Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses a case of a non-Muslim Westerner learning from experience -- and ponders why such cases are so rare among Western dhimmis.
On NPR recently I heard the mellifluous Robert Siegel -- so mellifluous that he punches above his weight, and one is disinclined to pluck out his idiocies because he is well-spoken -- describe a friend of his who had had relatives, or his own friends, die in the World Trade Center Attacks. That friend, hitherto an opponent of capital punishment, had described to Siegel his own newfound willingness not merely to contemplate, but to wish with his own hands to execute, the death penalty on Moussaoui, Osama Bin Laden, and the others he connected to that attack.So, Siegel's friend turns out to be a former death-penalty opponent who begins to see the matter differently becaus of his close ties to the victims of murder. He is one more of those souls who have a limited imagination, and who must endure experiences himself in order to learn from them; anything that might be learned, through the experiences of others, recorded and accessible to others, will not do it. The imaginative sympathy, a faculty once encouraged by literature and the study of history, is merely vestigial in him. But still, at least he was able, this friend, to arrive at some home-truths, while there are some who not only lack the wit to learn from the experience of others (as found in works of history and, often, of literature) but even lack the wit to learn from their own experience. For there are now many who continue to interpret away, in ways that prove most comforting to them, even the evidence of their own senses.
Siegel goes on to tell us that his friend describes Moussaoui as a "nut case." That, of course, is nonsense. Had Siegel's friend, had Siegel himself, had others at NPR, taken it upon themselves -- and a certain leisure is required for this task -- to study Islam and jihad and to think clearly about how such belief-systems can operate, none of them would think Moussaoui was anything but sane. Here one must not think of the local etiolated church service, but rather of the kind of indoctrination given to those admitted to the Army of True Communists (in the early days), or True Nazis (at any time).Moussaoui is not a "nut case." He is a perfectly rational and devout believer in what the Qur'an, and the Sunna, tell him. And he is not unusual in his understanding of what Qur'an and Sunna stand for, of the hostility, even murderous hostility, those immutable texts teach Muslims to feel toward all Infidels. Unless Robert Siegel is willing to study those texts, those of Qur'an and Hadith, and the life of Muhammad, he has no business assuming, and passing on that assumption to unwary listeners, that Moussaoui must, of course, be a "nut case." For there are tens or even hundreds of millions of Believers who, like Moussaoui, divide the world uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel, between the Domain of Islam, Dar al-Islam, and the Domain of War, or Dar al-Harb, and are perfectly aware of the duty imposed on them to push back the boundaries of Dar al-Harb until, ultimately, the rule of Islam is established everywhere. This is not a fabrication of perfervid mad-dog Infidel brains. It has been studied, at great length, by a great many Western scholars -- the scholars who lived and wrote and published in an earlier, less frightened and less inhibited age. Many of these scholars are represented in the anthology "The Legacy of Jihad." Islam has not changed. What has changed, since 1973, is the wherewithal that Islamic peoples and polities have acquired, including the nearly ten trillion dollars in OPEC oil revenues, and the other instruments of Jihad, including the foot-soldiers, the millions of Muslims who, in roughtly the same period, were admitted into, and allowed to settle deep within, the countries of Western Europe -- that is, within the Lands of the Infidels, behind enemy lines, as Muslims (but not those innocent Infidels) regard them.
There are millions who may not do as Moussaoui (who grew up in France) has done, but who support what he did, and who understand perfectly what prompted it. And it was not a matter of his being a "nut case." It is Moussaoui, and Osama bin Laden, and all the members of Jaish-e-Muhammad, and Laskar Jihad, and Hamas, and Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda, and As Sayyaf, and a thousand other groups, and millions who belong to no groups, who have the Qur'an and the Hadith and the example of Muhammad on their side. Unless and until a great many more people cease to soothe themselves with the comforting idea that all these people are merely "nut cases," and begin to look at, and to study with comprehension the Qur'an, and also -- this should never be overlooked -- the still more telling Hadith, they will continue to be surprised by a steady stream of such “nut cases.”
Mere reading of the Qur'an will not be enough. In both French and English it is far softer in its meaning than the original. And the reader may not be aware that Islamic tradition has resolved contradictory statements using the interpretative device of "naskh" or abrogation, resolving them always and everywhere in favor of the harsher verses, with the softer ones being cancelled.
And even reading and rereading the Qur'an and the most authoritative collections of the Hadith, and then studying the most salient aspects of the life of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, that Perfect Man, will not be enough. It takes time for it all to sink in -- and to imagine, to begin to comprehend, the effect it has on the minds of hundreds of millions, and even how the effect of filial piety, or civilizational pride, can cause otherwise intelligent people born into Islam to accept the monstrousness of it all, and to defend it and apologize for it in front of questioning and skeptical Infidels.
But let us pretend that Moussaoui, and tens of millions of others, are merely "nut cases." Suppose that were true. Suppose, that is, that only "nut cases" would take the passages of Islam and seek to act on them as Moussaoui did. And suppose, further, that the only thing we Infidels had to worry about were acts of terrorism, and not the slow transformation of our own societies (beginning with the sudden self-imposed limits on the practice of freedom of speech, by almost the entire American press, and now even by that supposed total iconoclast and brave disrespecter of all pieties, Comedy Central).
What then? How many "nut cases" are there? Well, the problem is that in any society, millions and millions of people at one time or another fall into depressions. In the United States, more than 15 million people at any one time are said to be severely depressed. When this happens to Infidels, they can blame all sorts of things: their parents, their children, their siblings, Amerika, The System, The Man, the Republicans, the Democrats, immigration, affirmative action, lack of affirmative action, crooked financial analysts, Wall Street speculators, Chinese and Indian competition, Fate, the stars in their alignment, their cholesterol level, their serotonin level -- even, at times, themselves.
What happens when a Muslim finds himself in disarray? You are Muhammad Atta, and things are not working out in Hamburg, where you set off to study urban planning, and you are not the great success you were supposed to be, and the Western world is so baffling, so confusing. You are Raed Albanna, dancing the night away in cocaine-soaked clubs of West Hollywood, and you are piling failure upon failure, for you failed to establish a practice as a lawyer in Jordan, and you need to find a solution more permanent and steady than that offered by that cocaine, those girls, that music by Nine Inch Nails.
When "Mike" Hawash, an Intel engineer with an American wife and three American children, earning $360,000 a year and the respect of his colleagues, turned to Islam and more Islam, and then deeded over his house to his wife, and made plans to fight the Americans in Afghanistan after the Al Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington, was he a "nut case"? Or was he someone who, in his recent return to Islam, was only reflecting his need for Islam and more Islam as a stay against confusion and depression? And if the Answer for Muslims, even those who are not especially observant, and who seem to be thoroughly Westernized and to have been the recipients of the best the West has to offer, is Islam and more Islam, then the Western world, the world of Infidels, owes it to itself to protect its own legacy, and to scrutinize closely and carefully control the immigration of those who, in moments of the kind of doubt or depression that come upon all of us, will always and everywhere turn, or return, to Islam.
Hugh- as always, a sharp trepanning of the swollen headed.
The diagnosis is given, but the patient (the general Western leadership and misinformed populace) is still wading in that broadest, slowest, shallowest river on Earth- De Nial*.
As the crocodilian "nut cases" pick them off, one by one.
(* -"Ooo, look, another one of us has mysteriously decided to thrash wildly and disappear underwater near one of those peaceful river reptiles, never to re-appear... Hmmm... Must be another baffling case of O.U.S. -Ongoing Unrelated Suicide.")
Having witnessed first-hand, within days of the 9/11 attack, that the closer one moved toward Ground Zero the more one saw banners hanging from (still standing) buildings stating "No War" and "Peace" and "No War with Iraq" (yes, really! well before any hint of possible American movement toward there), it seems hard to have hope that EXPERIENCE even teaches some people.
And as to Moussaoui being crazy; well, why can't people who claim that draw the obvious conclusion? If he's crazy, and if he's following the tenets of Islam, then....?? Aw, c'mon, the answer seems soooo easy.
Bob Schieffer, a CBS talking head (soon to replaced by the so-perky-you-could-puke Katie Couric), gave Islam a free commercial, on the Sunday "Easter" program he hosts, in his concluding chat. Saying that it is one of the "peoples of the Book" religions [a Muslim disinformation slogan, he failed to note] just like Judaism and Christianity, and that they all worship the "same God".
What enables him to make this sweeping theological statement?
Has he read the Koran (and Hadiths)?
Clearly not.
Just one more blathermeister undermining the resolve of the West by spreading confusion about the nature of the marching dogma of the sworn enemy, Imperialistic Islam.
Mistaking the tenets of a cult founded by a pedophile warlord for those of a Hebrew liberator of slaves or a Christian prince of peace.
Strange days, as Jim Morrison once sang.
(I guess grey hairs no longer denote anything but lack of Grecian Formula.)
What surprises me is that Islam has not grafted one of its own "holidays" onto Passover/Easter in order to co-opt and infiltrate the beliefs of their infidel dog enemies with their own propaganda.
A serious oversight on the Ummah's part.
Off to celebrate the Universe in Resurrection with my sister, brother-in-law, and their seven kids.
A Joyous Passover and Happy Easter all!
What is this "we all worship the same God" stuff? The real God of Islam is not Allah at all, but rather Muhammad. It is he who gets all the attention, he who is the human model for other humans, he who has set out the attitudes, and the strategy, for all Believers in their endless Jihad to spread Islam until all obstacles to the rule of Islam are everywhere destroyed.
But even if we stick to the assorted gods of the three monotheisms, it is clear that they are depicted differently, and are not the same God. One has had no trouble in describing the "God" of Christianity as being different from the "Jahweh" of Judaism. Why, then, all of a sudden, is everyone falling all over everyone else in this baseless assertion that "Muslims, Christians, and Jews" all "worship the same God"? Because some Mosque Outreach program, some smiling imam, keeps insisting that this is so -- meaning of course, that Islam has the right view, and only to the extent that the Unbelievers manage to asymptotically approach the view of Islam can they be said to "worship the same God."
Spare us sentimental nonsense, tossed off because it is comforting, because it sounds good, because someone sitting at a desk thinks surely that really ought to be.
Sentimentality of this kind is a threat to the understanding of Islam, and hence, a mortal threat to all Infidels.
Isn' t the Allah that Muslims worshiped a moon rock god?
Although the God of the Old Testament is different from that of the New - he does a lot more smiting for starters - there is an even bigger gulf between the Judeo-Christian God and Allah.
The Judeo-Christian God is like a stern (Old Testament) or loving (New Testament) father. Allah is a like a capricious, cruel oriental despot and slave master.
Isn't "nutcase" one word, rather than two? That said, I thought "hobbyhorse" was two words rather than one. It doesn't really matter.
There's some serious theological illiteracy being bandied about here.
"One has had no trouble in describing the "God" of Christianity as being different from the "Jahweh" of Judaism."
One may "describe" the God of the one and of the other as "being different", but the massive and solid tradition of Christianity in its Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox forms has from the beginning until now maintained as a core tenet that the God whom Jesus constantly talked about and prayed to (and Who blessed him at his baptism with the announcement of his Sonship) is one and the same as the God "Jahweh" of the Old Testament and therefore of Judaism.
"Although the God of the Old Testament is different from that of the New - he does a lot more smiting for starters - there is an even bigger gulf between the Judeo-Christian God and Allah."
Again, according to Christian tradition, there is no "gulf" at all between the God of the OT and the God of the NT. Tertullian in his Adversus Marcionem covered this rather definitively, roughly 1700 years ago.
Actually, Television, that was the point I was making, as should be clear from the paragraph after the one you quoted. It is indeed the same God, but he acts differently, doesn't he?
Interested,
Yes, God often acts differently in the OT and the NT; but my point is that Christian tradition (and even some Jewish traditions) sees not two Gods but one and the same God in both. Islamic tradition sees one and the same God in both and in their Koran. Our refutation of this Islamic conceit should not rest on inaccurate or irrelevant observations about Judaeo-Christian theology. For my money, the superiority of Christianity is that it represents an ability (more sociologically than doctrinally, not without paradox and even self-contradiction -- but that's a sign of humanity, to grow and bend with self-contradiction along the way being part of the growing pains) to evolve away from the Old Testament theology, and the inferiority of Islam is that it represents an unmodifiable "Biblical" antiquity or a regression (insofar as it has suffered unavoidable modification due to external pressures) to antediluvian mentality.
Like the old cliche about the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer, words composed of smaller words need to get smaller, while words not composed of smaller words need to be concatenated to become bigger.
The counter-revolution of the linguistic bourgeois
Words of a feather flock together.
The imaginative sympathy, a faculty once encouraged by literature and the study of history, is merely vestigial in him...
There is complexity in why this important human capacity has withered.
It is partly due to the Fictive Reality surrouding us. If one is surrounded by fog, one can't see clearly what is happening to others, so one reacts numbly.
Fictive Reality shouldn't exist, but it does. If something is fiction, then it ain't real. But, if most everybody believes the fiction, then that belief and the consequences of that belief are terribly real.
Let's take the word Islamist as an example. This murky term implies that a person acting out the commands of Islamic scripture is bad, but in its very use forbids any criticism of that scripture.
If we just called them what they are, Moslems, then we'd be able to connect the dots and understant that Islam is neither peaceful nor a religion.
But we don't, so we can't.
MO KORANS MO HADITHS MO SIRATS MO MOSLEMS MO ISLAM MO TV MO MO MO MO
The other part of of the reason why imaginative sympathy has withered is that we now share a new central nervous system: electronic media.
Electronic media is far more influential than print ever was. Images and sounds on a boob tube are so real that they evoke emotions in addition in order to twist facts and implement fake histories.
Put such a tremendous weapon into the hands of committed Marsxists, as we have, and the recipe for mass suicide is struck.
All these historical forces seem to play into the hands of Islamists, or, as I call 'em, Moslems.
profitsbeard
Good God, man, I envy you. Hope you had a truly great American feast. My two dependents, both of them of the feline persuasion, know nothing about holy days and ordinary days, so they prod and paw and brush against my feet and vocalize no matter what. And I give it to them, as I should, for they are true innocents.
Ovidius_naso: You too? This is my first Easter where I couldn't be with my family; just me and one properly spoiled cat, Elmo. I grew up with a bunch of cats; they're a lot of company.
This or that religion may claim that its god (or God) and that of other monotheisms are identical but that does not make it so. I do not think it is theologically naive to reject the feelgodd notion (or, in the case of Islam, the deliberate and false appeal to unwary Christians and Jews, positing a connection, and a shared sympathy and respect supposedly based on this "we all worship the same god" stuff. Oh no we don't. And when we who are atheists do not believe, they have not merely one version of one God not to believe in, but three distinct versions. The God in Judaism, and the God in Christianity, are far closer to each other than either version of God is to the God in Islam, and ethically, and aesthetically, those two earlier versions of God superior in every way to the Muslim version.
The God of the New Testament is influenced heavily by Greek rationality. In effect, the Christian God is subject to the Good and the True: A Christian will reject an apparent "voice of god" calling him to murder his neighbour as the voice of the devil. He won't do it. The New Testament in effect binds the Christian God from acting capriciously.
The Allah of Islam is not so restricted. If his subjects are convinced that he has told them to murder their neighbours, then there is nothing in Islam that will stop them from doing it.
The Old Testament God is a little more like Allah, but the tension is there to follow the Good and the True - think of the story of Abraham and his son on the "chopping block".
one hundred and fifty --150-- years ago, Cesar Famin, a French diplomat and historian, said many of the same things about Islam, particularly the Islamic social system of exploiting and humiliating non-Muslims, that are nowadays said by Bat Ye'or or Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Hugh Fitzgerald, and many other authorities. Somehow, in the past 150 years, the knowledge that Famin had in 1853 [when his book was published] has been forgotten or watered down or deliberately gainsaid or nullified in the Western academic world. How did that happen? By the way, much of what Famin said was either directly quoted or paraphrased by Karl Marx in an 1854 article in the New York Daily Tribune [Horace Greeley's paper]. See links below:
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2006/03/muslim-oppression-of-non-muslims-in.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2006/03/jewish-majority-in-jerusalem-in-1853.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2006/03/jews-in-jerusalem-in-mid-century-circa.html
How did that learning disappear or even become considered heretical?
Here is an excerpt from one of the links given above:
"Jerusalem in the mid-19th century was firmly under Muslim control, although non-Muslims were the clear majority of the population. Jews alone made up an absolute majority, and the Christians made up about a quarter. Cesar Famin, a French diplomat, historian, and man of letters, described the Holy City in a book published in 1853 [see the previous post].
Famin reports, moreover, that the Jews --despite being a majority of the Holy City's population-- were at the bottom of the social ladder, even below the Christians, who were dhimmis or rayahs like themselves. We will publish a series of relevant quotes from his book in English translation followed by his French original.
"The Muslims, who make up about one-quarter of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, are the masters here in every matter. This population, made up of Turks, Arabs, and Moors, is harsh to the Christians and the Jews, eager for gain, cruel to the weak, intolerant and jealous towards all those who do not share their beliefs."
Les musulmans, qui forment a peu pres le quart des habitants de Jerusalem, sont ici les maitres en toute chose. Cette population, composee de Turcs, d'Arabes, et de Maures, est rude aux chretiens et aux juifs; apres au gain, cruelle avec les faibles, intolerante et jalouse a l'egard de tous ceux qui ne partagent pas ses croyances. [p50]
Karl Marx by the way paraphrased and translated this passage in his own article in the New York Daily Tribune [quoted in earlier posts].
After relating how Ottoman soldiers control entry into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Famin goes on [Part of this passage too is paraphrased by Marx]:
". . . but of all the foreign nations that frequent the holy places subject to the good pleasure of the Muslims, there is none more ill-treated and more subject to extortion than the Jewish nation.
"We have seen above that the Jews form by themselves more than half of the population of the holy city. They inhabit in Jerusalem a quarter named after them (Hareth-el-Yahoud), . . . this quarter. . . is situated near the Sterquiline gate or the Rubbish Gate [now usually called the Dung Gate in English], now called the Mugrabi Gate. Thus, we may say that the expulsion of these former owners of the country is complete."
. . . mais de toutes les nations etrangeres qui frequentent les lieux saints sous le bon plaisir des musulmans il n'en est pas de plus maltraitee et de plus ranconnee que la nation juive.
On a vu plus haut que les juifs forment a eux seuls plus de la moitie de la population de la ville sainte. Ils habitent, a Jerusalem, un quartier auquel on a donne leur nom (Hareth-el-Yahoud), . . . Ce quartier. . . est situe pres de la porte Sterquiline ou des immondices, appelee maintenant porte des Maugrabins. Ainsi on peut dire que l'expulsion de ces anciens maitres du pays est complete. [ p 51-52]
This passage too was translated and paraphrased by Marx. We continue:
"In our times too, many projects for reestablishing the Jewish nation as a political society, and for reintegrating it in the homeland of its ancestors have been conceived and loudly announced; the support of men praiseworthy for their character, influential due to their wealth or their position, has not been lacking for these chimerical attempts which have never been crowned with even the most ephemeral success. To whatever faith one belongs, whatever degree of faith one carries in one's heart, there are however historical facts before which one must bend. The dispersion of the Jewish people has been consommated, and one may say that it will never end"
De nos jours aussi on a concu et annonce fastueusement bien des projets pour reconstituer la nation juive en societe politique, et pour la reintegrer dans la patrie de ses ancetres; l'appui d'hommes recommandables par leur caractere, influents par leur richesses ou leur position, n'a pas manque a ces chimeriques tentatives, qui n'ont jamais ete couronnees meme par le succes le plus ephemere. A quelque croyance qu'on appartienne, quelque degre de foi qu'on porte dans son coeur, il est cependant des faits historiques devant lesquels il faut s'incliner. La dispersion du peuple juif est consommee, et on peut dire qu'elle n'aura jamais de fin [pp 53-54]
........
Famin goes on, offering us more depiction of Jewish suffering in Muslim-dominated Jerusalem that is politically incorrect by today's standards:
"Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews of Jerusalem, the constant object of the insults and intolerance of the Mohammedans, insulted by the Greeks, in hostile relations with the Latins. . ."
Rien n'egale la misere et les souffrances des juifs de Jerusalem, objet perpetuel des avanies et de l'intolerance des mahometans, insultes par les Grecs, en hostilite avec les Latins. . . [p 54]
Here too Marx copied from Famin. Speaking of the Jews in Jerusalem, Famin writes:
"While waiting for death, they suffer and pray; they weep over the misfortunes of Zion . . . "
En attendant la mort, ils souffrent et ils prient; ils pleurent sur les malheurs de Sion . . . [p 54]
Somehow, the oft vaunted tolerance of the Muslims towards Jews does not seem to appear in Famin's account. It is clear that the Jews not only suffered as dhimmis, like the Christians, but that they were at the bottom of the social ladder, since the Muslims treated them worse than they treated Christians and since Christians too treated the Jews with a high hand. Henry Laurens of the prestigious College de France, considered the top French expert today on the modern history of the Land of Israel, skipped over this evidence and similar accounts in his deeply flawed, two-volume work, La Question de Palestine, purporting to be an accurate history of the Land of Israel since Napoleon. His book by the way simply overflows with reference notes, but some contemporary evidence does not find its way into the book. Like the New York Times, Laurens prints what fits his argument, which favors Arab nationalism, Islam, and the PLO."
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