And while we were not looking, our friend Musharraf feels compelled to continue genocidal attacks in Balochistan - perhaps because we have not solved all of the "Ummah's problems"...

From Outlook India's "Iron Purdah" http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070129&fname=Hindu+%28F%29&sid=1

QUOTE
Thirty-Three Hindus Killed in Pakistan in Attack by Government Troops. Most of the Dead Women and Children. Many More Injured. Hundreds Flee Homes...headlines like these never managed to hit the Indian media when it all happened in the neighbouring nation in March 2005.

An independent account of those killings emerged after teams from the Pakistan Human Rights Commission (PHRC) led by human rights activist and famous lawyer Asma Jahangir visited Dera Bugti town in Pakistan's Balochistan province, in January 2006, nine months after the killings there. The human rights commission published its report later last year.

UNQUOTE

Further we hear,

QUOTE

There's discrimination against all religious minorities. But what's particularly frightful for Hindus is the kind of harassment they face from the intelligence agencies." Asma Jahangir human rights activist, lawyer
....

This particular attack was not all; killings have continued, often as a result of heavy bombardment, the human rights commission report says. The residents that the human rights team met in Dera Bugti and in nearby Sui, where they had taken refuge, all confirmed that the FC had bombed them on March 17, 2005.

"Since December 30, 2005, use of rocket launchers, shelling and bombardment has regularly been carried out by the Frontier Corps," the report says. "They have used heavy weaponry, gunship helicopters and rocket launchers targeting civilian targets and populations as well. It is alleged that since then at least 150 civilians, mostly women and children have been killed. This figure includes the fatalities suffered on March 17, 2005." The human rights team was itself fired upon on its way to investigating the violations of human rights in the area, and members of the team said they suspected the attack was "pre-planned by an organised agency".

UNQUOTE

Oh! well - looks like these Ummah problems are literally forcing our Pakistani friends to keep killing unarmed women and children.. all for a good cause, though!!!

Posted by: AJack at January 21, 2007 7:51 AM

OK, he asked for it.

3, 2, 1 . . .

Posted by: CGW at January 21, 2007 9:10 AM

Musharraf is up to his usual tricks, practising the usual taqiyya which our leaders repetitively fall for, but Dinesh d’Souza is a supreme idiot. He tells us that the attacks of 9/11 were the result of the outrage of deeply religious, philosophical men against a wayward nation of decadent homosexuality and sin. Perhaps he’ll care to tell us why the Jihad began in 623. Was the Ban Qurayza Jewish tribe a “wayward nation of decadent homosexuality and sin” back in 628, when Mohammed had 900 men beheaded on his orders? Or the Byzantines in 1453? The Armenians in 1843 and 1915? Maybe the Israelis since 1948? No! The Jihad waged against us over the last 1,400 years has one purpose – to impose the iron rule of Islam on the whole of the infidel world. And the murder of innocents is one of their chief means of achieving this. Another is the demographic takeover of the infidel world - settle in it and start breeding like rabbits to get your numbers up, put pressure on existing laws, try to force Sharia in, and intimidate the rest of the population into converting to Islam. We have seen this in action during the last 100 years alone. In 1920, Syria was 33% Christian – now it is less than 10% Christian. In 1960, Lebanon was 60% Christian and less than 30% Muslim, but 47 years on, those numbers have been reversed. At the start of the 20th century, the Sudan was 30% Muslim – now it is almost 80% Muslim. What do you think has happened in little over 100 years? It is down to the fact that Islam is intolerant of other faiths, barbaric, brutal and bullying, and should be offered no quarter in the West, lest we become another Sudan or Lebanon.

Lets not forget that the only reason why we aren’t Islamic, at least for now, is because the West produced men like Pelayo, Charles Martel, Nicholas Graf von Salm, Janos Hunyadi, Jan Sobieski and the like. They didn’t play nice with Islamists. They crushed them, as did hundreds of their counterparts. Islam expanded where it didn’t come up against people like these and the men and women who fought under them. But they all lived between 311 and 1,285 years ago, and the Islamic world has had to wait three centuries from 1683 until around 1980 for the West to produce feeble generations who would go down with little resistance, who look for all manner of excuses to do nothing about the Jihad facing us, indulge in self-blame for Islamists blowing us up, and show more concern for the lives of Jihadists and their families than themselves and the future of their own children, and the country which has produced men and women of the calibre of Sobieski in relatively recent years – Israel – has been reviled by a cacophony of Islamists and brainless Lefties - all frustrated that a highly-productive and educated Jewish nation of six million souls defeated Muslim nations with combined populations of over 150 million in 1967 and 1973, and to this day far outstrips its unproductive, uneducated, terrorist-breeding neighbours economically and socially. But these feeble-minded Lefties are too clueless to realise that if Israel falls, the Greater Jihad against Europe and the US begins in earnest.

So how do we stop the Islamists and reverse Islamic imperialism? Talking to them won’t do it, and taking them on militarily with the ridiculous rules of engagement which tie our troops hands won't work either - at best it will contain to some extent, but not stop the Jihad. Islamic hatred of infidels is promoted through their media, and through the outpourings of all manner of wicked clerics, mullahs, imams and ayatollahs. Memri does a sterling job by translating what is said about us in Arabic and Farsi. We would have to reverse everything our media is doing now. Rather than being an Islamic mouthpiece and indulging in spending a month bashing politicians over their choice of school for their kids and other trivia, they should be expending their energies drawing the fangs of Islam, informing us of what is said about us and the hatred emanating from mosques and madrassas worldwide, and actually tell us the truth about Islam, those canonical texts which promote the slaughter of infidels, get out the word as to how non-Muslim minorities get treated in Muslim countries, and in addition to this, we should shut off all aid to, and stop selling our technology – technology that is being used against us – to Muslim countries. Make them face up to their weaknesses and let them be confronted with the backwards ideology of their faith. Let Allah stop working miracles through our financial aid. When we give aid to them, we’re throwing good money after bad, because they see it as jizya or tribute. And our politicians should stop making fatuous statements about ‘winning hearts and minds’. In all honesty, how on earth can we win the hearts and minds of those who are taught from birth to regard us as inferior beings, burn our national flags, call for our deaths, and celebrate atrocities like 911 by dancing, singing and handing out sweets to children? It is an impossible task. It is they who should be getting down on their knees for our generosity towards them, despite the numerous atrocities carried out against our citizens.

Posted by: Spirit Of 1683 at January 21, 2007 9:47 AM

Musharraf,

Please wake up and smell the coffee!

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at January 21, 2007 9:54 AM

Excellent post Spirit Of 1683.

Posted by: arjun.sevak at January 21, 2007 10:07 AM

Musharraff.
Isnt he the same General who in loud words said pkaistani troops are not involved in kargil war with india and refused to take back the killed pakistanis.
And then 7 years later in his book he acceptted troops were involved and killed.
What a General and what respect for his troops?
Indians had to bury the soilders with honours eventhough they were enemy.
How can the world trust such a man.

Posted by: Rajesh_singh at January 21, 2007 10:20 AM

"If a Muslim leader ever said anything to the effect of 'Muslims themselves provoke 'Islamophobia': some by performing acts of violence in the name of Islam and others by blaming those acts of violence on non-Muslims instead of cleaning their own house,' I would faint dead away."
-- from a comment by Robert Spencer above

And if you were to do so, that would be a case of one person getting the vapors because others had ceased their vaporings.

Posted by: Hugh at January 21, 2007 10:46 AM

"Talking to newsmen at Chaklala Airbase before his departure, Musharraf said the world should resolve the problems faced by the Ummah urgently, to get rid of terrorism and extremism.

President Musharraf said an urgent solution of problems is must due to gravity of situation in Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon."
-- from the article above

What is "Palestine" as referred to so blithely by Musharraff, and reported as if it were not to be questioned? The toponym "Palestine" was used in Western Christendom to refer to that land, on both sides of the river Jordan, which roughly corresponded to Biblical Palestine. More recently, it was the name given to that territory set aside by the League of Nations, under the Mandate for Palestine, for the establishment of the Jewish National Home that became the State of Israel after Israel successfully defended itself from the attacking Arabs during the War of Independence.

The use of the word "Palestine" by Arabs and Muslims is an attempt to efface Israel, and to replace it by a term that reifies that which does not exist -- an Arab "Palestine." It is not an innocent matter, devoid of meaning, and those non-Muslims who, like Blair, may refer to "Palestine" are in fact behaving, nolens-volens or perhaps willingly, as mouthpieces for Arab propaganda. No one who uses the term "Palestine" at the present is doing anything other than furthering the Arab and Muslim worldview.

After each appearance of the word "Palestine" in the Western, i.e., non-Muslim press, there should be an indication that there is not now (and many hope there never will be) a state called "Palestine." It is as phony as a state called "Mandela" which some black-power advocates wished, a dozen years ago, to carve out of parts of Boston, or the "Caliphate" that was created by a certain Turk in Cologne and which attracted a few thousand potential inhabitants. There is a "Palestinian" Authority. There are local Arabs carefully renamed after 1967 as the "Palestinian people" (a phrase that appears nowhere in the statements of any Arab leader, or U.N. ambassador, or any other pulbic figure, between 1948 and 1967, and even after the Six-Day War, it took several years for the new phrase, as with any propagandistic effort, to stick). There is not now a "Palestine." What was known in the West as "Palestine" is the current state of Israel and includes the land to which it had, by the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate, and has a legal, historic, and moral claim much more considerable than anything concoted by the Arab Muslims. There are Arabs and Jews in Israel, as there are Arabs and Kurds in Iraq and Arabs and Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and Arabs and Copts in Egypt. But there is not, even if the phrase is used a hundred million times, a distinct "Palestinian people" and there is no "Palestine" that should rightly be referred to without the reporter or news agency quoting someone using the phrase taking the time to simply indicate its not referring to a real country -- lest the ignorant be confused.

Here is how Musharraf's little comment, deplorable for many reasons including that passing-the-book and ignoring-the-nature-of-Islam that is dissected in the comments above, should appear if the Khaleej Times report is reprinted or quoted:

"President Musharraf said an urgent solution of problems is must due to gravity of situation in Iraq, Iran, Palestine [sic] and Lebanon."

One mo' time:

Palestine [sic], Palestine [sic], Palestine [sic].

Such a country does not exist. Muslims, both of the Slow and the Fast Jihad variety, would like it to exist. Infidels who undersand that the existence of such a state would create for Israel an intolerable threat to its existence, and almost certainly lead, after a suitable interval, to Israel's disapperance, and to the loss of the Holy Land to the Western world, and to a colossal blow to Western morale (already still reeling, sublmiinally, from the effects of the Nazi murders and widespread participation or support by others in those murders and the battening on that loot), and would lead not to a sating of Muslim appetites in the world but to a whetting of those very appetites. For there is no such thing as "compromise" with Infidels. Either the forces of Islam can keep fighting, or they must stop fighting, temporarily, or seek new instruments of warfare, if they are defeated on the battlefield. But the state of war between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb continues forever, and is not affected by a temporary hudna, or by the inability of Muslims, for the moment, to attack.

Triumph in one area -- and the disappearance of Israel would be a great triumph -- does not lead to a willingness or desire to stop in working steadily for the spread of Islam, and against all barriers to its ultimate dominance everywhere. The Qur'an does not say, Allah never said: Win back from the Jews any land that they may control, and stop there. The Qur'an does not say, Allah never said: Take back all the lands that once were part of Dar al-Islam, including Spain, Sicily, parts of southern France, Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Rumania, Bulgaria, much of Hungary, most of India, and so on, and then the Jihad can stop. No: Allah commands that the world belongs to him, and to Islam, and to the Believers. Why should it be otherwise?

Indeed. Why should it be otherwise?

Posted by: Hugh at January 21, 2007 11:42 AM

Folks, the truth is that the Muslims CANNOT accept any responsibility for their actions, so this is why you get comments from folks like Musharrif. His comments are a good example of living in deniel bigtime.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at January 21, 2007 12:04 PM

Question: what religion is D'Souza? I'm trying to get a grip on where he's coming from.

Posted by: RememberPimFortuyn at January 21, 2007 12:29 PM

And our politicians should stop making fatuous statements about ‘winning hearts and minds’. In all honesty, how on earth can we win the hearts and minds of those who are taught from birth to regard us as inferior beings, burn our national flags, call for our deaths, and celebrate atrocities like 911 by dancing, singing and handing out sweets to children? It is an impossible task.

Great post. This idea especially resonated with me because there is a group of people, especially on the Left, who say that whites are irremediably racist because they grow up in a racist environment and this ingrained racism demands a certain set of policies be put in place, etc. The Left doesn't trust the white people it brands racist to be able to overcome their collective environment to view non-whites as equal.

Applying this same logic to the idea to Islam in the West, the Left should be clamoring for policies to limit the impact of Muslim's collective environment, which is at least as vehement about the inferiority of 'the Other' as the alleged white racists' environment that the Left points to as an unsurpassable barrier to achieving racial harmony without coercive policies. Instead, they, and too much of the Right as well, talk about hearts and minds as though they are just there for the winning. They aren't. The best way to get them that way is to make Muslims suffer for their belief in the tenets of their religion (I mean in ways outside the normal ways Islam makes an individual and society suffer under its ridiculous tenets).

That means, at a minimum, no aid to Muslims, no immigration into the West, no freedom of religion without reciprocity in Muslim lands, immediate deportation of Muslims caught preaching Jihad, etc.

Posted by: venividivici at January 21, 2007 12:42 PM

"Question: what religion is D'Souza? I'm trying to get a grip on where he's coming from."
-- from a posting above

This is the wrong question to ask. It is his ideas and worldview that matter. Sometimes knowledge of a particularly piquant private history can help, but often it means little. There are Christians who are apologists for Islma, and Christians who regard Islam with horror. And Jews, ditto. And Hindus, ditto. There are atheists who offer merely a plague on all their houses, equally, and those atheists who distinguish that belief-system that not only makes universalist claims, but also makes no distinction between religion and politics or any other area of life, that does distinguish, however, quite clearly, between Believer and Infidel.

Recently some convert to Islam, in ranting about my proposal to withdraw from Iraq as amounting to "genocide" (i.e., if the Americans don't stay to keep the Sunnis and Shi'a at each other's throats, but instead simply leave), described me to Robert as a "Christian fascist." When Robert corrected at least the epithet, and explained that I was an atheist, the revert-ranter seemed genuinely confused, because he was under the distinct impression that only "Christian fascists" (you know, the ones who have been running around taking over America, and threatening to take over the rest of the world, as Chris Hedges and similar malevolences like to point out).

Surely the main point about Dinesh D'Souza is that he is ignorant, is arrogantly unaware of the depths of his ignorance, and is, essentially, stupid. Isn't that the real problem?

Everything was all right, said the Frenchman, until la betise s'est mise a penser. When Stupidity Began to Think. Whole lot of stupid people at a whole lot of think-tanks, getting a whole lot of grants and fellowships, or still worse, hired and promoted in universities, and meanwhile, with Captain Good attending Captain Ill -- well, you get the picture, don't you?

Dontcha?

Posted by: Hugh at January 21, 2007 1:03 PM

The Irony Coming from the Mouth of a Military Dictator

Excuse me while I vomit (ugh….yuk—well, I still don’t feel any better); General Pervez Musharraf said the world should face its problems of terrorism and extremism—this is coming from the mouth of a notorious military dictator! Musharraf is the same as any other dictator; he was about to be sacked from his job so what does he do? Does he accept the will of the democratic government and whittle away his retirement years writing down his memoirs about how great he is? Nah—rather than accept that mundane course of life he stages a military coup d'état in 1999, dissolves the democratic government and becomes the leader of Pakistan! Wow—that’s some gall you’ve got there Pervez; some angry loners when they get fired from their jobs go down to their former place of work and shoot all their former coworkers until they run out of ammunition. But no not you; you would rather go downtown fire the entire government, end democracy and install yourself as the leader of the country!

Well let me tell you something Musharraf is directly responsible for 9/11! You heard me right—he’s not just indirectly responsible for 9/11 but due to his megalomaniacal actions he’s total responsible the twin towers being knocked down! In order to not get killed and/or be thrown out from his job, Musharraf made a deal with the devil. He gave greater governmental control and authority to the fringe ultra extremist Islamic parties in Pakistan. Now Pakistan really did become a true Islamic nation as the rule of law was now replaced by the religious dictate of shari’a! Now instead of laws being enforced by a civil code with lawyers and judges, Pakistan gets religious law forced down its throat by Imams. Instead of charging rapist of women under the old law, the unreasonable hurdle of the burden of proof lies with the victims. Now women who have been raped must find 4 men who witnessed this act in order to prove she was raped because after all that’s the burden of proof laid out by the prophet Muhammad. Also now when a man dies, despite what a written will may have granted his daughters, sons may challenge their inheritance by shari’a and ask that his sisters get only half of what he gets because after all he’s a man!

These are just some of the lesser evils that have been passed onto Pakistani society now that Musharraf has given the religious fringe parties full reign of enforcing the laws of the land. But some of the other things Musharraf has done could be truly worthy to be included in the story of Dante’s Inferno. Here in order to keep power Musharraf has turned a blind eye while Pakistan’s very young get to be indoctrinated into soldiers for the worldwide Jihadist movement. Saudi Arabian funded Wahhabist madrasahs begin to sprout up all over Pakistan like so many dandruff flakes on the head of an unclean hobo.

All these religious schools do is to have the poorest of the poor just recite and memorize the Koran. Because after all the greatest honour a person can have is to memorize the Koran. Muhammad was illiterate and despite what some revisionist Muslims say, Muhammad was told by ‘the voice’ to recite (opposed to write)! Muhammad never in his lifetime ever did put even put a single written word down on paper, all he did was to keep on repeating ad nauseam everything that ‘the voice’ told him. It’s was only after Muhammad died when his followers collected every little saying that people could remember what Muhammad said and wrote them all down, this source of so-called knowledge is called a hadith. Whereas the Koran is a nonsensical book, it’s arranged in chapters called suras and these suras are not placed in chronological order by sorted by their length! Yes—by their length with the longest suras first and finishing with the shortest sura by the end of the Koran. So there’s no logic to the Koran unlike the Old Testament that is arranged as a story from Earth’s beginnings, the telling of the founding of mankind’s first family all they way to Moses and the giving of the law ending with the Jewish peoples’ arrival in the Land of Milk & Honey.

And unlike the Jews who actually read their Torah in the synagogue during the course of a year in the order of Genesis ending with Deuteronomy; Muslims just have a bunch of speeches from Muhammad that are listed from longest to the shortest. There’s no context given to the Koran, all one has are a bunch of speeches that Muhammad gave, some are to prop up his followers before battle, some are post victory speeches while most are just nonsensical ramblings of an insane man! Unlike Jews that read, study and debate their Torah; Muslims don’t read the Koran to study it, they look at it to memorize it! What is the purpose of a written document? It’s so you can refer back to it and quote it if need be but the one thing a written document is not for is to memorize it! The entire reason for writing down oral history is so the process stops being handed down verbally from one person to the next, once it’s written down you have a written text that can be passed down from generation to generation. Islam makes no sense in that the only reason why the Koran was written down was so that Muhammad’s oral sayings remain oral by whereby every Muslim stills needs to memorizing the Koran!

Thus Musharraf in order to guarantee that his reign is supreme he made a pact with the fringe hard-core Islamists to allow them to educate the nations’ poor so that every male can memorize the Koran! That’s the single purpose of these Saudi backed madrasahs and nothing else—that’s an unmarketable skill for the 21st century! Well that’s being to kind, it’s useless to be blunt! You aren’t taught math nor sciences, you know nothing of the outside world other than non-Muslims are evil and Jews must be killed. Thus the only thing you’re good for is to be a solider in the global Jihad and so all these students go to Afghanistan, Iraq anywhere the call to arms is heard.

The Taliban in Afghanistan could not have conquered and reigned in that country if it were not for Musharraf. The Taliban were not narco terrorists in that unlike southern American drug lords, their sole purpose in life wasn’t to profit from opium trafficking. The Taliban taxed the drug traffic but their main source of funding came from the Saudis however their main source of foot soldiers were formed from the manufactured Islamic zombies that were produced by the Pakistani madrasah educational system! Although it was Osama bin Laden’s group that attacked the U.S., Al-Qaeda was just one of many Islamic terrorist groups that housed training bases in Afghanistan thanks to the Taliban government. But just who exactly were the Taliban? Mainly they were not Afghani but foreigners, some were a variety of Arab fighters but the majority of its personnel were Pakistani! As well, the Pakistani military had many Taliban sympathizers and a great deal of military weapons were siphoned off from Pakistan’s military caches and shipped off to Afghanistan.

So without a Taliban run government in Afghanistan, Bin Laden wouldn’t have been able to set up shop and had attracted many disillusioned and disaffected Saudi youth looking for something else to fill the void in their empty privileged spoiled lives. So yes it was Bin Laden’s trained associates that made the 9/11-airline attack on U.S. soil but none of this would have been possible without Musharraf!

So as you can see the democratically run government knew exactly what it was doing when it drafted the order to sack Musharraf. He was not only incompetent but he would sell out Pakistan’s national interests to any and all parties that would support his viewpoint. Musharraf was a dangerous man; he was not the type of military leader a government could trust to follow out the orders of his political bosses. The government had Musharraf dead to rights, there was a reason why they wanted to fire his ass and as history has shown us, they were right in their assessment of his character. Musharraf couldn’t be a loyal soldier, he was too cocky and a narcissist of the first degree. He could also be highly prone to making allies with inappropriate parties and then underestimating their hidden agendas until it was too late—then Musharraf would be stuck with the consequences of his impulsive actions.

So Musharraf is directly responsible for 9/11 because rather than graceful be replaced which is part of the job description of top military brass all over the world (they are constantly being fired or relocated to different positions by their political bosses based on job performance); he decided to stage a military coup d'état and placed himself in the highest political office of the country. Then as a consequence to his actions he impulsively made alliances with the only people that would accept him, the minority but very militant Islamists. But like a good narcissist, Musharraf misjudged the hidden agenda of the Islamists; they now wanted the power to enforce their religious plans. Musharraf was trapped because he knew that unless he gave into these fanatics, his reign as leader of Pakistan would be a very short one.

So as a result of Musharraf illegally taking power and making allies with the Islamist fundamentalists, Pakistan’s laws were scrapped in favour of shari’a and snowflakes of Saudi funded Wahhabist madrasahs began falling all over the countryside. Musharraf’s staff had many Taliban loyalists who backed Afghanistan’s terrorist government with arms while the Saudi madrasahs began to pay off as more and more students became holy Jihad warriors. It was this Taliban state that gave haven to many of the world’s worst Islamic terrorists groups, one which just happened to be Al-Qaeda run by Bin Laden. So now Bin Laden had a base of operation to work from, he marketed his firebrand version of Islam to Saudi youth and many well educated and bored males travelled to Afghanistan in order to get training from Osama. And the rest as they say is history.

But it’s not over for Musharraf because he’s now onto his next phase of making allies all for the wrong reasons. He has become the most unlikely ally of George W. Bush; Musharraf is trying to play a friend in the war against terror. But the bottom line is Musharraf is the biggest terrorist of them all, he staged a coup d'état, destroyed democracy in Pakistan, made an ally of the religious fundamentalist, caused the nation’s law to be run by the shari’a courts and propped up the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Now by hastily making friends with George W. Bush, Musharraf’s back is against the wall because he has now pledged to fight the same Islamic extremist element he already made a pact with in Pakistan. In fact, he recently de facto gave the Pakistani tribal area free reign to do what they please and not be accountable to the federal authorities. So as you can see Musharraf is a dangerous man because he’s a narcissist who will do anything to stay in power, on one hand he pledges to George W. Bush to join the fight against terrorism while on the other hand he has just given these very same terrorists free reign in the tribal areas of Pakistan!

So if Musharraf really wants to help in the war on terrorism, he needs to start by first stepping down from power and let Pakistan be a democracy again—that’s just for starters!

Posted by: From Dave's Den at January 21, 2007 1:08 PM

holy warrior,

People often fixate on one half of the Jesus sayings, and neglect the other half. Thus, you fixate on Matthew 7:3 as though that were the last word, neglecting what Jesus concluded in 7:5:

"...first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Here, Jesus is obviously implying that a person can indeed cast the "beam" out of his eye that is obfuscating his judgement of another man's evil. Most people who fixate on 7:3 assume that Jesus is speaking of a perennial and fatalistic condition of man -- that we are doomed to have beams in our eyes which will always prevent us from assuming the authority to judge other people's evils. But Jesus in 7:5 counsels us clearly to clarify our ability to judge before we begin to judge.

The modern West is imperfect, but in its ongoing attempts to progress, and thereby to elevate humans -- both materially and spiritually (insofar as political representation and humane laws can be said to partake of spiritual values, and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln would have certainly concurred) to dignity, respect, and equality -- it has sufficiently cast the beam from its own eye to be able to adjudge the ophthalmopathology of Islam.

Posted by: remote_control at January 21, 2007 2:43 PM

"Surely the main point about Dinesh D'Souza is that he is ignorant, is arrogantly unaware of the depths of his ignorance, and is, essentially, stupid. Isn't that the real problem?" -Hugh

I detect something personal in all this talk about "immorality" and "family values" as being the source of Muslim upsetment. Ultimately, it has an infantile-childish tone with its emphasis on sexuality as the core of morals. (I would rather have an honest rake or whore then a pious deceptive-hypocrite Muslim any day.) Tip O'Neill once said "all politics is personal". Ultimately, everything is really personal. There is some personal problem with this man.

Morals, me arse.

Posted by: Frank at January 21, 2007 2:53 PM

"This idea especially resonated with me because there is a group of people, especially on the Left, who say that whites are irremediably racist because they grow up in a racist environment..."

It's not just some "group of people", nor is it anymore the special province of the Left. It is a much larger problem now, affecting and infecting our entire sociopolitical culture. And while Hugh Fitzgerald above is superficially accurate in calling it a general problem of "Stupidity", that accuracy, while enjoying rhetorical advantage (particularly against those who insist on polarizing the problem into the Either/Or of Left/Right), has zero analytical use, for it apodictically puts off forever the problem of its nature and cause. For such a superficial accuracy taken by itself, I suppose one would just keep plugging away and hope that the thoroughly enigmatic bad weather of Stupidity passes one day, as mysteriously and unremarkably as it settled over our skies one day. That might work for weather, but less hopefully for climate.

Posted by: remote_control at January 21, 2007 2:56 PM

It's not just some "group of people", nor is it anymore the special province of the Left. It is a much larger problem now, affecting and infecting our entire sociopolitical culture.

No, I think the manifestation of the underlying PC/multicultural template that you always mention is partially a good thing. It is right to learn from other cultures where there is something to learn. Nietzsche identified this as part of the greatness of the Greeks, for example.

It's the Left's combination of the openness to other cultures with its own self-hatred that causes the problem. Self-hatred has latched on to PC multiculturalism in a destructive way, whereas confident Westerners embrace what is good in other cultures without over-esteeming it (unlike self-haters who see in the scribblings of some minor Third World poet something to rival Shakespeare) or fabricating it (a la the "religion of peace" mantra). You could go back and ask where the self-hatred comes from and, again, I think Nietzsche is instructive in analyzing the psychology of modern day nihilism of much of the West.

My point was that in the problem of how to win "hearts and minds" the Left is applying a different standard to Muslims than the one they apply to whites. It's just one example of the contradictions inherent in modern Leftism, or multiculturalism generally.

Posted by: venividivici at January 21, 2007 3:50 PM

"It's the Left's combination of the openness to other cultures with its own self-hatred that causes the problem".

By "openness" they really mean the abandonment of critical thinking, any judgement of good and bad in other cultures. If education is not about making judgments about what is good and bad re other cultures or anything (based on reason) then what is "education" about?

The "problem" is that they have abandoned reason and call reason "bigotry". Thus it is with all ideology where correct beliefs are more important than logical thinking about what what is good and what is bad. Again, if education is not about such judgements re good and bad in anything (based on solid reasons) then wheat is education about?

"Multiculturalism" is a stealth supremacist dogma that has nothing to do with independent thinking or education. It's just another fucking dogma.

Posted by: Frank at January 21, 2007 5:40 PM

By "openness" they really mean the abandonment of critical thinking, any judgement of good and bad in other cultures. If education is not about making judgments about what is good and bad re other cultures or anything (based on reason) then what is "education" about?

I agree that this is how they define "openness", but I don't define "openness" this way. I would say that trying to convince people to be against "openness" is not necessarily the best strategy to win over people who don't yet understand that the "openness" paradigm can't really deal effectively with Islam.

I think it's a much more effective strategy to persuade people that because Islamic culture is itself not open to "openness" it doesn't deserve the consideration it denies other cultures.

I say this as someone who has studied mostly Western culture through a Master's degree and some Ph.D. level education. From what I've studied of non-Western cultures, I think the Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Koreans have done some interesting things, but most of the rest is just useless crap and time would be better spent reading "second-tier" Western authors than anything emanating from non-Western cultures.

Posted by: venividivici at January 21, 2007 6:50 PM

venividivici ,

"I think the manifestation of the underlying PC/multicultural template that you always mention is partially a good thing."

I agree.

"It's the Left's combination of the openness to other cultures with its own self-hatred that causes the problem."

I agree, but the nexus between the two is not going to be easily separated, because of the way that nexus has formed in PC Multiculturalism: the two have been profoundly intertwined.

"You could go back and ask where the self-hatred comes from and, again, I think Nietzsche is instructive in analyzing the psychology of modern day nihilism of much of the West."

Insofar as one seeks the counsel of a mental patient to understand mental illness, Nietzsche is instructive; but one would need a guide beyond Nietzsche for that (Pascal, or Jean-Paul, or Voegelin -- who used the former in addition to Plato -- come to mind).

"My point was that in the problem of how to win "hearts and minds" the Left is applying a different standard to Muslims than the one they apply to whites."

I have maintained that PC Multiculturalism is a construct that began in the Leftist orbit: but much of it has metastasized into the mainstream -- particularly the countenancing of Third World inferiority and barbarity coupled with the overweening self-criticism of the West and sneering derision of the obvious superiority of the West (there are millions of Westerners who would laugh in your face if you stated "The modern West is superior to all other cultures in history").

Frank,

"By "openness" they really mean the abandonment of critical thinking, any judgement of good and bad in other cultures."

The key to understanding PC Multiculturalism is that it tries to maintain an essentially incoherent paradigm by embracing a contradiction:

1) a multiculturalist relativism -- no culture is inferior or superior to any other

2) the West is inferior to Third World cultures.

They use #1 in order to level the playing field, then they reach into another bag of tricks to argue #2 through a seemingly complex "deconstructionist hermeneutics" to take the White West down a further notch into inferiority.

venividici,

"I think it's a much more effective strategy to persuade people that because Islamic culture is itself not open to "openness" it doesn't deserve the consideration it denies other cultures."

The "Nos Quoque" argument effectively blocks the way to this strategy -- which goes back to the self-hatred. The self-hatred component of PC Multiculturalism is profound and has deeper psychological and pneumopathological roots in neo-Gnosticism in the modern West: the Gnostic hatred for the Cosmos has, in effect, morphed into a hatred for the system of sociopolitical structures that functions as a "Cosmos" for every Westerner -- and the more successful and progressive these Western structures are, the more they are hated, because they are perpetuating a perpetual rapprochement with imperfection (which means that the "globalist" socio-economic-political machine is designed to operate within a context where human suffering will never be eradicated, only ameliorated, which is intolerable to the Gnostic mentality: the Cosmos must be transfigured: war and poverty and all bad things must be abolished, and any system that actually profits from their perpetuation must be evil and resisted and undermined, by hook or by crook). This "morphing" began with a bang in 1789, with the French Revolution, and it has only gained strength in various ways since then, despite major losses in key battles along the way (the defeat of Napoleon, the defeat of the Axis Powers, the fall of the Soviet Union). One aspect of this "morphing" especially relevant to our conversation is the development of a "Gnosticism Lite" -- a less offensive, kindler and gentler variant of modern Gnosticism: PC Multiculturalism. This variant is less virulent, and so it does not try to conquer as boldly and massively as former outbreaks of Gnosticism; but in its very "Liteness", it has achieved a deeper and broader influence, albeit a somewhat diluted and "decaffeinated" influence, at least in certain regards.

Posted by: remote_control at January 21, 2007 9:15 PM

venividivici-remote

I think that to understand a culture, to learn something from it, we must first understand that a culture must be intolerant-narrow in order to survive. All cultures have supremacist assumptions re other cultures.

If we really wish to learn from other cultures and our own culture, we must recognize the supremacist concepts, the closedness of culture, and study what is good and bad in each culture. For example, Saudi Arabia may be able to teach us much about what culture is about. We may learn that its fanatical closedness gives it some strengths but also that it cripples creativity. We may ask: are its supremacist assumptions true/false? Are there aspects of our/their culture that are superior/inferior to each other? These questions require judgements re what is good and bad.

The multiculturalists peddle an equivalency-non judgemental-Armstrong-mosaics-dogma that leaves no yearning to know what is good and bad in another culture or our own culture. It lobotomizes the yearning to know what is superior. It tells us good and bad don't exist. It calls judgements re speriority bigotry. It cripples the use of reason by its dogmas.

It is also a stealth-supremacist concept because by asserting the superiority of being uncritically "open"-"tolerant" to all cultures, it means that cultures which are closed (Islam, China, e.g.) must be inferior. But maybe their "closedness" is good. Maybe being "open" is inferior. Maybe multicultural concepts of "openness"-"tolerance" are inferior.

Multiculturalism is just another dogma. It's foot-binding for the mind, little better than a "religious" education in Saudi Arabia. I don't think we should be "open" to multiculturalism. That's my judgement.

Posted by: Frank at January 21, 2007 10:39 PM

remote_control,

I tend to agree with your hypothesis that PC Multiculturalism shares features with Gnosticism, especially the hatred of the good because it isn't perfect. It's self-defeating nature tends to limit the damage it can do over the long run, though. One variable that's changed is the definition of long run due to nuclear weapons, so even a few years of interference against the response to Islam can lead to many, many deaths.

Anti-Western sentiment among those born in the West is either a pose, a lack of historical judgment or the result of ignorance. It tends to be pretty easy to knock over on an individual level, but it is definitely part of a groupthink that is much more tenacious. Besides, I am as certain that the West is superior to every other culture as Muslims are certain they are superior to every other culture. I'm also certain that none of the things that make Western culture superior have any connection to anything Islamic. If someone laughs in my face at the proclamation of Western superiority, they definitely get an earful.

Frank,

I agree that multiculturalism is a dogma. That said, I do think it is important to learn from other cultures where there is something to learn. It's deciding what should and shouldn't be taken in to one's own culture that requires judgment. You are correct that too many fail to take that extra step of judging before 'tolerating'. It's certainly easier to just tolerate the barbarism. In that way, I see nothing more in multiculturalism than the same laziness that some have said is the defining characteristic of most of mankind.

Posted by: venividivici at January 21, 2007 11:45 PM

Musharraf is displaying the very same character his religion's founder did - IRRESPONSIBILITY.

It is has been typical of Muslims (modelled after their Profiteer, after all) to IRRESPONSIBLY start a problem, BLAME others for the problem, and EXPECT others to solve the problem.

In what way are the non-Muslims responsible for the problems of the Ummah >

In fact, it is the Ummah which is responsible for its own, and also the world's problems.

Mr. Musharraf, INTROSPECT AND STRIVE, RATHER THAN BLAME OTHERS AND EXPECT THEM TO SOLVE YOUR NONSENSICAL COMMUNITY'S PROBLEMS.

Posted by: proud-hindu at January 22, 2007 6:45 AM

Western society is imperfect ?
I read alot of studied, and intelectual stuff on this website. AND SO WE ARGUE, DEBATE and learn what?
to remote control-- thank-you
I guess I can say ' Where sin abounds, GRACE abounds much more. and. I can be thankful, so I am.
SORRY,NO FAITH IN MAN'S ABILITY TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS. SO G_d is faithful and I guess we watch the movie (as scripted in revelations).

Posted by: holy warrior at January 22, 2007 8:13 AM