1051. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227670 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Hope that this one sticks, because I must respond to this:

Sorry, but any such comment about the welfare state puts someone so politically far from me that I am going to find it difficult to engage in useful discussion (even if this site was working!)

You mean you find it difficult to engage in discussion with people whose ideas differ from yours. Especially when they present a well reasoned case, drawing on heavy evidence, that you find difficult to reply to.

Now, on the subject of the English welfare state, if you read Theodore Dalrymple's book, you find some of the most shocking descriptions of total degredation. And this isn't just Dalrymple's view, but the views of visiting African and Phillipino doctors who simply can't imagine such behaviour in the dirt-poor communities they come from. And a great part of that is that the abuses of the welfare state cut these people off from the necessity of providing for themselves and all the virtues that that in turn requires.

I can confirm that from personal experience. I've seen some pretty poverty ravaged places in my time. I've seen six-year old sheep herders on the freezing mountains of Lesotho. I've met farmers in Tanzania. I've visited hamlets scratching a living from the sides of the Himalayas. And I've never met people so totally degraded by their circumstances as you can find in the UK.

Even if we decided that some people were so terrible in their thoughts and actions that we took away their citizenship, it is totally inappropriate to deport them. No civilized democracy would want them, and to send them to regimes that support fundamentalism is to make the problem worse in that country, which is abusing the human rights of that country's citizens.

Okay, why? They want fundamentalism, there it is, they're welcome to it. I have trouble believing that the fundamentalism in, say, Saudi Arabia can be made any worse than it is. But you say that it's 'totally inapropriate'. Why? You've made a statement, now back it up.

Morality isn't platonic or mystical. It's an exact science - the science of how we can manage to live on this earth.

1052. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227593 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 11:03 am

*stretches* ColdFusionLazarus, I agree with TheWhitePearl: we don't have a few thousand years.

It's also a misunderstanding of what Islam is. It isn't a religion the way Christianity or Buddhism is. It's a Total System. It regulates every last scrap of your life, down to the last detail. That's one reason it hasn't changed.

The other is to do with it's central 'selling point' - the idea that, unlike the Bible, the Qur'an is the literal word of God. Even fundies don't believe that of the Bible - when they say it's the word of God, they mean it is, interpreted through people (hence: the Gospel according to Luke, according to Mark etc.). But the Qur'an holds a place in Islam comparable to the one Christ does in Christianity. You can't change or ignore a portion of the Qur'an and still remain a Muslim, anymore than you can doubt the divinity of Christ and remain a Christian. They are completely invested in this idea that they hold the final, perfect revaltion. They aren't going to change.

On the subject of 'removing freedom to save freedom', I repeat: the defence of liberalism and democracy has always involved some very illiberal and undemocratic measures. It's just the way things are. I think it was Locke (I really hate not having my library here) who, when arguing for religious tolerance, meant tolerance amongst the competing Protestant sects, but not for the Catholics. This was because he understood that the Catholics were so powerful that if they set up shop, they'd be able to wipe out all the competing sects and all religious tolerance would end. It goes without saying that he'd have been against tolerating Islam.

1053. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227557 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 9:42 am

Bonzai I don't know where everyone get's this impression, but I live in the UK, not the US.

But I do know about this asinine speech codes, which basically exist to rule any criticism of Islam outside the law. Again, why don't they just wear the yellow veil and be done with it?

The worst of the cartoon riots happened in the Muslim countries, not in the West. Yes, in the West there were protests, but that was Muslims exercising their democratic rights. People with signs like "behead the cartoonists" in the U.K were arrested and charged.

Really? How many? And what sentences did they get? Because according to the following news story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6904622.stm

Only four got arrested and they got six years - for incitement to murder.

Theo van Gogh was murdered, but the murderer was apparently a lone crazy, motivated by Islam for sure, but nevertheless a loner, not instructed by any Fatwa.

Well, given that - Sam Harris mentioned this a while back - something like thirty percent of UK Muslims back the death penalty for apostasy, I get the feeling that this guy wasn't part of a tiny minority.

Now some of us have been making the point that the entire damn crowd of rioters should have been put on the first boat to Saudi Arabia and were answered with a long shower of shit about being 'fascist'.

On a related note:

Frankly I find talks of striking Muslim countries at random and shooting Muslims in the street horrifying. If that is not Fascism I don't know what is, and what would make us more civilized than the Islamofascists if we descend to that level?

I'd like to stress that I don't advocate that. But, just answering your question as a hypothetical, there is actually nothing, short of fully fledged Nazism, that would make us the moral inferiors of Islamic jihadists.

Again, I don't support that, but I just want to stress that our reticence in the face of Islam stems from our concern for us, that we answer to a higher code than Islam. Don't ever loose sight of that point.

1054. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227552 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 9:33 am

*dryly* Steve, that is because he was very careful to couch their comedy in evenhandedness and the attack on all three religions as being somehow equal.

Don't believe me? Fine. Let's try the following experiment. Let's both take a stroll around London for a day, both carrying plackards. I'll carry one denouncing Christianity or Judaism (or both if you'd prefer) and you can carry one denouncing Islam. I'll get your next of kin to tell me how it went.

Or we could stop this nonsense and ask people like, oh, I don't know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders, Theo van Gogh (wait - he was killed), Wafa Sultan, Robert Spencer, Pim Fortuyn (whoops, him too), Walid Shoebat etc. about what it entails to speak up about Islam.

A good definition of the dividing line between a mixed-society and a dictatorship is when freedom of speech is abrogated. Well, we've had it abrogated here, so maybe we should instead talk about Europe as being in the first stage of Islamic occupation. I know that Steve is going to call me 'alarmist' and all that, while in the meantime our media and our elected officials and everyone else who is supposed to blow the whistle on this will continue to cave, one by one.

At this rate, they don't even need demographics and immgiration, since we seem to be so willing to wear the badge and bow our heads.

1055. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227529 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 6:50 am

Old Saurm, there's something wrong with this:

I don't think the publisher can be blamed in this case. They would be understandably reluctant to place their employees & families in possible danger, & would also be skeptical about making much profit from a book that might be blacklisted by booksellers for the same reasons.

What is wrong with this is as follows:

they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

1056. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227486 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 2:44 am

phil rimmer I'm sorry to have to answer: not much. It's a hell of alot easier making the case about Islam's evil to those who have had to experience it personally. This is why in Iraq we now have students who once praised the 9/11 attacks who are now saying 'I hate Islam'. (the mass slaughter of innocents isn't quite so funny when it happens a little closer to home).

If I had to name a group, it would be, once again, the Ahmadiya. But the principle allies should by the Hindu and Sikh immigrant communities, and this is especially critical as they are currently so desperate that some of them are making common cause with the BNP. I think that a broad-based UK coalition that includes the Hindus and Sikhs would stand less of a chance to being dismissed as simple 'racism'.

1057. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #227478 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 10, 2008 at 2:21 am

Steve the reason I'm against 'reaching out' to moderate Muslims is that it leads to the kind of craven apologia we see all the time.

And there's no way to reach out to people while simulataneously understanding that it's their damn religion that's the problem in the first place. It just doesn't work.

There are, however, cases where an outreach could work. For example, the Ahmadiya are considered heretical by other Muslims for rejecting Jihad and the horrors that go with it. Or the Bahai.

Above all, the people we should target are those non-Arab Muslims who have suffered so terribly at the hands of the Arab supremacism that is part and parcel of Islam (and why hasn't this been brought up more?). For example, the Kurds of Iraq. I remember watchin a video of the anti-Janjaweed rebels on al-Jazeera who have had it with the Arabs so much that they were dropping their Arab names and taking english ones like 'Colin Powell' and 'George Bush' (no, i'm not kidding).

Of course, that would have been a great alliance if the damn UN-fetishists hadn't been listened to, as a result of which all those potential allies have been brutally murdered.

Another source for allies is the Persian nationalist movement in Iran, always a strong source of resistance to Islam. There are plenty of Persians who have had it with the arab cult that has destroyed their ancient civilization. That's a rich source of allies, if you care to look.

Basically, anything that breaks up and weakens the dar al-Islam internally is a Good Thing.

1058. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #227115 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 9, 2008 at 11:17 am

decius, I have already quoted his response to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Here's another comment by him:

Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing.

You can read the whole sordid mess here:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm

Here is him on China:

China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting and positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.

He said this in 1967, five years after the end of the worst famine in human history that was caused precisely because of Mao. He also referred to Mao's China as 'relatively livable' - though not, presumably, to the thirty million who had died of starvation.

Here's Chomsky on Castro:

Noam Chomsky: Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States. It's the first time in the history of the hemisphere that anybody stood up to the United States. Nobody likes to be under the jackboot but they may not be able to do anything about it. So for that reason alone, he's a Latin American hero. Chavez: the same.

Do you know the conditions of existence incide Cuba?

He also said the following:

"American economic strangulation of Cuba" has been designed and maintained [to hide] the successes of Castro's programs to improve health & living standards

In other words, Castro's Cuba would be the only Communist society in the world that wasn't a hell-hole if it weren't for America. Anyone who believes that will believe anything.

The point is as follows: Chomsky is too much of a wily snake. What he does is typical: when it comes to the nightmare regimes of this planet, he gives them every shred of doubt. Howevwer, this sort of indulgence does not apply to civilized powers like the United States and Israel, where he will gladly take on any old junk to make his case about their perfidity. A particularly mendacious example was his response after 9/11, where he said the US couldn't be morally justified in going after the Taleban because the Clinton Administration had bombed the al-Shiga pharmaceutical plant. What makes this particularly mendacious is that, at the time, Chomsky said nothing about it, as Hitchens observes.

So, after finding that Communism has finally collapsed, Chomsky turns to another of the greatest evils in human history: Islam.

1059. The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Comment #226962 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 9, 2008 at 1:56 am

Is there any place where Christians still run Inquisitions and burn heretics? There are many Muslim theocracies where blasphemy is still a capital offense. Is there any Christian theocracy except for the Vatican,--even which doesn't run according to the law of Moses? But there are many Muslim theocracies and all of them impose Sharia.

*nods* Precisely Bonzai. If you want a visual metaphor, what would the three Abrahamic faiths be if you incarnated them as individuals?

Judaism would be the spotty nerd noone likes who ends up succeeding ridiculously well.

Christianity is a middle-aged guy who alternates between complaining about today's youth and pathetically trying to imitate them.

And Islam? A fat, beer-bellied thug, who has never held a useful job in his life, with tatoos crawling out his sleeves, who responds to even the most involuntary glance of curiosity or disgust with: "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKIN' AT???"

1060. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226957 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 9, 2008 at 1:45 am

hawt4dawk, St. Noam's objects of adoration include Mao's China, the USSR, Castro's Cuba, and the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, the last of which he went so far as to discount the eyewitness accounts of those who escaped the killing fields. He said:

"Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocutors wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account."

We've seen this before. Orwell wrote of the British intellectuals who managed right through the war to be ignorant of what happened at Birkenau and Ausschwitz. These creeps sprout like mushrooms throughout the history of the West.

Anyone who had a shred of human deceny, of an honest concern for human suffering would be ashamed to show their face in public again. Yet this doesn't bother him one little bit. And if that wasn't enough to demonstrate just what this dessicated mummy is, then you may notice that St. Noam's oh-so-even-handed understanding doesn't extend to the United States. He assured everyone that when the US went into Iraq it would be engaged in a 'silent genocide' of between three and four million Afghan civilians in the process of ousting the Taleban. At one point he suggested that ten million would die. What were his sources for this? None.

Know how many actually died? About five hundred. You don't get to be this wrong and be taken seriously ever again.

For the record, my source for this info about Chomsky is the impecably left-wing author Francis Wheen.

Chomsky, Michael Moore, and George Galloway represent the total collapse of the modern-day left. I have alot of respect and even admiration for what I think of as the Old Left: from Victor Hugo through Carl Sagan down to Christopher Hitchens, it has alot of honourable names and great people. But this mutant strain that fills the papers and airwaves today is purely negative - unable to create, it exists only to destroy and it does this by being an apologist for the most evil creatures to ever walk the face of the earth.

1061. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226764 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 8, 2008 at 3:57 pm

Oi, oi, oi, hawt4dawk

people more right wing, hawkish and knowledgeable than either Fanusi or Al

Knock it off with these suggestions that there are those more right-wing and hawkish than myself - else the next thing I know I'll get drummed out of the VRWC and have my Margaret Thatcher decoder ring taken away!

Okay, getting serious again, al, I yield to no-one in my loathing of the root-cause argument, but that wasn't a moral argument, merely a scientific one: these trends exist, and this capacity exists, and I'd rather not see it repeated everywhere.

If you want to wipe out fascism in Europe, exterminate the Serbs.

Okay, wait up: exterminate? Isn't that, umm, a little - fascist?

I am aware that if Milosevic came back from the dead he might well end up back in power. This is the paradox that I think Lee Harris remarked on best of all: In a civilized state, you can be the rational actor, who can be the conscientious objector and everything else. But in a tribalized state, you have to be the tribal actor, for whom loyalty to the tribe trumps all. And the reason that you have to be this is that your only hope of survival lies with allying yourself with a powerful gang. Darwin, in The Descent of Man remarks that there are no self-regarding virtues amongst primitive peoples; there are only social virtues. That makes perfect sense.

And that is the point behind re-primitivization. It's one thing to discuss these things academically, here on a chat board. It is something very, very different in a state of chaos.

hawt4dawk I think that Iraq can still work for us, and here's the reason why: if we support an independent, secular Kurdistan (as a haven for religious minorities) and then let the Sunni and Shia rip each other apart, we win. A giant Sunni/Shia civil war is emphatically a Good Thing for infidels, as such a fight will drain away the resources of both, and especially the two most deadly terror states: Iran and Saudi Arabia.

So what's the point of comparing that with The Netherlands except, obviously, to criticize "liberals" and "tolerance"?

Er... if the creation of Iraq through the drawing of borders is artificial, how is the importion of huge numbers of Muslims who go to Saudi-funded Mosques, in the middle of the most licentious country in Europe, not artificial. If the Sunni and Shia can't get over it in Iraq, what do you think the chances are between the Wahabbis and the Gay Humanist association in Holland?

And this isn't just academic. Homophobic attacks by, ah, 'youths of an asian extraction', are skyrocketing, especially in Holland. THe official comentary on this was that 'these youths are having trouble with their own sexuality' or words to that effect. Great. Imply their actually gay - that'll stop these attacks.

Bruce Bawer is a gay American who moved to Amsterdam to escape protestant fundamentalism in America. His book,'While Europe Slept' is a very revealing look at what he found in Europe.

Here's a quote from the dustjacket:

Across the continentâ€"in Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Stockholmâ€"he encountered large, rapidly expanding Muslim enclaves in which women were oppressed and abused, homosexuals persecuted and killed, 'infidels' threatened and vilified, Jews demonized and attacked, barbaric traditions (such as honor killing and forced marriage) widely practiced, and freedom of speech and religion firmly repudiated.

"The European political and media establishment turned a blind eye to all this, selling out women, Jews, gays, and democratic principles generallyâ€"even criminalizing free speechâ€"in order to pacify the radical Islamists and preserve the illusion of multicultural harmony. The few heroic figures who dared to criticize Muslim extremists and speak up for true liberal values were systematically slandered as fascist bigots. Witnessing the disgraceful reaction of Europe's elites to 9/11, to the terrorist attacks on Madrid, Beslan, and London, and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bawer concluded that Europe was heading inexorably down a path to cultural suicide

And he writes futher:

"The main reason I'd been glad to leave America was Protestant fundamentalism. But Europe, I eventually saw, was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their American Protestant counterparts look like amateurs. Falwell was an unsavory creep, but he didn't issue fatwas. James Dobson's parenting advice was appalling, but he wasn't telling people to murder their daughters. American liberals had been fighting the Religious Right for decades; Western Europeans had yet to even acknowledge that they had a Religious Right. How could they ignore it? Certainly as a gay man, I couldn't close my eyes to this grim reality. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me. I wasn't fond of the hypocritical conservative-Christian line about hating the sin and loving the sinner, but it was preferable to the forthright fundamentalist Muslim view that homosexuals merited death."

Anyway, to continue:

So what's the point of comparing that with The Netherlands except, obviously, to criticize "liberals" and "tolerance"?

Woah, woah, calm down. Mark Steyn has a very, er, unique style. The point of the quote was that if you can't get Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds and Shia Arabs to get along in the same country - what the hell chance do we have of getting post-Christian Europeans and Wahabis getting on in Europe?

Let me give you an example of this lunacy in action. A while back there was a certain palaver because the CoE inaugurated its first gay bishop (or something like that). A bit later, as you may recall, he said that Shariah was inevitable so we might as well get on with it and let it be introduced in Muslim ghettoes. Sorry, it doesn't work like that: you can be pro-gay or pro-Shariah, but not both.

1062. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226478 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 8, 2008 at 6:27 am

Incidentally, I don't know what everyone's views are on the Iraq mess, but Mark Steyn made a shrewd observation on that point:

love the way those naysayers predicting doom and gloom in Baghdad scoff that Iraq's a totally artificial entity and that, without some Saddamite strongman, Kurds, Sunnis and Shias can't co-exist in the same state. Oh, really? If Iraq's an entirely artificial entity, what do you call a state split between gay drugged-up red-light whatever's-your-bag Dutchmen and anti-gay anti-whoring anti-everything-you-dig Muslims? If Kurdistan doesn't belong in Iraq, does Pornostan belong in the Islamic Republic of Holland?

In a democratic age, you can't buck demography - except through civil war. The Yugoslavs figured that out. In the 30 years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 per cent to 31 per cent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 per cent to 44 per cent.

And that's the problem. The real nightmare of Yugoslavia is that it was a horrific answer to a genuine problem. One of the reasons that Milosevic rose to power is that there were very long memories of the hideous oppression that the Christian Serbs suffered at the hands of Muslims in that area (culminating in the massacres of 2 million plus at the hands of the Ottomans during the first world war). Then there was what the Handscharr got up to during the Second World War. One of the guys who was very active before the total catastrophe was Izetbegović, a Muslim politician who wanted Shariah in Kosovo. Now, imagine a situation where you see similar situations erupt in Europe. You think goons like Le Pen or Nick Griffin would take that one lying down?

Incidentally, because I know someone is going to misread this: None of this is an endorsement or a statement of support for the likes of Milosevic. It's an illustration of how Islamization will lead to re-primitivisation.

1063. The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Comment #226471 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 8, 2008 at 6:03 am

Thanks for the info, al. 'ppreciate it.

1064. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226378 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 8, 2008 at 3:02 am

*stretches* Time to continue this.

Nairb, sorry, but I don't speak french, so I have to rely on translations, like the following:

In Le Figaro daily dated Feb 1, 2002, Lucienne Bui Trong, a criminologist working for the French government's Renseignements Generaux (General Intelligence â€" a mix of FBI and secret service), complains that the survey system she had created for accurately denumbering the Muslim no-go zones was dismantled by the government. She wrote: 'From 106 hot points in 1991, we went to 818 sensitive areas in 1999. That's for the whole country. These data were not politically correct.' Since she comes from a Vietnamese background, Ms. Bui Trong cannot be suspected of racism, of course, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to start this survey in the first place.
The term she uses, 'sensitive area,' is the PC euphemism for these places where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms, and of course cops) is routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails, and where war weapons imported from the Muslim part of Yugoslavia are routinely found.

The number 818 is from 2002. I'd go out on a limb and venture that it hasn't decreased in two years.

For the record, if I'm wrong about the ZUVs, it's because of dual uses like this.

Let's leave the Jerusalem Post out of it. Personally, I don't buy the idea that this is just being 'talked up', however, there are some other facts that don't seem to gel with a non-Islamic explanation. For example the fact that one of those riots involved tear-gas shot into a Mosque. Now I might be jumping the gun here - and please do correct me if I'm wrong - but I don't think the French police would fire one in there if it weren't a centre of rabble-rousing. And this makes sense, given the political nature of Islam and the Mosque's function as a meeting house.

You misread it. There is no connection between immigration reduction and Muslim demographic decline.

*Takes another look.* So I did. Then I would like to know what their justification is for an end to Muslim immigration? But, anyway, you did seem to agree that Muslim immigration will continue as long as Europe is less basketcase than the Muslim world.

I clicked on the link above and saw the list of areas. And to my surprise found a number of areas I know well!
I actually used to live in those areas and do my shopping on a saturday on one of those streets.

I know how this sounds, but could you tell me how long ago that was? There's several places I've lived in where I walked around freely and these days I wouldn't go there except under armed guard (and in one case I and my family had to be gotten out by military escort).

One of the reasons that I'm so gloomy about this is that I've seen societies blow sky high before now, and I know how quickly it can happen. It can happen literally overnight.

For the record, I have no desire to have you going in any sense. Again, I don't speak French. Also, nothing I've written should be considered a denial of your point that it's the godawful nature of those ghettoes that provides the breeding ground for these riots. My point is that, once the infection begins to take hold, it's more than a matter of getting rid of the circumstances that allowed it to take hold.

I also concede that the rioters aren't exactly full-blown, bearded Taliban types. Yet that's exactly why I keep drawing parallels with the rise of Nazism. In Germany there were similar riots and bands of marauding youths (incidentally, this word, 'youths', is important, I'll come back to it later), who later formed much of the material for the thuggish Sturmabteilung under Hitler, which then was replaced by the far more fanatical SS later on.

This is what Lee Harris refers to as 'the cult of ruthlessness'. Throughout history, we see this cropping up time and time again. The ultimate secret underlying all power is the ability to have large gangs of young men who are capable of wreaking havoc.

This brings me to the point about these "youths" - they're youthful. Returning to my discussions with Sciros about Russia, there was a factoid I needed to chase down. It showed up in the Toronto Star a while back, which had predictions that Russia's army could be majority Muslim by 2015. That's the raw power of youth in action.

Sciros also asked me about Islamization: I mean a country that is in one way or another dominated by Islam, either militarily or demographically.

The point I'm alluding to is that Russia could either end up in complete fascism or undergoing a rather nasty devolution into a mess of conflicting areas. That's re-primitivization in action. And it is what I mean that you don't need to Islamify everything to re-primitivise it. Even if one country in Europe falls to Islam, the effects in other nations wouldn't be very pleasant.


Sorry, I'm sure I've missed points. I'll try and get them later; if there's one you particularly want addressed, post it again and I'll make it a priority.

1065. The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Comment #226000 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 7, 2008 at 3:12 pm

*nods* Exactly, Goldy. In Kosovo the veil's coming in in force and the position of Albanian women is typically dreadful.

Returning to the subject of lack of knowledge causing troubles, I have to cite what has to be the dumbest thing ever to come out of - and I dislike going after such soft targets, but this really is a kicker - the Bush administration is the following:

Condy Rice on the Sunni/Shia war:
"They just need to get over it".

The sound you hear is me banging my head against a wall.

1066. The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Comment #225991 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 7, 2008 at 3:01 pm

... I agree with the points outlined in the article, but where the author fails is by not - I don't know whether consciously or unconsciously - identifying the problem.

It isn't just the Jihadis who hate women or believe them inferior. One of the high-up ministers in the relatively non-insane state of Kuwait responded to a question abotu emancipating women with a breezy "the Qur'an says men are superior to women. Why can't we just leave it at that?"

No. The problem of women's subjugation and men's degradation (a common feature of those men who subjugate their women is their moral collapse) is a problem of Islam, period. Mainstream, traditional, orthodox Islam.

I firmly believe that a failure to identify the problem invariably leads to a failure to solve it. The women's rights movements, which should be supported to the hilt, I might add, in the long run are one of our best bets for bringing Islam down.

This isn't condemnatory, but merely a fact. I have some doubts as to Miss Manji's micro-credit ideas; that is, whether or not they would work. But I do know that she has advocated that Europe basically commit suicide by absorbing the Baby Boom in the Muslim world. I know she doesn't realize that that's what it would entail, but that's what happens when you don't identify the source of the problem.

As regards getting our asses off Saudi Oil, I've been a longtime advocate of that. I recently read an interesting article - any Canadians here to confirm this? - that suggested that Alberta was the second largest deposit of oil in the world, and the US should quit kissing up to the Al Saud family and simply get it's oil from Canada.

1067. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #225590 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 7, 2008 at 3:55 am

Been out of this argument for some time. I'll start with Narib's points:

Demographics

First of all, thanks for the math. Now, what I quibble with are some of those assumptions: The Muslim population TFR seems a little on the low side. It's certainly true that in Austria, the TFR has fallen from 3.1 to 2.3; however, in Norway, Somali women had a TFR of 5.2 in 1997-1998 in Norway. In Rance in (1999) the birth rates amongst Moroccans was 2.97 and amongst Turks it was 3.21. So that's why I think that the figure may be overoptimistic. Also, the generation times amongst Muslims may well be closer, especially amongst those, such as some Pakistanis, who have close ties to their fatherland. On the other hand, European populations tend to have children later, so that's another factor that needs to be considered.

However, a more salient point about that argument is that it, at a very minimum, requires an end to Muslim immigration. The EU study you cited assumed that demographic decline in the Muslim world would put a halt to immigration. I submit that it seems self-evident that Muslim immigration will continue as long as it is allowed and as long as Europe is less of a basketcase than the Muslim world.

I'd also like to stress that demographics is a game of the last man standing. It isn't particularly helpful if Muslim demographics are declining if ours are down the tubes already.

There's also another point, which is about the relative ages of the two populations, the young Muslim one versus the aging European one. Revolutionary force and fervor is always generated amongst the young, and particularly amongst young men.

So, at a very bare minimum, Muslim immigration needs to end. And end soon.

There are other problems that make this so serious: One of them is the multiculturalist nullity that can be pushed over by those willing to shove. If you go to: http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/ and take a browse you see a truly weird and frightening capitulation in the face of Islamic aggression. If this nonsense isn't reversed we are in serious trouble, not least because it will mean that ending Muslim immigration will be politically impossible.

The problem of Muslim immigration is real. By any standards, there has been a huge influx of Muslims into Europe leading to what the UN calls one of the fastest demographic transitions in history.

Now onto other points:

France does not have any no go areas as presented - actually strong, oppressive and in your face police presence has been identified as one of the sources of tensions leading to the youth gang violence in France in 2005/06

I'm sorry to have to flatly contradict you, but this comes from the French government:

http://i.ville.gouv.fr/divbib/doc/chercherZUS.htm

It's a list of these areas that are effectively outside of control. If a 'strong police presence' is taking hold, that is because this is a low-grade civil war. These areas are Muslim ghettoes, or predominantly Muslim ghettoes.

You chide me for considering this a kind of intifada. It's those cries of "Allahu Ackbar", and their link with skyrocketing rates of antisemitic violence. If this isn't to do with Islam, why do they erupt out of Muslim ghettoes? Here's a quote from the New York Times a while back, interviewing a local Muslim about those riots:

Ahmed Hamidi, a white-bearded Moroccan electrician long resident in France, had no patience with politicians in Paris, which lies hardly an hour away but seems like another planet.
``All the politicians care about are laws for homosexuals and all those immoral things,'' he fumed. ``They are against headscarves, against beards and against the mosques.

Anyway, moving on:

This kind of gang violence has occurred before on a smaller scale. It never has been linked to religion.It has been linked to poor integration of immigrants.Not immigrants not wanting to integrate.

I was under the impression that it was the business of immigrants to integrate. How you can forcibly 'integrate' someone isn't something I understand.

Also, Sarkozy said that the riots were well organized, which would explain certain postings on Muslim jihadist cites.

And here's a quotation from the Jerusalem post:

As some Muslim leaders have explained, what they want is autonomy in their ghettos. They seek to receive extraterritorial status from the French government, meaning that they will set their own rules based, one can assume, on Sharia law.

And here's Journalist Amir Taheri:

"Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the 'millet' system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs."

Finally, the rioters have avoided Muslim businesses, while torching Synagogues and Churches.

I'm sorry, but this idea that these guys aren't jihadis doesn't carry much water given these facts.

I've probably missed some of your points, but this is the most I can type for now.

1068. Breeding for God

Comment #225573 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 7, 2008 at 2:51 am

*yawns and stretches* I've been under the gun - still am - so I'm just now holding up my side and posting the points that al and I agree on:

1) Islam is a vile doctrine

2) If practiced according to the cannonical texts, Islam is dangerous beyond words

3) People differ widely in their practices

4) Islam is not a monolith nor should it be treated as such

5) Islam cannot be reformed, Muslims can.

6) Small populations of Muslims in the west can be a problem.

6) Intellectual defeat of Islam is as important as physical defeat.

7) Things may get worse before they get better.

(Tell me if I left anything out)

.


I would add:

8) The doctrine of taqqiya makes it difficult to take anything that prominent Muslims say at face value.

9) Muslim ghettoes can often be centres of the most barbaric activity.


10) That if rational, measured steps are not taken by reasonable people, considerably less pleasant steps will be taken by less pleasant people. I point to the rise of the BNP in Britain and Le Pen in France as examples.

And the solutions:

1) Intellectual Imperialism (as you put it)

2) A close watch on any Islamist influence in western countries

3) Demand Muslims accept western liberal values to become citizens, or deny citizenship.

4) No destruction of our own societies to achieve these goals.

5) Certainty of extreme retaliation for physical and military assaults on western societies.

6) Delineation between Muslim sects and forms of thought, encouragement of the Irshad Manjis and promotion of the Ibn Warraqs. Encourage non-violent and non-bigoted forms of Islam for the long goal of ending the appreciable influence of 7th Century Islam.

7) Cut off Saudi Arabian funding to Mosques and maddrassahs and vet the kind of books that can be used in the latter (none of this 'all infidels go to hell' nonsense).

and

8) If we can't end the horrible practice of slavery in Islamic countries militarily, we should get our hands dirty, buy the slaves ourselves, take them to a civilized country and set them free, with an option to return to their country of birth if they should so wish. That's something that should be handled through private means, though.

1069. Breeding for God

Comment #224718 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 12:38 pm

I was going to turn in, but I can't resist noticing this little gem:

It is inconceiveable to you that someone might share your general analysis but not want to deport entire populations en masse. But yet it is true. We (myself along with everyone else) finds your solutions dangerous and anti-liberty, percisely what you claim Islam is.

Now the whole thrust of al's recent arguments has been trying to show that Islam isn't really that bad or that dangerous, and this goes to the extent of rubbishing my sources, which he not only said nothing about up until now, but even praised them by adding to the list and said the following:

He sums it up pretty accurately. Any nice form of Islam you see is one of two things:


1) A clever ruse to slowly advance the true Islam.

2) A perversion.


Most "nice" Muslims fall into the latter category. And to be honest these "deviants" of Islam won't fair so well under Shariah. Like the Muslims who don't want their daughters to wear Burqas... tough luck. Muslims that drink from time to time.... sorry, no room in Shariah. One word describes the fate of non-Muslims.... jizyah. A tax paid by non-Muslims who happen to be Christian or Jewish, and is best rendered as "a tax in lieu of being killed".

This is comment #212006 by al-rawandi, and you can find it on the Dalai Lama thread. Now, all of a sudden, there's all these different types of Shariah, and I don't understand them (but I'm never told which one of these isn't a problem for Infidels). If anyone else is still reading, I would ask them to consider this for themselves. This is what happens when one errects an absolute that isn't open to criticism.

Now al, and I can't believe this needs spelling out, when I asked you to consider my worldview as a hypothetical and what your views would be if you agreed with me, I don't believe that I was in any way implying that I didn't consider this worldview correct. If I didn't, why would I hold it? It was an attempt to establish some common ground and not to slip into the sort of nonsense you can see now.

My proposition is, and remains, that Islam is unreformable by its nature, and that all attempts at reform are of the sort that might, sorta, could change things a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years from now. It is further that Islam has all the characteristics of a transformational fantasy ideology of the sort that has ripped the world into chaos time and time again, and that this form today, though oft latent, has been brought to full revival by important changes in the nature of the world. In short, I say that Islam is a threat and a civilizational threat.

Now, if, al, you can show me an orthodox, widely held interpretation of Islam that is in fact and not in theory standing against the Jihad, against the evil that threatens us, and further, that such a movement can hold its own against the power of this fanaticism, I will concede the case as won. However, nonthing you have brought to the table will even come close to that.

1070. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #224697 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 12:04 pm

Okay, I can't really let this lie:

Suuuwwwwiinnngggg and a miss.
...
now shifting from Europe after utter defeat

This just shows, in full, what I have suspected for a long time. To al this is not about finding the truth but about 'winning', about scoring cheap rhetorical points, the facts be hanged. This is always the result if someone erects any absolute immune from rational criticism.

Now, I will add that Nairb did provide me with the first optimistic news I have heard in a long, long time. And he did this by citing facts and data and using reason. al you could learn alot from him. Take him as an example.

What I said was that I still thought the assumptions were overoptimistic (e.g. the recovery of Europe's birthrates in one generation), yet they gave some cause for optimisim. I also stressed that there were other problems that weren't addressed, such as the nullity of European multiculturalism and the structural defects of our welfare state.

What I didn't say, and I mentioned this in this thread, so al is being actively dishonest by saying that I've 'shifted' from Europe, is that Europe faces still a very real and very present threat.

I am sorry if my tone is short, but this sort of childishness irritates me.

On the subject of Europe, re-primitivization is still a very real, and very serious threat. I mentioned that areas of both Germany and France had already undergone this, a point completely skipped over by a certain person.

----------------------------

Sciros, thanks for some good comments.

By "friend of Islam" he probably means "provider of firearms for cashola." Russia is yet to actually do anything but try to undermine US anti-Islam efforts *politically* which is consistent with its decades-long strategy of playing all sides and making money in the process. There's no way Putin actually gives a shit about Islam or any other religion for that matter.

Sorry, I shouldn't be ironic when I'm in an internet forum. I was alluding to Mr. Putin's statements, and the exact patterns of behaviour noted here. He's playing up Islam, as you said, for the moment, as a way of pissing off the US, but I don't think he knows what he's playing with. I have heard the tactics in Chechnya being described as 'scorched earth', though it doesn't seem too effective.

Now this brings me to another point, namely:

What you mean to say is it's projected to decrease by 1/3 of 145 million (142 to be more accurate) by 2050. A lot can happen in 42 years so I'm not sure how valuable that prediction is in any context.

Yes, of course, alot can happen. Now one of the things that al said could happen was mass population transfer. You may, if you wish, see the reaction I got over on the Breeding thread, where I was told that my suggestion of a piecemeal expulsion of Shariah supporters, piecemeal to ensure that only those who really supported it (goons like Hizb ut-Tahrir) would lead to fully fledge fascism, and that I was a 'little snake', a 'nazi', a 'fascist' for suggesting that. But apparently, Russia seems exempt from this. Apparently Russia is immune, in some people's minds, from fascism, and would be able to expel huge numbers without sliding into the re-primitivization that I keep discussing.

Imagine if the kind of policies that Putin has been practicing in Chechnya had to spread. That is the kind of re-primitivization I keep talking about.

Sciros I'll happily concede your other points, if you'll take this one on board: an area doesn't need to become fully Islamicized for it to become re-primitivized. That is the point I was making about Europe; even if these optimistic projections about population are correct, it doesn't mean that certain individual countries do not face the serious threat of Islamization. And I ask you, what would be the consequences in the rest of Europe?

1071. Breeding for God

Comment #224625 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 8:48 am

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear - I was thinking of calling it a night, but this article just takes the cake:

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=16819

Muslims blast Israel for reading kindness into the Koran
Arab media around the Middle East this week reacted hysterically after learning that a Jewish professor at Haifa University is using verses from the Koran to teach Arab Muslim psychology students how to treat their future Muslim patients.

Professor Ofer Grosbard developed the Quranet course using specially chosen verses from the Muslim holy book to help students reinforce in their patients concepts like respect, responsibility, honesty, dignity and kindness.

Can't have that, now can we?

Grosbard realized the need for the special course after one of his Muslim students complained that traditional Western psychology would be ineffective on Muslim patients who hold tightly to superstitious beliefs.

Despite the fact that the Quranet course was developed together with 15 Muslim students and was reviewed by three Islamic clerical figures, Muslim authorities around the Middle East denounced the project because it was overseen by a Jew.

Speaking to Gulf News, Dr. Abdullah Al Mutlaq of the Senior Ulema Board in Saudi Arabia insisted that all Jews hate Islam, and that Prof. Grosbard's efforts to emphasize the Koran's few lessons in human dignity and kindness would give Muslims the wrong impression of their religion.

I'm wondering whether even this Dr. Abdullah can have been quite this dumb. But his point is well taken: kindness, dignity, compassion, justice - from the Qur'an? 'Tis to laugh.

Dr. Manae Abdel-Halim Mahmoud, professor of Koranic sciences at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, told an Egyptian newspaper that the Israeli project "aims to tarnish the image of Islam by giving wrong interpretation of the noble Koran."

Palestinian Authority officials also blasted the project, stating that the current prevalent interpretation of Islam that has led to so much regional death and destruction is the correct interpretation, and that Prof. Grosbard's kinder, gentler selection of Koranic verses is misleading.

Gee, ya think?

1072. Breeding for God

Comment #224620 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 8:40 am

*hums to himself*

Last post for the day.

I did answer this.

No, you did not. Point me to the comment where you answered which of the schools was not a problem for Infidels? You didn't answer zip, you merely quoted the names of the schools and tried to pull rank and never answered that basic point.

o he isn't the only one, Ibn Taymiyya himself issued a similar fatwa, as have Hanafi scholars (which if you did not know, is a Traditional Sunni school)

Isn't he the guy who was known for his devotion to Jihad? I seem to have easily found the following quotation from him:

'The command to participate in jihad and the mention of its merits occur innumerable times in the Koran and the Sunna. Therefore it is the best voluntary [religious] act that man can perform...Jihad implies all kinds of worship, both in its inner and outer forms. More than any other act it implies love and devotion for God, Who is exalted, trust in Him, the surrender of one's life and property to Him, patience, asceticism, remembrance of God and all kinds of other acts [of worship]...Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God's entirely and God's word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.'" (quoted in Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, N.J.,1996, 47-49.)

This still fails my basic test: is this, or is it not, a problem from the point of view of the Infidels?

Okay, so the article may be 'unclear'. So, perhaps only imprisonment, or flogging or whatever for exercising ones basic freedom of conscience. Again this fails my basic test.

And didn't the Al-Azhar in Egypt re-issue that Shafi'i manual, the Umdat al-Salik as being correct and reliable in 1991? And isn't it stuffed with things that are a problem for Infidels - Jihad, the enslavement of captive women etc.

So, which of the four Sunni schools - let's just take them for starters - rejects the Jihad imperative?

Try the Caliph Umar, who suspended the entirety of Shariah Hudud for a period. Does that suffice as an example. As a present day matter, it is a way for Muslims to object to the barbarity of the Hudud and still remain Muslims

Is that Umar as in the Pact of Umar? You know, that document that lays down the conditions of dhimmitude?

I'd respond to the rest, but unfortunately it falls under the heading of floating abstraction again: "unnuanced", "irrational", etc. with no tie to concretes. I have responded to your concrete assertions (such as the one about Ali Goma, to whom you seem to extend a rather larger benefit of doubt than may be warranted).

Oh, just noticed one little detail: You brought up the Sufi interpretations. Some of us know that Al-Ghazali was a ufi. So was Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangoh, who argued for a re-invigoration of the Shariah and the reduction of Hindus to payers of land tax and jiyza. Then there's Tabandeh, the modern Sufi who wrote against the Universal Declaration of Human Right; these writings became the basis of Iran's approach to non-Muslims. It includes little things like the lashes for adultery. There's Sirhindi who said "Shariat can be fostered through the sword". Or how about Sha Wali-Allah,"the greatest Muslim intellectual India produced" according to Muhammad Iqbal? "It has become clear to my mind that the kingdom of heaven has predestined that kafirs should be reduced to a state of humiliation and treated with utter contempt. "?

This is the difference. When I make a comment about the Sufis, I tie it to concretes. When you, al do it, it's just a free-floating abstraction, tethered to nothing.

If you are going to criticize my comments on the schools of Jurisprudence, please provide concrete examples of how they've changed, and how they aren't a problem or a threat from the point of view of Infidels.

And one final point - you seem to be relying on the fact that I won't resort to invective or snideness unless I'm pushed extremely far. Please stop that.

And one final, final point: If you don't like the sound of your words when they are played back to you, you should think about that before making them.

1073. Breeding for God

Comment #224592 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 7:47 am

Then you go and ignore 90% of what I post, and only read the part where I slip in some jab at you, which I do to about everyone and you really shouldn't take personally.

If you want me to address everything you say, then you could stop prefacing it with those tirades. And you don't answer my question here either: My response to your comments about my ignorance of the schools of Jurisprudence was to challenge you to name one of the orthodox schools that wasn't a problem from the point of view of Infidels. You haven't answered this.

Now shall we take a look at your friend Ali Goma? You see, in GulfNews, he said the following:

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/07/25/10141696.html

Here's a quote:

What I actually said is that Islam prohibits a Muslim from changing his religion and that apostasy is a crime, which must be punished," Goma'a said

....

"There is a campaign by secularists to distort the image of Dr Ali Goma'a," a senior official in Al Azhar told Gulf News.

"He cannot deny punishment in this life for the apostate," said Mustafa Al Chaka of the Islamic Research Centre.

It's worth pointing out that his former statements first showed up in the Washington Post, and these show up in the Gulf News. Am I jumping the gun here, or could this have been taqqiya in action?

Which makes sense. A devout Muslim scholar going against the word of Muhammad?

Ali Goma is also a supporter of Hezbollah, and has numerous other unsavory beliefs.

Which brings me to al's complaint that I see Islam as monolithic. I have responded to that elsewhere, but here it is again: I've never said that. There's Sunni against Shia and all sorts of other conflicts. But this is all irrelevant. The only question I care about is: Is it a threat? The fact that the Shia Hezbollah probably don't like the Sunni al-Qaeda much doesn't make either of those gangs any less of a problem from the Infidel's point of view.

There is no conture or texture or nuance to his analysis, it is all "they are this way, get rid of them".

I could point out that there's little 'nuance' in al's assessment of me, but the real point is that this sort of a statement is what those of us who have studied logic and epistemology call a "floating abstraction". Floating, because it is untethered to concretes. What, exactly, have I said that's wrong? I've said that all the orthodox, traditional schools of Islam are a massive problem from an Infidel point of view. Has this been answered?

I also find it strange that those who complain that I draw no distinction between Islam and Muslims seem unable to draw that distinction themselves. I've said before that the majority of Muslims aren't lost to evil and it is therefore incumbent on us to help them break out of that mental prison. Yet does this say anything at all about the nature of Islam? As Ibn Warraq says "There are moderate Muslims, but Islam is not moderate".

On the subject of al's "many Muslim scholars" - which scholars? How many? 'Suspension of Hudud' - not its abolition? And when they say until there's no discord and so forth, are they saying that those punishments should be suspended until an Islamic state is established? And are we sure that's what they're saying all the time - and that other messages aren't heard elsewhere?

------------------

This is a fundamental problem I have with jihadwatch type analysis. They desperately try to construct a link with Islam whenever something bad happens, even when such a link is weak or completely unwarranted.Anything to paint an apocalyptic picture of impending Islamic take over. So if some guy called Mohammad robs a store, you will find that on Jihadwatch, as if Mohammad was motivated by Islam to rob the store simply because he has a Muslim name. This kind of "journalism" is simplistic, dishonest, manipulative and the worst part is that it obfuscates the real problems.

Okay, Bonzai I'm going to kick the ball into your court. if it's that common, you should have little trouble finding a bunch of examples for us, yes? So round them up and post them here.

However, I've read JihadWatch for quite some time and I know that Robert Spencer never puts up a story that involves Muslims acting bad unless there's good evidence that they're doing it because of Islam. For example, when they say so.

Which brings me to the French riots. The reason I say that they're because of Islam has something to do with those cries of "Allahu Ackbar". I know all the root cause arguments, and it's undeniable that the infernal contradictions of the welfare state and its economic sclerorsis provide a fertile breeding ground for this stuff. But there needs to be stuff for it to breed. And it's a dangerous fallacy to say that reversing those root causes once this has taken hold will reverse the problems. It won't, anymore than quitting smoking once you have cancer will get rid of that, or reversing the Versailles treaty once Hitler rose would have stopped that conflagration.

If these youths become radicalized eventually, it will only be the result of the profound alienation and rejection they experience.To overcome this feeling of not being here or there they may anchor themselves to Islam in order to create an identity.

Of course. I mentioned this in my discussion with Nairb, about the multiculti guff creating a vacuum into which Islam is pouring. I definitely that our economic sclerosis and welfare statism (the two are ineradicably connected) make it much easier for the disease to take root. But a disease needs to exist before it can take root.

1074. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #224584 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 7:10 am

Then you simply don't understand how Iran works. Ahmedinejad does not have final authority on ANY of these matters.


Of course it serves your hysterics to simply believe Ahmedinejad, that way you can wave you arms a little more vigorously and perhaps scare a few more people. You, shockingly, ignored my comments on the conflict with Khamanei (who has the real power as Supreme Leader). And Khamanei is more than pragmatic enough to realize what confrontation with Israel and the US will mean.

Actually I did no such thing. The point I was making, which I will keep on making, is that this analysis ignores the power of fantasy-ideology and its world-historical importance. How these groups draw tens and hundreds of millions into their sway. Even leaving nuclear weapons out of it, the fascists, nazis and communists were able to wreak incalculable destruction without them.

If we are going to talk about who is ignoring what, this is a point that you repeatedly refuse to address, nor have you discussed the state of Russia, for example. And if we are going to talk about who is molding evidence to fit his beliefs - well, the facts are like this: one of the two states most responsible for international Jihad terrorism, the government whose establishment lead to a huge boost for the same, is about to lay its hands on a nuclear weapon. Yet my concerns are considered unfounded hysterics and it is stated that I want to believe that another period of horror like that of the twentieth century is coming.

Your argument rests on the assumption that Ahmadinedjad is either rational or ineffective, and that the Mullahs are rational actors. Even granting that, what would be the long term effects of a nuclear Iran? Would the Sunnis sit still for that? Or would we see hyperproliferation of nuclear weapons?

Yet it seems to be always the same: invective, ad hominem and slurs. I think that if we were to do a tally of who uses what language and whose points aren't addressed, and what doesn't get discussed, I don't think that you'd end up on the winning side of that tally.

1075. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #224548 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 5:04 am

*dryly* One more reason that I draw the parallel with the transformative fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century is that very similar comments were made about a certain ambitious politician to whom I have made reference.

A survivor of the Holocaust said that what that had taught him was the following: "When people say they want to kill you, listen."

1076. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #224511 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 5, 2008 at 4:01 am

I have spent more time around fanatics than I care to remember. I made it my business to understand these people. So a comment like this from you is less than meaningless. Especially after I asked you if you had even one Muslims friend, to which I, of course, received no answer.

Two points: Firstly, I don't have your life history in front of me. I only respond to what you write here. Secondly, I actually do, and I did respond to this, which, of course, you skated over.

I am not talking about fanatics, but about fanaticism as a world historical force. Again, I draw the parallel with the convulsions that tore apart the twentieth century. In the example of the Sonnenschein family, they had far less evidence of murderous fanaticism that we do now, and look what happened.

I did write a rather long explanation of how this works, of how even moderates get sucked along when they make the mistake of granting the premise to the people who truly believe that. You'll find it in the Dalai Llama thread and reposted in the Breeding thread.

They are linked to the Taliban for the reasons I said, to keep Afghanistan religious oriented, and not oriented to Pashtun Nationalism which could spread to Pakistan

*dryly* The fact that the Pakistani government has just admitted, and I mean just, as this conversation has been progressing, that the ISI is riddled with Taliban sympathizers makes me think that it may not just be that kind of Machiavellian calculation.

Returning to the point about fanaticism as a world historical force, the reason I said that you don't understand it is comments like this:

Yes, moron foot soldiers. I am not sure that the cowards like Osama and Zawahiri who hide up in caves, will be interested in too much violence when their destruction will be assured along with that of the suicide bombers.

This is a comment applied not just to men like Zawahiri but to other fanatics like Adolf Hitler and Lenin. The idea is that they are cynical manipulators, getting dupes to do their bidding. This is exactly wrong. The secret to such men's success is that they genuinely believe what they are saying, and thus are able to infect others with their fanaticism.

There's another comment I have trouble with:

Have you every read the New Testament, specifically two verses which say the same thing (Luke 10:19 and Mark ... I can't remember the number)? It says that followers of Jesus will be able to drink poison and go unharmed. I have asked Christian nut after Christian nut to prove it, but none will drink the Drano to prove their Jesus correct. I suspect Muslims are the same...

If you recall our first altercation, one of the reasons I was irritated about the equivocation of modern day Islam with modern day Christianity was that it was a way of avoiding the problem. Christianity has had its teeth pulled a long time ago. The Enlightenment broke its power. The full horror of Christian fanaticism hasn't been seen in a long, long time, at least outside of such gangs as the Lord's Resistance Army. But if you scroll back a few centuries, you find people willing to drink that poison, convulsions of hysteria that consumed entire towns etc. In his history of the Enlightenment, Peter Gay describes a Jew who was sentenced to be flayed alive for blaspheming against the Virgin. The mob chased the executioner away in order to do it themselves. There's your parallel for fanaticism.

Though I don't really see why we need to look to Christianity to parallels with Muslim fanatics when we can find parallels fine in, oh, I don't know, Muslim fanatics. Sam Harris has observed what'll happen if guys like the nineteen hijackers get their hands on nukes.

As regards the question of who wields the power, we've seen this before: the German nationals thought they had power over Hitler when they put him in office. The Iranian left thought they could control Khomeni. etc. etc. That is the power of fanaticism: the one who can wield it really will have an eternal edge over those who don't.

Basically, I'm taking Ahmadinedjad at his word.

1077. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #224204 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 4, 2008 at 9:51 am

Sweet jesus, this guy still hasn't lied down and died?

1078. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #224150 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 4, 2008 at 8:26 am

So now you are from the future warning us of the coming destruction?

*sighs* This is why I eventually loose my rag. I thought the parallel was very interesting, and also very frightening, and it is a valuable lesson about getting complacent. I then get a one line flippant response like this.

And you are failing to count the power of the ISI in Pakistan. This group is very very very powerful and does not report to the government at large (The Interior Ministry that is). The ISI did support the Taliban, but only does so to create strategic depth for conflict with India and to preempt Pashto nationalism in Pakistan.

Perhaps. There's a section on the ISI over here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Services_Intelligence#Controversies

One of the points made is that, in 2006, the ISI still had links with the Taliban. Of course, it is also true that they were responsible for rounding up the Al-Qaeda types.

But this is all secondary. The most important point is this:

Even if the Pakistani govt. was overthrown they would be incredibly foolish to engage the Indian state in a conflict of a nuclear nature. Just like it seems unlikely that Iran will use nukes when and if it makes them

This is the central problem I have with your analysis al. You don't seem to understand the terrible power of fanaticism.

Lee Harris, writing again about the nature of the ideologies that tore the world apart in the previous century, says the following:

The concept of belief , as it is used in this context, must be carefully understood, in order to avoid ambiguity. For most of us, belief is a purely passive response to evidence presented to us: I form my beliefs about the world for the purpose of understanding the world as it is. This belief is radically different from what might be called transformative beliefâ€"the secret of fantasy ideology. Here the belief is not passive but intensely active, and its purpose is not to describe the world but to change it. It is, in a sense, a deliberate form of make-believe, in which the make-believe becomes real. In this sense it is akin to such innocently jejune phenomena as "the power of positive thinking," or even the little train that thought it could. To say that Mussolini, for example, believed that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire does not mean that he made a careful examination of the evidence and then arrived at his conclusion. Rather it means that Mussolini had the will to believe that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire.

This is what's wrong with the implication that these people are in any sense rational. I contend that if they have the button, they'll push it, not because of any rational calculation, but because that is what they have to do to maintain their transformative fantasy.

Any analysis of history, especially the twentieth century, that doesn't take into account the force of fanaticism and transformative belief is simply doomed to fail. Take our friend Ahmadinedjad for example. This is the guy who has built a road that the returned Mahdi can drive down. This is someone who has said he will nuke Israel if he get's the chance. Does this really look like a rational actor? Or does this look like a man lost to a fantasy ideology who will do whatever it takes to preserve that ideology?

1079. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #224140 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 4, 2008 at 7:29 am

Do you really think Dubai is going to let itself slip into the 7th century, let alone the United States? You are simply out of touch with reality, that is all there is to it.

Well, let's look at it on a case by case situation, shall we? Let's start with the subcontinent. Now I think that everyone knows that Pakistan is one successful coup away from Jihadists with nukes. Given the long and very bloody history between the Muslims and the Hindus in that area, what're the chances that those nukes won't be used? Rather slim, I'd say.

Turn northwards to the largest country in the world, Russia. Now, Nairb has - unlike certain people - provided me with some facts that suggest that things aren't as dire for Europe as I'd feared, though there is still a very real threat of Islamization, but Russia is a different matter. The UN says that it's population will decrease by 145 million (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Population_data). Given that and given Putin's assertion that Russia will always be a staunch friend of Islam, that's not particularly nice. Also, Pravda says that it will be majority Muslim by 2050 (http://english.pravda.ru/russia/history/21-07-2008/105837-russia-islam-0)

Turning to the woe-begotten continent of Africa, more countries are now implementing at least partial Shariah than ever before, and more countries are being sucked into it. A Kenyan candidate for President promised the Muslims he would enforce Shariah if elected. I recently visited Tanzania and was told by a number of locals that the tensions with the growing Muslim population were increasing. When my father visited Somalia for the first time, there was no sign of the niqab, but it is now ubiquitous, and the Islamic Courts goons were basically the Taliban Mark 2.

As regards the far east, the most populous Islamic nation, Indonesia, is now being flooded with Wahabi and other types of fundamentalist strains.

You already know my worries about Europe, and, despite Nairb's facts about Europe as a whole, that doesn't mean that certain nations won't fall in one way or another.

I come full circle to your comments about Dubai, you know, that Muslim nation right next to Saudi Arabia. Personally, if I was going to argue against re-primitivization, I would've picked a more robust example, but whatever. In order to make my point, let me define my terms: re-primitivization is a situation where a portion of the world returns to Hobbes's state of nature, a mess of perpetual conflict. Africa is the petry dish of this, with ever more vicious wars sprouting up over more and more of its surface. In fact, it's not quite accurate to refer to these as wars - they fit the model of something much worse: blood feud. The resurgence of cannibalism is just one example.

Now, I'll start with a basic observation: a nuclear war will have shockwaves around the globe, regardless of where it occurs. I have mentioned Pakistan and Russia, but, just to make things sure, there's also Iran and it's nuclear program and its apocalyptic leader. Even leaving Israel out of it, the Sunni Arabs I imagine will not be too happy about that prospect. Even if a country like Dubai doesn't fall to internal revolution, what are it's chances, long-term, with Wahhabi SA to the west? I trust al isn't going to tell me that Saudi Arabia is perfectly stable.

Lenin wrote that "everything is connected to everything else". A situation where Iran nukes Israel and Israel employs the Samson option - and that is a likely scenario if their damn program isn't stopped - would cause radicalism to explode throughout the world.

Lee Harris, in The Enemies of Reason notes that throughout history we see these groups that seem to come out of nowhere and sweep the entire world into chaos. But the basis of these groups lies deep within the culture from which they originated. Nazism drew on two thousand years of Christian Jew hatred (Hitler himself was turned to anti-semitism by a Christian socialist), as well as the romanticist philosophy widespread in Germany at the time, alongside such ideological road-builders as Hegel.

Writes Harris:

In even the most casual survey of history, one is repeatedly struck by the fact that certain groups do not seem to have the knack for realistic appraisal of themselves: they seem simply incapable of seeing themselves as others see them or of understanding why other groups react to them the way they do. A fantasy ideology is one that seizes the opportunity offered by such a lack of realism in a political group and makes the most of it.

In short, it doesn't matter whether or not al thinks it's possible, but whether the jihadis do. And that's a different proposition.

Hence the difference between clash and crash. A Muslim takeover of the world and its unification into a Caliphate is not going to happen. A situation where more and more of the world is pulled into bloody primitivism by Islam - that's a different proposition.

Returning to Europe, in both France and Germany there are already large numbers of areas that the government frankly admits it has no control over. By any definition, that sounds like a civil war. A low-grade one, one that is confined, but it has the characteristics of it nonetheless. And it doesn't matter whether the cause is Islam neat (France) or a mutant version (Germany, where Islam has combined with Turkish nationalism, racism and fascism), the effects are the same.

And it seems possible that, in lieu of submitting to Islam, certain states will take a rather nastier approach. Europe is, after all, the birthplace of fascism, communism and Nazism. And that seems to me to be re-primitivization, no matter what other label you wish to attach to it.

Does such large-scale re-primitivization seem unlikely? Well, catastrophe always does, right up to the point it happens. Dan Simmons, in the follow up essay to his excellent short story The Century War (I urge you to look it up, btw), asks us to imagine if we could travel back in time, to the first year of the twentieth century and try to talk to people then. What kind of a world would we have found?

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, although invisibly hollowed out by rot and in its final failing years, seems in 1900 to have succeeded in bringing stability and sanity to Europe. The continent is at peace, so much so and for so long (and here the parallels to early 21 st Century Europe are disturbingly clear) that the continent's vacation from history's shocks and responsibilities have led the Sonnenscheins (and all logical, optimistic Europeans) to believe that any dispute can be settled by dialogue, any demands from would-be tyrants appeased by reason and diplomacy, any lack of security rectified by more binding treaties and international organizations, and any remaining vestiges of social injustic or economic disparity remedied through the courts and bureaucracies. More hopeful than that in 1900 is the general acceptance of reason and tolerance as the mediating institutions of humankind, as well as the growing recognition of our common humanity. These dynamics toward ever-greater tolerance seem poised, on New Year's Eve 1900, to govern all of the future interactions between nations and men.

The Sonnenschein family [a fictional Jewish family that lives through the twentieth century] and Jews and Europeans in general"had never had it so good. Germany, which was the closest and greatest source of their future strength and security, represented the culture of Beethoven, Bach, Goethe and Kant. More important to their future well-being, Germany was a nation of the courts, by the courts, and for the courts.

And what kind of a response would we have heard if we were to try to tell them what lay ahead?

Imagine how absurd and obscene this message, (should it have been brought back by a Time Traveler - say a fourth generation member of the family), would have sounded to the healthy, wealthy, socially accepted members of the upperclass Jewish Sonnenschien family on New Year's Eve 1900. Imagine with what fury and scorn they would have rejected the Time Traveler's simple, sad litany of events to come.

A Germany gone insane and slaughtering millions of Jews? Unthinkable.

A Europe ravaged by not one but two World Wars consuming most of the continent's cities and cultures and killing a hundred million people? Ridiculous.

A continent ruled by reason, science, trade and diplomacy, a continent that had been at peace for decades, suddenly transformed by a rash of fanatical transformational fantasy ideologies into a reeking graveyard of slaughtered innocents and murdered innocence? Obscene.

The Time Traveler's message would have been heard as pure hateful vitriol.

And, I might add, there'd be a 19th century al telling me I simply had no grasp of reality.

The idea that civilization or large swathes thereof can fall to total barbarism always seems nuts. Yet to what exactly do civilizations fall? All the ones before ours have crumbled.

1080. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #223995 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 3, 2008 at 10:51 pm

First, it is not a contradiction. Second, yes, Christians do say these things many times (such as PZ Myer's cracker issue) but mostly it is irrelevant. Third, criticism of all religions is criticism of Islam. An intellectual such as Richard Dawkins has seldom focused exclusively on Islam but has criticized Islam on through the general attack on religion. Lastly, this is another example of Christians trying to prove superiority to Islam through implicitly saying "Muslims are barbaric, therefore, we are the righteous ones".

There is a second point they make, namely "We are the only ones with the courage to stand up to Islam, therefore..."

Anyway, trying to be even handed in our criticisms of Islam & Christianity is just ridiculous. While they are both factually incorrect, one is responsible for far more evil and suffering. Islam today is a major evil in the way that Christianity is not.

"More fear-mongering non-sense. There is no central authority for the whole Islam. Muslims on general are as clueless about on what they are doing as you are."

The trouble is that isn't true. Even John Esposito found that 93 million Muslims worldwide - minimum - absolutely and without reservation supported the 9/11 attacks (that is, a 5 out of one of those 1 to 5 questions). Another 93 million supported them with 4s. And another three hundred million said they were in some way justified.
Then there's those studies cited by Sam Harris. Etc. etc.

Could Muslim fanatics build a world wide Caliphate? No chance. But what they could succeed in is re-primitivising large sections of the world, if not all of it. And that's something to think about. This isn't so much a 'clash of civilizations', as a crash of civilization. Jihadists want to crash civilization into barbarism.


This is very problematic

1081. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #223847 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 3, 2008 at 2:11 pm

quomak, if I may? There's a contradiction that I don't think you see between the following:

Criticism of Islam unites us with Christians. While there is nothing wrong with this union against horrible practices just as FGC, I personally prefer to avoid these "unions" as much as possible.

and

Criticism of Islam is one way for Christian fundamentalists to gain power.

The contradiction arises from the following fact. I get to hear this alot from Christians: "Those atheists? Oh sure, they're all big talk when it comes to rubbishing Christianity, but try to get 'em to critisize Islam straight up and see how fast their 'courage' vanishes. Anyway, look at Europe: they got rid of Christianity, and what good's it done them? They're about to become the umpteenth province of Islam."

Etc. The point is the following. If atheists can't demonstrate the clear sight and moral strength to stand up to Islam, any hope we have of holding any kind of relevance in the social changes to come will be vain. There are many, many secular rightists who don't particularly like the religious right, but are willing to make common cause with them, if that's what it takes to stop Islam. I wrote a while back that, if that's what it comes to, I'd back the Christian fundies, not because I have any illusions about what I'm unleashing, but because if I'm going to be under a whip, I'd rather they held it. Also, we've weathered Christianity once before; we can do so again.

) Personally, refusing to single out any religion gives me an aesthetic feeling. It shows we are not biased by any cultural influence which at the end increases the credibility of the message.

Er... not sure what 'aethetic feeling' has to do with it, but criticism of Islam has nothing to do with cultural influence and everything to do with the fact that Islam has more adherents who are stark, staring bonkers than Chirstianity has had in a long, long time.

Sometimes singling out Islam gives some credibility to the extremists (by providing them with free advertisements) and misses the moderates who claim "that is not my religion".

Except that there is a virtual stampede of people trying to assure us that "it's only a Tiny Minority Of Extremists (tm)". If anything, the criticism of Christianity is far more robust. Post 9/11, I submit that these priorities are out of whack.

1082. Breeding for God

Comment #223779 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 3, 2008 at 12:12 pm

*chuckles* Dogfight eh? THere's a good song with that name.

Anyway, I'll be happy to PM you. There seems to be a bit of a lag between writing a PM and it being delivered - dunno why.

When I said you've got a PR problem, I meant that you have helped to create this misperception about yourself, which hampers your ability to reach your goal. I think you made a tactical error in demanding your opponents to choose between one nightmare scenario versus another nightmare scenario.

'S a fair criticism. Trust me, I didn't like this one little bit when I first realized the extent of what's out there, didn't like it to the point of considering suicide. Still, I intensely dislike some of what you call "character assasination". As though I had a vested interest in thinking that the total destruction of everything love is a strong possibility.

1083. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #223769 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 3, 2008 at 11:57 am

Nairb I responded to your response of my question of your response over here. If that makes sense. Anyway, it's over on the Breeding thread. One word summary: Thanks!

--------------------------------

kiste

The Muslims", "the Jews", "the Catholics", "the Gypsies", "the infidels", "the liberals"... I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it, I'm tired of it, I'm utterly weary of it and I don't want any of it. None of it serves any other purpose than stirring up hatred against "them" and it usually happens to serve the needs of those who make these statements

I'm sorry you're utterly sick and weary of it, I truly am, but in the long run that doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Your words carry weight here, because we're all rational individuals who deal with each other by reason. But if you went to a guy like Abu Usama and told him how sick you were about his views on "the Christians", "the Jews", "the Catholics", "the Jews", "the Hindus", "the Jews", "the liberals", "the Jews" and, oh yes, "the Jews" - he'd simply regard you as an Infidel Whore and your objection a further proof of his righteousness.

Because, for all those damn COEXIST bumper stickers, there's only one large-scale group that's having some trouble with the idea. There's this pattern of world conflicts: Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Animists in the same, Muslims vs. Yezidi in Iraq, Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine", Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in Chechnia, and, oh yes, Muslims vs. Muslims when there are no handy Infidels to flog. Most recent example of the last - the Sunni-Shia butchery in Iraq.

And since we're on the subject of Iraq, a good website on the matter responds to the question "It's all about Iraq, isn't it?" with the following:

Yep, it's all about Iraq 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 Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon 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 East Timor 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:

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, ... nor follow the religion of truth... until they pay the tax in acknowledg-ment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection."
Qur'an, Sura 9:29

Bottom line: Regardless of what you think of the motivations of those of us who are a little leary of the Ummah the fact is that that same group has a record of carnage you'd be hard pressed to attribut to, say, the Gypsies.

1084.