https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-civilizational-masochism-of-the-west/
Last week, Joe Biden issued a schoolmarmish warning to Israel, which he has been browbeating for months to placate his party’s anti-Israel left and Muslim American voters in Michigan, a critical swing state. Speaking to the press, he threatened, “There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan – if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.”
This solicitude for Muslims’ sensitivity about their faith bespeaks the West’s long bad habit of caring more about Islam––the faith that conquered and occupied, and to this day still occupies, much of the Christian Roman and Byzantine empires––than they do about their own civilization’s foundational religion, whose adherents today are being persecuted and massacred in Islamic lands.
This cultural tic does not demonstrate, as many “citizen of the world” globalists believe, a superior morality based on both an uncritical tolerance for the exotic “other,” and a haughty disdain for alleged parochial American nationalism and jingoist patriotism. Rather, it signals to the world a civilizational failure of nerve so widespread and intense that it has become a form of geopolitical masochism, manifested in conspicuous displays of cringing apologetics and shameful guilt for the West’s alleged historical sins.
For example, Biden’s foreign policy crew, products of this ruling class sensibility, seem to think that Muslims view Ramadan the way Christians do Easter, and so will be deeply offended by Israel besmirching this sacred time by continuing to fight. Actually, as Bassam Tawil writes, “‘In the holy month of Ramadan,’ according to fatwa 1566/10013/L=1431, ‘the reward of virtues is increased.’” And martyrdom while waging jihad against infidels is a theological virtue par excellence.