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2004-06-24 Europe
Islamophobia - for and against
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Posted by mhw 2004-06-24 8:18:23 AM|| || Front Page|| [5 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Most educated people know the difference between the muslim faith that is simply taken as a religion only and Islamism or Islamist Fascism that is both a faith, a political doctrine, a legal code (sharia) and a military doctrine.

The two are different. Fascist Islamism is on the rise and is radicalising moderate Islam.

Daniel Pipes put it best when he wrote that Fascist Islam is the enemy. Moderate Islam is the answer.

Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan took over America and people viewed their version of Christianity as the sole version. Militant Islamism is the KKK of Islam.

It will be defeated if we name it and fight it, and we need moderate muslim allies to help us. This is an ideological battle not a state on state battle, so we need inside allies who can help shift the culture.
Posted by Anon1 2004-06-24 9:44:24 AM||   2004-06-24 9:44:24 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Phobia is not the proper term, as it refers to an irrational fear of something. What we need is something that conveys righteous fury, if not out-n-out hate. What's the modifier for that?
Posted by BH 2004-06-24 9:56:04 AM||   2004-06-24 9:56:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 ass-kicking?
Posted by Frank G  2004-06-24 10:01:54 AM||   2004-06-24 10:01:54 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Anon1,
Well I agree we certainly need inside allies. However, as I've pointed out before, the Jihadists, who are only about 1-5% of Islam gain financial and logistics support from another 5-15% and verbal support from another 10-20%.

Also, unlike the KKK analogy, we have a huge percentage of the Islamic population who simply deny that the Jihadists exist and get ticked off if we try to do anything about the Jihadists. Also unlike the KKK analogy, we have another huge percentage that is hates the Jihadists but is to scared to do anything.

In his blog today, http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
says,
"....all we hear after such grisly scenes is... (croak).. (croak).. a maddening silence, and then a few obligatory half-hearted 'This is not the real Islam, you know', 'Noooo, it's really a religion of peace, you don't understand'...."

More and more people actually do understand.
Posted by mhw 2004-06-24 10:54:41 AM||   2004-06-24 10:54:41 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Daniel Pipes put it best when he wrote that Fascist Islam is the enemy. Moderate Islam is the answer.

True. Still, if the Quran is the word of God and is held as absolute truth and law by Muslims, who will dare change it to make Islam "moderate"? I think a reformation is way past due for the Muslim religion, but anyone who seeks to change its warlike and radical passages is not likely to see tomorrow as changing the Quran would be considered apostasy.
Posted by jules 187 2004-06-24 11:07:26 AM||   2004-06-24 11:07:26 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 "Also, unlike the KKK analogy, we have a huge percentage of the Islamic population who simply deny that the Jihadists exist and get ticked off if we try to do anything about the Jihadists. Also unlike the KKK analogy, we have another huge percentage that is hates the Jihadists but is to scared to do anything."

The KK analogy is closer than you think. Many Christians in the south refused to admit the existence of the KKK, and many more refused to admit or recognize the KKK's strength or its insidiously evil actions. The KKK was pretty successful in quelling dissent through intimidation. But the analogy is self-limited though because the goals of Islamists are much larger, much more organized, and because of that, incomparably more dangerous.
Posted by Sam 2004-06-24 11:09:52 AM||   2004-06-24 11:09:52 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Jules: reformation doesn't need to include changing warlike passages of the Koran.

It's all in the interpretation, and in what you encourage your mullahs to "big up" in their daily rants. They can talk sharia/Islamofascism up or they can talk ROP.

Sam: yep, the KKK never got control of a country let alone most of the world's supply of oil, let alone Nukes (only a matter of time before the Pakis sell some Nukes to an Islamofascist group and/or the Iranians make their own)
Posted by Anon1 2004-06-24 11:24:11 AM||   2004-06-24 11:24:11 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 yea we have nothing to fear - them muslim have always loved us and just can't understand we there is so much hate directed against them now..
Posted by Dan 2004-06-24 11:26:30 AM||   2004-06-24 11:26:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 7th Century Islam is the enemy.
20th Century Islam should be the goal.

Hell, look at 7th Century Christianity. (Actually it might be better to look at 12th-14th Century for the point I make, but you get the idea.)
Posted by Anonymous4021 2004-06-24 11:30:05 AM||   2004-06-24 11:30:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 Sam: further to this analogy, imagine if the KKK in the USA were attacked by say, Muslim Indonesia.

That may end up radicalising borderline KKKs, pushing them further into that ideology as they see an attack on their culture from a foriegn identity/religion.

But the KKK was most successfully defeated by being marginalised, isolated from the rest of christendom. It was defeated by the moderates.

While we have NO choice but to attack Islamofascism head on (they are killing us on our home soil), we NEED the alliance of moderate muslims to prevent that galvanisation, that temptation to unite borderline cases under the extremist flag.

Islamofascism needs as far as possible to be isolated, quarantined from moderate Islam.

We need to drive a big fat wedge between the two.
And at the same time build bridges to moderate muslim allies, amplify their voices of dissent against the Islamofascist KKK.

They are the key to a lasting victory.

The only lasting victory will be complete cultural overhall as Den Beste has argued well before. The only way you can have cultural overhall is by winning the ideological battle.

For that we need moderates, the same way the KKK couldn't have been defeated from outside.
Posted by Anon1 2004-06-24 11:30:31 AM||   2004-06-24 11:30:31 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 ...reformation doesn't need to include changing warlike passages of the Koran.

True, but that would mean Muslims living by the spirit rather than the letter of the Quran. I haven't heard the names of any mullahs (the Islamic voices of authority) who would fit into this "moderate" category.
If there really are moderate Muslims mullahs/leaders, who are they?
Posted by jules 187 2004-06-24 11:44:52 AM||   2004-06-24 11:44:52 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 Jules,

There is a sect of Islam called the Ahmadiya (there are different spelling).
Posted by mhw 2004-06-24 12:02:31 PM||   2004-06-24 12:02:31 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Sam - the analogy between the KKK and the Islamofacists is even closer than most people think, for most don't realize that the KKK went after whites as well as blacks.

My mother told me about an incident before I was born (small Virginia mountains town). The KKK burned a cross on my great-aunt's lawn because my cousin (her daughter) was slutting around. (And, knowing my cousin, she was not slutting with black men.)

Those bastards just wanted to enforce their own "law" and be in control of everyone, including everybody's "morality"; sounds just like our Islamonazis.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut  2004-06-24 12:04:50 PM||   2004-06-24 12:04:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 "But the KKK was most successfully defeated by being marginalised, isolated from the rest of christendom. It was defeated by the moderates. While we have NO choice but to attack Islamofascism head on (they are killing us on our home soil), we NEED the alliance of moderate muslims to prevent that galvanisation, that temptation to unite borderline cases under the extremist flag."

Moderate Muslims are stealth Muslims. Where are they? Do they have tongues? Can they write? Christian ministers in churches all over America preached loud and clear against the KKK. Yes, the KKK was marginalized - it was marginalized by Christians. Sure there were intimidated Chrsitians in the south who were afraid to speak out, but Christianity wasn't silent about the KKK. There were a few Church leaders who trumpeted the call of the KKK. But the vast majority didn't and neither the leaders nor the people were silent. Not true with the so-called "moderate" Muslims.
Posted by Sam 2004-06-24 12:37:23 PM||   2004-06-24 12:37:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Ms. Skolaut.... which small mountain town?
Posted by Shipman 2004-06-24 2:00:46 PM||   2004-06-24 2:00:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Phobia is not the proper term, as it refers to an irrational fear of something. What we need is something that conveys righteous fury, if not out-n-out hate. What's the modifier for that?

Detestation? Thank you for beating me to the punch, BH. Revulsion over militant Islam's barbarity has nothing to do with "irrational fear." It has everything to do with simple survival and outright self-defense. If moderate Islam does not pursue internal reformation with much greater vigor, ALL ISLAM will be destroyed, and necessarily so. Islamist terror is a cancer that must be excised from our world. Just as a virulent tumor that does not respond to chemotherapy is then subjected to radiology, so will jihadism find itself confronted with nuclear annihilation. I could not care less about any collateral casualties required to assure that Islamist terrorism is expunged from the face of this entire planet.
Posted by Zenster 2004-06-24 2:04:32 PM||   2004-06-24 2:04:32 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 I agree with Sam - "Moderate Muslims are stealth Muslims." Z you are right, the moderates need to find themselves, or the future is not bright - or maybe I should say it is very bright, like a bright flash.
Posted by Jake 2004-06-24 2:14:39 PM||   2004-06-24 2:14:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Sam - the analogy between the KKK and the Islamofacists is even closer than most people think, for most don't realize that the KKK went after whites as well as blacks.

Catholics, for example.
Posted by Robert Crawford  2004-06-24 2:28:45 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com]  2004-06-24 2:28:45 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 And Jews, too.
Posted by Marvin 2004-06-24 2:31:38 PM||   2004-06-24 2:31:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 Militant Islam is like the Black Plague. Periodic outbursts have ravaged civilization, but public sanitation and rat poison have marginalized its effect on the West for the last 300 years. The bastards were thrown out of Spain in 1492 and the highwatermark in the East was their defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1653. If it weren't for the infusion of oil money, these guys would still be polishing their scimitars, beheading each other, and no problem to the civilized world. The need for oil brought Westerners into their region, If they make it personal enough, we'll do what they always accuse us of, take the oil and push the Saudis back into the desert from whence they came. Killing women, children, and unarmed men is an Islamic specialty. Killing large numbers of people is a Western specialty - car bombing meet carpet bombing.
Posted by RWV 2004-06-24 2:53:31 PM||   2004-06-24 2:53:31 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 Who the hell do the anons (and others) think they're kidding? Moderate Muslims? Who the hell are they? Why are they never protesting in the streets when one of their whack-job "brothers" blows up himself and as many others as possible? Where the hell are they when some new attrocity is committed in the name of their death-cult religion? Why don't their leaders publically, loudly, and repeatedly call for reform of the mosques where the cries for violence against "infidels" originate? Why don't they publically, loudly, and repeatedly DECLINE the acceptance of funds from groups even marginally associated with terror?

Wake up, folks--MODERATE MUSLIMS by their silence and by their association are accessories to the killing that goes on in the name of their religion. They CANNOT be counted on, they DO NOT WISH to be counted on, and in the long run, are every bit as much the enemy as the supposedly "radical" Muslims are.
Posted by Crusader 2004-06-24 2:57:01 PM||   2004-06-24 2:57:01 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 The difference between the KKK and Islamic Jihad is that the KKK was in a sense, forced to comply with the faith they "professed," and when they couldn't (of course they couldn't) they were "ousted" by the rest of society. The members of Islamic Jihad are complying with the religion they profess.

In other words, the KKK were pretenders using a guise of religion to accomplish their goals. The Jihadis are using their religion, per se, flat out.

Islam = Bad Religion.

Unless the "moderate" Moslems want to start thinking for themselves, and unless they are willing to throw out the Koran, and take up arms, and enforce laws against the Jihadis and their preachers and accomplices (remember--the Jihadis being the "bravest" and "most honorable" of Moslems--i.e. the exemplary heroes), we're in for the long haul.


Posted by ex-lib 2004-06-24 3:22:05 PM||   2004-06-24 3:22:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 Sam: I don't what part of the south (if any) you are from but I was born in Selma, Alabama and grew up near there. There was never, in that area, a denial by christians that the KKK didn't exist. People new who they were and they attended the same churches. People were very much afraid of them but no one denied their existance.
Posted by Deacon Blues 2004-06-24 3:38:53 PM||   2004-06-24 3:38:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 Calling a sober estimation of a real threat a “phobia” is not only silly, it should be recognized for what it is: a tool in the quest for Islamic supremacy. But, then again, we should be a little afraid.

The Islamic Movement won't stop because it's a psychologically-motivated thing for the Islamics. If we don't start crushing this now, without relenting, in a decisive, conclusive manner, most people cannot imagine how it will grow. Trust me--we ain't seen nothin' yet!

It will grow because Islamics want ascendancy more than anything else in life. They crave it because they need it--their religion beats them down, Allan beats them down, and their society, and their family structures beat them down. They are itching to be elevated and recognized. They want to be seen as "special," to be rulers of the world, to enjoy prestige and, most of all, to humiliate others and put others underneath them, in every way possible, so they can feel safe from humiliation.

As Islamic individuals, worldwide, get a feeling of “winning” in any way whatsoever, in the WOT--of getting out of, or of having hope of getting out of their general status of "humiliation"--it will generate a psychological/emotional power for them on an unprecedented scale--the kind of power that can drive them for years to come.

An old American adage, and the best political advice for this situation, is: "Give 'em an inch, and they'll take a mile." This applies completely.

With every infringement that is not punished summarily, the Islamics' psychological self-perception of strength will grow, and so will their determination. In order to repeat the "good vibe" of such "affirmation," they will escalate the conflict and take more risks. In the risk-taking itself, is a sense of affirmation. Doing something about how they feel is better than doing nothing. Sadly, they will never recognize the true enemy--their religion, their culture--their "norms" of life and belief.

The most terrible thing is that their actions will be intermittently reinforced. Intermittent reinforcement is the strongest reinforcer of behavior, and will produce a conditioned response that is especially resilient to change.

Next, Mr. Iftikhar Ahmad, the director of London School of Islamics, says: "Islamophobia and Arabophobia has been part of western culture since the Crusades."

During the Crusades, the fact is that the West beat the Moslems. This man is trying to diminish whatever is left of that understanding in the West, by linking victories against them there at that time, with a psychological disorder--a "phobia."

Here's how we defeat that false reasoning construct: A "phobia" is a serious mental illness, that is treatable, and usually has it's roots in trauma. (Doubtful any such "phobia" exists at all, much less across the whole of Western society.)

Iftikhar is trying to claim that that West, indeed, has a widespread mental illness--more specifically, that anyone who disagrees with the aims and agendas of Islam has a mental illness. He is borrowing the construct aimed at social change in support of the Islamic Movement, directly from the homosexual/lesbian movement of the United States, which employed the same tactic quite successfully, and which quelled free discussion, critique, and legitimate research. (Now anyone who says anything in contradiction to them is seen as "less" able by society at large (is a "homophobic"--Hitler used the same types of constructs in rallying support against the Jews in Europe.)

By equating disagreement with Islam with a mental disorder, he hopes to drive a wedge between those who wish to crush the Islamic Movement, and those who don't really understand it. He knows that in general, people feel afraid of those who have serious mental disorders--because their weakness poses a "threat" to the healthy members. Nobody want to have a mental disorder--to be considered "defective" by the other members of society. By equating himself and his movement with health and safety, he intends to marginalize those who oppose the movement.

The good news is that if we understand that the more typical mental disorders are not really threatening to us as individuals, his threatening "insult" loses it's power in the face of truth, and becomes a joke.

If we want to stay alive through this, I'd suggest that we start laughing and commence firing.



Posted by ex-lib 2004-06-24 4:47:22 PM||   2004-06-24 4:47:22 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 Well said, ex-lib.

I'm with Ali Sina. Islam is like a hollow log. Nudge it with your toe, a bunch of termites swarm out and sting you. Kick it hard enough, it collapses into a pile of sawdust.

The happiest day of my life would be to walk down the street in Damascus and see a couple of kids on ten speeds, short sleeve white shirts, black ties, and a backpack full of literature pedaling down the street with a sense of purpose. And I'm not even Mormon!
Posted by 11A5S 2004-06-24 6:24:26 PM||   2004-06-24 6:24:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 #15 Shipman - Not willing to give myself away completely; let's just say not too far from the West Virginia border, about an hour from Roanoke.

#18 Robert & #19 Marvin - true. We had only 1 Jewish family in town (that I know of) - they owned the furniture store, and had to go to Roanoke for Temple. There was also a fairly small Catholic Church. Don't know how much grief they got during the KKK days. Thankfully the overt KKK crap was over before I was old enough to know about it (though there was still plenty of the sentiment around, and segregation, too), but I do know it was still going on at least up through WWII and possibly into the early 1950's.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut  2004-06-24 10:29:00 PM||   2004-06-24 10:29:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#27 If you have to ask, "where is the outrage?", you are already clueless. There is no outcry because there is no outrage. Fastest growing religion? No, I don't think so, forced conversions, deceit and death threats don't count. Poster is right...name the threat....then destroy it.
Posted by jawa 2004-06-24 11:54:55 PM||   2004-06-24 11:54:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#28 Ms. Skolaut
Note that I'm named after a (very) small Blue Ridge town. :)

Posted by Shipman 2004-06-25 6:43:55 AM||   2004-06-25 6:43:55 AM|| Front Page Top

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