Ingrid Mattson's Strange Journey

Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in
Vatican City. I wonder if Ingrid Mattson went there?
[Click on image to see larger version]

[This post has been revised somewhat to include more biographical material, and some information on Mattson's "journeys".]

Ingrid Mattson is a Canadian convert to Islam. She is the President of the Islamic Society of North America. She recently was part of an ecumenical group of Christian, Jewish and Hindu leaders who participated in the traditional National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral following Obama's inauguration.

Mattson's ISNA has been linked with Hamas and terrorist activities. I am not particularly interested in this, since I will always presume that Islamic societies will at some point or other support, or even fund, Jihad-advocating groups, of which Hamas is certainly one.

What interests me is Ingrid Mattson's conversion. When I saw her photograph, I saw immediately that this was a white woman convert. Her face reminds me of countless women I see around me, with the rounded cheeks and small chins, who resemble no Muslim from a Middle Eastern country.

Sure enough, she is originally from Ontario, and her story is as intriguing as any.

She was a philosophy and fine art student at the University of Waterloo and worked as an archivist cataloging art slides in the university library. She traveled to Paris and spent whole days in the Louvre. She calls this episode in her life "The summer I met Muslims". She went to daily mass as a young girl and adolescent. But neither the art nor her Catholic faith was strong enough to keep her with her family.

Right after graduating from university - when she says that she had already started her "personal study of Islam" - she went to British Columbia by train for a tree-planting job for the summer (another one of those "summers".) She took with her Fazlur Rahman's Islam, which she had found in a bookstore a only few days before. She read this book on her cross-country train ride, at the end of which she decided to apply for graduate studies in Islamic studies. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The most intriguing comment she makes is:

[I]n the end, I found even the strongest reaction to a work of art isolating. Of course I felt some connection to the artist, appreciation for another human perspective. But each time the aesthetic response flared up, then died down. It left no basis for action.

What a strange thing to say! All those pietàs and Madonnas, all those crucifixions and portraits of saints? All those paintings of the infant Jesus? She left all that to go to Islam?

Which is what happened, as she describes it:

Then I met people who did not construct statues or sensual paintings of gods, great men and beautiful women. Yet they knew about God, they honored their leaders, and they praised the productive work of women. They did not try to depict the causes; they traced the effects.

If a young woman so imbued in the most beautiful productions of Western culture and Christianity cannot find the grace to remain in that culture and faith, what is it that pulled her away from it?

She does say that her studies in philosophy eventually led her to Existentialism.

In college, philosophy had brought me from Plato, through Descartes only to end at Existentialism - a barren outcome.

I've always said that where there is a barren and empty heart, an unbeliever's heart, which is nonetheless always searching for something, then this heart is easy prey for Islam.

Perhaps this is what happened to her. And this should be a warning to all those in the West. If you take belief, and specifically Christianity, out of the equation, it will get filled with something else, which ultimately will not be the "nothing" of atheism, but could well be the something of Islam.

And Islam is around us everywhere these days. Even Mattson, almost twenty years ago, found enough Muslim influence in her metaphorical and real journeys to make final, fundamental decisions in her life. And how much more susceptible we are now, with Muslim influences that much more dominant in our daily lives.

Brigitte Gabriel Has Another Interview At Frontpagemag.com And Says Even Less Than She Did In 2006

A very vocal Muslim woman from Iran, Homa Arjomand, made it her life's goal to stop Sharia in Ontario a few years ago. To avoid the many negative impacts of Sharia on Muslim women, as was her main argument, the Jewish and Catholic arbitrations were also dismantled, and the Muslim Sharia thus lost its bid. Multiculturalism won a strange victory.

I wrote about this in Islam's Missionary Women where I say:

All these women [Homa Arjomand, Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and Irshad Manji] are pleading that their Western compatriots help them reform Islam and support their fellow Muslim women in achieving their dreams of transformed lives in the West. Each of them is using the rhetoric of freedom of the individual, freedom of expression, and a simplistic concept of secularism to justify her appeals.

But our duty as Westerners is not to reform Islam, nor to accommodate Muslim women--those very women who will have male and female Muslim off-spring, thereby turning our countries into what they left behind. Our responsibility is to make sure that Islam is kept at a distance, which includes Muslims...We can never be sure if our assistance to these multitudes of Muslim women would alleviate their plight, but making drastic changes in our own societies in response to their grievances will only damage us.

Brigitte Gabriel is another Arab woman speaking against Islam, but who is a few steps ahead of the rest perhaps because she is Christian. Her new book, They Must Be Stopped, attempts to address what to do with the growing Muslim presence in the US. It is equally relevant in Canada.

I have written about Brigitte's impassioned demands previously [also links to her 2006 Frontpagemag.com interview], and in her recent January 16, 2008 interview at Frontpagemag.com, she still doesn't come up with a better plan than stopping them from doing whatever it is they're doing through regulations, laws and constant monitoring.

Her argument is to stop them once they are here. One major thesis of her argument should be to stop the from coming here in the first place. She doesn't say this at all in her interview, although in her 2006 interview she does say "close our borders". That's it. In fact, in her 2008 interview, she seemed to have regressed. No mention is made about border closing at all.

They Must Be Stopped has to include the argument that allowing such a large, dangerous group in our society is unacceptable.

Brigitte now needs to think one more step ahead. In a sane world, no Muslims should be admitted into our countries. In an even saner world, we should find ways to remove such a large presence of a group that is eternally set to destroy us (for reasons of their own which they certainly find valid) . The policies need to be fine-tuned, but that is the direction that Brigitte, as a vocal and well-known spokesman, should be going.

Although to be fair, the full title of her book is They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam And How We Can do It .

In order to really critique it, I should read the whole thing, including the part where she says "How we can do it." But the problem is, she never talks about the "how", always about the "what" (sometimes about the "why".) I don't know why this is, but Robert Spencer once told in me in an interview that he feels the public is not ready for the "how".

But, if they never talk about it at important interviews, how is the public ever going to be interested in, and realize the feasibility of the "how"?

Churches into Mosques - And Downtown Toronto's First Minaret

Proposed mosque and minaret in downtown Toronto,
to be completed in the fall of 2009

The December 1, 2008 article from Christian Week says: "The downtown Toronto skyline is about to be punctuated by its first minaret."

I have previously written about minarets in the Toronto suburban skyline, but this article indicates that mosques, which have been camouflaging their presence in the downtown area behind nondescript corner buildings, are now getting more bold. This is just as I predicted.

But,there is something more insidious going on. From the same article in Christian Week, it appears that the mosque is being constructed on a the site of a former church.

Joe Boot, pastor of the nearby Westminster Chapel says:

If you look around the city of Toronto you see churches that have become mosques, Hare Krishna centres, condominiums and restaurants. This is simply another indicator of the de-Christianization of Canada.

This is fast becoming a reality throughout the Western world. In Belgium, for example, Antwerp's deputy mayor, who has also observed this trend, actually encourages it. He says:

Churches were built as places of worship and they should not be used as shopping malls. We've had a positive response from members of the Muslim community, which is open to the idea of converting them.

The spiritual laxness of Westerners has become the perfect entry point for a religion that will not only usurp Christianity, but will also make sure that everyone else, including those atheists and agnostics who abandoned their churches, will be under the thumb of Islam.

Such generous Westerners, such as the mayor of Antwerp, will be in for a shocking surprise when they are not given any leeway at the time of Muslim takeover. Their generosity will not be considered at all, and they will be expected to toe the Muslim line, like any other non-Muslim.

This generally involves dhimmitude, if not harsher measures.

Preserving Western Civilization

There is an important conference coming up from February 6-8 in Baltimore, Maryland called "Preserving Western Civilization".

This relates to Geert Wilders' quote which I've put as a banner on top of this blog:

"The Islamization of our Western culture is a real threat to everything we stand for."

This conference will address this issue, amongst others. From the conference program:

We believe that America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity must be defended. Today, our glorious Western civilization is under assault from many directions. Three such threats will be discussed at this conference. First, the massive influx to the United States and Europe of Third-World immigrants who do not share our fundamental political and cultural values. Second, the threat from Islam, a militant ideology that is hostile to our society and, in principle, committed to destroying it. Third, because of the persistent disappointing performance of blacks (which many whites mistakenly blame on themselves) many whites have guilt feelings that undermine Western morale and deter us from dealing sensibly with the other threats.

Here's a link for registration and conference details.

Lawrence Auster, who will also be participating, has more on his site. See also the "Action" link I have on the right panel about Mr. Auster's: proposition for separating from Islam through a "rollback, isolate, and contain" strategy.

The Prince of Mogadishu

Actually, he is a convicted criminal.

I found this dismissed (eulogized) in a 4 page write-up he got in January 2009's Toronto Life.

Just in passing, this is what he did. He...ran with a Toronto gang and spent time in jail.

I've seen him perform. There is a certain arrogance with Somalis these days, as though nothing can touch them. With writers like this, who can blame them.

I'm sure somewhere in there we can find out what a great Muslim he is (just like he's a great husband and father.)

I wouldn't read the whole 4 pages, but here's the link.

From Kathy Shaidle's pretty funny post.

Of course, I don't understand why she doesn't put Robert Spencer under the same scrutiny during her interview of him. Especially here:

KS: Is "moderate" Islam even possible?

RS: Anything is possible. But "moderate" Islam as an Islamic theological and legal construct does not now exist, and would need to be invented. Can it be done? The record of history shows that it is never wise to say that something could never happen. But as it would involve the overturning or wholesale reevaluation of the fonts of Islamic authority that have existed since virtually the beginning of Islam, it is extremely unlikely.

Read more of the interview for more of the same.It is not enough just to berate the easily identifiable suspects. There are lots more underground, and I don't think conservatives have realized that yet.