Robert,

Try to look at this dialog from an impartial perpective. You are actually debating public urination. This cannot be good. Insignificant critics like this are best left alone, in my humble opinion.

Posted by: Quijybo at June 23, 2006 4:50 PM

Quijybo,

That's very funny. I was going to say I'd, well, zip my lip, but never mind.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Posted by: jihadwatch at June 23, 2006 4:59 PM

You're in trouble now!

Posted by: jsla at June 23, 2006 6:05 PM

Well it reads as though another genuine Dhimmi, or at best an apologist and divertist (oh christians are guilty of that once or twice, neglecting the common historical and continued emergence of jihadist activities globally and spontaneously without any direct connection beyond the teaching of islam)has been yet again exposed despite her bluster

cordially i wonder if she will now bite the bullet and pick up the spade and continue digging whilst so clearly in such a deep and un-informed Hole with our host Mr Spencer, i'm willing to bet Googling for comparible hostile doctrines in Christian history up and to the here and now has now been exhausted

Maybe she should try entering Jihad to her search engine to recieved that wake up call from sleeping dhimmitude

fight the good fight

ps Miss/Ms/Mrs C Young, bigotry cannot come from telling the truth, ignorance however comes forth from maintaining and perpetuating the Lie, think on

Posted by: Taranus at June 23, 2006 6:08 PM

Cathy Young was given every chance to demonstrate that she would take the opportunity offered to study Islam before opening her mouth on the subject again. And of course she also had the right to remain silent. But alas, she did not, and while all of her arrows either fall far short of the mark, or sometimes behave like boomerangs, she appears to have ignored points made against her.

This business of sidewalk micturation, for example. Not Robert, but I, pointed out that the defecation and urination -- deliberately done when other places were available -- in churches (where Muslims have in the pastbeen given refuge as squatters by islamisant tiers-mondistes among Italian clergy, mocked by that old anti-clerical anti-fascist anti-Communist anti-everything Oriana Fallaci). And the particular incident that inflamed Fallaci were the streams of urine that flowed down the Baptistery in Florence, which the world-travelling Cathy Young may recall, and may also recall the effect of urine on the "Gates of Heaven," that is the doors of the Battistero sculpted in metal by Ghiberti, who famously won the commission.

Let me try to think of an analogous situation. Imagine a group of Muslims encamped near, say, the Bridge in Concord (the rude bridge/that arched the flood - that one), or possibly near the Lincoln Monument. And imagine that everyday, though there were plenty of other places to urinate, they deliberately aimed their ruder streams not into the Concord River, but right on the bridge, or on the obelisk erected in 1836 that stands right before that bridge. Or imagine that they did so, and repeatedly, to the Lincoln Monument. I offered Cathy Young the testimony of an outraged Italian at the same site -- she appears not to have paid any attention.

Furthermore, she again shows no signs of being willing to read, ponder, and assimilate, the actual texts of Islam, immutable texts, as the Word of God, or the interpretive doctrine of "naskh" or "abrogation" which makes that Qur'anic text still more dangerous for Infidels.

She, contributor to "Reason" magazine, who presents herself as owing allegiance to no cult or belief-system, as impassively just in her judgements which, after all, are based on the ineluctable modality (yes, a last, belated tribute to Bloomsday) of Reason, Reason, Reason. But it is not Reasonable, even or especially for a Contributor to Reason Magazine, to refuse to study those texts, to refuse to examine tha that history, and to remain fixated on words that are every day belied by the articles put up here, such easy dismissive words as "bigoted" and -- still worse, much worse -- that sinister one-word attempt to silence well-informed and piercing criticism of Islam, "islamophobic."

No, she does not suffer from according autoomatic respect to a belief-system that is customarily, and a bit too big-tentishly, called a "religion." That word may explain the automatic respect that some, such as our president, apparently feel for Islam. It is a respect the rest of us will not accord quite so easily.

What is it that Cathy Young cannot bring herself to analyze or think clearly about? Why is it so hard for her to recognize that Ibn Warraq'as formulatin -- "There are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate" is a truthful summary of the situation. And then, of course, the word "moderate" really means -- lax, unobsrevant, not taking completely seriously, ignoring large parts of, Islam. It is the full-bodied enthusiast, the "immoderate" Muslim, who worries us, and should. But as the membrane separating the category of "moderate" Muslim from "immoderate" Muslim is often breached, and there's a whole lot of osmotic activity, so that one never can be sure if today's "moderate" will not become tomoorrow's "immoderate," and further, one has no way of knowing when that "
"moderation" is either feigned, or more a fictive creation of Infidel wishing and hoping, and hoping and wishing.

It is too bad that Cathy Young thinks of herself, not quite accurately I'm afraid, as a creature of reason. She's become sufficiently americanized, I see, ona obamerikanilas', to embrace our version of "diversity" and "everyone wants the same thing" and "everyone desires freedom" and all the rest of the secular verison of the religious bomfoggery -- brotherhood-of-good-fatherhood-of-man stuff.

What a disappointment. One expects -- yes, despite all the counter-examples -- better from the children of Soviet refugees. Amazing what a decade or two in America can do to make people unlearn what they should never forget, and what their parents felt on their own pulses.

Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2006 6:21 PM

I'm disappointed Cathy Young did not address any remarks to me. I feel left out. True, I am of a shy and retiring nature, but if she would kindly read and take note and answer what I posted about her at the piece Robert devoted to her on June 12, then I would feel less neglected. And despite my shy and retiring nature, I would attempt to answer any points she might care to make.

So for her reading ease, I post one of my June 12 comments again:

"But Cathy Young has yet to do this, despite some close brushes with clear thinking."
--- from the article above

Clicking on the link brings a JW piece (Sept,. 19, 2005) by Cathy Young that appeared in The Boston Globe; it is favorable, and so are the comments. In my second posting (I include the first because it serves as glossing antiphon to Robert's allusion to Back Bay readers of newspapers (or as Cathy Young, remembering her Tsvetaeva, might put it, those "chitateli gazet," who become one entire newspaper "so lba do pupa"):

"Boston Globe: 'For a variety of reasons, the bigotry and hate in Islam are perilously close to the mainstream'

"The readers of the Boston Globe sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn, for their paper sways dizzily from dhimmitude to anti-dhimmitude -- attempting to be even-handed, I guess. When evening quickens faintly in the street, wakening the appetites of life in some and to others bringing the Boston Globe, mount the steps and ring the bell, turning wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Hugh Fitzgerald, if the street were time and he at the end of the street, and tell Cousin Harriet to take solace in this piece: "Muslims and the Holocaust," by Cathy Young in the Globe, with thanks to Scaramouche:

RECENTLY IN England, four Muslim-staffed committees appointed to advise Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet on issues related to Islam have come up with a recommendation: Get rid of an official event viewed as offensive to Muslims. What event would that be? A celebration of the Crusades, perhaps? No, Holocaust Memorial Day.

In the words of one committee member, ''The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others."

That ''one people," of course, are the Jews.

The committees aren't exactly proposing that the Holocaust commemoration be scrapped outright. They want it to be folded into a ''Genocide Memorial Day" that will also include such crimes as the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda and the massacres of Bosnian Muslims by the Milosevic regime.

Unfortunately, even against the bloody backdrop of the 20th century, there are strong reasons to regard the Nazi extermination of the Jews as a unique atrocity. It was the first, and so far the only time that, as Cornell University historian Stephen Katz put it in his 1994 book ''The Holocaust in Historical Context," that ''a state set out, as a matter of intentional principle and actualized policy, to annihilate physically every man, woman, and child belonging to a specific people."

But the problem with the proposal goes far deeper. The other ''genocides" for which they want recognition include the Israeli killings of Palestinians.

Clearly, Palestinians have suffered under the occupation. Over 4,000 have been killed since the renewal of violence five years ago. Some of these dead were completely innocent victims; others were fighters, violent protesters, or suicide bombers. (Nearly 1,000 Israelis have died as well.) This death toll is tragic; but to call it ''genocide" is to cheapen the word.

This is inadequate. It is true that some were fighters, violent protesters, and suicide bombers. It is also true that some were innocent victims. But the number of those innocents was inflated by the Palestinian Arabs themselves, by their deliberate practice of staging attacks from civilian areas, so that when the Israelis retaliated they would kill civilians -- and thus provide useful propaganda.

But in any case, read it all."

Posted by Robert at September 19, 2005 08:30 AM

Posting 1.

"Robert---

If you feel the need to employ The Boston Evening Transcript again, try the anecdote about the Harvard entomologist correctly identifying its flapping pages in "Speak Memory" -- it's a much funnier use of that most Boston-Brahmin of papers, the S. S. Pierce of papers, than anything thought up by that humorless son of a St. Louis furrier whom you insist on liking.

Posted by: Hugh at September 19, 2005 09:17 AM

Posting #2

"Catherine Young, a contributing editor at REASON Magazine, for some unfathomable reason managed to be hired by the Op/Ed editors at The Boston Globe. Unfathomable, because she is perfectly sensible, and has not panned out, I am sure, in the way that those editors who control that page expected she would -- with something like their opinions and their take on the world. They assumed she would be a voice of their kind of "reason" and would end up echoing their views -- and hasn't. Ooops. Won't make that mistake again. For Young turned out to be just a little too -- well, a little too much a voice of REASON, and not merely the "voice of a woman." So she is one of those who manages to balance such incurably misleading commentators on the world as the now-retired but still odiously Israel-bashing H. D. S. Greenway (who never referred to, in all of his years of heading the Globe's Middle East Bureau in Jerusalem, the matter of Islam, and seemed a year ago genuinely surprised to learn that the Copts were having any difficulties in Egypt -- Peroncel-Hugoz Greenway isn't), and the outside contributors from sophisticiated Europe we are all supposed to enjoy, such as Jonathan Powers and earlier, William Pfaff -- both of them absolutely predictable in their views of Islam (positive), America (negative), Israel(unspeakable).

Young is asymptotically approaching the truth about Islam, but as Robert notes above, not fast enough, and not close enough, for some of us. And it is clear she hasn't yet gone to the texts, but I suspect she will. REASON Magazine is connected to people such as the Humanist Society (which rings quaintly), and the Humanists are the kind of people whose once-newfangled skepticism about religion now seems to some so old-fashioned. Still, in the context of the Globe, where the Israel-bashing H.D.S. Greenway comes out of his bow-tied, Chinese-vased retirement once a week to spread his venom, and over on the editorial page (which isn't bad sometimes) that cluck-clucking over the sensible remarks of Romney about mosque-monitoring (which should be taken note of by those for whom a candidate's attitude toward Islam is the single most important determinant of their support), Young is a welcome addition. She also knows Russian and the Soviet Union, two points in her favor. She has to tread warily, no doubt. And hasn't yet focussed as much as she should on the teachings and history of Islam. But let her read a few books by Bat Ye'or, and Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim" and his essay on Islam and Fascism, and she will be up to speed, and smuggling more and more of the truth in. And The Globe would be far worse than it is, without her."

Posted by: Hugh at September 19, 2005 09:19 AM

When I wrote the penultimate sentence to that ultimate posting, on September 19, 2005, I assumed that Young had endured a Soviet childhood, which not always, but often, leads to a higher incidence of political common sense, because one, or one's parents, have lived through the dying days of a totalitarian belief-system, and therefore one is less likely to smilingly accept the most naive views of other imperfectly understood belief-systems that claim to offer a Total Explanation of the Universe and, in the case of Islam, a Complete Regulation of Life as well.

I assumed she would, as a contributor to Reason Magazine, study Islam through the intelligent offerings of defectors from it, much as one would study the Soviet System through the works of those who had never accepted the system (for example, Mark Aldanov -- ne Landau -- in his early work "Lenine" written in 1919, or Bunin, or Nabokov, or any of the millions of highly intelligent exiles from Russia who lived in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Shanghai, Harbin, Buenos Aires, New York, and places in between, trying to get the message out to a largely uncomprehending world), or who had been raised in it (Yelena Bonner, Andrey Sakharov, Yuli Galanskov, Andrey Amalrik, Edward Kuznetsov, Aleksandr Solzhenitysn, Joseph Brodsky, and many others).

I assumed she would want to read Ibn Warraq's essay on Islam and Fascism, would want to read "Why I Am Not a Muslim," would want to read the testimonies of former Muslims collected by Ibn Warraq in "Leaving Islam." I assumed she would want to read what Irfan Khawaja and Azam Kamguian have written, or a thousand other highly intelligent people born, through no fault of their own, into Islam, and who found their way out of it, and have carefully identified the way in which it continues to exercise its hold on the minds of men. I assumed she would want to visit the website of Ali Sina, www.faithfreedom.org, to find out what another ex-Muslim, tireless in his debates, and generously receptive to posting the articles of other ex-Muslims, had to say. I assumed she would be reading, with great interest, the scholarship of Bat Ye'or on the treatment of Christians and Jews under Islam, beginning with "The Dhimmi," and proceeding to "Islam and Dhimmitude," and then to "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam." And then I hoped she would read Bat Ye'or's work on the fate of Europe -- "Eurabia." I thought she might visit www.dmimmitude.org for other articles. I thought that Cathy Young might take time from her not-terribly-taxing schedule at "Reason" Magazine (and the quasi-reprinting of pieces at The Boston Globe) to really investigate what is in the Qur'an and Hadith, and not rely so much on the anecdotal evidence of nice Muslims she has known -- whose ability to misrepresent either their own views, or the contents of Islam -- whether out of nothing more sinister than filial piety or embarrassment hardly matters in the end -- to unwary Infidels, who do not know enough, have not studied enough, to judge for themselves.

I thought that she would read "While Europe Slept" and "The Legacy of Jihad" -- that compendium of useful scholarship that has been carefully covered over by current apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim who have assumed power over many academic departments, including most famously that of Columbia.

I had assumed all kinds of things, because I thought Cathy Young was a believer in skeptical inquiry. I thought she might actually come to the same conclusions as Hume and Bertrand Russell (who surely must be a tutelary spirit at "Reason" Magazine, and whose scathing remarks on Islam in both "The Theory and Practise of Bolshevism" and in his "Unpopular Essays" perhaps need to be read by Cathy Young), as Pavel Kohout and Yelena Bonner, as Ibn Warraq and Oriana Fallaci and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, all those famous skeptics in the history o philosophy, or former dissidents in the Soviet Union, or former Muslims, who have shown a spirit of inquiry and analysis that, I'm afraid, Cathy Young has not emulated -- not even tried to emulate.

A melancholy sight, the spectacle of someone who should have studied and thought more, but failed to do so, before passing hasty and ill-founded judgment.

Having failed to do so, Cathy Young is now unlikely to respond to the criticisms here by now engaging in that further study once suggested to her. Or if she does, it will likely be in a spirit of looking for justification for what she hastily concluded (about Oriana Fallaci, about me, about Islam), rather than in a spirit of starting over, rethinking the whole matter of Islam, its tenets, and its history, and trying to discover the truth. Someone suffering from wounded amour-propre can as a result have his reason clouded, even if that someone is a Contributing Editor to "Reason" Magazine.

Posted by: Hugh at June 12, 2006 12:44 PM

I'll wait here, and hope that she takes notice of what's posted above, and dutifully denounces it.

Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2006 6:30 PM

Ms. Young, instead of worrying about the mild critiques of her [self-admittedly relatively-uninformed] stance regarding a world terror cult that Mr. Spencer has engaged in, would do better to aim her anxieties, instead, toward those to whom reason itself is a contemptible "Western infidel invention", along with "democracy", "equal rights for women", and "freedom of conscience", etc..

Islam, on all of these subjects, is not moderate. So, a "moderate" follower of such global intolerance becomes a phantasm. A logical impossibility. An unreasonable assertion.

The "moderate" Muslim is simply the "water" in which the militant jihadists "swim". Thus far, almost without any resistance. And nearly none of these unicorn-rare creatures have ever turned in their terrorism-preaching brethren.

Let her learn a little more about the root contempt which Islamic dogma has for women, if nothing else motivates her toward a reasonable grasp of the Koranic and Hadithic condescension that a believing Muslim (according to very "sacred" tenets of their "faith") must feel for all infidels as well.

"Moderate" Muslims may not be acting on the cruel, intolerant, terroristic preachments of Koranic Islam, but that is not particularly reassuring, in the long run. Since, under pressure from their Ummah (blood being thicker than "nation", especially a non-Muslim nation), they could undetectably become more "immoderate" without much effort. Because, being a Muslim means more than being an "American", "Brit", "Frenchman" or "Nederlander" -(ask Theo Van Gogh... if you could).

There is no real allegiance to anything, for a Mohammedan, but Islam.

Read the Koran, Cathy. And the Hadiths.

Muslims do. Can you do any less?

Start with Sura 9:29-30.

Here's a useful link:

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchquran.html

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 23, 2006 6:58 PM

In her zeal to portray critics of Islam as bigots, Young focusses on smaller issues such as urination. Even on that small issue, she misses the point about the probable intent behind the urination. An analogy: Burning a piece of cloth is no big deal, but to publicly burn a flag is a bigger deal, because of what it tells us about the belief behind the act. It's not the burning of flags, or the publicly displayed urination that's the problem. It's the intentional and publicly displayed desecration of symbols of western culture (which is what Fallaci was talking about in the first place) that is bothersome, because it is a symptom of a more deep-seated hatred, and of more trouble to come.

That said, Ms. Young would be well-advised to actually read the Koran, with tafsir (and in doing so, even she will have a leg up on Bernard Lewis) before commenting further. This is the basic prerequisite for any discussion of Islam. Nearly all Muslims believe that the Koran is perfect; only a very few (radical reformists) admit to any problems in it. She is seriously mistaken if she thinks she can float the bigotry canard without first doing the necessary homework to find out whether or not criticism of Islam constitutes bigotry.

On Bernard Lewis, I think Robert is being very generous. Lewis is an expert, to be sure, but he is an expert who has gotten by without a mastery of the basics. The basics start with the Koran. Without that foundation of understanding, every assumption built up subsequently, without it, is precarious at best.

(Isn't it interesting that westerners prefer to read about Islam from Lewis and not Qaradawi? After all, Qaradawi is more qualified, much more knowledgeable, more popular, and more influential than Lewis. Could it be that reading Qaradawi is less pleasant for westerners than reading Lewis?)

Posted by: Archimedes at June 23, 2006 7:01 PM

"She, contributor to "Reason" magazine, who presents herself as owing allegiance to no cult or belief-system"

It surprises me that a magazine that is widely read by objectivists and libertarians would publish views that are more likely to be found in post-modernist rags like the New York Times and the Guardian.

Fortunately, (relatively) anti-dhimmi articles such as this provide some assurance that not everyone at Reason has sipped the multiculturalist Kool-Aide:

http://www.reason.com/rauch/041706.shtml

Posted by: Pavlov's dog at June 23, 2006 7:13 PM

Liberal agenda:
Keep changing the topic, it's harder to hit a moving target.
When the opposition does score a bullseye, claim that they still missed.
Obfuscate and cloud the issue as much as possible.
Pretend to be well informed and intelligent even when it's obvious to everyone concerned that you are a raving lunatic and have no idea what you're talking about.
When all else fails, deny, deny, deny.
Use catchy phrases and sound bites like "Bush lied and people died".
Remember it all depends on what your definition of "is", is.
And finaly, the worse the Conservatives can be made to look, the better the Liberals look (even when they're covered in their own fecal matter).

Posted by: Bohemond_1069 at June 23, 2006 7:38 PM

While we are on the exalted subject of urination, I listened to a segment on the Rush Limbaugh radio show awile back about urine bombs. It seems that highway worrkers had been finfing plastic milk jugs filled with urine littering the interstates. The theory is that yruckers are usrinating as they drive and siphoning it into empty milk jugs. Once the jug has been filled to capacity the trucker ejects it along the highway. thus avoiding any untimely restrooms stops. Also the state highway workers were possibly being subjected to a public health threat from these urine bombs. Just an interesting though useless piece of information for the urinally inquisitive.

Posted by: JanuaryMan at June 23, 2006 7:41 PM

Iknow it's off topic, but while speaking of Oriana Fallaci, can we put those poor raped nuns at Monte Cassino to rest. I've made something like this entry in the comments at Front Page, where the first accusation against her is given as:
Fallaci asserts that when jihad warriors occupied the Abbey of Montecassino in Italy in 883, “the Muslims amused themselves by sacrificing each night the virginity of a nun. Do you know where? On the altar of the cathedral.”

The nuns were not serially raped at Monte Caassino in 883 but at an unnamed church, near Salerno, in 874.(Salerno and Monte Cassino could easily be filed away in the same corner of the mind for quite other reasons, of course).

The wording of her remarks bears a striking resemblance to an anecdote (selected as expressive of national manners) referring to the year 873 recounted in Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’( 1995 Penguin Classic edition, edited by David Womersley, vol lII, p.475. - in Gibbon’s original 6 vol edition: vol 5, ch LVI):

“It was the amusement of the Saracens to profane, as well as pillage, the monasteries and churches. At the siege of Salerno, a Musulman chief spread his couch on the communion table, and on that alter sacrificed each night the virginity of a Christian nun. As he wrestled with a reluctant maid, a beam in the roof was accidentally or dextrously thrown down on his head; and the death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of Christ, which was at length awakened to the defence of his faithful spouse.”

Gibbon ( who was thoroughly modern in his critical approach to sources),discusses the provenance of this anecdote in a footnote on the same page. Since the authorities to which her refers have become rather antiquated after two centuries, Womersley provides information on them in a bibliographical index at the back of his 1995 edition.

see it in context at:
http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume2/chap56.htm

scroll down to para ending with text footnote marker (10)

Posted by: wallyUK at June 23, 2006 7:52 PM

"Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has replied to my columns and has also challenged me to a debate, in which I have no intention of engaging."
(from the story above)

What a shame, I have somewhat been looking forward to read this, but now I suspect she is a bit afraid to face the cool logic of Mr.Spencer

Posted by: cosmicAvenger at June 23, 2006 8:01 PM

in above entry on Ms Fallaci and the nuns being raped, that second mention of the date should have read 874 and not 873

Posted by: wallyUK at June 23, 2006 8:18 PM

Hugh

Spot on. I was reading Ms Young's profile during my commute home tonight, and my first thought was that, for someone born and raised until the age of 17, apparently, in Moscow, she displays an unusual amnesia about that political environment. In my experience, those endowed with average intelligence and common sense under similar circumstances have a special organ developed for totalitarian systems. They can sniff it under any disguise.
I don't know--and it's irrelevant--what makes a 17-year-old forget not the Gulag, not Sakharov, not Solzhenitzyn--but the very simple, very routine facts of Moscow life like wedding parties making the pilgrimmage to Lenin's mummy, and the obligatory hadj to the same for visitors, including tourists, and the simple but everpresent imposed "volunteer work," like the subotnik, which meant sweeping the streets on a Saturday, banners for which were raised everywhere in Moscow, one couldn't escape them, to remind the Muscovites to mind their Friday night vodka intake to make sure they made it to the neighborhood subotnik, or else.

Just this couple of mundane things. Not Colyma, not the Stalinist purges, not Lubyanka, not the creation, together with the French, of a terrorist state, "Palestine," and a terrorist chief, Arafat, not even the creation of a vast Gulag of unspeakable suffering, of abandoned, orphaned, handicapped children, stretching into the satellite countries which those nations are still trying to recover from.

Posted by: ovidius_naso at June 23, 2006 8:43 PM

I like the idea of the hajj to Lenin's Tomb. Lenin was akin to Muhammad -- each remained after death zhivee zhivykh. More Alive Than the Living. Real live wires.

God save us from such live-wire high-wire acts. There was no fun in those funambulists.

Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2006 9:01 PM

There are many informed comments above so I will only note this quote that, to me any way, sums up the whole issue:

"Spencer wants to debate me, apparently, in order to demonstrate that he knows more about Islamic teachings and history than I do. And he probably does.

Small wonder the lady doesn’t want a debate.

Posted by: johnb at June 23, 2006 11:11 PM

C'mon Cathy. Admit you are wrong. Lots of closet liberals are coming out and speaking out after years of denial. You know Islamophobia is fear of naming Islam as the problem and you only need to say 'Islam is the problem' once to set you free. You have to say Mo is my god 3 times to become a Muslim but say 'Islam is the problem' once to set yourself free.

Posted by: John Sobieski at June 23, 2006 11:35 PM

The other day a certain "John Howard" infuriated me so much that I delayed my bedtime by ten precious minutes after reading his posting offering the usual misleading business of "Islam is not monolithic." As this same jejune point is made by an admiring poster at Cathy Young's site I shall repost, as a riposte to that, what I first posted in reply to that "John Howard" the other evening:

"You tell us again and again, in various ways, that "Islam is not monolithic." Yes, we know. But we also know that the same passages in the same Qur'an, the Uncreated and Immutable Qur'an, the one dictated by Gabriel and taken down by an Arab amanuensis, are those which all Muslims read as the Word of God. And the Hadith (why do you keep ignoring the Sunnah, which is at least as important, to many Muslims, as the Qur'an?), were long ago winnowed by the most authoritative muhaddithin, and have been ranked by them (e.g., Al-Bukhari and Muslim, as the two most authoritative of the Sahih Sittah, the six tippety-top ones). And what do those Hadith say about "Infidels" or "Jews" or "Christians" or "polytheists" or "jihad"? We can find, easily. It is all on-line. And we can find out as well what interpretive doctrines may exist -- in this case, that of "naskh" or "abrogation" -- which permits a reconciling of passages seemingly contradictory, which doctrine, alas, tells Believers that the earlier softer (so-called "Meccan") verses are cancelled, overruled (just as Plessy v. Ferguson is overruled by Brown v. Bd. of Education) by the much harsher, much more hostile and menacing later verses -- e.g. Sura 9. Are we to ignore the canonical texts of Islam because of local differences in food or dress or in the degree of syncretism (e.g. the marabouts of West Africa, or the syncretism of the much-persecuted "Anbangan" (Geertz's word) quasi-Muslims?

Not only are the texts the same, but when one examines, for example, the differences between the major sects -- Sunni and Shi'a and Ibadi -- one finds no difference in the topics that we must concern ourselves with. No difference in the necessity, the rightness, the duty of Jihad to spread Islam until obstacles to its dominance, all over the world, are removed, for Islam is to dominate and Muslims are to rule. That is right. That is just. That is in the nature of things. For all of us were born Muslims, and somehow were raised wrongly, so that when we become Musilms officially we do not "convert" but rather "revert" to Islam (for Western Infidel consumption, Muslims will also speak demurely now not of "reversion" but rather, nominally, of "New Muslims" -- use of the word "reverts" would raise awkward questions from Infidels that at this point Muslims would prefer not to answer.

And of course there are not only differences between Sunnis and Shi'a and Ibadi Muslims, but also in the role of a mystic approach -- that of Sufis, or those more recent sects deemed doubtful, by orthodox Muslims, such as the Ahmadiyyas (Qadianis), now forced in Pakistan to list themselves on official forms as non-Muslims, or the most interesting group, the followers of the Aga Khan, the Ismailis (remember those weigh-ins, when the Aga Khan would then be presented with his weight in diamonds from loyal followers -- the kind of thing that used to be shown on a Gaumont newsreel, with the plummy-voiced announcer from yesteryear: Time Marches On!). And furthermore, there are four schools of Jurisprudence in Sunni Islam -- Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and I forget the fourth because I'm having so much fun.

But here is the main point. They have differences -- for example, as to the kinds of hudud, or codes of punishment, to observe. They have differences based, for example, on whether or not Islam has been affected by, its edges worn down a bit by, the presence of a large number of non-Muslims. It is probably true to say that some Lebanese Muslims, because of the Christians, and some Indian Muslims, are less menacing in outlook then those of, say, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or the Sudan. But the teachings that we care about are those which are all about Infidels. And those teachings do not and have not changed.

Of course there are some Muslims who do not subscribe to those teachings. But how do we know who they are? Of the ones who claim to be "moderates," which ones are and which ones are feigning? Which ones are telling the truth, but may, for reasons having only to do with personal setbacks (it need not be some element of foreign policy, or of politics at all, to trigger a reaction and a return to the full Islam, the Islam which divides the world between Believer and Infidel), become the "immoderate" Muslim who so rightly alarms us? Think of Hanif Kuraishi's "My Son the Fanatic." Funny when it first came out, not so funny now. We can't take that risk. We shouldn't be expected to.

Besides, we have a duty to preserve or own legacy. We may all be rotten to the core. Many are. But we were handed certain things. Artifacts. Works of art. A tradition of free and skeptical inquiry that might yet allow us to survive. We have no right to simply throw over whatever was created by and for Western civilization, by people -- Spinoza and Hume, Michelangelo and Balthus, Jefferson and Lincoln and ten thousand others (just look at the index alone in Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence" and realize that those names are only a small fraction of those who created the West, and then compare that list with the usual Muslim dozen -- Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Razi, etc. For god's sake, look at the mental desert of Islam, the desertification every which way, the narrow channeling of artistic expression into Qur'anic calligraphy and architecture, with no sculpture, no painting of living creatures, hardly any music (certainly no equivalent to Western church music). Look at how the keepers of the belief-system of Islam discourage, and punish, the efforts of some at free and skeptical inquiry.

You may be willing to find solace in the obvious -- that Muslims are not prefabricated beings, identical in language, clohting, food, schools of Muslim jurisprudence, and so on. That is no consolation for me.
Because the Jihad duty remains the same, and the hostility -- inculcated by those Qur'an ic passages, those Hadith stories, that example furnished by Muhamamd. Andwhat do you make of the role of Muhammad, clearly the main figure in Islam, with 83% of the texts devoted to him, 17% to Allah?)? What do you make of the fact that he married a nine-year-old girl? What "context" would you like to put that in? Are you aware that virtually Khomeini's first act, when he came to power, was to lower the marriageable age of girls in Iran to nine? Do you know why? And what about the assassination of those who mocked Muhammad -- Asma bint Marwan, Abu Akaf? What about the beheading of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza? The attack on the inoffensive Jewish farmers, tilling their fields in the Khaybar Oasis? Or a hundred other grim details, of that Perfect Man, uswa hasana? What do you make of all that, since there are not various versions of Muhamamd which various communities of Muslims accept -- there is only one, as there is the same Qur'an, and the same authoritative collections of "authentic" Hadith?

Your point about "Islam is not monolithic" misses entirely our point. Islam, in everything that pertains to Infidels, is in fact remarkably "monolithic." And you can test this with the evidence of 1350years of Jihad conquest. No matter where that conquest took place, no matter whether those conquered were Christians (of all kinds), or Jews, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Jains, or Confucians, or anything else in this sublunary world, the treatment meted out to those subjugated non-Muslims was always and everytwhee quite similar. Oh, a decent ruler, a ruler who was syncretistic, might make a difference. Akbar, for example. But why is gentle Akbar, who removed the Jizyah on Hindus and who no longer massacred them (some 60-70 million Hindus were massacred by Muslims, as you must know), not revered but rather ignored or reviled by Muslims -- precisely for his mildness? It is Aurangzeb and Mahmoud of Ghazni who are revered. And in Iran the Shah and his father tried to, and for a while succeeded, in elevating the status, or at least protecting, Jews and Christians -- a protection that is hardly to be seen now that the Shah is gone.

No. Islam is not monolithic. But when it comes to the attitudes toward Infidels, and the observable treatment of Infidels by Muslims, it is disturbingly monolithic enough.

And that is what we, the Infidels, are worried about. And we see no reason to risk our societies, our advances, our art and our science, and our everything, on the slender and entirely foundationless notion, that you presented at another thread, about some "reformation" that somehow -- how, exactly? -- will be achieved by Muslims living in, protected from retribution by other Muslims --- in the West.

The immutable and canonical texts, the 1350-year history of conquest and subjugation, and the observable behavior of so many Muslims in so many countries today, all tell us otherwise.

Sorry.

No can do.

Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2006 02:21 AM

Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2006 11:52 PM

Hugh-

Mao the Red was entombed in a similar crystal container after death, to which the former NBC anchorman at the time, John Chancellor, quipped:

"Now, millions of Chinese can go to see peasant under glass."

Editorializing. But I liked it.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 23, 2006 11:59 PM

Mr Spencer you do yourself no good, and you elevate the Cathy Youngs (besides wasting your time).

Hers is just one out of thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of internet web logs (blogs), vanity things mostly, and too much attention is paid to them.

Who has the time to respond to every blog that happens to mention you? And what better way of promoting yourself and increasing your own traffic and getting attention is to get the attention of
others by making derogatory and inflammatory comments.

Ignore her, and those of her ilk, and BTW, notice that she brags about her Moscow background, so we have here. What? A commie maybe?

Posted by: Nariz at June 24, 2006 12:00 AM

Conservative agenda:
Keep changing the topic, it's harder to hit a moving target.
When the opposition does score a bullseye, claim that they still missed.
Obfuscate and cloud the issue as much as possible.
Pretend to be well informed and intelligent even when it's obvious to everyone concerned that you are a raving lunatic and have no idea what you're talking about.
When all else fails, deny, deny, deny.
Use catchy phrases and sound bites like "You are either with me or with the terrorists"

And finaly, the worse the Liberals can be made to look, the better the Conservatives look (even when they're covered in their own fecal matter).

The above is from the Karl Rove playbook (the milder parts BTW, the rougher parts are attack where your opponent has the most moral strengths, to spread innuendo's and lies too ridiculous to be responded to and if refuted insinuate "the lady doth protest too much (the trashing of John McCain and Max Cleland for example). Or let's talk about the trashing of Real War Veterans and Heros like Sen Murtha, by chickenhawks who had "other things to do" during the Viet Nam war, or had a rich and influential dad who kept him out of war service (Dubya, and covered up his own desertion err AWOL).

And don't give me any lip punks, I'm a retired special operator with enlisted and commissioned service and real combat in the Republic of Viet Nam.

Posted by: Nariz at June 24, 2006 12:11 AM

That's good. He said that on the air?

The two best quips in American public life during the last few decades are [to the best of my knowledge and belief, Your Honor] these:

1) Adlai Stevenson, asked about Norman Vincent Peale's inveighing against him, replying "I find [St.]Paul appealing, but Peale appalling."

2) Daniel Schorr, remarking on what journalists manage to get away with:

"Forgive us our press passes."

They order these things better in France. Pierre Mendes-France seldom resisted an occasion for wordplay (see Speros Vryonis's account of what Mendes-France managed to quip in Istanbul in September 1955).

Jack Lang once defined a brainstorm as a "remue-meninges." [a word he invented, a comical calque from the existing word "remue-menages"]

Stevenson, Schorr, and Jack Lang are all people on one side of the political spectrum, and this may cause more of those words -- "Marxist" and "socialistic" -- to be flung about. Silly.

Stevenson's son Adlai Stevenson II or was it III, had terrible views on Israel, and was a supporterof the S. S. Liberty deliberate-attack canard, that has finally been put to bed. In other words, he was hanging around the recognizably vicious sort -- Paul Findley, James Akins, James Bamford. I hope his distrubing views are his alone and did not come from anything his father said. Certainly Marietta Tree would not have stood for it.

Daniel Schorr has recently said numskullish things about Islam on NPR; he can't see the menace for what it is, presumably because of the Bush problem, can't quite get into that 1930s nov-shmozz-kapop-and-potsie mode. Or perhaps he will.

As for Jack Lang, he can't denounce les anglo-saxons and their works and days, and still get away with spelling his first name "Jack" instead of "Jacques" even if he did come up with "remue-meninges." Who does he think he is?

Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2006 12:16 AM

Nariz-

Mr. Murtha doesn't seem to understand the fundamental U.S. concept of "innocent until proven guilty" nor of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy".

He embarasses his own service the Marine Corps by betraying both sthese bedrock American values and also his fellow citizens presently in uniform.

I wish him a cure for his current foot-in-mouth disease, but it seems that shameless political advantage has destroyed his common sense and any understanding of the jihadists' use of his ill-advised "shooting off of his mouth" blather.

Let the legal system work through any accusations of misconduct in the ranks, first, before you slander those risking their lives for the freedom that Murtha uses only to be stunningly foolish.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 24, 2006 12:24 AM

Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six times as common today as they were a generation ago.

If the Swedes are as intensely committed to Islamic multicultualism as I think they are, they'll solve their kiddie sex problem the same way the Ayatollah did: legalize it.

Make the little kids street legal on their ninth birthday. Dating, maybe that could start at age six. But no monkey business! Hand holding and maybe some making out, but no petting. And absolutely no dating these little blonde haired blue eyed six-year old Swedish first graders without their watchful parents supervising from the next room.

And let's show some etiquette, Ahmed: Trim that beard down before seeing little Enga. Otherwise you could rub her alabaster face all red and stuff.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at June 24, 2006 12:27 AM

Hugh-

On the air, live.

I was a kid, and a little history buff, and laughed outloud -for the first time in my memory- at a technically non-humorous story on a national nightly newscast.

Nowadays, he would probably be fired by the p.c. police.

Can't be insulting those dead despots.

(Katie Couric would probably do a puff piece on which Windex works best on Mao's tomb. Lemon or regular?)

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 24, 2006 12:28 AM

"As it happens, I have travelled in Italy a lot and have seen a lot of the Somali street vendors. On two occasions, I have seen men urinating in the street. Neither of them was a Somali or a Muslim."
How did Ms. Young know that? Saw that they were not circumsised? Good voyeur.

Posted by: highbg at June 24, 2006 12:41 AM

Helas, I warned Robert about Cathy Young when I first alerted him to her first smear job, that she hasn't a single true thought of her own, but can only define herself as being in opposition to something. Whatever is under discussion, she will find a way to disalign herself from any position presented in order to appear above the fray. So in attempting to argue anything with her, one ends up in something like those computer gags where whenever you put your mouse over the right answer, it flits away to another part of the screen. She is incapable of recognizing her own public humiliation.

More disconsoling is that Reason, once a part of the thoughtful opposition, has (with the exception of the Rauch piece) been utterly clueless since 9/11, or since Virginia Postrel left as editor-in-chief. Supposedly the defender of our liberties against all enemies, the only enemy they can see is our government. That Islam is as statist and virulent a threat to human liberty as has ever existed does not ever seem to cross their minds, and conditioned as its writers are to seeing an oppressive, expansionist government everywhere due to the "War on Drugs," they can bring themselves to defend nothing our government does to protect its citizenry. Fashioning themselves as the canary in the coal mine, they now more resemble the fabled Monty Python parrot. Cathy Young makes a good fit on their pages.

Posted by: longtime lurker at June 24, 2006 12:46 AM

Robert

I tend to agree with Nariz here. Do we know how much of a readership does Cathy Young really have? Even the MSM newspapers - be it the NY Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, SF Chronicle, et al have seen circulation drop precipitiously, and I'm not sure that their web sites get top hits either. According to a recent (Pew?) poll, the only newspaper that has recently seen an increase in circulation has been USA Today. So is going after columnists in these newspapers really a wise target? And Reason magazine? The only place I've read of it is here.

I'd think focusing on the major opinion makers would be the way to go. Blogs might be useful, but they are accessed by people already on the Internet, and anybody already on the Internet might as well directly come here. Incidentally, what would it take to get this site linked at the Drudge Report?

The other major audience to go for would be talk radio. Even if you are nowhere near the Rush's and Hannities of the world, I'd think that the Michael Reagans, Michael Medveds, Lee Rodgers, et al are good places to start. Surely they are more worthy of your time than losers like Cathy Young?

Posted by: Infidel Pride at June 24, 2006 1:37 AM

WallyUK,

Thanks for the link. You may very well be correct about Fallaci's original (and uncited) source, which she may have partly mixed up with another incident. The Muslims also sacked and then destroyed the Monte Cassino in 883. Given the standard jihad policy regarding non-Muslim female captives, it is possible that nuns were raped there also.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 24, 2006 2:04 AM

Re: Cathy Young's statement: "As it happens, I have travelled in Italy a lot and have seen a lot of the Somali street vendors. On two occasions, I have seen men urinating in the street. Neither of them was a Somali or a Muslim."

With her remarkable talent for discernment, she'd make a good consultant for law enforcement profiling of Muslims.

Posted by: Television at June 24, 2006 3:57 AM

... my deplorable views on "Islamophobia" are due to the fact that (1) I'm a non-Jew (which would come as a big surprise to my Israeli relatives ...

Like some of my best friends/relatives are ...?

Come on, there are plenty of dhimmis in Israel dreaming in a cloud of kumbaya...!

Posted by: Cynic at June 24, 2006 8:34 AM

the marabouts of West Africa...

So called because they are hermits and nobody knows their wharabouts.

Posted by: Interested at June 24, 2006 9:04 AM

Quijybo wrote:

Try to look at this dialog from an impartial perpective. You are actually debating public urination. This cannot be good. Insignificant critics like this are best left alone, in my humble opinion.

I agree. Robert and Hugh, don't waste your time and energy on such maggots. She can think whatever she wants. The public's opinion is gradually shifting towards our viewpoint, thanks to Islam continuing to be... Islam.

Cathy Young is a deluded, unthinking victim of our liberal education system, a severe case of leftist brainwashing victim. She sees what she wants to see.

Posted by: US_infidel at June 24, 2006 10:54 AM

Nariz!

Murtha is in good standing.

With Benedict Arnold.

Maclellan.

Custer.

He is a JOKE and a waste of gevernment paycheck.

He probably agrees with Coward Cathy.

Posted by: Gary at June 24, 2006 11:46 AM

Nariz,

You're right. It isn't worth replying to everyone who has a blog.

Cathy Young, alas, writes for the Boston Globe and Reason magazine. Her nonsense is influential, or at least widely distributed.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Posted by: jihadwatch at June 24, 2006 12:17 PM

"Cathy Young, alas, writes for the Boston Globe and Reason magazine."

Keep in mind that Reason magazine does accept unsolicited manuscripts (I found link for this on the website). Perhaps someone with writing talent (other than Robert or Hugh, that would be too conspicuous!) could submit something to counter Cathy's dhimmitude.

Posted by: Pavlov's dog at June 24, 2006 2:02 PM

Memo to Cathy Young:

Here is a key Kuranic passage (the origin is held by Muslims to be from God so realize that is it taken seriously by Muslims and may not not be excised) : "and when the forbidden months have passed slay the infidels everywhere they are found, besiege them,. capture them, torture them, prepare every stratagem of warfare against them...."

Ms. Young do you know what that is? That is conspiracy to commit multiple first-degree murder.

I rest my case.

Posted by: pythagoras at June 24, 2006 3:06 PM

Wharabouts -- that's a good name for wellies.

Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2006 5:09 PM

A little poem.

Cathy Young suggests a wrinkle
In Spencer's stream of thought on tinkle.
Do those Musselmen intend
To douse with pee and thus offend?

Or do they simply unleash torrents
When in Rome and when in Florence
Like the beasts upon the farm
Who do so not intending harm?

I think that Cathy Young's behind
In this debate -- and she's unkind
And thoughtless to express her smear
She's only bringing up the rear.

Perhaps one day she'll take a look
At Islam's crazy wretched book
And then she'll know she wasn't right,
That Mr. Spencer won this fight.

Posted by: jsla at June 24, 2006 7:02 PM

Could be titled "Urine trouble now..."

Posted by: jsla at June 24, 2006 7:06 PM

Torrents and Florence is a particularly good rhyme.

Posted by: Interested at June 24, 2006 7:55 PM

Thanks very much.

Imperative also were: "Cathy Young's behind" and "bringing up the rear" (done clumsily I admit). It's part of a cycle I'm working on called "Dabbling with Dribble" which issues later this year.

Posted by: jsla at June 24, 2006 8:46 PM

Jsla,

Lol! It's brilliant.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 24, 2006 9:08 PM

jsla-

Very droll. (Did you write that in a snowbank?)

I would only add:

Cathy Young
Is clearly Old
Enough to read
the letters bold
That form the book
"al-Recitation".
Enough with her
Prevarication.

Burma Shove.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 24, 2006 11:33 PM

Debating cretins in the dinosaur media is like playing Whack-a-Mole at an empty game-arcade: It's pointless, isn't any fun, and no one is watching.

Cathy Young? "Reason" Magazine?

*Nobody* reads this obsolete crap....save vicariously _here_.

Even if she were a blow-dried talking head on network television, nobody would be watching -- everyone has 200 channels now, and the box is never on a number below #25.

Posted by: Mike Schneider at June 25, 2006 7:36 AM

"Dabbling with Dribble"

Have you read any Margaret Drabble? If not, don't. She can't control her plots - in fact she's inclined to change horses in midstream.

Posted by: Interested at June 25, 2006 12:20 PM

a blow-dried talking head...

Mmmmm.

Posted by: Interested at June 25, 2006 12:22 PM

Your quibble with Drabble: her scribbles are babble? Then I wont' read her, not even a nibble. She sounds discombobulated, a writer for rabble.

Posted by: jsla at June 25, 2006 1:30 PM

"Ms. Young do you know what that is? That is conspiracy to commit multiple first-degree murder."

No it's not, silly. It's downtrodden victims of the evil West (the Roman Empire at the time, the Neo-Roman Empire now) freedom-fighting the only way they can, poor wittle Muslims, stroke stroke, smooch smooch.

Posted by: Television at June 25, 2006 2:42 PM

Cathy Young Replies!

"Ode sans Commode"

My name is Ms. Young and I write for the Globe.
Today I will unmask a true Islamophobe.

It's that guy over there, on Jihad Watchi;
He's no better than Oriana Fallaci.

It's true I know nothing 'bout Islam per-se;
But neither do you; Touche!

So cease with the offers, I will not debate;
Couldn't if I wanted to such is my state.

They call me a Dhimmi which is terribly unfair.
It's the same holy warfare they wage on poor C.A.I.R

They're mean those right-wingers,
with their internet zingers;

A real Jihad I say! tho' without any bodies.
Now leave me alone! while I do my pilates.

Posted by: alexon at June 27, 2006 1:59 AM