November 03, 2015

Are we seeing the collapse of Muslim civilization?  And is that  disturbing?

Spengler (David Goldman) is always an unusual and interesting thinker and he answers both questions above in the affirmative. Despite his lengthy disquisition (See  HERE), however, I think he fails to make his case.

Muslims have always been at one-another's throats.  It was what enabled the Christian Byzantines to survive alongside Muslims for hundreds of years.  When a Muslim regime attacked Byzantium, some other Muslim regime would see that as a weakness in the warring Muslim regime and attack it "from behind".  So the war with Byzantium would suddenly be over as the besetting troops were withdrawn to fight the sudden new Muslim enemy.  And just the fear of that situation among the Muslims helped protect Byzantium. So I can't see that the present chaotic situation in the Middle East and North Africa need disturb anyone.  It is just Muslims being Muslims.

And Muslim attacks on non-Muslims are neither new nor rare either -- from the Barbary pirates of the 17th to 19th century to the Turkish slaughter of the Christian Armenians and Pontine Greeks  only around 100 years ago.

And that period in history is the one that I would identify as the real big break in Muslim civilization.  The Ottoman empire, with its vast reach and power was long well accepted as the Caliphate but its great losses of territory in WWI plus the total abandonment of  its traditions by Mustafa Kemal totally disrupted its place in the Muslim world and left a large theological vacuum.  A Caliphate was lost! And Islamic scholars took a long time to adapt to that new situation on the ground.  But they did eventually adapt by returning to Bedouin roots and its primitivism.  And Saudi Arabia became the headquarters of the new/old understanding. And oil money gradually spread that understanding far and wide.

So the fall of the Ottomans made Islam polycentric, with all Muslims now responsible to propagate and promote the faith and with all Muslim rulers hopeful of becoming the new Caliph. And that has now built up some momentum.

So because the present scene is just a re-enactment of traditional Muslim hatreds and behaviour, I can't see that European countries have any reason to see in the present Muslim chaos any forewarning about their own future

The acceptance of a Muslim influx by Western European countries is driven not by any civilizational fears but by Leftist squawks about "compassion" and "racism", which embarrass governments into impotence.  And Leftists LIKE the Muslim influx.  Destroying the existing society has always been their primary aim and they care little about what replaces it. "Anything would be better" is their hate-filled and myopic cry.



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