Why Abduct Us When We Cede Our Values For Free
Sun-Times ^ | September 3, 2006 | MARK STEYN
Posted on 09/29/2006 4:46:58 PM PDT

Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism.

Consider, for example, the bizarre behavior of Reuters, the once globally respected news agency now reduced to putting out laughably inept terrorist propaganda. A few days ago, it made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But this moment of media fakery was ruined when his blood spattered shirt had ridden up during this photo shoot, revealing an undershirt that was spotlessly white, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga. What's stunning is not that almost all Western media organizations reporting from the Middle East are reliant on local staff overwhelmingly sympathetic to (the Muslim) side of the conflict -- that's been known for some time -- but the amateurish level of fakery that head office is willing to go along with.

Down at the other end of the news business, meanwhile, one finds items like this snippet from the Sydney Morning Herald:

"A 16-year-old girl was tailed by a car full of men before being dragged inside and assaulted in Sydney's west last night, police say . . .

"The three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark 'mullet-style' haircuts."

Three men with "mullet-style" hair, huh? (The poison of political correctness at work that the enemy can no longer be named –for fear or legal action by the insane laws that were drawn up to protect people from the damage of words and opinions, demeaning words and prejudicial words – but these absent words in fenuinized and liberal western governments around the world are taking greater and greater meaning in government and law enforcement and doing exactly what they were designed to do – that is to hamstring western law enforcement and justice in their supposedly unjust prosecution of minorities in the 1970’s 80’s and 90’s.) Not much to go on there. Bit of a head scratcher. But, as it turned out, the indefatigable Sydney Morning Herald typist had faithfully copied out every salient detail of the police report except one. Here's the statement the coppers themselves issued:

"Police are seeking three men described as being of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance, with dark 'mullet-style' hair cuts."

That additional detail narrows it down a bit, wouldn't you say? The only reason I know that is because the Aussie Internet maestro Tim Blair grew curious about the epidemic of incidents committed by men of no known appearance and decided to look into it. One can understand the agonies the politically correct multicultural journalist must go through, distressed at the thought that an infelicitous phrasing might perpetuate unfortunate stereotypes of young Muslim males. But, even so, it's quite a leap to omit the most pertinent fact and leave the impression the Sydney constabulary are combing the city for mullets. The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby wrote the other day about how American children's books are "sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness." But there seems to be quite a lot of that in the grown-up comics, too. And, as I've said before, it's never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. There may come a time when you need it.

It's striking how, for all this alleged multiculti sensitivity, we're mostly entirely insensitive to other cultures: We find it all but impossible to imagine how differently they view the world. Go back to that video in which Fox's Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig announced their conversion to Islam. The moment the men were released, the Western media and their colleagues wrote off the scene as a stunt, a cunning ruse, of no more consequence than yelling "Behind you! He's got a gun!" and then kicking your distracted kidnapper in the teeth. Indeed, a few Web sites seemed to see the Islamic conversion routine as a useful get-out-of-jail-free card.

Don't bet on it. In my forthcoming book, I devote a few pages to a thriller I read as a boy -- an old potboiler by Sherlock Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1895 Sir Arthur had taken his sick wife to Egypt for her health, and, not wishing to waste the local color, produced a slim novel called The Tragedy of the Korosko, about a party of Anglo-American-French tourists taken hostage by the Mahdists, the jihadi of the day. Much of the story finds the characters in the same predicament as Centanni and Wiig: The kidnappers are offering them a choice between Islam or death. Conan Doyle's Britons and Americans and Europeans were men and women of the modern world even then:

"None of them, except perhaps Miss Adams and Mrs. Belmont, had any deep religious convictions. All of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol upon the earth represented."

"That symbol" is the cross. Yet in the end, even as men with no religious convictions, they cannot bring themselves to submit to Islam, for they understand it to be not just a denial of Christ but in some sense a denial of themselves, too. So they stall and delay and bog down the imam in a lot of technical questions until eventually he wises up and they're condemned to death.

One hundred ten years later, for the Fox journalists and the Western media who reported their release, what's the big deal? Wear robes, change your name to Khaled, go on camera and drop Allah's name hither and yon: If that's your ticket out, seize it. Everyone'll know it's just a sham.

But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade. In his new book The Conservative Soul, attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one, Time magazine's gay Tory Andrew Sullivan enthuses, "By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live -- now, which is the only time that matters." That's almost a literal restatement of Faust's bargain with the devil: (This is what the church has done over decades with its “live and let it live” with the lost around them – instead of reaching out and speaking of our love of this great salvation to all of those around us --believers have been cowed into silence – and we have received a Pay Day for this sin and disobedience – the Pay Day is virtually no Christians today in Government and so in particular humanists, secularists, feminists, have taken the vacuum left by the church and created nations in their own image and likeness and of coarse these nations are gutted to defend themselves from enemies from within and without. In the US and Canada there is still time for repentance – this involved moving against the shuttered silence about God that has been created by political correctness and speaking openly about Christ and secondly in Christian household refusing to go down the path of destruction of population control but having a household full of well-educated healthy God fearing children. And with an exponential increase in believers that will all need jobs these will eventually take the positions in education and government that they have vacated over the last 3-4 decades.)

"When to the moment I shall say

'Linger awhile! so fair thou art!'

Then mayst thou fetter me straightway

Then to the abyss will I depart!"

In other words, if Faust becomes so enthralled by "the moment" that he wants to live in it forever, the devil will have him for all eternity. In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions -- that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.

A few years ago in more than one article we noted that in a fairly recent development in today’s preachers and teachers – there was no love for God so much so that they can not wait to pass on to go to heaven – There instead is a fear of death – they declare that death is of the devil and seek with all their strength and material wealth to defeat and thwart it.

In Revelation the risen and ascended Christ declares: I am He that Liveth and was dead and behold I am alive for evermore, Amen! And I have the KEYS OF HELL AND OF DEATH.

The meaning of this is that death is not of the devil – and the resistance and fear of it is ungodly. And further if Christ in his love gave his life for you and he has commanded that every disciple of His is also to be so willing to give his life for those who hate and despise them – what then are we walking in? The salvation and walk that is preached in this day is preached, one of not caring or loving your neighbor as your self, definitely not loving and caring for those that hate and despise you, and being in abject fear of those who would do violence and kill with the sword – so the Christians fear, they cut and run and hide all over North Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia – All of these in the end analysis have a religion that is not worth dying for.

And this is utterly different than the Gospel Christ preached and the Gospel the Apostles preached and understood to their very lives.

Today arrogant Christian zealots see to rule and control their governments by political force – which is forbidden by Christ himself in the Gospels – you cannot be His disciples and do these things. If these arrogant “activists” were to put this energy into preaching the gospel to the poor in their own communities and seek to take care of their needs they would gain something honorable in this life towards the next. But instead they seek the rule and control of the Pharisees. With their opposing rabbinical schools seeking preeminence over each other. Their faith is a cold calculated faith – filled with covert manipulation behind the scenes, it is a faith that they themselves are not willing to die for -- and therefore their disciples taken by their same selfishness are unwilling to do so either,

Just like the war on Terror -- If we as believers will not go out to the enemy and preaching to the laying down of our lives -- the enemy will come to our gates to overthrow and destroy us.

The duty of every Christian is the same duty as every man and woman in the US military does every day to defend this nation. Other than true believers giving service to our country and people by putting their lives on the line as part of their duty – so also we are to fight our warfare as the church not with carnal weapons but with the word of God and the shield of faith and go where these liberal feminized preachers of this day and their disciples would not care to go or would fear to tread.

The word of the Lord is very plain -- Either true believers in the church rise up to this call or they shall be utterly consumed by the enemy that they fear.

Europe is the model of what the church in this country walks in and sadly the US Military, the British and the Australian military are more dedicated to the values of God and country and household than the bible believing churches and Spirit-filled congregations in these same countries.

Awake! Open you eyes, see, and understand.