Do Not Apologize

This'd make a Guardian reader choke on their muesli (via):

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.

Comments

[SnoopyTheGoon]

Aside of a too idyllic view of the British colonial rule (while he is correct about the benefits, he is a bit too humble about the downside), a good article, by a graduate of Islamic school, no less!

[Fabián]

This phrase "Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers?" resonated within me. I remembered "do we (Jews) have to apologize for killing Jesus?". Maybe it is not related at all, it was just a feeling.