RUTHFULLY YOURS

“ . . . they went up on the breadth of the Earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and the fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.” – Revelation 20:9

It’s curious how often life imitates art. Germany recently won plaudits from the world’s elites when it announced it would accept 800,000 Muslim “refugees ^[1]” this year. There have been some cold feet in Berlin since then, but it’s probably too late. The hordes are on their way. Per Jean Rean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of Saints ^[2], on an Easter weekend with an old professor watching an armada of rotting ships steaming slowly up to the coast of the Riviera:

On this Easter Sunday evening, eight hundred thousand living beings, and thousands of dead ones, were making their peaceful assault on the Western World. Tomorrow it would all be over.

The Camp of the Saints tells the story of the destruction of European civilization (including its outpost in the United States), partly by a flood of unassimilable wretches from India, partly by a failure of nerve on the part of the custodians of European civilization. The choice, Respail noted in an afterword, was stark:

To let them in would destroy us. To reject them would destroy them.

Is this a false dichotomy? Maybe. But think about this: As I write, Munich is gearing up for Oktoberfest, the annual festival the city has been celebrating since 1810. There will be beer, lots of it, and pork sausages and women in dirndls. A good time will be had by all.

Well, almost all — the Muslims are not amused. And one Morad Almurdi, writing from the Netherlands, has started a petition demanding the end of Oktoberfest. “Dear City council of Munich,” he writes ^[3]:

I am writing this letter to bring to your attention something that I and many Muslims believe is unfair and requires attention.

I would like to inform you that the Oktoberfest is an Intolerant and Anti-Islamic event. We tried to ignore the event, but there too many Un-Islamic acts done at the Oktoberfest. Such as alcohol consumption, public nudity etc.

We understand that the Oktoberfest is a yearly German tradition, but we, Muslims, can not tolerate this Un-Islamic event, because it offends us and all Muslims on the earth.

We are requesting the immediate cancellation of the upcoming Oktoberfest event.

We also believe that the Oktoberfest might also offend all the Muslim refugees coming from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. The cancellation of the Oktoberfest event will help refugees not to forget their Islamic history. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I doubt that Oktoberfest will be cancelled this year. But stay tuned.

Do you suppose the Germans will muster the gumption to point out that complains about alcohol consumption “etc.” are un-German, and contrary to their way of life?

More and more, The Camp of the Saints seems like a proleptic documentary, not a work of fiction.

Auf Wiedersehen, Schengen: Austria Reimposes Border Controls with Hungary ^[4]