"you did not live up to your reputation of being a crazy, muslim-hater."
-- from a note to Robert Spencer by a student at the University of Wisconsin
Puzzle: why don't students, instead of listening to others who pass on stuff-and-nonsense -- which then becomes, in the case in point, an apparently unquestioned "reputation of being a crazy, Muslim-hater" -- actually find out for themselves by going to Jihad Watch and reading what RS or others involved in the effort (and since comments are only very perfunctorily moderated, not attributing to, or blaming, the site for some of the postings that are irrelevant or unacceptable in other ways) have actually written. There are thousands of articles and postings by those contributors to choose from.
The implication of the writer is that had she not seen Robert with his own eyes, she would have continued to believe in that "reputation" of RS "being a crazy, Muslim-hater." Really? There is no other way to check that "reputation" fostered by CAIR and its determined collaborators, including not a few professors who are paid-up members of the Army of Apologists as well as of MESA Nostra (about which see here), than by seeing someone in the flesh? No way to find out what he actually writes, and whether what he writes is based on truthful rather than false quotations from the Qur'an, Hadith, Sira? No way to check these matters at all?
Isn't one of the favorite bumper stickers, reflecting a favored sentiment, that of "Question Authority"? Go ahead -- question the authority of those who whisper in your ear that so-and-so is a "rabid Muslim-hater." Find out for yourself about how that phrase is being spread around by those determined to shout down or whisper down (both methods can be effective) those who would subject the texts and tenets of Islam to study, analysis, and critical scrutiny. The shouters and whisperers want to do this so that Islam can remain forever beyond and immune from criticism, when the daily Jihad news, from Indonesia and the Philippines, from Malaysia and Thailand, from Bangladesh and India and Pakistan, from all over the Middle East, from all over the countries of Western Europe where only one group of immigrants -- Muslims -- present a permanent problem that no other group of immigrants present, because they come bearing not an alien creed, but an alien and a hostile creed, demands that criticism.
Many, as they read more and more of the Daily Jihad News (which is not well-reported, nor sometimes even covered at all, in the American media, just as it is not sufficiently covered, or explained intelligently, in the media of other Western nations) will want explanations that make sense. They will want explanations that help them not only to understand what is going on, but that will help them to predict the efficacy of such things as the war in Iraq (foolish) and Afghanistan (foolish), in the stop-and-go, confused and confusing efforts, to deal with violent Jihad, but to ignore, more or less, the other instruments of Jihad (the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, demographic conquest).
Robert's appearances on university campuses can encourage. And it can dispel the dark rumors so deliberately spread, about his -- or for that matter others' -- "reputation." The texts are there. They can be found at Muslim websites, treated differently, treated reverently, but still -- the texts are the texts. And many websites run by Muslims, for Muslims, do not hide what Islam inculcates, even if they attempt to express things more and more with one ear cocked to what non-Muslims, dropping or eavesdropping in, might make of texts and tenets that are presented just a little too forthrightly. And Muslims themselves, including some of the sweetest-sounding young girls have shown their keen awareness of the need to protect, by obfuscation and omission, the reputation of Islam. Why, I just heard a BBC interview with a Saudi "artist" who is taking part in an exhibition in London and fancies herself quite a revolutionary figure. But the way she carefully failed to explain to the interviewer something that that interviewer clearly needed to know -- that in Islam all sculpture, and all depictions of humans, is forbidden, was telling. She tiptoed around the subject, carefully avoiding the real explanation for the narrowness, and paucity, of Saudi or other Islamic art.
Read, study, think. It's the same in any field. That's how you learn about, and come to comprehend, the ideology of Islam.
I see this often. Lots of the kids base everything on what they read on hear from others. They don't seem to want to see things for themselves and make their own decisions. They will also argue their point to the death but can't back anything up with proof. It's very frustrating.
Just a couple of comments in response to Hughs article.
One is the idea of trust, I think faith would also be a good synonym. Students who usually do well in education have to have a faith in their teachers, starting with their first teachers, their parents.
That is why if a child is taught not to play with matches they are more apt to make it to college if they had not burned down their homes, a child has to have some faith in the parent who told them that.
Parents earn that faith by feeding and clothing the child, showing parental love and care in many ways. Teachers also are given much trust, the child sees them every day and soon learns that a child who hoots and heckles a teacher does not get out of school on the same schedule as the children who listen and repeat the lessons they are given.
Which is one reason why students, while being taught to question authority, the authorities that are usually questioned are authorities that the child does not contact so much, and as the child enters adolescence and endeavors to become their own person, the parental authority is also open to questioning.
So when educrats such as William Ayers have been hugely successful in politicizing education the student is exposed to "progressive" politics, which is mainly a rehash of the politics of 60s radicals somewhat updated by experience.
These politics are formed by postmodern philosophies, which is basically the idea that there is no truth, except the truth that there is no truth, and there are no authorities except the authorities that tell you there are no authorities.
As Hitler said, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and by insinuating themselves into education the radicals and bombers from the past have done more damage than their bombs did.
Most if not all the ceos, personnell managers and others who have been indoctrinated into postmodern ways of thought are the products of this sysytem, ethics for todays mover and shaker has become all about empowering third world despots and having race gender and sexual orientation policies than about conducting your business in a way that makes you a corporate citizen of the nation that ennables your business to thrive, if there is any concept of citizenship it is to be a corporate citizen of the world, which requires a disdain for provincial american or british or german ideals and to embrace the authentic cultures of the world UNtainted by western ethics or as they label it the books and ideas of dead white men.
In this destruction of traditional norms, while cooking the books the boys of enron counted on carbon trading to save the fairy tales they called their financial prospectus. CEOs and other officers are called more to connect with various identity groups, giving benefits to gays, hiring refugees from american foreign policy perfidy than they are to live lives that inspire trust and make business rest on more than legalisms and threats of lawsuits and jail.
That the students were amazed that Spencer was not a drooling rabid racist should not be a surprise as that is the lesson repeated over and over to those motivated individuals who want to excel in life.
I think the problem here lies with that phrase "question authority". In liberal world authority can only ever mean someone who is
wealthy
white
male
protestant
Thus, members of the various protected classes never have any need to be questioned.
Students are naive, and gullible. They come from a school system that does not encourage free thought (public) and into a system that insists that only new thought counts (doctoral programs) and leaves out the part that reality, whether we like it or not, does have a bearing on what we believe.
So why are we surprised that these people can't and don't want to think for themselves when they have never been rewarded for it?
I have talked about JW and posted links. I have told people I will lend or give them one of Robert's books. I have posted videos of Robert and other people speaking about Islam.
It matters not what facts you give to them. They believe what they want to believe. And that's that.
At least this person made the effort to go to the event and listened and heard for themselves. That gives me a bit of hope.
Heck students don't initially need Spencer's site to figure out what Islam is about. They can pick up any history book that covers events from 700 A.D. to 1500 A.D. and its like a litany of Muslim conquests and destruction of Christian lands and peoples.
Pick up a Koran and read it and be amazed at the innate blood hungry g-d Allah and his murderous and degenerate prophet.
Get Al Ghazzli's "the Alchemy of Happiness" and see that Islam's leading Sufi makes the worse American Evangelical look like a new ager. Ghazzli represents what real Sufism was and is, not the Dawa crap put out by Americans(Helminski) and Europeans(Schuon)who converted to Islam and are peddling Sufism to infidels.
It isn't just students who are naive and gullible. A well-educated senior citizen acquaintence actually told me she'd rather keep her head in the sand than believe the stuff I told her about the dangers of Islam!!!
Then, and here's the good part: after swearing, tearing my hair, and throwing my shoe at the wall, I sent her a copy of Hugh's article about the possibility of an Obama presidency and the importance of Obama talking to folks like Aayan Hirsi Ali, etc. As a liberal dem I guess she responded to Hugh's putdown of Bush cause she wrote back after reading the whole article and said she hopes Obama will follow Hugh's suggestions!! Sand-free, she now actually sees the threat!!
Thanks to Robert and Hugh, we are making headway!
All anyone needs to do is read the Qur'an. That's what I did and that's what made me realize that when Bush said that the jihadis had "hijacked Islam" he had no idea what he was talking about.
As long as the Qur'an is believed to be the word of Allah, it does not matter whether we defeat this generation of violent jihadis. There will be a next generation and generations to come, not to mention the continuous "stealth jihad".
Read and be enlightened.
I'm afraid the reason for small penalties for violent crimes in the Netherlands is just an extension of the pervasive immorality there - legal prostitution, legal drug use, etc. from lack of strong religious values.