Now why would a Welsh grandfather end up gun-smuggling in Afghanistan? Well, he was a convert to Islam. Yet somehow all the peaceful teachings of the religion that we keep hearing so much about don't seem to have had much of an effect on him.
The problem of the radicalization of converts is ongoing. Some analysts argue that they join jihad groups because of their relative ignorance of the Qur'an and Islam in general; they are, in other words, easily misled. Others point out that they come to the Qur'an and Islam without cultural baggage and preconceptions, and are in a better position to evaluate Salafi claims to represent "true Islam." In that case, the fact that any of them at all join jihad groups should be pondered carefully by government and law enforcement officials.
I doubt they are doing so.
"Grandad held for gun-smuggling," from icWales, with thanks to Twostellas:
A WELSH grandfather has been arrested on suspicion of gun smuggling in Afghanistan.It was revealed yesterday that electrician Peter Eaton, 52, was arrested on October 12, and has been in Kabul prison ever since.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman confirmed last night the father-of-three from Hakin, near Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, was being held, "on suspicion of weapons smuggling offences."...
Mr Eaton converted to Islam after meeting his Samoan wife-to-be, a Red Cross translator, while working in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.
He has also worked in Bosnia, and has spent much of the past decade abroad, although he has visited the Milford Haven area, where he owns several properties, up to four times a year.
Speaking of strange bed-fellows; is it true that the largest number of converts to islam occures among Hispanics; Mexican Hispanics in particular? (Some things I've read and people I've talked with indicate this as a material "fact" -- I have doubts; but really don't know.)
If this is either true or false?
Strange bedfellows? I wonder why a middle-aged grandfather would convert to a religion that sanctifies marriage to six year old girls.
Regarding Mexican converts to Islam, I was in Chiapas, far removed from the population centres, and there we encountered-- a mosque.
There was nothing odd in meeting Zapatistas, Sendero Luminoso activist/refugees, Protestant missionaries, Liberation Theology Catholics, Santaria voodoo types, and the syncretist indigenos. A violent and crazy place we were in, and yet to see a mosque was more than I could believe, given the nature of the chaos already surrounding us. How strong an influence? I have no idea. Any there is too much.
A popular politician running for mayor, (presidente) used this slogan: "I eat beans; I drink beer; I killed two Guatemalans. Vote for me: I'm just like you.
Imagine if they turn to Islam.
Thank God my family left Mexico, but they would never convert, beer is way too important.
GOD BLESS BEER AND ALL IT STANDS FOR
Conversion is a point that brings out the worst in most people, those who do often becoming fanatics in their new-found stance, and those they left behind feeling betrayed. In Chiapas the Protestants are seen as a plague of demons wrecking the order of things, leading to kidnappings, assaults on apostates, and the murder of missionaries and even of former family members. Whole villages are physically divided between the Catholics and the Protestants. Now with the Muslims making inroads, as they seem to be, what more can go wrong?
More by far. It's not just middle-aged men gone native in the desert, but look at the Caribbean, at the masses of angry locals looking ofr a new ideology to replace the worn-out and incomprehensible Marxism that used to be the cutting edge of social dissent. No more theories of surplus value but mere rote and ritual and glorious fascist grand gestures of ultra violence-- all in the name of Allah! From Belize to Brazil to Bimini we will see Islam.
I forgot about beer.
If I may, on behalf of Prophet Geoff, "Beer Be Upon You!"
"To beer-the cause of-and solution to-all of life's little problems"
-Homer Simpson
"Oh, lager beer! It makes good cheer, And proves the poor man's worth; It cools the body through and through, and regulates the health."
-Anonymous
"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
-Dave Barry
"Beer will always have a definite role in the diet of an individual and can be considered a cog in the wheel of nutritional foods."
-Bruce Carlton
"No soldier can fight unless he is properly fed on beef and beer."
-John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough
Make sure that the beer - four pints a week - goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop."
-Winston Churchill to his Secretary of War, 1944
"The roots and herbes beaten and put into new ale or beer and daily drunk, cleareth, strengtheneth and quickeneth the sight of the eyes."
-Nicholas Culpeper
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
-Benjamin Franklin
"He was a wise man who invented beer."
-Plato
"God (Allah?) made pot. Man made beer. Who do you trust?"
-Restroom in The Irish Times, Washington DC
"...there is only one game at the heart of America and that is baseball, and only one beverage to be found sloshing at the depths of our national soul and that is beer."
-Peter Richmond
"[I recommend]… bread, meat, vegetables and beer."
-Sophocles' philosophy of a moderate diet
"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!"
-Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Friar Tuck
NOW IF BEER ISN"T WORTH FIGHTING ISLAMO_FASCIST I DON"T KNOW WHAT IS.
To beer, a pillar of Western civilization. *drinks*
Grandad has led a very busy life, most of it abroad in places such as Bosnia and Afghanistan. Doesn't seem to have missed those Welsh Valleys
though. Reckon he has an interesting past though he has doubtless posed as a 'pious, moderate Muslim' and all his friends and aquaintances will be 'SHOCKED THAT THIS LOVELY QUIET MAN HAS BEEN ARRESTED FOR - GUN RUNNING!! Another plot by
Zionists and George Bush to discredit Muslims,eh...
There is a strong puritanical and strict teetotal strand running through parts of Wales.
It's not so long ago that many Welsh counties were "dry" on a Sunday. No pubs open at all. Off licenses likewise. No resturants allowed to serve wine with the meal on the sabbath.
Islam must have reminded him of his childhood.
"Beef and porter, good belly mortar."
Don't know who said it. Saw it on a Samuel Adams calender.
"Beer is a basic food-group." T-ham
"If you don't want me to consume it, leave a note, if it sits in the same place in my fridge for a period of 24 hours, it's legally prey and I make no promises." T-ham
"Make sure that the beer - four pints a week - goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop."
-Winston Churchill to his Secretary of War, 1944"
I raise my class in a toast to Churchill's wit and wisdom on this important issue.
Oddly, some of the best beer I ever encountered was in Saudi Arabia and China! LOL!! Old Barvarian recipies they tell me.
Don't like the mosques in Mexico -- but thanks for the info.
Sonofwalker,
A certain Scotsman Ian Dallas, who was an anarchist in the 60's is responsible for the small but growing Muslim community in southern Mexico
DISSENT EMERGES IN MAYA MUSLIM MOVEMENT
A self-described "moderate" faction has broken from the Mission for Dawa in Mexico, an Islamic group which has won a following among Maya Indians in the poor barrios of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Led by Tzotzil Maya Muslim convert Juan Gomez Gomez--who now goes by the name of Yahya--the dissidents accuse Mission leaders of "deviating" from traditional Islamic teachings in favor of a "radical" ideology. Gomez said the Mission, led by a the Spaniard Aureliano Perez Orihuela, had "abandoned the true word of God."
Gomez also accused the Mission of exploiting Indian converts. He said one who left the movement had worked five years in a bakery run by the Mission but was never paid. Gomez charged that Mission leaders "do not practice what it says in the Koran." He said the Mission was not violent, but that there are "other Muslims who are more radical." It was not clear if he meant within Chiapas.
Gomez's wife Rahma (Josefina Jimenez Hernandez) and their two children are part of a group of 30 Muslims who live in the San Cristobal community of Molino de los Arcos and have now broken from the Mission for Dawa.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) recently issued an alert warning of the threat of imminent violence due to intolerance towards the Muslim movement by the region's Catholic political establishment. Gomez, a former evangelical convert who was evicted from the nearby village of Chamula by local political bosses in 1974, said his community seeks to avoid violence. "Here the people respect us, and we also respect those who are of different religions," he said. "We are at peace." (Proceso, April 11)
The Mission for Dawa in Mexico claims some 300 followers in San Cristobal. First arriving in Chiapas in 1997, the Mission is said to be linked to the Murabitun Worldwide Movement, a Morocco-based sect led by Abd al-Qadir al-Sufi. WW3 REPORT intelligence indicates Abd al-Qadir al-Sufi is a former British anarchist who wrote under the name Ian Dallas in the 1960s.
It was outside of San Juan Chamula that we encountered Islam in Chiapas for the first time, a collection of huts where the locals didn't speak Spanish. I would call that more than an "inroad."
If we look at such isolated places being infested by Islam, what do we make of the larger picture in the South? We can look at the attempts Muslims have made to over-throw the government of Trinidad. Look at the populations of Brazil, but particularly of the Caribbean. If Islam has a toe-hold in the mountains of Chiapas, in a village it took days to walk into, then what are we facing if Jamaica becomes a nation of Muslims? How about Puerto Rico? Yes, even Wales.
I'm not a defeatist by any means, and not a pacifist. Being here on my best behaviour, bad as it is at times, I'll write no more on the idea of extraterritorial intervention.
We in the modern West face an internal enemy that is far worse, according to me, than the average Islam-intoxicated homicide bomber: the Left dhimmi fascist's naive groupie, the guy next door who tells me Islam is a religion of peace and that I'm a Right-wing religious bigot. My naive neighbour is no better informed on the tenets of Islam than is the average Mam-speaking indigeno in Chiapas. My neighbour is more dangerous simply because he is dragging down the entire project of Modernity, allowing the spread of fascist Islam even into the deepest pockets of the primitive world where it will make its way outward till the majority of our world is psychotic and violently so, aggressively so, and also focussed on destroying the remains of the Modern world in keeping with Islamic triumphalism. If the rot has spread into the jungles of Central America and the shanty-towns of the Caribbean and South America and to the hills and vales of Wales and to the heartland of Kansas, where will it stop? If we, my neighbour and I, don't stop our own from accepting and appologizing for Islam, if it spreads ever deeper into the hearts of darkness, then where will we stand to make a final stand? Will we find ourselves stranded in the desert, hemmed in by enemies on all sides, surrounded by the lord of the ring, Islam?
We're losing the battle to spread modernity to the vast world. Reason over superstition, law over revenge, universality over identity: these are the things we revolutionaries of Modernity are losing to the primitives and their allies. Rather than spreading common decency and Human rights for all to all we sit back and allow Scotsmen to inveigle primitives into Islam. We are at risk. The world of Modernity is shrinking, and it's growing Islamic at a frightening pace. If our very neighbours sit back and scoff at us and dismiss us with ill-considered cliches and insults, then where in the desert of Australia will we make our last stand? And then what?
There is a time for talk and argument, but it's my humble opinion that most people don't put much faith in arguments. Most people believe what those around them believe, and if that is the multi-culti rubbish they hear on the streets and cafes, then that is what they believe themselves. But, because arguments aren't won by logic and reason and, dare I write this,truth, then one must look at reality, and one might see Sorel in the wings, and Bakunin: the propaganda of the deed and the grand gesture of the Myth. Being here on my best behaviour I'll write no more.
We are under attack and we are losing the battle for Humanity's progress from primitive fascism and feudalist life as farm animals. No argument is going to appeal to the natives in the jungles. Hugh's most brilliant wit and wisdom, Spencer's greatest appeals to intellectual honesty will fall on ears of corn, and nothing will affect the outcome. I am reasonable, and I will write no more.
I'll conclude by stating that I do not believe that one can convert a man from irrationalism to Rationalism by force of reason; that if one sits on the stoop and chats up a neighbour without enforcing ones opinion by whatever means till the ruling ethos of the entire community is anti-fascist; that if Islam and it's fascsit variations of anti- and counter-Enlightenment are not spread; then we are lost forever. And being reasonable and well-behaved here, I leave it to you, dear reader, to let me know "What is to be done?"
This thread is now old news, so one might imagine that if a reader comes to it at this point it's due to some particular interest in this topic. If you are here and wish to continue this duscussion please click on the link below and see if there's anything of interest for you regarding this:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com
"Mr Eaton converted to Islam after meeting his Samoan wife-to-be, a Red Cross translator, while working in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.
He has also worked in Bosnia, and has spent much of the past decade abroad, although he has visited the Milford Haven area, where he owns several properties, up to four times a year."
But didn't Claire Short just tell us it's all because of Israel, about the only hot spot it seems Mr. Eaton hasn't been to since meeting his Samoan wife-to-be during Desert Sand. Doing the math, whatever grandchildren Mr. Eaton has, it is unlikely any were from any children he might have had with this woman.
I'd chop my own head off before converting to islam
... and God Bless Beer; my cold gold pal ! : )
It makes me wonder all the more how old his Samoan wife is. I'm guessing she's over six given that she's employed. Still, I'm thinking she's a fair bit younger than he, and that he tries to keep her happy by being macho on his feet, if nothing else.
But back to my original position: why is it that our won desert to the enemy while our own never do anything in our defence? That's the thrust of my questioning above. If you have answers or questions of your own, or if you find others with the same questions, let me know.
SoW, you are
l. Very confused
or
2. Very ignorant
The proof is in your overuse of the oxymoronic phrase left dhimmi fascist.
Left dhimmi yes
left Fascist no.
The left is the antithesis of fascism and
fascism is the stuff of "conservatives" the right.
For instance, and I'm being accurate here, the epitomy of fascism - Hitler,was very "moralistic", strong on "family values" and so intolerant of the likes of gays and abortion, that he criminalized both to the extent of liquidating gays and abortion providers. Hmmm.
As regards secularism, modernity and liberalism, I can't think of anyone, other than Muslims, that hate and fear them and have declared their own war on them, than the so called Christian Right.
Modernity is the bane of all good traditional Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Jews, that much they have in common with the Muslims.
Or don't you pay attention to our own internal culture war, you know the one declared by Pat Robertson, Lou Dobs, Jerry Falwell and the Grahams.
nariz~ you are a LIAR.