This writer hits the nail on the head: "Since the anti-Israel people might use violence, the speech of the pro-Israel people must be limited. On the other hand, since the pro-Israel people do not use violence, the speech of the anti-Israel people can proceed without restraint."
That's exactly what's going on, official denials notwithstanding. "Something's seriously wrong at York University," by David Frum for the National Post, February 27 (thanks to Sr. Soph):
Next week, York University will once again open its halls and classrooms to "Israel Apartheid Week," so-called. This year as every year, militants and activists will use the taxpayer-funded facilities of York to vilify the Jewish state.
Well, that's free speech, isn't? Everybody gets to express his or her point of view, no matter how obnoxious, right?
No, not right. Not at York. At York, speech is free -- better than free, subsidized-- for anti-Israel haters. But for those who would defend Israel, York sets very different rules.
In advance of York's annual hate-Israel week, the campus group Christians United for Israel applied to use university space to host a program of pro-Israel speakers.
The university replied that this program could only proceed on certain conditions.
It insisted on heavy security, including both campus and Toronto police -- all of those costs to be paid by the program organizers. The organizers would also have to provide an advance list of all program attendees and advance summaries of all the speeches. No advertising for the program would be permitted -- not on the York campus, not on any of the other campuses participating by remote video.
These are radically different and much harsher terms than anything required from the hate-Israel program. The hate-Israel program is not required to pay for its own security. It is free to advertise. Its speakers are not pre-screened by the university.
The pro-Israel event, scheduled for this past Monday, Feb. 22, was cancelled when the organizers declined to comply with the terms. A university spokesman told the Jewish Tribune that it insisted on the more stringent requirements on pro-Israel groups "due to the participation of individuals who they claim invite the animus of anti-Israel campus agitators."
The logic is impressively brazen: Since the anti-Israel people might use violence, the speech of the pro-Israel people must be limited. On the other hand, since the pro-Israel people do not use violence, the speech of the anti-Israel people can proceed without restraint.
Over the past days, however, the university appears to have realized that this "We brake for bullies" policy on speech might present some PR problems.
So now it seems they have reverted to a bolder policy: flat-out denial....
Over & over I keep hearing, we are better than that, we don't use violence, let's not stoop to their level etc., etc.
Well, maybe it's time we did try to operate at their level & give them a taste of their own medicine.
After all, it's all they seem to understand. Anything else is seen as weak & submissive by them and simply encourages more acts of intimidation.
And if you're Canadian, and even if you're not be sure to let the powers that be at York know that you're mad as h*ll & not going to take it anymore (politely of course).
What a total and complete outrage! Canadians need to fight back or loose whatever rights they have left.
Par for the course. See links under BULLYING AND INTIMIDATION and EDUCATION at http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/everything-you-need-to-know-about-islam.html
York University historically has a large affluent Jewish
student population living in affluent suburbs of Toronto
(e.g., North York). It still has one of the larget
Jewish populations as a percent of total student population
(about 30 %). York also more recently (last 20 years) became
overflowing with Pakistani and Indian Muslims from Toronto,
as well as some Arab and Persian-Canadians. The faculty at
York is known to be to the Left of even usually Left-leaning
campuses like University of Toronto, Queen's University,
Simon Fraser University, McGill University, University of Victoria, Dalhousie University and others (the western Canadian universities tend to be somewhat more utilitarian and less political). York and University of Victoria (BC) are the most Leftist universities in Canada; among those
Leftists, unfortunately, are also Leftist (self-hating)
Jewish faculty and students, particulary at York. York,
on the other hand, also has a fair number of Conservative
and Orthodox Jews who tend to also be pro-Israel. With
the support of Leftist academics and Toronto/North York
human rights groupies (and the ad naseum diarrhea of
NDP member Svend Robinson, the George Galloway of Canada)
Jewish groups at York and UT are incessantly harrassed.
Ottawa does little about it even though PM Stephen Harper
and his cabinet are clearly very pro Israel. The Provinces
manage the universities and so are free to engage in harrassment of Jews and promotion of Jihad which York, UT
and Queen's particularly excell at in Ontario. The York university administration is more ideological than
other Canadian universities and more so than most American
universities. Just ask Irwin Cotler, well known Canadian-Jewish jurist, human rights attorney, expert on the UN
and Genocide who also happens to be a Zionist and critical
of Leftist and Islamic domination of Canadian human rights organizations (Cotler, for example, was very critical of
the biased UN Goldstone report which blasted Israel for
violations and hardly said anything about Hamas (and nothing
about Fatah which does still exist in Gaza).
Canadian Leftists tend to be more like their English
counterparts than like American Leftists which means
they are even more thoroughly brainwashed and given
Canada's historically larger role in the UN and UNIFIL,
Canadian Leftists aren't as subject to Canadian Parliament
sanction that on occasion American Leftists are
by the US Congress when they go to far.
Sorry this is OT but important:
I 've had problems with Typepad on this site so I decided to sign in using "Google". When I did I found that "google" used that moniker, which is different from Typepad's ( because someone was already using it ).
So depending on how you choose to sign in & what your moniker is on that site, that's how your comments will appear....Unfortunately I have not been able to acquire the same moniker under each different application.......
Oh, & if you use g-mail, there might come a time (as it did with me) where "g-mail" alerts you to other accounts of people you e-mail & asks you if you'd like to follow them. I found it incredibly intrusive as did one of my e-mail friends who was shocked that I'd "found" ( through no desire of mine) his hidden account....Go figure. Be careful out there.
And on a further note, if you look to the right of "typepad" after you press the "sign in " button there are several more ways to sign in that may mean the use of different monikers as in my case when using "google". Typepad at best has been tempermental.
"The ongoing troubles at York University started when Mamdouh Shoukri became its president.
Need any more be said?"
Nope. Says it all.
UN HEROS CONTRE LE HAMAS
http://www.avraidire.eu/2010/03/un-heros-contre-le-hamas/
Récemment un jeune homme du nom de Mosab Hussain Yousef (32 ans) a reçu beaucoup d’attention à cause d’une entrevue avec le journal israëlien Haaretz. Son cas est extraordinaire. Il n’est rien de moins que le fils de l’un des fondateurs du groupe musulman terroriste Hamas.Son père est le Sheikh Hassan Yousef, qui fut condamné à 6 ans de prison en Israël. Hamas fut fondé en 1987 contre l’occupation israëlienne. Je n’ai rien contre le nationalisme mais tuer des innocents c’ est trop.Il a declaré que pendant 10 ans il a travaillé secrètement contre Hamas pour Israël.Ainsi il a pu éviter la mort de beaucoup d’innocents en fournissant des informations qui ont empêché la réussite de dizaines d’attentats.Plusieurs leaders du Hamas coupables de terrorisme furent aussi arrêté grâce à ses reinsegnements.Son nom d’agent était “le Prince Vert”, parce que le vert est la couleur de l’islam et le titre de prince parce qu’il était important.Il était tres dangereux de faire ce qu’il a fait.En plus de celà, il y a quelques années, il est devenu chrétien,abandonnant l’islam.
MENACES DE MORT
Tout cela est décrit dans son livre “Fils de Hamas”...
Here's Concordia's contribution to the BS..Note the "large Arab population" inference in the article. Looks like the Army's going to be needed for Jews or pro-Israel people to speak from now on..or just ban moslums period..Sickening..
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1042674485553_25?s_name=&no_ads=
This sign that I photographed at a protest at York last year pretty much says it all.
You can add to your list of most toxic campuses Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. This rather small, extremely "liberal" tax-supported college is where Rachel Corrie, the girl who died protesting against Israel in Gaza was indoctrinated. (The word "educated" seems inappropriate when you study what goes on there.
The Corrie family, seven years after her death is now sueing Israel, with the assistance of our President and VP. I have formed a committee to bring the pro-Israel voice to that campus, and to get the media to look at the role the totally distorted view of the Arab=Israeli conflict presented there played in her going to Gaza in the first place. Anyone trying to counter this view is exposed to personal harassment, and, in the case of faculty, concerns about tenure. Wish me luck.
I wish you luck, I know you'll need it, It seems like the majority are brainwashed these days.
I hope your career will not be at risk.
Then adopt the enemy's tactics. Just so I am fully informed, what part of your freedom isn't worth fighting for? I can imagine it know, 1930's Germany, some pour Jewish fellow telling his family that they are above engaging in such thuggish brown shirt behaviour. If you aren't willing to fight these thugs now, will you be more prepared when they are twice as large? ten times? Now is the time.
This, like most issues, resolves to a logical issue. In other words, people who deny the Islamic threat are simply not thinking.
The solution to the Islamic threat is the same as to other threats. We the people need to defend ourselves, effectively and proactively. If I may borrow from Paul Revere: "to arms!"
Alas, poor York:
Next time that you're feeling magnanimous
You'll do well to invite the animus
Of violent groups
Who'd call up their troops
Because in their hearts they're damnin' us.
"What a total and complete outrage! Canadians need to fight back or loose whatever rights they have left.
And Americans, and Brits, and the French, the Italians, the Dutch.......
Mamdouh Shoukri does not sound so bad from this article: http://www.torontolife.com/features/yorks-middle-east-war/?pageno=2
Mentioned in it, as a ringleader of the anti-Israel agitators, is one Ahmad Habib, described as a "refugee" from Iraq. Why is he a refugee from Iraq? If he came as a "refugee" from Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. Besides, why does any Muslim, Sunni or Shi'a, have to be accepted as a "refugee" when, if an Iraqi, there are plenty of places in Iraq safe for Sunni, and others guaranteed safe for Shi'a, Arabs. What is the definition used by Canadian immigration authorities of a "refugee"? Surely it cannot be anyone fleeing a miserable and violent country, for that would open the door to a billion people, fleeing in the first place the wretchedness and violence that are common to Muslim states and societies, and the result of Islam itself. One allowed in refugees from the Nazis and the Communists, because they were fleeing persecution, and the one thing they wished to do, when they arrived in America, or Canada, or elsewhere, was to alert those giving them refuge to the threat posed by the Nazis, or the Communists. "Refugees" from Muslim lands come bearing Islam, and wishing to promote the world-view, and the foreign policies, that Islam promotes.
Why is Ahmad Habib still in Canada, still helping to suppress, through the threat of disrutpion and violence, the exercise, by Canadians, of free speech?
Who will look into this case, and in looking into it, look into hundreds of thousands of similar cases? The peoples of the advanced Western world may, if they choose, admit into their midst those who come from elsewhere, but only if those who come from elsewhere are not dead set against the legal and political institutions of that advanced Westewrn world, that took centuries of thought and then action to become as they now are. The Holy Law of Islam, the Shari'a, flatly contradcits, in spirit and letter, the laws and customs of America and Canada. It is one thing to admit those bearing an alien creed. It is another to admit those bearing an alien and a permanently hostile creed. Islam is based on a clear and uncompromising distinction between Believer and Unbeliever, Muslim and Infidel, and mandates a permanent state of war (though not of warfare) between the two. The whole world belongs rightly to Allah, and to the "Best of Peoples," and anything that is an obstacle to the spread, and dominance, of Islam must be removed, by whatever means prove most effective. This is not hard to understand; the texts are there, the commentaries on the texts are there, the works of scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, explaining Muslim doctrine, are all there. What is required is a willingness to find out. And it is that which much of the Western world refuses to demonstrate.
From Hugh's post:
'the texts are there, the commentaries on the texts are there.........What is required is a willingness to find out.'
Is the reluctance due to intellectual laziness or lack of mainstream media reporting?
A third reason could be that because Westerners/Liberals are not like that themselves, they do not expect anyone else to be like that either.
I am totally flummoxed as to how can people be so blind to the islamic supremacy threat.
More nastiness from York University, from 2008—an apologia published in the school paper over the massacre of eight young Jewish students in Israel. Here is an account:
http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=1969
The name of York's school newspaper is—quite ironically—the Excalibur.
I don't always agree with Frum, he's right that something is definitely very wrong at Ontario's York University.
A poster above suggests that these problems of violent and disruptive activities began when Mamdouh Shoukri took over as York university president. This is not true. There is a decades-long history to radical and militant political protests at York (overwhelmingly by leftists), which cause massive disruption to those students who want to pursue their studies undisturbed. There has been an increase in the intensity of the Muslim student groups' attacks on and harassment of Jewish students and non-Muslim students generally in recent years (before Shoukri came in), but this is probably an effect of the increasing Muslim population in Toronto and surrounding area. Whether Shoukri's handling of this problem is related to his Islamic beliefs, I do not know, but as president he has ultimate responsibility for how this situation is handled, and he should be subject to criticism over it just as the former president (Marsden) was subject to criticism.
Specifically with regard to the Muslim students' agitations and disruptions, I can recall reports from the mid-1990's of various incidents at York, mostly relating (putatively) to the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am also familiar with the Vari Hall setting described in the Toronto Life article to which Hugh refers; i.e., I've been through that place numerous times. As described in that article, when the various student groups set up their tables in Vari Hall, it is basically a free-for-all of activist mayhem at an important pedestrian traffic hub. In retrospect, with what I know now about Islam and the various activist and indeed militant and sharia-supporting Islamic student groups on campuses across North America and the U.K., I suspect that the Muslim groups were causing or escalating most of the problems back then (in the mid-1990's), and they continue to do so now, in increasing numbers, increasing feverishness, and increasing violence. Muslim student groups tend to be much more in favor of sharia law (about 60%, though perhaps higher at York) than does the general Muslim student population (about 30%). At minimum, the majority of these Muslim students groups are jihadists of tongue and pen. Jewish student groups have been threatened with violence and death by members or associates of Islamic student groups at York.
Excuse the omission in my first sentence in the post above: I don't always agree with Frum, but he's right...
"I am totally flummoxed as to how can people be so blind to the islamic supremacy threat."
Being totally flummoxed is a good start toward arriving at a reasonable hypothesis to explain this seemingly bizarre anomaly. Moreover, the flummoxation increases when one factors in that these "people" who are so blind are, on the whole, relatively good, decent and intelligent people -- apparently in the majority among Elites and ordinary folks alike throughout the West -- and the societies in which their views are nourished, and to which they symbiotically contribute by their participation, are relatively healthy, free, democratic societies (i.e., societies of the modern West).
So where does that bring us?
In order to decrease the pressure which this anomaly exerts on logic -- for we as rational beings seek explanations for oddities, and this particular oddity is not only a doozy, it is serving to endanger our lives and the lives of our loved ones -- we must first eliminate explanations that don't make sense, or that go against certain non-negotiable axioms:
1) The blind people are a small minority who hold extraordinary power over the masses and over most structures and institutions of society and culture throughout the West.
Problem: how could people so blind -- and therefore ignorant and stupid -- have so much power? Doesn't make sense.
2) The blind people are not blind, they are evil -- protecting Muslims for reasons of greed or power while knowing that Muslims endanger us and that Islam is evil.
Problem: this implies that a cabal of evil people could be "really" pulling the strings and controlling our free and democratic societies along with most structures and institutions throughout the West. This is conspiracy theory, and Gnostic to boot, and therefore is not a permissible theory.
3) The blind people are not so much blind, as simply temporarily ignorant of the enormity of Islam: all that needs to be done is direct their attention to the text of the Koran, a few choice Hadiths and Tafsirs, and a few articles at Jihad Watch -- and voila! -- their eyes will be opened and they will join the Anti-Islam Movement.
Problem: This is a nice-sounding theory, but not very plausible, and flies in the face of experience too many of us have had when we see what people do when, in fact, their attention is apprised of the facts of Islam, and yet they still continue to regurgitate and parrot various defenses of Muslims and of Islam. Apparently, then, for a good number of people, a mere acquaintance with the facts of Islam is not sufficient.
Let's recap:
A reasonable hypothesis to explain why the West persists in seeming to be blind to the danger of Muslims and of the Islam that makes them dangerous must rule out as primary explanations the following:
1) a blind and stupid minority in power, holding a putatively Islamorealist vast majority of ordinary folks in its thrall
2) an evil minority in power, holding a putatively Islamorealist vast majority of ordinary folks in its thrall
3) people in positions of influence and power who are simply innocently unaware of the facts of Islam, and the instant someone calls their attention to those facts, they would wake up and join the Anti-Islam movement.
Given the nature of the overall problem, then, the only reasonable hypothesis would have to be that relative sociopolitical health and intelligence is conducive to this persistence in being "blind" to the danger of Islam. I.e., relatively decent and intelligent people, in their decency and intelligence, maintain the position that continues to defend, rather than appropriately condemn, Islam and the Muslims who follow Islam. How can this be? The answer lies in the content of that decency and intelligence. Among other things, to be decent and intelligent in our current Western era is to be "not prejudiced", "not bigoted" and "not racist". 90% of the time when Muslims come to our visual attention, they look like Ethnic People. This visual cue exerts an instant psychological trigger on the post-modern Westerner of the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century: instantly, before even conscious thought and deliberation can kick in, that visual cue pushes the buttons in the post-modern Westerner of the anxious concern to avoid prejudice, bigotry, hate and racism, and instead to make sure to support diversity and tolerance.
Then, when that post-modern Westerner factors in the massive fact of the sheer numbers (not to mention the colorful ethnic diversity) of Muslims worldwide, he feels an additional frisson of hideous repulsion at the thought of being bigoted against such vast multitudes of ethnic peoples.
Furthermore, this post-modern Westerner has been indoctrinated in the revisionist history whereby he has learned that only the white West has been guilty of crimes of racism and ethnic cleansing, if not wholesale genocide, of ethnic peoples throughout history, and that ethnic peoples, by contrast, are as innocent as gazelles on the savannah by nature the prey of the evil White Lions who went colonizing and raping the Third World. The self-understanding of the evil of his own West possesses additional more recent ballast in groups such as the KKK, Aryan Nation, Neo-Nazis, and of course the not-so distant memory of Hitler which ever reminds of the "Never Again" mantra of avoiding "another Holocaust" -- with a "Holocaust" tendentiously defined as the kind of crime that only white Westerners could commit, and against some kind of minority, the browner the likelier.
The sincerely righteous sense of morality of this post-modern Westerner is intelligent -- intelligently informed, or deformed, by the framework of a rather complex paradigm which includes among other things what I have articulated above:
1) an irrationally excessive Anti-Racism
2) a concomitantly excessive and morbid self-criticism of the West
3) part and parcel with 1 and 2, a revisionist history of the West.
With these attitudes exerting force, a curious and perverse mechanism comes into play, which recalls Lawrence Auster's "First Law of Majority-Minority Relations":
"The worse any designated minority or alien group behaves in a liberal society, the bigger become the lies of Political Correctness in covering up for that group.
And Auster explains:
"This increasingly undeserved favorable treatment of an increasingly troublesome or misbehaving minority or non-Western group can take numerous forms, including celebrating the group, giving the group greater rights and privileges, covering up the group's crimes and dysfunctions, attacking the group's critics as racists, and blaming the group's bad behavior on white racism."
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009226.html
What Auster has not sufficiently explained, though, is why one particular designated ethnic minority, Muslims, have astronomically surpassed all other ethnic minorities in terms of enjoying the perverse privileges described by this law. The explanation is implicit in his First Law, since Muslims by their expressions and behaviors serve to augment and exacerbate the crucial "worse behavior" factor in that Law's formulation.
Additional factors unique to Muslims illuminate this:
1) Violence:
Muslims are more violent than any other designated ethnic minority.
a) Quantitatively: Muslims are by far more violent -- both in terms of sheer numbers of acts of violence and the geographical dispersion of violence over the globe -- than any other designated ethnic minority (even blacks, whose putative problem of violence Auster spends a lot of time discussing and documenting on his site, pale (pun intended) in comparison to Muslims by an astronomic factor).
b) Qualitatively: Muslims are not only astronomically more violent quantitatively, their violence is qualitatively more gruesome (e.g., beheadings, mutilations, torture) and deadly (e.g., mass explosions, mass raids or razzias as seen in Mumbai, the potential for deployment of WMDs of various kinds, etc.).
c) Networking Violence: Aside from quantitative and qualitative violence that astronomically exceeds the violence of any other designated ethnic minority, there is the greater capability Muslims possess to deliver on threats of violence -- demonstrating the fanatical will to do so as well as greater sociological support among fellow Muslims, and international networks to actualize that support.
2) Demographics:
Aside from the violence factor, the sheer numbers and global dispersion of Muslims tends to lend additional weight to those who have an aversion to being "prejudiced" and "bigoted" and "racist" against a perceived ethnic people. The strong critic of Islam instantly becomes a person arraying himself against an Entire People -- and when that Entire People is perceived to be Ethnic, that clinches the deal: the Islam critic must be a "racist" "hater".
P.S.: For those few who have read through all this, I would add that by virtue of their continuing struggle against Muslims (it matters not that their struggle is rationally necessitated by the offensive violence of Muslims and is conducted with utmost ethical comportment: all that matters is that they are perceived to be "attacking" and "oppressing" Muslims), Israelis (and by extension Jews) have become Honorary Whites -- and thus suffer the perverse effect of Auster's First Law.
KHUSHI: "I am totally flummoxed as to how can people be so blind to the islamic supremacy threat."
You've given three good reasons yourself above, but have overlooked what I feel is the most important: It is less about the enemy than it is about us.
Most Americans - even liberals - know the truth about Islam, either consciously or sub-consciously. But they're too apathetic and/or self-involved to be bothered. On those occasions when they actually contemplate it, they feel powerless to be able to do anything about such an overwhelming problem, one so huge that their own policy-makers pretend doesn't exist...and so in order to mitigate their anxiety, they prefer not to think about it. They're able to do so relatively easily because the threat at least appears to them to be on the periphery of time and distance (though we here know better).
It's as simple as that.
9-11 was clarity, a sobering moment, a cold-shower...and for a time the American public was actually galvanized for the civilizational mission at hand. But our cultural gate-keepers (politicians, academics, journalists) lulled us back into a world of complacency.
Meanwhile, the enemy eats, sleeps and drinks Jihad obsessively, festering over every slight, scheming revenge for every defeat, incessantly dreaming of the day they can vanquish the hated infidel. And this is not just a reference to the foot-soldiers of Islam, but to the Muslim masses, your average men and women, who are daily inculcated with religious zeal that so effectively encompasses the cultural and political.
In other words, they have have the focus that we lack.
"Mamdouh Shoukri does not sound so bad from this article: http://www.torontolife.com/features/yorks-middle-east-war/?pageno=2"
No he doesn't; only one problem, though: he's a Muslim.
Which means he supports evil and dangerous Islam. And it's even worse that he's obviously intelligent. Therefore, he cannot possibly wiggle out with an excuse of an ignorance of the evil and dangerous Islam he supports and enables.
By "not sounding so bad", Muslims like Shoukri -- and Infidels impressed with him -- are actually facilitating Stealth Jihad.
Cornelius,
Apathy and self-involvement are factors, but in my estimation they are not the primary cause. I find it interesting that most people in the Anti-Islam Movement continue to assume that there cannot be any positive content in the worldview of Westerners to explain the persistence of whitewashing Islam. It is the positive content of anti-racism and the sense of moral sincerity and superiority it endows that, in my estimation, represents the factor without which the West would have taken care of this problem long ago.
"9-11 was clarity, a sobering moment, a cold-shower...and for a time the American public was actually galvanized for the civilizational mission at hand."
Not necessarily. It depends on who is perceived to be the perpetrators of 911 (I'm not taking about Truthers here). For the reasonable non-Truthers, there are two ways to frame the perpetrators of 911:
1) a tiny minority of extremists who are misusing Islam
2) Muslims following mainstream Islam -- therefore logically contiguous with multitudes of Muslims around the world, if not all of them.
A Western person can feel hit hard by 911, but will refuse to graduate from #1 to #2, for the reasons I articulated in my previous, very long post. Those reasons constitute a strong, visceral conglomeration of emotions and convictions that make the person feel they are morally right, and that the Islam critic is dangerously on the verge of unethical attitudes of prejudice, bigotry, racism, hate, "painting all Muslims with a broad brush", etc. etc. ad nauseam. I think more than 50% of Westerners think this way, and only a minority so far have shown the ability to think outside their PC MC box, or are only behind held back from graduating from #1 to #2 by apathy and self-involvement.
That article Hugh linked has a photo of a typical Leftofascist, one Dan Freeman-Maloy:
http://media.torontolife.com/dynimages/features/york_freeman-maloy.jpg
Were one to construct a physiognomy of the typical Leftofascist, one could use this face as a prototypical model, a face whose Gestalt in myriad intangible ways conveys and oozes the smug superiority, the self-righteous fanaticism, and the obtusely perverse Orwellianism of Leftofascism and Islamoleftism.
Dan Freeman-Maloy seems to be clearly an Islamoleftist (a term apparently coined by the French blogger, Robert Heurtebise: Islamogauchisme) -- though I'm not sure if he falls into subcategory 3 or 4 of my categorization in my essay Islamoleftism.
I disagree Hesp.
I think the majority of Americans understand Islam for what it is on an essential level (if not on a theological one); they know it's barbaric. The power of PC/MC is not necessarily to brainwash (even though that's certainly the ultimate goal), but to silence, to strike fear into the hearts and minds of otherwise free people...in order to keep them from uttering uncomfortable truths.
Lo and behold, it's working like clockwork; if two intensely anti-Islamic personalities like you and I are reluctant to come out of the cloak of anonymity and show our public face to the world, think about those with less conviction and understanding than us. No wonder our civilizational self-defense is so latent.
That's why your on-going criticism of Robert's tactics and strategy ring so hollow to me. You and I are talking the talk, he's walking the walk...with his mug plastered all over the cultural landscape, with both a metaphorical and literal bulls-eye on it.
Some good news out to TORONTO!
on This Wed., Mar. 3
at 7:30PM at Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue
at 470 Glencairn (about a block and a half east of Bathurst
are appearing Daniel Pipes and Wafa Sultan
To talk about the usefullness of moderate Muslim regimes.
Please plan on being there. You can RSVP by calling 416-864-9736.
Write to the president of York University, Mamdoug Shoukri, at mshoukri@yorku.ca
Write to the president of York University, Mamdoug Shoukri, at mshoukri@yorku.ca
Write to the president of York University, Mamdouh Shoukri, at mshoukri@yorku.ca
Hesp,
Flummoxation, LOL!
You & Cornelius may not 100 percent agree, but there's a lot of truth to what you're BOTH saying!
But I wanted to ask you this:
So, for all the reasons you provided, does one conclude that "civilized" societies & national entities reach a point of "cultural entropy," wherein what we think are our better instincts & intentions become maladaptive? In effect, we become too elightened, too well-intentioned, "too good," to accept & deal-with the bad--even as the bad plots & pursues our destruction? That we're too "good" for even justified hate? That what we like to think makes us "civilized," contributes to our ultimate doom?
If that's what you're saying, I find it pretty hard to argue! But then, I surely don't have any answers for how to change this wrong-headed group-think?
Thanks,
G
"This increasingly undeserved favorable treatment of an increasingly troublesome or misbehaving minority"..
George,
I don't think there's any necessary law of civilizations where they develop or devolve into that kind of entropy. I think the modern West is unique in developing self-criticism to such an extreme degree. Just think of one manifestation of it: every public book store and every college bookstore and every library throughout the West has books in, and every college throughout the West has classes in -- subjects and personages from history (e.g., Nietszche, Spengler, Sartre, Margaret Mead, Noam Chomsky, and hundreds more like them) who were and are profoundly critical of the West, going far beyond constructive criticism. And then we have our pop culture, the Arts, the news media, rife with similar degrees of self-criticism, though less high-brow. Why the West has done this I don't have a good hypothesis. It just could be a colossal mistake with an arc of 500 years, but only recently coming to fruition.
Might I submit troublesome AND misbehaving minority
On second thought(and third) "troublesome" is a lenient definition of the "problem"..The "problem" is a broken water feed pipe in the basement.Not only at the leaks but the supply. Strange that "Joe the Plumber" would be the saviour of this (and many more) great nation(s).
Fruition..If this is islam's fruition,one can only hope for an early winter..frost and snow,there ya go.
Whilst I seemingly have a handle or helm.."Replace the pipe!" "Up the Rebels"!..Drano anyone?..
George,
I have disagreed with Hesperado on occasion in the past and usually agree with Cornelius. In this instance however, Cornelius seemingly misses the absolutely critical point that Hesperado makes (although with WAY too many words).
That critical point is that the greatest obstacle we face in this conflict is the WILLFUL ignorance of many of our fellow Infidels. Anyone who has “worked the room” trying to educate our fellow Kuffar about Islam knows the frustration of encountering the reflexive, almost unconscious denial of the most well documented and obvious facts and the most artfully crafted arguments. This goes WAY beyond simple ignorance or apathy.
The problem is that when the subject is Islam, there is frequently an active rejection of facts in a manner that is similar to the reaction one would receive if you challenged the basic tenets of anothers’ religion – and of course it IS a direct challenge to the basic tenets of the “religion” of PC/MC.
It is quite astonishing to behold the evasion, denial and contortions that otherwise intelligent and sensible people will subject themselves to in order to avoid the truth – all this while claiming (and believing themselves) that they are doing nothing of the sort.
The PC/MC “religion” is much more pernicious and is far more internalized and widespread than many of us realize.
Hesperado,
We “got here” from the Viet Nam war, which “proved” that our government and by extension our founding ideals are evil, racist and designed to dominate “brown” people. We suck, have nothing to offer any other culture but misery and they are better than us anyway – especially if that culture is “brown”.
So goes the PC/MC mantra.
Dave,
Certainly the Vietnam War was one major catalyst for this phenomenon, but many other forces and events also contributed. One can see it gathering force long before that time, in the immediate aftermath of WW2 and the dismantling of Western Colonialism throughout the Third World. The phenomenon I think is much deeper than the Vietnam War or any other event one would point to (e.g., Watergate). It's like there was a deep tidal movement, and these more visible crises are just crests of waves more to the surface moved by that deeper tidal process. And I agree with your description of PC MCs: we need to understand that they are true believers, they sincerely believe in the ethical righteousness of their view, and they are not evil people, but relatively decent and intelligent. That is precisely the problem we face, and its magnitude: it would be a much smaller problem, were all the people arrayed against us simply stupid, or apathetic, or evil. It's much worse than that: they are decent, intelligent, productive people in the full light of progressive middle class society! That is what make PC MC such a formidable force. It makes decent intelligent people think their views on Islam are... decent and intelligent!
Dave,
I don't doubt that there are many believers in the MC creed. But I don't think they constitute a majority...at least not of Americans.
Do you remember the aftermath of the Rodney King trial, when the cops were found innocent and south-central LA exploded in an orgy of violence? Do you remember the brutal assault on Reginald Denny?
I went to work the next day and tried to discuss it with my co-workers. Now I have no doubt that they were just as appalled as I was, but NO ONE would touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. They had been properly conditioned. The issue of race was just TOO sensitive. So it is today with religion (and Islam).
Hesperado is absolutely right in calling attention to the perniciousness of MC/PC, but I believe it is more about the fear than the ignorance this ideology instills...that is the main reason why a majority of Americans refuse to speak out.
Davegreybeard,
My experience in talking to people about Islam is different from what you describe. I do find that presenting factual information about Islam does have a positive effect in bringing the person closer to my view that Islam is a bigger problem than they realize. (I'm judging this by their responses).
It's important to distinguish so-called "PC MC" from other factors that also contribute to some people's seeming reluctance to accept major arguments that Islam critics make (e.g., that it is not merely a tiny minority of Muslims who present a problem; that there are Islamic scriptural bases for present-day Muslim belief and behavior). Some of these factors are not uniquely related to arguments about Islam per se but rather to how people respond to arguments generally. A natural response that many people have to any claim is to think of not only confirming examples but also counterexamples and counterarguments as they test mentally the credibility of the claim. This occurs on just about any topic, perhaps more so on religious and political topics.
Some things that will turn off large percentages of one's potential audience right away are any politically or religiously partisan statements (Note: I'm not saying you do that; but this is common in the Jihad Watch comments threads). To win over the largest percentage of people, we've got to make arguments in a manner that is as appealing as possible to the vast majority of people (who are reasonable and of good will). For the most part, that form of persuasion involves the meat-and-potatoes of presenting credible and appropriate arguments and evidence to support one's claims about Islam.
One of the most important factors that makes our efforts at persuasion difficult is a factor that some among us in the Anti-Islam Movement try to put off or circumvent, even though logically it cannot be put off forever, and logically it is at the very least implicit in between the lines of the nature of the problem. And if our presentation is faithful to the nature of the problem of Islam, we will be unable to avoid that implicit subtext even if we try to camouflage it or (like a Daniel Pipes) even think we can reconstruct that nature from which we have eliminated that factor.
And what is that factor?
It is the fact that we have no way of limiting the number and demographic dispersion of Muslims we claim are worrisome. Pipes and a few others attempt to declare a limit, but any such limit is an artificial superimposition upon the problem, whereas, on the contrary, time and time again we have discovered this or that previously "moderate" Muslim or Muslim group showing evidence of supporting the very things that should worry us. Those of us who are more realistic and informed (apparently) than Pipes -- or more willing to be candid -- have no way to delimit the demographic problem of Muslims. Therefore, our presentation -- if it is faithful to the nature of this problem -- will tend to give the impression that we are proposing an exigent concern about vast multitudes of a diverse people all over the planet. How many? Who knows -- a few million; many millions? 500 million? And where? Why, anywhere and everywhere where Muslims exist -- from the jungles of the south Philippines to the Horn of Africa to the Middle East to London to St. Paul Minnesota to Toronto Canada.
This by itself is a difficult problem for our audience to wrap their heads around. The longer any of us, in our presentations, tries put off expressing this blunt reality, the longer we pussyfoot around it or whitewash it or try to camouflage it, the more our audience will smell something fishy, and they will be right in detecting the logical conclusion of our presentation even if we try to soften its rough edges. Unless we want to seriously dial back our presentation and reconstruct an artificial Hologram of Islam that has clear and definite lines of a Minority of Extremists and a Majority of Moderates, where that Minority is packaged small enough to go down the hypersensitive and narrow esophagus of those in our audience concerned not to "paint all Muslims with a broad brush".
And again, this particular problem described above cannot, and does not, eubsist in an abstract vacuum, but will immediately be connected, in the minds of our audience, with the ostensible ethnicity of Muslims -- and therefore an added, unavoidable burden attaches to our presentation which makes it that much more unpalatable -- yea, unthinkable -- to the normative post-modern Westerner who is not a hick from some swampland in Alabama or a hooligan from Edinburgh.
PC MCs -- who I maintain are the majority throughout the West at least in terms of having their hearts and minds deeply formed and shaped into a posture whose primary concern is to be "not prejudiced" and "not bigoted" and "not racist" -- will just have to change and become a little more "prejudiced", a little more "bigoted", a little more "racist"; and they will change, but most likely only the hard way. And that hard way will be brutal and tragic in the coming century. But it could be avoided. A good number, if not the majority of us in the Anti-Islam Movement are at bottom no different from PC MCs around us, and we have changed, so there is no real good reason for PC MCs to persist in being so laggard.
However, I don't think that one-on-one discussions with individuals is really helpful overall -- or at least, it is only one small part of the puzzle and not enough for change to happen. What is needed are town meeting type situations, organized by influential individuals in the A.I.M. These should supplement the public talks, and occasional symposiums, that they are already going around presenting.
I.e., Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Robert Spencer, Pam Geller, et al., should also organize public sessions like town meetings, where a panel presents very brief points on the problem of Islam, and then for 2 or 3 hours, the floor is opened up to questions and comments by audience members. These could be filmed for YouTube to further expand the reach. Over time, perhaps, if they catch fire and attract larger audiences, the MSM may be unable to continue ignoring them, and they may be televised on network TV.
This can also be done on the Internet: the Paltalk chat venue -- where people can make comments in voice through microphones -- would be a great context for that. for example, if Spencer and Geller really put their weight behind it, they could get up and running a regular Paltalk room that I guarantee would have 500 people -- or even several rooms subdividing into 100 people per room. The hundreds, of course, would not be the same people every night, but would continue to attract new people in regular influxes over time.
Hesperado,
Regarding the problematical “factor” that is the percentage of the Muslim population that has an affinity for Jihad, I would state that it is highly variable.
It would seem that the relative size of the Jihadi population (and those who support it) varies in inverse proportion to the perceived strength of the Infidels confronting it. At present time, Infidels appear weak and the Jihadi population has increased as a percentage of the Muslim population as a whole. At other times in history Infidels have appeared to be “the strong horse” and the relative size of the Jihadi population has decreased.
Understanding and explaining this phenomenon may provide the lubricant required to ease the fact “down the hypersensitive and narrow esophagus of those in our audience concerned not to "paint all Muslims with a broad brush".
As to your other point that Town Hall style meetings would be a very effective means of conveying knowledge about Islam, I whole heartedly agree – but we ain’t there yet and it’s going to be a while.
So in the meantime, since I find it impossible to just sit on my hands in the face of this mortal threat to Western Civilization, I shall continue my “one on one” proselytizing. It may be much less effective than a public forum, but it is the only venue available to me at the moment.
'P.S.: For those few who have read through all this,'
I did, Hesperado, and I am glad I did.
Your post is a fine essay in itself and yes, what you are saying is right. The West needs to get its self-esteem back before it can win the fight against islam.
Cornelius too makes sense when he says even the ones who are convinced of the need to defeat islam have to be willing to come out of the closet, so to say. (I, too, am guilty as charged and do not as yet have the courage to face verbal arrows of being called a racist or a muslim-hater)
I may be wrong but to me it seems that what you both are pointing to are step 1 and step 2 of the process to defeat islam.
First, get rid of the self-loathing.
Secondly, get rid of the apathy and do something about it.
Cornelius wrote:
'Meanwhile, the enemy eats, sleeps and drinks Jihad obsessively, festering over every slight, scheming revenge for every defeat, incessantly dreaming of the day they can vanquish the hated infidel............In other words, they have the focus that we lack.'
Cornelius,
I only hope that this focus comes to us infidels too, long before we all are dead or converted.
Re: your reply to Hesperado, (this is part of my post to hesperado)
Cornelius too makes sense when he says even the ones who are convinced of the need to defeat islam have to be willing to come out of the closet, so to say. (I, too, am guilty as charged and do not as yet have the courage to face verbal arrows of being called a racist or a muslim-hater)
I may be wrong but to me it seems that what you both are pointing to are step 1 and step 2 of the process to defeat islam.
First, get rid of the self-loathing.
Secondly, get rid of the apathy and do something about it.
Kinana - nice points.
And about the need to be matter-of-fact.
In that connection, I would have to say that when I first started reading jihadwatch (following a link from bat ye'or's website, upon which I had stumbled when googling in search of a book by Jacques Ellul) the 'angry' postings (especially if there were a lot of them in any one thread, and if they involved much anger but little content) were rather offputting, as were diatribes pro and against religion, or on other sidetracks.
It was Hugh's delicious prose, and the down-to-earth but well-informed irony of people like Duh Swami, and the scholarly tone of necessitasnonhabetlegem, and the way in which some posters made a practice of intelligently relating the topics under discussion, to the salient Islamic texts, that drew me in and made me keep reading.
Dave
nice to see you posting...hope you are well.
Ever heard the slogan 'each one teach one'?
The one-on-one method can spread information surprisingly quickly, if the pupil goes on to become a teacher in turn.
Example: I've mentioned before that I gave one of my brothers 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades'. He read it, and 'got it'; I am told that he would come home from work and, chores done, evening by evening, devour it chapter by chapter; then he would come to bed and 'debrief', to his poor long-suffering wife, the horrifying facts he had just absorbed. She saw no reason to doubt him. I'm not sure whether she read the book herself; but she lent it to her dad, who only got halfway through before getting so spooked by what he was reading that he gave it back. It wasn't that he disbelieved Spencer's thesis; rather the opposite!
Further, I have no idea just how many people those thoroughly-convinced-and-thoroughly-spooked three people, by now, may have told the Awful Truth about Islam.
My brother, by the way, volunteers in the local Bush Fire Brigade; a group who have undergone training not only for fighting bush fires, but for dealing with every imaginable emergency up to and including terror attacks (e.g. he showed me the guide book they had been given, which gave the procedure for dealing with, for example, a suspected truck bomb...). Because he's in the Bush Fire Brigade, I sent him a printout of a story that appeared here a couple of years ago, about Muslims threatening to set forest fires in assorted Infidel lands (including Australia) as a means of Jihad; and because he lives in a district that might be chosen by Muslims as a jihad training ground (rough bush country, State forest, lots of odd little properties tucked away in hidden valleys) I also sent him a couple of stories about Muslims carrying out jihad training in remote bush areas of Canada, just so's he'd be on the alert for any suspicious strangers flitting through the bush, firing guns, etc. The thing is: I'm sure he'll have found the opportunity to share those warnings with his mates in the Brigade, and with the blokes he works with. And then they'll ALL be on the lookout, profiling like mad.
Just keep on keeping on.
Always a pleasure to hear from you Dumbles and your warm support is always much appreciated.
You KNOW I will continue on because I just cannot stand by without doing SOMETHING to fight this plague that Muhammad has unleashed on mankind – I suspect that you feel the same.
I am well and thriving and always find a little time to read a bit of JW, but do not always find the time to post.
My current target is a young man (32 is young to me) that I met at the gym. He is recuperating from wounds received in Afghanistan while he was a member of a Special Forces Team fighting the Taliban. I told him of my time in Viet Nam as a member of an Advisory Team (though not Special Forces) attached to a South Vietnamese Army company. We had a lengthy conversation about shared experiences and “stuff”.
When I asked him if he knew much about Islam, he replied that he spoke Arabic and had been to several “cultural classes”. His thought was that Islam was not the main issue or “driver” of the enemy but was sort of “around the edges”. He felt that local politics and a tribal culture were the main issues that had to be dealt with – I replied that he had it exactly backwards. Our discussion continued on at some length from there and he mentioned that he expected to return to Afghanistan some time after his recovery. I mentioned that I had recently read “Horse Soldiers”, which is about the Special Forces teams who were the very first U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. (I highly recommend this book!) He had read it also and mentioned another book “On Killing” which I am just starting to read now. “On Killing” is a study on the process and consequences of soldiers killing in combat – not sure why he mentioned this book and I am a little skeptical after the “intro”, but I’ll see where it leads.
I feel quite a bond with this young lad as we share the experiences of “Military Advisory Team” soldiers, though a generation apart. I also feel a great need to make sure that he knows the enemy – in great detail.
Wish me luck Dumbles; I’ll do the best I can.
Why do you Zionsit fear the truth? Islam is the way of the future and no mater what you Jahoodi Nazis do it will win. We never have lost and we have always defeated invaders. Iran will be the new super power and Israel, the illegal occupier, will be banished from the Holy Land. Allah's holy land.Deal with it.