Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing

I respected Islam until I took the time to actually learn about it. Reading the Quran (with two orthodox Sunni commentaries), the standard Hadith collections, the historical record, etc. gave me all the enlightenment on this subject I needed.

All the "Coles" aside, the number of us who know the truth is on the rise. I suppose I'm just one of those "victims" of the "evil, media elite."

DesertDawg

Tomorrow, the Post continues this hard hitting, investigative series by asking office workers across the country: "Has this month been rainier than usual? What do you think?

Ah, the blinders which the Washington Post wears! These same blinders affect our media and our leaders.

Read this essay by Mark Alexander to debunk some of the myths in the WaPo article.

Also, a list of resources for combatting the pc with which the West is infected is available here. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam is featured there, of course, but also are some other materials.

Desert Dawg is right. More people are waking up! Part of the reason is the cartoon wars, which the WaPo briefly mentions.

"According to the poll, the proportion of Americans who believe that Islam helps to stoke violence against non-Muslims has more than doubled since the attacks, from 14 percent in January 2002 to 33 percent today."

Truth always truimphs in the end.

Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam are fueled in part by political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists.

Imagine that. When psychotic lunatics commit barbaric acts constitent with the teachings of the koran, and these are reported - there is a negative perception amongst those who read the reporting about the lunatic psychotic religion.

What backwards, hate filled, islamaphobes! Off with their heads!

I can't help but think how much hostility tends to be evident within Mohammedans, whether it's beating their wives, burning a flag or jumping around and shouting "Death to the infidel!".

Perhaps an ideal strategy would be to fly a plane over their countries with thousands of copies of 'Anger Management' and let them drop.

Who knows? Maybe even good old Jack Nicholson could give them a few moments of laughter where they begin to see how wonderful life is and then stop taking themselves so seriously and contribute to life rather than taking away from it.

Maybe in a humourous fashion they'll clue in as to why people have a hard time coping with their lack of people skills and why nobody likes being around someone who is always huffy.

PJ

I was annoyed by the question, 'Have you heard prejudiced comments against Muslims lately?' The word 'prejudice' is vague and easily abused by PC types. Are you 'prejudiced' if you don't like Koranic verses favoring violence for infidels? Are you prejudiced if you feel dismay when Muslims refuse to discuss this honestly?

Now Wafa Sultan was tremendously impressive: see

http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S1#

if you haven't already.

I can identify with DesertDawg. I too used to believe that islam was
a peaceful religion to be respected. I even recall getting email ads for
Roberts book and deleting them, thinking "here's someone that wants to
stir up conflict". When I began to look into islam, I began to see how wrong
I was and in my travels I ended up here. Having read Roberts P.I.G. I now know
that Robert is one of the most level headed and rational people I've seen
on the subject. In spite of the atmosphere of pc, many people are having their
eyes opened, and many by the actions and words of muslims.

"Now Wafa Sultan was tremendously impressive: see

http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S1#

if you haven't already."

That link doesn't work. I know this is a bit off-topic, and most of you have seen the incredibly brave Wafa Sultan, but those who haven't should visit

http://www.memritv.org/

and look at clip #1050 which you can enter in a box.

Fox news is carrying a story about the use of cartoons to teach children about martyrdom. Things like that could give someone a false impression of islam (sarcasm off). Fear the truth followers of old mo, fear it. It is spreading faster than islam.

When you go to the article, you can write an email to the authors. (Perhaps this was by clicking on their names.)

They will probably be flooded, but it is easy enough to add your own well-considered words to the flood. Perhaps they will have a follow-up article that features jihadwatch and suggests that the problem is not the intolerance expressed by victims and future victims of a belief system that is, in truth, prone to violence.

I am suprised on 46% have a negative view of Islam.

I also respected Islam. I gave it the same default respect I had for anything I did not know about. Even more from what little I heard thru the Media and movies.

Then 9/11 came about and I started looking into Islam. And watching the continued terror and deliberate targetting and murder of innocents not only being comitted by Jihadists but celebrated by the 'mainstream muslims' while the 'moderate muslims' remained silent.

After hearing about the cold blooded murder of a 8-month pregnant jewish woman and her three under-10-YO daughters by the brave 'lions of Islam' in Israel - and the celebration of this 'great victory' by Hamas and the mainstream muslims I lost all respect.

After learning what the Koran and other 'Islamic Scriptures' say I finally decided that Islam is the exact opposite of everything Christianity stands for. Death instead of Life. Hatred instead of Love. Slavery instead of Freedom.

I just feel sorry for those muslims who are entrapped by Islam and don't know anything else. They cannot turn from it without a death sentence. Its forbidden for them to even consider or hear about anything else.

I had to laugh when I read the part where Juan Cole claimed it was the "political elite, mass media, and select special interest groups" that are to blame for an inreased negative view toward islam and muslims.

I would have liked for Cole to have given some examples of who he was referring to.

I'm of the opinion the "political elite" (here and abroad) are in fact afraid to confront the issue of islam and muslims.

As for "mass media"...please. The USA maistream media censored itself during the cartoon jihad. Newspaper editors can't bring themselves to call the recent UNC act of jihad what it really is: an act of religiously motivated terrorism.

Who are the "selct special interest groups" Cole refers to? he doesn't say. Could he mean "THE JOOOS?" Could he mean the readers of JW/DW? The readers at Rantburg and LGF?

I have to conclude Juan Cole and other muslim apologists would dearly like to impose a complete ban on the reporting of muslim atrocities committed on a daily basis throughout the world. Yeah, that will go a long way toward stemming the tide of increased negative opinion. But it wouldn't provide the truth.

The negative perception of Islam % has decreased two % in the last half hour in the latest MSNBC poll.

In the cartoon poll, it was apparent that the Muslims overtook the poll after a few days, because the question being asked was (ARE MUSLIMS RIGHT TO PROTEST MUHAMMAD CARTOONS?)

This was after the poll had to be located, as it was moved off the front page.

In a matter of a couple of days, the numers went from 81% (NO) to 26% (NO).

Go and cast your vote and give your opinion of the religion of peace here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11735622/

Benjamin,

Thanks for the link. Wafa Sultan was truly amazing. I was actually surprised
that such a viewpoint would be shown on Al Jazeera.
Of course most of the
viewers probably think she's a raving lunatic and blasphemer.

My (highly-educated) colleagues would
consider me very prejudiced and even racist if
they knew that I frequent an website such as
this.

Sad, eh?

#6
A few cartoons depicted and lightly mocked your (false) prophet as a terrorist. So you staged loony riots and sacked European embassies. Westerners can see what madmen you are when you riot and terrorize to protest Muhammad being drawn as a terrorist. We see what schizophrenics you are.

But it is the fault of politicians and the media -- Muslim politicians and their very political clergy, and media outlets like Al Manar, Al Jazeerah and PA-TV.

Exhort your political constituency to give up their children to be shahids as Arafish did, many times, live and on camera, and that's the impression you create. Broadcast the tapes of suicide terrorists talking about drinking Jewish blood and that's the impression you create. Urge your population to attack embassies and consolates over some cartoons and that's the impression you create. Cite appropriate sections of the Qu'ran and that's the impression, you create. Broadcast taped beheadings, and that's the impression you create.

. Stop committing violent acts.
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when you think no non-Muslims are around.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

I like this the new Five Pillars of Islam.

My (highly-educated) colleagues would
consider me very prejudiced and even racist if
they knew that I frequent an website such as
this.

It's because they choose not to educate themselves about Islam and are prejudiced against those stout enough to do so and face unpleasant truths. People have unpleasantness in their lives and don't want to add to it by finding out more about the biggest threat to the liberal West. China ranks high too.

"The survey also found that one in three Americans have heard prejudiced comments about Muslims lately...."

Amazing, isn't it, when a major American newspaper can have so many examples of biased reporting in one article? There is no attempt to show that the American people are good learners despite the many mass media attempts to brainwash us all. There is no epiphany here for the Washington Post. They still just don't get it.

Islam is the enemy.

That statement is not prejudice on my part, Mr. & Ms. Reporter. God gave me enough graymatter between my ears that I can actually distinguish between a friend and an enemy of the Constitution. A shame our schools and colleges seem to be turning out too many drones over the past decade or that poll's findings would be even higher.

Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam are fueled in part by political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists.

Fine, then let's shift our focus away from Jihadist operations, or those referred to as "extremists" by the Marxists over at the WaPost.

Let us turn our attention to the contetnts of the Koran, the Hadiths, the Sirat, the history of Islam, the qitabs issued daily in our cities, the Salats said billions of times daily by Moslem non-extremists [sic].

So much to discuss. But, may we? The elites, and the opinion programmers working for them, have quarantined these subjects by placing any truthful discussion them outside the bounds of our Fictive Reality.

So, all you nutty Ivy League and Stanford alums out there, may we please have permission --- and the requisite media access --- to discuss these now verboten subjects?

Won't involve the terroristic actions of Moslem extremists, I promise. Well, except maybe for Mohammed and his cohorts. And maybe Abu Bakr too, and...

Aw hell, Mr. and Ms. Ruling Elite, I dunno, may we discuss Moslems at all?

More people are 'waking up'?! I dont think so.

If 9/11, Madrid, London, Beslan, Bali were not
enough to wake someone up, that person is
brain-dead.

Brain-dead people do not wake up.

george_rem

Some people are heavy sleepers and need to hit the snooze alarm several times.
I don't think people are brain dead, but this indicates how powerful the
pc grip is and how much it takes to overcome it.As I said in an earlier post,
pc isn't about changing peoples hearts, it's about making them sit down and shut up.
The ones awake are pretty much quietly sitting there.

An article you may find of interest:

Subject: Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2004/articles/0503arabs.html

Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality

By Edward V. Badolato, Executive Vice President for Homeland Security

1717 Pennsylvania Ave., 9th Fl.
Washington DC 20006
edward.badolato@shawgrp.com
Phone 202.261.1910
Fax 202.261.1949

Dealing with terrorism, especially Islamic Fundamentalists, requires an intimate knowledge of terrorism, terrorist operations, and especially the key cultural features that makes up the Arab psyche. An understanding and detailed background knowledge of the Arab mentality is critical to performing accurate threat analysis. Understanding Arab culture can provide valuable insights into the changing nature of Post 9-11 terrorism, and how to rank and prioritize potential threats. To outsmart our clever and elusive Islamic terrorist foes, one must first understand what makes him tick. This paper is bases on years of experience in the Middle East, and is dedicated to helping the reader understand the Arab mentality.

INTRODUCTION

The Arabs are a proud and sensitive people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: family, language, and religion. No adequate understanding of Arab culture is possible without first examining these three major elements and the pervading impact they have had on their culture. Cultural understanding by Americans of the Arabs is especially important at present because it can provide a basis for our own interactive behavior with them as well as a basis for interpreting their actions.

The Arab's cultural system has proven functionally useful in the Middle East because it provides the Arab with an accepted behavior pattern which dominates daily life. In the Middle East, these accepted behavioral patterns have been developed over centuries through the Arab's social response to various stimuli such as images of human nature, man's dealing with good and evil, idealistic images of correct personal behavior, concepts of political relationships and an Arab's commonly accepted view of the world as basically threatening and harsh. The Arab response to these various stimuli over a period of centuries has produced cultural attitudes which eventually developed into their behavioral characteristics.

To begin to understand the Arabs, one must first understand the major factors influencing Arab culture: family, language and religion. The kinship characteristic includes a set of group dynamics that are built around the family. Their language exerts tremendous influence on their personal interaction and emotional tenor. Their religion, Islam, is an ultimate expression of the idealism of the Arab. Any discussion of Arab culture must also include their dominant cultural concerns, such as continuation of the close knit family. Loss of their Arab identity, the corruption of youth, the incursion of the West, and the issue of Islamic fundamentalism.

The 'Five Pillars' of Islam are the foundation of Muslim life:

1. Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophet hood of Muhammad;

2. Establishment of the daily prayers;

3. Concern for and almsgiving to the needy;

4. Self-purification through fasting; and

5. The pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.

Imam or Faith

To a Muslim there is none worthy of worship except God and Muhammad is the messenger of God. This declaration of faith is called the shahadah, a simple formula that all the faithful pronounce. The significance of this declaration is the belief that the only purpose of life is to serve and obey God, and this is achieved through the teachings and practices of the Last Prophet, Muhammad.

Salah or Prayer

Salah is the name for the obligatory prayers that are performed five times a day, and are a direct link between the worshipper and God. There is no hierarchical authority in Islam and there are no priests. Prayers are led by

a learned person who knows the Qur'an and is generally chosen by the congregation.

Prayers are said at dawn, mid-day, late-afternoon, sunset and nightfall, and thus determine the rhythm of the entire day. These five prescribed prayers contain verses from the Qur'an, and are said in Arabic, the language of the Revelation. Personal supplications, however, can be offered in one's own language and at any time.

Although it is preferable to worship together in a mosque, a Muslim may pray almost anywhere, such as in fields, offices, factories and universities. Oftentimes visitors to the Muslim world are struck by the centrality of prayers in daily life.

A translation of the Adan or Call to Prayer is:

God is Great.

God is Great.

God is Great.

God is Great.

I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God.

I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God.

I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

Come to prayer!

Come to prayer!

Come to success!

Come to success!

God is Great!

God is Great!

There is none worthy of worship except God.

Zakah. The financial obligation upon Muslims.

An important principle of Islam is that everything belongs to God, and that wealth is therefore held by human beings in trust. The word zakah means both "purification" and "growth." Our possessions are purified by setting aside a proportion for those in need and for the society in general. Like the pruning of plants, this cutting back balances and encourages new growth.

Each Muslim calculates his or her own zakah individually. This involves the annual payment of a fortieth of one's capital, excluding such items as primary residence, car and professional tools.

An individual may also give as much as he or she pleases as sadaqah, and does so preferably in secret. Although this word can be translated as "voluntary charity" it has a wider meaning.

The Prophet said, "Even meeting your brother with a cheerful face is an act of charity." The Prophet also said: "Charity is a necessity for every Muslim." He was asked: "What if a person has nothing?" The Prophet replied: "He should work with his own hands for his benefit and then give something out of such earnings in charity." The Companions of the Prophet asked: "What if he is not able to work?" The Prophet said: "He should help the poor and needy." The Companions further asked: "What if he cannot do even that?" The Prophet said: "He should urge others to do good." The Companions said: "What if he lacks that also?" The Prophet said: "He should check himself from doing evil. That is also an act of charity."

Sawm or Fasting

Every year in the month of Ramadan, all Muslims fast from dawn until sundown--abstaining from food, drink, and sexual relations with their spouses.

Those who are sick, elderly, or on a journey, and women who are menstruating, pregnant or nursing, are permitted to break the fast and make up an equal number of days later in the year if they are healthy and

able. Children begin to fast (and to observe prayers) from puberty, although many start earlier.

Although fasting is beneficial to health, it is mainly a method of self-purification and self-restraint. By cutting oneself from worldly comforts, even for a short time, a fasting person focuses on his or her purpose in life by constantly being aware of the presence of God.

God states in the Qur'an: "O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed to those before you that you may learn self-restraint." (Qur'an 2:183)

Hajj or Pilgrimage

The pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) is an obligation only for those who are physically and financially able to do so. Nevertheless, over two million people go to Mecca each year from every corner of the globe providing a unique opportunity for those of different nations to meet one another.

The annual hajj begins in the twelfth month of the Islamic year (which is lunar, not solar, so that hajj and Ramadan fall sometimes in summer, sometimes in winter). Pilgrims wear special clothes: simple garments that strip away distinctions of class and culture, so that all stand equal before God.

The rites of the hajj, which are of Abrahamic origin, include going around the Ka'bah seven times, and going seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa as did Hagar (Hajir, Abraham's wife) during her search for water. The pilgrims later stand together on the wide plains of 'Arafat (a large expanse of desert outside Mecca) and join in prayer for God's forgiveness, in what is often thought as a preview of the Day of Judgment.

The close of the hajj is marked by a festival, the 'Id al Adha, which is celebrated with prayers and the exchange of gifts in Muslim communities everywhere. This and the 'Id al Fitr, a festive day celebrating the end of Ramadan, are two key holidays of the Islamic calendar.

MAJOR FACTORS OF ARAB BEHAVIOR

The Family.

The first major factor overshadowing all other societal demands of an Arab is that of family and kin.

The family is the foundation of Islamic society. The peace and security offered by a stable family unit is greatly valued and seen as essential for the spiritual growth of its members. A harmonious social order is created by the existence of extended families; children are treasured and rarely leave home until the time they marry.

Parents are greatly respected in the Islamic tradition. Mothers are particularly honored: the Qur'an teaches that since mothers suffer during pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing, they deserve a special consideration and kindness.

It is stated in the Qur'an: "And we have enjoined upon man (to be good) to his parents. With difficulty upon difficulty did his mother bear him and wean him for two years. Show gratitude to Me and to your parents; to Me is your final goal." (Qur'an 31:14)

A Muslim marriage is both a sacred act and a legal agreement, in which either partner is free to include legitimate conditions. As a result, divorce, although entirely uncommon, is permitted only as a last resort. Marriage customs vary widely from country to country.

An Arab's concept of the world has occasionally been described as a series of seven concentric circles with the individual Arab at the center. He is surrounded by the circle of his immediate family, and outside that circle is his extended family or tribe. Next are his immediate geographic region and then his country. Outside of his country ring is the rest of the Arab world; then the rest of the Muslim world, the "Dar al Islam," or the area of Muslim peace and stability. Outside this ring is the rest of the world viewed by the Arab as the "Dar al Harb" or war area.

The principal means of reinforcing familial relationships is through marriage. Arab marriage patterns are usually within their own family group with the most desired partners being cousins. One of the long-term results of this custom has been the development of a highly organized social structure among a closely-knit family. Even with extended family members, the goals of family well being and honor are principal considerations.

The style of Arab parenting is responsible for much of their behavioral traits according to the noted Arab cultural expert, Dr. Raphael Patai who claims that Arab children have difficulty establishing a predictable pattern arid a differentiation between love and discipline. This fluctuation between a loving mother and stern disciplinarian father can add to the complexity of growing up and often fosters schizoid personality traits. Many Arabists have commented on the rapid change of Arab emotions and reasoning. Lawrence of Arabia spoke of this when he said that the Arabs view "everything black or white with no middle ground." This roller coaster type of behavior is often demonstrated by cool self‑control followed by uncontrolled public outbursts of emotion. This also illustrates the ease with which a crowd can become violent in the Arab world. No doubt, tightly controlled families, closeness of living space and intense family pressures contribute to another important Arab behavioral trait stemming from group dynamics. That trait is conflict.

CONFLICT

Arab behavior has a propensity for conflict.

The Muslim community expanded rapidly after the Prophet's death. Within a few decades, the territory under Muslim rule had extended onto three continents--Asia, Africa and Europe. Over the next few centuries this Empire continued to expand its conquests and Islam gradually became the chosen faith of the majority of the world’s inhabitants. Among the reasons for the rapid spread of Islam was the simplicity of its doctrine--Islam calls for faith in only One God, Allah, and it was made relatively easy for conquered peoples to convert..

Reasons for Arab conflict may lie again with the family where competitiveness is instilled at an early age, and life generally exists under various forms of intense pressure. An old Arab saying aptly describes the competitive, hostile spirit bred into Arab children:

"I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world."

Another probable cause of this intense conflict is Arab history itself, which has been dominated by warfare, domestic upheaval and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world. The legacy of this history is a basic, almost visceral mistrust of‑ any outside group, or more specifically, any Western state whose true ultimate intentions cannot readily be determined, but which they feel will most likely be bad for the Arabs.

There are many other internal sources of conflict in the Middle East, which have existed among the Arabs themselves for centuries. Some of these long‑standing sources of conflict are strategic conflicts, economic rivalries, ideological wars, tribal and religious disagreements--and just plain cultural differences. For example, there has been strategic rivalry between the Mesopotamians of the Fertile Crescent and the Egyptians since ancient times. More recently, strategic struggles have taken place over the Lebanon, the White Nile, the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf (as most commonly refer to as the Persian Gulf).

Also economically, the conflict over scarce resources now continues with oil, land, water, and mineral rights taking the place of food, (although still strategically important in some countries), and caravan routes. Today's ideological conflicts often place the progressive socialists (Iraq, Libya, Syria and Algeria) against the conservative traditional states. There are also problems within these groups as Iraqi Baathi's against Syrian Baathi's, various "isms" such as Pan Arabism, progressivism, Wahabism, and socialism all typify the general ideological fragmentation of the Arab population and add to the spectrum of conflict. In the area of tribal and religious conflict, numerous rivalries predate recorded history. Consider that the early Islamic wars after the death of the Prophet brought on the Sunni‑Shiite tensions, which remain today in many areas such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

When asked why the more recent Iran‑Iraq war began, one Arab historian noted that it really began at the battle of Qaddisiya over a thousand years ago when Mohammed's son‑in‑law, Ali, was defeated by the forerunners of today's Sunni Arabs. Viewed from this perspective, even the Christian‑Muslim struggle in Lebanon appeared to be part of this historic trend of religious conflict. Dynastic rivalries, such as between the House of Saudi and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has always been a factor in Arab life. Also, there is the age old struggle between the desert bedouin and the townsman such as was rekindled in the intense 1970 conflict between the Jordanian Army's bedouins of the Desert Legion and the Palestinian townsmen in Jordan.

In dealing with Arabs, consideration must always be given to their patterned behavior for dealing with potential conflict. Especially in military affairs, the undercurrents of traditional conflict can limit the number of options available to a decision maker and limit his overall capability to correct a problem. Historically, this has been evident in the difficulty in making and maintaining Middle Eastern alliances. Suspicion of a traditional enemy's territorial ambitions die hard, and international troop movements to shore up Arab allies or as part of a peacekeeping force are usually very difficult because of the fear that the visiting soldiers may be used against the host government or that they will be very reluctant to leave. Likewise, new pacts on military agreements with western foreign powers are initially viewed negatively by an Arab state's neighbors because of the potential impact on inter‑Arab affairs as well as a xenophobic fear of the West. Experience has shown that it is fairly unusual for an Arab state to enter into an agreement with an outside power without first consulting with its neighbors to allay their fears about a potential change in the local balance of power and to forestall potential conflict.

Because conflict appears to be such a normal behavioral characteristic in Arab group dynamics at the individual. group or even international levels, it seems reasonable that the Arabs would have developed a traditional means of settling their differences--and they have. Over the centuries they have developed a ritualized. form of mediation for dealing with conflict. A study of Arab history, and even present day events. points out that the traditional methods of mediation have been used time and time again. In large scale hostilities the mediation may at times seem ineffective to a Westerner, but it does serve several purposes. It interrupts the fighting, lets cooler heads prevail and gives each side an honorable way out of the quarrel.

The methodology is essentially the same for a small personal quarrel or a war. It is arranged around a mediator who plays a specific role. The mediator or wasit is usually a man (or country) of personality, status, respect, wealth and influence with both sides. Picking or persuading the perfect mediator is obviously the sine qua non of successfully mediating a conflict. Traditionally it has been the rule that a mediator meets with much greater success if he is a man of prestige. Custom requires that the steps in mediation follow a specific pattern: separate the fighting parties, make it physically impossible to continue the fighting, arrange a solution which will not cause a loss of face or honor to either side, and then guarantee the restitution or final agreement. There are numerous examples of conflict mediation in the Arab world from the personal to the international level. They are all ritualized and it appears that the major difficulty lies in getting the right mediator at the outset. A lesson the United States has had difficulty grasping in its long quest for Middle East peace.

CROWD MENTALITY

In the Arab world there is little stigma placed on the loss of self control and what westerners would consider hysterical public outbursts of emotion. This is a particularly frequent factor in group dynamics, and it is often demonstrated by the way in which a crowd can suddenly give way to outbursts of anger and violence. Reasons given for this generally lead back to the Arab family--closeness, competitiveness and conflict. Also, some cause might be related to the Arab means of vocal expression where they routinely express themselves by shouting, often accompanied by angry gestures in the marketplace, when correcting children, at funerals, etc. Opportunities for emotional outpourings are frequent in an Arab's daily life, and with the impetus of crowd mentality, these emotions are likely to break loose with chain reactions.

An Arab crowd is high strung emotionally, and violent crowds are a frequent occurrence during periods of stress and crisis. Deaths of national leaders, political rallies, anti‑western rallies, etc., all qualify as reasons for Arab disorders. There can even be less serious reasons, for example in Lebanon the author witnessed a severe riot in 1978 over the unpopular outcome of a beauty contest.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE

Arab Emotions and Hyperbole.

The second major factor influencing Arab culture is language. The Arabs place a high value on the Arabic language, and it exerts an overpowering psychological influence over their behavior. Arabic scholars have long known that even though most languages are influenced by the culture and people who speak it‑, Arabic has an influence over the psychology and culture of the people who use it. "English cannot even challenge Arabic for its sheer power and ability to impact on the emotions of the listener," according to the noted Arab‑‑American historian, P. K. Hitti who also states that "no people in the world has such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and is so moved by the word, spoken or written."

Not only are the listeners moved, but Arabic has an impact on speakers as well. Orators are prone to be carried away in verbal exaggeration when speaking before an audience. This exaggeration is called mubalagha in Arabic, but it is not considered to be a derogatory term by the Arabs. Rather it is considered to be an admirable capacity for oratorical eloquence. A key point in understanding Arab hyperbole is that their mentality finds nothing wrong with eloquent exaggeration because they feel that words really shouldn't be taken at all times at their face value. The Arab Scholar, Edward Atiyah, supports this by his comment that Arabs as a people are swayed "more by ideas than by facts." The mastery of a rich rhythmic vocabulary with lyrical phrases is a highly valued oral skill which is often attained even by illiterates.

It is an understatement to say that the Arabs merely value their language, for it is a most beloved possession. One reason for their love affair with Arabic is the melodious pleasure derived from hearing and saying certain traditional words and patterns of words derived from its rich literary heritage. But probably the most important underlying reason for their love of Arabic is the Qur'an and the belief that this holy book, set forth in Arabic, is an expression of man's highest earthly linguistic achievement.

Understanding the Arab's love of Arabic makes it easier to comprehend that speakers are admired, not so much for what they say, but how they say it. For example, Egypt’s President Nasser could hold crowds spellbound for hours with his eloquence. After the Six Day War in fact, crowds of Arabs would gather around every village television set to admire and applaud the Rais—the President's--marathon speeches because of their elaborate flowing classical style. Even today, Nasser's speeches remain as a prime example of the orator's craft, and for years students of Arabic at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute in Washington. D.C. studied them as an example of mubalaghato hear his long speeches, appreciating not so much what he said, but how he said it.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE

Arab Emotions and Hyperbole.

The second major factor influencing Arab culture is language. The Arabs place a high value on the Arabic language‑, and it exerts an overpowering psychological influence over their behavior. Arabic scholars have long known that even though most languages are influenced by the culture and people who speak it‑, Arabic has an influence over the psychology and culture of the people who use it. "English cannot even challenge Arabic for its sheer power and ability to impact on the emotions of the listener," according to the noted Arab‑‑American historian, P. K. Hitti, who also states that "no people in the world has such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and is so moved by the word, spoken or written."

Not only are the listeners moved, but Arabic has an impact on speakers as well. Orators are prone to be carried away in verbal exaggeration when speaking before an audience.

One should never underestimate the behavioral impact that the Arabic language has on the Arab people. Its psychological influence lies in three main areas: general vagueness of thought; overemphasis on words at the expense of their meanings and stereotyped emotional vocal responses to specific situations. The most difficult of these behavioral influences for Americans to understand is overemphasis and exaggeration. There are numerous examples of how exaggeration and emphatic overemphasis can lead Arab speakers down the path to outlandish public statements. For example, Patai tells the amusing story of the A‑‑bomb made by a Syrian tinsmith: "On the eve of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, Musa Alami. a well known Palestinian leader was attempting to gain support in various Arab capitals. In Damascus the President of Syria told him: "I am happy to tell you that our Army and its equipment are of the highest order and we'll be able to deal with a few Jews; and I can tell you in confidence that we even have an atomic bomb ... yes it was made locally; we fortunately found a clever fellow, a tinsmith..."

Most Arabic scholars feel that this mubalagha as well as tawkid (assertion) is almost a linguistic game played between speaker and listener. In his article on the influence of language on Arab psychology, the Arab scholar, Dr. Edward Shouby, comments on mubalagha and tawkid, and his words are worth remembering:

"Arabs are forced to over‑assert and exaggerate in almost all types of communications, as otherwise they stand a good chance of being gravely misunderstood. If an Arab says exactly what he means without the expected exaggeration, other Arabs may think that he means the opposite. This fact leads to misunderstandings on the part of non‑Arabs who do not realize that the Arab is merely following a linguistic tradition."

Shouby's comments emphasize the important concept that the average Arab uses exaggeration and overemphasis without even being aware that he is doing it. It is very difficult for an Arab to make a simple statement of fact. For this reason it usually pays to be cautious about focusing on exact translations of Arabic statements such as the long rambling tirades of Gadhafi from which the emotional and inflammatory mubalagha statements are usually quoted directly by the Western press

There is also a bit of wish fulfillment in Arab exaggeration. They at times can have such a strong desire for an event to take place that they make a statement that confuses the desired action with an accomplished fact. The general vagueness of thought and ambiguous structure of the Arabic language itself also contributes to this tendency to exaggerate and substitute words for action. For example, in sentences expressing wishes such as Wallahi la fa' altu which can be literally translated "By Allah, I did not do (it) , can actually mean "By Allah I shall not do (it)." Another example is the word phrase badrab which literally translates "I want to beat," but actually means "I shall beat." This linguistic subtlety between desired actions and accomplished fact should be considered when listening to the emphatic statements of Arabs. It is obvious that time and action can have very subtle connotations in the translation of Arabic. Westerners should be wary of this.

ISLAM

Arab idealism as expressed through Islam is a dominant cultural feature.

Based on its linguistic origin, the Arabic word 'Islam' means to achieve peace--peace with God, peace within oneself, and peace with the creations of God through submission to God and commitment to His guidance.

Islam is not a new religion but the final culmination and fulfillment of the same basic truth that God revealed through all His prophets to every people. For a fifth of the world's population, Islam is not just a personal religion but a complete way of living.

Over a billion people from all races, nationalities and cultures across the globe are Muslim--from the rice farms of Indonesia to the heart of Africa; from the skyscrapers of New York to the Bedouin tents in Arabia. Only 18% of Muslims live in the Arab world; a fifth are found in Sub-Saharan Africa; and the world's largest Muslim community is in Indonesia. Substantial parts of Asia are Muslim, while significant minorities are to be found in the Central Asian republics, India, China, North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe.

The Islamic religion has always been a source of law and sociopolitical ideology, and from past to present,

As Muslim civilization developed, it absorbed the heritage of ancient civilizations like Egypt, Persia and Greece, whose learning was preserved in the libraries and with the scholars of its cities. Some Muslim scholars turned their attention to these centers of learning and sought to acquaint themselves with the knowledge taught and cultivated in them. They, therefore, set about with a concerted effort to translate the philosophical and scientific works available to them, not only from the Greek and Syriac languages (the languages of eastern Christian scholars), but also from Pahlavi, the scholarly language of pre-Islamic Persia, and even from Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. Arab scholars became the keepers of the period’s science and knowledge—an accomplishment upon which many modern Arabs look back upon with great pride.

Over the years, Arab philosophers have attempted to rationalize and legitimatize their ideals in terms compatible with Islamic idealism. The Islamic scholar. W. Cantwell Smith, has aptly described the Muslim's almost quixotic loyalty to the Islamic ideal as "a passionate but rational pursuit of that social justice that was once the dominant note of the faith and the dominant goal of its forms and institutions." The idealism of Islam can be viewed as the ultimate set of personal rules for Arab behavior, and it provides an all encompassing code of interpersonal relations. This code is embodied in the Shari'a which is a sacred body of Islamic law derived from the Qur'an The Shari’a dominates all aspects of life and society in a way that is almost incomprehensible to an American.

The Qur'an is the very word of God, Almighty. A complete record of the exact words revealed by God through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur'an was memorized by Muhammad and his followers, dictated to his companions, and written down by scribes, who cross-checked it during the Prophet's lifetime. Not one word of its 114 surahs (parts or chapters) has been changed over the centuries. The Qur'an is in every detail the same unique text that was revealed to Muhammad fourteen centuries ago.

The Qur'an is the principal source of every Muslim's faith and practice. It deals with all subjects that concern us as human beings, including wisdom, doctrine, worship and law; but its basic theme is the relationship between God and His creatures. At the same time, the Qur'an provides guidelines for a just society, proper human conduct and equitable economic principles. For example, it encompasses how they run their government, their legal courts, their schools, their businesses, their social life, and their religion. It has been described as being as totally encompassing. It is as if one single document contained our constitution, our legal code, national education policy, business practices, inter‑personal etiquette, and the Bible.

Some might argue that Islam is another means developed by Arab culture as a way to cope with and forestall the Arab's basic behavioral tendency towards conflict. Nonetheless, Islam is interwoven with Arab culture and its rules give a distinctive pattern to the Arab's daily life. Various verses of the Qur'an symbolize this acceptance by man of God's pattern. The Arab doesn't always live in a tight patterned world of justice and order, but as Smith says: "he tries".

It is this mixture of Islam and Arabism which provides an interesting combination of many prized elements of Arab culture. Pride and sensitivity, the ideal of manly virtue, the Arabic language, dignity, and the all important concept of honor are all interwoven between Islam and Arabism. it is these valued ideals which hold Arab society together. Consider that Arab society, like most societies, has common loyalties and traditions. Yet, in the Muslim world there is an additional system based on personal conviction with a carefully worked out system of values and beliefs based on Islam as the common ideal. In a very real sense the Arab community is a living example of a religious ideal with "religious" being used in a truly personal sense.

THE BEDOUIN

Even though the nomadic bedouins presently make up a very small portion of the Arab population, they have always been considered the "Arabs par excellence" and the repository of traditional Arab culture and values. The bedouin ethic is thought to be the ideal moral code by most Arabs. The code of the bedouin is simple: it is essentially based on courage, hospitality, honor, generosity and self‑respect. These simple but admirable virtues make up the basic code of the desert which is admired as an ideal by all Arabs. In fact, tracing one's lineage to bedouin stock has been considered a claim to social status for many Arab leaders. For example, in Iraq both former President Kassem and Saddam Hussein both had their genealogy traced to desert tribes.

Some motivation for this could be attributed to a form of nostalgia for a better time, when life was simpler and more manageable, such as it was with the nomadic bedouins. It must be emphasized here that most bedouin traits are derived from honor, dignity and self‑respect, and an American would heed well the importance of these to an Arab. Honor (sharaf) has been highly valued since early Arab history because it was conducive to group cohesion and survival. Sharaf probably follows from the fact that shameful behavior or cowardice would weaken the group and endanger society.

Arabs are extremely sensitive to any slight to their honor, and it follows that any insult to one's honor must be revenged. There are even times when a personal incident can bring dishonor on an entire family, such as a scandal involving a female family member's sexual honor or in the instance of a blood feud. During 1968, the author observed that as part of their security duties, Israeli Druze border guards would kill or injure Palestinian commandos operating in the Jordan Valley area. The Palestinian's family was then honor bound to take revenge against the Druze guard or his family unless a conciliation involving blood money could be arranged.

Honor can also be the collective property of as large a group as an entire army. For example the relaxed, conciliatory approach taken by King Hussein towards the gradual takeover of the country by Palestinian fedayeen in 1970 shamed and angered his Bedouin Army. The King's strategy was essentially to avoid a fight until a solution could be worked out, but this situation, along with strident Palestinian actions, caused the Jordanian Army to feel insulted and to have lost face (more specifically in Arabic terms "to blacken their face"). Symbolically, some armored units tied women's brassieres to their vehicle antennas to express their collective dishonor and the feeling that Hussein had made them into women.

A key point to consider is that right or wrong, in all matters involving honor, an Arab must behave with dignity and self‑respect or lose face (wujah). It is important in any confrontation to leave the Arab a way to withdraw or back down without losing face. Nasser's dispute with Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles over Aswan in 1956, served to illustrate this. What Dulles began as a routine reappraisal of our foreign aid program became personalized by Nasser into a matter of national honor.

Because dignity, self‑respect and honor are so vulnerable to external actions, the Arab is extremely heedful of being slighted and may often see personal insult in comments or deeds which carry no such intentions. Even long‑time residents of the Middle East, such as Jordan's legendary Glubb Pasha, could mistakenly provide such an unintended slight. The day before a ceremonial review of the Arab Legion was to take place, Glubb said to his orderly: "I don't really want you tomorrow; you can have the day off and take your wife to the review, if you like." Whereupon the deeply insulted orderly replied: "So you think I am the kind of person to sit with women?"

Any discussion of the role of bedouin traits in Arab ideals would not be complete without mentioning hospitality and generosity which go hand in hand. Providing hospitality is a matter of both face and honor to an Arab. To be inhospitable is shameful. During the hospitality, the host is always expected to be generous and Arabs often entertain lavishly. It is interesting to note that the Arab word for generosity, karim, also means distinguished, noble‑minded, noble‑hearted, honorable and respectable. This gives some idea of the esteem with which generosity is valued.

PAN ARABISM

The Pan Arab movement involves a "one world" consciousness of the Arab world as well as an important Arab political concept. Indeed, this feeling of a monolithic Arab entity is enhanced by the strong religious, linguistic, social and economic ties uniting most Arabs. This would appear logical because of their similar attitudes toward life, language and history. The Islamic religion itself provides a powerful cohesive effect and gives a further spiritual sense of commonality within the Arab world.

Pan Arabism as a powerful political ideal has been a unifying force in the Arab's struggle for independence, first from the Turks, and in recent times, from the West. Arabs can become very emotional about Pan Arabism, and a strong feeling of solidarity with Arabs in other countries has become a potent political consideration. These feelings of Arab solidarity have also been given expression by the Arab League which was founded to promote inter‑Arab cooperation. It is in these expressions of brotherhood that Pan Arabic ideals actually can occasionally cause political motives to disappear and internal differences to be smoothed over in the emotional climate of Arab unity‑ It must be understood, however, that although Pan Arabism is an emotional state of mind which is very important to Arabs, the Arab people are still a long way from becoming one nation.

AREAS OF DOMINANT ARAB CONCERN

Although the Arab considers the family as the basis of Arab society, he holds even stronger views about Islam as the complete solid structure of society. Another area where there is a challenge to traditional Arab identity is with the elite class, and especially the western trained technocrats. These bilingual individuals frequently suffer an ethnic identity crisis, not belonging to the West, yet not able to fully return to basic Arab life.

The most dramatic response to the Arab identity crisis is presently being made by the Islamic fundamentalists. These fundamentalists such as seen among al Qaeda, the muhajidiin of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and the Afghan Taliban, who all signify a change in the political behavior of Muslims. According to Professor Leonard Binder of the University of Chicago, these fundamentalists are seeking cultural authentication through domination of the political scene.

Another significant concern is the danger of the loss of Arab identity. The proud Arab sees and intimately feels the daily impact of modern technology, new social mores and western culture. The long haul diesel trucks are replacing the camel caravan, the quick snack shops are replacing the coffee shops, and western movies and music are frequently preferred by Arab youth. Infringement on Arab identity may cause a nostalgic quest for the good old days, and even in some cases, a reactionary backlash against symbols of western progress.

One of the most bitter and frequent complaints of theses groups against the West is that it is attempting to corrupt Arab society. Some Arabs feel that even simple, innocuous entertainment such as Western films and music are counter to the general morality of the Arab world. Relaxed standards of dress, women's liberation, alcohol and rock music are all considered by some Arabs to be an affront to Islamic purity. Not only do Arabs see tangible evidence that individuals are falling prey to Western influence, but they frequently sense that the fundamental values of the population are generally being corrupted.

The disintegration of traditional Arab society, along with loss of identity and outside corruption, is another paramount concern of the Arab. Huge segments of the population simply cannot cope with modernity and the social and political changes taking place. No one really knows where it will end. Westernization of the education system, women’s rights and inclusion in the work force, vastly improved literacy levels, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, introduction of social services and inclusion of the poorer classes in democratic political processes are all having tremendous impact on the old way of life. The Arabs wonder if it will be for the better.

This paper was initially written by Ed Badolato in 1980 when he was a student at the US Naval War College in Newport, R.I, and it was part of a three-part research effort on Arab culture. Part I . "A Clash of Cultures: The Expulsion of Soviet Military Advisors from Egypt," was published in the Naval War College Review, March-April 1984, pp.69-81. It was a standard handout used by various military attaché offices in the Middle East to describe how not to act when dealing with the Arabs. Part II. “A Short Guide to Understanding the Arabs”, formed the basis of this article. Part III.” The Cultural Mindset of the Arab Military” was also used in training US military personnel headed for the Middle East.

Ed Badolato, a career Marine officer, was the distinguished graduate of the War College’s Class of 1980. He began his first of several tours in the Middle East in 1967, shortly after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, when he was stationed on the Golan Heights. He was one of the first US military to actually deal with emerging Middle Eastern terrorists. He spent three tours in Viet Nam serving mainly with infantry and long-range Marine reconnaissance units. During his career, he commanded every sized Marine unit from platoon to regiment.

He served in various capacities in nearly every country in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, including tours as the Defense and Naval Attaché in Beirut, Damascus, and Nicosia where he organized various special counter terrorism activities. Following his retirement from the Marine Corps, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Presidents Regan and Bush, (1984-89)where he was the principal architect of the U.S. government's readiness and response to terrorist threats to our energy infrastructure--as well as all counterterrorism security planning for the US’ fifty-eight nuclear weapon facilities.

"it's all the fault of politicians and the media. " That explains it. Silly me. And here I thought it was because of all the murders, riots, kidnappings, bombings, executions, beheadings and threats of violence from Muslims themselves. Now I know better.

Kinda makes me wonder what the numbers would be like if the MSM broadcast all the islamic related news.

Interesting MSNBC poll on same subject, shows 80% having problems with Islam.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11741730/#survey

I am certain you get very different answers in an anonymous poll versus someone calling someone up on the telephone with their name and contact information. If the repeated 10% with "no opinion" in the WaPo poll felt ability to be honest, perhaps the poll would have different slant.

"James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, said he is not surprised by the poll's results. Politicians, authors and media commentators have demonized the Arab world since 2001, he said."

Just so we are all clear on the topic of James Zogby, he is a PAID poller. This man gets PAID to create polls for companies both foreign and domestic. He often gets paid to do polling by Arab-Muslim companies from Arab-Muslim nations. Zogby is paid to get results, basically.

Read this blog on the topic:

http://polipundit.com/wp-comments-popup.php?p=12556&c=1

And I'd like to say also, that once again, I am not at all surprised to read someone trying to break this taint upon Islam down to a racist agenda by talking about this from an Arab perspective. Who is demonizing the Arab world? I hardly even think the word Arab. I hardly even utter the word Arab. I have known many good Arab-Americans and a couple of them were Muslims, but most were secular or Christian. That's just how it has been. No attempt on my part to sort them out.

The topic of the violence fueled by Islam has NOTHING to do with the Arab race. In reality, the Arab and the Israeli Jew are often closely related from the same ancient Semitic stock. Haven't you ever wondered how it is that the best of the Israeli Secret Service, Mossad, are able to blend into Arab environment virtually undetected?

Don't try to play the race card, Mr. Zogby. It makes you look like an ass.

Zogby has lost all credibility in my eyes. He seems to think that it is more important to fight perceived racism than real fascism. He probably thinks there is nothing worse than hurt Arab feelings, not even a mushroom cloud over an American city.

People must have been listening to Wafa Sultan.

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/ will link to MEMRI TV and gives you the ID's of the clips 783 and 1050, I am in total awe of this fantastic woman and so is the Religious Policeman!!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11741730/#survey

Well, well, well. As of my live vote just seconds ago, the statistics at MSNBC read:

How do you view Islam? * 19379 responses

Favorably. 11%

Unfavorably. 79%

I'm not sure. 10%

___

Approaching 20,000 votes and 80% negative? Kind of makes you wonder about the validity of that Washington Post-ABC poll now doesn't it?

Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing
Poll Numbers in U.S. Higher Than in 2001

When I see a headline like that my first thought is: counter attack. I first assume the writer is pushing the muslim agenda of “we are misunderstood” and “only a small minority do these things” “we need to limit free speech when it causes tension” you get the idea. Think about them demanding the cartoons not be published and the attempt to misdirect us with “we demand apologies”. I am never surprised when I see them counter the truth. The biggest fear they have is for us to question islam. We have negative perceptions? When exactly did we have a favorable one? Maybe, Sept 10th? I have seen this same tactic used to explain gang violence, some kid after he/she is caught explains his or her actions as “I had to represent”. You don’t have to “represent” you don’t have to support terror, you don’t have to demand free societies bend to your view and except your way of life. You don’t have to whine when your actions are resisted. You don’t have to teach your children to hate everyone you disapprove of. You don’t have to teach your children that living in the west on welfare is a better life than staying home and helping to build a real economic base. You don’t have to beg your victims to show tolerance.

Here is a thought, lets build better relations and improve your image. Build a few churches and synagogues in the Middle East. Protect them from your small minority who will resist the effort to build tolerance and improve your image. Promote the idea of muslims trying other religions not to convert, to show “understanding”. Give up some of the oil money to the American Red Cross, they can use the help and it shows support for the USA. Start firing clerics who teach intolerance. I understand we don’t properly translate Arabic and don’t understand the true meaning of their words. But you understand it, put them on unemployment, and take away the audience. I don’t really think your “Image” is the problem. Our understanding your true nature is the problem. The truth will bring the downfall of islam.

Robert,

That's an inspired five-point program. You've managed to do it in only five points when most programs require 140% more points yet can't brag about success rates.

Not only am I confident it would work, but why hasn't anyone thought of it before?

I had absolutely no clue about Islam before 9-11. But after having read enough of the texts, along with a look at Islamic history, it's difficult to not come to the conclusion that it is a cult of death and encourages intolerance of all other peoples, in one verse after another. The writers who claim that Islam was tolerant sort of gloss over the fact that the required poll tax is basically an extortion racket or what the mob would call "protection" money.

I am not saying that their is not some intolerance and nonsense in the Christian texts, but these are IGNORED by the majority of Christians. But there is no comparison with the Quran for encouraging violence and intolerance.

Actions speak louder than words anyway. Just thankful that their are brave writers and scholars out there who continue to point these things out.

The percentage of Americans that have no trust or respect for Islam and Muslims is probably closer to 75% if not 85%.

Too many individuals will not say anything negative due to the ingraining of PC, but PC is dying due to fear for their safety and the safety of America from Islamic terror.

The common American does not separate the acts of terror and the violence across the world including the senseless murders over the cartoons by Muslims from Islam.

It is starting to work. JW needs to be actively planting the seeds of knowledge across America and the western civilizations.

The Texican.
Freedom, the only choice at any cost.

"My (highly-educated) colleagues would
consider me very prejudiced and even racist if
they knew that I frequent an website such as
this."
-- from a posting above

Not "highly-educated" nearly enough.

TaTa for several hours, got to go work so I can pay taxes and keep my internet service on.

Keep it up.

The Texican.

Are those highly educated colleagues functionnaires for the EU by any chance?

Pre Muslim mutiny: Figures from the MSNBC poll

How do you view Islam? * 35018 responses


Favorably.
12%

Unfavorably.
78%

I'm not sure.
10%

Muslims burn, rape, murder, pillage, saw off heads, fly planes into buildings, kidnap, torture, mass murder, burn down churches, burn down embassies, female genital mutilation, praise hitler, throw acid into faces of Muslim women, beat Muslim women, beat non Muslim women, hang teenage girls, drag bodies through the streets. And the Muslims wonder why about half of America believes Islam is violent?

1. Stop committing violent acts. (won't happen)
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.(won't happen)
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when you think no non-Muslims are around.(won't happen)
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.(won't happen)
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.(WON'T HAPPEN. )

Jeff Davis

to the above post about "how to think like an Arab" is pure bunk! l dont care what the Arabs think, l dont want to know how to think like one, and have enough information from learning their koran! Western people are getting it, we judge on deeds, and not what you say. enough of this pc puke, they say one thing, and do another. l know the results of their hatred towards non muslims, to know it is evil. even before 9-11, l did not trust this cult, as l had read and heard enough of what they did to women, and westerners in general. some people are still alseep after 9-11 and politicians as well.
l am glad that my parents instilled in me with enough common sense to judge the actions of those who say one thing and do another. Even the so called moderates when you hear them talk about Jews it makes me cringe! l am not Jewish, but you know from histroy they have been the scapegoats for all that has gone wrong. l once told a Jewish friend of mine, a very liberal lawyer, that l respected their religion, as they did not go around and try to convert people! the arab culture became more known to us westerners, because they sit on oil! their culture is one of a dying/death, and with technology they will revert back to obscurity!

How do you view Islam? * 35896 responses


Favorably.
12%

Unfavorably.
78%

I'm not sure.
11%

"Sometimes I wonder if the Post writers believe they are writing for adults"
...from Robert's posting

I would call it utter disrespect for their readers. Sometimes I do wonder how stupid they and the NDT think Americans are. On the other hand, when the Washington Times and NY Post elevate the journalistic competence of their own reporting, and publish editorialists like Diane West, well, the newspaper market of intelligent readers is wide open and up for grabs.

Juan Cole has served up a great, steaming heap of taqiyya in his discussion of this poll. His desperation and his hatred of the United States fairly drip from the page, and the extent of his flat-out lying is truely amazing.

Here's the link. Perhaps some JW readers might like to add a few comments to Dr. Cole's rant.

"the proportion of Americans who believe that Islam helps to stoke violence against non-Muslims has more than doubled since the attacks, from 14 percent in January 2002 to 33 percent today."

This is supposed to be encouraging? That 67% of Americans think Islam is not a problem? Five years after 911? After Madrid, Beslan, two Balis, London, scores of grisly beheadings in and out of Iraq, years of suicide bombings galore in Iraq and Israel and elsewhere? Mountains of other data of barbaric actions by Muslims in innumerable different locales around the globe?

The fact that a majority of Americans, by this poll, do not think Islam is a problem shows two things:

1) how dominant PC has become

2) that this is not merely a problem of "elites" in government and media, but infects millions of ordinary people.

Do any of you geniuses know what 67% of 300,000 million (the population of the US) is? That's how many millions of mostly ordinary Americans do NOT think Islam is a problem.

For the love of Pete, stop saying "elites"!

Norseman

I like secular, sarcastic Muslims who don't take themselves too seriously.

Sometimes religious Muslims seem fine when they only quote peaceful passages from books but do a great job defending secular values.

I'm not a big fan of most imams or people like Juan Cole who assume I'm not trying as hard as I can to come up with reliable Muslim friends and arguments to cause an enlightenment in Islam.

Worst of all, don't pretend as though you know the true meaning of Islam and I'm some uneducated rube in Burbia.

I know the word ijtihad and wish the bearded loonies whould shut up about salaf, fitna, shirk, or da'wa and try it.

Is that clear enough?

Qur'an, sunnah, jihad, fight tumult and oppression, dhimma, kufr, takfir, Rafidite, polytheists, Zionist, Crusader, imperialism, colonialism, Iran in 1953, Palestine -> Don't want to hear about it.

Not in favor of killing me? I'm all ears.

Update on MSNBC Poll

How do you view Islam? * 50209 responses


Favorably.
12%

Unfavorably.
77%

I'm not sure.
11%

We read about the numerous stories where many Muslims fail to assimilate into western cultures and then on the other hand many appear to assimilate while practicing their faith. It is difficult to really understand what is in the hearts of many Muslims who live in the western world until they openly express it as did Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, the executive director of ministerial services in the New York jail system from the article just below this one. Then you have the twenty-two-year-old Iranian student Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar who drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and deliberately tried to kill anyone to get back at the United States for killing Muslims.

We know that possibly as many as 80 PCT. of mosques in the US have been infiltrated by the radical teachings of the Waahabist sects of Islam that are financed by the masters of taquiya, and kitman; the Saudis,we know there are numerous Muslims in the US, let alone the likes of Abu Hamza who openly preached hate against the UK while living on the British welfare system.

Apparently our law enforcement will have to continue to ferret out these non assimilating malcontents when the smoke appears.
Short of WW 3, or even an imposition of Marshall law; "God forbid", they will probably be putting out these spot fires for years come to stop those who are determined to firmly adhere to the militant tenants of the Koran, and the Hadiths whever they may appear among us.

Infidel33 wrote:

I would call it utter disrespect for their readers. Sometimes I do wonder how stupid they and the NDT think Americans are. On the other hand, when the Washington Times and NY Post elevate the journalistic competence of their own reporting, and publish editorialists like Diane West, well, the newspaper market of intelligent readers is wide open and up for grabs.

Actually, I think the truth lies more in the fact that many journalists are not nearly as bright as they attempt to make themselves appear to be.

Back in college I once did an internship at a major American newspaper. I was basically a 3rd string copy editor for a couple of months. You can not even begin to imagine my shock at the amount of errors that I would catch coming through two previous full-time staff editors! I made a joke of it, and by the end of my internship, the lead staff members that were overseeing me there basically offered a job as an editor. I scoffed at the opportunity. In my own mind at the time, I basically thought to myself, "Sorry, but I'm obviously too intelligent to be dying of boredom here as a copy editor."

I almost ran out of that newspaper office on the last day of my internship and I never went back.

True story.

Foehammer

Juan Cole quotes Sura Five three times.

Am I supposed to suddenly find those passages trump --- do we really need another long list featuring, but not limited to, Sura Nine?

Cole enters this debate late, angry, filled with personal venom, and without much in the way of theological support.

But somehow he's paid for information.

"This is supposed to be encouraging? That 67% of Americans think Islam is not a problem?"
Posted by Dr. Pepper

That fact that any portion of the population views islam "negatively" is encouraging to me.

Consider this, the average American is constantly bombarded with "islam is a religion peace that has been hijacked by a few extremists". They hear this message not only from the MSM but elected officials as well (ad nauseam).

Despite this propaganda distrust grows.
People are starting to take notice, granted not as quickly as I would like, but I will take what I can get.

Exhort your political constituency to give up their children to be shahids as Arafish did, many times, live and on camera, and that's the impression you create.

Now that Hamas has taken over it's back to explicit incitement on PA TV.
Must be that mother of shahids they have elected to improve the American's perception of Islam.

it's all the fault of politicians and the media.
Then again if Americans watched the news on TV that showed the Indians killed in two islamic bombs attacks this week on Hindus maybe they'll blame Bush's visit and the TV reports

1. Stop committing violent acts.
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when you think no non-Muslims are around.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Why would any civilised person object to any of that?
Seems shockingly simple to me. And if yu don't want to do ALL of them...feel free to catch the next plane out of our countries.

Let's remind ourselves:
Some people bring problems onto themslves!!
___________

NEW REPORT ON SAUDI GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS

WASHINGTON, DC, January 28, 2005 -- Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom released today a new report exposing the dissemination of hate propaganda in America by the government of Saudi Arabia.

The 89-page report, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques,” is based on a year-long study of over two hundred original documents, all disseminated, published or otherwise generated by the government of Saudi Arabia and collected from more than a dozen mosques in the United States.

The report is available on the Freedom House website at: http://freedomhouse.org/religion/

The propagation of hate ideology by Saudi Arabia is known to be worldwide, but its occurrence within the United States has received scant attention until now. Within worldwide Sunni Islam, followers of Saudi Arabia’s extremist Wahhabi ideology are a distinct minority, as is evident by the millions of Muslims who have chosen to make America their home and are upstanding, law-abiding citizens and neighbors.

Read it all here:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/news/bn2005/bn-2005-01-28.htm

In his rant, Cole quotes Koran 5:82 and then says:

" It is not saying that non-Muslims go to hell-- quite the opposite."

to which I reply:

"[5.86] And (as for) those who disbelieve and reject Our communications, these are the companions of the flame."

george_rem

If your colleagues can't tell the difference between prejudice and an opinion based on sound evidence, or between "race" and ideology/belief/value system,
then they are not "highly educated"--not even well educated. Period.

This is what's happening, folks, in our schools. Students come out unable to think in a reasoned manner and lacking essential knowledge.

James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute,is the brother of John Zogby the pollster. James Zogby is an Arab-Christian apologist for Islam.You can see him from time to time of C-Span making excuses for violent Palestinians. John Zogby the pollster was discredited during the 2004 election when he called the election for Kerry in March 2004.

As to the poll results. How can the Washington Post be surprised that Americans have a negative perception of Islam? Muslim fly planes into buildings, behead people on the internet, blow up churches,bomb commuters in London and Madrid, riot over cartoons, kill over alledged wet Korans, preach hate openly everywhere and commit atrocities on a daily basis somewhere in the world. Before 9/11 I thought Islam was one of the worlds great religions and worthy of respect.Since 9/11 Muslims have shown me just how wrong I was.

The more on learns about Islam, from the texts of Islam itself, from the histories of Muslim conquests and subjugation of non-Muslims (such as the books by Bat Ye'or), the more one reads widely in the non-Muslim scholarship on Islam, the more wary and appalled one will become.

For something new is happening. For the last three decades at least, apologists for Islam have risen steadily to fill many places in academic departments, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. These apologists consist of both Muslims, and of a new breed of non-Muslim "scholar" of Islam who tends to know nothing, or at least to say very little, about Islam itself, and to concentrate on such tangential and essentially trivial matters, in the larger scheme of things, as "the construction of Palestinian identity" and other matters having to do with camouflaging, through careful re-interpretation and sleight of word, the Arab Muslim Jihad against Israel (what is called here the Lesser Jihad) as a conflict of "two nationalims." Islam itself is discussed as a collection of rituals of worship, with heavy concentration on the non-threatening aspects of the Qur'an, highly selective quotation from the Qur'an and misinterpretation of the meaning even of those phrases as, for example, that "there is no compulsion in religion" and that other one, favored by Bush of Washington and Boubakeur of the Paris mosque, 5.532 (about "he who kills a man, it is as if he has killed the whole world" etc. -- a phrase taken from Judaism, but without the additional phrase added in the Qur'an, 5.533, that changes the entire meaning.

That army of apologists within MESA Nostra and others have for decades managed to keep students from learning about, much less reading, the works of Snouck Hurgronje, Joseph Schacht, Antoine Fattal, K. S. Lal, Henri Lammens, Sir William Muir, Arthur Jeffery, Tor Andreae, Aramnd Abel, Edmond Fagnan, and dozens or hundres of other authors of histories, monographs, and articles on aspects of Islam, and instead substituted the Potemkin scholarship of Esposito, the "lyrical suras" bowdlerized Qur'an of Michael Sells, the feelgood nonsense of Maria Rosa Menocal, the nonsense of Khalil Abou El Fadl, or even articles from that propaganda outlet "Aramco World" -- all of which can be found on the course syllabi at the seemingly most respectable places.

But now that bumpersticker "Question Authority" is being taken seriously, even by young students. They know that there is something wrong, when they compare what they are told about Islam, and what the evidence of their senses, or their outside reading, tells them. They, and their parents, may not always knkow quite what is wrong, how they are being mislead, the different rhetorical and other strategies designed to keep as much of the Infidel world as ignorant of Islam for as long as possible (and the Muslim apologists, helped by the vast sums spread carefully around by the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and others, have done wonders -- so far). Those students ey may never have heard the word "taqiyya" or "kitman." Their professors may have carefully kept them from finding out what the Hadith are (so much harder to explain away than the incondite, often obscure and not always fully graspable at one or two readings, Qur'an) or about the details (Asma bint Marwan, Abu Akaf, Aisha, the Banu Qurayza, Al-Hudaibiyya, the Khaybar Oasis) of the life of Muhammad, the Model of Men, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.

And it is not just the texts, nor the histories. There is what anyone can learn about, any day of the week -- the latest atrocity, in India or the Moluccas, in southern Thailand or southern Sudan, in the metros of Western Europe, in schoolyards and theatres in Russia, and in the recordings made, of telephone calls, of khutbas delivered by truth-telling imams unaware that Infidels might find out, of clandestine meetings.

The Musliims of this world may have bought, directly and indirectly, many of our rulers. The other day Bill Clinton pocketed a few hundred thousand dollars for addressing an audience in Qatar, where he deplored the publication of those cartoons and, casually, unthinkingly, as is his wont about so many important matters, proceeded to express his own indifference to the Western principle of free speech. There are many people like Clinton who are, or were, in the governments of the Western world, saying and doing something to please their generous Arab hosts or patrons, or donors to presidential libraries and to private bank accounts. But there are many more people who are not recycling petro-dollars in such disgusting fashion, and they are becoming more and more fed up, with all of it --with the ex-diplomats and former government officials, with the universities that still countenance the influence of Arab money (how much longer will the administration at the Georgetown University continue to sully its name by allowing the likes of Esposito to have his "Center" use, and exploit, the seeming respectability of the Georgetown name)?

No, the contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira simply cannot be hid forever. And the audiences for newspapers will not put up forever with the obvious nonsense, whether offered by editors at The New Duranty Times or The Bandar Beacon, nor the idiots who have been given columnists's slots, such as the egregious Tom Friedman. The limits of tolerance, of the stupidity and ignorance displayed by those in their brief and undeserved authority, have been reached.

All kinds of emperors have all kinds of no clothes.

yea regarding DesertDawgN29 post, i used to have a respectable view of Islam before i learned about its roots. To be honest i never really new anything about it until what happened on 9/11. I always thought religions we somthing to bring peace to ones heart. When i learned that 9/11 was religiously motivate i begin to research Islam and found some frieghtening things. When they say the media has warped our views of Islam i say Heck NO! to that. Just by my own findings i have come to my OWN conclusion of what Islam is. History and the Quran its self have more then enough proof that this religion or "cult" rather is full of violence and anger. Islam a religion of peace...ppft! The Quran is an instruction manual on world conquest. Read it your self America. Jesus spread his word though love and forgiveness and lead by example. Muhammad beheaded those who would not listen to his hate speach.

Lodi Terror Trial Update
With a lot of prompting from FBI agents questioning him, a man now on trial on charges of lying to cover his terrorist ties told the agents four young men in Lodi were being groomed to carry out an attack on the White House, the U.S. Justice Department headquarters and the Pentagon.
That segment of the videotaped interrogation of Lodi ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat starts in his interrogation at the FBI's Sacramento field office, after he told his questioners he once toured four terrorist training camps in his native Pakistan.

"Did they do any demonstrations for you?" Special Agent Timothy Harrison asked Hayat.

"Shooting guns," Special Agent Gary Schiff added.

"Shooting guns," Hayat echoed.

Within a very short time, the interview moved from that point to where Hayat was saying the imam at the Muslim mosque in Lodi was holding secret meetings with four local men who had trained in the Pakistani camps, including Hayat's own son, Hamid Hayat, and plotting an attack on government buildings in and around Washington, D.C.

The jury in Umer Hayat's case spent most of Tuesday and all of Wednesday watching the 10-hour videotaped interrogation that was conducted on the night of June 4 and the late morning and afternoon of June 5.

First, prosecutor David Ditch projected excerpts of the interview on a big screen. On Tuesday afternoon, defense attorney Johnny Griffin III began playing the entire interview for the jury. That process consumed Wednesday and is expected to finish this morning.

Hayat, a 48-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, is charged in a grand jury indictment with two counts of making a false statement to the FBI when he initially denied having any firsthand knowledge of Pakistani training camps and denied that his son trained at one of the camps.

Hamid Hayat, 23, also a U.S. citizen, is charged in the same indictment with providing support to terrorists by undergoing the training in 2003 and returning to Lodi in May "to wage violent jihad against persons and real and personal property within the United States."

Hamid Hayat is charged in three additional counts with making false statements to the FBI in an attempt to conceal his terrorist activity and intentions.

The Hayats, who have been in custody since their arrests June 5, have pleaded not guilty and are being tried before two juries in one courtroom.

If convicted, Hamid Hayat faces at least 23 years in prison, and Umer Hayat faces at least eight years.

Once Umer Hayat agreed that he watched trainees shoot at one of the camps, Agent Schiff said, "Practicing and going around buildings, and stuff," while gesturing as if going through a room with a weapon.

"Yes, yes," Hayat again agreed.

Agent Harrison asked, "So, this was training to go into houses and do this? Or training to go into buildings? Government buildings?"

"Mostly government buildings," Hayat replied.

"Here in the U.S.?" Harrison asked.

"Yes sir," Hayat said.

"Which, do you know which government buildings are we talking about?" Harrison asked.

"Uh, Justice," Hayat answered. "Like, Justice or immigration building or, uh, that a, like, uh, uh, government building. Whatever the important government building, you know."

"But they especially like ... Department of Justice," Harrison said.

"Yeah," Hayat said.

"No surprise," Harrison commented.

"Immigration, yeah, FBI building," Hayat added.

After further exchange, Schiff said, "So, they're going to go attack U.S. government buildings. That's what they teach at these camps."

"Yeah, White House, especially White House," Hayat said.

A few minutes later, Schiff asked who gives directions to the four Lodi men Hayat had identified as having been trained in Pakistan to wage jihad.

"Absolutely, I don't know who the boss is here," Hayat said.

After some back-and-forth on the subject, during which Hayat said the "big boss" in Pakistan is Fazlur Rehman, the opposition leader in the Pakistani parliament, Schiff said, "Well, you've got somebody in your mind. ... I can see you picturing somebody who the big boss is here. Who's the one that's closest to Maulana Fazlur Rehman here?"

"Maulana Shabbir," Hayat said, referring to Shabbir Ahmed, then the imam at the Lodi mosque.

"Maulana Shabbir," Schiff said. "OK, well, that wasn't that hard, was it?"

"Yeah, yeah, no," agreed Hayat

Schiff then asked how Shabbir interacts with "these kids" who went to train and "learned how to kill Americans and shoot at President Bush dummies and all that stuff."

"Well, they get together at his house," Hayat said.

"And I don't know, honest to God, what they talking inside because they never invite me to come here."

But Schiff persisted. "Are they planning to get, go to the government building someday? They want to get more people trained and get to the government buildings?"

"I think so," Hayat said.

"How do you know that? What have you heard?" Schiff pressed.

"I don't heard but what, whatever they get together, so they, I think he's teaching them to go on the building, Justice, White House or whatever, you know?" Hayat answered. "I think that's what they're talking about inside."

Harrison then asked, "What are the leaders in the camp telling these kids coming back here to America to do?"

Schiff answered his fellow agent's question. "Someday we're going to go back, come back to America and everybody feels good because they just learned how to do this and then they come back to the United States and someday we're going to get together and we're going to jihad against America."

"That's right," said Hayat

"We're going to go to Justice, we're going to go to the FBI building," Schiff added as they build toward a climax.

"Yes," said Hayat, interrupting the agent.

"And we're going to jihad against ... " Schiff said.

Again, Hayat cut him off with, "And go to White House." "And we're going to kill President Bush because ..." Schiff said.

Hayat again cuts him off with, "Pentagon."

"Pentagon, we're gonna kill Rumsfeld," said Schiff, referring to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"Yeah," Hayat agreed.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/ongoing/investigation/story/14227875p-15051445c.html

According to various people named Cole and others quoted in this story, it's all the fault of politicians and the media.

This, of course, is to totally reverse the true position. The mainstream media bends over backwards to see what it imagines is the Islamic point of view. It even hides information from the public. This may be owing to simple-mindedness and lack of knowledge or it may be owing to fear - that they are paralyzed by fear like a rabbit in a car's headlights, not wanting to admit what they already suspects because they can't even face the thought of it.

Look at the soothing quality of these opinion pieces from John Casey of Gonville and Gaius College, Cambridge. They are taken from the Telegraph:

1. This is folly, not a clash of civilisations
2. Muslims love Jesus as much as Christians do

Note especially the unctuous quality of the "Muslims love Jesus" piece ...

I once had a conversation with members of Hizbollah ...

Does he not know what Hizbollah is about? How could he not?

How deceiving are these pieces likely to be for the average Englishman, who knows nothing much about these matters, perusing his Telegraph? Nothing unpleasant here; nothing to see, really; move along now.

If we want to talk about Jesus and Islam it's far more disturbing and far more to the point to notice that the Palestinians have appropriated the imagery of Christian Arabs and are as noted at Front Page Mag posing as Jesus Christ.

To quote from Dr Raddatz in the the Front Page Mag article:

The question is whether the European public has the intellectual and democratic energy to intervene and break the paralyzing propaganda of "Islamic peace", "Cordoba tolerance", "democratic Euro-Islam" etc., spread by official opinion makers, thereby turning into Islam functionaries themselves.

Pre mutiny poll update

How do you view Islam? * 62368 responses


Favorably.
13%

Unfavorably.
76%

I'm not sure.
11%

Just after 9/11, I read the Qur'an for the first time. I was shocked out of my skin. I couldn't believe what I had read. I felt sure that I must have missed something and went and read books that purported to have favorable impressions of Islam. I read Karen Armstrong, John Esposito and Michael Sells. However, when I read these authors they didn't discuss the same Qur'an I had read. It was like they were talking about a different religion. So, I thought the only way that I am going to get a grip on this Islam thing is to go back to the original sources. So, I read the Sirat Rasul Allah (The Life Of Muhammad) translated by Guillaume. I read chunks of Al Tabari, the historian. I read Ibn Rushd. I read the Ahadith. I read The Reliance of the Traveller. Then, I realized something fundamental, that Western writers who were apologizing for the Muslim faith and Muslim writers seeking to make converts and portray the Muslim faith in a positive light, systematically omit salient information or outright lie about the Muslim faith!

When I realized that there was all this disinformation and lying going on, that really stoked my interest in finding out what the truth about Islam was. That desire led me to the critics of Islam and the apostates.

One thing that has been bothering me lately however is this question: how do we keep separate our hatred of Islam as an ideology from the human beings who believe in that flawed ideology?

Notice also the poisonous insertion of: "The poll found that nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence...."

We learned after the fact that while a very small number of attacks did occur, a very high number of these incidents were concocted by our Muslim citizens to magnify the heinous claim that Muslims were actually the true victims of 9/11!

This revolting distortion by the Muslim population was clear to anyone who scratched below the surface of their bogus claims. Within days of 9/11 C.A.I.R and other Muslim organizations were ready to wage this cancerous deceit upon the traumatized US citizenry -- and the media allowed it, played along with it unquestioningly, and amplified this pathological lie.

This was only one of the jarring developments emerging from our Muslim citizens "in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks..." It was one of the first red flags which squarely implicated Islam in 9/11, and the collective Muslim population which seemed ready and eager to exploit the calamity to defame America, gain concessions from America, and weave a web of lies surrounding the catastrophe Islam had unleashed in America.

Americans flocked to mosques, not to burn them, not to tear the worshippers from limb to limb, but to "protect them" from supposed raging mobs which never materialized, and never had existed. Americans flocked to Muslim commuities with food and open arms to reassure them of our tolerance. This at the exact moment that these Muslim communities were concocting their anti-American lies, and working the 9/11 horror to their advantage!

This is the truth about "the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks..."

Finally, America was never credited by Muslims for what it DID'T do to them after the Islamic attack of 9/11! Apparently only 39% of Americans blamed or associated Islam for the attack, despite the overwhelming evidence that Islam was implicated front and center. The attackers and the planners made no secret of the Islamic underpinnings for their atrocity. And large swaths of the Muslim world were seen ululating and dancing with glee when 9/11 'happened.'

Does anyone doubt that had the roles been reversed, had this gargantuan atrocity happened in the epicenter of Islamby 19 Christian terrorists flying planes into the Great Mosque or some other world recognized symbol of Islam, does anyone doubt that the global Muslim hoards would have butchered til they could butcher no more? that they would have torn limb from limb and head from body in an endless frenzy of insane hatred and revenge? Every person they could lay hand on which could somehow be linked to that attack across the Muslim world would have been butchered mercilessly, and there would not have been surcease until every last non-Muslim was dead. Of this I am convinced. The death toll would have reached into the MILLIONS.

Subtle innocuous seeming tidbits such as this filth perpetuate Muslim pretexts of victimology and cloak and obsure their actions and intent. When Western media parrot these lies and distortions they are simply acting as tools for the great Muslim disinformation campaign against their mortal foe -- the non-Muslims of the world.

WaPo: Islam's TOOL!

Cynic:

In case my point was missed, it's not western media and pols at fault, it's middle eastern/Muslim media and pols.

Although you could certainly say that western media outlets that didn't publish the Jyllens-Posten cartoons because they didn't want to stir up Muslim emotions, are not disinclinded to publish "new" Abu Graib photos long after the miscreants were tried and convicted, knowing full well, that that too "stirs up" Muslim emotions that are likely to endanger Americans.

Hugh,

tangential and essentially trivial matters, in the larger scheme of things, as "the construction of Palestinian identity"

Do I detect some dripping sarcasm? Of all the crazy notions in academia, Palestinians looking inward and developing notions of modern secular statehood would be a Very Good Thing, IMO.

"tangential and essentially trivial matters, in the larger scheme of things, as 'the construction of Palestinian identity'

Do I detect some dripping sarcasm? Of all the crazy notions in academia, Palestinians looking inward and developing notions of modern secular statehood would be a Very Good Thing, IMO."
-- from a posting above

The "construction of Palestinian identity" is the kind of thing that Joel Beinin, Rashid Khalidi, and other academic propogandists for the "Palestinians" both promote and exaggerate, because it helps with this "two competiting nationalisms" nonsense.

No one hesistates to say that in Iraq there are Arabs and Kurds. No one hesitates to say that in Algeria and Morocco there are Arabs and Berbers. No one hesitates to say that in Egypt there are Arabs and Copts (Arabic-speaking, but not Arabs). No one hesitated, before the 1967 war, to speak and write of Arabs and Jews in Israel, or fighting over claims to land in the Middle East. Right?

It was only after the 1967 war that the local Arabs, in a careful and sustained campaign, renamed themselves the "Palestinian people." They were betting they could get away with it, that the Israelis would be too stupid to see what was going on and counteract, that those who claimed to have Israel in their hearts would also have it in their heads and figure out why this redefinition of the conflict was so dangerous.

Now there are all sorts of younger people running around who believe, who have been led to beleive, that there was once, under Muslim rule, a separate political unit called "Palstine." There never was. And they are led to believe, that there always was this "Palestinian people" consisting of the local Arabs who are, of course, overwhelmingly Muslim. No one appears to want to investigate where the recent ancestors (mostly in the last century, some from the period 1840 0n) came from -- from Egypt, from Algeria, from Iraq, even from formerly Ottoman Muslim territories in Bulgaria. No one today appears to want to find out about the actual demographic and cadastral information pertaining to what, in Western Christendom, was known as "Palestine" (a name that originates in the attempts of the Romans to efface the Jewish connection to the land by replacing "Judea" with "Palestine" and "Jerusalem" with "Aelie Capitolina").

The notion that the local Arabs -- the "Palestinian people" -- are anyting other than the shock troops, in the past, in the present, and even if they quiet down for a while, in order to obtain their goals in other ways, always in the future -- could ever be interested in "modern secular statehood" that would cause them to drop their refusal to contemplate the permanent existence of Infidel-ruled Israel --- is not possible.

Palestinians looking inward and developing notions of modern secular statehood would be...

... like a Unicorn turning in his handguns to the local police, saddling up a flying pig, and soaring off to the warm beaches of Atlantis, to leave us the Hell alone once and for all?

Did I mention the warm beaches of Academia, where nobody works and everybody must get paid?

Palestinians looking inward and developing notions of modern secular statehood would be...

... like a Unicorn turning in his handguns to the local police, saddling up a flying pig, and soaring off to the warm beaches of Atlantis, to leave us the Hell alone once and for all?

Did I mention the warm beaches of Academia, where nobody works and everybody must get paid?

Friends, I would like to inject a note of skepticism about the public's ability to firmly throw off the heavy shackles imposed by the PC media and the political class. While we in the USA have clearly not yet approached the state of dhimmitude that the some other multicultural, multi-religious democracies in Europe and Asia have reached, the experience of India is instuctive. As Hugh and others have noted,the Indian pseudo-secular ruling Hindu class, in complete thrall of Islam, has gone to great lengths to hide the truth. A dreadful example relates to the February 27, 2002 attack in Gujrath on a passenger train, the Sabarmati Express, passing through the town of Godhra. The train was forcibly stopped and the Ladies Coach bore the brunt of a Muslim mob attack.The fire set by the mob killed 59 Hindus, mostly women and children, pilgrims reurning home from Ayodhya, a holy Hindu town. The news of the gruesome killings led to a wave of anti-Muslim riots, the so-called Godhra riots, in which several hundred Muslims--but also a hundreds of Hindus-died, partly in police firings as the police tried to control mob fury. These bare facts have been very well-documented and the incidents have been a subject of various lengthy judicial inquiries and court cases.
However,recently, in an overtly political move, the Congress Party-led coalition appointed a judge,Justice Banerjee, to freshly investigate the cause of fire. On the eve of upcoming state elections, the Justice submitted a report concluding that the fire was an accident and not set by the mob! The other day, the Indian Parliament was in an uproar as the opposition BJP questioned the credibility of the report and denounced it as a transparent and cynical attempt to garner Muslim votes... I know most of us are thinking that this kind of travesty of justice and perversion of truth will never occur here in the USA...I too hope and pray that we will never reach that point of dhimmitude in the West, but after the recent European drift in that direction, one must wonder. Hugh--Any thoughts? ( Apologies for a somewhat lengthy post, but had to provide the background.)

about loving the sinner (mentat's question): i don't talk seriously with muslims, and i suppose i'd stop doing this after the first real conversation... but i imagine backing away from talking about the horrors of the faith, and saying, "You know, in America, you are allowed to convert. You probably will not be killed."

I know, dear reader. The word "Pollyanna" comes to mind. The answer will be "I have no interest in converting."

Islam reminds me of a mafia more than any other kind of organization -- a mafia whose restrictions against leaving are internalized.

we have allowed these people into the country and have failed to shame the natives who have joined the faith.

few will leave the fold. and whether we love or hate the sinner, we will have to pay.

Well, I'm not surprised that muslims are perceived poorly. Anyone with a radio or a television can figure out why.

As we say in Texas, "It doesn't take me long to look at a horseshoe." It's fairly simple and easy to comprehend. When the bus driver and the welder get the picture, you can bet the rest of middle America is not far behind.

As usual, however, the only people who are blind to the truth are academics, and the higher they are the dumber they are. University professors, as is shown in this article, can be counted on to be amongst the most stupid of all.

University professors, as is shown in this article, can be counted on to be amongst the most stupid of all.

And/or on the take, which the bus driver and the welder are not.

He's got a good thing going. $20 million for his "Georgetown" Center, which means a lot more for lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, and John Voll, and Yvonne Haddad.

How many more academics are "shilling for Islam"?

Here's a very positive perception of Islam:

Radical Islam (unlike the actual religion) tolerates no other religion.
--- Jed Babbin, RealClearPolitics

Setting aside that Islam is not a religion, somebody help me here and show me where Islam preaches tolerance of other religions.

Maybe this quote from God is where:

The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them.
--- Koran 8:59

MORE KORANS MORE HADITHS MORE SIRATS MORE FLUFF MORONS LIKE JED BABBIN

Thanks for making things real clear, Mr. Babbin, sir.

Is there a positive perception to any ideology that degrades and dehumanizes (apes and pigs) other races and religions in its canonical text?

Radical Islam (unlike the actual religion) tolerates no other religion.
--- Jed Babbin, RealClearPolitics

LOL. Wow, that actually has a Zen-like quality to it. Who woulda thunk it?

As for the controversial cartoons of Muhammad, he said Arabs seem hypersensitive about religion. "I think it's been blown out of proportion," he said.

What have those Palestinian Christians been filling this poor bus-driver's head with?

Whats wrong with Apes and Pigs?

Chakravak,
what do you think of the proposition that pro-Islamic attitude on the part of Hindu elites in India was influenced by the British imperialist pro-Islamic attitude?

Radical Islam (unlike the actual religion) tolerates no other religion.

So what's he saying? That the more "radical" versions of Islam are non-actual? :-)

With over 4000 acts of Islamic terrorism that have resulted in multiple human fatalities since 9-11-2001, it is beyond obvious that violence lurks in Islam's ideological core. Muslims couldn't and wouldn't be doing all this if there was no justifications for such acts in their religious source the Kuran. And, as it happens, the Kuran provides PLENTY of grist for the terrorists' sawmill.

Thus it follows that all this killing is a part of what Islam is designed to do. And the worst of it is that Islam accomplishes this by stealthily removing all value conferred upon human life by making its doctrine carry more weight than human life itself--and Islam has embedded this mentality in most of what it teaches. So in way or another, Islam's message of violence against the unbelievers is going to be communicated to the Muslim community. This cannot unfortunately be corrected at the mosques so easily for another reason: subtracting killing from the religion at this point will make it clear that Islam is conforming to non-Islamic dictates. Such a perception is likely to provoke outrage among much of the Islamic communities around the world. Not that I care about that so much but it could trigger a response making Islam yet MORE murderous than it now is.

Robert's suggestions in essence are superb. The only trouble with them is that they are inherently non-Islamic and could trigger a reaction accusing those who could carry out such non-violent interpretations of committing sacrilege or heresy.

But we'll see how well Robert's five suggestions play in the mosques around the globe. Maybe I'll be surprised. Or not.

Hey mainuh1,

Dude, the looooong cut and pastes are LAME, are u a noobie??? Most people will just quickly scroll PAST it.

Just "snip" a attention-getting paragraph and provide a LINK.

Just a helpful-hint...

And further, Pythagoras, if Muslims weren't ALL involved in a deliberate campaign to dissemble and confuse, to deflect criticism away from Islam's role in all the violence and hatred and vengeance, we wouldn't need to post comments like yours or mine or all the others here ... The fact that so many non-Muslims still are confused about Islam, or refuse to believe what their lying eyes seem to be saying about Islam and terrorism indicates how well the collective Muslim disinformation campaign is working.

Most "infidels" find it hard to credit the notion that Muslims are taught from earliest times to dissemble about Islam when dealing with "infidels", and to never criticize fellow Muslims in the presence of "infidels". Such things appear far too close to "conspiracy theories", and our laudible rational Western Ways tend to make such ideas seem preposterous.

But it's true! And this is one case when it's better to believe your lying eyes than what all the lying pundits and lying Muslims would have you believe -- EVERYTHING depends on it!

Why would a liberal newspaper like WP be anxious about Islam's negative image if Islam is so reactionary? Of course, it's not just at WP that we see this attitude among liberals. I guess Chris Hitchens is a mutant.
If they're anxious that innocent Muslims will be discriminated against, shouldn't that concern extend to misunderstood Christian Evangelicals - which it doesn't?

Hey Dr. Pepper,

ELITES, ELITES, ELITES!!!!

Although not all elites wish Islam to be percieved as benevolent. They play a double-game, called the Hegelian Dialectical Process.
Who controls the money? Why would they play a double-game? A double-game as defined by funding/influencing two seemimgly opposing reality-perspectives. Oh, yes, it's true.

The notion that the local Arabs -- the "Palestinian people" -- are anyting other than the shock troops, in the past, in the present,

Hugh, Palestinian are then Arab from local areas that migrated to Isreal for economics. looks like they want to destroy the goose "Israel" who laid their "golden egg". Looking at Arab countries their economies are in ruins, even with the billions of dollars collected over oil they sit over cannot seem to improve themselves. It took enterprising Jews to show them the way, and now their jealously has got the best of them. l read some where, Iranians the past president is a billionaire, and has him money laundred through Dubai. yet the regular Iranian lacks most essentials in life. How long can these mullahs keep their people in poverty? They see the west prosperous, and emigrate here, and then they want to bring their hatreds and hedious cult over.
\l know there were many women protesting against the muslim clerics who wanted to bring in Sharai law to Ontario. now l hear rumblings about public tax dollars paying for their schools, since in our original "British North Amer.Act" guaranteed two types of schools, public which was Protestant, and Catholic were mainly French Cdns, and those Irish who managed to stay alive from their cross over on the coffin ships. Now the muslims are clamoring for ours dollars for their schools. l would rather all go to public schools than put a dime on muslim schools!

"One thing that has been bothering me lately however is this question: how do we keep separate our hatred of Islam as an ideology from the human beings who believe in that flawed ideology?"
-posted by Mentat

That's actually pretty easy. First we have to keep in mind that it is Islam and only Islam that makes Muslims do these horrific things. I agree with American that there should be no love for the likes of terrorists and taqiyya artists like Ibrahim Hooper. Hate them, they are a lost cause. As for the simple illiterate villager who only knows Islam but has no means on acting on it or the American Muslim who says an antisemitic slur every now and then but would never take up arms for many reasons (cowardice being the #1 reason) you should rebuke them with factual information so they can learn how Islam is affecting their mind. They may not be receptive but some might take the hint sometime down the road. You should tolerate them but not befriend them unless they become apostates or "cultural Muslims" in the same vein as Fuoad Ajami or Amir Taheri. Have pity for those Muslims who are not cognizant of the implications of the Islamic program, have none for those who are aware of the implications. It can be hard to tell at first but once you become aware of their attitudes towards infidels and the infidel state, it all becomes crystal clear. We can't convince every Muslim to apostasize so we shouldn't get discouraged. Those that are impervious to reason should be ignored because Islam has already claimed them and much like Sheol, it will never release them.

Why would a liberal newspaper like WP be anxious about Islam's negative image if Islam is so reactionary?

Because "reactionary" has no meaning here?

The problem is one of violence.

Perhaps we could rephrase the question: why despite many attacks by Islamic terrorists and despite the violent content of the Koran and hadith and despite the secret recordings of "peaceful" preachers spitting out the most vile hatred against Jews and others and despite all the rest of it is a "liberal" paper reluctant to condemn Islam?

It is likely some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Moreover, I think they are stuck in a posture of rejection towards the surrounding society and have a natural sympathy for anything that threatens it. They sense the threat and it awakens that reponse, but at they same time they lie to themselves and tell themselves, and say to us, there is no threat.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Daveconcerned,

I think the politicians are in the middle of the Elitist pyramid. More like "regional managers" for the money-powers of the world. The way the "system" is set up, they don't have much choice but to play the game. Control of currency and credit is where the real power is. Loans and funding require 'collateral"-- in this sphere, collateral is policy/PR influence. The goal? World-wide monopoly, captive markets, and 1984's "oligarchy collectivism".

American said

I think there's a time for love and a time for hate.

I don't see that hate has anything to do with it, actually. If someone is lunging at you with a knife, is it really necessary to "hate" them in order to defend yourself? Would "hating" them gain you any advantage in protecting yourself? The only thing that has to be done is to take the knife away from the assailant, or to incapacitate or disable them in some other way.

Hatred only encourages us to act out of emotions, rather than out of logic. There are many rational steps that we should be taking to protect ourselves, and we are not.

Unfortunately, our leaders are following an even worse strategy, which is to try and reason with the lunging lunatic, and to tell us that he is not really lunging at us, but is instead trying to return the knife to its sheath which just happens to be located behind our head etc. etc. etc.

daveconcerned,

I have suspicions, but no conclusions yet. The mind-game(at this point)
is very difficult to decipher. The fact is I have traced so-called anti-communist entiities to socialist sources and communist entities to supposed "right-wing" orgs. They all lead to the international banking cartels through interlocking directorships, which has been well documented and a matter of public record.
I'm just a sceptic and a truth-seeker in a "wilderness of mirrors".
I'll give you a couple links to give you an idea of where I'm coming from( ya gotta watch out for the "jew-baiters", they may well be "controlled opposition"):

http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=BolshevikRev

http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=NoneDare

I could give more, but I'm not ready to do that here yet.

I've found(confirmed) info that even ties the John Birch Society with the CFR.

This is simply terrible. All the media reports of Islamic terrorism daily worldwide is giving Muslims a very bad image. I suggest that from now on, whenever Islamic terrorism strikes anywhere in the world, the media should replace "Islamic" with "Buddhist" for the next couple of months. After that, all acts of Islamic terrorism should be reported as "Jain" or "Hindu" terrorism. That way, it will start appearing that all sorts of people from all sorts of religious backgrounds commit acts of terrorism, not just Muslims. That would be much more fair and soon enough the negative perception of Muslims and Islam will wane.

Whats wrong with Apes and Pigs?

Mr. Ape Pig, I'd like to invite you out to my hog farm. The hogs have been talking about you; they think you're some kind of new cross-breed carnival freak species or something. They'd like to eat you and, well, maybe eat you.

MORE KORANS MORE SUNNAH MORE MOHAMMED MORE MOSLEMS MORE HATE MO!

Exactly what is an Islamist, for crying out loud. This mysterious word spontaneously popped up when the word Moslem started to go sour. All the eggheads on my TV started using it as if a) it had been in use all along, and b) they understands what it means.

Is an Islamist a Moslem who partakes of Islam? That's the best I can guess.

A negative perception of Islam is increasing because more and more people are viewing Muslims with alarm because of their words and their actions. After studying about Islam and Muslim history, observing rants and riots, we understand that many Muslims are intent upon taking over the West and inflicting Islam upon us while killing us off or crowding us out. Those that aren't intent on using violence intend to persist through Da'wa.

There is no compromise nor accommodation with other ethnic, national, or religious groups as advertised in the maxim: "there is no compulsion in religion," with "religion" in the form of Islam being the whole ball of wax. One gets tired of being viewed with disdain by Muslims that believe everyone else is unworthy.

... we understand that many Muslims are intent upon taking over the West

You just left out a few billion Hindus,Buddhists, and Confucians, among others.

C'mon, epg, this mass murder thing is a team game. There is no "I" is Moslem, and there is no "eye" in Islam.

Yep daveconcerned, but it's the banking/finance firms that own the "big-businesses". And us. They have our body, but we can still keep our minds free. For the moment.

mainuh1 cut-and-pasted a very long and largely irrelevant article from the 1980's.

It seems to be full of the usual half-truths and misunderstandings of "Middle East Experts" (tm).

I too studied the 5 Pillars of Islam in high-school, which left me no closer to understanding what Islam is really about.

Some random quotes:

Parents are greatly respected in the Islamic tradition. Mothers are particularly honored: the Qur'an teaches that since mothers suffer during pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing, they deserve a special consideration and kindness.

Except if she shows her bare ankles or wrists or, heaven forbid, her face in public, in which case she must be severely beaten with a stick.

The word zakah means both "purification" and "growth." Our possessions are purified by setting aside a proportion for those in need and for the society in general.

And Allah knows just how needy those Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad warriors are, so keep the zakat flowing!

A Muslim marriage is both a sacred act and a legal agreement, in which either partner is free to include legitimate conditions.

"Legitimate conditions" such as allowing men to have additional "temporary marriages", which we in the West would refer to as "legalized prostitution".

An old Arab saying aptly describes the competitive, hostile spirit bred into Arab children: "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world."

I take this not as a healthy sibling competition ("I against my brother in trying to get a higher score in math"), but as an example of the inherent hatred, in differing degrees, for everyone. There is the Arab man in the middle of the bullseye, and as you move further and further from the center, the hatred score increases. Siblings, then cousins, then clan, then religious sect, then Muslims from other sects, then infidels. It is also an example of the shifting loyalties that change constantly depending on the direction of the wind and the phase of the moon.

Another probable cause of this intense conflict is Arab history itself, which has been dominated by warfare, domestic upheaval and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world.

There's a chicken-and-egg scenario: Arabs are violent because they have a history of being violent. And what is that about invasions into Arab lands? The invasions for 1400 years have been going the other direction.

One could go on and on, but one has to get back to work, or one will get into trouble.

Incidentally, you said this article is from 1980, which sounds right since it has the same depth of knowledge as I had back then, but it refers to the 9-11 attack. If this is a recent article, it shows the sad state of knowledge of Islam by those in power.

Arabs are violent because they have a history of being violent.

So it couldn't have anything to do with the most sacred and holy Islamic scriptures, then

Like the part in the Koran where God commands Moslems to emulate Mohammed's "most excellent pattern of conduct" combined with the one in the Hadiths where Mohammed had his boys build a camp fire on a pagan Arab's chest and watched as it burned through to the ground.

Worshipping that kinda stuff Friday afternoons couldn't have connection to the violence. No.

American, I am not criticising you or trying to start a flame war.

Does calmly reasoning with him help you out?

If you will read what I wrote, that is what I referred to as the worst possible strategy, which is the one we're using right now.

In this situation, I might summon my rage, and my hate, and jam my thumb into his eye, and then, pumped up on the adrenaline, take away his knife and kill him.

Or, I might do like Indiana Jones and shrug my shoulders and simply shoot the swordsman and walk away.

If the hatred-and-rage thing is working for you, great. During WWII, people became filled with hatred and rage towards Germans and Japanese, and called them all sorts of nasty names. Which isn't as effective as destroying their ability to produce war machinery.

When I say that fighting jihad is not based on stirring up hatred, I don't mean that we should love them either. I'm saying this is a defensive war, they are filled with hatred, and we are just trying to stop their violence. It's not about hatred, at least for me.

American: However, for those who are vicious killers, I don't
see why hating them is bad.

Special Guest is right. Hating is a complete waste of time and energy and gets in the way of acting intelligently. All we really need to do is identify the problem and remeove it. If you are Christian it gets in the way of 'Love your enemy'...Of course this does not deter muslims from hating even though they claim to love Jesus. Love him yes, obey his teachings and commandments...no way...dont hate, just act appropriatly...

When words fail, war ensues.

War is coming. It's as clear as crystal. The United States of America has a long standing tradition of being slow to see the big picture, but quick to put up its back when cornered by the ultimate realization of a threat. Why else do you suppose that the Islamic world is trying so hard to whittle away at us from every corner -- the 'thousand cuts' style plundering of our guts, our minds, our traditions, our laws and even our own people? To bring down the USA means victory for the New Caliphate, and they know that the best way to succeed is through instilling Dhimmitude, fear and stripping away our right of Free Speech.

Well, I'm here to say, there's no way on God's green Earth that any of this is going to happen without a fight. In a way, the 9/11 attack was premature. It gave away the hand of the Islamic Movement.

The proverbial cat has been long out of the bag and now more and more Americans are becoming aware of the true nature of Islam and its ultimate goals.

Absorb the reality of what I've just stated. We are going to be given no choice but to raise a sword to cut the head off this snake soon. War is rotten, but to just lay down and give in out of fear and loathing of war and violence, well, that's far worse. Better to fight and die for what we hold dear than to ever give up this nation to some tainted ideology, no matter what shape it comes in.

I can speak for myself and explain why I have acquired a negative perception of Islam .

1. I cannot (for the life of me) site a single
example illustrating Islam as a religion of
peace.
Yet, I can easily identify endless examples
of mohammedan intolerance, deceipt and terror.

2. After careful review of the texts Mohammedans
follow, it has become abundantly clear to me
that as a non-believer (infidel, how quaint)
I am immediately thrust into the realm of
Dar ul Harb (house of war) against the believers
in Dar ul Islam.

Can't see a whole lot of positive influence through that, and I certainly don't blame other 'infidels' for feeling the same.

more Americans in 2006 think that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence than they did in 2001.
Well, duh.

We find it hard to like people who cut off a human being's head on t.v.

Or to believe their apologistas.

Time for Islam to head back to Mecca for a Long Hadj, and sort out the sh*t among themselves.

1350 years might do it.

You bother us too much, we'll carve your epitaph.

"Islam is mind and thought control taught and enforced from childhood.

This might end up being nail in our coffins. This is why islam has the culture of the poor and the culture of the wealthy (dabbling in haram behavior).

Is this why the "powers that be" are trying to foist islam on us?"
Posted by: daveconcerned
___

I'm thinking probably not. I think they want it to MERGE with the "Humanism" that is dominant, and be pacified.
There are serious problems with "Humanism" too. At least from an individualists point of view.
Mind and thought-control is also used for the "Humanist" ideology. In the form of promoting collectivism. Collectivism=conformity= destruction of independant thought=servitude and slavery. AKA; the Big-Brother State.

The fact that most would dismiss these ideas as stupid or insane only proves my point.

Muslims are Fortunate to Have Media Support

Muslims are very fortunate to have the backing of the major news corporations, including the NYT. In a recent story on the bombings in India, NYT reporter Somini Sengupta bends over backwards to display the reaction of Hindus to the blast as being radical. No mention is made of the Islamic terrorists who carried out the attack. Sengupta herself is a Hindu, but a dhimmi, who believes that embracing Muslims is an obligation of everyone in the media.

Re: Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing---
Muslims ask French to cancel 1741 play by Voltaire

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06065/666058.stm

There was also a recent front page article on this in the Wall Street Journal. Voltaire-he was brave....

Why would a liberal newspaper like WP be anxious about Islam's negative image if Islam is so reactionary?

I believe that Rush summed it up, at least pretaining to the USA.

The liberal media is so blinded by their hatred for George Bush and his administration (BDS=Bush Derangement Syndrome) that any negative image of Islam will only serve to show that GWB is right.

The media and the liberal left do not even believe that there is a war on terror, simply for the reason that GWB said there was.

Stories of rioting and car swarms only get reported when it is impossible to repress them any longer. It was one week, before any hint of the car burnings in France even appeared in the new york times. (Caps off on purpose)

In our local paper, the current news from Iran is so bland and sterilized that it sounds like a debate at the local PTA meeting.

IMHO, I think that the antique media see themselves as giving a sermon from the Mount to the great unwashed masses below. This has been the case since I can remember (I'm 60 y/o now).

With the advent of talk radio and the Internet, other options have opened up for the masses, but the MSM only view them as annoying little gnats that can have no effect on their hegemony. Their arragance and blinding hatred allow them to ignore anything that doesn't fit their world view such as declining sales and viewership.

This country is beginning a paradigm shift, away from liberalism with the opening up of these new technological breakthroughs that allow instant access to news and diverse opinion. Antique reporters like this one are truly confused by how people can come to their own conclusions when THEY didn't tell you what to think

Shortboard_Surfer-

It's as if all of the main stream press received a bulletin:

ONLY PRINT SUICIDE NOTES.

In effect, their reporting is mainly to help hasten the end of the U.S. Empire. That odious capitalistic thing which keeps the world from unifying in peace.

When it comes to the American Experiment, there can be only themes of: negation, surrender, lying about the ideological nature of the current enemy, self-destruction, internal dischord, distrust, and folly.

If it were done consciously, it couldn't dare be more audacious.

But the black hole in the heart of all of these 'articles' is their gaping ignorance about Islam.

It makes them all ring as hollow as wormy walnuts.

If I couldn't compare their biases with the other directions of reporting in the world press, from Denmark to Mecca, Den Haag to Calcutta, and many online links, the Big Media's Potemkin World vision of the happy people of Islam might seem vaguely believable.

So who is buying the b.s. anymore?

I'm beginning to think that the hosts on t.v. should have earplugs linked to a viewer correction line, and have to admit, ASAP, every deceptive area of focus (ignoring Iran's decade-long hidden nuclear bomb program every time a 'new' problem about Iran, and its lust for nukes, arises), intentional mis-characterization (of ideology, e.g.- calling Islam a "peaceful" religion based on no independent research), the hidden motives of interviewers / interviewed representatives (-do they themselves subscribe to the ultimate goal of Islam: to dominate the world, and have all other peoples reduced to second-class "dhimmi status"?).

And, if that didn't work, 220 volt Wi-Fi whoopie-cushions.

'Love your enemy'

all the way into the sights of my weapons.

The Texican.
Freedom, the only choice at any cost.

PS: Email a letter convert another non-beliver.

On 911 I stood ten blocks north of the North tower....

The Worldtrade Center towers crumbled to dust.

Funny but iI can close my eyes and still see in vivid detail the nooks and crannies ... of the shopping concourse, that stretched underneath... the toy store where I bought my grandson legos, of all things, as I rushed to his birthday party. The many times I had dinner at Windows on the world... I remember my favorite table... taking the escalators down to the Path train.... the long walk from the E train to the base of the towers... My first job in the South tower and my desk.... all vanished in minutes destroyed utterly But still living in my mind.

I can close my eyes and still see it all, yet it is gone, gone forever.

On that day, I the saw fear on the faces of my fellow New Yorkers... my grandson asked a very mature question. Who did this and why?

In the coming days my view of Islam was forever changed,

Glad to see that others who were not there see the same evil that i witnessed on that day.

Think, if Jihad and Da'wa is not stopped places and things you hold dear will vanish in just the same way.

Wake up world the danger is real and it must be stopped

When you have passages like this in your religious texts:

The Victory
[48.13] And whoever does not believe in Allah and His Apostle, then surely We have prepared burning fire for the unbelievers.

The Victory
[48.28] He it is Who sent His Apostle with the guidance and the true religion that He may make it prevail over all the religions; and Allah is enough for a witness.

Or

Sahih Muslim Book 008, Number 3311:
'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.

.......then any reasonably intelligent person will begin to understand that this religion is not divinely inspired and is rotten at its very inner core.

A simple comment :

From a website picture showing the WTC Towers after they came down, with a short but direct statement :

" What I know about Islam, I have learned on 9/11 ".

End of quote.

jewdog -

You make a good point - thank you!!!

I thought about the poor image problem and decided except for 9/11 they could and might have hired a NY PR firm to work on their image. el cid has horrible memories I do too. I saved muslims while in the military, now I question if it was the right thing to do. What I hate is the people whos actions now cause me to wonder if the people we saved will spawn another generation of terrorists. My gut tells me it is never wrong to help the weak and oppressed, now I wonder.

kentim,

I agree that our elites are PC-oriented and that they have a great deal of power; however: there are millions of non-elites who are also PC-brainwashed, and I do not subscribe to the neo-Gnostic conspiracy theory that the West "really" doesn't have democracies. We do. Our people do have a significant degree of influence and power -- more so than any other period of history. And the problem of PC whitewashing, therefore, is not merely an "elitist" problem. It is a GRASS-ROOTS, pandemic cultural problem.

OT but, local Tampa news: A HOA is going to charge a woman who has a deployed husband $100 per day for displaying a "support our troops" sign. Local DJ Cledus T Judd, has offered the first $1000. Also, local Harley club has offered to hold the sign. Lol, I'm thinking it would be smart of the HOA to let them.

MSNBC

How do you view Islam? * 80119 responses


Favorably.
14%

Unfavorably.
74%

I'm not sure.
12%

Asylum inmate,

Where are you getting these figures?

On 911 I stood ten blocks north of the North tower....
The Worldtrade Center towers crumbled to dust.
Posted by: El Cid
------

We greatful that you survied 9/11 and have had the opportunity to share with you. God's blessings on you.

Your posting above could be used as a letter if you would allow it.

The Texican.

And the Spaniards, out of concern for the Negative Perception of Islam wants to help:

This just in from PakTribune Times online:

www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=136572

Spain to support Pakistan for moving resolution in UN on blasphemous sketches issue
Tuesday March 07, 2006 (2335 PST)

Take a look -- but first get a barf bag.

Go and cast your vote and give your opinion of the religion of peace here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11735622/

Posted by: Asylum inmate
___

Last totals as of 10:42 CST

How do you view Islam? * 80484 responses

Favorably. 14%

Unfavorably. 74%

I'm not sure. 12%

"Spain to support Pakistan for moving resolution in UN on blasphemous sketches issue..."
-- from a posting above

The symbolism appalls. No one expected the Spanish Inquisition.

Soumaya Gannoushi telles us we got it all wrong:

http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=4052

These people really live in another universe. Delusion is perhaps too weak a word to describe the Mohammedan mindset.

Islamic countries systematically eradicated unbelievers & Jews from their countries, those who remained live in fear of their lives. Nobody in the west seems tempted to migrate to an Islamic country. Since it was never quite save to travel there less and less westerners will be tempted to book tours or support the dar al Islam with tourist-dollars.

But we in the west, (who have given muslim infil-traitors all sorts of rights, rights which they have not earned but which were foolishly extended to them by equally foolish governments) we have also allowed them to settle in large numbers, to build mosques and madrassahs and instead of monitoring them closely and encouraging in all possible manners to break away from the cult, to integrate and to adopt civilized values, we must now see that we have been duped by our leadership as well as by the cunning muslims, who simply came to destroy our way of life and to destroy us...

I think it equally foolish to believe that we can rid ourselves of the sons of Allah with democratic means alone and without a strong counter-movement, which is at least as radical as the muslims themselves, ready to move on them whenever they go on a rampage.

The future is bleak, we will see civil war-like conditions in many western countries within this decade.

On Wahabbism.... You know it's spreading to Indonesia as well. Now, they've made the parliament to draft (and about to pass) the bill on anti pornography.

This is so sad, the content of the law defies the multiculturalism and multifaiths in Indonesia (soon to be converted to Wahabbism).

People in Bali, Papua, and Central Java, and Women and Children activists are fighting to annul the (proposal) of the law.

But the proponents (islamic organizations) are setting deadline for the passage of the bill. It has got to be in june, at the latest... or....

I post my concerns over that issue on my blog: http://www.jroller.com/page/donraka?entry=i_strongly_reject_the_proposal
(that's where I put my personal opinions).

And the central blog of movement (centralized in Bali) to reject the law is: http://jiwamerdeka.blogspot.com

Please take a time to read, and feel free to voice your concerns and opinions in the comment section.

If you think it's also a 'jihad' -- as it may open the door for shariah law in indonesia --, I'd be thankful to have this issue raised in jihadwatch.

I think this type of jihad is equally cruel to bombings -- which they did to us, as well, twice,

Best regards,
Raka

My (highly-educated) colleagues would
consider me very prejudiced and even racist if
they knew that I frequent an website such as
this.

Sad, eh?

Posted by: george_rem at March 9, 2006 08:45 AM

George, have them deprogrammed at a nice place that caters to the brainwashed. I'm beginning to think that the PC mentality might be a facade, an excuse to live in a perpetual state of denial. What a precarious folly!

Texican feel free to use it, also feel free to correct any of my awkward sentence structure. I realize the limitations of my writing.

You know on that day if you would have asked me if New York would have survived I would have doubted it?

I can tell you honestly that I was not scared, just full of rage!

I was never in any direct danger, I happened to pass by both tower on my way north and to the Westside were my grandson's school is, it was never in danger, and windward of the dust cloud,

I was just an incidental witness. every now and then I remember small things about this vanished world of the Tower environs and that day.

There were huge crowds just watching this crime unfold, No one could believe their eyes, I mean it was so surreal you would look up and see dark specks falling from above not really comprehending that you were watching people jump to their deaths, not just one or two but continuos stream of jumpers.

if you caught a glimpse of Mayor Gulliani or brave firefighters on their way to certain death, you would almost weep and feel great pride.

New York has survived and is such a wonderful place to live, and believe it or not Battery Park City at the foot of the towers survived unchanged and is one of the livable cityscapes in the world.

PJ-
You have such a beautiful mind, but I must say that I don't think you have a realistic understanding of what Islam is all about. Your idea of inculcating a modicum of humor into the average muslim's existence in this day and age would be doomed to failure. Not only that, but would be looked upon as just another example of 'western weakness'. Sorry. If it were any other group of people, I'd agree with you.

Oh- and another thing: I think calling them 'Mohammedans' gets a response similar to drawing cartoons of their "prophet" Mohammed. Don't ask me why. It just another of those things (there's a million of 'em) that get these folks all riled up.

But I wonder what the average Hindu guy (or gal!) thinks of his mohammadan neighbors? That's the real question.

The MSM mind control is wearing off.
Posted by: American

I don't have % numbers with me. However, in my experience, it seems to track along ideological lines. Left Wing Hindus (much like Left Wing anyone else) tend to support them, and blame anyone else - Upper caste Hindus, Westerners, Capitalists, Jews, anyone else but Muslims. The only time they may blame Muslims is if it is a conflict between Left wing Muslims vs. Quranic fanatics, in which case they side with their ideological brethren. (If one brings up the Hindu holocaust with those clowns, the retorts vary from "But they at least adapted India as their home, which the Brits didn't" or even a more absurd "If all that happened, how is India still a Hindu majority country?") This seems to be the case above w/ Somini Sengupta, who, from her name, sounds like a Marxist from Bengal.

The rest of Hindus merely tolerate them. However, they are sensible enough to keep their distance, and avoid associating with them altogether. Despite India having a Mohammedan population of 13%, there isn't much of an association between Muslims & Hindus. Or for that matter, Muslims & Parsis. Or Muslims & Sikhs. Or Muslims & Christians. Or Muslims & anybody else. Also, Muslims have been notorious for supporting Pakistan against India particularly in cricket matches, something that most Indians look at with contempt.

Fifteen years ago, I was working in Gujarat for a brief period. People there had (have) a reputation for honesty and friendliness. However, just about everybody I came across was virulently anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim, and pretty much shared my opinions. If someone knew that X was a Muslim, the question of X being invited to that persons home was out of the question.

As to Eliyahu's question above as to the source of the dhimmi attitudes of Indian elites, they do not stem from any British imperialist pro-Islamic attitude, but rather from decades of Nehruvian propaganda which had been hard coded into Indian history text books. In those, much of the bloody history of Islamic occupation of India is glossed over, and only the unavoidable ones, like Mahmud of Ghazni, Tamerlane, Aurangzeb are mentioned in that context.

If one reads the memoirs of Jawaharlal Nehru or his published letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi, one who is aware of history would see that this is someone who had his opinion of world history masquerade as actual events. (For a western audience, do this with his description of world history) Using this template, and his podium to glorify the role of his Congress party in India's independence movement, it was always their policy to vilify the Brits.

However, to do that, one had to pretend that the Muslim rulers who preceded them, be it the Moghuls, the Bahamanis or their successor sultanates, the Delhi and various other Afghan/Turkic sultanates in North India before that, were benign rulers. They were not. The whole history of that period was one of persecution, particularly religious persecution, something that the Brits never did. (If Indians by & large remained Hindu, it was because throughout the history of India, every ruler was more busy waging war against neighboring infidel kingdoms and conquest, rather than consolidating Islam in the territory already conquered. As a result, enough Indians remained Hindus, and by the time this had taken hold all over India, enough Hindus revolted and threw that off.) Nonetheless, this is a detail that Government (i.e. Congress from 1947-1996) sponsored historians wouldn't acknowledge, since it bursts the bubble of their myth that the Brits were worse than Muslims.

As a result, there is a good section of the Indian populace that has fallen for this, hook, line & sinker. As far as the rest go, given the desire to avoid further bloodbaths, and also given the fact that stating facts about Muslims that make them unpopular are grounds for criminal proceedings, there traditionally hadn't been a groundswell of support for parties like the BJP. However, the escalation of Muslim intransigence in the last 10 years, not only in Kashmir, but also in the rest of India, has fueled a resentment that had translated into support. (In fact, in the last election in which the BJP led coalition lost, it's important to note that while the BJP held its ground in terms of the number of seats, its regional allies in several states got trounced.)

Getting to question of how ones negative opinions about Muslims formed over time, the time I first got a negative impression of Muslims was as a kid, going through the history of what they did in India, and noting the similarity of how they wiped out other religions, like Zoroastrianism in Persia, Christianity in the mid-east, etc. It would have been one thing had that been just history. However, while countries like Spain, which once had the Spanish inquisition, ceased to be a fanatical catholic country after the WWII, the same fanaticism that characterized the Moghuls and their predecessors is characteristic of those in Pakistan, and now increasingly, Bangladesh today. As a result, I never really had a positive impression of Muslims.

As for personal experiences, while I never had any negative personal experiences with Muslims, one thing I did note was that in school, they tended to be underachievers. Looking back at it today, it seems to be what Hugh calls the Inshallah fatalism of this bunch.

The main thing that I learnt new here at Jihadwatch was on what was behind all this hatred and bigotry: while I knew about dar-ul-Harb, dar-ul-Islam, kafirs, jihad and the like, what I didn't know was that this was characteristic of Mohammed himself. This was a major piece of the puzzle filling in. If the founder was such a villain, what could one conceivably expect from the followers? And note how countries, which previously were enlightened civilizations, such as Egypt, Persia, Indonesia, etc. became barbaric wastelands under Islam. E.g. Under the Zoroastrians, Persia had a noble civilization and empire. Under the Muslims, Iran produced the Assassin cult (a bit of a redundancy there.)

The first time I heard Robert on KSFO, he struck me as the first American who seemed to know what Islam really was all about - until then, everyone I had heard speak was spouting the ROP line, and unwittingly acting as a foot soldier for Jihad. In fact, the reason the US is looked at with suspicion by some anti-Jihadists in India (and I suspect in Serbia, Russia, China) has been its apparent acquiescence in the confrontation with these groups by non al Qaeda Jihadists (Pakistanis, Albanians, Chechens, Uygars).

So are all Muslims treacherous? No, in India's case, the president Abdul Kalam was the one who developed India's nuclear technology, while in sports and showbiz, India has its share of Muslim stars. However, such examples are few, and can be counted. But in India's mainstream life - business, technology, medicine - their contributions are unheard of.

American

Even the Christians have an opinion.

But look at this one:

It was Jesus who said - Judge not and ye shall not be judged.

Is the cornerstone of what is happening to Islam today - It has reached out to judge and condemn everyone - and now here in the west Islam is pretty much being ripped apart - as people judge it. And nothing about it is held sacred - in this examination.

I think where we are going - is going to be tempered by another one of Jesus' words and that is - Those who humble themselves shall be exalted but those who exalt themselves shall be humbled.

Needless to say that the ‘humbling of Islam’ is in the making – and no amount of money is going to save them from this.

jsla

"Spain to support Pakistan for moving resolution in UN on blasphemous sketches issue
Tuesday March 07, 2006 (2335 PST)

Take a look -- but first get a barf bag."

This is where we can't just give up and believe that things are automatically against us - If it is the Islamic people who are writing to the UN and not anyone else, then whose opinions are going to heard?

They are either going to assume that we don't have an opinion - or they will simply make one up for us. We have to write to the UN, write to the newspapers, write to the politicians - and let them know what you think.
___________
For example the Pakistani Prime Minster has made these cartoons an obsession of his. He is more interested in these cartoons than the blasts which blew up the America diplomat and others, the day before Bush arrived in his country. Perhaps these cartoons are a way for him to avoid his reality.

Also worth mentioning - out of Pakistan came a few fatwas or religious edits - aimed at killing those who drew the cartoons. We have heard nothing from the Pakistani Prime Minister which might show his objection to these violent incitements to murder – European citizens.
_________

This is why it is so important to send those letters anywhere where you think that they might be useful or could take effect.

The increase in the negative perceptions of Islam is because of sites like this one that disseminate the TRUTH!
What is, to me, shocking about this poll is that so few Americans understand what Islam teaches and the danger to them from those who believe it...
Perhaps if they did the results would be "96% of Americans have a realistic view of Islam."

Nobody Special

Oh- and another thing: I think calling them 'Mohammedans' gets a response similar to drawing cartoons of their "prophet" Mohammed. Don't ask me why. It just another of those things (there's a million of 'em) that get these folks all riled up.

I often call them Muhammedans. This is what they are and this is what the European explorers, anthropologists and colonialists called them. This word means they worship Muhammad first and Allah comes second. Which is the truth, though it will throw Muslims into paroxysms of anger when you say it to their faces. See all those cartoon riots over Muhammad "the perfect man"? This proves to me they worship and idolize Muhammad. The Shi'ia are idolators of Muhammad and Ali. Muslims are idolators

It is appeasers who voted in the current president for Spain, and so this appeaser is willing to go to the UN to supress freedom of speech. The vote in Spain was vervy close, and the appeasers took advantage of the bombing incident, and left wing media took the ball with the vote against the current president. so there you have in goverment a not very popular president voted in on emotion!

Dr. Pepper,

What is PC? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? What is it's source and who were it's developers and promoters?

I know the answers to these questions already. And it started before the Frankfurt School arrived.
It started on a mass scale in the Soviet Union(and was in development before then).

I don't know what a "gnostic conspiracy theory" is, I don't like labels because they limit a persons freedom of thought and bind him/her to a collective group. The only group I belong to is a group of independant individuals.

Political-Correctness is psychotherapy( or parenting). It is a method of eliminating intellectual/philosophical conflict in society(submission/pacification). It is programing us how and what we should think and feel. It starts in school and is maintained throughout the cultural institutions of society. But what is the result of this effort to eliminate conflict? It can only be conformity., to the collective. Group conflict as in identity-politics is not proof that this is not so, it is in fact proof that collectivism rules, it just has not evolved into totalitarian collectivism yet. But that is the goal. Of course it is not seen or described as such, but that is what it will be. Intentions do not determine results.

I'm not necessarily trying to convince anybody about anything, and I don't claim to "have it all figured out", I'm just trying to provide info I have learned after a serious investment of time, in the hope somebody smarter than me could contribute to the clarifying of reality.
One thing I've noticed about PC is it seems to indoctrinate the idea that Truth is universally abitrary and subjective(emotion-based). This should be a red-flag, because it is an attack on logic-based reasoning. If a society or culture is deficient/devoid of logic/language skills they are ripe for servitude and slavery. They won't even know they are slaves.

The things I'm talking about are related to the Jihad and JW-DW. A large percentage of what is posted here relates to cultural perspectives, national politics, philosophy/religion, geo-politics, history, war, and individual perspectives.

I don't think there's any dispute that the Ford Foundation is a promoter of collectivism. Heres another source of many that has influenced society in PCism. One needs to understand the difference between individualism and collectivism to realize the pretty talk hides a supremicist totalitarian attitude. The goal was a Hegelian Dialectical merging of the American system with the Soviet.
http://www.fordfound.org/elibrary/documents/0113/087.cfm#0113-div2-d0e1838
There is money behind the Ford Foundation, and all the rest. At the top it is directed downward. For a reason.

Muhammadan is a misnomer, Muslims find offense to this term since in their scripture they are termed "Muslim" and not Muhammadan (which would imply Muhammad is their Savior and is a "Son of God"). Remember, Islam is based upon absolute monotheism, they reject the trinitarian doctrine of mainstream Christianity, the Paulian books of the New Testament, and the cruxification of Christ.

It's just a matter of respect. In Buddhism, the Theravada Buddhists do not like being called "Hinayana Buddhists" since that means "the lesser vehicle" in the path to enlightenment.

I've encountered that many Muslims from India have a disdain for their Hindu roots and mainstream Indian popular culture emanating out of Mumbai.

There is a sense of superiority among some Muslims, this Islamic triumphalism is the reason why they do not associate with Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsis, Jews, Christians, and other religions/sects in India.

Yes, there are Marathi Jews in India. This community has been living in the subcontinent for centuries, largely escaped the anti-Semiticism that plagued other Jewish communities.

kentim,

"What is PC? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? What is it's source and who were it's developers and promoters?"

What I term "PC" is the current (over the last 50 years) face and body, so to speak, of a larger more amorphous civilizational process. That larger process I would term neo-Gnosticism. Being an amorphous civilizational process, it has no identifiable "developers"; it was not hatched in a secret lair by a bald Bond villain stroking a white cat. Who "developed" the Renaissance? We can point to certain people who represent that amorphous period of change, and to certain people who helped move it along; but we cannot point to a certain individual or group of individuals who actually created the Renaissance. The Reformation is another such process; certainly, Luther was a major, pivotal figure there. But again, he did not create it; he was a major part of a larger, amorphous process going on around him.

"it started before the Frankfurt School arrived.
It started on a mass scale in the Soviet Union(and was in development before then)."

I'd say that Russian Communism was only a major symptom of neo-Gnosticism, and it in turn provided one major engine for its further corrosion of Western values, but Russian Communism was not the etiological agent of neo-Gnosticism.

"I don't know what a "gnostic conspiracy theory" is, I don't like labels because they limit a persons freedom of thought and bind him/her to a collective group."

You know what a "conspiracy theory" is, and I'd bet you wouldn't balk at using that term. So I suspect the only part of my phrase you object to as a "label" is "gnostic" (though I didn't write "gnostic"; I wrote "neo-Gnostic"). As for labels, like anything else, they can be useful, or not useful. Labels are not necessarily bad. In this case, I am identifying a certain type of thought that tends to infect the ultra-right (but also the ultra-left in many cases): a tendency to be excessively cynical about the state of freedom and democracy in the West; a tendency to think that ordinary individuals have no real power, that all power and influence is concentrated in the hands of some elite cabal who do not share the same values as the mass of ordinary people, an elite cabal who manipulate events, control the news, control entertainment media, control the flow of all moneys; maintain an elaborate superstructure of deception that makes the ordinary people think they have some meaningful voice and influence when they really don't; etc.

While certain limited aspects of this vision may be accurate, what distinguishes the neo-Gnostic conspiracy theory is its excess, its inability to accomodate major holes that would render this vision only partial, rather than bleakly complete. It's interesting where ultra-right and Left meet: if one were to propose to either of them that, in fact, most major corporate moguls and CEOs and politicians in the USA are decent, hard-working, ethical and sincerely patriotic individuals, both the ultra-right and the Left would laugh in one's face: that can't be true! In their shared view, 98% of all major corporate heads and politicians in the West are, at heart, behind closed doors, evil and corrupt and amoral and bent on weaving their evil spider's webs of globalist power. This I think is not only unproveable, it shows signs of pneumopathology and a Gnostic attitude about how evil forces control the Cosmos beyond the control of the lonely existential individual who is therefore forced to find the Key to "the Truth" about what is really going on, and, if he is lucky, to find a small underground group of other like-minded individuals who will commiserate with him -- and then, who knows, join the Resistance with him.

As a fellow infidel from India, I'd like to attest to Infidel Pride's assessment about the perceptions of muslims within India as being accurate. As he points out it is not the Brits who are responsible for the Dhimmi attitude of Indian Hindus, but rather decades of indoctrination through Nehruvian based history textbooks which sought to whitewash the bloody legacy of Islamic rule in India.

Infidel Pride writes: So are all Muslims treacherous? No, in India's case, the president Abdul Kalam was the one who developed India's nuclear technology

While Abdul Kalam is always cited (especially by Hindus) as an example of a muslim who clearly isn't working against India's interest; interestingly enough he is not considered a role model by muslims themselves.

Rafiq Zakaria, considered a very liberal muslim in India.. but in reality, the quintessential taqiya-master (Incidentally, Rafiq, who died a few years back, is the father of Fareed Zakaria who writes in Time Magazine & Newsweek), wrote an article in Asian Age "What's muslim about Kalam?" (this embarassing article has since been removed from the Asian Age website, but a ghost copy is available at: http://www.hvk.org/articles/0602/184.html ). Rafiq Zakaria points out that Kalam is not 'muslim' enough because, egads.. he can quote from Hindu scriptures like the Bhagvad Gita and because he doesn't fast regularly during Ramzan... In other words, unless one is quoran-thumping, anti-Hindu bigot, one cannot dare call oneself a muslim. A terrific article dealing with this is by Varsha Bhosle, "Carefully constructed facades" see: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/24varsha.htm

I find it unfortunate that so many Muslims have such a narrow definition of what it means to be a Muslim.

I would prefer someone like Kalam to be the majority of the ummah.

kentim,

I disagree not with your listing of attributes of PC, but with your implication that this sums up the key to PC.

"Political-Correctness is psychotherapy( or parenting). It is a method of eliminating intellectual/philosophical conflict in society(submission/pacification). It is programing us how and what we should think and feel. It starts in school and is maintained throughout the cultural institutions of society. But what is the result of this effort to eliminate conflict? It can only be conformity., to the collective. Group conflict as in identity-politics is not proof that this is not so, it is in fact proof that collectivism rules, it just has not evolved into totalitarian collectivism yet. But that is the goal. Of course it is not seen or described as such, but that is what it will be. Intentions do not determine results."

Certainly these features figure in to the PC nebula; but these by themselves could figure in to any number of other movements as well. What makes PC distinct are at least the following features:

1) it is anti-Western

2) it is paradoxically and incoherently anti-Western

3) it is reflexively and naively pro-non-Western

4) it tends towards multi-culturalist relativism (but again, exhibits this often in terms that are paradoxical, self-contradictory, and often incoherent).

Muhammadan is a misnomer..... Posted above

Websters dictionary defines Muhammadan as : of or relating to Muhammad or Islam.

Some Islamic claims
Monotheistic
Believers in the same God as Jews and Christians.
Muhammad and Jesus are equal, even though I don’t recall Moslems going crazy over Jesus cartoons.
Islam forbids killing of the “innocent”
Religion of tolerance
Religion of peace
Religion that honors and respects women

Until Muhammadanism stops paying lip service and starts to practice what it preaches, they will always be looked down upon.

Bar, you do realize that the Islamic claims that you mention above are purely used as a lure to attract unsuspecting converts and to lower the guard of clueless Dhimmis towards the one and only true purpose of Islam... i.e. conquest!

jsla: to the best of my knowledge my eyes AREN'T lying! And I truly believe what I am seeing. And I see that (and therefore believe) Islam is one vast death squad!

All Muslims are a party to this--whether they want to be or not. They inhabit a totalitarian political-killing apparatus which they usually are unable to exit in one piece.

"Rafiq Zakaria, considered a very liberal muslim in India.. but in reality, the quintessential taqiya-master (Incidentally, Rafiq, who died a few years back, is the father of Fareed Zakaria who writes in Time Magazine & Newsweek..."
-- from a posting by Razdan above

Razdan, one would like to know as much as possible about the evidence that Fareed Zakaria is iindeed the son of Rafiq Zakaria, and more about the latter. Any further details would be welcome, here or by email.

Razdan

Yes, I purposely picked out only Islamic counterfeit statements and why I also used the phrase “lip service” because their mouth says one thing, their deeds, the Qur’an and hadith’s say another.

Razdan-

I read both very useful articles. The first was revealing not so much on Kalam, but on the slippery writer Rafiq Zakaria. Perhaps he and Tariq Ramadan went to the same Summer School in Taqiyya-and-Tu-Quoque.

The second article was even more interesting -- especially the business about the misuse of Swami Vivekenanda, and provided an example of what he actually thought of Islam (a very good quotation).

There needs to be more at this site, at all sites, about the destruction wrought on Hindu (and Buddhist) India.

On a related note, Infidel Pride above notes that advanced, with-it Hindus, inattentive or ignorant or not wanting to know about their own history (why not? why not take an interest?), are terrified of being accused of "communalism" which is an all-purpose charge meant to bully Hindus and other non-Muslims from expressing the slightest reservations about the role of Islam, either in India's past, or at present, or indeed, the role of Islam, as a belief-system anywhere in the world. But why should hundreds of millions of people in India be forced to accept and repeat lies about their own country's history?

As for that business about how Muslim rule could not have been oppressive because India today is still a majority Hindu country -- oh, for god's sake. A moment's thought tells one that the 150 million Muslims in India, and then the roughly 162 million in Pakistan (formerly West Pakistan), of whom about 150 million may count as Muslims, and the 144 million in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), of whom about 130 million might count as Muslims, add up to 430 million Muslims, making their percentage of the total population of the territory that once formed India, more than one-third. And every single one descended from Hindus, not the 60-70 million Hindus who were killed, of course, but those who, frightened out of their wits, or forced to convert because they could not stand to be treated as non-Muslims were treated,as dhimmis (or zimmis) and so converted or "reverted" to the belief=-system offered them by their Muslim masters, among whom there were more Ghaznis and Aurangzebs than there were Akbars.

Hindus who wish to exempt themeslves from the charge of "communalism" that so preoccupies some, and who therefore belittle or dismiss those who still insist on historical accuracy, and in explaining the scope and effect of the destruction of Indian civilization by the invading and conquering Muslims, the tens of thousands of temples destroyed, the hundreds of thousands of artifacts destroyed, the 60-70 million Hindus murdered, the mass lootingfor the benefit of Muslims, of the accumulated treaasures of Hindu (and Buddhist) India, the tales of wholesale slaughter and enslavement (so matter-of-factly recorded, for example, by Ibn Battuta in his Rihla), are not to be forgotten. The belief-system has not changed. The indifference to what happened to the Hindus, the complete curtain of nonsense and lies that has been pulled down on that past -- a past rediscovered when the British arrived, who though imperialists, though strutting about, no doubt, were far less imperialistic, far less murderous, far more respectful of the Indian past (there was no Muslim equivalent, in all the centuries of Muslim rule, to Oriental Jones and all the other British scholars of Hindu law, Hindu texts, the Sanskrit language, save possibly, during the earliest years, al-Biryuni, 973-1048).

The arrival of powerful British imperialists helped in the rediscovery of India's non-Islamic and pre-Islamic civilization. Anyone who sweeetly suggests that "but today India is nearly 90% non-Muslim , so what's the worry, what's problem" is missing, in a big way, the point.

Hugh: Razdan, one would like to know as much as possible about the evidence that Fareed Zakaria is indeed the son of Rafiq Zakaria, and more about the latter. Any further details would be welcome, here or by email.

I know wikipedia is not a good reference, but for what its worth, here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareed_Zakaria
excerpt: Fareed, of Muslim heritage, was born in India, and is the son of former deputy leader of the Congress party and writer Rafiq Zakaria. His mother is Fatima Zakaria (former Sunday editor, Times of India).

I presume fareed's own website article from NY Times is a more reliable source:
http://www.fareedzakaria.com/interviews/nyt.html
excerpt: Mr. Zakaria (Fareed) grew up on Malabar Hill, Bombay's Bel Air, in a big house, Rylestone, where his parents held Urdu poetry readings and had plenty of space for him to play cricket out back. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was deputy leader of the ruling Congress Party under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. His mother, Fatma Zakaria, was the Sunday editor of the The Times of India.

and, of course, there is the 'reliable' BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4666793.stm
excerpt: He (talking about Rafiq Zakaria) is survived by his wife, a daughter and three sons, including Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International magazine.

Hugh, a good example of Rafiq's mastery as obfuscation of Islam's legacy (and the use of the 'victim' bogey) can be found in this lengthy article:
http://www.india-seminar.com/2001/500/500%20rafiq%20zakaria.htm

Why aren't these "millions of wonderful people out there who are Muslims..." out there condemning their bretheren who are committing atrocities in the name of Allah?

Nat

nhoop616, you forget that Islam doesn't recognize atrocities committed by fellow muslims... especially if its in the name of jehad!

Razdan and Infedel pride. Thanks for your posts; I found them illuminating.

Dr. Pepper, "good" and "evil" are relative(emotive) terms and therefore really don't need to enter into the equation.
All I'm interested in is verifiable actions, statements, evidence, and facts.
It does not matter what these people think they're doing or why, it does not matter if they're even conscious of it(and after 30+ years of indoctrination it does not matter).

There is a thing called "rationalization", there are 2 different definitions of it. One is to "rationalize" something dishonestly, to justify it or excuse it(something "not nice"). Sometimes people are not,or barely, conscious they are doing that. They state facts that support their actions or beliefs, but in reality, it is NOT the REAL REASON/motivation for their actions/beliefs. In other words; it's a con, and it may well include a self-deception.

The other rationalization is act of reasoning, an honest pursuit of truth.

You really can't seriously deny that "globalization" is not a world-wide collectivism can you? And can you actually deny that the Constitution and the principles of the founding of America are based on Individual Rights? And a soveriegn individual, states, and nation?
America is(was) not a "democracy", but if it's said enough times and by enough people, guess what? It becomes a de-facto "democracy".

The Soviet Union was never a "communist" country, and never claimed to be, they were "building socialism". Socialism, communism, nazism , islamism,fascism are all collectivist ideologies, this is beyond dispute( and so is "humanism"). The French revolution was collectivist. The original Americans rejected European philosophy, which was based on a Big-Brother State, how the hell have we adopted it now if not for foreign meddling/influence?

Why did Wilson create the Federal Reserve system? He basically sold out the country and made us slaves.
Again, it does not matter what they were thinking or why they acted like they did, the fact is they have DESTROYED America, and created some kind of Soviet/Marxist-American synthesis. Individualism and collectivism are polar opposites and cannot co-exist, and individualism has been and is in the process of being destroyed. When that happens we will be completely at the mercy of the "government".
What political-correctness and numerous other ideas, actions and laws are ALL ABOUT is PROTECTION of the "government", to create an omnipotent "government" to manage the herd of "humanity". I think some "right-wing"(Bushites) people may go along with it because they see Jesus as a collectivist, and it's obvious why leftists would be okay with it. But I believe both are mistaken and are being manipulated.

Political-correctness only attacks that which may divide people. And distinctions between truth and falsehood, reality and fantasy, freedom and slavery are blurred in the process, because truth and reality are oftentimes extremely divisive. This is why arbitrary, subjective truth and reality is promoted, everybody can be right, therefore, confict is eliminated-- the(media selected) "government" will decide for us.

To pick up on the MSNBC poll watching "How do you view Islam?" that Asylum Inmate was generously providing for us, the latest results show
74%unfavorable
14% favorable
13% I'm not sure.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11741730/#survey

The poll hasn't moved much in the past 24 hours so I think it's safe to say that's roughly the final conclusion.

That was 84,676 votes - 3/4 solidly unfavorable from beginning to end (with the remainder split between favorable and unsure). I'm not terribly familiar with these online polls but isn't 85,000 responses a pretty significant number for these things? In any case, I must say, the results of the poll are encouraging.

I don't know if Hugh & Razdan are still reading this, but some thoughts on what you said.

Hugh

On your wondering out aloud why Hindus should be fear being branded "communal", part of it is that this is being done not by Muslims, but by a secular-Left elite that sees Hindu revival as a threat to the dominance of their ideology. (Yeah, Islam would be a threat as well, but it just doesn't have the numbers behind it - Right Wing infidels, for example, wouldn't support an Islamist party over Communists just because of their opposition to the Left. On the other hand, by pandering to Muslim wishes, er fears, they lock up the Muslim vote in a few states, especially Left Bengal). The other, more serious shortcoming that Hindus have had is that they have never managed to articulate that, "We do not wish ill of Muslims, but there is plenty in Islam that overtly threatens us infidels." As long as any opinion is not just seen, but actually is, anti-Muslim, as opposed to anti-Islam, it is seen as a recipe for Hindu-Muslim violence, and public expression of such sentiments are a simple invitation to a police crack-down. But more importantly, those Hindus who do express their anti-Muslim, as opposed to anti-Islamic sentiments, display an inability to articulate that the contents of the Quran, let alone the Hadith & Sira, and play into the hand of those who then think that they are the Hindu equivalent of Jihadists (which too is only the Saudi Wahabis, the Paki Mullahs and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and NOBODY ELSE, not Hamas, not Hizbullah, not Muslim Brotherhood), thereby automatically forfeiting any claim to credibility.

This may be beginning to change. Some time ago, an article by Tavleen Singh appeared on J/W or D/W. Recently, on the cartoon controversy, she echoed the same sentiments echoed by Robert or Hugh (I forget who) about how Islamic law doesn't apply to infidels. I had sent this to D/W, but it probably got overlooked.

http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=87288

The other thing about not wanting to read about the Muslims holocaust of Hindus (incidentally, what period does your 70m cover? Pre Moghul 1000-1525? Moghul 1526-1761?) is that there is just too much of blood boiling material. As a kid, I used to read RC Majumdar's volumes of the history of India, and I'd burn with hatred at the accounts of what the various Muslim rulers did. You mention Ibn Battuta - I read about his account of the sultan of Ma'abar (now Madurai), who was one of the most barbaric Muslim rulers, and a bloodthirsty tyrant. Point being, just as one wouldn't want to keep watching graphic and intense violent movies day in & day out, reading that history was just a way to microwave my blood before the invention of microwaves, and I'm not sure that too many people would want to do that.

Yes, the Brits were better. While those who would have wished for the Hindus to re-conquer India and drive the Muslims out, truth is that the Marathas, who were the dominant power in India after Aurangzeb's death, did not capitalize on their success and make allies out of other infidels i.e. the Rajputs, the Sikhs, the Jats, etc. As a result, they lost the goodwill of various groups in Northern India that would have been only to happy to expel the remnants of the Moghuls, Afghans and Iranians. Also, by helping rediscover a lot of ancient Hindu glory (such as Col James Todd and his yeoman work on the history of the Rajputs), they did a service that far exceeded the introduction of railways or the English language.

The other observation about how Pakistan and Bangladesh populations aren't factored in when making statements about the genocide of Hindus is astute, and an obviously overlooked one. Besides, the fact that the Indian subcontinent is 60% Hindu says nothing about whether Hindus were massacred or not.

Razdan

On Abdul Kalam, Rafiq Zakaria's watering down his Muslim credentials is something I wasn't aware of - thanks for that link. Obviously, Dr Kalam seems to operate under the assumption that since he is a Muslim, he needn't play to the Muslim gallery. Obviously, he seems to be mistaken.

The other thing that amazed me from the article "What's Muslim about Kalam" was that the All India Khilafat (i.e. Caliphate) committee still exists, some 80 years after the end of the Ottoman empire. Maybe someone ought to hook these guys up to al Qaeda, which is the leading Caliphate campaign going on right now. I don't know whether Presidents Zakir Hussein & Fakiruddin Ali Ahmad were associated with this organization, but if Dr Kalam had ever attended a function of an organization that advocates an extra constitutional authority outside India that Indian Muslims would be answerable to, he wouldn't have deserved to be president of India.

As for the other link, one would conclude from Swami Vivekananda's statement that he equated Muslims with Christians. But in his speech to the World Parliament of Religions, the criticism there was explicitly about the Conquistadora's in Latin America.

P.S. Razdan, are you the same Razdan who in the early 90's used to post on the usenet group soc.culture.indian about the plight of Kashmiri pundits?

The is weariness being a front-line state. India, Israel, France. A heaviness in the heart, things will get better, won't they? Ask the Jews in Germany in 1933 what they thought. Surely the madman will lose out. Israel and India are highly successful, increasingly westernized economic success stories. We see it here in the US to with the Brooks, NR crowd who preach global trade as a cure all. Shimon Peres promise of nanotechnology 'transforming the 'new middle east.' All hogwash, but it plays well in Davos. 911. The recent bombing in India, The Passover bombing in Israel all serve to wake us up(for a while). But when we hear about yet another bombing, yet another example of a primitive religion having a hissy fit over a cartoon, the Iranian thugh-in-chief with yet another racist chant, we wake up, smell the starbucks, and, suddenly, the mindless pat of Zogby and company sounds just plain silly. This awakening to the threat crosses race, political affiliation ect. I'm a Fox news man(or was)by nature, but Brit Humes and O'reiley caving in the the WH talking points fills me with rage. Et tu Rush? Lou Dobbs calls a spade a spade on Dubai at least. Sadly, having a highly educated, smart, go-go economic system is not an innoculation against the forces of Jihad.

Dr. Pepper,

I think you may be confusing PCism with Marxist "Critical Theory". PCism is more subtle and seductive.
The development of contemporary PCism started with Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and included John Dewey and numerous other collectivists, promoted and funded by the mega-"capitalists"(actually monopolists) of that time to the present.

Infidel Pride: Razdan, are you the same Razdan who in the early 90's used to post on the usenet group soc.culture.indian about the plight of Kashmiri pundits?

Guilty as charged :-) Did you also contribute on soc.culture.indian? You really do have a good memory to be able to recall what I wrote nearly 2 decades back. It always amazed me, back then, how Hindus could feel so worked up about the tearing up of a defunct mosque (the Babri Masjid) and loudly proclaim how ashamed they were as Hindus that such an abomination could happen in India, and yet were totally unmoved by the fact that over a thousand of their fellow Hindus had been murdered in cold blood in Kashmir and over 300,000 of us had been driven out from our homes in Kashmir. I was also amazed at the Indian Dhimmi press and the myraid Human Rights organizations who refused to write anything about us, but who would wax eloquent on the imaginary 'plight' of muslims.

After moving to the USA, I (along with many other Kashmiri Hindus) did my bit in trying to appraise the US Congress about the plight of Kashmiri Hindus and pointed out that Islamic threat that India faced could very well occur in USA. I was appalled at the amount of arms and ammunition provided by the USA arming the jehadists in Afghanistan (in order to fight the Russian communists), much of which was being syphoned off to the jehad in Kashmir. This seemed to me to be a very short-sighted policy and I remember pointing out that this policy could one day return to haunt us. As horrified as I was with being proved correct with the Sept. 11 bombings, I had thought that this should serve as the ultimate wake-up call... but it seems that the US, like the rest of the Dhimmi world, is still refusing to come to terms with the threat it faces from Islam. JW & DW (and a few other sites) are about the only places that recognize this threat. In trying to understand what had happened to us in Kashmir, i.e. why were Kashmiri Pandits who had never ever attacked a single muslim through their long history been singled out for murder and extermination by the muslim jehadists and why the supposedly peaceful Kashmiri muslim (with their Sufi brand of Islam) could support the terrorists amongst them; it became painfully clear to me that the problem lay with Islam. It was only after reading the works of Robert Spencer that all the pieces finally started falling into place. JW, and the wonderful people who contribute here, feel like an extended family to me.

P.S. Thanks for your excellent posts here. While there are only a handful of us Indians on this site, I agree with Hugh that we can provide a very useful input to the rest of the JWers about the history of jehad in India. I had always thought that India stood alone in its appeasement policy towards muslims, but sadly I'm finding that appeasement is well and alive in Europe and USA as well.

Razdan

I used to post under the handle "unixman" on that site. During my college life in the US, I was totally addicted to usenet. After graduating, not having a PC helped me wean off that addiction.

Today, those sites, unmoderated, are a complete wasteland. I find that J/W is a lot better, not due to being one-sidedly anti-Islamic, but because it tends to be more pedagogical, with occasional light hearted threads thrown in. Fortuntately, since there aren't so many threads and topics here, it isn't a time sink the way usenet was.

moslems are subhuman animals.No other religion on earth preaches murder,terror and the abuse of women.I would use General Sheridan's comment about my people to include moslem butchers.
Onewhowalkstall

Seems like the poll is being rigged now. The favorable camp is gaining. :-)