John Quincy Adams had Islam's number

Neo-neocon is the kind of blogger you need to settle in and make time for. She is old-school and and has old-school assumptions about her readers. That is to say, she prefers the long, link-and-excerpt-rich blog post, and she often digs up documents and screeds that clearly show that she has a lot of leisure time. She doesn't generally do the drive-by soundbite-type of opining so characteristic of our high-pressure, multi-task age.

But it's worth one's while to stop by on occasion, as she digs up some gems.

She has a post that takes the historical perspective on the point I was making in the LITD post right below this one: Islam is weird and non-Western. Read the whole thing to take in her point, but what I'll excerpt here is an 1830 snippet from John Quincy Adams that sounds like to could have been written by Andrew McCarthy, Pamela Gellar, or Robert Spencer.

Herewith:

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. …He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between [Islam and Christianity]…a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him…(Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.)….

The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force (Blunt, 29:274)

So, the question for us, some 185 years later, is, do we want large enclaves of folks so inclined all over our land?

 All you diversity freaks, please explain something: What's the upside?

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