In The Dark — And Whistling
by Hugh Fitzgerald (February 2010)
Islam is not a hieratic mystery, where only the initiated, a special priesthood, can possibly understand. It is, rather, sufficiently grasped by more than a billion people, who save for a handful, have been born into it, and have grown up in societies suffused with it, societies where it is impermissible to question Islam, to ponder whether its directives make moral or intellectual sense, and where any open display of questioning is punished, and any open admission of apostasy can result, in many cases, in a death sentence carried out not necessarily by the Musliim state, but left up to the informal meting out of Muslim justice by Believers quick to take offense.
But you can read them, can read all about them. But mystery about Islam there still is. Why should this be so, and what are the consequences of the failure of many in the West to learn about, or to know about, or to make sense of, the Total Belief-System of Islam? But you have to keep on.
What would make sense is for Western Europeans to rally round Wilders and Pat Condell and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Robert Redeker and Irfan Elshian and Magdi Allam and all the others, living and dead (think of the enormous power of Oriana Fallaci even from beyond the grave, in her enraged warnings about Islam), to see things aright, and no longer to tolerate those who would never tolerate them in a way that we regard as acceptable. To comment on this article, please click here.