Imam calls for jihad and caliphate, picks up gun during Friday prayers

Good point. In "stressed times" and in evil times, like the Catholic priests in Croatia during the second world war; the murderous Ustasha. I think of the Croatia and the Ustasha every time I listen to Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner sitting in for radio talk show host Michael Savage. There have been militant rabbis historically; not so many today but some. Like you said however, this was and is not the norm.

Also, note the calls for a new Caliphate.

Thanks. You were called a "greasy" Islamophobe by a believer. Interesting. Anyway, I like the term. I've been called lots of unflattering things, especially on left-leaning websites.

Robert Spencer wrote:

Wildjew:

I was wondering who coined the term "greasy Islamophobe," so I Googled it. Looks like it might be original to Robert Spencer.

No, I cannot claim the phrase. What happened was this...
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Thanks so much for the backstory, Mr. Spencer.

A highly memorable phrase, and one you have used to wonderful effect.

Well, I knew of one minister who got people all riled up about Y2K and had them hoarding canned food and darkly hinted that anyone who didn't keep a firearm was irresponsible in the protection of his family. Having just come out of government service at the time, and being aware of precautions the government was taking, noting that a banker in the congregation (who probably had more to lose than anyone else) wasn't overly concerned, and having someone close in the business world who knew of computer protections at hand and in use, yours truly did not get involved in the survivalist mania--and became something of a target of this minister's ire. But the man was also a very conflict-prone type who pushed a few doctrinal limits, so he ended up deposed from the ministry (although not before he peeled off a bunch of followers to start his own group).

Well, I and a lot of others know the biblical and Christian theological answers to such a person. So, before anyone gets the idea that conservative Evangelicals are easily led by their pastors, let the above story be an object lesson that is Ain't Necessarily So (in the immortal words of Sportin' Life). But, like a lot of others here, I have neither heard nor read Muslims refute the terrorists from Qur'an and Hadith.

This being said, Uncle Kepha readily admits he's one who believes that there are times when violent resistance to a tyrant who violates the social compact is justifiable; or times when the state is obliged to wage war for the defense of the people--even if the general, dominant note of the Old and New Testaments is that we should seek the peace of whichever city we find ourselves in (even if it's Babylon, as Jeremiah wrote) and seek peace with all men, as far as it is up to us (as Paul wrote in Romans 14).

Fineliving

thank you for the extra background information. It's always helpful.

"Shouting and yelling and roaring and screaming immoderately, it's how we see crowds are being managed and directed in those parts. Gesturing, posturing, play-acting. Fake spontaneity guided along. "Allahu-Akbar" left, right and centre. The Grand Gesture to impress impressionable minds.

Mr Ordinary in the beginning who to his embarrassment discovers himself standing out from the crowd is a moment of brief entertainment."

You're superimposing Western sensibilities on Muslim psychology/sociology. You have not a shred of evidence upon which to base your superimposition; except, perhaps, a dash of wishful thinking, and the force of suppressed subliminal dread and anxiety, lest the thought that Muslims actually are, en masse and individually (if one can even speak of "individuality" when speaking of Muslims), inherently and thoroughly and uniquely fanatical.

I've noticed this particular meme creep its way into the Counter-Jihad, as a way perhaps to cope with the horror, the full catastrophe that is Muslims and their Islam -- the meme, I mean, of positing that most Muslims, when they are not "ignorant of their own Islam", are more or less passive victims of the strong-arming psychosocial pressures from a tiny minority of fanatical rabble-rousers and imams.

There is not a shred of evidence for such a meme -- there is only anxious wishful thinking + the impulsive reflex to trigger the unreflective axiom in one's mind that "Hey, Muslims are human, too; so they can't possibly be as massively and uniquely fanatical, hateful and murderous as they seem -- at least not one billion of them spread out all over the world...! It can't be!" And so, one anxiously infers, it therefore isn't.

In fact, the opposite meme is a more grimly reasonable and persuasive inference to make, given the mountains and mountains of indicative data we rest on here, on July 26, 2012, atop Mt. Jihad Watch (are you guys really actually reading all this grotesquely horrific shit day in and day out? or are you somehow screening out or softening its full terrible impact with perhaps a residue of the PC MC filter in your brains? one wonders...), along with the oceans of dots crashing their criss-crossing waves against this mountain's lower slopes; a million dots that positively scream for connection by anyone with half a brain.

Kepha wrote:

Well, I knew of one minister who got people all riled up about Y2K and had them hoarding canned food and darkly hinted that anyone who didn't keep a firearm was irresponsible in the protection of his family...
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Well, sure. And I've certainly been to a few services that featured lusty call-and-response and some pretty colorful evocations of hell, as well. I certainly wasn't meaning to imply that all Christian services are low-key affairs.

But like Buraq, what this crazed and violent Muslim Kutbah reminded me of most was mass Nazi rallies, more than any religious service. And why not? It was calling for the same sort of savagery.

Obviously, that minister in your example was *way* off base on a whole range of things. But even in his case, calling on parishioners to defend their families from the specter of violent looters is a whole lot different from the calls for blood and violence on this Imam's part.

Well, granted calling on us to defend our families is different from going out and killing people who don't call us a religion of peace.

However, re the guy I descried, I rather sensed that he had something of a "bring it on" mentality about impending social violence; and some of his followers struck me as the sorts who could get riled up to do something nasty. And, I hope I'm wrong about them.

Further, Uncle Kepha is a firm believer in the doctrine of original sin, and that we stand accepted before God only because of the imputed righteousness of the Messiah. In and of ourselves, there's a lot of unsanctified nastiness in all of us, and it comes out pretty easily. That may even include real Christians--although I also believe God is merciful enough to keep us from persevering in evil. I suppose one more reason why I'm not a Muslim (or a Unitarian, for that matter), is that Islam doesn't seem to understand what a deep, pervasive, and horrible thing sin is.

"...Islam doesn't seem to understand what a deep, pervasive, and horrible thing sin is."

Oh, I dare say Muslims understand sin quite well; just as the πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ of the Gospels knew who Jesus really was:

And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he [Jesus] entered into the synagogue, and taught.

...

And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out,

Saying, Let [us] alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.

-- Mark 1:21; 23-24