The “New” Faith and the Pill of Multi-Culturalism

The epilogue [of Stanislaw Igancy Witkiewicz’s Insatiability], in a few words:
the outbreak of the war led to a meeting of the armies of the West with those of
the East. In the decisive moment, just before the great battle, the leader of
the Western army surrendered to the enemy; and in exchange, though with the
greatest of honors, he was beheaded. The Eastern army occupied the country and
the new life, that of Murti-Bingism, began.” [pg 5, The Captive Mind]

So writes Polish dissident Czeslaw Milosz in 1951. Milosz was using Witkiewicz’s story of western decadence and decay, to discuss the rise of the communist intellectuals, who abandoned all truth and beauty in art, philosophy, literature or science, in favor of dialectical materialism, which Witkiewicz describes using the metaphor of a drug, the pill of Murti-Bing, which erases all existential dread. And while the old communism has died, the description serves just as valid a purpose, for us to discuss the roles of Multi-culturalism and Islam in West.

Fjordman, in his “A Communism for the 21st Century” says:

We are told to treat cultural and historical identities as fashion accessories, shirts we can wear and change at will. The Multicultural society is “colorful,” an adjective normally attached to furniture or curtains. Cultures are window decorations of little or no consequence, and one might as well have one as the other. In fact, it is good to change it every now and then. Don’t you get tired of that old sofa sometimes? What about exchanging it for the new sharia model? Sure, it’s slightly less comfortable than the old one, but it’s very much in vogue these days and sets you apart from the neighbors, at least until they get one, too.

These issues of culture, of theology, of right and wrong, they are all interchangeable, we are told by the Multi-culturalists. Which is why we aren’t more surprised when we see headlines like, “Perplexing many, Episcopal priest announces she’s a Muslim, too” (H/T Right Truth) It is not that Rev. Ann Holmes Redding is unaware that the two faiths contain tenets which are mutually exclusive. She simply doesn’t care.

It wasn’t about intellect,” she said. “All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.

In other words, Redding is a priest who approaches religion, the way I approach art, which is to mull around the gallery stupidly and than buy a print of something which catches my eye. I don’t know much, but I know what I like. Of course the question is why Redding picked, “the new sharia model?” If all faiths and cultures are equal, why Islam, and not Buddhism, or Sikhism, or (however unlikely) actual Christianity?

She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to
God, the meaning of the word “Islam.”

Whether Rev. Redding’s surrender will see a better outcome than the leader of the Western Army remains to be seen, but the impulse to surrender is the same. Because while she is supposedly a Christian, Redding’s actual faith is the New Faith of Multiculturalism, which is really No Faith. And one cannot resist something with nothing. Indeed, whether Rev. Redding realizes it or not, she probably appreciates the great moral certainty which religion (an actual religion and not a mish mash feel-goodisms) creates. And Islam is filled with certainty about its own superiority and eventual triumph. Take a glance at some other converts to Islam from the West. Says one Slovakian Woman:

I tried to live according to my parents' teachings: listen but don't pay
attention (thank God, I never subscribed to this point of view but had developed
my own principles instead: listen, think and make your own opinion). This
enabled a contradictory situation within me that led to a sub-conscientious hunt
for the truth on what was the cause, the source. Thank God, my 'investigation'
didn't take long. Immediately after reading first publications on Islam, I found
it. I decided fast indeed: the faith I really wanted, it's the faith, the belief
in one and only God, The Almighty.

An open mind is soon filled. Says another:

Strangely, I never liked the smell of burning candles, nor the general
"atmosphere" in an Orthodox Church. In a typical Orthodox Church in my country
there are no benches and when there was the time for the sermon, people used to
push to be closer to the altar. During the sermon, your legs would hurt so much,
until a point when you couldn't concentrate on the sermon anymore… It was at the
local Islamic center, in a building with a beautiful minaret, on the seaside!
Amazingly enough, since I moved to Qatar (where I now live), I always admired
the building; it's simply breathless to me. I thought it was only a mosque, but
when later I found out it was actually an Islamic center with a Shari`ah court,
I made a promise to myself that if or when I would ever take the Shahadah, it
would be in that beautiful building.

Looks like Fjordman got it wrong. Its not just a sharia couch, it’s a whole building. And finally, my favorite, former neo-nazi, Abdul Aziz Myatt:

I marveled at the life of Muhammad and at the spread of Islam — at how those
early Muslims, once "rough and ready" nomads, had through only the words, deeds
and revelations of the Prophet, created perhaps the most civilized civilization
there has ever been.

One wonders which words and deeds of Mohammad and his merry band of “rough and ready nomads” most appeal to Myatt? Perhaps this one:

Then they surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of B. al-Najjar. Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent
for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches. Among them was the enemy of Allah Huyayy b. Akhtab and Ka`b b. Asad their chief. There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900. As they were being taken out in batches to the apostle they asked Ka`b what he thought would be done with them. He replied, 'Will you never understand? Don't you see that the summoner never stops and those who are taken
away do not return? By Allah it is death!' This went on until the apostle made an end of them.

At the Collapse of Europe Conference last week, Mark Steyn told the story of a jailed white supremacist (who may have been Myatt, he didn’t say), who converted to Islam, saying. “It turned out he wasn’t that big on the white part, it was the supremacy bit he liked.” Whether the conversion experience comes from a desire to submit [Redding], or the need to dominate [Myatt] in reality both are symptoms of the same societal illness. Eric Hoffer, in “The True Believer,” writes,

“To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than
freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief
from the burdens of willing, deciding, and being responsible for inevitable
failure.” [118]

For the racist fascist, it was an easy step from “no races or cultures are of value besides mine,” to, “no races or cultures are of value.” and for the multi-culturalist, “all cultures are equal” means also that “all cultures are meaningless.” This multi-culturalism, which is really nihil-culturalism, leaves its subscribers identity-less. Is it a surprise when they reassume an identity, they select one which offers power and superiority over those who do not have it? Gogol’s madman says in his diary, “Today is a day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That King is me.”[189]

What comfort it must be to encounter a system (spiritual, political, cultural) which says in essence, “whereas your previous identity was worthless, submit, and through that submission you will be a part of something which will have dominion.” The radical Islamist ideology does this, as did Communism and Nazism before it. So it is no surprise that it is the Leaders of the West who have quaffed the poison pill of multi-culturalism. That the nomeklatura of the No Faith is a laundry list of Pseudo-intellectuals, bureaucratic idlers and failed artists, who actually perceive identity as something so fluid and meaningless that it can be lost in the first place? In the asylum there are plenty of Napoleons, but very few Popeyes. I am what I am’s. As the intellectual armies of the East and West engage in a battle of ideas our strongest defenders have been not professors or writers sequestered in ivory towers pondering what the meaning of is, is, but every day people who have not surrendered the full use of their faculties to the metaphysical opiate contained in the pill of Murti-Bing.