Whoa. Dean Esmay unhinged. His response to the commentators gave me a mental picture of rabid dog... just like the seething Islamofascists' response towards the Pope...

Posted by: atheling at September 28, 2006 3:43 PM

Now Esmay can direct his ranting and raving at the Pentagon and the Pope, as well as to approx. 88% of the respondents to a recent WND poll here

Posted by: Archimedes at September 28, 2006 3:47 PM

P.S. I get approx. 88% from 41.69% + 29.01% + 17.08% for the "yes" (Koran inspires violence) side at the moment, and it should be fairly stable regarding margin of error. The sample is probably mostly right-wing or right-leaning.

Posted by: Archimedes at September 28, 2006 3:56 PM

Dean Esmay needs to immigrate to iran, syria, pakistan, any muslim state would suite me fine. but let him get the taste of islam, and will come to the conclusion why many muslims are desparate to leave country.

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at September 28, 2006 4:29 PM

Esmay has a certain prominence because he was one of the early bloggers, and because he received a lot of linkage back then from Instapundit, who's always been a Blogosphere kingmaker. He's middling bright, middling articulate, and has a reasonably wide range of interests and exposures. And apparently, he's let his readership figures persuade him that he's a voice to be reckoned with.

Voices to be reckoned with seldom do much reckoning themselves.

Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at September 28, 2006 5:00 PM

He's like the witless and nasty football player in any teen comedy. "You f-ing traitors!!!" What a buffoon.

He's so credulous about our "allies," and so willing to miss the point, which is not to demonize muslims, but to demonize an ideology that has inveigled far too many lonely men into murder and mayhem and has lulled even more into thinking those lonely guys might have a point.

Dean is right about this: we face a problem of loyalty. Can it ever be wrong to be German? Certainly not. And yet, history presents circumstances when one must choose loyalty to the clan (however defined) or loyalty to justice and reason and decency. In 1942, it was a bad thing to be a LOYAL German, because being loyal to Germany meant being loyal to the enormous crimes it was perpetrating. Circumstances left no middle ground. Wars tend to do that.

We are rapidly approaching a similar situation with Islam. Is it wrong to be a muslim? Certainly not. But muslims are choosing, in what seems like increasing numbers (Karzai, being just one guy, notwithstanding), to be loyal to the Ummah, and not to justice and reason and decency. You hear a cry against this very process in the Pope's words. THere have always been, and still are, and will always be good and decent muslims. But circumstances are making it more and more difficult for a muslim to be merely good or decent. Soon, and perhaps already, it will be heroic or nothing.

Germany didn't lack good and decent people, either. But it, like every other nation, lacked heroic people, and Naziism created conditions where being a "great guy" wasn't good enough. Or, rather, it was merely good enough to cover you in belated shame for the crimes that others showed no remorse for whatsoever.

The sands are still shifting, but they are blowing in an ominous direction. And on this landscape dean esmay has come to play Neville Chaimberlain, spouting vain hopes about his enemies and damning his allies as traitors.

Posted by: mountainecho at September 28, 2006 5:05 PM

Archimedes

I think Dean Esmay and Ralph Peters were the 2 respondents in the poll who answered yes to the question

No, the Quran is full of beautiful poetry and love

Posted by: Infidel Pride at September 28, 2006 5:14 PM

An open letter to Dean Esmay,

You stated this: "Including people (Muslims) in America's armed forces who are serving with honor and distinction right now." Why did you not say some Muslims? Did you conveniently forget the cowardly grenade attack on a group of sleeping officers? Yes, there are some Muslims who have accepted American values. I have known many, but I would hardly call them Muslims. They do not practice their religion in any form that I have observed. One man I know who is in his late forties, was born here to immigrant parents, calls himself a Muslim, but has never been to a mosque.

Why did you say this: "Recently, I noticed that some of Iran's unelected and illegitimate leaders have said that Islam is incompatible with democracy." I believe that the current leader, a Mr. Ahmadinijad, was in fact elected. Elected or unelected is irrelevant anyway. I have read too many rulings from the Muslim clerics to believe that Islam and any kind of Western style republic including Swiss style democracy is totally incompatible. In Islamic countries, the Mullahs, Imams, and Ayatollahs rule by virtue of Islamic tradition, and the parliamentarians are superfluous. We do not need to look no further than Pakistan’s flirtation with changing their rape laws.

You also brought up World War II, which is the usual course of any discussion of the current world situation. However, Mr Esmay, war is declared on nations, not leaders. We did not declare war on Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini; we declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy including every citizen of that country. We did not produce a list of people with whom we were not at war. Every person who helped the armies of our enemies was considered a combatant. The baker who made bread to feed soldiers was just as important as the soldier himself. When the bakery was bombed, if the baker was injured, that was considered just too bad. We bombed every target that we could think of, factories, railroads, boats, ships, and even cities. Yes, hundreds of thousands of “innocent” civilians died. This is where the comparisons end; Germans, Japanese, and Italians were not fighting based on the orders of a long dead, “prophet.” When the armies surrendered, the fighting stopped. The only reason that the Japanese stopped, was because their “living god” (Hirohito) told them to stop. The Islamic god is not around to tell the Sincere Muslims to stop fighting and accept non-Muslims as equal hmans.

There have been many articles and opinions written about moderation in Islam. Let me create a new name for what some people call Islamofascists - I will use the term Sincere Muslim. My world view is that the Sincere Muslim greatly outnumbers the Muslim-In-Name-Only, the kind I have known. The Sincere Muslim is where the problems are coming from.

Until such time that scientist invent a Sincere Muslim detector, we must assume that every Muslim is hell-bent on either converting us, dhimmifying us, or killing us.

Posted by: Pelayo at September 28, 2006 5:36 PM

I have read too many rulings from the Muslim clerics to believe that Islam and any kind of Western style republic including Swiss style democracy is totally incompatible.

That's a baaaad sentence. How's this:

I have read too many rulings from the Muslim clerics; I believe that Islam and any kind of Western style republic including Swiss style democracy is totally incompatible.

Posted by: Pelayo at September 28, 2006 6:08 PM

Folks - I am sorry, but the fact is that Dean Esmay is just an uneducated former Repo Man who likes "women who swear".

The war is a serious global problem for serious people to determine the solutions for our shared safety. The fringe are not worth being distracted about. The answer is probably having a separate page for all the fringe who scream that someone who takes the issue of Jihad seriously are "Islamophobes" and have them read that page.

And if there are a lot of people who want to read the Repo Man's blog, well... that's their problem.

Posted by: jeffreyimm at September 28, 2006 6:26 PM

"despite all of Esmay's frothing hysteria and foaming-at-the-mouth slanders and distortions, some people evidently still take him seriously. How anyone could possibly do so after his foul-mouthed raging in the comments that Michelle Malkin links to is a mystery to me." - Robert Spencer.

It shouldn't be a mystery. Esmay is the mainstream, tapping into the prevalent PC atmosphere out there.

Posted by: remote_control at September 28, 2006 7:35 PM

I don't know much at all about this Dean Esmay character but from what I've seen here the man needs to:

A)change his name like Cat Stevens did if he's that much in love with Islam.

B)get some kind of mental help since he may bite someone.

C)get some class and knock off the foul language.

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at September 28, 2006 9:15 PM

Alright, someone has to defend Dean and I guess that someone will be me.

I read him daily. I read Michelle and LGF daily. I never found LGF or Michelle to be blanket anti-Muslim. I take it for granted that most folk think of individuals and don't view millions of people as a monolith. Until recently (this summer), there was never any contention between Dean, Michelle and LGF.

I never commented at Dean's site until his recent tear on anti-Muslims. And, like here, I wouldn't have except that I thought I needed to lend my voice to tip things to the side of moderate again. Not that it helped any!

He's not unreasonable on any topic but this one. And he's not really PC in the traditional sense of the term. I honestly think he suffers from some kind of chemical imbalance.

Regardless, I think somewhere down the line he has developed a sense of brotherhood with some seemingly moderate American Muslims. This has created tension for him. It is exacerbated by his former friends becoming less tolerant and more judgemental of Muslims in general due to current events. Another understandable phenomenom. I have nothing particular against Dean's Muslim buddies but I disagree with them on many issues. I think Dean's sense of loyalty will not allow him to disagree with them. And he's overly idealistic, demanding more fealty than anyone owes, and allowing less diversity of opinion than he does on most topics.

So, it's not just a sense of loyalty. It's also a bizarre naivity toward working for unity rather than working toward disunity. He's made to large an emotional investment in this relationship he's created for himself as the champion of the previously unnoticed moderate Muslim.

So...by G-d, we'd better all f#*ing get along and acknowledge the Moderate or Dean will declare we are Islamophobes. And if you say he's wrong you'll be a f#*ing liar!!! Oh, I'm sorry ;). You guys are ALREADY Islamophobes.

So, now he is like the anti-John Bircher who sees anti-Muslims everywhere he looks. He's even demanding people declare there are against all terrorists because he found a few examples of apologists for non-Muslim terrorism against Muslims.

I completely understand his sentiment. And his unspoken fear. If he admits to himself that he allowed himself to be duped by his friends, or that he misjudged his friends, or that he misunderstood the Koran or Bernard Lewis, or that he could be living in a future terror cell... well that may be too much reality for him and shatter his ideal.

Honestly, I hope he finds a way to crawl out from under this mess he's made and make his way into the light again. I rather like Dean. And at this moment, I feel a little sorry for him.

ClareNancy

Posted by: clarenancy at September 28, 2006 9:15 PM

ClareNancy

Thank you for your insigtful post. I also read Dean regularly as well as LGF and Jihad Watch. I have a slightly diffeent take on Dean.

His obvious imbalance may be chemical in nature but it it is certainly also a form of deranged white liberalism.

Dean in this vein is a hero, a champion, a defender of virtue, a protector of all that is weak and brown.

Why would Michele Malkin provoke his ire of all people? She fails to recognize her place as the grateful recipient of white liberal largess. For, in this worldview, non-whites and non-westerners can riot and seethe, after all that is what children and adolescents do, but they cannot forget their place and assume to be agents or full members of society.

Dean's completely unsubstantiated (and unsupportable) attack on Michele included all kinds of tripe about Japan and loyal Philipinos.
She is not supposed to forget her place. How dare she be an American who would goddamnright intern the potentially seditious, rather than a symbol of perpetual victimhood.

You may be right that he does not want to be the dhimmi dope that he may be starting to feel that he is. No one wants to be conned. But I also think general white liberal derangement is at play.

How else could a man with a coool blog but no job think that he is in any position to protect anybody? let alone an Ummah filled with billionaires and kings, not to mention a whole bunch of doctors and lawyers?

Posted by: tokyobk at September 28, 2006 9:58 PM

The inherent problem with Islam is not Muslims per se but Islamic ideology originating in the Kuran, Hadiths, and Sura. Islamic doctrine leaves Muslims no choice but to carry out its imperatives and therein lies the problem. A point that goes way over Esmay's (and many other libs now screaming "No war!!!")head.

Islamic ideology licenses Muslims to commit virtually unlimited first-degree murder as part of their Islamic jihad practice. And that is why we are seeing non-Muslims being murdered across the world, usually in the Islamicized nations such as Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan et al, but now also in the non-Islamic nations where Muslims have been allowed in. There is no sign that anti-infidel violence mandated by Islamic ideology and carried out by Muslims is abating and there is no reason to believe that it will abate anytime soon.

Observers like Esmay can attempt all they want to make the problem go away by hiding the problem with a veil of subterfuges and brilliant excuses. However the violence coming from Islam is NOT stopping. Since 9-11 there have been at least 5800 lethal terror attacks leveled against non-Muslims by Muslims, and they continue almost on a daily basis. Why should anyone put up with this? And why should anyone listen to idiots like Esmay who insist on making unlimited excuses for terrorism that is ideologically driven, calculated, ruthless and wholly abhorrent? Why should we pretend that Muslims will stop their violent acts when their ideology says to continue warring against us infidels until "the last day?" Why would anyone wish to delude themselves over anything--much less a matter that threatens the survival of the world? I don't get it. Unless Esmay has accepted Islamic blood money to make excuses for Islam (he wouldn't be the first to, and he won't be the last if he did).

Esmay has some nerve asking the world to buy his excuses for Islamic terrorism. If Muslims are unable to resolve their differences with non-Muslims peacefully no one is obligated to put up with it. Nearly everyone else has ways of solving their differences with the rest of the world with some degree of civility.
The time has come for the non-Islamic nations to eliminate Islam before Islam eliminates the world altogether with some ghastly mega-terror attack that they are surely cooking up for us.

I wonder if Esmay is a friend of Hugo Chavez' ? (Another idiot putting out crap like "Islam is peace" or "the United States threatens the world"...blah, blah, blah).

Posted by: pythagoras at September 28, 2006 10:18 PM

Esmay must have a personal stake in this debate; his irrational defenses of islam and muslims are too vehement, too passionate. He refuses to budge an inch, despite ample empirical evidence to refute his arguments. I don't think he knows anything about islam, although he may have a few muslim acquaintances or "friends." Maybe he is a secret convert to islam, who knows. He might as well be one; he is an apologist extraordinare.

All I can say is that he is going to feel very, very stupid when he finally gets a clue, and that day will eventually come. If he wants to be a champion of the underdog, there are plenty of more worthy underdogs out there to defend, underdogs who would sincerely appreciate his devotion and fervor on their behalf. Muslims sure as hell don't.

Posted by: Susanp at September 28, 2006 10:42 PM

Infidel Pride,

"No, the Quran is full of beautiful poetry and love"

Yes, I was surprised that that one didn't get more responses of the "What the heck, I'll click that one just because it's so ridiculous" category. There's always some percentage of jokers in every poll.

Posted by: Archimedes at September 28, 2006 10:51 PM

Pelayo posted an "open letter to Dean Esmay" here at JW. Why, you might ask, didn't Pelayo post it on Dean's World? I think I know; I tried to post at Dean's World, and discovered new registrations are not being accepted. There WAS an exception, if you send a letter detailing just why you should deserve the privilege, his Highness might relent.

Posted by: Xero G at September 28, 2006 11:05 PM

Oh, this guy has lost it. He is either a revert or he's infatuated with some muslimah. He hates our guts for wanting to preserve our way of life? Do you want sharia right here, Esmay?
Karsai may be more moderate than most, but what did he say about Israel's right to exist? Maybe Israel isn't important to you, but it is our real ally and the only democracy in the middle east.

I invite you to read the qur'an and hadith. Find the love in those texts. Maybe it is between the building a fire on a man's chest, and beheading 600 Jews at an oasis. I must have missed it.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 29, 2006 12:24 AM

He actually defends sharia law in the comments. He believes it is more democratic than most governments. He's a ringer.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 29, 2006 1:08 AM

Dean Ismay's irrationality about Islam reminds me of Christopher Hitchens' irrationality about Christianity. I mean, the guy badmouths Mother Teresa and it ain't pretty. How anyone can spew vitriol at a tiny nun who spent her life caring for the sick and abandoned is beyond me...

Do you think both Dean and Christopher are suffering from the same malady?

Posted by: atheling at September 29, 2006 2:42 AM

Robert

Please - Esmay's not worth sweating over any more - he's a total distraction. You might as well dedicate a complete thread to Naseem.

Reading his comments on his blog, I can't imagine that any serious person will take him...seriously

Posted by: Infidel Pride at September 29, 2006 3:57 AM

Archimedes

Esmay hates 'cherry picked verses' whenever his critics cite the Quran. Way around it might be to reproduce the entire surah, and embolden the portion that one would normally 'cherry-pick'.

I'll wager that even that wouldn't convince him, although the non-highlighted portions wouldn't negate the cherries.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at September 29, 2006 4:01 AM

Infidel Pride said

You might as well dedicate a complete thread to Naseem.

Sheee-it. How many threads have been dedicated to "Naseem"? "He"/"She"/"They" post(s) one comment on a posting of any subject, and instantly the thread degenerates into Naseemania.

I agree with Infidel Pride, Dean Esmay and Naseem have little to do with anti-jihad. They are a distraction, and would be best ignored (that's not the same as banning them).

Posted by: special_guest at September 29, 2006 4:10 AM

And now we've made this idiot famous, like a serial killer. DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

Posted by: Know Your Enemy at September 29, 2006 9:13 AM

Esmay is King Tolerance?
Hates Christians, loves islam.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 29, 2006 10:46 AM

If only this guy Esmay understood that Muslims would kill him at the drop of a hat, in spite of the favoritism he attempts to show them.

With Islam, appeasement and currying favor mean zilch. Esmay can't seem to figure this out about Islam, even if it quite literally kills him.

Posted by: pythagoras at September 29, 2006 1:21 PM