Islam & the Left

It is no secret that the political Left in the United States and indeed most of the West has made common cause with the forces of radical Islam. this should come as no surpirse to anyone who has spent any time at all studying either of these two forces.

Islam has spent well over a thousand years conducting bloody imperialism against the world, including the West. The radical Left has spent the majority of the past two hundred years enabling and apologizing for various dictators- Mao Tse-tung, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe and of course Yasser Arafat. The Left has spent the majority of the past century trying its best to cause revolution in democratic states that might bring in their preferred form of government- totalitarianism.

Let us not forget that Hitler's war was made possible by his secret alliance with Josef Stalin's Soviet Union. And that the predecessors of today's al-Quaeda, in the person of Yasser Arafat's uncle, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husayni (or al-Husseini) constituted some of the strongest and most fervent supporters of Hitler's "Final Solution". Before there was a state of Israel, mind you.

Of course, the latest collaboration has caused the Left some problems. After all, leftists renounce all religion with great passion. they consider Christianity to be one of the great evils of history, and rarely have a good word for any other religion either. But yet their alliance with Islam requires that they celebrate exactly the kind of religious ecstasy that they find so repugnant in other religions. Christians experience ecstasy in the covenants, or in "being saved", not in blowing up civilians or making onerous pronouncements about how non-Christian must convert or die.

Christopher Hitchens, the anti-religious, pro-Iraq War leftist stepped up on May 24 in Berkeley, California to try to make the Left reconcile this essential dichotomy. His verbal opponent was journalist Chris Hedges. According to Zombie, who photo-blogged the event,

The American political landscape experienced an epochal re-alignment on May 24. A subtle yet far-reaching tectonic shift.

You probably didn't notice. But you will, eventually.

Because it was on that date in Berkeley, California that the radical left reversed what had been its immutable rejection of religion and for the first time embraced spirituality.

...

The arena where this pivotal re-alignment took place was the King Middle School auditorium in Berkeley, where far-left "progressive" journalist Chris Hedges formally debated iconoclastic "neocon" pundit Christopher Hitchens. (Videos of the debate and photos from the event can be found below.) The topic of the debate was "Is God...Great?", a riff on the title of Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great.

Surprising as it might seem in a contemporary political landscape where mocking religion is an established liberal pastime, and where Christianity and spirituality are most often associated with conservatism, it was Hitchens -- now loathed by the left for not toeing the party line over the Iraq War -- who attacked religion, while the neo-Socialist, anti-patriotic, radical Hedges volunteered for the seemingly topsy-turvy position of having to defend spirituality and the existence of God.

How did this strange state of affairs come to pass? In one word: Islam.

The left -- of which Hitchens was a part until recently -- has always been anti-religion. But now, they've become caught in a philosophical bind: how can they promote multiculturalism -- and by extension all non-Western cultures, such as fundamentalist Islam -- if they condemn religion in general? Neocon pundits have since 9/11 frequently accused the left of being in bed with Muslim extremists, a charge which the left has vehemently denied. But with every denial their position was becoming more and more untenable, as the verbiage and narratives of Islamic radicals and "anti-war" progressives have grown to become virtually indistinguishable.

Someone had to take the lead and resolve the dilemma that the left had created for itself. And so it was Hedges who stepped forward in this debate to test the waters for the first time, taking what is for him (and the left) a revolutionary position: that spirituality and religion -- with the noteworthy exception of organized Christianity -- is good.

Now, at no point did Hedges state that he was performing this amazing flipflop specifically due to Islam. He didn't need to say it -- because Hitchens said it for him. In fact, Hitchens repeatedly tore the roof off of Hedges' carefully constructed rhetorical edifice, saying aloud the exact thoughts that Hedges and the left didn't want anyone to hear.

OK, let's be frank: Hitchens absolutely mopped the floor with Hedges. It was an embarrassment, really.

Zombie has been kind enough to post the videos on YouTube that he took of the evening's entertainment. Read the whole thing and watch the videos.

The Left in the United States and the rest of the West has become a laughingstock for their persistent hypocrisy and their lack of patriotism. However, it took Hitchens to expose them as nothing more than tired ideas without even a robe in which to hide- unless they want to take the burqa. I hear Islam is always looking for converts...

Hat tip to little green footballs.