West: Speak no evil: The new EU lexicon on terrorism

You shouldn't accuse Muslims of being radical, because that's just plain wrong and they might get angry and kill you for making such unfounded statements.

We're going to be combining certain words together so often, we'll end up hyphenating them.

So we have acts of terrorism-that-abusively-invokes-Islam being carried out by Muslims-who-aren't-real-muslims, but, strangely enough, not Hindus-who-aren't-real-Hindus or Quakers-who-aren't-real-quakers.

Mohammed was the original hijacker of Islam. Somebody should have told him it was a religion of peace.

They speak no evil, because they hear and see no evil.

"Mohammed was the original hijacker of Islam. Somebody should have told him it was a religion of peace."

This was part of the Koranic material that was lost when old MO died. The goat sneaked into the bedroom and ate a bunch of the files when everyone was pissing and moaning over the untimely demise of the prophet.

Where there is censorship, whether on grounds of prudery or political correctness, people become creative in getting round it. (Is it coincidence that the EU official refers primly to "improper words"?)

One way round this would be to feign ignorance of a potential double meaning. So you could refer to the "hijackers of Islam", and claim you meant those hijacking the religion rather than the planes. Likewise murderers of Islam, killing their defenceless religion and so forth.

(I'm not normally in favour of double meanings. If any creep into something I write, I whip them out straightaway.)

Rather like a homework/prep excuse ...

Interested's/JanuaryMan's scenario is crying out for a - whoops! - cartoon.

Mohammed, wearing a school satchel, is standing before Allah, who is wearing a mortar board. Allah is asking what became of the notion of peace, which existed in religious doctrine before the time of Islam but seems, effectively, absent from the Koran. Mohammed, a large curved dagger in his belt, stands there looking shifty and regarding his shoes; he is suggesting that a "goat ate that part".

Mohammed was the original hijacker of Islam. Somebody should have told him it was a religion of peace. Posted by: Interested

Since the only ones talking to him were Allah and the Djinns, one can see why it got glossed over.

Yojimbo - Allah then gives Mohammed six of the best - and we're not talking about virgins.

Then Mohammed uses that larged curved dagger to slit Allahs throat for the offense caused by his question.

I hear the Suicide-Bomber Dads of Al Qaeda support group meets alternate Thursdays in the CAIR office.

The fact is that these attempts to remove meaning by altering language - PACE good old George Orwell himself - always, always fail. The word "homosexual" was invented to avoid the negative overtones of "invert" or "pervert", which in turn are artificial formations designed to avoid even older negative terms; in turn, it became so offensive that the homosexuals demanded to be known as "gays" - and now anyone familiar with the language of 13-year-olds in state school playground knows that "gay" has become a sangunary insult and a description of a bad, frustrating or sickening situation. (For instance, a boy losing in a sport or videogame will cry out in frustration: "This is SO gay!") By the same token, the Nazis tried to avoid the terms "massacre" and "slaughter" by describing what they were doing as "the final solution to the Jewish problem" - and immediately "Final Solution" became a term even more sinister than "massacre" or "pogrom". The instances are endless: the BBC started referring to Unionist and Republican murderers in Northern Ireland as "paramilitaries," with the result that now "paramilitary", from being a neutral word describing an army-like organization such as a militia or police force, has become just another word for terrorist, murderer, thug. But people never learn from history; probably because they never studied it.

Diana's invocation of Orwell is entirely appropriate. If you'll recall from 1984, "newspeak" was the term referred to language modification. Each new, abridged dictionary produced by the state was smaller in size, as the language was constantly being paired down to only the most basic terminology in order to induce conformity and limit the scope and possibilities for thought crime.

Today Europe's "newspeak" is proceeding apace. Expression will very soon be more defined by what cannot be said that what can. And the real tragedy is, were the ummah forced to confront the reality that so many of its sons have embraced violence, such acknowledgement might - MIGHT - produce the cultural/religious introspection necessary to precipitate a reformation in interpretations of the faith.

Instead, Islamic theology is automatically exonerated from the violence perpetrated by its faithful. No need for introspection; no need for soul-searching; no need for change. Islam is fine just the way it is.

There is a thin line between freedom of speech and insulting others. So why should anyone intentionally enrage others by making fun of their values and religion? Words can hurt, and, as necessary as satire undoubtedly is, there is a line you shouldn't cross.

Singlenotlooking: sure. And 80% of American men beat their wives, and that is on account of Christianity. I suggest you remove not just the beam, but the elaborate and filthy scaffolding of hypocrisy from your eye, before you give the rest of us lessons about manners. You have just been guilty for one of the most outrageously insulting pieces of trash ever to appear on these pages, and I am not minded to let you forget it in such a short time.

Rub a dub dub,
The EU will scrub
All our thoughts of offending errata.
And now Islamic terror's
A phrase that's in error,
An official persona non grata.

"So why should anyone intentionally enrage others by making fun of their values and religion?"

That question and its answer should be up to the individual and his conscience, and if some people think it's wrong, they can try to persuade him through peaceful reasonable means, such as mature conversation, letters, speeches, editorials in newspapers, books, etc.

Whether intentionally enraging others by making fun of their values and religion is right, or whether it is wrong, should not be a matter of public law and police enforcement. Public law and police enforcement should protect the larger arena of society in which some people are free to make fun of values, and other people are free to disagree and express their disagreement in peaceful, legal ways.

Jesus Christ supercop

"You shouldn't accuse Muslims of being radical, because that's just plain wrong and they might get angry and kill you for making such unfounded statements"

LMAO - excellent !

Not unlike when Mohammed took his Wife Aesha to the little league game and admonished her for wearing a provocative burqa style cheerleader outfit.

"The basic idea is to avoid the use of improper words that could cause frustration among Muslims and increase the risk of radicalization."

Phrases which offend Muslims include;

"what do you mean we've run out of oil"

"I want to buy a Hydrogen-Cell car"

"my house is completely powered by Solar Panels"

"your Camel emissions are fogging my glasses"

"2 x Cheese Burquas please"

Paolo

I am not sure how you managed to go from this;-

"There is a thin line between freedom of speech and insulting others. So why should anyone intentionally enrage others by making fun of their values and religion? Words can hurt, and, as necessary as satire undoubtedly is, there is a line you shouldn't cross."

TO THIS

Singlenotlooking: sure. And 80% of American men beat their wives, and that is on account of Christianity... I am not minded to let you forget it in such a short time

Your criticism of singlenotlooking is completely
unacceptable.

No one has made you judge and jury of what is and is not, acceptable content on this forum.
singlenotlooking has as much right to air his/her opinions as anyone AND without being insulted.

Paolo

Are you drinking to much coffee ? because you should stop before you hurt yourself.

Peter: evidently you do not mind obvious lies - which she has proved unable to substantiate - presented as facts, in the service of a moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam which does not exist except in her sick mind. We know that you are an anti-Christian troll, and that nothing that offends Christians is offensive to you. You are the last person in the world to judge what is or is not offensive to us. The only thing in which singlenotlooking is worse than you are is that she is actively arguing for "not offending" Muslims - i.e. for dhimmitude. And she does so after having gone out of her way to offend Christians. I do not expect you to understand this, but I regard it as contemptible behaviour.

lol Peter, Paolo didn't get my joke, that's all, I think he's rather young

thank you Peter, I'm sorry that idiot insulted you too, because of me

But surely Paolo gratuitous offence, that is offence given simply for the pleasure of giving offence and for no other reason, should not be the accepted norm. I would think that such offence should be separated from offence taken at perfectly reasonable propositions ideas or words (or cartoons) where the grounds for taking offence are specious at best or just plain crazy at worst, and that this latter crazy behaviour is the way that moslems behave.

I know that freedom of speech is absolute and can't and shouldn't be divided but the deliberate giving of offence for its own sake in a situation where it serves no purpose at all is surely just an irrational act.

Dominic.

Sorry Paolo I meant to add that I think that this nonsense that the EU is indulging in is just another example of the dhimmi attitudes that prevail in Brussels. I wasn't trying to excuse this nonsense in any way.

Dominic.

Paolo

Your use of the word "WE" indicates to me that you wish to appear to speak as some representative of a majority.
YOU DO NOT
Referring to someone as having a sick mind is un-called for in a forum such as this

Paolo, this terrible behaviour. so PLEASE tone it down.

Peter, Paulo, Singlesnotlooking: Simmer down, now.

Singlesnotlooking: You're a dhimmi. Hit the road.

singlesnotlooking

you are welcome

back to the main subject:

Your post I thought was okay, I cannot think of any situation where people do not censor themselves in someway.

How far it is taken depends on many factors, the bottom line should be that a sense of respect should give us enoughfeedback for us to make the right decision.

I am currently revising my dictionary and marking those words which may have the potential to offend.
so far I have crossed out everything !

In future I will be using emoticons as suppplied by my children

Many of you are missing the point: There is a difference between

1) whether it's okay or not okay for a person to insult and mock others

2) whether the Law and the Police should decide #1, and then punish accordingly.

A person could decide that it is not okay for a person to insult & mock others, AND yet, at the same time, decide that the Law and the Police should not get involved in the matter.

Confusing these two issues is the mark of a dim wit.

Good post Television, but there is social terrorism at play here.

I'm an avowed atheist, although a former Traditionalist Catholic, and have been falsely accused of being anti christian, for daring to mention some facts, unsavory as they are about Christians and their attitudes and behaviors, that said and done.. I also take note that Christianity is freely satirized and caricatured in western media, and there is no self policing evident, yet the dhimmi's in the west are TERRIFIED and intimidated by Islamic outrage and overwrought infantile sensitivities.

On the one hand there is license to ridicule Christians and Jews, on the other hand it is "insenstive" and verboten to speak to truth about Islam.

Double standards.

One thing for sure, that every explanation I've read from any authority, be it media, the Administration, corporation or university, for not using words that hurt Muslims or printing cartoons of Muhammad, actually affirms and confirms that Islam is an ideology of terror.

They censor themselves and others out of Fear of the Muslims.

Peter and singlenotlooking: you suit each other. Ignorance, vanity, prejudice, rubbish picked up from bad elementary school textbooks and never improved upon, lies asserted as fact, and then airy claims to irony to wiggle out of the assertion, seem to be the climate you live on. An essay on the failures of modern education could be written out of you two. Or as we say in my country, "Dio li fa e poi li accoppia" - God makes freaks, and then brings them together.

Will the EU now try to suppress the phrase "Islamic terrorism"?

Europe seems to long to go quiet into that dark night. Such linguistic self-strangulation is lubrication to quieten the continuing entry of Muslims into Europe and the emerging Islamic demographic domination.

It seems as though the West, especially Europe, has a sort of spiritual AIDS. Quite diverse forces with differing motives unintentionally work together to suppress any defense.

The Left is often ignorant of (and in some cases supportive of) the strong totalitarian tendencies in Islam, in the Quran and in the life of Muhammed as understood by Muslims. Speech critical of Islam is targeted as 'racist' (though Islam is not a race) and worthy of lawsuits, prosecution, ostracism and hate.

Meanwhile political Islam, akin in various ways to an extreme Rightist movement, threatens terror and death to anyone who speaks critically of Islam.

So the center gets it coming and going, being caught between the pseudo-moral fury of the naive/ignorant portion of the Left and the terrorist fury of the theofascist Islamic Right.

As often happens in totalitarian situations, one is confronted with impossible moral choices. In Soviet Russia, many such situations arose: should I protect a truth-telling dissident? Or should I protect the lives of my children and my family by turning in the dissident? Stalin might have me and/or my family killed if I choose not to turn in the dissident and they find out I knew about him. Thus the Soviets created situations in which it was almost impossible to act morally.

No doubt similar 'impossible' moral conundrums arise to some extent in every society. But now they are beginning to arise with a bit more salience in the West due to Islamic terror. We are not in a Stalinesque situation, but if I am a politician or a newscaster or journalist, do I speak the truth, as I understand it, about Islam? Or do I protect my job and my family's future, perhaps my family's life itself? I must also think of my fellow employees and staff, all of whom I could put at risk of bombs, anthrax in the building ventilation system, etc. Or they might merely be subject to death threats. If I succeed in seeing and speaking too much truth, both the pseudo-moral fury of the naive/ignorant Left and the fascist fury of the Islamist right may come down on me simultaneously. And I could be ostracized socially and economically by people who have nothing against my views, but are merely trying to protect their own careers.

The Soviet dissidents won in the end partly because the Western world existed and would not censor the dissidents, who continued to get samizdat smuggled out and published worldwide. But if the West now self-censors, what other place will there be to air the facts? Especially when the propagation techniques of Islam are much more formidable and disarming than those of the Communists?

If self-censorship deepens in the coming two decades in Europe and elsewhere, if the atmosphere of fear grows and Islamic totalitarianism begins setting in more firmly, rooted in the many European cities where Islam will have become the majority religion, then society may be tragically presented with another impossible moral choice -- a social "gordion knot" that only a war could 'solve.' That would be a tragedy, but if Europe refuses to wake up soon, and deal in a civilized and rational way with the threat to its liberal institutions (for example, by stopping further Muslim immigration), then later on, when those liberal institutions are dying and being replaced by theocracy, civilized and rational solutions will no longer be possible. Civil wars could emerge, and worse.

Eurabia - cheese eating surrender monkeys

Islamquest,

Great comments!

Indeed, the West is abdicating its role as global defender of liberty. When Islam is validated everywhere, even in the West, Muslim dissidents face increasing isolation and have the intellectual and moral ground cut out from under them.

One of the things that saved certain Soviet dissidents like Sakharov, Solzenitzen, and even lessor known names like Andre Amalrik, Natan Sharansky and Zhores Medvedev, was that the Western world took an interest in their cases (and their writings). Though these brave souls faced arrest, indignities, and some were even confined to psychiatric institutions, the fact that they were known in the West put limits on the methodologies of the regime in dealing with them.

In the old Soviet Union, the existence of Western freedom was held up as a stunning rebuke to the closed system that Russians chafed under. Today, instead of being celebrated in the West as defenders of liberty, Muslim dissidents are ignored and sometimes even repudiated (e.g., In 'While Europe Slept,' Bruce Bawer discusses the case of a Norweigan Muslim immigrant who is rebuked by the powers that be for suggesting multicultural policies are often counter-productive).

We need a sea-change in attitudes in the West, particularly among the elite, where this condescending validation of Islam is discarded and we become advocates of genuine change in the Muslim world, change beyond the narrow parameters of what is accepted under Islamic theology.

One possible solution to the above post is to do what one of our American publications did. They published a letter stating that they would not publish the Mohammed cartoons out of fear for their employees safety.

This may seem dhimmi at first, but they were pointing out publicly that they believed the Islamicists were so violent that they feared for their employees very lives. I feel this statement said more about Islam than the cartoons themselves did.

To Cornelius:
Thanks, glad you liked the post! I agree with yours as well. Have also read Bawer's superb book While Europe Slept and given copies to friends. - Omar

To ShortBoard Surfer:
I agree, I think the response by that paper was not too shabby. In general though, the strategy might be of limited utility, since intimidation extends to any criticism of Islam, including publicity about Islamic intimidation. And when the death threats, etc., come your way, many who should be your allies will barely permit you to defend yourself, will charge you with racism and xenophobia, or will politicize you and label you a conservative, even if you happen to be a liberal, or if you are trying to maintain some kind of journalistic reputation of neutrality. I don't mean to sound defeatist at all, just trying to flesh out what we are up against. - Omar

Coyote, the EU is funny and absurd. But it really is a dangerous situation when people who control so many UN votes and so many millions of euros are so mad and dangerous for themselves and the rest of us, and for civilization.

I wish that there were more peace loving people like yourselves alive when your christian forefathers of this country kept their own christian brothers under brutal oppression denying them every right afforded them in the constitution because their skin was of a darker hue. I'm not even refering to slavery, but to the racial aparthied that existed in amerikkka after emancipation all the way until the 70's. If only your forefathers only new how peaceful christianity was, perhaps many more people in amerikkka could have enjoyed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'm glad to see that you have discovered peace in spite of your racist and sadistic ancestry.I'm glad the children of terrorists now are standing against terrorism.It's a good thing the terrorists haven't learned from your forefathers because you guys would all be dhimmis by now.