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General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on April 27, 2008, 10:48:15 PM

Title: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on April 27, 2008, 10:48:15 PM

(http://www.city-journal.org/assets/images/cj_header.jpg)

An Anatomy of Surrender
Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.

By Bruce Bawer

Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war?holy war, jihad?to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801?05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists? weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist?s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini?s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Kho­meini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies? basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular?the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam?s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper?s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed?have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology?which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive?people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis?infidels living in Muslim societies.

Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly?or not so slowly, in Europe?s case?being absorbed into the House of Submission.

The Western media are in the driver?s seat on this road to sharia. Often their approach is to argue that we?re the bad guys. After the late Dutch sociologist-turned-politician Pim Fortuyn sounded the alarm about the danger that Europe?s Islamization posed to democracy, elite journalists labeled him a threat. A New York Times headline described him as marching the dutch to the right. Dutch newspapers Het Parool and De Volkskrant compared him with Mussolini; Trouw likened him to Hitler. The man (a multiculturalist, not a Muslim) who murdered him in May 2002 seemed to echo such verdicts when explaining his motive: Fortuyn?s views on Islam, the killer insisted, were ?dangerous.?

Perhaps no Western media outlet has exhibited this habit of moral inversion more regularly than the BBC. In 2006, to take a typical example, Manchester?s top imam told psychotherapist John Casson that he supported the death penalty for homosexuality. Casson expressed shock?and the BBC, in a dispatch headlined imam accused of ?gay death? slur, spun the controversy as an effort by Casson to discredit Islam. The BBC concluded its story with comments from an Islamic Human Rights Commission spokesman, who equated Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality with those of ?other orthodox religions, such as Catholicism? and complained that focusing on the issue was ?part of demonizing Muslims.?

In June 2005, the BBC aired the documentary Don?t Panic, I?m Islamic, which sought to portray concerns about Islamic radicalism as overblown. This ?stunning whitewash of radical Islam,? as Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson put it, ?helped keep the British public fast asleep, a few weeks before the bombs went off in London subways and buses? in July 2005. In December 2007, it emerged that five of the documentary?s subjects, served up on the show as examples of innocuous Muslims-next-door, had been charged in those terrorist attacks?and that BBC producers, though aware of their involvement after the attacks took place, had not reported important information about them to the police.

Press acquiescence to Muslim demands and threats is endemic. When the Mohammed cartoons?published in September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to defy rising self-censorship after van Gogh?s murder?were answered by worldwide violence, only one major American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined such European dailies as Die Welt and El Pa?s in reprinting them as a gesture of free-speech solidarity. Editors who refused to run the images claimed that their motive was multicultural respect for Islam. Critic Christopher Hitchens believed otherwise, writing that he ?knew quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for ?restraint? was simple fear.? Exemplifying the new dhimmitude, whatever its motivation, was Norway?s leading cartoonist, Finn Graff, who had often depicted Israelis as Nazis, but who now vowed not to draw anything that might provoke Muslim wrath. (On a positive note, this February, over a dozen Danish newspapers, joined by a number of other papers around the world, reprinted one of the original cartoons as a free-speech gesture after the arrest of three people accused of plotting to kill the artist.)

Last year brought another cartoon crisis?this time over Swedish artist Lars Vilks?s drawings of Mohammed as a dog, which ambassadors from Muslim countries used as an excuse to demand speech limits in Sweden. CNN reporter Paula Newton suggested that perhaps ?Vilks should have known better? because of the Jyllands-Posten incident?as if people who make art should naturally take their marching orders from people who make death threats. Meanwhile, The Economist depicted Vilks as an eccentric who shouldn?t be taken ?too seriously? and noted approvingly that Sweden?s prime minister, unlike Denmark?s, invited the ambassadors ?in for a chat.?

The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: ?If you?re wondering why you haven?t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it?s because there haven?t been any.? Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them?and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters? Muslim identity (few cited the cries of ?Allahu akbar,? for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.

When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing?even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. u.s. muslims assimilated, opposed to extremism, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today?s american muslims reject extremes. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain?yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views.

After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an ?anti-Muslim backlash??thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists? real acts of violence to non-Muslims? imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye?or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong?s hagiography of Mohammed as ?a good place to start? learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito want to understand islam? start here.

Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott?s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn?t speak English, refused to shake women?s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. ?Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother?s voice?; ?Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ?She entered my heart,? said the imam.? Elliott?s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as ?right-wing? and insisted that Shata was ?very moderate.?

So it goes in this upside-down, not-so-brave new media world: those who, if given the power, would subjugate infidels, oppress women, and execute apostates and homosexuals are ?moderate? (a moderate, these days, apparently being anybody who doesn?t have explosives strapped to his body), while those who dare to call a spade a spade are ?Islamophobes.?

The entertainment industry has been nearly as appalling. During World War II, Hollywood churned out scores of films that served the war effort, but today?s movies and TV shows, with very few exceptions, either tiptoe around Islam or whitewash it. In the whitewash category were two sitcoms that debuted in 2007, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation?s Little Mosque on the Prairie and CW?s Aliens in America. Both shows are about Muslims confronting anti-Muslim bigotry; both take it for granted that there?s no fundamentalist Islam problem in the West, but only an anti-Islam problem.

Muslim pressure groups have actively tried to keep movies and TV shows from portraying Islam as anything but a Religion of Peace. For example, the Council for American-Islamic Relations successfully lobbied Paramount Pictures to change the bad guys in The Sum of All Fears (2002) from Islamist terrorists to neo-Nazis, while Fox?s popular series 24, after Muslims complained about a story line depicting Islamic terrorists, ran cringe-worthy public-service announcements emphasizing how nonviolent Islam was. Earlier this year, Iranian-Danish actor Farshad Kholghi noted that, despite the cartoon controversy?s overwhelming impact on Denmark, ?not a single movie has been made about the crisis, not a single play, not a single stand-up monologue.? Which, of course, is exactly what the cartoon jihadists wanted.

In April 2006, an episode of the animated series South Park admirably mocked the wave of self-censorship that followed the Jyllands-Posten crisis?but Comedy Central censored it, replacing an image of Mohammed with a black screen and an explanatory notice. According to series producer Anne Garefino, network executives frankly admitted that they were acting out of fear. ?We were happy,? she told an interviewer, ?that they didn?t try to claim that it was because of religious tolerance.?

Then there?s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves ?respect.? Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London?s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was ?space constraints,? but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery?s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London?s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though ?very few people have explicitly admitted? it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has?and his reluctance isn?t about multicultural sensitivity. ?The reason I haven?t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,? he told the Times of London, ?is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.?

Leading liberal intellectuals and academics have shown a striking willingness to betray liberal values when it comes to pacifying Muslims. Back in 2001, Unni Wikan, a distinguished Norwegian cultural anthropologist and Islam expert, responded to the high rate of Muslim-on-infidel rape in Oslo by exhorting women to ?realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.?

More recently, high-profile Europe experts Ian Buruma of Bard College and Timothy Garton Ash of Oxford, while furiously denying that they advocate cultural surrender, have embraced ?accommodation,? which sounds like a distinction without a difference. In his book Murder in Amsterdam, Buruma approvingly quotes Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen?s call for ?accommodation with the Muslims,? including those ?who consciously discriminate against their women.? Sharia enshrines a Muslim man?s right to beat and rape his wife, to force marriages on his daughters, and to kill them if they resist. One wonders what female Muslims who immigrated to Europe to escape such barbarity think of this prescription.

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and one of Britain?s best-known public intellectuals, suggested in February the institution of a parallel system of sharia law in Britain. Since the Islamic Sharia Council already adjudicates Muslim marriages and divorces in the U.K., what Williams was proposing was, as he put it, ?a much enhanced and quite sophisticated version of such a body, with increased resources.? Gratifyingly, his proposal, short on specifics and long on academic doublespeak (?I don?t think,? he told the BBC, ?that we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights, simply because it doesn?t immediately fit with how we understand it?) was greeted with public outrage.

Another prominent accommodationist is humanities professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, author of an August 2007 essay in the New York Times Magazine so long and languorous, and written with such perfect academic dispassion, that many readers may have finished it without realizing that it charted a path leading straight to sharia. Muslims? ?full reconciliation with modern liberal democracy cannot be expected,? Lilla wrote. For the West, ?coping is the order of the day, not defending high principle.?

Revealing in this light is Buruma?s and Garton Ash?s treatment of author Ayaan Hirsi Ali?perhaps the greatest living champion of Western freedom in the face of creeping jihad?and of the Europe-based Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan. Because Hirsi Ali refuses to compromise on liberty, Garton Ash has called her a ?simplistic . . . Enlightenment fundamentalist??thus implicitly equating her with the Muslim fundamentalists who have threatened to kill her?while Buruma, in several New York Times pieces, has portrayed her as a petulant naif. (Both men have lately backed off somewhat.) On the other hand, the professors have rhapsodized over Ramadan?s supposed brilliance. They aren?t alone: though he?s clearly not the Westernized, urbane intellectual he seems to be?he refuses to condemn the stoning of adulteresses and clearly looks forward to a Europe under sharia?this grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and prot?g? of Islamist scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi regularly wins praise in bien-pensant circles as representing the best hope for long-term concord between Western Muslims and non-Muslims.

This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described ?the Islamists? aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law? as ?bold and noble.?

With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it?s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway?s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet?s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, ?Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists? hostage.? As if that capitulation weren?t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi?a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children?to accept Selbekk?s apology. ?To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,? Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was ?tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.?

The UN?s position on the question of speech versus ?respect? for Islam was clear?and utterly at odds with its founding value of promoting human rights. ?You don?t joke about other people?s religion,? Kofi Annan lectured soon after the Magazinet incident, echoing the sermons of innumerable imams, ?and you must respect what is holy for other people.? In October 2006, at a UN panel discussion called ?Cartooning for Peace,? Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor proposed drawing ?a very thin blue UN line . . . between freedom and responsibility.? (Americans might be forgiven for wondering whether that line would strike through the First Amendment.) And in 2007, the UN?s Human Rights Council passed a Pakistani motion prohibiting defamation of religion.

Other Western government leaders have promoted the expansion of the Dar al-Islam. In September 2006, when philosophy teacher Robert Redeker went into hiding after receiving death threats over a Le Figaro op-ed on Islam, France?s then?prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, commented that ?everyone has the right to express their opinions freely?at the same time that they respect others, of course.? The lesson of the Redeker affair, he said, was ?how vigilant we must be to ensure that people fully respect one another in our society.? Villepin got a run for his money last year from his Swedish counterpart, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who, after meeting with Muslim ambassadors to discuss the Vilks cartoons, won praise from one of them, Algeria?s Merzak Bedjaoui, for his ?spirit of appeasement.?

When, years after September 11, President George W. Bush finally acknowledged publicly that the West was at war with Islamic fascism, Muslims? and multiculturalists? furious reaction made him retreat to the empty term ?war on terror.? Britain?s Foreign Office has since deemed even that phrase offensive and banned its use by cabinet members (along with ?Islamic extremism?). In January, the Home Office decided that Islamic terrorism would henceforth be described as ?anti-Islamic activity.?

Western legislatures and courts have reinforced the ?spirit of appeasement.? In 2005, Norway?s parliament, with virtually no public discussion or media coverage, criminalized religious insults (and placed the burden of proof on the defendant). Last year, that country?s most celebrated lawyer, Tor Erling Staff, argued that the punishment for honor killing should be less than for other murders, because it?s arrogant for us to expect Muslim men to conform to our society?s norms. Also in 2007, in one of several instances in which magistrates sworn to uphold German law have followed sharia instead, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim woman?s request for a quick divorce from her brutally abusive husband; after all, under the Koran he had the right to beat her.

Those who dare to defy the West?s new sharia-based strictures and speak their minds now risk prosecution in some countries. In 2006, legendary author Oriana Fallaci, dying of cancer, went on trial in Italy for slurring Islam; three years earlier, she had defended herself in a French court against a similar charge. (Fallaci was ultimately found not guilty in both cases.) More recently, Canadian provinces ordered publisher Ezra Levant and journalist Mark Steyn to face human rights tribunals, the former for reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the latter for writing critically about Islam in Maclean?s.

Even as Western authorities have hassled Islam?s critics, they?ve honored jihadists and their supporters. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth knighted Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, a man who had called for the death of Salman Rushdie. Also that year, London mayor Ken Livingstone ludicrously praised Qaradawi as ?progressive??and, in response to gay activists who pointed out that Qaradawi had defended the death penalty for homosexuals, issued a dissertation-length dossier whitewashing the Sunni scholar and trying to blacken the activists? reputations. Of all the West?s leaders, however, few can hold a candle to Piet Hein Donner, who in 2006, as Dutch minister of justice, said that if voters wanted to bring sharia to the Netherlands?where Muslims will soon be a majority in major cities??it would be a disgrace to say, ?This is not permitted!? ?

If you don?t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when ?Undercover Mosque,? an unusually frank expos? on Britain?s Channel 4, showed ?moderate? Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action?reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, ?revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.? Only days after the ?Undercover Mosque? broadcast?in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed?Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved.

Canadian Muslim reformist Irshad Manji has noted that in 2006, when 17 terrorists were arrested in Toronto on the verge of giving Canada ?its own 9/11,? ?the police did not mention that it had anything to do with Islam or Muslims, not a word.? When, after van Gogh?s murder, a Rotterdam artist drew a street mural featuring an angel and the words thou shalt not kill, police, fearing Muslim displeasure, destroyed the mural (and a videotape of its destruction). In July 2007, a planned TV appeal by British cops to help capture a Muslim rapist was canceled to avoid ?racist backlash.? And in August, the Times of London reported that ?Asian? men (British code for ?Muslims?) in the U.K. were having sex with perhaps hundreds of ?white girls as young as twelve??but that authorities wouldn?t take action for fear of ?upsetting race relations.? Typically, neither the Times nor government officials acknowledged that the ?Asian? men?s contempt for the ?white? girls was a matter not of race but of religion.

Even military leaders aren?t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America?s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that ?whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito?; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. ?That Coughlin?s analyses would even be considered ?controversial,? ? wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, ?is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.? (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)

Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they?re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.

The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they?re incapable of defending it when it?s imperiled?or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively?and some, approvingly?while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission.

But we certainly can?t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don?t stand up for it ourselves.

Bruce Bawer is the author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. He blogs at BruceBawer.com.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_cultural_jihadists.html (http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_cultural_jihadists.html)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: fatman on April 27, 2008, 11:16:56 PM

ZZZZZZZZ

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Xavier_Onassis on April 27, 2008, 11:28:25 PM

When in trouble,
When in doubt,
Run in circles,
Scream and shout:
"Panic! Panic! Panic!"

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 27, 2008, 11:38:38 PM

So they hate us for our freedoms.

This makes the solution simple , eliminate the freedoms and appease them.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 27, 2008, 11:56:07 PM

The basic gist of the article seems to be that there is no such thing as moderate and/or liberal Islam, and that people should fear even ordinary, non-terrorist Muslims. They are here to ruin our culture, destroy our country and rape our women. We have left the Yellow Peril for the Muslim Peril.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/YellowTerror.jpg)

Just change the oriental caricature to one of a bearded man in a turban, and we're all set.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 12:10:24 AM

The Yellow peril was not real?

We certainly wasted a lot of time between 1942 and 1945 shooting at those harmless Japanese.


Not to mention all the many innocent Chinese volunteers we slew in Korea between 1950 and 1953.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War


There are Islamists that don't want War , Just as there were Oriental people who didn't think WWII , the Korean and Vietnamese war was a good idea , it didn't require a majority vote to get those wars started the minority that wanted War more than peace were perilous enough .

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 01:00:46 AM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 12:10:24 AM

The Yellow peril was not real?

No, it really was not. The Yellow Peril was not about the danger posed by the Japanese during World War II or by Chinese folks during the Korean War. Things like the Korean War and the Japanese part in World War II were used to highlight the supposed nature of the Yellow Peril, but that came after the Yellow Peril had been around for a long time. The Yellow Peril goes all way back, at the very least, to the 19th century, and has more to do with people being fearful of Chinese and oriental immigrants to the U.S. (and other parts of the Western world, but mostly the U.S. so far as I know). The immigrants were supposedly stealing jobs, ruining wages for native workers and leading to decline of our culture. (Sound familiar?) The resulting characterization of the Chinese and Orientals as a threatening evil led to further fears of crime waves and invasions by the Chinese, which was a common theme in fiction from the late 1800s on though the middle to late 1900s. (And may still be, but I am not aware of it.)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 01:07:46 AM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 01:00:46 AM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 12:10:24 AM

The Yellow peril was not real?

No, it really was not. The Yellow Peril was not about the danger posed by the Japanese during World War II or by Chinese folks during the Korean War. Things like the Korean War and the Japanese part in World War II were used to highlight the supposed nature of the Yellow Peril, but that came after the Yellow Peril had been around for a long time. The Yellow Peril goes all way back, at the very least, to the 19th century, and has more to do with people being fearful of Chinese and oriental immigrants to the U.S. (and other parts of the Western world, but mostly the U.S. so far as I know). The immigrants were supposedly stealing jobs, ruining wages for native workers and leading to decline of our culture. (Sound familiar?) The resulting characterization of the Chinese and Orientals as a threatening evil led to further fears of crime waves and invasions by the Chinese, which was a common theme in fiction from the late 1800s on though the middle to late 1900s. (And may still be, but I am not aware of it.)

Although overblown , the Yellow Peril did materalise , not through our racism but theirs.

Islam has a large faction that considers itself comissioned by scripture to conquer , this is a real thing , not a propaganda invention.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 02:30:10 AM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 01:07:46 AM

Islam has a large faction that considers itself comissioned by scripture to conquer , this is a real thing , not a propaganda invention.

I agree that there is a faction like that in Islam. But as I said, the basic gist of the article seems to be that there is no such thing as moderate and/or liberal Islam, and that people should fear even ordinary, non-terrorist Muslims.

Yes, there were Chinese criminals in early 1900s America. So was racism, distrust and hatred directed toward Chinese immigrants as a whole justified? I think it was not. Yes, there are Islamic terrorists in the world. Shall I then believe and fear that all or even most non-terrorist Muslims support terrorism and the destruction of U.S. cities? I do not. If I am wrong, tell me why.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:40:38 AM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 02:30:10 AM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 01:07:46 AM

Islam has a large faction that considers itself commissioned by scripture to conquer , this is a real thing , not a propaganda invention.

I agree that there is a faction like that in Islam. But as I said, the basic gist of the article seems to be that there is no such thing as moderate and/or liberal Islam, and that people should fear even ordinary, non-terrorist Muslims.

Yes, there were Chinese criminals in early 1900s America. So was racism, distrust and hatred directed toward Chinese immigrants as a whole justified? I think it was not. Yes, there are Islamic terrorists in the world. Shall I then believe and fear that all or even most non-terrorist Muslims support terrorism and the destruction of U.S. cities? I do not. If I am wrong, tell me why.

It is a matter of degree. The faction of US Christians that are like this , we call the KKK, and we have had it both ways. Time was that we tolerated their behavior a lot and they became powerfull in government and as shadow government , then we tolerated them less and they have become less of a threat.

The number of idiots available has been a constant , the effectiveness of the KKK in its own purposes has declined as it lost the approval of the community it lived in.

For the Al Quieda and other similar organizations , are they nearer the end of the tolerance spectrum that the KKK had in 1920 or the tolerance level of more recent times?  Which direction is the trend?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 10:31:52 AM

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/img/global/tol-logo.gif)

British Muslim 'bullied' for converting to Christianity
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
April 28, 2008

A British citizen who converted to Christianity from Islam and then complained to police when locals threatened to burn his house down was told by officers to ?stop being a crusader?, according to a new report.

Nissar Hussein, 43, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was born and raised in Britain, converted from Islam to Christianity with his wife, Qubra, in 1996. The report says that he was subjected to a number of attacks and, after being told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, reported the threat to the police. It says he was told that such threats were rarely carried out and the police officer told him to ?stop being a crusader and move to another place?. A few days later the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British human rights organisation whose president is the former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, is calling on the UN and the international community to take action against nations and communities that punish apostasy.

Its report, No Place to Call Home, claims that apostates from Islam are subject to ?gross and wideranging human rights abuses?. It adds that in countries such as Britain, with large Muslim populations in a Westernised culture, the demand to maintain a Muslim identity is intense. ?When identities are precarious, their enforcement will take an aggressive form.?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3828082.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3828082.ece)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Xavier_Onassis on April 28, 2008, 12:15:34 PM

But see, it is NOT the Iranian Shiites that are into this evangelical conquest thing, but the state-supported Wahhabi Saudi Sunni Muslims, the group to which Prince Bandar Bush belongs.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 01:18:36 PM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:40:38 AM

It is a matter of degree. The faction of US Christians that are like this , we call the KKK, and we have had it both ways. Time was that we tolerated their behavior a lot and they became powerfull in government and as shadow government , then we tolerated them less and they have become less of a threat.

I could be wrong, but you seem to underestimating how widespread the concern about the Yellow Peril was. Your comment is sort of like saying only the KKK was racist and the U.S. just tolerated them more in the past. This is not true, and I'm sure you know that. The notion of the Yellow Peril was so widespread, so accepted by mainstream audiences, it was a common theme in fiction. Jack London wrote about it. Heinlein wrote about it. It was part of popular culture in the form of Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless. The Yellow Peril was not just some crazy idea on the fringes of society.

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:40:38 AM

For the Al Quieda and other similar organizations , are they nearer the end of the tolerance spectrum that the KKK had in 1920 or the tolerance level of more recent times?  Which direction is the trend?

Do moderate/liberal Muslims exist? Are they in the majority or are they a fringe? Do we have cause to fear the Muslim who lives next door, just because he is Muslim? Is the default assumption to be that if a person is a Muslim he must therefore support the use of terrorism and destruction of our society?

Yes, there are Chinese criminals. Yes, there are African-American drug dealers. Yes, there are Italian-Americans in the Mafia. Yes, there are Islamic terrorists. So do we fear whole groups because some people out of those groups are not upstanding, highly moral people? Yes, there are Caucasian folks of European decent who are criminals, drug dealers, racists and terrorists. So let's fear Whitey too. So now we're suspicious and fearful of everyone. "Fear your neighbor like you fear yourself." Wait, no, that's not right...

There is a difference between recognizing an actual threat and trying to use that threat to feed irrational fear and prejudice. In my opinion, the article that started this thread is entirely the latter and none of the former.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 03:39:20 PM

April 26, 2008

Criminality or jihad?

"I think this is just criminality, fair and square. We should just call them criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine," he said. "But adding the word 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' certainly doesn't help our cause as Americans. It's counterproductive. It paints an entire community of believers, 1.2 billion in total, in a very negative way. And certainly that's not something that we want to do." -- from this article
Criminality is the work of individuals, who break the law because they feel like it. It is prompted not by ideology, but rather by what has prompted criminal activity since the beginning of time.

Terrorism by Muslims is quite different. It can be the act of a collective, of Muslims acting in concert, and supported financially and morally by other Muslims who may prefer to participate in violent Jihad indirectly -- the better, for example, to participate in other, non-violent, but just as dangerous and possibly more effective methods of Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and dominance, of Islam. Where an individual Muslim may be acting, he is doing so not on his own behalf, not to enrich himself, but to further what he has learned -- and learned from the texts, not mistranslated and not misunderstood, of Islam itself: Quran, Hadith, and Sira.

Furthermore, it is important that Infidels understand that they are having war made upon them, and that the war is not limited to what non-Muslims correctly identify as "terrorism." Rather, many or most Muslims are easily persuaded that it is not terrorism at all, but rather a form of qitaal, or combat, simply updated to meet modern conditions, where the Infidels have military superiority -- so unfair! -- and bombs in restaurants and on busses and planes smashed into buildings is merely a form of "equalizing," of leveling the grimmest of playing-fields.

It is important to use the phrase "Islamic terrorism," if the only alternative is "terrorism." But it would be most helpful to speak and write of Jihad, to explain what Jihad means -- what it means and has meant to Muslims over the past 1350 years, and to quickly get over the ludicrous business of those who pretend the word's main meaning is something about an interior struggle to maintain a virtuous life, or somesuch variant.

Why is it important to use the word "Jihad"? Because emphasis, exaggerated emphasis, on "terrorism" makes people pay no attention to much more effective and dangerous instruments of Jihad -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa aimed at the psychically and economically marginal, and demographic conquest. The latter is especially worrisome. Consider the Netherlands, where there were 1,500 Muslims in 1960, 15,000 in 1970, 800,000 in 2004, and over a million today.

It is unfortunate that none of the political leaders in the West, and few in the press, radio, television, feel they have a responsibility to learn the contents of Islam, or to learn something of the history of Islamic conquest, and subjugation of non-Muslims, over the past 1350 years. A great deal could be learned. It requires some effort and some time, and nowadays how many, in the class of people whose responsibility it is to protect and instruct us, would take that time, and make that effort?

The answer is: very few.

And we will all pay. We have already paid in the countries of Western Europe -- in Great Britain and France, in Germany and Spain, in Belgium and Italy and the Netherlands and Denmark and Norway and Sweden. We have all paid and will be grimly paying for the fact that the political and media elites were so criminally negligent over the past 35 years as Muslim immigrants by the millions were allowed in and given every conceivable benefit, and allowed to build mosques and madrasas.

They were allowed to settle in without anyone questioning what this meant, what Islam was all about, and whether or not the "problems" -- as they are demurely called -- with Muslim migrants were merely, as some continue to pretend, the same problems that all immigrants experience or present, or whether there was something about that "problem" that had to do with the nature of Islam as a Total Belief-System.

That Total Belief-System is inculcated with a brainwashing, and reinforced at every level, in states, societies, communities, even families suffused with Islam. That explains why, in every Infidel land, no matter what its makeup or what its politics or what the attitude of its citizens, the same problems are posed by one particular group of immigrants and by no other group -- not by Chinese, Hindus, Vietnamese Buddhists, not by Caribbean blacks, nor by non-Muslim blacks from sub-Saharan Africa, not by Mexicans, not by Central Americans, not by Andean Indians, not by any group at all. But they are posed by Muslims, to the extent that they take their Islam seriously, wherever they come from.

And that is the fix that Western Europe, and therefore the historic West, is now in. It was a problem that, had the handful of cassandras -- see for example the writings of Jacques Ellul -- been heeded, could have been avoided. Entirely manageable once, it is manageable -- with great difficulty ? today.

But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020797.php (http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020797.php)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 03:58:37 PM

Quote from: ChristiansUnited4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 03:39:20 PM

Rather, many or most Muslims are easily persuaded that it is not terrorism at all, but rather a form of qitaal, or combat, simply updated to meet modern conditions, where the Infidels have military superiority -- so unfair! -- and bombs in restaurants and on busses and planes smashed into buildings is merely a form of "equalizing," of leveling the grimmest of playing-fields.

[...]

But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

And there it is, Plane. Most Muslims support terrorism, so the author of the article claims, and they must be opposed as we would oppose Nazis and Soviets. The Muslim Peril. Complete with calls for halting immigration of the offending people. They are different from us. They intend our destruction. Obviously, and I say this with sarcasm, we need to spread fear and hatred of them as much and as quickly as possible. So tell me, Plane, have you joined a non-partisan anti-Muslim league yet?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Rich on April 28, 2008, 04:37:05 PM

>>When in trouble,
When in doubt,
Run in circles,
Scream and shout:
"Panic! Panic! Panic!"<<

These are the same people who blamed Bush for not being prepared for 9-11. He had a memo! He had a memo! Yet these people stick their fingers in their ears and hum while jihadists look them in the eye and scream, "DEATH TO AMERICA!"

Fools.

And then there's Mrs. Clinton who vows never to surrender! Unless of course it's against terrorists.

Fools.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 04:49:56 PM

19 million Muslims for jihad
and that's just in Indonesia

By Michelle Malkin -  October 15, 2006

One in 10 Indonesia Muslims back violent jihad: poll

The details:

Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali as defending the faith, a survey released on Sunday showed.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, with 220 million people, 85 percent of whom follow Islam, giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world.

Jihad that has been understood partially and practiced with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims, the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement.

They approved the bombings conducted in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam, it added, saying the percentage of such support "is very significant."

While the vast majority of Indonesia's Muslims are relatively moderate, there has been an increasingly vocal militant minority and political pressure for more laws that are in line with hardline Muslim teachings.

The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,092 Muslim men and women.
Now, some quick math:

220 million Indonesians.

85 percent of them Muslim.

1 in 10 of those Muslims support suicide bombings to "defend their faith." (As Robert Spencer notes, "that's just those who are willing to tell a pollster something that they would know the government would not likely be happy to hear.")

So, that's 19 million Muslims for violent jihad in "moderate" Indonesia alone.

Another survey published over the summer underscores the myth of "moderate" Muslim Indonesia. The Washington Times editorialized:

More than two-thirds of Indonesians favor the country's current secular system of law, according to a privately funded nationwide survey by the Indonesian Survey Circle, a pollster. If that seems like good news, read it this way: This means there are "only" about 82 million Indonesians who favor Shariah. Approximately 216 million out of Indonesia's approximately 246 million inhabitants, or nearly nine-tenths of the population, are Muslims. And while Indonesia's religious and cultural climate is justifiably regarded as moderate in comparison to much of the rest of the Muslim world and its government is a very useful ally against terrorism the numbers still leave plenty of room for concern.

Just over two-thirds of respondents disapprove of the death penalty for those who renounce Islam, according to the survey, which was first reported by Rupert Murdoch's www.news.com.au. More than three-quarters of Indonesians disapprove of mandatory head scarves. Nearly two-thirds oppose stoning for adultery. More than 75 percent are against severing the hands of thieves.

When the aggregate numbers of people are factored in, the study looks considerably more disturbing. If one-quarter of Indonesians favor cutting off the hands of thieves, it suggests that upwards of 60 million Indonesians favor the practice. If roughly 164 million Indonesians oppose stoning adulterers, it means that more than 80 million favor doing so.Add those jihadi-endorsing and sharia-embracing masses to these Muslims polled in Britain in July:

13% of British Muslims think that the four men who carried out the London Tube and bus bombings of July 7 2005 should be regarded as "martyrs".

7% agree that suicide attacks on civilians in the UK can be justified in some circumstances, rising to 16 per cent for a military target

16% of British Muslims say that while the attacks may have been wrong, the cause was right

16% would be "indifferent" if a family member decided to join al-Qaeda and two per cent would be proud
And toss in these European Muslims polled by Pew in June:

(http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa56/USA2008/Politics/pewmuslims.jpg)

Small minority? Only if you use Dhimmi Math.

http://michellemalkin.com/2006/10/15/19-million-muslims-for-jihadand-thats-just-in-indonesia/ (http://michellemalkin.com/2006/10/15/19-million-muslims-for-jihadand-thats-just-in-indonesia/)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:44:51 PM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 01:18:36 PM

There is a difference between recognizing an actual threat and trying to use that threat to feed irrational fear and prejudice. In my opinion, the article that started this thread is entirely the latter and none of the former.[/color]

All right then , what is the real size of the actuall threat?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:47:58 PM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 03:58:37 PM

Quote from: ChristiansUnited4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 03:39:20 PM

Rather, many or most Muslims are easily persuaded that it is not terrorism at all, but rather a form of qitaal, or combat, simply updated to meet modern conditions, where the Infidels have military superiority -- so unfair! -- and bombs in restaurants and on busses and planes smashed into buildings is merely a form of "equalizing," of leveling the grimmest of playing-fields.

[...]

But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

And there it is, Plane. Most Muslims support terrorism, so the author of the article claims, and they must be opposed as we would oppose Nazis and Soviets. The Muslim Peril. Complete with calls for halting immigration of the offending people. They are different from us. They intend our destruction. Obviously, and I say this with sarcasm, we need to spread fear and hatred of them as much and as quickly as possible. So tell me, Plane, have you joined a non-partisan anti-Muslim league yet?

I have , I work for the USAF.

What part of this do you recon to be the inaccurate bit?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 05:57:00 PM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:47:58 PM

I have , I work for the USAF.

The USAF is an anti-Muslim league? Interesting.

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:47:58 PM

What part of this do you recon to be the inaccurate bit?

Am I talking to the wind? Sigh. The inaccurate bit would be the part where there is no room for made for moderate/liberal Islam, where most Muslims support terrorism, where all Muslims must be feared, hated and stopped.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 06:13:57 PM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 05:57:00 PM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:47:58 PM

I have , I work for the USAF.

The USAF is an anti-Muslim league? Interesting.

Quote

Well ,..we do kill people , from the Al Queda point of view how would you describe our tipical victim over the past five years?

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 05:47:58 PM

What part of this do you recon to be the inaccurate bit?

Am I talking to the wind? Sigh. The inaccurate bit would be the part where there is no room for made for moderate/liberal Islam, where most Muslims support terrorism, where all Muslims must be feared, hated and stopped.

This is why I brought up the KKK they never amounted to a majority anywhere either , but there was a time when it wasn't safe in Illinois to imply that they were less than perfect Christians , the situation of Al Queda is simular as long as they have plenty of support and intimidate those who do not support.

Can we ,as a measure of how many Muslims feel confident in opposeing Al Queda , or how many are serious about being moderate,  see if we can find out how many have counciled calm in the face of Danish cartoon lampoon of Islamic icons? I am certain that no majority anywhere took to the streets in that silly manovre , but no Islamic Countrys Government has yet stood up for Denmark at all.

So there is not only widespread tolerance for Al Queda style goals , there is large scale intimidation also , even where the sorce of the problem is ten percent or so of the total population.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 06:30:32 PM

There is good news to report: The idea that "militant Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution" is finding greater acceptance over time. But there is also bad news, namely growing confusion over who really is a moderate Muslim. This means that the ideological side of the war on terror is making some, but only limited, progress.

The good news: Anti-Islamist Muslims have found their voice since September 11. Their numbers include distinguished academics such as Azar Nafisi (Johns Hopkins), Ahmed al-Rahim (formerly of Harvard), Kemal Silay (Indiana), and Bassam Tibi (G?ttingen). Important Islamic figures like Ahmed Subhy Mansour and Muhammad Hisham Kabbani are speaking out.

Organizations are coming into existence. The American Islamic Forum for Democracy, headed by Zuhdi Jasser, is active in Phoenix, Arizona. The Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism appears to be genuinely anti-Islamist, despite my initial doubts about its founder, Kamal Nawash.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2226


With time, individual Muslims are finding their voice to condemn Islamist connections to terrorism. Perhaps most outstanding is an article by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a Saudi journalist in London: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists," he writes, "but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. ? We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women."

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Xavier_Onassis on April 28, 2008, 06:51:02 PM

"Anti-Islamist" Muslims?

Is that like "Anti Jesus" Christians?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

There is not any war against Islam, but the most dangerous thing you putzes could do is claim that their should be.
It is the government's duty to protect the people against terrorists acts. Juniorbush and Condi failed miserably at this and used it as a pretext to monger a totally unnecessary, unwinnable war that has dragged on for five years now. What could be won, in Afghanistan is in peril because they don;pt have the power to fight two at once, and here you fools are trying to monger a third for the same bogus reasons as the second.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 07:34:11 PM

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists," he writes, "but it is equally
certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. We cannot
clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become
an Islamic enterprise;

Great stuff Plane.

There is hope for the moderate Muslims to
overcome this scourge(IslamoNazis) to the Muslim faith.

One of my best friends is a Muslim and he deplores
the IslamoKlansmen that are murdering people
all over the globe and bringing great shame to the Muslim religion.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on April 28, 2008, 07:50:49 PM

(http://info.jpost.com/C001/Supplements/Shoah/pics/logo.gif)

The Region: Stuck in the Middle Ages,
Islam targets moderation

April 27, 2008
By BARRY RUBIN

If history works out in the end, the high price paid in blood and suffering can at least be justified as having produced some good. But what happens when it doesn't?

Clearly, radical Islamism and the region's current political troubles have parallels with the European history of Christianity and Judaism. Yet often the nearest equivalents date not from a few decades back but rather from the 1500s and 1600s. That calendar gap shows why the region's task is so monumental and lengthy.

In the 1500s and 1600s, Europe and its two main religions struggled with the impact of modernization, rationalism and scientific thinking; the challenge of new ideas; and revitalized interest in ancient pagan Greece and Rome. Despite much bloodshed and repression, a way was found to manage these contradictions.

Islam and the Arabic-speaking world, not to mention Iran, have still not done so on a large scale. Before there can be democracy, rapid development, social progress, equal rights for women and other such changes, this job has to be done. And the work has barely begun.

How did the West move from a medieval world view into the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and then on into the modern age? That's a complex question, but basically the answer includes:

the confidence that increasing knowledge, even if seemingly contradicting religious dogma, was a way to understand the deity's true plan for the world. The church sometimes acted against science or technology, but not very often;

accepting pluralism of belief, with Protestantism playing a key role in establishing a range of alternative interpretations;

incorporating a pragmatic view in which success was the ultimate test, and practice trumped ideology;

adopting reason as the ultimate tool for living in this world;

a growing separation between religion and state, and room for secularism in the public sphere.

WHAT DOES this all have to do with the contemporary Middle East? Quite a lot.

Not only do regional Muslim-majority states not accept these principles but Islamists, with real success, are trying to turn back the clock even further. Moreover, there's an additional problem: Islamists and even mainstream Muslim clergy know how the story turned out in the West, bringing about a vast decline of religion.

Thus Saudi cleric Muhammad al-Munajid, and many others, sound like Spanish Inquisition zealots determined to stamp out anything new, different, original, or individual.

Another parallel with Western history is the use of the Jew as the demon of modernization, conspiring to subvert traditional society and change as a way of gaining power.

Those who think the problem stems from a need to make Western policy more palatable, showing enough empathy or appeasement, have no idea of the historical processes in play. Consider an interview by Munajid on Al-Majd television on March 30.

Focusing on the threat within Islam, Munajid warns (translation by MEMRI) that advocates of change are heretics engaged in "a very dangerous conspiracy." Why? Because rather than depending on clerics, they claim the right to interpret Islam, are reopening the gates of ijtihad - closed among Muslims for almost 1,000 years - and applying reason to religious doctrine. "This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people... fools or heretics."

Of course, Islamists as well as liberal reformers threaten the mainstream (conservative) clerics' monopoly over Islam. Many Islamists are not qualified theologians.

But moderates are more dangerous, in the mainstream view, since they may loosen religion's hold altogether. Thus, mainstream clerics are more sympathetic to radical Islamists - a key factor in the reformers' weakness and the Islamists' strength. To paraphrase an old Cold War slogan, they say: "Better green than dead."

Islamists and mainstream clerics carry this idea even into Europe itself, trying either to keep the Enlightenment out of their own communities, or even roll back European history. Sometimes they are helped by befuddled "native" elites who have lost confidence in their own civilization.

IN CONTRAST, among Jews and Christians, despite reactionary tendencies, new interpretations were permitted to keep up with the times. This came gradually to be considered the best way for these faiths to survive and flourish. Many of their reformers were themselves highly qualified clerics.

Early Protestants were burned at the stake; others won their rights only in combat. But Europe changed.

Reformers could call for support on nationalism (Czechs and Dutch revolting against foreign rulers); on aristocratic rulers seeking their own interests (Henry the Eighth's divorce, nobles seeking to loot monasteries' wealth); and on peasants' class resentment. These factors play little or no such role in the Middle East today. On the contrary, instead of a way to win more freedom or power, reform is seen as a destabilizing tool used against Islam by foreign powers and culture.

Moreover, Munajid and others know something past Europeans didn't: how far secularism can go. As a result, Muslims are extraordinarily insecure. Munajid warns that reformers "want to open up everything for debate," so that "anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants... If you want to become an apostate - go ahead. You like Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem...."

Today, new interpretations; tomorrow, rampant alcoholism, short skirts, empty houses of worship, and punk rock. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief.

In England, even when William Shakespeare was young, British universities highlighted teaching about ancient pagan cultures. The first modernist biography of Christianity's founder was published by 1830. Their equivalents are impossible in the Arab world in 2008.

Most clerics and their supporters simply don't believe they can win a fair fight in the battle of ideas. Therefore, only repression will do. Conflict is far "safer" than peace.

This is the real, underlying critique of the West and Israel: that these places are bad role models, against whom windows and doors must be barred. They must be made to seem so horrible as to close the eyes and ears of the faithful to the temptations they offer. An iron curtain must be lowered, behind which the isolated enthusiastically embrace their isolation.

One sees this process at work even in "liberated" Iraq and Afghanistan. The radicals want to roll back the West and destroy Israel, which, they argue, wants to subordinate the Middle East politically and transform it culturally. Most of the relative moderates - regimes and mainstream clerics - want, at a minimum, to hold Israel at bay and avoid a formal peace with it.

Remember, Sayyid Qutb of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was driven to extremism by his horror at life in 1950s' small-town Kansas. What effect must 21st-century Western life, with its far greater excesses, have?

Today the advocates of "medievalism" in the Middle East have mass communications, modern organizational techniques - and, soon, even nuclear weapons.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1208870505155&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1208870505155&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 28, 2008, 09:55:37 PM

Quote from: Xavier_Onassis on April 28, 2008, 06:51:02 PM

"Anti-Islamist" Muslims?

Is that like "Anti Jesus" Christians?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

There is not any war against Islam, but the most dangerous thing you putzes could do is claim that their should be.
It is the government's duty to protect the people against terrorists acts. Juniorbush and Condi failed miserably at this and used it as a pretext to monger a totally unnecessary, unwinnable war that has dragged on for five years now. What could be won, in Afghanistan is in peril because they don;pt have the power to fight two at once, and here you fools are trying to monger a third for the same bogus reasons as the second.

So there needs to be a term specific to the problem , to diffrentiate between the many Muslims who are peace loveing and innocent and the few who are an intractable problem?

Islamo- Natzi?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 11:33:00 PM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 06:13:57 PM

Quote

The USAF is an anti-Muslim league? Interesting.

Well ,..we do kill people , from the Al Queda point of view how would you describe our tipical victim over the past five years?

So, attacking al Qaeda is being anti-Muslim? You sure you want to go there?

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 06:13:57 PM

Can we ,as a measure of how many Muslims feel confident in opposeing Al Queda , or how many are serious about being moderate,  see if we can find out how many have counciled calm in the face of Danish cartoon lampoon of Islamic icons? I am certain that no majority anywhere took to the streets in that silly manovre , but no Islamic Countrys Government has yet stood up for Denmark at all.

So there is not only widespread tolerance for Al Queda style goals , there is large scale intimidation also , even where the sorce of the problem is ten percent or so of the total population.

So you feel we should fear all Muslims then, yes or no? Do you believe we should stop all Muslim immigration? Basically punish people for being Muslim?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on April 29, 2008, 08:53:41 AM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 28, 2008, 11:33:00 PM

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 06:13:57 PM

Quote

The USAF is an anti-Muslim league? Interesting.

Well ,..we do kill people , from the Al Queda point of view how would you describe our tipical victim over the past five years?

So, attacking al Qaeda is being anti-Muslim? You sure you want to go there?

Quote

This exactly what Al Quieda makes as its point every day , we are killing them for what a true Al Queda member , or admierer would consider Islamic Perfection. We don't really choose victims based on their beliefs , but an Al Quieda apologist wants to say we do.

Quote from: Plane on April 28, 2008, 06:13:57 PM

Can we ,as a measure of how many Muslims feel confident in opposeing Al Queda , or how many are serious about being moderate,  see if we can find out how many have counciled calm in the face of Danish cartoon lampoon of Islamic icons? I am certain that no majority anywhere took to the streets in that silly manovre , but no Islamic Countrys Government has yet stood up for Denmark at all.

So there is not only widespread tolerance for Al Queda style goals , there is large scale intimidation also , even where the sorce of the problem is ten percent or so of the total population.

So you feel we should fear all Muslims then, yes or no? Do you believe we should stop all Muslim immigration? Basically punish people for being Muslim?

No of course , but I still do want to have a realisistic apprisal of the situation , not an assessment that is idealised .

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on April 30, 2008, 07:35:01 PM

Quote from: Plane on April 29, 2008, 08:53:41 AM

This exactly what Al Quieda makes as its point every day , we are killing them for what a true Al Queda member , or admierer would consider Islamic Perfection. We don't really choose victims based on their beliefs , but an Al Quieda apologist wants to say we do.

Huh. So just exactly when did the USAF begin letting terrorists define what the USAF is?

Quote from: Plane on April 29, 2008, 08:53:41 AM

Quote

So you feel we should fear all Muslims then, yes or no? Do you believe we should stop all Muslim immigration? Basically punish people for being Muslim?

No of course , but I still do want to have a realisistic apprisal of the situation , not an assessment that is idealised .

Do you, Plane, think the article that started this thread or the one in reply #13 of this thread are somehow realistic appraisals of the situation? Because fear all Muslims is basically their appraisal of the situation. The Muslims are either terrorists, terrorist supporters or terrorist sympathizers. And the way to solve this problem is not to engage Muslims in debate, because of course we've been assured debate is useless, but to treat Muslims as cultural enemies, hate them, fear them, shun them. Do you really think this is a good plan? That is will protect us from harm?

There are realistic appraisals of the situation, Plane, but ChristiansUnited4LessGvt, Michelle Malkin and the like are not the ones providing it.

Let's go back to the Yellow Peril comparison. We had laws severely limiting the legal immigration of Orientals and warnings in newspapers about the danger of Chinese immigrants ruining our culture, and on and on, as early (if not earlier) as the 1850s. Did that sort of attitude stop or contribute to Japanese aggression against America in December of 1941? No, I'm not blaming America, I'm saying the historical evidence does not support fearmongering as a practical means of stopping other people from from attacking us.

As for a realistic appraisal of the situation, I am not sure trying to provide one here is worth the effort. For all the talk about how folks who support the "war" in Iraq and the "war on terror" should be considered just having a different opinion without being told they want war, talking about the consequences of U.S. foreign policy in anything less than a positive way has a tendency to result in a lot of insulting accusations. A genuinely realistic appraisal would have to include the notion of "blowback", but talking about that results in accusations of blaming America for terrorist attacks, of hating America, of being some sort of terrorist sympathizer/appeaser. I've had that fight before, and frankly, I think it would be a waste of time to try it again.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 01, 2008, 05:45:20 AM

Quote from: Universe Prince on April 30, 2008, 07:35:01 PM

[Huh. So just exactly when did the USAF begin letting terrorists define what the USAF is?

We don't , they do. They tell each other that they are really great religionists in the only true religion and we are killing them for this reason. The facts may be otherwise for us , we don't really care what they say as long as they don't follow up by harming us. There are lots of Mosques in the US and we have not been burning them down .


Do you, Plane, think the article that started this thread or the one in reply #13 of this thread are somehow realistic appraisals of the situation? Because fear all Muslims is basically their appraisal of the situation.

Not the way I read them , nor do I want any restriction on religious freedom or immagration based on religion.

What I don't want is blinkers emplaced , if there is a muslim fifth collum here I want to know how bad it is realisticly , if there is or isn't a large international conspiracy to do us harm I want to react appropriately totally reguardless of whether it is fueled by Islam or not , but if Islam is an important factor I don't want to ignore this ,but learn the truth of it.

It is not the point to generate pointless fear , but to be clear eyed.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 02:25:16 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 05:45:20 AM

Quote

Huh. So just exactly when did the USAF begin letting terrorists define what the USAF is?

We don't , they do. They tell each other that they are really great religionists in the only true religion and we are killing them for this reason. The facts may be otherwise for us , we don't really care what they say as long as they don't follow up by harming us. There are lots of Mosques in the US and we have not been burning them down .

So... now you're saying the USAF is in fact not an anti-Muslim league. If you don't care that they think you are, why even bring it up?

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 05:45:20 AM

It is not the point to generate pointless fear , but to be clear eyed.

I'm sure Malkin and the fellow who wrote the article at the start of this thread and ChristiansUnited4LessGvt would all say so too. But then again so would the KKK and the anti-Semitic and those folks who warned so earnestly about the Yellow Peril. I'm not calling anyone a racist. I am saying the rhetoric still amounts the fearmongering, and I'm saying when people talk in these terms of massive, international, fifth column conspiracies, you should be highly skeptical if not dismissive. There was no actual Yellow Peril. The Jews are neither inferior nor trying to take over the world. The Muslims of the world do not form an international fifth column conspiracy to destroy the West. Yes, there were Chinese criminals. Yes, some Jews are good at banking. Yes, some Muslims are terrorists. So we should deal rationally with the ones who are, and not waste time trying to drum up irrational prejudice to enforce an irrational Us vs. Them dichotomy that will only cause more harm than good. That is as clear-eyed an assessment as you're going to find.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 01, 2008, 06:53:55 PM

Quote from: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 02:25:16 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 05:45:20 AM

Quote

Huh. So just exactly when did the USAF begin letting terrorists define what the USAF is?

We don't , they do. They tell each other that they are really great religionists in the only true religion and we are killing them for this reason. The facts may be otherwise for us , we don't really care what they say as long as they don't follow up by harming us. There are lots of Mosques in the US and we have not been burning them down .

So... now you're saying the USAF is in fact not an anti-Muslim league. If you don't care that they think you are, why even bring it up?

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 05:45:20 AM

It is not the point to generate pointless fear , but to be clear eyed.

I'm sure Malkin and the fellow who wrote the article at the start of this thread and ChristiansUnited4LessGvt would all say so too. But then again so would the KKK and the anti-Semitic and those folks who warned so earnestly about the Yellow Peril. I'm not calling anyone a racist. I am saying the rhetoric still amounts the fearmongering, and I'm saying when people talk in these terms of massive, international, fifth column conspiracies, you should be highly skeptical if not dismissive. There was no actual Yellow Peril. The Jews are neither inferior nor trying to take over the world. The Muslims of the world do not form an international fifth column conspiracy to destroy the West. Yes, there were Chinese criminals. Yes, some Jews are good at banking. Yes, some Muslims are terrorists. So we should deal rationally with the ones who are, and not waste time trying to drum up irrational prejudice to enforce an irrational Us vs. Them dichotomy that will only cause more harm than good. That is as clear-eyed an assessment as you're going to find.

I don't agree with your assessment of the original article. The situation is analogous to the KKK which is why I brought them up. Membership in the KKK was never a majority of any state , but their pro Christian propaganda , or their claim to be good Christians helped them achieve tolerance and assistance from the non members they lived among.

Al Quedas leadership has charm and appeal , they claim scriptural justification and piety, the KKK ran this advantage into the ground and they seem ridiculous when they speak this way now, perhaps after a while the Al Quieda will sound ridiculous when they claim to be the best of Islam , at that point they will just begin to loose the war they declared.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 08:50:52 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 06:53:55 PM

I don't agree with your assessment of the original article. The situation is analogous to the KKK which is why I brought them up. Membership in the KKK was never a majority of any state , but their pro Christian propaganda , or their claim to be good Christians helped them achieve tolerance and assistance from the non members they lived among.

No part of that makes much sense to me. For one thing, you're oversimplifying. The KKK existed in several forms. There was a Reconstruction era KKK, and a collection of groups calling themselves the KKK starting in the first part of the 20th century which became the almost purely racist KKK of the 1960s. So which one are you talking about? While most people think of the KKK as that of the 1960s, almost purely a racist and nativist group engaged in violence and intimidation of non-whites, the KKK of the early 20th century was a social organization (or more accurately a group of social organizations with similar goals) concerned with labor issues, education and politics, and such groups were not always necessarily racist or nativist. And over the stretch of the KKK's several incarnations, the KKK has waxed and waned in popularity and size. So please, if you're going to use the KKK as a metaphor, you need to be more clear as to what you mean by that.

For another thing, if you want me to see the KKK as analogous to some sort of international fifth column conspiracy, you really need to do more than say it's analogous and then give me some weak explanation that is suppose to illustrate the analogy. Please, explain this to me. I'm not a genius. I cannot see what you're thinking, and your explanations are not enough for stupid ol' me to grasp the, I'm sure, brilliant point you're trying to make.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 08:55:23 PM

For a quick look at what I'm talking about regarding the KKK, check this out: http://www.reason.com/news/show/34134.html (http://www.reason.com/news/show/34134.html)

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 01, 2008, 09:11:44 PM

Quote from: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 08:50:52 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 06:53:55 PM

I don't agree with your assessment of the original article. The situation is analogous to the KKK which is why I brought them up. Membership in the KKK was never a majority of any state , but their pro Christian propaganda , or their claim to be good Christians helped them achieve tolerance and assistance from the non members they lived among.

No part of that makes much sense to me. For one thing, you're oversimplifying. The KKK existed in several forms. There was a Reconstruction era KKK, and a collection of groups calling themselves the KKK starting in the first part of the 20th century which became the almost purely racist KKK of the 1960s. So which one are you talking about? While most people think of the KKK as that of the 1960s, almost purely a racist and nativist group engaged in violence and intimidation of non-whites, the KKK of the early 20th century was a social organization (or more accurately a group of social organizations with similar goals) concerned with labor issues, education and politics, and such groups were not always necessarily racist or nativist. And over the stretch of the KKK's several incarnations, the KKK has waxed and waned in popularity and size. So please, if you're going to use the KKK as a metaphor, you need to be more clear as to what you mean by that.

For another thing, if you want me to see the KKK as analogous to some sort of international fifth column conspiracy, you really need to do more than say it's analogous and then give me some weak explanation that is suppose to illustrate the analogy. Please, explain this to me. I'm not a genius. I cannot see what you're thinking, and your explanations are not enough for stupid ol' me to grasp the, I'm sure, brilliant point you're trying to make.

Which sort of KKK did not claim to be Christian and depend on quiet neighbors?

Which sort isn't analogous in this particular way?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 10:20:38 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 09:11:44 PM

Which sort of KKK did not claim to be Christian and depend on quiet neighbors?

I don't know, Plane. I'm too stupid to figure this out. Which KKK was so popular and so large as to fit some sort of analogy with an international fifth column conspiracy? I'm thinking maybe the one that had a charter from the state of Georgia was not exactly a secret. I'm thinking most of them were not really a secret. But obviously I must be wrong. Clearly they were an international fifth column conspiracy because you said so. And I mean that sarcastically.

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 09:11:44 PM

Which sort isn't analogous in this particular way?

Since I still don't know what the analogy actually is, I cannot say. I repeat: "if you want me to see the KKK as analogous to some sort of international fifth column conspiracy, you really need to do more than say it's analogous and then give me some weak explanation that is suppose to illustrate the analogy. Please, explain this to me. I'm not a genius. I cannot see what you're thinking, and your explanations are not enough for stupid ol' me to grasp the, I'm sure, brilliant point you're trying to make."

I am trying to understand, Plane. But if all we're going to do is gloss over details and claim the KKK in general is a model for the Muslim population of the world, as if Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world, and if you're going to sell that as some sort of clear-eyed assessment snake oil, I ain't buying. If you've got something more specific in mind, for the love of pizza, then explain it to me. Otherwise, we have nothing to discuss.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 02, 2008, 12:56:40 AM

Quote from: Universe Prince on May 01, 2008, 10:20:38 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 01, 2008, 09:11:44 PM

Which sort isn't analogous in this particular way?

I am trying to understand, Plane. But if all we're going to do is gloss over details and claim the KKK in general is a model for the Muslim population of the world, as if Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world, and if you're going to sell that as some sort of clear-eyed assessment snake oil, I ain't buying.color]

Well there it is, you have it backwards.

The KKK is analogous to the Al Queda , the population of Islam that tolerate their presence is alike to the American Christians who were taken in by KKK claims of rightiousness.

In both cases it never was everyone . The KKK was and is probly larger then the Al Queda even though Al Queda is international in a way the KKK never tried to be .

Although I can draw a parrellell in this or that respect , I am not claiming that one is the copy of the other.

"as if Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world" Is a little stronger than I would have said , but the case for the Koran being the foundation of exactly this is indeed the charter of the Al Queda and the reason that the Al Queda has been able to hide from us quite well in several diffrent countrys.

Your position is alike to President Bush who has so often said that Al Queda hijacks a noble religion , but what have they done to accomplish the hyjacking?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 02, 2008, 01:49:19 AM

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 12:56:40 AM

"as if Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world" Is a little stronger than I would have said , but the case for the Koran being the foundation of exactly this is indeed the charter of the Al Queda and the reason that the Al Queda has been able to hide from us quite well in several diffrent countrys.

Your position is alike to President Bush who has so often said that Al Queda hijacks a noble religion , but what have they done to accomplish the hyjacking?

I'm getting a little tired of this dancing around. Do you or do you not agree with the the article that began this thread? Do you or do you not agree with reply #13 of this thread? Do you or do you not believe the Muslims of the world constitute an international fifth column conspiracy that threatens the foundations of the U.S. and the Western world?

And in case my post seems obfuscated, from where I sit, the clear-eyed appraisal of the nature of the Muslim world and terrorism is not made by the initial post of this thread, reply #13, Michelle Malkin's article, or any argument that tries to claim the Muslims of the world constitute some sort of international fifth column conspiracy that threatens the U.S. and the Western world.

I sit here and watch as you and others call for clear-eyed assessment of the situation, for wake-up calls to the reality of the situation. And I watch as attempts to have a clear-eyed discussion are bogged down in assertions that anyone who doesn't see the threat of the international fifth column conspiracy is not facing up to the reality of the situation. We cannot discuss whether or not there is a moderate/liberal Muslim population because we're too busy trying to figure how the KKK is a metaphor for the Muslim world. The Muslim world has been judged before we have even started to attempt a clear-eyed assessment of the situation. We condemn al Qaeda for considering the USAF an anti-Muslim league, and we refuse to consider that the Muslims as a whole are not an anti-West league. Seems to me the KKK metaphor might have another application.

So unless we're going to get past the "Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world" and have a clear-eyed discussion, then we have nothing to discuss because there is no actual discussion taking place.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 02, 2008, 05:18:42 AM

Quote from: Universe Prince on May 02, 2008, 01:49:19 AM

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 12:56:40 AM

"as if Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world" Is a little stronger than I would have said , but the case for the Koran being the foundation of exactly this is indeed the charter of the Al Queda and the reason that the Al Queda has been able to hide from us quite well in several diffrent countrys.

Your position is alike to President Bush who has so often said that Al Queda hijacks a noble religion , but what have they done to accomplish the hyjacking?

I'm getting a little tired of this dancing around. Do you or do you not agree with the the article that began this thread? Do you or do you not agree with reply #13 of this thread? Do you or do you not believe the Muslims of the world constitute an international fifth column conspiracy that threatens the foundations of the U.S. and the Western world?

And in case my post seems obfuscated, from where I sit, the clear-eyed appraisal of the nature of the Muslim world and terrorism is not made by the initial post of this thread, reply #13, Michelle Malkin's article, or any argument that tries to claim the Muslims of the world constitute some sort of international fifth column conspiracy that threatens the U.S. and the Western world.

I sit here and watch as you and others call for clear-eyed assessment of the situation, for wake-up calls to the reality of the situation. And I watch as attempts to have a clear-eyed discussion are bogged down in assertions that anyone who doesn't see the threat of the international fifth column conspiracy is not facing up to the reality of the situation. We cannot discuss whether or not there is a moderate/liberal Muslim population because we're too busy trying to figure how the KKK is a metaphor for the Muslim world. The Muslim world has been judged before we have even started to attempt a clear-eyed assessment of the situation. We condemn al Qaeda for considering the USAF an anti-Muslim league, and we refuse to consider that the Muslims as a whole are not an anti-West league. Seems to me the KKK metaphor might have another application.

So unless we're going to get past the "Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world" and have a clear-eyed discussion, then we have nothing to discuss because there is no actual discussion taking place.

I agree with the article which you seem to have speed read. Islam does have this problem built into it , hard wired.
There are lots of peace loveing Muslims , but there is a definatly observed phenominon of Muslims blowing up busses without direct contact with any central command .

So what there is to discuss is the degree to which""So unless we're going to get past the "Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world" " is true .

The literal language of the Koran and Hadith call Jahaid a duty and the Al Queda call every non supporter a shirk, if their attitude doesn't matter what does?

Very many Muslims consider the Al Queda a foolish project each one who thinks this way is no problem and this is likely a majority , yet even a minority smaller than 1% distributed across freindly territory in an unpredictable patter is a serious fifth collum problem.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 02, 2008, 04:57:50 PM

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 05:18:42 AM

I agree with the article which you seem to have speed read.

No idea which one that is.

Speed read? Pooh yi.

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 05:18:42 AM

Very many Muslims consider the Al Queda a foolish project each one who thinks this way is no problem and this is likely a majority , yet even a minority smaller than 1% distributed across freindly territory in an unpredictable patter is a serious fifth collum problem.

So we have moved past "Muslims are all secretly terrorist sympathizers in cahoots to rule the world". (I hope.) So now what? The article in reply #13 says:

But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

The very presence of Muslims, the author makes clear, is a threat to the Western world. So tell me what your clear-eyed appraisal of this is. Is the author correct? Is he wrong? And who are the Western hirelings who are traitors? Do you agree they are traitors?

If you think I'm speed reading these articles, being unfair in my assessment, then let's see you defend them. Explain why they are correct and I am wrong.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: _JS on May 02, 2008, 05:54:52 PM

I'd like to hear some clear answers as well.

I've been quickly labelled as someone who needs one of those "wake-up calls" because I don't consider terrorism or Islam a vital threat or to be honest, all that much of a major crises of massive proportions certainly not to the degree that Michelle Malkin, Sirs, or CU4 seem to consistently indicate.

Quote

But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

Do the folks in here agree with this view?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 02, 2008, 11:18:02 PM

Quote from: Universe Prince on May 02, 2008, 04:57:50 PM

If you think I'm speed reading these articles, being unfair in my assessment, then let's see you defend them. Explain why they are correct and I am wrong.[/color]

You have a strategy that would prevent Muslims from interpreting scripture as a license to kill?

I don't think that heavy restrictions on immigration is a practical solution , nor do I think that putting on blinders solves anything.


Here is the problem , Al Queda can persuede a small number of Muslims to create havoc , they use Islam to produce the persuesion , the fifth collumn does indeed show up amoung Islamic populations anywhere.

Seeing how the fifth collum has blown up trains in Spain and Busses in England I don't think you can argure that the problem is lesser than what is observed , yet I would argue that the visible part of the problem is likely smaller then its true extent.

If I do conceed that restrictions on trade and immagration are unfesable , what do you propose as the more fesable alternative ?

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 03, 2008, 12:58:02 AM

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 11:18:02 PM

You have a strategy that would prevent Muslims from interpreting scripture as a license to kill?

Prevent people from thinking something we don't like? Ummmmmmmmm, no. I don't. Don't want to. "Of course liberty isn't safe; but it is good."

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 11:18:02 PM

I don't think that heavy restrictions on immigration is a practical solution , nor do I think that putting on blinders solves anything.

That I prefer not to be distracted by the misdirection of some who want to promote the Muslim Peril does not mean I am wearing blinders or that I expect anyone to do so.

Quote from: Plane on May 02, 2008, 11:18:02 PM

Here is the problem , Al Queda can persuede a small number of Muslims to create havoc , they use Islam to produce the persuesion , the fifth collumn does indeed show up amoung Islamic populations anywhere.

Seeing how the fifth collum has blown up trains in Spain and Busses in England I don't think you can argure that the problem is lesser than what is observed , yet I would argue that the visible part of the problem is likely smaller then its true extent.

If I do conceed that restrictions on trade and immagration are unfesable , what do you propose as the more fesable alternative ?

I propose that we have to start with the acknowledgment that there is such a thing as moderate/liberal Islam. The notion of jihad as a holy war against infidels is not the only one. But at no point can we discuss this with anything remotely resembling clear-eyed assessment if we cannot first acknowledge that it exists. One of my major objections to the articles that ChristiansUnited4LessGvt has posted here is that they do not, and seem to make a point of refusing to, acknowledge that moderate/liberal Islam exists. You want to talk about blinders? Well, there they are. If we only ever say that the Islamic terrorist version of Islam is the right one, or that it is necessarily supported by Muslim holy texts, we're never going to have a clear-eyed discussion about this.

Believe it or not, Irshad Manji, a "Candadian Muslim feminist, author, journalist, activist, and lesbian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irshad_Manji)", does exist. And if we want to figure out what to do about fundamentalist, extremist, terrorist Islam, we need to start with people like her, not with people like Michelle Malkin, Bruce Bawer or Hugh Fitzgerald (authors of articles ChristiansUnited4LessGvt has posted in this thread). That is not only a feasible alternative, it is, in my opinion, the only feasible way to address the matter for long term peaceful results that protect us and them.

But as long as we keep being distracted by the fearmongering, as long as we get bogged down in notions of a Muslim fifth column, we will never have that kind of clear-eyed discussion. We have to move past what seems to have become conventional thinking on this matter if we intend to ever grasp the true nature of the situation and determine what to do about it. If you want clear-eyed assessment, you have to live in the light, not in the shadows of the cave. And what people like Malkin et al offer has no more value than shadows on a cave wall.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on May 03, 2008, 01:23:01 AM

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOy7Rj71m4k[/youtube]

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 03, 2008, 01:28:45 AM

I think you are being more hopefull than realistic.

If terrorists are a small minority of Muslims , sadly, Muslims willing to condemn them seem also to be a small minority.

Al Queda has had no problem finding hiding places , supples and money .

Perhaps there will come a time when most Muslims are ashamed of Al Quieda style political action by means of violence , but if this were already so Al Queda would have been easily eliminated .

What is demonstrated by events like the bombings in London?

Not that there is a large number of violent Muslims , but that a rather small number can be a big problem.


If you have found a  "Canadian Muslim feminist, author, journalist, activist, and lesbian", what do you expect her to do?

She will have precious little credibility with Members of Al Quieda , their admirers , and those intimidated by Al Quieda , she will be neither persuasive nor a threat -Al Queida is both.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Christians4LessGvt on May 03, 2008, 01:33:15 AM

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHyzlILoiDY[/youtube]

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 03, 2008, 01:38:03 AM

Tarek Fatah, a liberal Canadian Muslim, wrote in his critical review of The Trouble With Islam that the book "is aimed at making Muslim haters feel secure in their thinking."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irshad_Manji



Hahahahahahahaha!


Interpretation is free.

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Plane on May 03, 2008, 02:05:50 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houri


Hmmmmm

grapes?

Quote

Some modern day philologists such as Christoph Luxenberg have argued that the word huri, has been misinterpreted by generations of Muslim readers as wide-eyed virgins (who will serve the faithful in Paradise; Qur'an 44:54, 52:20 ,55:72, 56:22) actually means white grapes. He suggests that the word is actually a misread from its actual meaning of "white grapes", a word often found in many Christian descriptions of Paradise as abounding in pure white grapes. This theory sparked much joking in the Western press; Muslim suicide bombers would be expecting beautiful women and getting grapes.[64]

Title: Re: An Anatomy of Surrender
Post by: Universe Prince on May 03, 2008, 03:21:12 AM

Quote from: Plane on May 03, 2008, 01:28:45 AM

If you have found a  "Canadian Muslim feminist, author, journalist, activist, and lesbian", what do you expect her to do?

She will have precious little credibility with Members of Al Quieda , their admirers , and those intimidated by Al Quieda , she will be neither persuasive nor a threat -Al Queida is both.

And with that, this conversation has now officially qualified as a complete waste of time. Cheese and rice, Plane. Do you really think I'm talking about trying to persuade al Qaeda? Yes, that must be my plan. Send in the lesbian Muslim, and she will convince bin Laden to give up his evil ways. It's just gotta work! Pooh yi. I'm done. I can recognize terrorist bombings until my fingers are rubbed free of fingerprints, and I'll still not get one single recognition of moderate Islam. Even when you go to look at the Wikipedia page on Irshad Manji, apparently all you can see is "making Muslim haters feel secure in their thinking." We're done. I'm done. There is no point and no value in continuing.