Reviewing The Newest Fatwa Obtainer: Mark Steyn's "America Alone"

TWO NOTES for our readers. First, this post will remain at the top of the page all day today. Second, this is a collaborative effort from Thomas and I. He writes in blue; I write in purple; the book excerpts are in black.

We said that today was going to be a "special" day here at The Asylum, and we meant it. Both of us have finished reading Mark Steyn's exceptional new missive, "America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It," and now BOTH of us are going to review it. Together. Right here. We don't often do this (unless you're a fan of our regular columns at Common Conservative (which our newest is available right now), but in the case of Mark Steyn we'll make the exception.

Mark Steyn, unlike many pundits on the Internet and the dead-tree industry of newspapers, gets it. He understands the problems that this world is facing from the Islamicists trying to put together their worldwide caliphate. And before anyone stands up and cheers fro the ol' red, white, and blue for America's efforts to kill these animals, we should remember that we are not the only dog in this race. The world is involved, as well. And it starts with some solid, sobering facts of life, literally:

Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history. Most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethinic comedies--My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk--in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast, loving, fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe; Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain, 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the Anglo democracies; America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealnd's is a little below. Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding, in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling. --pg. xiv, America Alone

OK, the humor's good. Mark's one of the best pundits available that can inject a joke to make you laugh one minute, and slap you in the face with reality the next. And that's what this book is. It's thew world's wake-up call. Change direction now, or the current generations (your parents, mine, and Marcie's) won;t recognize the world a couple of decades from right now. And the first finger he points is noting that Europe is slowly dying; outbred by the people attempting to take them over by sheer force of will. Yes, the Islamicists, Mark points out later in his book, have no problem adapting to certain aspects of Western culture--such as how special interest groups achieve victory in the public political arena--but they refuse to assimilate to the Western style of life. They abhor our tolerance for others, and our freedoms, but they have no problem embracing them as long as the end to their means is met. They're doing it right now in Europe.

Countries in Europe are slowly giving into the Islamicists in their midst. Take a look at the changes runing through Europe: "Islamophobia is now a hate crime in Great Britain, France has introduced gender-segregated swimming baths, Australian hospitals have removed pork from their menus. Last year France witnessed the worst internal violence in decades when Muslims in their nation rioted over the death of two of their fellow brethren. We know the story (but only because we followed it intensely) about the two boys running from the police who were electrocuted. The Muslim population went nuts for the better part of two months, and France stood powerless in the wake of the seemingly unending violence. They are facing it again this year. A group of Danish cartoonists made some cartoons about Mohammed, and the world was gripped in similar violence. Danish embassies were attacked, torched, defaced, etc. as the Islamicists took to the streets to air their grievances through violence.

The enemies we face in the future will look a lot like al Qaeda: transnational, globalized, locally francised, extensively outsourced--but tied together through a powerful identity that leaps frontiers and continents. They won't be nation states and they'll have no interest in becoming nation states, though they might use the husks thereof, as they did in Afghanistan and then Somalia. The jihad may be the first, but other transnational deformities will embrace similar techniques. September 10 institutions like the UN and the EU will be unlikely to provide effective responses. --pg. xxii, America Alone

Going back up to the above from my lovely wife, that's what the world faced then, and it's in it's future now. These people have no national identity. They're Islamicists, and believe in a caliphate stretching across the globe. There will be no nations for them, only the land that Mohammed's "wisdom" granted them access to. No wonder why the Left in America is so hip to give these animals leeway; they share similar ideologies. The Left wants a borderless, open society much like the Islamicists do. The difference is that they're not beheading people to accomplish their goals. What the Left misses entirely is they're on the Islamicists s**t-list, too. Their necks are just as protected as the rest of us infidel's necks are; that being, they're not protected.

But Mark observes that "leeway" is not their goal. Subjugation is. Colonel Qaddafi stated that "There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe--without swords, without guns, without conquests." It is already happening there. When Europe falls, America will be standing very alone in a world full of its most lethal and ruthless enemies. And if anyone thinks that we will get assistance from our other "friends" abroad, think again. China will not get involved. They are waiting for Russia to die. Our "friends" the Saudis? Do not hold your breath. Mark also notes that in this war, we seem to be our own worst enemy:

... After Septmeber 11, George W. Bush told the world "You're either with us or with the terrorists." In fact, much of the world is with neither, and much of the rest of the world is with both. And why should anyone take the president's demand to choose sides seriously when America itself refuses to: the United States is both "with us" and "with the terrorists." American taxpayers are in the onerous position of funding both sides in this war. In the fiove years since September 11, the price of oil rose from $12 a barrel to hit an all-time high of $70--so, if you sell oil, your revenues are five times what they were. And there's nothing like bigger oil windfalls to drive powerful despots down even crazier paths. "Looking at it another way," wrote Frank Gaffney in his book War Footing, "Saudi Arabia--which currently exports baout ten mbd (million barrels of oil a day)--receives an extra half billion dollars every day." Where does that extra half-bil go? It goes to the mosques and madrassas that the Saudis fund in every corner of the planet. Oil isn't the principal Saudi export, ideology is--petroleum merely bankrolls it. --pg. 69, America Alone

Doesn't that leave a sour taste in your mouth. And I'm sure the moonbats on the Left will immediately scream that it's time for alternative fuels. Yes, we've heard this before, and while that might be true, we believe it's time to cut the ties to these animal-loving freaks in the Middle East. Let's focus on our own reserves, like those off the Gulf Coast and those in ((GASP)) ANWaR. But the point is that we can't even abide by what we say right now in this war. We, America, right now is quite literally her own worst enemy. And that should scare the H*ll out of anyone. If we can't even maintain what we say to the world, how can the world expect us to back it up? We went into Ireaq to remove Saddam Hussein, and cut his ties to terrorist groups like al Qaeda, but yet we let Moqtada al-Sadr slip through our fingers, and he's fueling the resistance against coalition forces there. Yep, the world really listens to America; it's more like monkey-see, monkey-do.

Europe is dying, and when it goes, no one wants to be around. The itchiest part of the continent that has experts worried is Russia. They already have problems with the Islamicists in areas like Chechnya. In addition to that, Russia has a lot of problems:

So the world's largest country is dying and the question is how violent its death throes will be. Most of the big international problems operate within certain geographic constraints: Africa has AIDS, the Middle East has Islamicists, North Korea has nukes. But Russia's got the lot: a potentially African-level AIDS crisis and an Islamist separatist movement sitting atop the biggest pile of nukes on the planet. Of course, the nuclear materials are all in "secure" facilities. Probably. --pg 29, America Alone

Can anyone imagine the outcome of a violent collapse of the Great Russian Bear in this day and age? Mark brings up Robert Ferrigno's piece de resistance "Prayers For The Assassin" later in the book as an example of what might happen to America if she fails in her mission; I would rather bring up Joel Rosenberg's novel "The Ezekial Option" when it comes to the death throes of Russia where an unltra-nationalist works a deal with an Iranian terror mastermind to institute a coup in Russia giving Iran the nukes they have always desired. Anyone care to see that come to pass?

And these are points that are all valid in his book, in this day and age. The world needs a wake-up call to see what's happening. Europe, sadly, should be written off. They lack the understanding of their enemy. They lack the ability to deal with them. So comfortable are they in their lives, which revolves around the government dole that they've lost whatever will they had to fight them. Just keep giving them the checks, leave them to their comfy chairs, and repeats of Fawlty Towers, and they will happily live in excrement. There is a lady--known as "the Dutch lady" by Mark Steyn--who goes out everyday in traditional Muslim garb for women. She lives in a rough part of Amsterdam, and it's the only way she can avoid the abuse handed out by the Muslim men there. She's not a convert, or a "revert" as Mark calls them. She simply made a choice to change how she approached going out in a city where the Muslim population is slowly choking the Anglo population out of existence.

Europe is giving in without a fight. And to say that this is exclusive only to the "mother continent," is a serious misnomer. Here in America there are Muslim cab drivers who are refusing to take fares for a variety of reasons, and all of those reasons are based on their religious beliefs. It is a subtle, sinister way that the Islamicists can begin injecting sharia into American culture. We are a nation of laws, and if the Muslim cab drivers do not like attending to those members of society that they are offended by, I suggest a new line of work. But this is the strategy that the Islamicists are using around the globe. They move into a country in great numbers, set up shop, start griping about how that society acts, and then they start using strongarm tactics to institute change. The change is only for the better in their eyes, and to H*ll with the infidel that was gracious enough to allow them entry. The infidel, they muse, will either be dead or converted. That is the strategy they have used since the beginning of Mohammed's bloody religion.

When I made my observation about mulitple Mohammeds in the news, Merle Ricklefs, a professor at the National University of Singapore and South-East Asian editor of the sixteen volume Encyclopedia of Islam, remarked sarcastically, "Deep thinking, indeed." Well, gosh, maybe it's not terribly sophisticated. But then again, when you're dealing with fellows who decapitate female aid workers in Iraq and engage in mass slaughter of Russian schoolchildren, maybe sophistication isn't always helpful. Particularly when sophistication seems most likely to be a form of obfuscation by experts wedded to the notion that Islam is something that simply can't be understood unless you've read all sixteen volumes of their Encyclopedia or, better yet, written them. For those of us who aren't professors of Islamic studies, the obvious course is to step back and try to work from first principles: What's happening? Who's doing it? The five-thousand-guys-namedMo routine meets the "reasonable man" test: it's the first thing an averagely well-informed person who's not a multiculti apologist notices--here's the evening news and here comes another Mohammed. --pg 65, America Alone

The nuanced nutters on the opposite side keep claiming that we don't understand Islam. We need to be more tolerant of it. Why? They're anything but tolerant of us. I'm not saying we should incite war with the religion proper (of which it isn't a religion, per se, but rather an ideology rooted in socio-political warfare), but I'm not going to listen to someone's gripes when they're sawing the head off of another infidel. Those that wish us to be tolerant of them need to wake up and smell the hummis. They're butts will be in the same line for the cheap scalp treatments from the Islamicists as Marcie and I would be. They're not going to be spared because they postulate in front of these animals.

And those apologists overlook the recruitment tactics that are used by our enemies. They recruit like-minded individuals, but they also target the worst of the worst. They have targeted prison populations to convert new jihadists. The worst of the worst--murderers, rapists, and hard-core thieves--are among those the Islamicists wish to gain into their fold. Why? Little training required for them as they are already pretty much predisposed to committing what society proclaims a crime, but what the Islamicists can use on the global battlefield. AND it gives our enemy a leg-up. With so many people looking at shifty Muslims in airports and on buses, our enemies are adapting, and recruiting Anglos. Less likely to be observed, and more likely to be ignored altogether until it is too late. Indeed, Mark observes:

If you're thinking of profiling dodgy-looking fellows with beards and robes when you're next on the subway, how are you going to spot Assem Hammoud? Arrested for plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel, Mr. Hammoud said he had been ordered by Osama bin Laden to "live the life of a playboy ... live a life of fun and indulgence." That way he would avoid detection. Cunning, eh? Just to show how seriously he took his assignement, there was a picture of Assem with a trio of burqa-less hotties on a "mission" in Canada, looking like a traveling man who's decided to blow the last night of expenses on the three-girl special. What a master of disguise. "I was proud," declared Mr. Hammoud, "to carry out my orders"--even though they required him to booze it up and bed beautiful infidels all week long. But it's okay, because he was nailing chicks for Allah. So he gamely put on a brave show of partying like it's 1999 even though, as a devout Muslim, he'd obviously much rather party like it's 799.

As religious fanaticism goes, that doesn't sound to me like a movemnet that's going to have recruitment problems. --pg 67, America Alone

Mark makes a lot of good points, and all of them are completely ignored by the media. The best place to find this sort of thinking (aside from Mark's site and regular columns) is in the blogosphere. Experts across the 'Net have been looking at Islam and analyzing it for the last five years, and they have a far better grasp of this than the so-called" experts" trotted out on FOX, CNN, and the rest of the MSM. And it's of the utmost importance that we recognize what is happening in the world today. It's dying, slowly and painfully, and if we're not careful it's going to take us with it.

As Mark points out, demographics are a key part of this analysis. Europe's dying on the vine because of their nuanced approach to fertility. It is unecessary for them. The world's population is large enough without them contributing more. When America hit its 300 millionth citizen, the world belly-ached that we were part of the problem; that our greedy nature was eating up all the vital resources on the globe. Not true. We export a large amount of food around the world, and fuel--pteroleum--is not likely to run out anytime soon. The most vital resource needed now is babies. The Muslims are trying to breed Europe into obscurity, and we will be next on their target-rich list. Not only must we continue to maintain our fertility rates, but they must increase. The Islamicists are gearing up for the final fight, and we might miss the party if we are not careful.

In a matter of a couple decades the world will not be the same as it was today. Europe will be virtually Islamified. Russia will be dead and gone, and probably in Islamicist hands. Japan, which is already virtually dead in terms of fertility, will be non-existent, and possibly swallowed up by their longtime enemy, China. Canada is even facing problems like those in Europe, and they seem to be almost as befuddled as France is right now. So, what is the solution to the whole bloody mess?

Mark believes that the answer is will. Yes, we need babies, but we--the world in general--appears to have lost the will to fight an enemy that makes the Nazis look like the Vienna Boys Choir. And without that will, the world will look much different in a century's time. The great American experiment that began 232 years ago will be long gone and forgotten as Islamic scholars scrub the history texts clean of anything that does not praise and honor Islam. America will be a footnote right next to Europe. I know it sounds bad, but it does not have to be that way. All it takes is simply fighting back, and with greater force of will than our enemies have. It has been a long time since this nation has had to confront evil like this. It is time we woke up, and realized that no one will do it for us, and those who claim to help us along the way are more likely to hinder us. We must hold true the lines, and never give in. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the true lesson to be learned from Mark's book.

This book is a must-have for anyone who wants to understand what's going on in the world right now when it comes to our enemies, their goals, their accomplishments, and just how close we are coming to "the end of the world as we know it." Yes, Mark is a writer, but he's also a human being that is just as offended as we are that the Islamicists have deemed us infidels, and for that we deserve to have our heads handed to us, literally. Don't waste time on the nutter "end of the world" doom-mongering books by idiots like Al Gore, who thinks that the world is going to end because we drive cars, and don't hug enough trees.

Indeed, the world as we know it will die without the will that Mark has emphasized. Polar ice caps melting, the non-exploding population, and a mythical shortage in natural resources are utterly insignificant compared to the rise of this form of Islam. This is a strain that silences their moderate brethren with fatwas, death threats, and violence. Moderates will have no chance to change what they dislike if the radicals continue on the warpath. Mark believes it can be stopped, but it is going to take "hard will" to achieve it. That means violence. That means faith. And it means tossing aside the nuaced ideas from the sixties throwbacks. This is the 21st Century, and this war needs an approach much like the one we used to defeat Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. We do not need the feel-good people demanding we emote with our enemies. Our enemies will go away when we kill them. That, and a serious change in midset, will bring this world victory. Not multicultural psychobabble, and tolerance for those who commit violence in the name of their prophet and god.

Marcie and Thomas