I think he may have missed the memo on Saudi/US relations. But, oddly, no mention of Ted Haggard, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Bill O’Reilly, et al when it comes to Family Values, Culture Wars and hypocrisy.

Also – if someone’s paying him to write this plonk, they should stop. Immediately…

…and if they don’t, Hanson will yell even louder and with much greater frequency.

But his yells go to eleven! It’s one louder, isn’t it?

“This is like that Adam Dunn for Brett Tomko and Mark Hendrickson swap I saw a Dodgers fan suggest once at mlbtraderumors.com, but proposed by Chris Berman broadcasting from inside a noisy sports bar.”

Chris Berman knows nothing about baseball.

LOLz at the mlbtraderumors reference.

http://static.grupthink.com/answer/3/3c728fce8f5d24259b34754c797c303a
?

Maybe we could persuade VD to head to Iraq to enforce these demands.

Chris Berman knows nothing about baseball.

or football… or basketball… hockey… NASCAR… soccer… arena football… hydroplane racing… cricket… Thai kickboxing… rugby… hotdog eating…

Yes, because in America we have a special place for people who are childish/ primitive/ sissy enough to complain about an insulting cartoon:

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/14/ted-rall-is-at-it-again/

there are social and cultural costs and consequences for any who wish to embrace the benefits of modernism.

Indeed there are. In fact, I seem to remember some feller named Thorstein Veblen pointing out that when Germany modernized without paying these cultural costs, it caused problems for everyone. Alas, VDH is no Thorstein Veblen, otherwise he’d realize (as Michael Lind did), that the situation of our “Red States” mirrors fin de siecle Germany as much or more so than does the situation in the Middle East.

That’s it. I’ve had it with these damn muslims too. If they don’t straighten up their act right NOW we’re gonna stop invading their countries, destroying their shit and killing them. Hah! What’ll they do then, huh?

mikey

there are social and cultural costs and consequences for any who wish to embrace the benefits of modernism.

And yet you never hear Republicans shut the fuck up about it. Christ, they think global warming is a ploy developed in the smoke-filled rooms where “Old Money Socialists” and “academics” seduce the AP into promoting their anti-American agenda.

That, of course, is dumber than alchemy.

or football… or basketball… hockey… NASCAR… soccer… arena football… hydroplane racing… cricket… Thai kickboxing… rugby… hotdog eating…

Oh, I dunno… I bet Berman knows a _lot_ about hotdog eating…

“the endless habit in the Middle East of blaming others for self-inflicted miseries”

vs.

“Indeed, even after the five-year withdrawal from Vietnam, the American military took twenty years to regain its own confidence. If we blame a Jimmy Carter for the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, [not relevant here, but also:] the unchecked Cambodian genocide during 1977-79, or the communist infiltration of Central America”

And we (the Hansons) do blame Jimmy Carter.

Self-inflicted, except when Jimmy Carter did it.

While we’re at it, let’s make sure that neither rich nor poor are allowed to sleep under bridges or steal bread, that neither whites nor blacks are allowed to drag an indictee from jail with the implicit approval of local law enforcement and string them up from a tree, and that Anglo-Americans(TM) and Mexiswarthies are both forbidden from using any language except English.

For equality!

Since you want to let it all out, how about shouting about Atlas Shrugs’ latest travail.

Detectives are investigating possible links between the men accused of gunning down two Brooklyn cops and an alleged million-dollar scam at a Long Island auto dealership.

While probing the murder of car salesman Collin Thomas outside the showroom of Universal Auto World in Lawrence, L.I., in January, cops unraveled what they said was a massive scam at the dealership.

Employees at Universal allegedly stole and bought identities, then used the IDs to obtain at least $1.3 million in financing for fancy cars, court records show.
…..

As part of the homicide probe, Nassau County police raided the dealership, owned by auto czar Michael Oshry, and Oshry’s Hewlett Harbor home and seized business records.

Cops found banking records were sent to the house, though the state requires such files be kept at businesses, according to court papers filed in a civil forfeiture action by the Nassau district attorney.

“The dealership knew what was going on,” an investigator said.

Oshry’s lawyer, William Petrillo, said his client “has not engaged in any criminal activity.”

His ex-wife, Pamela Geller, former associate publisher of the New York Observer and a conservative blogger, burst into tears when told her ex is under criminal investigation.

Although listed in business records as a Universal co-owner, she denied it. “I have nothing to do with this,” Geller said.

Sometimes (not often) you have to love the New York Post.

Re “the legitimacy of his gripes”: yeah but. Everyone this side of lunacy thinks Muslims should stop persecuting infidels. It’s as obvious as saying “People should stop doing bad things.”

The purpose of these mantras are not argumentative, however, but incantatory. They are meant to make Hanson feel better. With each iteration Hanson feels his Moral Stature growing. This of course means that all the people who are not yelling at Muslims are much smaller than he, morally speaking, which heightens the intensity of both his ecstasy and his need to increase it.

We might call him a whirling dervish of denial. At this point all I can see is a blur.

Can’t we just say that it takes a lot of booklearning regarding History, Social Studies, Islamologi, Religious Studies, Philosophy and more before you can say what we can blame regarding the state of nations? The assholishness of some western countries or intriniscal flaws in Islam? Only objectivists ignore the fact that people react like humans, not ideals, to the environment. Too many on the left and right do not, yet apply it selectively.

How much damage has America done to nations that happen to be muslim and in different states of unpleasantness and general lethargy today? Had the “muslim world” been christian yet been forced to endure the same treatment throughout history – had it been a better place? Questions worthy of discussion!

Someone should tell Victor David Hanson and the sitzkriegers that just because talk is cheap, there is no reason to inflate the value further…

I also like how Hanson trots out that whimpering, oh-god-the-wogs-are-gonna-kill-me simp Rushdie.

Wingnuts of a feather fly into inchoate babbling rages at the mud people together.

Two of his translators were attacked – the Japanese killed, the Italian wounded – in order to bring a so-so magical realist immigrant novel into their native tongues. Rushdie, on the other hand, evolved into the blitcons’ pet wog, blathering on about how filthy Muslims are and how they’re going to kill and outbreed us and Islamophobia is too kind to them. I wish it had been him instead of the Japanese translator, because he’d have gone out trying to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez instead of that Steyn asshole.

I started reading the first sentence quoted, but even before I got to the end I was distracted by thoughts of coffee and pie. I still don’t know what he said, nor do I care.

I am reminded, though, that both Bush and Cheney are very confident that when the history is written about their Administration, it will depict the two of them as heroic, far-seeing do-gooders. To which I respond, in my thoughts, “Yeah, if Victor Davis Hansen writes that history.”

Actually, if you substitute ‘women’ for ‘Muslims’, he sounds an awful lot like ol’ Bob Carey. Salty and feisty and ready to shake his fist at some people doing some thing somewhere that doesn’t affect him personally.

Now here’s a controversial idea: Muslims should act like civilized human beings. It would be interesting; I wonder when the Enlightenment will occur to them?

Finally, it is awesome how he declares reformation of Muslim society impossible, then demand that the Muslims reform or we’ll have to Get Tough(TM).

Not the most charitable when he comes to ultimatums, is he? I think VDH just wants so hard to be some kind of decadent Roman politician, with the power to command legions to commit massacres without an enlightened press to look over his shoulder. He forgets, I suppose, that in this more enlightened age no one is going to decide the war he helped start was a mistake and come to him with a sword and make diving motions.

PS: The most important thing for Muslim society to do is clearly not to reexamine their attitudes toward women or establish a political dyadism beyond Baathist-versus-Islamist; it is to greet us as liberators when we roll into town screaming about Mahomet being a child-molesting demon.

Ave Nero!

re. GB: The thing is really that the Enlightenment has to be internal. I’m rooting for it in the Muslim world myself; within our lifetimes, although probably later on in them, we will face a Muslim world with two billion people with a newfound eagerness for the cleansing light of science and reason.

Every time we go into a Muslim country and bomb the shit out of them, convincing a million widowers, widows, and orphans that the one with the right answer is the Koran-beating fanatic up the street, we set the process of an Islamic enlightenment back by anywhere between years and decades.

If we wanted to help the Muslim world, the best thing to do would be to tolerate their growing pains – we don’t send teenagers to prison for five years for getting into a fight – and offer financial and material support to the forces of enlightenment in the Muslim world.

Right now, the people we’re offering f&m support to are, surprise surprise, oil magnates and ‘Westernizers’ (read: agreeable kleptocrats), and we make matters even worse by pouring orders of magnitude more support into efforts to blow the shit out of major Muslim countries.

We couldn’t be fighting harder against the Enlightenment in the Muslim world if we tried, and VDH is demanding that we fight it harder – after all, it’d be unfair to let the wogs modernize. They’re so backwards!

There are ultimately two kinds of hate. If someone does something sufficiently foul to you or your loved ones, say burns down your house and mails you your dog’s head, you hate them. You didn’t hate them before they did this thing, you hate them now, and the reason you hate them is clear to all involved.

The other kind of hate has no reason. You hate them because they are different from you, because you are scared of them, because they are a different color, eat different foods, speak a different language and observe different cultural norms of behavior.

In modern times, we recognize that hate without reason is bigotry, and it is frowned upon. So now, we see people like Hanson, who hate for all the old tribal reasons, trying to provide a window-treatment of justifications for their hatred. They try to show us the REASONS for their hatred. They are betrayed by the indiscriminately broad targeting of their hatred.

9/11 made people fearful and suspicious of muslims, but truly was not enough to make people hate every muslim in the world. That was a pre-existing condition. But that would not prevent them from exploiting the attack as a way to more effectively demonize muslims. And we are seeing it more and more. Loathsome…

mikey

If we blame a Jimmy Carter for the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan…

Whoa, Nelly! If we are going to blame Jimmy Carter for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, then we are going to have to credit Jimmy Carter with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Sorry, Ronnie Raygun!

P.S. I’m still going to keep calling it National Airport.

I wonder if he views the CIA-orchestrated coup against democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 as a “self-inflicted miser[y]”?

Alec,

I completely agree with you that our government is mishandling the problem of Islam. This includes 1) starting an illegal and pernicious war with Iraq and 2) providing financial and material support to some of the worst people in the world, especially in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. I further agree with you that the appeal of the core of Islam, which is to struggle with the outside world until it is brought into Islamic submission, is strengthened by things like the war in Iraq.

Where we part ways is in our patience in waiting for an Enlightenment to happen. Islam as an ideology simply cannot co-exist peacefully with civilized peoples. Rather than give you examples of this, which are legion, a better exercise would be to try and find a counter-example of a large Muslim population living peacefully and justly with non-Muslims. I don’t mean where the Muslims are a minority, like in the States, I mean where they are in significant numbers.

You pose an analogy of teenagers getting into fights, and say that we don’t hand out five year prison sentences for such a thing. (Nevermind for now the irony of this statement next to the recent news story of a young man facing four years in prison – right here in the States – for the “crime” of desecrating a Koran. I’ll get back to that.) I propose that a truer analogy is that of a sociopathic forty year old with an AK-47. We have to take away the weapon before we can talk about reform.

After all, Muslims have had the example of civilized people for centuries, It’s like saying, “Those folks really need to learn to invent fire” when in fact fire has already been invented. Their societies have been tremendously retarded by their Islamic ideology and there is no excuse for them.

Meanwhile, how many people – from the Phillipines to Nigeria, from the UK to Thailand – have to die while Muslims try to figure a philosophy that happened hundreds of years ago?

AJB: Misery? Why, the Shah was beloved by all. Democracy is a sham!

Golden Boy: “try and find a counter-example of a large Muslim population living peacefully and justly with non-Muslims.”

Lebanon, when free from Israeli and Syrian meddling.

And how about most of these?

http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr140.html

Sub-Saharan African countries have problems, but they don’t result from Muslim-Christian violence. (Except Sudan, but even there it’s secondary to nomads vs. agriculturalists.)

coffee-table… pie-in-the-sky…
These are the hallmarks of a column written shortly before lunchtime, when the noble intellect of VDH was half-devoted to other concerns. By way of contrast, in columns written after lunchtime, he uses more imagery about ‘scotching threats’ and ‘ginning up opposition’.

Agum,

Very interesting – I’ll read that. Thanks.

re. gb:

Where we part ways is in our patience in waiting for an Enlightenment to happen. Islam as an ideology simply cannot co-exist peacefully with civilized peoples. Rather than give you examples of this, which are legion, a better exercise would be to try and find a counter-example of a large Muslim population living peacefully and justly with non-Muslims. I don’t mean where the Muslims are a minority, like in the States, I mean where they are in significant numbers.
That’s pretty narrow, innit? I mean, Muslims are a minority in a great deal of the world.

Indonesia does OK, for the most part, and so does Turkey (their biggest problems, esp. with the entire honor-killing business, are, in fact, with backwaterish Islamists, largely Kurds). Most European countries have less problems with Muslims than their conservatives let on – they’re largely as quiet and hard-working on the average as our Mexicans. There’s a disproportionate amont of crime and violence, but that’s because they’re literally in society’s sewer. Any group in the same position would be the same way.

India prides itself on a well-integrated Muslim group which isn’t a subpolity or anything, although with the rise in BJP (Hindutva, or ‘Hinduness’, as a national ideology) that’s been strained of late. In fact, the typical standard-bearer for the Muslim community in India tends to be fairly secular, even compared to the ‘mainstream’ one.

If you’re looking for first-world countries with a Muslim majority where religious minorities are doing OK, find me a first-world country with a Buddhist majority where the religious minorities are doing OK and we’ll talk.

The situation is just as shitty in places like the Congo, where the only religion of any note is Christianity. It’s an economic problem, not a religious one, and in countries where the economic pressures are less severe so are the social problems. Turkey, for instance, is no better or worse on the grand scale of things than an Eastern European country in a similar economic situation.

You pose an analogy of teenagers getting into fights, and say that we don’t hand out five year prison sentences for such a thing. (Nevermind for now the irony of this statement next to the recent news story of a young man facing four years in prison – right here in the States – for the “crime” of desecrating a Koran. I’ll get back to that.)
The way I was raised, trying to terrorize someone who never did a damn thing to you with their own property makes you scum. I dunno about you. But I’ll get back to that, too.

I propose that a truer analogy is that of a sociopathic forty year old with an AK-47. We have to take away the weapon before we can talk about reform.
Thing is, the Islamists don’t represent a social group in full control of their faculties, as it were. Examine Islamist or at least Shariist groups in Muslim countries – where the ‘Infidel! *blam*’ problem isn’t as pronounced – and you will unanimously find them in the ‘worst’ part of the country. Aceh (in Indonesia) has been in dire economic straits for a long time, for instance. The strongholds of Islamism in even a uniformly poor country like Iraq are typically the equivalent of the South – just like, surprise surprise, the stronghold of Christian dominionism in America is largely the poorest part of the country.

After all, Muslims have had the example of civilized people for centuries,
Whoa-whoa-whoa, hold it, sailor. First and foremost, ‘civilized people’ is pretty nasty. After all, Muslims in the first world are pretty civilized, all things concerned. (Before you go off on a tangent, have you actually met any? The most savage inclination my Pakistani friends typically had was towards cricket.) You say ‘civilized’, I say ‘Napoleon, the Confederacy, Hitler, Stalin…’

We’re a pretty shitty ‘example of civilized people’, on the balance.

It’s like saying, “Those folks really need to learn to invent fire” when in fact fire has already been invented. Their societies have been tremendously retarded by their Islamic ideology and there is no excuse for them.
You’re confusing Islamism for something endemic to the religion. It’d be like treating the Christian-dominionist problem in the South as an inherent flaw of Christianity. It’s not fair, and it’s going to piss Christians on the fence off. Similarly, treating ‘Muslims’ as a problem is going to do a lot to damage the reputation of ‘civilization’ in the eyes of those who need it most.

Meanwhile, how many people – from the Phillipines to Nigeria, from the UK to Thailand – have to die while Muslims try to figure a philosophy that happened hundreds of years ago?

Tell that to the survivors of the OKC bombing?

It’s an economic problem, not one with ‘the Muslims’. That’s a really important hurdle to jump, sir, and until we do we’re going to have a condescending, counterproductive attitude towards the development of a positive social place for Islam.

Any religion is basically OK if it’s allayed by a sturdy belief in the necessity of secularization. Turkish women, the imbroglio from the Islamist loons aside, enjoy more freedom than their neighbors – either in Iraq or in Bulgaria.

There’s nasty stuff in the Koran, but there’s nasty stuff in the Bible and the Dao de Jing, too. ‘Enlightenment’ is largely picking and choosing in such a way as to cancel the nasty stuff out.

And if we’re going to be worrying about disarming sociopaths, we should probably be more worried about the religious nutjobs who currently have their hands on The Goddamn Button. Compared to that, anything A-Q or any other Islamist group has is like firecrackers.

Alec,

I’m not sure that you can make the argument that Muslim violence stems out of poverty. It is well known that the al Qaeda terrorists were middle class (in fact terrorism as a whole, across the globe, seems to be a middle class phenomenon.) Several polls have revealed that it is the Muslims who are more educated and prosperous who are more likely to support terrorism.

However, my argument is more about the systemic illiberalism inherent in Islam. On a different thread I listed the discriminatory laws that Muslims have put in place over non-Muslims, in every country in which they gain ascendance. This illiberalism is backed up by violence, intimidation, and coercion.

India is a great example. 100 million Muslims live in India, and they are the source of all kinds of sectarian strife that you don’t see with other groups. I’m actually a little bit surprised that you picked India as an example; I think it illustrates precisely how violent and unstable large Muslim minorities are.

You ask if I’ve met any Muslims. Alec, I used to think like most of you do, that Muslims were misunderstood and that it was unfair to blame Islam for the excesses of a few fanatics. Then, later in my professional life, I became acquainted with several well-educated, prosperous Muslims, and once they began to open up to me, I was shocked, jaw-droppingly, mind-bendingly shocked by their true feelings about Islam and the West. It’s a long story but that was the genesis of my research into the reality of Islam.

Now I will whole-heartedly agree with you that in order to co-exist with civilized peoples, Islam will need to have the nastier parts plucked out of it. We can agree to call that the Islamic Enlightenment. In the case of Islam, the nasty bits are very close to the core, but that’s the only way forward.

Golden boy. Come out and say it. What is your prescription for ending the vile muslim menace. Come on, big guy. Have you got the stones to say out loud, clearly without weasel words, what you propose to do about the impending global dominations of islamic culture and shari’a law?

You’ve shown up here railing against a population of your fellow human beings a billion strong. You’ve blamed them, demonized them and predicted their victory over the “civilized” world. Do you have the sand to say the words?

mikey

Victor Urban Dance Squad Hanson

As in “Deeper Shade of Soul” or “Demagogue”?

Mikey,

It’s a pleasure to hear from someone so well known in neo-atheist and secular progressive community. I have very clearly stated – in the other thread in which we chatted – what I’d like to see happen. Feel free to take a gander.

The core of Christianity once consisted of the stuff that lead to the Holocaust, GB.

While UBL and his immediate associates are the products of wealth, so are the headmen of the Dominionists here – your Bushes, your Reagans, your megachurch-runners. On the other hand, the foot-soldiers, the ones who tend to be the one to carry bombs – they’re pretty disproportionately poor.

When you have nothing to live for, you have a lot less to lose.

As for Muslims being a source of sectarian strife in India – horseshit. Most of the Muslim ‘strife’ in India is largely reactive, and it’s kind of unfair to talk about angry Muslims in India without mentioning what made them so inexplicably angry. It’d be like talking about all the trouble-making the civil rights movement engineered in the 50s and 60s. They sure as hell made a LOT of trouble, but the problem is that they were spurred on by someone bigger and meaner than they could have ever been.

I’m really not pleased by the ‘co-exist with civilized peoples’ schtick you have going on here. Who exactly are these ‘civilized peoples’? I’m of the opinion that civilization is an ongoing process and a term like ‘civilized peoples’ is a ridiculous oxymoron – you can’t actually have ‘a people’ that is uniformly ‘civilized’.

It’s OK not to like certain things done by people besides you. I don’t like female circumcision or honor-killings any more than you do. But ‘civilized peoples’ versus ‘uncivilized peoples’ is an antiquated way of dealing with the world, and it’s a kind of antiquated that has taken millions of lives.

Your middle-class Muslim acquaintances, to wit, are a part of the same ‘people’ as you. Lumping them into the same ‘people’ as a group who received no education past middle-school (and probably received that much in a madrassa), who had to contend with cholera and scurvy and polio and other diseases Western science had destroyed, and who would consider a yearly income of $1000 prosperity is insane. The only common factor is their religion, and the practice is in all likelihood fundamentally different.

It’s the sort of attitude that mumbled quietly whether or not we could trust Kennedy not to take orders from the Pope – after all, he is a Catholic, and you know how horribly they got along with civilized peoples in the Inquisition.

I think one major thing we can probably agree on, and which would hopefully separate out any out-and-out bigots, is the necessity of developing the standard of living in the Muslim world. Eliminating the specter of hunger, disease, and misery is about basic human decency, not geopolitics – although I’d contend it’d help geopolitics a lot, too.

In the 10th century, when the tables were turned – when Europe was a backwater whose savage inhabitants could not be relied upon not to burn epilepics at the stake and when the Muslim world was the last basion of classical learning and science – the same dynamic played out on a much larger scale. The post-Visigothic nobility made a land grab against the fairly liberal and enlightened Iberian emirates an issue of holy war (and then proceeded to expel the unrepentant Jews and slaughter the converted). The Europeans even went and friggin’ invaded the ‘holy land’, sacking village after village and town after town, slaying Muslims by the thousands for no better evident reason than religious fervor. (The influx of wealth and technology after the Crusades – surely a coincidence.)

In the long run, Napoleon, Hitler, et al aside, the perpetrators of the Crusades, the Reconquista, and sundry other atrocities against what was pretty much Civilization at the time got their shit together – surprisingly, without the benevolent but forceful hand of Islam to guide them – and now we have penicillin and lethal injections.

And by the way, the places where Islam remained present – there was even talk in the Ottoman empire along the ‘civilizing’ dynamic, with people willing to obey the Empire as necessary and perhaps even convert taking high positions in the Imperial court – turned into shit-holes like the Balkans (no offense, but seriously – you find a better word to describe how shitty they’ve been since). Indonesia and the like will probably be the leadership of the Muslim enlightenment, precisely because we’re not trying to bomb them to smithereens in the name of ‘civilization’. Meanwhile, places where we are Very Concerned about bringing Enlightenment to the uncivilized peoples – Iraq, say – will devolve into Balkan-style shitholes, violently racist and reactionary.

Still won’t come out and propose your “final solution”, eh? Y’know, your cowardice is matched only by your ignorant fears…

mikey

Alec,

I’m not here to defend Christianity, for one very good reason – I’m not Christian. I’d make a pretty poor advocate, and that goes for any other religion too.

I agree with you that raising the standard of living in Muslim countries will go a long way towards reducing the level of violence there. After I wrote my response to you, I started thinking that my response was inadequate in that it doesn’t address the mass movements in places like Nigeria and Indonesia. You addressed this and you are quite right – the foot soldiers probably are motivated from a sense of nothing to lose.

However, your history lesson aside, the question arises of what we do while we wait for the Islamic world to reform itself and remove the most objectionable of its doctrines. Even here in the States we have absurd supremacist claims by Muslims being worked through our legal system. I am very pleased to see, though, that you aren’t trying to pretend that there is not a problem – it is a start.

Oh, and Mikey, can you be quiet for a little while? The grownups are talking. Thanks.

Oh, and Mikey, can you be quiet for a little while? The grownups are talking. Thanks.

Clearly you’ve not followed this site and mikey’s contributions here. Mikey is more of a grownup than you’ll ever be, you miserable bed-wetting fuckwit.

Hmph, I see <q> is yet another Preview Pretender.

We do have the occasional Muslim in America who tries to pretend his or her religion is above the law.

On the other hand, in many states a majority of the electorate wants to put the Ten Commandments – their version of them, mind you, not the heathen Papist or Jew version – in the courts.

I think the problem with focusing on Islamic theocracy as Westerners is exactly that. I was raised Catholic, bummed around the rest of Christianity as a youth, and am an atheist (and a fairly evangelical one) now. But throughout my entire time with Christian congregations, I’ve seen ideas we regard as intolerable impositions coming from Muslims being treated as mainstream theology in Christianity.

It’s nice to worry about the theocrats in Iraq, but we’ve got theocrats living next door, and they’re heavily armed and extremely well-organized. I think the latter of those is a pressing enough problem we should probably leave the other theocrats be. After all, it’s going to be pretty nasty if we manage to miraculously bring the Muslim world into a secular golden age — and our domestic Christianist phalange takes over and fulfills its lovely promises regarding the Hedjaz and radioactive glass.

To rely on scripture – one that is, nonetheless, impressed heavily into the consciousness of English literature – you are demanding we fish after the mote in the Muslim world’s eye with a scalpel even though the beam in our own is digging into our brain. (Literally – there’s a reason the biggest strides in stem-cell research of late have been made in places like South Korea.)

If we’ve eliminated the Dominionist threat, made poverty a thing of the past, and ensured that people have a more or less equal shot at things – if we have, in fact, achieved ‘civilization’ ourselves – and then the Muslims are still violent and uncivilized to the point that they have no hope of modernizing without outside intervention – then yes, we can talk about getting that mote out. In the meanwhile, though, we have MUCH more pressing concerns, and making Islamists #1 looks more than a little mean-spirited and dishonest in light of that.

It’s like, and I’m really hoping you’re as disgusted by this as I am (because if not, I don’t know how much hope there is for us having a civilized conversation) – that entire Shirley Q. Liquor controversy.

One-paragraph summary: Some fairly mainstream (among Libbies, anyway) Libertarian does this blackface mammy drag act mostly in the South, attracting large, almost exclusively white audiences to watch him pick on their social and economic inferiors’ superstition and bad habits. When he tried to break out of the South, the parts of the gay community that aren’t horrible assholes (there’s a a pretty unfortunately big section of it who are) got infuriated and tried to keep him out at all costs, because he’s an awful, awful bigot.

His excuse, and the excuse of those apologizing for him, is that he wants black people to come to terms with the problems in their ‘culture’. Which would be nice and all – if he were black. But he’s not.

And you aren’t, unless I’m horribly mistaken, a Muslim. There’s a lot that is very difficult to say without being an insider – otherwise, it’s instinctively taken as an insult, a threat, or whatever. Criticizing female circumcision, when it’s not obviously a wedge, is about as far as you can get as a Westerner in the parts of Africa it’s practiced. Flying in and demanding that they change major parts of their religious practice is going to piss them off, and we all know that.

They’ll want to change those parts on their own – nobody wants to be a bunch of superstitious, violent assholes (witness the Enlightenment here, where the Christian world gradually abandoned the parts of Scripture taken to justify monarchy, slavery, and later misogyny and anti-Semitism). But make the right side look like a bunch of preachy, condescending outsiders, and you’re doing harm, not good.

I mean, look at Poland. Among the Polish far right, the failed experiment of the Soviet Union includes not only communism, but the trappings of democracy and liberalism. (A conservative faction of the Sejm has been trying to elect Jesus King of Poland.) There were those in the Soviet sphere who meant well – who wanted to spread progress (and believe me, the Soviets had a boner for ‘progress’ like you would not believe – Marxists are nothing if not fervently driven by a belief in a forwards-moving history), but ultimately they fucked the pooch. Let’s not repeat that, please.

Urban Dance Squad? Jesus, that takes me back …

history lesson aside

Well now, there’s a big part of your problem, Goldener Knabe: you seem more than content to wax analytical in the absence of valid historical context. Other portions of your problem have been articulated well here by others.

Your notion of yourself and others like you (one shudders) as “civilized,” as compared to everyone who adheres to, or was born into, or otherwise is identified as belonging to Islam as somehow less than civilized, is not only illogical, not only nauseating, but is sheer madness.

Oh — and didn’t your parents ever teach you not to show up to someone’s home uninvited and ineffectually insult the hosts? It’s really quite uncivilized.

Geez, Golden Bigot, you send your tinfoil hat out to the cleaners?

If I believed what you claim to believe, I’d feel like I’d have to DO something, y’know? I mean, you clearly feel that muslims are your enemy, that they are a threat to your way of life, and you clearly want to help other people to feel that way. I cannot believe you think we should sit back and do nothing. You have to have some idea of how to deal with this “crisis”, don’t you? I mean, it wouldn’t make sense, given your level of frantic hysteria about the horrors of “islam”, to just allow them to take over everything, right?

So what is it? Put them in camps? Gas them? Just detain them forever, maybe use them for slave labor?

Seems to me you’re fear of saying what you’d do about it is maybe related to the reaction to people who spout eliminationist rhetoric you’ve noticed before?

OK, lemme toss you a softball then, since you lack the courage of your own convictions. Give us 150 words on how you’re different from the grand wizard of the ku klux klan – other that the obvious, you hate a different group…

mikey

mikey:

Sounds like you’re taking the same attitude with him you suspect him of taking with the Muslims. :-p

(I’m normally a far, far bigger shithead, but I felt like being polite so as to make a point; I think GB is a well-meaning person in error owing to an honest mistake, as many people I have met are.)

I understand kicking people around a bit if they have an unquenchable, uncorrectable hatred for all that is good, but people can change. This is pretty much what the fundamental belief of progressivism represents.

Although it is fun to call people Nazis. 😛

no more apologies for things like our insensitive cartoons or excuses for their insane anger against novelists.

yeah if there is one thing the Right is known for, it’s tolerating cartoon and books they don’t like.

Sorry Alec. Nope. Not buying it. I’ve seen enough hatred in my life. I’ve also seen the results of hatred of one group by another. If you’re uncertain, that result is typically torn bodies of innocent women and children, refugees, disease and a generational hardening of attitude that lends the additional horror of permanence to the hatred. I’m not going to tolerate it. I won’t listen to it in the world, and I won’t let it stand here. You might think the fucker’s hatred is grounded in an “honest mistake” or something, but hatred is not to be tolerated, ever.

Nope.

mikey

Alec,

No, I never heard of Shirley Q Liquor. What you describe sounds absolutely grotesque. I’ll have to look this up.

Here’s a question though (I realize I could look this up at the same time): is anyone placing Shirley Q Liquor under arrest for insulting black people? The answer is no, but it is exactly that kind of exceptionalism that Muslims here and everywhere are seeking, and that I strongly object to.

Mikey,

It seems like you are the one advocating violence. I’m actually asking for tolerance and free speech, the very things that Muslims attack the moment they have any influence. What I hate is the illiberalism, the intolerance, and the fascism inherent in Islam. You are deliberately ignoring this, and directing all the bile in the world at me won’t change that one bit.

Umm, ok, sure. You say they have a vile ideology, and you are encouraging them to spread that ideology around, and you are absolutely tolerant of their wish to do so? Wow. I really didn’t get that from your posts…

mikey

Oh, and violence seems to have been part of my life for nearly forty years. I don’t necessarily advocate it in every case, but I find it has proved useful on occasion…

Mikey,

Yes, I think that Muslims should be able to practice their religion in this country. I find Islam to be vile, despicable, and illiberal, but hey – Scientologists are just as litigious, Mormons have a back story just as ridiculous, neoNazis are just as violent, etc. My tolerance stems from my support of our Constitution and my desire to see our American values upheld.

However, I will not tolerate any claims of supremacy from these groups. If you dumped a swatzika into a toilet, would the NYPD arrest you for felony hate crime? No, and yet Muslims have established enough of a climate of intimidation and exceptionalism that this is now true here in the States.

Mikey, violence has not been any significant part of my life. If you want to intimidate me, you probably can. Congratulations.

Siding with Mikey on this one. I haven’t seen any other interactions with Golden Boy, and I think I’m glad. I’d not be able to keep my food down if he was worse than this.

GB , look, people have practically trolled this past you without naming it, and you have failed to take the lesson. So let me give it to you simple like. Can you think of any other group over the last two hundred years that was subjected to the same kind of rhetoric as you’re putting out? Dangerous. Supremacist. A source of great strife. Cast in contrast with “civilized peoples”. Criminal. Keepers of “objectionable” practices. Too great a threat to let be, too useful to destroy outright. C’mon, you’re likely an American. Surely you can come up with ONE cogent, powerful example for comparison.

Y’know, I’m not confident you’ll comprehend me, so let me just give it to you. You might just see how ugly your ideas about Islam is if you just substitute the word “Black” or “Negro” or some similar flavor (go for the spice!) for Muslim in your comments above.

Now I suspect you’ll reject that out of hand (probably for some form of “but ethnic minorities can’t stop being ethnic”). If you do, fine. I’ll have done my part to point out your path to you as you stumble around in the dark. It’s your choice whether to proceed down that road of good intentions. Just remember people tried to tell you where it led.

The answer is no, but it is exactly that kind of exceptionalism that Muslims here and everywhere are seeking, and that I strongly object to.

Well, if he were taking it into the streets, knocking large black women down and shouting ethnic slurs at them, that might be a horse of a different color – specifically, a horse of that lovliest of colors, red-hate-crime-orange.

The difference between something like the Skeptic’s Annotated Koran (which see) and what transpired with the college student is around the same. The young man saw fit to steal and vandalize someone’s property. It’s not just a matter of speech; the person whose Koran got flushed can no longer, if they ever could, take security in the safety of their belongings and that they hold dear.

See, that’s where the line goes between iffy stuff and Hate Crimes – hate crimes are actively intimidatory, stuff like spraypainting swastikas on synagogues/mosques/etc. and stealing and vandalizing people’s holy books. The Koran-flushing was an effort to intimidate someone as a Muslim and Muslims in general by explicitly thumbing his nose not just at Islam, but at something beyond that: people practicing it.

The intent isn’t to denigrate Islam or the conventional view of Islam, because that can be and is done without deliberately terrorizing and antagonizing other people. The intent is to make sure the Muslims know they are not safe – it could as easily happen to them. Doing nothing to the man who did this is like saying they have it coming for being a member of some kind of minority. A fundamental part of democracy is protecting minority groups; tyranny of the majority is as bad as any other kind.

I wouldn’t, and I don’t think most of the Muslims you treat as a unified group would, want the kid persecuted if it were a matter of him buying a Koran and desecrating it. It would be his and he would be free to do with it as he wished. Doing it in public would be iffy, because then you could make a case that it’s meant to implicitly threaten Muslims. (This is what your religion means – you’re not welcome here; we shit on you.) But he stole someone’s holy book and desecrated it. It is not free speech but vandalism we’re dealing with here; the Koran is in the freaking public domain. If he really wanted to do what everyone’s claiming he was doing he could have printed out a few goddamn Suras for $.10 at a public library and pissed on them.

I’d have the same reaction if he stole someone else’s Bible or anything similar. I don’t hold the Koran in any reverence whatsoever, but the person he stole from did and he knew that, which strongly suggests it was the person – and the people who they represented – he wanted to get at, not the religion itself. What kind of shithead does something like that? Is it really a productive use of your reputation to support that kind of asshole behavior?

Also, I’m insulted as a man of letters by the comparison to Mormonism. They have a Skeptic’s Annotated Book of Mormon too, and it is nothing so much as really, really awful Bible fan fiction. Say whatever you will about Mohammed, and I’m certain you do, but he was a much better writer and scholar than that greasy asshole Smith. 😛

Book of Mormon, Bible fanfic == full of win.

Alec,

I agree that the young man’s action was juvenile; I wouldn’t do something like that myself. The initial charge against him was a misdemeanor property crime. It was only after CAIR agitated for harsher penalties that he was charged with felony hate crimes. It is clear that CAIR believes they have won a victory here by criminalizing insults to Islam.

I am worried that you think that desecrating a Koran in public is “iffy.” Do you think the KKK should be allowed to parade down Main Street? If so, why is insulting Islam in public iffy? This is a very slippery slope you are on, and I’m interested as to why.

Snowwy, your analogy is ridiculous. There are some things that Alec has brought up that concern me a bit, but equating ethnic discrimination with *criticizing* religious supremicists is ludicrous.

Awww, fer the love of….

At least Adam Yoshida was honest.

This idiot is the worst of both worlds. A cowardly, ineffectual, eliminationist troll.

Shit….

mikey

simba: It’s true, though. The way Smith wrote the BoM is the way American evangelicals believed and believe to this day that the Bible reads. 😛

GB: I’m arguing that what he did isn’t juvenile but a damn hate crime specifically because it was an effort to target his quarry specifically as a Muslim and implicitly threaten Muslims as a group. They are a minority, they routinely deal with discrimination like any other minority (more so in areas where the belief persists that they’re all violent terrorists), and when you attempt to terrorize a minority with an act of violence against person or property you are commiting a hate crime. That is, like, the textbook definition there, and unless you’re denying that hate crimes are at all valid or that they don’t apply to Muslims for some reason, what he did was one and would have been one even if CAIR hadn’t stepped in. As a matter of fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that him getting off with a misdemeanor property crime for a hate crime would have been a miscarriage of justice, like a lyncher being charged for manslaughter.

The reason I say it’s ‘iffy’ is because of the status of the Koran as an increasingly ethnic signifier. If it were to happen in Europe, where ‘Muslim’ is almost entirely racialized, it would unquestionably be a hate crime.

The Koran isn’t a purely religious instrument. In this context, its religious context was secondary to its social context, which is as an identifier for a group the perpetrator did not like.

I don’t like religion, I don’t like any religion, and as long as an attack on a religion is just on a religion I’m OK with that. But it’s almost impossible to physically degrade the Koran and separate that from a specific symbolic ethnic degradation.

‘Insulting Islam’ in public isn’t iffy, and I didn’t say it was. What is iffy is taking something that serves as a symbolic representative of a human group – a group that but for the lottery of birth you could as well have belonged to – and physically assaulting it. It’d be like if the Klan, while marching down Main Street, burned the hated Jew and Negro in effigy. It’d not only be as repugnant as attacking an ethnic group always is, but it’d also be specifically threatening and then it’d cross into the domain of hate speech.

Hate speech law might seem like a serious imposition on the first amendment, but it’s actually a lot clearer-cut than people like to make out distinguishing between actual exercise of free speech and chest-beating bigotry. This is an instance of someone symbolically attacking another person and the minority group he represented in order to cow them into terror and silence.

The CAIR doesn’t believe that they have won a victory by criminalizing insults to Islam. What they want is for Muslims to be treated as the minority group they are, and I think that’s reasonable. If you don’t…

mikey: Even if he is, I think I owe it to whoever might be watching and think he has a point (him, Christopher Hitchens, any other member of that genre) to deflate it.

I do have better things to do, though, so I won’t be at it all day.

GB, your comparisons are off. Of course the KKK can parade down main street — just as you and your friends can get a permit and hold a parade against the supremacy of Islam. But when someone from the KKK (or wherever) steals someone’s private, sacred property and destroys it in a specifically disrespectful and public way in order to intimidate and frighten the owner of the property . . . then yeah. That’s a crime. You really can’t see that? The stupid Koran-flusher was not, as you insist, persecuted for voicing his opinions. He was arrested for stealing and destroying someone else’s property — and yes, the stakes are higher because he did it with the intent to intimidate someone based on his religion.

How dare an act of vandalism be blown up into some sort of “hate crime.”

Alec,

I find it disturbing that you are willing to cede special privileges to Muslims in America. Somehow you are conflating tossing a Koran in the toilet with actual, violent acts. Frankly I am surprised that you believe this.

A hate crime is necessarily a crime of intent, which essentially makes it a thought crime. Who gets to interpret the intention of the thought criminal? Why, the purported offended party of course! This is a lever by which Muslims intend to intimidate Americans and anyone else who believes in free speech.

Alec, you’ve essentially set up a scenario whereby anyone who insults Islam in public would be committing a hate crime. There is no protection from this; enough Muslims could be found to say that they were offended by any such display to qualify for the criteria that you laid down. It is sad that you are happy to see the sacrifice of a young man who pulled a juvenile stunt in order to satiate the hunger for Muslims to prove their supremacy. I’m not sure what to say in the face of such an illiberal opinion.

“the very things that Muslims attack the moment they have any influence. What I hate is the illiberalism, the intolerance, and the fascism inherent in Islam.”

By the blessed Dawkins that’s an ignorant and bigotted generalisation; As an atheist myself, I don’t think any Faith is rational, but you must be living in your own arrogant and narcissitic bubble to have not noticed that there are millions of people who have Faith but NOT a doctrinaire approach to life. And that includes millions of Muslims…. quite a few of whom own the late night shops that sell you the things supposedly proscribed by the Quran. Yet you walk around, with blind eyes completely unable to see the reality of the very streets you walk, and tell yourself that because you’ve a head stuffed full of fancy words, your shamefully simplistic and media driven understanding of the world should be worthy of respect. After all, don’t you try and express it eloquently? And maybe you do, but it’s still trying to make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.

ALL Islam is inherantly Fascist? Really? Comparing racial and genetically based, State controlled Corporatism with spiritually justified Globalism and anti-materialist purism? Just because both have a violent extreme? You honestly believe that passes as insightful comment? Then you’ll never get respect here, because that kind of thinking is completely unworthy of it.

No, if you want to actually prove you are worthy of debating, start using some genuine logic, and start doing some genuine research; Alec has just linked you to the Skeptics Annotated Bible. Go there, and click any particular category you feel like; Let’s say… Intolerance. Now go and do the same for the Skeptics Annotated Bible. Compare Apples to Apples, and not Oranges. And you’ll find that the original Doctrine for BOTH Faiths are incoherant, violent, intolerant, pretty much anything you care to mention. Both Old Testament and New. The “Fascism” you decry is “Inherant” in Christianity too. And yet you specifically claim it’s a problem unique to Islam. Would you care to try again?

May you never have to police up the pieces, Alec. Because when you do, it has a powerful effect on your level of tolerance for bullies and haters. A ten year old kid hit with thirty rounds of 7.62 from a minigun is a pathetic, horrendous sight. And when you consider how unnecessary it is, and the voices of demonization that led to that tragic crime, well, you tend to get a little twitchy about the talkers, y’know?

I’m an atheist, sure, but even if I’m wrong about that, I’m all done. I’ve broken all ten commandments, thoroughly, completely and repeatedly. This gives me a certain, well, freedom of action that allows me to take an umcompromising position about thugs like the Boy here.

See, the criminals are not the trigger-pullers on the front line. Eleven Bulletstops get used for the greater goals. The criminals are the voices of hate and immoderation that cry for the demonization of people that results in killing, rape, ethnic and sectarian cleansing and all the horrors that go with it, in vietnam, in sudan, in iraq, everywhere. People need to stop the hatred. And I’ll take my oar and pull. Hard. You’re gonna have to live with folks like me, golden egg, and we’re not going to let you demonize muslims, because we know where that path leads. You’ve already got blood on your hands. Trust me youngster. You don’t want more…

mikey

Ooops, Annotated Quran first, then Bible natch…. not two rounds with just one of incoherant, violent books. Damnable typos.

Alec,

I find it disturbing that you are willing to cede special privileges to Muslims in America. Somehow you are conflating tossing a Koran in the toilet with actual, violent acts. Frankly I am surprised that you believe this.
Only as much as I cede special privileges to any minority group. And yes, I think that throwing a Koran in a toilet is a lesser crime than, say, physical assault, but it’s a difference of degree, not of kind – they both involve a conscious decision to demonize and terrorize.

A hate crime is necessarily a crime of intent, which essentially makes it a thought crime. Who gets to interpret the intention of the thought criminal? Why, the purported offended party of course!
This is actually why hate crime laws exist, actually. If it weren’t for those laws, taking justice for hate crimes would be the responsibility of the offended party rather than the state. As it stands, the state – a neutral adjudicator – is the one who interprets the intention of the ‘thought criminal’. What you are challenging is not the ability of the offended party to interpret the intention behind the hate crime but the ability of the offended party to even take a case for a hate crime to court. That’s absurd; they at least deserve a day in court for a judicator of the facts (whether the judge or the jury) to determine whether or not the crime was motivated by hate and intended to terrorize.
This is a lever by which Muslims intend to intimidate Americans and anyone else who believes in free speech.
It’s a lever by which the state intends to intimidate those who would abuse free speech. That is why hate crime laws have to be very careful, otherwise they impinge upon free speech. But as I said, CAIR is not trying the damned case here; you implying that they are is fundamentally dishonest if you’ve so much as seen a freaking episode of Law and Order. (BUH BUH)

Alec, you’ve essentially set up a scenario whereby anyone who insults Islam in public would be committing a hate crime. There is no protection from this; enough Muslims could be found to say that they were offended by any such display to qualify for the criteria that you laid down.
That’s for the courts to decide, isn’t it? We live in a nation of laws, and if the laws produce miscarriages of justice they will be amended. You’re treating this as summary vigilante justice; unlike the jackass with the toilet fetish, the government is obligated to carefully consider the facts before jumping to action.
It is sad that you are happy to see the sacrifice of a young man who pulled a juvenile stunt
If the ‘juvenile stunt’ had been the burning of a cross, would your opinion remain as generous?
in order to satiate the hunger for Muslims to prove their supremacy.
I think this speaks for itself. You honestly seem to believe that a group comprising less than a percent of the population somehow exercises supreme power over the courts and the laws and are not only adequately served justice in which shit like this routinely happens but who are actually flaunting it.

I am very sorry you feel that way. It must be difficult, thinking you are being persecuted by people you will never meet.

I’m not sure what to say in the face of such an illiberal opinion.
I’m not sure which of us is suggesting that belonging to one particular minority deprives one of the protections from abuse usually associated with minority status, or which one of us is cheering on a racist bully.

Once I figure that one out, I’m sure I can tell you all about ‘illiberal’, you pompous bigot.

Kevin,

Yes, those skeptic’s annotated holy books look very interesting. I will take a look when I get a chance. Thanks to Alec for pointing them out to me.

The differences between Judeo-Christianity and Islam are not wholly contained within their scriptures, as you rightly point out. In fact, the Koran heavily plagiarizes the Bible; it would surprising if there were *not* a large number of similiarities.

The departures are in both the theory and practice of the religions. Christianity teaches love and forgiveness; when Christians don’t practice this, they are consciously going against the teaching of their religion. Islam is a violent, supremacist creed; bin Laden is following directly in the footsteps of Mohammed.

Of course, the other major difference is that Christianity has gone through an Enlightenment, and the Muslim world is stuck in seventh century barbarism.

Alec, I’m glad you have such faith in our courts. I prefer not to see people hauled in front of a judge for such charges as insulting religion, but then again you think I’m a bigot for expressing such views (I’ll cheerfully accept the “pompous” tag.) I’ll ignore your insults as I ignore those of the increasingly bizarre Mikey, and ask you this question: Would you support felony hate crime charges against someone who stole a Bible and threw it in the toilet?

See, if I hadn’t been polite with him until he started openly excoriating the hated wog, I wouldn’t have coaxed the modernization cover-talk out of him and I could well have abused a poor undeserving soul with a few misconceptions by accident.

That’s what you Web 2.0 wankers need to learn: patience. You don’t start baiting them for being Nazis until you can get them to salute the Fuhrer first. It’s not as if it’s usually too hard.

I hope this has been instructive.

As for being hauled in front of the courts, that’s how common law justice works: you get indicted for an offense on the force of evidence and the court decides whether you’re guilty or not on the basis of the weight of fact. It’s a pretty sturdy justice system, which is why we use it. And either you know that or you are a fool; either way, this is officially beneath me and I bother with it only because it amuses me.

Again with the ‘insulting religion’ thing. This is not what it is about. It is about attacking an ethnic or ethnicized group. You could at least get your cover story right before you start playing the bleeding heart.

The Bible is not an ethnic signifier for a minority group. Were it a piece of scripture specific and emotionally charged to any largely socially unintegrated group – say, Catholics in Utah or the Deep South – sure. Same goes for the Torah. And the same would be the case for a country where the Bible is representative of a minority group – Japan (Koreans, largely), Turkey (Greeks), etc. This is because terrorizing a minority group is wrong and the state has an interest in punishing people who do, whether or not you happen to like that minority group. Then again, I’m not in the business of making exceptions; that you are, and so casually and aggressively, speaks to the fundamental bankruptcy of your knee-jerk Islamophobia.

Yes, these Muslims look pretty terrorized: http://catholiclondoner.blogspot.com/2006/09/very-rushed-post.html.

Well, Alec, I doubt we are going to reach a consensus here. I have presented a pretty compelling argument that Muslims are beginning to find a way to criminalize insulting Islam in the States, and you’ve presented… well, besides the insults to me, your belief that Muslims deserve special protection and consideration. So I guess we do agree that that is the fundamental issue. I simply don’t think we should surrender to their absurd claims for exceptionalism, and you apparently do.

Throw a Bible in the toilet and that’s fine; throw a Koran in there and you are a felon. Is this really where you are?

Christianity teaches love and forgiveness; when Christians don’t practice this, they are consciously going against the teaching of their religion.

10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

10:14 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
10:15 Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Of course, that’s only the New Testament. The truly heinous stuff – you know, God punishing Israel brutally for incomplete genocide – is largely in the Old Testament. On the other hand:

5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

But I guess that doesn’t count when the people who claim to believe in it aren’t brown, right? It can still be a religion of peace as long as its practicioners aren’t mud people.

Throw a Bible in the toilet and that’s fine; throw a Koran in there and you are a felon. Is this really where you are?

I directly stated the opposite of this. Play affronted liberal all you like, GB, but you’re the one who wants special treatment for Muslims. In this case, you want the world to assume by default they’re acting in bad faith and they’re evil and conspiring against you and your precious kultur.

You’re so damn obvious, that’s the sad thing. You’ve clearly been to college for this shit, because it’s the kind of dumb-ass bushleague bullshit that would have been beaten out of you anywhere else, but you still try and frame the entire discussion about ‘insulting Islam’ when everyone else to say a word on the topic – even me, when I was being charitable and taking you at your word instead of openly reviling you as the hypocrite you are – has acknowledged that insulting Islam is not what is at issue here and that if it were they’d agree with you. Hell, you didn’t even try to prove that it was about insulting Islam instead of demonizing Muslims; the closest you even came was casually writing the whole thing off as a ‘juvenile prank’. You couldn’t be doing this awful, awful shit more ineptly if you tried; there are so many levels on which you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and someday, with any hope, you’ll at least get in touch with one of them – as the saying goes, insh’Allah.

Interesting fact: the Koran is actually more liberal on homosexuality than the Bible. Every claim it makes about gay sex being immoral is on the basis of it being ‘unnatural’; while at the time it was believed that it was, evidence has come to light that animals bugger each other all the time. Once more liberal clerics have the breathing room to come forward, that’ll be one thing they have the ‘civilized’ West beat on.

Another interesting fact: transsexuals in big, bad, evil Iran enjoy better legal protections than their brothers/sisters in most of Europe – and they enjoy them because of a specific theological decision by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Ayatollahs represent a jurisprudent tradition similar to that of the Catholic Church. While each has produced abominations and will produce more, and while each argue from defective, superstitious grounds, they are reasonable, intelligent people and the errors in their ways can be rectified – and will, in time.

It’s an interesting thought, especially when one thinks about how hard we have tried to ignore anything but buck-toothed savagery from the Middle East. There is the occasional glimmer of hope for a better future even from the darkest of places – but only if you aren’t wearing blinders when dealing with them.

Golden Boy-

Thanks for being so very predictable. You couldn’t even take the time to think about it- as I anticipated. When you conflate ALL OF ISLAM (except, of course, when they are properly under our oh-so-benevolent heel) with religious supremacism, I can come to only one conclusion.

You, sir, are a rank and vile bigot, and worthy of nothing but scorn and abuse until you mend your ways.

I’m sure that it is possible to argue honestly and in good faith that hate-crime laws are a Bad Thing (whatever good intentions the legislators may have had). Such arguments are none of my business, and I have enough residual sense to keep my mouth shut, though after a few beers I would no doubt have an opinion on the topic.

In contrast, Golden Boy seems to be arguing that when hate-crime laws are a Bad Thing specifically when they are applied on behalf of Muslims; indeed, such legislation is suddenly the thin end of the slippery slope down to Sharia Law.

OK, that’s more or less what Alec said back at 23:35.

Herr Doktor Bimler,

No, I actually think all hate crime legislation is pernicious, because it is predicated on the intent of the perpetrator and is in essence a thought crime. Hate crime legislation is being misused in this particular instance to criminalize insulting Islam, but I am uneasy with it in all of its forms.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that “golden boy” has never been tied up and dragged behind a pickup truck. Probably can’t even tell you three epithets that were hurled at him in his younger days.

What a surprise…

mikey

Mikey: Me neither. Am suburban white boy; closest to ethnic slurs I ever had to be was bigot grandfather.

I know I’ve got race problems, and I know the dumb animal part of my brain freaks out just a little when I see someone too different from me. The important thing isn’t not having that reaction, of course – it’s knowing the reaction is there and beating the living shit out of it.

I’d also like to make sure that my grandchildren, as much as is possible, live in a world where that dumb animal instinct has nowhere to take them. People need to just be people to one another; it’s a pretty simple goal, but society and its idiot defenders make it so difficult.

As GB demonstrates, ‘thought crime’ is only Orwellian if you use it as such. It is possible to have thoughts which, if translated into action, become criminal.

Hate crimes have nothing to do with ‘thought crimes’, it’s just the hamhanded effort to shut the entire genre of laws down that makes them so. Hate crimes exist to protect minority groups from abuse, because abuse is really, really easy.

You know what, I have criminal thoughts. I’m not immediately comfortable with a lot of people; my old roommate made me uneasy because he was a huge black guy with a fairly thick accent. For Garcon d’Or, it’d be the fact he was a Muslim that freaked him out. But between Nyali and GB, I know who I’d prefer to be stuck in a train cab with, no matter how lily-white the latter’s ass might be. Because once I’ve kicked my subconscious’s ass – which isn’t hard to do, if you’re actually interested in being part of civilization – we’d have a lot more to talk about, the big black architecture student and I, than I would with the courageous young islamophobe behind Door Two.

Alec,

“I have criminal thoughts.”??!! My goodness, I don’t know what happened to you, but please accept my congratulations on your willingness to engage in a Maoist self-accusatory session.

In the meantime, I suppose we’ll both be watching the struggle between those who wish to impose a special superiority in law for Islam and those who fall afoul of their supremacy.

Goldielocks, having drunk too deeply of the product of his sacred cow (hey! Kool-Aid!), refuses to acknowledge that there’s no there there. There’s just no way the self-interest of a majority Christian American nation is going to allow the institution of an Islamic theocracy upon itself.

But he’s gotta beat that drum, boy. Too many people are too unafraid of teh Sceeery Moosleems.

Oh, and about that “intent of the perpetrator” meme? I wonder how our legal system ever tells the difference between justifiable homicide, manslaughter, and murder. They must just throw 20-sided dice or something. For death penalty cases- rochambeau!

Huh, I had thought we had been witnessing that ‘struggle’ since the day Dubya was “Appointed by God’.

No, I actually think all hate crime legislation is pernicious, because it is predicated on the intent of the perpetrator and is in essence a thought crime.

Evidently, the Golden Fleeced has never pondered the distinction between, say, manslaughter and murder. That’s right, its intent. You know, mens rea (“guilty mind”), the ancient Western legal tradition that takes into account what someone intended— what they were thinking, what their motivation was– when deciding both offense and punishment.

Heh, Snowwy beat me to it.

The departures are in both the theory and practice of the religions. Christianity teaches love and forgiveness; when Christians don’t practice this, they are consciously going against the teaching of their religion.

Look at nearly all vocal religious figures in the US: how many of them are preaching love and forgiveness? And how many are inveighing against Those Eeevullll Muslims and how we should bomb the bejeezus out of them?

Islam is a violent, supremacist creed; bin Laden is following directly in the footsteps of Mohammed.

Pig’s. Fat. Arse. Islam is no better or worse than Christianity or Judaism. Neither in theory or practice.

Of course, the other major difference is that Christianity has gone through an Enlightenment, and the Muslim world is stuck in seventh century barbarism.

This might surprise you a little, but much of that Enlightenment actually came from the Islamic world in the first place. The Islamic world was into science, medicine, poetry, etc, while Christendom was still pissing in their own trousers (quite literally).

And, of course, there’s the vast difference between the behaviours of the Islamic and Christian conquerers: in Spain, the Muslim overlords allowed Jews to live unmolested as valued members of society, while the Christians immediately drove them out and/or started killing them. During the time of the Crusades, Christian armies would slaughter anyone they came across (many Armenian Christians, for example), and reneged on a promise to spare cities that surrendered (putting them all to the sword). The Muslim armies kept their word once given, refrained from wholesale pillage and slaughter, and allowed citizens of conquered cities to become part of the empire.

Then we come to the 20th century. You constantly complain that the Middle East is backward: do you have any idea of what the West has been doing to it in the last century? It’s bloody surprising there’s anyone left there, in some cases. And both Iran and Iraq were quite modern, at least until they drew the attention of the US.

Lebanon was once a beautiful country, And Beirut was once the Paris of the region: beautiful, cosmopolitan, and extremely modern. Alas, it was not allowed to remain so. Greece, although not Muslim, also attracted the attention of the US shortly after the Second World War, much to its detriment.

I could go on at length, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that (a) Islam is not the “vile ideology” you claim it is, and (b) many of the problems in the Middle East are directly attributable to actions of the US, Britain, France, and Russia.

Question: If someone bombed your house, and you had nowhere to go, so were forced to shelter in the ruins, would you take it kindly when I called you “squalid, filthy, brutal, and uncivilised”?

Think about that.

Just a FYI, “Golden Boy” was the name one of our charming obsessive-compulsive trolls used a year or two ago, either at Eschaton or Kos as I recall. You’ll notice he’s just distorting people’s arguments here, refusing to address any point that doesn’t allow him to slander Islam (spot how he skips the fact that the original Quran was stolen so by default any Bible in exactly the same situation would also result in a crime; notice too he claims that he’s not yet read the annotated notes on either holy book, but instantly goes on to shift his claim to state that it’s irrelevant any because Christianity, which he claims he doesn’t follow, teaches love and blah blah blah…). And in particular, pay close attention to the fact that he keeps trying to claim that “Liberalism” is whatever he thinks, rather than what endless actual liberals keep pointing out to him… Concern Troll? I’d say the odds are pretty high that this is all he is, wouldn’t you?

Incidentally, this post is coming to you from the United Kingdom. Where every day I mix with as many Muslims as Christians. Anyone who claims Islam is a monotheistically violent religion is simply ignoring many of the actual Muslims who exist; after all, it doesn’t matter which Muslim organisation or how vehemently they disown violence, people like “Golden Boy” never, ever believe them, and still insist they are violent at some deterministic level. Just like the deterministic Fascists in fact.

Golden Boy – the link you used earlier doesn’t work but this does. As Joee Blogs says “These were 100 Muslims out of the 2 million (ish?) living in Britain. Thus this is hardly representative of all muslims“. It is hardly representative of any muslims!

Guess where Joee Blogs sources some of his pictures – where else than from a recently tearful ex-Mrs Oshry (aka Atlas Shrugs, aka Pamela Geller).

The bloke with the “Behead those who insult Islam” sign is now in a British prison doing six years along with three of his co-protestors. While British prisons may not be as violent as American prisons, they are certainly not fine examples of inclusiveness.

Islam is being used by many of the West’s lackeys in the Middle East and Asia as an “the opiate of the masses”. If I was living there, I would be protesting about the lack of democracy, the inequality of wealth and the corruption rather than a handful of very unfunny cartoons published by a newspaper that once supported the Nazis in a country well known for its racism.

The Muslim/Ottoman Empire wasn’t a paradise for Jews, but overall they fared better there than in Christendom.

A pretty good antidote to DV8 Hanson is probably the War Nerd (aka “Gary Brecher” not his real name, apparenly) columns in exile.ru, an English-language online magazine about Russia. If you can get past the gleeful Russian triumphalism, which is actually pretty entertaining and sobering at the same time, exile.ru is worth a read. And Brecher enjoys puncturing Hanson not least because Hanson apparently thinks Brecher set fire to Hanson’s grapevines (!). Anyway, Brecher points out that the British Empire in its heyday puts the neocons in the shade, and we’re basically living with the result.

India, by the way, is a pretty good example of where Muslim grievances come from. Like the US and the UK, India’s stuck pretty much with two major parties, Congress Party, essentially a Gandhi family operation, and the Bharatya Janata Party (BJP). With the Congress Party, you get old-fashioned corruption, though they seem to be wising up a little. With the BJP you get the latter overlaid with Hindu fascism. Vajpayee, the last BJP Prime Minister until the Congress Party stomped them in the last elections, was a full-bore Hindu fascist. He and his party encouraged bulldozing of mosques to wind up the Muslims to justify sending in the army or just letting Hindu rent-a-mobs conduct pogroms.

BTW, going back to the VDH shit, how the mighty have fallen. William Ffing Buckley plugging plonk in a particularly mawkish way (pdf!). Soon he will be doing adverts for Thunderbird.

Snowwy and Kingbu bring up the valid point that determining the intent of a criminal act is already a well-established part of our legal process. That’s undeniable, but the difference here is that in the case of hate crimes, it is the victim’s perception of the act that becomes the key factor. The manslaughter / murder distinction is found within the act itself, but the status of hate crime is determined post facto. In the case of the young man who tossed a Koran in the toilet, he was arrested and charged with misdemeanor property charges, and only later did a Muslim pressure group determine that his intent was such that a felony charge was appropriate.

Qetesh, I’m afraid that seeking to draw an equivalence between the actions of medieval Crusaders and modern jihadists doesn’t bolster the case for Islam. And I condemned and continue to condemn the invasion of Iraq, and I would be totally against any war with Iran. I take your point about Western interference in the Middle East, but why is it that Saudi Arabia is using its immense wealth to spread Salafism around the globe? Why is it that in Thailand, the Phillipines, Nigeria, etc Muslims are targeting Christian and Buddhist populations? I don’t think the issue of Islamic aggression can be boiled down to one of a reaction against the West (gee and you think that *I* am the one who is simplistic.)

Kevin, I never posted at Eschaton or Kos. I have run into the comments of a different “Golden Boy” who is vociferously in favor of the war in Iraq. The only other place I post on a regular basis (and am registered so my moniker cannot be reused) is at Salon. Now your claim that I skip over the fact that the Koran was stolen is totally false. I’ve said many times that the initial action resulted in misdemeanor property charges, and that a Muslim pressure group funded by the Saudis forced those charges to be changed to felony hate crimes. And of course, my point about the Islamic ideology is not that it is universally and excusively violent, but then again you were happy to distort my earlier statements. Get your Muslim friends to open up about Islam; you may be surprised.

That’s undeniable, but the difference here is that in the case of hate crimes, it is the victim’s perception of the act that becomes the key factor. The manslaughter / murder distinction is found within the act itself, but the status of hate crime is determined post facto.

This is purely fiction. The distinction between manslaughter and murder is in the intent of the perpetrator. The distinction between random vandalism and “hate crime” vandalism is… wait for it… in the intent of the perpetrator.

Which of these is a hate crime? (1) Young idiot steals a Koran and flushes it down the toilet. (2) Young idiot steals a Bible and flushes it down the toilet. (3) Young idiot steals a Torah and flushes it down the toilet.

Which of these is murder? (1) Young idiot stabs a guy in a bar. (2) Young idiot shoots a guy in an alley. (3) Young idiot runs over a guy in a parking lot.

Hmm… We don’t know. We have to determine the answer based on the intent of the young idiot in each case. And when do we make that determination? To use your own words: post facto. But when did the young idiot form his intention? Why, before committing the crime, of course.

And how do we determine intent? Well, we can ask the young idiot, and he might tell us. We can look at all the other circumstances — was the young idiot shouting anti-Muslim/anti-Christian/antisemitic comments as he flushed the toilet? Was he shouting “I’ve been planning this for months, you asshole!” as he stabbed/shot/drove? We can ask witnesses to describe what they saw and, to some extent, what they thought was going on. And yes, in the flushing incidents, we can ask the owners of the flushed books whether they felt intimidated on the basis of their religion. And that may or may not influence the determination. (Of course, it’s not possible, but if we could ask the homicide victim if he thought the perpetrator intended to kill him, we would have the same situation.)

So frankly, I’m not sure I see that big a difference between hate crimes and other intent-specific crimes.

Dan,

You don’t see the difference between hate crimes and other intent-specific crimes? OK, I’ll give it a try.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the murder / manslaughter distinction? Don’t kill anyone.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the Muslim hate crime distinction? Don’t insult Islam, the Koran, or their despicable prophet.

Please tell me you cannot see the difference.

Golden Boy, that makes absoultely no sense. The guy committed a crime, and based on intent it’s a hate crime. Your point falls apart, but it’s supposed to be:

How to avoid the hate crime distinction when stealing someone else’s property and vandalizing it? Don’t be a miserable xenophobe like Golden Boy.

Hi SimbaB,

Let’s say that the Koran hadn’t been stolen. Let’s say that instead, a Koran that one owns is burned / shot / dumped in a toilet, in public (that’s key.)

Is this a thought / hate crime? Let’s assume that it is reasonable to believe that the person doing the burning / shooting / dumping dislikes Islam.

This is not an unsubtle point. Alec indicated upthread that he thought such an action would be “iffy”. Teasing that out of him showed me that the fact that the Koran was stolen in the actual case is irrelevant; what is relevant is how sensitive we will be to the Muslim demand that we revere their holy books and symbols.

Can you answer that, SimbaB? Or at least try?

i’m, as always, so confused by all of this. it is clear that the actual koran, just like the actual torah or the actual new testament (s), is filled with loathesome and vile rhetoric, and real-world that result in hatred, killing and insanity.

is that controversial in a non-religious forum? really? i get the people that are pissed at GB for singling out Islam for the treatment he gives it, but i’m still unclear how liberalism that is intolerant of misogyny and general (sorry for the solipsism) illiberalism is supposed to handle this kind of discussion. am i supposed to pretend that orthodoxy in the case of every major monotheistic religion is a pernicious influence? further, should we pretend that orthodoxy isn’t the most accurate reading of the three pieces of fiction that govern the lives of billions of our fellow citizens?

now yes, we all know that muslims can be liberal, even secular, as can christians and jews. but the truth is that whatever residual effect might be achieved for such people by holding on to the moniker foisted upon them by their heritage (i’m still a muslim/jew/buddhist on sunday or for the festivals or whatever) they have in fact rejected the essence of what those monotheisms believe inherently.

does judaism not, via the torah, exclude all but the chosen? does paul not spew hatred throughout his part of the new testament? does the koran not call for jihad? did the last 2000 years not happen?

i mean, if the alec’s and simba b’s can’t acknowledge that then i feel like they aren’t liberals. intolerance of intolerance may be the defining essence of modern liberalism to me–and if it isn’t secular, i don’t think it can even be called liberal any more.

should read “isn’t a pernicious influence” sorry

i mean, if the alec’s and simba b’s can’t acknowledge that

I don’t understand what sentence you would have those two write. Can you clarify?

FWIW, it would seem to me most religiously-based hate crimes are committed by theists against other theists. Golden Boy’s claimed atheism notwithstanding, atheists generally despise religion because, among other things, it is the cause of violence and intolerance. The phenomena of right-wing Islamophobia seems to be something altogether different. I’m not sure I can quite put the right words on it, but atheists have a rational opposition to religion, all religion. They don’t generally hate specific religious individuals simply because they are religious. Seems most Islamophobes, and indeeed most xenophobes, hate irrationally and indiscriminately—most of the time out of fear. That’s not to say that they don’t try to rationalize their hatred (e.g. Golden Boy here) but the origin of their hate is nonetheless irrational.

Simba,

You ducked my question, old boy. Don’t kid yourself on your intellectual honesty…..

You ignored my question, old boy.

Fixed your typo.

You’re not worth my time.

In order to help out Simba and other folks, I looked up some Koran desecrations on Youtube. Your job, o arbiters of thought crime, is to determine whether or not any of these are felony insults of Islam. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that all of these Korans are the legal property of the person committing the various acts.

This first one is a warmup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJQD9FFKl0

but how about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSZFzD0CMfU
or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2ScCWvn_s

Come on Simba, are you afraid to answer?

How does one avoid falling afoul of the murder / manslaughter distinction? Don’t kill anyone.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the Muslim hate crime distinction? Don’t insult Islam, the Koran, or their despicable prophet.

Your Q&A here are not congruent. To be a real analogy, the answer to the second question should be: “Don’t steal and burn a Koran.” Alternatively, you could ask:

How does one avoid falling afoul of the murder / manslaughter distinction? Don’t kill anyone with the intent to do so.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the Muslim hate crime distinction? Don’t commit a crime against a Muslim with the intent to intimidate them for their religion.

Or do you seriously believe that, for instance, you are subject to hate crime prosecution just for calling Mohammed a “despicable prophet”? I’m pretty sure not even your bugaboo, CAIR, would pressure anyone to bring charges for simply mouthing off. Now, if you were curb-stomping a Muslim while shouting “And this is for your despicable prophet!” then I’d say you were at risk. But purely spoken or written bigotry isn’t a crime in and of itself under any hate crime legislation I’m aware of.

Let’s say that the Koran hadn’t been stolen. Let’s say that instead, a Koran that one owns is burned / shot / dumped in a toilet, in public (that’s key.)

Is this a thought / hate crime? Let’s assume that it is reasonable to believe that the person doing the burning / shooting / dumping dislikes Islam.

Let’s say that a cross that one owns is set afire, in public. Let’s assume that it is reasonable to believe that the person doing the lighting dislikes black people.

If you can establish that the cross-burner’s intention is to intimidate black people, then you’ve got a hate crime. If your Koran-flusher’s intent is to intimidate Muslims, then same deal.

felony insults of Islam

As far as I know, there is no such thing as a “felony insult of Islam.” Find me one piece of “hate crime” legislation that makes a simple insult a crime.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as a “felony insult of Islam.” Find me one piece of “hate crime” legislation that makes a simple insult a crime.

I predict a “there’s a Pace University student arrested for that right now!” response.

By the way, I looked at those videos. They make me sorry to share a country with the bigots who made them, but I don’t see anything illegal about them (assuming that the guy in the vid posted by “NOJEWTUBE” — also nice — was in compliance with firearms laws).

OK, I’ve answered your question. Now it’s your turn: Go out and find me any hate crimes legislation that you think would make any of those films a felony. I’ll make it easier for you; find some law that would make any of those films a crime at all.

Dan,

You may find nothing wrong with those videos, but you should know that CAIR is using the first video (“Kill the Koran”) to try to pursue hate crime charges against the people that made it. Perhaps your definition of free speech is not the same as that of the Saudi-funded pressure groups that attempting to work our legal system. I’m sure CAIR would be happy to share with you what laws they believe those folks ran afoul of.

You may find nothing wrong with those videos, but you should know that CAIR is using the first video (”Kill the Koran”) to try to pursue hate crime charges against the people that made it.

Ho-Ho! You showed him, didn’t you? You clever dog, you!

I am shocked and awed that a religious group would try to pressure the justice system. What’s next?!? Vehicles with giant tires? Fried hog fat in bags?

I predict a “there’s a Pace University student arrested for that right now!” response.

Well, first off, I am looking for the actual law that makes “insult to Islam” a felony (or any sort of crime). Secondly, here’s the final graf from the NY Daily News article on the arrest:

Shmulevich was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on hate crime charges for criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, officials said.

(my emphasis)

And here is the NY hate crimes legislation (in relevant part), Title Y, Section 485 (emphasis added):

§ 485.05 Hate crimes.

1. A person commits a hate crime when he or she commits a specified
offense and either:
(a) intentionally selects the person against whom the offense is
committed or intended to be committed in whole or in substantial part
because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national
origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability
or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or
perception is correct, or
(b) intentionally commits the act or acts constituting the offense in
whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding
the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious
practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless
of whether the belief or perception is correct.
2. Proof of race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion,
religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of the defend-
ant, the victim or of both the defendant and the victim does not, by
itself, constitute legally sufficient evidence satisfying the people’s
burden under paragraph (a) or (b) of subdivision one of this section.
3. A “specified offense” is an offense defined by any of the following
provisions of this chapter: […]section 145.00 (criminal mischief in the fourth degree);
section 145.05 (criminal mischief in the third degree); section 145.10
(criminal mischief in the second degree); section 145.12 (criminal
mischief in the first degree); […] subdivision one, two or four of section 240.30
(aggravated harassment in the second degree); or any attempt or conspir-
acy to commit any of the foregoing offenses.
[…]
§ 485.10 Sentencing.
1. When a person is convicted of a hate crime pursuant to this arti-
cle, and the specified offense is a violent felony offense, as defined
in section 70.02 of this chapter, the hate crime shall be deemed a
violent felony offense.
2. When a person is convicted of a hate crime pursuant to this article
and the specified offense is a misdemeanor or a class C, D or E felony,
the hate crime shall be deemed to be one category higher than the speci-
fied offense the defendant committed, or one category higher than the
offense level applicable to the defendant’s conviction for an attempt or
conspiracy to commit a specified offense, whichever is applicable.
3. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, when a person is
convicted of a hate crime pursuant to this article and the specified
offense is a class B felony:
(a) the maximum term of the indeterminate sentence must be at least
six years if the defendant is sentenced pursuant to section 70.00 of
this chapter;
(b) the term of the determinate sentence must be at least eight years
if the defendant is sentenced pursuant to section 70.02 of this chapter;
(c) the term of the determinate sentence must be at least twelve years
if the defendant is sentenced pursuant to section 70.04 of this chapter;
(d) the maximum term of the indeterminate sentence must be at least
four years if the defendant is sentenced pursuant to section 70.05 of
this chapter; and
(e) the maximum term of the indeterminate sentence or the term of the
determinate sentence must be at least ten years if the defendant is
sentenced pursuant to section 70.06 of this chapter.
[…]

As it happens, Criminal Mischief 1st, intentionally damaging another’s property by explosive, is a B felony; 2nd, intentionally damaging property over $1,500, is a D felony; 3rd, intentionally damaging property over $250 is an E felony; and 4th, intentional destruction of an abandoned building or another’s property, or recklessly damaging another’s property over $250 is an A misdemeanor.

Most of the forms of Aggravated Harassment are A misdemeanors; some forms are E felonies, but it’s hard to sort out.

CAIR is using the first video (”Kill the Koran”) to try to pursue hate crime charges against the people that made it. Perhaps your definition of free speech is not the same as that of the Saudi-funded pressure groups that attempting to work our legal system. I’m sure CAIR would be happy to share with you what laws they believe those folks ran afoul of.

Since you have your finger on the pulse of hate crimes legislation, surely you can tell me what criminal statutes CAIR is pushing?

And my definition of free speech is undoubtedly different from a lot of special-interest groups’ definitions, up to and including the Bush Administration. Your point?

does judaism not, via the torah, exclude all but the chosen? does paul not spew hatred throughout his part of the new testament? does the koran not call for jihad? did the last 2000 years not happen?

i mean, if the alec’s and simba b’s can’t acknowledge that then i feel like they aren’t liberals. intolerance of intolerance may be the defining essence of modern liberalism to me–and if it isn’t secular, i don’t think it can even be called liberal any more.

You are entirely correct. I’m an atheist; I disdain all holy books, and I’ve said before and I’ll say again that the enlightenment is largely secularizing. The ‘Jesus’ liberal Christians follow is a preacher of love instead of a Jewish messiah-complexed ranter and raver, and the Golden Rule is the most important part instead of the Law. Same goes for liberal and most conservative (i.e. non-Orthodox/Hasidic) Jews, although they lack the Jesus figure – usually substituting for the kind of person they’d like to be.

Same goes for progressive/modern Muslims; they regard Mohammed as a figure in favor of science, modernization, love, and tolerance.

The important part of the Enlightenment is unburdening oneself of the nasty parts of Scripture and adopting a ‘secular savior’, which is to say modelling the Messiah or whoever after whatever is right instead of modelling whatever is right after the Messiah.

Now, that is my position on religion. On the other hand, the Torah and the Koran (and in the countries I mentioned, the Bible) represent disadvantaged minorities, and it’s very hard to separate out attacking the religion and attacking the minority. ‘Positive Christianity’ claimed to be removing itself from the perfidious influences of the Old Testament, but it was largely an effort in Jew-bashing at the end of the day, and that’s why it died with Nazi Germany.

Like I said, I don’t like any holy book; it’s just that physically desecrating any one associated with a minority group is an intimidatory act at the end of the day. I doubt the Koran-flusher could actually quote a single goddamn sura – objectionable or otherwise; he was clearly just doing what he did to terrorize somebody, and that makes him a shithead who deserves to be punished.

…

Blowback:

The bloke with the “Behead those who insult Islam” sign is now in a British prison doing six years along with three of his co-protestors. While British prisons may not be as violent as American prisons, they are certainly not fine examples of inclusiveness.

Islam is being used by many of the West’s lackeys in the Middle East and Asia as an “the opiate of the masses”. If I was living there, I would be protesting about the lack of democracy, the inequality of wealth and the corruption rather than a handful of very unfunny cartoons published by a newspaper that once supported the Nazis in a country well known for its racism.

It benefits those who benefit from that lack of democracy to force the issue to be about cartoons, you know. That’s how the opiate of the masses work.

And just so you know – the BEHEAD THOSE WHO CLAIM ISLAM IS VIOLENT posters were Photoshop jobs. Sorry: the hated Wogs aren’t quite that hateful.

GB:

I like how I go to sleep, because I am not a horrible little man fuelled by hatred for brown people, and you declare victory. You’re a fucking class act.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the Muslim hate crime distinction? Don’t insult Islam, the Koran, or their despicable prophet.

Please tell me you cannot see the difference.

You are the only person using ‘insult Islam’ here. If this were about insulting Islam, I would agree with you, but it is not. The facts of the case involve an insult to more than Islam and a threat to more than Mohammed, and ignoring that is ignoring reality. Some of us have to live in the real world instead of shaping it to fit our racist agendas.

Let’s say that the Koran hadn’t been stolen. Let’s say that instead, a Koran that one owns is burned / shot / dumped in a toilet, in public (that’s key.)

This is not an unsubtle point. Alec indicated upthread that he thought such an action would be “iffy”. Teasing that out of him showed me that the fact that the Koran was stolen in the actual case is irrelevant; what is relevant is how sensitive we will be to the Muslim demand that we revere their holy books and symbols.

I said ‘iffy’ precisely because it’s possible for the Koran desecration to be in good faith – that is, directed at Islam instead of Muslims. But it almost never is.

There’s a difference between ‘insulting Islam’ and ‘insulting Muslims’. Making a website tearing to shreds the many idiocies of the Koran is insulting Islam. Taking a holy book you can’t even read and flushing it in the toilet is insulting Muslims; there’s no understanding of the religion there, just ‘Take THAT, people who look different!’ No matter how much you think Muslims have it coming, the distinction is clear and you’re ignoring it because you’re a fucking fraud.

I’d advise you to stop shaming yourself in public – we’ve all gotten together and pounded you whence you let dung for quite some time, and you’ve gone from reasonable-looking to laughingstock in a few hours – but you really seem to enjoy looking like an ignorant, incompetent asshole. Hell, at least Bill O’Reilly can manage his fucking talking points; you fuck yours up like you want to be caught with your pants down. There you go, asshole. You want some more?

Never mind, I found a reference on the CAIR site (from July 2006, by the way). As I suspected, it’s not simply the video you linked to that is the reason for the criminal charges.

(WASHINGTON, DC, 7/10/06) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the Justice Department to investigate an incident in Tennessee in which a bullet-riddled Quran was thrown at the entrance of a mosque as a possible violation of civil rights.

CAIR said the perpetrators of the incident videotaped their actions and then posted the video online. (The video was placed online June 17, 2006, but the actual incident may have taken place last summer.) The two men are first shown shooting a copy of the Quran, Islam’s revealed text, with a “Colt M-16.” (An M-16 is a fully-automatic military weapon that is not legal for personal use.) They then take the Quran to a mosque and throw it at the entrance while shouting what sounds like “Jesus rocks.”
[…]
The author of the http://www.myspace.com/mully88 site identifies himself as “mully88” and claims to live in Chattanooga, Tenn. “White Power” theme music plays on the site and the author’s profile lists as heroes “anybody that has killed a muslim or at least tried to kill a muslim.” The site also contains slurs targeting Hispanics and African-Americans.

“By throwing the bullet-riddled Quran at the mosque, we believe the perpetrators went beyond the limits of free speech by taking part in an overt act of religious intimidation,” said CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar.

Iftikhar compared the men’s actions to those who burn crosses on the lawns of African-Americans. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that states can punish those who burn crosses with the intention to intimidate.

Now of course CAIR is a biased source, so I looked around. Unfortunately, the original Chattanooga paper’s article was not available on the paper’s website, and pretty much all I could find was right-wing websites bitching about it and representing it pretty much the way you did, i.e., two guys being leaned on by the Feds for shooting a Koran.

As far as I can tell, the FBI was investigating, but no charges have been brought to date.

Oh crap, I didn’t see that link in the middle of that quote. I didn’t mean to post a link, so if the Powders The Be around here would delink it, I would appreciate it.

And I am so glad we have live preview for me to ignore. That was supposed to be “Powders That Be.” Yes, the d was intentional, and no it doesn’t mean anything.

Dan,

I linked to the Koran-shooting video because I thought it would give an example of something that you might actually consider to be a hate crime, with the videos of the Koran being casually desecrated to fill out the spectrum. There is certainly a range of opinion represented here at this site, everything from Alec putting on his angry face for anything at all that might be construed as “threatening” to Muslims to you actually doing research into the law.

I need to run for a few hours but I’ll be back; still waiting for Simba to weigh in on where the First Amendment ends for him.

“White Power” theme music plays on the site and the author’s profile lists as heroes “anybody that has killed a muslim or at least tried to kill a muslim.” The site also contains slurs targeting Hispanics and African-Americans.

Must be great knowing these are the people you’re trying to defend, GB. Do you even try to pretend you’re not some kind of bigot? It’d be hard for you to be any more obvious.

I need to run for a few hours but I’ll be back; still waiting for Simba to weigh in on where the First Amendment ends for him.

What part of “you’re not worth my time” don’t you understand?

Anyway, I really shouldn’t engage you anymore, but I do think this rule of thumb from high school civics class is worth chewing on: “My rights end where yours begin.” or, more vividly, “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.”

GB:

everything from Alec putting on his angry face for anything at all that might be construed as “threatening” to Muslims to you actually doing research into the law.

OK, this is progress: you’re at least willing to admit you’re in favor of intimidating Muslims. I guess they’re just less human than you and me, huh?

Robert Green:

You seem to be arguing from the premise that religion is inherently illiberal and intolerant. You suggested that it ought not to be viewed as anything other than pernicious.

I am not a fan of religion, but I don’t know that I exactly agree. The Bible certainly has a lot of material that is violent, that calls for action against non Christians or “false” Christians, or at least could be construed that way. It also has parts that are all about serving everyone and loving those that hate you. It has all kinds of stuff in it. Erotic stuff about love, and brutally anti-erotic, flesh-hating or even world hating stuff. Not all of it is internally consistent. And when you add Christian legends it gets even lss consistent.

My point is that religions can cut a whole lot of different ways. Toward war or peace or persecution. I guess I am not sure that they are inherently intolerant, as you were saying. Does that sound naïve to you?

Regarding the Jewish angle, according to the Seven Laws of Noah non-Jews are people too.

blowback said,
a handful of very unfunny cartoons published by a newspaper that once supported the Nazis in a country well known for its racism.

Denmark well known for racism? Sources, please.

I dunno Simba, m’man. I’m gonna go with the amended version, “my right to swing my fist is entirely dependent upon the humanity and personal behavior of your nose and the person it’s attached to”.

Ok, sure, it’s awkward, but it derives it’s authority from Burke:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”

Maybe I’m over reaching by including myself among good men, but the older I get the more I’m willing to try…

mikey

There is certainly a range of opinion represented here at this site, everything from Alec putting on his angry face for anything at all that might be construed as “threatening” to Muslims to you actually doing research into the law.

Well, that’s because Alec is calling you on your obvious anti-Muslim bigotry, whereas I’m just calling you on your hate crimes bullshit.

No, Dan, Alec believes that anyone who calls the Muslims on their intimidation tactics is a bigot. He’s constructed a fantasy in his mind where I’m somehow on the “side” of the people who shot up the Koran. I think it makes him feel better; it certainly has no connection with reality.

I began in this thread by pointing out that Islam has yet to go through an Enlightenment, and continued the discussion by highlighting how Salafist pressure groups in this country are eroding our First Amendment rights. No one has really been able to dispute that. I’ve spent a lot of time politely redirecting the discussion towards those points and have been rewarded with increasingly shrill bile. Strip away, for example, the invective from Alec’s argument and what you are left with is a puerile belief that “bad thoughts” should be criminalized.

As for you, Dan, I think you are missing one of the points I’ve made about the hate crimes argument. While it is true that currently hate crimes act as an escalator towards crimes already committed, there is apparently a discussion about whether any insult towards Islam is to be permitted at all (witness Alec’s comment about desecrating a Koran one owns in public as being “iffy”.)

All right, I’ll give you a new fact to chew on. Certain countries (such as Germany) criminalize public insults against religion. There has been an attempt by Muslim groups to make this EU wide. Would you support such a ban on insults?

The fact that you believe no one can “dispute” your hate filled, irrational eliminationist fantasies is only further indication of your hatred, bigotry and paranoia. You need treatment by a mental health professional, and it’s pretty sad that you’re likely to hurt somebody before you get taken off the streets, you prick…

mikey

I began in this thread by pointing out that Islam has yet to go through an Enlightenment, and continued the discussion by highlighting how Salafist pressure groups in this country are eroding our First Amendment rights.
Calling the CAIR names like that is like calling the Million Man March a KKK-like hate rally. The comparison is so obviously specious it calls your motives into question, you hate-filled bigot.

And I love ‘our First Amendment rights’. Evidently we have the right to strut our Nazi asses into mosques, disrupt services, and play the moral high ground – free speech! – but there’s not some kind of freedom of religion guaranteed to them. Not as if there are any American citizens who would voluntarily show up in a mosque, no sir; not as if you have to worry about their rights to worship or peaceably assemble. They’re wogs, not Americans. Isn’t that right?

No one has really been able to dispute that. I’ve spent a lot of time politely redirecting the discussion towards those points and have been rewarded with increasingly shrill bile.
If by ‘politely redirecting the discussion towards those points’ you mean ‘attempting to frame the discussion in those points and ignoring any effort to placate you on them’, yes. I’m certainly against Salafist groups destroying the First Amendment and everyone else here is too; the problem is that that isn’t what’s happening. Instead, fascist stooges are trying to surpress the First Amendment rights of an immigrant minority and you’re cheering ’em on instead of urging they get help of some kind. And as for polite, I was polite as could be until you started ignoring me in your Muslimophobe bloodlust – at which point politesse would have been counterproductive.
Strip away, for example, the invective from Alec’s argument and what you are left with is a puerile belief that “bad thoughts” should be criminalized.
I’m sure your average first-year law student would be surprised to learn the concept of mens rea is puerile. This is the third time someone has told you this in this topic in exactly those words, and you keep returning to it. I think this exhibits pretty well that you are beneath not only pity but contempt as well – you merit nothing but scorn.

I began in this thread by pointing out that Islam has yet to go through an Enlightenment

Well, yes you did, but that innocent little “pointing out” was accompanied by… well, let’s review the bidding, shall we?

First:

Now here’s a controversial idea: Muslims should act like civilized human beings.

And then there was:

Islam as an ideology simply cannot co-exist peacefully with civilized peoples.

And who can forget:

After all, Muslims have had the example of civilized people for centuries,

Or:

What I hate is the illiberalism, the intolerance, and the fascism inherent in Islam.

And that old favorite:

How does one avoid falling afoul of the Muslim hate crime distinction? Don’t insult Islam, the Koran, or their despicable prophet.

So let’s see… uncivilized, inherently fascistic, despicable prophet…. Well, I won’t presume to speak for Alec, but I think it’s pretty obvious that if he thinks you are a bigot when it comes to Islam, he’s pretty much got you pegged. If I said the same things about Christianity as you said about Islam, wouldn’t you say I was an anti-Christian bigot?

————————–

Strip away, for example, the invective from Alec’s argument and what you are left with is a puerile belief that “bad thoughts” should be criminalized.

I’ve read Alec’s comments, and I don’t see anything in his comments that suggests he actually thinks “‘bad thoughts’ should be criminalized.” He’s pretty clear when he says:

See, that’s where the line goes between iffy stuff and Hate Crimes – hate crimes are actively intimidatory, stuff like spraypainting swastikas on synagogues/mosques/etc. and stealing and vandalizing people’s holy books.

I understand that to mean he doesn’t like the “iffy” stuff, but in and of itself, that stuff should not be a crime.

—————————

Anyway, the most intriguing part of your latest comment is this:

While it is true that currently hate crimes act as an escalator towards crimes already committed, there is apparently a discussion about whether any insult towards Islam is to be permitted at all

Where, pray tell, is this discussion “apparently” happening? I know you’ve come in here all het up about CAIR trying to criminalize looking crosswise at a Koran, but you have yet to produce any solid examples. They applauded — and perhaps encouraged — the charging of the Pace student with hate crime enhancement for his vandalism, but it seems to me there is good reason to think that vandalism fit within the definition of a hate crime under New York law. CAIR also asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the morons who made that “Kill the Koran” video had then lobbed the bullet-riddled book at a mosque, which, I dunno, sure seems like it might implicitly be a threat based on religious bias. So is that all you got? Because I’ve read the CAIR website, and I don’t see anything there that indicates they want to abolish the First Amendment for critics of Islam.

————————-

Maybe you really are a crusader for the First Amendment. Maybe you proudly tattooed your ACLU membership number on your forehead. But where’s your outrage over the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case? Where are your complaints about the Christian Right’s excessive influence over the curricula in our public schools? Surely that’s at least as egregious as CAIR’s alleged attempts to “criminalize” badmouthing Islam? From where I sit, it sure looks like all your concern for the First Amendment is just a way for you to spit metaphorical poison on Islam and Muslims.

Alec,

I’ve definitely touched a nerve with you if you are resorting to mischaracterizing me so viciously. Unlike Mikey – who refers to taking me out and is clearly projecting – you seem to be doing this in hysterical disbelief that anyone would question the sacred place that Islam holds in liberal orthodoxy. I am no Republican – far from it! – but this protective cover we give to Islamic totalitarianism never made any sense to me.

You are definitely scoring an ironic victory against me by attributing violent and bigoted ideas to me that I then must spend time denying. Let’s cut to the chase: show me something I wrote here that is even close to violence and I’ll bring myself to account. Until then, let’s just assume that I know you feel hatred, contempt, pity etc towards me and move on to discussing the topic at hand.

Oh, and I’m not sure I’d hang my hat on CAIR if I were you. Federal prosecutors named them as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial, in association with Hamas.

Certain countries (such as Germany) criminalize public insults against religion.

Germany has also criminalized a religion. It’s a funny old world where different places get to make different laws.

Dan,

The topic at hand is Islam. Look, I have absolutely no tolerance for any establishment of religious exceptionalism. But too many people that consider themselves to be progressive have a blind spot when it comes to Islam. I think it may stem from a visceral reaction to Christianity, since Islam seems to be such a hard alternative. In any case, it is willful blindness to ignore that any society with a large population of Muslims has to deal with a chilling effect on free speech in regards to Islamic ideology.

Look at the comments on the Youtube video where the Koran is used as a coaster or has bacon placed into it as a bookmark. Muslims from all over the world post demands for the video to be removed. Who do they think they are? The absurdity of their underlying supremacist assumptions would be laughable if they weren’t so violent and so real.

I have to say that I find the “Kill the Koran” video to be sickening. I hate to think of what went through the person’s mind who found the shot up Koran as they were entering the Islamic center.

In any case, it is willful blindness to ignore that any society with a large population of Muslims has to deal with a chilling effect on free speech in regards to Islamic ideology.

Look up the Bonghits 4 Jesus case and call that an Islamic-specific chilling effect again.

In the words of Winston Churchill: A fanatic is one who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject. Wait’ll you see my dick; hey bitch – wait’ll you see my dick.

Dan,

Here is another example of Muslim pressure groups going after someone who dared insult Islam: http://www.cair.com/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=39918&theType=NB.

From CAIR’s own site we can read about the dastardly crime of hanging a poster that mocks Islam and Mohammed on a dumpster that is not even on a mosque’s property, but does in fact face that mosque. As the article says, “The words, transliterated from Arabic into English spelling, distorted a common Islamic prayer about Mohammed into an insult.”

So is it proximity to a mosque that now defines hate crimes? After all, no one’s property was damaged or stolen; no underlying crime seems to exist.

Alec, I looked up this bonghits 4 Jesus case. A student couldn’t wear something supportive of pot usage and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. I couldn’t find the felonies this guy was charged with for insulting Christianity; could you point me to a reference?

Also, I think your Tourette’s is acting up again.

Also, I think your Tourette’s is acting up again.

And you want us to take you seriously.

i think the reason people here have difficulty taking you seriously is you keep linking different things together that are only really connected if youre some sort of conspiracy theorist. “OMG CAIR wants someone prosecuted for a hate crime, some people posted nasty things at youtube, and Pakistan is a repressive dictatorship! the muslims are coming!” the youtube one really is a new low though

“Look at the comments on the Youtube video where the Koran is used as a coaster or has bacon placed into it as a bookmark. Muslims from all over the world post demands for the video to be removed. Who do THEY think THEY are? The absurdity of THEIR underlying supremacist assumptions would be laughable if THEY weren’t so violent and so real.”

i mean, fuck sake, they posted comments on fucking youtube and you’re trying to claim they’re terrorists. if THEY werent so violent and so real? lets be honest, you have no idea who these people are, and assuming you know all about them just because they’re muslims is a stupid and bigoted thing to do. Also your habit of saying “muslims do this…and muslims do that….” not some muslims or a muslim, but always MUSLIMS as if theyre some undifferentiated mass. you’ve a bit of previous in claiming to know what’s in muslims’ minds better than they or their friends do, so presumably if you meet any muslims who dont fit your expectations you assume they’re lying, or possibly sleeper agents.

i notice that none of the videos have actually been taken down. how’s that for muslim censorship? and most of the comments consist of stupid gobshites shouting at each other just like everywhere else on the internet. “fuk u u cunt – piss off raghead bastard – youre fucking dead you prick – hoo hoo funny arab go fuck your mother etc. etc.” you get worse stuff than that in music chatrooms.

GB, you’re conflating two separate incidents mentioned in that article. We don’t know what the poster said that was on the dumpster facing the mosque, only that it had an anti-Muslim message (per CAIR). The “transliterated Arabic” poster was taped to CAIR’s office door.

Note also that nobody is being charged with a crime; the police are investigating it as if somebody had reported a threat. Depending on the circumstances, it could be a threat.

Also, as far as I know, nobody is trying to criminalize the guy who sponsors Friday night pig races on his property next to a mosque in Texas. In fact, here is the entirety of CAIR’s anti-free speech commentary on that particular situation, taken from a Houston Chronicle article that is apparently no longer online:

A Katy man’s decision to stage weekly pig races to protest a mosque construction has prompted an alliance of local clergy to conduct a series of forums aimed at what they characterize as preventing bigotry and promoting religious acceptance.

(They also have a bare link to The Daily Show’s bit on the pig races.)

I’m not sure why you’re so obsessed with CAIR and Islam on this topic anyway. If you look at the FBI’s 2005 report of hate crime statistics (the most recent available), you’ll see that, with respect to religion, there were about 7 times as many anti-Jewish incidents (848) as anti-Islam (128), and nearly as many anti-Christian (combined anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant, 115) incidents as anti-Islam. Compare that with the 2004 statistics, and, surprisingly, the number of incidents declined from ’04 to ’05 for anti-Jewish (from 954) and anti-Islam (from 156), though it rose for anti-Christian (from 95 combined anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant). Surely if CAIR were wielding excessive influence in having “insult to Islam” transformed into a hate crime, we would expect to see a rise in incidents reported, wouldn’t we?

So tell me, where is your rage against the ADL and the Jews for their “chilling effect” on free speech?

By the way, I think the main reason Christian advocacy groups are disinclined to demand incidents be treated as hate crimes is because they have invested so much in trying to portray hate crime legislation as a threat to their religious freedom.

Which is precisely why my Greasemonkey is equipped with this.

Ico,

It is hardly a conspiracy theory when one has fourteen centuries of violent, coercive behavior to inspect, directly inspired and encouraged by the founder and texts of the Islamic ideology. Some of you folks act as though you never heard of Islam before this thread, and think that responding to a few incidents I’m discussing here can completely close the book on the subject. Islam – not extremist Islam, not fundamentalist Islam, not Islamic fringe elements – has inspired and directed unremitting warfare against the civilized people of the West for centuries.

It predates the Israeli-Palestine conflict and it is orthogonal to control of oil. Otherwise, how does one explain thousands murdered by Muslims in the Phillipines, Thailand, India, Nigeria, etc? Surely American support for Israel is not the basis for this – as you well know.

The article we are commenting on demanded that the Muslim world understand that they cannot foster their absurd claims of supremacy on us. They cannot riot, kill, and burn down churches simply because some cartoons are published that they do not like. They cannot sue Americans that they terrify on airplanes for being frightened into reporting them. Sorry if this requires you to think across multiple incidents and connect the dots. However, it seems to follow a perfectly clear strategy to me:

“When you are strong and I am weak, I demand that you follow your principles. When you are weak and I am strong, I enforce my principles [sharia] upon you.” Is this not the pattern across the world wherever Muslims confront non-Muslims?

As for the comments on YouTube, nowhere did I make the claim that the commentators were terrorists. Instead, I wished to point out a representative sample of Muslims *demanding* that non-Muslims respect their own illiberal ideology. Can it be that the point was lost on you?

Shorter Golden Boy: Im not a conspiracy theorist! there really is a global muslim conspiracy to destroy the west through hate crime laws! I’m not paranoid! They really ARE out to get me.

firstly, who here has stated that islamic fundamentalism is entirely caused by US support for Israel? youd get further arguing with what real people say rather than voices in your head.

next, to the meat of the matter.
Islam, Islamic ideology. this monolithic structure you obsess over so. there’s no such thing. No unifying ideology. Islam is interpreted in a thousand different ways by innumerable people, through a lens which reflects what they want their religion to mean, and it has been this way for centuries. Islam today is not the same as islam 200 years ago which was itself different form islam a thousand years earlier. Is it any wonder that kings and emperors claim the muslim scriptures give them a divine right to rule and conquor, and war against infidels? that the poor claim mohammed was on their side and see an Islam that protects the weak and raises up the oppressed? that reactiuonary bigots see a bigoted islam and liberals see a liberal islam? its all there, you just have to pick and choose whichever parts they want and discard the rest. there have, after all, been wars fought over the meaning of islam and the quran, and centuries of argument even amongst manistream scholars. Its funny that you out of all the people in the world have seen through all the different faces mohammed wears and all the different ideologies that have been called islam to its true essence. and lo and behold its true essence is exactly that which backs up your own prejudices. just like everyone else. Is islam by and large a force for reaction in the world? i would say yes, but to leap from that to a global conspiracy is just idiotic.

The islamic world has not been united for well over a millennia and in that time most of the wars fought by it have been between muslim states, not between a unified islamic polity and an imagined “west”. just as in europe most wars were fought among christian states. Historically the islamic world and christendom have suffered the same ebb and flow in relations as every other part of the world, warring with each other, allying, trading, denouncing, exchanging ideas. There are many cases of christians and christian states allying themselves with muslims to fight other christians and vice versa. one of the reasons the crusader states were able to survive two centuries in the levant was through alliances with local muslim leaders. christians fought for the ottomans against their own rulers and muslim mercenaries fought for byzantium against the turks. in the 1850s christian britain and france allied with muslim turkey against christian russia, and in world war one muslim arabs fought muslim turks side by side with christian europeans. If you are prepared to look at the history clearly and without prejudice its quite explicable as great power politics between competing states that sometimes took on a religious dimension, rather tha n some sort of thousand year jihad.

name me all the islamic countries in the last century that have declared war on and invaded “the west” i dont think there are that many.

interesting that you should characterise the events of the last few hundred years as an islamic war against the west. when the french invaded algeria in 1830 and the algerians resisted was that part of islam’s war against the west? when the british occupied egypt in 1882 and established colonial rule there was that also part of islam’s unremitting war on the west? the destruction of the mahdist state in sudan by the british in 1898 was also no doubt a cog in the great machine of islamic world conquest. was the british occupation of iraq and jordan in 1918 and the subsequent brutal counterinsurgency war also part of it? the italian invasion and occupation of libya, the french conquest of muslim west africa, the british invasion and destruction of the muslim kingdoms of india, the dutch occupation of indonesia and the russian conquests of muslim central asia, where do these events fit into the unremitting war islam waged against the west? at the end of the second world war there were less than half a dozen islamic countries not under european occupation. you snidely imply people here know nothing of the history of islam, but it seems to me that you know nothing about history at all.

this segues nicely into my next point – you like to talk about the civilized west. which civilized west would this be? the civilized west that exterminated the native americans, that decimated west africa through slaving, that conquered half the world to fuel its industrial expansion and left poverty and starvation in its wake, that wiped out the herero and australian aborigines? or the civilized west that invented auschwitz, the daisy cutter and carpet bombing? If you think the west has been civilized for centuries then you presumably believe these are the hallmarks of civilization. the main thing the islamic world would have learned from civilized europe over a century and a half was the feeling of its boot on their neck.

“Otherwise, how does one explain thousands murdered by Muslims in the Phillipines, Thailand, India, Nigeria, etc?”

why do you characterize the war in the philippines purely as “muslims killing people”? even divorced from historical context it’s not remotely accurate.
arent the majority of people killed in the war in mindanao muslims killed by the filipino security forces? and wasnt the war started in the first place by violence and dispossession of the moros? Its rather peculiar that you phrase it as “muslims are targetting christians” shouldnt it be “why are filipino christians targetting muslims for murder?” and isnt the same true of thailand? How does this magically become translated into a “muslim problem”? Muslims are by far the biggest victims of fundamentalist and communalist violence in India, yet you frame it as something muslims have caused. the pogroms in Gujarat not only killed thousands of Muslims but were organised not by random thugs or terrorists but by the Gujarat BJP government, with the connivance of the national government, yet you have the audacity to claim (earlier on in the thread) that other religious groups in india don’t do this sort of thing. The massive violence committed by the BJP against all their communal rivals (muslims, christians, adivasi) and liberals and reformers within their own religion, dwarfs anything muslim groups have done. Also, did you know that for many years there was a vicious guerrilla war fought in the Punjab between Sikh separatists and the Indian government? and that it was Sikh fanatics that murdered Indira Gandhi? Still sticking to the story that communal violence in India is exclusively caused by muslims?

more to come later on, if i can be arsed

icho, it sounds a lot like the “Jews are responsible for the attempts to exterminate them” argument. You know… “If they just wouldn’t be so Jewy, we wouldn’t have to kill them.”

had a conversation with a german acquaintance last night who was getting up in arms about tom cruise and scientology (the above-referenced religion that has been outlawed in germany) and i just couldn’t get past the following: how is it that germany can outlaw some silly and pernicious made up story but has its own pernicious and made up story as a STATE RELIGION?

and here this crystallizes where i’m lost in the whole debate above (though i certainly think Mikey has been way over the top in his responses and has added more heat than light, not the usual mikey way) is the idea that islam somehow isn’t illiberal. that it doesn’t stand for things that any real liberal is against. like, a lot against. i noticed above people saying that some version of christianity was really more liberal now, or that the laws of noah are different than their interpretation–i call bullshit on all of that. i’m sorry, but you can’t defend islam as a liberal ON LIBERAL GROUNDS (e.g. defending a minority, an of course class liberal position) without mentioning that the thing you are defending is monotheism, and that monotheism is fucking terrible.

i guess what i want people to write is: “GB, by singling out Islam for your attacks you come off as racist. having said that, of course the points about the lack of an enlightenment, the deeply held islamic notions of misogyny and backwardness ARE terrible, but so what? that doesn’t mean you get to be a racist ass” without covering that ground it sounds a lot like people here are defending islam whole cloth (as it were) and frankly that just seems wrong. The Quran actually says things–its followers actually do things–its influence actually has ontological meaning. until we can as liberals accept that our tolerance of others has led to a flowering of intolerance of those (women, gays and others) whom we either are or should defend…well, until then our position is simply incoherent.

Icho,

Glad to see you like history. You asked for a 20th century example of Muslims invading and killing non-Muslims; I’ll give you Christian Armenia being overrun by Turks. One estimate I’ve read says one million Armenians dead, in a ghastly pre-Holocaust event known and referenced by Hitler.

Robert, I think this whole discussion brings into sharp relief the unthinking and knee-jerk response too many progressives have with any criticism of Islam.

Finally, during my additional research as I participated in this thread, I came upon this petition to put pressure on the Taliban to spare the Koreans they currently have on their version of death row: http://www.avaaz.org/en/
The organization sponsoring this, Avaaz, is a peace NGO with no sectarian or ethnic bias. I’d encourage everyone to take a look and sign it if it makes sense to you.

I should say that Avaaz was formed in cooperation with MoveOn.org, if that helps their credentials any here.

From their site: “Avaaz.org was co-founded by Res Publica, a global civic advocacy group, and MoveOn.org, an online community that has pioneered internet advocacy in the United States.

Avaaz.org was developed and established by a group of social entrepeneurs who have worked at the intersection of global justice issues and new online organizing techniques. Avaaz.org’s individual co-founders are Executive Director Ricken Patel, Jeremy Heimans, David Madden, Eli Pariser, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda and Andrea Woodhouse. “

robert green, you’re right and I’d like to apologize to the people who come here regularly – not to golden boy. I haven’t done a particularly good job of refuting the hate, and that makes me sad.

I have a problem with bigotry, especially blatent, in-your-face bigotry, and when it’s stupid and mindless I have a tendency to react in a stupid and mindless way. Golden boy is the worst kind of bigot, and to any extent that I’ve validated his arguments by blowing up, gawd I’m sorry for that. But know what? It really is my style. I can’t, or maybe it’s fair to say I won’t deal with these arguments on a logical basis. They are arguments claiming that an entire group of people, identified only by the religion in which they were raised, are somehow evil or less human than the rest of us. If I responded to that inelegant argument inelegantly, then all I can say is you oughta check out my act in real life. Because I would have beat the sumbitch ’til his mom wouldn’t recognize him.

So while I have not made a valuable contribution to refuting golden boy’s toxic claims about a huge group of innocent humans, and I have not been able to prevent his spreading of hate and fear, that’s ok. ‘Cause at some point, they have to get out of the box and onto the streets. And I would stand happily with the muslims, the gays, the jews, just about anybody who had to deal with mindless bigotry. And then, well, you’ll have every reason to call my reaction irrational…

mikey

“When you are strong and I am weak, I demand that you follow your principles. When you are weak and I am strong, I enforce my principles upon you.”

…Every conquered and conquering people/nation/collective, everywhere, ever. This particular sentiment is not limited to Muslims alone, you know. You can find this kind of thing in the bible and in actual factual accounts of history.

How do you live when you’re so afraid all the time, GB? How do you handle things like grocery shopping and going to work and the like? I mean, you can’t control access to your local grocery store, which means you’re in danger of encountering Muslims there. And Muslim people travel hither and yon on the streets of your city — mine too — so, you know, you have to worry about them there, too. So how do you handle it?

I’m genuinely curious. Do you leave the store when you see someone that looks suspiciously Muslim? Do you cross the street or change lanes? Or have you looked around and found the whitest, most Christian enclave in the country and moved there instead?

rg: I agree that Islam is as bad as any other monotheistic religion. It’s the big problem religion-wise in the Islamic world (tautologically), just as the Big Problem here is Christianity, the Big Problem in Israel is hyper-orthodox Judaism (the conservatives and liberals aren’t bad, usually), the Big Problem in India is typically Hindutva, etc.

I think it’s usually singled out in “the West” by people who don’t know a damn thing about it and largely want to use it as a club to whale on brown people. That’s the gist of what I’ve been saying. Thank you for pointing that out more clearly and concisely than I tend to.

For what it’s worth, I consider the Ayatollahs and the Popes largely identical forces – rationalizing forces on top of an ossified association of religious assholes used to being national hegemons. They’re at their best when arguing rationally from theological grounds instead of co-opting their existing prejudices into religious justifications. As the War Nerd, mentioned elsewhere on this thread, once said – paraphrased – the Taliban is sort of the equivalent of the Baptists declaring a theocracy in western America and shooting anyone whose flatbed was too small for offenses against religion. Treating them as representative of Islam’s worst excesses is absurd; they’re representative of what happens when you mix ferocious, provincial parochialism with the trappings of god-talk. (Nothing good.)

And yes, GB is, in fact, a racist ass. The ironic thing is that from the tone of the discourse thus far, declaring Christianity a religion of love on the force of no real evidence but disavowing a personal connection to it, I’d wager dollars to donuts that he’s a snot-nosed Jewish kid fresh from high-school forensics who takes the right-wing Christianist anti-semites’ bullshit about “judaeo-Christian values” at face value. I’ve known many of them (having been in forensics myself and all), and they’re all about this pleassant when you get them under the hot lights.

Boo, superstitious bigotry. Hooray beer!

robert, I agree with you. Monotheistic religions, taken as single entities in and of themselves, are illiberal. They impose restrictions on liberties that I consider human rights. They demand adherence to doctrine that can be, and often is, oppressive. They are especially pernicious when they have a single central authority figure issuing pronouncements from on high, but for the most part, if the rules are more than a couple hundred years old, many of them are going to be abhorrent to liberals. (I don’t think the Golden Rule, which is at least given lip service in the world’s largest monotheistic religions, is so bad.)

But I haven’t been defending Islam per se here. I’ve been defending Muslims. Individual followers of Islam. According to Golden Boy, Islam is a monolithic bloc; therefore, in his apparent world-view, all Muslims are illiberal, uncivilized, etc. However, having been raised in a cultural heritage that consisted mainly of a liberalized version of a monotheistic religion, I can tell you that people — even groups of people — are not monolithic blocs. They have political, cultural and even religious opinions that vary from one to the other, and any claim to know how They think or what They want or what They will do if given half a chance is pure bigoted pig-ignorance.

If GB had directed his remarks at radical Islamic extremists, or even orthodox Islamic fundamentalists, then they would likely have passed without much comment. But he took attributes of those fundamentalists and smeared them over all Muslims everywhere. I would agree that Muslims who behead journalists out of some misguided religious fervor are uncivilized; but the Muslims I see on the street every day? Well, they seem pretty civilized to me. And given that they now live in a country that tends to treat them according to Golden Boy’s attitudes, I’d say that’s pretty good.

Hm. I just realized that GB’s harping on the CAIR/hate crime issue is a lot like the arguments against anti-discrimination laws protecting homosexuals. You hear it a lot — “They’re demanding special rights and privileges.” — when in fact, all they really seem to be asking for is to be treated like human beings and accorded all the rights of human beings and U.S. citizens.

Anyway, I’m tired of GB. He’s tried to make his point, and failed repeatedly to come across as anything but an anti-Islam fanatic, with perhaps a dash of concern troll thrown in.

without covering that ground it sounds a lot like people here are defending islam whole cloth (as it were) and frankly that just seems wrong.

I don’t buy that, as I read most of the answers above to be very carefully specific in their responses to Golden Boy’s diaper-intensive panic. The defense being mounted that I see is that people in America fall under American law whether consorting with Beelzebub, Allah, or nobody. People in free-ish societies get to do a bunch of kooky things, and Islam being one kooky thing among many I’ll devote the amount of hysteria to it that I feel it deserves.

Setting The Record Straight About Black America And The Republican Party
http://www.nmatv.com/view_video.php?viewkey=3eb9ded908c236bd1996&page=1&viewtype=&category=mr

LEARN THE REAL TRUTH!

Golden Boy: there’s no way to take you seriously if you can’t even get Tourette Syndrome right. (See http://www.tsblog.org) Showing your ignorance in one area is the quickest way to get you declared ignorant in all areas.

i dont think i can be bothered to go into everything else in much detail, but

1)”As for the comments on YouTube, nowhere did I make the claim that the commentators were terrorists. Instead, I wished to point out a representative sample of Muslims *demanding* that non-Muslims respect their own illiberal ideology. Can it be that the point was lost on you?”

Here’s what you actually said further upthread (i already quoted it, but it bears repeating) capitalization mine.

“Look at the comments on the Youtube video where the Koran is used as a coaster or has bacon placed into it as a bookmark. Muslims from all over the world post demands for the video to be removed. Who do THEY think THEY are? The absurdity of THEIR underlying supremacist assumptions would be laughable if THEY weren’t so violent and so real.”

you’re quite clearly claiming the people who posted the rude comments on youtube are violent. you claim with no evidence that because they’re musli9ms complaining about something they’re identical to muslims who use violence and terror tactics to push their own agenda, and are part of som vast undifferentiated “they”, the same “they” no doubt who murdered theo van gogh and rioted in cairo and tehran. furthermore, a “representative sample”? the only thing these quotes are a representative sample of is people who post on koran desecration videos on youtube. you think they’re representative because they (well some of them) are acting in the way you think muslims act. You self-select a group of muslims who fit your preconceived notions of islam and then turn round and say “look how muslims act!” Muslims are fanatical. Muslims burn down churches. Muslims riot over cartoons. Muslims are violently supremacist and want to conquor the world and institute sharia law. if this were really the case there would have been tens of millions of people on the streets rioting rather than a few thousand, and hundreds of thousands of jihadis storming the cities of europe with bombs strapped to their chests You seem to find it remarkable easy to hold muslims who have done nothing wrong responsible for the actions of others they neither know nor support.

2) Victor David Hanson. do you not think there’s something sadly ironic about a man who is a vociferous supporter of unending wars against middle eastern countries (including an ongoing one that has already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths) chastising the muslim world for their barbarity and lack of civilization because of a couple of riots? will the middle east have achieved the apex of civilization when they band together to invade italy and hungary and flatten those countries, then threaten france with a nuclear assault? things always look different when you’re on the wrong side of the gun, but VDH is morally no better than bin laden supporters. There are quite a few violent supremacist movements in the world, and one in particular has all the big guns

3) the only reason it seems to follow a perfectly clear strategy to you is you deliberately look for incidents that bolster your worldview and ignore everything else. if you try hard enough you can join any dots together, but the pattern is still only in your mind. you could just as easily come up with a jewish plot to take over the world through the same careful selection and distortion of facts, but it would be bollocks too.

Robert, i’m pretty sure no-one here is defending islam whole cloth. to be honest my knee-jerk opinion about islam is “what a load of bollocks”. personally i think its a crappy religion, and the majority of cleridcs and scholars, even when they’re not bigots tend to be smug, holier-than-thou close-minded assholes, which is the natural outcome of believing any philiosophy or belief system based on the allegedly recieved word of god. unlike a lot of atheists, i dont really believe that religion is the root cause of evil and barbarism. if people hadnt invented religion they’d just have come up with some other way of being cunts to each other, but those religions that thrive and prosper will generally be the reactionary and bigoted philiosophies that help prop up inequitous social models and give religious justification to various ruling wankers, and the longer an area remains without significant input of new religious or philosophical ideas, the more ossified and close minded its likely to become. the problem with islam, or people’s attitudes towards islam, is they see it as an all encompassing social force responsible for everything wrong in the middle east and wider muslim world. social or political problems in cambodia eg. would never be dismissed as caused by “buddhism” or “buddhist culture” people understand the complex interplay of forces in shaping societies around the world, but have a blind spot when it comes to the middle east. It’s always important to seperate “Muslims” from “Islam” because Islam will always be on some level an abstraction whether you assume its influence is a net negative or positive. You can never be sure what a muslim believes about anything just from the religion they decide to be a part of, or even what they mean when they say they’re muslim. I often find myself in the unenviable position of having to defend a religion i dont like from crazed bigots who’ve decided its the sole force of evil in the universe. but its always important to do it, because that sort of bigotry and racism will always make things worse, even if the people you have to defend are assholes.

Liberals are sometimes a little wary of being seen as overly critical of islam, but thats because (as far as i can see, not being one myself) they dont want to feed the racist stereotypes that are already pretty ubiquitous, not because of some mispalced multicultural diffrent strokes for diffrent folks wishy-washy bullshit. which seems like a reasonable fear in the current climate.

a little aside,
muslims are always being asked to denounce this or that horrible thing some muslim did somewhere, which shows pretty clearly the underlying racist assumption people have about muslims in general. It never seems to work for anyone else. My mother was jewish and my father catholic, i grew up considering myself mainly jewish, although not particularly religious, yet few people ever felt the need to get me to denounce Paul Wolfowitz or Baruch Goldstein. It wasn’t assumed (except by a few bigoted zionists) that as a jew i would automatically support the occupation of the west bank or the invasion of iraq. My father never gets asked to denounce ETA or ultra-religious colombian death squads that murder gays and prostitutes on some bizarre assumption that his default position is support for anything evil catholics do anywhere unless he specifically say otherwise. so why is it asumed the default position for muslims is support for any disgusting shit any muslim does? my ex-girlfriend used to get this shit all the time (no-doubt still does), people making weird assumptions about her opinions “as a muslim” despite them often knowing she was a socialist and a pacifist and was always being asked to denounce this or that, as if people thought they had to make sure she wasnt a secret jihadi.

last bit (hopefully)

the armenian genocide isn’t really an answer to my question of “name me all the islamic countries in the last century that have declared war on and invaded “the west”” As the armenians were already subjects of the ottoman empire it can hardly be called an invasion, and a massacre of helpless civilians can’t really be called a war either. the mobilizxation for the genocide was carried out in the context of a wider war of course, against britain, france and turkey’s own arab population, but it wasnt the british or the french who were being wiped out or invaded. i also find it strange that you consider the armenians living in cilicia, eastern turkey and the levant as part of the “civilized west”. it stretches the definition a little. you should have just said “christians” but i guess that wouldnt be world spanning enough for you. even if we did grant this as an example it was still 90 years ago. not much been happening since. i would suggest turkey’s attack on bulgaria in 1913, as a possible contender which makes a grand total of one keeping to the original definition.

i dunno what your last post was about. telling us the credentials of aavaz? seems like you’re trying to imply that people here dont realise the taliban are butchers or that we’d refuse to believe such a thing could happen without being officially accredited by a liberal NGO. which if you’ll pardon my french is arseclap. i think i see where tyou’re coming from though. opposed to massive generalisations against islam = apologists for muslim fundamentalists. got it

Icho and others,

If what you say is correct, if criticizing the behavior of Muslims here and abroad is based on simple racism and bigotry, why does this racism and bigotry not extend to other “brown people” (your words)? Why do not Hindus, for example, come in for the same opprobrium?

After all, according to Alec, Hinduvatu is the big problem for India. Why do we not see the same issues with Hindus trying to spread their Hinduvatu here? The worst I’ve seen in the States are grocery stores named “Jai Hind!” but why do Hindus, for example, not have the equivalent of a CAIR? Why is there no Hinduphobia, or liberals passionately devoted to Hindus being able to freely practice their religion as they wish? Do Hindus actually have any of these issues in the States, or is it a uniquely Muslim problem? Icho, I appreciate that you had a Muslim ex-girlfriend, and may be sensitive to these questions, but in my mind they leave a logical hole a mile wide.

Alec: I’d wager dollars to donuts that he’s a snot-nosed Jewish kid fresh from high-school forensics

This nasty little anti-Semitic comment from Alec shows why I don’t reveal anything about my age, ethnicity, occupation, etc. He’s completely wrong, of course, but it is amusing to watch him blow his liberal facade as he gropes for an ethnic or religious hook to hang his hatred on; Psycho Tough Guy Mikey has done much the same thing with his out-loud fantasies of beating me in the street.

Finally, the point of the Aveena.org link was to allow folks to make a positive contribution to the plight of people who could really use it. Hopefully you took a look and signed it if it made sense to you.

Sorry, its avaaz.org.

Rather than give you examples of this, which are legion, a better exercise would be to try and find a counter-example of a large Muslim population living peacefully and justly with non-Muslims.

Bangladesh.

Did you have some point to make?

Meanwhile, how many people – from the Phillipines to Nigeria, from the UK to Thailand – have to die while Muslims try to figure a philosophy that happened hundreds of years ago?

Thailand?! Would this have anything to do with the bloodless coup in 2006, when Wingnuttia went mad when they realized that Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin is a Muslim? If it is, what in the hell is it doing in the context of a statement asking how many people have to die unless the tacit answer you’re looking for is “none”?

Nullifidian, check out this from the Asia Times:
Bangladesh: Breeding ground for Muslim terror (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DI21Df06.html)

Of course, we needn’t roam too far afield, when there are incidents like this one: http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2007/08/05/ap-state-sc/d8qql69g0.txt from last night.

From the article:

“Authorities closed a highway outside Charleston for more than five hours Saturday night after police found explosives in the trunk of a car… Law enforcement officials closed the road about 7 p.m. after the traffic stop in Goose Creek. Television stations reported that two men riding in the vehicle were detained.

Goose Creek is home to the Naval Weapons Station, which houses the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig, a military prison where enemy combatants have been held. The traffic stop took place about 5 miles from one edge of the sprawling Navy weapons facility, according to WCSC-TV.”

Maybe the two men are Norwegians, or TimothyMcVeighs, or Indians like those fine activists up in Scotland. Maybe….

No, I actually think all hate crime legislation is pernicious, because it is predicated on the intent of the perpetrator

Because, of course, hate crimes are the only times you’ll ever encounter the issue of intent being raised in a criminal case. You’ll never see it in the context of the justification defense, the decision to charge someone with murder, rather than manslaughter, the difference between arson and accident, etc. These kinds of issues just never come up in jurisprudence.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the murder / manslaughter distinction? Don’t kill anyone.

How does one avoid falling afoul of the Muslim hate crime distinction? Don’t insult Islam, the Koran, or their despicable prophet.

No, actually the way you avoid falling afoul of any hate crime enhancement is to not commit a crime. What a surprising revelation that there has to be an actual crime underlying the hate crime enhancement!

This is pathetic. It’s one thing to be an eliminationist idiot, but now you’re just phoning it in. You can’t give up the concept that hate crimes should be overturned (at least as far as those skeery muslamonazifasciantidisestablishmentarians go), but you’re so obviously flailing about for a reason to justify your bullshit excuses.

This nasty little anti-Semitic comment from Alec…

OK, you’re either clearly not arguing in good faith or you’re an utter imbecile.

If what you say is correct, if criticizing the behavior of Muslims here and abroad is based on simple racism and bigotry, why does this racism and bigotry not extend to other “brown people” (your words)? Why do not Hindus, for example, come in for the same opprobrium?

First of all, you’re taking our assessments of your postings and attitudes here and trying to apply them globally. We don’t know how far your racism and bigotry extends, but we do know from your postings here that it at least covers Muslims.

As for the broader question of why Americans in general who harsh on Islam aren’t also down on Hindus, the obvious first answer is that they may be — but probably because they assume that brown people other than Mexicans (hated for different reasons) are Teh Hated Muslims. Also, violent extremists within Hinduism have not risen to prominence in the American news. But I’d be willing to bet that if the RSS or a similar group attacked the U.S., on our soil or abroad, there would be people like you decrying the uncivilized nature of all Hindus, and nattering on about Hindu advocacy organizations in the U.S. when they complain of the inevitable anti-Hindu assaults and harassment.

Nullifidan,

Actually I addressed your point upthread, in the example of CAIR cheering on hate crimes charges against people that hung an “insulting” sign opposite a mosque.

Djur, the comments of Alec and Tough Guy Mikey speak for themselves. Shorter Alec: “Shut up smarty-pants Jew”; Shorter Mikey: “I’m intolerant of your intolerance of intolerance”.

And I’m still waiting for anyone to address my question I posted at 15:08.

Dan,

Wow, and you accuse me of stretching to make a point? That’s weak. Somehow you think that people that have taken the time to educate themselves about Islam, the Koran, jihad, taquiyya, etc are now suddenly conflating Muslims with all “brown people”? What a ridiculous answer. The only positive thing I can say is that you must know you are really reaching now to answer my points.

Actually I addressed your point upthread, in the example of CAIR cheering on hate crimes charges against people that hung an “insulting” sign opposite a mosque.

Okay, so who are these people charged? I’d like names, dates, and filings, because so far the only thing that has been produced is that the FBI is investigating it as a possible threat.

Let’s face it, you’re now just lying to justify your bigotry.

Erm, sorry, the police not the FBI. I’d been talking about the FBI in another context on a message board.

Shorter Alec: “Shut up smarty-pants Jew”;

You’re an enormous buffoon.

Nullifidian,

The point is that large, mainstream Muslim groups in this country (the States) believe that insulting Islam should be a crime, and are pressuring law enforcement and policy makers to make it so.

Djur, reread Alec’s words.

I’d wager dollars to donuts that he’s a snot-nosed Jewish kid fresh from high-school forensics

And then of course there is Tough Guy Mikey, who said:
onto the streets…and I would stand happily with the muslims, the gays

What a measure of Mikey’s self-delusion that he believes that Islam is aligned with protecting the rights of homosexuals! I’m not sure where Mikey went, but here’s a nice shot of Muslims in the street:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4XGyc8tAuk

And Dan, I’m quite sure that most people who saw the footage in that YouTube clip know exactly what ideology inspired it.

Really, you people are going to such lengths to defend the indefensible. Why?

The point is that large, mainstream Muslim groups in this country (the States) believe that insulting Islam should be a crime, and are pressuring law enforcement and policy makers to make it so.

No, the point is that the simple act of insulting any religion in the States will never be a crime, and the reason you’re up in arms is not because you feel oppressed by the ‘Muslim Power Structure’ (since there is no such thing) but because you want to firmly align yourself with a white-supremacist oppressor class. The means to do that lie in discrediting hate crimes in general as “thought crimes”, despite the fact that the concept of mens rea is a central pillar of criminal law, and assigning motive is routine in criminal cases.

To that end, you’re willing to lie, misrepresent, and obfuscate. For example, the Asia Times article you cited was just one such misrepresentation. The fact that there are radical elements in Bangladesh’s Muslim population (though not to the scaremongering degree in the article) is neither here nor there when it comes to assessing the ability of a Muslim majority to live peacefully with minority members of non-Islamic religions. To do otherwise would be like using the Ku Klux Klan to argue that WASPs cannot live peaceably with minority members in their communities, and ignoring any evidence which calls into question this sweeping generalization.

Somehow you think that people that have taken the time to educate themselves about Islam, the Koran, jihad, taquiyya, etc are now suddenly conflating Muslims with all “brown people”?

No. But I have seen a fair amount of evidence that run-of-the-mill Americans can’t tell the difference between “brown people” living in America and radical Islamist terrorists, and that the fear of the latter has resulted in hate crimes against the former. See, for example, this story or this one, and others like them.

And I don’t think you should presume to speak for “people who have taken the time to educate themselves about Islam,” because I know several of those personally, and they don’t seem to share your particular fear of the Global Mussulman Conspiracy.

I don’t particularly care about Alec’s assessment of your background, but your attitude toward Islam expressed here is basically in alignment with that of right-wing Jews and Christians, and since you have expressly disclaimed Christianity, the assumption that you are or were Jewish was not unreasonable. Note that he did not attack your views because of your presumed Jewishness, imply that your bigotry is an inevitable outgrowth of it, or attribute to you any particular negative characteristics (“uncivilized,” for example) arising from it. In fact, his comment suggested his greatest disdain was for forensics students.

As for your YouTube video, what exactly is it supposed to prove? That some Palestinians were assholes right after September 11? OK, I’ll concede that point. But then again, some Palestinians are assholes all the time. So are a some Israelis and some Americans. The difference between you and me, I think, is that I can look at that video and be disgusted with those particular Palestinian assholes; but you look at it and become disgusted with all Muslims everywhere.

Nullifidian,

It amuses me that you folks think I’m white bread. I’m not sure this white supremacist oppressor class would let me in, Nullifidian, but I’ll be sure to knock on their door and ask. What’s their address? Is the password “No thought crimes!”?

And no, Dan, I’m not Jewish either. I was born into a particular Christian sect to which I only nominally continue to belong. And that’s about all the personal information I care to share at the moment.

The YouTube video is an example of Muslims in the street expressing themselves. The (admittedly somewhat snarky) point was to show TG Mikey an example of Muslims in the street, since he earlier expressed willingness to join them there. My hot-tempered friend seems to have moved on and the point was missed, but I thought it worthwhile to highlight his ludicrous idea that Islamic ideology somehow aligns with the rights of homosexuals.

It is in fact a ludicrous idea that Islamic ideology aligns with anything resembling progressive or liberal ideals. I’m intolerant of their intolerance; sorry, folks, that’s just the way it’s going to be. I’ll point out Islamic totalitarianism, aggression, and coercion as much as I like, no matter how much folks screech “bigot” and “racist” at me.

It amuses me that you folks think I’m white bread. I’m not sure this white supremacist oppressor class would let me in, Nullifidian, but I’ll be sure to knock on their door and ask. What’s their address? Is the password “No thought crimes!”?

Erm, when did I say anything about your identity? One doesn’t have to be a member of the dominant oppressor class in order to identify with it. That’s a principle imperialists exploited for decades. You don’t think that the same people who wet their pants at the mention of the word Reconquista aren’t the same people who regard Michelle Malkin, who stokes that fear, as some sort of wog?

In these sorts of cases, it’s always useful to have some sort of Lord Haw-Haw of the ethnic minority one is demonizing, so that one can point to the “good” minority (as defined by the white supremacist majority) and say “You see?! This one agrees with me, so of course I can’t be racist!”

Now, if you can provide us with any way in which your concept of “thought crimes” doesn’t also eliminate the concept of mens rea in criminal law, people might take you seriously. If you weren’t so pathetically eager to make the world safe for bigotry that you’re willing to lie, misread, and obfuscate to make your points (e.g. claiming that people had been charged with a crime in one or two of the cases involving posters–your conflation of them rendering it difficult to discern if you’re talking about one or both), then people might take you seriously.

In short, if you weren’t such a lying, bigoted fuck-up, you might have some credibility.

Nullifidian,

Can I sign up for your newsletter, Denouncing the White Supremacist Majority? It sounds fascinating, and I can learn all about your theories of imperialism and whatnot.

In the meantime, when I’m not frothing at the mouth about the white supremacists that run my life (or whatever it is that your crackpot theory is), I might pay attention to stories like this: http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/newjersey/story/7494543p-7390500c.html

This thread has been quite, um, interesting: People start off fairly reasonable, and then once the undeniable fact of Islamic intolerance won’t disappear, all sorts of things start to happen: Alec raging about “snot nosed Jews”, TG Mikey running off in a Quixotic quest to find Islamists who support gay rights, and now Nullifidian frothing about white supremacists running the world.

The Saudis pouring money into this country to support Salafism would be amused – and unfortunately, that’s not a conspiracy theory.

From Golden Boy’s link:

Prosecutors have shown a jury evidence that leaders of a local Muslim charity were outraged by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, they sang pro-Hamas songs and had financial dealings with a man whom the U.S. government would later call a terrorist.

(dully) Wow. I am so horrified. By those shocking revelations. Truly this is the groundwork being laid for the new Caliphate.

You know, for those of us with a working knowledge of Islam that isn’t based off Ye Lyffe of ye Impoftore Mahomet, Syrvantte of ye Deamone Termagant, your continued conflation of Salafism and Wahhabism is highly amusing. Considering that you consider CAIR to be a ‘Salafist pressure group,’ I guess you must consider them to be Wahhabis too. Now that’s fucking hilarious.

Alec raging about “snot nosed Jews”

You’re a mind-bendingly foolish simpleton or you’ve the intellectual honesty of Alan Dershowitz. One or the other.

Mikey running off in a Quixotic quest to find Islamists who support gay rights

Not only do you conflate Salafism and Wahhabism, but you additionally conflate Islam with Islamism. Well done, blockhead.

I can learn all about your theories of imperialism and whatnot … now Nullifidian frothing about white supremacists running the world

OK, so you’re both a piss-brained nincompoop and a lying sack of shit. Good to know.

In conclusion, what you know about Islam and the basic rules of intellectual decency could be stored between two pages of the Qu’ran.

Djur,

Of course you neglected to quote this from the article on Muslim terrorism in the United States:

“Federal prosecutors used wiretapped phone calls and videos seized in police raids to slowly build their case that officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development raised millions for Hamas terrorists.

Five men are charged with helping finance a terrorist group, conspiracy and money laundering. The men include Abdulrahman Odeh, the group’s New Jersey representative.

Authorities say some of the charity’s money helped support the families of suicide bombers. The trial is one of the federal government’s highest-profile terror-related prosecutions since the attacks of 2001.”

And of course, CAIR was named by federal prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators in this case.

Oh, and from Wikipedia: Salafism is often used interchangeably with “Wahhabism”. Adherents usually reject this term because it is considered derogatory and because none of the adherents of Salafism in the past ever referred to themselves as such. Typically, they used terms like “Muwahidoon” or “Ahl at-Tawheed.

I don’t mind using the derogatory term at all ;).

Alec said what he said, Djur. Let *him* come back and wave his hands about it.

Golden Boy

One piece of friendly advice: it is beyond foolish to link your comments to your real name.

Golden Boy:

I chose to cite the part of the article that was actually based on established fact. The rest is not based on currently established fact. Whether I consider providing money to Hamas as being part of the Islamofascist conspiracy to destroy America is an entirely different issue.

Beyond that, I would certainly hope someone is supporting the families of suicide bombers. Shall they be punished and left destitute because of the actions of the men?

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information on Islam. Furthermore, the fact that ‘Wahhabism’ and ‘Salafism’ are used interchangably by the west does not indicate that the terms properly indicate the same thing. In general, Salafism indicates a broader movement with no political connections — it is not dissimilar to the Christian primitive movement. Wahhabism is a specific movement of fundamentalist Islam with direct connections to the Saudi state.

I wouldn’t blame Alec if he doesn’t really feel like pissing around on the Internet all day arguing about Islamofascism.

Of course you don’t mind using derogatory terms for what you consider the vile carryings-on of uncivilized wogs.

So it’s foolish for me to be public about my identity online (which I have been for over seven years), huh? What’s going to happen? I’m sure a civilized and impassioned warrior for free speech such as yourself would never use that information to foul ends.

However, I’m not interested in discussing anything with someone who sees fit to make veiled threats. My involvement in this discussion has ended. Get thee back to LGF.

Blather blather blather anti-Semite blather.

I love how you immediately take ‘snot-nosed Jewish kid’ for an anti-Semitic remark. ‘Snot-nosed kid’ is a pretty standard term of abuse for pseudo-intellectual squirts like yourself; to make it anti-Semitic you’d really, really have to want to believe what everyone says about Jews. That you do isn’t too surprising; you already comport yourself towards one ethnic group on the basis of an awful stereotype that lacks the attention to detail found in True Lies. I guess you’d pretty much have to accept racial stereotypes by default, which means ‘snot-nosed Jewish kid’ clearly means something to you it doesn’t to me. Then again, that’s because when I think of ‘Jew’ I think of my Jewish acquaintances, who have more in common with me (and my Muslim friends, too) than they have differences – rather than a gaudy, tasteless caricature with a humongous schnozz. Different strokes.

I guess I am probably an anti-Semite, though, what with my rantings and ravings about a secret international cabal of illiberal theocrats who secretly control the legal system and who practice their hateful religion out of nothing but wicked spite for all that is good. That part where I lump any active group of them, regardless of political orientation, into the first term of abuse I learned for Jewish chauvinists, and that part where I instinctively lionize anyone who desecrates the Torah and take at face value any ridiculous libel promulgated by bigots against Jews out of sheer spite – well, that makes me an anti-Semite too. Not to mention the fact that whenever I see a Jewish person I immediately think of them as an amorphous evil entity functionally identical to every other Jew in beliefs and goals, and I can actually take people seriously when they talk about what ‘the Jews’ say, do, or believe – and not only that, but I invariably think it is something bad.

Hey, wait a minute.

And because you’re about as sharp as sandstone, let me spell this out in one-and-two-syllable words for you:

Your point of view on Arabs is directly and with almost no polish or change lifted from pre-Shoah anti-Semitism. Your (3-syllable words coming up, sorry:) premises, conclusions, and implied praxis are not just similar to that of Europe’s old anti-Semites, but the lifting is so shameless and bald-faced that you can see the damn seams. Your efforts to fix the discussion around an Arab straw-man are nearly identical to similar efforts made from Wagner to Celine – although they were much more slick and less crass than you are.

Even the way you see them is almost the same as the way Europe’s anti-Semites saw Jews: as they thought of bearded Hasids where most Jews were proto-Reform/Conservative, you think of barely-scrubbed sword-and-AK-wielding Arabs, even though Arabs make up a fifth of Muslims and do not even have a damn democracy to represent them. Your jargon pretends you know things you do not; where an anti-Semite would have used obscure hand-waves centered about ‘Zionist’, you instead use – interchangably! – Salafist and Wahhabi, two different groups most Muslims have never heard of, never mind that they represent the less widespread branch of Islam and are active only in the Arab world, and at that only usually in monarchist circles. What’s more, your idea of ‘civilization’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ are straight lifts from anti-Semitic thought. You might as well find some way to attack ‘Muslim physics’ and be done with it.

‘Anti-Semite’ was so incredibly dumb of you, GB, because you are one, adjusted for inflation. If you hadn’t brought that into this, I wouldn’t have had to point it out, but now I do. How does it feel, dumbass?

Djur,

As far as I know I’m the only one who has been physically threatened on this thread. I bear you no ill will, just figured I’d point it out to you. No worries.

I’m sure that everyone appreciates your concern for the families of suicide bombers. Nothing like having your priorities straight, eh?

Alec,

Poor guy. I’m sure if you rage for a few more hundred words against me that everyone will forgive you for calling me a “snot nosed Jew.”

As for your idea that criticism of Islam derives from European anti-Semitism, I’m not sure that holds water in the real world. After all, there really are imams teaching that non-Muslims are inferior beings, deserving of only death or submission, and they are doing this teaching in mosques in the West. Or do you think that is a rumor only? I’m happy to show you volumes of evidence if you do.

Why, yes, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and David Raziel are radically opposed to the sanctity of non-Jewish life, and that certainly makes hating Jews acceptable. I’m glad we cleared that up!

Forget it guys. It’s just like arguing with the KKK. He won’t allow logic or genuine understanding of the real world have an impact. Bigots are blinded by hate. Since the proprietors are unwilling to ban scum like this, I recomend the antitroll greasemonkey script. Because he loves it when you engage him. He gets to repeat vile racist eliminationist rhetoric at YOUR house. Giggles and boners for him. Annoyance and frustration for you.

The funny thing is his willingness to pretend to be stupid when it suits him. For example when I mentioned muslims and gays as hated, oppressed groups that needed people of good faith to stand with them, he knew exactly what I meant. But he felt he could score more points if he could misunderstand and claim I was taking the position that islam supports gay rights. The guy is obvious, and he’ll keep going as long as you will.

For me, he’s a pie eater. You may, of course, choose to keep trying….

mikey

Mikey,

You are missing the point. Standing with CAIR and other Muslims means abandoning (for example) homosexual rights.

Why not simply say, as I do, that we will be intolerant of Islam’s intolerance? Why not agree with the author of this article, and state that Westerners need not back down in the face of Islamic coercion and intimidation?

As for Alec’s reference to two founders of the state of Israel, I simply have no comment. If he hates Israel that much, that’s his problem. It is interesting that this thread has revealed that, but I’ll leave analysis of that to others. The point remains that when he got really, REALLY angry at me, the epiteth he chose to throw was “you Jew.”

This thread has been quite, um, interesting: People start off fairly reasonable, and then once the undeniable fact of Islamic intolerance won’t disappear,

Probably because this ‘undeniable fact’ never appeared in the form of any evidence or even minimal understanding of Islam (the fact that you continue to refer to “Islamic ideology” as if there were such a creature is a dead giveaway).

In the meantime, when I’m not frothing at the mouth about the white supremacists that run my life (or whatever it is that your crackpot theory is),

The ‘crackpot theory’ is the concept of white skin privilege. It’s elucidated in works by crazy-ass n-ggers like WEB DuBois, conspiracy-theorist extraordinare. I’d recommend something like Black Reconstruction in America on the psychological wage of white skin privilege, but I know you wouldn’t read it, even if it forms the basis of the work of Eric Foner and other prominent white intellectuals. After all, the man was a COMMIE!!!!!111ONE!1 I also doubt you’d do the intellectual spadework to understand the mechanisms of colonialism and the way in which they recruited Natives of their land to police their own, and rewarded those which provided the political and intellectual cover for empire.

I might pay attention to stories like this: http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/newjersey/story/7494543p-7390500c.html

Of course you would. Would you give the same degree of attention to news articles showing that the feds have fabricated evidence in this trial? Revealingly, the faked evidence isn’t evidence of any sort, given the charges. They’re fabricated anti-Jewish statements put in the mouths of this charity’s head honchos, clearly designed to turn public opinion against them and part of the eventual bad-jacketing of anyone supportive of the cause of Palestinian nationalism and who may be thinking of getting in the way of the imposition of starvation by giving humanitarian aid to residents in the Gaza Strip. For the concept of “bad-jacketing”, I could refer you to Churchill’s and Vander Wall’s The COINTELPRO Papers and Agents of Repression, but I doubt you’d read them either.

This thread has been quite, um, interesting: People start off fairly reasonable, and then once the undeniable fact of Islamic intolerance won’t disappear, all sorts of things start to happen: Alec raging about “snot nosed Jews”, TG Mikey running off in a Quixotic quest to find Islamists who support gay rights, and now Nullifidian frothing about white supremacists running the world.

Not to mention the sight of you creating strawmen of not just one person’s position, but all three of our positions. I won’t speak for them, although it’s plain to anyone with an ounce of reading comprehension that your characterization is grossly dishonest, but I can speak for myself. I never said anything about white supremacists ruling the world. In fact, I seriously doubt you understand the concept of white supremacism. It is, simply, the creation of a hierarchy in which whites are empowered at the expense of others. Take, for example, the original subject of this thread: Victor Davis Hanson. He gets to declare, unilaterally, the reform of Muslim society impossible, and then he barks out orders that they reform or “we” (by which he means white men of privilege, like himself) are going to have to get tough (by which he means “Let us take up arms and you go forth”, in the best tradition of the Crusader intellectual, like St. Bernard).

And you’re part of the same rotten tradition. It doesn’t matter what ethnic group you come from (see Alec’s statements regarding that unprincipled and untalented hack, Salman Rushdie) because you’ve got that ideology jammed so far into your head that you’re willing to lie and obfuscate every single time in order to make your case. But really, why bother? Everyone here can see your blanket ignorance of the thing you propose to be critiquing every time you speak, so you don’t stand a snowball’s chance of convincing us. Do you do it to hear yourself speak, to shore up your own beliefs in an echo chamber of your own making (by bolstering your own position with rhetoric that the supposedly retrogressive ‘ideology of Islam’ is an “undeniable fact”)? I don’t see the motivation. Nor can I say that I really care. There’s no point in engaging you in a dialogue because you’ll simply take all the Gricean assumptions necessary for communication (that responses, for example, will be honest and substantatively address the issues raised) and turn them on their heads.

In short, you are nothing more nor less than a conversational black hole, from which one will never get one’s wasted time and effort back.

Prosecutors have shown a jury evidence that leaders of a local Muslim charity were outraged by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, they sang pro-Hamas songs and had financial dealings with a man whom the U.S. government would later call a terrorist.

Hey, me too!

I’m outraged by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. I can’t cop to singing Hamas songs, but I do know Palestinian nationalist songs as well as songs by dangerous radicals like Joe Hill. I have had many dealings, financial and otherwise, with people who run things like Food Not Bombs, named an “anarcho-vegan” (I cannot make this up) terrorist organization by a counterterrorism official speaking at UT Austin in 2006.

I’m such a damn threat, singing folk songs, protesting Israeli apartheid, and feeding homeless people. How will the Vaterhomeland survive?

Waah, the victim card! Waah waah!

Alec says, somewhere upthread, “The ironic thing is that from the tone of the discourse thus far, declaring Christianity a religion of love on the force of no real evidence but disavowing a personal connection to it, I’d wager dollars to donuts that [Golden Boy]’s a snot-nosed Jewish kid fresh from high-school forensics who takes the right-wing Christianist anti-semites’ bullshit about “judaeo-Christian values” at face value.”

From this, GB — now a self-professed non-Jew — derives antisemitism. But wait! The magic is yet to come! For within a few short posts, the phrase “a snot-nosed Jewish kid fresh from high-school forensics” has become, mirabile dictu, “snot nosed Jew”! Which yes, could probably be considered an antisemitic comment, but in fact one that only GB has entered into this thread. And yet, with a mere flick of his magic ring, The Incredible Goldini transforms this into “Alec raging about ‘snot nosed Jews'”! The audience can only gasp!

But wait, the show is not over! With a flourish of his cape and a wave of his wand, the phrase metamorphosizes into “you Jew” — again, a phrase (or, as he puts it, epithet) that only The Great Goldeno himself has added to the thread.

Such powerful magic!

Similarly, Goldenskaya the Magnificent has conjured — from thin air! — threats by Mikey “who refers to taking me out” and who has “out-loud fantasies of beating me in the street” and attributed them to Mikey. I went and looked at everything Mikey wrote, but could find no references to taking anybody out, nor any such fantasies. Truly, this is conjuration of a puissance not seen since Merlin strode Albion!

But perhaps there is a more mundane explanation for this presto-changeo mummery. Why yes, the conclusion is inescapable: CAIR and the International Mohammedan Jihad and Knitting Circle must be behind it. They’re after you, Golden Boy! Run, run like the wind!

Dan,

That was pretty weak. I’m sure Alec appreciates the lengths to which you are going, but his comment is what it is, and his followups haven’t exactly disavowed it. I appreciate the sardonic humor on this thread – Djur’s Ye Lyffe of ye Impoftore Mahomet, Syrvantte of ye Deamone Termagant is pretty damn funny – but your post was just lame.

As for Mikey, perhaps you missed these comments:

Mikey Aug 3 2:36 “oh, and violence seems to have been part of my life for nearly forty years. I don’t necessarily advocate it in every case, but I find it has proved useful on occasion”

Mikey Aug 4 3:40 “it’s pretty sad that you’re likely to hurt somebody before you get taken off the streets”

Mikey today 3:04 “you oughta check out my act in real life. Because I would have beat the sumbitch ’til his mom wouldn’t recognize him.”

But then, cognitive dissonance is more or less the name of the game for liberal apologists for Islam, isn’t it?

Well, no wonder you feel threatened by the Big Bad Muslim Mafia. You feel threatened by everything!

Which makes it kind of surprising that you can’t appreciate CAIR standing up for Muslims who feel threatened by people who shoot Korans and lob them at mosques.

Oh, and this:

liberal apologists for Islam

assuming you include me in that group, shows me that you haven’t understood a single word I’ve written here. Maybe you haven’t tried.

I’ve challenged you on your misunderstanding of hate crimes legislation. I’ve challenged your assertions that Muslims, in their entirety, are “uncivilized,” “fascistic,” and all those other lovely things you have said about them. You’ve picked the occasional sentence or phrase from my comments, but never really addressed any of the points I have made or answered any of the questions I have asked.

Speaking of which, revisiting your earliest posts, I found the following:

I used to think like most of you do, that Muslims were misunderstood and that it was unfair to blame Islam for the excesses of a few fanatics.

This was directed to Alec, but it shows a fairly broad miscomprehension of what I, at least, have been trying to get across to you: It may or may not be fair to “blame Islam for the excesses of a few fanatics.” But it is absolutely unfair to blame non-fanatic Muslims for the excesses of the fanatics. Unless you have some secret knowledge that every Muslim who lives in the West is a crypto-jihadist, simply biding his or her time until Zero Hour, then your depiction of all Muslims as a monolithic (and evil) bloc is baseless bigotry.

christ. leave for 24 hours and suddenly there’s nine million new posts. better get cracking i suppose

Dan, it appears he does believe that. a couple of quotes.

Alec, I used to think like most of you do, that Muslims were misunderstood and that it was unfair to blame Islam for the excesses of a few fanatics. Then, later in my professional life, I became acquainted with several well-educated, prosperous Muslims, and once they began to open up to me, I was shocked, jaw-droppingly, mind-bendingly shocked by their true feelings about Islam and the West. It’s a long story but that was the genesis of my research into the reality of Islam.

followed by, in reply to Kevin Bacon’s “none of my muslim friends are mad fanatics” post.

“Get your Muslim friends to open up about Islam; you may be surprised.”

the only way that makes any sense is as an admission that he believes that all muslims are west-hating fanatics, whatever they actually do or say. he’s actually going so far as to claim that he knows Kevin’s friends and their ideologies and motivations better than he does. seems like quite a feat.

Golden Boy, you seem to have a problem with avoidance, and with admitting your mistakes. there’s a striking pattern on this thread

eg. you say X, someone else posts a link to information that refutes it, you say “thats very interesting i’ll take a look at it when i have time” and then never mention it again, shifting the argument somewhere else .

after it being pointed out that you seem to know nothing about the mechanics of hate crime legislation or the concept of intent as it pertain s to crimes, all you can manage is saying good point before maundering off on a tangent. after i pointed out that your “islam has been at war with the west for centuries” claim was silly and historically ignorant, and that you (apparently deliberately) misrepresented the situation with regards to communalist violence in india, and that your connecting commenters on youtube with violent fanatics was stupid, you didnt address any of the points, instead you changed the topic and suddenly its all about an allegedly anti-semitic comment that Alec posted ages ago. see a pattern here?

you’ve moved away from specific points and arguments towards generalised vague criticisms of “liberal apologists for islam” despite the fact that everyone arguing with you appears to be united in the belief that islam sucks.

to get things back on track a little, i’d like you to try and refute some of the points i made or give some detailed defences of some of your own earlier assertions. if you dont do this within the next few posts i’ll have to assume you’ve decided they’re indefensible. that seem fair? good. look forward to hearing from you

I think you are mischaracterizing how I’ve responded on this thread in your own favor. I’ve spent a lot of time politely responding to angry and exaggerated attacks, and I’ll gently point out that many of my opponents have ducked plenty of my arguments as well. I’m happy to clarify my thoughts or address issues you think I’ve missed. You point out four: 1) the paper on Islam in Africa (which I said was interesting and would look at); 2) hate crimes; 3) Islam’s war with the West; and 4) YouTube commentators on videos desecrating the Koran.

The paper on Islam in Africa concluded that Islam was a value neutral political force in Africa, and that policy makers should carefully consider it as they deal with African populations. OK – anyone excited about discussing that?

In the discussion about hate crimes, my accusers consistently ignore my main point, which is that Muslim pressure groups in the States are encouraging hate crime prosecutions when there is no underlying crime. I highlighted two cases where this was true (shooting the Koran and hanging a poster critical of Mohammed), and the response was hyperbolic ad hominems. The one response that did try to address my main point was a weak, “Well, let’s see if they get convicted,” the implication being that then and only then might there be some concern. But of course this illustrates the intent of Muslims here in the States and that was my point.

On the Islamic jihad against the West, I’ll take a hint from the Latinophilic tendencies here and say, Res ipsa loquitor. I have an example from the struggle of the religion of peace against America from just the last 24 hours, if you are interested.

The YouTube comments are particularly interesting. They show a self-selected group of Muslims using Western technology to castigate (to say the least!) a Westerners desecrating an Islamic symbol. It’s an example of the absurd Muslim demand that non-Muslims treat their symbols, religion, etc with the supremacy that they expect. It ties into the point about hate crimes, actually.

And I do find it interesting that now Alec’s anti-Semitic comment to me is now “alleged” and “ages ago.” It is amusing the lengths to which you will go to defend your own, and I suppose it is a virtue of sorts. Dan has to resort to insulting me yet again when I pointed out that he was deliberately misleading about Mikey’s posts; perhaps you will do something similar.

Aware of a religious asshole? Send a gift at Sendahole.com.

Golden Boy, my question still stands:

How do you get along in the world, being so afraid of Muslims? How do you go grocery shopping, or to the movies, or to work? Do you get your food and movies delivered; do you work from home? I’m not being snarky, here, I truly wish to know.

Birdseatbugs,

OK, since I was taken to task so nicely by Icho for not responding to every last question, I’ll answer your sarcastic little dart.

My job requires that I travel all the over the (first) world, on a semi-regular basis. I reckon I’m in airplanes and airports, surely a priority terrorist target, more than just about anybody on this thread. So it is not as though fear of terrorism per se is affecting the way I live.

If you’ve actually read my posts, you’ll see that my concern is more about the trend of sneaking exceptionalism for Islam in the States than some fear that I’m going to be hit by terrorists. Or did you think that the silly hyberbolic statements that some of my more excitable antagonists on this thread like to say are actually true?

The paper on Islam in Africa concluded that Islam was a value neutral political force in Africa, and that policy makers should carefully consider it as they deal with African populations. OK – anyone excited about discussing that?

Excited? No, but since it was given in response to your request (“try and find a counter-example of a large Muslim population living peacefully and justly with non-Muslims” — implying that no such counter-example exists), it would be reasonable to expect you to comment on it and explain why it does not alter your position.

In the discussion about hate crimes, my accusers consistently ignore my main point, which is that Muslim pressure groups in the States are encouraging hate crime prosecutions when there is no underlying crime. I highlighted two cases where this was true (shooting the Koran and hanging a poster critical of Mohammed)

No. As I pointed out to you when you first raised these cases, they involve more than simply “shooting the Koran” and “hanging a poster critical of Mohammed.” The first case is being investigated because the Koran-shooters then threw the bullet-riddled Koran at a mosque. The second case involved two separate incidents: (1) the placement of an insulting poster on a dumpster next door to, and facing, a mosque; and (2) the taping of an anti-Islamic poster on CAIR’s office door.

Also, in neither case has CAIR demanded charges be filed. They have asked for an investigation, but ultimately, the Justice Department and/or local authorities will decide whether charges are warranted, i.e., whether an underlying crime has been committed.

I would also like to know why you keep discussing “Muslim pressure groups,” plural, when all you can cite to is CAIR.

I get the strong impression that if it were a bullet-ridden Tanach being thrown into a synagogue, this wouldn’t even be an issue.

I had the same suspicion. Where is the anxiety about the ADL’s efforts to enact hate crime legislation?

[…] But don’t think it’s all Democrats this week. Victor Davis Hanson is afraid of […]

You can try to hand wave and distract all you like by pointing at the “Jews” (and what is up with that?). CAIR is the foremost Muslim pressure group in this country, heavily funded by a hostile foreign power. A short selection of their recent accomplishments includes getting a young man charged with felony hate crimes for the heinous crime of throwing a stolen book into a toilet; representing six imams that orchestrated a terrifying incident for the purposes of scapegoating innocent Americans; and now recently coming to the defense of two more Muslims recently stopped in South Carolina with pipe bombs in their car trunk.

The good news is that many progressives are starting to get the picture that scoring points against conservatives with a Muslim stalking horse is pernicious and downright dangerous. Many of you don’t, of course; we’ll just have to see how far Islam goes in this country before you will recognize its danger. Take a look at the UK, for starters, where women regularly go about in burqas in certain cities and Islamic norms are all but law. Or maybe just wait until CAIR, who made sure the young man for Pace had his name and picture widely published, gets someone hurt.

CAIR is the foremost Muslim pressure group in this country, heavily funded by a hostile foreign power.

A hostile foreign power which is an ally of the US and which throws aid money all over the globe to all sorts of causes. Sounds like they deserve a fresh shipment of weapons.

RB,

Certain people in our government may consider the Saudis to be our allies; I think most Americans realize that the Saudi government and people are our enemies. The $22 billion our government saw fit to drop on them in weaponry is an abomination.

Allah Ackbar, RB, did you think I was some kind of fan of the Bush administration? Oy vey.

I like that I’m evidently the most anti-Semitic Jew there is. So anti-Semitic that I managed to get engaged to another one. Real asshole, me.

I’ve given up on this, largely because GB has gotten tedious. But I just felt like pointing that last bit out. 😛

OK, since I was taken to task so nicely by Icho for not responding to every last question, I’ll answer your sarcastic little dart.

If you’ve actually read my posts, you’ll see that my concern is more about the trend of sneaking exceptionalism for Islam in the States than some fear that I’m going to be hit by terrorists. Or did you think that the silly hyberbolic statements that some of my more excitable antagonists on this thread like to say are actually true?

Firstly, thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my post. I really do appreciate it. Secondly, I wasn’t being sarcastic! I am something of an amature ethnographer/anthropologist, and as such am intensely curious about why and how people do the things they do.

No, I don’t think “the silly hyberbolic statements that some of my more excitable antagonists on this thread like to say” are indeed true. I do, however, have my own opinion which I formed after reading your posts. The fact that it tends to fall in line with the opinions of other posters is something we’ll all have to live with, I’m afraid. Anyhow!

Your statement that you are more concerned with “the trend of sneaking exceptionalism for Islam in the States” falls a little flat when taken in context with everything else you’ve said to date, including but not limited to equating all Muslims *in general* with “uncivilized” people.

From what I’ve observed, I’d say you’re driven more by fear of Muslims *in general* than terrorists specifically, which is why I asked about the more mundane aspects of your life (grocery shopping, going to the movies, going to work) rather than specifically asking if you believed that the Islamapocolypse would be upon us any moment and are we all gonna die — other than espousing the belief that Muslims are “uncivilized”, you didn’t seem too attached to the idea that “all Muslims are terrorists” (unlike some people).

Again, thanks for at least responding. I’ll leave you to your discussion with those more well-versed in history and the law than I.

You can try to hand wave and distract all you like by pointing at the “Jews” (and what is up with that?).

It’s not handwaving to note that anyone could see the threat implicit in throwing the Jewish holy text (the Tanach) into a synagogue, riddled with bullets. In fact, it would be safe to say that the only person who would deny that a threat exists is someone ideologically committed to anti-semitism. You’re just committed to an anti-semitism of a different kind, but no less transparent. In fact, it replicates the norms of anti-semitism down the line, all the way to complaining about an “other” with foreign customs which is conspiring with dissident elements in one’s own country to overthrow one’s own cultural norms and replace them with the “other’s”.

CAIR is the foremost Muslim pressure group in this country, heavily funded by a hostile foreign power.

This wouldn’t be the “hostile foreign power” with deep links to the Bushes and one which is an ally to the United States, would it?

A short selection of their recent accomplishments includes getting a young man charged with felony hate crimes for the heinous crime of throwing a stolen book into a toilet;

No, actually the young man managed that because he apparently did the deed. How else is a prosecutor supposed to read the case of a man stealing a Quran to throw it down the toilet? It doesn’t exactly suggest the warm feelings and smiles to Muslims, does it?

representing six imams that orchestrated a terrifying incident for the purposes of scapegoating innocent Americans;

This terrifying incident was–hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen–prayer.

If you wet yourself at the thought of Muslims praying, then you are indeed a pathetic specimen.

and now recently coming to the defense of two more Muslims recently stopped in South Carolina with pipe bombs in their car trunk.

The only article I could find on that subject said that the family was releasing a statement through the Tampa branch of CAIR, combined with a fairly de rigeur statement that they deserve due process and a fair hearing. That’s hardly defending them, but rather defending the legal principles that have been with us since John at Runnymede. Only you and your fellow wingnuts could possibly confuse the two.

The good news is that many progressives are starting to get the picture that scoring points against conservatives with a Muslim stalking horse is pernicious and downright dangerous. Many of you don’t, of course; we’ll just have to see how far Islam goes in this country before you will recognize its danger.

Yes, let us all quake and quiver with fear at the impending takeover of a religion with only 1%, approximately, of the people of the United States being adherents. Next we can lie awake worrying about the Santeria threat: first they’ll come for the chickens, next the chickenhawks!

Take a look at the UK, for starters, where women regularly go about in burqas in certain cities and Islamic norms are all but law.

I’d love to know which cities these are, because I doubt very seriously if you can tell a burqa from a jilbab from a niqab from a hijab. And to say Islamic norms (whatever those are) are all but law is simply a roundabout way of saying they aren’t law.

Or maybe just wait until CAIR, who made sure the young man for Pace had his name and picture widely published, gets someone hurt.

Now we’re back into old-school anti-semitism: the Muslim hordes control the media! How else are we to interpret you blaming the media coverage of this on CAIR?

By the way, the article I consulted, the only one I could find about CAIR’s involvement regarding the two men accused of carrying a pipe bomb, also contained their pictures. In fact, it’s pretty much standard for many criminal cases. Are you going to complain about the vulnerability of those two young men, thanks to their pictures and names being published, or will you be hypocritically silent on that point?

Certain people in our government may consider the Saudis to be our allies

Redefining the government as “certain people” is pretty stupid, but is par for the course.

Allah Ackbar, RB, did you think I was some kind of fan of the Bush administration? Oy vey.

Well, you’re not smart, redefine whatever you like, tell half-truths, smear, don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re interested in non-stop panic. Yes, I think you’re a fan of the Bush administration.

i’ve been getting error messages from sadlyno for a couple of days, hence the lack of posting. i have to go out to work in half an hour, so i’ll make this brief, with another more substantial post tomorrow, assuming anyone’s still reading.

golden boy, in a comment supposedly answering the charge that you avoid answering questions and refuse to admit mistakes or evidence that undermines your contentions, you again aviod answering questions. ironic? could be.

my original challenge – “name me all the islamic countries in the last century that have declared war on and invaded “the west”” was fairly specific, and i was hoping after we’d dealt with that we could have moved onto more wide-ranging topics relating to islam’s alleged war against the west, but days later you still havent given me a straight answer. if the facts really do speak for themselves you’d have no difficulty giving me some examples. but this is the sum total of your “answer”

“On the Islamic jihad against the West, I’ll take a hint from the Latinophilic tendencies here and say, Res ipsa loquitor. I have an example from the struggle of the religion of peace against America from just the last 24 hours, if you are interested.”

i would be interested in your example, but i have a sneaking suspicion that it will fall outside the bounds of the actual question, and therefore be irrelevant.

“And I do find it interesting that now Alec’s anti-Semitic comment to me is now “alleged” and “ages ago.” It is amusing the lengths to which you will go to defend your own, and I suppose it is a virtue of sorts.”

i called the comment “allegedly anti-semitic” because that’s exactly what it is. there’s no actual hard evidence that Alec was being anti-semitic, something you’re obviously aware of as you deliberately distorted what he said to make it more offensive. the length of time since it was posted was relevant because you started making a much bigger deal of it shortly after most of your arguments were refuted and therefore was another way of changing the subject . I’m sure in your head your interpretation of events is so obviously true the only reason someone could disagree with you is a cliquey desire to protect their friends, but this is silly too. after all, despite your insinuations, i dont know any of these people, i’ve never really talked to any of them outside this thread, and our opinions on most matters are probably quite distinct. i guess if you believe in a fourteen century long global muslim conspiracy its not too much of a stretch to assume a tacit conspiracy amongst people who disagree with you in blog comments.

if you’d care to explain exactly what it was about Alec’s comment that was definitely anti-semitic, (without making up quotes) we can debate the pros and cons, but just asserting it as fact won’t wash. (as an aside, what did you find so offensive about Alec suggesting you were jewish? what have you got against jews that you become angry when someone suggests you are one?)

“The YouTube comments are particularly interesting. They show a self-selected group of Muslims using Western technology to castigate (to say the least!) a Westerners desecrating an Islamic symbol. It’s an example of the absurd Muslim demand that non-Muslims treat their symbols, religion, etc with the supremacy that they expect. It ties into the point about hate crimes, actually.”

i fail to see what is “particularly interesting” about people being mean on comments threads. the only interesting thing is your continuing habit of lumping all muslims together into a single mass. you seemed to completely miss the point about my muslim ex, which was used to point out people’s habit of assumingt muslims were collectively responsible for anything any muslim did. immediately after i pointed this you did exactly the same thing, claiming that youtube comments were part and parcel of the islamic quest for global dominance. but you havent actually proved (or even given any evidence) that the commenters were in any way representative of anything wider than themselves , or were prepared to do anything outside shouting on the internet to squash anyone else’s free speech.

more to come tomorrow, probably

Icho,

I’ll wait for part two of your comments before posting my response.

Until then, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9oX5Q2ftmA

No, you won’t enjoy it, but the clips at 4:45 and starting at 6:00 are particularly interesting.

Hmmm…Walid Shoebat. Seems I said something about this a few posts back.

Oh yes:

In these sorts of cases, it’s always useful to have some sort of Lord Haw-Haw of the ethnic minority one is demonizing, so that one can point to the “good” minority (as defined by the white supremacist majority) and say “You see?! This one agrees with me, so of course I can’t be racist!”

Walid Shoebat is a self-proclaimed ex-PLO terrorist who is a Christian fundamentalist. Consistent with these views, he thinks that Jews are going to be destined for hell unless they convert at the time of the Rapture. While he’s trotted out by Jewish and Christian Zionists to make their point, the only group he feels truly comfortable with is the latter, and the former, in their attempts to use him to make a case for Israel’s moral stature, are making a deal with the devil.

He is certainly no expert on CAIR, having never been affiliated with them nor having any special insights into the organization. Instead, he’s just a far-right, fundamentalist Christian propagandist. If that “profile” (*grin*) is not known for telling the truth in any other context, why do you think we should believe it in this one?

“Icho and others,

If what you say is correct, if criticizing the behavior of Muslims here and abroad is based on simple racism and bigotry, why does this racism and bigotry not extend to other “brown people” (your words)? Why do not Hindus, for example, come in for the same opprobrium?”

first of all, it wasn’t me that used the term “brown people” you need to make your comments clearer. a question for you? do you really believe that being racist about one group of people automatically makes you racist against them all? that people can’t have prejudices against one set of people and not another?

“After all, according to Alec, Hinduvatu is the big problem for India. Why do we not see the same issues with Hindus trying to spread their Hinduvatu here? The worst I’ve seen in the States are grocery stores named “Jai Hind!” but why do Hindus, for example, not have the equivalent of a CAIR? Why is there no Hinduphobia, or liberals passionately devoted to Hindus being able to freely practice their religion as they wish? Do Hindus actually have any of these issues in the States, or is it a uniquely Muslim problem?”

Your question seems a little bit confused. i think its fairly obvious that Hindus dont have many of the problems that muslims face. as you readily admit there is little organised Hinduphobia. I would say that the targeting of muslims and the dissemination of right-wing propaganda against muslims as a group were good reasons why advocacy groups exist. If Hindus were being thrown into prison withpout trial and subject to racist abuse and attacks from the mainstream media and politicians then “liberals” probably would stand up on their behalf. but your question really betrays your lack of nuance. you seem to be conflating everything Muslims do in america (eg. terrorism, proselytising, political advocacy, civil rights work, etc.etc.) into a single group. groups like the hindu american foundation do a lot of the same civil rights and advocacy work on behalf of hindus that CAIR does, and there has been an upsurge in right-wing hindu organizing in the United States, and various wealthy hindus have become more vociferous about pushing a right-wing hindu supremacist line. but there are far fewer hindus in america than muslims and therefore they’re likely to be less visible.

“After all, according to Alec, Hinduvatu is the big problem for India. Why do we not see the same issues with Hindus trying to spread their Hinduvatu here?”

It depends what you mean by “spread their hindutva here.” there’s certainly a lot of proselytysing going on, and there are a reasonable number of converts to hinduism in the US. if you mean “why is there no organised conspiracy among hindus to take over america and subvert America?” then im afraid the only answer i can give is “because that would be a stupid thing to do” and point out that there isnt really any evidence of muslims trying to do that either.
“why is there no hinduphobia”? islamophobia is useful to the united states government and establishment because it is presently involved in a series of wars that can be portrayed as a war against “Islam” It’s always easier to gain public support for wars if you demonise your enemies into subhuman vermin and portray said wars as a last-ditch defence against barbarism. India, and especially the BJP are close allies of the United States and disseminating anti-hindu propaganda would serve no useful purpose. The islamophobia in the west reached critical mass when large numbers of right-wingers realised they could jump on the bandwagon and smuggle their ideas about racial purity or religious war into the mainstream by tying it to an already demonised and marginalised enemy “other”. after all, muslims (usually racialised as arabs) are one of the few groups left thats its acceptable to spew racist rubbish about). do you ever stop to wonder why most of the people pushing these conspiracy theories are from the extreme right? why in Europe most of them are genuine fascists? racism against black people or hispanics or east asians is less acceptable these days, so right wing groups use islamophobia to push racial messages under cover of protecting western society from destruction. i’m sure most of the extreme islamophobes are also racist against hindus, blacks, etc. etc. but there’s less political capital to be made from going after them.

as far as islamic terrorism goes, if the united states invaded or attacked India and occupied portions of it setting up quisling governments and killing hundreds of thousands of people, how long do you think it would take for hindu terrorists to start blowing things up in the United States? The first major Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attack against the United States was in 1993, after the first Iraq war and the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia. During the time when the Islamists who later became al-qaeda et. al. were allied to the US there wasn’t any muslim terrorism in america.

“As for your idea that criticism of Islam derives from European anti-Semitism, I’m not sure that holds water in the real world. After all, there really are imams teaching that non-Muslims are inferior beings, deserving of only death or submission, and they are doing this teaching in mosques in the West. Or do you think that is a rumor only? I’m happy to show you volumes of evidence if you do.”

there really are Rabbis in Israel and elsewhere that claim Jews are a chosen race and the goyim are subhuman. to take a famously extreme example Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, in his eulogy to Baruch Goldstein said “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail,” and Israel does legally discriminate against christians and muslims in favour of jews. what does this tell us about Judaism’s “inherent” supremacism? absolutely nothing, because Perrin and his ilk do not speak for “Jews” and neither does the Israeli government. Do you think that European anti-semites never used real examples of Jews committing crimes or saying grotesque things to bolster their propaganda? taking disparate unconnected events and claiming they’re part of some overarching global conspiracy is the hallmark of classical anti-semitism. Do you really think there aren’t “volumes of evidence” about all the horrible bigoted things jews and christians do and say? the only way you can make any sort of general point about those religions from them is if you ignore all evidence to the contrary and all their co-religionists who dont do or say such things. One of the main rhetorical techniques of classical anti semitism is the casting of Jews as something alien and other, not part of “the west” and in fact at odds with it and its values. It doesnt matter to the anti-semite how long jews have been living in europe, what their religious or political views are or how integrated they are into the wider society, they are still seen as an oriental infestation, who have no right to exist in wider society. Your own views about muslims apparently mirror this rhetoric. you repeatedly set “muslims” in their entirety against “the west” as things that can never mix or exist in harmony with each other. is the west an organic entity that no muslim can ever be a part of? are fourth generation muslims who’ve spent their whole lives in Europe not part of “the west”? what about white or african-american muslim converts? do they negate their westernness when they convert? what are the characteristics of “the west” as an organic entity? christianity? rationalism? the enlightenment? whiteness? liberal democracy? racism? colonialism? nazism? do you believe that muslims born into eg. Britain who have secular values and obey the laws and participate in the cultural and social life of their country are aliens? interlopers? that there’s no way they can really become british no matter what they do short of converting to another religion? does your definition of westerness merely exist in opposition to whatever you believe muslims believe or do?

you keep acting as if no-one here believes islamic fundamentalism exists and that if you point out some muslim somewhere saying horrible things and supporting terrorism or murder of infidels somehow you win the argument. but that isnt the argument we’re actually having. The actual argument is more like “Is islam uniquely violent and destructive and anti-modern as a religion, and are muslims in general supportive of Islamic extremism and violence against non-muslims in pursuit of world supremacy of a particulalry chauvinist version of islam?” Pointing to youtube clips of people celebrating 9/11 or the exploits of various terrorist organisations doesn’t actually answer the second question to your advantage because you have to account for the vast majority of muslims who have never done anything to push this global islamist agenda, or in many cases fight against it quite bitterly. there are many muslims who will quite happily reconcile their islamic beliefs with fewminism, socialism, modernity, liberalism, democracy etc. where do they fit into ypur grand scheme?

trying to insinuate that people who disagree with you about the global muslim conspiracy are apologists for extremist islam is just stupid. having a realistic opinion of the dangers posed by radical islam is in no way analogous to defending even mainstream islam, and a refusal to piss our pants over an imagined global conspiracy isn’t analogous to refusing to admit that muslims often do bad things.

“As for Alec’s reference to two founders of the state of Israel, I simply have no comment. If he hates Israel that much, that’s his problem. It is interesting that this thread has revealed that, but I’ll leave analysis of that to others. The point remains that when he got really, REALLY angry at me, the epiteth he chose to throw was “you Jew.””

ignoring another lie about what Alec actually said, are you actually claiming that mentioning Jabotinski’s racism and hatred of non-jews is anti-semitic and anti-israel? Jabotinski’s fascist leanings and racism are well-attested to, and he himself was never shy about broadcasting them. I fail to see what this thread reveals about alec’s views on israel. care to elaborate?

“Take a look at the UK, for starters, where women regularly go about in burqas in certain cities and Islamic norms are all but law”

n ot only another sweeping allegation not backed up by any evidence or sources, but also conflation of two entirely seperate things. a small number of muslim women wear the burqa in britain and are perfectly at liberty to do so because the government doesnt interfere with the way people wish to dress. i’m sure you’d be much happier if secular mobs wandered round ripping veils from women’s faces and fining people who dressed like foreigners, but what will that achieve? all it will lead to is the further marginalisation of an already marginal and oppressed minority. there has already been an upsurge in attacks and abuse meted out to veil-wearing women as the press cranked up the anti-islamic attacks over the past year. as for “…Islamic norms are all but law” what does this mean? what islamic norms? in what way are they “all but law?” is any of this based on personal experience? or just reading right-wing websites? if the latter i quite understand. i very rarely recognise my own country when reading these sites. a little clarification would be nice

“Certain people in our government may consider the Saudis to be our allies; I think most Americans realize that the Saudi government AND PEOPLE are our enemies. The $22 billion our government saw fit to drop on them in weaponry is an abomination.”

sneaky little conflation of a country’s population with its unelected leadership there. your wording is strange. do you really believe the saudi regime hoodwinked certain members of the US government into supporting it against their own interests? I agree that the high level alliance between the US abd saudi governments is very bad for the US people (not to mention the saudi people) but its always worked out very well for both governments. after all who else is going to buy so much crap off the US using recycled petro-dollars or act as a conduit for american funds and weapons to right-wing terrorist groups, or provide so much cheap oil at the expense of their own long-term economic well-being. the US and saudi arabia have been allies for more than 60 years, its not just about the bushies (although they take the mutial backscratching to new heights), and having a fundamentalist quasi-fascist dictatorship dominating the arabian peninsula has been pretty beneficial for american strategic and business interests. the fact that they also support mad nutters who sometimes kill americans is unlikely to bother senior members of the american government or oil companies. maybe your habit of looking at the west as a quasi-organic entity has caused you to forget that often the desires and interests of a government are often diametrically opposed to the desires and interests of its own population.

i’ve got some more things to say, but it’ll have to wait till i get back. i’d also like to dissect the little CAIR video youn posted earlier, but that’ll have to wait till i get back too, cos i’ve quite a bit to say about it

Ictho,

There are a number of untruths in your post, as well as internal contradictions. I’ll spare you the invective you’d have received were you debating one of my antagonists in this thread, and just walk through what I’ve noticed.

You say: Name me all the Islamic countries in the last century that have declared war against the West.
The reality: When we talk about the Islamic jihad against the West, that doesn’t mean countries declaring war. As we’ve seen countless times, Muslims wage violent and / or coercive campaigns against non-Muslims without standing armies

You say: Give me an example of what you mean by the Islamic campaign against the West.
The reality: Just from the last several days, we have Muslim “students” (and how many times do we have to see that phrase?) stopped with pipe bombs in the trunk of their car.

I’m just going to skip the whole Alec contretemps, except to note that one needn’t be Jewish to take offense to anti-Semitic comments.

You say: What is so interesting about Muslim comments on Koran-desecrating YouTube videos?
The reality: It is anecdotal evidence on Muslim attitudes. I never represented it as anything more than that. You are the one trying to puff it up into a strawman you can knock down. Read what they say and tell me that their demands that non-Muslims defer to their sensibilites aren’t absurd.

Now it really starts to get interesting when you try to tackle my argument that criticism of Islam is not a priori racist.

You say: i think its fairly obvious that Hindus dont have many of the problems that muslims face. as you readily admit there is little organised Hinduphobia
The reality: Admit? Oh dear, Ictho, that’s my assertion; it strengthens my argument.

You say: but there are far fewer hindus in america than muslims and therefore they’re likely to be less visible.
The reality: According to the US Dept of Statement, there are over 1.4 million Hindus in the States, and approximately 2 million Muslims. Sorry, Ictho, try again.

You say: islamophobia is useful to the united states government and establishment because it is presently involved in a series of wars that can be portrayed as a war against “Islam”
The reality: Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are close allies of the United States. The US spends a lot of time and effort making a distinction between its close Muslim allies and those “few” fanatics that have distorted Islam (that’s the official line.) This is also contradicted by your later statements about the close alliance of Saudi scumbugs and high US officials and businesmen.

You say: India, and especially the BJP are close allies of the United States and disseminating anti-hindu propaganda would serve no useful purpose
The reality: Are you kidding me? This is one of the most laughable statements I’ve seen. Though I know you are good intentioned, and not from the States, this is really beyond the pale. US-Indian relations have been cool for decades. In fact, the big implication of the new nuclear deal between the two is that it represents a diplomatic advance; try reading the Economist or something that actually explains history – getting this wrong indicates you really don’t understand what has been going on at all.

You say: The first major Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attack against the United States was in 1993
The reality: In 1988, 259 people, including a group of American schoolchildren heading on a class trip to Paris, were murdered by Muslim terrorists when their Pan Am plane exploded – clearly as revenge for the invasion of Iraq three years in the future, right Ictho? Before all of this, of course, Muslim terrorists were active against American and Israeli targets, beginning in the seventies. This includes the charming incident of Muslim operatives shooting an elderly American Jew in his wheelchair, and then throwing him overboard a cruise ship, but I figured I’d just list the biggest success for the religion of peace before your magic year of 1993.

Skipping over a lot of hand waving on the subject of anti-Semitism, we come to:

You say: I agree that the high level alliance between the US abd saudi governments is very bad for the US people (not to mention the saudi people) but its always worked out very well for both governments.
The reality: Wait a minute, I thought it suited the US to whip up anti-Muslim hate? Now you are telling me there is an alliance here! I’m confused.

Ictho, you don’t understand the reality or history of US-Indian relations, nor do you have any idea how many Muslims there are in the States versus the number of Hindus. You tried to knock down my point, that criticism of Islam is not a priori racism, by saying that Hindus don’t have anywhere near the number of Muslims in the States (false) and that the US is allied to India (false) and at war with Muslim states (obviously in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are close allies), as explanations as to why Hindus may not come in for the same opprobrium as Muslims. Wrong on all counts; I think you’d best stick to hyperbolic exaggerations and personal attacks, like everyone else who has engaged me; the facts just seem to trip you folks up.

extremely late reply.

re. muslim population. you’re right that i overestimated the number of muslims in the US. i was thinking round about 4 million, and apparently that was an overestimate. your two million figure is a little on the low end though. the CIA factbook apparently puts it at just over three million, and the pew research centre puts it just under 2.5 million. apparently no-one really knows for sure.
you see how easy it is to admit mistakes? you should try it sometime.

now. let’s get on to your mistakes.

You say: Name me all the Islamic countries in the last century that have declared war against the West.
The reality: When we talk about the Islamic jihad against the West, that doesn’t mean countries declaring war.

you say “the reality” as if its been me thats avoided the issue, but i asked you that question days ago, and its only now you’re actually admiting that there arent any. i already said that i was willing to move onto more general questions relating to this war. i guess this snide little insinuation is the closest im going to get to an admission that your “Muslim war against the West” isnt quite as impressive as you pretended. considering you started off with such extreme language i was hoping you had something more to offer as evidence than attacks by small terrorist groups. is that what islam’s relentless centuries long war with the west boils down to? that’s pathetic. im glad we’ve finally got that out of the way though, because now we can move onto a more general discussion of this war. here’s a couple of questions

considering most of the violence in the last couple of centuries has flowed the other way, does this imply that there has been a christian war against islam or against “the east”? if not, why not? after all we’re not talking about small terrorist groups or vague “coercive campaigns” here, but large armies, powerful states and decades long occupations, most of which were very popular in the invading countries and based on pseudo scientific theories of racial and cultural superiority, which is all a bit more impressive. If you’d rather bring in poitiers or the siege of vienna, then thats up to you, but i think most people will realise that things that happened in the last two centuries have more relevance than what happened in 1689 or 732

if the people who’ve been at war with the west are merely small terrorist groups and the like, what does that say about islam in general? can we extrapolate the opinions of people who dont blow things up from the activities of people who do? if so, why?

can you give me a run down of the major engagements and “battles” (for want of a better word) of this somewhat amorphous war against the west in the last two centuries? the list doesnt have to be comprehensive, a dozen or so major ones should be enough to be going on with.

also, what’s with the “we”? we’re not reading from the same script here. part of the problem is that you’re being so vague that im really not sure what youre talking about half the time. so really “we” haven’t seen anything.

As we’ve seen countless times, Muslims wage violent and / or coercive campaigns against non-Muslims without standing armies

again with the “we”. “as we’ve seen countless times”? have we? if there are so many why not mention some that are a bit more impressive than a few acts of terrorism.

You say: Give me an example of what you mean by the Islamic campaign against the West.
The reality: Just from the last several days, we have Muslim “students” (and how many times do we have to see that phrase?) stopped with pipe bombs in the trunk of their car.

if you’re talking about an islamic war against the west lasting centuries, you really have to be talking about a majority (or at least a huge number) of muslims acting in concert with specific goals of conquest and subjugation in mind. pointing to al-qaeda doesnt work, nor does making a lot of noise about the arrest of two potential terrorists.

I’m just going to skip the whole Alec contretemps

why skip it? you’re the one that brought it up. you thought it was worth mentioning multiple times and also smeared me by claiming i was trying to cover up on alec’s behalf. why is it suddenly not worth your trouble? after i ask for clarification suddenly its not worth the bother. isnt this just another case of avoidance?

except to note that one needn’t be Jewish to take offense to anti-Semitic comments,

i didnt ever say you did. what i said was you seemed to be using an accusation of anti-semitism to avoid answering various charges. if you were actually answering something i said rather than a straw man you should have said something along the lines of “you dont have to be jewish to use false charges of anti-semitism to distract attention from arguments you’re losing.” i asked you to substantiate your claims and the fact that you didnt take up the challenge would suggest you dont really have a case.

You say: What is so interesting about Muslim comments on Koran-desecrating YouTube videos?
The reality: It is anecdotal evidence on Muslim attitudes. I never represented it as anything more than that. You are the one trying to puff it up into a strawman you can knock down. Read what they say and tell me that their demands that non-Muslims defer to their sensibilites aren’t absurd.

anecdotal evidence is exactly what i said it was in the beginning, you were the one that claimed it had some sort of deeper significance. i’m glad you’ve admitted it has no real relevance, silly chuntering about strawmen not withstanding.

Now it really starts to get interesting when you try to tackle my argument that criticism of Islam is not a priori racist.

thats not actually what you said, what you suggested was that YOUR specific arguments against islam were not racist, which is a completely different thing. i’ve never claimed that criticism of Islam is inherently racist, but If you use racialised discourse to describe religious groups and refuse to see nuances within said group then its fair to assume a certain amount of racism underlies your opinions.

You say: i think its fairly obvious that Hindus dont have many of the problems that muslims face. as you readily admit there is little organised Hinduphobia
The reality: Admit? Oh dear, Ictho, that’s my assertion; it strengthens my argument.

im not sure i understand your point here. i’ll try and break it down. you think the fact that there is little organised hinduphobia strengthens your argument? howso? i would think that if a racial or religious group was subject to organised campaigns of harrassment and disinformation it would be natural that its members would become defensive and vocal about it. that was my point. hindus need to be less aggressive because they are less picked-on. what do you mean? it looks like you’re trying to use the fact that islam is attacked or slandered more than hinduism is the fault of muslims, which is a bit too close to victim-blaming for comfort. are you really suggesting that attacks on islam are the fault of muslims? that the fact that muslims are often demonised and attacked proves that islam is a pernicious influence? is this your line of reasoning – “why are muslims being attacked in the media so much? what is it about islam that makes people attack it? whats wrong with muslims that people feel compelled to print and broadcast scare stories about it?” If that’s not what you mean you’ll have to be clearer next time.

You say: islamophobia is useful to the united states government and establishment because it is presently involved in a series of wars that can be portrayed as a war against “Islam”
The reality: Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are close allies of the United States. The US spends a lot of time and effort making a distinction between its close Muslim allies and those “few” fanatics that have distorted Islam (that’s the official line.) This is also contradicted by your later statements about the close alliance of Saudi scumbugs and high US officials and businesmen.

i really have no idea what you’re getting at here. the fact that the US has alliances with muslim and islamist governments hardly precludes them from using islamophobia to sell interventions in the muslim world. I never said the US was actually at war with islam, i saids they used the rhetoric of a clash of civilizations to sell wars that were actually waged for more prosaic reasons. you must have misunderstood me as i cant see how the alliance between the US and Saudi or Pakistan undermines anything ive said. And its hardly true that the US goes to great lengths to make a distinction between Islam and the people its fighting (occasional nods to “moderate muslims” notwithstanding).

You say: India, and especially the BJP are close allies of the United States and disseminating anti-hindu propaganda would serve no useful purpose
The reality: Are you kidding me? This is one of the most laughable statements I’ve seen. Though I know you are good intentioned, and not from the States, this is really beyond the pale. US-Indian relations have been cool for decades. In fact, the big implication of the new nuclear deal between the two is that it represents a diplomatic advance; try reading the Economist or something that actually explains history – getting this wrong indicates you really don’t understand what has been going on at all.

i know you have a habit of making factually unsupported assertions and im sure it must be hard to break the habit, so all i’ll say is can you provide some evidence for your claims here? should be easy enough if its one of the most laughable statements you’ve ever seen. vague waffle like “try reading the economist” doesnt count by the way

You say: The first major Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attack against the United States was in 1993
The reality: In 1988, 259 people, including a group of American schoolchildren heading on a class trip to Paris, were murdered by Muslim terrorists when their Pan Am plane exploded – clearly as revenge for the invasion of Iraq three years in the future, right Ictho? Before all of this, of course, Muslim terrorists were active against American and Israeli targets, beginning in the seventies. This includes the charming incident of Muslim operatives shooting an elderly American Jew in his wheelchair, and then throwing him overboard a cruise ship, but I figured I’d just list the biggest success for the religion of peace before your magic year of 1993.

you have serious reading comprehension problems. even though you quoted what i said you obviously haven’t read it. ill capitalise the important part. “The first major ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST terrorist attack against the United States was in 1993”. you bring up achille lauro and the lockerbie bombing. the group that carried out the achille lauro attack and the PFLP-GC, the group assumed to be behind the Lockerbie bombing were both spliter groups of the PFLP, a secular quasi-marxist organization founded by a christian (george habash). both offshoots were themselves secular. what do either of these have to do with muslim fundamentalism? here’s a question for you. why do you conflate attacks by palestinian terrorist groups with islamic fundamentalism? do you think the PLO and the PFLP and the PLA were islamic fundamentalist movements? do you lump in every terrorist group with muslims in it into the fundamentalist bracket no matter what their actual ideology is? what does that say about you?

and also, why, when i was talking about terrorist attacks on america do you bring in Israel? they are after all different countries. what do palestinian terrorist attacks against israeli targets have to do with either america or islamic fundamentalism? after all, the palestinian attacks began after israel occupied the remains of palestine and forcibly repressed the population there, a fairly obvious cause and effect. christians were involved in many groups within the PLO and the main strands of ideology within it were vaguly socialist tinged nationalism or various forms of marxism. islamic fundamentalists didnt become a significant part of the palestinian movement until much later (at least at first, under Israeli patronage)

can you grasp the difference between “Muslims” “Islam” and “Islamic fundamentalism”, one is a variegated group of a billion people, the other is an abstract series of moral and religious laws and exhortations based on various interpretations of a book written over a thousand years ago, and the last is a series of specific ideologies that believe in reactionary reductionist versions of islam and believe they should be imposed, sometimes by force, because they are the highest form of human society and the revealed truth of god. these are actually quite different things, and the fact that you cant see that is not only evidence of your monomaniacal obsession, but also suggests that you are irrationally prejudiced against muslims.

this whole “religion of peace” stuff is nonsense too. i never claimed that islam is a religion of peace. to use the phrase as some sort of Bwa-ha-haing gotcha is completely idiotic. ive never stated that muslims dont commit terrorism or that muslims are inherently peaceful so why are you using that stupid phraseology? ive made my views on islam pretty clear on this thread, and it does you no good to pretend im some sort of apologist just because i dont believe the rubbish you spout.

Skipping over a lot of hand waving on the subject of anti-Semitism,

interesting how some on-topic remarks about the similarities between certain brands of islamophobia and anti-semitism that was in reply to something you said becomes a lot of hand waving. have you got anything to say about it, as it appears to demolish your we-cant-be-like-anti-semites-cos-some-muslims-really-are-evil thesis. i guess i’ll just have to assume you concede the point. and then, after claiming alec’s statements about two founders of Israel proved he was anti-semitic, suddenly you dont want to talk about that any more either. strange

You say: I agree that the high level alliance between the US and saudi governments is very bad for the US people (not to mention the saudi people) but its always worked out very well for both governments.
The reality: Wait a minute, I thought it suited the US to whip up anti-Muslim hate? Now you are telling me there is an alliance here! I’m confused.

again, what? you certainly are confused. why is whipping up anti-muslim hate not compatible with an alliance with a muslim state? im sure most of the top US officials dont believe most of the crap they spout or they wouldnt be so blase about allying with the Saudis, its a political tool. you might as well claim the republican party didnt use racism against black people to push their agendas cos they were allied to mobutu sese seko or jonas savimbi. or, to use a better example. the egyptian press often prints anti-semitic stories designed to inflame hatred of jews and the egyptian government is often complicit in it. yet egypt is a close ally of israel. according to you that shouldnt be possible. do you really not understand the difference between geopolitical and economic considerations on the one hand and meaningless rhetoric designed to appease or inflame a political base on the other? it would appear not.

we come at last to the final paragraph and its a bit of a damp squib. we have one mistake i made repeated twice, and also an unsupported assertion repeated twice, and then more blather based around your dishonestly false reading of the whole “US at war with muslims” thing. then a little passive aggressive whinging about how everyone was so mean to you. and some chest beating and triumphalism that seems a little out of place considering your ignorance, mistakes and lack of basic reading skills. not a particularly impressive display all in all.

i noticed there were a whole heap of things i talked about that you didnt bother to engage, and i’ll go back up the comments thread and list them all in my next post. i’ll also post a more in-depth look at that crappy anti-CAIR video probably tomorrow morning when i’ve got time to finish it.

here’s the deal (what separates the men from the boys so to speak, or the rational people from the hysterical shrieking conspiracy theorists) if you said “some muslims are retrograde fascists” you’d be correct. if you said “some muslims want to destroy the west” you’d be right too, (despite the rather vague premise). if you said “some muslims use violence to try and push particular political and religious agendas, youd also be right. the problem you have is trying to link these groups to some sort of wider islamic polity, that doesnt want to destroy the west, that doesnt use violence to impose its own desires on others, that doesnt believe in a global caliphate. and you can’t do it despite a lot of huffing and puffing. you just end up looking stupid and paranoid.

Ictho,

Thanks for the long and thoughtful post. I’m not proud of my tone over many of my postings, so here’s a belated apology to you, Alec et al. The personal stuff was completely unnecessary.

In an effort to clarify my thinking on the subject, and circle back around to the VDH article upon which we are commenting, I’m going to post what I think is unique about Islam, and why showing deference to particular Islamic sensibilites is dangerous (the point of the VDH article and the reason I posted in the first place.)

Before I do that, I will address some of the points you bring up. It seems to me that one of your main theses is “Racists are targeting Islam because brown people practice it.” The point of bringing up the large Hindu population in the United States was to show a counter-example, of a significant “brown” population that does not come in for the same opprobrium as Muslims. I showed that it wasn’t because of their numbers, and the example was meant to suggest that there is something different about Muslims. That is the elephant in the room, Ictho, the central point that I am trying to make here.

Arguing about which Muslims killed who for what reason doesn’t really advance or rebut my central point. Nor does the history of Indian-US relations, or “Wars Fought By Islamic Countries, Vol 3 1898-2006“, or even what percentage of Muslims support terrorism.

I believe that Islam is significantly different from other religions, and it is incumbent on me now to explain why I think that. I distill it down to three basic differentiating characteristics, in which I believe Islam differs from all other major religions: 1) Islamic origins and doctrine; 2) the founder of Islam; and 3) Islamic practice.

1. Islamic origins and doctrine

I have quoted in this thread some of the more extreme, misogynist and violent passages from the Koran. It is quite right to point out that the Old Testament, for example, also has extremely violent and misogynistic passages. In fact, if you read the Koran you will notice that whole portions of it seem to be lifted from the Bible; certainly the concept of sharia law strikes me as being derived in whole from Deuteronomy. This is not remarkable, as Mohammed invented Islam based on the influences of Judeo-Christianity, and the Koran plagarizes shamelessly from its theological parents. I am always amazed by people who throw violent Biblical ideas and passages at me, as though that somehow absolves Islam since Judeo-Christianity has its share of such things too.

The major difference betweeen Islam and Judeo-Christianity (J-C) is that in Islamic doctrine, the Koran is considered to be the absolute, unchanged word of God. The Bible is accepted in J-C as being written by multiple authors, and under divine influence. The Koran is the actual, living word of God to Muslims. I have never seen any serious Muslim, moderate or not, try to say otherwise – to do so is actually to cease to be a Muslim. If anyone can point out an instance of the opposite I would be grateful, but to my knowledge the Koran is accepted by all Muslims as being the immutable, eternal, and final (that is important) word of God.

Now to my cynical view that suits Mohammed just fine. God himself told me these things, says Mohammed, and not only are they the word of God, they are the final and immutable word of God – I am the last prophet. This is self-serving nonsense to all of us who don’t submit to Islam, but it gives Islamic doctrine an authoritarian and absolutist cast that I cannot identify in other religions. When the Koran says to wage war against the whole world until it is under Islamic rule, there is no way to attenuate or moderate that message – Mohammed, who invented it, didn’t intend for that to be possible.

2. The Founder of Islam

Islam and Mohammed are clearly tightly coupled. What did Mohammed do after his sham of being instructed by God to place all under Islamic – which is to say Mohammedan – rule? Well, he set about doing just that. From the start Islam was a unifying political force, in which the struggle to dominate its neighbors by both actual warfare and by coercion and deceit was the central story. There is a reason why there is no separation of public life from personal life in Islam, and that is because Islam is a political ideology as much as it is a religion.

Another point about Mohammed is the example he sets for his followers. I think we can all agree that even if we do not adhere to the religions these men founded, following the example of Jesus, Buddha, Lao-tze, etc would certainly result in a peaceful and just society. Who can say that about Mohammed? He was demonstrably a pedophile (consummated his marriage with a nine year old girl), pirate, warlord, and torturer. And by what is this demonstrated – the major newspapers that I somehow coerce into publishing anti-Muslim news stories every time I need to write a letter to SadlyNo. No, it is demonstrated by “holy” Islamic scripture itself! The Koran and the hadiths tell us that Mohammed violated a nine year old girl, stole, plundered, murdered, and waged wars of conquest – all because God told him to. Christians who try to genuinely “walk in the Savior’s shoes” are models of self-denial and charity; any Muslim who did the same as his founder would be a criminal on the order of …. well, you know.

3. Islamic practice

Inspect the countries in which Islam holds sway, and you will see that the Mohammedan command to mingle the private with the public is in full bloom. We spent most of our time on this thread arguing about Islamic behavior, and I’ve no interest in rehashing it, only I want to point out that people in the West are aware of how aberrant the norms and doctrine of Islam are compared to those of Western style liberalism. It does absolutely no good to try to lie and say that “Islam is a religion of peace,” as does our abnormally dense President. Islam, properly translated, is the religion of submission; submission to the will of Allah, as Muslims would have it; submission to the totalitarian Mohammedan ideology, as I would have it.

That is why it is very relevant to show where Muslims in the West are trying to instill deference to their norms and taboos upon us, as in these ridiculous Koran desecration stories that you smirk at. To say that Muslims are not wholly successful in forcing us to comply with their demands is to completely miss the point. Islam, as I’ve shown, is intended to be a religion of conquest and supremacy. It is no good to pretend that it is not.

Now I am perfectly happy to accept that it is possible to have an Islam-lite, where the core doctrines of submission and supremacy have been ripped away, and all that remains is the idiotic bowing and scraping to Mecca and so on. The problem with Islam is that in theory, practice, and by example of its founder, those truly are core doctrines. I wish anyone well who is trying to change the core of a 1400 year old religion practiced by 20% of the world, but we must face the unpleasant truth about Islam. The Muslims really do mean what they say, and one course of action we can take – the most important one and the one that I advocate most strongly – is to face up to these facts, and resolve never to give their absurd demands for deference to their norms and taboos any hint of concession.

That was VDH’s point, I think, and I completely agree with him.