John V. Fleming, a professor of English at Princeton and columnist for the Daily Princetonian, speaks truth to power and kindly mentions an essay collection I published last year in the process:
Earlier this month, following widespread reporting of crowds howling in the street as embassies burned and corpses littered the ground, two guest columnists published an essay here complaining of a media-perpetrated anti-Muslim "stereotype" of unreason and violence. "Islam is a religion with a long tradition of tolerance and coexistence with other religions," they concluded, "and the Muslim community asks only for basic tolerance and respect."That we should tolerate the tolerable and respect the respectable seems an unexceptionable if modest aspiration of civil society. The Myth of Islamic Tolerance itself, however, is unlikely long to survive the perusal of a recent book of that title (Prometheus, 2005, 593 pages) or, for that matter, the wider familiarity with the Koran and Hadith among non-Muslims. These columnists complain, with regard to the Danish cartoons, of "the double standard by which slurs against Islam are permitted in the West while attacks on other faiths are not."
Read it all.
This man must be one of them Islamophobes I been hearing about.
This whole website is fall of them. In terms of raw hate, they could even give the Jihadi's a run for their money.
Everyone please take note that this man, John V. Fleming, is a professor of English and NOT history! I suspect he does stand-up comedy acts on the side. Clearly, his alleged grasp of history fares about equally well and couldn't pass muster on Devil's Island.
Perhaps this man would like to explain to the rest of the world exactly what happened to the likes of the Egyptian civilization, the Byzantine civilization, the Persian civilization, the once-flourishing land of Hindustan, the Roma civilization of the Himalayas, the Jewish civilization of Israel, and others. What happened to them? What do they all have in common? I'm sure this professor of ENGLISH doesn't know, but if you were to ask him he would probably lie to you about the fate of these civilizations in the same way he is lying to us concerning the nature of Islam. This guy is CLUELESS. He had better get his derriere back into a collegiate lecture hall where ENGLISH CLASSES ARE HELD!!!!! Otherwise, he should be FIRED!
What is needed most is for Americans to upstage liars like this man and put the TERRIBLE REALITY of what Islam is (legalized murder) and how it operates (through extreme and continued violence) onto center stage and keep it there!
Nothing is safe:
http://www.nysun.com/article/29847
March 27, 2006 Edition > Section: Foreign
'Unclean' Stray Dogs in Turkey Killed And Tortured by Muslim Councils
By AMBERIN ZAMAN - The Daily Telegraph
March 27, 2006
ANKARA, Turkey - Islamic municipalities in Turkey are killing stray dogs, animal rights groups claim.
Municipal workers are hunting, torturing, and killing the animals by the hundreds, the campaigners say.
The allegations surfaced when Burcu Isikalp, a young veterinary surgeon, went searching for seven strays she had been caring for near her home in the capital, Ankara. Witnesses told her that municipal workers had taken them away. She went to Ankara's largest refuse dump, Mamak, where she found one of the strays with hundreds of other dogs. "They were all dead, stacked in large pits," she said. "We also found 10 dead puppies in a bound plastic bag. There is a myth among pious Muslims that dogs are unclean."
Animal rights campaigners who accompanied Miss Isikalp last week said that at least two of the dogs had been sexually abused.
The mayor of Mamak, Gazi Sahin, of the ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party, has denied responsibility.
What happened to the Jewish civilization of Israel?
I just have to say, PREACH IT! It's wonderful to see so many people waking up to the reality of Islam. And this guy is right, as more and more non-muslims get to know the koran and hadiths, the more and more the truth will break through into the media (although some would say the muslims are doing a fine job of this themselves, which is true too). And remember...KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE...GI JOE!
I wonder how long it will be before Princeton apologizes for this islamophobic article?
Giving the jihadis a run for their money,
The sincere, but sometimes sarcastic,
Mr.Ape Pig (Esq.)
Umm, Pythagoras, did you read the attached link? Because I have no idea what you're so incensed at.
Troilus and Criseyde. Franciscan literature. An Odd Man Out. I thought so.
Once upon a time, John V. Fleming would not have been the Odd Man Out, but closer to Par For the Course. Imagine the beautiful not-so-distant past where the prize catch for, say, Princeton, would not have been the comical Cornel West, so quickly hired from Harvard and given a very plush chair, but rather, say, Erwin Panofsky or Leo Spitzer (or any of the attendees at the Gauss Seminars), or when, in Harvard's case, the English department might have been pleased to obtain the services not of Homi Bhabha, but rather of Reuben Brower, as pellucid and subtle in his studies of literature as Bhabha has been impenetrable and coarse, when Brower was at long last lured away from Amherst, and from such colleagues as that pure teacher of literature, Theodore Baird.
Those were the days. We thought they'd never end. How wrong we were.
freethinker1:
What is your perspective on first degree murder--do you approve of it? What is your take on ideologies that legitimize and thus incorporate first degree murder into their core beliefs?
Please reply with a straight answer.
Has it ever occurred to you that there ARE times when "hate" is an appropriate and called for response? You will agree with me that Muslims do PLENTY of HATING themselves and the world has never had any problem with that. (There is only a problem when non-Muslims actively hate, like here, no?). The most popular recent song in the Middle East was titled "I HATE ISRAEL." (But that's different, that's hating Jews, who cares, no????).
Now, would you 'hate' an ideology that is directly responsible for the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of millions of innocent human beings (taking at least seven major civilizations with them) over a period of more than 14 centuries? I would bet you would. Would you apologize for despising that ideology?
That ideology is Islam.
If you have a problem with the latter point, then you're NO freethinker1 as far as I can see.
pythagoras
ps-freethinking is usually the first casualty of an Islamic invasion of a non-Muslim land.
Pythagoras are you talking about the ancient Jewish civilization of Israel. They were driven out of the land by the Romans. It really doesn't help your cause to spread blatant lies like that. It kinda diminishes the value of everything else that you say.
"Imagine the beautiful not-so-distant past where the prize catch for, say, Princeton, would not have been the comical Cornel West, so quickly hired from Harvard and given a very plush chair, but rather, say, Erwin Panofsky or Leo Spitzer (or any of the attendees at the Gauss Seminars), or when, in Harvard's case, the English department might have been pleased to obtain the services not of Homi Bhabha, but rather of Reuben Brower, as pellucid and subtle in his studies of literature as Bhabha has been impenetrable and coarse, when Brower was at long last lured away from Amherst, and from such colleagues as that pure teacher of literature, Theodore Baird."
And you dare mock the lucid, ice-water clear prose of Homi Bhabha? Fifteen commas, two hyphens, a matched set of parentheses, just to start, never mind numerous incidents of "say," "rather," and "but," and more subordinate clauses than a school for wayward Santas.
The only appropriate punishment is for you to diagram this sentence, and publish it along with the answer to that damnable contest! You are hereby sentenced.
The sentence you select for what I hope is merely mock-indignation may have required slightly more work than what, nowadays, many readers are used to putting in, what with those "fifteen commas, two hyphens, a matched set of parentheses, just to start, never mind numerous incidents of "say," "rather," and "but," and more subordinate clauses...." as you put it. Those commas, those hyphens, that matched set of parentheses (I wish I'd written that), help make a periodic sentence include a good deal of sense. I vary sentence lengths, following Dr. Saintsbury's prescription in his "History of English Prose Rhythm" but sometimes one feels the urge just to do it the old way, to pile clause upon clause, but never so much as to defeat the reader's expectancy and hope that the sentence will repay attention, and make sense.
Bhabha's sentences in the paragraph above make none.
I can produce non-sense on self-command. Neither a profusion of commas, which offer landings on which readers can stop to catch their mental breath, nor matched sets of parentheses, are likely to be much in evidence if non-sense is the goal. Take, for example, that paragraph I produced for the MESA Nostra Contest.
Now I know what the matter is. The contest. The answer. Where is it?
Good question. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. That's any hour now.
"What is your perspective on first degree murder--do you approve of it? What is your take on ideologies that legitimize and thus incorporate first degree murder into their core beliefs?"
pythagoras:
your own namesame here founded a cult which required a rule of silence about its primary teachings. the punishment for breaking that silence was death.
can you give an explanation of your handle?
Hugh, I'm afraid all the high-falutin' language got beaten out of me, repeatedly, by a chief bosun's mate a long time ago. Long-winded and pretentious I can still do, but flowery, genteel, I cannot. Some liken their commas to landings, but I liken them to rocks and shoals which threaten navigation, and which therefore should be removed whenever possible. Fifteen commas in a single sentence reminds me less of a threatening shoreline than of a broken levee, utterly unnavigable.
Thank you, though, for your kindness regarding my "matched set" comment. It would be far the worse if they didn't match.
Couldn't ask for a quicker, clearer, more cogent introduction to the central evil in Islam that causes this clash of their anti-Civilization with Civilization.
Kudos for a fine job, Mr. Fleming!
This is no hate site this is a site trying to wake people up from there slumber and get them to see past the lies spread by our gutless media and leaders that Islam is a religion of peace.
When they increase there numbers in our countries and gain strong political power people are going to find out what islam is about and that is domination.
Do all the left wing liberals truely believe that muslims in a position of power in a western country are not going to try to run the countries based on islam and change people way of life if they do they are simply blind.
"Long-winded and pretentious.....flowery, genteel..."
-- from a posting above
Surely the opposite of "long-winded and pretentious" is not more of the same ("flowery and genteel"). The first adjectival pair dismisses, and so does the second. Sentences whose main fault is that they refuse to exhibit only one attitude, that of the subject-object-verb can-do, just-the-facts-ma'am school of expression, but deliberatley allow themselves to continue for a while to walk across the green, picking up clauses that may curl around a thought, the way Lady Chatterley would pick up a wildflower to curl around part of her gardener (her party of the first part), are not sentences necessarily to be praised faintly, and therefore damned (see Bartlett's florilegium) as "flowery and genteel."
Some are better than that. They may not be found in the profusion one would wish at this website. But they do exist.
"Some are better than that. They may not be found in the profusion one would wish at this website. But they do exist."
I need to learn English, one of these days.
(Damn my inferior education)
Damn my inferior education
It was probably quite good in its own way.
I have to keep dictionary.com open to translate all those hugh, sorry huge words that Huge, sorry Hugh uses. Damn, I should have memorized and digested every word in my GRE verbal, and probably taken the GMAT as well.
So I guess this Guy Fleming is an english prof. I'm at a loss and I could'nt liken my commas and Parenthesis to to landing strips, coral reefs or skateboard ramps. It is good though to see some mention in an Ivy League paper of this clear and present danger before us. Maybe the west is waking.....NAH! Not likely probably just a "dead cat bounce"
While I can see how "flowery" can be dismissive, I just don't feel the same about "genteel," which implies a certain gentlemanly level of refinement.
Alas, E.B. White and his pure teacher, Strunk, beat the daylights out of me, too. At least I stubbornly refuse to descend into the Hell of military-speak, especially the seventh ring of the passive voice. So that subject-object-verb business works well for me. I also try to heed Orwell's advice to avoid the adjectives, for it is usually in the adjectives that the lie is set.
Rocks and shoals, Hugh, rocks and shoals. It's all I can do to stay off of them.
freethinker1: "In terms of raw hate, they could even give the Jihadi's a run for their money.This whole website is fall of them."
To quote Archmedes' succinct statement from a previous thread: "We live in a funny age when those who try to criticize bigotry and intolerance are accused of it."
Caroline,
Thank you for pointing out that statement by Archimedes:
"We live in a funny age when those who try to criticize bigotry and intolerance are accused of it."
It is not just the reality inversion, pointed out by Archimedes, which interests. Particularly interesting, also, for me, is the automatic and reflexive way that so many people make the accusation. Like Groupthink.
George Orwell was easily the most prescient writer of the 20th Century.
Let's not forget the redefining of the word (formerly a proper noun with a capital eff) 'fascist' to mean "anyone who doesn't agree with me".
longtime lurker--
Don't misunderstand. I feel about Henry James the way Middleton Murry did (comparing his too-delicate scrupulosities of style, prompted by inner velleities, to "a hippopotamus trying to pick up a pea") and the way Edward Gorey did (or does?), when he tells us how much he can't stand Henry James.
Strunk & White, or just plain Strunk to E. B. White ("get the little book") should be dropped from airplanes over all major and minor campuses, and distributed free to all members of the MLA. Two copies -- one for home and one for the office -- should be given to those who are at this very moment already making plans for this summer's treat -- participation in some symposium or conference on the Lago di Como, where the onerous duty, the singing-for-the-supper, consists of delivering a paper or commenting on that of someone else, or in participating in some panel where, at the end of a most fruitful morning session, I'm sure you all agree, we can now all retire for a long lunch with views of the Villa Carlotta and then return for one more discussion, which we all can be sure will be just as fruitful as the morning session, on The Fate of Culture, Should Poetry Be Privileged?, What Does Literature Mean? or What Kind of Happiness Should We Be Pursuing?
Strunk to begin with. But not to end with.
"Genteel" to me now signifies "phony genteel," as in the comical striving of Hyacinth Bouquet (Bucket) in that BBC series.
On the other hand, "Gentilesse" -- a favorite word of Chaucer -- retains its original purity.
Prof. Fleming mentions The Da Vinci Code as an example of flagrant disrespect for a Western religion (Catholicism) and the difference in response to that in comparison with the response to the Mohammed cartoons.
When this comparison comes up, I've noticed people frequently adduce the Piss Christ art exhibit of the late 1980s or Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary clotted with elephant dung and surrounded by pornographic cut-outs, as well as the aformentioned Da Vinci Code book. (See http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21171 and http://newsbusters.org/node/3918)
However, far more egregiously disrespectful lampoons of Christianity and Judaism occur elsewhere, in far more popular venues, far more frequently, namely: the TV cartoon shows South Park and The Simpsons as well as the late night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien. (These are by no means the only TV or cable shows that routinely lampoon, ridicule and offend Judaeo-Christianity; and there have also been innumerable Hollywood movies that do the same, not to mention theater, on and off Broadway and live poetry shows in any major American city, etc.)
Just to take one example:
The Act of Disrespect
The Dec. 7, 2005, season finale of South Park, titled "Bloody Mary":
In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is believed to be bleeding from its rear end, inspiring faithful parishioners to flock from miles around to be healed by the miraculous blood.
Eventually, Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, whereupon he determines that the statue is actually menstruating and thus is nothing special.
"A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle," the pope declares in the episode. "Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time."
The Response from Christians
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The Catholic League slammed the network for its irreverent portrayal of church icons and sought to block the episode from being rebroadcast.
The Catholic League demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central's parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and "a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD."
The Catholic League also sought a personal condemnation from Viacom board member Joseph A. Califano Jr., who the group noted is a "practicing Catholic."
The Catholic League was hailing its protest as a success after a repeat of the finale was scheduled to air Wednesday night, but was pulled from the Comedy Central lineup without explanation.
The Response to the Response
Califano was only too happy to oblige. After viewing the episode, he released a statement calling the episode an "appalling and disgusting portrayal of the Virgin Mary."
"It is particularly troubling to me as a Roman Catholic that the segment has run on the eve and day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day for Roman Catholics," Califano said.
Califano also pledged to have Viacom president and CEO Tom Freston review the episode.
Comedy Central did not respond to a request for comment on why "Bloody Mary" was yanked from the schedule. Screencaps of the episode were no longer available on Comedy Central's press site or on comedycentral.com's South Park section.
However, in an email to fans, the network said the episode was not included in the South Park marathon "in deference to the Holidays."
"Despite misleading claims from those who would like to claim victory, we have not permantly shelved the 'Bloody Mary' episode from future airings due to outside pressure," the email continued, "nor will we exclude it from future DVD releases."
The Catholic League previously tangled with Comedy Central in 2002 over a South Park episode titled "Red Hot Catholic Love," but failed to produce any results.
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,18055,00.html
How does this compare with the Mohammed Cartoon events?
The Act of Disrespect: Comparison
Qualitative:
a) The South Park act of disrespect was far, far worse than the Mohammed cartoons: any reasonable agnostic, even, would consider it scurrilous and ugly. (As an agnostic myself who believes in the primacy of a sense of humor, I would never descend to that pointless gutter as depicted in that South Park episode.)
b) The South Park perpetrators and the Catholic advocacy group were part of the same culture and the same country, while Muslims in several different countries (Muslim and non-Muslim) were reacting against the action of a newspaper in a non-Muslim country, Denmark.
Quantitative: The South Park act of disrespect --
a) was, as a highly popular cable show and pop cultural phenomenon throughout America, Canada, Australia and Europe (in addition to many non-Western countries) seen by far more people than the Mohammed cartoons, and in the past year being syndicated on network TV show it will likely be repeated at least once to far more viewers
b) was only one of innumerable other South Park episodes over the years (South Park has been popular for 10 seasons) that have flagrantly disrespected Christianity and Judaism far worse than the Mohammed cartoons disrespected Islam.
The Response
Quantitative:
The Christian response to the South Park episode was limited not only to one subgroup of Christianity in general (Catholicism), it was limited to one advocacy group within that subgroup, and that advocacy group furthermore was limited to one country, the USA.
The Muslim response to the Mohammed cartoons was
1) international
2) pan-Islamic
3) extended to the level of governmental and international political bodies.
Qualitative:
The Christian response resembled the Muslim response in one respect only -- the Catholic advocacy group demanded an apology. Otherwise, the Christian response differed in important ways. With the Christian response, there were:
no international riots,
no international deaths,
no international death threats,
no international demands for "punishment"
no international governmental demands for apologies,
no international governmental and advocacy groups calling for boycotts.
The Muslim response to the Mohammed cartoons did in fact have the above features, which we can summarize as:
a) international in scope, indicating a global solidarity around this issue
b) violent
c) intolerant
d) excessive in comparison to the offense.
Every one of these, including (d) is the opposite of the Christian response to the South Park offense.
The Response to the Response
There were no shows of sympathy by any mainstream media for the Catholic advocacy group nor for Christians in general for the offense against them by South Park. With the Mohammed cartoon event, on the contrary, there were near universal shows of sympathy by mainstream media, including taking the action of not publishing the cartoons and even at times reprimanding or even firing employees who went ahead and published them.
There were no international editorials, articles by academics, and speeches by politicians defending the Catholic advocacy group. With the Mohammed cartoon event, there were in fact international editorials, articles by academics, and speeches by politicians in solidarity with the Muslims.
If William had teamed up with Peter (while the former had not with White nor the latter with Wagnall), we might now have the benefit of a Strunk & Funk.
Hugh, I will soon be abroad for several years in that land you so love, Italy. Perhaps I will be fortunate enough to receive your tutelage in the Lake District. And however much I appreciate Henry James' sentiments, I've only been able to struggle through a few of the earlier novels for exactly the reasons you suggest. He brings out the rabid editor in me.
I'm not sure about the phrase "Lake District" being applied to the lakes of Northern Italy. In intellectural property class (it was then called "Romantic Poetry" and met motuwethly, at 10) I was taught that the phrase "Lake District" had been copyrighted by the government of the United Kingdom, round about 1798 (a copyright notice was stuck into every copy of the Lyrical Ballads) to refer exclusively to that group of placid lakes in England, the ones that William and Dorothy Wordswoth and Coleridge walked around, and into which W.W., who was born and lived in Grasmere (in Dove Cottage), would look in order to study the reflection of a mountain (Skiddaw, which later moved to America and, in shedding its English past, changed its name to 23-skidoo) which reflection in turn led to all sorts of other reflections.
When I hear the phrase "The Lake District" I think of small Rydal Water (the very lake into which WW may have been looking), and much larger Derwentwater, Windermere, Ullswater, others of that ilk, and not of Lago di Como, Lago di Garda, Lago Maggiore.
The main and wonderful thing is that you will be for several years in a place (Naples? Sigonella?) that will allow you to kick up your heels whenever you get a chance to go off-base and move around that boot. See those pictures and statues before it is too late. You must be delighted, and glad that American Mediterranean forces are located there rather than in, say, Libya or Algeria. Why, if Khaddafy hadn't come to power there might still be a monarchy, and American servicemen condemned to living at Wheelus, or at some godforsaken Tripolitanian naval base wangled from the son of King Idris. Thank God that's not possible -- for your sake.
I have nothing clever to say about this, but I spent a good deal of my childhood around the Lombard lakes and the Alps. If Hugh implies that seminars and holidays in that area are part of the intellectual bribe for publishing multi-culti nonsense, I have to say that at least the bribe is of a very high quality indeed.
The comment about American academics planning their summers around a visit to Bellagio was limited to that one place, and no other comment on northern Italy had anything to do --at another thread, I think -- with the comments on Bellagio. The Rockefeller Foundation-owned villa, with its outbuildings and gardens, is possibly the most desirable on the well-travelled circuit limned by David Lodge in "Small World.". Stanley Fish must have been there very often. has been there. And it's not just for professors of literature. Economists "with a human face" and savers-of-the-world -- i soliti ignoti -- have undoubtedly been there as well. No need to list them here.
I goofed! I was in a hurry and misread the article. This isn't the first time I've made such blunders either.
My apologies to Mr. Fleming.
I was so angry at Yale (where my father graduated) for taking into its student body a TALIBAN WAR CRIMINAL that I couldn't even see straight!! I suspect I was still under the influence of that irritation at the time I misread the above article. I am suspicious of ALL universitiy personnel for the time being. That also partly accounts for my mess-up.
But even the above condemnation by Mr. Fleming won't work with Islam, which has far too great an amount of negativity towards none Islamic elements built into it for Mr. Fleming's plea for sanity among the Muslim community to amount to much.