Now if there's a good reason for making no donations to the Indonesians following that earthquake, this is it.

Wonder when that volcano's going to blow.

Posted by: Spirit Of 1683 at May 28, 2006 7:55 AM

All that aid sent by the Western world a year ago, and the sight of those American military men off-loading and then distributing that aid, which supposedly made such an impression, supposedly was going to change things. Of course it didn't.

What would have? What would have would have been a non-step campaign in the radio and satellite television and on the Internet, in which the Western donors had ceased to be so shy, and had listed again and again all the aid they had sent, and then, at the same time, again and again noted how nothing, or almost nothing, had come from "fellow Muslim" countries, had noted just how much the rich Arabs take in, had run stories about their lixes of decadencde and luxury, had run stories about the treatment of Indonesian maids who escape from their Arab masters occsionally in London or Virginia, and from their stories we can all imagine in horror how those Indonesians are treated behiind the high walls of palaces in Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait.

But of course none of that was done. No attempt to point out that all this aid was coming from the Western world -- that would, apparently, have been unseemly. And so it would, if the recipients were fellow members of the West, or at least fellow Infidels not taught to so that gratitude, unfeigned and long-lasting, would have been permanent.

And the timidity of the Western governments, that make no attempt to provide the truth about Arab supremacist ideology, about the indifference of the rich Arab Muslims to the poor Muslims, above all the despised non-Arab Muslims (Berbers, Kurds, Indonesians, Pakistanis, and all the rest) needs again and again to be the subject of Infidel broadcasts.

War is being made on us. And we are allowing to be made, and doing almost noting of value in return. Not when it comes to propaganda. No, so far the big plan has been to take over, rebuild, reconstruct, make as wonderful as possible, two countries full of hostile Muslism -- Iraq and Afghanistan - and in spending hundreds of billions to protect their populations from killing each other, in giving them schools, hospitals, roads where none existed, in preventing any conceivable divisions, we somehow think, hope, scheme, never quite explain how, that this will help solve that idiotically named "war on terror."

In Aceh, every bit of Western aid should be recalled at every opportunity. And the complete indifference of the Saudis and other rich Arabs, and the long story of how they treat Indoesians, should be broadcast, with human-interest stories to flesh out the charges, day and night.

It's the only way. Divide the camp of Islam. Cease working to unite it, as in Iraq.

Do what was done in the Cold War, in World War II. If anything, this war requires much more emphaiss on propaganda. Not the propaganda of Karen Hughes or Al-Hurra, telling Muslims how wonderfully Muslims are treated in the United States, and how naturallly they fit in. No, telling non-Arab Muslims about Arab supremacism. Dividing the camp of Islam, and needing only to speak, and repeat, the horrible truth to do so.

Posted by: Hugh at May 28, 2006 9:10 AM

l think Aceh is in need of another tsuami especially where the immans reside and their mosques.

Posted by: Lulu at May 28, 2006 9:31 AM

Mount Merapi may have the final word on anything going on in Indonesia. No area is more geologically active, especially since the tsunami earthquake last Christmas. I think that freed up magma. Toba, Tambora, and Krakatoa are all in that area. Could be interesting.

Posted by: Beagle at May 28, 2006 10:24 AM

When a country declares itself an Islamic state, it is formally declaring war on the rest of civilization. We should acknowledge that fact, and respond with a total quarantine. And, as Hugh suggests, that change of attitude should be very publicly declared and defended.

The Muslim countries, and the imams and ayatollahs that run them, never pay a price for their blatant assaults on humanity. We need to stop rewarding them for their uncivility and start making them pay--every day and in every way.

This is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash of civilization against institutionalized barbarism, plain and simple.

Posted by: Stendec at May 28, 2006 10:45 AM

Kind of old news and it's not the whole story. Some aspects of sharia are expected to be applied to Christians but not all, see christians subject to islamic law and an interesting personal take on Aceh sharia, the trouble with syariah.

Posted by: patung at May 28, 2006 11:40 AM

I see this as a good thing; does anyone think this country will receive anymore tourism? (besides terrorist conventions), I doubt very many Australians go to Bali night clubs anymore, and if many still do then just wait another year or two for the Saudi’s to find banking loop holes in funding more terrorism.

Posted by: billybob at May 28, 2006 11:40 AM

Beagle, Anyone Else,

If there is a poster who knows a bit about earth science, that part about volcanos and earthquakes, is interested in reading a post because I am wondering if this recent Java island earthquake has something to do as a possible sign that the Mount Morapi volcano is about to blow. Thanks for all posts in response.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at May 28, 2006 1:17 PM

Do you ever get the impression that the "hearts and minds" of Muslims were lost 1300+ years ago -- there is NOTHING we could ever do, short of reciting their cult classic shahadah, to alter their attitude towards us... And we also know that this would represent nothing anyway -- With their hole religion (ooops -- whole -- sorry) dedicated to extermination of alternatives -- we would still be under mortal threat from Islam -- just ask all those dead Muslims everywhere killed by other Muslims for the sake of Islam --

Islam is pollutioin.

Posted by: jsla at May 28, 2006 1:46 PM

bigcatgirl13106 wrote:

If there is a poster who knows a bit about earth science, that part about volcanos and earthquakes, is interested in reading a post because I am wondering if this recent Java island earthquake has something to do as a possible sign that the Mount Morapi volcano is about to blow. Thanks for all posts in response.

-------

Well, as a person with a strong background in geology, I can tell you that the area is very seismically active.

I'm not going to go into a discussion of seismology and vulcanology here, but I will discuss this a little bit.

Indonesia sits on the edge of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian Plates. The Indo-Autralian plate is being subducted under the Eurasian Plate. This subduction causes the rocks to melt, cusing magma to rise to the surface in volcanoes (like Mt. Morapi). The sliding of the Indo-Australian plate under the Eurasian plate causes friction as well. Sometimes the plate boundary locks up. When the two plates finally do release, this causes and earthquake. If it causes a dramatic change in the level of the ocean floor, and tsunami can occur (as did 12/26/2004).

The recent earthquake in Indonesia is and isn't related to Mt. Morapi. It is a part of the same subduction process at the plate boundary, but it may not have anything to do with the impending eruption of the volcano. Indonesia is subject to many earthquakes everyday that go unoticed, and are unrelated to an on-going or potential eruption.

As an aside, it has been noted that a more militant for of Islam was brought to the islands after the explosion of Krakatau (more famously Krakatoa). Missionaries (if one can call them that) from Arabia went to Indonesia after the eruption and said that (guess what) because of the eruption, they needed (drum roll please) more Islam. Krakatoa - The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883; Simon Winchester. Winchester deals not just with the geological implications of Krakatoa, but also the political and societial implications of the eruption.

http://www.usgs.gov/ is a good place to go for more earthquake info.

Posted by: BG at May 28, 2006 2:03 PM

Hugh writes: "Do what was done in the Cold War, in World War II. If anything, this war requires much more emphaiss [sic] on propaganda."

Hugh,
I'm not sure that your analogy holds up. Because with Nazism and Communism, we could and did make the case that those ideologies were evil and unworkable, but that Nazism and Communism were NOT representative of the great cultural heritage of the German and Russian nations. Nazism and Communism could be viewed as modern aberrations of just the last hundred years. In other words, we could be against German Nazism without being against Goethe, Schiller and Kant. We could be against Russian Communism without being against Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy. We didn't have to make the case that the Russian and German cultures and philosophies have been fundamentally broken for over a thousand years, as we may have to do with Islam. If we had, we would not only have to have destroyed the ideologies of Nazism and Communism but also the legacy of Goethe, Kant, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy as well.

So the question is: How deeply flawed is the Islamic ideology and the Islamic culture? Can we make a case that most of it is valuable and worth saving, and just the jihadist and misogynist components must be excised and jettisoned? Or is it irremediably broken to such a fundamental and long-lasting degree that the whole 1,400 year legacy needs to be opposed, something we didn't have to do with the German and Russian cultures?

Posted by: Steven L. at May 28, 2006 4:13 PM

l think Aceh is in need of another tsuami especially where the immans reside and their mosques. Posted by: Lulu

Too bad that that tsunami isn't as annual a season as hurricanes - that place needs to be washed out. Only problem is that such a tsunami should apply only to Sumantra and Jave - wouldn't want Sri Lanka to be hit by another disaster.

And no aid for the volcano victims this time around. If dar-ul-Islam can't cough up the cash, Indonesians, say to yourselves, "It's the will of Allah"!

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 28, 2006 4:26 PM

Stephen L.

You make some excellent points above. I concur that analogies to Nazis and Communists, while evocative, really understate the menace and danger of Islam to our well being. I also argue that without adequate models in our collective consciousness for this particular enemy we are at a serious disadvantage.

For the longest time I have been frustrated at the fact that we are socially and politically ill equipped to confront the Jihad. This is an area where far better word smiths and shapers of opinion must begin to help out. This is where some real groundwork needs to be done. I deplore the fact that we are reduced so often to understanding this cataclysm through the terminology (and therefore the 'terms' in the larger sense) of our enemy.

We don't have a good word for 'non-Muslim' -- i.e. they have coopted terms like "infidel" and "unbeliever" -- the very use of such terms or terms such as "non-Muslim" hands them a small but significant victory with every use... It helps to reinforce the solipsism of Islam in their Islam-drenched brains. This is dangerous... Rather than moving to expose the stupidity and brokenness of their execrable "religion" of hatred, it places Islam for us AND them at the center of the definition of things.

The word "religion" to describe Islam is totally false and misleading. While it definitely is a "religion", it hardly comports with our notions of that term in many many regards -- it also elevates it to a level it doens't deserve, and bypasses all the other mind control minutia obsessed aspects of the "ideology" of Islam. Islam is also political totalitarianism -- a call to murder and a call to hate -- a disinvitation to discourse -- a dissuader of free thought -- and a malignant movement bent on world domination and subjugation -- hardly a tradition "religion". Terms like: "belief system" and "ideology" also fall short of the mark.

Their rape of our culture (and all others for that matter) has been shrouded in meaningless Islamic terms such as "Jihad" for the average Westerner. Again -- this obfuscates the matter at hand, and causes much confusion - especially when there is a successful coterie of liars and apologists and Muslim promulgators who further the perjury that "Jihad" has nothing to do with violence, or that it isn't primarily about the expansion of Islam to non-Muslim lands.

Muslim intentions to subjugate through Islam's myriad modalities doesn't have a corrollary in recent Western experience -- the notion of "Holy Wars" is so quaint, dilluted, and convoluted that, again, I think such ideas simply blur their intentions and shroud the truth of their latest onslaught. I say recent because in simpler times we recognized full well the menace and meaning of their push to spread Islam in our domain -- at one point we were able to repudiate Islam with a Counter Jihad called a "Crusade". Sadly it has become a word of self loathing and self-flagellation in the West. Hardly anyone in the West knows why the Crusades happened any more. The story is primarily taught through the lens of "Post-Colonialism" (i.e. "Children -- let's learn today about another way your cultural heritage was wrong and horrible... Today we learn about the evil Crusades"...) . Such notions have been hopelessly tainted for us in the modern age.

There are plenty of other alienating examples which are impeding our understanding of the conflict -- Here's an ugly subtle example:

Steven Erlanger at the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/world/middleeast/26cnd-mideast.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fE%2fErlanger%2c%20Steven&oref=slogin

recently asserted that Hamas had "offered" a "truce" to "permit [the] right of Israel to exist as a permanent, sovereign state" -- This spectacular genuflection reveals this corrupt "reporter" has no knowledge or appreciation of a "hudna" in Islam and Arabic culture. Such pseudo-truces are only good until the Arabs can come back and slit your throat or stab you in the back. The notion that this represents anything promising, or that it's a sign of Hamas "moderating" it's genocidal platform is so naive that it could be called hilarious (that is if more slaughtered Jews seems hilarious to NYT readership -- and I know -- I know -- Clearly some think it's jolly fun...)

Any way -- the homogenous nature of Japanese and German nations, coupled with their previous and undeniable extremely high level contributions to the legacy of humanity before they embraced their racists supremacist nightmares made them excellent candidates for rehabilitation, and bad candidates for annihilation. Clearly such wasn't necessary. Can the same thing be said about Islam? There is NO corollary one could identify in all of Arabdom or Islam to make the case that Islam is in the slightest like Germany or Japan...

Posted by: jsla at May 28, 2006 5:02 PM

This might be a better way to illustrate a point above --

How absurd would it to have been during WW2 to have been limited to terms like the following to 'self-label' ourselves:

"Well -- for all of us non-Nazis..."

or

"I, as a non-believer in the supremacy of the Aryan Race, believe that..."

Such terminolgy must sound as if we're self-loathing and idiotic to our Muslim enemies. Do you think these Muslim bigots don't enjoy every self reference we make with terms like "infidel" or "non-believer" or "kaffr" or "non-Muslim"? Think about it.

Posted by: jsla at May 28, 2006 5:43 PM

Stephen/Jsla

Excellent points you both have made. Adding my two cents, I have a term we could use to describe islamophobic, non-muslim, civilized human beings. How about the word "normal"?

Posted by: William The Crusader at May 28, 2006 6:14 PM

I don't know if this piece of info will be of any use but the terms our Vicar uses are "We civilised people" or "the civilised peoples" when referring to non-moslems, and "the barbarians" or sometimes "the barbarian horde" and even "the islamic barbarians" when referring to moslems.

These terms may not resonate in quite the same way outside a European cultural milieu as they do here but they may help to indicate what we mean more precisely, perhaps.

Dominic.

Posted by: necessitasnonhabetlegem at May 28, 2006 6:17 PM

"No, so far the big plan has been to take over, rebuild, reconstruct, make as wonderful as possible, two countries full of hostile Muslism -- Iraq and Afghanistan - and in spending hundreds of billions to protect their populations from killing each other, in giving them schools, hospitals, roads where none existed, in preventing any conceivable divisions, we somehow think, hope, scheme, never quite explain how, that this will help solve that idiotically named "war on terror." - Hugh

I am reminded of this exchange from Life of Brian:

And what have they [the Romans] ever given us in return?! XERXES: The aqueduct? REG: What? XERXES: The aqueduct. REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah. COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation. LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like? REG: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done. MATTHIAS: And the roads. REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads-- COMMANDO: Irrigation.XERXES:Medicine. COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh Huh... COMMANDO #2: Education. COMMANDOS: Ohh... REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough. COMMANDO #1: And the wine. COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah... FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh. COMMANDO: Public baths. LORETTA: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg. FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this. COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. REG:
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? XERXES: Brought peace.

Hugh, you are (as always) right. Watching the news has become almost painful, because the questions you ask never are by the supposedly professional journalists. It is an exercise in frustration when you want to scream through the screen such obvious questions, but the lame reporter just waffles fluff instead.

Posted by: anti-uffe at May 28, 2006 6:18 PM

Anti-uffe -- perhaps you do this already, but if you don't, you should write and email every time you see something that makes you this upset. Eventually it will work -- although I have no examples to prove that blatantly-optimistic-unsupported-by-the-facts-or-exeperiences-in-life assertion!

Some rules are worth keeping in mind: Try to keep it polite, and, of course, and never threaten to behead them.

(.........But then, again, if you do, they just might start being oblique and saying all kinds of nice things about you too! But I still wouldn't suggest it. Just be polite if you're able....)

Posted by: jsla at May 28, 2006 6:34 PM

The sharia laws treat those outside the barbarian religion of islam in a way that reminds me of the treatment of blacks under the Jim Crow laws of the US. Those on one side of the law treated one way and those on the other side treated another way. But in islam, not just different, separate, but impure, polluting. I am always surprised when, after hearing Malcom X talk about how he was a walking dead man because the muslims were going to kill him, blacks (and whites) use his example as a reason to convert.

This law change, comically, is going to change that by forcing non-muslims to follow the islamic rules to be inclusive for all since those not following the rules were bad examples and must be eliminated.

This is what the money for relief went to, pure white headscarfs for girls that never had one before and religious police to enforce the rules.

Don't give any money.

jsla~ I agree we need a better word for exactly the reason you stated.

Posted by: Borg at May 28, 2006 10:34 PM

BG, In other words, we can look forward to many years of actual catastrophe type entertainment from this region.

Yes, that's harsh, but I have shed too many tears since September, 11, 2001, to shed another one for a dead or suffering Mohammedan.

I cannot accept as fact that someone has to go to a Mohammedan country for a vacation.

Posted by: Pelayo at May 29, 2006 1:17 AM

anti-uffe, there is one thing that Mohammedans would add to the dialog in the "Life of Brian." a Mohammedan commando would have said that the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health were against Islam and could not be tolerated.

Posted by: Pelayo at May 29, 2006 1:35 AM

I also argue that without adequate models in our collective consciousness for this particular enemy we are at a serious disadvantage. For the longest time I have been frustrated at the fact that we are socially and politically ill equipped to confront the Jihad. Posted by: jsla

jsla

Both you and Stephen L make outstanding points. While using Nazis as a comparison point is useful in terms of raising awareness about the magnitude of the threat facing us, it is inadequate for a number of reasons. For one, the Nazis, by their exclusionist policies, didn't have infiltrators in enemy countries: white supremacists in Britain, France, Russia or the US weren't accepted as Aryans. Also, the very notion of German supremacy uber alles ensured that there would be little support for it outside Germany's borders. Therefore, while the military threat from Germany existed, there were no demographic threats of Germans threatening to become majorities in other countries, other than the Sudetenland.

Communism is a better analogy. Although Communism was a vehicle of Soviet hegemony, it far exceeded Russian geopolitical ambitions such as Eastern Europe or Sakhalin Island. Communists were there in every country, and they weren't Russian; nonetheless, in many cases, they acted as wholly owned subsidiaries of the CPSU. However, the similarities aside, there were some notable differences between the Communists and Muslims, other than the fact that the Communist ideology was identified as a threat, which Islam isn't:

• In the case of the Communists, taqiyya and kitman weren't used, so much as tu quoque. People who embraced Communism genuinely believed in it, and didn't try to pretend that they didn't want to get rid of property rights, or that government didn't have legitimate limits. They didn't pretend that certain things didn't exist in Das Kapital or Kommunist Manifesto; as a result, people who disagreed with Communism weren't hoodwinked by taqiyya artists in the way people who have questions about Islam are.
  
• While the Capitalist world had its share of Communist citizens, one didn't have thousands of Communists from Communist countries sponging off capitalist societies; instead, every effort was made to create a facade of egalitarian societies and rugged self reliance in Communist countries. This is totally different from the millions of Muslims settled in the Western world, not to mention 130 million in India alone.
  
• While the Soviets did pump cash into a huge propaganda machine particularly in third world countries, it didn't come close to what the Arabs, with their petroleum billions, have pumped into dar ul Harb. Note that the Soviets just tried doing it in countries that were on the tipping point, and which could have gone either way. However, the Arabs get to do it just about everywhere: I believe only Israel and Serbia might have kept them out.
  
• In the case of Communism, there were geographical targets, most notably Moscow. In the case of Islam, Mecca and Medina can be potential targets if occupied by Infidel armies. Expel all Muslim presence from these 2 "holy" cities, and all the Muslim rage in the world that's directed at Infidels, be they in the West, Israel, Thailand, India, et al would be re-directed at such an occupation. Threats to level those places would keep down terrorist acts against such an occupation force, but it would force Islamic rage to fester, but something they can do nothing about.
  
• Most importantly, Communists had a desire to survive, and didn't start wars they knew they couldn't win. In Afghanistan, they obviously thought they could, but I daresay if they knew how that war would turn in terms of losses to the Red Army, they wouldn't have gone in. This rationality was even there with individuals - how many Communist suicide bombers does one know of in history? Right now, the West thinks that they are playing on the desire to survive of the Arab states - something that was on display during the weeks after 9/11. Without addressing Islam, it's a major mistake.
  

A major reason for the lack of comprehension of the threat we face is that this is the first war that the US is really fighting against Islam (actually, make that Islam is really fighting against the US) without the US knowing it. To understand how to deal with this threat, the US has to look at countries that were once under Islamic rule, and no longer are. Some such examples are Spain, Greece, Israel, India, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia.

Of the above, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Israel were wrested off the Ottoman empire after WWI. Since there is no country more powerful than the US, obviously, that model is out of the question. Of the other two, Spain totally got rid of Islam in the 15th century by forcibly expelling the Moors from Iberia, and converting those who remained. India got rid of Islamic rule in the 18th century, and given events in Afghanistan and Iran since then, would have stayed totally non-Islamic. For this analysis, the Brits need not be factored in, since no other country can colonize the West, should it choose to get rid of Islam. If it weren't for dhimmi rule in India today, most Muslims would be killed or expelled from India as well.

The ramifications of this is that to forcibly convert all American Muslims from Islam to something else, the 1st amendment would need to be abrogated, or Islam has to be certified as a cult, rather than a religion. Calling it a belief system, or an ideology, or a geopolitical entity, is needless, except when describing their goals.

I however miss the point above when talking about describing those who recognize the threat. What's wrong with Infidels - particularly since they coined the term? During World War II, sure the Allies were "non-Nazis", but since the Axis pitted themselves against the rest of the world, the term German or Japanese adequately described the enemy, regardless of any "moderate Germans or Japanese" that might have existed. In this case, the enemy cannot be described in geographical terms, even if Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacy: it doesn't cover the half a billion Muslims in the sub continent and the East Indies. Also, while a good portion of the Dhimmis, a la Chamberlain, are simply ignorant about the fact that Islam is the threat, a good portion of them are actual sympathizers of the enemy. I'm not just describing Islamo-Christians; I believe that there are several people from the Cold war era who were anti-West, and have ported their support from the Soviets to Islam. As a result, coming up with a label for us is even more difficult. How about anti-Islamists? Or better still, a shorter word that nonetheless delivers the above meaning?

On the subject that the Germans and Japanese made excellent contributions to humanity making them bad candidates for annihilation, it's fair to believe that once the some of non-Arab portion of the ummah is de-Islamized, they have the potential of re-discovering their Jahiliya. Indonesia until recently was culturally a Hindu country, although religiously Islamic: it could go all the way back if Islamic forces in that country were trounced in a war. Similarly, in Iran, there is a good possibility, if not probability that Iran could renew the greatness of ancient Persia, even if it didn't unequivocally embrace Zoroastrianism. Similarly, the Kurds, Barbers and Black Muslims are the most likely to apostatize, given their persecution by the Arabs.

However, some of the other ethnic groups in Islam, I have my doubts on:

1. Turks: Unlike the Mongols, the Turks don't have a pre-Islamic heritage, which makes their situation tricky. You have them not only in Turkey, but in Turkestan (Turkmenistan, Uzbegistan and Kirghizstan) and Azerbaijan. Their history is essentially Islamic, and includes the Golden Horde, and Tamerlane, and so de-Islamizing them would be difficult. Despite Kemal "Ataturk" and Suparmurad "Turkmenbashi", there doesn't seem to be a pre-Islamic basis that they can draw from, unlike the Mongols with Chengiz and Persians with Cyrus.
   
2. Afghans, Paks, Bangladeshis: Pre-Islam, all these were part of India. If de-Islamized, the Afghans would look like a hybrid of Indian, Persian and Turk. If de-Islamized, Pakistan and Bangladesh would remain independent of India, but culturally, they'd be at a loss to distinguish themselves from India.
   
3. Arabs: This is undoubtedly the most difficult, since whatever left of their Jahiliya culture was either co-opted by Islam, or totally eradicated. Within them, if Egypt goes Coptic and is lost to them after a war, their culture is dead. Lebanon and Kurdistan would be other major blows, and if Barbers de-Islamize, North Africa would be lost as well.
   

My conclusion: for some half the Islamic population, it's difficult to make the case for rehabilitation.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 29, 2006 2:41 AM

Boy, was I long. Just to clarify, by "anti-Islamist", I wasn't endorsing the euphamism of "Islamism" as opposed to "Islam"; rather, I was describing people who are opposed to (the tenets of) Islam, rather than anti-Muslim, which can sometimes be taken as a blanket call to Jihad against all Muslims, irrespective of attitudes. We need to avoid getting ourselves pigeon-holed into the genocide camp.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 29, 2006 2:46 AM

Great posts!

There is another diffenrence between nazism and communism on the one hand and Islam on the other. I agree that Islam is not only a religion but rather a political ideology, but certainly parts of Islam ARE religious in a very basic way. While the power of nazis or communists only ran from a person's birth to his death - a few decades - the power of Islam - in the opinion of its followers - lasts forever.

So "apostazy" to nazism or communism was much easier for an individual person and it was not at all a problem for a German or Russian of that times who fled from his country to live i.e. in the USA, neither was it a problem for anyone in these countries after WWII/the Cold War was over and nazism/communism defeated.

Neither Hitler nor any communist leader predicted what would happen to a German or Russian after his death. They didn't tell people that traitors would go to hell after dying. They were capable to establish hell on earth - sure - but what do a few decades mean compared to eternity?

So - even if Muslims live in our countries or live in Afghanistan or Iraq, where a war was militarily lost and even if they rationally recognize that an "infidel's" life would be a better life - they still fear eternity.
In discussions with Muslims I've learned that they are full of fear. Most often they brag "I don't fear anyhing...." but always they complete such a statement by "....nothing but Allah". They seem to be terrified of Allah and of what he could do to them during eternity if they are not good Muslims.

How can we - whatever we do: give them financial aid, improve their lives or even threaten them, even threaten them by nukes - compete against a God, against such a horrifying and cruel God?

Posted by: Eisvogel at May 29, 2006 5:09 AM

Good point - I reckon we´ve gotto be even more horrifying and cruel... So, they won´t be afraid of Allah anymore, but of us.

Posted by: cosmicAvenger at May 29, 2006 5:58 AM

The simple situation of battle lowers the civilized western world to the level of the barbaric hordes. There they won another point.
Maybe it is indeed time to forget not only PC, but also our moral correctness (at least for the timebeing)when dealing with the barbarians. Now, think of what really frightens you about them, and then think of what really frightens them about us. As Eisvogel mentioned above, they are scared sh*tless of their god.
They behead us in the belief that a disconnected corpse forbids the soul to travel home... So, it looks like our fighting forces will have to start beheading the corpses of the fallen enemy... (I know, it is a terrible proposition) but since our moral standard has sunk to the level of the enemy´s already only by the sheer reality of fighting battle we do nothing wrong but speak the language that the enemy understands. And they are obviously very frightened of not reaching Allah´s paradise if they get beheaded... It is terrible, but this war of the worlds will not be fought on a conference table, it will be the dirty settlements of mideast and the highrise skyline of western cities.

Posted by: cosmicAvenger at May 29, 2006 7:01 AM

Perhaps the earthquake was Allah's answer to imposing Sharia on non-believers.

Posted by: perpster at May 29, 2006 10:52 AM

"We need to avoid getting ourselves pigeon-holed into the genocide camp."

lol - truth hurts don't it

"And they are obviously very frightened of not reaching Allah´s paradise if they get beheaded.."

where do you get this bull from?

Posted by: truth speaker at May 29, 2006 11:30 AM

"A bill proposed by lawmakers in the Indonesian province of Aceh would impose Shariah law on all non-Muslims, the armed forces and law enforcement officers, a local police official has announced."

poor christians they wont be able to follow the tenets of their religion and steal, fornicate, get drunk and gamble. Well as we Muslims who reside in Non-muslim lands are always being told: if you dont like it : leave

Maybe they can go to the Christian paradise of East Timor - hear those peaceful Christians are murdering each other again

Posted by: truth speaker at May 29, 2006 11:32 AM

"When a country declares itself an Islamic state, it is formally declaring war on the rest of civilization. We should acknowledge that fact, and respond with a total quarantine."

Great idea - so when are you gonna do that with the Saudis?

"The Muslim countries, and the imams and ayatollahs that run them, never pay a price for their blatant assaults on humanity."

Comical - pure dhimmi watch accuracy - there are about 53 Muslim countries in the world of which only 1 (Iran) is run by Imams and Ayatollahs

Posted by: truth speaker at May 29, 2006 11:45 AM

Today the West has too much pluribus and too little unum.

Posted by: jsla at May 29, 2006 11:58 AM

Thanks for some great responses above Infidel Pride and Eisvogel.

I will ponder your observations Infidel Pride about the significance of those nations which have ceased to be under the yoke of Islam.

They say that "posession is 9/10s of the law..." It's interesting to observe how "success" stories in de-Islamization mainly seem to involve reclaiming colonized territory by (usually violently, but not always) expulsing the Muslim effluvium. India did it by referendum, I believe, and created Pakistan - a dangerous rabid wolf perched on her front stoop for all eternity... (and, of course, this could also be seen, not as a 'de-Islamization' of India -- but as a successful Jihad by Muslims who gained vast tracts of sovereign Muslim territory at the expense of India -- so this exampe illustrates successful de-islamification as it does successful Muslim colonization I think...)

As for forced conversion -- I seriously doubt this is effective - the only way to disabuse people of their belief system is to MURDER that belief system -- usually through the tool of war. When effectively done, war is good at crushing political ideologies such as Supremacist Germany. Though we didn't destroy Shintoism in Japan, we targeted their God Emperor (the simpering war criminal Hirohito) and debased him before his Japanese thralls -- I would argue that this has only been partially (although primarily) successful. Japan still deeply harbors the Supremacist racial notions which vexed the world in WW2.

This is fascinating material.

Posted by: jsla at May 29, 2006 12:35 PM

India did it by referendum, I believe, and created Pakistan - a dangerous rabid wolf perched on her front stoop for all eternity... (and, of course, this could also be seen, not as a 'de-Islamization' of India -- but as a successful Jihad by Muslims who gained vast tracts of sovereign Muslim territory at the expense of India -- so this exampe illustrates successful de-islamification as it does successful Muslim colonization I think...)

jsla

You are mistaking 2 Jihads for 1. The first one started in 1000AD, and ended in 1761, with the complete effective destruction of the Moghul empire. From 1708 onwards, different Infidel military forces - Marathas, Sikhs, Rajputs, Jats, et al fought the Moghuls, and two invasions - one by the Persians in 1739 and another by the Afghans in 1761, saw to the actual end of the Moghul empire.

From that time onwards, the Hindus and Sikhs could have finished the Muslims: there were only a few Islamic enclaves, which wouldn't have held out against the Marathas. However, the wars in Europe (notably the 7-years war) between England and France spread to India, and all the various Hindu (and Muslim) kingdoms got caught up in it. As a result, by the time the Brits had subdued all the independent Indian states, the destruction of Islamic states couldn't be achieved. To be fair to them, the Brits did de-fang Islam to an extent by abolishing Farsi as a language in India, which was the vehicle of Moghul imperialism.

The second Jihad was the one that civilian Muslim leaders under a British Raj campaigned for under the framework of sessesion, which ultimately resulted in Pakistan.

For the models that I was suggesting that western countries (and India) look at, I was suggesting the first one, which could potentially have ended with Muslims states being annexed to larger Infidel empires, and the practice of Islam being banned in such domains. Since the US has never been colonized since independence, and isn't likely to be, don't look at the possibility of Muslims carving out their own country even in Europe, let alone the US. After all, a Civil War was won with an even greater support behind a sessession movement. If that could be ultimately defeated, there is no reason that Muslim equivalent of that should even get off the ground.

I think you misunderstood me about the forced conversion idea: I was suggesting doing exactly what was done about Shintoism. Just as Emperor worship was banned, I was contemplating a similar model where after dar-ul-Islam is humiliated, the truth about Mohammed be spelt out to all Muslims. In the past, I have, half jokingly, suggested that Shariah laws be inverted to discriminate against and persecute Muslims until they become Infidels. To that, I'd force all Mullahs, Imams, Ayatollahs, Shiekhs et al to denounce Mohammed, the Quran, the Ahadith and all the texts, and ban things like the Muezzin, the Haj, the Friday mini-Nuremburg rallies, et al. Under an infidel occupation, all the Islamic support infrastructure would have to be dismantled for it to be made unpopular. It would be interesting and fascinating to see how self-sustaining Islam can be, bereft of all such support.

It's not known how many of the supposed one billion "Muslims" in the world are in fact Athiests, or secretly Apostates in some other religion. But under such a regime, they'd be free to "come out".

As for Japan, what you are stating is interesting, but I must confess that I haven't seen much evidence of it.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 30, 2006 3:34 AM

Infidel Pride,
Read both your posts. I am afraid there is but a very small percentage who are athiests. There are some in India who lived like Hindus, they were in poverty, and the Hindus gave them odd jobs and some money, and they had no problems with celebrating Hindu festivals. I myself know now of only one who is a muslim and a vegetarian. The rest, over a period of 9 years (I have been at since 1997) have become rabid. We had forgotten the term assalam alaykum. Now they all use it to greet each other. There were muslims studying with me in school. In our batch of 160 (in different sections), 8 were muslims. Only two made it to high school. Only one graduated. He talked to us normally in college. But over the years he has dropped all Hindu friends and now is a teacher in a madrasa. In every city, there are mosques coming up. In my city, one small mosque had a 100 foot minaret built in it by some saudi sheik. There are now "religious sermons" daily in that mosque. If this is the condition in Hindu dominated territory, what would be the condition be like in muslim countries, where the infestation rate is as high as 100%. No, I agree with what you said in one of your posts on another thread. "Time to....".
BTW get my mail ?

Posted by: arjun.sevak at May 30, 2006 11:56 AM

"Shariah took effect in 2005 in Aceh, a predominantly Muslim region on the northernmost tip of Sumatra. But it only applied to Muslims...."

When the Jakarta government signed the peace deal with the Aceh rebels (GAM), the Aceh rebels agreed that Shariah law would only be applied to muslims, but now we see how long that deal lasted.

It's no surprise to any one with half-a-brain, for the following reasons:
1)devout Muslims (such as the GAM) lie about their true intentions, especially since the GAM viewed themselves as followers of real Islam whilst they viewed Jakarta as apostate muslims.
2)Law in society must be applied to everyone equally otherwise the society will collapse into chaos. In other words, if you don't apply shariah law to all (muslims and non-muslims), then muslim criminals who are arrested under shariah law will simply claim conversion to Christianity, Buddhism, etc.-- this is why Shariah law must hold a severe penalty for apostasy from Islam.

The Aceh rebels practiced their art of warfare and negotiations with Jakarta just as Muhammed would have done -- lie and deceive to get what you want (Sharia law) one step at a time.

Someone posted that anyone living in Aceh that doesn't like shariah law can move -- and that's probably what many non-muslims will do -- leave Aceh for other parts of Indonesia. If the history of Sharia law holds true, Aceh will be the cess pool province of Indonesia within 5 years. The government in Jakarta has been playing with fire in Aceh, and they are going to get burned by Aceh in the near future.

Posted by: porkchops38 at May 30, 2006 7:14 PM

Arjun

I get your point about India. It has 13% no doubt, but I was thinking more about Islamic countries, particularly ones like Iran and Indonesia, where the freedom to exit Islam doesn't exist, and any apostacy has to be done surrepticiously. I spelt out above which countries I think might do it quickly, vs which ones would be more reluctant to do it.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 30, 2006 7:14 PM

Infidel Pride -- sad to say I really only have more anecdotal evidence -- I haven't done any kind of scholarly reading on the subject -- My experience comes mainly from a year of living interestingly in Japan in the mid 80s. A year only allows one to scratch the surface of the Japanese culture -- but it was a sufficient time to penetrate enough to hear frank input from the reticent native Japanese.

It'soff topic, so I won't tell you the many stories about their historic revisionism, or their sometimes shocking attitudes towards all non-Japanese... collectively one can begin to make the case that there are still relatively dormant but deeply entrenched beliefs of Japanese racial superiority.

I have never encountered a language which can boast so many ways to count to ten, or which has innumerable names for the different types of snow -- a completely different name for wet snow, dry snow, fluffy snow, snow that turns to ice, snow that sticks to branches, and the same can be said of rain, or the sounds that the rain makes... The Japanese will explain the reason for this is that, after thousands of years of racially isolated development, and the cultivation of a deep appreciation for the poetry of nature, that the Japanese brain is uniquely developed to now appreciate nature to such a heightened degree that only specific vocabulary words will do to describe this or that effect. It's shocking.

I could go on for hours, but I believe that these culturally embedded beliefs in Japanese racial exceptionalism, coupled with an increased desire by the Japanese to deny the heinousness of their previous behavior is probably a recipe for a resurgence at some point of their supremacist ideology. I don't believe this dormant force has been destroyed --

Anyway -- I hate OT posts -- so I'll self loathingly stop this one NOW!

Posted by: jsla at May 30, 2006 10:19 PM