I just had the intriguing experience of reading this short review article before realising that it is written by Theodore Dalrymple.

I especially agree with the conclusion:

The fundamental question is whether Islam as a private faith would still be Islam, or whether such privatization would spell its doom. I think it would spell its doom. In this sense, I am an Islamic fundamentalist. The choice is between all and nothing.

Only at that end point did I look up to see who had written this.  Smart fellow, I was thinking.  My sentiments exactly.

I am, like so many Westerners, now dipping from time to time into the Koran, for as long as I can stand it, and generally boning up on Islamic history.  My conclusion also, so far, is that Islamic Fundamentalists are not betraying Islam.  They are simply doing it.  Average Joe Muslim, with his desire for a quiet and happy life, of just the kind that I also prefer, is the one who is betraying his religion.

On the other hand, I have never - never - encountered a Christian who did not constantly betray his or her religion.  “Sell all you have and give it to the poor.” Christianity, if the Gospels are taken seriously, is a religion of pacifism and self-sacrifice.  How many Christians do that?  Hardly any.  Most Christians, just like most Muslims, behave like regular people.

However, just now, the mosts are not equal.  Most Muslims is not all of them.  Most Christians pretty much is.  And there is also the little fact that Christians living up to - or down to - the demands of Christianity ruins only them.  It doesn’t threaten others, unless the Christians in question have power and are hence screwing with other people’s lives when they suddenly decide to indulge in their Fundamentalist Christianity and to take the self-ruining Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously.  Those Christians, of the sort that President Bush is rumoured to be or at least to favour and consort with, who say that Christianity is a license for them to conquer the Middle East or whatever, can easily be demolished by referring them to the words of their founder.  Christianity absolutely does not verbally manoevre all other Christians into agreeing with such plans.  Quite the contrary.

Dalrymple again, just before that end bit above:

The specific (and baleful) contribution of Islam is that, by attributing sovereignty solely to God, and by pretending in a philosophically primitive way that God’s will is knowable independently of human interpretation, and therefore of human interest and desire - in short by allowing nothing to human as against divine nature - it tries to abolish politics. All compromises become mere truces; there is no virtue in compromise in itself. Thus Islam is inherently an unsettling and dangerous factor in world politics, independently of the actual conduct of many Muslims.

Just like Soviet Communism and its imitations, in other words, only this time, a billion people really believe in this crap, or at least tell themselves that they do.

What a ghastly moment it must be for a Muslim when it dawns on him that what he thought was merely some pleasing rituals and the obligation to be a good little person is actually an unbreakable oath to fight an eternal war against un-Islam, no holds barred.

Islam is the enemy.  And Average Joe Muslim, simply by repeating the mantras, strengthens Islam.  I would not now favour the expulsion of all Muslims from my country.  But I can easily imagine circumstances in which I would favour this.  But this is not because I am a monster.  It is because Islam is monstrous.

Western Civilisation, rooted in Christianity and yet utterly distinct from it, is even more monstrous, but in a quite different way.  (It is more monstrous because it is massively more powerful.) I am struggling even now with a piece called “How the West defeats its enemies”, which, you never know, I might one day, Real Soon Now, manage to finish.  It will be a scary posting.  I believe in scare-mongering.  Scare-mongering is a force for peace.  If we are all frightened of each other, we all get to live quiet lives.