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Important observations about the Pope Rage in Der Spiegel:
The pope has apologized for the outrage amongst Muslims sparked by his recent comments. But the episode proves once again that criticizing Islam is dangerous.Twenty years ago in the German city of Bremen, Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell's life depended on police protection. His offense? In a satirical program on German television, he let fly with a lewd joke about the then leader of the Iranian revolution Ayatollah Khomeini. Mass demonstrations in Iran -- orchestrated, no doubt, by the government -- were the result. The threats of violence led to an apology by Carrell, and he never again made a joke about any Muslim -- at least not on television.
In February 1989, the Ayatollah then released a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses." The book, he and other Muslim leaders claimed, was a grave misrepresentation of Islam. Rushdie's Japanese translator lost his life as a result of the fatwa and Rushdie himself went into hiding, though the Iranian leadership distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998. There remain, however, a number of fanatical Muslims who yearn to see Rushdie dead.
Feminist and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian who recently left Holland, also lives under threat of murder. In addition to a number of interesting books about the oppression faced by women in the Muslim world, she also wrote the screenplay for the short film "Submission." In one scene, a verse from the Koran -- demanding that women bend to the will of their husbands -- is projected onto a woman's naked body. The film was provocative, and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh paid for it with his life. He was killed on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim fanatic.
And then there's Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who a year ago published a series of Muhammad caricatures in his newspaper. Months after they originally appeared, the Muslim world erupted in protest against the drawings. He too must fear for his life.
One thing should be kept in mind, however: The often violent protests that erupted in the Muslim world in the wake of the cartoon controversy have often been manipulated and fuelled by Islamists. The bile currently being flung at the pope is no different.
But the attacks against the pope are especially grotesque. The severe criticism -- often coupled with threats of violence -- directed at the speech held last Tuesday by Benedict XVI is not just an attack on the head of the Catholic Church. The malicious twisting of the pope's words and the absurd allegations made by representatives of Islam represent a frontal attack on open religious and philosophical dialogue.
That so many in the Muslim world joined the protests against the pope merely show just how influential Islamist extremist groups have become. The political goal of the Islamists is clear: any dispute between Christianity and Islam must obey the rules handed down by political Islamism.
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at September 18, 2006 5:30 PM
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Good, but marred by committing the "Islam has been hijacked by extremists" error.
Posted by: ZionistYoungster![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 18, 2006 5:49 PM
I am not commenting the piece, but I am pointing out something curious.
When people talk about our crusades, the inquisition, violence parts of the bible etc (and unfortunately many new registered idiots are doing it), we reply with "no christian is blowing up a plane", "no christian is blowing up a mosque" etc.
So essentially we are saying "judge us by how we are rather than from our books and literal interpretation".
A guy on another board wrote about this pope incident to express his feeling to one of the million groups of people representing muslims (in the UK, it's called the ramadan foundation)
Here's part of their replies. Of course they badmouth the pope etc etc. and they say
"We ask everyone to judge Islam not according to what Muslims do but according to its scriptures. "
It cracks me up that they ask to judge islam NOT from the people (which are beyond presentable) but from the book.
It's the total opposite from us.
If I have to judge Hindus, I do it by staying around them and watching them, not reading their books, as well as buddists.
Since they too know the muslims are TOO unpresentable, they drive people to the book.
Posted by: FedUp at September 18, 2006 5:49 PM
The irony of all the islamic protests and the murder of an innocent nun in Somalia have shown that the Muslims themselves have proven true the very ideas that they protest. Seems that they are so stupid they don't even get that point. They just gather up in an angry ugly mass and demonstrate without question. Yeah, that's a culture I want in my back yard. Why do we keep letting them in?
Posted by: never_submit at September 18, 2006 6:01 PM
If they want to be judged by their "holy" book then they are IMHO in serious trouble...
Posted by: roguereligion at September 18, 2006 6:01 PM
Fed Up
I think your observations are interesting. It's also interesting that Moslems want to be judged by their scriptures and yet we are told that those scriptures cannot be interpreted in any language other than the original Arabic. So we're back to judging Moslem behavior after all. And when it comes to judging Moslem behavior, I think of that line from "Forrest Gump:" "...Stupid is as stupid does."
Posted by: Chatillon at September 18, 2006 6:04 PM
that's the point, their daily BEHAVIOUR is WORSE than the koran.
Why do you think they keep on saying "read the koran"?
because they are sure that western people will read the koran with the mindset of how they read the bible = a very old book with no repercussion on todays' world.
That's why they are suggesting to read it. The western mind would mark the violent passages as "outdated" and concentrate to the few obscure peaceful ones.
That's why reading the koran is a double edge sword. To leftist, multi-culti, full of white-man gulty conscience, the koran is ATTRACTIVE.
Posted by: FedUp at September 18, 2006 6:05 PM
I would like Hugh's comment on WHY the muslims tell you to read the koran if THEY know it contains justification for violence.
Wouldn't be like self-suicide?
Posted by: FedUp at September 18, 2006 6:06 PM
Hey, Fedup - the answer to your question is in your preceding post.
Posted by: Pelayo at September 18, 2006 6:33 PM
Wasn't it Rodney Dangerfield who said: "I tell you I don't get no respect. I insult the prophet, and I don't even get a fatwa issued. I tell you, I don't get no respect."
Posted by: Mr. Slugworth at September 18, 2006 6:34 PM
Talking of the Koran, I was watching one of David Rosenberg's series 'The Cult of the Suicide Bomber' on TV tonight. In it he mentioned that the pre-recorded videos that these people make follow a formula which includes reciting a few verses from the Koran. Does anyone know if they have any particular favourites for the occasion?
at September 18, 2006 6:42 PM
HOWLER ALERT!!!
HOWLER ALERT!!!
Hey Robert, check out this quote by John Esposito in the Washington Post article:
"Pope 'Sorry' About Reaction to Islam Remark
By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 18, 2006; Page A01
link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/17/AR2006091700178.html
Quote:
"Esposito also said the speech contained an important factual error.
Benedict noted in the Regensburg address that one verse, or sura, of the Koran says, "There is no compulsion in religion," meaning that conversions should not take place by force. "According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat," the pope said.
Esposito said that, in fact, the "no compulsion in religion" is a later verse, from Muhammad's time in Medina -- when he had effectively established a state, not from the Mecca period in which he was under threat. "The pope was suggesting that the ban on forcible conversions was overtaken by later verses advocated the spread of Islam by the sword, but that is false," the professor said."
at September 18, 2006 6:42 PM
Who's next?
I think it is us.
This is beyond Rushdie, Ali, or Theo Van Gogh. In converstations during smoke breaks, I find too, too many people who have never heard of the afore mentioned people. The common American, like the marginal Muslim is ignorant. However, the assassination of the pope or an attempt on his life might tip the balance so that everyone will know that we are most likely their next target.
Being a regular visitor to many, many websites and reading on-line fatwas and books led me to believe that everyone was as aware as I was. Lately, have I been awakened to the ignorance of too many people.
Posted by: Pelayo at September 18, 2006 6:46 PM
pavlov, here is that thing discussed on http://www.westernresistance.com/
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/002967.html
They end up at the conclusion that the pope wasn't in error.
Posted by: FedUp at September 18, 2006 6:50 PM
I know that I've asked this before, but can somebody please define Islamist for me?
I mean, we don't have Christianists or Buddhistists or Hinduists.
Why do we keep reconjugating Islam?
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at September 18, 2006 9:18 PM
If they do go after the pope he will be martyred. And in the real sense of the word. Blowing oneself up to kill children doesn't count in my book. The back lash will be severe. My only worry is it will be disproportionate(on the weak side). They kill the pope we should nuke mecca. Of course bush will chicken out.
Posted by: pissedoffcanadian at September 18, 2006 9:29 PM
Have the Dutch built a memorial to Theo?
If they haven't, then shame on them.
If they have, anybody got the police blotter on the various Moslem desecrations of that monument?
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at September 18, 2006 10:03 PM
John Esposito, the lean, mean jogger, the recipient of Arab money for his Center (he boasts about that Arab money) of "Muslim-Christian Understanding," which is merely a facade for a group of apologists, with Esposito leading all the rest (Haddad, Voll, and others), attacks the Pope, deliberately avoids the main point -- is there compulsion in Islam or isn't there? -- and has Islam a long record of using violence, the violence of Jihad, the military conquest of vast territories in which large numbers of culturally much more advanced, wealthier, settled populations -- of Jews and Christians, of Zoroastrians and, later, Hindus and Buddhists -- were subject to at least forced dhimmitude, a condition of permanent degradation, humiliation, and physical insecurity, that naturally would lead some of those enduring this status, in order to escape it, to convert to Islam. Is that not "compulsion in religion"? And of course there are all the mass murders of conquered non-Muslims, including the 60-70 million Hindus killed, and those who were terrified into, forced into, converting to Islam. Isn't that "compulsion in religion"?
Esposito so far has been permitted to keep his monstrous enterprise, treasonous to the West, and certainly to Catholicism, at Georgetown, one of the most important Catholic universities. How can this continue? How can he be allowed to retain, and to flaunt, a Georgetown connection? What alumni, what faculty, what students are offended by the presence of John Esposito, and his attempt to mask his propagandistic enterprise that, objectively, furthers the Jihad in just the way that CAIR does -- and who thought nothing of attacking the Pope by deliberately missing the point? Many, I should think. Many should withhold donations to the university, many should investigate what goes on, what has been going on, at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding -- one more phony aspect of the whole "dialogue" racket with which we are all, by now, familliar.
Let his center go. It will exist. It will still have the money from the rich Lebanese contractor who started it, and the later infusions, most recently from the Saudis, whose solicitude for Christians and Christianity is well known, which is what makes it so understandable that Esposito would solicit them, or perhaps had no need to -- they know a good thing for Islam, even Wahhabi Islam, when they see it. And for them, and for Sheik Al-Azhar, and for Esposito's hysterical Hamas friend Azzam Tamimi, his "ustadh," and for so many other deeply unsavory characters who have marked Esposito's entire professional life, if you can call it that, John Esposito is really quite a find.
One understands perfectly why the government of Saudi Arabia, and the Al-Saud family, would like to keep Esposito well-endowed. But why is his continued, and flaunted, connnection to Georgetown permitted, and not treated as the embarrassment, no the disgrace for Georgetown, it so obviously is.
Posted by: Hugh at September 18, 2006 10:21 PM
"I would like Hugh's comment on WHY the muslims tell you to read the koran if THEY know it contains justification for violence.
Wouldn't be like self-suicide?"
-- from a posting above
CAIR and other tireless conductors of Da'wa will never send out copies of the Hadith, unless of course they have carefully gone through them and left only the most anodyne or most impenetrable. They will not distribute, either, the life of Muhammad -- that is, the life of Muhammad that Muslims learn about, with the decapitation of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, the murders of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Akaf, the marriage to little Aisha, aged nine, the attack on the inoffensive farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, the treachery -- "war is deceit" said Muhammad -- of the treaty made in 628 A.D. with the Meccans at Hudaibiyyah.
But the Qur'an they do distribute. They know that the recipients will scarcely be able to make their way through a work which is so confused, in parts so utterly incomprehensible (as Christoph Luxenberg and hundreds of other Western scholars have noted), so strange to Westerners in its arrangement, with passages that in English (or French for that matter) sound much milder than they are in the original, and of course, simply unlikely to be read all the way through, with proper understanding.
Take, for example, the Arabic phrase "Jihad fi sabil Allah." Jihad in the path of Allah. Christian readers will immediately think that is a fine sentiment -- just a Muslim version of "walk in the ways of the Lord." But it isn't, not at all, and those who know what the word "Jihad" means, and not only from the Qur'an itself, but from the gloss provided both by the Hadith and by the life of Muhammad, the sira that depicts the Perfect Man, uswa hasana, who must be obeyed, and emulated, in all things, will realize that "jihad fi sabil Islam" is a sinister phrase.
The Qur'an is unlikely to be read with proper comprehension, but just to ensure that the unwary Infidel, curious about Islam, is carefully directed, those who distribute the Qur'an are also careful to point out a handful of semi-plausible passages. No pointing out of 9.5 and 9.29 or indeed of Sura 9 at all. Much more 2.256 ("no compulsion in religion") and 5.32 but without 5.33 (Bush fell for that -- one wonders who's been teaching him).
After all, they have to provide something. They provide the Qur'an, but do what they can to make it a case of directed reading, directed away from the essential meaning of the Qur'an, to a few bits, abrogated by later verses (but why point this out to Infidels?), that offer the thinnest of reeds on which to hang one's hopes for a "good" Islam somewhere in the middle of all that "bad" stuff ("But don't the Jewish and Christian texts say terrible things" etc. Muddy the waters, keep muddying them -- isn't that what you would do, if you were a Muslim? Of course you would.).
Perhaps that answers your question.
Now I have a question for you.
What is "self-suicide" and how does it differ from "suicide"?
Posted by: Hugh at September 18, 2006 10:34 PM
A.P.Farmer, this is from the Yahoo dictionary for -ist. "An adherent or advocate of a specified doctrine, theory, or school of thought"
I don't know when this word was coined, but I believe that it came about when people were trying to find a nice word for "Muslim Killers."
It's this PC doubletalk where we have been cowed into finding nice words to describe ugly people. The last thing we want to do is insult a baby killer.
Posted by: Pelayo at September 18, 2006 11:22 PM
Islam has been "hijacked by extremists," but they're also the pilots and ground crew.
Posted by: Beagle at September 19, 2006 1:30 AM
Alarmed Pig Farmer asked
Why do we keep reconjugating Islam?
To distinguish the "few radicals" (Islamists) from the "vast majority of moderates" (Muslims).
Kind of like radical "Nazists" vs. moderate "Nazis".
Posted by: special_guest at September 19, 2006 2:07 AM
It's not really a "reconjugation" (conjugation refers to verbs, not nouns). It's more a process of what could be called euphemization through tweaking the word in various ways or supplying weak synonyms.
I devoted an essay on my blog to this:
The Camel in the Room: Prefixes, Suffixes, Qualifiers and Euphemisms
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2006/06/camel-in-room-prefixes-suffixes.html
at September 19, 2006 2:34 AM
When exactly does a Muslim become a "moderate" ?
Is it when he fails to condemn violence but simply says "nothing to do with me" ?
Is it when he says "but you Christians started it ?
Or when he says "it's only a minority" and I only inwardly support them ?
Or when he says "look at Palestine, and Chechnya, and Kashmir" and we say yes.........they are all scenes of Muslim violence.
Just how does a Muslim show he is a "moderate" ? Does he listen in the mosque to words of hate against Jews and Christians and say..........."I shall do nothing but defend those who do" ?
I find it hard to know why Germans were accused of complicity with Hitler's crimes but so few Muslims are responsible for similar murders of Jews and Christians as those perpetrated in Poland by "a minority" of Germans in the Wehrmacht and Einsatzgruppen.
Why is the West so frightened of violence ? It tolerates it at street level in randomised form, and has a higher tolerance of violent movies and gangs roaming the streets than hitherto...........but it is seemingly cowed by Muslim violence.............or is it just politicians frightened of losing a Saudi pension or an arms contract ?
Posted by: Voyager at September 19, 2006 3:45 AM
Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, the Pope -- Who's Next? I was thinking about this even threats against the pope are being brushed off by the liberal media. I was thinking who has the respect of many and the media wouldn't dare to criticize. We need this person to speak out. the only person I can think of is Oprah. Hopefully she does a story on islamic jihad. Maybe then will the liberals get islam is a serious threat.
Posted by: pissedoffcanadian at September 19, 2006 5:13 AM
Hugh,
Good comments. This is why it is wonderful that we have the internet when it comes to getting to know what the Koran and the Hadiths teach. No need to get a copy of either, all you have to do is simply do an internet search about violence and the Koran for example, and the great thing is that you will get a lot of information.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at September 19, 2006 6:07 AM
even threats against the pope are being brushed off by the liberal media.
You are amusing. Of course the liberal media dislikes the Pope - he does not sanctify their erratic beliefs.
The "Liberal Left" is simply noise - they yelp and screetch like children and are given the bottle to silence them. The Muslim Fanatics have seen how easily Western Society caves into the noisy ones and think it is ripe for plucking.
It is simply a question of being resolute and saying - NO - and not backing down. But when did Western Society really fight for anything - I mean fight to preserve anything ?
at September 19, 2006 7:02 AM
"What is "self-suicide" and how does it differ from "suicide"? "
I know suicide alredy means "to self" but I wanted to stress if possible the "to self" tone.
I know it's wrong to say self-suicide.
Posted by: FedUp at September 19, 2006 8:33 AM
Voyager, you nailed it.
Unfortunately it's enough to say one of the things you listed to be labelled "moderate".
And yes again, the Germans received a lot more shit just for being Germans.
Posted by: FedUp at September 19, 2006 8:34 AM
Let's not forget Theo von Goth. Throat slit on the streets of Holland.
Oh, and that Dutch politician, Wilders, who is under constant police protection.
Posted by: Celsius at September 19, 2006 1:20 PM
Der Spiegel says that we should "keep in mind" that "the often violent protests...have often been manipulated and fuelled by Islamists."
And yet huge numbers of Muslims are quite eager to participate in these spasms of barbaric rage. I think it's about time we stop excusing them by blaming it all on the manipulations of a few radicals. The problem is pervasive. The Islamic scriptures are fundamentally intolerant and violent, and the traditions are barbaric.
Until large numbers of Muslims prove their bona fides by rising up and fighting for freedom for non-Muslims, we are fully justified in believing Islam to be the enemy of civilization.
Posted by: pst314 at September 20, 2006 8:57 AM
"Twenty years ago in the German city of Bremen, Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell's life depended on police protection."
"People ask me, "you make jokes about Jews, Christians, why dont you ever joke about the muslims?" Because they'll kill me!!" - An English comedian, who I shall leave nameless.
Posted by: Uriel Septim at September 20, 2006 2:19 PM
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