Spencer: Why the Anti-Jihad Resistance is Not About Race
Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:11:55 am PDT
An excellent post from Robert Spencer on the need for the anti-jihad movement to reject the white nationalists and racialists trying to hitch a ride and gain legitimacy: Jihad Watch: Why the anti-jihad resistance is not about race.
People I respect have pointed out that European culture is being overwhelmed and transformed by out-of-control Muslim immigration, and there is nothing wrong with defending it from that. I agree. But while culture has a racial component, culture and race are not identical. To reduce culture to race on a continent that has seen six million sacrificed to the idolatry of race and blood is not, in my view, the right way to defend European culture — and there must be articulated a sane and moral alternative that is clearly distinct from that and rejects it utterly. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands has managed to mount a strong stance against Islamization while avoiding dalliance with racial groups. While I am not a European and am conscious that Europeans will probably charge me with naivete and ignorance (the last time I posted this I inspired not one, but two websites charging me with being a secret jihadist, so this time I’ll probably be Satan himself), I still don’t see why it can’t be done elsewhere. Such dalliances inevitably raise the specter of neo-Nazism and white supremacism, and allow the mainstream parties to pretend that Europe faces a choice between becoming Eurabia and reviving the gas chamber. There are other ways, there have to be other ways, to deal with this.
The anti-jihad movement, if it is to become mainstream in Europe or the U.S., must articulate a positive vision of defense for the human rights of all people against the ways in which those human rights are contravened under Sharia, and avoid being diverted into side issues and non-issues, or formulating the problem incorrectly.
