The German government is downright stupid.
Whatever you think about Scientology, you have to wonder about the Church's treatment by the German state.
In December, Germany's interior ministers said they considered the religion to be "not compatible with the constitution." Yesterday, an AP story reported that the German Scientologists have dropped a legal battle to keep the country's intelligence services from monitoring its activities. What is Germany so afraid of?
German officials have categorized Scientology as a business, not a religion, and tax accordingly. Scientology has responded by complaining about "religious discrimination."
The German government has a much easier time opposing Scientology that Islam because Germany has orders of magnitude more Muslims than Scientologists inside its borders and the Scientologists do not control governments of trading partners. But if the German government wanted to look out for the interests of the German people it would focus much more on reducing the Muslim presence and put less effort into the much smaller threat from Scientology.
With US attention focused on insurgencies in Iraq Yemen has let go all the people involved in the attack on the USS Cole.
ADEN, Yemen -- Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.
Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections.
I bet the US government issues visas to Yemenis who want to visit or go to school in the US and that we even get some Yemeni immigrants.
Part of the blame probably belongs on the Bush Administration for not maintaining pressure on our enemy the government of Yemen.
"During the first part of the Bush administration, no one was willing to take ownership of this," said Roger W. Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who helped oversee the White House's response to the Cole attack. "It didn't happen on their watch. It was the forgotten attack."
The Bush Administration couldn't even maintain enough forces to hunt down Al Qaeda stragglers in Afghanistan. Iraq beckoned after all.
We should keep Muslims out of the West. We should also very aggressively go after terrorist groups that attack us.
Update: In the comments Brent Lane points to a US government web page which shows 70 Yemenis won US visas through our mind bogglingly foolish diversity lottery. So did 4392 Egyptians. Wonder if any of Mohammed Atta's relatives or friends were among the lucky winners. More Yemenis than Finns came up winners. Can someone explain how this isn't just an incredibly stupid idea for a policy?
Writing for the Daily Mail Anthony Browne predicts the rise of China will shift the West rightward and kill off political correctness.
But Western attitudes will change as well, with a likely shift to the political Right. White liberal guilt, the driving force behind political correctness, will subside as Westerners feel threatened by the global order changing, and their supremacy slipping away.
Anti-Americanism will disappear as Europeans realise how much better it was to have a world super power that was a democracy (however flawed) not a dictatorship.
There is even speculation that the intense economic pressure on countries such as Britain will cause them to trim down their bloated welfare state, simply because it will no longer be affordable at present levels.
Western attitudes of superiority to China and the rest of the East will also subside, as Westerners realise they are no longer the masters of the world.
The relative status of Westerners will decline vis a vis Chinese people. The Chinese will change the status games. Westerners won't be able to imagine that they are the only causes of what goes right or wrong with the world. It is unfortunate that we need to face something akin to the decline of the West to make people more realistic.
Writing in a blog on the Foreign Policy web site Henry Bowles sees the rising Muslim population more in terms of bad nationalists getting mad about it rather than Russians getting shafted by a growing hostile and culturally and religiously incompatible population.
Ready for Russia's very own Oriana Fallacis and Jean LePens? If population trends continue at the current rate, Muslims could outnumber ethnic Russians in 30 years, al-Jazeera reports. More Russians are dying each year than being born, due in large measure to the popularity of abortion (Russian women had almost 13 abortions for every 10 live births in 2003), alcohol, and suicide.
It matters less to Bowles that Russians might end up living as Dhimmis subservient to Muslim rule under Sharia law. No, what is important to Bowles is to pose as morally superior to Oriana Fallaci and Jean LePen. This is very white of him. An opportunity to signal one's higher status vis a vis other whites presents itself. Gotta jump at that chance and look down on the white red necks.
If Russians want to prevent becoming a minority under Muslim rule then Bowles thinks they are engaging in hysteria and sees Russian nationalists as "the usual suspects".
Predictably, the usual suspects are speaking up:
Many ethnic Russians are terrified at the prospect of becoming a minority in their own country. Alexander Belov, from the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, said: "History is a fight between races and religions. "It's the law of nature ... people are used to being with people like themselves, speaking the language their mothers taught them.”
We’ve recently seen domestic politics polarized by nativist hysteria in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Western Europe. But at least this is occurring within democratic systems with moderate political parties and strong protections for minority rights, where the extreme right can only do so much damage. It won't be that way in increasingly autocratic Russia, however, where there aren't established moderating forces in civil society.
The reactions of European and American elites to the problems posed by Muslim immigration demonstrate one reason why we can't allow that immigration to happen in the first place. The elites will see the resulting problems as caused by the ignorance and lack of submission of the existing inferior lower classes. You get blamed. You get searched in airports. You get blamed. You get forced to make accommodations. You get blamed. You get condescended to.
Update: One point that Foreign Policy might want to address if they wanted to be serious about Russia's demographic problems: How would the security of the United States be harmed the large Russian nuclear weapons arsenal came under Muslim control 50 years from now?
Update II: I say that we can't trust our elites. Some might think I'm being a fringe kook to talk like that. But Dutch businesses are threatening to sue Geert Wilders for damages should Muslim nations boycott the Netherlands in response to this film.
Dutch businesses Saturday threatened to sue far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders if his anti-Islam film led to a commercial boycott, as several more Muslim countries condemned it.
"I don't know if Wilders is rich, or well-insured, but in the case of a boycott, we would look to see if we could make him bear responsibility," Bernard Wientjes, chairman of the Dutch employers' organisation VNO-NCW, told the newspaper Het Financieel Dagblad.
So they see their profits as more important than our right to free speech. You get forced to make accommodations to immigrants who don't want you to be free. If you don't do this and sales suffer then you get blamed.
While the Muslim countries protest Dutch politician Geert Wilders' film Fitna one Muslim radical cleric points out that Fitna interprets the Koran in a way that agrees with his understanding of that text. (scroll down to watch Fitna)
Iran called the film part of a "vendetta" against Islam. Several hundred people took to the street in Pakistan and the government summoned the Dutch ambassador. Muslim Bangladesh said the film could have "grave consequences", while the Indonesian government called it "racist" and "an insult to Islam", yet called for calm.
Omar Bakri, the Libyan-based radical Muslim cleric who is barred from Britain, did not think the film was very offensive. "On the contrary, if we leave out the first images and the sound of the page being torn, it could be a film by the [Islamist] Mujahideen," he said. [...]
Says Robert Spencer At Jihad Watch:
The formerly UK-based jihadist hits the nail on the head: for all the rage from Muslims about how Fitna "links Islam with violence," that link has already been made by the jihadists, who never aroused any significant rage among their peaceful brethren. The jihadists quote Qur'an to justify their actions -- it wasn't Geert Wilders who had to go hunting in the Qur'an for verses that matched those actions.
The offense then is that a non-Muslim drew the connection between the words in the Koran and what Muslims do today. For the Jihadists and their tens of millions (at least) Muslim fans and supporters the connection that Geert Wilders draws between the Koran's text and the terrorists is already obvious. Yet the operators of LiveLeak.com received so many death threats from Muslims they dropped Wilders' film from their site. The reason for the threats about Fitna is simple enough: The film is a call to action aimed at non-Muslims. Whereas the Jihadists want the non-Muslims to meekly submit to dhimmitude as second class citizens under Muslim rule. Some European politicians are eager to comply. As Steve Sailer points out, the severe criticism that the European elite aimed at Pym Fortuyn got Fortuyn killed by a leftist sympathizer of Muslims.
That also reminds me that, unlike all the respectable voices, I've always been even more upset by the murder of Pym Fortuyn, a potential Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in 2002 than by the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004. The van Gogh murder was the obvious result of letting a whole bunch of Muslims into the country, a problem that can be solved (granted, at vast expense) by paying them to leave and other sensible reforms. The only solution to the West's Muslim problem is to disconnect.
But Fortuyn's assassination was carried out by a well-educated Dutch-born white leftist the day after the climax of the "Two-Week Hate" against immigration-restrictionists that swept Europe when Le Pen won a spot in the French Presidential final. When Fortuyn was murdered, respectable voices across Europe opined that Fortuyn more or less had it coming. The European Establishment excused themselves from any responsibility by blaming it all on animal rights craziness.
Here is the 10 minute movie Submission that got Theo van Gogh killed and forced Ayaan Hirsi Ali into hiding.
Many members of Europe's elite want to silence the critics of Islam.
Following the assassination of van Gogh, the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands, Piet-Hein Donner, proposed to reinstate blasphemy as a criminal offence. In the United Kingdom Islamophilia runs amok. The July 7 bombings, which killed 55 people, seem to have reinforced the taboo on criticism of Islam. The London police chief, Ian Blair (Tony’s parrot, though unrelated), said the bombings could not be qualified as “islamic terror” because “Islam and terrorism do not go together.” Politicians and opinion makers assure us that Islam does not condone terror and that we must support the “beleaguered” Muslim community. With every act of terrorism the press becomes more friendly towards Islam. The Guardian has virtually become al-Guardian.
Here is part1 of the Fitna movie by Geert Wilders:
Here is part 2 of the Fitna movie by Geert Wilders:
A buy-out option to pay Muslims to leave Europe would enable people like Geert Wilders to once again walk the streets of Amsterdam.
Lots of people have posted the Geert Wilders Fitna Movie about Islam on YouTube. Here it is in 2 parts.
Here is the second part of Fitna.
Here is the first part of an interview of Wilders.
Here is the second part of the Wilders interview.
Some people claim that since only a very small fraction of Muslims are terrorists that Wilders and other severe critics of Islam are unfair. But this defense of Islam by non-Muslims is based on the false assumption that the only Muslim threat comes in the form of terrorism. In Western nations where Muslim minorities have become substantial the Muslims show an increasing desire to force non-Muslims to live according to Muslim laws and customs.
The poll of 1,000 Muslims, weighted to represent the population across the UK, found that a growing minority of youngsters felt they had less in common with non-Muslims than their parents did.
While only 17 per cent of over-55s said they would prefer to live under Sharia law, that increased to 37 per cent of those aged 16 to 24.
Muslims create parallel societies and attempt to force other Muslims and non-Muslims to live according to Muslim rules. The support for Sharia law is incompatible with a free society.
The survey of more than 1,000 Muslims from different age groups in the UK, found:
- 71% of over-55s compared with 62% of 16 to 24-year-olds feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain than with Muslims abroad
- 19% of over-55s compared with 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds would prefer to send their children to Islamic state schools
- 17% of over-55s compared with 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds would prefer living under Sharia law than British law
- 28% of over-55s compared with 74% of 16 to 24-year-olds prefer Muslim women to choose to wear the hijab
- 3% of over-55s compared with 13% of 16 to 24-year-olds admire organisations like al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West
Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.
The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
The Muslim doctors arrested for the UK airport bombing attack show that education and status are not an assurance that Muslims will refrain from terrorism. In fact, the Muslim terrorists tend to be more educated and from more affluent families.
Wikileaks has the Fitna movie too.
Dutch movie maker and critic of Islam has ignored the Muslim death threats and pressure from appeasers in the Netherlands government and has released his new 15 minute move about Islam. Time to watch it. (update: this address now shows a video explaining how the LiveLeak.com people are afraid to keep the video on their site)
Islam is not compatible with free Western societies. Islam's beliefs clash with and can not be reconciled with our beliefs. We can best protect ourselves from Islam by keeping Muslims out of the West.
Update: As you can see if you click on that link above, LiveLeak.com chickened out about showing this movie due to many death threats from extremely intolerant Muslims.
So I went looking for other sources of this movie. The fitnathemovie.info site no longer responds. The site reports
This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation. For more information about Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy visit the following URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/aup.jsp
Investigating? They chickened out too.
Here is the Geert Wilders Fitna movie on Google (and let me know if it ceases to work):
Post in the comments if you find places where it can be watched. The number of sites that have chickened out about this movie should serve as a warning of a threat that we face. Wake up. Appreciate the Muslim threat to your freedoms.
The reactions of so many web hosting sites to this movie brings to mind Patrick Henry's Give me Liberty, or give me Death! speech of March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses. I've long though that he should have uttered "Give me Liberty or I'll kill you" as it captures a more useful and productive reaction. But the mood of our times seems to be more along the lines of "Give me liberty. But if you are a non-European fanatic then as a European I am morally inferior and want to appease you".
Another way to find Fitna: Here is a YouTube search on Geert Wilders.
The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".
Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.
For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.
He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".
If you want to maintain social cohesion then don't let in incompatible cultures and religions. If you think that the potential exists for such disloyalty that parallel legal systems even come under consideration then you have a very deep problem that must be solved at its roots. A parallel legal system is just a step on the road toward deeper divisions and greater segregation into parallel societies in the same physical territory. Why inflict that upon yourselves unless you are a sadist or a masochist?
There's another way to avoid the conflict between cultural loyalty and state loyalty: Deport the foreign culture.
Balkanization leads to civil war. Lebanon is once again skirting the edges of possible civil war. Britain can become another Lebanon or perhaps a Kosovo. Or Britain can expel the incompatible religion and culture.
Not all cultures are mutually compatible. Not all religions are compatible. Loyalty to a culture can and does often mean disloyalty to the larger society. Why live in a society so divided and distrustful? Why let your country become divided up into separate incompatible cultures?
A Der Spiegel profile of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian immigrant to the Netherlands who is targeted for death by Muslim fundamentalists, includes some great comments by Hirsi Ali.
Her attacks drew criticism from Islamic fundamentalists as well as leftist Western intellectuals, who accused Hirsi Ali of discriminating against, offending and stirring up resentment among Muslims across the board. Her critics said her demands amounted to nothing less than a demand for Muslim immigrants to renounce their religion.
She's discovered, she now says, that even those who claim to be fighting outdated dogmas are quick to impose their restrictions on thought. From public life she's learned that minorities should not be rebuked; that there are also racists among non-whites; and that "tolerance of the intolerant is nothing but cowardice."
Respect for cultures of Muslim immigrants amounts to disrespect for individual rights.
Hirsi Ali admits her behavior could be seen as provocative. But, she adds, there was no doubt the Dutch had turned a blind eye to the horrors some of their Muslim neighbors were inflicting on their wives and daughters. "Teachers, the authorities, politicians and even the media looked the other way when girls didn't return to school after the summer vacation, because they had been married off in Morocco in the meantime." All the talk about respect for the identity of immigrants and their culture, Hirsi Ali says, is "nothing but thoughtlessness, laziness and fear of openly addressing human rights violations."
As Lawrence Auster noted a couple of months ago, Hirsi Ali has thought her way out of the box of conventional thinking that still held her back from advocating effective and sufficient policies for dealing with Islam. She's no longer in the elite crowd that defends the conventional wisdom that the problem with Islam is some small number of radicals who have hijacked it. She's not even in the smaller crowd that holds Islam is the problem but that we are basically helpless to do nothing but wring our hands and talk about it.
She gave a great interview to the libertarian Reason magazine. Hirsi Ali pretty much advocates forcing Islam to submit to the West rather than vice versa.
Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—
Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I’ve been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn’t allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with—what’s the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.
Reason: Do you believe that the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights—documents from more than 200 ago—ought to change?
Hirsi Ali: They’re not infallible. These Western constitutions are products of the Enlightenment. They’re products of reason, and reason dictates that you can only progress when you can analyze the circumstances and act accordingly. So now that we live under different conditions, the threat is different. Constitutions can be adapted, and they are, sometimes. The American Constitution has been amended a number of times. With the Dutch Constitution, I think the latest adaptation was in 1989. Constitutions are not like the Koran—nonnegotiable, never-changing.
Look, in a democracy, it’s like this: I suggest, “Let’s close Muslim schools.” You say, “No, we can’t do it.” The problem that I’m pointing out to you gets bigger and bigger. Then you say, “OK, let’s somehow discourage them,” and still the problem keeps on growing, and in another few years it gets so bad that I belatedly get what I wanted in the first place.
I respect that it needs to happen this way, but there’s a price for the fact that you and I didn’t share these insights earlier, and the longer we wait, the higher the price. In itself the whole process is not a bad thing. People and communities and societies learn through experience. The drawback is, in this case, that “let’s learn from experience” means other people’s lives will be taken.
I love how she's figured out that constitutions aren't supposed to be suicide pacts.
At Newsweek Tracy McNicoll says the latest round of Muslim riots (not that she uses the "M" word) are no big deal because 138 cars burned in one night is pretty close to average.
Early this morning, global audiences may have read wire reports lamenting a “third night of rioting.” But that is misleading. Indeed, the same police union spokesman who early Tuesday fed headlines by deploring rioters’ “urban guerilla”-style use of firearms said today that “nothing too nasty” happened last night and that no new shots were fired. That 138 cars were burned across France last night is actually nothing extraordinary--that’s about the average for any night. Violence may flare-up again when the teens killed in Sunday’s collision are buried. Or even before that. Or after. But the media covering the riots have the same responsibility police peppered with buckshot do--to keep the violence in perspective.
We don't need to see this as a new step in the decline of a civilization because the current rate of destruction of property by hostile Arab and African Muslims in France is already pretty high. No need to think things are getting worse. So things are great. This is how civilizations decay. Rationalizations.
To maintain a high quality civilization requires an attitude similar to that brought to maintaining a high quality industrial process: zero tolerance of decay. Whatever happened to Western societies that so disabled their ability to hold others to a high standard?
20 of 23 Sudanese 7 year olds voted to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Oops. Now the British lady who taught them is in jail and the school has been shut down.
A British primary school teacher in Sudan is facing 40 lashes and up to six months in prison after allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear after the prophet Mohammed.
Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, claim she made an "innocent mistake" by allowing the class of seven year-olds to choose the name. But she has been accused of insulting Islam’s holiest prophet, arrested and imprisoned.
Her mistake was to live and work in a society where you get jailed and whipped for allowing something to happen that some people consider an insult to ther religion. The article reports an angry crowd has gathered. I hope the crowd doesn't storm the jail and deliver vigilante justice Muslim style.
If charged and found guilty of blasphemy she faces punishment under Sharia law.
The moral of this story? Don't live among Muslim savages. Stay away from them. They are a threat to liberties that you take for granted.
Brits who don't seem to get that Muslims are a threat to them are not paying attention:Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
Overall, the findings depict a Muslim community becoming more radical and feeling more alienated from mainstream society, even though 91 per cent still say they feel loyal to Britain.
These poll results and others like them are nature's way of telling Westerners not to allow in large numbers of Muslim immigrants.
I found the Human Rights Watch - Middle East and Northern Africa page (i.e. all the nasty things Muslim governments do) and it has lots of articles about how Muslim societies are not fun for non-Muslims. Egyptians are only allowed to register as Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Baha’is officially don't exist in Egypt because in orthodox Islam only followers of Abrahamic religions which preceded Islam are "people of the book" worthy of dhimmi status (and dhimmi status is second class citizenship at best).
(Cairo, November 12, 2007) – Egypt should allow all citizens to use their actual religious identity when required to list religion on government documents, Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said today. The government’s discriminatory practice of restricting identity to three religions, directed at Baha’is and preventing converts from Islam from listing their true belief, violate many rights and cause immense hardship.
In their 98-page report, “Prohibited Identities: State Interference with Religious Freedom,” Human Rights Watch and the EIPR document how Ministry of Interior officials systematically prevent Baha’is and converts from Islam from registering their actual religious belief in national identity documents, birth certificates, and other essential papers. They do this based not on any Egyptian law, but on their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. This denial can have far-reaching consequences for the daily lives of those affected, including choosing a spouse, educating one’s children, or conducting the most basic financial and other transactions.
“Interior Ministry officials apparently believe they have the right to choose someone’s religion when they don’t like the religion that person chooses,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. “The government should end its arbitrary refusal to recognize some people’s religious beliefs. This policy strikes at the core of a person’s identity, and its practical consequences seriously harm their daily lives.”
The Egyptian government also does not allow Muslims who convert to Christianity to change their identity card religion. But at least they recognize Jews and Christians. Does the Egyptian government allow Zoroastrians to register?
In theory the Koran in 22:17 gives Zoroastrians some standing by referring to the Zoroastrians of the Magian Zoroastrian sect.
022.017 YUSUFALI: Those who believe (in the Qur'an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Sabians, Christians, Magians, and Polytheists,- Allah will judge between them on the Day of Judgment: for Allah is witness of all things.
PICKTHAL: Lo! those who believe (this revelation), and those who are Jews, and the Sabaeans and the Christians and the Magians and the idolaters - Lo! Allah will decide between them on the Day of Resurrection. Lo! Allah is Witness over all things.
SHAKIR: Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)-- surely Allah will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over all things.
So are you allowed to be a Zoroastrian in Egypt? Or are Zoroastrians not allowed to exist there?
The Koran puts Christians and Jews in a submissive position as At-Tawba 29 (9:29) shows with a requirement to pay a special Jizya tax.
YUSUFALI: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
PICKTHAL: Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
SHAKIR: Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.
That tax probably played a big role in reducing the numbers of Christians and Jews in lands which Muslims conquered. First, the tax was an incentive to convert to Islam. Conversion ended the tax. Second, the tax reduced the amount of money available for food and housing and therefore reduced surviving offspring in an era when calorie malnutrition was the biggest killer.
If Egyptians are allowed to be Jews then they have an advantage over Jordanians...
In Saudi Arabia gang rapists get 6 to 9 years while a woman victim gets 200 lashes and 6 months in jail.
SAUDI Arabia yesterday defended a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes.
The 19-year-old Shiite woman and an unrelated male companion were abducted and raped by seven men in 2006.
Ruling according to Saudi Arabia's strict reading of Islamic law, a court originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between ten months and five years. It blamed the woman for being alone with an unrelated man.
But last week, the Supreme Judicial Council increased the sentence on the woman to 200 lashes and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two and nine years in jail.
We buy oil from this Islamic theocracy. This is the country where the bulk of the 9/11 attackers came from.
If I understand this correctly, the men originally had sentences half as long as the 6 to 9 years!
In its decision doubling her sentence last week, the Saudi General Court also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of raping her, Saudi media said.
Another report (the one below) put the original sentences for the rapists at 1 to 5 years.
She's being punished for trying to complain to the public about her original sentence.
The court also harassed her lawyer, banning him from the case and confiscating his professional license.
An official at the General Court of Qatif, which handed down the sentence on November 14, said the court had increased the woman's sentence because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media." The court sentenced the rape victim to six months in prison and 200 lashes, more than double its October 2006 sentence after its earlier verdict was reviewed by Saudi Arabia's highest court, the Supreme Council of the Judiciary.
She says the judges were insulting and took a dim view of her daring to leave her house by herself.
"At the first session, [the judges] said to me, 'what kind of relationship did you have with this individual? Why did you leave the house? Do you know these men?' They asked me to describe the situation. They used to yell at me. They were insulting. The judge refused to allow my husband in the room with me. One judge told me I was a liar because I didn't remember the dates well. They kept saying, 'Why did you leave the house? Why didn't you tell your husband [where you were going]?'"
We really should keep Islam out of the West. We should also try much harder to develop substitutes for oil.
Update: A Saudi court forced a married couple to divorce for tribal reasons.
(New York, July 17, 2007) – After a Saudi court forced a married couple to divorce in response to a lawsuit brought by the wife’s brothers, officials placed the woman and her young son in detention and are threatening to detain her husband, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch called on the Saudi authorities to unconditionally release Fatima `Azzaz and her son, and to end the harassment of her husband, Mansur Timani.
In August 2005, a court in the northern city of Juf forcibly divorced the lawfully married couple in absentia. The court ruled that Timani’s tribal lineage was socially inadequate for him to marry `Azzaz, essentially declaring that the marriage could harm the reputation of `Azzaz’s family since Timani is of a lower social class. The Riyadh Court of Appeals in January upheld the verdict, ending judicial appeals. Human Rights Watch called on King Abdullah to refer the case to the Supreme Council for the Judiciary to correct the unjust decision.
Is this sort of ruling based on Islam? Or just on tribal practices?
Gary Bauer wants to make Islamofascism into a political issue in the 2008 election.
'The war against Islamofascism is in many respects a 'values issue,''' Bauer wrote. ''That may seem like an odd statement at first glance, but, as I have often said, losing Western Civilization to this vicious enemy would be immoral.''
I'm disappointed that Gary Bauer would use the term "Islamofascism". Islam predates Fascism by over a thousand years. Islam doesn't need concatenation with a 20th century political ideology in order to be properly understood. In fact, attempts to equate a branch of Islam with fascist confuses the issue. The term "Islamofascism" tends to imply something other than Islam itself is the cause of terrorism and the clash of civilizations. That conclusion seems dubious to me. The Jihadists are Muslim fundamentalists. They seek to resurrect the use of all the tactics which Muhammad used in his initial spread of Islam. They are textual literalists.
Some Christian conservatives do see at least a portion of Islam as an enemy of Christianity.
'From one perspective, branding ''radical Islam'' as a family values issue is yet another example of the broadening of the evangelical agenda. But next November, it also could energize one of the Republican Party's key voting blocs, much like anti-gay marriage measures did in 2004.
''It's the ultimate life issue,'' said Rick Scarborough, president of the Texas-based conservative Christian group Vision America. ''If radical Islam succeeds in its ultimate goals, Christianity ceases to exist.''
Note the term "radical Islam". How about "fundamentalist Islam"? Aren't the Jihadists really returning to the roots of Islam where it was spread by military force?
But regardless of how they label the (mostly demographic) threat from Islam what to the Christian conservatives propose to actually do about it? This article mentions nothing constructive coming from them.
So what kind of solutions do Christian conservative leaders propose for battling what they see as a real threat?
One is staying in Iraq. More than 40 conservative leaders, most of them social conservatives, signed a declaration in September warning against the "catastrophic" consequences of withdrawing from Iraq. The statement said the war "must be seen in the broader context of Islamo-fascism's war on America and Western Civilization."
The biggest threat for the West from Islam is demographic. We can only lose that battle of the womb if we let Muslims move to our countries. Keep the Muslims out and the threat is minimal. Therefore, if social conservative or Christian conservative leaders want to sign a declaration that is constructive they would sign one that calls for the end of Muslim immigration into the West.
Back in December 2001 Billy Graham's son Franklin labelled Islam itself as the problem.
Evangelist Franklin Graham has been drawing fire for controversial comments he made about Islam, which he said is "wicked, violent and not of the same God." Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, reportedly made the comments in October, said NBC News. The younger Graham said Islam is not "this wonderful, peaceful religion. When you read the Qur'an and you read the verses from the Qur'an, it instructs the killing of the infidel for those who are non-Muslim."
Franklin Graham then toned down his rhetoric in response to a lot of criticism. Still, at least briefly he was honest.
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, said to the 40 leaders attending today, ''Since we are in a global community, no doubt about it, we must temper our speech and we must communicate primarily through actions.''
It has been more than a year since major evangelical leaders, like the Rev. Franklin Graham, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Jerry Vines, past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, began publicly branding Islam, or Islam's prophet Muhammad, as inherently evil and violent.
Mr. Graham, son of the evangelist Billy Graham and head of a global missions agency, Samaritan's Purse, said last year that Islam was ''a very evil and wicked religion.'' Mr. Vines described Muhammad as ''a demon-possessed pedophile.''
Will these Christian leaders start advocating policies that provide us with real protection against Muslims?
Separationism keeps growing in popularity as the most reasonable response to Islam. Jim Pinkerton has written a highly excellent piece The Once & Future Christendom.
In his subtle way, Tolkien argues for a vision of individual and collective self-preservation that embraces a realistic view of human nature, including its limitations, even as it accepts difference and diversity. Moreover, Tolkien counsels robust self-defense in one’s own area—the homeland, which he calls the Shire—even as he advocates an overall modesty of heroic ambition. All in all, that’s not a bad approach for true conservatives, who appreciate the value of lumpy hodgepodge as opposed to artificially imposed universalisms.
So with Tolkien in mind, we might speak of the “Shire Strategy.” It’s simple: the Shire is ours, we want to keep it, and so we must defend it. Yet by the same principle, since others have their homelands and their rights, we should leave them alone, as long as they leave us alone. Live and let live. That’s not world-historical, merely practical. For us, after our recent spasm of universalism—the dogmatically narcissistic view that everyone, everywhere wants to be like us—it’s time for a healthy respite, moving toward an each-to-his-own particularism.
Jim's interpretation of Tolkien is great. I highly recommend reading this essay both for the Lord Of The Rings interpretation and for Jim's take on what we should do about our clash of civilizations with Islam.
I find Jim's use of the term "narcissistic view" as insightful. The universalists so love their own ideas that they can't imagine why the rest of the world won't eventually do so as well.
Why haven't we separated ourselves fully from the Muslims? The temptation of greater power. We have hubris to think that we can unite the entire world in our own universalist vision.
In addition to the innate differences, Tolkien added a layer of tragic complexity: the enticement of power. Some races in Middle Earth were given Rings of Power—19 in all, symbolizing technological might but also a metaphor for hubristic overreach: “Three Rings for Elven-kings under the sky / Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone / Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die.” One notes immediately that the Hobbits, along with other categories of being, have received no rings. Again, Tolkien’s world doesn’t pretend to be fair; we get what we are given, by the design (or maybe for the amusement) of greater powers. Only one threat endangers this yeasty diversity—the flowing tide of overweening universalism, emblemized by Sauron, who seeks to conquer the whole wide world, and everyone and everything in it
I'm surprised to learn that my lack of attraction to universalist ideology gives me something in common with Hobbits.
Enter Frodo, hero Hobbit. Tolkien, who served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers during the Great War, modeled Frodo, admiringly, after the Tommies—the grunt infantrymen—who fought alongside him. Neither a defeatist nor a militarist, Tolkien admired those men who were simultaneously stoic and heroic. In the words of medieval historian Norman Cantor, “Frodo is not physically powerful, and his judgment is sometimes erratic. He wants not to bring about the golden era but to get rid of the Ring, to place it beyond the powers of evil; not to transform the world but to bring peace and quiet to the Shire.” Because of their innate modestly, only Hobbits have the hope of resisting the sorcery of the Ring. Frodo volunteers to carry the Ring to the lip of a volcano, Mt. Doom, there to cast it down and destroy it once and for all.
Yes, the Hobbits aren't utopians. People who want to transform the world with militarily imposed democracy promote an unachievable utopian dream.
We have enemies within.
Nor can we ignore the painful reality of a genuine fifth column in the West. This summer, Gordon Brown’s government concluded that 1 in 11 British Muslims—almost 150,000 people living in the United Kingdom—“proactively” supports terrorism, with still more rated as passive supporters. And this spring, a Pew Center survey found that 13 percent of American Muslims, as well as 26 percent aged 18-29, were bold enough to tell a pollster that suicide bombing was “sometimes” justified. These Muslim infiltrators, of course, have potential access to weapons of mass destruction.
We can basically buy out the citizenship of our enemies within. This is a solvable problem. We just need to find the will to solve it.
Incompatible cultures and ethnicities lead to violent conflict.
Waltham, MA—In the last century, more than 100 million people have perished in violent conflict, very often because of local clashes between ethnically or culturally distinct groups. In a novel study this week in Science, researchers report on a mathematical model that can predict where ethnic conflict will erupt.
The study, conducted by scientists at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) and Brandeis University, can be applied to many areas and its predictions were tested on distinct ethnic groups in India and the former Yugoslavia. The researchers applied a model of global pattern formation that differentiates regions by culture. They discovered that heterogeneous areas with poorly- defined boundaries were prone to ethnic conflict.
No surprise here. In an age when intellectuals embrace universalist myths about how much all of humanity has in common we need research to rediscover the obvious.
The open borders crowd wants to reduce separation. What'll that cause?
The research asserts that in highly mixed regions, groups of the same type are not large enough to sway collective behavior toward claiming any particular public space; likewise, well-segregated groups are protected by clear boundaries identifying their space. However, the study concludes that “partial separation with poorly defined boundaries fosters conflict.”
What causes a fairly homogeneous area of consensus and peace to decay into an area of conflict? Immigration and differing rates of reproduction create subpopulations large enough to come into conflict with the former hegemonic population.
In essence, as poet Robert Frost wrote in a well-known poem, “good fences make good neighbors.” Well-defined borders help prevent ethnic tension.
"Our research shows that violence takes place when an ethnic group is large enough to impose cultural norms on public spaces, but not large enough to prevent those norms from being broken," said Brandeis researcher Dr. May Lim. "Usually this occurs in places where boundaries between groups are unclear.”
Neoconservatives and liberals don't want to face up to the consequences of their pursuit of utopia. A global capitalist market with open borders and democracy everywhere is not feasible. Attempts to impose it by force abroad are not going well. Iraq is immersed in civil war. Russia, Venezuela, and some other countries are becoming less free. Within the United States public backlash against globalism is reflected in increasing opposition to elite plans for more trade treaties and more immigration.
If the Bosnia and Albanian Muslims hadn't out-reproduced the Serbs and Croats then the Muslims wouldn't have started pushing the Serbs out of areas they had dominated for centuries. In the West the Clinton Administration and neocons portrayed the Serbs as the evil transgressors and used the Serbs as sacrificial meat to try to demonstrate to Muslims that Western countries won't always line up in favor of non-Muslims against Muslims. This is the sort of foolishness our intellectuals get into when they try to make policies based on myths. Iraq is another example of the folly that comes from belief in universalist myths.
John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed argue in an article in Foreign Policy Muslim extremists are better educated than most Muslims and do not feel hopeless about their situations.
Ask any foreign-policy expert how the West will know it is winning the war on terror, and the likely response will be, “When the Islamic world rejects radicalism.” But just who are Muslim radicals, and what fuels their fury? Every politician has a theory: Radicals are religious fundamentalists. They are poor. They are full of hopelessness and hate. But those theories are wrong.
Based on a new Gallup World Poll of more than 9,000 interviews in nine Muslim countries, we find that Muslim radicals have more in common with their moderate brethren than is often assumed. If the West wants to reach the extremists, and empower the moderate Muslim majority, it must first recognize who it’s up against.
But if the extremists and the so-called moderates have so much in common then don't they have much less in common with us? Also, I do not believe we can empower one group of Muslims against another group of Muslims. We lack the ability to exert such subtle influence.
The radicals are more educated than the average Muslim.
There is indeed a key difference between radicals and moderates when it comes to income and education, but it is the radicals who earn more and who stay in school longer.
This must be a mistake. Liberals believe in education as the magic panacea for most of what ails societies. Education makes Muslims more likely to be extremists? That's contrary to liberal dogma.
I see realist reasons why this isn't surprising: More educated Muslims view themselves as in more direct status competition with Westerners. Their educations raise their expectations. Their occupations put them in economic competition with Westerners. Less educated and lower class Muslims see highly educated Westerners as more akin to the Muslim upper classes and more distant from their own lives. People who feel they are competing for status are more likely to resent their competitors who are more successful.
Education usually leads to greater experience with the West and therefore greater chance to feel inferior to it. If we really want to reduce Muslim resentment of the West then my advice is to keep them more distant from us.
Esposito and Mogahed find that Muslim terrorists do not feel hopeless. They think they have good prospects even without turning to suicide bombing. So forget about economic development as the panacea to dampen down terrorism.
Whenever a suicide bomber completes a deadly mission, the act is often attributed to hopelessness—the inability to find a job, earn a living, or support a family. But the politically radical are not more “hopeless” than the mainstream. More radicals expressed satisfaction with their financial situation and quality of life than their moderate counterparts, and a majority of them expected to be better off in the years to come.
We should separate the West from Islam. That is the best way to defend ourselves from them and to reduce animosity between us and them.
The status of the Roman Catholic Church in Turkey shows what a farce it is for the European Union to consider admission of Turkey to the EU. The Catholic Church in Turkey functions as an appendage to foreign embassies.
The Roman Catholic Church is not legally recognized in Turkey. It functions largely attached to foreign embassies; its priests do not wear their collars in public.
Meanwhile many American cities now have large mosques jutting up in the skyline.
Most Christians in Turkey are of the Armenian, Greek and other Orthodox denominations, and although most of these are recognized in the Turkish Constitution as minority communities, they face severe restrictions on property ownership and cannot build places of worship or run seminaries to train their clerics.
Such hardships make it almost impossible for Christians to sustain and expand their communities, advocates say. The Greek Orthodox, for example, have dwindled to no more than 3,000, just 2% of the community's size in the 1960s.
Turkey has one thing in common with France and Britain: Growing Islamic radicalism.
Fueled by a vitriolic, and growing, potion of nationalism and Islamic radicalism, spasms of violence have led to the killing of one priest this year, the beatings of two others and the burning of a Christian prayer center. Christian tombstones are often vandalized and property frequently confiscated by authorities.
Time for the West to separate itself from the Islamic countries. Stop letting in Muslim immigrants. Deport the vast bulk of the non-citizen Muslims. Stop getting involved in the internal affairs of Muslim countries. These are the best policies for defending our civilization from Muslims.
The Turkish government denies poor treatment of non-Muslims. You didn't expect them to be honest, did you?
"Obviously, more needs to be done to promote religious freedom for all denominations," Ali Bardakoglu, president of Turkey's powerful Religious Affairs Directorate, said in an interview. But he defended the government's treatment of minorities, contending that Christians and other non-Muslims do not face serious problems.
Bardakoglu was one of the most emphatic critics of Benedict after the pope delivered a speech in Regensburg, Germany, in September that denounced Islamic violence and quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor who disdained Islam and its prophet, Muhammad. Adding insult to injury, as far as many Turks were concerned, the emperor was defending Constantinople, cradle of Orthodox Christianity, against the Muslim conquest that gave the city its name today: Istanbul.
Well, the Turks did invade and overthrow the Byzantines. Why shouldn't the Pope verbally defend Constantinople?
Pope is kowtowing to the Turkish government.
In a remarkable gesture, the pope will meet with Bardakoglu, the country's top religious figure, at his ministry, a modern, imposing building on Ankara's outskirts, on the first day of his Turkey visit. Bardakoglu's directorate commands a huge budget and oversees all of Turkey's imams.
Originally, the Vatican expected Bardakoglu to call on the pope at the Vatican Embassy, as protocol would have dictated. But the Turks refused. After a series of negotiations, the pope agreed to go to Bardakoglu. "It is a gesture of goodwill," a senior Vatican official said.
Of course Saudi Arabia is far worse toward Christians. A single church? Just fuggedaboutit.
What's progress for Christians in Turkey? A Protestant group was allowed to open its own church. It took the weight of the EU for Turkey to make such a small pathetic step.
It is EU pressure that has nudged Ankara along in easing some of the restrictions on minorities; for example, a Protestant group in Istanbul has for the first time been allowed to open a church.
Turkey is purported to be the moderate, secular, democratic model for the rest of the Muslim countries. Western expectations are so low for the Muslims that Turkey can get rated as somehow modern and Western in spite of the fact that it isn't.
The Pope has a fairly accurate and realistic take on Islam. Back in 1997 before he was Pope he gave an interview where he discussed Islam. For an excerpt see my post: Pope Benedict Sees Islam Incompatible With Western Societies.
I agree with Lawrence Auster that we should take the path of civilizational defense and separate the West from Islam. We can't assimilate them in our countries. We can not convince them to abandon Islam and Islam itself is simply incompatible with the West as Pope Benedict argues. We aren't compatible. We need a divorce. It is really that simple.
Pope Benedict's September 12, 2006 speech at the University of Regensburg in which he made some comments about Islam ignited Muslim fury as the followers of the so-called "religion of peace" took violent exception to the idea that their religion is anything less than perfect and supreme. The Pope sees the same incompatibility between the West and Islam that ParaPundit has repeatedly pointed out.
Benedict has studied Islam extensively and, in a 1997 interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, dealt generously with the religion.
"There is a noble Islam, embodied, for example, by the King of Morocco, and there is also the extremist, terrorist Islam, which, again, one must not identify with Islam as a whole, which would do it an injustice," the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said.
Still, he added, Islam does not fit in with Western civilization.
"Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything," he said. "There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society."
That article has excerpts from comments that the Pope has made at other times about Islam and is worth reading in full.
That 1997 book-length interview of the Pope (before he became Pope and hence more constrained in his public utterances) and the section about Islam sounds especially interesting. So I did some web digging and came up with a longer excerpt.
I think that first we must recognize that Islam is not a uniform thing. In fact, there is no single authority for all Muslims, and for this reason, dialogue with Islam is always dialogue with certain groups. No one can speak for Islam as a whole; it has, as it were, no commonly regarded orthodoxy.... There is a noble Islam, embodied, for example, by the King of Morocco, and there is also the extremist, terrorist Islam, which, again, one must not identify with Islam as a whole, which would do it an injustice.
An important point, however, is ... that the interplay of society, politics and religion has a completely different structure in Islam as a whole. Today's discussion in the West about the possibility of Islamic theological faculties, or about the idea of Islam as a legal entity, resupposes that all religions have basically the same structure, that they all fit into a democratic system with its regulations and the possibilities provided by these regulations. In itself, however, this necessarily contradicts the essence of Islam, which simply does not have the separation of the political and religious sphere, which Christianity has had from the beginning. The Quran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic....
These comments are far more important and profound than the Regensburg remarks that caused the huge recent flap with Muslims burning churches and Muslim governments lodging diplomatic protests.
The European race has shrunk as a percentage of the total world population going from about a quarter to a tenth. The Muslims sense weakness on our part. At the same time, they still feel threatened by us. The combination has awakened them.
In the cultural situation of the 19th and early 20th centuries, until the 1960s, the superiority of the Christian countries was industrially, culturally, politically and militarily so great that Islam was really forced into the second rank. Christianity--at any rate, civilizations with a Christian foundation--could present themselves as the victorious power in world history. But then the great moral crisis of the Western world, which appears to be the Christian world, broke out. In the face of the deep moral contradictions of the West and of its internal helplessness ... the Islamic soul reawakened. We are somebody too; we know who we are; our religion is holding its ground; you don't have one any longer....
Pope Benedict has a great sense of history. Yes, that is exactly what has happened. The West has a problem of an existential nature. The Muslims are out-reproducing us while also asserting their religious superiority. Our secular leftists would have us believe Muslim anger is our fault. Too many of our religious (e.g. George W. Bush with his Islam as "religion of peace") want to believe that they have a greater bond with Muslims who share a faith in God than with secular Westerns who share values like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Muslims now believe they have the more vigorous religion. Truth enough. Vigorous Jihadists seek to kill us while within their own societies and they keep women in line by being willing to do things like throw acid on the faces of women who do not stay under covers.
So the Muslims now have the consciousness that in reality Islam has remained in the end as the more vigorous religion and that they have something to say to the world, indeed, are the essential religious force of the future.
Here's my very politically incorrect view of why Islam seems more "vigorous": First off, Middle Eastern Muslims are dumber on average than Europeans. So most lack the intellectual capacity for introspection with lots of critical thoughts about their own religion. An intellectually driven reformation is not in the cards. At the same time, lower IQ people have more babies in the modern world. So the Muslims are out-reproducing people of European descent. On top of all that, smarter Europeans have used their smarts to make themselves much more economically successful and powerful. Their greater success and power causes resentment and a burning anger among Muslim males who do not want to compete for women.
Islam codified a version of Middle Eastern desert tribal norms which was enligthened for its time. But those norms and the practice of consanguineous (cousin) marriage are not compatible with Western societies and Western values. Christianity and secular values of the West have far more in common with each other than they do with Islam.
The West should separate itself from Muslim lands and Muslim peoples to a large extent. Do not let Muslims move into the West. For Muslims who have citizenship or residency offer them cash to leave. People in bad marriages get divorced. Cultures and religions that are incompatible should get divorced as well. We can get along better by staying out of each others' lives.
If someone told you that your religion advocates violence or spreads itself using violence would you react by blowing up houses of worship of other religions? Muslims are attacking churches in Gaza Strip and West Bank in protest at Catholic Pope Benedict's comments about Islam.
Churches in the West Bank and Gaza were damaged in several shooting and fire bomb attacks over the weekend, in response to the words of Pope Benedict XVI criticizing the Muslim religion. Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Gaza to protest.
On Saturday, a Greek Orthodox Church in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City and four other churches in Nablus were attacked by Palestinians wielding guns, fire bombs and lighter fluid. At least five fire bombs hit the Anglican Church and its door was later set ablaze. Smoke billowed from the church as firefighters put out the flames. The fire bombings left black scorch marks on the walls and windows. No injuries were reported from those incidents.
On Sunday two more West Bank churches were set on fire as the wave of Muslim anger over the Pope’s comments continued. A small church in the village of Tubas was hit with fire bombs and was partially burned. In Tulkarm a stone church built over 170 years ago was torched, completely destroying the inside. According to local officials, neither were Catholic churches.
Writing in the Sunday Times of the UK Rod Liddle notes Muslims think they have the religion of peace but think they have the right to respond violently to anyone who denies their claim.
You can bet your life that by the time you read this, some Catholic priest toiling away in a godforsaken, dusty hellhole — Sudan, perhaps, or Turkey — will have been smacked about a bit, or had his church burnt down or been arrested without charge. The Pope should have been aware that Islam always reacts to western allegations that it is not a peaceful religion by mass outbreaks of vituperation, denunciation and acts of jihadic violence.
That this is a paradox seems not to be even remotely recognised by many Muslims. Commenting on the Pope’s speech, Tasnim Aslam, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani foreign ministry, came out with this little piece of doublethink beauty: “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.”
We should keep these people out of the West.
Some of the Muslims demanding an apology from the Pope are hardly examples of moderation and tolerance.
The murderous Muslim Brotherhood was the first out of the blocks, demanding that all Islamic countries cut their ties with the Vatican. The “liberal and moderate” Islamic scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (pro death penalty for homosexuals, female circumcision, suicide bombings against Jews and other similarly tolerant stuff) has insisted the Pope must apologise. Soon the placards will be out, the effigies, the foam-flecked demonstrators and attacks by adolescent suicidal nutters.
The Pope's forthcoming trip to Turkey may be cancelled by the Turks. Liddle suggests the Pope should demand the Turks stop mistreating Christians and also allow Muslims to convert to other religions. I agree.
A subtle and astute politician, perhaps Benedict should apologise for having caused offence — and then demand by way of reciprocation that Turkey — Islam’s democratic representative in the West — return to Christian denominations the land it has confiscated from them, allow the Christian churches to open seminaries (which they are barred from doing), make it easier to build new churches, and lock up Turks who terrorise priests. And maybe allow Turks to convert from Islam to Christianity without fear of official or unofficial reprisal. A fair exchange?
The Muslims do not deserve apologies from Westerners who speak their minds.
The Pope made the mistake of trying to appease the Muslims with an apology. But let us take a look at what he originally said that got the Muslims so bent out of shape. If Islam is a religion of peace then the Muslims who laid seige to Constantinople were bad Muslims.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
So the Pontiff is talking about the thoughts of a Byzantine emperor whose city was under seize by obviously non-peaceful Muslims. The Muslims of course wanted peace to come to Constantinople by forcing the Christian inhabitants of the city to submit to Muslim rule and pay a higher rate of taxes than Muslims pay. That submission is what Islam expects of non-believers who at least are of "the book" (Jews and Christians). Of course, for other non-believers the Muslims can follow the instructions of their Koran and dole out even much harsher treatment such as death.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
Islam was spread by the sword by Mohammed, the founder of Islam. It was also spread by the sword by other Muslim leaders.
A Palestinian Muslim group may try to blow up all the Christian buildings in their territories.
A hitherto unknown group calling itself the Swords of Islamic Right on Saturday threatened to blow up all churches and Christian institutions in the Gaza Strip to protest remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
The group, which claimed responsibility for a shooting attack on the facade of a Greek Orthodox church in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City on Saturday, said it would not accept an apology from the pope.
On Saturday, four other churches in Nablus were also attacked by Palestinians wielding guns, firebombs and lighter fluid.
They'll peacefully destroy churches.
And for many conservatives here, fearful of terrorist attacks in the name of Islam and rising Muslim immigration in Europe, the remarks of the pope — despite his own denial that he meant to criticize — amounted to a rare public airing of a delicate concern many of them share: whether, in fact, Islam is at the moment especially prone to violence.
Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, said Saturday that the comments amounted to “an opening, a positive provocation, and so for this reason he is a great pope, with a great intelligence.”
I'd love to see the Europeans and Americans have a more honest discussion about the nature of Islam.
Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci recently died. Fallaci was not shy about speaking her mind on the nature of Islam and for this European governments persecuted her.
For four years I’ve been repeating to the wind the truth about the Monster and its accomplices; that is, the accomplices of the Monster who, in good or bad faith, open wide the doors–who, like [those] in the Apocalypse of John the Evangelist, throw themselves at his feet and allow themselves to be stamped with the mark of shame.
I began with “The Rage and the Pride.“ I continued with “The Force of Reason.“ I followed [those] with “Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci,” and “The Apocalypse.” And in each one I preached, “Wake up, West! Wake up!“ The books, the ideas, for which in France they tried me in 2002, accusing me of religious racism and xenophobia. For which Switzerland asked our Minister of Justice to extradite me in handcuffs. For which in Italy I will be tried for vilifying Islam; that is, for an offense of opinion. (An offense that carries a sentence of three years in prison; none of which will be served by the Islamist caught with explosives in his cantina). Books, ideas, for which the “Caviar” left, the “Fois Gras” right, and even the “Prosciutto” Center have denigrated and vilified me, putting me in the stocks together with all who think as I do. That is, together with the sensible and unprotected people who are defined by the radical-chic in their frivolous talk as “the riff-raff of the Right.”
Fallaci felt passionately for Italy and the West and spoke out against our enemies who she was not afraid to name. That puts her above most of our politicians. She will be missed.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey of registered voters from September 8-11, 2006 found most people do not buy George W. Bush's attempt to draw an analogy between terrorism and fascism.
President Bush has compared the war against terrorism to the fight against the Nazis and fascism. Do you believe that this is an appropriate comparison that reflects the danger of the current situation, or an inappropriate comparison that is only being made to justify the Bush policy in the war against terrorism?
Only 35% chose "Appropriate comparison/reflects the current danger". 59% chose "Inappropriate comparison/made to justify the Bush policy". 6% were unsure. So most people aren't gullible rubes on this one. That's gratifying. But 35% are still fooled.
The enemies of liberty come from different parts of the world, and they take inspiration from different sources. Some are radicalized followers of the Sunni tradition, who swear allegiance to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. Others are radicalized followers of the Shia tradition, who join groups like Hezbollah and take guidance from state sponsors like Syria and Iran. Still others are "homegrown" terrorists -- fanatics who live quietly in free societies they dream to destroy. Despite their differences, these groups from -- form the outlines of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology. And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam.
The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.) On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation -- the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism -- the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be: This war will be difficult; this war will be long; and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists and totalitarians, and a victory for the cause of freedom and liberty. (Applause.)
I hope he does not believe what he's saying. I'd prefer that he's just lying to justify the Iraq Debacle in order to save his political hide. But I fear he really does believe his rhetoric.
The big mistake made by Bush and by "Islamo-fascism" label creator Christopher Hitchens is to try to fit Middle Eastern Arab Muslim political beliefs and behavior into a Western ideological framework. Yet another totalitarian ideology? I see this foolishness as due in part to a left-liberal and neoconservative liberal desire to see liberalism as the universal aspiration of all humanity. There is afoot a belief in a form of Liberal Manifest Destiny where it is the destiny of the world for every society to become liberal in character. This is an appealing vision for hardcore liberals because it allows those most liberal to picture themselves as a vanguard. In the univeralist version of liberalism higher status comes from imagining oneself as further along on the same trail that almost everyone else is travelling on. The more people that can be imagined as on the same trail (no matter how far behind most of them are) then the more people one can be ahead of in development. Therefore "advanced" liberals can look down on the less developed from a vantage point of higher status.
But the people who label Muslims (or subsets of Muslims) as fascists do so by ignoring evidence that undermines their own belief in the universalism of liberal values. The result is that the liberals and neocons attempt to place other civilizations into Western categories that obviously do not fit. I argued back in November 2002, Middle Eastern political factions are not motivated by ideology and their behavior is based on ties of blood and faith.
Racially and tribally based regimes predate the creation of modern fascism. Absent a European intellectual influence the Middle East would still have regimes that were centered around powerful families and clan loyalty with identification extending further out into ethnic group and religious identity. Consanguinity is the biggest underappreciated factor in Western analyses of Middle Eastern politics. Most Western political theorists seem blind to the importance of pre-ideological kinship-based political bonds in large part because those bonds are not derived from embrace of abstract Western ideological models of how societies and political systems should be organized. Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations argument is therefore demonstrated by the Western inability to understand societies that do not fit into any recognizeable modern Western ideological political category.
Lawrence Auster quibbles with my labelling of consanguinity as the most important underappreciated factor for understanding the Middle East and he argues that Islam is underappreciated by intellectuals willfully trying to ignore the Muslim elephant in the room (my terminology, not his). Well, at the time I wrote the quote above I naively expected the shock of 9/11 to cause intellectuals to become more honest about Islam. I was wrong. The intellectuals refuse to see the obvious because to admit to the obvious would require admitting that some key tenets of secular liberal faith are wrong.
I see the cousin marriage practice and Islam as mutually supporting. Islam essentially codified the beliefs and values of an Arab tribe of the 7th century. The cousin marriage practiced in Muslim lands today finds a supporting moral code in Islam. The practice is even maintained in urban environments in Western countries with large Muslim populations - see my post Over Half Of Pakistanis In Britain Married To First Cousins.
As for the belief of Bush that we can transform Muslim societies: Over a year ago Larry Auster dug up a quote from a British writer writing in the mid 1930s about the British occupation of Iraq. The Bush Administration is mouthing the same foolishness that was written about the British occupation of Iraq over 80 years ago. Iraq was supposedly firmly on the road to political and social modernity in 1935.
Iraq is moving steadily forward towards the modern conception of the State, with a single judicial and administrative system, unaffected by considerations of religion or nationality. The Millet system [i.e., dhimmitude—not reflected by this ridiculous euphemism!] still survives, but its scope is definitely limited. Even the Assyrian tragedy of 1933 does not shake our faith in the essential progress that has been made. The Government is endeavoring to carry out faithfully the undertakings it has given, even when these run directly counter to the long-cherished provisions of the Sharia Law. But it is not easy; it cannot be easy in the very nature of the case, for the common people quickly to adjust their minds to the new legal situation, and to eradicate from their outlook the results covering many centuries of a system which implies the superiority of Islam over the non-Moslem minority groups. The legal guarantees of liberty and equality represent the goal towards which the country is moving, rather than the expression of the present thoughts and wishes of the population. [Emphasis added.] The movement, however, is in the right direction, and it may yet prove possible for Islam to disentangle religious faith from political status and privilege. [S.A. Morrison, ‘Religious Liberty in Iraq’, Moslem World, 1935, p. 128]
Hope springs eternal.
Why did Sayyid Qutb and other Muslim intellectuals find so much about Western mating practices to get upset about? A reader of Steve Sailer writing to him from Istanbul says the idea of romantic love threatens Muslim men with the need to compete for women with higher status European males and they see this competition as deeply threatening. So ignore all their rhetoric which seeks to dress up their anger in a supernaturally derived code of ethics and look at them as males competing for status and women.
It is no coincidence that the so-called "romantic" norm has evolved among the European Caucasian demography because of the speci