In "The Enemy at Home: Dinesh D’Souza Takes Sides in the War on Terror—Osama bin Laden's Side" in The Stranger, Bruce Bawer, author of the essential While Europe Slept, follows Dinesh D'Souza's reasoning (in D'Souza's "jaw-droppingly repulsive screed") to its conclusion.
I have written at some length about this book three or four times now, but Bawer has captured the essence of the problem with the book far more concisely and effectively than I ever did, and this is the one piece everyone should read about it.
...Charging that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11,” he wants good Christians to recognize that Islamic values resemble their own—and that the real enemy is those fags next door. If only they’d retarget their rage, thereby showing their respect for “traditional values,” Muslims would stop hating the USA.D’Souza (who says he is Catholic) invites us to “imagine how American culture looks and feels to someone who has been raised in a traditional society… where homosexuality is taboo and against the law…. One can only imagine the Muslim reaction to televised scenes of homosexual men exchanging marriage vows in San Francisco and Boston.” Let it be recalled that D’Souza is referring here to a “traditional society” in which girls of 13 or 14 are routinely forced to marry their cousins, and in which the groom, if his conjugal attentions are resisted on the wedding night, is encouraged by his new in-laws to take his bride by force. Such are the sensitivities that, D’Souza laments, are so deeply offended by the American left, which “would like to have Mapplethorpe’s photographs and Brokeback Mountain seen in every country… the left wants America to be a shining beacon of golden depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.”
This isn’t entirely new territory for D’Souza. In What’s So Great about America? (2002), while celebrating the U.S. for enabling him—an immigrant from India—to achieve “a life that made me feel true to myself,” he condemned as contemptibly self-indulgent others who sought to be true to themselves. The West, he summed up, is “based on freedom,” Islam “on virtue”; while praising the latter, he claimed (ultimately) to prefer the former—though it seemed a close call, for while freedom for the likes of himself is cool, freedom for certain others is merely a license to sin. In any event, he’s now firmly in the “virtue” camp. He still claims to prize freedom—he just doesn’t like what some people have done with it. Hence he recommends a more Islamic (i.e., Orwellian) definition of “freedom”—namely the kind of “freedom” in which newly free citizens hold free elections in which they vote in authoritarians who promise to impose sharia.
As for “virtue”—well, D’Souza fumes for pages at length about the moral corruption of everything from Pulp Fiction and Jerry Springer to Britney Spears and Will and Grace, ardently contrasting all this vice and filth to the glorious uprightness of Muslim family values. Forget the sky-high rates of wife-beating and intrafamily rape in Muslim households; forget the stoning to death of gays and rape victims—D’Souza offers only scattered, rote, and understated acknowledgments that Muslim domestic culture might not be 100 percent morally pure (“There is, of course, no excuse for the abuses of patriarchy”). He ignores the Muslim schoolbooks and media that routinely depict Jews as subhumans who merit extinction; he winks at the current persecution of “traditional, family oriented” Christians (and Hindus) across the Muslim world; and he pretends that “most traditional Muslims” condemn honor killings. (On the contrary, when European Muslims slaughter their daughters, journalists struggle to find coreligionists who’ll criticize them for doing so.)
He’s quick to warn, moreover, that in discussing potentially troubling aspects of Muslim culture, “we should be on guard against the blinders of ethnocentrism.” In short, while inviting conservative Christians to buy the idea that Muslim family values are essentially equivalent to their own, he wants them to overlook the multitudinous—and profoundly disturbing—ways in which they aren’t. He labors consistently to minimize this value gap—and thereby reinforce his argument that today’s terrorism (far from perpetrating a centuries-long tradition of violent jihad) is, quite simply, a reaction to America’s post-’60s moral dissipation. He would have his readers believe that if only the U.S. returned to the values of the Eisenhower era, our Muslim adversaries would let us be. But he deliberately obscures the mountains of evidence that for “traditional Muslims,” even small-town 1940s America wouldn’t do. For example, in sympathetically describing the outraged response of Sayyid Qutb, the father of modern Islamism, to America’s debauchery, D’Souza neatly skirts the fact that Qutb first witnessed that debauchery at a church dance in the then-dry burg of Greeley, Colorado, in 1948—a year when, as Robert Spencer has noted, the highlights of America’s decadent pop culture included the movie Easter Parade and Dinah Shore’s recording of “Buttons and Bows.”
Minor point: that was indeed here at Jihad Watch, but actually it was written not by me, but by Anne Crockett.
Promoting his tract on TV, D’Souza has consistently softened and misrepresented its message. His January 28 reply to critics, which ran in the Washington Post, is a masterpiece of dissembling: he complains that Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert hounded him with the question “But you agree with the Islamic radicals, don’t you?”—but fails to mention that he finally replied “Yes.” Indeed, though he purports to disdain those radicals, he writes about them far more compassionately than about anyone on the American left: Among the images he strives to improve are those of Theo van Gogh’s murderer (he quotes out of context a sensitive-sounding courtroom remark the butcher made to his victim’s mother), of bin Ladin and Khomeini (both of whom, we’re told, are “highly regarded” for their “modest demeanor, frugal lifestyle, and soft-spoken manner”), of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (whose criticism of gay marriage he approvingly cites, while omitting to note that Qaradawi also supports the death sentence for sodomites), and even of the 9/11 terrorists (D’Souza excerpts the goodbye letter one of them sent his wife, which he plainly finds noble and poignant).For those who cherish freedom, 9/11 was intensely clarifying. Presumably it, and its aftermath, have been just as clarifying for D’Souza, whose book leaves no doubt whatsoever that he now unequivocally despises freedom—that open homosexuality and female “immodesty” are, in his estimation, so disgusting as to warrant throwing one’s lot in with religious totalitarians. Shortly after The Enemy at Home came out, a blogger recalled that in 2003, commenting in the National Review on the fact that “influential figures” in America’s conservative movement felt “that America has become so decadent that we are ‘slouching towards Gomorrah,’” D’Souza wrote: “If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed.” Well, D’Souza has now made it perfectly clear that he’s one of those critics; and the book he’s written is nothing less than a call for America’s destruction. He is the enemy at home. Treason is the only word for it.
What an absolutely great piece. Thank you, Robert.
He has it right this guy is an complete traitor - he should go and live in Iran or some other Islamic shithole if he finds their values superior -
Failing that he should suffer the penalty of treason if he continues to live and enjoy the USA
" I can see why the Islamaniacs
have a problem with American values-"
IIFL - you also should be more careful in your pronouncements about our values - we have FREEDOM and people are free to live by their own values in our coutries and what the Islamist think I could not give a rflying f*** - why are we even debating this shit - I mean what values do they have - the values of the devil !
It seems to me that, by claiming himself a Catholic and therefore part of the religious right in America, he is simply providing the left another reason to hate the right. This book will likely only serve to inflame liberals against conservatives yet again.
My point of view is this: I will hold my own morality, religion and system of ethics because I want, too. And I am offended by many things, but I certainly don't kill anybody or lop off body parts because I'm offended.
I *** DO NOT CARE AT ALL IF THE ISLAMISTS APPROVE OF US OR NOT. I COULD GIVE A DAMN. ***
I will not have people who subjugate, brutalize, murder, and terrorize their own and other cultures preaching to me about anything.
And besides, much of Islam's "morality" has to do with keeping 1/2 of their population -- the women -- completely dominated by males. So I don't believe most of garbage about Islamic "morality" anyway.
What's evinced is actually no morality whatsoever, until you get to those Muslim pluralists, writers, authors, publishers and human rights activists who are resisting it. And they are many. They get no press, and they get pushed around by other Muslims all the time. As evidenced by the British Muslim soldiers who are now under death sentence from he Islamists in their midst.
But as for the rest, I could care less what they think. They aren't of a moral calibre to preach morality to anybody.
by claiming himself a Catholic and therefore part of the religious right in America, he is simply providing the left another reason to hate the right. This book will likely only serve to inflame liberals against conservatives yet again.
I agree with that statement, at the same time I don't think most liberals need a reason to despise authentic Catholic teaching or that of traditional Protestant groups.
The problem with his book is that many conservatives are buying into it because they agree with the moral decay on the left he speaks of (homosexuality, abortion, etc).
Where he gets it all wrong (and conservatives that agree with him) is to think that muslims will respect traditional Christian values if in fact we lived by them. I am a practicing, authentic Catholic and the islamic fanatics would do away with me as quickly as they would any liberal.
Even our allies in Europe don't understand what freedom is for an American. The EU harping on the US as being "cowboys"; as if that is something bad is one example.
I am also beginning to believe a lot of Americans don't understand it anymore as well.
On the "morality" of shari'a law.
Pakistan is in violation of every single women's and children's convention on human rights in the world.
Saudi Arabia is in violation of every single women's and children's convention on human rights in the world.
Iran is in violation of every single women's and children's convention on human rights in the world.
If you continue down the list of Arab League members, you can just replace "every single" with "most".
Don't preach to us, D'Souza. You're in no position.
Does D'Souza sound awfully much like Qubt to anybody else?
Dinesh D'Souza bears closer scrutiny. He may call himself Catholic, but no Catholic I know believes that we should destroy our own society to spite ourselves. What kind of an idiot would buy into that logic?
Could he not be at worst a mole for the Muslims, at best, a useful idiot? It would do us some good to find out a little bit more about how Mr. D'Souza spends his off time.
"This book will likely only serve to inflame liberals against conservatives yet again."
Posted by: BigDaddy at February 8, 2007 08:23 AM
BigDaddy,
Agreed. I thought and posted a nearly identical sentiment over two weeks ago. At least I am not alone.
"generally speaking our values are superior"
IIFL again you are qualifying it "generally" I suspect a slight admiration for the Islamic fascists - I mean even hitler got some things right? eh - absolutely not - they are evil their whole system is evil and we should not give them an inch even in arguments about "values in the end either we shall prevail or they shall prevail - this is a winner takes all situation - when it all comes to a head there will be no sitting on the fence - remember that!
'JUST ANOTHER MUSLIM APOLIGIST WHO SPEAKS WITH FORKED TOUNGE'....
t
THIS GUY AINT NO CATHOLIC/CHRISTIAN....how do i know this?,and its very important to understand this,all christians know not to point the finger,never!,its a big no-no as written in the bible.
And here we have a pinichio from india spinning us a long yarn!,read between the lines people,at best hes an uneducated muslim,at worst,hes a sneaky muslim on a crusade!.
Youve been rumbled mr de pinichio,and you know why i know your a spy?...because a christian..would never point the finger at a muslim..never.Take that plank of wood out of your eye...before you ....
IsabeltheCrusader:
CAIR, the ISNA, etc. have been judiciously recruiting people to speak for them who don't "look" like your normal thick-bearded Wahhabi. Notably the female head of ISNA this year, a Canadian Western convert to Islam. As always, I want to know who's funding someone when they do something this stupid. Natalia deLong-Bas, who wrote the whitewash of Wahhabism never even read Ibn abd al-Wahhab's correspondence or other writings, just took what the Saudis let her look at inside King Fahd university. They paid for her PhD.
Show me the money. And I want to hear what the Catholic Church has to say about this. Anybody heard any comments from them?
"The West, he summed up, is “based on freedom,” Islam “on virtue”; while praising the latter, he claimed (ultimately) to prefer the former.."
D’Souza does not understand freedom. Freedom is the unlimited right to reason, the unlimited right to express thoughts, ideas and opinions based on reason. It is a mind-spiritual thing and freedom implies all liberty and a free society. It is not licence. Both Islam and licence are an absolute threat to freedom. Islam is the foot-binding of the mind. License destroys freedom. Both Islam and license point straight to a totalitarian end.
The first principle of freedom must be its limitation based on the use of reason. Hence those behaviors, those expressions-incitements which interfere with opinions and ideas based on logical reasoning are oppressive to a free people. Islam is merely the flip-side of the licence coin. The choice is not between Islam and licence. The choice is between Islam-licence or freedom.
Ultimately, as the old saying goes: the devil is in the details. The definition of freedom here means that some issues (behaviors, expressions) are asserted by some to be expressions-behavior based on reason and the free and open exchange of ideas. In a free society those gray areas end up in court where the arguments are formulated pro and con. However, the ultimate principle of freedom always remains that it is the unlimited right to reason and the unlimited right to express thoughts and opinions based on reason-mind.
For a society to be free both Islam and licence must be well contained. Neither Islam nor license encourage the unlimited right to reason or the unlimited right to express thoughts and opinions based on reason. Again, D does not understand freedom, he has an infantile understanding of freedom.
Some of the Muslim family values are superior to our American chaos. They do have a god. There is no abortion in Islam and little divorce. The family and clan is strong. Women are doing what they are geniuses at -at birthing, at raising children, cooking, keeping the home and hearth organized and clean.
But I refuse to idealize all the above without looking at the downside. Which is that there is zero scientific progress in such a culture. How great are these family values when you live in dirt and poverty? How good are they when you always blame the infidel and the Jew for your failure? The very strong family-clan ties are strengthened further by generation upon generation of cousin marriage. The individual is locked in, cannot rebel and innovate, this kills all free thinking and progress. No one can break out of their orbit
Oddly, D shares the same infantile understanding of freedom as Islamic societies. It's an emotion based understanding of freedom. Freedom is about the mind-soul. People in free societies, people who cherish freedom, understand that and know that freedom is also about responsibility in expression and behavior. Without limitations, individual freedom becomes meaningless. Freedom is based in the use of the mind-reason, logic and responsibility. It is self-government. Islam and those who encourage license in behavior and expression have much in common since neither promote individual self-government based on the individual person's use of God's gift of reason.
dennisw-
Hitler used the same arguments re America. We were allegedly "immoral". Islamic societies have a similar idea of morality and freedom as the Nazis. In fact, the similarities between Islam and Nazi ideology are remarkable. Hitler himself noted that-so did Himmler. They were right.
We don't need Nazi family values or Islam. We need to cherish freedom, to understand what the gift of freedom means. We must ask God to guide us in our freedom so that we may escape the hellish control of the mind that is Nazism or Islam.
"Well, you have to admit that they deal with their enemies quite well-we could learn a lesson from them on that score."
You think we are no less ruthless than them? what you are seeing at the moment is an anomalie in western culture - soon we will revert to type and then gosd help these Islamists who thought they could take our countries - they will be crushed to dust - when this is all over - in a century or so a child will turn to its father and ask " who were the muslims dad" "oh they were bad people son" will be the reply
Morgaan,
The Catholic Church was effectively infiltrated and neutered after Vatican II. You will hear nothing about this from what masquerades as that church, except maybe some mamby-pamby excuse making from the similarly neutered American bishops.
I'm off to a meeting. 'Will check in with you guys later. Have a jihad-free day!
Yes, he is a traitor and deserves to be punished before being sent to sharia saudi.
"...invites us to “imagine how American culture looks and feels to someone who has been raised in a traditional society… where homosexuality is taboo and against the law…".
Well, well, a Tamil Brahmin woman (born and married into an equally orthodox joint family) who was never allowed to venture out of the kitchen eventually had to migrate to America with her husband who was working in IBM. (IBM was asked to wind up by the schizophrenic American hating Indian govt then) Her feedback about America carried a lot of value for me. And she had nothing but glowing tributes about American values and culture. Swami Vivekananda Himself has said "there is no poetry in the lives of many Indian women" and that the
East has a lot to learn from the West.
Words like morality and virtue are so glibly bandied around by disgruntled Indians in general. What vice is our own great great India alien to? Be it incest, rape, homosexuality, paedophile...To add to my fury there is no punishment or accountability. There are some honest Indians (in America) who admit they don't miss India at all. I have never really lived there but I too have only goodwill and gratitude towards America. Have we Indians ever bothered to take a hard look at ourselves and introspect? Dinesh too seems to revel in his *celebrity* status like certain others.
"Dinesh D'Souza bears closer scrutiny"
Isabellathecrusader, you bet. There are many like him, who, when embittered, would conveniently blame it on "Christianity" or "racism" or "Western culture". If I were to narrate anecdotes this post would become very lengthy.
Thank God for people like Robert Spencer and others who post here. Proves America is not brain dead like the rest of the world.
I think that Nazis or Muslims who lecture on freedom or morality are like a blind man giving descriptions of the Grand Canyon. They are describing what they do not see. It's absurd for a Nazi or a Muslim to lecture anyone on freedom or morals.
For concepts of freedom and morality we have to look to people like Socrates, Gandhi, even Saint Francis, or the teachings of Jesus. They were not blind.
dennisw,
What you have written about muslim family structure,God(!) etc is just a false facade. Whatever be the undesirable features, Americans are not hypocritical. Isn't there a striving towards perfection, reaching out to people, uninhibited communication, above all FREEDOM?
The proof of pudding is in the eating. Even in the remotest village in India's back of beyond you would come across someone whose family member has settled for good in America without any complaints.
Dinesh D’Souza simply doesn't understand freedom. He loves it here however doesn't defend it. He is similar to a lot of his mid-east/mid-aisan counterparts. They have no particular patriotism except to themselves.
His twisted version of how Britney Spears managed to get us 9/11 goes along with a lot of views I see expressed on National Review. This keeps him over there as a guest writer. He conveniently forgets the values of ISLAM and the behavior of its followers. He manages to seperate the belief from the followers. He does not recognize the lack of moral western values that ISLAM represents. After all he came from India where Anthrax laden cows wander the streets cannot be killed because they believed to be holy. I think I heard him say in an interview that he lived somewhere around San Diego. You know, in the land of fruits and nuts.
IsabeltheCrusader ...
I'm not Catholic so I get a little lost here. They were infiltrated and neutered by whom?
Freedom and morality come back to the universal practice of the Golden Rule. Islam is not about the universal practice of the Golden Rule. All the other religions are based on the Golden Rule and are similar re that. Islam is different. It is based on domination.
"Well, you have to admit that they deal with their enemies quite well-we could learn a lesson from them on that score."
You think we are no less ruthless than them? what you are seeing at the moment is an anomalie in western culture - soon we will revert to type and then gosd help these Islamists who thought they could take our countries - they will be crushed to dust - when this is all over - in a century or so a child will turn to its father and ask " who were the muslims dad" "oh they were bad people son" will be the reply
One basic difference between Islamic countries is that they punish for immorality (as they see it) and we punish almost exclusively for crime. We don't, generally, criminalize thought, sexual behavior, or other people's religions and they do. I prefer free speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion -- even if chaotic and sometimes offensive to my self-chosen sensibilities -- to the "social harmony" of homogenized thinking and behavior enforced by debased violence (hudud amputations and stonings) in the same way I prefer unreliable train service to Mussolini.
Anyone who denies the history of islamic terror and rates muslim values above that of the West is a muslim in my book...
"I prefer free speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion -- even if chaotic and sometimes offensive to my self-chosen sensibilities -- to the "social harmony" of homogenized thinking and behavior enforced by debased violence"
Morgaan Sinclair, yes. Absolutely.
So Dinesh came all the way to live in the States - that place with no virtue, no moral values.
So why come that long way.. To get to the States he had to cross Pakistan, Iran, Saudi-Arabia. The lands of the lived virtue..
Why in heaven's name didn't he stop there but had to pass on? Latent masochism?
By the way - the Byzantines were profound Christians, they even lead civil wars over the question whether Jesus, Maria or the saints should be depicted or not (iconoclasts).
They were very devout - but did that stop Muslims from invading their lands, enslaving, chasing and slaughtering them? No.
But their firm belief in Christianity led them to fight the muslim invaders for 800 years - till the bitter end. Statistics suggest that today's Europe probably won't even make it another 50 years before coming under islamic rule.
Islam has never respected other religions so they'll continue invading anyway. Yet this time they don't even seem to find resistance. They are instead given a helping hand in their conquest..
When they took over the Byzantine empire they conquered the heartland of Christianity. Today's Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Algeria - all Christian land before the Muslims invaded it,driven by their quest for booty and slaves. Something easily forgotten in the West...
Whether it has been the Meccan carawans, Persia or the Byzantines - it's been Muslims who continuously started hostilities.
To put it succintly, D'Sousa is a dissembling and disguised muslim turd.
The very muslim politique allows for this dishonest duality, pretending to be one thing while promoting another - all the while, the proponent sees nothing wrong or inconsistent in the position.
But we do.
Turn him over, he's done.
DennisW wrote:
Some of the Muslim family values are superior to our American chaos. They do have a god. There is no abortion in Islam and little divorce. The family and clan is strong. Women are doing what they are geniuses at -at birthing, at raising children, cooking, keeping the home and hearth organized and clean.
May you next time be born a woman in Saudi Arabia. This is the worst male chauvinist statement I've ever seen on this site.
And you are also misinformed. Abortion does occur in Islam, as does artificial insemination, as does womb graft, as does womb transplant, as does female genital mutilation (though not as much as by African tribal custom).
Muslim "family values" which denigrate, incarcerate, disenfranchise, torture, bar from education, proper food, and medicine are not "family values." They are human rights violations.
Do you know what the #1 cause of death is in this world -- ahead of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and everything else? It's the deaths of women and children that are a direct result of the male-worshipping disfranchisement of them from employment, inheritance, and equality before the law that renders them less likely to be allowed the same amount and quality of food and medical services given men.
It's not what makes Islam "superior" (as if we haven't heard that phrase too much already). It's what makes Islam utterly inferior if that's the way you practice. This is not so for all, obviously, and a good example of that is the Afghan father who WALKED HIS 12-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER OVER THE HINDU KUSH MOUNTAINS TO GET HER OUT OF AFGHANISTAN WHEN THE TALIBAN TOOK OVER. That was because he wanted her to have a life. He left his wife behind, with three sons to take care of her, by agreement with the whole family who knew the person in most danger from the Taliban was the young girl. They are now reuinted and live in the United States.
Don't preach that "women are geniuses at childbearing and homemaking crap to me." They are, but the rest of what they are is not up for debate now or ever, and we will not go back to being the generation of depressed social outcasts on Milltown that we used to be.
D'Souza hates liberal vales more then hates muslim values. We all knew that. It now appears he hates democracy and freedom more then muslim values and government.
Now that is treason. Without democracy and individual freedom we have no real nation. The only thing that holds us together is our mutural understanding of this.
Does D'Souza really think a theocratic state of a Islamo-Christian nature can work. The two faiths are so different we might as well have a Capitalistic-Communistic economic system! Cats and Dogs become one...and 1+1 = 3.
What the hell is man talking about? It is as bad the leftwing excuses and plans to bring us an end to this conflict. Like blame American foreign policy and our support of Israel.
Both are convinced if we just "jump" high enough all problems will go away....
BY Magic!
If my choice is between the kind of society that allows for Britney Spears minus her knickers and the kind of society that insists on sharia law, thanks all the same, I'm going with Britney.
GreatCometof15077 wrote:
"Does D'Souza really think a theocratic state of a Islamo-Christian nature can work."
Yeah, how stupid is this guy? and how stupid does he think the conservative Christians in this country are? Like they're going to merge with the ideology that kills 3,000 people from 80 countries on our soil?
He'd be better off trying to sell a sun lamp in the desert.
"D’Souza does not understand freedom. Freedom is the unlimited right to reason..."
Great post, Frank.
I've been working on a paper recently for school about why people from a classical liberal viewpoint (drawing back to classical liberal ideas from the Enlightenment that both modern liberals and conservatives trace political roots) should be opposed to all things Islam (human rights violations, subjugation of women and those of other religious groups, among other things).
The operation of these 'noble islamic virtues' within the context of a warped and intrinsically evil totalitarian goal of Islamic world domination are NO different than Nazi 'family values'.
Read Ingmar Bergman's (the Swedish director's) memoirs about how when he was a teenager in the 1930's he spent a summer with a Nazi family in a small German city. What a paradise! Marches, Parades, camping, songfests, joyous family life and good clean living! Hard work and simple pleasures. The antithesis of that Jew-Intellectual-Urban-Seuxal-Freudian-Ugly-Modern Art world of degeneracy... etc. etc.
Poetcomici wrote: The antithesis of that Jew-Intellectual-Urban-Seuxal-Freudian-Ugly-Modern Art world of degeneracy... etc. etc.
ROFLOL!! You tell 'em, kiddo. That's WONDERFUL!
Assalamau Laikum Mr. Spencer,
I see that on each piece related to Dinesh...you have tried to outdo yourself. Certainly there is lot on Dinesh on JW....BUT do you know if Dinesh is reading this information?
Is the messages getting to him...or is it a closed group of infedel "effendies" blowing hot air onto cold milk.
I recently finished reading 'The Looming Tower', which has some interesting detail about bin Laden. Lawrence states that in between the time when he was kicked out from Sudan and 9-11, OBL forced his 'family' of three wives and nearly a score of children to live in terrible, inhumane and unsanitary conditions. Then after the big hit, big money came in. What was the first thing OBL did with the big money? He bought a 14 year old girl to add to his harem. His sons were angry, his mother was angry, his first wife, who was already jealous over his favoritism of the other, older wives, left him after 11 children and 27 years of marriage (hell is a better word). Nice morals, eh?
You having some problem with this debate, Naseem? Would you like to debate Islam's treatment of women and homosexuals ... and particularly the new death sentence for homosexuals in Nigeria?
How about the death sentence for the woman Nazanin Fatehi who stabbed a rapist to prevent him from raping her neice (as he'd just raped her). She was sentenced to death in Iran because there weren't four female witnesses to attest to the rape. Wise move on the part of the rapists. There were three of them and just the two women, so, of course, there was no possibility they'd be convicted. Her sentenced was reversed ONLY because a Canadian Iranian woman screamed about it until it caused the ayatollahs so much bad publicity they had to back down.
So ... would you like to involve yourself in a good, solid, point-by-point cultural debate with the folks on this site?
Actually, no matter how much Robert writes about D'Souza, it's all just good, normal commentary. That's a far cry from threatening to kill people over a cartoon, now isn't it?
Actually, Kay, OBL also has had a mistress, to whom he confessed that the Western woman he'd most like to have sex with is Whitney Houston. And then OBL was so bad to his sister-in-law that she's talked endlessly about how he'd cringe (what an act!) when she'd come into the room without an abaya on.
What a hypocritical sleaze. And then there's Zawahiri, whose wife was killed in Tora Bora, along with one of his kids, because this guy is NOT going to go to war without his supply of sex with him.
Makes me want to throw up.
Naseem!
You however do watch this site....
You have a deep down love for us don't you...come on you know you want dump Islam for anything..
Take off the Burka and be free!!!!!!!!!!!
First Custer and D'Souza. I see you have been reading up on us non-muslim wicked Americans again. You do so want to be like us...
Just admit it.
Posted Above:
"It seems to me that, by claiming himself a Catholic and therefore part of the religious right in America, he is simply providing the left another reason to hate the right. This book will likely only serve to inflame liberals against conservatives yet again."
The best scenario would be for liberals to get good and mad at D'Sousa, and want to check out his counterpart on this issue: Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch. Then they would come to understand Christian fundamentalism has nothing on Muslim fundamentalism. In his book Bawer also states:
"Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me... James Dobson's parenting advice was appalling,but he wasn't telling people to murder their daughters..."
Can somebody tell me what the "effendies" are to which Naseem refers? I'm not familiar with this term. Thanks.
Freedom School ...
I think the reaction of liberals (I'm surrounded by them at Harvard) is that they think D'Souza is offensive and stupid, and they're angry about it. They aren't blaming Christians in the way D'Souza hoped they would. Not at all. In fact, this whole thing doesn't make conservatives or Christians look bad. It makes Muslims look bad as it exposes their prejudices in graphic detail.
And nobody here believes D'Souza is a Catholic. They think he's takkiya Muslim ... a Muslim pretending to be something he's not for the purpose of disinformation, Commie style.
Morgaan Sinclair,
I will try to answer your question to IsabeltheCrusader,
If you want to understand how the Catholic Church lost the plot on the subject of Islam, then you need to understand the Second Vatican Council.
That was when they had the zany idea of renaming Islam the “Third Abrahamic faith.”
This was an idea which was seen by many as way too liberal and, in fact, the current Pope has, in many ways, repudiated this idea.
If you want to know what Catholics thought about Islam, prior to this, then I suggest you read Hilaire Belloc.
A good place to start would be here
“The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed”
Is available at
http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT
thestudent10048-
I'm glad I've a little influence somewhere. Good luck on the paper. God bless you. God bless our freedom.
Morgaan Sinclair
I will admit one thing about D'Souza that might be useful. Becuase liberals hate D'Souza so much they also might dislike anything he supports....thus traditional muslims.
It is possible this could be used to an anti-jihadist advantage in getting some liberals (esp. Classical types) into the camp.
Coalition building is critical to form a majority. In-fighting is ok as long as the overall objectives of defeating Islam are not compromised.
Morgaan Sinclair wrote:
"Can somebody tell me what the "effendies" are to which Naseem refers? I'm not familiar with this term. Thanks."
It is a mid-east term for well educated men. Naseem makes an attempt at sarcasm by placing it in quotes.
-XRDC
GreatCometof1577.
Well, there's a lot of cultural illiteracy here, fomented a lot by the way the liberal media project the problem -- and none of these people every watch anything on Fox, for example, or read about the problems in the Islamic world on the internet.
Therefore, when I'm in Harvard bars with professors and TAs after classes, they don't know ANYTHING about it. One professor asked me questions for FIVE HOURS and was in shock after I was done. I backed it all up the next morning with reams of research.
Here's a good example: One VERY good friend of mine who is a professor at Harvard was scathing the US military for the attack on Falluja. I told him that when the troops finally got in there, they were met by Fallujans who cried in joy to see them. Why? Because the Zarqawi people had taken any woman not in cover, cut her breasts off, and then burned her to death in the streets. The tales told to the military were 10 times Auchwitz, which was unspeakable, unspeakable, in itself. They had killed most of the Shia's in Saddam-like slaughters. They had imposed extreme shari'a so that the people had no rights. U.S. troops found dismembered hands, feet and heads, bodies floating in the rivers. Backed up sewage in the streets (shades of Kabul under the Taliban).
At first he thought I was lying. I backed it up again, with reams of research, most from overseas or taken off websites like Asianet or Pakistan Today.
The dirty way the Leftist media has played over the last many years is really incredible. "AS" (for his sake I won't say his name), a native Iraqi cameraman for ABC news, is only about 23 now. But he was at the National Press Club about 2 years ago when a friend and I had lunch with the deputy Press Office of the Pentagon and a couple of reporters from Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, and he just went ballistic about the coverage of Abu Ghraib. He was furious about it, because he said it was NOTHING ... NOTHING ... in comparison to what Saddam did and what Zarqawi did ... and yet no American news service would provide any balance whatsoever ... not even Fox. He was distraut, because he knew where this would lead. He doesn't understand why the American Leftist media is more concerned with getting Democrats elected than it is for just telling the simple truth.
My friends at Harvard are slowly coming around to the fact they've heard very little of the other side. They are angry about Bush's endless bullshit about the environment (he is wrong, knows he's wrong, and won't do anything about a growing problem), they are sick of the sexual politics around homosexuality, and they are right about that, too.
But what they don't realize is that they have been brainwashed into giving up the rights of women to some hope that Islamic wars will stop if we just are willing to go ahead and satisfy them by sacrificing the women -- while at the same time carping about our using the same laws to find Muslim terrorists that we use to get mafiosi (basically the Patriot Act is mostly RICO statues applied to terrorism).
It's going to take a lot to bring them around, but there may be a magic bullet ... one that will actually fuse Democrats and Republicans in a way that will give both most of what they are looking for from the other. But I'll have to talk about that later as it involves a book I'm working on, and I can't talk about it because I'm under contract. But there are some good fusions coming. There are. There really is some deeply viable hope on this one.
Hey Robert, is that CPAC debate still on. I doubt it will be for long.
From above, quoting Bawer: Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me...
Well said by Bawer. And that's how they do it in Saudi Arabia. They stone with a wall. They drop it first on a leg, crushing the leg. Then on the other leg. Then on an arm. Etc.
And these guys want to talk "family values" to me???
Commonsense tells us that freedom comes with its infirmities, or its maladys , it leaves open a door to what can be defined as corrupted moral values that do not represent what was given down by Judao/Christian teachings that make up the foundations of western judicial systems laws. Indeed freedom has allowed those who would push the barriers of conservative values to do so.
Groups like the ACLU have challenged traditional values at every turn from pornography that was mostly underground just over 40 years ago to now openly displayed in the public; all under the argument of "freedom of speech, or expression".
But in America and other Western countries you will find millions upon millions of people who live decent lives in open and free societies.
In all societies there are to clear representations of peoples behaviors whether they are living in free and open societies or fundamental Islamic societies, those two forms of human behavior are either the decent or the indecent. Fundamental Islam has no corner on decency even among themselves, especially for an ideology that demonstrates very little respect for life on this earth. Dinesh D'Sousa dishonors the decent Americans or those in other Western societies by making to much of his left wing proclamations on about our free societies infirmities.
D'Sousa should have been more balanced in his arguments since it appears he failed to address the behaviors in Islamic countries who suppress human freedoms, and expressions that defeat the human spirit in kind whether you are a decent person or an indecent person.
D'Sousa has admitted to studying about Islam for around 3 years, that is a but a whisker compared to people like Robert Spencer who has devoted his scholarly efforts to this understanding for way over 25 years now.
Mr.D'Sousa; please step out of those narrow hallways at the university before you publish and tout such a book.
Dennisw,
"[In Islamic culture] The family and clan is strong."
Our western society and civilization is based on mutual trust and good faith. We have our bad apples, of course, who exploit the system. But by and large the man on the street can trust the other man on the street to cheerfully cooperate in preserving civil behavior, civil discourse, and the public order.
Islam, based on domination and struggle against the "impure," destroys all mutual trust among people. The Muslims is freed of all responsibility to other human beings. He is automatically "innocent" in any act of intolerance, violence, or deceit as long as his act supports Islam, the purity of Islam, and the spread of Islam. That is why Islam is forever incapable of being civilized.
The reason the family and the clan is "strong" in Islamic societies is, in my view, because these are the only islands of humanity in which the Muslim can find any trust. In other words, the clan and the family are self-defense mechanisms from the predations of the retributive Islamic ideology that surrounds them.
This "strength of family and clan," just like "Islamic morality," is utterly and contemptibly phony.
For Stendec:
Nice points! Another thing to consider is that many American families are just as strong -- WITHOUT resorting to cruelty against one sex or violence to enforce paternalistic regulations.
And a question is whether the Islamic famaily would be so strong if diverging from its precepts didn't carry terrible lashings and amputations and long prison sentences in gaols where sexual torture is common (Saudi Arabia).
If something is not done by choice, can you call it a virtue?
Frank and crows and Morgaan. I have read all your replies. Just want to acknowledge. I gave the upside AND the downside of the cohesive families in Islamic societies. No way would I prefer to live in one. I'm just fine here in the USA.
Too much family/clan cohesion leads to mindless conformity and stagnation. No innovation and progress. Science and logic become less important than pleasing the heads of the family
stendec
The reason the family and the clan is "strong" in Islamic societies is, in my view, because these are the only islands of humanity in which the Muslim can find any trust. In other words, the clan and the family are self-defense mechanisms from the predations of the retributive Islamic ideology that surrounds them.
EXACTLY! Family clan and faith are the organizing principles in Muslim society. The individual's refuge from the storm. Forget the nation and other clans. They come a distant second.
Does D'Souza sound awfully much like Qubt to anybody else?
Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair
Exactly what I was thinking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
He at least sounds like a "trojan horse" muslim.
Morgaan,
"If something is not done by choice, can you call it a virtue?"
Right on the mark. Islam, of course, means "submission," and submission is won exclusively on the basis of fear. I don't see any virtue whatsoever in that ideology.
Dennisw,
"Family clan and faith are the organizing principles in Muslim society."
I suppose the grand Islamic project could be described as an effort to create one giant "super clan," the umma, that includes all of humanity. Then there would be "peace." The trouble is, for this super clan to work, every last individual has to be "pure." The work of cleansing (exterminating) the "impure ones" from the super clan will never end.
This is absolutely laughable.
liberals and conservative in america may differ in idealogies but their basic value system is not fundamentally diametric. Both liberals and conservative want freedom, liberty, justice and democracy. All other values is usually limited to personal practices whether they like it or not. The US constitution guarantees it.
Also when defining a Liberal or conservative it is used as a loose term because there are many front where one can be conservative on one issue and liberal on other.
Dinesh should be sent right back to India where he belongs. America doesn't need a who justifies islamofascist agression as if it is somehow fault of the americans. Blaming the victim should be illegal.
Sorry for using so many quotation marks. This practice seems frequently to be necessary when dealing with Muslim doublespeak.
DennisW ...
No sale. Your comment about a woman's place can't be taken back now.
Family and clan may be strong in Muslim societies, but it is not an INDIVIDUALS refuge from anything. Individuals as we understand them do not exist in these families.
When one family group can rape the daughter from another family group for something her brother did, and her parents response is to kill her...
Family "honor" may be paramount, but the persons who comprise the "family" mean nothing.
If the Left is responsible for islamic jihad and generic islamic insanity, why did muslims vote overwhelmingly Democrat in the last election? Why is Keith Ellison, the first muslim in Congress, a liberal democrat? Why have CAIR's minions aligned themselves with the insidious and immoral ACLU? The ACLU is the embodiment of the far left and litigates tirelessly to eradicate evil and offensive religious expressions like public displays of the Ten Commandments and diabolical crosses; anything and everything associated with Judaism and Christianity.
The ACLU and islamic advocacy groups have a common goal---the severe mitigation of Christian influence in America. The muslims are merely exploiting the idiots in the ACLU to further their own agenda, and the ACLU promotes islamophobia and muslim victimhood to illuminate the evil Christian persecution of innocent muslims, hoping to discredit and weaken Christianity. CAIR sweetly kisses up to the Jews and atheists in the ACLU, the very ones that would die first by the swords of the conquering holy warriors.
Muslims and the ACLU have united to fight a mutual enemy and in doing so, both have exposed their glaring hypocrisy. But I doubt if Mr. D'Sousa noticed this strange alliance, or perhaps he focuses on global islam in his book. If that is the case, most muslims hate America based on hearsay about its decadence and immorality, not because they have seen it for themselves. That's a pathetic and weak argument for the intense animosity emanting from the islamic world.
CAIR and the ACLU are strange bedfellows indeed, illustrating that both will sleep with the enemy to achieve their goals, ideological differences be damned.
Well said, Freedom School ...
Also, there's a twist here. Honor killing didn't start in Islam, despite the fact that people like Hirsi Ali like to claim it did.
Honor killing began in Sumeria, where a woman's procreatively ability and sexuality were deemed to be the possession of her family. This was a matter of family and clan wealth. Clans wanted to keep women among their own to make as many children as possible, thereby enhancing the clans numbers. Women who married outside the clan (and had children for other tribes) were considered as "infidels" then. We find the first laws criminalizing sexual behavior in the Hammurabi Codes.
There is no exoneration of honor killing in the Qur'an or the hadith. In fact, Muhammad, for all his questionable attitudes and "supposed" (I say supposed because I think 99.9% of the hadith are outright lies made up by later followers for their own purposes) bad and good things he did, obviously did one thing: He illegalized the killing of female infants, the gynocide that was so prevalent in Arabia at the time.
Meanwhile, most of the "defense" put forth for Islamic honor killings in the Middle East actually come from the Old Napoleonic Codes (leave it to the French to do something like this). Wherever the Napoleonic Codes form the basis of law, you'll find the exoneration of a man who kills a woman.
How this happened is that in the early 20th century many Islamic countries -- Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, etc. -- were in a rush to get a Western-style constitution. Most opted for the Belgian constitution as, unlike the American one, it allowed for a monarch. But Jordan, for example, picked up some Napoleonic statutes, as did Brazil, as did Ataturk (Turkey) in principle if not in specfic clause, and other cultures. And wherever these statutes were forged into law, honor killing prevails. Palestinians in Gaza who kill their wives go over to the West Bank to be tried because the Jordanian legal system still carries a 1805 Napoleonic statute that completely absolves any man of killing his wife if he just "suspects" that she has been adulterous. So the accusation, always unproved, is that the woman has slept with somebody.
The most striking example of this problem of the Napoleonic codes is in Brazil, which accounts annually for 16-20% of all the honor killing in the world. But you'll never hear about that because they're not Islamic, they're Christian. Honor killing was outlawed in Brazil only in 1996, but the ban is not being enforced.
Honor killing was a standard part of culture in ancient China, the Roman Empire, and among some native American cultures. So the attitude that a woman's sexuality is the possession of her family or of a man has been extant for at least 5,000 years, and is due to one simple fact:
Women are smaller and can't defend themselves. Or, the mighty have behaved very badly indeed.
SusanP ...
The evidence of what you're saying is just startling: In Palm Beach Christmas of 2005 they banned Christmas trees but allowed menorrahs. Wonderful to have the menorrahs. But leave the Christmas trees, too.
This is certainly not what the Founding Fathers meant. It's just not.
Stendec wrote:
"Islam, of course, means "submission," and submission is won exclusively on the basis of fear. I don't see any virtue whatsoever in that ideology."
Submission by definition does not have to be a bad thing. On the contrary, one can choose to submit for reasons other than fear. A wife who feels genuinely loved by her husband may willingly submit to his leadership while the husband may submit to her needs.
Islam on the other hand seems to have left love and needs out of the equation.
Eph 5:21
-XRDC
Odeyssus:
Thanks for the link to Hilaire Belloc.
It was a great read, although the writer (and the Church, by extension) seemed to be blaming the Jews for at least part of the threat we face from Islam.
XRDC WROTE:
Submission by definition does not have to be a bad thing. On the contrary, one can choose to submit for reasons other than fear. A wife who feels genuinely loved by her husband may willingly submit to his leadership while the husband may submit to her needs.
XRDC, where do you stand on this premise: A man who feels genuinely loved by his wife may choose to willingly submit to her leadership while a woman may decide to genuinely submit to his needs?
That means that if you as a man felt genuinely loved by me as a woman, you'd have no trouble submitting to my leadership in the relationship, right?
I would submit this to you: Where love reigns, there is no will to power (over somebody else). -- Carl Jung.
So this crap that somebody has to submit to somebody else in a relationship is PURE EVIL. It's sanctioned theft of another's free will.
Relationships between two adult, loving people never involve this kind of "rulership" one of the other. No one rules another human being. And how two people design a relationship should be based on the needs of both, the needs of the family, and may radically fluctuate over the course of a long relationship.
Or it's prison for somebody.
This must be a sign of the apocalypse. The left and right are agreeing. For those who aren't aware, THE STRANGER is Seattle's most left, pro-gay and liberal publication. The fact that Robert Spencer is quoted (or mis-quoted as the case may be) at all in this publication is absolutely astonishing.
Ok, so the agreement isn't on the issue of values, but it is on the one thing that matters when it comes to the freedom we all, right-center-and left cherish, and the preposterous supposition of the traitorous D'Souza. The existence and survival of that freedom is paramount, and no matter how downplayed by the left media and Muslim deflectionists, both sides of the political spectrum are starting to see the threat of Islamic totalitarianism.
PMK
You can argue endlessly, did the Church ever endorse anti-semitism?
John Paul II referred to jews as “our elders in the faith.”
There used to be a statement about “the perfidious jews” in the Good Friday Service.
They removed it at Vatican 2.
They also ( I am quoting from memory) issued a statement that Christians did not hold Jews collectively responsible for the death of Christ - which never was a Christian doctrine anyway.
These were decent gestures but the real act of unparalleled madness was the re-branding of Islam as the “Third Abrahamic faith.”
This totally ignores it’s hostile nature to all non-Muslims.
In fact, Belloc described Islam as Christendom’s “worst ever enemy.”
To give an exert from
"Millions of modern people of the white civilization-that is, the civilization of Europe and America- have forgotten all about Islam. They never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past."
There are also important sections in Belloc’s other books dealing with Islam. All equally pessimistic.
In fact, Belloc is quoted in Robert Spencer’s film “Islam: What the West needs to know.”
Books I would recommend include “Europe and the Faith,” “The crisis of civilization “ and “The Crusades: the world’s debate.”
His writings on Islam seem starngelt prophetic nowdays.
Sword of the Infidel:
That's right. We have to have the right to hash out whatever is bothering us. We have a right to HAVE different values, and KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT.
That's a far cry from where the Islamists are on this.
I am SO DELIGHTED to that D'Souza blundered this way. It really wakes the Left up about what he's saying -- and the difference between radical Islamism and Christianity-based cultures, which Bawer totally gets when he says that Jerry Falwell doesn't want him to get married but that the radical Islamists want to drop a wall on him.
It's wake-up time. And not a minute too soon!
Odysseus.
The Church has come around, but it has a horrible history with regard to the Jews. I won't go into every horrible detail, but just a few will suffice:
The Church in the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, and it took the entire fleet of the Ottoman Empire to save them. The Ottomans built eight unwalled townships in the eight major cities of the Empire, as well as synagogues, businesses and housing, and saved the entire Sephardic Jewish community from extermination.
In the Crusades in Cappadoccia, the Muslims had to again save the Jews by hiding more than 40,000 in the volcanic caves there.
The Volkstag movement in Germany in 1920 was the precursor of the rise of the Third Reich. Hitler called Martin Luther the finest specimen German culture every produced -- ONLY because Martin Luther's anti-Semitic screed calling for the burning of synagogues and the withdrawal of rights of protection for Jews "on highways" was almost the entire basis of the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. 97% of the people in Nazi uniform were Catholic or Lutheran, mostly Lutheran. The other 3% was Methodist, the only group to apologize. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously broke with the Lutherans and started the Confessional Lutheran Church which fought Hitler, but was given be only 3-5% of the Lutherans in Germany at the time. The Vatican accepted the artwork stolen from the Jews and there is a horrible picture of the Catholic bishops of Germany doing the Nazi salute. During the war, the grave of Hitler's Catholic mother was a Catholic shrine.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Now, every religion has big problems in its past, and Christianity is no exception. But Christianity does not have anti-Semitic SCRIPTURES and therefore it was able to transcend its more problematic theorists and get back the love. Because what's getting preached from one end of the New Testament to the other is love.
In the beginning of Islam, Islam treated Jews and Christians as People of the Book to be protected. Jews were the Elder Brother.
All that changed within 50 years, and anti-Semitism is rabidly ensconced in the hadith and in the Medinan verses. As Mustafa Akyol has pointed out, the hadith have to go and the Medinan verses relegated to historics.
For anyone who missed it, D'Souza's 3-hour apology for Islam will be re-broadcast this Saturday 2/10 on CSPAN2 - it was pretty pathetic but instructive:
http://www.booktv.org/schedule/
BunrattyBill:
Thanks. Who is paying this guy ... and how much are they paying him. He sounds like Anthony Cordesman, the Saudi shill, who's bee prostituting himself for 25 years on the Saudi dole. My Lord!
Morgaan Sinclair
Changed within 50 years?
What about within Mohammed’s lifetime? What about the murder and beheading of jews carried out by Muhammed, all recounted in Robert Spencer’s biography?
And the other issue: the Church cannot and should not give the Islam the status of a genuine faith, equal to Christianity.
The fact that the Church failed to show leadership on this issue is one of the reasons we are in the current mess.
The armies that twice seriously imperilled the future of Europe were comprised of Muslims not Jews.
Where is the Jewish equivalent of Dar-Al-Harh and Dar-Al-Islam?
Can the hadith be re-written?
Much of Islam is borrowed from Judeo-Christianity anyway so why don’t they just convert to Christianity.
As a Seattle resident and reader of The Stranger, I was shocked yesterday to pick up this weeks edition and see such a concise review in what can be termed a very left-leaning paper in a left-leaning city. It makes me think perhaps there are others like myself that do not consider themselves as right or left, or this as a right or left issue, but a fight for our way of life. I especially liked his opening statement regarding post-9/11 America and the commonality we all shared that day.
From Oriana Fallaci's "The Force of Reason"
“Of course, the Catholic Church knows very well that, according to Muslims, Jesus Christ died of a cold and since then he copulates as a sex-maniac with the virgins Houris in Djanna. It knows very well that Islamic theologians have always lived on that ideological robbery and those grotesque defamations, that they have always judged Christianity as an abortion of Islam. It knows very well that Islamic imperialism has always wanted to conquer the West because the West is the first and true interpreter of Christianity. It knows as well that Islamic colonialism has always tried to subjugate Europe because, besides being rich and full of water, Europe is the cradle of Christianity. A Christianity as manipulated as you want, as distorted as you want, as betrayed as you want, but Christianity.
“The Catholic Church knows also very well that, without the crucifix, Charles Martel’s French army would have never beaten the Moors at Poitiers. Without the crucifix, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon would have never retaken Andalusia. Nor would have the Normans liberated sicily from the Saracens. Nor would have Tsar Ivan the Great put an end to almost three centuries of Mongol rule in Russia It knows as well that without the crucifix we would have never turned down the first and second siege of Vienna. We would have never rejected Suleyman the Magnificent and Kara Mustafa’s Ottoman Turks. (Remember what John Sobieski, the heroic king of Poland, shouted to his sodiers during the battle that in 1683 repelled Kara Mustafa? He shouted, ‘Soldiers! It is not Vienna alone that we must save! It is Christianity, the same idea of Christendom!’ And remember what he added soon after? He added: ‘Soldiers! Let’s fight for Our Lady of Czestochowa!’ That’s right: Our Lady of Czestochowa. The Black Madonna to whom also in the years of Solidarity, of the struggle against the colonialism of the Soviet Union, all Poles recurred) And more than anybody the Catholic Church knows that without the crucifix our civilization would not exist. That the roots from which that civilization was born, the roots of Greco-Roman culture, were not passed on to us by the Avicennas and by the Averroes: they were passed on to us seven centuries before by St. Augustine who carried the Greco-Roman culture into Christian theology. Right or wrong, you phony historians and fraudlulent academics of Euro-Arab Dialogue?!? But, more than anybody else, the Catholic Church knows that without the irresistable provocation and the sensational bet we would be speaking a language that does not contain the word Freedom. Liberty. And we would vegetate in a world that, far from rejecting death, sees death as a privilege.”
Odysseus.
More than 6 million people are converting from Islam to Christianity every year. In Tunisia, the Muslims are NOT calling this apostasy.
There is great debate over whether much that is in the Medinan verses or the hadith are even REMOTELY true. That Robert puts them in his book without commenting on their veracity or not is fair, because Muslims worldwide believe them to be true whether they are or not.
I am for making the case that it's very likely the whole Aisha age story is pure hogwash as there's ample evidence this story was invented by the Sunnis who had to MAKE Aisha that young to prevent a Shi'a claim on the thrones of Islam.
But that's a case that is going to have to be solved by the ulema, like the rest of it.
I think we can take some solace from the fact that certain of the very active YOUNG Islamic theologians, backed up by Al-Ansari, formerly the head of shari'a at the University of Qatar -- he's the one who famously said that the US had every right to invade Afghanistan -- are saying this:
(1) the hadith have to ALL go, regardless of origin (Bukhar and al-Muslim, too)
(2) that the Medinan verses, where you find all the War Verses crap, have to go because they are histories and contradict the Meccan verses.
The big problem here is that the LATER (Medinan) verses gained precedence over the more spiritual (and benign) Meccan verses because they were, later, more politically advantageous to the people who wanted to use Islam for political power.
That's opposite to what theorists like Akyol would now like to do, and they cite the ELEVATION OF SECONDARY SOURCES over the Meccan verses to be the continued justifcation of violent jihad.
I did not say "rewrite" the hadith. I said get rid of them. And the Medinan verses, too. And then look at any of the Meccan verses that don't follow basic human rights.
This isn't original with me. It's Fazlur Rahman, the great Middle East studies professor at UChicago, who developed this method of dealing with the failure of modernity in Islam and the Middle East. Credit where it's due.
Why I am a dedicated political secularist is that I don't want ANY religion arbitrating what religion has legitimately or not based on its scriptural bases. It has to follow basic tenets of human rights, which are right now more spiritual than many of the religions in their more heretical forms, including Hinduism of the Hindutvu.
Or ... to quote Thomas Jefferson:
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. (1800)
That's inscribed on the inside of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.
Look, Odysseus, I'm absolutely delighted that Christianity prevailed in Europe.
But history is history, and the great advantage to the Church is that it admitted its mistakes, changed, and moved on. But you can't erase the immense threat Christianity has been to Jews by quoting me Crusader stuff. Good things don't make bad things go away. But when you consistently show a changed and loving attitude, eventually you heal what has been done wrong, and that is what the Church continues to do. When Pope John Paul II sat through a Jewish service in a Jewish synagogue, it was a momentous thing to have done. A lot of healing there.
Just don't try to paint a picture of black and white in this, because historically it just doesn't hold water.
XRDC,
Yes, your point is well taken. I meant (referentially) to say "... that submission, ..." meaning Islamic-mandated submission, which comes from fear of the post-mortem wrath of Allah against unbelievers, no matter how slight their deviation from Koranic doctrine, or, derivatively, fear of brutal punishment in the here and now from Allah's pious minions on earth.
Morgaan Sinclair
Thank you for your replies
This conversation has drifted off-topic.
The original subject was: did the decline and fall of Western Civilisation begin with the Second Vatican Council.
Perhaps yes was my view.
The Church was uniquely placed to warn of the dangers of Islam.
It failed to do so and the consequences are with us.
Odysseus, the topic of the conversation was D'Souza. The assertion by XRDC attributable to Ephesians 5:21-33 that women should submit to men was the drift off-topic, but one that's very telling.
According to Catholic Father Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. (whose article Robert Spencer republished approvingly on Dhimmi Watch on 6 Feb. 07),
"[Pope] Benedict XVI admires in Islam the certainty based on faith, which contrasts with the West where everything is relativized; and he admires in Islam the sense of the sacred, which instead seems to have disappeared in the West."
And:
"[Pope Benedict XVI believes that] Muslims are not offended by religious symbols, but by secularized culture, by the fact that God and the values that they associate with God are absent from this civilization."
Morgaan Sinclair, the original question I was trying to jump into was-
IsabeltheCrusader said
The Catholic Church was effectively infiltrated and neutered after Vatican II.
You said
I'm not Catholic so I get a little lost here. They were infiltrated and neutered by whom?
My replied were an attempt to answer this.
They were probably infiltrated by illusory forms of Multi-culturalism. That and the fact that, in the age of modern communications, Pope-Rage can go round the world in an instant so criticism of Islam became muted....to say the least.
Incidentally, I am fascinated by this new, reformed Islam you say exists.
Please provide some links so I can read more.
Please provide more info on conversions from Islam to Christianity in Tunisa.
What is the possibility of it happening elsewhere?
What percentage of Muslims follow this reformed Islam?
What is the possibility of Taquiyya?
Odysseus ...
Go to www.thewhitepath.com
This is the website of Mustafa Akyol, the op-ed editor of Turkish Daily News, and my good friend. He is 33. Read everything on the site. He has a large and growing following in Turkey. Chance he's taqiyyah: ZERO. He is a total supporter of Christianity, Judaism, Intelligent Design, and the Pope.
I'll get you more, but it'll take time. The Tunisian stuff has disappeared from the internet, but I have a hard copy here somewhere.
Meanwhile, of late, one on growing French conversion from Christianity to Islam from DhimmiWatch yesterday:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/015160.php
More later. Haven't eaten since yesterday, and I have to do something about that now.
“If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed.” Well, D’Souza has now made it perfectly clear that he’s one of those critics; and the book he’s written is nothing less than a call for America’s destruction. He is the enemy at home. Treason is the only word for it."
Then D'Souza can join the rest of the traitors.
However, there is a difference between his yap which are just words and actually doing it.
You note?
The ones that actually are DOING the destruction of America are arbusto, elmer fudd, gates, rice, the pentgn chief generals, and the rest of the satanic cabal.
These are the ones to hang high. If I were to see the lampposts grow new fruit, I would turn my back.
The INVASION SURGE has begun, the military has very quietly shipped out the armed forces.
RIGHT NOW THEY'RE ON THEIR WAY TO THE PERSIAN GULF.
Pray for them!
The soulless ones weren't kidding.
These people are insane, because the War has been lost.
As you can read:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/earthchange-bulletins/message/3764
http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.upi.com%2FNewsTrack%2FTop_News%2F20070206-023207-5140r
http://www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?S=6035178
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16616389.htm
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My own son - trained in special. corp. in the Navy was shipped out last week -
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This is from another site:
"Yes, six downed helicopters in half that number of weeks are indeed a strong of suggestion of enemy remaneuvering, but naturally only a qualified military official could make that informed call.
The USSR began to lose in Afghanistan when the Afghanis learned how to shoot down the Russian helicopters.
And the US, which prefers to fight its wars from the air, lost in Vietnam because one cannot win a ground war from the air.
It is time to face facts here. The US is still fighting in the streets of Baghdad itself. There are mortar attacks into the Green Zone itself. The road to and from the airport can only be held open for limited amounts of time. The US is fighting a holding action at best. If the Sunni and Shiite ever realize that it is the US, UK, and Israel initiating the so-called sectarian strife, our kids in Iraq will not stand a chance.
There is no victory possible in Iraq. "
-----------
All this about the other topics on the news are distractions from the general news media - while the most important thing for us is being downplayed.
It is a real tragedy - because Americans don't want to face the truth.
It's not a matter of honor or to destroy islam - because the thing going on over there is that
ROBOTIC SOULLESS CREATORS ARE THROWING THEMSELVES AGAINST OUR TROOPS AND KILLING OUR KID SOLDIERS.
In fact, our kid's lifes are being wasted for no reason - and instead of withdrawing and regrouping elsewhere - MORE AND MORE TROOPS ARE BEING TRHOWN IN A BLACK HOLE.
The leaders here are also soulless, because they don't care about our kids.
What she should be doing is going out in the streets ENMASSE and put a stop to this madness.
Then D'Souza can join the rest of the traitors.
TAR AND FEATHER HIM ALONG WITH THE REST OF THE TRAITORS
arbusto, elmer fudd, gates, rice, the pentgn chief generals, and the rest of the satanic cabal.
These are the ones to hang high. If I were to see the lampposts grow new fruit, I would turn my back.
The INVASION SURGE has begun, the military has very quietly shipped out the armed forces.
THE WAR HAS ALREADY BEGUN
All this about the other topics on the news are distractions from the general news media - while the most important thing for us is being downplayed.
It is a real tragedy - because Americans don't want to face the truth.
It's not a matter of honor or to destroy islam - because the thing going on over there is that
ROBOTIC SOULLESS CREATORS ARE THROWING THEMSELVES AGAINST OUR TROOPS AND KILLING OUR KID SOLDIERS.
In fact, our kid's lifes are being wasted for no reason - and instead of withdrawing and regrouping elsewhere - MORE AND MORE TROOPS ARE BEING TRHOWN IN A BLACK HOLE.
The leaders here are also soulless, because they don't care about our kids.
What WE should be doing is going out in the streets ENMASSE and put a stop to this madness.
The day is coming soon enough that there will be fighting the the streets.
DON'T DOUBT THAT A REVOLUTION IS COMING.
Another feature of the so-called morally superior Muslim culture is that practice by wealthy Saudis (Daniel Pipes has written about this) of marrying young girls only to divorce them the next day. It is the Muslim equivalent of prostitution, complete with pimps who run around to find the virgins who are then handed over to the Saudis. Frequently, the girls are under the impression that they are to be legitimate wives, but, in reality, they are simply used for the night, then discarded. No doubt this is yet another one of those highly laudable Islamic practices Dinesh D’Souza would like to see Americans adopting.
The other day their was an article about why Arabs are not shocked by sex scandals. It may be due to what they have access to, via their satellite dishes. "Hotbird" is the most popular satellite station now serving the Middle East. And, according to Matthew Fisher: "it beams down dozens of stations from the heavens whose only offerings are hard-core pornography from the United States, France and Italy." The hard-core porn broadcasts are "far raunchier than anything most Canadians can tune into" (National Post, February 5, 2007).
Ah yes, so much for Middle Eastern "decency" and "modesty" and "decorum" -- yeah, that's while they're busily watch hard core porn and decrying the West's "immorality" -- they might want to brush up on the definition of "hypocrite."
I meant to say:
ROBOTIC SOULLESS CREATURES ARE THROWING THEMSELVES AGAINST OUR TROOPS AND KILLING OUR KID SOLDIERS
I frankly don't know what these CREATURES are -
or where they're coming from -
is it possible that every islamic male from all the countries around there HAVE THE TIME AND MONEY to travel over there? They keep coming in waves - and there's no stopping them.
It seems those CREATURES have overwhelmed our people.
Why so much attention for this turd?
D'Souza is like the kid in the bus who farts and accuses the guy next to him instead of feeling shame.
Wouldn't it be better to ignore him?
Well said, J.S.
Al-Sistani has also condoned the "temporary marriage" concept, which is also rampant in Iran.
The children of these marriages are bastards who have no legal rights in Islam. There are so many of them now that the ulema is trying to decide what to do with them.
Also, I just have to point out that the adultery rate in Saudi Arabia is given to be equal to or greater than that in the United States.
Also, Victoria's Secret is doing a thriving business in riyadh.
Odysseus,
very nice posts, although I don't think I agree with your position on Vatican II if I understand it correctly.
regarding this rant:
The Catholic Church was effectively infiltrated and neutered after Vatican II.
Some of the greatest Catholic theologians of our time contribtued to Vatican II, including John Paul the Great and Pope Benedict (at the time Cardinal Ratzinger) among many others. Sometimes the application of its teachings are incorrect at the local parish level.
You will hear nothing about this from what masquerades as that church
Masquerading as a church??? So in your enlightened and all knowing opinion Catholics are a bunch of phonies masquerading as Christians...
except maybe some mamby-pamby excuse making from the similarly neutered American bishops.
I guess in your mind you are qualified to make such a remark since you seem to know everything every American Bishop has said on the topic....
Morgaan,
That figures (about al-Sistani), I went to his website once and he was discussing the intricacies of certain sexual practices (too explicit/graphic for me to repeat), and I thought "is this really a cleric??" Some of the practices Sistani was discussing are what we in the West would characterize as homosexual (these are "unnatural" practices). Yet, they are outwardly so "homophobic". I find it very bizarre. (I also wonder about the frequency and prevalence of homosexuals in S. Arabia -- I suspect that it is at least as high as it is in the West, the only difference is -- don't ever get caught.) Anyway, there's so much of this duplicity in the Arab world -- and so many Westerners just eat it up -- "Yeah, Muslims are so much more moral than us decadent Westerners!!"
Another thing, about the prostitutes, in these societies in which virginity is so highly valued, once these young girls are "de-flowered" -- it means (as I'm sure you're no doubt aware) a life time of impoverishment (they can't get married - they're ruined -- like in 15th century Europe, the girls are "spoiled", "damaged goods"). The Saudis frequently pray upon East Indian girls (doesn't go over well in the Hindu community).
adobe,
those quotes you give are from IsabeltheCrusader not me.
I suggest you read the posts above more closely to find out what I said.
And, to wit, I am not fooled by the sudden urge to return to topic when you're own faulty theology on the status of women is exposed by Ephesians 5:21-33. Paul, of course, was not Jesus, who loved and saved Mary Magdalene. But you would rather see the world go down to radical Islamism than to fight them on the terms this fight really exists: Radical Islamism is about many things, but foremost among them is the control of women and their sexuality and procreativity.
And the reason you will lose for us all is that you are unwilling to give up your own.
By not being willing to confront radical Islamism on its treatment of women, for which you are, yourselves, to a MUCH lesser degree culpapble, you will lose this war for the Right as the Left is simultaneously willing to sacrifice the health and safety women to defeat the right.
This is the Ship of Fools.
"the control of women and their sexuality and procreativity." Exactly!
Not that long ago there was a documentary featuring the "white slave trade" -- it still goes on -- this is the sex trade (again, luring women to "get employment" "job offers" -- typically from Eastern Europe -- then they wind up in Turkish brothels.) The role of Islam in all of this was extremely muted (not much mention -- program was PC). But it was utterly hideous what these women went through (they're psychologically damaged for life).
Also, one does hear about European males going on sex tourism to countries such as Thailand -- but, at least the Europeans have recognized this as criminal behavior -- and the perpetrators will be prosecuted if they get caught -- in the Middle East, on the other hand, there is no opprobrium for such conduct, in the Middle East, it's taken as "acceptable" -- mistreatment of women/young girls is taken for granted or smiled upon.
odessy wrote: those quotes you give are from IsabeltheCrusader not me.
my mistake, after I made the post I realized my error in not putting Isabelthecrusaders handle before that section. I apologize for giving the impression in my posts that you made those comments.
I suggest you read the posts above more closely to find out what I said.
my error was in inaccurate/sloppy layout of my post, not in reading your posts closely. thanks for the suggestion though.
Odyesseus,
Maybe Belloc described Islam as Christendom’s “worst ever enemy” but he also, in the link you pointed to, suggested that the Jews posed a danger to European culture.
I give you two pieces straight from that article (caps mine):
In the place of the old Christian enthusiasms of Europe there came, for a time, the enthusiasm for nationality, the religion of patriotism. But self-worship is not enough, and the forces which are making for the destruction of our culture, NOTABLY the JEWISH COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA from Moscow, have a likelier future before them than our old-fashioned patriotism.
(Was he referring to the Communist threat to Europe? The Communist movement was a lot bigger than just the Jews? Why were they singled out?)
".....while under the English mandate the FORCING OF AN ALIEN JEWISH COLONY UPON PALESTINE has raised the animosity of the native Arab population to white heat."
(No mention that this was the homeland of the Jews from whence they were driven out by MUSLIMS or that the migration was spurred by pogroms throughout Europe before WWII and the Holocaust. Native ARAB population? Since when?)
These were the only mentions of the Jews, but why were they there at all if the topic was the heresy of ISLAM and the threat ISLAM posed to Europe and Christendom? Belloc seemed to include the Jews, if only peripherally, in the threat, even though the Jews had made a home in Europe in the centuries after the diaspora and considered themselves Europeans.
Given that it was written prior to WWII, were the Jews a threat to peace or a threat to Christendom BECAUSE they raised the ire of the Muslims?
J.S.
The West is not fighting radical Islam on its most vulnerable front. If the the West fights radical Islamism ONLY ON THE BASIS OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIOSN OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN ... the West will win.
But you can't get the West to do it, because in many of the Christian traditions the men want to keep the anti-Woman scriptural elements, or interpretations thereof, for their own purposes.
If they aren't willing to give those us, they can't fight radical Islam and win, because they can never fight on the one issue that underpins all of this crap:
CONTROL ACCESS TO SEX BY CONTROLLING WOMEN.
It's dirty, it's despicable, and it's the truth. And it's everywhere.
And the Left, most egregiously of all, will not confront it because it wants the beat the conservatives more than it wants to protect human rights.
Actually, that's ...
CONTROL UNMODERATED ACCESS TO SEX ANY WAY YOU WANT IT, ANY TIME YOU WANT, FROM WHOMEVER YOU WANT IT, WITH IMPUNITY UNDER THE LAW ... EVEN IF YOU RAPE ... BY CONTROLLING WOMEN UTTERLY ... QUOTE THE QUR'AN WHILE YOU DO IT.
Go read the life of Qubt. He couldn't get a woman "pure" enough so he had to settle for "bachelorhood" (read: celibacy).
Is that really the truth, or did this guy have more sexual problems that you could shake a stick at???
And look at Mohammad Atta, who planned the 9/11 attacks. Insane. Women, he said, weren't to touch his grave or attend his funeral. Not even his mother or sisters.
Why??? More seuxal problems than Freud could have dealt with at his zenith.
Watch the blaming of the Jews, guys. They're not responsible for any of this.
They are the only Abrahamic religion not to wage war to take territory. The most they're guilty of is defending the territory the world gave them after it tried to exterminate them.
Talk about the slaugher of the innocents. ...
It's interesting that the Naqshbandi Sufi G. I. Gurdjieff said that anti-Semitism was rooted in the jealousy of Jews that they "groked" the magical energies of abundance better than any other race.
To note also, they carry the doubled gene for music, which is why they always wind up sitting in more than 50% of the seats of the world's concert orchestras.
And no, I'm not Jewish. I just read a lot.
For J.S. ...
Sex is a big topic in the Qur'an and hadith, and among all imams of all times. People go to imams like Al-Sistani -- whose record about women is mixed, some bad, some VERY GOOD -- with all kinds of questions, hoping for a fatwa to tell them what's Ok and what's not.
Al-Sistani recently did two things, opposite in impact. First, as Grand Ayatollah of India, al-Sistani demanded that the shari'a courts in India treat women as equal under shari'a law. That sent Shi'a imams worldwide scrambling!!!!
But second, he exonerated "temporary marriages" which render women prostitutes and their children with no rights under shari'a law.
To Al-Sistani's credit, he held back the Shi'a militias for two years until the Sunnis blew the Golden Dome mosque in Sammarra. Then he let them go.
Now he is calling for an end to Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Iraq. But it may be too late.
It's so screwed up with these guys that they seem to be taking two steps forward and one back all the time.
But there are, on balance, good signs as well as bad.
But don't let your guard down.
Watch the blaming of the Jews, guys. They're not responsible for any of this.
Morgaan,
AMEN.
"Some of the Muslim family values are superior to our American chaos. They do have a god. There is no abortion in Islam and little divorce. The family and clan is strong. Women are doing what they are geniuses at -at birthing, at raising children, cooking, keeping the home and hearth organized and clean" posted by dennisw
Oh, please! Abortion is as widely practiced in Islamic communities as in any other, whether or not it happens to be legal. I know a woman who used to work at a women's clinic in Australia; she said about one-quarter of the women and girls getting abortions there were Muslim. One of them that she remembered was a Somali girl in her teens, brought in by her father, who didn't even seem to know how she got pregnant. The clinic staff found she had been gentially mutilated, probably when she was much younger. The girl refused to tell them anything and seemed traumatized. They concluded that she had probably been raped by a family member.
As for divorce, all it takes for a Muslim man to divorce his wife is to say "I divorce thee" a certain number of times - is it three? Muslim women don't have that privilege. Besides, if a man gets bored with his wife he has the option of acquiring two or three more; again, not an option open to women.
If Muslim women are "geniuses" at birthing children, it's only because they're too oppressed and uneducated to use birth control to limit their families as Western women do. The more educated and emancipated women are, the less babies they have, a simple little fact that conservative hand-wringers about the declining birthrate in the West can't seem to get their heads around. Want to raise the birth rate?" Stop educating women. The fact is that most women, when they really have a choice, choose not to have more than one, two, or three children. Can you blame them? Try giving birth yourself, Dennis, then maybe you'll understand why.
Adobe,
I'm sorry that your feathers were ruffled by my post of 9:36am this morning, but I'll stand by it. I am qualified to make those statements as I have been a practicing Catholic my entire life, almost fifty years now, and I have seen the after effects of Vatican II and all the destruction that it has wrought. And those precious bishops that you so eagerly defend sold us out a long time ago and appear to be more interested in furthering their earthly careers than doing their job, i.e., getting down to the business of saving souls.
Why haven't we heard anything from the American bishops about the treatment of Catholics and other Christians by Muslims in the Holy Land? Why aren't they sounding the alarm here in the United States? There was a time when saints like Peter Nolasco, John of Matha and Felix of Valois ransomed Christian Catholics from the Mohammadans. How is it that this practice was encouraged in ancient times by the leaders of the church but not today? This is definitely a sin of ommission and they will have to answer for it. If you have evidence that they have been vocal against Muslim atrocities committed on Catholics and other Christians, by all means, produce it here.
Let's take a look at the abortion issue. If it is true that anyone who efficaciously procures an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church, then why is it that the majority of American Catholic Bishops remain silent on the subject? The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Should not the supposed keepers of the faith stand up against the practice, especially since it is an equal opportunity destroyer, eliminating the child and endangering the mother's soul?
And what about the rampant homosexuality in the American seminaries, where future priests take vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience and bishops look the other way regarding lack of sexual abstinence. I mean, how can they rationalize sexual activity when part of the vow is NOT to engage in it?
And what about the message of Fatima? The Blessed Mother told the three children of Fatima that she wanted the Pope, in union with all the bishops of the world, to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, all together, on one day and it has never been done, contrary to the popular propaganda issued from the Vatican. If you say it was done in 1984, it was not. The Pope with the bishops consecrated the world to Mary's Immaculate Heart, but not Russia, which was her specific request. She promised a period of peace for the entire world after the consecration takes place. Have you seen any such peace? If the Pope and the bishops were obedient to the requests of the Blessed Mother regarding this peace, don't you think we would have seen some evidence of it by now? Are the atrocities committed by Muslims against their own people, as well as non-Muslims, especially the onslaught of Islamic oppression in the past two decades, an indication of that peace that the Blessed Mother promised. No, more a proof that it has not been done and that Catholic bishops have a lot to answer for.
Isabella the Crusader, your precious pre-Vatican II Catholic Church may have had more balls about standing up to radical Muslims, a debatable claim, but it also looked the other way when a certain 6 million members of another non-Christian faith (as well as homosexuals, Gypsies, Slavs, Communists, disabled people...) were slaughtered in Europe, when it wasn't actually facilitating the slaughter. Vatican II was the result of the Church coming to realize, belatedly, exactly what it had to answer for. Some Catholics, like yourself, predictably resented these attempts to bring the Church out of the Dark Ages and into the modern age, who wanted the Chruch to be a Church of hate rather than a Church of love. Those people are annoying but thankfully few, and enjoy very little influence or presitige among the Catholic mainstream. As a "lapsed Catholic", and as ambivalent as I am about the Catholic church both past and present, I am convinced that Vatican II saved the soul of the Church, and that without it we could be dealing with as many Catholic jihadists today as Muslims. If the Muslim religion really needs to go through a truly soul-searching change, for an example of how to go about this it need look no further than Vatican II.
Morgaan,
Iraq -- what a nightmare. I suppose it's pretty tragic that (thanks to the Iraq war -- everything the Americans never wanted to happen seems to be happening) women in Iraq may eventually have fewer rights than under Saddam. I've read that Saddam (for an Arab leader) was progressive (insisting on women's literacy, etc., I read somewhere that Iraqi women had one of the highest literacy rates in the Arab world), but if control of their lives reverts back to the Imams, those days are probably over. (I've also read that most professional women have already fled the country.)
There was another item which revealed the Arab mentality toward women (I believe it was outlined in a Matthew Fisher column), and (in a way it's mildly amusing) the attitude of the Arab men is that when they beat women or do honour killings, this is to demonstrate that Arabs "love" their women -- that is how they express "love" -- through killings and beatings. And, of course, since killing and beating women is frowned upon in the West, the Arabs interpret this phenomenon as evidence that the West does not love its women... Basically, that expresses Arab attitudes toward women (the inverse/opposite of Western attitudes). And yet another annoyance when one considers Dinesh D’Souza's fawning admiration for Islamic "values."
Looks like I was wrong about D'Souza (In the other thread). He is a slime-dog.
Oh well. Another school-ified book-learny moron with trash in his soul.
Their getting easier to spot all the time.
Life and death crises do that you know.
Angloirish,
Spoken like a true lapsed Catholic. If it's such a great ideology now, how come you are lapsed? Sorry to disappoint you but there are lots and lots of traditional Catholics out there, who are having the kids that you didn't bother to and who may save your ass someday when it comes down to whose got a majority and who'll be making the rules, the Muslims or the rest of us.
And spare me your tired and oh so boring nonsense about the church looking the other way when people were gassed during WWII. You are either ignorant or a flat out liar, because you didn't bother to LOOK IT UP before you spoke. Please note what the Jews say about how the Catholics helped them.
http://www.holocaust-heroes.com/
And don't let that chip on your shoulder speak for you anymore. It just makes you look pathetic.
This theory has been disputed by Ali Sina, who notes that
On the question of female infanticide, Sina notes in this FPM Symposium:I would take with a pillar of salt any claims that Islamic texts make about Jahaliya Arabs. After all, we have seen what they say about the other people they conquered - the Byzantines, the Persians, the Hindus, et al. We've seen them practice revisionist history vis a vis all the people they fought against e.g. note what they state about Jews in Arabia during Mohammed's time, and what they state about Israel today. Given all that, why should their accounts of their enemies in Arabia - all of whom were either converted or obliterated - be taken at face value? - simply because unlike Copts, Maronites, Jews, Hindus, et al, there are no non-Muslim Arab survivors. Instead, a historical analysis similar to the one Sina makes above is warranted.
J.S. ...
This is late and I don't know if you'll see this, but ...
Saddam had a secularist state, like that of Ataturk. He was basically your average thug atheist. He killed at least a million people -- 1/2 million in his own country, mostly Shi'as. The rest were Iranians during the 8-year war.
Saddam's "women's rights" consisted of letting them vote in rigged elections in which only he ran. He never TOUCHED the desert tribalist values of the five major clans in Iraq, which kept total control of women outside of the major cities.
Uday and Qusay regularly prowled the high schools, taking any teenage virgin they like. If they talked about it, they died.
BUT, that said, women in Iraq were MUCH better off then than they are now. Why? Becuase lurking in the wings were the Iranianized Dawa Party guys just panting to impose shari'a on the women in Shi'a areas. The Kurds have maintained women's rights -- and the draft constitution proffered by the Kurds early on, which was shelved unfortunately, would have maintained U.S. level women's rights. The great failure here in the beginning was to support the secular Sunnis in the cities, who could have held onto women's rights in the center of the country.
All this is to say that the most dangerous thing with regard to the spread of extreme shari'a is a vacuum.
You remove the linch-pin that holds down these creepy groups and all hell breaks loose. It happened in the Balkans after Tito, with Milosevic trying to take the whole country for the Serbs -- it happened in Aceh province in Indonesia when the stupid Indonesia government banned the GAM independence leaders from the country, paving the way for the imams to impose shari'a law (now the GAM have been allowed back in and won the prime ministership ... yah!!) -- and it happened in Iraq when we removed Saddam, which was a stupid thing to do, something that most of the decent Muslim groups in the US WARNED Bush would happen. Those groups estimated that it would take 20 years of preparation for free (really free) elections in Iraq and he wouldn't listen. Mr. Shrub Cowboy just had to go to war. Moron! When you look back at what Pipes and Spencer were writing then about it, you can see how prescient they were.
Something there is that abhors a vacuum. And now, with the blood of 9/11 making them believe they can stop being backward people and rule the world -- NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS! -- they are marching onward.
So, yes, removing Saddam created a vacuum into which stepped the shari'a male dominists, who have beaten women into cover or killed them for not obeying, while the Iraqi police have turned a 100% blind eye and the wife of the President of the United States has the unmitigated gall to tell us we brought "freedom to the women of Iraq." What a crock.
Isabelthe crusader,
are you SSPX, is the Pope also in error??? The whole magesterium has it wrong??? But somehow you have it all right???
I am qualified to make those statements as I have been a practicing Catholic my entire life, almost fifty years now, and I have seen the after effects of Vatican II and all the destruction that it has wrought.
I have to break it to you, you are not the only life long practicing Catholic of 50 years.... Don't confuse the lax theology and sometimes pro-gay practices of many of our US seminares with the important theological writings of Vatican II.
And those precious bishops that you so eagerly defend sold us out a long time ago and appear to be more interested in furthering their earthly careers than doing their job, i.e., getting down to the business of saving souls.
Thats a broad brush to paint of all our Bishops. Certianly I do not defend all of them, but many allow the latin mass. In addition, you may want to read up on St. Padre Pio, he has a lot to teach you about humility towards Bishops that may be in error.
Why haven't we heard anything from the American bishops about the treatment of Catholics and other Christians by Muslims in the Holy Land? Why aren't they sounding the alarm here in the United States? There was a time when saints like Peter Nolasco, John of Matha and Felix of Valois ransomed Christian Catholics from the Mohammadans. How is it that this practice was encouraged in ancient times by the leaders of the church but not today? This is definitely a sin of ommission and they will have to answer for it. If you have evidence that they have been vocal against Muslim atrocities committed on Catholics and other Christians, by all means, produce it here.
That is an issue for the entire Church to tackle. As much as you like to bash our Bishops, certianly the Catholic laypeople have not stepped up to the plate on this issue.
Again, you sit on every sermon in every Church to know what is being said on the topic???
Let's take a look at the abortion issue. If it is true that anyone who efficaciously procures an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church, then why is it that the majority of American Catholic Bishops remain silent on the subject? The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Should not the supposed keepers of the faith stand up against the practice, especially since it is an equal opportunity destroyer, eliminating the child and endangering the mother's soul?
The majority of Bishops are silent on this issue??? how can you possibly know this??? Just because they are not taking the action you wish does not mean they are in error.
And what about the rampant homosexuality in the American seminaries, where future priests take vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience and bishops look the other way regarding lack of sexual abstinence. I mean, how can they rationalize sexual activity when part of the vow is NOT to engage in it?
Again you paint a broad brush. Many Holy priests are out fighting the good fight.
Your post is filled with venom and hate for our Church. The people in it are not always perfect, but Jesus made us a promise about our Church. Despite your doom and gloom the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit.
angloirishslav posted:
Isabella the Crusader, your precious pre-Vatican II Catholic Church may have had more balls about standing up to radical Muslims, a debatable claim, but it also looked the other way when a certain 6 million members of another non-Christian faith (as well as homosexuals, Gypsies, Slavs, Communists, disabled people...) were slaughtered in Europe, when it wasn't actually facilitating the slaughter.
What are you talking about???? Looked the other way as millions died??? stop rewriting history....
Funny, thats the same time the Chruch tackled the scourge of abortion head on, talk about millions of innocents being slaughtered...
Vatican II was the result of the Church coming to realize, belatedly, exactly what it had to answer for.
Again you are wrong, Vatican II was the result of the spiritual growth of the Church. It has nothing to "answer" for.
Some Catholics, like yourself, predictably resented these attempts to bring the Church out of the Dark Ages and into the modern age, who wanted the Chruch to be a Church of hate rather than a Church of love.
Third strike, wrong again.... The Church was never a Church of hate. See islam for that type of ideology.
Those people are annoying but thankfully few, and enjoy very little influence or presitige among the Catholic mainstream.
I am not sure what you mean by "Catholic Mainstream", but if its some type of new-age type of liberal thinking, sorry to disapoint you.... thats not mainstream....
As a "lapsed Catholic", and as ambivalent as I am about the Catholic church both past and present
Not only are you ambivalent, you are misinformed about your Church...
I am convinced that Vatican II saved the soul of the Church, and that without it we could be dealing with as many Catholic jihadists today as Muslims.
Where do you get this stuff, that is so off the mark I don't know where to begin.... Vatican II is a spritual blessing for the Chruch. Unfortunatly many have twisted it into something it is NOT. Sounds like you are one of them...
But how can you have true virtue unless you are free to choose it? You can't bully people into heaven.
Hey! I'm a Catholic and a leftie!
Pfff. My mother couldn't cook if you threatened to drop a wall on her. She was far better at her job than she ever was at housework.
Hilaire Belloc was deeply anti-semitic. He also referred to Jesus Christ as 'a milksop'. We should all be very careful about citing him on anything.
WSW
Wild Slutty Womens
Belloc was a very pious Catholic
When did he refer to Christ as "a milksop?"
Adobe,
"Isabelthe crusader,
are you SSPX, is the Pope also in error??? The whole magesterium has it wrong??? But somehow you have it all right???"
No, I am not SSPX, but thanks for asking.
"I have to break it to you, you are not the only life long practicing Catholic of 50 years...."
You asked me what qualified me to make statements about the church. 'Never said I was the only one.
"Don't confuse the lax theology and sometimes pro-gay practices of many of our US seminares with the important theological writings of Vatican II."
Why do you think the "lax theology and sometimes pro-gay practices of many of our US seminaries" has been so rampant since Vatican II? It certainly wasn't rampant during Pope St. Pius X's papacy, who, BTW, warned about the damage modernism would do to society and the church. And now we've seen the fruits of it in the post Vatican II church and our modern society. Do you think that the disrespect children show to their parents, the overwhelming lack of faith in people who went to years of Catholic school but lost that faith after one semester of comparative religion in college, the breakdown in morality, the rise in crime, gang violence, viciousness while driving on the highways and other assorted and sordid activities show just what a effective influence the Catholic Church has had on society since your precious council.
"Why haven't we heard anything from the American bishops about the treatment of Catholics and other Christians by Muslims in the Holy Land?"
That is an issue for the entire Church to tackle? Really? "As much as you like to bash our Bishops, certainly the Catholic laypeople have not stepped up to the plate on this issue." My point exactly...lax leaders, lax lay people. Oh, and don't call telling the truth about the bishops not doing their job "bashing". People call Robert Spencer a hatemonger too, when all he is doing is telling the truth.
"The majority of Bishops are silent on this issue??? how can you possibly know this???"
Again, feel free to fill me in on how I'm wrong here, with facts please, not just through your rose-colored view.
"Again you paint a broad brush. Many Holy priests are out fighting the good fight."
No hon, my brush is teeny-tiny compared to the deafening silence of our bishops. And there ARE many good priests who are fighting the good fight and have it that much tougher because they are not being backed up by the leaders in the church, i.e., the bishops.
"Your post is filled with venom and hate for our Church. The people in it are not always perfect, but Jesus made us a promise about our Church. Despite your doom and gloom the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit."
Right. And Robert Spencer hates Muslims, too. And your post-Vatican II Catholic Church cannot be counted on to stand up to Islam, which is what we are fighting here.
I stand behind my original post, where I said the church was infiltrated and neutered. The church ceased to stand up to Communism after Vatican II. It does not stand against Islam now. If you care to do a goole search on a lady named Bella Dodd you will see how she admitted to recruting communists into the church, under the directive of Lenin, because he knew that Communism could never be able to fight the Catholic Church from the outside in. When she converted to Catholicism in the mid-1950's under the assistance of none other than Archbishop Fulton Sheen (now there was a church statesman and defender of the faith) she later told him that by the time Vatican II came about there were already at least three cardinals who were communists.
Any coincidence?? I think not. But since you are so strong in your faith, I'm sure it will be safe enough for you to check it out and see if what I'm saying is true.
dennisw:
"Too much family/clan cohesion leads to mindless conformity and stagnation. No innovation and progress. Science and logic become less important than pleasing the heads of the family"
Yes. I get the import.Cooking and taking care of one's own family also perfectly ok. You are right. By nature women are good at it. Exceptions also ok. (I am a fluke cook) After reading the comments I felt they were unfairly harsh on what you wrote.
Infidel Pride,
" Given all that, why should their accounts of their enemies in Arabia - all of whom were either converted or obliterated - be taken at face value? - simply because unlike Copts, Maronites, Jews, Hindus, et al, there are no non-Muslim Arab survivors".
Yes. valid points.
Isabellathecrusader wrote: "Angloirish, Spoken like a true lapsed Catholic. If it's such a great ideology now, how come you are lapsed? Sorry to disappoint you but there are lots and lots of traditional Catholics out there, who are having the kids that you didn't bother to and who may save your ass someday when it comes down to whose got a majority and who'll be making the rules, the Muslims or the rest of us. And spare me your tired and oh so boring nonsense about the church looking the other way when people were gassed during WWII. You are either ignorant or a flat out liar, because you didn't bother to LOOK IT UP before you spoke. Please note what the Jews say about how the Catholics helped them.
http://www.holocaust-heroes.com/
And don't let that chip on your shoulder speak for you anymore. It just makes you look pathetic."
Oh, how I do love a good argument, especially with a Catholic fascist...first of all, my reasons for being "lapsed" are none of your damn business, but I feel obligated by the rules of honest debate, when I comment on issues of Catholicism, to inform people that I was raised as a Catholic and also that I am no longer observant. The fact that I no longer go to church does not mean that I hold the church in contempt. And I certainly have no "chip on my shoulder" about having been raised Catholic; you'd be surprised at the number of lapsed Catholics who don't, either. And I did not say anything about the church having a "great ideology" now, only that it's an improvement over what they had before. As for there being "lots and lots of traditional Catholics out there who are having kids", what's that got to do with anything? What exactly do you mean by traditional Catholics anyway, people who make no attempt to limit their family size? If you do, then I'm sorry to inform you that there are very, very few "traditional Catholics" left in the Western world, because most Catholic families now are about the same size as non-Catholic ones. They obviously must be doing something to stop from breeding like rabbits the way Catholics were expected to pre-Vatican II. Your confidence that Catholics are all dutifully squeezing out hordes of future Catholic soldiers to, as you put it, "save my ass" from the invading Muslim hoardes is a little premature, although no doubt as a good pre-Vatican II Catholic you have done, or are perhaps still doing, your duty and produced the obligatory litter of 10 or so, as opposed to most other Catholics of our generation who prefer quality children over quantity. As for my having or not having children, an issue which is also none of your damn business, exactly how is that relevant? Do you think I am not entitled to be protected by the military of my own country and its allies if I did not do my reproductive duty? Is that the only meaningful way a woman can contribute to her society? And does that apply to every childless person out there? And anyway, how dare you criticize a woman's choice not to have children, when people like you are constantly harping about the plague of single motherhood and fatherless children in our society? Re. the Holocaust, yes, I know that many INDIVIDUAL Catholics and honourable and courageous priests, monks, and nuns helped and sheltered Jews, but that doesn't change the fact that the behaviour of the official leadership of the church, as distinct from individual church members, was a disgrace. The Church is an institution, not a collection of autonomous individuals, and the leadership of the institution, in this particular instance, failed miserably. To point that out is not Catholic-bashing, except in the twisted minds of historical revisionists like yourself.
You should join up with the Islamofascists; you have more in common with them than not.
Isabellathecrusader,
Again I ask you
is Pope Benedict wrong???
is John Paul the Great wrong???
are other Cardinals wrong such as Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia or Bishop Bruskewitz of Nebraska???
These are Holy, Holy men. What about Mother Angelica??? She obviously had a problem with a Cardinal (detailed in her book) yet she never spoke so vehmently as you do about them.
Again I ask, is the ENTIRE MAGESTERIUM WRONG???? These are simple questions.....
Wow, Angloirish, how did you get all that out of my post? Me thinks though dost protest too much.
I thought you were a guy, so blaming me for your fears of becoming a breeding machine are kind of funny.
Adobe,
Is Pope Benedict wrong? Well let's take one example, one that is applicable to the subject at hand.
Pope Benedict is the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, the visible head of the church on earth, is he not? And he has an obligation to protect the faith and the faithful from false teachings, from heretical beliefs and scandals, does he not? So when the Pope stepped inside the Blue Mosque in Turkey on November 30, 2006 and prayed with Muslims, in the Muslim style, removing his shoes, humbly receiving instruction in the basics of Muslim prayer from Mustafa Cagriche, following the command to turn toward the direction of Mecca, and crossing his hands on his stomach in a classical Muslim prayer attitude known as the "posture of tranquility", while avoiding all external signs of Catholic prayer, especially making the sign of the cross, which was noticably and embarassingly absent from the display, would you say he was defending the faith or giving scandal? Would you say it was right of him to go into that mosque in the first place? Would you say his purpose was to unite Catholics throughout the world and gratify Catholic teaching or appease Muslims? Was his message that Catholicism is the one true faith, or that Catholicism isn't any better than any other religion, and certainly not any better than the Satanic system of Islam?
Regarding Pope John Paul II, was it right or wrong of him to pray in a similar fashion in a Mosque in Damascus in 2001? Would you say he created unity within the church by praying in a mosque or did he cause a scandal by doing so? Was it right of Pope John Paul II to apologize for the Crusades? Indeed, is it correct to try and unite other faiths with the Catholic faith by practicing a false ecumenism that abandons Catholic principles and embraces heretical views, like that of Islam, which we see the fruits of here everyday and whose inherent evil we seek to resist and hopefully destroy? Will we do so by embracing the enemies practices? No, we will cause our own downfall and the dhimmification of our posterity by following these practices of two, as you say, holy, holy men.
As for the magisterium, if they remain silent on the most important issues of our time, the onslaught of oppressive Islam, the daily procuring of abortion in America, the turning a blind eye to sexual abuse by priests against innocent children, the disobedience of Our Lady's request for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart (Russia, not the whole world) then they are most certainly and unequivocally, wrong.
But please, do tell me, what have Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia or Bishop Bruskewitz of Nebraska said on the subjects of Islam, abortion, church pedophilia and the Blessed Mother's request?
Isabellahthe crusader:
"Indeed, is it correct to try and unite other faiths with the Catholic faith by practicing a false ecumenism that abandons Catholic principles and embraces heretical views, like that of Islam, which we see the fruits of here everyday and whose inherent evil we seek to resist and hopefully destroy? Will we do so by embracing the enemies practices? No, we will cause our own downfall and the dhimmification of our posterity by following these practices of two, as you say, holy, holy men".
I feel grateful to Isabellathecrusader for articulating beautifully what I feel towards our own so called "Hindu holy, holy men". You are right. The unholy charlatans refer to islam as a "religion" preaching "the same truth" and exhort the muslims who visit them (for wish fulfillment) to be a "good muslim". What does such a preposterous counsel mean??
Thanks, Crows & Cows. I'm glad someone understands something I'm trying to say here. Unfortunately, it appears that most religious leaders in our time are blinded by the dazzling allure of Islam, an allure that rhymes with (and resembles) a pile of manure.
A very good evening to you.
Isabellathecrusader,
Thank you.I am deeply touched. Best Wishes!
Isabellathecrusader, IP and Others,
Before this goes into the archives, do read what is written by Shoshi Shophrony, a JEW( and others) in the following. Must read in the atmosphere of hindu God vs christianGod, atheism, agnosticism..
http://www.arunachala.org/NewsLetters/2004/nov_dec.pdf
Crows,
I read the article by Ms. Shrophony and the experience she had of Bhagavan is not at all unlike the experience I have of Jesus. Isn't it interesting that both the Hindu and Catholic philosophies are based on love. mutual respect and consideration for other's well being? Where is that in Islam?
Last night I had this discussion with my computer guy who is also a great friend. He sees what is on my computer, in the bookmarks and on the desktop. He's teased me for a while now about all the anti-jihad stuff I have saved. But yesterday we really got into a good discussion and he told me he was starting to notice how Islam and peace just don't seem to jive. I could see the light bulb had gone off. He asked me if Islam is such a great religion then why do the Sunnis and Shites keep murdering each other? And that made me think of something that I've been contemplating for a while now, that if the whole world was conquered by Islam there still wouldn't be any peace and the killing would continue to go on. The Satanic death cult of Islam would have to continue to serve up human sacrifice to worship it's blood thirsty "god". What kind of "god" demands misery and bondage to appease itself? Not the true God.
We're told that Islam is peaceful, but we're never told it's loving. Can you have true peace without love? I don't think so. Why would you want it?
Odysseus, sorry to take so long to get back to you on this. It took some tracking down.
My source is Wendy Holden's review (Literary Review, April 1995) of Peter Vanisttart's book In the Fifties. According to Holden, the author spent the decade
and discovering that
One example Holden gives from the Vansittart book is:
I believe Belloc died in 1953, so he might have been senile, not feeling well, joking (though it isn't funny) or being deliberately provocative to annoy this Vansittart pipsqueak.
Nevertheless, I didn't make it up.
WSW
Well, Belloc wasn't perfect...
I still think he is well worth reading on the Subject of Islam. His work contains a lot of insight.
"Heresies survive by the truths they contain”
Therein lies the reason Islam has such a hold over it's followers: not presumably the decidedly ungodly character of the ”seal of the prophets.”
Like many Christians, perhaps he found it difficult to put a lot of faith in someone who died 2000 years ago.
Perhaps he is with Jesus now, and has found that he actually likes him!
I will close with an exert of a review I found on the amazon website.
“Ominously, Belloc closes this chapter by asking whether Islam will rise up once more to challenge the West. Prophetically, he answers, "yes". Islam, he maintains, has the virtue of spiritual solidarity, whereas in the West, religion, the very glue of civilization, is dissolving, leaving us irresolute, aimless and vulnerable. A strong political leader in the Islamic world could harness the strength of this spiritually united people and overwhelm us. Pretty relevant ideas, even though written in the 1930's.”
Isabellathecrusader,
Thanks. Yes. Agree with you. Don't even mention islam while savouring Spirituality. That sullies everything. Oh I feel so weary..
Crows,
On feeling weary, take a rest hon, and know that while you do, others have your back.