The Council has spoken

The Watchers Council held its weekly meeting, this time at Castle Urquhart on the north shore of Loch Ness (sorry to report that there were no monster sightings), and after much debate, and not a little roistering, chose these fine pieces of writing.

The winning Council post was "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie"... Accommodating Islam by Joshuapundit. Here is a sample:

A case in point is the recent confab at Harvard over the desire of six female Muslim Harvard students, backed by the Harvard College Women's Center, for women-only hours at one of the university's gymnasiums.

The students' argument was that since Islam forbids them from wearing revealing clothing like leotards in the presence of men, the school ought to accommodate their beliefs by provide man-free hours at one of its gymnasiums so they can work out without the leering presence of any males in the building.

Harvard agreed, and made the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic man-free for six hours per week.

No problem, right?

There are plenty of other gyms on campus, after all and it's just a lousy six hours per week,isn't it? And it's all about tolerance and diversity, right?

No, it's quite a bit more than that.

Universities like Harvard make a lurid fetish of gender equality and diversity. But in this case, they decided that Islam's needs were more important than these supposedly dearly held principles. Or to put it another way, what Harvard has decided (and they're by no means alone in this) is that Islam merits special privileges and considerations above and beyond what the university is prepared to offer to other groups.

Imagine, if you will, what Harvard might say to evangelical Christians who requested gay-free hours in one of the gymnasiums.Or for that matter, to homosexuals who requested gym hours set aside for gays only.

And then we could talk about Harvard's commitment to diversity and tolerance in the light of its refusal to allow an ROTC program on campus, regardless of US law or the wishes of those students who might wish to avail themselves of it.

What we're seeing here, of course, is Orwell's old phrase about some animals being more equal than others, played out on supposedly liberal college campuses.

The non Council winner was Creating a European Indigenous People's Movement by Fjordman and posted on The Brussels Journal. Here is a sample:

An American friend of mine has proposed that native Europeans should create a European Indigenous People's Movement. I have hesitated with supporting this because it sounded a bit too extreme. However, in more and more European cities, the native population is being pushed out of their own neighborhoods by immigrant gangs. The natives receive little or no aid from their authorities, sometimes blatant hostility, when faced with immigrant violence. In an age where the global population increases with billions of people in a few decades, it is entirely plausible, indeed likely, that the West could soon become demographically overwhelmed. Not few of our intellectuals seem to derive pleasure from this thought.

Bat Ye'or in her book about Eurabia has documented how the European Union is actively allowing Muslims to colonize European countries. The next time EU leaders complain about China's treatment of minorities, I suggest the Chinese answer the following: "Yes, we represent an anti-democratic organization dedicated to subduing the indigenous people of Tibet, but you represent an anti-democratic organization dedicated to displacing the indigenous peoples of an entire continent." There is no love lost between me and the Chinese Communist Party, an organization responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of its citizens, but even Chinese authorities do not actively seek to displace their own people with violent Muslims. European authorities do.

In decadent societies of the past, the authorities didn't open the gates to hostile nations and ban opposition to this as intolerance and barbarophobia. What we are dealing with in the modern West is not merely decadence; it's one of the greatest betrayals in history. Our so-called leaders pass laws banning the opposition to our dispossession as "racism and hate speech." To native Europeans, when listening to our media and our leaders, it's as if we don't even exist, as if it were normal for them to put the interests of other nations over their own. Despite having "democratic" governments, many Western countries have authorities that are more hostile to their own people than dictators in some developing countries. Why?

I am particularly proud that this piece won because it was the one I nominated.

The other results can be seen here.