Ahmed Akkari, one of the men behind the Danish cartoon protests, spends time on Greenland decompressing from the Islamist cocoon, and comes to renounce his former ways:
“He’s very brave. He’s taken a big step, and he’s ready to atone. He’s changed from being an Islamist to being a humanist.”
Believable?
Islamist ‘literature’ for Kierkegaard?
More details here on what he helped to inspire.
Cartoons here. (Westergaard’s is the 2nd down, I don’t have the rights to reprint).
Bonus:
Christopher Hitchens remained unmoved in a debate with Tariq Ramadan and maintained that the metaphysics of Islam will ultimately create and encourage violence through its moral absolutism and its total metaphysical prescription for all aspects of life, including politics and the public square. Muslims are the ones right now in Europe and the Middle-East, he points out, who are violent and threatening violence and it must be stood up to.
One of the products of Europe is the secular multiculturalism to which Ramadan often appeals, but which the adherents of secular multiculturalism are not always fully willing and able to defend (free speech as broadly interpreted as it often us under the 1st amendment here under the Constitution) against Muslim threats of violence. This secular tradition has also not been fully integrating Muslims successfully under its banner nor through public policy, the economy, or Europe’s political institutions, often creating fiefdoms and ghettoes.
Hopefully, we can still avoid getting into bed with both the neo-neo colonialists, the bien pensant Euro-Left on one hand and the Islamists on the other, without really addressing the underlying conflicts.
It should be pointed out that aside from cartoonists, filmmakers like Theo Van Gogh, and recent arrivals like Hirsi Ali, it is often the real materialists in Europe, former Marxists and socialists who speak up the loudest and possibly become marked for death:
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Here’s a further debate from Intelligence Squared with Ayan Hirsi Ali on one side, arguing that Islam is the problem (the same absolutism in Islam that will not tolerate questioning of its tenets, and its many violent passages). A member of the opposing side suggests that Muslim alienation in British life, combined with a European influenced fascist inspired-Islamism is the problem, not Islam itself (yes, it’s colonialist Europe’s fault). He proposes a more human-rights based Islam.
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It’s ironic that a strain of European secularism and socialism, quite fascistic, from Gadhafi to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party to Syria’s secularist Baath party still barely in power, was exported, and now we’re dealing with a fascistic Islamist response.
See Also: Why Lars Hedegaard Still Matters
From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic
Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie
Theodore Dalrymple argues that France has the potential to handle Muslim immigration better because of its ideological rigidity, which can better meet the ideological rigidity of its Muslim immigrants…Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain
How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn
Repost-Eugene Volokh At The National Review: ‘Multiculturalism: For or Against?’
If you thought the cartoons were bad, more on the Fitna movie here. Libertarians stand firm on this issue: Repost-A Canadian Libertarian Making Noise: Ezra Levant
Via The A & L Daily-Interview With Christopher Caldwell At Spiegel Online
Christopher Hitchens At Slate: Yale Surrenders
A British Muslim tells his story, suggesting that classical liberalism wouldn’t be a bad idea…as a more entrenched radical British Left and Muslim immigration don’t mix too well: From Kenanmalik.com: ‘Introduction: How Salman Rushdie Changed My Life’… Via YouTube: ‘Christopher Hitchens Vs. Ahmed Younis On CNN (2005)’…
