Argumentum ad Cultro
THE WORD ‘ISLAM’ IS RARELY SPOKEN THESE DAYS. In situations where it should be necessary to
talk, for example, about its moral justification for violence, rape, Gaza and
societal change, euphemisms are used and ellipsis is commonplace. Where once Islam could be discussed in
forums, lectures and seminars as well as pub and dinner-table conversations,
the Overton Window has closed. Yet Islam
is effecting a reversal of the West’s moral progress, and those who, like me,
wish to bring attention to this cannot make headway because commentary is
increasingly discouraged. How? I have a theory…
In Stage 1 psychology I learnt about ‘operant conditioning’, whereby behaviour
could be controlled by using reward and punishment. A sub-function of this was ‘intermittent
reinforcement’ in which reward and punishment could be applied at irregular
occasions and achieve the desired result with less intervention. The subject is aware of good and bad
behaviour and internalises it for maximum reward and minimum punishment. Ironically, in education the far Left has
maximised reward for minimal effort and minimised punishment to the point where
control is lost. But that’s another
issue.
Generally, in Western societies punishment is no longer physical. It tends to be limited to incarceration,
fines, public shame and forms of restitution.
This is not the case in Islam since the rules for Muslims’ behaviour are
those laid down in the Koran and hadiths, from the tribal desert culture of 7th
century Arabia. Since these are dictated
by God or by Muhammad’s actions, they cannot be changed.
And thus it is with violence. When God says,
“And slay them wherever you come upon them…” [2:191] Muslims are obliged to comply, and comply they
do. Cutting off heads, knifing people,
mowing people down with vehicles, machine-gunning and bombing, the list goes on
and on. This is punishment for the
non-believer, but not every one of them, just a few. It is intermittent reinforcement in action,
and results in implicit fear.
There is a phrase in studies of logic called ‘argumentum ad baculum’, a fallacy
which means argue with the cudgel rather than with the subject under
discussion. It’s a threat, plain and
simple. However, God says, “I will throw
fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve.” And Muslims are obliged to “then
smite their necks…” [8:12, 47:4]. Not with a cudgel, but with a knife, so to
coin a phrase to suit Islam’s intermittent punishment, it should be ‘argumentum
ad cultro’. We in the West are, after
all, in Islam’s domain of war and this is how it is fought.
IMPLICIT FEAR IS A WONDROUS TOOL. This
is the real Islamophobia - the fear of offending Muslims, and offended Muslims can
be extremely violent. The occasional
beheading or knifing reminds people that Islam’s punishment for blasphemy is
death, and since blasphemy is hard to define, no-one makes comment. In the Islamic world, punishment works top-down. Courts routinely jail or hang perpetrators,
or the police permit mobs to attack suspects.
The Christian world hasn’t killed blasphemers for centuries and the application
of relevant laws is lax, which suits the public’s secular inclinations. But for fundamentalists, Islamic law is
universal. The doctrine of hisbah,
‘command right and forbid wrong’ [9:71, 3:110, 3:114, 7:199, 9:112] obliges
action by Muslims in the doctrine of fard al-‘ayn, individual
responsibility. This is bottom-up
punishment in what I’ve termed ‘retributive subsidiarity’, the obligation of
each Muslim to impose the will of Allah and punish infractions, operating at
the lowest practical social level.
Even so, the level at which such control operates is rising. Lawyer Lucy Rogers counter-protested an
Auckland pro-Palestine march with an improvised sign and was told to move on by
the police, despite the right of Kiwis to peaceful protest. She was arrested for ‘breach of the peace and
failure to comply with the lawful instructions of a police officer’, alleging
she was ‘attempting to “antagonise” the crowd and their role during protests
was to uphold the law.’ A police officer
can be heard telling Rogers the pro-Palestine protesters were “going to get
upset [with the sign] and then it’s going to start a riot”. Similar things are happening in Europe with ‘two-tier
policing’. One result is that Muslims’ assertiveness
increases. This can lead to aggressive
assertion, thence to assertive aggression.
This is what Islamic conquest looks like – authorities are doing the
fundamentalists’ jobs for them.
GIVEN IMPLICIT FEAR, Westerners are increasingly describing themselves as ‘Christian-adjacent’
or ‘cultural Christian’ which is a back-door way of saying Islam is toxic and
taking over the West without saying “Islam”.
It’s a code phrase, or as Jews have termed it in the past, a shibboleth,
signifying outsiders from the prevailing world view. Our personal, professional and political
lives are shaped by the fear of what other people think. Adding qualifiers to ‘Christian’ is deemed
wise, since Christianity is considered below the salt for the professional
managerial class.
