"Hugh having read this its clear you are mentally ill. You believe every Muslim follows Islam, preaches Islam and wants to take over the UK by jihad." -- from a curious comment by a Muslim apologist, "istanbulnotconstantinople," at Jihad Watch recently.
I'll leave it to others to decide if I am mentally ill. Were I to be considered such, I would note that I, as a once-perfectly sane Infidel, have had to spend a lot of time, far too much time, on the Belief-System of Islam and all of its permutations and combinations of craziness.
The apologist makes the charge that I am "mentally ill" because, you see, I "believe every Muslim follows Islam" and "preaches Islam." Really? Would that be a crazy thing to think? Or, put otherwise, would it be silly to assume, or to make policies based on the reasonable assumption, that those who continue to call themselves Muslims should be held to "follow Islam"? And to "preach Islam"?
And furthermore, this "istanbulnotconstantinople" apologist further charges me with what in his view is clearly a sign of my being "mentally ill," for he claims that I assume that all Muslims wish "to take over the UK by jihad." But in writing that, he misstates, for he knows that the word "jihad" as used by me means simply the "struggle" to "remove all obstacles to the spread, and dominance, of Islam." And that can be achieved by combat, or qitaal, and that, traditionally, was the way that Islam spread -- through armed conquest. And since Muslims have shown, or a great many have shown, that they do not regard as acts of terrorism many things which we non-Muslims do see as such, but rather see them as new ways of conducting combat in "unequal situations" (yes, how unfair of the Infidels to have been able to produce and manufacture all those tanks and planes that not a single Muslim state has yet been able to produce, despite the oil-rich Muslim states having received more than ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone), those acts of terrorism, whether carried out or foiled, do distract Infidels from concentrating on the larger question of the other instruments of Jihad, that are more dangerous and more effective, and have to be opposed.
Da'wa should not be freely conducted, not in prisons, not outside of prisons. Saudi and other rich Arabs should not be allowed to spend tens of billions of dollars on mosques and madrasas, on buying up existing, or founding new, academic centers or departments or individual professors engaged in "teaching about Islam" or about the Middle East. Armies of Western hirelings -- including those ex-diplomats and former intelligence agents who have behaved so traitorously, should be exposed, and held up for attack and ridicule in the press and in Parliamentary or Congressional committee hearings. This should happen so that they, and others who might be tempted in the future to become paid agents of Islam and of the rich Arabs, will have to think twice about doing so.
Do I think that every single Muslim "follows Islam"? No, but we Infidels are entitled to assume, and to act on the assumption, that anyone who continues, knowing what the texts and tenets of Islam are and remain, and knowing that we Infidels now know, or are coming to know, to identify himself as a Muslim can be held to "follow Islam.”
And if they "follow Islam," then, because the Total Belief-System of Islam makes so many demands, and requires that its followers clearly distinguish, or divide the world between, Believers and Infidels, and are to work, however they can, to push back the boundaries of Dar al-Islam, it would be naive to assume that Muslims, that those who "follow Islam" or can be held to "follow Islam," would not wish to "preach Islam." And furthermore, it would be reasonable to assume that they would wish to engage in the "struggle" to remove all barriers to the spread and dominance of Islam -- which is to say, to participate in Jihad.
If one's writing or arguing or acting on the argument that those who identify themselves as "Muslims" should be assumed to believe in Islam makes one "mentally ill," then among those "mentally ill" are at least a billion Muslims.
Is "istanbulnotconstantinople" among them? Or would he care to tell us in what way someone who calls himself a Muslim, but neither "follows Islam" nor "preaches Islam" is, nonetheless, a Muslim? And how does that "Muslim" who does not "follow Islam" differ from those who are really unwilling-to-admit-they’re-apostate Muslims, one of those Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims, the ones who are not Muslims at all, in the sense of believing in Islam, but who cling to it for other reasons -- out of filial piety, or some dreamy belief that they have to have an "identity" and that "identity" must surely be connected to Islam, which is not the same thing as being a Believer.
All of us must be crazy then.
Welcome to the funny farm!
Is this person mentally stable?
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-2008-06-09-0004/
"Your lifetime is over. September 11th is the beginning of you death. You have extended the mission in Afghanistan until 2011. You men will definitely return home after three years, but not alive, but in coffins."
istanbulnotconstantinople
I saw the above idiot's behavior on the female genital mutilation thread and it was terrible. He is either a taqiyya spinner or is woefully misinformed about the Islam he is trying to represent. His arguments got more feeble as the regulars here proved how incorrect he was
So now this fool is attacking Hugh who is a 100 times better informed on Islam. The amusing part is how often Muslims don't even have basics facts right on their cult..... Similar to them reading reciting Koran in Arabic and being mostly clueless about what is in it. What they know about the Koran is what some low IQ Mullah has told time
When trying to ascertain the extent of a Muslim's fidelity to faith (i.e., extent of effective brainwashing), ask 3 questions:
1) Do you believe 100 lashes (or even lapidation) is an appropriate punishment for adultery?
2) Do you believe amputation is an appropriate punishment for theft?
3) Do you believe death is an appropriate punishment for a Muslim apostate?
How about it IstanBULL?
"Very clever, Mr. Bond, but not clever enough!"
- fiendish laughter
In any case, it isn't necessary for "every" follower to be devout, but rather that the fanatical minority be singleminded and with a single purpose, for the threat to be real and inarguable.
In my lifetime the Free World has fought and beaten back two (3) ideologies bound on World domination.
Are we going to rollover on this 'new' one?
Hey, there ARE SOME PERFECTLY SANE posters here ... tee hee hee hee ha ha HA HA HA [chortle] ho ha HA.
You didn't ban him did you? I was still hoping on getting a reaction from him.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/021283.php#comments
"...I, as a once-perfectly sane Infidel, have had to spend a lot of time, far too much time, on the Belief-System of Islam and all of its permutations and combinations of craziness."
Any rational person who gains a clear grasp (or as Hugh would say, an inobnubilated grasp) of Islam's core and immutable doctrines, if he is a moral person, and if he is a responsible person, will strive to raise the alarm among fellow citizens and to act intelligently within his abilities, position, and resources, to protect our civilization from ruin at the hands of this vicious and implacable cult.
Thanks, Hugh, for being moral. Thanks, Hugh, for being responsible. Thanks, Hugh, for striving each day to inform, to educate, and to provide thoughtful analysis based on verifiable facts. Thanks, Hugh, for striving each day to blow away the Islamic smokescreen of taquiyya, and kitman, and dawa. Thanks, Hugh, for striving each day to lift the fog of confusion created by historical revisionists, moral relativists, and Orwellian Newspeakers who pollute the public discourse with disinformation on this vital subject.
Thanks, Hugh, for being so sane in a world that seems to have gone insane.
Not all Muslims, even most of them, believe in offensive jihad. But a sizeable minority do and the majority who do not will do little if anything to curb the "tiny" minority.
By the way, the sacking of Constantinoble and the Armenian genocide IS NOT "nobody's business but the Turks" It's every Infidel's business.
Constantinople, that is.
Istanbulnotconstantinople?
Constantinople has been illegally occupied for 555 years.
And the Greeks turned into refugees in their own country.
Talk about rewarding aggression.
If you are mentally ill for your views on Islam, Robert, so am I. And I consider us in good company with the likes of Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina and many other brave Crusaders.
Sane or not, I will faithfully follow to the ends of the earth.
Hate to tell you all this but the guys right spencer and all us in the west are mentally ill we have not removed these people in goverment who are selling us out we are mentally ill or better yet suicidel for not fighting these people like we fought the nazi and japanese i for one have a complete grasp on how my goverments curtailing to the jihadists and i sit and do not act we are all nuts and our kids are nuts and our kids are gonna pay dearly for our inaction.
"you are mentally ill".
If you are crazy, then a lot of other people are crazy too.
What is really happening is that Muslims are encountering ideas that our alien to their experience. People are not allowed to speak badly of Islam in Muslim countries so it must seem like crazy behaviour to Muslims.
This is akin to a former North Korean soldier who first heard someone speak badly of "The Glorious Leader." He say, "I almost went insane myself hearing someone speak of the Glorious Leader badly. I'd never encountered such a person before."
What is hopeful is that this person took the time to email you. It might indicate that he is becoming conflicted regarding his understanding of the purity of Islam.
To those walking in darkness, the light is seen as being either evil or insane. No Robert, you are not insane, but rather someone who is committed to expressing a solid and reasoned critique of Islam and Muslim culture.
I've not seen anything Robert has written that is insane, evil or hateful. Offensive yes, but then if you say anything important someone will be offended.
I've always thought that Robert and Hugh were two wild and crazy guys!
Greek Constantinople did not really die in 1453 but in 1955. There was still an embattled but rich full remnant of Byzantine Greek life hanging on by its fingernails till one night in September that no one else seems to recall. And this in 'modern' Turkey.
http://chicago.agrino.org/turkish_pogrom_against_the_greeks.htm
If you are mentally ill for your views on Islam, Robert, so am I. And I consider us in good company with the likes of Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina and many other brave Crusaders.
Sane or not, I will faithfully follow to the ends of the earth.
And we might as well add Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, John Quincy Adams, Bishop Fulton J Sheen, Hilaire Belloc, William Gladstone and their ilk to the ranks of the mentally ill.
Oh, come on! Here's the "mentally ill" person:
istanbulnotconstantinople.
You know that all the inferior Mohammedans do is call us names! That's all they have! No substantive arguments! Of course it's the above Mohammedan poster who is "mentally ill" - for following the hoax, barbarian "religion" of Islam.
Hey Joe Mohammedan - checked into your local insane asylum yet? You need to, asap.
Given the physical description of Mohammed after receiving his "revelations", I think it is safe to say that he was mentally ill.
Stick that in your hookah and smoke it, istanbul boy.
"Greek Constantinople did not really die in 1453 but in 1955."
-- a posting above
The poster is referrnig to the events of September 1955, when Greek stores and offices and Greeks themselves were attacked all over Istanbul. Speros Vryonis devoted a whole book to the subjuect -- "The Mechanics of Catastrophe."
VVV,
Oh, so correct!
I don't know if you've seen this, but I refer to it quite a bit for the biting satire and mockery of that false profiteer.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/comics/introduction.htm
Browse the pages using the Page X on the left side.
We can use this wonderful material to tell this idiot instanfoolwhoeverImajackoffMoismybitch to sit down and STFU.
Bye!
boneshack,
I have seen that and I wholeheartedly approve of the mocking of Mohammed's idiosyncracies. I also approve of the clinical description of Mohammed's mental and physical illnesses in the book:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/book.htm
Show these little runts that the things they think are so divine are actually the epitome of the mundane.
Hugh, if you pay more than slight and very clinical attention to the trolls on this site, you certainly will be driven from your wits.
The problem with looking for the reasons behind unreason is that, well ... unreason doesn't have sensible reasons.
I recommend that you restrict yourself to exercises in what Ayn Rand called Philosophical Detection (in the essay of the same name). Philosophical detection is the analysis of an irrational argument into the underlying irrational premises on which it is based -- flawed premises in epistemology, ethics etc ...
Certainly mohammedan thinking in general, and formal mohammedan philosophy in particular offers the philosophically minded critic a smorgasbord of loony stuff to choose from.
Other than that, really, you deserve the leeway to attend to your mental hygiene. You work in very dirty surroundings.
Keep the faith.
His moniker "istanbulnotconstanstinople" was intended to provoke infidels-- a touch of Turkish islamo-nationalism.
That site the poster above provided on the September 1955 pogrom against non-Muslims: principally Greeks, but also including Jews and Armenians for good measure is all too reminiscent of Germany of the interwar years.
The amount of hate in these people is incredible.
They're fanatics, one can't reason with them.
Don’t waste your time. Just be strong enough to deter their aggression.
Simple as that.
Who knows if the troll is a muslim or a dhimmi apologist. Regardless, there are many people who refuse to believe or cannot grasp the horrors associated with islam, certain that an ideology so malevolent, so crude, so savage could not exist in the 21st century. To the uninformed and ignorant, only incorrigible bigots would malign a legitimate religion or feel threatened by muslims out of hate for the "other". When presented with a few facts about islam's doctrine and history, these folks wouldn't see the threat that is obvious to us, they would see either "hate" or delusional fear created by belief in a spurious, asinine conspiracy theory that only fools would lend any credence. Some people cannot accept the existence of evil.
Islam is surely enough to drive anyone insane; look what it has done to muslims. People who understand it but don't believe or practice it are among the sanest people on the planet. If only there were 1.5 billion more of them.
Hugh Fitzgerald
"Do I think that every single Muslim "follows Islam"? No, but we Infidels are entitled to assume, and to act on the assumption, that anyone who continues, knowing what the texts and tenets of Islam are and remain, and knowing that we Infidels now know, or are coming to know, to identify himself as a Muslim can be held to "follow Islam.”"
Even though Mr Fitzgerald admits the fact that not every Muslim "follows Islam" , (in fact the majority of Muslims dont "follow Islam" because some 80% HAVENT READ the texts), they ALL must be HELD to "follow Islam". And as Mr Fitzgerald indicates , to " follow Islam" means in this case , to participate in jihad. Therefore all Muslims must be held to be 'slow' Jihadists at the very least.
Of course , the majority of the Muslims in the West do not participate in any sort of Jihad. They are indifferent to the tenets and teachings of their religion or simply unaware of them. To be a Muslim in the West is akin to most Britons being Christian , it is simply a cultural hangover from the 'old country' which is increasingly being eroded. Most Muslims in the West can and do pick and choose what they believe in , generally its the good stuff because they have been influenced by Western values.
To take the position that every Muslim living in the West is a Jihadist strikes me as rather paranoid and everyone knows that paranoia is a mental illness.....
Belief in Allah is mental illness enough. All muslims believe in Allah, unless they are lying.
All muslims who believe in Allah and the messenger, follow Islam by definition, regardless if they can read the Quran or not. All muslims pray five times a day, or they are not muslims.
According to Tabari, Mohammad said that Allah said, 'A true believer is one who does the prayers, pays the tax, bows in homage and renounces agreements with Jews'. This is essentially all it takes to be a good muslim, well that and a strict adherence to Sharia...and jihad, don't forget that duty, and maybe an honor killing once in a while...don't worry you will get used to those...Allah willing...and he always is...
I second Stendec's post. Every word of it.
Go Hugh!
'david xavier' - before accusing Hugh of 'paranoia' and, therefore, openly reiterating, if in a snide way, the accusations made by our latest Disruptor, you claimed:
"the majority of the Muslims in the West do not participate in any sort of Jihad. They are indifferent to the tenets and teachings of their religion or simply unaware of them. To be a Muslim in the West is akin to most Britons being Christian , it is simply a cultural hangover from the 'old country' which is increasingly being eroded. Most Muslims in the West can and do pick and choose what they believe in , generally its the good stuff because they have been influenced by Western values."
Would *you*, 'david xavier', by any chance, with those words, be describing yourself?
Unfortunately, the fact that many Muslims in the west may be 'lax' or 'cultural' Muslims, does not comfort me much.
You see, I have read Jacques Ellul.
In connection with the phenomenon of the 'cultural' or 'slack' Muslim, who is living in the West, I will cite this interesting paragraph from his essay, 'Les Trois Piliers du Conformisme', or, 'The Three Pillars of Conformity'.
First, the French:
"Oui, mais dira-t-on, en quoi cela concerne-t-il notre changement de comprehension, d'ouverture, a l'egard de l'islam? Le plus souvent, ces immigres sont des musulmans de nom, de pure forme.
'Comme 50% des Francais sont 'catholiques', on garde des rites, des fetes, des jours sans travail...mais c'est tout.
'Il faut, pour comprendre la realite, tenir compte du phenomene, que j'ai etudie ailleurs, de 'remanence du religieux' - c'est-a-dire que quelqu'un qui appartient de nom, de tradition, de famille, a une religion, est toujours suceptible de redevenir un religieux fervent et parfois sectaire s'il se produit un 'choc', une persecution, un reveil emanant d'un petit groupe mystique, l'injustice dans un pays pratiquant une autre religion, etc.
'Les rites conserves rendent l'homme ouvert et receptif a une renaissance religieuse."
I translate - apologies for my high-school knowledge of French, but I think I have the gist of it -
"Yes, but, someone will say, what does this have to do with our [i.e. French] change of understanding, of opening [up], with regard to Islam?
" Most often these immigrants are Muslims in name [only], purely formal [in their faith].
"Like the 50 % of French who are ‘Catholics’, people keep up the ceremonies, the feasts, the holidays…but that’s all.
"To understand the reality we must take into account something I have studied elsewhere, the phenomenon of the “residual religious” – that is to say, that a person who belongs to a religion in name, by tradition, by family, is always liable to become once again fervently religious and even sectarian if he sustains a ‘shock’, a persecution, an awakening arising from a little mystical group, an injustice in a country practising another religion, and so on.
'The ceremonies that are kept up, keep the person open and receptive to a religious revival. "
One must remember that Ellul was a sociologist. He was also the kind of person who would never say something like this, unless he had in fact observed it to be so.
How can I be certain that a 'cultural' or 'nominal' Muslim may not, tomorrow or next week or next year or in ten years time, so long as they continue to claim 'Muslim' as their identity, transform themselves into a full-on jihadi?
Question: no matter how nominal and 'kafirized' a given MINO [Muslim-In-Name-Only] may be, if the surrounding Muslim community is large enough, how easy would it be for that particular MINO to either go the whole way and call themselves an apostate, or else, while wishing to call themselves Muslim, dissociate themselves, firmly and openly, from such things as jihad plots, or projects to force the kafir to give way to sharia?, or to openly question and criticise jihad and sharia?
When Magdi Allam, in a western country, identifying himself as Muslim and desiring to practise and visibly exemplify a 'peaceful' Islam, came out in support of Israel, and criticised jihad and sharia, he was promptly threatened with death by other, more pious and zealous traditional Muslims.
To take the position that every Muslim living in the West is a Jihadist strikes me as rather paranoid and everyone knows that paranoia is a mental illness.....
Posted by: David Xavier
Wrong!
Every Muslim is a member of the club, and when asked by a jihadist " are you with us, or against us", 100 per cent will say "I am with you". To say "no" means they are no longer Muslim, which has "consequences".
Ignoring that fact, as Hugh has been warning, would be downright crazy.
To take the position that every Muslim living in the West is a Jihadist strikes me as rather paranoid and everyone knows that paranoia is a mental illness.....
Posted by: David Xavier
And every ostrich with it's head in the sand is an ostrich with his head in the sand...It is clear by your above post you know little about Islam, certainly not enough to criticize Hugh. In order to adequately (if that's possible) defend Islam and muslims, you have to know at least a little about it.
DX: Of course , the majority of the Muslims in the West do not participate in any sort of Jihad.
Exactly how do you know that? Do you know the majority you speak of?
How many 'sorts' of jihad do you know of?
The pickers and choosers you speak of are not muslims at all, they are either fakes or apostates. You cannot pick and choose from the perfection that is Allah and Islam. Those choices cannot be made. Not one of Allah's directions/demands are less important than the others. Allah made very clear in his book the Quran how he wanted his muslims to conduct themselves. Mohammad provides the role model of perfection. Mohammad said...'If anyone changes his religion, kill him'. To pick and choose is changing the religion, to break away from the mainstream, and is apostasy...
DDA,
"Would *you*, 'david xavier', by any chance, with those words, be describing yourself?"
Yes I am describing myself as a Christian for Identification purposes only.I am not a Muslim if thats what you are implying (yet again).
"How can I be certain that a 'cultural' or 'nominal' Muslim may not ....transform themselves into a full-on jihadi?"
As I have said before , our values as expressed in our diverse liberal tolerant multi-cultural society is worth this risk , this and faith in our law and enforcement institutions. I am certain that our 'way' will win over the hearts and minds of the 'other'. I think this is happening already in the West ..certainly it is in Western Sydney.
Dsinc,
"Every Muslim is a member of the club, and when asked by a jihadist " are you with us, or against us", 100 per cent will say "I am with you". .....
Yet , in the West , a majority do reject the call to Jihad ( else we would be swimming in blood). Perhaps its the siren song of the decadent West or perhaps they are playing possum? I suggest that encoaching Western influence on many Muslim immigrates provokes the violent reaction in a minority and the West will win out.
duh_swami,
"Exactly how do you know that? Do you know the majority you speak of?
How many 'sorts' of jihad do you know of?"
The one Hugh Fitz is talking about is the demographic one ..but do you really think there is a 'joint' consciousness to the many Muslim who come to the West that compels them to come to the UK or USA or Europe and "breed" like Cuckoo's in a nest so as to usurp the Kafirs? Of course not , it the seeking of a better life...
"The pickers and choosers you speak of are not muslims at all, they are either fakes or apostates. You cannot pick and choose from the perfection that is Allah and Islam. Those choices cannot be made. Not one of Allah's directions/demands are less important than the others...."
Again , most Muslims have not read the Koran , you probably know more about whats in the texts than they do...perhaps by accusing them of being of apostates and such , you drive otherwise normal Muslim immigrants into the very thing you fear the most...real literal Islam! Perhaps if we all keep quite ,stop the incitment ... it will all go away.
If you are mental ill to think that Muslims want to spread Islam, then I am mentally ill. If you are mentally ill because you fear the rise of Islam, then I am mentally ill. If you are mentally ill because you strongly oppose Islam, then I am mentally ill.
Spencer has a strange bedfellow: Michel Foucault. He spent most of his life trying to tell us that the term 'mentally ill' is a term that has been used by people, both in and out of authority, to discredit and demean all those people who dare to disagree with them.
Yet , in the West , a majority do reject the call to Jihad....
Fact. Islam is violent. Moderate Muslims are sleepers. Put a gun to a moderate Muslim's head and he will reject the call to jihad?
Dream on David Xavier.
...real literal Islam!
What other Islam is there?
Perhaps if we all keep quite ,stop the incitment ... it will all go away.
Now there is the "real" mental illness.
Pseudopsychiatry once again raises its chimeric head. Let's see, how many times has mental illness been used to dismiss the awful truth of the Cassandra League? Gee willickers, I can go all the way back to Biblical passages where the mental state of those prophets who didn't wish to utter the false prophecies of the soothsayers....Christ, himself. Paul, Peter....they were all dismissed as madmen, too. We are in good company, then!
Chimerical. I meant to say chimerical...sorry. It is my mental state. It is not all there.
"'Do I think that every single Muslim "follows Islam"? No, but we Infidels are entitled to assume, and to act on the assumption, that anyone who continues, knowing what the texts and tenets of Islam are and remain, and knowing that we Infidels now know, or are coming to know, to identify himself as a Muslim can be held to "follow Islam.' [quoting from py piece]
Even though Mr Fitzgerald admits the fact that not every Muslim "follows Islam" , (in fact the majority of Muslims dont "follow Islam" because some 80% HAVENT READ the texts), they ALL must be HELD to "follow Islam". And as Mr Fitzgerald indicates , to " follow Islam" means in this case , to participate in jihad. Therefore all Muslims must be held to be 'slow' Jihadists at the very least.
Of course , the majority of the Muslims in the West do not participate in any sort of Jihad. They are indifferent to the tenets and teachings of their religion or simply unaware of them. To be a Muslim in the West is akin to most Britons being Christian , it is simply a cultural hangover from the 'old country' which is increasingly being eroded. Most Muslims in the West can and do pick and choose what they believe in , generally its the good stuff because they have been influenced by Western values.
To take the position that every Muslim living in the West is a Jihadist strikes me as rather paranoid and everyone knows that paranoia is a mental illness....."
-- from a posting above
You misunderstand, you misstate, you oversimplify, you miss the point, you miss all kinds of points.
It is no doubt comforting to think that most Muslmis -- you pull a figure right out of the air, of "80%" -- and I, right out of the air, pull another figure, of "20%" -- that is, 20% of Muslims now living in the West who are, as you maintain, ignorant of the duty of Jihad. But I think, in fact, it is impossible nowadays to be a Muslim in the West and not have a good sense of what the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira say. The doctrine of Jihad is not tangential; it is central; it's all over the Qur'an. For god's sake, just look at the "Calcutta Koran Petition" and see the more than one hundred excerpts from the Qur'an that are described, rightly, as "Jihad-verses." And the Hadith-collections are full of it as well, full of hatred toward the Infidels. And what is the Sira, if not, in large and pertinent part, a catalogue of battles against the Infidels, a veritable kitab al-maghazi?
But let's look again at your "80%" figure of those Muslims who, as you put it all-cappishly, haven't read the texts:
"...(in fact the majority of Muslims dont "follow Islam" because some 80% HAVENT READ the texts), they ALL must be HELD to "follow Islam"."
Is, by any chance, that 80% figure based on the fact that 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arab, and so, you assume, have not read the texts? But you know perfectly well that non-Arab Muslims now do read the Qur'an in other translations, and furthermore, all kinds of Muslims study, or rather memorize, hundreds or even thousands of verses from the Qur'an, in Arabic, and then are told, more or less, what those passages mean. Think of the millions of Pakistani boys whose "education" has consisted of what madrasas offer, and who vie with each other to memorize those verses, and to become a "hafiz."
But even if there are some Muslims who are unaware of the details, it doesn't matter. They are not foxes, but hedgehogs. The know one Big Thing. And that One Big Thing is that they are Muslims. And what that means is that they are the "best of peoples" for they have accepted the final, right, undistorted revelation, the one that Muhammad, the most Perfect of Men, received from Allah (via Gabriel) over twenty-three years.
And they know that they owe their loyalty to Islam, and to fellow members of the Umma. And they know, if they know nothing else, that there is a permanent gulf between Believers and Infidels and, between the two, a state of permanent hostility, or war, though not always open warfare, essentially exists between the two, for Muslims are, in a just world, a right world, a world that goes according to Allah's will, to dominate -- and dominate everywhere.
The lowliest illiterate Muslim, who knows only the Five Pillars of worship, but who also knows he is "a Muslim," can very easily be whipped up against the Infidels. Look, if you need an example at the present day, at all those iliterate Afghani tribesmen, fighting the "Infidel" when the Infidel was British, or two decades ago Russian, or today, American, British, Australian, French, German, and so on. They don't need to have read the Qur'an. They "know" what Islam tells them, as self-identified Muslims, to think.
You don't understand what it means to "participate in Jihad." Those Muslims who come to the Lands of the Infidels, who settle in, who procreate, and usually procreate, at least in Western Europe, at rates three or four times those of the non-Muslims in whose lands they now have been permitted to settle, are engaged in demographic conquest. And many of them know it. Many of them are keenly aware of Muslim numbers. Long ago, Houari Boumedienne, when the Muslim population in Western Europe was one-tenth or one-twentieth what it is today, said openly at the U.N. (in 1974) that Muslims would "conquer Europe" through the wombs of their women. Many, many others -- if you want I'll give you a quick handful -- have said the same thing. They know what is going on. And they know what each new mosque that goes up, paid for not by the locals, but by what may be seen as both a foreign power, that is Saudi Arabia or another rich Gulf Arab state, but "foreign powers" that seek not so much agents of influence for their own countries, but agents of influence, capable of bringing new recruits into, the Army of Islam, the Camp of Islam.
Jihad is far more than merely terrorism or qitaal. And one can participate in Jihaad by all kinds of acts. The attempt to hide from Infidels what Islam is all about, even if prompted merely by filial piety or embarrassment, is itself a form of Jihad. Objectively, by keeping Infidels unwary, it furthers the cause of Jihad.
That does not make one a "Jihadist" in the ordinary sense, the sense in which most people now use that term. But the actions may still further the Jihad, and those who merely swell the ranks, and thus the perceived power, of Muslims in the West are themselves contributing to the problem. Even those who come largely indifferent to Islam, if they do not make a clean break, are in danger themselves of returning, possibly as a response to life's setbacks that we all suffer, to that old-time religion, and when that "old-time religion" turns out to be Islam, Infidels have every reason to worry.
Towards the end of your response to me you write this:
"To take the position that every Muslim living in the West is a Jihadist strikes me as rather paranoid and everyone knows that paranoia is a mental illness....."
Don't be absurd. You know perfectly well that I did not write, did not argue, that "every Muslim livinig in the West is a Jihadist." I said something different. I said that the definition of "Jihad" is broader than most appear to think, and that, furthermore, one can participate in Jihad in various ways, sometimes merely by lending moral support to those directly engaged. And in my reply to you here I noted that Muslims can, by their activities, or by their presence, and their proliferation, increase the perceived power of Muslims (and politicians are weak, and likely to yield to that perception), and that does further the same goals as any classic Jihad, even if the means chosen, or even not deliberatley chosen, are different.
Finally, the best response to what you wrote is contained in another posting, by "dumbleodore's army," above, when she quotes the piercing student of Islam's presence in France, Jacques Ellul, who early on sounded an alarm, because he understood how very different, how much stronger, was the hold of Islam on the minds of men, and how much more than a "religion" in the Western sense Islam is, and has always been. It is a Total Belief-System.
Here, again, is what Ellul wrote (as excerpted by "dumbledore's army"):
"Oui, mais dira-t-on, en quoi cela concerne-t-il notre changement de comprehension, d'ouverture, a l'egard de l'islam? Le plus souvent, ces immigres sont des musulmans de nom, de pure forme.
'Comme 50% des Francais sont 'catholiques', on garde des rites, des fetes, des jours sans travail...mais c'est tout.
'Il faut, pour comprendre la realite, tenir compte du phenomene, que j'ai etudie ailleurs, de 'remanence du religieux' - c'est-a-dire que quelqu'un qui appartient de nom, de tradition, de famille, a une religion, est toujours suceptible de redevenir un religieux fervent et parfois sectaire s'il se produit un 'choc', une persecution, un reveil emanant d'un petit groupe mystique, l'injustice dans un pays pratiquant une autre religion, etc.
'Les rites conserves rendent l'homme ouvert et receptif a une renaissance religieuse."
Here is the English verison by "dumbledore's army":
"Yes, but, someone will say, what does this have to do with our [i.e. French] change of understanding, of opening [up], with regard to Islam?
"Most often these immigrants are Muslims in name [only], purely formal [in their faith].
"Like the 50% of French who are ‘Catholics’, people keep up the ceremonies, the feasts, the holidays…but that’s all.
"To understand the reality we must take into account something I have studied elsewhere, the phenomenon of the “residual religious” – that is to say, that a person who belongs to a religion in name, by tradition, by family, is always liable to become once again fervently religious and even sectarian if he sustains a ‘shock’, a persecution, an awakening arising from a little mystical group, an injustice in a country practising another religion, and so on.
'The ceremonies that are kept up, keep the person open and receptive to a religious revival."
As we have seen, from so many examples, when it comes to Muslims who have appeared to be Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only, the hold of Islam, the desire to defend Islam from prying Infidel eyes, is very strong, even among the kind of people =-- say, Kanan Makiya, or Fouad Ajami with his inability to see Al-Sistani for what others, such as John Agresto, know him to be -- of whom one expects a bit more, because now we have Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many other apostates who lay bare certain truths, and we are no longer going to be satisfied with the ajamis and the makiyas, as we would have been, even quite recently.
The "residual religious" among Muslims are not a comfort, but a menace. That is the problem.
Mental illness as a political strategem accusing those who do not share your ideology as being mentally ill has been used before by other totalitarian ideologies. In the soviet union most famously, as those people unable to recognize the perfection of the society they were living in were consigned to the tender mercies of the doctors who were then able to try out various experiments on their "patients".
While it is pretty cut and dried the totalitarian aspects of Islam, multiculti ideology has not been so identified but it is still developing.
So this is a statement worth ponderring, "Perhaps if we all keep quite (sic)
,stop the incitment ... it will all go away."
But remember the incitement is not merely words, the boys who dated the daughters of the man in Dallas were not speaking against Jihad and Muslim ideology, yet the father murdered his daughters, the travellers in the airport who just wanted to take a taxi back home and were refused rides were not exposing taqqiya yet they were refused service.
The man who needed a service dog to overcome a disability was not comparing and contrasting differing interpretations of Christian and Muslim views of God, yet he was forced from school.
Women who go about their business without wearing a hefty bag are not speaking out against the second class citizen status of women in Islam yet many have been targetted for rape.
So it seems that incitement can take many forms, the answer then for many multicultis would be to "understand" what actions or appearances might be taken as incitement by Mahometans and then change their behavior to satisfy the cultural demands of Islam.
So the answer for some is that by keeping quiet, by giving in, by keeping your head down and relying on the tender mercies of those who are taught a supremacist ideology that "it will all go away".
Why would it all go away?
If I were to find that whatever I did no matter how outrageous and harmful to others was met with silence and attempts to understand and accomodate me, would I find it best to just go away, to alter my conduct to appease those who do not speak out against it?
It seems to me that the next step for those who think that if we all keep quiet it will just go away will be to enforce silence on those who are not impressed with the whole shut up strategy.
This has already been occuring in part, papers that ignore part of the who and why in articles lest they incite those to whom the who and why might be sensitive issues. It does not seem to be working very well, but then those who are captive to any ideology often will blame the imperfectness of others and not the flaws of the ideology.
I happen to believe in a more traditional liberal approach to speech, the answer to speech you do not like is not to repress speech but to answer speech that you do not like with more speech.
Previewing your Comment
HF
"It is no doubt comforting to think that most Muslmis -- you pull a figure right out of the air, of "80%..."
The 80 % figure was from Daniel Pipes web site , it is an estimate of Muslims who have not read the Koran etc. Yes I do understand there are many Muslims in the Middle East or Pakistan who are fodder for the Islamist line ..nethertheless in the West while there is extremism , the Hedgehog can become the Fox. Take the usual whipping boy , Tariq Ramadan ...do you think dear Tariq wants Europe to really experience a Islamic Renaissance ( yes I know that's an oxymoron) and experience some sort of 2nd ( imaginary) Golden time of Islam....surely its merely a politico-cultural power play to get him a better house and car. The Osama-types would have his head first in queue when they take power. And while most Muslim immigrants in the West may say let the 'revolution' begin, all would vote for the status quo as they do with their feet in the Middle East in trying to get into Israel away from the the paradise of what was the PA. Looking at Europe ...Is there any Islamist party in Europe.. Ok they have the Socialist Democrats (now there's a oxymoron!)...damn!
As for the birth rates , some utterance in 1974 is hardly convincing...in fact immigrant populations always tend to be higher than the indigenous populations partly because that is their purpose.Now I dont want to go into your 'Beneš decrees' rants but lets face it , diversity in culture has its costs as well as its advantages. I notice that Spain needs an extra million workers to keep the State afloat ...its a matter of shall we sink or shall we allow immigartion from near by "Islamic " neighbour ...or Do you suggest they seek out the Vietnamese?
"knock Knock , who's that at my door...dont answer dear child , its a Islamic rape gang"
A future ode nursey rhythm from HughFitz school of bigotry.. such corrosion is inevitable under his projected prejudiced white anglo fantasy that justifies the vilification of Muslims as a Frankenstein-Gypsylike lumpen mass. We have seen this story before with the...Black Negro American story!
HF- (from DDA - aka the "arch witch")
"The ceremonies that are kept up, keep the person open and receptive to a religious revival."
Gee , I have been to the Chinese new year , the TET festival , then there is the Loas and Thai stuff, then there's a Ramadan party ..My experience undercuts this fascist French guy you quote and who I think is a right 'prat' and besides ...lets face it...people who gratuitously post French dialogue are a bunch of wankers...
from above: Again, most Muslims have not read the Koran , you probably know more about whats in the texts than they do..
Above all, Islam is an attitude, if you don't have it, you are not a muslim...
So according to that, I am a better muslim than they are...Sorry David, all this is going over your head.
One cannot be 'sort of a muslim'. It is like being sort of dead or sort of pregnant. Islam means slavery to Allah, Abdallah. I guess it never dawned on you that Imams 'read' the Quran to illiterates, and explain what these items mean and how muslims are to react to them. Reading the Quran or not reading the Quran is not the test for a muslim. It is accepting Allah as God, and Mohammad as the messenger, the perfect role model, and then acting like you believe it. Besides you said that most western muslims pick and choose, mostly the good stuff...They must be reading the Quran to do that.
Since you seem to know a lot about muslims, do you know what a 'real' muslims greatest fear is?
I will tell you...It's not getting into Allah's paradise. To be denied Allah's heaven is to go to Allah's fire. Allah did not guarantee even the most faithful and devout muslims a heavenly berth.
Only jihadi's who die in combat get the fast track to Paradise. The others can only try their best to please Allah, and hope he lets them in. Mohammad said that only one in a thousand would be accepted and space was limited to 70,000.
Everything in Islam is for Allah. Everything not of Allah is haram.
What you describe are muslims who are not muslims at all. And I would agree that they do exist, but I think high mosque attendance, and faithfully preformed prayers would put your 'free thinkers' and 'pickers and choosers' in a minority...Not a majority...
'mentally ill' is relatively new.
Australian Islamofascist Yusuf Irfan calls everyone who criticises Islam 'wackos, sickos, redneck racist Islamophobes, fruitloops, far right polemicists who suffer from a degree of intellectual lazyness' and last not least 'cultural warriors'.
All this coming from a dodgy character who waves his freak-flag like a trophy, and hates everything and everyone who doesn't buy into his perverse worldview including Judeophobia, Hinduphobia, Buddhistophobia, Christianophobia and Kuffarophobia.
Quite a piece of work, this Irfan Yusuf from the weirdo planet.
do you think dear Tariq [rAMADAN] wants Europe to really experience a Islamic Renaissance ( yes I know that's an oxymoron) and experience some sort of 2nd ( imaginary) Golden time of Islam....surely its merely a politico-cultural power play to get him a better house and car. The Osama-types would have his head first in queue when they take power. And while most Muslim immigrants in the West may say let the 'revolution' begin, all would vote for the status quo as they do with their feet in the Middle East in trying to get into Israel away from the the paradise of what was the PA."
-- from a posting above
Don't be silly. Of course Tariq Ramadan is not merely out for a "better house and car." He's deadly in earnest; he's working to ensure that the islamization of Europe proceeds without Infidels becoming too alarmed, or too wary. He's not out, as you seem to think, for a "better house and car" any more than Osama Bin Laden, who had all the money in the world, or Ayman al-Zawahiri, from one of the most important families in Egypt, sitting on or around K2, are interested in a "better house and car." You seem to think that ideology plays no role, that Muslims are not deeply influenced by Islam, that it the end these are all epiphenomena and underneath lies the desire for things. This kind of vulgar economic determinism may go over in some quarters, but it won't pass muster, or cut the mustard, among those who understand what a mind on Islam - ask Wafa Sultan, ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- can be.
As for that "status quo" that you think Muslims who leave Muslim lands for Europe -- that is, the Infidel status quo -- will dearly cling to, that is something for which the evidence suggests otherwise. It was the first generation of Muslim immigrants who were glad just to be able to come to a superior place, a place where things worked, where the police did not brutalize one, where the lords of misrule were not everywhere, as they are in Muslim lands. But the second and third generations are, as we see in Germany and in France, not always quite so content, quite so grateful.
And what about those Arabs who flee the PA for Israel? Are they about to jettison Islam, or their hostility toward Israel? Is that what we see in the Israeli Arabs, the ones who in such places as the Galilee have become ever-more aggressive, and dangerous? Again, you ignore what is actually going on.
And what is going on is this: Muslims may go to the Western lands, but they go carrying with them some undeclared mental luggage. And while, in a sense, they are fleeing the failures of Islamic states and socities -- the political, economic, and social, the intellectual and moral failures --they do not recognize that. They know only such things as that they are "seeking work" or "seeking a better life." They don't understand what it was that made their lives, back in Egypt or Morocco or Algeria or Somalia or Libya or Iraq or elsewhere, so much less pleasant than their live in the countries of Western Europe. They do not understand the connection, for example, between the view in Islam of the Believer as the "slave of Allah" who must also obey the Ruler, as long as that Ruler is a Muslim, and the prevalence of despotism, the near-impossibility of true Western-style democracy. They do not understand that when, in Islam, political legitimacy is located not in the will expressed by the people, but by the expressed will of Allah in the Qur'an, that militates against democracy and for despotism. They do not understand that, in Islam, inshallah-fatalism, and a history of depending, over many centuries, on the Jizyah exacted from non-Muslims in the lands ruled by Muslims, helps to explain why even with the vast sums -- ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone -- Muslim oil states have failed to create modern economies, and are doomed to remain spoiled, rentier societies, from abroad, dependent on foreign, almost all of them Infidels, at every level. They do not understand, even if they leave or flee the lands of Islam, what it is that makes the countries from which they flee so unpleasant -- and what makes them so unpleasant is directly related to Islam.
You appear to believe -- on what basis? -- that Muslims coming to the West are just like refugees from the Communists, who warned against Communism, or refugees from the Nazis, who tried to alert us about the Nazis. Not at all. Muslims who come, by the boatloads, from North Africa, to Italy, to Spain, or who come, by ferry from Algiers, to Marseille, or those who arrive even by plane, and want to settle, do not thereby declare their allegiance to the Infidels, and their putting forever into deep freeze the impulse to remove barriers to the spread, and dominance, of Islam.
Look around, for god's sake. Use your head.
"My experience undercuts this fascist French guy you quote and who I think is a right 'prat' and besides ...lets face it...people who gratuitously post French dialogue are a bunch of wankers..."
-- from the same poster above
That's a bit more of an unseemly display than one was expecting. And when you dare to describe Jacques Ellul, the great Jacques Ellul, a hero of the Resistance, a "fascist French guy" -- when he was, against the Nazis and then, later, in his books about the tyranny of the "technological society," always on the side of freedom, you make yourself look ridiculous. Not for the first time.
Here, for those who would like to find out more about Jacques Ellul, whose words were given, by the way, both in the original French as well as in English, so that those who read the English, but also wanted to check it against the French to see if there was much of a difference, could do so. But our crude and levelling poster, who hates those who know something and may choose not to hide it -- the very idea upsets him -- expresses his scorn that might better be turned on himself: "people who gratuitouslyl post French dialogue are a bunch of wankers..."
Here's more from Wikipedia about Jacques Ellul:
Jacques Ellul (January 6, 1912–May 19, 1994) was a French philosopher, sociologist, theologian, and Christian anarchist. He wrote several books about the "technological society", and about Christianity and politics, such as Anarchy and Christianity (1991) - arguing that anarchism and Christianity are socially following the same goal.
One of the most thoughtful philosophers to approach technology from a deterministic viewpoint, Ellul, professor at the University of Bordeaux, authored some 40 books and hundreds of articles over his lifetime, the dominant theme of which has been the threat to human freedom and Christian faith created by modern technology. His constant concern has been the emergence of a "technological tyranny" over humanity. As a philosopher and theologian, he further explored the religiosity of the technological society.
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Philosophy
3 On media and propaganda
4 Books
5 Interviews
6 See also
7 External links
[edit] Life
Ellul was born in Bordeaux, France, and was educated at the universities of Bordeaux and Paris. In World War II he was a leader in the French resistance. He was also prominent in the worldwide Ecumenical movement, although he later became sharply critical of the movement for what he felt were indiscriminate endorsements of political establishments, primarily of the Left (namely the socialist states of western Europe), but sometimes of the Right (especially in later writings).
Ellul studied Marx and became a prolific exegete of his theories. Ellul became a Christian at age 22. The influence of these ideologies, which are generally considered to be in opposition to one another, has alternately earned him devoted followers and vicious enemies. In large measure and especially in those of his books concerned with theological matters, Ellul restates the viewpoints held by the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, who was a leader of the resistance against the German state church in World War II. Barth's polar dialectic of the Word of God, in which the gospel both judges and renews the world, helped to shape Ellul's theological perspective. But Ellul went beyond Barth in one particular observation: "That which desacralizes a given reality, itself in turn becomes the new sacred reality".
The sacred is then, as classically defined, the object of both hope and fear, both fascination and dread. Once nature was the all-encompassing environment and power upon which human beings were dependent in life and death, and so was experienced as sacred. The Reformation desacralized the church in the name of the Bible, and the Bible became the sacred book.
Science (through Charles Darwin's theory of evolution) and reason (higher criticism and liberal theology) desacralized the scriptures; subsequent decades have seen science, particularly those in the applied categories amenable to the aims of collective economic production (whether capitalist, socialist, or communist), elevated to the position of sacred in Western culture. Today, argued Ellul, it is the technological society that modern-day humans generally hold sacred. Ellul defined technique as "the totality of methods rationally arrived at, and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity". Thus, it is not the society of machines as such, but the society of "efficient techniques" which is the focus of Ellul's sociological analysis:
“Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity. ”
It is useless to think that a distinction can be made between technique and its use, according to Ellul, for techniques have specific social and psychological consequences independent of human desires. There can be no room for moral considerations in their use:
“Not even the moral conversion of the technicians could make a difference. At best, they would cease to be good technicians." In the end, technique has only one principle, efficient ordering.
“some utterance in 1974 [that of Houari Boumeddienne about conquest, through demographic change, of Western Europe] is hardly convincing..”
--- from the same poster, an apologist for Islam, who appears to be verging on rhetorical hysteria
Here is what Boumedienne said at the U.N. in 1974:
"One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory."
Now, if that were a lone statement, it would be bad enough, telling enough. But there are many other Arab Muslim political leaders, and Muslim clerics, who have said exactly the same thing.
Here are a few:
Muhammar Khaddafy, who said:
“There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
The most famous Sunni cleric in the world today, , with a mass following of tens of millions, Sheik Yousef al-Qaradawi, who not to a small audience, but right on Al-Jazeera, the following: ""Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor" and "the conquest this time will not be by the sword but by preaching and ideology." And of course he does not mean that Islam will “return to Europe as a conqueror and victor” by force of arms; he and his audience know perfectly well that direct conquest by means of qitaal, combat, is not possible. What they will do is, using the Muslims who have settled deep within Europe, and who are supplied by their rich co-religionists in Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil states with tens of billions of dollars to pay for mosques, madrasas, and campaigns of propaganda and of course Da’wa, is to conquer by simply becoming more and more and more numerous, and in those very numbers will bend – are already bending – timid Infidel politicians to their will, causing them not to recognize the full meaning and menace of Islam but to make excuses for, to take the side of, to actively work against those warning about, Islam and Muslims in Europe. It has happened in the Netherlands. It has happened in Great Britian. It has happened in Sweden. It has not yet happened in Italy, nor in Denmark. But that is the strategy, and it is recognized, and discussed openly, right on Al-Jazeera, by the world’s most famous Sunni cleric.
There is Mullah Krekar, who still manages to remain in Norway, despite his clear connections to the terrorists of Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq. It is he who famously gloated that "[j]ust look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children."
That was Mullah Krekar, right in Europe itself, right in a country from which he refuses to leave and apparently is not being dislodged, who took such great pleasure in noting that “the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes.”
And then there is the man who predicted that Muslims soon "will control the land of the Vatican" and "will control Rome and introduce Islam in it,” and that was a leading Saudi cleric, Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Arifi, imam of the mosque of King Fahd Defense Academy.
That is enough. That is more than enough. But don’t pretend, or don’t try to convince others, that Muslim clerics, Muslim political figures, ordinary men-in-the-street Muslims (and I have plenty of quotes from them, too) do not recognize demographic conquest as an instrument of Jihad. They do. And they are amazed that they can continue to write and speak openly about it, while all over the Western world Infidels are mostly studiously, wilfully, ignoring what they say, because if it were taken seriously, then all kinds of things would necessarily have to follow, for those who understand the full meaning, and permanent menace, for human freedom, political and mental, of Islam.
This is sort of a rhetorical question but if a person truly believed that by "keeping quiet... maybe it will go away" why would they themselves speak up about what they percieve to be cultural supremacism or chicken littleism as the case may be?
David Xavier, you lost me at:
Others here have given excellent, well-reasoned answers to your rants, in the apparent belief that you are an honest broker, interested in an honest discussion.
I think you're a troll, and your goal is to incit us.
Like Hugh, I was rather surprised to see 'david xavier' suddenly dissolve into an unseemly display of spite over Jacques Ellul, whom he, dx, saw fit to describe insultingly as follows:
"this fascist French guy...who I think is a right 'prat' ".
For proof of how much of a 'fascist' Ellul was, how much of a 'prat', let us travel, in our imaginations, to Jerusalem. Let us go to the Avenue of the Righteous.
The Wikipedia biography is quite good, but it did not see fit to mention perhaps the most telling testimony to Jacques Ellul's character.
His time in the French Resistance was occupied, in part, with helping Jews to elude the Nazis.
In her preface to the booklet 'Jacques Ellul: Islam et judeo-christianisme', in which is published the essay from which I quoted, 'les trois piliers du conformisme', Dominique Ellul (his wife, I think), writes:
"J'ajoute a titre indicatif que Jacques Ellul a recu en hommage posthume le titre de Juste parmi les Nations" par la Fondation Yad Vashem de Jerusalem en juillet 2002 pour avoir aide, a ses risques et perils, des familles juives pourchassees pendant l'Occupation".
"I add, simply for information, that in July 2002 Jacques Ellul received - as a posthumous honour - the title of 'Righteous Among the Nations', from the Yad Vashem Foundation in Jerusalem, for having taken the risk of helping some persecuted Jewish families during the Nazi Occupation [of France]'.
'david xavier' has seen fit, in front of us all, to spit upon the name and the memory of a man whose memorial tree stands in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.
I think that tells us all that we need to know about 'david xavier'.
He likely lives in England ("prat," "wanker") but I can't tell if he's a Muslim or a non-Muslim apologist, of a not-too-immediately-extreme sort, for Islam. He certainly attempts to feed visitors a heavy dose of the "everyone's guilty of the same thing" pabulum and to keep us from seeing, or recognizing, Jihad in all of its various guises.
If so, Mr. Fitzgerald, his talents are wasted here, except as a honing of his logic and rhetoric; still, apologists do have their uses as sparring partners and argumentative foils.
There is mention of what one might vulgarly call 'bed jihad' (an Indian poster used this marvellous phrase recently and it deserves to be taken up), in Martha Gellhorn's classic article, 'The Arabs of Palestine', The Atlantic Monthly, 1961.
In 1960 she visited Gaza, Jordan, Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem, Israel proper, and Lebanon, and in all of these places she interviewed 'palestinian' Arabs, both Muslim and Christian.
Here are two portions of the section that reports upon 'palestinian' Arabs in Lebanon:
"The miniature white clinic [in the 'camp', which Gellhorn describes as 'little cement or frame houses rambling over the hillside'],had only one customer, a nice-looking girl of twenty-one who had brought her fourth baby for a checkup. Her husband works in Libya; she too lived there for a few years but returned. Libya is very expensive; she can live here with his parents and thus save money for the future...
' Her fourth baby', I mused, and she only twenty-one. 'Yes, yes', said my guide, 'the [palestinian] refugees have a higher birth rate than any other Arabs, and healthier children.'
Gellhorn, still in Lebanon, then visited a 'camp' of 'palestinian' Arab Muslims. This is what she saw, and was told, among these 'palestinian' Arab Muslims.
'We heard shrill painful child's crying and went toward the sound.
'A child of about two was tied by the ankle to a chair, howling the same word over and over. A younger child was silently trying to hold its body up, clinging to the arm of another chair. On a clean mat, on a clean little sheet, a baby twisted its body restlessly, but its legs lay still. All three were remarkably good-looking, all seemingly husky and well formed.
'The camp leader carried on a short barking exchange with their young mother and reported:
"She is twenty-five. None of the children can move their legs; the legs will not hold them. The child is tied because he can pull himself out of the house and get hurt. She says, please, will you help her?"
'Speaking French to the UNRWA official, because no one else there knew the language, I said, "She can easily have five or six more children like this. It is terrible for her. The visiting nurse ought to explain about birth control."
'"You don't know what you're saying. UNRWA could not touch such a thing, not even mention it.
'Here are these people, and the name of their country does not exist on the map any more. If we start teaching them birth control, we will be accused of trying to wipe out the people too.
'Besides, the men would never allow it. They want to have a lot of sons; it is a matter of pride with them.
'And politics enters too, as into everything; I've heard them say it. "We need to have many children and grow and increase so that the world will never forget us."'
"They're doing well, from what I've seen."
"About 30,000 babies a year."
Both the Christian and the Muslim 'palestinian' Arabs seem to have been deliberately over-breeding, not primarily because children are a good, but as a political act - driven by hate.
Gellhorn observed hatred of Jews, in both; one must read 'The Dhimmi' and 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam', to properly understand the palestinian Arabised Christians' subsumption within the Arab/Muslim agenda, their unthinking mirroring of Arab Muslim Jew-hatred almost indistinguishable from their maintaining the worst traditions of 'christian' antisemitism.
So although I'm sure there was among the Christian Arabs an element of what one might call a perfectly healthy, from a Catholic POV, pro-life attitude, there was something else at work too, a conscious and thoroughly UN-Christian vengefulness. Gellhorn notes that in the schools these CATHOLIC Arab children were being taught to hate -
"They are Roman Catholics here, but the young teachers are refugees, not priests. They have to teach the children about Palestine, since most of them have never seen the country and even the oldest cannot remember it. The children are taught hate, the Garden of Eden stolen from them by murderers; their duty is to live for Return and Revenge".
Return and Revenge - themes that Gellhorn has already identified as saturating the Arab Muslim discourse concerning Israel.
These children were being bred, and taught, to be weapons in a Jihad agenda.
But it is in the Muslim camp that the UNRWA guide tells Gellhorn that the over-breeding is deliberate, that it is not merely the unconscious fruit of the general middle eastern cultural obsession with sons, but a conscious, verbally articulated political decision.
And if 'Palestinian' Arab Muslims (and their dhimmi Christian janissaries) were consciously articulating and pursuing such a program, why would not others also be capable of thinking, and acting, in that way?
Hugh ,
"("prat," "wanker")" is used in Australia too . "prat" is an import fom the U.K as you guessed rightly but "wanker" is an Australian term meaning "jerk" in the U.S. sense .However,the British use it too now . The poster you refer to wrote he was in Sydney,Australia in another post in some other thread I read on jw/dw.
But he could be in Britain .
He certainly is quite aloof and believes in moral relativism.
"this fascist French guy (Ellul)...who I think is a right 'prat' ".
A pygmy biting at the ankles of a giant.
DDA
Ok , Jacques Ellul is not a 'fascist'or 'prat' and I did not seek to spit on his name. Clearly I confused my targets and had lost my brakes well before this. (Yes when the party is over, go to bed , dont stay up and open the third bottle!).Nethertheless , I will still point out that Gellhorn is talking about Muslims in the Middle Eastern circumstance and is hardly unbiased ( to the point that you are being disingenuous in citing her.).
HF
No I am not an " Muslim or a non-Muslim apologist, of a not-too-immediately-extreme sort, for Islam." Or am I ? For I am basing my objections to your condemnations of Muslims in the West to my day to day experiences with Muslims in a Western country. I do understand what you are saying regarding Jihad , but the Koran justifies almost everything ...perhaps whats missing is a little hope on your part...people can pick and choose. I am though in lock step with you re: Israel and have posted so. But the insanity in the Middle East, the tribalism , the standover gunmen , the schooling , the need for hate - the Islamism, is far removed from the Western Muslim experience. Indeed what you are suggesting to me is to consider long held relationships with real people as suspect ..because of your pedantic interpretation of Islamic texts and your investment in the Israel-Middle Eastern experience, and its colouring of you own world view.
dx
As regards your insult to Jacques Ellul - you can't pretend you didn't say what you said, and you sounded like you meant every word. It was mean-spirited and ugly.
You have been sniping slyly at Hugh, ever since you started posting here. You have also, from the beginning, taken pot shots at me also, constantly needling, covert insults. It doesn't matter about me...I'm a nonentity...but it matters a lot about Hugh, because I think you are, in your own small way, attempting to prevent new readers of this site from taking him seriously. Well poisoning.
You claim to be 'on the same page' as Hugh, re. the jihad against Israel.
But you do that straight after having called me 'disingenuous' for citing Martha Gellhorn, implying that HER reporting of the Muslim jihad against israel is 'biased' (and of course, therefore, not to be trusted?).
Now: the moment I read 'Arabs of Palestine', I saw that Ms Gellhorn's 'reading' of the Arab Muslim jihad against the Jews of Israel, is substantially the same as Hugh's.
By the way, I trust Gellhorn on that particular subject, just as much as I trust Hugh. A lot. She saw what was going on. She refused to swallow the whole Arab Muslim propaganda campaign - though, in 1961, she began her article with a masterly summary of the classic Arab Muslim Big Lies about Israel, the same ones that are still peddled today. That article 'The Arabs of Palestine' has worn astonishingly well. So much so that I found it eerie to read.
Gellhorn's observations about, for example, Gaza in 1960, are completely confirmed by Nonie Darwish's own account of what she, an Egyptian Arab Muslim child, learned in school in Gaza in the 1950s.
And can you honestly say that Gellhorn's final warnings at the end of 'The Arabs of Palestine' - that the 'voice of Hitler is heard again, speaking Arabic' (today it speaks Farsi, also) - and that UNRWA resources should not finance the teaching of hatred, were without substance?
There is abundant independent documentary evidence for the validity of both warnings, from that period right up to the present day.
I think when Gellhorn talks about the Arab [Muslim] press being 'one long scream of hate', about their culture being full of hate, she isn't being 'biased - she is just describing the facts, as they were, and as they still, sadly, remain.
Now for your other claim. You argue that Gellhorn's observations (which you have in any case dismissed as inaccurate or biased) apply only to "Muslims in the Middle Eastern circumstances" and that "the insanity in the Middle East ...is far removed from the Western Muslim experience'.
First, let me remind you that this site catalogues stories of Quranically inspired 'insanity' happening in places far, far away from the 'Middle East'. Let's remember Indonesia, and the Laskar Jihad, and thousands of murdered Christians and burned churches. Let's remember Hindu girls kidnapped and raped and 'converted' to islam in Pakistan. Let's remember Hindus beaten to death outside mosques in Bangladesh. Let's remember the jihadi attacks and ambushes and kidnappings and extortion and murders of civilians and non-Muslim religious, in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. Let's think about sharia law, and anti-Christian riots, and burned churches and dead Christians in Northern Nigeria. And classic jihad on the grand scale, complete with the traditional mass rapes, mass murders, mass pillaging and mass enslavements, and the howlings of Allahu Akbar, in southern Sudan. I don't call southern Sudan 'the middle east'.
OK. Those places aren't ''the west'. But now let's look closely at the 'western muslim experience'.
So let's think about all the people who today live in hiding, or under guard, IN WESTERN COUNTRIES, because of the threats openly made against them, because of their perceived 'offences' to Islam, or their 'apostasy', by at least some among the Muslims living in Western lands.
Let's think about Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Holland, and Theo Van Gogh's fatherless son, fatherless because his dad was murdered in broad daylight on a busy street, by a second-generation 'dutch' Moroccan Muslim. Let's think about 73 year old Kurt Westergaard - it was not 'middle eastern' Muslims but Muslims right there in Denmark, who were plotting his demise. Let's remember all those UK and Italian and French apostate Muslims who live in hiding, pursued by their murder-minded family members bent on carrying out the sharia punishment for apostasy. Let's think about Robert Redeker, in hiding because Muslims IN FRANCE threatened to kill him after he published one little article drawing attentiion to the violence in the life of Muhammad and in the text of the Quran.
If the 'western muslim' experience is so miraculously, wondrously different from the experience of Muslims everywhere else in the world...go stand on the grave of Aksa Parvez in Canada and tell it to her ghost. Tell it to the hundreds of Pakistani Muslim underage girls, born in the UK, who have to be rescued by the British authorities after being taken back, by their families, to Pakistan and forcibly married off.
Tell it to all the girls whose African Muslim families are subjecting them to FGM - IN THE WEST. Tell it to all the girls and women who are being 'honor' murdered IN WESTERN COUNTRIES for 'crimes' such as...dating a non-Muslim boy, or not wearing hijab. Tell it to all the women and girls who are being beaten by their husbands IN THE WEST because the Quran commands it. Tell it to all those girls and women in the USA and Canada who are discovering that their Muslim husbands feel perfectly justified in taking a second or third or fourth wife, in defiance of Western law. There's an awful, awful lot of these cases - and the ones we know about are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
The more closely one looks at the facts, the more your casual recommendation of a 'she'll be right' approach to the ever-increasing Muslim presence in 'the west', seems to me to be either hopelessly naive...or a deliberate obfuscation.