Just askin’…
Meanwhile, Mark Steyn writes:
In the developed world, we’re told that Westernization is “inevitable.” “Just wait and see,” say the blithely complacent inevitablists. “They haven’t yet had time to Westernize.” But Westernization is every bit as resistible in Brussels and Toronto as it’s proved in Cairo and Jalalabad. In the first ever poll of Irish Muslims, 37 percent said they would like Ireland to be governed by Islamic law. When the same question was put to young Irish Muslims, it was 57 percent. In other words, the hope’n’change generation are less Westernized than their parents. 36 percent of young British Muslims think the penalty for apostasy – i.e., leaving Islam – should be death. Had you asked the same question of British Muslims in 1970, I doubt the enthusiasts would have cracked double figures.
Unlike the dopes droning the halfwit slogans at the Obama rallies, these guys mean it. The children are our future. That’s the problem.
***
Steyn mentions the Buddha statues of Bamiyan, which were blown up by Muslims in 2001.
I remember arguing about that incident with former next-big-thing Jeff Sharlet at the then super-trendy, “Best of the Web” site KillingTheBuddha.com
That site’s name turned out to be awfully appropriate, because back then, Jeff Sharlet was all, hey, the Buddha himself would have approved of the blowing up of statues, cuz idolatry is bad, and who are we to judge etc.
After 9/11, when Muslims blew up some shit a lot closer to home, I repeatedly poked Jeff Sharlet with a very sharp (online) stick about his oh so recent enthusiasm for far-off nihilism, which he’d tried to disguise as sophisticated, rarefied enlightenment.
I’d show you our exchanges but KillingTheBuddha.com is no longer online.
I’m still here though.
I’m never “the next big thing” and never will be — but oddly enough, I have a cockroach-like ability to survive those who are were.
Weird.
