Latest / The Catholic Current / The Left’s Love for Islam (Dimpee Brar) 5/12/26

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The Left’s Love for Islam (Dimpee Brar) 5/12/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Fr. Robert McTague
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This is starting to sound familiar, almost 30 years later, that we don't have anything
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really specific and concrete to say to the world, but the world might have a few ideas
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for us.
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That can't be the Church's mission, can it?
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It's not the Church's mission.
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Jesus told the apostles, go out and baptize all nations.
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Catholicism is God's truth, which liberates you from the twin evils of sin and ignorance.
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Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, through the intercession
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of St. Ignatius Solo, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit
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of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
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Well, friends, we are touching upon a sensitive topic today.
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Some might even say incendiary.
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If you've seen protests recently, there are people carrying strange signs, things like,
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you know, queers for Palestine.
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And it also seems to me rather odd that people who are very left of center, anti-patriarchal,
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anti-heteronormativity, atheistic communists, etc., seem to be really buddy-buddy with militant
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forms of Islam, and it's been called the Red-Green Alliance.
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And I ask, why and how is this happening?
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And I found someone whose work indicates to me that she may know the answer.
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She is the Director of Engagement for Allies for a Strong Canada, and she has written extensively
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The Federalist, Daily Wire, Western Standard, others.
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And she appears on podcasts, and now she is appearing on mine.
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Dimpy Brar, welcome to The Catholic Current.
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Thank you so much, Fr.
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McTague.
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It is a pleasure to be here with you today.
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Oh, you're very kind.
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I want to start with an article that you published in The Federalist last month, and it's called
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Why Islam Seeks Shelter Under the Banner of the Left.
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It would seem to me that leftists wouldn't have much patience with Islam.
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I mean, Islam is not known to be pro-feminist, it's not pro-homosexual, it's patriarchy,
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it's religious, it's traditional.
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What's going on?
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I think fundamentally this is a case of having a shared common enemy, and quite often having
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a shared common enemy isn't enough, except when that major common enemy is Western civilization
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itself.
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What the left and Islam, I believe, share in common is a total hatred of the West.
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Now we understand, those of us who are more religious, or subscribe at least to the particular
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religious inheritance that comes through Western civilization, of which is Judaism
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and Christianity, formed around or centered around Genesis, we are accustomed to taking
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for granted the idea that men are created in the image of God.
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This is such a radical idea in the history of human thought, and it has succeeded and
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been victorious for so many generations, that we again have taken it for granted.
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However, we forget that for many of those outside of the West, this is one of the greatest
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enemies to their existence and their ways of life.
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When you believe that life is determined by birth, caste, some other accident of geography,
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then you are going to hate and despise all things equality.
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That is a leveling which you will not be able to tolerate.
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Right.
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There is a universalism to Christianity that people can't countenance.
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You know, with Jesuit missionaries in India, which has a very strong caste system, and
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some people were just designated by fate to be the untouchables, and you could kick them
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and beat them, and that would be fine, or you could subjugate your enemies, or you could
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use women only as broodmares.
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And wherever Christian missionaries went, we stopped child sacrifice, we educated children,
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we educated women, and then we developed things like the rule of law and private property
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and so on.
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And so the leftists hate Christianity because it doesn't give primacy to this world, or
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the party, or the state, or the dear leader.
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And Islam hates Christianity because it says that Christianity is disrespectful because
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of the intimacy.
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We agree with Islam, God is absolutely transcendent and he's just, but because of the incarnation
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he's also intimate.
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So there's a preciousness to human life that is worth defending, that neither leftists
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or I think Islam can countenance.
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So can we give some examples of where Islam seems to be in ascendance in the West?
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I did a quick scan, apparently the mayors of nearly every major city in Britain is Muslim
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now.
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What do you make of that?
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Well this is again something that is unprecedented in the history of the West.
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If you were to have told someone 100 years ago that the twin cities of New York City
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and London would be occupied by an Islamic mayor, they probably would have laughed in
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your face.
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They would have thought that that would have been something preposterous, a contradiction
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in terms.
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The fact that we have reached this point is to me one of the most terrifying aspects of
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the reality and the war that's really being waged against the West.
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We for so long have looked towards Europe and thought, okay, they're being conquered,
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but we didn't think it would get this close.
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And for it to be the two largest cosmopolitan cities, financial cities and financial heights
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and political centers, this is something that is proving to be exceptionally dangerous,
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especially because they have come into power through the left's machinery.
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You see, the left has made a kind of covenant with Islam and it has its own vanity that
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they are flattering.
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So the left has three reasons in particular that they think they can work with Islam.
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First, they are flattered by the notion that what they would consider, although they wouldn't
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say this out loud, to the left, as you noted earlier, Islam seems the quote unquote backwards
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nation of all nations in terms of their views of things, in terms of their leftist ideology.
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However, that to them, to the left, suggests that this is really the truth of their universal
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principles of the leftists, that even this people can agree to them or mouth the same
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moral vocabulary.
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Secondly, it also flatters itself that it can control Islam, that Islam is going to
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be more raw material for its emancipatory project like all others.
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And the third nastiest form, the one that's the most difficult to confront, which I do
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believe is now happening here in the West, is that the left uses Islam as a kind of proletariat
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auxiliary militia.
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Islam supplies the kind of belief and will and hatred of the West that our academics
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only really gesture and posture at, whereas they are willing to take action on that.
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And as one knows from any cursory glance at military history, it's very difficult to
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shoot or attack on people that look like you, that sound like you, that speak like you do.
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It is not difficult when it comes from a people that use itself as already foreign
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and alien, and therefore does not have the same obstacles in its path to destroy, killing,
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murdering.
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You know, I think it was Lenin who had referred to different groups as useful idiots, that
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there were naive people who said, hey, you know, the communists, the Bolsheviks, they
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hate the people that we hate.
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Let's join forces with them.
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Something similar happened with the overthrow of the Shah in Iran in the 70s, and I'm certainly
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not in any way an apologist for the Shah, but as you observed, that after the Ayatollah
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and the leftist joined partners and they got rid of the Shah, the Ayatollah shot the leftists.
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And once Lenin used the people who he found to be useful, he shot them too.
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You know, I've had people get in my face and say that, you know, obviously as a Catholic
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and as a priest, you know, I'm a hateful person because I'm not an enthusiast for homosexual
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activity and gay marriage and so on.
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And I said, look, I'm also not throwing you off rooftops or hanging you from utility poles.
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That's something that Islam does.
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And so you better find out who your real friends are and who your real enemies are.
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And I, you know, when Islam describes itself and it describes me and then acts accordingly,
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I take that seriously.
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I know that Islam hates me because I'm a Christian, and the way that I understand Islam is that
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it really has an animus to anything that's not itself.
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And I've been told, well, you know, Father, that's the extreme.
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That's Islamism.
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That's not moderate Islam.
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But you know, I've read and interviewed scholars.
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I've had Raymond Ibrahim over here many times.
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And as I understand it, if you're a moderate Muslim, you're probably not really considered
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a good Muslim by other more ardent Islamists.
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So I think we have some challenges to face.
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Part of the charm and the appeal of Western life is there's freedom of movement.
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There used to be freedom of speech.
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And we've made ourselves rather porous, and that makes us rather vulnerable as well.
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And that's something that I want to talk about in the next segment.
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Friends, we come back.
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We're continuing our conversation about the strange red-green alliance.
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My guest today is Dimpy Barr.
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We're talking about her new article in The Federalist.
11:08
And she works for the Alliance for a Strong Canada.
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We're talking about the left's love for Islam.
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I'm trying to puzzle that out.
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My guest today is journalist Dimpy Brar, who is with Allies for a Strong Canada.
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Dimpy, is it fair to say that one of the reasons why we're so naive about Islam's intentions
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for the West is that we assume that Islam is tame and domesticated the way other religions
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are in the secular West?
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For example, no one in the United States says, oh my gosh, you can't say that.
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The Catholics will never stand for it.
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Think of what they'll do.
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You know how they get.
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No one ever says that about Catholics.
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In the secular West, as I understand it, Christians in particular, and in general, behave.
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They go to their church on their special day, and they do their special thing, and they
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acknowledge God as their mascot, and are very proud of themselves that they allow God to
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interrupt part of their weekend, and then they get on with real life, as they call it,
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as if God doesn't really, really matter.
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That's why I think the secular West is utterly unprepared for people who take religion absolutely
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seriously.
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What do you make of that analysis?
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I completely agree with that.
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One of the failures of the West is that we've really corrupted our views of what we once
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believed.
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For instance, we are the inheritors of a belief in tolerance.
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That idea of tolerance once promised us peace.
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The idea was that all religions, if they are relegated to the private sphere, will become
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matters of opinion, and since they're all equally matters of opinion, you can't persecute
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or be persecuted for it, therefore, ergo, we will have peace.
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What they did not conceive of is that our toleration was never meant to tolerate the
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intolerant.
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The hard limit of that toleration was, if you go against the idea of natural rights
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to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if you do not subordinate yourself to that,
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if you are not tolerant of that, you must leave.
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Now, Islam, for that reason, had a very difficult history in the United States, in particular,
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in becoming a source of naturalized citizens, because they understood that Islam must be
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understood as it understands itself, not the way we impose our views on it.
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Islam does not accept a distinction between private opinion, private religion, and public
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life.
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It does not accept a distinction between theology and politics, and it most certainly does not
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accept the distinction between Islam and other ways of life.
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Islam is radically, like the left, what they share in common, is radically inegalitarian.
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It believes in inequalities.
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Where the left has a hierarchy based on gender, sex, and race, where the white heterosexual
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male is at the very, very bottom, Islam has a distinction, a dualism between the infidel
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and the believer.
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And the laughable thing about this, Father, is that that idea of tolerance comes from
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a particular religious inheritance in the West.
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The West is fundamentally the product of two cities, Athens and Jerusalem.
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Athens gives us our philosophy and our reason.
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Jerusalem is our heart and our soul.
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It gives us our revelation and our God.
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And it's that unique inheritance that separates us and keeps us away.
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Unfortunately, we have degenerated our tolerance into a kind of openness that the best way
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I can describe is akin to the lotus eaters in Homer's Odyssey, you know?
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The lotus eaters just sit and eat of the lotus fruit.
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They know nothing of friends and enemies.
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They know nothing of home.
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In fact, they've lost all longing for home, their ancestral home and their inheritance.
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And as a result, what do they seek for?
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They seek for the lotus fruit, the one instrument of their own destruction, i.e., they long
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for their own annihilation.
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And I fear that that is the point at which the West is reaching.
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No, sadly, I agree with you.
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I think, look, I think back to when the European Union was founded and they were talking about,
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hey, in the preamble to the European Union Constitution, we want to talk about the sources
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of European identity.
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And it was the Polish delegates who said, hey, we noticed you didn't mention Christianity.
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And well, you know, I mean, look, even if you think Christianity is false, you really
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can't talk about Christian, you can't talk about European identity without mentioning
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Christianity.
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That would be like having a history of China without mentioning the emperor.
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So as I said, secularism is, I think, inherently leftist, and secularism hates Christianity
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because it relativizes the state and it puts limits on what one may desire because God
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makes clear for us what's good and what's not.
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So that's got to go.
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And I think Islam is saying, hey, let us help you with that.
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And we've seen this in Britain as well, but you're in Canada.
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What's taking place in Canada that you find alarming these days?
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So I like to say that Canada is not a joke.
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I've noticed that it can become the butt of jokes, but I find that laughter is a kind
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of evasion.
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And I find it incredibly important for Americans to pay attention to their neighbors for the
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North.
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You see, the left sees Canada as a northern guiding star and model.
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Everything that's tried here in Canada is what your left would love to do to America.
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And like every other Western nation, it is only ever an election away.
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So in Canada right now, we have reached a point at which our Prime Minister loudly proclaims
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that Muslim values are Canadian values, that he proclaims that.
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Oh, absolutely.
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We have had an incredible exodus of Jews who have been here for generations who are fleeing
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now, who feel entirely unsafe is the least of their worries.
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They are being explicitly persecuted and it's being given a green light by our politicians
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because no one's doing anything about it.
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But the worst part is this, Canada has understood, its liberals at least, that there are now
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electoral blocs, Islamic electoral blocs, which operate as swings and kingmakers in
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our electoral politics.
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So we've now reached a point where if you are not actually flattering this bloc and
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providing or supplying their interests with what they want, you will lose an election.
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And when a nation reaches the point at which one singular constituency or faction is determining
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the politics of the nation, you are surrendering your sovereignty.
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This is what happened in Europe.
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It's what happened in the UK and it's happening here in Canada.
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And do not think for a second that the left does not want to try that out in the United
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States.
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It has succeeded in New York City.
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This is something I find that many conservatives on our side are reluctant to mention.
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We must be explicit.
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They are succeeding right now.
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They are succeeding in Texas right now as well.
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It's not just in Democrat states or in Democrat cities.
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It can be everywhere.
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And again, we are now witnessing a time in which it's not that Islam's doctrines are
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true.
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It's not that they're mightier than they've ever been before.
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It is us in the West that are weaker that's allowing and enabling this to happen.
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It's really us.
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It's an internal problem, a corruption of our souls that's allowing for this to take
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place.
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I'm glad you mentioned corruption of soul.
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We live in a postmodern context, and of course the poster child for postmodernism is Heath
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Ledger's depiction of the Joker where he keeps asking, why so serious?
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Postmodern secularists can't imagine anyone taking religion seriously.
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Sad to say, Christians, Catholics among them, have kind of helped with that because we really
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don't take religion all that seriously for the most part.
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God is our mascot and our insurance agent, but otherwise we want to live the good life
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just like everybody else.
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And when someone takes religion seriously and takes religion seriously with a deadly
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earnestness, postmodern secularists are just absolutely unprepared to deal with anyone
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like that who takes it seriously.
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They're going to get their lunches eaten.
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Do you think that's a fair analysis?
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We just don't know what to do with people who take religion seriously anymore?
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Yes.
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In fact, that's one of the differences between the left and the right.
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The left understands, which is again so interesting to me, the left takes ideas and beliefs seriously.
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They understand that someone with strong conviction with belief means that they have true love
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there, that they are willing to not just die for something, but to live for it.
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Can we really say in the West that we're willing, let alone to die for something, to live out
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our way of life?
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I think people forget that the steeples of churches in North America and in the West
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used to be the tallest structures for a reason.
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They were meant so that your eyes were guided upwards to show you that there is a law, something
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higher both outside of yourself and above you to which you subordinate yourself.
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And we have now reached a point where we have forgotten that when the Christian says that
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Jesus is the light, the life, and the way, that is a living rebuke to those who seek,
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who are I would call nihilists, relativists, postmodernists.
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That is a living rebuke to a people who says man creates everything.
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Man is the measure of all things.
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They cannot tolerate that.
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But I must say, I do see a positive lining in this for those who are willing to at least
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see it, which is this.
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When one hates, one is forced to look upwards.
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In our enemy's hatred of the West, of Christianity, of Judaism, all of them are connected.
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In their hatred of us, they accidentally pay us great compliment if we're paying attention,
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which is that we are still supreme.
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We are noble.
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We are the obstacle to tyrannies and despotisms the world over.
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And make no mistake, whether it's Islam, leftism, globalism, China, these are all tyrannies.
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And the Western way of life is the only obstacle in their path.
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No, that's absolutely right.
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Christ really did come to set us free, free from sin, free from the tyranny of sin, but
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also free for the perfection of human nature in body and soul in this life and the next.
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And we used to know that and think it was so important that we would go out and get
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ourselves martyred as missionaries.
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And now we have a sense of you do you, and that's something that no faithful Muslim will
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ever say.
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Friends, we can back and continue our conversation with journalist Dimpy Brar.
25:03
We're talking about the strange alliance of Western leftists and Islam.
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We're talking about the strange alliance between political leftists in the West and Islam.
27:00
My guest today is Dimpy Brar, student author and journalist, and works with Allies for
27:05
a Strong Canada.
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Dimpy, I'm mindful of the fact that, you know, Mark Twain once said, everyone complains about
27:11
the weather, but no one does anything about it.
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I have two suggestions for why the West doesn't do anything about what we've observed here
27:19
so far.
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Number one is what I call McTigge's axiom, which states most institutions would rather
27:25
die than admit that anyone ever made a mistake.
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And then there's McTigge's corollary, which states that most people haven't matured past
27:34
the age of 15 and are still desperate to be invited to sit at the cool kids' table at
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the high school cafeteria.
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The axiom and the corollary seem to be vindicated every day of my life.
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How do we go forward?
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How do we not just sound the alarm, but how do we go about making changes?
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Well, I have one part, first of all, I love both of those, the corollary especially, because
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there is nothing so pathetic that's occurred since the post Second World War in the West
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in the way that we've become entire slaves to public opinion.
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Public opinion used to be a pejorative.
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If one were to be considered enslaved to public opinion, that was an unkind way of saying
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that one was irrational and unreasonable.
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Now we live by it, our politics is by public opinion.
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I first have to begin with something that's going to sound a little abstract and theoretical,
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but in reality, I think it's one of the most practical solutions.
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I believe the center of the problem is the universities.
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Why the universities?
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The universities have a special relationship to any liberal democracy, especially in Western
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civilization.
28:45
And the fact that the conservatives in any way have ever seeded ground in that is to
28:51
our eternal shame.
28:54
That is where all these ideas are flourishing.
28:56
And again, the left plays for keeps.
28:59
So they understand that the education of our souls, of our youth's souls, that's what really
29:05
counts.
29:06
You want to capture hearts, minds, and souls.
29:09
And it's one of the great tragedies of the fact that Mr. Kirk was martyred himself, because
29:14
this is something that he took so seriously and really made a huge difference in doing.
29:19
So my first instinct is to say that we must recover our founding through knowledge and
29:26
reason.
29:28
Christianity and Judaism is unique among religions and ways of life because reason is asked and
29:35
called for.
29:37
You are not asked for submission as the way, blind submission, in the way that Islam's
29:43
religion, in fact, that's what the name means, is submission.
29:47
You are not called upon to blindly submit.
29:50
Our piety is of a far greater, more difficult, often burdensome nature because it requires
29:57
wrestling with God.
29:59
It requires asking questions and it requires deep study, knowledge, and reason.
30:04
So that would be my first.
30:06
The second would be courage is contagious and the truth is like a fire.
30:13
I find that fundamentally we have a crisis of cowardice in the West.
30:18
I can't tell you how many people I meet in private who will either message me or quietly
30:24
whisper in my ear that they agree with what I'm saying, but they didn't want to say it.
30:29
Well, this is the problem.
30:32
Islam and our enemies feed off of this cowardice and this silence.
30:36
It's not because there's more of them.
30:39
It's because they're better funded, more organized, and more obnoxious.
30:44
And our politicians end up heeding to that because they just happen to be the loudest
30:49
in the room.
30:50
But I still believe that there is a silent majority in the West.
30:54
Yes, they are cowardly and yes, they're not saying anything and they only want to do the
30:59
bare minimum, I find, but it is incumbent upon them to start speaking the truth.
31:06
One of the phrases I hate the most is, I think of Patton actually when I'm thinking
31:12
about this, I often hear in defense of Western civilization, well, I don't want to be on
31:18
defense.
31:19
Our enemies are the ones that should be on defense.
31:22
Why are we on defense?
31:25
We should be on offense.
31:26
We have the truth on our side.
31:28
We have God on our side.
31:30
We are told constantly, whether it is through Torah or the New Testament, that one must
31:37
cling to God.
31:38
And I fundamentally, Father, I find that I'm in the right company right now to say this.
31:43
In practical terms, we must cleave and cling back to God.
31:49
We have forgotten God and we have forgotten that the Declaration first says, the laws
31:54
of nature and nature's God, not man.
31:58
Right.
31:59
And, you know, it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who was asking, why did things go sideways
32:05
in the West, given what a disaster the 20th century was?
32:09
And he said, man has forgotten God.
32:12
So I really do think that we need our come to Jesus moment.
32:16
You know, the Christ of God came to set us free from sin and from the tyranny of our
32:22
own corrupted will and set us free for love and peace and joy in this life and the next.
32:30
And we used to have the courage of our conviction.
32:33
I think of G.K. Chesterton who said, it's not that Christianity has been tried and found
32:39
wanting, it's that it's been tried and found difficult.
32:43
To live Christianity robustly, you have to embrace the cross.
32:48
And Fulton Sheen called shenanigans on this years ago.
32:52
He said, we want Christ without the cross.
32:56
So in other words, Jesus of Nazareth is our therapist and he's our cheerleader for our
33:02
cult of self-esteem, but he's not calling us to victory.
33:08
And that needs to be recovered.
33:11
So we all have some work to do.
33:14
So I imagine there are parents of younger children who say, well, all right, my kid's
33:20
not ready for college just yet, but what should we be reading, doing, talking about, avoiding?
33:28
What would you recommend to parents and to educators?
33:31
Oh, I would always say that regardless of whether you're Christian or however you feel,
33:38
I do believe that wisdom is found in our sacred texts and they're there for a reason.
33:45
Tocqueville once observed that when he came to America, there were two books on every
33:50
American's shelf.
33:51
One was the Bible and the other was the complete works of William Shakespeare.
33:56
You do not need a lot.
33:58
You do not need to go through an entire compendium of the great works.
34:02
But if you're going to start somewhere, start with the Bible.
34:06
Read the Old Testament.
34:08
There is great wisdom there as well.
34:11
And read again the founding documents of the United States of America, the Declaration,
34:17
the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.
34:21
Those were revolutions in human thought.
34:24
Those are revolutions in human history that will never, ever come to be again.
34:29
And we have to remember, I am still a Sikh.
34:32
I am not a Christian, a Jew, or anything like that.
34:37
However, the best life for someone like me, for my family, will always, always be in a
34:44
Christian nation.
34:46
Only there is my life tolerated.
34:49
Only there is my life considered sacred.
34:51
And as a woman, it is the only place in which I am not considered a slave.
34:56
And that is directly the result of the fact that Genesis says that all men are created
35:00
in the image of God.
35:01
And it is only through that inheritance that my life is able to be lived to the fullest,
35:07
to be able to pursue the good life in full.
35:10
But besides that, I think you don't even need anything more than that.
35:14
I think that's enough.
35:16
It's a lifetime of study for even one of those books, but to give your children wisdom and
35:22
bequeath them in that way, it will be a boon to the generations after us.
35:27
It's very radical.
35:29
Yes, indeed.
35:30
Aristotle had said that if you've got an army that's losing a battle and you're in a rout
35:36
and people are dropping their spears and running away, someone has to stop and pick up the
35:41
spear and turn around and reform the line.
35:45
And I think it needs to be acknowledged that the West, which is rooted in Christianity,
35:52
really is worth defending.
35:54
It really is the only game in town.
35:57
It really is the only worldview that values all of human life.
36:05
It's the one that values human dignity of the vulnerable and those who should not be
36:11
exploited.
36:13
It gives priority to the rule of law, to private property, to contracts, to truth-telling,
36:20
to mercy.
36:22
And I think we in the secular West have been parasitic upon the inheritance of Christendom
36:29
for a long time.
36:30
And I want to say, you know, guys, if you kill the goose that lays the golden egg, you
36:35
have one big dinner, and then we all go hungry.
36:41
So once you break the last barrier, once you defeat the inheritance of the West, it's not
36:49
going to look pretty.
36:50
So let's speak medically.
36:52
If symptoms persist, if Westerners don't have the good sense to stand up and defend themselves,
37:01
what might the future look like?
37:03
I know that's a big question, and you only have three minutes to answer it.
37:06
Oh, I have a very quick answer.
37:09
I'll leave you with what Aristotle said, especially for the women that are listening and those
37:13
fathers and mothers who have daughters.
37:16
Aristotle only ever gave one explanation or definition of what it meant to be Greek
37:22
versus barbarian in the first book of politics.
37:24
He says, for the barbarian, woman is slave.
37:28
When it comes to Islam, when it comes to the left, and when it comes to globalism, they
37:33
have two things in common.
37:34
Woman is slave, and also slavery now exists.
37:37
It is nothing short of despotism and tyranny, of which in the modern world, with the technological
37:43
advances that we have, it will put the Nazis to shame.
37:47
These people are serious.
37:49
They do not have a view of the sacredness of human life.
37:53
They do not subscribe to those views, and they have no problem putting us and giving
37:59
us what they think we deserve.
38:02
So it will be beyond our own comprehension, the type of tyranny and despotism that they
38:07
will hope to enslave us under.
38:10
I would just say, look at where...
38:12
I don't see lots of people scrambling to get into Muslim countries these days.
38:19
Any speculation as to why that is?
38:21
Yeah, probably because you'll get your head chopped off for half of these things, and
38:26
you can only live the greatest, most prosperous way of life in the West.
38:31
It will always be the case.
38:32
It's also the same case with the Communist Party of China.
38:35
No one's trying to get into China right now.
38:38
Or North Korea.
38:39
Or North Korea.
38:41
Or why is that?
38:43
And I don't see people scrambling to get into Somalian universities, for example.
38:48
So I think we need to have a really candid, sober assessment.
38:54
And part of the appeal of Christianity for me is that it knows what to do with evil.
38:59
And part of the frustration of the secular postmodern West is that it doesn't know what
39:06
to do with evil.
39:07
It doesn't know what to do with ideologies that you can't reason with, or just be merely
39:13
droll and ironic about.
39:17
There are people who don't like us, who want us silent, silenced, corrupted, converted,
39:23
or dead.
39:24
And we can't afford to be naive about that.
39:27
And our children, and especially our females in our culture, are very, very much at risk.
39:33
And I have to add, of course, I don't hate anyone.
39:37
I don't want to kill anyone.
39:39
I'm not going to force anyone's conversion at gunpoint or swordpoint.
39:44
And I'm not suggesting that anyone step dynamite vests to their chest and walk into a public
39:48
place.
39:49
Christians don't do that sort of thing.
39:52
But I also think we cannot afford to be naive.
39:56
Dimpy Brar for Allies for a Strong Canada, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
40:01
God bless your good work, and I do look forward to next time.
40:04
Thank you so much.
40:05
It's such a pleasure.
40:06
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of the Catholic Current.
40:10
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40:13
on this timely Tuesday, timely thoughts, you and me reflecting on what we've heard today.
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41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ.
41:22
This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for the Catholic
41:25
Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
41:28
You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios, your local radio station,
41:32
the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:38
Well, here we are, the last segment of Tuesday, a timely Tuesday.
41:41
You know what that means?
41:42
You and me sharing timely thoughts, reflecting what we've heard today.
41:46
My guest was Dimpy Brar.
41:48
She's an author and journalist, and she's with Allies for a Strong Canada.
41:52
And we were talking about the strange relationship between the political secular left and Islam,
42:00
sometimes called the Red-Green Alliance.
42:03
And it doesn't seem to make sense, because all the reasons that the left hates the West
42:10
and Christianity for being heteronormative and oriented towards patriarchy and family
42:17
life and the priority of religion, etc., etc., that would seem not to frost the cake of leftism.
42:26
And Islam, my goodness, is very patriarchal, very heteronormative, tends to throw homosexuals
42:35
off of rooftops, and yet we see people carrying signs celebrating queers for Palestine.
42:44
So what's going on here?
42:46
Now I will quote my mentor, the late, great Paul Weiss, who in another context said,
42:51
At the risk of appearing arrogant, I will say this much.
42:55
I have thought about the matter.
42:57
And I think Dimpy Brar is correct that what leftism and Islam have in common is a hatred
43:06
of the West.
43:09
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
43:12
At root, the fundamental issue, I believe, is the rejection of Christ.
43:19
Why do I say that?
43:21
Well, what does Christ represent?
43:23
Well, he represents both the absolute transcendence of God and also the intimacy and the nearness
43:35
of God.
43:37
And Christ insists on the uniqueness and value of every human individual.
43:44
So you just can't sacrifice the masses or the mob or the great unwashed or the bourgeois
43:51
or the kulaks or the people who are just cannon fodder for the revolution.
43:59
That's not okay.
44:01
And that's why the secular West hates Christianity and that's why Islam does as well.
44:09
Now here's the thing that we have to notice.
44:13
People are not clamoring to move into Muslim countries.
44:21
You just don't hear about people begging to get into Iran or Yemen or Somalia or even
44:27
really Saudi Arabia.
44:31
And again, I have to add, I don't hate anyone, I don't want to bomb anyone, I don't want
44:34
to cut anybody's throat, I don't want to strap a dynamite vest and walk into a crowd at anything.
44:40
It's not about hatred, it's about understanding historical, political, and cultural trends
44:45
and where they are leading right now and also really what the remedy is.
44:50
Now the things that Westerners like about the West, like the rule of law and contracts
44:57
and private property, etc., all of that stuff rooted in human dignity is rooted in Christianity.
45:05
So the secular West, the post-modern West, has been parasitic upon its Christian heritage
45:15
for the longest time.
45:17
And even the so-called Enlightenment is really just posturing upon what Christianity and
45:26
Christendom has built.
45:29
When you work against Christianity, when you work against Christians, eventually Christendom
45:36
begins to become brittle, and the so-called Enlightenment secular West becomes hollow,
45:43
and then people who are, shall we say, violently, vehemently, adamantly opposed to the Christian
45:53
West and the Enlightenment West, they tend to move in and take over.
45:58
Things don't go very well after that.
46:01
Now here's part of what grieves me very greatly.
46:07
You guessed it, it's time for Father to talk about the senior Catholic cadres of the people
46:12
who should really know better club, because they seem to me to be frightfully naive, both
46:21
of the horrors and vacuity of secular post-modernism in the West, and also they seem to be frightfully
46:33
ignorant of what Islam says about itself, and what it also says about those who are
46:42
not Muslim.
46:45
In Islam, there is the house of Islam, and there is the house of war, and the house of
46:53
war is whatever part of the world is not yet under the sway of Islam.
47:00
We have to be really very, very clear about that, and I also think that Dimpy Brar was
47:08
right, that our universities have not been helping.
47:11
There is a very, very prominent self-identified Catholic university, and they do a lot of
47:19
Islamic studies there, and they get a pile of money from very wealthy Muslim governments
47:26
every year.
47:27
Big piles of money.
47:29
So that when professors say really shocking things about slavery and rape, the university
47:40
doesn't have a lot to say, and the professor in question doesn't get fired because he's
47:49
associated with big Muslim money.
47:54
Isn't that interesting?
47:57
Does that inspire trust?
47:58
Does it make you breathe a sigh of relief?
48:00
Does it want you to make you jump up on your feet and sing rousing choruses if he's got
48:06
the whole world in his hand, or is it inclined you to say, what the heck is going on here?
48:12
So I think we all need to be much, much, much better informed.
48:18
We can't afford to be naive about Islam.
48:23
We cannot afford to be naive about the moral emptiness and malice of the secular postmodernist
48:33
West, and we have to stop being so darn ungrateful for what Christ offers to the world.
48:43
Ultimately, I can't recommend a political candidate or party or platform.
48:48
You've heard me quote the scriptures very often, put not your trust in princes, but
48:55
we do have to put our trust in Christ.
49:00
We do have to acknowledge that when individuals and communities and clans and tribes and nations
49:08
get together under the banner of the cross, civilization happens, Christendom happens,
49:18
and that really is good for everyone.
49:23
I think we have to put aside our self-loathing.
49:26
I think we have to take note of the people who hate us, and for the people who are clueless
49:32
or witless or are sitting on the fence, we have to offer them a real alternative, and
49:40
we have to do that while there is still time, because the clock is ticking, and it's not
49:49
looking good for the West right now.
49:52
Think on these things today, take them to prayer, and talk about it with those you love.
49:56
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggert, host here every day of the Catholic Current.
50:00
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50:17
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take it around the world.
50:22
We can do it with you, we cannot do it without you.
50:25
Let's do this good work together.
50:27
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Mary God bless you, Father, Son,
50:31
and Holy Spirit.
50:32
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.
50:51
Amen.