Raymond Ibrahim, in Chronicles of Higher Education, writes of the Two Faces of Al Qaeda -- the one meant for Western eyes and the one for Islamic eyes. This parallels an observation made by Father Mark Gruber, O.S.B. as he saw, and heard, the anti-infidel teaching of the young in Egypt.At Suicide of the West, Mark Gordon echoes Robert Spencer's inference that Islam itself is no religion of "peace," but only on its own terms as it subjugates others in its "Pax Islamica," so to speak. In response to a comment I made, Mark stated, "Harkening back to the Pinkerton piece, we need an aggressive Shire Strategy that recaptures the civilizational momentum of the West. But this requires a rediscovery of our identity as a Christian people, and that may never happen."
Here in Virginia, Governor Tim Kaine saw the light and accepted the resignation of a Muslim whom he appointed earlier to the Virginia Commission on Immigration. As LGF reported and provided Youtube footage, one Dr. Esam Omeish, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood front group calling itself the Muslim American Society, has stated, “...you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land." Well, says you.
The Holy Father, in my estimation, will give us both the grounding and a model for how the faithful are to work toward a renewed and healthy Christian West. Personally, Pinkerton's "Shire Strategy" (cf. above) holds the best hope to my way of thinking. But it would be naive and simplistic to think it will happen without conflict or confrontations. Advocates of Jihad, like my neighbor Dr. Omeish, know that the borders of "Pax Islamica" have always been bloody. Unless the necessity of chivalric legitimate defense [Catechism Nos. 263-2267] is totally abdicated, there will need to be an honorable practice of the cardinal and theological virtues among Christian men. Not in doubling rivalry with a foe; but in a sad but necessary defense of all that is still good in the world. Chivalry will become a fierce yet gentle practice once again.
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My emphasis on fierceness as well as gentleness come from the perception that men in the West have been paralyzed by several mitigating factors: (1) guilt and remorse due to a largely unconscious rejection of the infusing grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Nothing is so enervating as the slough of despair brought on by not allowing God to forgive and set free to use ALL of our God-given emotions (yes, including anger) with discipline and virtue. Secular man is a pitiable shell of what we were created and redeemed to be imago dei. (2) The Satanic cows the Western secular man due to an utter lack of "eschatological horizon," as our friend Gil Bailie says. Western man avoids the "sting of death," well, like the plague. Sadly, it is only when we cannot avoid such scenarios -- think the heroism of 9/11/01 -- that our true selves show themselves and what we are capable of doing. (3) Western man, far from being a-theist are unlabeled GNOSTICS who live in dream-lives, victims of what novelist Walker Percy diagnosed as "angelism". They come down once in a long while in "bestialism" moments such as grosser forms of sexuality and sensuality (masturbation, fornication, adultery, SSA, airport stall/anonymous sex, etc.) just to remind themselves that they not only have bodies, but that they are bodies -- but not for long.
The Doctrine of the Incarnation is an even greater neglected understanding of human beings in the delapidated West than that the Resurrection.
It is in stories like this that we need to begin to turn the tide.
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