Bill Clinton, along with co-author James Patterson, has written a thriller. The plot of The President is Missing concerns the uncovering of a cyberterror attack that threatens all of America. President Duncan’s problems are compounded by a possible impeachment for having held a telephone conversation with “the most dangerous and prolific cyberterrorist in the world—a man named Sulliman Cindoruk, the leader of a group called ‘Sons of Jihad.’”
“Ah,” you may be thinking, “the Muslim connection!” But not so fast. As President Duncan informs us, “He’s Turkish-born, but he’s not Muslim.” What’s that? A Turkish jihadist who’s not Muslim? According to the Turkish State, 99 percent of Turks are Muslims. What are the chances that a non-Muslim Turk would be a jihadist leader? And—seeing that jihad is an Islamic concept—how can you have a non-Islamic form of jihad?
Does Bill Clinton really believe this nonsense? Or is he just inserting the obligatory “this-has-nothing-to-do-with-Islam” clause expected of authors who write thrillers about terror? According to the description on Amazon, “this is the most authentic, terrifying novel to come along in many years.” But to me, the most terrifying thing is that a former president of the United States may actually hold such a naïve view of Islamic terrorism. The novel might more accurately be entitled “The President is Missing the Point”.
The President is Missing is yet one more example of popular culture running interference for Islam. The story reminds me of other popular thrillers that make a point of telling the reader/viewer that terrorism has nothing to do with you know what. A few years ago Liam Neeson starred in Non-Stop, a thriller about an unidentified terrorist who begins to murder one passenger every twenty minutes on board a trans-Atlantic flight. Who is the terrorist? To throw you off track, the filmmakers first cast suspicion on a Muslim doctor wearing Muslim garb and a full beard. Of course, if you’re foolish enough to believe he is the culprit, it just goes to show what an unsophisticated “Islamophobe” you are. As it turns out, the doctor is one of the heroes of the story, and the real terrorist is an American combat veteran.
A similar switcheroo occurred in 2002, when Paramount released The Sum of All Fears, a thriller based on Tom Clancy’s 1991 novel of the same name. In the book, Palestinian terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb in Denver at the Super Bowl. In the movie, the terrorists are transformed into neo-Nazis. That may be because the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) launched a two-year lobbying campaign against using Muslims villains in the film version.
Over in Europe, they’re having similar problems with fiction that comes in conflict with the politically correct fiction that Islam has nothing to do with anything bad. Michel Houellebecq, the author of Submission, an entirely plausible novel about the Islamization of French Universities, has come under fire for being racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic. Houellebecq is currently under 24-hour police protection—presumably, if you buy the party line about Islam—to keep him safe from all those angry book reviewers.
Another example—this one from the category of non-fiction—comes from Germany. In 2010 Thilo Sarrazin, a respected economist, wrote a book which took aim at his country’s immigration policies, especially in regard to Muslim migrants. As a result, he came in for bitter criticism, and was pushed out of his prestigious position at the Bundesbank. However, since Germany is Abolishing Itself became a best-seller, Random House again signed with Sarrazin in 2016 for a new book entitled Hostile Takeover: How Islam Hampers Progress and Threatens Society. It was scheduled to come out in early July, but at the last moment Random House changed its mind for fear that the book would stir up “Islamophobia.” All of which seems to confirm the books title: Hostile Takeover. Random House hasn’t been taken over by Islam in the full sense of the term. But it seems willing to let Islam call the shots on what kind of books can be published about Islam.
The book titles are prescient: Hostile Takeover, Submission, and to mention another entry in the death-of-Europe book club, The French Suicide (“Le Suicide Francais”) by Eric Zemmour. There have been a number of suicide-of-the-West type of books over the decades but their authors didn’t lose their jobs, require police protection, or have to dodge bullets (as in the case of Danish author, Lars Hedegaard). This time, however, the suicide seems much closer at hand.
A glaring example concerns the Bataclan Theater in Paris. On November 13, 2015 three Muslim terrorists entered the theater and opened fire on the crowd, murdering 130 people and injuring 413. When the theater reopened a year later, the musician Sting sang a song called “Inshallah”—“If it be your will, it shall come to pass,” or simply, “Allah willing.” For the second anniversary of the attacks, smiling politicians released balloons outside the theater. For the upcoming third anniversary of the massacre, the theater management has scheduled an Islamic rap concert featuring an “artist” named Medine (after Medina) whose “lyrics are filled with hatred towards non-Muslims, France, and the West.” One of his most popular songs is called “jihad.”
If you instinctively think of this as an outrage, you’re not alone. According to Professor Guy Milliere:
Organizations representing the families of the Bataclan victims said that an Islamic rap concert praising jihad, in a place where people were murdered and tortured by jihadists, would be an insult to the memory of the victims, and asked that the concert be cancelled.
But Milliere, an authority on French culture and politics thinks it unlikely that the concert will be cancelled. France, he says, is already in submission mode: “Macron and the French government…speak and act as if the enemy has won and as if they want to gain some time and enjoy the moment before the final surrender.”
The situation is much the same in England. On June 3 London’s Southwark Cathedral hosted a “Grand Iftar Service” on the anniversary of last year’s London Bridge terror attack. In that attack Islamic terrorists drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, then began stabbing people in the nearby Borough Market area. Altogether they killed eight people and injured 48 others. What better way to mark the anniversary of an Islamic jihad attack than to celebrate with a “Grand Iftar Service”?
Next thing you know, Islamists and their liberal allies will want to build a large Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attack. Oh wait! They’ve already tried that. Fortunately, it didn’t work out the way they hoped. But elsewhere, cultural jihad has been a great success. Not a day goes by without a half-dozen new examples of capitulation to Islamic cultural demands. Textbook publishers whitewash Islamic history. Lectures that might be offensive to Islam are cancelled. A college library cautions students not to wish others a “Merry Christmas.” KFC stores in Australia refuse to sell bacon in their sandwiches. Swimming pools are segregated to accommodate Muslim wishes. Santa Lucia Day celebrations in Sweden are cancelled lest Muslims take offense, European Jews are advised not to wear kippahs in public, and Muslim rape gang activities in England are covered up by the authorities for fear of seeming racist.
The escalating submission to Islam has three causes.
First and foremost, is simple fear. Publishers remember what happened at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and they don’t want it to happen to them. Theater owners saw what happened at the Bataclan Theater and the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, and they reason that prudence is the better part of valor.
The second factor that contributes to the submission is a genuine desire to be tolerant and welcoming, combined with a genuine naiveté about Islam. Even at this late stage, there are still many people who believe that if Europeans just tried harder to be nice to Muslim migrants, everything would work out fine.
The third factor is cultural shame. Like others in the West, Europeans have been taught that their culture has a record of predation unmatched in history. To many, Western culture doesn’t seem worth defending. They’ve lost faith in their culture and, in a great many cases, they’ve lost faith in Christianity. The only faith they have left is in relativism. And if, as relativists claim, one culture is as good as another, what difference does it make if Islam takes over? Life will still go on as usual. Won’t it?
Ironically, Catholic leaders and Catholic activists are often in the forefront of those who seem to have lost faith in their culture. They decry nationalism (which, in Europe, often involves a defense of Christian culture), while promoting a utopian universalism which not only asserts that all men are equal before God, but also that all cultures and belief systems are equally good.
Thus, Catholic leaders, while still affirming the wrongness of individual suicide, have become intimately involved in Europe’s cultural suicide. They continue to encourage mass Muslim migration at a point in time where other European leaders are abandoning the idea post haste. Street priests, nuns, and missionaries backed by bishops and heads of communities organize street protests against Italy’s new, more stringent migrant policies. Others help Muslims build mosques to show their community spirit. And one Italian bishop says he is ready to “turn all the churches into mosques” if it were useful to the cause of Muslim migration.
One wonders what Church leaders would do if St. Peters were bombed by Islamic jihadists. Would they host a “Grand Iftar Service” at the site on the anniversary of the event as a sign of their continued solidarity with Islam? Don’t dismiss the idea as preposterous and unthinkable. We live in strange times.
This article originally appeared in the July 26, 2018 edition of Catholic World Report.
Photo credit: Bataclan Theater, media.nu.nl
