In his latest post over st SteynOnline, Mark Steyn was kind enough to quote your Humble Dispatcher:
Re the accelerating Islamization of Europe, Bob Belvedere over at the Camp of the Saints has an interesting aside:
People like the Koch Brothers should really be forming paramilitary units for the purposes of rescuing what European Treasures they can, such as the aforementioned Throne [of Charlemagne], the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David and Pieta, Magna Carta, etc.
Put Magna Carta to one side for the moment, since the document is a mere souvenir of the idea, and it’s the idea that matters, which is why some of us are still writing books on the subject (personally autographed copies exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore [BOB: I bought a copy and it is a fine read]).
But the notion of commando teams rescuing what’s left of western art from the Eurabian night struck me a year or so back as I was watching a rather undernourished George Clooney flick, The Monuments Men, about art experts rescuing great paintings marooned behind enemy lines during World War Two. In the first chapter of his very prescient book The West’s Last Chance, written before the Mohammed cartoon eruptions, the late Tony Blankley contemplates a European future in which firebreathing imams incite art wars on whatever’s to hand — Michelangelo’s “Little David” gets blown up in Florence, Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve are attacked with acid, a car bomb explodes outside the Rodin museum… More and more of the surviving works are carted off to “secure” storage facilities, never to be seen in public again.
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
Islamic State militants have killed three captives in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra by tying them to columns and blowing them up, activists say.
The identities of those reportedly killed on Sunday have yet to be given.
But they are thought to be the first to have been killed in that way since the jihadist group seized the ruins in May.
IS has destroyed two 2,000-year-old temples, an arch and funerary towers at Palmyra, one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world.
The group believes that such structures are idolatrous. The UN cultural agency, Unesco, has condemned the destruction as a war crime.
Given the number of actual flesh-and-blood people being slaughtered by ISIS, some folks say they can’t see the point of complaining about the destruction of architectural and artistic treasures. But there is method to the Islamic State’s madness. As part of its cultural totalitarianism, Islam has a long track record, wherever it sets foot, of obliterating the pre-Islamic past. Why? To ensure there’s nothing to go back to. There can be no return to greatness, because there is no longer any record of that greatness — only a void that Mohammed filled. In the past, there is desert. In the present, there is only Islam. And so, in the future, for want of any alternative, there can only be Islam.
Wherever Islam achieves Power And Control it takes one of three actions regarding those things the conquered people hold sacred / dear:
1) It destroys them for the exact reasons Mark cites;
2) It ransoms them to raise money to support and expand their Jihad; and
3) It converts some of the buildings into Mosques.
The Mohammedins will destroy those buildings, documents, and works of art that are of no use to them or whose destruction, they believe, will add significantly to the Demoralization of the Conquered and their Allies.
The conversion of a building held sacred by a beaten people into a Mosque creates very powerful symbol of the Might of Islam and, therefore, is designed to Demoralize and send a warning to those who are considering recapturing their taken lands and, also, to Demoralize and put Fear into the Hearts and Minds of those Allies that will, it is hoped, cause them to seek to appease the Muslims.
Of course, no deal ever struck with the Mohammedins is worth the paper it is printed on because Allah allows his Children to lie to Infidels in order to obtain time to gather strength for the next phase of Jihad [Taqiyya, anyone?].
When a work of art or sacred document is deemed to be of no significant use to the Jihadists, it is often ransomed, so that the Infidels indirectly end-up funding the Jihad against them. After all: to the Muslim, since the destruction of the Infidels will be completed at some point, they’ll eventually be able to destroy those items anyway.
This is who the Muslims are; this is what they do.
Too many in The West still refuse to see and accept this Truth, to face the Reality that Islam is at War with us and thinks this way.
And — make no mistake — the Mohammedins see this conflict as a War Of Extermination.
