gswann@presenceofmind.net
Posted on 01/15/2003 7:08:11 AM PST by Greg Swann
Cain's world: Why they hate us...by Greg Swann |
This is from Dennis Prager at TownHall.com:If America abandoned Israel, our Arab and Muslim haters would rejoice, but they would surely not stop hating us. Not one of them. They would only conclude that their terror worked, and that America will give in when the threats are great enough. One proof? Most Muslims living in Europe, which has abandoned Israel, continue to loathe Europe. Europe's abandonment of Israel has only convinced them -- for good reason -- that Europe has lost its moral fiber and is ripe for an Islamic takeover.Prager goes on to list his reasons why Islam hates America, but I think he misses the most important one: Islam hates American--and the West as such--because it is a reproach to Islam. If we are infidels, tools of the devil, why do we succeed where they fail? Why does god withhold his favor from those who are supposed to be favored? Cain did not slay Abel. Hellenism did not hunt down and eradicate barbaric Pastoralism. Pastoralism tells the story the way it does for two reasons: To hang onto the sheep, so to speak, and to feed them its seething resentment against Hellenism and its insuperable mercantile and military success. Islam hates the West because Islam was born in hatred for the West. It is Cain and Abel writ large in flowery calligraphy: Abel's Pastoralist counter-revolution against the Hellenic Cain, who was 'killing' the old way of doing things not by murder or conquest, but by sweet commercial persuasion. Unlike early Christianity, Islam did not suppress its vestigial Hellenic remnants, and it mistook the ensuing relative prosperity as proof of god's favor. When the Christians reclaimed Athens, and when Islam finally fully renounced it, then did Abel get a glimpse that nature--not god--had favored Cain all along. Muslims must choose, and they don't want to. The fruit of the West is abundant and her Temptations unending. The Koran is Truth, unerring, and yet it cannot bear up to scrutiny. The Muslims bring with them god's final revelation, yet, as with the Christians, they succeed best when they live by reason, and fail worst when they hew to dogma. They have not discovered the corrupt Christian solution to this contradiction--letting Cain run the firm so long as he doesn't put his name on the door--so they are left with these alternatives: Apostasy or murder. Cain did not slay Abel. But if Islam is to survive as Islam, it must kill the West. That is why they hate us. |
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