Another example of "there is no compulsion in religion" (sura 2:256)?

Sounds more and more like this

Posted by: miira at August 21, 2005 8:11 AM

Loud and clear from every corner of the Muslim world: the Caliphate, Islamic imperialism, and Islamic empire that will enslave or annihilate us: the rest. This will happen unless we take decisive actions as did our ancestors at various times in history.

Posted by: epg at August 21, 2005 8:14 AM

The brave defenders of the oppressed RoP had to truck in "militants", because by allah, we're up against 3 housewives here! In the name of all that is good and decent, what else would you have us do? Not 1, not 2, but THREE!

When oh when will the world see that our backs are against the wall, we had no choice, we cling to each other in terror even as we fight like cornered rats. These are desperate times, you see.

Besides, I may get to rape someone.

Posted by: t-ham at August 21, 2005 8:20 AM

The focus of our efforts has to be changed from a "war on terrorism" to a "war to prevent the Caliphate," a force that would have enslaved the world had it not been for the Battle of vienna in 1683.

Posted by: DavidE at August 21, 2005 8:21 AM

This is precisely the kind of article one should be sending out to friends and family...the blueprint for all to see.

Even the bleeding-hearted leftist living life in his self-induced fog might read this and pause, glimpsing for just a moment of time that seemingly bizarre and elusive truth that perhaps not ALL the world's ills can be traced to George W Bush.

Then again, perhaps I'm expecting too much.

Posted by: Cornelius at August 21, 2005 9:29 AM

This is utterly evil. Why did we rush to save these evil people during the tsunami? Maybe we should have let Mother Nature do her work and leave well enough alone.

Posted by: foreign devil at August 21, 2005 9:57 AM

Ibrahim told ANS the book declares Muslims "must remove any obstacle in the way of implementing the Islamic ruling system." These three housewives are seen as an obstacle that must be removed, he said.

Limitation is the source of power. Like the surgeons knife, cutting away the unwanted. 'Obstacles are limitations and must be removed', he said...

Any resistance at all is an obstacle...those who wish to resist, must first understand the nature of the beast, then kill or subdue it...one of the biggest blows to Islamic hegemony, would be to strip it of its religious authority. The truth already does that mentally, but beyond understanding, there is action. The US gov and others who give Islam a religious tax status, should re-define Islam, and declare it is 'not a religion' acceptable for tax exemptions'. The problem with that is that the US gives generous tax breaks to any religious group applying. There are no laws prohibiting the establishment of religion, you dont need govs permission to do that. You only need its permission if you want to recieve donations. (a religious tax status)...The requirements are easy, A board of 5 (or three in a pinch) directors, a mission statement, have regular meetings, recruit new members, publish literature...and not necessarily all of the above...presto, you are in, and your group can act almost like the IRS does not exist. These laws need to be...re-worked, so that Islam no longer qualifys.
We do not have to identify Islam as the enemy. The loud mouth spokespersons for Islam are doing a fine job of that themselves. Public awareness is slow but growing. As proof I submit this...
I went into our, small town, local bookstore looking for RS book on pigology. There were none, but they had five hundred on order. Thats a lot for this place where there are leftists behind every tree...

Posted by: duh_swami at August 21, 2005 10:02 AM

sort of OT but duh_swami gave me an opening;

"...must remove ant obstacle..."

I picked up a copy of F. Max Mullers translation of "The Upanishads" at a used book store recently. It seems way over my head, but an interesting para in the intro:

"..translated from Sanskrit into Persian(by)
Dara Shukoh, eldest son of Shah Jehan, an enlightened prince, who openly professed the liberal religious tenets of the great Emperor Akbar, and even wrote a book intended to reconcile the religious doctrines of Hindus and Mohammedans.(...)translation finished in 1657.

...in1659, the prince was put to death by his brother Aurangzib, in reality no doubt, because he was the eldest son and legitamate successor of Shah Jehan, but under the pretext that he was an infidel, and a danger to the established religion of the empire"

probably Bush and Blairs fault.

Posted by: t-ham at August 21, 2005 10:32 AM

What's that about Christians being "people of the book"? Pagans who say that Christians will receive better treatment than them should pay attention.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at August 21, 2005 11:02 AM

One wonders if Paul Wolfowitz, now enjoying his new job as head of the World Bank, had any inkling of what Islam is really all about, or attempted to find out, when he was in the Pentagon making plans for bringing democracy and "toys and good things to eat" like the Little Engine That Could, to all the boys and girls, men and women, in Islam-blighted and Islam-benighted Iraq.

One should not forget, as Richard Pipes reminded us in an interview two years ago in the Boston Sunday Globe, that Wolfowitz (who worked with Pipes on Team B) was a "brilliant systems analyst but knew nothing about history" or about the influence of culture on people.

Why do I raise this matter here? Because policy comes from individuals, and Sir Lewis Namier's prosopographic study of each signer of the Declaration of Independence (or was it the Constitution) showed how much one can learn by examining the individual.

One would like to examine, in turn, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Hadley, Feith, and the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and indeed all the members of Congress, and many officers in the army, to find out what they knew, or when they began to learn, about Islam. Who advised them? Who suggested what reading material? Who provided the summaries? Who brought in, or failed to bring in, Bat Ye'or and J. B. Kelly, but were content to rely on Bernard Lewis and his loyal acolytes, and who, still worse, thought people of the Esposito and Armstrong ilk, were just the ticket? What role did the "good native informants" play -- from those seemingly-sensible, but entirely unrepresentative Chalabis and Allawis and Ambassador Franckes, play in the hopes and dreams of American policy-makers?

What about Fouad Ajami, and this or that "Think" (not to be confused with Tommy the) Tank, and the JohnsHopskinsCenterforInternational Watchamacallit, and the Thrusting Young Editors of the so-called conservative movement?

What does each of them now know about Islam? How much time does each devote to finding out about Islam, instead of assuming that because it is a "religion" it must, positively must, conform to certain prefabricated ideas of what religions must be, and must, simply must, be entitled to some kind of automatic respect (why religions deserve automatic respect is beyond me). Each of these is a different case. But they are cases worth study.

The book in which such studies are collected will probably bear a title such as "Who Lost Iraq?" But that title would be unfair. "Iraq" as a nation-state was never there to be won. No one lost Iraq. Or rather, the non-existent Iraqis lost Iraq. And the Americans, if they would only stand back, would see that this non-existent Iraq can do more to divide and demoralize Islam than can all the wellmeaning American efforts to create this Light Unto the Muslim Nations that will not be a light, and not be a nation, and can only bring heartache to Americans, military and civilian, and demoralize them -- when it is Islam that needs to be demoralized.

Which brings us back to Wolfowitz. A "weapons systems analyst," his own immediate encounter with Islam, with an Islamic society, was as the American Ambassador in Jakarta. Well, what do you think Paul Wolfowitz might have learned about Islam, about what it teaches, and about the attitudes of Muslims, in the highly-artificial role of American Ambassador -- where every Indonesian official is likely to wish to please the powerful American, and every Indonesian official, exercising those arts of ingratiation that are so highly developed in certain societies (far beyond anything Western man allows himself, or even finds dignified -- at least in the oily Arab version of such phony, Uriah-Heepish ingratiation), well aware that Ambassador Wolfowitz was Jewish (and this is carefully noted, and made far more of, in calculations in Muslim states, than Wolfowitz, or the comical Albright, or the heavily portentous (German accent here please) Kissinger ever understood, or would even wish to understand). Of course Wolfowitz saw not Islam, red in tooth and claw. Of course he could not possibly see very much at all, in the luxury and air-conditioned swank of the Embassy, or even on his trips outside Jakarta to the "real" Indonesia.
'
One question for Paul Wolfowitz before he gets off the stand and leaves the courtroom. Mr. Wolfowitz, have you ever read the books on Islam, and specifially on Islam in Indoensia (then the Dutch East Indies) by the great Dutch orientalist C. Snouck Hurgronje? You haven't? Well then -- had you even heard of C. Snouck Hurgronje before this question was just put to you? No? Why not?

Posted by: Hugh at August 21, 2005 11:07 AM

I believe this is the book.

http://www.ramadhan.org/modules/My_eGallery/gallery/Books/pdf/Jihad-ForeignPolicyOfTheKhilafahState.pdf

Download it and other lovely titles from:

http://www.ramadhan.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=12&topic=&allstories=1

Wonder if sites like this are on Blair's radar and scheduled for shutdown.

Posted by: khamr at August 21, 2005 11:32 AM

It seems to me that the leaders of the Western world know sod all about Islam or Muslims. They can pontificate as much as they like, but the more they do so, the more they display their total and utter ignorance of this so-called 'religion' ( I would prefer to call it a political ideology).

They know little about it because a.) they haven't bothered to learn anything about it, and b.) they have not been exposed to the 'real' disgustingly supremacist Islam because many of them have had silver spoons in their mouths since birth. It would have done them some good to have gone to work in the Gulf, for example. Then they might have learnt something about the dangers we now face.

As for the books they haven't read - my guess is that we could count with a couple of hands the books on Islam the whole lot of them have read! Such is the ignorance they display.

One book I know that the President has read. It is Natan Sharansky's book on how the problems of the Middle East would be solved by bringing democracy to the region. President Bush read it and ran with it. What the poor man didn't understand was this, though: It would never be possible to bring democracy to the Middle East. Never! Not, at least, while the Koran is the Muslims' guide, and Muhammad their prophet.

Islam makes democracy an irrelevance. After all, it leaves nothing for the people to decide. What place is there for democracy in a society of a people who have the Shariah as its guiding light?

'Tis elementary to note that democracy and Islam are diametrically-opposed political systems; further, they are diametrically-opposed in every way one can imagine.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said that "politics is the art of the possible". Perhaps it may be safely stated that, by his definition, neither Blair nor Bush, not any of their henchmen, qualify as politicians, for they have not learnt the art of the possible! Moreover, we would all be safer if they all retired into obscurity.

With Muslims in Indonesia (and all over the Islamic world, actually) calling for the death of Christians, the times we are now living in call for a new breed of persons to be called to high office: a breed that is altogether smarter, altogether wiser, altogether more pro-active, altogether more aggressive, and altogether more 'altogether'!

Our politicians are destroying the West by their very ignorance and incompetence. One needs to ask oneself why so many Americans, and enough Brits and others too, have had to be killed for the sake of trying to achieve this impossible goal? The outcome of which is unfolding before our very eyes.

Posted by: Mark at August 21, 2005 12:40 PM

88% of Indonesia's 230 million people are Muslim.

How Indonesia's 'secular' legal system treats those three ladies will be worth monitoring.

The following link gives some insight into the current Indonesian political/religious situation.

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/01/41ad6a82d72eb

The following sentence is noteworthy.

Indonesia has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, but it is not OFFICIALLY an Islamic state.

The following paragraphs make it pretty clear that some Indonesian Muslims expect that situation to change.

"But after 1945, Indonesia experienced a power vacuum, and rival Muslim and nationalist factions strived to grab hold of the state's leadership.

The victor of the struggle was Sukarno, who had headed the Preparatory Committee for Indonesia's Independence before the end of the war. The committee drew up a constitution, and Indonesia was SET to become an Islamic state.

But just after Japan surrendered, Sukarno responded to pressure from radical youth groups by removing what came to be known as the "seven words" from the preamble of the constitution - "with obligation for Muslims to practice Shari'a."

Indonesia's government became secularized, but Wahyudi said contention between nationalists and Muslims did not end until 1946 with the Jakarta Charter. The charter held that the state was based on belief in one God and REQUIRED Muslims to follow Shari'a but gave national independence precedence.

Muslim leaders later soured on the compromise, since many thought it had not been intended as a permanent, and remains divisive to this day."

Posted by: PRCS at August 21, 2005 2:47 PM

mark - as for western readers not knowing about the quran - tony blair has proclaimed that he carries a copy everywhere he goes, but some of us think he is not reading to warn himself against islam, but out of sympathy for it

Posted by: freddiefreeloader at August 21, 2005 3:06 PM

sorry - leaders

Posted by: freddiefreeloader at August 21, 2005 3:15 PM

I am beginning to suspect that of our Prez,too freddie.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at August 21, 2005 6:15 PM

People need to know the truth. The real victims in this planet are those conquered people living under the Islamic death. Can any of you stand to live like these people? Can you even imagine the horror of it? If Islam destroys the West, it would be our collective guilt for sustaining the Muslims and rejecting those poor souls that sealed out fate after we helped to seal theirs.

When Muslims try to tell any of you about the discrimination they face in the West, tell them to shove it you know where. What the ****? Really!

Posted by: have_mercy at August 21, 2005 7:12 PM

Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Zaroastrians, Atheists:

"Thu shalt not kill..."

Mohammedans:

Kill, Kill, Kill...

until there is no more religion and everybody submits to the 'laws' of Allah...

Posted by: Terminator at August 21, 2005 7:13 PM

l, Hugh's latest eloquent rant decrying the ignorance of the neocons mirrors alot of what we're hearing from the Western Left. I continue to find it facinating how the policies he advocates dovetail with those of the Left and even of our Islamist enemies.

I have no problem with Hugh's premise that Wolfowitz was/is ignorant of the historical predilections of the Muslim world. I can even accept that the decision to remove Saddam was perhaps short-sighted and ill-conceived (though history's verdict on this matter is far from decided). My problem is not with Hugh's criticisms, it's with the solutions he advocates.

He's an unqualified proponent of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. He seems to believe that the inevitable sectarian fratricide that would follow such a withdrawal will somehow discredit the religion of Islam, and is apparently impervious to the geo-political ramifications of American defeat.

Anyone with any real understanding of geo-politics can predict with ease that Iran is the entity that would fill the vaccuum left behind by a US withdrawal from Iraq; that whatever the ferocity of the ensuing Sunni-Shiite civil war, it will be of relatively short duration with the Shiites emerging victorious; that US allies such as Kuwait and Qatar would re-examine their relations with such an undependable ally such as the USA, in all likelyhood expelling us from our bases in order to placate the new regional super-power (Iran); and most importantly, that extremism and jihadism would be dramatically energized by American defeat and regional realignment. One can just hear the coming admonitions of the Left when Iraqi-based terrorists attack America in the not too distant future: "you brought in on yourselves by getting involved in the first place"....words Hugh would no doubt agree with. My own preference is that we do everything in our power to avoid such an eventuality.

For Hugh to suggest that American defeat and withdrawal is NOT the objective of Al Qaeda in Iraq - which he did in an earlier post - is to reveal an appalling lack of understanding of the Islamists (an accusation that mirrors his own against Wolfowitz). Hugh seems to feel that the terrorists just want to satisfy their blood lust...and confers upon them no strategic vision. Or perhaps he feels they hope to keep the conflict in Iraq alive as a recruiting tool, though common sense tells us that nothing would be more psychologically beneficial for the cause of global jihad then American defeat in Iraq.

And it's not just in Iraq that Hugh's vision seems to dovetail with the Islamists. In another posting, he advocates terminating all but the most necessary civilizational contact with the Muslim world. One need not even comment on how implausible such a strategy would be in the age of the internet. But beyond that, the concept itself is fraught with the seeds of failure. What kind of absurd logic is it to advocate terminating Western political, educational, cultural and intellectual influence in the Muslim realm? This is tantamount to ceeding to the Islamists the entire Muslim world, instead of maintaining our many assets there and working with them to isolate and defeat the jihadis.

In all his supposed wisdom regarding things Islamic, Hugh is such a pessimist that he advocates turning our backs on the entire Muslim world. Bin Ladin himself couldn't have come up with a better recipe for insuring the triumph of jihadism throughout Dar ul Islam.

Posted by: Cornelius at August 21, 2005 7:25 PM

I was going to say Thank God I'm not a 'Christian', but realized that they would be coming after me first, and worse.

As an eclectic, taking from Jesus, The Tao, The Buddha, The Upanishads, Raja, Hatha and Prana Yoga, The Poetic Eddas, Navajo sayings, Za-zen and Heraclitus, Schopenhauer and Husserl, to mention only a few.

So, my choice is made by the Imperialistic Islamicists?

Submit or die?

Nah.

Fight. And Win.

In the words of one who knew:

"Let's make war hell, for that is precisely what our prospective enemies will try to do and are trying to do at this moment."

-Philip Wylie "Generation of Vipers"

Only the harsh taste of reality will wake these Muslo-somnambulists from their global dream.

The sooner they start tasting their teeth being kicked down their throats, the faster they'll rouse from this mass-delusional state and back off the Caliphate Nightmare.

Pussyfooting is a failed policy.

Time for claws.

Posted by: BigSleep at August 21, 2005 11:57 PM

Well, that's why they want the Caliphate so badly: it can issue orders to wage jihad that can be offensive and doesn't have to be pushed under the definition of 'resistance to occupation.'

-----------------------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org

Posted by: dolphin at August 22, 2005 3:32 AM

Well, that's why they want the Caliphate so badly: it can issue orders to wage jihad that can be offensive and doesn't have to be pushed under the definition of 'resistance to occupation.'

-----------------------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org

Posted by: dolphin at August 22, 2005 3:34 AM

Well, Robert turned out to be right once again. Note the specific reference to the establishment of the Caliphate. That's why they want it so badly: it can issue orders to wage jihad that can be offensive and doesn't have to be pushed under the definition of 'resistance to occupation.'

-----------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder
http://www.acage.org

Posted by: dolphin at August 22, 2005 3:46 AM

Darn it, something is definitely wrong with my software. First a comment under the wrong entry, now a triple post.

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the mess. I'm switching to a different browser. That's enough for me.

Posted by: dolphin at August 22, 2005 3:51 AM

It always starts out this way. When muslims first come into a country, either illegally or by immigration, they rely on our kindness and good nature, for tolerance. As their numbers increase some muslims start up the Jihad. The moderate muslims plead for tolerance. We, in our ignorance or good nature, heed their pleas and fight on their behalf. The muslims increase in numbers, some now citizens, and consequently the jihad picks up, as they are quite confident that they cannot be deported. All the while we are accused of islamophobia or worse.

Once a near majority is achieved by muslims, then the natives who are a minority by now, start to face real persecution. Many leave the country that has been their native land.

This has been the case all over, where muslims have become a majority due to huge demographic growth, fuelled by immigration and a very high birth rate. Kashmir, Bosnia, Kosovo, Turkey, parts of the West Bank of "Palestine" - Christians are being driven out, etc etc. This is the case in parts of Indonesia such as the Moluccas and Sulawesi. Nigeria is now in the last phase. I can think of no exceptions.

I have two great fears.

1. Demographics and our democratic way of life, will lead to the subjugation of Western civilisation, with all that entails for all non-muslims.

2. We will react violently in the event of a massive terrorist outrage, and start a process of mass deportations. This will start a civil war and the winner will take all. I'm fairly sure that we will in an outright confrontation. Howver, while this goes on here in the West, Christians in muslim countries will be massacred outright in revenge.

I really feel sad, that it has come to this. After thousands of years of conflict, we in the West had begun to enjoy the tolerant civilisation that we have brought about. Now all this is in peril, as the forces of the state, and the retrograde nature of islam, step by tiny step, start to extinguish freedoms we have taken for granted.

To act on this danger, we have embarked on military campaigns abroad, but the real threat exists within the West itself. The rising Muslim population, both from immigration and high demographic growth rate, poses a threat far greater then any number of future 9/11s. The jubilation and glee among Muslims, even within the West itself, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, should concentrate our minds. Any prudent policy dictates that we protect our own house first, rather then costly and ineffective foreign adventures.

This threat I believe is so great, that despite our abhorrence of the idea, we should stop all immigration of Muslims, both primary and secondary. Instead of the bogus Muslim asylum seekers from Muslim countries, we should offer hope, help and asylum to the terribly subjugated, intimidated and spiritually broken Christians in Islamic countries. These people need our assistance more then any. For reasons of cultural affinity, they will readily integrate and assimilate in the West. They and their descendents are unlikely to pose an existential threat, now or in the future, to the culture and the freedoms we take so much for granted.

Some papers in Britain, such as The Daily Express and the Daily Mail, are now demanding the removal of illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers- who are in the main muslim. Some of the London bombers were asylum seekers, soaking Britain for £15,000 a year on benefits alone.

It is sad that it has come to this. But if actions are not taken soon, then civil wars, the very worst type of war, are a distinct possibility, and then we all will be losers, winers and losers alike.

Posted by: DP111 at August 22, 2005 6:42 AM

"we have embarked on military campaigns abroad, but the real threat exists within the West itself."
-- from a posting above

As long as Muslim states are kept from acquiring major weaponry, and Muslims kept bottled up at home, and not allowed to export their excess populaton (Muslim birth-rates are the highest in the world, positively fantastic -- a demographic weapon to spread Islam that is explicitly regarded as such), and if there is a campaign to halt all Muslim immigration and to reverse it by measures up to and including a kind of Benes Decree (the Decree by which, in 1946, the Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia by Eduard Benes and Tomas Masaryk), and a counter-Da'wa to diminish the appeal of Islam among the psychically and economically marginal Infidels is cleverly conducted, and if further other measures are taken to create the conditions by which Muslims will be forced eventually to figure out that the explanation for their own failures, political, economic, social, and intellectual, are directly attributable to Islam itself, the Infidels should find the task of containment entirely manageable.

Posted by: Hugh at August 22, 2005 7:11 AM

Hugh:

I agree with you.

I have said for considerable time, that muslims are the very first victims of islam. The koran has an ideology within it, that claims that all that is to be known, is within the koran. As a consequence, free inquiry died out in regions that were subjugated by islam. Muslims in general closed their minds to the developing saga of mankind. The koran is thus responsible for the intellectual impoverishment of a significant part of humanity.

It is indeed right that we should set our goal to liberate this portion of humanity from the chains of slavery that islam has put on them. They need external liberation in much the same way that slaves could not liberate themselves, and needed an external agency to do this.

However, there is another issue at stake here. Before we sail forth to liberate the islamic world, we need to ensure that we are free from the threat within. If this is not the case, then we will lose the war at home, and we will enter a Dark Age of the islamic kind - the very worst imaginable.

Hugh, in your sometime pessimist moods, have advocated a closure of muslim immigration. The problem will not be solved in a day or year. It will take the same amount of time at the least, that it took for muslim populations to establish their numbers here. But once the motion is started, it will have a momentum of its own, and more important, an impact of its own. Left to their own rapidly exploding populations, unable to get succour from the West, the islamic world will have to ask itself some hard questions about the role of the koran in a modern society, ie the root causes behind the failure of islamic societies. Once that starts, they will be on the way to civilisation. At this moment in time, as they are able to offload their burgeoning populations, there is no need for them to do so. Why, after all would they want to change a winning strategy?

I feel that this is a humane way to bring the muslim world to its senses. In the event of a mass terrorist outrage, or a severe downturn in the economies of the West, as a consequence of loss of business confidence in the markets, a real backlash will begin, leading to civil wars. Other options lead to Third Conjecture type scenarios where hundreds, if not billions of people perish. And at the end of it, the victors will impose conditions far worse then before the onset of a real hot war.

Oh what a mess we have made, and all of our doing as well.

Posted by: DP111 at August 22, 2005 7:55 AM

Freddie: I sometimes wonder about this myself. Blair has made so many ridiculous pronouncements on Islam - namely to the effect that Islam is a religion of peace and love - that one simply has to stop and think about his motives for carrying that book around with him all the time.

Posted by: Mark at August 22, 2005 8:26 AM

Freddie: I sometimes wonder about this myself. Blair has made so many ridiculous pronouncements on Islam - namely to the effect that Islam is a religion of peace and love - that it simply makes one stop and think about his motives for carrying that book around with him all the time.

Posted by: Mark at August 22, 2005 8:27 AM

"...the islamic world will have to ask itself some hard questions about the role of the koran in a modern society, ie the root causes behind the failure of islamic societies. Once that starts, they will be on the way to civilisation."

)))

Posted by: Sebastien at August 22, 2005 8:30 AM

dolphin:

Thanks for the link to acage.

Posted by: DP111 at August 22, 2005 9:02 AM

Nice website, Dolphin. Congrats on your efforts.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at August 22, 2005 12:29 PM

Who is really running Indonesia? It almost certainly is NOT the Indonesians...

I suspect it is al-Qaeda that really runs the world's largest archipelago (and strips its forests, selling them on the black market for untraceable jihad capital...).

Posted by: pythagoras at August 22, 2005 3:09 PM

A NOTE TO SEBASTIAN FROM PYTHAGORAS:

First Muslims are forbidden to question Koranic teachings. Harsh penalties are mandated to be meted out for this by the Qur'an itself and the Hadiths. Few Muslims would dare take your advice (even if they wanted to).

Secondly, mosque leaders are well-equipped to punish Muslims for questioning the Qur'an--and destroy any movement advocating Islamic reforms. Islamic societies are brutally totalitarian and quite sophisticated in locating dissent and quashing it. They would in all probability succeed in crushing any attempts at Islamic reforms. Islamic reformation is NOT in the cards my friend. They don't call it islamo-fascism for nothing Sebastian.

Thirdly, since Qur'anic teachings are held as the word of Al-lah, they may not be modified in any way, and Islam provides unlimited political and economic power (and much mareial reward therefore)to those who enforce islamic teachings as written in the Qur'an. Which means that no matter what form Islamicized societies take, there will ALWAYS be the danger that those who follow the Koran verbatim will attempt to overthrow the modified or as you say 'civilized' version--and WIN. Look at Indonesia today. Once a syncretic Islamic society with a variety of cultural influences, today an islamo-facsist's wet dream come true....

Posted by: pythagoras at August 23, 2005 2:45 PM

These people show that the democratic one-man one-vote principle is essentially flawed for a population of mentally inferior people.

Posted by: Germen Roding at August 24, 2005 8:48 AM

This is another example how human potential has been wasted by muhammedanism. Purging the earth from this scourge should be a prime objective of all humanitarians.

Posted by: Germen Roding at August 24, 2005 10:11 AM

Anyone born and raised in a country in which human rights are ensconced in a constitution or national charter must ask: Would this be permissible in my country? Would I put anybody into harm's way on the basis of their personal belief and non-violent practice of it?

These questions are of course rhetorical (Naww? REALLY?), but they lead me to think a little on how the laws of a jurisdiction reflect the mindset of the people that live there. In the West, our laissez-faire laws reflect respect for freedom of conscience, a recognition that even society has its limits when it comes to the individual. Now imagine a friend of yours wants to set up a Christmas tree lot in Mecca sometime in December. A reasonable response to such a proposal would be something like: "Well, you're not going to make much money, because you see most of the folks there are Moslem and they have no use for Christmas trees." A realistic response would be "Well, you're not going to make much money, because you see all of the folks there are Moslem and they're going to cut your head off so that all of the folks there continue to be Moslem." One can call that process "Proportional conversion," i.e. the proportion of Moslems increases because the total population is decreased.

A fair response to outrages of this sort would be sanctions against the perpetrating governments. It would also be a good thing to enforce some laws here in the West that might be overlooked. For instance:

 No polygamy. One spouse per customer, please
 No spousal abuse, not even "gentle beating." As they teach in daycare "Use your words, Dear;"
 No hate mongering. I don't need for you to like me and I won't cry myself to sleep if you don't. I just need for you not to kill me. I'll gladly extend the same courtesy to you;
 Loyalty to the country and community. OK, let's say you don't hate me and want to kill me, you just want to help me out by changing my options. We've got a process for that called freedom of speech, elections, legislation and due process. Respect that and we'll get along (see above).

And I promise to reject any effort to impose stupid, unfair legislation in return. For instance: No poll tax. Call me crazy, but I don't think that society needs money from you in particular simply because I personally find your beliefs inconsistent with mine. Taxation should be levied equally regardless of race, religion, etc. Everyone knows that God intends only for the rich not to pay taxes.

Posted by: Chatillon at August 24, 2005 3:53 PM