Culture War: December 2003 Archives

Although my Canadian readership will recognize the above title as a play on our national anthem, I am having second thoughts about moving back to Canada. Not too long ago, Mark Steyn – a fellow Canuck – penned an excellent editorial in the Telegraph. It concerned the Islamification of Europe. As Mr. Steyn wrote, “To those of us watching from afar the ructions over the European constitution - a 1970s solution to a 1940s problem - it seems amazing that no Continental politician is willing to get to grips with the real crisis facing Europe in the 21st century: the lack of Europeans.”

As many other commentators within the culture war have noted, the low reproduction rate among native Europeans coupled with increased Muslim immigration are quickly transforming Europe into another Islamic continent. Yet the European secularists refuse to face this problem. Having spent the past thirty years suppressing the consequences of biological coupling, the modern European remains clueless as to the consequences of demographic coupling.

Unfortunately, recent Canadian statistics and demographics demonstrate a similar trend. Thus Mr. Steyn’s observations could easily included our native land. A recent statistic quoted by the Canadian Society of Muslims on its website estimates Canada’s Islamic population at around 650,000. Over the past decade alone, this represents a growth from under one percent of Canada’s total population to well over two percent.

At first two-to-three percent of the population seems statistically negligible. Granted, the Muslim population more than doubled over the past ten years, but it still represents a small minority of Canadians. Yet factor Canada's declining reproduction rate as well as its liberal immigration policy into the equation. As an aside concerning the latter, in the aftermath of its 9-11 coverage, even Canada’s putatively conservative Globe & Mail questioned our government’s liberal immigration policy. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is Canada’s closest equivalent to the CIA, had reportedly warned Canadian politicians that our loose immigration policy made us an attractive staging ground from which terrorists could easily attack American targets.

But returning to the subject at hand, Canada's Muslim population is much younger than our general population. Additionally, they enjoy a stronger reproduction rate. Has Pierre Trudeau removed the state from the nation's bedroom – likely located somewhere in the Burnaby-Douglas riding – only to see it replaced by the Sharia?

Speaking of which, one of my Envoy Encore recently emailed me a story published by Aljazeera. It detailed Muslim efforts to establish an Islamic tribunal in Canada. "Since arbitrators' rulings can be enforced by the courts," we read, "the development has raised eyebrows that Sharia will in effect be endorsed by Canada's secular courts." The story dismisses any negative reaction to this development as overblown . It then equivocates the proposed Islamic tribunal with various Rabbinical courts already enjoying limited legal recognition under Canadian law.

Setting aside the Sharia's peculiarities for a moment – and like Kathy Shaidle, a fellow Canadian Catholic author, I find myself among the some of us [who] think stoning rape victims is a bit peculiar – there are other reasons to remain skeptical about this comparison between Islamic tribunals and Rabbinical courts. Does modern Judaism regularly attack civilian targets among the Gentiles? Does Isreal sponsor terrorist activities on western soil? Islam is alone among the five major world religions in employing forced conversion as a legitimate means of evangelization.

Actually, I take that back. Secularism, which is Canada's new state religion, also imposes forced conversion. Just look at poor Mark Harding. Mr. Harding is a Christian who recently ran afoul of Canada's hate police for drawing attention to certain peculiarities within the Islamic world. As Doug Coup reports in the Christian Times:

“[Harding's] offending pamphlets discussed Islamic societies around the world where ‘Muslims are torturing, maiming, starving and killing Christians’ simply because of their faith. Harding argues that Islam ‘is full of hate and violence,’ and that its holy books teach that it ‘will always be at war’ with other religions. ‘Once a state becomes an Islamic state, no other religion is tolerated,’ he says.

“His outspokenness last June landed Harding in trouble with the Muslim community, and he is going to trial next month to face criminal charges on three counts of ‘incitement to hatred.’ Complaints were also lodged with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. He was arrested and spent a few days in jail before a hearing last summer.”

Canadians political and religious commentators need not find Mr. Harding’s situation surprising. After all, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is the same quasi-judicial body that silenced as hate literature certain biblical passages pertaining to homosexuality. It is not too much of a stretch to silence international headlines as well. And thus I am reminded of Mark Steyn’s response to a similar flap over Johnny Hart’s recent allegedly anti-Islamic cartoon:

“Although I agreed of course that Islamophobic cartooning was the most pressing issue of the week, in my usual shallow way I'd become distracted by some of the day's more trivial stories - the 11 Hindus burnt alive by a Muslim gang in Bangladesh, the 13 Christian churches torched by Muslim rioters in the Nigerian town of Kazaure, and the 27 Turks and Britons murdered by Muslim terrorists in Istanbul. No dead Jews in that particular day's headlines, but otherwise a good haul of Hindus, Christians and, of course, Muslims...”

Like Mr. Steyn, I too cannot help but these headlines distracting. They may be as trivial as the First Amendment that protects my expression of concern over their content from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but nevertheless I find them distracting.

Of a similar trivial nature is my concern over Canada’s apparent elimination of free speech from our public discourse. Criticism of another culture can be branded “hate speech” unless the critiqued culture is distinctly Christian or American. Yet if civil liberties in the Middle East are an example of what we can expect in Canada’s tolerant and multi-cultural society, the culture of death propagated by our secularists will eventually give way to the Islamosphere’s culture of fear.

PLOT: An NYU professor wants to allow one of his film students to make a porno movie for his class. The university's administation, in a shocking display of common sense, tells the student she can't do that. The student, chastened, agrees that this is beyond the bounds of morality and good taste. The New York Times does not write a long story about it. The ACLU is not asked for a comment.

Now that's a story that would never get greenlighted, would it? Yet everything in the first two sentences is true; but the NYT did write a story about it, and the ACLU made frowny faces about the "university acting as a moral censor."

The student, Paula Carmicino, "planned to intersperse 30-second clips of passionate sex with scenes of the couple engaged in more mundane activities, like watching television and reading a newspaper."

"The whole concept of it was to compare the normal behavior of people in their everyday lives versus the animalistic behavior that comes out when they are having sex," she said. There are plenty of "animalistic" things that humans do besides sex: eating, pooping, breathing, sleeping. Funny how they aren't as interesting.

The professor, who goes by the improbable name of "Professor de Jesus," was foursquare behind the student. No one would imply that the professor or the students had anything other than noble motives for supporting their fellow artist, though they would have been present for the filming of the "graphic" sex.

The spoilsport administration, through its toady lacky running-dog book-burning soul-destroying mouthpiece Richard Pierce said that

...the school had long had an unwritten policy that student films should follow industry standards and was now considering putting that policy in writing. defending [sic] the university, he said N.Y.U. was considered very broad-minded on questions of artistic freedom, but had to draw the line at videotaping real sex before a class of students. He compared that to a filmmaker committing arson for a movie about firefighters.

"Someone give me a list of universities that allow sex acts in the classroom," Mr. Pierce said. "We're not going to be the first."

He also praised Ms. Carmicino as a "serious and valued" student. "The history of art is replete with examples of artists producing great art under limitations," he said.

Blasphemy! Surely this philistine knows that great art can only be created under unfettered freedom! I don't want to hear about Bernini or Bach and their "limitations." This is the 21st century, man!

One other priceless detail: NYU's president is named "John Sexton." Truly, you can't make up stuff like this.

On a typical weekday, I'm on a computer 8-12 hours a day. They're a great tool for getting things done, and I'm very glad for them because their existence provides a living for my family.

They are, however, a terrible waste of time for primary education, and with the exception of word processing or Internet-based research, they're probably a waste of time for later grades, too. This article -- from San Francisco, of all places! -- calls computer-saturated education a bunch of b.s.:

Throughout the country, computer technology is dumbing down the academic experience, corrupting schools' financial integrity, cheating the poor, fooling people about the job skills youngsters need for the future and furthering the illusions of state and federal education policy.

The article shows that money from intellectual, soul-enhancing activities like music and arts get a much lower priority than technology, to the detriment of the kids.

Education is a human activity. It can be supplemented by machines, but machines do not educate. Putting an excessive number of computers in schools, and using them as a panacea for true education, is thus one of the many tentacles of the culture of death, which attempts to subordinate men to processes, artifacts, and rules, rather than making those things subordinate to man's needs.