Some exciting news from Dot Wordsworth in this week’s Spectator:

A creature so rare that its existence had been discountenanced has been discovered in South Africa. The creature is the English gerundive, a relative of the extinct Latin gerundive, and its discoverer is Jean Branford, the respected editor of A Dictionary of South African English. I had never believed in the existence of the English gerundive until now. Just to place it in its habitat, let us remember that:

1.      The participle (Latin amans) shares properties of verbs and adjectives, as with reading, ‘the reading public’.

2.      The gerund (Latin amandum) is a verbal noun, active in meaning, as with reading – ‘reading occupies Charles’ (where reading acts as a subject); ‘reading law journals occupies Charles’ (where the noun phrase is the subject of the sentence, and reading takes an object, law journals, in the noun-phrase); ‘Charles enjoys reading’, where the gerund functions as an object.

3.      The gerundive (Latin amandus –a –um) is a verbal adjective passive in meaning. It is translated as ‘fit to be loved’, ‘fit to be read’, or ‘lovable’.

It is easier to spot a part of speech if you know what it looks like. Fans of How To Be Topp, will have no trouble recognising a gerund, an aggressive, egotistical predator with a racy private life. Here a gerund attacks some peaceful pronouns.

This is in keeping with its active nature. The gerundive, as befits its role, is a puny, passive little thing. Below, the gerund, a social snob, “cuts” the gerundive, who meekly takes it on the chin.

 No wonder it is all but extinct.

No gerundive was found to exist in English. But Dr Branford says, ‘What about reading matter? Or whipping boy?’ The form of the gerundive is in English the same as that of the participle, but then so are the forms of the participle and the gerund. The meaning of the gerundive is distinct from that of the gerund: distinguish reading room and reading matter, where the latter has a passive sense. Or distinguish whipping boy and whipping post. With whipping post or reading room, the gerund acts as a modifier, just as nouns can, in constructions such as violin case, dog whistle.    

The newly discovered gerundive in chewing gum (‘chewing gum sold here’) is distinct from the gerund identical in form, (‘chewing gum is a horrible habit’). Other examples of gerundives from Dr Branford are stewing steak, cooking apples, bedding plants. Don’t forget that a passive element is present in the gerundive, so pickling onions include a gerundive (‘onions fit to be pickled’) but pickling spice (‘spice for pickling onions’) does not.

In passing, Dr Branford notes that Kingsley Amis, in The King’s English (1997), gets the gerundive completely wrong. Homer nods. She also remarks that the great Henry Fowler’s ‘notion of the grammar of participles was at best hazy’. Fowler said that English does not happen to possess a gerundive. The late Robert Burchfield, in his revision of Fowler’s Modern Usage, notes that Latin does. Only now has the English gerundive, thanks to Dr Branford, been bred in captivity.

The distinction is clear. Chewing gum is gum that gets chewed. Stewing steak is steak that gets stewed. These are gerundives. Chewing gum is a bad habit. Stewing steak can take a long time. These are gerunds.

I am struggling to find further examples of the English gerundive, although I know they must be out there somewhere. By analogy with cooking apples, we have baking apples or eating apples, in the sense of apples to be baked or eaten rather than the activity of baking or eating apples. And there is whipping cream, that is cream for whipping. I started wondering about “writing paper”, but I think that is a gerund, meaning “paper where you write”, as a reading room is a room where you read.

This evening I will be attending a birthday celebration in the East End of London. I will be on the look out for gerundives and if I spot one I will catch it and drag it back home. It will make a good scratching post* for my cats.

*"Scratching post" differs from "whipping post", because it gets scratched, while the whipping post doesn't get whipped.

So what do Katherine Lester's shameless father and stepmother from a Michigan hicktown do? They whore her out for interviews with "Good Morning America" and other news shows--all for the glamour of the lights. And they talk to Seventeen Magazine.

And what does Seventeen do? On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, it GLAMORIZES this foolish girl's absurd trip to the Mid-East. The October issue of Seventeen, now on the stands, bears this headline for your daughters: "Online Love: Make It Work! The 5-page article, as told to 17 by Lester, is incredible, incredibly irresponsible. It glamorizes the whole runaway-to-convert-to-Islam-and-get-married act.

Read it all.

A report from The Telegraph.

Pakistan's madrassas teach only one subject – the Koran. At this typical urban madrassa, the Jamia Anwaria, in a lower-middle-class suburb of northern Lahore, the pupils are devoting themselves to a single, all-enveloping task – namely committing to memory the more than 6,000 verses of Islam's holy book.  All of them. By heart. During that period all other subjects and ambitions – maths, science, history and humanities – must be put on hold.

Mohammed Khalid Anwari, head teacher, explains that none of the children can understand a single word of the sacred book they are learning.  The Koran is an Arabic text, but the students, many of whom have received basic education before entering the madrassa, are literate only in Urdu. The two languages share an almost identical script, which allows the children to read the words, but not understand them. And what if one of these younger children were curious enough to ask about the meaning of the words? 'If they ask, I tell them the meaning,' the teacher explains. 'But usually they don't ask. Sometimes, when they first arrive, they want translation, but over the passage of time they stop asking questions. It is not required to understand.'

You should never stop asking questions.  A tragic waste of young minds who could have become nurses and engineers and who don't come to know God.  If you don't have time to read the 9 pages of the report make sure you do watch the Audio slideshow.

"Another trait common among those warning us that Islam is innately evil is that few have spent any time in the Muslim world. Well, I have. While the Middle East leaves me ever more despairing of its future, elsewhere, from Senegal to Sulawesi, from Delhi to Dearborn, I've seen no end of vibrant, humane, hopeful currents in the Muslim faith."
-- from this article by Ralph Peters

All kinds of people have spent "time in the Muslim world." Bassam Tibi has, so has Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina, and Azam Kamguian and Irfan Khawaja, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Many intelligent people have not only "spent time" in the Muslim world but were born into it, and raised in it, and finally, upon coming to live in the West, and able to breathe and think freely, have chosen to leave Islam. They do so only after having carefully analyzed what Islam teaches, what they hear being said in the mosques about Infidels, behind those Infidel acts. They know perfectly well the attitudes and atmospherics of societies suffused with Islam. Why does Ralph Peters think that his visits, “from Senegal to Sulawesi, from Delhi to Dearborn,” with “no end of vibrant, humane, hopeful currents in the Muslim faith” have given him an understanding and insight superior to that of these articulate, intelligent, thoroughly pleasant and altogether reasonable, and almost always humorful people – not to mention others who offer testimony that can be found, in book form (see “Leaving Islam”) or at such websites as www.faithfreedom.org.

There is nothing hate-filled and hysterical about any of these people, who are adamant in their implacable opposition to Islam, in their dismay at those Westerners who fall for every bit of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, who seem never to get their fill of that “dialogue” or never to quite understand why it is that Islam cannot conceivably be reformed – god knows a few people, in the last century, tried, but kept coming up against the reality of the Qur’an and the Hadith, and the figure, or rather Model, of Muhammad.

Why does Ralph Peters think his impressions, “from Senegal to Sulawesi,” are more important and accurate than what these defectors tell us. Why, for that matter, does he think that the Islam analyzed in such piercing detail by Snouck Hurgronje or St..Clair Tisdall or Arthur Jeffery or another hundred people who devoted their lives to studying the subject, are to be so easily dismissed by him, for their views on the impossibility of the reformation of Islam, and their analysis of its suppression of free and skeptical inquiry, and encouragement of the habit of mental submission, are everywhere so evident in their writings, but when others, today, say or write the same things, Peters finds them “islamophobic” and “hate-filled.”

If Peters wishes to read further, he might wish to read the essay by Ibn Warraq on “Islam, Middle East and Fascism” in which the fourteen defining features of Fascism that Umberto Eco once presented are set beside Islam, and the latter is found to exhibit all fourteen of them.

Perhaps Peters will beg to differ. But at least he should be willing to read Ibn Warraq, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ali Sina and Walid Shoebat and many others. And he ought to actually read those books about Islam some of which have apparently (according to my informants) been sent to him, and the contents of which so disturbed him that he immediately lapsed into the “all religions do it” argument that some find so soothing to believe, but others – those who count on them for instruction – will find unacceptable as a response.

The organisers of Madrid Fashion Week have announced that they are banning skinny women to develop a more healthy image for the event this month. If any very skinny models do turn up, they will be classed as unhealthy and in need of medical help.

Madrid city council, which sponsors the fashion week, has ordered that every model on show must have a body mass index (BMI) of at least 18. Models who are 5ft 9in (1.75m) tall must weigh a minimum of 8st 11oz (56 kg).

Esther Cañadas, Spain’s best-known model, does not qualify under the new rules as she is said to have a BMI of only 14. Almost a third of the women lined up appear to have been barred. The council promised that a nutritional expert would be on hand to check every model taking part in the shows, and that any woman found to have a BMI of below 16 would receive medical treatment.

A nice plate of paella followed by a slice of one of those cartwheel cakes, I forget their name, but not the taste!

Cuca Solana, the organiser of the Pasarela Cibeles, (Madrid Trade Fair) was hauled before the country’s parliamentary commission for youth in April to defend the event against criticism that it pressures young women into losing weight.

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent for The Times

THE first rabbis since the Second World War will be ordained in Germany next week in what is being described in German papers as a “miracle”. The ordinations of the three rabbis are to take place on Thursday in Dresden. They are all graduates of the new Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, near Berlin.

The seminary, inaugurated in 2000, is an attempt to meet the need of Germany’s 100,000 Jews for home-grown rabbis. . .The 100 congregations in Germany are served by about 25 rabbis, most from abroad. Those synagogues without permanent rabbis survive through the services of laymen and women, by borrowing rabbis from neighbouring towns or importing them from abroad for high holy days.

Baroness Julia Neuberger ( whose grandparents were among those who fled to London) is to preach at the ordinations. . .  She is expected to say: “There can be no greater pleasure than to see this rebirth of Jewish life, this reaffirmation of Germany as home to one of the world’s significant Jewish communities. It cannot be like it was before. But we have here a college, born out of the Enlightenment, born out of the German reform movement, strongly affected by the scientific study of Judaism.”

Her planned speech, disclosed to The Times, continues: “Perhaps we will once again see that extraordinary German Jewish symbiosis. Perhaps once again, with these new rabbis, this rebirth, we will see talent spring forth and a capacity for cultural and intellectual endeavour to find a modus vivendi with a religious life that is not orthodox but is demanding.”

Ralph Peters also had a piece, one of those Grand Schemes that people like to throw out, whereby all the borders all over the Middle East would somehow be withdrawn. This is the kind of silly thing that some like to play with, as if it is a substitute for, and superior to, sensible measures, such as that, for example, of identifying, and then doing nothing to remedy but everything to exploit, the natural pre-existing fissures within the Camp of Islam. That would be too boring for Ralph Peters. Besides, in his view Islam is not the problem, but rather such things as borders that can be rectified, and those who think otherwise are islamophobes and hysterical peddlers of hate. I leave it to readers of his full article to discern whether it is he, or the principals at this website, who are hysterical in both their manner and their proposals.

My comment on the Grand Scheme of Border Changes Hither and Yon was as follows:

"Not possible, but an independent Kurdistan is morally, and more importantly, geopolitically, to our, Infidel, advantage. It would be a disturbing threat to both Iran and Syria, and Kurdistan's claims on the Kurdish-populated areas of both Iran and Syria should and could be backed.

But what, some say, of Turkey, that they chose to describe, quite backdatedly (it's not the 1950s or the 1960s anymore) as "our NATO ally Turkey." Turkey is a member of NATO. But the main reason for NATO's existence in the past was the military threat posed by the Soviet Union, and Turkey, which was happy to collaborate in efforts to contain its ancient enemy Russia, was a good ally. But how good an ally can Turkey, with Islam in the ascendant and Kemalism under constant siege (only now are the Turkish secularists becoming aroused and fighting back against sly Erdogan and his troops), be if the main purpose of NATO is now to protect Western Europe, and preserve the Western alliance, from those who, within Europe, either Muslims or collaborators with Muslims (stupidity, cupidity, and timidity together providing the Esdrujula Explanation which I put forth at this site some time ago -- Copyright Office please take notice). Turkey is part of the damn problem, the problem of Islam, not part of the solution. Kurdistan, for complicated reasons, including a long history of enduring persecution and even mass murder at the hands of the "purest" Muslims -- that is, the Arabs whose ethnicity does not detract from, but merely reinforces, identification with Islam. Kurdistan could, if the Americans back it, a power with its own oil, and would always have to rely on the Americans for support.

What could Kurdistan do for us? It could concentrate on emphasizing "Kurdishness" and slowly, but surely, de-emphasizing the role of Islam, that "gift of the Arabs" that keeps on giving. It could provide a haven for Iraq's Christians, and prove its goodwill by punishing any Kurds who have behaved or intend to behave islamically (we know what that means) toward those Christians.

What about other map redrawings? We should not care whether or not Qatar or Kuwait or Abu Dhabi or any of the other sheikdoms any other place is bullied by a larger neighbor, but of course being indifferent, we could also charge a very large fee to protect Qatar, Kuwait, and other statelets from Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or even a conceivably intact Iraq. At the moment we appear to be so grateful for the use of bases. We are selling ourselves, and our implied protection, cheap -- far too cheap for what the Al-Sabah and Al-Thani and Al-Maktoum and the other ruling families could and should be paying. They not only need our protection, but they need the assurance that their assets abroad will remain intact, and not turned over to successor regimes. They need all kinds of things, and it is the Americans who appear not to realize this, nor to charge nearly enough for their services. Tens of billions annually should be the figures bruited about -- has no one ever negotiated in an Arab souk? Does no one know how to deal with these people?

Christians in the Middle East should also be encouraged, on a one-for-one basis, to replace Muslim Arabs who should be forced out of the West Bank. It should be made clear to them that the farce of the "one-state solution" is over, that the farce of the invented "Palestinian people" will soon be over, and that the Israelis will not surrender, will not be allowed to surrender. If Olmert proceeds with his crazed plan as formerly announced, it is up to the American government to discourage or prevent him -- neither Judge Reinhardt's Ninth Circuit, nor the Supreme Court, nor the World Court, nor any court of the mind one can imagine, would ever sanction Ally-Assisted Suicide. The Western world would become unhinged, in more ways than one, if Israel were forced to surrender still more territory, including control of the aquifers, and forced to live in a condition of maximum peril until such time as the Muslim Arabs could, at long last, go in for the kill. [It would do the kind of secret moral damage, create the kind of wounds, that were caused the Western world, in ways scarcely recognized, by the genocide of the Jews during World War II.] Christians or those who are no longer Christians because they cannot believe, but recognize the great and civilizing value of Christianity if practiced correctly, should stake a physical claim to the Holy Land, and not leave the Jews of Israel alone to stave off the Muslims. Middle Eastern Arabic-speaking Christians, such as those now in Iraq, may wish to consider moving to eastern Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank" as it was ridiculously renamed by the Jordanians in 1948, and even more ridiculously, that name became standard in the Western world, rather than the toponyms that had been in use for several millennia, and were good enough for, inter alia, Jesus of Nazareth). Christians in the West could agree to spend a year or two, as living witnesses, living in Israel, and possibly deliberately choose to live in that area now called "the West Bank."

But the Muslim Arabs should be encouraged in every possible way to leave that area, for if they realize that the Israelis are not going to leave, not now and not ever, and that Christian refugees from Islam will be moving in, they will not stay for ever. They are not "bearing witness" to anything. They are simply there as the shock troops of the Jihad, and if their lives are made sufficiently difficult, some of them, perhaps many of them, will see the reasonableness of leaving. Why should they sacrifice themselves on the altar of Jihad, if the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and all the others do nothing or so very little to support them?

-Posted July 8, 2006

"Ariel, a truly great man, made some serious mistakes in his last years. Conceding the Gaza Strip was one; anointing Olmert as his successor was another.

Even still, based on his whole career, Ariel Sharon still stands as the one person that all anti-Dhimmis should look to for guidance."-- from a reader

This tribute to Ariel Sharon, who undid as a political figure whatever good he might have done as a military one, is misplaced. He was a brave soldier, the leader of Unit 101, and performed well, in some cases spectacularly well, in all the military wars he served in.

But that was all not merely balanced, but far outweighted, by his complete indifference to, lack of understanding of, Islam, and his belief that he, as that "great military leader, etc." could "make the compromises" -- that is, the crazed and self-defeating unilateral withdrawals, the one in Gaza, the others planned and now made the policy, and apparently still the policy, merely delayed, of that awful construct, Kadima, and that cloudy-headed heir to Sharon, Olmert.

Yes, "Nil nisi bonum etc." should in many cases be observed, but not in all. And technically, Sharon is not yet dead, and therefore not entitled to such solicitude reserved for the fully dead. But even if he were dead, one would not wish to permit such a tribute to remain unanswered, not when lives of the still living have been damaged, and continue to be damaged, by the folly of this man, and the folly of those who, complacently telling themselves "Arik knows what he is doing" or "Arik won't let us down" or "let's trust Arik" proceed to walk, slowly and determinedly, right off first one cliff, and some apparently are prepared to walk off the second, cliff, into a much deeper abyss.

Reading the Qur'an is one thing. Reading the Qur'an, with a full understanding of how Muslims reconcile the contradictions through the long-accepted doctrine of "naskh" or abrogation, by which the later, far more sinister and aggressive verses (from the period when Muhammad, now among his followers in Medina, had no need to pretend to placate the powerful non-Muslims who had resisted him during his Meccan period) than those they replace. Reading the Qur'an with close attention to the context, so that 5.532 is read along with, 5.533 (something Bush failed to do, no doubt because someone handed him 5.532 but carefully refrained from giving him 5.533), which completely changes the meaning of the initial verse.

Reading the Qur'an requires close reading, an art no longer taught in the schools, not in the universities as it once was, not in the high schools or elementary schools. But it matters. A Qu'ranic phrase such as "fi sabil Allah" -- "on the path of Allah" as in "jihad fi sabil Allah" (Jihad for the sake of Allah) could well be taken to mean, by an English-speaking reader, for the innocuous phrase, so different from the warfare, the razzias and conquest and loot and seized women that Jihad "in the way of Allah" implies, of the Christian phrase "walk in the ways of the Lord." And even the very nature of the English and French languages ensures that the translation of the Qur'an into those languages does not convey the full violence of the original Arabic.

And reading the Qur'an is not enough. One must read, as well, some of the Hadith -- a few hundred of those deemed "most authentic" by the most authoritative muhaddithin, especially Bukhari and Muslim, would give one a sense of what Muslims know, what Muslims take as a guide, a guide that helps to provide a gloss on the Qur'an itself, for it is both Qur'an and Sunnah, the latter being a word that roughly means the customs, behavior, attitudes of Muhammad and his companions, as revealed in the Hadith, the writings which preserve Muhammad's sayings, and his acts, and even note the occasions on which he remained silent (and those silences are interpreted), and the Sira, the biography or biographies of Muhammad that further flesh out the full meaning of the Qur'an, of the revealed will of Allah, for who better to express that will than the Perfect Man, Muhammad?

Yes, members of the British public should be much better informed about the tenets of Islam, and not only the tenets, but the way in which societies suffused with Islam encourage certain attitudes, toward Infidels, toward the use of force, toward the use of reason.

Finally, non-Muslims in Great Britain have a responsibility to find out about the past 1350 years of Muslim Jihad-conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims. What did happen to the Hindus of India? What happened to the Buddhist temples, and those of the Jains, under Muslim rule? What does Ibn Battuta say? What happened to the Christians and Jews of the Middle East and North Africa? Was Islamic Spain really, as Maria Rosa Menocal would have us believe, a place of happy and peaceful "convivencia" or do historians who specialize in the field of Islamic Spain, such as Evariste Levi-Provencal, tell us a different tale?

Yes, the more one knows about Islam, its doctrine and practice, the better off one will be. Those who viewed over the past twenty years the Arab Muslim attacks on Christians and animists in the southern Sudan, attacks never objected to by any Muslim or Arab group, and who over the past three years have viewed the attacks by Arab Muslims on the non-Arab Muslims of Darfur, may find their explanation for such behavior in Islam. Those who remember the Biafra War, and the massacres of Christians that preceded the declaration of Biafran independence, and Col. Ojukwu's Ahiara Declaration of 1969 in which he denounced the "Jihad" by the Muslims of the north, aided by those Egyptian pilots who strafed Ibo villagers at will, will now find the explanation for the Muslim behavior in that war, and possibly an explanation as well for the abandonment of the Nigerian Christians by the Western powers. And one will be able to make sense of the Muslims who attack and kill Buddhist monks and farmers and schoolteachers in southern Thailand. One will be able to make sense of the killings by Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines. One will be able to make sense of the Taliban, and will be able to figure out why they made Hindus were identifying garb during their reign, and why the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was not different in kind from all the previous destruction wrought on the artifacts of the Greco-Bactrian civilization of Afghanistan, or the Buddhist or Hindu artifacts there, and in India itself, over many centuries. One would no longer be puzzled by the attacks on those who dare to criticize Islam, the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, the death threats against two Dutch parliamentarians (forced to sleep at army bases, forced to be surrounded by armed guards), or the similar threats made against publishers and cartoonists in Denmark, or against a leading journalist, Magdi Allam, in Italy. One would begin to understand the ways in which Muslim threats and Muslim attacks in Madrid, the plots aborted as well, from that against the Strasbourg Christmas Fair, to those many averted and only vaguely alluded to, if ever, so as not to scare the Western publics.

One would begin to puzzle out, to figure out, that if everywhere, in every Infidel country, whether it be one of those that prides itself on its tolerance, makes a fetish of it, makes a fetish as well of the welfare-state benefits it provides, such countries as Holland and Denmark and Sweden, or a country that prides itself on its "knowledge" of the Arabs and of Islam, such as France, or even has at times flattered itself that because of its own history it has some special insight, as Spain, or whether that country is Italy or Germany or Canada or Australia or the United States -- everywhere the Muslim population has presented similar difficulties, similar worries, similar behavior intent on changing the legal, political, social, and moral institutions of the host country, and nowhere to fully accept those institutions, or the very ideas that so distinguish the Western world from the Islamic one.

And if the behavior of Muslims, living now in many different Infidel countries, varying widely in their economic and social arrangements (compare Denmark with the United States, or Holland with Australia), turns out to everywhere cause problems, everywhere to provoke unsettlement, everywhere lead to great expense to monitor and protect against Muslim attacks, everywhere to lead to a situation where many feel greater physical insecurity as a result of such a presence, then surely the problem must be with Islam, and with those who are its adherents.

And if, furthermore, we not only have presented to us the same problems with Muslim communities in quite different Infidel lands, there is another way to compare, and that is to see if this is a general problem with immigrants, or not. But it turns out that no other group -- not Buddhists from Vietnam or Cambodia, not Hindus from India, not Bolivian peasants or black African non-Muslims, whether Christian or animist, not any other immigrant group, presents the same kind of problems, bears not merely an alien creed -- alien creeds can sometimes be accommodated -- but rather an alien and a hostile creed, which remains hostile, for the basis of Islam, as a warring and militant faith, is that Islam must dominate, that the war between Believers and Infidels must go on forever, until such time as the latter finally yield to the former, and Islam dominates everywhere, and everywhere Muslims rule. It is not hard to find the extensive textual support for this in the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira. It is not hard to find, in the 1350-year history of Islam, historical evidence that demonstrates, through the activities and behavior of Muslims, that this doctrine is taken seriously and, whenever deemed necessary and possible, will be acted upon.

Of course, for centuries, those simple souls who lived deep within Dar al-Islam, illiterate and largely aware of the Infidels only as a remote possibility, would not be Jihad-minded as Muslims today, who because of three things -- the oil wealth (ten trillion dollars since 1973), and the migration (tens of millions of Muslims permitted to settle deep behind what they have been taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines delineating the Dar al-Harb, that is Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels), and finally, the new technologies that make the dissemination of Islam, to the remotest peasant, not only the Five Pillars of ritual worship (shehada, zakat, salat, ramadan, hajj) but the passages that preach, as so much of Qur'an does, and as the Hadith reinforce, Jihad -- understood to allow for the employment of non-combat means as well to spread Islam, through the "wealth" weapon, through campaigns of Da'wa, through demographic conquest that is openly discussed, openly seen as the best means of subverting the Infidels, and not only in Western Europe.

Yes, the British public -- and other Infidel publics -- should learn all they can about Islam. But not from the likes of any group with the word "dialogue" in its title, not from those "Mosque Outreach Nights," not from the army of apologists who are everywhere, not least having infiltrated into some church groups, into the bureaucracies of the E.U. and the U.N., and who are present to reinforce the idea that Islam is merely a "religion" and those who dare to question its tenets are, of course, to be summarily dismissed as "hate-mongers." And when any attempt is made to present the evidence -- the evidence from the texts of Islam, the evidence provided by history, evidence accumulated over many centuries, or even just that from the last few decades, or few years, or few months, or few weeks, or few days, of unyielding Muslim hostility to Infidels, and to the entire civilizational legacy of those Infidels, it is not examined, not looked at.

For like Mr. Podsnap, much of the Western world does not wish to know about these Disagreeables. It wishes, like Mr. Podsnap, to snap its fingers, and put those Disagreeables out of sight, out of mind. They will not be noticed, and therefore, they will not exist.

That is how those whose duty it is to protect and instruct us have behaved, are behaving. For one-third of a century little has been done, almost nothing, to limit the Muslim, chiefly Arab, oil revenues that have made possible the acquisition of major arms (hundreds of billions of dollars worth) and funded arms projects, has provided the "money" weapon that, through bribery and boycotts and a network of Western businessmen eager to curry favor, has been so important to preserving Saudi Arabia's image as a "staunch ally" even as it becomes, with the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the most malevolent and powerful enemies of the West.

Mr. Podsnap put aside all "disagreeables" for they "offended him."

For decades now, and still today, those Engagers-in-"Dialogue," those three-abrahamic-faith boys, those we-all-have-so-much-to-learn-from-one-another enthusiasts --

Podsnaps All.

A comment on Peters's seeming inability to sit down with the texts, and his willingness to substitute his own anecdotal evidence (a visit to Senegal, his impressions of the marabouts, that sort of thing -- no different from what Madeleine Albright or Tom Friedman do when they collect their impressions, or what Paul Wolfowitz did when he learned all about Islam as the dynamic, take-charge, get-out-in-the-field ambassador in Jakarta):

Here is one comment from a 2004 appearance:

"Ralph Peters is a retired officer who is often sensible about the uses of military force, and he takes a dim view of the Arabs. He is also said to be a scholarly sort, with books in Russian and German in his library (at least, this is what the articles about him unfailingly convey). So why doesn't he exercise the same caution, and engage in the same kind of mental preparation, in proceeding to make assumptions, and utter pronouncements, about Islam -- especially since, what with the dreamy idea that Occupied Iraq is not a whit different in its prospects from Occupied Germany or Occupied Japan after World War II (and all those who claim differently must either be appeasers, or Nay-Sayers, when in fact some of those Nay-Sayers want the "Light Unto the Muslim Nations" Project stopped not because they do not worry about Islam, but because they really worry about it, and worry most not about the "war on terror" but about the likely islamization, through Da'wa and demography, of Western Europe, and having studied the history of Islam, agree with Reza Afshari and Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina that the sharia and human rights, are flatly incompatible (free conscience, free speech, equal treatment of women and minorities are all impossible under the Sharia, or under a legal system, that "takes its inspiration" from the sharia, as the Egyptian legal code does, or as the "new" Iraqi Constitution, which gave in so much to the Islamists, infuriating Allawi (he could not have been pleased with the naiveté of Noah Feldman et al).

This unwillingness to study Islam -- study first the Qur'an and a few hundred of the hadith, and then the sira, or to immerse oneself in the classic scholarship about Islam ("classic" meaning not the shallow apologetics of the past 40 years, which includes Esposito, Sells, Ernst, et al)--means that no one, and that includes those whose instincts and heart may be in the right place, but who have not permitted their minds to follow -- has a right to utter an opinion about Islam without such study, or at least paying attention to those who have engaged in such study.

One hopes, in the case of Peters, that he will allow himself the leisure to read -- beginning, perhaps, with Bat Ye'or's "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" and then, perhaps, looking at Muir's biography of Muhammad (not outdated), at Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim," and at a number of the articles to be found on-line at www.secularislam.org and www.faithfreedom.org. Ibn Warraq's essay on the similarities between "Islam and Fascism" should also be studied.

If Ralph Peters is reading too much Schwartz et al in the pages of The Weekly Standard, that might explain the problem. Amir Taheri is the best of their writers on Islam, but even he has to, at time, pull his punches.

 - posted November 17, 2004

I was too hopeful that he would start to study, too trusting that he would not substitute his own anecdotal evidence for study of Islamic tenets, immersion in Qur'an and Hadith and Sira, and further immersion in the history of Islamic conquest and subsequent subjugation of non-Muslims. Instead, this "author of 21 books" substituted his own travels, his own brief encounters, in countries where he did not know the languages (but he is careful to demonstrate, on every conceivable and some not-so-conceivable occasions, his knowledge of Russian and, especially, German), and the Muslims he saw were not in the Arab lands, but on the periphery, in countries where specific local conditions had diluted the effect of Islam, had blended it with local easygoing ways and easygoing customs (those marabouts of which he speaks, for example -- and of which V. S. Naipaul also writes with far greater keenness in his "Among the Believers" and "Beyond Belief").

Ralph Peters fails to see that where he finds Islam acceptable, or unmenacing, it may be for reasons having to do with the fact that the Muslims he sees are not the full-blooded thing. It would be as if he took the Ahmadi sect -- treated as non-Muslims by the orthodox -- as representative of Islam, or took Andrey Sakharov as a representative product of Soviet Communism, or Oskar Schindler as a typical member of the Nazi Party. He sees, but uncomprehendingly.

Of course, on those lightning-tours, to places where neither English nor German nor Russian (his apparent languages) are spoken, where he is an Important Personage, where those to whom he is introduced are those who would not mind meeting this Important American Personage, and whose Islam, modified by syncretism and local custom, is not the real thing but Islam Diluted, Islam Minus -- diluted by easygoing ways, diluted by the lack of knowledge, or lack of fervor, of the locals.

He comments on Senegal. But why not ask black Africans from Niger, students in France, who return to Niger from time to time, what they have to say about the effect of Saudi money and Saudi mosques and Saudi-funded madrasas on the practice of Islam in Niger -- where that syncretism, and those marabouts, are on the run, and everywhere,now, the once-unknown burqa can be seen.

I was too kind to Peters. I believed him capable, though a product and participant, apparently, in the Cold War, of being able to learn new and sometimes difficult things. The difficulty comes first in learning the doctrine, and then in seeing how the phrase "moderate" Muslim is distinctly unhelpful, because there is no bright line separating the "moderate" from the "immoderate" Muslim, and the "moderate" in many ways furthers the Jihad -- which Peters apparently conceives of only as one involving violence as its instrument, rather than recognizing that jihad fi sabil Allah is the struggle to spread Islam, by whatever means are most effective, including the use of the money weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest. He leaves all this out. In this respect, he is a True Believer in the Administration and in the policy, based on the smug assumption that there is no problem with Islam, but only with those "terrorists" who "hate freedom" -- and which has led to tarbaby Iraq, and the squandering of men, money, and matériel, now too obvious to hide.

And while Peters, that ex-military man who is careful to bring journalists to his home to see his library of German and Russian books, which never fail to be mentioned, as if that were a guarantee of something, he appears not, after all, to be such a great reader, such a dutiful student. It was permissible on 9/10/2001 to know nothing about Islam. In the five years since, it has become impermissible for any one to comment on Islam without having studied it first.

And he has not.

In that comment, from 2004, I was too hopeful, too kind.

From The Times Online:

"it is also an occasion for lamentation, a time to reflect on the baleful effect the programme has had on the American mindset — namely Star Trek’s message of liberal imperialism, a philosophy that uncannily has since been realised in real life.

 

Rather than having succumbed to the urge to boldly go and meddle with strange new worlds he didn’t understand, Captain Kirk should have stayed at home and sorted out his own people’s problems."

"Nice Americanism of the month" is a variation on my "Annoying Americanism of the week" column. It discusses an Americanism creeping into the Queen's English that I actually like.

Careful readers may notice a discrepancy in the scheduling, indicating that an Americanism is four times more likely to be annoying than nice. This may change, depending purely on my whims.

This month's nice Americanism is "snuck". The Queen probably says "sneaked", but I think "An intruder snuck into my bedroom," far better describes the glee and chutzpah with which Michael Fagan would have done it.

American English has a few irregular verbs that are regular in British English, for example, "dove" and "pled", where we would say "dived" and "pleaded". I'm fairly neutral about these, but "snuck" is something I like. Good rhyming possibilities as well.

That said, I am not happy about the word "sneakers", which has snuck - well it would, wouldn't it? - into our language and is gaining ground on "trainers", the latter having ousted my preference "plimsolls", or, as we called them in the North "pumps". Time this word snuck off.

hat tip: LGF

Gary Shapiro writes glowingly in the New York Sun.

Let's see, only 24 years and three months to go at NER...