The National Review editors say -- again:
Ayatollah Sistani has called the publication of the cartoons a "horrific action," not surprisingly. But he also has condemned the "misguided and oppressive" Muslims who "have exploited this . . . to spread poison and revive old hatreds with new methods." They, he continued, project "a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love, and brotherhood." In a better world, Sistani would have a Nobel Peace Prize. This is hereby a call for someone out there who is eligible to make a nomination — a category including congressmen and professors — to make the nomination.
Query: If Sistani won the Nobel, would he deign to accept the prize from the unclean hands of an unbeliever?
Hugh Fitzgerald discusses Sistani's Nobel qualifications, and his classification of unbelievers as on a par with blood, feces, and animal sweat -- in other words, Sistani's tendency, disturbing in a Nobel Laureate, to spread poison and revive old hatreds -- in this March 21, 2005 Jihad Watch article.
WEll maybe the idea of an Explosive Manufacturer having a Peace Prize might amuse him. Still he should look at who won it in 1925, 1926, 1929 and see how their efforts failed and consequently no prizes were issued 1939-1945
Between Arafat, Sistani, and others, they're on the verge of turning a Nobel nomination into an insult.
Time to institute a new category-- the Nobel Bully-Others-Into-Appeasing-You-So-It-Kinda-Looks-Like-Peace-But-Isn't Prize.
No cash awarded. Just a pressed ham. ;)
Re: "Between Arafat, Sistani, and others, they're on the verge of turning a Nobel nomination into an insult."
The Nobel committee jumped the shark a long time ago - like when they gave it to Jimmy, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchú Tum to name a few in addition to the Arafat.
What I want to know is where can I buy a copy of the Danish children's book?
Maybe I'm incorrect about this .. but I have a sense that this is not the PC version of Mr. Mohammed and Company.
Anyone know where to I can buy it?
Chalk that NRO piece to Rich Lowry, NRO's chief dhimmi-in-residence. I don't think his attitude is quite as prevalent there as was a few months ago, thankfully.
I raised the same point with DhimmiBoy(honestly, has he reached puberty yet? He's NRO's answer to ESPN's Jack Edwards) our Illustrious Leader about the gracious Sistani's distaste for the touch of the kuffar. Have yet to hear back.
And I hereby give my permission to anyone who wants to use "Touch of the Kuffar" as a nom de plume, or blog title.
I just went to Sistani's website. The only thing he left out was....breathe in.....breathe out!!
Too many rules!!!!!!!
I find it rather weird that when a senior cleric speaks out against violence, it's considered newsworthy.
But we live in strange times.
If the Western world is to come to its senses, there is going to have to be an epuration, a cleaning of the Augean stables. An epuration of the BBC. Of NPR. Of The New Duranty Times. Of The Bandar Beacon. And among the Brave Young Conservatives as well. Those who cannot see the menace of Islam properly, and who keep pushing a line that puts so much vain hope in these "moderate" or "good" Muslims who, upon closer inspection, never quite add up, never quite will tell the truth even if, here and there, out of self-interest, they are temporarily less disturbing than others.
Sistani is not, by the standards of Islam or of his neighborhood, particularly threatening. Compared to all the rulers in the Islamic Republic of Iran, or that home-grown los-de-abajo troglodyate, Moqtada al-Sadr, or al-Qaradawi, he is not bad at all, he is practically Churchill.
But it would be absurd to award Sistani Nobel sainthood quite yet. Of course the Nobels outside the sciences no longer mean much. Why, even in the sciences lots of deserving people don't receive it, while some not quite so deserving do, and then there are the tragedies of timing, the would-be winner who dies just before a prize he would have gotten is announced, so is no longer included (Stephen Kuffler, who worked with Wiesel and Hubel, is one example).
The terrorist Arafat, apologist Ebadi ("mistreatment of women has nothing to do with Islam"), and protector of the Muslim Brotherhood Saint Sadat are the three who have come so far from the world of Islam.
Instead of Sistani, how about Nobel recognition to any of the following:
Ibn Warraq
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Oriana Fallaci
Not a word so far from National Review Online on these candidates.
One waits.
The NRO is absurd. Every single columnist there is clueless about Islam. They think Bernard Lewis is the final word on the matter and that is so wrong for so many reasons. Jonah Goldberg blaming French "racism" for the beur riots is one thing but this Sistani-For-The-Prize nomination is insulting. "His pragmatism helped Bush in the polls, so let's give him an award!" Hey NRO staff, how about putting your country ahead of your political party for a change? Although not as shrill as the NYT, the NRO and My Weekly Standard are just as treasonous.
"Stephen Kuffler, who worked with Wiesel and Hubel, is one example..."
-- from my posting above
At a certain point one just gets fed up, do gorla, stufato, with Islam and everything about Islam. It is all so boring and idiotic even to have to take certain things seriously. But one must, just as one had to in 1933 or 1935 or 1937 or 1939.
So, for mental refreshment, you can go to this link: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/skuffler.html
to read about Kuffler's life, especially his Austrian childhood and youth, his training in languages and letters before he turned to science, and other details that evoke a world that no longer exists. Note his experience in Austria during the Anschluss.
Try to imagine someone like that ever coming out of the world of Islam. Ask yourself why that could never be.
Now click on someone else -- Georges Perec, say, or Oliver Wendell Holmes, or Henri Focillon, or Balthus, or Fats Waller, and ask yourself why none of these people could conceivably come out of the world of Islam.
After you have answered your own questions, to your own satisfaction, think about what is important to you. Think about what Islam inculcates, what is important in Islam, for Muslims. Explain, if you can, how those who believe in Islam can conceivably exist in a state of permanent harmony with those who do not so believe, who wish to resist Islam, who do not wish to transform their own societies, their own laws, customs, manners, understandings, to accommodate the unceasing demands of Muslims for changes to make things the way they would have them be.
Think about that at odd moments, from here on out.
An O.T. video from google videos, watch it. Funny as hell
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8442014088728649932
Think about that at odd moments, from here on out. - posted by Hugh
Oh, I do, believe me. One can't be in any line of work that requires an appreciation of 1.) education 2.) freedom of expression 3.) critical inquiry and 4.) free association (especially among both genders) and not stop and think how much of their existence would be impossible in the Islamic world view.
I don't know if being female translates into a heightened appreciation of how devastating sharia is to the human soul-- but ever since I saw National Geographic's "Women of Arabia" issue on the coffee table while still in grade school, I've thought, "There but for the grace of God go I."
Music, humor, nature, religion, and my independence: Sharia would destroy it all.
Not if I can help it.
Sistani is not a bad guy when compared to the rest of the Ayatollahs. He has been in the background and kept a low profile.
But he has done nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary. True he has to kept the Shiites in Iraq from going all out against the Sunni's, with all the provocation.
Still he does not qualify for the Nobel prize.
Call me picky .. but having a single clue as to the meaning of the word "Peace" ought to be a basic requirement for candidates considered for the Nobel PEACE Prize. Last time I looked, the Islamic version of peace very closely resembled our definition of war.
Sistani's status as a possibly lesser crazy Imam does not qualify him for the Nobel prize. It's simply out of his league ... then again, what am I talking about .. look at the rest of the recent recipients!
I wish those in charge of nominating candidates would all sit down and watch the video The Incredibles together. Maybe then they could see that there is social value to rewarding excellence.
Shinoliite wrote:
I don't know if being female translates into a heightened appreciation of how devastating sharia is to the human soul-- but ever since I saw National Geographic's "Women of Arabia" issue on the coffee table while still in grade school, I've thought, "There but for the grace of God go I."
I hear you. I remember being afraid of Muslim thought even as a very young American girl, though it seemed worlds away then. For over fifteen years now, I've had a photo of three fully burkha'd women on my 'fridge, just to remind my visitors of the difference between "here" and "there".
I very much worry about the spread of Islam for my daughter and, especially, my grand-daughters.
"click on someone else -- Georges Perec, say, or Oliver Wendell Holmes, or Henri Focillon, or Balthus, or Fats Waller, and ask yourself why none of these people could conceivably come out of the world of Islam"
Then consider all the anti-Western luminaries of the West: Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels, Spengler, Freud, Jung, Sartre, not to mention hordes of eminent anti-Western Western and/or anti-American American men and women from the Arts; etc. -- the Muslim world could not conceivably produce equivalent critics of Islam (imagine a Muslim Nietzsche who would write volumes about the disease of Mohammed and the pathology of believing in Allah...). This would also go for the less disordered intellectuals who also searingly and profoundly criticize their own West, such as Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and Albert Camus.
And it's not only that the Muslim world would have to merely "produce" a Muslim Nietzsche, et al.: the Muslim world would also have to lionize these luminaries and have 1,001 college courses in them, and fill the bookstores of all their cities with books by them and praiseworthily about them, and have thousands of book clubs and intellectual circles and internet discussion forums dedicated to how great they were -- to make this comparison truly valid.
"In a better world, Sistani would have a Nobel Peace Prize."
This is just a gauge of the NR's dhimmitude. It is apparently medium; low would mean they want some lefty-nutjob nominated, high would mean they are ready for UBL himself. Alfred Nobel must be laughing himself silly.
Hugh, awhile back you managed to get approx. 110 words into a sentence. I am speechless. But you rock, dude.
Daisytoo-
Check this out this site for a way to order Mr. Kare [not CAIR] Bluitgen's Danish children's book on "The Koran and the Life of Mohammed":
http://www.sightandsound.com/features/588.html
And an interview with the author at:
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm.?id=196982006
Plus, for anti-Western/anti-Christian/anti-semitic works proudly offered at a Muslim book fair see:
http://watch.windsofchange.net/
It has a lot of other useful links embedded, and good images.
Ooops:
Daisytoo-
the first link above should be:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/588.html
And for the Scotsman paper, you'll have to do a search for "Kare Bluitgen" on the page you do reach, since it won't link directly to the interview for some quirky reason.
Previous Noble Prize winners;
Yasser Arafat.
Jimmy Carter.
Wanaari Maatha.
Rigoberta Mench`u Tum.
Yeah, Sistani would be in good company here.