Pseudo-Satanism in the Hedge Row

“In their ongoing effort to be naughtier than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones began making satanic allusions in 1967 . . . Jimmy Page, the lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, was a Crowley fan even before he accepted the Lucifer Rising job . . . By this route Satanism became heavy metal’s semiofficial religion, observed …

Lord of Tomorrow Morning

Convocation Remarks 2007 Fleetwood Mac exhorted us all plainly. “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” Well, okay. And politicians consistently tell us that they want to be elected so that they can build a bridge to the future—as though we could go anywhere else, whether we build that bridge or not. But behind these bromides is …

When Fundamentalists Read the Text More Clearly

“The revival of the model of early Islam in a modern form absolutely mandates the reaffirmation of uncompromising animosity to non-believers and the return to violence as a means of attaining political ends. Islamic terrorism, far from being an aberration, became inseparable from modern-day jihad. It is legitimized by it, and it is its defining …

In Other Words, Not Breaking On Through to the Other Side

“Morrison never made the sustained effort needed to write even passable free verse, and his emotional range—from petulant narcissism to dead-serious angst—is far narrower than that of the least of his poetic idols . . . booze became the formaldehyde in which his adolescent hangs-ups were preserved” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 238).

Not Much of a Difference

“The only difference between Muslim ‘conservatives’ and misnamed ‘fundamentalists’ concern the methods to be applied, not the final objectives, which are the same: to rekindle the glory that was Islam under the prophet and his early successors” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 204).

The Closing of the Islamic Mind

“Not even a prime location at the crossroads of the world could supply an antidote to the slow poison of Islamic obscurantism. The Ottoman interlude concealed and postponed the latent tension between the view of world history as the fulfillment of Islam and its triumph everywhere on the one hand, and the reality of the …