Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.
I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.
But the cartoon story is different.
Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn't to provoke gratuitously -- and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.
At the end of September, a Danish standup comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran.
This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children's writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my book is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding.
Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.)
Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam.
So, over two weeks we witnessed a half-dozen cases of self-censorship, pitting freedom of speech against the fear of confronting issues about Islam. This was a legitimate news story to cover, and Jyllands-Posten decided to do it by adopting the well-known journalistic principle: Show, don't tell. I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them "to draw Muhammad as you see him." We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet. Twelve out of 25 active members responded.
We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.
The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs. Another suggests that the children's writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People's Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal.
One cartoon -- depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban -- has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.
On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those.
Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.
This is exactly why Karl Popper, in his seminal work "The Open Society and Its Enemies," insisted that one should not be tolerant with the intolerant. Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. In Saudi Arabia, you can get arrested for wearing a cross or having a Bible in your suitcase, while Muslims in secular Denmark can have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, TV and radio stations.
I acknowledge that some people have been offended by the publication of the cartoons, and Jyllands-Posten has apologized for that. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material. You cannot edit a newspaper if you are paralyzed by worries about every possible insult.
I am offended by things in the paper every day: transcripts of speeches by Osama bin Laden, photos from Abu Ghraib, people insisting that Israel should be erased from the face of the Earth, people saying the Holocaust never happened. But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper's ethical code. That other editors would make different choices is the essence of pluralism.
As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.
The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.
Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people's beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue -- in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them.
In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy. A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People's Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between "them" and "us," but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not.
This is the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate when it chose to test the limits of self-censorship by calling on cartoonists to challenge a Muslim taboo. Did we achieve our purpose? Yes and no. Some of the spirited defenses of our freedom of expression have been inspiring. But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated, much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten's headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship.
Still, I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons.
Flemming Rose is the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
#1
But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.
That's it in a nutshell. And dont forget that the word 'Islam' means 'Submission' not peace....
Conservative bloggers should encourage more elected officials to give interviews for blogs.
It could become a major political edge, because it doesn't have the "sound bite" problem. That is, if say a US Senator was an expert on a topic, he could give a response worthy of a Lincoln-Douglas debate, even if it ran several pages of detailed information, instead of just blurting out some talking point.
Talk about possibly raising the quality of debate!
Few people know it, but the US congress has some serious, world-class experts on certain topics, and yet they can never really explain all the stuff they know. And since bloggers aren't necessarily like reporters, trying to trip up and drag down everyone they interview, the politician could relax and say something intelligent for a change.
Bloggers are also under no obligation not to publish written interview information. So a congressman or senator who was an expert on military appropriations could bring in graphics, charts, bibliographies, and any and every training aid he wanted, and it would appear all over blogistan, reaching a goodly number of people, and being archived for future reference.
An important point to emphasize with such officials is that it is NOT a typical interview, that the blogger interviewing them is possibly just going to give them subject headers ahead of time and letting them fill in the rest, if that. And at no particular pace, or even sitting across from each other. No games, no tricks. Maybe a few real questions *after* they have analyzed what the official has written and said.
This is critical, because bloggers don't want to just be given the typical press release made by some weasely vassel staffer. So they have to tell them ahead of time that blog readers can have a very high interest and expertise in their subject, so want the "advanced" material.
Bloggers can also return to the official serious and educated feedback that they may not be getting anywhere else. Blog readers, as has been demonstrated in the past, can be as sharp as a tack and can spot data conflicts from a mile away. This can be priceless to those with limited and possibly conflicted advisors.
Islam is the unexploded bomb of global politics. US foreign policy - the only foreign policy there is, for the United States is the only superpower - proceeds from the hope that a modern and democratic Islam will emerge from the ruins of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Is it possible for Islam to reform? A negative answer implies that Ahmadinejad's January 5 call for world domination falls within the Islamic mainstream... The previous day, the London Guardian leaked a European intelligence report detailing Iran's efforts to acquire technology required to build nuclear weapons. A very few writers, including this one, have rejected the possibility of Islamic reformation, to the stony contempt of universally accepted opinion.
Now Pope Benedict XVI has let it be known that he does not believe Islam can reform. This we learn from the transcript of a January 5 US radio interview with one of Benedict's students and friends, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, posted on the Asia Times Online forum by a sharp-eyed reader. Fessio described a private seminar on the subject of Islam last year at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence:
The main presentation by this Father [Christian] Troll was very interesting. He based it on a Pakistani Muslim scholar [named] Rashan, who was at the University of Chicago for many years... Rashan's position was Islam can enter into dialogue with modernity, but only if it radically reinterprets the Koran, and takes the specific legislation of the Koran... and now applies them, and modifies them, for a new society [in] which women are now respected for their full dignity, where democracy's important, religious freedom's important, and so on. And if Islam does that, then it will be able to enter into real dialogue and live together with other religions and other kinds of cultures.
And immediately the holy father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said, well, there's a fundamental problem with that because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through his creatures. And so it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark... by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.
The interviewer then asked Fessio, "And so the pope is a pessimist about that changing, because it would require a radical reinterpretation of what the Koran is?" Fessio replied, "Yeah, which is it's impossible, because it's against the very nature of the Koran, as it's understood by Muslims."
Hebrew and Christian scripture claim to be the report of human encounters with God. After the Torah is read each Saturday in synagogues, the congregation intones that the text stems from "the mouth of God by the hand of Moses", a leader whose flaws kept him from entering the Promised Land.
The Archangel Gabriel, by contrast, dictated the Koran to Mohammed, according to Islamic doctrine. That sets a dauntingly high threshold for textual critics. How does one criticize the word of God without rejecting its divine character? In that respect the Koran resembles the "Golden Tablets" of the Angel Moroni purported found by the Mormon leader Joseph Smith more than it does the Jewish or Christian bibles.
Strange as it may seem, the pope must whisper when he wants to state agreement with conventional Muslim opinion, namely that the Koranic prophecy is fixed for all time such that Islam cannot reform itself. If Islam cannot change, then a likely outcome will be civilizational war, something too horrific for US leaders to contemplate. What Benedict XVI thinks about the likelihood of civilizational war I do not know. Two elements of context, though, set in relief his reported comments concerning Islam's incapacity to reform.
The first is that Benedict's comments regarding the nature of Muslim revelation are deliberate and informed, for his primary focus as a theologian has been the subject of revelation. A second element of context is Benedict's admiration for the US separation of church and state. In an essay published in this month's issue of First Things, Benedict makes the remarkable (for a pope) statement that the US model is what the early church really had in mind. He proceeds from the famous argument of Pope Gelasius I (492-496) that "because of human weakness (pride!), they have separated the two offices" of king and priest. Neither the state church model of Northern Europe nor the secular model of France, Italy and Spain has sufficed, Benedict observes.
It is most promising that a European, indeed one who speaks with the authority of the throne of St Peter, has explained the difference between the Christian foundation of the US political system and theocratic Islam - even if the explanation came in the form of a stage whisper. I expect this to have profound consequences.
Later in the same essay, Benedict takes up a theme I have addressed over the years, namely the moral cause of Europe's demographic implosion (see Why Europe chooses extinction, April 8, 2003), writing:
Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as though they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen - at least by some people - as a liability rather than as a source of hope. Here it is obligatory to compare today's situation with the decline of the Roman Empire.
My investigation of the causes of Europe's present decline was inspired by comments of then-cardinal Ratzinger in a book-length interview with the German journalist Peter Seewald published in 1996 as The Salt of the Earth. Nothing is really new in Benedict's present formulation except, perhaps, his sense of urgency as the hour grows late and the moment of truth approaches. In the cited essay, Benedict excoriates the pessimism of Oswald Spengler, who claimed to have discovered a deterministic pattern of rise and fall of civilizations. Instead, he argues that "the fate of a society always depends upon its creative minorities", and that "Christians should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority".
I agree with the pope, not with my namesake. My choice of nom de guerre is ironic rather than semiotic. The fact that the West still has such a leader as Benedict XVI in itself is cause for optimism. It might be too late for Europe, but it is not too late for the United States, and that is where the pope's mustard seeds may fall on fertile ground.
#1
Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as though they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen - at least by some people - as a liability rather than as a source of hope. Here it is obligatory to compare today's situation with the decline of the Roman Empire.
This sums up the bulk of Euroland in a nutshell. It also sums up much of the left in the U.S.
Yes, one's future is artistic/philosophical/architectural heritage, to some extent. But without humans beings, it's all for nought.
It may seem new that people are seeing this behavioral tendency and describing it, but it isn't. Decades ago, in his book The Silmarillion, Tolkien wrote about something very much like this situation in a short story named "Akallabeth". The Silmarillion is a good but lengthy and difficult book, but it might be worth it for 'burgers to pick up a copy, read this particular short story contained within, and then look at the frontispiece and check the year of first publication.
One of the great challenges of the West is the need to craft a society where there is freedom of choice for people in their pursuit of careers and avocations yet there is sufficient social norming pressure to induce them to breed in sustainable numbers. The current state of our culture, particularly with regard to feminism in its current guise and the expectation set it tries to prmulgate, will not be up to the task.
Some very lofty notions and high ideals may, unfortunately, have to be modified, even jettisoned in order to maintain a sufficient birthrate. I don't necessarily like this, but we may be forced to accept the fact in the face of the alternative - extinction of the West.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/19/2006 6:47 Comments ||
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#2
I disagree about what motivates people to breed.
Economics shows that in a poor society, no matter what other variables, people have a lot of children, when children are seen as both a money-making venture for the family and possibly support in later years for the old.
However, at a certain economic threshold, which varies by country, people stop having large families, as children move from the "credit" column to the "debit" column for their parents and the rest of their families. They are seen as hard work, expensive, and destined to leave their family as soon as they can.
Government has in past proven that it cannot significantly increase the number of children a couple wish to have, but they can further inhibit their desire, so that they have even fewer than two children per couple.
The reason for this is straightforward: the government is trying to help, instead of just getting out of the way. This interference, which invariably emphasises "child welfare", makes parenting an even more onerous task. They keep trying to raise the "responsibility" bar for people naturally overwhelmed with responsibility already.
So the way to get more children is to purposefully set up the conditions in which people *want* to breed, where children aren't a burden, and are again desireable.
Areas, regions, or parts of cities subtly set aside for breeding parents and children--nobody over the age of 40 or so. These places need employment, but for the male only, and otherwise need to be boring. Entertainment and materialism need to be carefully controlled, so that savings rates are high.
The area needs to be very child-oriented, with no contraception or abortion available, and housing built to cluster 5-7 families together with a "common yard" between them. These type cluster-houses have been shown to be very conducive to young parents.
Some degree of coercion needs to be introduced, such as encouraging single parents to marry, and an emphasis on conformity as far as having large families. Adults who medically cannot have children need to be ushered out. Conversely, there should be no sanction against adultery. At some point, even a small amount of fertility drugs might be introduced, to bring about increased multiple births for parents not breeding properly.
Only at this point, when you have couples busily making children, do you start to need the schools, clinics, and other up-front government services. But these have to be as stress free as possible.
Even what little entertainment is offered should emphasize having children.
This is a comprehensive scheme, an ideal unlikely to happen; but the more elements that do happen, the more likely a birthrate will go up.
#3
It appears to me, 'moose, that you have just declared that "the government is trying to help, instead of just getting out of the way" and then you have issued a prescription that cannot be filled except through governmental interference: "Areas, regions, or parts of cities subtly set aside ", "Entertainment and materialism need to be carefully controlled", etc. Put it on eastern-European soil and it almost sounds like an old Nazi breeding plan.
#5
Anonymoose don't look for solutions in economic rationality. A hint "an organism is not adapted to its environment, it is adapted to the environment of its ancestors."
#6
Darrell: Not Soviet, but Levittown and similar communities in post-WWII America. Much of what I am describing has already been done, resulting in the "baby boom generation".
Back then, much of what happened was unintentional, coincidental, and circumstantial, but the results were spectacular. That is why America in the 1950s was full of young children.
Today, to replicate the situation, the government would have to be deeply involved, but indirectly, not like today when they are in your face, in your wallet, and far more interested in productivity than procreation.
Who else but the government could prepare an area for new young families to occupy? Who else could provide the right kind of jobs and all the other incentives?
But until the children were born, the government has to leave the reproduction part alone. It can't brow-beat the parents and constantly remind them of their 20-year-long upcoming responsibilities. You don't want parents that are afraid of having children, scared at all the work, frightened of government intervention at the slightest lapse, etc.
Instead, the government actually has to let potential parents be somewhat irresponsible. To put it bluntly, most pregnancies are unintentional; and were it not for alcohol, the human species would be a fraction of its size.
'moose, while I applaud your goals you will make contraception illegal over my dead female body.
And fair warning - I won't die easily, as I own guns and know how to use them.
Just thought I'd contribute a friendly difference of opinion here .... ;-)
There are serious issues in a society that is so self-indulgent it does not value children. But let's leave 20th century authoritarian mass-state solutions to the graveyard, whether of the Nazi or the Stalinist kind.
With rapidly increasing life spans, we will be able to both pursue careers and have children. Increasingly even my generation, the baby boomers, have had more than one career in succession and that will be much more true for the younger generations.
What is needed is a sense that the future holds exciting possibilities. For that, people will work AND have kids -- and raise them well, too.
#8
Who else but the government could prepare an area for new young families to occupy? Who else could provide the right kind of jobs and all the other incentives?
The marketplace, as soon as people really want them.
#9
moose - you don't EVEN wanna get into trying to reconnect my vasectomy. We're not that friendly :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/19/2006 14:23 Comments ||
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#10
Wrt reform: While the Koran is supposed to be eternal, most of sharia is based on the hadith. The debate over sharia law was closed off over a thousand years ago, but people try from time to time to reopen ijtihad. So for all the respect Muslims pay sharia, it isn't "eternal" in the same way the Koran is supposed to be. So at least in theory it is possible to go back and rework sharia, perhaps adding a new principle and getting rid of a lot of the bogus hadith. (If I recall correctly, Khadafi tried something like that.)
Problem is that we infidels have no standing in such an enterprise. We can coax, but if the Muslims don't want to do it, it won't happen.
Me? I think Benedict isn't quite right: Islam _can_ reform, but won't. Not soon, anyway.
Posted by: James ||
02/19/2006 15:39 Comments ||
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#11
and were it not for alcohol, the human species would be a fraction of its size.
Hate to burst your bubble, but there's a billion screaming Mohammedans on the planet and hardly a one of them was conceived through the divine intervention of St. Bud or St. Jack or St. Jim or St. Chivas.
That said, I understand where 'moose is coming from. I just vehemently oppose trying to enforce it through laws or other means.
Also, having grown up in a 3 generation household, I'm not at all sure it is good policy to keep grandparents away from their grandkids on a daily basis. The 50s suburbs were an anomaly in history and had their pathologies. Older generations are an important part of a kid's upbringing IMO.
#15
The Soviet way would be to force people into such communities. The American way is to incentivize them in, while trying to exclude those who aren't interested in reproducing.
In other words, creating a good environment for reproduction for people who, when in such a good environment, want to reproduce.
And though people like to copulate just for the sake of copulating; and women's desire to have careers are also valid desires; neither are conducive to having five or six children. Which is what you need to have, at least at first.
So these incentives are not for them. Sorry you can't have it all. Either five kids or a career is an exclusive or.
People who cannot be allowed into the community are those who do not want to reproduce, but who do want to copulate. One such individual can prevent two other people from reproducing by their interference. Like sterile screwworm flies.
While grandparents can have a good influence, such a community would have to be a 'Sun City' in reverse: that is, in Sun City, the young under 60 people can visit, but they are not allowed to stay there overnight, regularly.
In this case, the grandparents could visit all they wanted, but could not live in the community proper. The adults you want to have children have to interact with a lot, and mutually support their peers. When couples are surrounded by other couples with young children and pregnancies, they are far more inclined towards children themselves.
How many times have we heard the following whining and yet received no specific answers from our leaders?
"Israel has nuclear weapons, so why single out Iran?"
"Pakistan got nukes and we lived with it."
"Who is to say the United States or Russia should have the bomb and not other countries?"
"Iran has promised to use its reactors for peaceful purposes, so why demonize the regime?"
In fact, the United States has a perfectly sound rationale for singling out Iran to halt its nuclear proliferation. At least six good reasons come to mind, not counting the more obvious objection over Iran's violation of U.N. non-proliferation protocols. It is past time that we spell them out to the world at large.
First, we cannot excuse Iran by acknowledging that the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, and Pakistan obtained nuclear weapons. In each case of acquisition, Western foreign-policy makers went into a crisis mode, as anti-liberal regimes gained stature and advantage by the ability to destroy Western cities.
A tragic lapse is not corrected by yet another similar mistake, especially since one should learn from the errors of the past. The logic of "They did it, so why can't I?" would lead to a nuclearized globe in which our daily multifarious wars, from Darfur to the Middle East, would all assume the potential to go nuclear. In contrast, the fewer the nuclear players, the more likely deterrence can play some role. There is no such thing as abstract hypocrisy when it is a matter of Armageddon.
Second, it is a fact that full-fledged democracies are less likely to attack one another. Although they are prone to fighting — imperial Athens and republican Venice both were in some sort of war about three out of four years during the 5th century B.C. and the 16th century respectively — consensual governments are not so ready to fight like kind. In contemporary terms that means that there is no chance whatsoever that an anti-American France and an increasingly anti-French America would, as nuclear democracies, attack each other. Russia, following the fall of Communism, and its partial evolution to democracy, poses less threat to the United States than when it was a totalitarian state.
It would be regrettable should Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or Germany go nuclear — but not the catastrophe of a nuclear Pakistan that, with impunity de facto, offers sanctuary to bin Laden and the planners of 9/11. The former governments operate under a free press, open elections, and free speech, and thus their war-making is subject to a series of checks and balances. Pakistan is a strongman's heartbeat away from an Islamic theocracy. And while India has volatile relations with its Islamic neighbor, the world is not nearly as worried about its arsenal as it is about autocratic Pakistan's.
Third, there are a number of rogue regimes that belong in a special category: North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Cuba, unfree states whose leaders have sought global attention and stature through sponsoring insurrection and terrorism beyond their borders. If it is scary that Russia, China, and Pakistan are now nuclear, it is terrifying that Kim Jong Il has the bomb, or that President Ahmadinejad might. Islamic fundamentalism or North Korean Stalinism might be antithetical to scientific advancement, but it is actually conducive to nuclear politics. When such renegade regimes go nuclear they gain the added lunatic edge: "We are either crazy or have nothing to lose or both — but you aren't." In nuclear poker, the appearance of derangement is an apparent advantage.
Fourth, there are all sorts of scary combinations — petrodollars, nukes, terrorism, and fanaticism. But Iran is a uniquely fivefold danger. It has enough cash to buy influence and exemption; nuclear weapons to threaten civilization; oil reserves to blackmail a petroleum hungry world; terrorists to either find sanctuary under a nuclear umbrella or to be armed with dirty bombs; and it has a leader who wishes either to take his entire country into paradise, or at least back to the eighth century amid the ashes of the Middle East.
Just imagine the present controversy over the cartoons in the context of President Ahmadinejad with his finger on a half-dozen nuclear missiles pointed at Copenhagen.
Fifth, any country that seeks "peaceful" nuclear power and is completely self-sufficient in energy production is de facto suspect. Iran has enough natural gas to meet its clean electrical generation needs for centuries. The only possible rationale for its multi-billion-dollar program of building nuclear reactors, and spending billions more to hide and decentralize them, is to obtain weapons, and thus to gain clout and attention in a manner that otherwise is not warranted by either Iranian conventional forces, cultural influence, or economic achievement.
Sixth, the West is right to take on a certain responsibility to discourage nuclear proliferation. The technology for such weapons grew entirely out of Western science and technology. In fact, the story of nuclear proliferation is exclusively one of espionage, stealthy commerce, or American and European-trained native engineers using their foreign-acquired expertise. Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran have no ability themselves to create such weapons, in the same manner that Russia, China, and India learned or stole a craft established only from the knowledge of European-American physics and industrial engineering. Any country that cannot itself create such weapons is probably not going to ensure the necessary protocols to guard against their misuse or theft.
We can argue all we want over the solution — it is either immoral to use military force or immoral not to use it; air strikes are feasible or will be an operational disaster; dissidents will rise up or have already mostly been killed or exiled; Russia and China will help solve or will instead enjoy our dilemma; Europe is now on board or is already triangulating; the U.N. will at last step in, or is more likely to damn the United States than Teheran.
Yet where all parties agree is that a poker-faced United States seems hesitant to act until moments before the missiles are armed, and is certainly not behaving like the hegemon or imperialist power so caricatured by Michael Moore and an array of post-September 11 university-press books. Until there is firm evidence that Iran has the warheads ready, the administration apparently does not wish to relive the nightmare of the past three years in which striking Iran will conjure up all the old Iraqi-style hysteria about unilateralism, preemption, incomplete or cooked intelligence, imperialism, and purported hostility toward a Muslim country.
In the greatest irony of all, the Left (who must understand well the nightmarish scenario of a fascist Iran with nuclear weapons) is suddenly bewildered by George Bush's apparent multilateral caution. The Senate Democrats don't know whether to attack the administration now for its nonchalance or to wait and second-guess them once the bombs begin to fall.
Either way, no one should doubt that a nuclear Iran would end the entire notion of global adjudication of nuclear proliferation — as well as remain a recurrent nightmare to civilization itself.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/19/2006 00:00 ||
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By Mansoor Ijaz, MANSOOR IJAZ is an American Muslim of Pakistani ancestry.
ANOTHER WEEK, another Muslim country burns in rage over months-old Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in an unflattering light. On Friday it was Libya, and earlier in the week it was my father's homeland, Pakistan, where violent protests were scattered across the nation. Some Muslims have decided that burning cities in defense of a prophet's teachings, which none of them seem willing to practice, is preferable to participating in rational debate about the myths and realities of a religion whose worst enemies are increasingly its own adherents.
This week's events should compel those of us who claim Islam as our system of philosophical guidance to ask hard questions of ourselves in order to revive the religion's essential foundation: justice, peaceful and tolerant coexistence, compassion, the search for knowledge and unwavering faith in the unity of God.
The raging Muslims in the streets of Lahore and London have missed a revelation: it is in America that a Muslim can live in a decent society that comes closest to those ideals. The societies that they claim to be loyal to, in Egypt, Syria, Iran, Pakistan,and so on, are the societies in which Islam can't be practiced on a foundation of 'justice' and 'compassion'. There's no such thing in those thugocracies, and there won't be in any caliphate that al-Qaeda or the GPSC would have Muslims build. Orrin Judd asks an interesting question: if Mohammed were to come back today, in which country would he say that the people live with the kind of dignity he demanded?
I am an American by birth and a Muslim by faith. For many of my American friends, I am a voice of reason in a sea of Islamist darkness, while many Muslims have called me an "Uncle Tom" for ingratiating myself with the vested interests they seek to destroy through their violence. Mostly, though, I try not to ignore the harsh realities the followers of my religion are often unwilling to face.
The first truth is that most Muslim ideologues are hypocrites. What has Osama bin Laden done for the victims of the 2004 tsunami or the shattered families who lost everything in the Pakistani earthquake last year? He did not build one school, offer one loaf of bread or pay for one vaccination. And yet he, not the devout Muslim doctors from California and Iowa who repair broken limbs and lives in the snowy peaks of Kashmir, speaks the loudest for what Muslims allegedly stand for. He has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam's poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank.
Thus demonstrating the hypocrisy of the media as well.
The hypocrisy only starts there. Muslims and Arabs have done pitifully little to help improve the capacity of the Palestinian people to be good neighbors to their Israeli brethren. Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. Yet rather than educate and feed Palestinian and Muslim children so they may learn to settle differences through dialogue and debate, instead of by throwing rocks and wearing bombs, the Muslim "haves" put on a few telethons to raise paltry sums for the "have nots" to alleviate the guilt over their palatial gilded cages.
He seems to have a few Saoodi princes in mind. One could try to argue that every society has had its robber barons, its rapacious wealthy and powerful few. We certainly have in America. Yet it was, in substantial part, due to our religious beliefs that we made the robber barons yield enough, and in the right ways, to make our society more just. What chance do the Saoodis have when the princes and the clerics together maintain a chokehold on their society?
The second truth — one that the West needs to come to grips with — is that there is no such human persona as a "moderate Muslim." You either believe in the oneness of God or you don't. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don't. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn't live there.
While one can reject the claim of 'moderate'-ness in one's own faith -- indeed, one should do so, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian -- Muslims have to recognize, as Jews and Christians have done, that a person can be whole in one's faith and still be politically moderate, pleural and inclusive. That's the point of the Christian injunction to 'render what is due to Caesar'. Islam needs a Reformation: one wonders if the Kurds, the southeast Asians, and the Shi'a might be closer to that than the Arab Sunnis.
Haters of Islam use the simplicity and elegance of its black-and-white rigor for devious political advantage by classifying the Koran's religious edicts as the cult-like behavior of fanatics. The West would win a lot of hearts and minds if it only showed Islam as it really is — telling the story, for example, that the prophet Muhammad was one of the great commodity traders of all time because he based his dealings on uniquely Muslim values, or that the reason he had multiple wives was not for the sake of sex but to give proper homes to the children of women made widows during a time of war. The cartoon imbroglio offered Western media an opportunity to portray the prophet in his many dignified dimensions, not just the distorted ones; sadly, there were few takers.
Not that the Western media would have been spared had it done so. Remember, the cartoons were ignored for months until a Danish iman, prompted by people we haven't yet identified, decided to use additional, fake cartoons to whip up the hatred. Think a Danish newspaper could have, at that point, engaged in some dialogue on how to portray Mohammed?
But to look at angry Islam's reaction on television each night forces the question of what might be possible if all the lost energy of thousands of rioting Muslims went into the villages of Aceh to rebuild lost homes or into Kashmir to construct schools.
In fact, the most glaring truth is that Islam's mobsters fear the West has it right: that we have perfected the very system Islam's holy scriptures urged them to learn and practice. And having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize those of us in the West and to try to bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate or house.
This is not Islam. And the faster its truest believers stand up and demonstrate its values and principles by actions, not words, the sooner a great religion will return to its rightful role as guide for nearly a quarter of humanity.
We, like he, are waiting for Muslims to do just that. Show us the peace, tolerance and decency of your faith, show us how you take care of the poor, the sick, the lame in your societies, show us how you protect your children, show us how you provide a way for people to live in peace with themselves and with each other. It took us Christians a long time to figure out how to do that, and by no means are we perfect. But you've had almost as long, and while we won't expect perfection, there has to be more than what you've shown us in recent years.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/19/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Sorry, Steve. I've given up hope. I don't even trust people like Ijaz; he's just one more Muzzy using taqqiyya. Screw the lot of them; they constitute a clear and present danger to national security. I want to see mass deportations from America and the West and Iran a smoking black radioactive glass sheet.
The world needs to be deislamicized the same way it was denazified after 1945 and the sooner we get started the better. Unfortunately for us we'll have to have another 9-11--or worse--before the national will to make that happen manifests itself. Even then, we'll probably have to do serious damage to our own freedoms; we'll have to either lock up or execute the lefti/tranzi idiots that comprise most of the Democratic Party because they constitute a very dangerous fifth column in our midst.
I see it getting very ugly in the next three to five years and I strongly suggest that any 'Burgers who haven't started buying guns, ammo, food and getting to know their neighbors well start doing so immediately. Private citizens are running out of time to prepare for the apparently inevitable and those who aren't prepared are going to pay a high and bitter price.
Posted by: mac ||
02/19/2006 8:06 Comments ||
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#2
Ijaz is still living with the internal contradictions of his religion.
for example he somehow believes the west is the one that can demonstrate true islamas in this,
"...The West would win a lot of hearts and minds if it only showed Islam as it really is — telling the story, for example, that the prophet Muhammad was one of the great commodity traders of all time because he based his dealings on uniquely Muslim values..."
and he doesn't even understand his own prophet as in this,
"... or that the reason he had multiple wives was not for the sake of sex but to give proper homes to the children of women made widows during a time of war."
he had about a dozen wives through connections with his followers; he also had about a dozen wives that he got when his gangsters massacred the men of other tribes and in addition to this he had another dozen or two sex slaves.
What I like to ask Moslems is "Gee with so many wives and being the greatest fellow who ever lived, its remarkable that he had no sons and only one daughter."
#3
"to give proper homes to the children of women made widows during a time of war"
If Mo (PTUI) had not incited those wars, there wouldn't have been so many dead husbands and fathers.
#4
here is a quote by Robert Spencer over at http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/
"...Unfortunately, Mr. Ijaz seems to be a man between worlds; his loyalty subject to the claims of both. Eventually, I believe, he will be forced to choose; and it is that very choice he seeks to avoid by writing these kinds of pieces."
#6
to give proper homes to the children of women made widows during a time of war
That's a funny way to spell enslaved which is what Mo did to them - often after he and his gang murdered their husbands.
prophet Muhammad was one of the great commodity traders of all time because he based his dealings
The commody of cource was slaves and booty taken during one of his raids. Those the the unique muslim values he is talking about....
#7
I found his argument compelling and he should be given a platform. The idea that all Muslims, billions of them, are bad people and should be exterminated is fantasy at it's worst. Oh yeah, lets fire up those ovens so we that we can live in a peaceful world. bleah.
Ijaz has the answer to the problem that we face. Bring the Muslims and their religion into the 21st century. Get the good Muslim people to stop blaming "others" and start acting like a religion of peace.
You only need look to the West to see the number of idiots that can be rallied to support evil ideas like Communism or Nazism.
You want to talk about what we need to do to keep terrorists out of our midst - be they communist, fascist or islamist - count me in. Start talking about all Muslims as terrorists, count me out.
#9
I agree with you, mhw. But the only way out of this mess is to recognize that the solution is to bring the good Muslims on board to ideas that any human being can agree with and Ijaz is doing that here. I understand taqqiyya. But this seems sincere to me and I think we should applaud him and encourage other Muslims to adopt his ideas.
#10
This is not Islam. And the faster its truest believers stand up and demonstrate its values and principles by actions, not words, the sooner a great religion will return to its rightful role as guide for nearly a quarter of humanity.
Four years since 9/11 -- the "truest believers" haven't stood up in noticeable numbers.
34 years since Munich -- the "truest believers" haven't stood up.
How many generations are we supposed to wait for these "truest believers" to stand up? Perhaps we should view Islam as akin to socialism: "Nice idea in theory, but the practice is always so screwed up it just makes things worse."
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/19/2006 12:38 Comments ||
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#11
2b -- Ijaz so horribly mis-states the history of Mohammed, how can you trust him on anything? Sure, Mo' married to help the widows and orphans left by wars... wars he started. Why didn't Ijaz mention that?
I don't trust anyone who plays the "Islam means peace" crap. It's a lie, and when I hear someone repeating that lie, I have to wonder what else the person's lying about.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/19/2006 12:44 Comments ||
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#12
Nice idea in theory, but the practice is always so screwed up it just makes things worse."
ok, I agree. But then what?
I've read your posts enough to know that you don't agree with mac's call for Iran a smoking black radioactive glass sheet.
This isn't a problem that is going to go away by demanding that Muslim's renounce their faith. I would wager that despite the protests and the media reports that most Muslims really don't like the idea of suicide bombers blowing up children in baby carriges.
#13
2b, I too am trying to reconcile my Christian faith with what I believe we and the rest of the West are facing. I agree with you: I don't want to kill huge numbers, they cannot be forced to give up their faith, there are innocents etc. But the moderates, or truely faithful have been silent.
We need a plan now. If we continue to wait, the next war will be fought with nuclear weapons. I love my neighbor, but I love my own family more.
I hope that you or someone else can propose a plan that avoids the slaughter that I see looming.
#14
I would wager that despite the protests and the media reports that most Muslims really don't like the idea of suicide bombers blowing up children in baby carriges.
Then they should stop supporting those who do. They should expose those who do.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/19/2006 12:58 Comments ||
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#15
Well said, SR-71. And I completely agree with you RC. I just don't think that the answer is to lump them all into one group.
Islam is a religion based on blame. I would go further and say that Mohammed, for power and greed, created a new religion that allowed him to do what Christianity does not - convert by the sword.
None of that matters. It is what it is. Now we need to move forward. I think Ijaz is sincere. We should support his efforts.
I don't have the answers. But I'm tired of hearing that we should just "get rid of them all". It's unrealistic.
#17
that's true, inspector. I'd say that we should look to Christianity to see what caused whites to stay silent to the abuses by the KKK. I'd wager it was fear. But the problem is that the KKK distorted Christianity and the Jihadists actually are adhereing to their faith.
That said, I still think that we are best served by appealing to the good in Muslim people. I believe that good and evil is found in each of us. When we sink to calling for extermination of good people, we become the ones who are evil.
#18
the good v evil is not a 50/50 balance in all people. Rioting muslims may only be stupidly evil, but have redeaming qualities when they go home and kick the old lady in the burka? Don't buy into the idea all people have good in them...note the good muslim mom who is happy her sons were suicide bombers.
#19
This kind of debate (along with humor of a style I find that reminds me of my military past (USMC/USA)) is a great release for me. But let me pose a serious question. The challenge for those of us in the prevention business is to figure out how to craft domestic intelligence collection priorities regarding Muslims. Over and over again we encounter prohibitions against "profiling", yet daily I read reports and suspicious activities summaries from federal, state and local sources that paint a picture over and over again about suspicious activities at this mosque or that. Despite obvious radical elements in their place of worship, there is never a peep from the rest of the believers that attend the place. It seems like the overwhelming majority of followers are content to ignore out of fear or passively support radical activities, and their tacit support suggests that they cannot be relied upon to stop the clandestine activity. Couple that with an enormous amount of fund raising activity that flows overseas, and what can one conclude except that the MAJORITY of US Muslims are at least a passive threat?
#20
I am sorry 2b, but I think we are going to fight a war that is like what we did to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, muslims seemed to want that war, I know we will win it I am just sad so many are going to die.
#21
but I think we are going to fight a war that is like what we did to Nazi Germany
sadily, you are probably right. But we will need the good Muslims to win. Iraq is proof of that. I'm not naive to the gravity of the problem that we face.
I'll just say that if the media worked in our favor - I think we could head this thing off. I really do. But instead - just like with communism - they stoke the fires of discontent and as a result, thousands will die. And then, after millions die, they will just sit back and say ... it's the West's fault.
#22
"...what can one conclude except that the MAJORITY of US Muslims are at least a passive threat?"
Passive threat, at best-- and that's being extremely optimistic, IMO.
My kind of "moderate Muslim" is a Muslim who actively affirms, over and over to anyone who will listen, his absolute committment to fully support the Western (especially American) system of separation of church-- or mosque-- and state, and who works actively to drive out the extremist elements which have taken over his faith.
I have seen only a pitifully small number of such people since 9/11-- so few, in fact, that the number might as well be zero for all the help we can expect from them.
As far as I'm concerned, this notion of the "moderate Muslim" is nothing more than a pleasant, soothing falsehood concocted by well-intentioned people to keep from facing the reality of an Islam that constitutes a dire menace to our very survival.
JMHO...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
02/19/2006 14:25 Comments ||
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#23
I would go further and say that Mohammed, for power and greed, created a new religion that allowed him to do what Christianity does not - convert by the sword.
Not to start that old religious argument again, but that statement is absurd, 2b. Christianity found plenty of converts at the point of the sword over the centuries, as well you know. That practice only stopped after the Thirty Years War in the 18th century of the Common Era.
What Mohammed did was found a new religion that allowed him to benefit personally from the those who did not convert at the point of the swords of himself and his robber gang. He'd hoped to benefit from pursuading the Jews that he was their long-awaited Messiah, and early on many in the region did think so (back when he was still praying in the direction of Jerusalem). But they fell away when he didn't usher in the Messianic Age and the restoration of the House of David to the throne in Jerusalem, and Mohammed never did forgive them for that.
I suspect (and I speak here as a North-Easterner and also a first generation American, so I have absolutely no solid data on which to base my conclusion -- therefore worth absolutely no more than the nothing you just paid to read it) that most Southern White Christians were silent about the activities of the KKK because they did not disapprove of them. That is, they had imbibed with their mother's milk the idea that the Blacks were naturally inferior, and that unless firmly suppressed would become a danger to themselves and others. And, while perhaps not entirely comfortable with individual actions against individuals known to themselves personally, rationalized the entirety as an uncomfortable necessity. In Nazi Germany there where many instances where people protected their Jewish friends, while merrily staging pogroms in the next community over... because those people were just Jooos.
Likewise, all those lovely Palestinian supporters justify the boomers because, as they are fond of saying, the Palestinians are victims of oppression. If Westerners can find such justification, what more do simple Muslims need to support passive acceptance? I agree that "Kill 'em all and let God sort it out," is both unworkable and evil. We cannot remove from the living over a billion people, most of whom passively accept the actions of perhaps as much as a few hundred thousand (nb: number pulled out of my hat, with no basis), even including those providing funds, and those rioting, raping, killing Christian schoolgirls, and pillaging local churches. We will have won when these passive supporters realize the cost of not objecting is too high. Which will take, I fear, a good deal of killing and destruction, flashed to television screens around the world.
The Muslim world must come to understand that, despite their clever manouvers in the UN and elsewhere, our armies cannot be stopped, and that Allah has no intention of helping them. The conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq were first stages of that lesson, but the world still thinks those victories can be rolled back by riots and rhetoric. They are wrong, because a simple majority of Americans (I don't think it's yet much more than that, but it suffices, and our numbers continue to grow -- the school kids took 9/11 personally) believes in the importance of this fight. And in Europe they are starting to see it, too, even if the politicians don't, yet.
But even if Europe does cave, I believe we can carry this fight on our own -- we know where the troops are barracked, we know where the leaders live, and we can rain destruction down upon them from beyond the horizon. The threats they hold -- dirty bombs, suicide bombers, even another oil boycott -- are none of them as dangerous to us as our hysterical media would like to believe. Even the 9/11 attacks, horrible as they were, killed only a few thousand in a country of several hundred million, stopped trading on the stock market for a few days, and cost the economy a few billion dollars. The attacks did not diminish our ability to defend ourselves, nor did they affect our cohesiveness as a society or significantly effect our productivity as the driver of the world economy.
We will win, it will get considerably uglier than it is now, but in the end Islam will be forced to join the modern world.
In the meantime, though, I think all mosques and Muslim organizations should be profiled until not a mouse squeeks in the basement that our intelligence services don't know about. ;-)
Posted by: Dave D. ||
02/19/2006 14:44 Comments ||
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#25
Personally I think what we need is to get the articulate Islamic apologists on TV (and yes, their face will be pixilated and voice altered because of death threats).
Fox TV does have Robert Spencer on but needs to go the next step to have Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina or someone of that caliber on.
In the meantime, every month or so I write to the WaPo suggesting they have a column by an apostate.
#27
you make some good points, tw. First - your point is valid about the reasons that most whites stayed silent. It was no doubt a combination of fear of being ostracized as well as being indoctrinated to the belief that blacks were truly inferior. And to the problem that we face in that "moderate Muslims" share this same superiority mindset - you make an excellent point. However, Christianity as a religion had to be perverted to support both oppressing and killing one's neighbor, and Islam does not. I was using the example of the South as an example of something we might look to, to help bring good Muslims forward - while acknowledging the inherent problem that their texts condone bringing converts by the sword as well as not separating government from religion.
I'm not in the mood to defend Christianity. I believe Christ provided a path for a better way. That it's been abused throughout history to rally for poltical gain and greed is not news to me.
As for solutions, I agree that the Muslims will respong best to strength as well as some of the other points you made. I'm just tired of the exterminate them mentality - and as someone whose mother survived the holocaust, I know you are too.
#28
2b, all the Abrahamic religions have bloody hands. Judaism's stage of conversion-by-conquest occurred under the Hasmoneans (the kings descended from Judah Maccabee of Hannukah fame's brother). One of the reasons King Herod was so hated by the Jews he ruled (besides certain unattractive personal habits, like murdering his wives and offspring), was that he was an Idumean (spelling?), and his ancestors had converted to Judaism at sword's point perhaps 150 years earlier. Christianity is not now what it chose to be in times past, when its leaders were seduced from Christ's path (as you put it so well) by the poisoned chalice of political power. The Christianity you follow is most certainly not of that kind, and I admire the strength with which you follow the dictates of your faith. You make the world a better place.
If Islam were understood as you understand Christianity, we wouldn't be in the midst of this war they started. It is my hope that at the end of this war, it will be. Even if the message of Islam must be twisted a bit from Mohammed's intention.
And I have faith, just as I have faith that the Arab section of the globe will not be made smoking glass at our hands, that we will not have to kill them all to accomplish this.
#31
Thanks tw! Well said (and hugs :-) I've been out and thinking about this. And, I don't have much time but I want to say that I often refer to Christian principles as being that force which inspires us all to try to individually lift ourselves up. Christianity has been a strong force for good in the world, feeding the hungry, educating the masses, and teaching tolerance and forgiveness - above hate and revenge. But I don't mean to exclude Jews or atheists or others when I refer to it that way. Israel and Jewish communities, as well as other non-religious groups do that as well. And I'm sorry if I made it seem that I was implying it was exclusive - sometimes it's just easier, for the sake of brevity, to refer to ideas of Christ's teaching to encompass those ideals - but I've never meant to imply them as exclusive.
Israel is a excellent example of a society that also encompasses those same principals as well as Jewish communities world-wide. Discussions of religion always bring so much baggage with them.
But the point I'm always driving at is that what is different about the Muslim religion is that, with its emphasis on blame, humiliation and revenge it does not serve its adherents well.
It's much like our own media and liberal elites, with their obsession with assigning blame. Anything that goes wrong must be assigned blame. Not everyone in the world is fed? Must be the Joos or the white anglo saxon males to blame. No such thing as an accident anymore - must assign blame and jail time to actions that each one of us has probably been guilty of at some point in our life. Fat? Must be someone's fault. Lost your job? Blame The Man. It's self destructive and does nothing to help make the world a better place.
Jews, Christians and the west in general all have histories of state sponsored blood, rape and pillage. But we have moved forward towards a more civilized world. But the Muslim emphasis on blame and revenge and Sharia lock them into ideas whose time has long since past.
Mansoor Ijaz touches on this in this article and until the Muslims start to evaluate what is wrong in their own societies and make an effort we can't hope to win this war. But I feel the biggest problem that we face is that our own media and liberal elites - are no different. And they hold the megaphone that encourages exactly what exacerbates the problem. The demand that immaculate pefection can not be obtained due to ___________ (insert your Satan here)....and if we could only eliminate all those __________(insert your Satan here) then Utopia would emerge.
Muslims are just people ill served by their religion. Among them are good and bad - just like in our own societies. To win this war, we must find a way to appeal to their better nature. We can't do it without them.
#32
Not to beat the religion horse too much, but TW I think that you're right in that the RELIGIONS have bloody hands (all of them). BUT, I'd add, that if you look at the TRUE teachings of each religion, you'd see that Christ's teachings are 180 degrees from Big Mo's teachings. That's what worries me....as some here have more eloquently states...the muslims are TRULY following their "leader's" teachings and his lifestyle. I won't pretend to even begin to speak for Judaism, but as for Christianity, those who have killed in Christ's name have DISTORTED His teachings. Those who do it in Mo's name follow his teachings to the "letter of the law." And, all, please don't give me the Crusades argument....after researching it, I've about come to the conclusion that their fight is our fight against the Muslims...truly defensive in nature, and I hope and pray that we don't have to go to those lengths, but if we do...I'm "down with it." I will turn the other cheek when you strike me, but strike my family and/or nation, don't expect me to hold back (and, personally, I don't believe Christ would either). A final point in this matter to me is oftentimes Sudan....I, for one, as a Christian, believe we should stop the genocide going on there and would shout from the rooftops if we could save those (majority) African Muslims from their Arab "overlords" (not to mention the Christians among them).
Posted by: BA ||
02/19/2006 21:02 Comments ||
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#33
Agreed, BA. Especially on the issue of the Crusades. The Crusades were preceded by nearly 500 years of Muslim conquest. The hot war with Islam ceased with the Hudna of 1683 after the Siege of Vienna. I believe that the present is only a continuation of the first 1000 years of war between Islam and everyone else.
#34
My biggest fear is that by not stating the ugly truths -- the calm acceptance of jihadists by the mass of Muslims, the never-ending funding flowing from the general population of Muslims to the jihadists, the willingness of 40% of Britains Muslims to state in public they want sharia -- we're setting ourselves up for the ugliest of all possibilities.
Tolerating crap just gets you more crap. Eventually, something will snap; either there will be an atrocity that makes 9/11 fade into history, or the accumulation of small atrocities will push civilization's tolerance to the end. Putting a stop to the crap now will (hopefully) prevent that; either the moderates will be enheartened to finally stand up, or the cost of not being a moderate will be so high Islam will change on its own.
But the signs aren't good, even from the supposed moderates. Take this bit from Ijaz:
Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. Yet rather than educate and feed Palestinian and Muslim children so they may learn to settle differences through dialogue and debate, instead of by throwing rocks and wearing bombs, the Muslim "haves" put on a few telethons to raise paltry sums for the "have nots" to alleviate the guilt over their palatial gilded cages.
The fact is, Saudi and UN money flow to Palestinian schools. Practically floods into them.
And those schools teach jihad.
Does anyone think the curriculum would change if there was more Saudi money flowing in?
Why the focus on money that's not going in, while ignoring what's coming out of the schools that exist?
If your local school started teaching racial hatred and the glories of murder and death, would your focus be on its budget, or its message?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/19/2006 22:20 Comments ||
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#35
If your local school started teaching racial hatred and the glories of murder and death, would your focus be on its budget, or its message?
Good point - as well as agree with BA we could/should stop the genocide in Sudan. It wouldn't be that hard to do if all western societies assisted whole-heartedly.
What bothers me the most is that if the western media would support the efforts to enlighten the Muslim world, instead of pandering to their victim mentality and blame the West mantra - then I think the rational Muslims would be able to find a voice that allows them to move from the 7th Century into the 21st. But our liberals and our media have the same blame/victim mentality and feed into their delusions of victory and will leave us as the liberals always leave us - with mountains of skulls left in their climb toward utopia.
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