head and saying "exactly" and "yes" or "of course" out loud to myself in agreement. Thanks for the great writing! cheers from an expat USA living in NZ hungry for the conservative revolution

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  4. Anonymous13/7/09

    sultan, you really are islamophobic. You're scared and hate other religions and I'm afraid your words are far from reality.

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  5. Absolutely true, every word of it.

    As you note, it's also exacerbated by the fact that people assume the Abrahamic faiths are fundamentally alike. Of course this is far from being true. Islam is fundamentally different from either Judaism or Christianity.

    One of the first things that apologists for Islam will often claim is 'Oh, but there's violence in the bible and/or Tanakh as well!', so as to excuse the hatred in the Quran.

    Raymond Ibrahim has written an excellent piece on this which I really recommend.

    People confuse critiquing the religion of Islam, with being racist towards Muslims. But the two are totally different.

    Religions are just ideologies and no ideology can be immune from critique. Thus just as one can condemn communism or the racism of Nazism, so too one is free to condemn Islam in the same way.

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  6. Lisa, glad you liked the articles and thanks for letting me know. Always glad to meet another reader.

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  7. Anomymous,

    it's not Islamophobia when they're trying to kill you.

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  8. JWAV,

    Indeed. Any belief system that demands immunity from criticism, is demonstrating its own weakness.

    The real world consequences of Islamic violence are not theoretical scripture, but practical implementation.

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  9. Leftists don't care about attacks.
    Leftist people will excuse their attackers and wonder how they can change themselves so as to make it stop.
    I mean look you see that now in the liberal left that blames Israel and America for being hated.

    There is nothing illegal in the so-called settlements. They are NOT against international law as some have stated.

    International law is ridiculous anyway and violates national sovereignty.

    Arab-Mohammedans already have far too much land in the middle east that they stole from others like the real Persians, the real Babylonians, the real Egyptians, the real Syrians. They came in, replaced the original people with Arab migrants , overthrow the real religion of the land and set up shop as a legitimate nation.

    Look at the results and oppression and backwardness as a result.
    Note the horrors in Iran under Arabs while the real Persians are oppressed there. Iran is Persia.

    Now they wish to take Israel from Israelites and give that to the nomadic Arab tribes as well.

    Arab-Mohammedans have Saudi Arabia. That is their nation, created and gifted to them compliments of the British.

    Before that Arabs were simply wandering migrant tribes of caravan robbers, sheep herders and slave traders.

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  10. Anonymous13/7/09

    I apologize to Jewish for the action of my religious.
    It is not what most wish I hopefully think.

    ReplyDelete

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