Diana West ably dissects PBS's recent documentary on antisemitism.
It only took PBS one hour to uncover the causes of anti-Semitism, now in an alarming heyday. In "Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence," narrated by Judy Woodruff, PBS offered the answer: The reason for Jew-hatred, now widely promulgated among Muslim populations, is, well ... Jews! Israel! Even Christianity!Oh, brother. This wreck of a thesis emerged early in the documentary as fact and fiction collided, mangling cause and effect. According to the show, Jews basically caused Anti-Semitism in the Arab-Muslim region around them by first building the tiny modern state of Israel (500 times smaller than that Arab Muslim region), and then actually trying to defend it against a host of Muslim armies and terror groups. As PBS tells it, it isn't the genocidal proclivities of surrounding Muslim nations that have caused war unending on the Jewish state; it's the continued existence of the Jewish state that has caused the genocidal proclivities. The show practically begs a viewer to ask, Well, what else could you expect?
But there's more to this lefty apology for the luridly vicious Anti-Semitism expressed on a daily basis in the Islamic world in sermons, schoolbooks, television shows and newspapers, some of which is helpfully shown in the documentary. We are told that Anti-Semitism is something new to Islam. According to the practically oracular authority of Princeton's Bernard Lewis, never in 1,200 years did Muslims even think of Anti-Semitism, let alone act on it -- not until European Christian empire-builders introduced the pathology to the region in the 19th century, what with tales of Christ-killers and, later, the forged "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
It wasn't that those first 1,200 years of Islam and sharia were exactly paradise for Jews, Lewis said, but Jews were "tolerated" so long as they accepted their "inferiority." This was a pretty breezy way to dismiss centuries of violence, oppression, fear and degradation inflicted, according to Islamic law, on "dhimmi" Jews (and on "dhimmi" Christians for that matter), as copiously documented by historian Bat Ye'or. But Lewis stuck to this story: "Anti-Semitism was introduced into the Middle East by Christians."
Even oracles get it wrong sometimes, I guess, because Lewis's explanation doesn't square with a long and vivid historical record, and that includes the Koran. The notion that Christians introduced Muslims to Anti-Semitism may well be the conventional wisdom -- indeed, it may even be that nonagenarian Lewis is the source of that conventional wisdom -- but just as surely as Anti-Semitism historically existed in Christianity, it also historically existed in Islam. And I can actually footnote that statement because, quite by chance, the same week the documentary aired, I happened to read the first chapter of a forthcoming book called "The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism" by Andrew G. Bostom, author of "The Legacy of Jihad."
Bostom examines the origins of Anti-Semitism in the Koran (such as in 2:61, which decrees an eternal curse of humiliation and wretchedness on Jews, repeated in 3:112), in the canonical commentaries on the Koran, and in the historical record. And it all begins practically 1,000 years before, say, Queen Victoria made herself an empress. The question is, does Anti-Semitism's origin in Islam, whether Christian or Islamic, become a chicken-egg question for scholars, or does it actually matter?
It matters a great deal, and here's why. The conventional wisdom, as expressed on PBS, does two things. It blames Christianity and the West for introducing Anti-Semitism to a practically Edenic Islamic world, and it minimizes Islam's non-original sin of partaking of it. Indeed, this same conventional wisdom suggests that Anti-Semitism is the natural, if unfortunate, response of "unempowered" Muslims to contemporary political events beyond their control -- namely, the essentially Christian/Western-sponsored establishment of the modern state of Israel.
If we bothered -- if we dared -- to examine Anti-Semitism in its historical Islamic context (just as we have examined Anti-Semitism in its historical Christian context), we would better understand Islam's hysterical rejection of Israel, which, in Islamic terms, is a state of "dhimmi" inferiors restored to equality, if not economic and military superiority, its very existence a violation of traditional Islamic code.
Failing to do this, the West overlooks and effectively absolves Islam of its animus against Jews and, by modern extension, Israel. The West also consigns itself and, weirdly enough, Israel also, to the role of guilty parties who must continually try to appease an aggrieved Islam.
Twisted? You bet. But there's no hope of unraveling things without first setting a grievous historical record straight.
I stumbled across this PBS fauxmentary Monday night during football halftime.
After watching it for ten minutes, I intuitively knew it wasn't going to examine the contents of the unholy koran.
Thank you Ms. West for validating my intuition and publically shaming PBS!
About 10 years ago PBS broadcast a "documentary" asserting that it was a Black regiment which liberated the Jews of Auschwitz. The lie was soon exposed. PBS specializes in fake or "feel-good" history. Watch their documentaries at your own risk.
The main problem with any hypothesis about how the Christianity or the West has influenced Islam is that Islamic theology, which is the foundation of all other things Islamic, is founded on a rejection of the Christianity and the West. Islamic anti-Semitism is clearly a consequence of Islamic theology and would be exactly the same had Christianity never existed, just as Muslim anti-Christianism would be just as extreme had the Crusades never happened.
All of the anthropologists and sociologists in the world know that there are tribal cultures who adhere to the belief that all members of other tribes are less than human in some way, and that this way of thinking is part of the legacy of primitive times that needs to be overcome in order for material and social progress to occur at a global level. All of the worlds non-Muslims need to say to Islam that the world cannot allow its tribal mentality to continue wreaking havoc on those outside the tribe and we will do whatever is necessary to stop it, including declaring full-on war against every Muslim on earth.
75% of the world is non-Muslim and that 75% owns about 99% of the worlds fire-power. It is not in Islam's interest to have us use that fire-power unrestrainedly, but I know that many will support that policy if push comes to shove, which it apparently will be doing, and soon. No amount of Al-Jazeera video of carnage and civilian atrocities in Muslim areas will sway me from that position once it is reached, either.
I've already got it rationalized as a "win-win". They want to die in a jihad in order to have their last moments on earth be filled with the "knowledge" that they will go directly to paradise and I want to stop them from being able to threaten civilization by any means necessary.
Let us just say, for the sake of argument, that antisemitism is in fact something that the contemporary Islamic World has chosen to pull out of the garbage bin of European History and consume hungrily.
Does that excuse it? Where'd they get the appetite?
It is entirely possible that Europe is responsible for developing the most comprehensive and deadly form of antisemitism ever known.
But, Europe (The West) also developed representative government, religious pluralsim, individual rights, the rule of law, and, rational inquiry (even when it challenges religious precepts).
The Islamic World has proven perfectly capable of embracing the former while showing remarkable indifference to the latter.
I have some of those (muslim posters) over on my blog. If you're ready to engage them please go ahead and have ago:
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/13/asshole-of-the-month-sheik-taj-al-din-al-hilali/
And um, why does PBS continue to get our tax dollars? This is why no one watches that damn channel, they could decent accurate historical documentaries on the History channel, and now with BBC America, our nation’s ravenous appetite for Monty Python and other British men in drag can be satisfied there.
That explains why Muslims get on so well with Hindus and Buddhists.
People on Bali must feel especially warmly towards Muslims, as no doubt Hindus do in Malaya and across India.
Blame PBS and BBC and all the other publicly funded TV networks. They are havens for leftist hacks. Otherwise unemployable wackos and commies. Jews have to get rid of their support for socialism and public funding for commies at PBS because the left is anti Israel.
MuhammadMarx - the threat to the West. Once a nation has nationalized health care the dependency on centralized big Gubbermint gets too strong to counteract the party line from DC or any nation's capital
While the supposed documentary was farcical, from top to bottom, the appearance of Bernard Lewis was not the worst of it. One did not expect people of the level of Gavin Langmuir and Leon Poliakoff, but to have man-in-black Tony Judt, and PLO-propagandist (for that was how he got started back in Beirut, before getting that "degree" in Middle Eastern studies from Hourani's D. Phil. factory at St. Antony's) put in appearances was hard to stomach.
As for Lewis, a man more outwardly cultivated than wise, and who in his mass-audience "The Middle East: A History of the Past 2000 Years," devotes exactly three paragraphs, on one out of a total of 400 pages, to the status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule -- which is not distant from Le Pen's justifying his remark that the death camps were a "detail" of World War II, by noting that in some histories of that war that "detail" is discussed in a few pages), he keeps up this nonsense about how antisemitism was non-existent in the world of Islam, and is essentially a European import.
But this is nonsense. The Qur'an and Hadith are full of anti-Jewish remarks. The Jews were held to have been the most adamant (the adjective "stiff-necked" comes to mind) of Muhammad's opponents, and they were always the special victims of his aggression and violence (see the Khaybar Oasis, see the Banu Qurayza, see what happened to the family of his Jewish sex-slave girl, or to individual Jews who appeared to oppose him).
Had Lewis understood things better, had he understood how to frame them, had he been less intent on his self-appointed exculpatory task, perhaps influenced by his own mistreatment by English antisemites in the Foreign Office, and his own memories of Europe during the War, to be compared with how much he was made of in Turkey and not only by fellow Ottomanists, he would have said the following:
"There is not one but many antisemitisms. That of Western Christendom, with which we are all familiar, is different in its origins from that within the world of Islam. In Islam there is a general incluclated hostility toward all non-Muslims, and a belief in Muslim or still more accurately, Arab supremacism, but it is true that within that general hostility special animus is reserved, in the canonical texts, for the Jews. And while Muslims in the 20th century found a natural affinity with Hitler -- let's not forget the role played by Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, in encouraging Hitler and in turn, being encouraged by him, and his practical role in raising an all-Muslim S.S. force -- they did not derive their own antisemitism, rooted in the texts, from Hitler or any other European source."
That is what Lewis should have said. And he perhaps should have been, in the writing of his own book about "Semites and Anti-Semites," a bit more careful about his use of other Western scholars, beginning with Georges Vajda.
Israel: "its very existence a violation of traditional Islamic code."
Many, because of NPR and others, will never realize this.
This is not the first time Lewis whitewashes islamic antisemitism and islam's attitude to non-muslims in general. But the worst part is that he is considered a foremost expert of islam by almost everybody.
PBS stands for Propaganda Bullshit and Sedition. No matter what they show as a faux document of history always has tinges of anti American and anti Western dogma. I watched about 20 minutes of something about the Crusades and the Crusaders were depicted as as alchahol guzzling sex fiends and the Muslims as noble religious warriors. This is first rate propaganda.
Reality, apparently, is whatever you want it to be and has absolutely no relevance to the truth. This is the logic that moves PBS to blame Islam's hatred of Israel upon both Christians and Jews.
This hatred of Jews and Christians and blaming them as the source of all anti-Semitism is the sheer lunacy of PBS and their left-wing cohorts who are atheistic secularists aka dhimmis of the West.
http://www.realclearreligion.com
Anti-Semitic?
Bah!!
I am anti discrimination .. and thus (of course) .. I am opposed to organisations that promote discrimination and hatred ...
but who are promoting discrimination and hatred in the modern world??
well - I *don't* think that the "dirty jews" are promoting discrimination at all ...
kuffr and proud == i will not submit
Jew-hate is the Sixth Pillar of Ismla
Though I haven't researched it yet; one might be propelled into thinking that PBS might be gathering, or soliciting some of the same funding from the same groups that have warped, and perverted the thinking of a certain former President. Certainly one would think that their charter does not allow such influential funds as does a former President's Center, never mind that 15 members of that center have resigned in what should rightly be called disgust.
Apparently the researchers on this program conveniently chose not to research the Quranic teachings that rage with Anti-Semitism. The question is why did they put a different spin on this? Could we see Anti-Semitism raising its ugly head among the authors of this program? Why such a blatant omission of the historic truth that most of us on this sight clearly understand and can see? Why did they ignore the Nazi contribution to Anti-Semitism that was encouraged by Islamic leaders at the time? Why did they ignore the contribution of the Russian secret agents false book the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." which is an extremely popular book throughout the Islamic world including Turkey. And why did they ignore the Hamas Charter that calls for the killing of all Jews, and the complete destruction of Israel? And of course Hamas was voted in by the Palestinian people.
Islam from its inception is an anti-semitic faith. There racism was not learnt from the Christian west.
The Protocols of Zion and Mein Kampf are merely used to add support to their anti-semitic beliefs, they are not the causes. The Koran is!
Muslim anti-semitism has always been there and will exist until the End of Days but guess what the Trees can only talk in the Lord of the Rings.
"he is considered a foremost expert of islam by almost everybody."
-- from a posting above
No, he isn't. It is just that those who do Middle Eastern studies come in two varieties: the apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who hate Lewis for knowing a bit too much about Islam, and for so intelligently attacking Edward Said. In other words, the espositos and the armstrongs and dabashis and khalidis and ernst-sells brigade all hate him.
And these apologists for Islam who have cleverly wormed their way into academic department after acadeic department, who have more or less taken over MESA Nostra and also now dominate the editorial boards of professional journals where they permit either Islamic propaganda about the Lesser Jihad (hypertrophied attention to "the Palestinians"), or anodyne articles on subject sufficiently abstruse, so that Islam is seen not steadily and whole, but only this or that untroubling aspect (nothing about Jihad-conquest, nothing about the treatment of dhimmis), are so obviously awful, and so obviously against Lewis, that one wishes, and many have assumed, that Lewis is a tremendously learned (he is), and therefore reliable (he isn't) truth-teller about Islam.
Meanwhile, Lewis, who takes a generous interest in his students, has produced a cadre of acolytes who are not capable of recognizing when the gold-leaf on their idol comes off in their hands. And they defend him, and will not hear of attacks, especially attacks by those who are much cruder and ruder than he.
And then there are still others impressed by the fact of age, and unwilling to see someone over 90, with all his faculties intact, criticized for his enthusiastic support of the Oslo Accords, or for the Iraq venture, or for such his belated recognition of the menace of Europe's islamization which is then followed not by any intelligent setting out of Things To Do, but rather of seeming to support, yet again, the hopeless squandering in Iraq, for how else can one interpret that recent remark by Lewis that itself needs to be remarked upon, which was "Either we bring them freedom, or they will destroy us." What a statement. What an astounding thing to say,.
Try to imagine, in the middle of World War II, FDR or Churchill saying that "either we bring them [the people of Nazi Germany] freedom, or they will destroy us." The goal of Churchill and FDR was not to "bring freedom" but to destroy our enemies, so that they would lack the capacity to harm us, and so that they would be so damaged that they would lose whatever hold they had on the minds and allegiances of men.
Lewis has been so wrong, so obviously wrong, in his practical prescriptions, and so shallow, finally, in his comprehension of the full malevolence and menace toward Infidels that Islam poses, and this is partly, one feels, the result of personal vanity, which is always embarrassing to bring up.
But there it is.
"PBS stands for Propaganda Bullshit and Sedition." by Briars
I like that. Here are some alternatives:
NPR - National Proletariat Radio
National Propaganda Radio
PBS - People's Broadcasting Network
JW/DW, Spencer, Fitzgerald, Bat Y'eor, Bostom, Sina, J.Q.Adams, Servier, Hurgronge and many, many others = the answer to the cancer.
Why would any serious young non-muslim mind deliberately seek brainwashing in lieu of education? Keep exposing them. Just as carter's latest book is now thoroughly discredited, and sought only by the ignorant who are determined to remain that way, so should these PBS and BBC fauxumentaries and so should these university departments, bought and paid for by arab dictators.
Dear Hugh: I wonder what Noam Chomski would have contributed to the PBS show?
Maybe Barbara Streisand could contibute a learned essay on the subject.
Hi people,
I'm trying to get through to a bunch of blind PC-riddled people on OhmyNews who can't seem to see what's in front of their bloody eyes. And we have a Muslim on the forum who is fooling people with all the usual taqiya Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace-and-Israel-is-Satan bull****. He's also telling people that Arabs aren't first class citizens of Israel, etc. If you have spare time, PLEASE drop a line at OhMyNews and help me wake some people up. What's sad about so many liberals is that they can't seem to understand that ISLAM IS AN ENEMY OF LIBERALISM. Liberals should be more mad than anyone else about the world war these bastards are waging against us. I know I am. Anyway, like I said, please spare a moment to visit OhMyNews and help counteract Islamic propaganda. I know there are only too many people who need help waking up, but I'd really appreciate it if someone with a really in-depth knowledge of Islam could help fight this lying bilge.
No need to register to post or comment!
http://english.ohmynews.com/TALK_BACK/bbs_list.asp?ba_code=63
An angry, Islamaphobic liberal. (The real kind, not the whining, surrendering, cowardly kind)
"Fauxmentary" is, I presume, is a homophone of "fomentary," a word which does not yet exist, but is, semantically, perhaps close to fauxmentary. For the fomenting of the audience is a result of the airy faux-ment of it all.
I have had trouble with several statements made by Lewis over the years. A good example is from his paper "The New Anti-Semitism by Bernard Lewis, The American Scholar - Volume 75 No. 1 Winter 2006 pp. 25-36" in which he states...
"The comparison has often been made between the Cold War of the 20th century and the confrontation between Christendom and Islam in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. In many ways the comparison is a good one. But one has to remember that in the confrontation between Christendom and Islam, the movement of refugees, of those who, in Lenin’s famous phrase, “voted with their feet,” was overwhelmingly from west to east not from east to west"
This statement is highly debateable and I would ask Lewis based on what? Its these kind of sweeping statements that bother the heck out me. The point Lewis was trying to make was people wanted to live under Ottoman control which I doubt was the reason even if the demographic data is true. Also the 15th-17th centuries were periods of vast Ottoman military gains and then by the end of the 17th century loses. Of course people are going to be migrating all over the place because most of eastern Europe was a war zone. The reason it was a war zone was becuase the Turks invaded. Maybe Bernard Lewis should brush up on his military history before making statements like the above.
The paper goes on and on making assumption after assumption. Somehow he manages to link the Dryfus affair and some bad european translations of anti-semitic writings at the time to the modern Islamic version of anti-semitism. He seems to think it was:
(1st) Chrisitan missionaries feeding anti-semitic ideas to christian minorities in muslim lands that then feed those ideas to muslims
(2nd) The Dreyfus period european anti-semitic translations
(3rd) Hitler and the Nazis
He states: "The growth of European-style anti-Semitism in the Arab world derived in the main from this feeling of humiliation and the need therefore to ascribe to the Jews a role very different from their traditional role in Arab folklore and much closer to that of the anti-Semitic prototypes"
Bernard! Pick up the Koran (you still read it right and not your own flowery writings on the subject).
The reason we have anti-semitism in Islam is becuase it has been there from day 1. The only reason muslims site stuff like the examples above is becuase it fortified their own notions of the Jewish faith. I can assure you they don't need to quote european writings from the Dreyfus period to back up their hatred for Jews. They find all they need in their own holy works. How many times do muslims use ancient battles with the Jews to explain their hatred? Always! When was the last time you heard a radical cleric screaming about Dreyfus? Never! The only reason the Jews were not treated as bad in the past was becuase Jews in the east were subdued under their Islamic masters.
Today Jews are not subdued and thus the return of Islamic hatred of Jews. They MUST be subdued.
It is a matter of Islamic faith.
Oh boy. Feel free to call me an idiot.
I just renewed my contribution to PBS because I watch their cooking shows on weekends (you can't see the wonderful, eccentric Julia Child anywhere else, or Jaques Pepin's memories of his French bourgeois childhood home and kitchen) and because I would feel like a cheat if I didn't pay for the pleasure.
I don't watch their documentaries, unless they are about animals, especially about cats. I don't have, and I won't get, cable TV.
I'm going to try to cancel my contribution, though I have a feeling it's not possible.
Call me an idiot again.
SURGE at PBS
PBS has an ombudsman and he's been overwhelmed lately by the fomenting audience's comments surrounding a certain faux-men-tarry. (xoxox 4 Hugh)
"Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one is rather long. In fact, it is extremely long. You could even call it a “surge,” to use the word of the moment.
This mailbag surge is mostly because there’s been a burst of post-New Year’s correspondence surrounding, especially, a new documentary aired on Jan. 8 titled “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence.” Anyone who follows news of the Middle East and the long struggle among Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs and Israelis will understand that this subject provokes fierce opinion and argument."
You can leave a comment here:
http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/
Instead of going with the historian who has staked his entire career on misrepresenting Islamic "tolerance", PBS should have (but for obvious reasons couldn't bring itself to) tell the truth. Here it is, in Andrew McCarthy's recent review of Robert Spencer's Muhammad bio:
"In Medina, the Muslims were pitted against an alliance of the Quraysh and the Qurayzah Jews in the “Battle of the Trench.” During the Muslims’ building of the defensive trench, Muhammad’s pick blows are said to have emitted lightening flashes, which drew cries of “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is greatest” — the “Islamic cry of victory” for Spencer) and were interpreted by the Prophet as a sign that Allah would eventually make Islam triumphant beyond Arabia in the east and west. Opining that “war is deceit,” Muhammad directed one of his followers to appear as a sympathizer to the enemy factions, while sowing discord between them. It worked: the Quraysh abandoned the field and the Muslims laid siege to the Jews, whom Muhammad called “brothers of monkeys.” (Spencer notes three places — 2:62-65, 5:59-60 and 7:166 — where the Koran records that “Allah transformed the Sabbath-breaking Jews into pigs and monkeys.”) When the Qurayzah surrendered and sought mercy, Muhammad agreed with the assessment of his follower Sad bin Muadh that “their warriors should be killed and their children and women should be taken as captives.” In the execution, Muhammad personally participated in the beheading of between 600 and 900 captives — including all males who had reached puberty.
This incident was not unique. Spencer recounts that Muhammad ordered a Jewish poet, Kab bin al-Ashraf, killed because the Prophet took offense at “amatory verses of an insulting nature about Muslim women.” After the murder, he commanded the Muslims: “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” When Muhammad ordered the expulsion of the Nadir Jews with whom area Muslims had a treaty, Muhammad’s emissary declared, “Hearts have changed, and Islam has wiped out the old covenants.” When the Jews declined to leave, Muhammad construed this to mean that “[t]he Jews have declared war” — another reminder that whether Islam is “under attack,” the trigger of jihad, is ever in the eyes of the beholder. In the ensuing siege, the Prophet ordered the earth scorched, refuting his own prohibition against the wanton destruction of property so often cited by Islamic apologists. And in the “Raid at Khaybar,” Muhammad directed that a Jewish leader, Kinana bin al-Rabi, be tortured to extract the location of tribal treasure; when al-Rabi stood fast, Muhammad had him beheaded, and later, when more hidden treasure was located, the incensed Prophet — as he had done with the Qurayzah Jews — directed that warriors among the Khaybar Jews be killed and the women and children taken as slaves."
Yes, Muslim antisemitism borrowed the demonic stuff from Christians, but the groundwork for Jew-hatred was laid from the moment the Jewish tribes rejected the Messanger and his revelation. That's what comes of being the first monotheism: the monetheisms that followed, convinced that their faiths superceeded Judaism and Jewish claims to be God's "chosen" felt compelled to cast asperions on Jews for having rejected the one true faith, first Christianity and then Islam.
A portion of Christendom has owned up to its role in historical judenhass. But for various reasons too many people prefer to give Islam a pass and remain ignorant about judenhass in core Islamic texts. And people like Bernard Lewis, who have a vested interest in keeping them in the dark, are more than happy to keep it that way.
It's telling that PBS went to Arabs to "explain" the new Judeophobia, rather than to Jewish experts such as Robert Wistrich, Shmuel Trigano, Alain Finkielkraut, and many others. Lewis is Jewish, but he errs on this issue. On the other hand, in his book, Semites and Anti-Semites, Lewis devotes a chapter to Arab collaboration in the Holocaust and with the Nazis, particularly the doings of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the chief leader [British-appointed] of the palestinian Arabs. Now, since the Holocaust preceded the rebirth of Israel in 1948, Arab collaboration in it, particularly that of the Mufti Husseini, cannot be attributed to anything that Israel did.
Of course, as others have said, Muslim Judeophobia goes back to the early days of Islam. On this I recommend the book "Il 'Complotto Ebraico'" by Carlo Panella [2005]. Ibn Hazm, the medieval Muslim philosopher in Spain, was notoriously Judeophobic.
Moreover, Arab auxiliary forces joined the Roman legions in the siege of Jerusalem in the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, these Arabs were motivated by hatred of Jews [Tacitus, The Histories, book V:1]. Apparently the feeling was mutual. Anyhow, how do the "leftists" at PBS justify the ancient Arab collaboration with the Roman imperialists against the Jewish freedom struggle?
I know I have put this link here before
http://www.conceptwizard.com/pipeline_of_hatred.html
but this time for the newbies!
Isn't it wonderful seeing history re-written before your eyes?Must be one of islams greatest achievements.
"Fauxmentary" is, I presume, is a homophone of "fomentary," a word which does not yet exist, but is, semantically, perhaps close to fauxmentary. For the fomenting of the audience is a result of the airy faux-ment of it all.
Posted by: Hugh"
Interesting interpretation, Hugh!
I read it more like the new word, "fauxtography",,therefore to me it seemed more like faux-documentary, or "fauxumentary".
In any case, both are quite valid and apporopriate!
No, you misunderstood. I took as a given that "fauxmentary" is a recent invention (a month or two old, possibly) based on "fauxtrography" which also came home from the hospital quite recently. But I wanted to point out that it sounds, and could even mean, the same as an as-yet-nonexistent "fomentary." We are not just on the same page, but on the same line of that page.
"But I wanted to point out that it sounds, and could even mean, the same as an as-yet-nonexistent "fomentary." We are not just on the same page, but on the same line of that page.
Posted by: Hugh "
Thanks for that Hugh. I understood it - no worries!
"I'm going to try to cancel my contribution, though I have a feeling it's not possible.
Call me an idiot again."
Ave, Ovidius. Si vale, bene est. Valeo.
I won't call you an idiot and don't cancel your subscription.
We want the village idiots out where we can keep an eye on them...and I can't get Austin City Limits anywhere else.
I did not watch the PBS show, because I gave up on them long ago. However, if Bernard Lewis has been accurately quoted, there may be something to what he says.
Islam certainly was anti-Jewish from the moment Muhammad realized that the Jews were not buying his message. By the same token, there is a long history of anti-Judaism in Christianity (of the kind which, as some noted, could be solved by "a splash of baptismal water"). Also, it is important to realize that Islam is, for the same reason it is anti-Jewish, anti-Christian as well.
The term "Anti-Semitism" stems from the 19th century German writer Wilhelm Marr. It views the essence of European culture as residing in "Aryan" genes rather than in Christianity; and condemns the Jews not because they are not Christians, but because they represented and "alien" and "Asiatic" intrusion into Europe. In that sense, the propaganda spewing from the Arab world today DOES owe something to a Europe that was rapidly shedding all of its Christian identity (except for the feeling that the Jews are a "them" rather than an "us").
Even so, I will not take seriously any "documentary" on the state of the Jews (or any other Ahl-al-Kitab) under Islam hat does not take a look at the Qu'ran and the Hadith as sources for Muslim Judaeophobia. The myth of idyllic Andalus sure dies hard.
I have some of those (muslim posters) over on my blog. If you're ready to engage them please go ahead and have ago:
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/13/asshole-of-the-month-sheik-taj-al-din-al-hilali/
Posted by: sheik yer'mami
Hey.. I went and blasted the motroll you had on there. I hope I wasn't too hard on the poor bugger.
"I have some of those (muslim posters) over on my blog. If you're ready to engage them please go ahead and have ago:
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/13/asshole-of-the-month-sheik-taj-al-din-al-hilali/
Posted by: sheik yer'mami
Hey.. I went and blasted the motroll you had on there. I hope I wasn't too hard on the poor bugger.
Posted by: MeanieMo"
Thanks, Meanie Mo. I have done same. I think we were too soft on him. Stupidity is as stupidity does.
I haven't got the energy, (and the time today) to keep it up. Have a nice day all - I am off to my son's 32nd birthday party!
The myth of idyllic Andalus sure dies hard.
My hypothesis is that the ones keeping that myth alive really would find it idyllic. "Gee, why spend so much energy trying to live life on my own terms when I can just listen to my Muslim overlords and have them take responsibility for me?" appears to be the foundation of their perspective, albeit unconsciously, because everything they do objectively helps Muslims. I simply do not think the principles of self-government and individual liberty have penetrated as deeply into the West as I would have hoped.
The Left has done exactly the opposite of what a rational person who is capable of interpreting empirical evidence would do in regards to Islam since 9/11, going from supporting an aggressive response to preferring a passive one. Not one shred of evidence has been generated in the 5 years since 9/11 that passivity is the correct policy response. Those who do not see the incipient threat of Islam are not fit to make policy because they are incapable of evaluating empirical evidence. Period.
To the guy above who contributed to PBS.. I do suggest you try and withdraw your support. Are you *NUTS* to pay for enemy propaganda?! Would you pay for Bridges or for Al-Jerkzeera?
Don't worry - you won't be cheating when you watch your cooking show for free!!
Call it reverse Jiziyah.
Puke-BS is taxpayer-financed so you've paid them more than plenty! I and some of the others here have also funded their crap without being asked first.
Then there are the Heinz foundation and all the others who finance Puke-BS and NoPRain's leftist drivel. Flush with cash from the profits they make off us daily. Instead of lowering the price of what they sell to us they funnel money to dubious causes and groups.
When you give money to these stations you are not cheating them but you are in fact cheating yourself and US. You are giving as small support to the Voice of the Enemy.
Wars are also economical in nature. The frontlines are no longer deliniated by borders and battle fronts. The frontlines are even such simple things as our spending habits and the emails and letters we write.
Please be very conscious from now on whom we give our money to. The enemy is infinitely more well-funded and we need to conserve our resources judiciously.
Hugh/
Sorry, but 'fomentary' is a real word in English (albeit, maybe not in American English) and is in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is very rarely used and is considered obsolete. It means that which foments, or, by extension, one who foments (a fomenter, in an other and a more modern word) and its plural form is 'fomentaries'.
Dominic.
What a dope I am not to have checked in the dictioary before assuming that "fomentary" did not already exist. Everything already exists, or practically everything. Fomentary it is. And it may be listed as "obs." but the use of it right here may help to escort it triumphantly back into high society.
And um, why does PBS continue to get our tax dollars? This is why no one watches that damn channel, they could decent accurate historical documentaries on the History channel, and now with BBC America, our nation’s ravenous appetite for Monty Python and other British men in drag can be satisfied there.
Posted by: JadeDragoness
Living in New York I can tell you that you can get more than your fill of those things right on the street. Without spending a dime of taxpayer funds :-)
How about "dhimmi-mentary", with an echo of "dim-witted"?
Hugh/
"...but the use of it right here may help to escort it triumphantly back into high society."
Excellent idea. Perhaps, whilst we are at it we should also revive 'jactance' (and the act itself - 'jactation') to refer to the outrageous claims some moslems make about various things and inventions. It has a certain earthy ring to it, don't you think? (Indeed, almost overtones of the 'sin of Onan'!)
Dominic.
"Islam certainly was anti-Jewish from the moment Muhammad realized that the Jews were not buying his message."
And guess what his message was? It was that he, Mohammed, was newly and ultimately privileged by the Jewish God to be the reviver and leader of the true Israel that had been deformed for so long by most Jews, except for an elite line of prophets of which he, Mohammed, was the final one -- sent by God to finally set Mankind straight and prepare the way for the global domination of Islam, the Apocalypse, and the End of the World.
Imagine Joseph Smith with a splash of Cromwell, a dash of Rasputin, a heaping cup of Charles Manson, a dollop of Fitty Cent and Hugh Hefner, generous helpings of Napoleon and Hitler, and a few shakes of the raving homeless dope addict in the Greyhoud bus station with untreated schizoaffective disorder and delusions of grandeur -- and you have the fixings to construct the actual Mohammed of history and/or legend.
PalleyWood studios makes another propaganda video , except the child actor exploited by playing injured child/dead child .
The link below is to a video asserting to tell the TRUTH about Israeli war-crimes from last November , the script and assigned roles delayed the movie along with the Rent-A-Ambulance service
and Rent-A-Victim Company.
Take note of the childs unique ear lobe and concaved spot on the left ear which is dark from a possible shadowing effect , I stopped the video at the 1:34 point and then launched another browser for the same website and video because something looked really odd about the two children , in the second browser I ran the video to the 2.47ish spot and froze the frame .
Low and behold when I put the two frames beside each other it was the same ear lobe and hole but a different set of clothes plus the child was now alive and having blood wiped off their face.
There is no way that 2 kids with the exact ear defects were the same age and in the exact building that was hit by an Israeli bomb and both
had head injuries to the left cranium , you only need to rotate the image at the 2:47 frame just a slight bit to the counter clockwise to see the match that exposes another scam by PalleyWood Studios .
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c31f8ec7f5
I wouldn't be the least surprised if the child was drugged to fall asleep and lose all auto-nerve motor reactions from the REM stage or nightmare twitches, these are the same sick Mothers that strap bombs to theirown kids as suicide-bombers and having a child-star from a PalleyWood production is a badge of honour to promote more hatred on Earth and retain the Victimhood status as a career whiner that blames the Jews for all their shortcomings.
Ok, let's be clear here. Bernard Lewis in the PBS documentary suggested that there are two models of how Muslims and Jews related to each other in pre-modern times. One model suggests that they were living in complete harmony (a regular paradise); the other model suggests that Jews were in a perilous state -- subject to constant persecution and discrimination. Lewis argues that neither view is accurate.
Lewis suggests that Arabs tolerated Jews so long as Jews accepted inferiority, and that Jews did not enjoy full rights. On occasions Jews were also subjected to violence (murderous pogroms) under Islam.
But, Lewis maintains, Islam did not subscribe to a belief that Jews were demonically evil or that Jews possessed a kind of cosmic Satanism. It's this latter form of antisemitism (Lewis alleges) that the Christians brought to Islamic lands.
Ok, that's Lewis' argument. My problems with this? First, this kind of argument does not give (imo) sufficient emphasis on the religious nature of the "inferiority" of Jews under islam. Lewis seems to wish to overlook the religious mandate behind discrimination toward Jews under Muslim rule (or at least to drastically downplay its importance.)
Next, whether Jews are murdered because they are deemed to be incarnations of Satan or eliminated because they're lying, mischievous "Infidels" -- isn't this academic? In either case, you're dead. Who cares? This is as if you'd argue that a Jew murdered by an Islamic suicide bomber is oh so much better than to have been burnt at the stake by a Christian! (O praise be to the pagan g-d of sacrifice!). It's almost laughable -- frankly, in the end, it makes NO difference -- you're dead in any event.
Next, it seems to me that what Lewis is attempting to do is whitewash the most horrendous aspects of islam. How is this done? Well, suppose you live in the Arctic -- you may be subject to extreme temperatures, say, minus 40 in the winter, but plus 20 in the summer. These are the extremes, can you then, simply add the two, then divide the two extremes and come up with a "medium", then claim that it's this medium that describes the climate? (In other words, like Lewis you're "modifying" or leveling off the extreme ends of the spectrum -- the pluses and the minus-- to arrive at some non-existent "medium"). If one were to do so, you'd end up with a temp (Celsius) of 0 degrees -- hey, that sounds reasonable. But suppose, you decide since the medium temp is 0 degrees to show up in the midst of winter -- what happens? you freeze to death. Doing a simple average of the two extremes in temperature is not the correct way of judging the actual conditions or figuring out what's the "norm." Ditto for Islam. Eliminating the two extreme of the "models" does not, necessarily produce an Islam of "moderation."
We have to figure out what is the NORM for Islam with respect to religious minorities. And, unlike Lewis, I do not believe it's "moderation." It's intolerance which often flares up to create pogroms, then dies back down to a low ebb (just discrimination and inferiority and intolerance, but not outright murder), only to flare up once again to express itself in outright murder. That's Islam.
Jew-hate is the Sixth Pillar of Ismla
Posted by: november1981 at January 13, 2007 01:09 PM
No, it's the seventh. Jihad is the sixth.
There is a major row in Australia at the moment
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070111/23/1219e.html
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1826209.htm
Australia's Muslim leader says:
Muslims have more right to be in Australia than Anglo Saxons
Timbo
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/014792.php#comments
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/13/asshole-of-the-month-sheik-taj-al-din-al-hilali/
Posted by: sheik yer'mami
Lots of goodies at both links.
Yet another busy day on the 'blogs!
This is the latest on the Sheik, Timbo.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sheikh-an-embarrassment-says-pm/2007/01/14/1168709599368.html
Seems his son-in-law is a convert. Can you guys believe their name is Mr and Mrs Tocock? (tu quoque???).
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sheikhs-ok-say-inlaws/2007/01/13/1168105227900.html
Please check my logic:
1) Blaming "the Jews" for things is anti-Semitic.
2) Blaming "the Jews" was a key feature of Nazism, a fascist movement which was certainly a low point of human history, but a benchmark of ant-Semitism.
3) The left likes to call people who disagree with the left "fascists".
4) The left is now blaming "the Jews" for problems in the Middle East (and elsewhere).
Doesn't that make the left fascist? Doesn't that make the politically-correct left akin to the Nazis? Or am I missing something here?
Leftist ideology goes a long way to creating that gap between what is said and what is done, and in that gap does leftist ideology abide....
Antisemitism is born out of jealousy.
Always has been, always will be.
Mohammed and his Companions were jealous of the great success enjoyed by the Banus in Arabia, the success of their farming operations, their craft works, their education, their civil systems.
The pagan Arabians (now Arabian Moslems) looked pathetic by comparison.
Always has been, always will be.
Call it performance envy.
Doesn't that make the left fascist? Doesn't that make the politically-correct left akin to the Nazis?
Posted by: Gunslinger07
Exactly right.
Hitler was a socialist.
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1010
Since PBS is taxpayer supported, shouldn't we be able to file a class action lawsuit against them when they use PBS funds to produce trash like this? I'd rather see it used on useful things, like handing out water wings in New Orleans or something?