Monday, May 08, 2006

Western weakness; nature abhors a vacuum


The Brussels Journal has a couple of articles about Belgian churches harboring illegal immigrants. Most of the illegal immigrants are Muslim. A few excerpts:

...Most of the immigrant squatters in the churches are Muslims. They display banners in the church showing the name of Allah (picture taken in the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Brussels).

The Belgian Bishops are so ignorant that they do not see what is going on: their churches are being turned into mosques before their very eyes.

The Muslim squatters hold Islamic prayer services in the church. The altar has been moved and the statue of Our Lady covered by a cloth to hide her from the eyes of the Muslim believers.

The squatters are living in the churches. "Church occupations" by illegal immigrants have been going on for a number of years in Belgium. They are not really "occupations" because the Bishops condone the actions and actively support them. Chris Gillibrand visited a number of Brussels churches to take these pictures...



You can can read more, and see more photos and links too, from the source article here:

Allah Takes Over Church

I see some similarities with our own immigration situation, and the granting of amnesty. Something I also found shocking, was the way Belgian Catholics themselves are being treated by their own Bishops:

...However, many Belgians, including many Catholics, do not agree with the “church occupations.” Belgium has one of the most hospitable policies towards immigrants in Europe. Illegal immigrants are hardly ever expelled. Six years ago the government issued a collective amnesty for illegal immigrants, granting everyone who could prove they had lived in the country for five years the right to “regularise” their status and stay. Over 50,000 did so. The 2000 regularisation was a response to a previous series of church occupations, which had shocked many conservative Catholics, such as Father Herwig Arts, an Antwerp Jesuit and well-known author. “Black families entered our chapel and turned it into a dormitory,” Father Arts complained to the press (Gazet van Antwerpen, 21 November 1998). Father Arts saw men and women sharing beds and cooking in Antwerp’s Jesuit chapel. “They removed the tabernacle, installed a television set and radios, depriving us of the opportunity to pray in our own chapel and say Mass. [...]. It has upset me very much. For me the place has been desecrated,” he said. “I feel I cannot enter it anymore.” At the time Father Arts was severely criticised for his comments. Today he remains silent, as do all Catholic priests, given that the Bishops support the church occupations by the illegal immigrants...

...For Catholic believers the situation is all the more painful as the same Bishops have never bothered to take any action to change, let alone, protest Belgium’s legislation regarding abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and gay adoption. On the contrary, when a Catholic organisation asked for permission to organize a Mass against the impending euthanasia legislation in Brussels Cathedral on 2 March 2002, the use of the Cathedral was prohibited by Cardinal Danneels because it was feared that (Catholic) politicians of the anti-immigration Vlaams Belang party would attend.

(bold emphasis mine). The reference to the Amnesty echos our own situation here in the US. Note how the Belgian amnesty did nothing to solve the problem of church occupations as it was meant to; it perhaps has even increased the problem. Why immigrate leagally when you can just occupy a church instead, until you are given amnesty? You can read more from the source article here:

Belgian Church Organizes Illegal Immigrants



I'm seeing a common thread in western countries; and inability or unwillingness to enforce their own laws. If we do not respect our own laws, we can hardly expect anyone else to respect them, either. If we don't value and respect our own culture, politics and religious background, neither will anyone else.

For all the talk about Muslims and radical Islam, they are only one part of the equation. Islam has been the same for hundreds of years; it hasn't suddenly become agressive. If the Muslims seem more aggressive to us, it's because we have become flabby and weak. They see the west as a bunch of decadent libertines who drink and take drugs, abort our own children, and abandon our own religion; people who are lost in materialism and sensuality, with no will to fight. To the extent that they are right, is the extent they see weakness. Socialist countries with declining populations seem the weakest of all.

I've done a lot of posts about conservative verses liberal politics; many of the posts have been about Islam and Muslim related matters too. I have noticed a common theme that runs through them all; western weakness. I don't necessarily mean a military weakness, but a social-cultural one. A lack of will to fight the war on terror, a lack of will to secure our borders, a lack of will to enforce our own laws, to support our own culture. Nature abhors a vacuum; if we fail to support our culture and values, others will surely rush in to replace them.

Tammy Bruce recently did a post recently called White Guilt and Being Delicate with the Enemy, where she maintains our ability to fight and win the War On Terror is being severely hampered by politically correct multiculturalism and liberal self-loathing of our own culture and values.

Tammy references an article in the Opinion Journal by Shelby Steele called White Guilt and the Western Past: Why is America so delicate with the enemy?, which talks about the white guilt of the west and it's resulting influence of restraint and minimalism on our ability to fight and win a war, or even deal effectively with ANY of our most urgent problems. Some excerpts:

...Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort--only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.

Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism. But in today's atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so....


This stigmatization by the political left is weakening the western cultures in many areas of public life:

...Whether the problem is race relations, education, immigration or war, white guilt imposes so much minimalism and restraint that our worst problems tend to linger and deepen. Our leaders work within a double bind. If they do what is truly necessary to solve a problem--win a war, fix immigration--they lose legitimacy.

To maintain their legitimacy, they practice the minimalism that makes problems linger.
What but minimalism is left when you are running from stigmatization as a "unilateralist cowboy"? And where is the will to truly regulate the southern border when those who ask for this are slimed as bigots? This is how white guilt defines what is possible in America. You go at a problem until you meet stigmatization, then you retreat into minimalism.

Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities....


I can see why Tammy Bruce liked the article; it's a subject she herself has tackled in her books. You can read the whole artilce HERE.

6 comments:

Walker said...

Excellent, Excellent Post, Chas. I linked to it (but that's not saying much... hahaha).

The same thing is happening in the U.S., too, with the Catholic Church leaders claiming to be the shepherds for all illegal immigrants. But this Belgian thing... much much worse. Having been utterly abandoned by their own people, they turn into muslims.

Walker said...

Chas,

Fantastic post. I passed this info on Belgian churches along to the remnant Catholics. It's unbelievable. Just 50 years ago, the notion of letting a muslim pray in a Catholic church would have been impossible. Removing the tabernacle -- unthinkable!

Chas said...

Egyptian author Bat Ye'or is convinced the the churches like those in Belgium are bringing on their own destruction. She said in an article at the Brussles Journal:

...Bat Ye’or convincingly argues that the transformation of Europe into Eurabia is the result of a deliberate strategy that was foolishly set in motion by French Gaullists who wanted to create a European-Arab counterweight to the United States. Today the European Union is continuing this policy, which aims to create a united Mediterranean continent based on a symbiosis between the Northern and the Southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In her Eurabia book she meticulously describes how this strategy has been implemented during the past 35 years and how the promotion of Muslim immigration to Europe constitutes part of this plan.

Ever since she was forced to leave Egypt Bat Ye’or has lived in Europe. She does not intend to leave. She feels old and tired, but she urges young people to continue resisting dhimmi status. “We should not ask the moderate Muslims to save us. We have to change the present situation ourselves. That is our duty to our children and our ancestors.” Her study have made her aware that the destruction of Christian societies by Jihadists has always been brought about by the Christian leaders and churches themselves. “I think that we will not be able to act responsibly so long as we do not understand the dynamics, the spirit, and the functioning of Eurabia, a concept that has been conceived in Europe and by Europeans, and has not been imposed upon us from outside.”


Here is a link the the whole article:

Eurabia Scholars Gather in The Hague

Walker said...

Wow. That bows me away. In a similar situation, the Catholic Church has been careening toward self-destruction ever since Vatican II. It utterly stopped teaching its beliefs, tore down its churches, gutted its schools, supported its enemies in every way possible, and relaxed its standards so that, finally, there aren't any.

I've said for years that the collapse has been so thorough it is as if it were planned. It's as if someone sat down and said: How can we destroy the oldest Christian institution in the World, discredit it, and make people disown it?

This is even happening in mainstream Prot churches, too. Look at the episcopalians -- no one could have adopted a more perverse and unsuccessful path than that bunch... unless maybe if you count the Presbyterians and the Methodists.

To me, the collapse of the churches is the most troubling part of the implosion of Western society. It was the Christian church's values of respect for women, marriage, children, and hard work that built the Western world. Adults acted as the stewards of those values. Now you see what happens when the framework is removed: 11 year olds getting pregnant; culture of rape, prostitution, and violence, especially in the black community; disrespect for heritage (expressed in the fatuous idea of multiculturalism), rise of civil disorder ... well you know.

I'm sorry I'm writing a book.

Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...

05 12 06

Excellent post Chas. Although I don't necessarily believe in "The White man's burden" and manifest destiny, there is some truth to the assertion that PC has hampered our ability to be honest with each other. Shelby Steele just wrote a book about the topic of White Guilt, and I think it is nasty, but I also feel as though the analysis is skewed...


These Belgians are focusing so much on tolerance, that they fail to see that the Muslims are insulting them and could give a damn about them. I have been inside of Buddhist's home before, I take off my shoes and relax my mind. But it would be arrogant, rude and insensitive for me to step up in there with a painting of Jesus, because that is not their religion. I see a lot of disrespect here, and a lack of graciousness. The Belgians need to wake up!

Chas said...

I've read that in Italy, where hospital rooms will often have a crucifix on the wall, the Muslim patients will take it off the wall and throw it out the window! They call it a "corpse on a stick", and find it offensive.

Muslims are not Christian, don't believe Jesus was the son of God, and don't believe he was crucified. Fine. But couldn't they ask, or even insist, that the crucifix be removed from the room, without tossing it out a window, which is so disrespectful and arrogant?

The Italians put up with it, I suspect because so many of them have stopped respecting their own religion. Yet by allowing the disprespect to go unchallenged, they are simply inviting more. Ditto Belgium and the rest of Europe, too.

Whether it's religon, culture or laws, if we don't respect our own, neither will anyone else. Part of what Shelby Steele was touching on, I think, was that multiculturalism makes westerners reticent in protecting or advancing our own culture or values, to the point where we are unable to work for our own self-interest and sovereignty effectively.

What is passing for multiculturalism these days is too often a one-way street, used as a political tool by the left against western values and culture. Without mutual respect, it's a sham, and we are seeing the consequences now.