Debate regarding the comparative worth of Islam vs the West would be an excellent idea and perhaps lay to rest the noxious idea of equivalence of culture. Phyllis Chesler writing in Pajamas Media has written about that very debate.

The debate was held in England sponsored by the Spectator magazine and featured Ibn Warraq and Tariq Ramadan with Warraq taking the position that Western Culture is superior. This was a different debate in that the audience was polled both before and after in regards to their belief regarding the defense of western values. Prior to the debate, the count was: "For the motion 313; Against the motion 221; Don’t Know 207. Of a total of 741 people less than half supported the defense of Western values and culture with just shy of 28% saying they didn't know. Imagine that, after 7/7, after Glasgow, after the dud bombs outside a London night club there were 28% that didn't know.

"Hold on Roper," I hear you say, "those were islamo-fascists, not the Muslim culture." And, that is true, but it is the culture of Islam that gave rise to the islamo-fascists. And it is the culture of Islam that remains substantially silent while the Imams call for jihad. And it is the culture of Islam that supports the stoning of women, hanging of gays, honor killings etc. All these points and more were discussed at the debate. And by debates end, there was a significant shift in the "don't know" category with the final vote being "For the motion 465; Against the motion 264; Don’t Know 18."  The motion being "We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values."  Note please that the don't know category fell to 18, the for the motion increased to a substantial 62 % at 465 but the "against the motion" also increased to a full 35%.  We can assume that some of these votes were Muslim, but I doubt that 35% were. 

This makes for an interesting question, have the seeds of the destruction of western culture been planted and are they being nourished by glib speakers in debate?  Are the members of the audience so inured to the tenets of multiculturalism that they cannot and will not stand up for their own culture?  That they cannot see the difference?

In an editorial in the Investors Business Daily we find this: 

"...militant Muslims believe peace cannot be attained until Islam dominates the globe. And they make up much of the Muslim establishment in America. We know this by the words they've been caught on tape mouthing to Muslim audiences. We know this by their radical associations.

But more damning, investigators recently uncovered smoking-gun documents revealing that many founders of the major Muslim groups in the U.S. were involved in a secret plot to take over the U.S. by using our religious and political freedoms against us.

They call themselves Americans, but they view our system of government, our way of life, as an abomination to Allah. They've devised a scheme to sabotage our "miserable house" from within and dismantle it piece by piece, replacing it with "Dar al-Islam" — the House of Peace."

Today we have the head of state of the United States, George Bush proclaiming that Islam, Jews and Christians worship the same God.  I don't think so, it may have started out with the same roots, but somewhere along the path to today there was a mighty shift.  Christians and Jews have gone from where barbarity was the norm to where it is abjured.  In Islam, or at least in significant elements of it, barbarity is celebrated.  Children are dressed up in suicide bomb belts, cartoon mice urge children to jihad, a 16 year old girl is imprisoned where she is raped by one of her guards.  Both are convicted of adultery, the guard is given so many lashes, the girl is hanged.  Ponder that, a 16 year old girl hanged for the "crime" of being a rape victim.  And this is the culture that 264 people of 741 supported. 

Today, in New York the sole remaining iconic landmark, the Empire State Building will be bathed in Islamic green light celebrating Eid.  New York, where just six short years ago two passenger jets full of passengers and fuel slammed into the Twin Towers killing 3000 innocent civilians by adherents of Islam. 

Today in Sudan, genocide is taking place and the world sits on it's hands because Darfur isn't important in the geopolitical calculations of other nations.  In the UN which pledged "never again" it is happening again.  In the UN the Human Rights mob (for mob it is) is populated and chaired often by the very governments that are most inimical to human rights.  In Saudi Arabia, youth have their hands cut off for stealing food.  In many parts of the Islamic world, the celebration of one "martyr" causes sufficient religious fervor that men and boys cut themselves with knives bleeding profusely in the cause. 

In Afghanistan, the former regime of the Taliban executed teachers for teaching girls to read and write, forced women into burkas, forbid children playing with kites or listening to music and dynamited centuries old statues of the Buddha.

This is the culture that 35% thought OK, or at least that western culture wasn't worth defending. And so, if western culture does fall, it will go out not with a bang but with a whimper, not by destruction, but by dhimmitude as those that ought to know better, would rather submit, then stand.

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