Comments by NakedCelt
1. Sharia law 'could have UK role'
Comment #204755 by NakedCelt on July 5, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Comment #204405 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The raw power of ideas -- yes, because ideas exist independently of ideators and control people's actions without reference to their circumstances. Why, it was the purest and most random coincidence that fascism came out of the countries hardest hit by the Depression!I wonder how Mahmood fits into Fanusi's global Islamic conspiracy?
Okay, when exactly did I use the phrase conspiracy? That isn't what this is about at all. People who believe in conspiracies do so because they don't understand the raw power of ideas.
If you honestly think that a small group of radicals cannot cause massive damage, then you have learned nothing from the blood soaked history of the twentieth century.
As an example, look how this Khalid Mahmood guy, as an inevitable result of being a Muslim, holds up Sharia law and demands that it be made official throughout the UK! Oh, wait...
2. Group Asks for Divine Intervention to Ease Oil Prices
Comment #204378 by NakedCelt on July 4, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Comment #204180 by Scott McMeekin:
Perhaps a better strategy, given the USA's history of selling anything to pretty much anyone with no tangible long-term thought to the ramifications of such transactions, might be to add an taxy duty to all of those large arms sales to Saudi Arabia to offset their higher oil prices.Bush seems to be trying the opposite at the moment -- giving the Saudis nuclear power in exchange for lower oil prices.
3. Sharia law 'could have UK role'
Comment #204374 by NakedCelt on July 4, 2008 at 9:40 pm
The Telegraph has this too. I thought the following was particularly revealing:
Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar and a practising Muslim, said that allowing Sharia law in parts of the UK would be divisive.I wonder how Mahmood fits into Fanusi's global Islamic conspiracy?
He said: "This would create a two-tier society. It is highly retrograde. It will segregate and alienate the Muslim community from the rest of British society.
"The majority of British Muslims want to live only under British law and they would reject anything that means they are treated differently.
"What Lord Phillips and the archbishop are discussing is something that is completely outside their area of understanding."
4. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview
Comment #201523 by NakedCelt on June 29, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
Rest assured, I've heard this nonsense before, and it is never substantiated. No critic of her epistemology, nor of her ethics has ever held water. No, I'm not interested in arguing this point with you - I've heard it all before,Of course you have. Of course you have. Rand's philosophy could be mathematically disproven right in front of you and you would still consider the critique unsubstantiated. Just like Rand, you consider it morally wrong to hold your existing beliefs subject to reassessment. There's a word for this approach to epistemology. Starts with F and rhymes with "wraith".
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
OK, then let me expand. For the benefit of others, of course, since you have faithfully blockaded yourself against counter-argument.Her metaphysic was basically Aristotelian essentialism, her "solution" to the Problem of Induction merely a rehashing of the No True Scotsman fallac
I notice that you take refuge behind jargon.
Aristotelian essentialism is not quite as supernaturalistic as Platonic essentialism. Aristotelian essentialism is the view that everything has a fixed "nature" which causes it to behave in certain ways and not in others. Hence the laws of nature.
Aristotelian essentialism is most often wielded against the Problem of Induction. As I'm sure you're aware, the Problem of Induction goes like this. Just because things have happened a certain way once, twice, a hundred or a billion times before, does not mean it is logically necessary that they happen that way the next time. Consider the following argument:
1. Fire burned today.Not logically valid. And no number of additional days when fire burned will make it logically valid.
2. Fire burned yesterday.
3. Fire burned the day before yesterday.
4. Therefore, fire will burn tomorrow.
Science is purely descriptive; each scientific observation of what fire does is simply equivalent to another "Fire burned on Tuesday 23 September 1980" or whatever. The "laws" of science are simply a statement of what nature has been observed to do up until now. The fact that you can discern all kinds of pretty mathematical patterns in those observations still doesn't provide certainty that the patterns won't be disrupted tomorrow.
Aristotelian essentialism attempts to solve the Problem by asserting that it is (for instance) in the nature of fire to burn. If it doesn't burn, it isn't fire. A misleadingly popular solution, because it doesn't solve anything. The fallacy can be exposed thus:
"All Scotsmen are mean by nature."That's why it's called the No True Scotsman fallacy. And it opens itself right back up to the Problem of Induction.
"But my uncle Alasdair is a Scotsman and he's not mean."
"Well, then, your uncle Alasdair can't be a true Scotsman."
Let us suppose we are investigating something that seems to be fire, to see whether it really is fire. We'll call it "phlox" in the meantime. If it doesn't burn, we know it's not fire, because it is the nature of fire to burn. We now have the following argument:
1. Phlox burned today (and so proved to be fire).This is just as invalid as the previous argument. Aristotelian essentialism adds precisely nothing to the case.
2. Phlox burned yesterday (and so proved to be fire).
3. Phlox burned the day before yesterday (and so proved to be fire).
4. Therefore, phlox will burn tomorrow (and so prove to be fire).
Ayn Rand thought it did. She was wrong.
What does make the argument valid is the magic word "probably".
1. Fire burned today.Which is fine. A deterministic universe is simply a special case of a probabilistic universe in which all the probabilities happen to be set at 1 or 0. That quantum physics appears to be probabilistic is a confirmation that science is indeed plumbing the depths of reality.
2. Fire burned yesterday.
3. Fire burned the day before yesterday.
4. Therefore, fire will probably burn tomorrow.
Objective morality is likewise untenable. Moral judgements boil down to statements of the format "Action X is good" or "Action Y is bad". One can rephrase such sentences as "You should do action X" or "You should not do action Y" without any loss of meaning -- unless we posit an essence of good and bad, which, as we have just seen, would add nothing to the case. But "should" statements can be rephrased again: "Do action X." "Don't do action Y." Again, no meaning is lost, and this time it is clear that they are not statements at all but imperatives. An imperative cannot be true or false. ("Don't do action Y." "That's not true!" Makes no sense.) Since moral judgements are imperatives, moral judgements cannot be true or false.
If that looks like the beginning of a slide into the chaos of total moral relativism -- tough cookies. Reality is under no obligation to conform to our preferences.
(As a matter of fact, I don't think it's quite as desperate as all that, but this thread has crept far enough away from the article already.)
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
No, we know they're disadvantaged from the statistics on health and income.I was thinking of racially or ethnically distinctive groups, such as African Americans or (in my country) Maori, but when I think about it groups distinguished by age, socioeconomic status, and interests would illustrate the point equally well (students in my own town are an example, as are British "football hooligans").
So Hindus and Sikhs are not ethnically distinctive? Your argument boils down to: "any disadvantaged minority group is badly behaved, and we know they're disadvantaged because they are badly behaved."
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
Britain has bent over backwards for the Muslims.By the standards of someone who wants to cut short Muslim immigration, yes, but that's not saying much. British politicians may have bent over for Muslims, but what about British communities -- you know, the people they actually have to get jobs and food and services and education from?
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
If I were an African American I would be incensed at being lumped in with the hideous crimes of the Muslim community.Then I'd respectfully suggest you look up crime statistics for US urban areas.
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
Nor for that matter does your vaunted casuistry explain why, in Muslim majority countries, it is the religious minorities who are best behaved, despite facing far worse oppression than Muslim immigrants in the West do.Assuming this to be accurate -- and, given your standards of argumentation so far, I'm not confident about that assumption -- I'd suspect that this is because non-Muslim populations there are so small that there is not such a thing as a kafir neighbourhood in those countries; hence, communities never cross the threshold where a given person (it generally starts with young men) would receive more local prestige by damaging the majority society than by deferring to it.
But I don't think you're going to get Muslim immigrant communities down to those sorts of numbers again by halting immigration, and if you try and deport them you're in for severe retaliation -- from all kinds of immigrants, I would think, not just Muslims. Not to mention from the countries you're trying to deport them to.
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
No. The problem is the doctrine itself, and I can't believe I have to say this amidst unbelievers.Right, because you still can't be bothered defending your basic assumption that beliefs determine behaviour. Time and time again I've called you on this, and always your answer is to reassert that no, they really do.
There's a basic distinction to be made here. Specific, that is context-dependent, beliefs do indeed determine behaviour. I believe the bus will leave my neighbourhood at 2:35, so I aim to be at the stop by 2:30. I believe the outdoor temperature is cold today, so I take a coat. Nothing controversial there.
General beliefs are a different kettle of fish altogether. I know many people who believe sincerely that cigarettes put them at increased risk of cancer, yet continue to smoke them. I know several people who are perfectly convinced that spiders in the south of New Zealand are harmless, and yet are paralytic with fear when they see one. I've met people who believed gas-guzzling cars were bad for the environment and still chose to drive them. I grew up among people who believed that human beings were basically evil and deserved eternal torment in Hell, and still managed to treat them with perfect decency. General beliefs influence behaviour, I'll grant you, but they don't determine it. I suspect, in fact, that the influence general beliefs have on behaviour consists simply of the fact that we sometimes draw specific-belief conclusions from them and act on those.
That being the case, behaviour is driven by context, by habit, and by life-long observation of the behaviour of others. That being the case, religious belief is not a sufficient cause of antisocial behaviour. It takes specific confirmation of the belief -- e.g., a kafir behaving exactly the way the Qur'an predicts kafirs will behave -- to trigger such behaviour.
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
None whatsoever? You mean you were making up the thing about six million converts to Christianity per year in Africa?What do we do, ship it back to where it came from? Where the stuff is already piling up against our borders? Where it might go critical by itself and cause a serious breach? No, we spread it out, prevent it from clumping, let it decay below critical mass in safe lead containers. Allow "radioactivity" to stand for "Islam" -- the solution is integration. (The "lead containers" would be educated secular communities.)
Except this ugly thing called 'reality' rears its head. There is no evidence whatsoever that this works.
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
However, if Muslims are confined to the dar al-Islam, their ability to cause trouble is drastically diminished.The way Israel's problems have magically vanished since they cordoned off Palestine, you mean?
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
As to your cretinous comments about teleportation devices, if someone comes forward, they get police protection. If someon threatens them, they are charged and prosecuted.Go tell that to a domestic violence protection programme. See how long it takes for them to stop laughing.
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
We already have very brave groups speaking out, no thanks to our cowardly elites. Those who wouldn't come forward given the climate I have described are of no use whatsoever. That's their problem and not ours.Not ours? So now you're saying that the presence of Muslims who won't convert is not a problem for anyone but themselves?
Comment #200163 Fanusi Khiyal:
Now tatoo this in mirror writing on your forehead so that you get it:Lost count of the number of times you've asserted that. Now it's time to back up your argument.
Our goal is the survival of civilization. Helping Muslims break free of the mental prison of Islam is an excellent way of doing that, and a nice bonus, but it is not our primary concern. Our primary concern is to eliminate the Islamic threat to this civilization.
Got that?
Here's a hint. What looks to Ayn Rand followers like dismissing, with splendid disdain, those who won't see the rational inevitability of their conclusions, looks to everyone else like someone evading a question because they haven't got an answer.
5. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview
Comment #200093 by NakedCelt on June 26, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Ayn Rand herself, the greatest defender of capitalism that has ever livedAh. Now I'm beginning to understand where you're coming from.
Ayn Rand wasn't the greatest anything. Her metaphysic was basically Aristotelian essentialism, her "solution" to the Problem of Induction merely a rehashing of the No True Scotsman fallacy. The same fallacy also underlies her supposed success in deriving an "ought" from an "is". Most of the rest of her philosophy was spatchcocked together from the two philosophers she affected most to despise (Nietzsche and Kant). She praised Reason to the skies but fell down a bit on actually employing it, responding to criticism more often with ad hominems like "Only a morally bankrupt person would think that" than with actual arguments. There are serious holes in her political ideas as well. The most gaping one is the issue of whether deprivation of a person's needs constitutes force; you'll remember John Galt refused to answer that when it was put to him in Atlas Shrugged. Grant that it might, and Rand's entire political theory falls apart. Most damningly of all, she regarded conclusions reached through reasoning as final, to the point that being prepared to re-evaluate such conclusions in the light of new data was moral cowardice.
That's not to say she was totally lacking in insight. She did in particular articulate the idea that freedom can only exist if law enforcement is strictly circumscribed. Your proposition to block Western borders against Muslims on the basis not of their past activities, nor of their possessions, but of their beliefs, would require border officials who were neither more nor less nor other than thought police. Here's a handy tip: when considering granting any government department new powers, always imagine first what a government with beliefs diametrically opposed to your own could do with them.
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
And here I thought that you had finally started to understand something about the nature and menace of Islam. With the small numbers we already have we see pushes for Shariah and terrorism. What the hell do we face if we have two, three, four, five times that number?...So what are you saying? Let's say we have a lot of radioactive material on our hands that we want to prevent from reaching critical mass. More is arriving daily. What do we do, ship it back to where it came from? Where the stuff is already piling up against our borders? Where it might go critical by itself and cause a serious breach? No, we spread it out, prevent it from clumping, let it decay below critical mass in safe lead containers. Allow "radioactivity" to stand for "Islam" -- the solution is integration. (The "lead containers" would be educated secular communities.)Large-scale immigration is, I admit, a necessary precondition for the latter scenario; but it's not a sufficient cause. Shariah communities can only become established in the first place if Muslim immigrants are left to their own devices by the host society out of fear, indifference, or misplaced sensitivity. That this is indeed happening should be of serious cause for concern.
And the larger numbers of Muslims there are, the more clout they can wield, and the more they can isolate their communities of faithful away from the rest of the host society.
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Are we really going to have to experience a continent wide Bosnia with a dozen Milosevic's?Err... Milosevic was a Serb. An Orthodox Christian. The Muslims in Bosnia were the ones getting killed (along with any Catholic Croats). At that particular time, anyway; obviously there's been centuries of tit-for-tatting in the region.
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The fact is that the only Muslim you can ever be sure to trust is either the apostate, or the near-apostate (e.g. Irshad Manji). There are millions who don't support jihad and shariah and who never will, but you can never tell which are which until it's too late. Especially since even those with a 'residual' Islamic identity can undergo fully fledged reversion to the real thing.That reversion is not something that happens at random. It's readily predicted, albeit qualitatively, by the degree to which immigrants fail to integrate into the host community.
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
I didn't say "any minority religious group". I was thinking of racially or ethnically distinctive groups, such as African Americans or (in my country) Maori, but when I think about it groups distinguished by age, socioeconomic status, and interests would illustrate the point equally well (students in my own town are an example, as are British "football hooligans").You could be describing any disadvantaged immigrant or indigenous group
No, I could not. This isn't just wrong, it's actually libelous. Hindu and Sikh immigrants don't pull this stuff. Nor are they as heavily represented in the heroin trade as Muslims are. This tired, shopworn marxist casuistry explains nothing. On the other hand, understanding the texts and teachings of Islam explains everything.
It's well known to youth educators, parenting experts, counsellors, and many allied professionals, that "Do as I say, not as I do" never works. People emulate their elders' actions far more reliably than they absorb their stated thought patterns. The texts and teachings of any religion will therefore always be subservient to its practices as vehicles for transmitting it. Disrupt the practice of shariah, by integrating Muslim immigrants into communities that do not practise it, and the beliefs will follow.
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
I said potential apostates. The effectiveness of Christian evangelism depends utterly on the fact that evangelists do not wait for their target audience to change their beliefs first. Hospitality comes first, then introducing the new belief, then argumentation. It simply doesn't work the other way round. I agree that we need to support ex-Muslims, but there won't be enough ex-Muslims to make any difference if that's all we do. As I told you on an earlier thread, my family were close friends, through our church, of a couple who worked as missionaries in Kyrgyzstan, at considerable personal risk. Suggest to them that they should wait for the local Muslims to come round to Christianity first and then start befriending and welcoming them -- they'd have laughed in your face.Not good enough. Potential apostates need to have an existing community support network ready to step into when they leave their shariah communities; people you've never met cannot be a community support network for you. You praise Christian missionaries for their effectiveness -- why are you so dead set against adopting their methods
When did I ever say I was? I have said that we should adopt and adapt them. One example I gave was supporting the ex-Muslim councils around the world, not to mention people like Ali Sina. Support groups and community protection for apostates are essential. What's difficult about this?
(Actually, no. Knowing this guy, he'd have very earnestly explained to you, with several biblical examples, that Christians need to be in the world but not of the world and that one's witness begins with hospitality. Think an intellectual version of Ned Flanders. But you get the idea.)
Comment #198999 by Fanusi Khiyal:
You're going to install teleport machines in their homes, are you, that whisk away new apostates to safe locations before their angry relatives can catch them? And these machines will have mind-reading devices that test the beliefs of users so as to filter out Muslim from non-Muslim and prevent the believers from following? And the safe locations will be staffed by people who know the new apostates' economic and emotional circumstances intimately and can provide for their needs as readily as their families could, right from the kickoff? And some kind of anti-panic drug so that the apostates automatically trust the staff as readily and deeply as they do people they've known all their lives? Do elaborate on the design of your new system. It sounds quite fascinating.No-one's going to come to a protection system that demands they first endanger themselves.
Er - I have said time and time again that I support providing defense to anyone who asks for it, as well as throwing out any Shariah supporters, an action which would make it a lot less difficult for apostates to come forward.
What, exactly, is difficult here?
6. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview
Comment #198930 by NakedCelt on June 24, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
NakedCelt you still haven't addressed the point that Muslim immigration is pushing our societies towards extinction. I'm sorry, but our first duty must be to hold the line. If we keep letting Muslims into our nations, we may as well just cut our own throats.Oh dear. And here I thought we were starting to understand each other. I have not addressed the point that Muslim immigration is pushing our societies towards extinction, because I don't think Muslim immigration is pushing our societies towards extinction. For one thing, the end of cheap energy is a far more imminent and potentially deadly problem. For another, you haven't made a case that Muslim immigration per se is pushing the West towards extinction. Hidden Muslim terrorist cells certainly might be -- the West's heavy market centralization, its dependence on a few powerhouse economic hubs, makes it vulnerable to terrorist attacks. If shariah communities were to expand within Western cities, take over food production and infiltrate institutions of law and government, then that too would be a credible threat. Large-scale immigration is, I admit, a necessary precondition for the latter scenario; but it's not a sufficient cause. Shariah communities can only become established in the first place if Muslim immigrants are left to their own devices by the host society out of fear, indifference, or misplaced sensitivity. That this is indeed happening should be of serious cause for concern.
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Increasing numbers of Muslims in our societies means increasing levels of gang-rape, increasing weakness on the part of our politicos to deal with this problem, increasing abuse of women, increasing intimidation - no. This has got to stop, and it has got to stop right now.You could be describing any disadvantaged immigrant or indigenous group. This is what happens when one group of people are cut off socially, politically and economically from the wider society. People who feel that (a) they have little hope of advancement through legitimate means, (b) the police are there to harass them rather than protect them, (c) the majority of society will distrust them whether they try to fit in or not, and (d) they haven't got much to lose by inflicting damage on the host community, will not tend to be law-abiding citizens. The effect is of course to lock them further in their isolation and perpetuate the problem.
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
I'm afraid this is very naive. How would you stop determined closet jihadists from meeting in secret and plotting terror attacks?You called me naive once for implying that Muslims might convert out of sheer appreciation of the benefits of the West.
This isn't just through sheer appreciation. This is a situation where those who were deceiving us would be forced to hide their faith and keep it under wraps. No Da'wa, no preaching, no nothing. Seems like a win-win to me.
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
I think we are at cross-purposes on the meaning of "culture". The Nazis weren't a separate culture from the rest of Germany. They took a particular set of contemporary German cultural values, centrally the admiration of force, and promoted them to the nth through existing German institutions. The Allies bombed them not to change their minds about their values but to dismantle their infrastructure for delivering and co-ordinating their attacks. After the war the Allies did not impose British or American political institutions on Germany, much less colonize them culturally. Germans are not Nazis, but they are still Germans, and so they should be.You can't destroy one culture and replace it with another without gigantic misery
Even if this were true, my response is: So goddamn what? My country was bombed flat, with entire cities full of civilians consumed by phosphorus incindaries, in order to rid it of the demented culture that was causing trouble. Japan wouldn't turn away from its ideology of conquest and tyranny until two of its cities were destroyed by nukes.
I'm not advocating either, merely a continual barrage against this madness. It has worked before, it can work again.
Contrast that with what the British colonizers did to the indigenous cultures in Australia and New Zealand in the 19th century -- kidnapping Aboriginal children to be brought up white, beating Maori school pupils for speaking their own home language. That's what I would understand by the term "cultural imperialism". Both countries have large criminal underclasses drawn from the indigenous population for that very reason.
I gave a couple of examples of traditional cultural institutions within Muslim Africa that run clean counter to core Islamic values. There will be many more if you look carefully. Enabling and nurturing these institutions will achieve twenty times more than trumpeting the superiority of Europe and America (human nature is such that that is how your programme would be understood, regardless of its intentions).
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Hey, you were the one advocating Marxist trade barriers on Saudi oil sheikhs.Marx wasn't wrong about everything, you know.
I'm not going to get into this. His writings caused over one hundred million deaths, and enslaved a third of the planet in the most lifehating hell imaginable. Discussion closed.
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Not good enough. No-one's going to come to a protection system that demands they first endanger themselves. It would be like a drug rehabilitation programme that only helped people who'd already overcome their addiction.Unfortunately many of those women will themselves be "supporters" of shariah, in that they'll teach their families to abide by it, out of sheer concern for their safety if nothing else.
In which case they need to be expelled. Period. I don't care why someone supports Shariah, they get to renounce it or get out. If we have strong protection systems in place for apostates, then more of them would be willing to abandon this view. If they don't, they need to get out and stay out.
Comment #198444 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Not good enough. Potential apostates need to have an existing community support network ready to step into when they leave their shariah communities; people you've never met cannot be a community support network for you. You praise Christian missionaries for their effectiveness -- why are you so dead set against adopting their methods?Like I said, we need to help people over that difficult first step of confronting their own beliefs.
Which is why I advocate a continuous program of cultural imperialism.
Comment #198445 by Fanusi Khiyal:
And, NC, if you want to see where muslim immigration is taking us, read the following short story:OK, I've read 'em. It's a guy who agrees with you, a guy who thinks you can outdo radical Islam at ruthlessness. Some hopes. A competition in ruthlessness will always be won by the more hateful, more coercive ideology. That's a losing strategy. If it's our only hope, we're already fucked.
http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm
Read the follow-up message to. It will make your hair stand on end.
Thing is, though, Fanusi, that story is fiction. I'm sure I could write an equally convincing SF story promoting my point of view. You want to convince me, you need facts, and not ones cherry-picked to support your own ideas.
7. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview
Comment #198393 by NakedCelt on June 23, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Not good enough. When I apostasized, the morning that I woke up and said to myself "Oh my nonexistent God, I'm not a Christian any more" was the end of the hard part. And I live in a mostly fairly nonreligious country. I'd grown up since birth in a tightly knit Pentecostal/Evangelical church community, and I'd been wrestling for months with the choice between leaving it and striking out alone or going on living with jangling cognitive dissonance. That was hard enough. What if my entire country had had the same belief? What if leaving meant not just loneliness but persecution, ostracism and exile? That would have been a much bigger load on the fear side of the scale; perhaps enough to overwhelm the discomfort of the cognitive dissonance and lead me to stifle my doubts for the rest of my life.I'm afraid this will be directly counter-productive. Given the hostility of Islam to apostates, I'd guess there are a lot of Muslims — women especially — who secretly see the irrationality of the whole thing but don't dare admit that to themselves, much less anyone else, out of a very realistic fear of severe consequences. We don't want to slam the door that represents their only hope in their faces. We want them — no, we need them to know that if they do decide to walk out in courage, we'll support them every step of the way.
Then they need protection. Is that really so hard? One apostate is easy to persecute. Ten thousand, not so much. Six million a year? Not a chance. Any Muslim apostate should qualify for automatic protection, both police and in the media and by public figures. Anyone inciting murder should be charged and prosecuted. We already have groups like the Ex-Muslim councils of Britain and Germany. They deserve to be backed to the hilt.
As regards apostates from within Muslim nations, we should always offer them asylum. Adbul Rahman was spirited out of Afghanistan, and we should make it clear that anyone abandoning Islam is more than welcome in the West - as long as they're sincere.
Don't forget, also, that the religion itself also imposes fears on those who think of leaving. My initial fear when I found my mental footsteps straying towards atheism were that Christianity would turn out to be right after all and I would end up in hell. It doesn't feel so implausible when it's what you've believed for the first twenty years of your life. We want Muslims to be able to take those first difficult steps, and that means we have no choice but to reach out to them while they're still Muslims.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
This will have the beneficial effects that even those who do engage in taqqiya and secretly remain Muslims will need to keep it under wraps. And seeing the benefits of the West, they may start to question themselves, and become apostates in truth.You called me naive once for implying that Muslims might convert out of sheer appreciation of the benefits of the West. It may happen for some, but I suspect that those engaging in taqqiya will secretly meet with others like themselves, forming underground radical sects like those who bombed the World Trade Centre.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Our top priority is our survival, the survival of our civilization and our way of life. That's it.For a given value of "our way of life". We are very soon going to have to adjust our way of life to not having an endless supply of cheap energy. I suspect that reengineering society to a steady-state economy (the only alternative to Malthusian collapse) is going to take deep-seated cultural change.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Fewer, but they'll be the more committed, radical ones. And any force directed against them will confirm them in their stance that the West is dangerous and evil. Part of the reason Christianity and Islam between them dominate so much of the globe is that both consider martyrdom glorious. Deadly force merely strengthens the resolve of those remaining. That's why Christianity flourished in the Roman Empire, and it's why Hamas is now thriving. You can certainly argue that Israelis have the right to defend themselves from deadly force with deadly force, but this isn't about rights; it's about consequences.I have to query this. Unless the attacks are extremely effective and at the same time entirely and transparently just, I fear the main effect will be to select for the more virulent strains of Islamic belief (those that advocate jihad by the sword rather than the pen).
Are you so sure? When it becomes clear that there are very real, very grave consequences for preaching this evil, how many will be willing to go along?
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Islam is something of an opportunistic infection. It smells weakness at the heart of Western civilization. More than anything else, that needs to be disproved. We need to show them that we're not willing to yield an inch of our civilization without a fight.No. The infection metaphor is an apt one, but I think what you're proposing is equivalent to an incomplete course of antibiotics.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
That's not the part I was arguing with. By "walling off the dar al-Islam" I mean the anti-immigration part of your plan. I know it's risky, but we must allow for friendly contact between Muslims (I mean Muslim individuals and families, not Muslim institutions) and the West. Trying to out-ruthless Islam is like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest.No argument there �quot; except to note that walling off the dar al-Islam completely has the opposite effect (consolidating and strengthening it).
Again, how sure are you? Would it really make it stronger? If there was an independent Kurdistan, and the Berbers of North Africa were pushing for independence from Arab rule, and the blacks in Darfur had their own state? If the Arab Muslims saw their dominion shrinking day by day? If the continual warfare between Sunni and Shia made starkly clear the price that Islam exacts? And how safe would the Mullahs in Tehran be, when their people know just how much money they have received unearned from their oil wealth, and how little they have helped their own people with it?
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
If there was a continual trickle, perhaps even a stream or flood, of Muslims who decide to throw in the towel, decide their faith isn't worth this misery, become apostates and flee to the West? If they could hear from those apostates who had gone through similar experiences?Muslims are much less likely to throw in the towel from within the dar al-Islam. That's why we cannot afford to block immigration. If prospective immigrants had communities of people in their host countries who shared their culture and language but not Islam or shariah... that's the only scenario I can see where Muslims would apostasize en masse.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
No. Once they are unable to send their culture over here, but must face the full power of the ideas of the Enlightenment in a divided, broken, weak dar al-Islam, we will see some titanic levels of apostasy.I don't think TV, flyers, and the 'Net are going to be enough. Independent non-Arab states, yes; but they'll need universities.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
You can't destroy one culture and replace it with another without gigantic misery. My country is still suffering the effects of colonization more than a century ago, when a generation of Maori schoolchildren learned that everything about their home and families was wrong and backward and grew up full of shame and self-hatred.I'd agree reservedly with this, but I'm not sure about "cultural imperialism" to describe it. Ideas, not customs, are the battleground.
Poh-tay-toe, poh-TAH-toh. Of course ideas are our battleground but let's be clear: they wish to destroy our culture, and replace it with theirs. We should try to destroy their culture and replace it with ours. I have no qualms about stating that clearly. Of course, I don't mean that they should start listening to pop or watching Hollywood or whatever. But the core values of our society - Reason as the highest court of appeal, Scientific progress, the equality of men and women, the equality of all people, the vision of Man as an independent being free to live his own life - should come to supplant their values of Faith, Stagnation, Tradition, Misogyny, Abasement, Racism, and Hatred.
Speaking as an anthropology graduate, I think you're a bit pessimistic about other cultures, as well. Most cultures encompass multiple values and ideals, including freedom, justice, and decision-making by consent. A more effective method — though one that'd take more work — would be to seek out social structures within the target cultures that embody those values, and enable and nurture those (I'm thinking traditional lesbian marriage among the Nuer of the Sudan, for instance; or the black Muslim women of Mali who, so far from accepting the burqa, go topless in public).
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
They won't be there in perpetuity. In ten years, tops, Dubai will be the world's biggest ghost town.There is no one alternative to oil; we need lots of them
Well, if you are right, and there is no other way, we should seize and hold those oil fields in perpetuity.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
As regards your 'Marxist' comments, there's nothing marxist in having such a system. The fact is that the 'greedy oil barons' just can't get away with the kind of upmarking that these Saudi princes insist on making. They'd be immediately undercut. It's the fact that Saudi Arabia has a quasi-monopoly, guaranteed by force, that makes it possible. I'm not interested in the various utopian socialist visions, but putting the cash-squeeze on every mohammedan bigshot would provide all sorts of benefits for us.Marx wasn't wrong about everything, you know. He was wrong to believe that governments established by armed force would be able to manage economies worth a shite. But he rightly saw that big money can buy armed force and create monopolies; and that markets don't have an inbuilt mechanism to avoid crashing into resource limits (though, for him, that insight was limited to human resources). Personally, I'd go for what Peter Barnes calles "Capitalism 3.0" — trust funds to protect environmental, cultural, and human resources from overexploitation, while allowing growth within the confines of resource limits.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Unfortunately many of those women will themselves be "supporters" of shariah, in that they'll teach their families to abide by it, out of sheer concern for their safety if nothing else. Remember also that value systems get internalized when you grow up in them. Like I said, we need to help people over that difficult first step of confronting their own beliefs.Much as I see the horror of the burqa, for instance, I don't think forcing Islamic women to choose between staying at home in their shariah communities (because they can't wear the veil to work or school) and running the risk of being killed for their family's honour (because they took the veil off) helps anybody.
This is why they need protection, and all supporters of Shariah should be expelled. We need to make it possible for the veil to be taken off.
Comment #197981 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Because Christian missionaries don't wait for people to start acting like Christians before they invite them into their homes, that's why. Neither can we afford to wait for people to turn aside from Islam on their own initiative. Christianity has been trying to outdo Islam at ruthlessness for centuries, and increasingly failing. Now it's trying the openness-and-acceptance approach, and — if your six million a year figure is correct — succeeding. (I have my hopes that the acceptance part will get internalized and start changing Christianity too, though I don't think the US will be a leader there.)As for the Christian missionaries — I have noted this elsewhere — their primary weapons are hospitality, generosity, and acceptance. If you're suggesting adopting those weapons, I'm all for it. But I think they might be a little inconsistent with your ideas (1) and (3).
I don't see why.
8. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview
Comment #197839 by NakedCelt on June 22, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
1. We place a moratorium on Muslim immigration, halting it for at least twenty years, if not indefinetly, until we've sorted out the problems with the ones we already have. We should try, as much as possible, to reverse this immigration. One thing we can do is to make it plain that all Muslims need to choose between the constitution of the country they inhabit and the Shariah, and any Shariah supporters will loose their citizenship and be sent to a Muslim country of their choice.I'm afraid this will be directly counter-productive. Given the hostility of Islam to apostates, I'd guess there are a lot of Muslims — women especially — who secretly see the irrationality of the whole thing but don't dare admit that to themselves, much less anyone else, out of a very realistic fear of severe consequences. We don't want to slam the door that represents their only hope in their faces. We want them — no, we need them to know that if they do decide to walk out in courage, we'll support them every step of the way.
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
2. We need to take away the money weapon, by any means necessary. One thing that's essential is a Manhatten-style energy project to get us off oil. We should also put the cash squeeze on Muslim bigshots whenever possible. "So Prince Adbul Yermami, you charge us a hundred and fifty times what it costs to produce that oil? Fine. When you need medical treatment in a Western hospital, we'll charge you the same markup. Same if you want to send your kids to Western Unis, which could do with the money. Oh, and you want to buy another private jet? They just got very expensive." And also make it very clear that, just as the allies seized German property during the second world war, anyone of these well-heeled sheiks found in bed with the jihadis will very rapidly loose his california mansion, his switzerland estate etc.I'd agree with this one in substance, but I don't think a "Manhattan-style energy project" is going to solve our energy problems. There is no one alternative to oil; we need lots of them. Ultimately our society is going to have to come to terms with the laws of thermodynamics on a global scale, and reconfigure itself to allow economic growth to follow a logistic rather than an exponential curve, slowing in time to avoid crashing into resource limits.
If you apply your idea for what to do about greedy oil barons to other commercial entities that make a similar markup on production, you basically get a Marxist trade barrier system. Again, I wouldn't entirely disagree, but it needs to be backed up by a system of concessions for making genuine economic contributions (e.g. paying good wages, buying local supplies, funding environmental, educational, scientific or community enterprises).
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Of course, another part of that is explaining to nations like Pakistan and Egypt that if they don't knock it off with allowing Jihad and Islamic supremacism to be preached in their mosques and madrassahs then they won't recieve a penny of Infidel aid (just a disguised version of Jizyah anyway).No argument there.
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
3. Many countries already have laws that allow for the confiscation of property used to deal drugs. We should use this as a model and seize and tear down any Mosque or Madrassah that advocates Jihad or Shariah supremacism.I have to query this. Unless the attacks are extremely effective and at the same time entirely and transparently just, I fear the main effect will be to select for the more virulent strains of Islamic belief (those that advocate jihad by the sword rather than the pen).
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
4. We need to support non-Muslim minorities in Muslim states. For example, ignoring the plight of Iraq's Christians and Yezidi (and the couple of Jews still left) is a disgrace.No argument there.
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
5. Conversely, we should help those non-Arab Muslims that are suffering because of the Arab supremacism that is part and parcel of Islam (google 'Islam as a vessel of Arab supremacism' - it'll make your hair stand on end). For example, we can push for an independent Kurdistan, as long as it guarantees the freedom of non-Muslim minorities (see point 4). We can help out the black Muslims of the Sudan, and the Berbers, and every similar group while making it plain that what they suffer is all a result of this Arab Supremacism (we wouldn't even need to do that much there. The blacks of the Sudan are so fed up with the Arabs that they've dropped their arabic names for ones like "Colin Powell" and "George Bush". I'm not kidding). The rule of thumb should be: anything that breaks up and weakens the dar al-Islam is a good thing.No argument there — except to note that walling off the dar al-Islam completely has the opposite effect (consolidating and strengthening it).
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
6. Similarly we should protect those dissidents fighting against Islam. It's another disgrace that we can find trillions to pour down the sinkhole of Iraqi democracy while not being able to spare the cash for some really tough guys to guard Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan etc. Also, we should support the Iranian diaspora that has very heavily renounced Islam, and is fighting against it.No argument there.
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
7. Above all, what we need is an aggressive and continuous campaign of cultural imperialism, to firstly discredit Islam, and secondly to wake Infidels up to its nature. One great example would be heavily subsidizing the printing of books by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan, Bat Ye'or, Ali Sina etc. Spread 'em around, give 'em away free. The more people know, the safer we'll be. Organize something like 'Radio Free Europe' where the truth about Islam is continuosly told. Get versions in Arabic, Urdu and Farsee, and target Muslim states. Christian missionaries are already having a huge impact in Africa and even, via radio and internet, in Iran where the penalty for apostasy is death. Why should the Christians be alone in this? Why shouldn't atheists get onboard?I'd agree reservedly with this, but I'm not sure about "cultural imperialism" to describe it. Ideas, not customs, are the battleground. Much as I see the horror of the burqa, for instance, I don't think forcing Islamic women to choose between staying at home in their shariah communities (because they can't wear the veil to work or school) and running the risk of being killed for their family's honour (because they took the veil off) helps anybody.
As for the Christian missionaries — I have noted this elsewhere — their primary weapons are hospitality, generosity, and acceptance. If you're suggesting adopting those weapons, I'm all for it. But I think they might be a little inconsistent with your ideas (1) and (3).
Comment #197595 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The key point to remember is that noone is as much a victim of Islam as the Muslims themselves, who have had their right to happiness and a good life robbed from them by a demented doctrine from a seventh century warlord. Helping them break out of their mental prison is right, just and proper.I agree, but this is distinctly inconsistent with a few things you've said in the past about Palestinians.
Comment #197605 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Except, like I said, the Christian missionaries you're referring to do not work by criticizing the beliefs of their target audience. Christians do that when they're talking to other Christians, but not when they're trying to evangelize the fallen. They work by opening their homes, socializing, and generally trying to behave in a way that will attract people to them.What is needed is criticism from the inside if that's at all possible in this case.
I'm sorry, Tera but it's not. Islam is unreformable. All reformists have invariably been branded heretics and if they haven't been killed, their followers have been hunted to this day. Witness the Ahmadiyya. But let me take you up on this:
Criticizing from the outside only strengthens a stance.
Not necessarily. When you have six million Muslims a year in Africa alone taking their lives in their hands to leave Islam, you have a good reason to hope. Getting people to accept a tortured contradiction is far harder than getting them to make a clean break.
9. Report: Troubling texts at Va. Islamic school
Comment #195828 by NakedCelt on June 18, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Oh, one more point.
Comment #193382 by Fanusi Khiyal:
It is also insane not to recognise that Christianity is in many ways saving our necks here. Six million African Muslims abandon Islam for Christianity every single year . When the Pope baptizes a Muslim convert to Chrisianity, he's sending a far stronger message that the West won't back down than many of our governments are willing to do.Yes. I know something about this too. The fundie church I grew up in was a missionary church. One family worked as English teachers in Kyrgyzstan, but also, clandestinely, as evangelists. They were actually quite close friends of my parents, so I do in fact know something about the tactics Christian missionaries use to convert Muslims.
Shall I tell you what they are?
They are hospitality, acceptance, understanding, openness, and honesty. They invite Muslims to their home, they socialize with them, they emphasize peace and tolerance. They know, as do all Christian evangelists, that the first task is to prove that they are good people — without that, all further efforts are in vain.
In short, these Christian missionaries you're praising work by doing the things I'm advocating.
10. Report: Troubling texts at Va. Islamic school
Comment #194529 by NakedCelt on June 16, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Comment #193382 by Fanusi Khiyal:
'Scuse me, I was away for the weekend.Peak Oil is the most urgent civilizational threat; it may well be happening already. It doesn't just mean petrol prices going up. It means the price of everything going up. There will be, at least, a second '30s-style Great Depression.
What I propose, thewhitepearl and others is that we get our priorities straight. Islam is a civilisational threat, and quite possibly a threat to human existence itself. Yes, I mean that literally. Imagine say ten or twenty years down the road a nuclear armed Iran and also nuclear Sunni powers. Now, how long would it take for them to start hurling nukes at each other?
Think about a few political movements that came out of the '30s. It's not a coincidence.
Comment #193382 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Christianity is not a civilisational threat, or, to be more specific, it is only a civilisational threat where it impacts with Islam.Not yet, because there has as yet been no civilization-level disaster to blame non-Christians for. Not many people listened to Pat Buchanan or Jerry Falwell, because mostly their predictions of God punishing America with natural disasters didn't happen.
Why was fascism so virulent? Precisely because it got the solutions to its problems exactly wrong. Fascism not only didn't help, it made the situation worse. But only through economic knock-on effects; never anything so obvious that its adherents were disillusioned. Rather, as they lost their freedoms, they fought all the harder against the Jews and blacks whose fault they believed it was. A classic positive feedback loop. Like so many positive feedback loops, it eventually led to a systemic collapse.
Peak Oil's effects will likewise be economic and hard to pin down. People who were brought up to believe that God smites wicked civilizations will start to draw obvious, but wrong, connections. These same people generally tend to identify "wickedness" with homosexuality, liberalism, atheism, and Islam, which will accordingly come under increasing pressure. Many of the targets will simply leave, or else knuckle under and keep out of public life. Educated people will be disproportionately represented in this group; those who actually know what's going on, still more so (since they will be seen as "deniers"). As they leave or are silenced, solutions will draw further away — another classic feedback loop. There is no reason why it shouldn't simply go on and on until the system collapses completely.
Peaceful, inclusive Christians in this scenario will be seen as traitors and appeasers. They will be among the first to go.
Comment #193382 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Which brings me to the point raised ad nauseum by Naked Celt that it doesn't matter that Christ was a pacifist and that Muhammad was a psychotic warlord because people 'interpret'. Really. Well a) not one single interpretation of Islam has managed to decry violence and tyranny without being driven out as heretical. b) the ways of interpreting Islam have been fixed for a thousand years, and it doesn't look like it's changing. c) There is no way to interpret the Qur'an, Hadith and Sira so that they yield nonviolence or tolerance. None. Two thirds of the Qur'an is railing against the kafirs (that would be us). It also extolls Muhammad as an 'excellent example' of conduct, and there is no way that striking the heads off bound captives, or crucifying them, or rapind nine-year old girls can be 'interpreted' away.Speaking as an ex-fundie-Christian, anything can be interpreted away. The New Testament similarly extols the genocidal prophets and kings of the Tanakh. As for your (a) and (b) points, well, the same was true of Christianity up until the Enlightenment. Which, nevertheless, happened.
Comment #193382 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The Enlightenment was possible thanks to deep fault lines within Christianity, most significantly the separation of Church and State....which opened up after the Reformation. In fact the Enlightenment partly arose out of the wars that established the separation of Church and State. The church before that was effectively a branch of the government.
This is an important point. The Reformation opened the door to the Enlightenment, where the split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches had not, because it was not a geographic split. Catholics and Protestants could not avoid each other, so they killed each other instead. It wasn't pretty. Kings who tried to claim a divine right to rule were deposed not by enlightened secularists but by fanatics of the opposite church. Precisely because neither church was able to establish a monopoly, states functioned only by sitting firmly on the fence — and becoming independent of both. In short, what killed the power of religion was integration. Allow (or worse, force) Muslims to remain separate from the rest of us, and Islam will remain powerful. Integrate, and things will indeed get ugly for a while, but no uglier than a monolithic, walled-off Islam sitting by itself getting angrier and more assured of its own unique claim to truth.
Comment #193405 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The reason I referred to her is that her reaction to this revelation was 'Oh, what about the Bible?'. I've seen this so many times and I am fed up with it. It's never anything more than an excuse to avoid judgement and the obligation thereof.If by "an excuse to avoid judgement" you mean "a reason given for not agreeing with you," then that's probably true. Otherwise, I'd like to see a justification for that statement. Fundamentalist Christianity today is as fully fixed on the Bible — the whole Bible, from "In the beginning" to "Amen" — as Islam is on the Qur'an. Fundamentalists teach the same set of beliefs about Satan, devil worship, and the occult that they did four hundred years ago when they were burning witches. I speak from personal experience. No change in belief would be necessary to start Christians burning witches again, only a change in circumstances.
Comment #193405 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Repetition doesn't make it true. The Crusaders killed Christians and Muslims alike in Muslim countries. There's a distinction between defending a place and reappropriating it, and one key point in that distinction is whether you kill your enemies' oppressed underlings. They also took the opportunity to slaughter Jews and Cathars en masse within Europe, successfully wiping out the latter. Yes, they did call both movements "crusades". Is that enough to give you a problem with them?all wars waged by Muslims are waged because of Islam, including their participation in both World Wars, but to treat Christianity the same way is laughable for reasons he never deigns to explain
I do get tired of being misquoted. I've never denied that the Crusades were inspired by Chritianity, it's just I don't have a problem with them, given that they were a defensive conflict. Similarly, the Inquisition etc.
You do insist on dragging in Muslim participation in the two World Wars into your argument, while quietly neglecting the Arab anti-Ottoman fighters in WWI. Only by a very loose definition does the Ottoman participation count as "global jihad" — viz., it was a war waged by an Islamic polity, waged, and history is quite clear on this, because they had treaties with certain Christian colonial powers in Europe that obliged them to come to their defence. The European colonizers had similar treaties with one another; that's why WWI happened in the first place. If the Ottoman WWI effort nevertheless counts as "jihad", then, simply to be consistent, any war pursued by Christian polities that used Christianity as a justification must count on the score-sheet against Christianity. If this is unreasonable, then it is also unreasonable to have such loose standards for attacking Islam.
Comment #193405 by Fanusi Khiyal:
However, what I note is that the Islamic wars of expansion are always and invariably justified with reference to the core texts of Islam. Now there is a difference - and pay attention, this is important - between a religion that on occaision has been an accessory to fascism, and one that is fascist in and of itself. This is why we have millions of Christians - even the fundies - who will fight against any attempt to mix Christianity with politics, but few Muslims who will protest the same thing about Islam.Where then were the Christians who protested against the Crusades? There were some who did protest the heights of the witch-hunts, but at about the same proportions in the population as the number of Muslims who serve in anti-terrorist units (usually hired for their knowledge of Arabic).
Comment #193405 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The reason I don't give a fig about the Palestinian situation was neatly stated by Churchill when he said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he - churchill - would find some good things to say about Satan.There is a little matter of comparative body counts yet to be sorted out here.
11. Report: Troubling texts at Va. Islamic school
Comment #193222 by NakedCelt on June 15, 2008 at 1:17 am
Comment #193148 by Peacebeuponme:
NakedCeltTrue enough, and I certainly wouldn't propose "passing off all Muslim aggression" as purely the product of geopolitical concerns. Religions themselves are pretty strong geopolitical forces — look at the impact the Catholic Church's stance on contraception continues to have in Africa and Latin America. I'm saying that religions are influenced by geopolitics. Poverty, inequality, violence, discrimination, poor education, marginalization, all of these things make fundamentalist religions more virulent.Fanusi basically reckons that Islam is more dangerous than any other religion because Muhammad was a warrior. Christianity, meanwhile, is restrained by the fact that Jesus was a pacifist. Unfortunately, this idea only works if every religion is somehow nailed to a specific interpretation of its core texts, which they aren't. Well, they can be, but the only nail available for the purpose is current social and cultural norms, which are inextricably embedded in geographic and economic realities.
I don't think we can pass of all muslim aggression as a result of geo-political concerns and not because of any unique aspects of islam as compared to other religions. Regardless of history, we need to assess the impact of islam as it affects us today. I don't think there can be a reasonable doubt that it is the most dangerous religion today.
Comment #193148 by Peacebeuponme:
Certainly in Europe, christians are are pretty marginalised bunch, and even though US citizens love to talk about god, they don't let biblical requirements get in the way of living a free 'western' life, by and large.I wouldn't call Christians "marginalized" in Europe. They're a small percentage of the population, but fifteen centuries of being a majority has left its marks all over European language and culture. Christians in Europe might be a minority, but they're not an alien minority that'll have trouble fitting in.
Of course Americans don't let biblical requirements get in the way — that's precisely an example of what I was talking about, that every religion continuously reinterprets its own core texts under the influence of politics. My greatest fear is that, when Peak Oil and military overspending plunge America into a depression — and they soon will — many of those "benign" Christians will conclude the Apocalypse is on the way and the US will collapse in Christofascism.
12. Report: Troubling texts at Va. Islamic school
Comment #193142 by NakedCelt on June 14, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Fanusi basically reckons that Islam is more dangerous than any other religion because Muhammad was a warrior. Christianity, meanwhile, is restrained by the fact that Jesus was a pacifist. Unfortunately, this idea only works if every religion is somehow nailed to a specific interpretation of its core texts, which they aren't. Well, they can be, but the only nail available for the purpose is current social and cultural norms, which are inextricably embedded in geographic and economic realities. The rest of his argument depends on a highly selective view of history (all wars waged by Muslims are waged because of Islam, including their participation in both World Wars, but to treat Christianity the same way is laughable for reasons he never deigns to explain).
13. Complex Synapses Drove Brain Evolution
Comment #190814 by NakedCelt on June 9, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Comment #190515 by Styrer-:
No scientist, I had often wondered what sparked the huge increase in size of human brains.I'm not a scientist, but isn't the article talking about an increase in complexity somewhere between the first vertebrate and the first mammal?
This fits.
To all you scientists - how controversial does this seem to you? See any holes?
I would think a number of different factors would have to have come together to prompt the evolution of the human brain. One of the great facilitating factors would have been the discovery of fire around when our ancestors were Homo ergaster: the brain is a metabolically hungry organ, yet we don't eat more for our size than our fellow apes. Most of the extra energy has been redirected from the digestive system, which would only have been possible when we (a) started eating more meat (perhaps) and (b) started cooking our food.
14. Couple charged in Norway over genital mutilation of daughters
Comment #190315 by NakedCelt on June 8, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Comment #190068 by ThoughtsonCommonToad:
And yet... Comment #190057 by Vanitas:Surely their beliefs must play some part in explaining their practice?Surely that is the most significant part. The most important part, perhaps even the only part.
...the fact is that FGM is, as far as I know, a practice native to Africa and common with people of all religions.Therefore, no, while I'm sure these people justify these practices (if only to themselves) on the basis of whatever their particular religion happens to be, and while it is indeed quite likely that they are Muslims, Islam is not the root cause of FGM, merely a handy source of rationalizations. The cause is most likely patrilineal inheritance of property and the consequent need to tightly police female sexuality.
Comment #190311 by NakedCelt on June 8, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Comment #190300 by moderndaythomas:
The food crisis is tied to the oil crisis. Organic and free-range are less dependent on oil than other agriculture, especially if they eschew energy-hungry irrigation, so their prices are likely to rise more slowly than other foods.Our family eats organic whenever possible.
Yes, organic is better when possible, but when there is eight billion people screaming for food, will it be probable?
Will organic and free range be possible?
Comment #190282 by NakedCelt on June 8, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I'm concerned about GMOs, too. For one thing, I don't trust major corporations not to cut corners on safety if it'll profit their shareholders. For another, I'm afraid in the international market there are likely to be just a handful of GMO strains for each crop that spread all over the world because they sell better, which then opens the door for some pathogen to adapt specifically to that strain, wipe out huge swathes of the world's agriculture, and leave the situation worse than before.
17. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #189948 by NakedCelt on June 7, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Comment #189690 by Fanusi Khiyal:
NC, what am I going to do with you? Now you're trying to pull rank on me. I have lived in more places than you are likely to ever do, and simply living in a country does not give you insight into every town and city there. If you specifically lived in Camden, I might be willing to listen.Have you ever lived among Muslims? If not, then by this argument I can safely dismiss your interpretation of Muslim motivations.
The white populations of Australia and New Zealand were established less than two hundred years ago. There hasn't been enough time for whole separate cultures to develop. Much as we might make rude jokes about each other's countries, the fact is that we form a cultural continuum. Camden would have to be quite bizarrely cut off from the rest of Australasia to produce an ethos that coincidentally sounded exactly like Australasian racism but wasn't.
You still haven't explained why Australia First and One Nation saw this as an opportunity to further their respective causes, which are quite simply across-the-board anti-[non-white, non-English-speaking, non-Protestant]-immigration.
Comment #189690 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Ah, yes. Core texts. Because Muslims are somehow immune to the basic principle that governs the behaviour of all other human beings, namely that we constantly reassess our beliefs and values against what the real world throws at us. Beliefs and values are transmitted down the generations only insofar as the real world confirms them. Granted, "the real world" consists very largely of other human beings with similar cultural backgrounds to our own. Granted, our beliefs and values form a framework of thought and behaviour which we don't like having disrupted, so that in general, in assimilating and interpreting new data, we give it the spin which least disrupts that framework. But all of that applies to everyone, kafir and Muslim alike.Because your "Islamic Holocaust" is so vaguely defined. Yes, the Qur'an recommends aggressively spreading the word; well, the Bible recommends aggressively spreading the Gospel, and Christians have.
There is so much wrong with the following paragraph that I don't even know where to begin. I'll start here. No, there is nothing in common between the Christian perspective to spread the word of Christ and the Islamic mandate to wage war on all Infidels, binding until all are enslaved under Islam . That is my definition of the Islamic Holocaust: the degredation and murder of kafir populations specifically sanctioned and justified by extensive reference to the core texts of Islam. Got that? In other words, Muslims fulfilling Muhammad's orders.
As for Christian core texts... how about this?
Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
[Here comes the line that got cut from The Passion of the Christ for being too anti-Semitic.] Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
— Matthew 27:22–25
Comment #189690 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Once again, you scate cleanly over all the evidence I cited showing that the Crusades were a defensive conflict, a response to centuries of Muslim aggression. You blithely ignore all contrary evidence.Because my sources simply don't agree. Haroun al-Rashid encouraged Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem because they brought wealth into Syria. The Fatimite caliphs, equally tolerant but rather more acquisitive, saw the pilgrimage as an opportunity to levy taxes. Those who couldn't pay didn't pass the gates of Jerusalem, but they were allowed to sit around waiting outside for richer pilgrims to pass and pay their passage. Not until the caliphate passed to the Seljuks did the pilgrims start to face persecution, and that was partly because their numbers had been enormously swelled by the news that it was now 1000 years since the birth of Christ and he could be expected to return at any moment.
You also haven't addressed the fact that the Crusades targeted Cathars and Jews in Europe as well as Muslims in the Middle East. Doubtless that too was a defensive conflict, a response to centuries of Jewish and Cathar aggression...
Comment #189690 by Fanusi Khiyal:
OK, let's stop there, because none of what follows matters unless this is correct. Is it correct?By the same token, since Israeli voters clearly don't realize that it's wrong to kill civilians no matter who's hiding behind them, shall I conclude that they aren't worth spit?
Dear me, there should be some award for being wrong in so many ways in one sentence. 1) This is a war zone; people are trying to kill you. You fire back, because its the only way to survive,
Hamas fired some rockets into Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes that killed thirty-five Palestinians in three days, and Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai went on record warning the Gazans that they would experience, and I quote, a shoah if they didn't stop. Shoah is of course Hebrew for "Holocaust".
What was the Israeli death toll from the rocket fire? Was it comparable to the Palestinian death toll from the air-strikes? Was it such that firing back was the only way to survive?
Let's see. Would the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs be a sufficiently non-pro-Muslim source of information that you'd accept its data?
The total Israeli death toll from Qassam rocket fire, ever, is 15.
Of course those fifteen people all should have lived. But I can't see that doubling that number in three days on the Palestinian side is necessary for the survival of every woman, man and child in Israel. Does Israeli return fire slow the fire from Palestine? Do you think having your children and neighbours blown up makes you less inclined to throw something back? — a question that both sides could do well to ponder.
The parallel with the Second World War is illusory. Israel is firing indiscriminately in the general direction of where the attacks come from. There is no Palestinian army to defeat, no Palestinian manufacturing infrastructure to dismantle — just a lot of very pissed-off people whom Israel seems determined to piss off even more.
Ah, but I forgot! They're Muslims. When they get angry, it's because they've been reading inflammatory things in the Qur'an. The deaths of their families have nothing to do with it.
Comment #189690 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Throughout history, people have killed other people for the flimsiest of reasons, and they've always managed to justify it.Truth to tell, though, no-one behaves morally for the sake of satisfying an abstract moral code, religious or otherwise
Perhaps you don't, but not all of us are like you.
"You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." So said a black slave orator in the American South. His sole audience was a white fifteen-year-old boy, but since that boy happened to be Mark Twain, the idea was preserved (http://paulgraham.com/cornpone.html). Research since that time has borne out his observation.
Comment #189690 by Fanusi Khiyal:
It would be of great help if you could show any example that Muslim populations can be integrated, or the Muslim majority populations have any track record of treating kafir minorities well.During the Middle Ages, many Jews found shelter from Christian persecution in Muslim Spain. But you've already dismissed that.
18. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #189644 by NakedCelt on June 6, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Comment #188414 by Fanusi Khiyal:
You still have not given any evidence whatsoever that the move against the Qur'anic school was racially motivated,Comment #189311 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Skeptic JimBecause Skeptic Jim and I both live in the same part of the world as these people. We are familiar with the culture and ethos being expressed here. We hear the same things coming from those who call East Asians "yellow" or "slant-eyes" and yell "go home" at them from cars on Friday night. I've met people in the National Front, and they talk like the Camden crowd in this article, minus the half-arsed attempts to pretend they're not racist. Note also the presence of Australia First and One Nation; they may not have initiated the opposition, but it's clearly the kind of thing that benefits them.However, that is not the kind of reasoning that this mob of ignorant rednecks is using. This mob of ignorant rednecks is using bigotted, in group/out group type reasoning.
How do you know? I have been arguing this for a rather long time with NC and he had no answer to give to that question. So I place the same question to you: how do you know?
But, really, all it takes is to take the language used at face value. They're wrecking Australia, they're taking over, they don't fit in this town 'cause we're Aussies, OK. Not a hint of a whisper of a discussion of Islamic values or beliefs. They just don't fit. They'd end up being a majority and that's not what this town is about. So what is it about? Being Australian, that's what.
What would you think of someone who argued that the Holocaust wasn't racially motivated because Judaism is a religion, not a race?
Comment #188414 by Fanusi Khiyal:
nor, for that matter, have you addressed the fact that Islamic Holocaust has been ongoing for fourteen hundred years and is still continuing to this day.Because your "Islamic Holocaust" is so vaguely defined. Yes, the Qur'an recommends aggressively spreading the word; well, the Bible recommends aggressively spreading the Gospel, and Christians have. If by "Holocaust" you mean the killing of non-Muslims by Muslims throughout history, the fact of their Infidelity being a justifying factor, then in fairness we must compare this to all killings of non-Christians by Christians when justified by appeal to their pagan status. That means not just the Crusades against Muslims, Jews, and Cathars, but also the destruction of pagan communities during the evangelization of Europe, the killing of Inuit and Dorset Culture people by Norse settlers of Greenland, the entire colonization of the New World, the spread of the Spanish, Portuguese, and British Empires (preceded by missionaries and settlers, just as you're claiming for the current migration of Muslims to the West), the Holocaust itself, the wars fought by the US against "godless Communists" in Asia and Latin America, and of course the present-day American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should we lump all that together as "the Christian Holocaust"?
Comment #188414 by Fanusi Khiyal:
So the only reason the average Joe Muslim might denounce honour killings, jihad, Shariah supremacism is to win favour? Nice to have that in the open. If that's true and they don't realize that these things are wrong in and of themselves, then these average joes aren't worth spit in the first place. So the hell with them.By the same token, since Israeli voters clearly don't realize that it's wrong to kill civilians no matter who's hiding behind them, shall I conclude that they aren't worth spit?
Truth to tell, though, no-one behaves morally for the sake of satisfying an abstract moral code, religious or otherwise. We refrain from killing people we know because we value their company. We refrain from killing strangers because we understand that society will come down heavily on us if we do, and we accept society's power to do so because we understand that it also protects us. Any subgroup that does not feel protected by society will become pragmatic, to the point of being amoral, about strangers. And chances are such a group will be pretty isolated from other parts of society. That is why dialogue and integration with existing immigrant populations, Muslims included, is a vital concern.
That's also why I'm spending so much time arguing with you; I think your ideas help to build the very wall that Islamic fundamentalism depends on.
19. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #188306 by NakedCelt on June 3, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Comment #187347 by Fanusi Khiyal:
What, exactly, would qualify as evidence to you?Historical documents, or archaeological evidence, indicating that Muslim polities really were making a concerted invasion of Christian polities prior to the launch of the Crusades. Pope Urban's say-so is not sufficient. It would also have to be clearly more than just Christian kingdoms and Muslim sultanates going to war with each other to the same degree that Christian kingdoms were warring amongst themselves.
Comment #187347 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The other bizarre things is that you drag up Australian white supremacist movements without the faintest shred of evidence that they are involved in this dispute. Not a shred. Yet you know absolutely that they are behind this, yet you can't concede the converse about Islam.I don't think those organizations are behind this. I think the attitudes they represent are a critical part of the narrative framework of the Camden response. The Australian National Front, at least, are openly racist, and on that explicit basis oppose Islam in Australia. Hence, it is not valid to say that an objection to a Muslim school is purely religious and non-racial in character. The grounds on which one objects to a Muslim school are critical, and the grounds on which the Camden people objected to a Muslim school are far more like those of the National Front than those of the good people at RichardDawkins.net.
Comment #187347 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Well, there was the bit where, trying to draw you out by displaying the absurdities inherent in your stance, I sarcastically saidbject, far more strongly, to your oft-repeated, never-defended assumption that every single Muslim there is is somehow responsible for everything any Muslim anywhere has ever done.
Quotation please, for I have never said that.
Muslims took land in Kashmir and Constantinople, therefore no Muslim has a right to complain about land being taken from them anywhere until all Muslims, collectively, redress those historic thefts.and your response was
By George, I think he's got it! Correct.
Comment #187347 by Fanusi Khiyal:
What I have said is that any sizeable Muslim population represents a threat to any kafirs and Infidels around it. Yes, a large amount of that population may not work to support the jihad - but so what? It spreads because they are unwilling to lift a finger to stop it. If the moderate Muslims are unwilling to lift a finger to save Infidel lives, why should Infidels give a damn about them? Why should Infidel societies accept the threat of a Muslim presence, just because some of that presence is benign?Unwilling, or afraid? What do you think would happen if they did speak out? Most people are not as brave as the Muslim anti-terrorism cop who got in the LA Times last year (links thereto now sadly defunct). He considered fighting Muslim terrorists to be a form of jihad, on the grounds that terrorism brought shame to Islam.
Comment #187347 by Fanusi Khiyal:
They have forced us to treat them as a lump sum. Noone else. By refusing to distinguish themselves from the jihadis, they have made it impossible for us to accept any Muslim presence in Infidel lands without accepting a terrible threat. They did this, not us. They made that bed, now they can lie in it.Yet another argument that makes no sense unless every individual Muslim is somehow responsible for all Muslims collectively. Consider. From an average-Joe Muslim's point of view, what's the point of distancing yourself from your own community in the hope of winning the favour of a larger population that (probably, for all you know) won't bother making the distinction anyway?
Comment #187403 by Nova:
NakedCelt:I mean there are no such people. I mean there is no conspiracy and no infestation. I mean the fact is that the general climate of opinion is more liberal than your own, and the tone of BBC reports simply reflects that. Build a bridge and get over it.So? It's still wrong.What do you mean it's wrong? Thats the people the term has come to represent.
20. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #187309 by NakedCelt on June 1, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Comment #186962 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Vis a viz Rwanda, I didn't ask you how you personally would justified genocide with reference to Christianity, I asked how the Rwandan genocide was justified.
Convenient, that, I can't find a quote — lots of information about Christian ministers who supported and aided in the genocide, but not specific translations of what they said.
Comment #186962 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Cute. Still doesn't count as evidence for Pope Urban's propaganda. "Muslims have done nasty things, therefore any accusation levelled against a Muslim is accurate" is not a logically valid proposition.Muslims did nasty things in East Timor, Muslims did nasty things in Lebanon, therefore all accusations levelled against any Muslims anywhere are accurate.
Yeah, you got me. It's all just about what they did in East Timor and Lebanon...
and India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Israel and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Argentina and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Germany and Australia and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and Chad and Canada and China and Nepal
and the Maldives and...
...and pretty much wherever Muslims believe their religion tells them to:
Comment #186962 by Fanusi Khiyal:
*hums to himself* This ties in with your complaints of my viewing the Muslim world as a threat, despite the fact that there are millions who do not support the jihad, soft or hard. During the Second World War, who was the enemy? The Axis powers - despite the fact that there were millions who did not support Hitler or Il Duce. During the Cold War, who was the enemy? The Soviets - despite the fact that millions in the USSR hated their system. This sort of generalisation has been valid ever since, oh, I don't know, the Sumerians menaced by Sargon were worried about the Akadians.No, it hasn't. It has been made ever since the Sumerians, and it has, all that time, been invalid.
I don't object to your seeing Islam as a threat. It looks pretty threatening to me too. I object to the assertion that Islam is unique among religions in this regard. And I object, far more strongly, to your oft-repeated, never-defended assumption that every single Muslim there is is somehow responsible for everything any Muslim anywhere has ever done.
Comment #186962 by Fanusi Khiyal:
This is what's wrong with your parallel with the atrocities in the Old Testament. In the first instance, as Christopher Hitchens has remarked, they never happened, and in the second instance, even if they had, they would have happened over three thousand years ago.I'm not talking about parallels. I'm talking about its use in propaganda — for the Crusades, for the conquest of the Americas, for the British Empire, and for America's wars right up to the present day. Any time anyone has wanted Christians to go to war, they've appealed to Bible passages like that. I don't see a fundamental difference between that and Muslim leaders making similar use of the Qur'an.
Comment #186962 by Fanusi Khiyal:
While today, on the other hand, one million Muslim Arabs enjoy greater rights in Israel than they would in any Muslim Arab nation.Sorry, are we talking about Gaza here? Where thousands of people are being starved behind walls because a few of them somewhere in there fired off a few rockets, killing a grand total of... how many Israelis, Fanusi? Just an estimate to three significant digits will do.
Comment #186962 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Now, answer me this if you think my generalisations are unjust: Where is a Muslim-majority society that shows non-Muslims the kind of tolerance that kafir societies show Muslims? Well?Dubai.
Comment #186963 by Fanusi Khiyal:
*sighs* The root of this error is in the asinine phrase 'no discrimination based on race, cast or creed'. Race and Cast do not have any significant implications about individuals. Creed, on the other hand, does. If a town in America refused point blank to let the KKK in, noone who misunderstand their reason. Nor would anyone not realise that an influx of KKK supporters would have profound societal impact.The KKK? You mean a group like this? http://nfavic.tripod.com/ Or this? http://www.nsm88radio.com/Aussie calling/AC111807.mp3
Comment #186963 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Saying 'We are aussies, OK?' is a recognition that the cultural inheritance of Australia is fundamentally different to Islam - in that it respect women's rights, freedom of conscience and so on.This is the cultural inheritance of Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia
The Camdenites say nothing about women's rights or freedom of conscience. Instead, they say the same things that Australians and New Zealanders have been saying for decades about the Yellow Peril — we're Aussies/Kiwis, they're coming here to take us over. (They don't like Jews either.) Since the '90s they have been prefacing such remarks with "I'm not racist, but..." and "I know this isn't politically correct, but..." I see no evidence here that the Camden reaction was informed by anything beyond what I can hear any time by tuning in to talkback radio.
Comment #187054 by Nova:
NakedCelt, I was simply using liberal to represent what it typically refers to today in Britain, I didn't lump them together they are lumped together in normal discourse.So? It's still wrong.
Comment #187054 by Nova:
I agree that perhaps some of them are racists, but no racist points were brought up so this is still not a racist issue, the BBC is infested with liberals who slipped that in to heighten the profile of Muslims due to a very misguided distortion of multiculturalism.Given how very vague you've been about who these people actually are, that's an amazingly specific statement to make about their motives and beliefs. I note again the word "infested".
21. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #186923 by NakedCelt on May 31, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Comment #186735 by keith:
NakedCelt,"X has food, I am starving" plus "X is a Tutsi, I am a Hutu" can all too easily become "The Tutsis have food while we Hutus are starving... let's go and kill them."
This is an example of 'narrative framework'? I suppose it could be, in the same way that a single note played on a didgeridoo is probably referred to as 'a composition' by some anthropologists.
No, that was a summary of an example narrative. Presumably there are differences between Hutu and Tutsi culture that a Hutu could have expounded on for several pages.
Comment #186735 by keith:
Even so, I'm not sure that it was the accuracy of the phrase that Max and I were objecting to. It was more the general ponciness of it.
Yes, well, lots of people object to the general know-it-all-ness of scientific language. A technical term is a technical term.
Comment #186869 by Nova:
NakedCelt the only part of your post that actually had anything to do with race was "Can I just say this without being racist or political?" which was someone renouncing that it was racist!"Renouncing that it was racist" — a clear sign that it was racist, in the same way that "No offence, but..." is an announcement that one is about to say something offensive. That quote came from the gentleman in his 70s, who would have lived the more formative half of his life under the White Australia policy (look it up).
Comment #186869 by Nova:
You too are seeing a racist issue where there is none.I am speaking from my first-hand knowledge of New Zealand and Australian discourse. I'm telling you, this is how racists talk in this part of the world. Note, for instance, that the woman quoted said "We are Aussies, OK", not "We are Christians, OK" or "We are secularists, OK".
Comment #186869 by Nova:
You also ask me to look up the word liberal, telling me what it means which shows you have not looked at my post closely because I say at the beginning I use the term very loosely.Ah, yes...
"massive infestation of liberals"
"Muslim defending liberals"
"freedom hating liberals"
"the liberal media"
You're right, that's an extremely loose way to use language. Rather than referring to any actual group or subculture, you have lumped the attitudes you dislike together and personified them.
My point was to let you know: I like freedom, I do not defend Islam (unless pointing out that it is not the only oppressive religion in the world can be considered a defence), and I still think the Camden people quoted were being racist in this instance. Loose as your language certainly was, it was nevertheless inaccurate.
22. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #186630 by NakedCelt on May 30, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Comment #186570 by Nova:
It's the massive infestation of liberals in the BBC which makes it keep using the absolutely infuriating lie of 'race' in this article. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH RACE? Nothing.
When Australians say things like
They're wrecking Australia. They're taking us over... This town has every nationality... but Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK.or
Can I just say this without being racist or political?... Don't let them take Camden.or
...they'd be a majority. And that's not what this town is about.they're being racist. That is the Australian (and New Zealand) way to express racism. Racists in this part of the world say exactly the same things about East Asians.
Comment #186570 by Nova:
Whenever you criticize Islam your called a racist
But these Camden people were not criticizing Islam. Not once, as quoted in this article, did they discuss Islamic beliefs or practices. The nearest they came was
They've got terrorists amongst 'em... They want to be here so they can go and hide in all the farm houses.This was simple, naked fear of those who are different.
Comment #186570 by Nova:
It has just become the common defense of Muslim defending liberals who support a crazy distorted multiculturalism whatever the cost (democracy, freedom of speech) to equate any dispute involving Muslims with a racial issue. Its an amazing travesty that issues which are purely religious can have 'race' slapped onto them to make it sound higher profile... its the sheer unthinking state of the people who use the term that astonishes me and the power of the freedom hating liberals who manipulate it to their advantage - they even popped xenophobia in there once to raise the profile to something it has nothing to do with even more. It greatly infuriates me that the liberal media has transformed Islam into a nationality and a race to inflate its profile when it is criticized and they just get away with it and no one notices.
So you're telling me that if I were to say "A guy I work with is a Muslim", you'd be none the wiser as to what part of the world he came from or what colour his skin was?
What does freedom mean, if it doesn't mean people can be different from the majority if they want to? What does it mean unless that people can associate with those who think as they do, if they want to? A genuinely free society would necessarily be a diverse society. That is why "liberals" — go look up the derivation of the word — support cultural diversity.
I oppose Islam because it is anti-freedom. I do not think that forcing people who are Islamic to pretend they are not Islamic improves matters in the slightest. Hostility from the outside only strengthens fundamentalist religions.
23. Town moves against Islamic school
Comment #186159 by NakedCelt on May 29, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Comment #185607 by MaxD:
Keith,
Not to be jumping on your bandwagon, but when I read the phrase "narrative framework" I felt like vomiting.
Ugh.
No offense NakedCelt. It felt like a post-modernist phrase to me, or something you'd find in the worst kind of Sociology class.
Some postmodernist terms are hijacked from legitimate cultural anthropology, you know. "Narratives" include the little stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, including other people and why they're different from us. "X has food, I am starving" plus "X is a Tutsi, I am a Hutu" can all too easily become "The Tutsis have food while we Hutus are starving... let's go and kill them."
Comment #185514 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Don't really have that much time, so I'll just repeat my points. I have made this one several times, which you continually ignore: Muslim Arabs in the Palestinian Mandate continually waged pogroms and massacres of the local jews long before Israel existed. They were also complicit in the Holocaust (google the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem). So the "Gott" in "Gott mit uns" really was Allah, at least as far as the Handscharr were concerned.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is hardly a sentiment restricted to Muslims. Irish republicans and Finns supported the Nazis as well, simply because they wanted rid of the British and the Soviets, respectively.
And, as I recall, the Arabs fought alongside the British in World War I. Because the British were the enemies of their enemy, the Ottoman Empire.
Comment #185514 by Fanusi Khiyal:
here aren't many Muslims in New Zealand, but living in a university town you meet a few. They aren't genocidal savages with no desire or ability beyond murder.
It's interesting that you keep complaining when I point out the collective sins of the Muslims - which are beyond imagining - but you think that a few innocents can redeem an entire group. Fascinating.
I was specifically talking about the Palestinians, and anyone who studies that area recognizes that their intentions are explicitly genocidal. Now, what is difficult about that to grasp?
Comment #185570 by Christopher Davis:
...the greatest evil of racism is that it fails to recognize people as individuals.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Collective sins of the Muslims? "Redeem" an entire group? Who are these "The Palestinians" who are genocidal? Every single man, woman and child in Gaza, the East Bank, and the Golan Heights? Or are you judging them all guilty on the basis of the population they happen to be part of? Der Ehrwige Jude, eat your heart out.
Comment #185514 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Until I see some attempt by Muslims to square the record, to make compensation for the fourteen centuries of jihad war (btw, this is recorded in every single history of Islam - even lickspittle apologists such as Karen Armstrong don't deny that. You could try reading Efraim Karsh's Islamic Imperialism), the slave trade, the genocides, I don't give a tinker's damn for any Muslim complains on any subject whatsoever. This is just the typical Islamic dualism that excuplates any Muslim of anything done to the kafirs, but complains when kafirs respond in kind. Muslims do this, it's just to be expected, but it's insane for kafirs to sign onto it too.
Collective guilt again. Comment #185570 by Christopher Davis:
...the greatest evil of racism is that it fails to recognize people as individuals.
Comment #185514 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Far less have you made a case that the only root cause is Muhammad. All you've done is assert these points over and over.
Please read a little. Two thirds of the Qur'an preaches hatred towards the kafirs. 75% of the Sira is devoted to Jihad, and 20% of the Hadith. I just stated that and I am tired of repeating myself.
How much of the Tanakh preaches hatred towards goys? And if jihad includes preaching the word, the New Testament beats the Qur'an for expansionist messages.
Comment #185514 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Nor do I expand the definition of Jihad - this is the traditional definition, as grounded in the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira, and elaborated by the Islamic schools of jurisprudence.
Granted, but this is a futile argument against Scott Atran's analysis. He does not say that only a few thousand Muslims actively further jihad according to the traditional definition as grounded in the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira and elaborated by the Islamic schools of jurisprudence. He says that only a few thousand Muslims are engaged in violent terrorism. I for one am much more concerned about terrorism than other forms of jihad. If Muslims want to spread the word by the pen — bring 'em on, let's put their ideas in the public domain for debate.
Comment #185514 by Fanusi Khiyal:
As to your comparisons with Rwanda - refresh my memory, which of Christ's words were used to justify that? Or European colonialism - much maligned, but I'll leave that to another day - what Christian texts were cited? That is what atrocities were justified on the basis of Christ's teachings? The explicit words?
Well, it wouldn't just be Christ's teachings, because one of the things he said (Matthew 5:17–19) was
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.which opens the door for things like Deuteronomy 7:17–24:
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?
Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but shalt well remember what the LORD thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt;
The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby the LORD thy God brought thee out: so shall the LORD thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.
Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed.
Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible.
And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.
Christians are clearly meant to find this admirable — Hebrews 11:32–34:
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.
Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.
Indeed Jesus himself echoes the sentiment — Revelation 2:26–28:
And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.
And I will give him the morning star.
Clearly, the destruction of the sinful world is an occasion for great joy. Revelation 18:2–8:
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: