One of the reasons I was excited about Omar and Michael’s request to join me here was the opportunity to engage in a reasonable dialogue about Islam. So far I think we have succeeded. One thing tough struck me. Jason Pappas argued here that Islam itself is the problem, and over at QandO today Tom Perkins argues:
The Poet Omar Wrote:
“I mean we all know all Muslims are nothing but dangerous, violent primitives who respect nothing but the threat of cultural annihilation.”
Thing is Omar, that’s a good enough working description.
What Moslem’s there are who not merely don’t fit that description, but will risk their lives or what wealth they have to oppose it, they don’t seem to amount to much.
That’s coming from someone who doesn’t think much of C. “It’s the Jooos” Ford, BTW.
I take Tom at his word that he is not universally intolerant. I can’t say I have noticed anything to suggest otherwise. I also understand exactly what he is saying. Similarly with Jason, I can see where he is coming from as well, but I think in Jason’s case he is just wrong.
Let us start with Jason. First of all the problem we face is not terrorism per se, and Jason and others have made that argument forcefully and well. However, it isn’t just Islamism either. The Muslim world is filled with fascist, odd Marxist and Islamic totalitarian movements. They have morphed over time and adopted a more Islamic face, Saddam and Arafat presided over steadily more Islamicized states (okay, in Arafat’s case state is hardly accurate, but bear with me) and Assad is moving in that same direction as well, but at their heart they are not dangerous because Islam is dangerous, but because totalitarianism is dangerous. These movements have less in common with the ancient caliphate (and exactly how it was worse than the states of Europe at the time is beyond me) than they do with European fascist, Nazi and communist movements.
I often hear that if Christians were the ones flying planes into buildings we might be worried about non-Muslim fundamentalists in our country as well, but they aren’t. I think that is a very valid point about the problems in the Muslim world now, but I don’t think it has much validity in understanding Islam itself. The past of nations that were majority Christian shows that Christians are perfectly capable of religious terror, and there is plenty in the Bible one can use to justify whatever you want. Our secular movements have given us the Nazi’s, fascism and Stalinism and Leopold’s millions of victims in the Congo. In the case of Spain the fascist movement was specifically Catholic and trying to construct Gods kingdom on earth. Obviously secularists and Christians, as well as other faiths, can justify all manner of horrible things. Obviously mass terror can arise in many cultures. This is not about Islam; it is about totalitarian ideologies, many of them ostensibly secular. So far these totalitarian movements have killed many millions in the Muslim world, and I fear we are in for the “Long War.” Nevertheless the people of Europe have visited even greater horrors upon the world so far, we can’t just claim it is about Islam’s inherent violence. I think Paul Berman said it best:
I assume that Islam, like the other great religions, is a huge piano keyboard on which one could play this tune or that. Islam isn’t the cause of the problem. Islam is the setting of the problem. Islam has offered a language for the totalitarian movements but an anti-totalitarian language could just as easily be drawn out of Islam, and is by some people.
Omar is one of those people. Omar might not like the way I am about to put this, but I would ask Jason and Tom to consider this. Even if we accept Jason’s view that Islam is theologically bound to be violent, and that this interpretation is valid, why argue against other more liberal, if in Jason’s mind incorrect, interpretations? Self interest should drive us to encourage such mental gymnastics on Omar’s part. I don’t look at it this way, but it certainly seems logical. The last thing the Muslim world needs is to hear that Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad have the only correct ways to view Islam. Islam will not go away; we don’t need to insist that Muslims view us as subject to universal dhimmitude in order to be good Muslims.
In that spirit I suggest we all encourage the real liberal democrats in the Muslim community. Where are they? Our media is fascinated by the terrorist appeasers such as CAIR and the radicals. I suggest we support those who are actually fighting on our side in this war of ideas, and so I suggest The American Islamic Congress.(H/T Michael Rubin at The Corner) Sign their petition, read their agenda, support their activities, become a member. We keep demanding to hear from moderate Muslims, how about we actually help real liberal democratic voices be heard. It is in all of our interests, but the Muslim community’s most of all.
Update: Omar has suggested two other organizations: The Libforall Foundation and the Free Muslims Coalition. I have already begun to peruse the sites and they are very impressive. I sincerely suggest that those who are most set in their opinions of Muslims in general should spend the most time finding allies in that community. The stakes are too high. I have known too many Muslims who are not our enemies to give up on the idea that we have common ground.
Update: Omar has suggested two more links, Arabs for Israel and a link to Frontpage magazines profile of Abdul Hadi Palazzi who runs the Cultural Institute for the Italian Islamic Community.
Stirring post, Lance. I agree wholeheartedly. I recognize that Islam is not the problem today, any more than Christianity was the problem during the Crusades. Instead, those religions were the commandeered vehicles for dreadful human impulses. Attempting to destroy Islamism is not only morally repugnant, it is foolish. To be sure, Islamofascism is the clear and present danger in today’s world, and it must be recognized as such. But defeating it is more likely to come through undermining it than by pulverizing it. To that end, restoring moderate Muslims to the top of the hierarchy of their religion should be a paramount objective.
By the way, congratulations to you, Omar, and Michael on the blog! Very cool design.
David,
Thanks for stopping by, and I appreciate the sentiments. I hope you come her often. I have enjoyed reading you at QandO, even when I disagree (which reminds me, I need to go see about the last comment I left in response to you on campaign finance.)
Please do check out the American Islamic Congress website. I think it is worth our while.
It might be usefull to point out that Mohammad himself was a warrior who murdered and raped, just ask the Jewish Banu Qurayzah tribe. Islam was born a warrior religion with the concept of Jihad.
With respect to the Crusades, the Muslims had taken the Holly Land by force, and had been attacking Europe for over 400 years when the Crusades began. The Muslims invaded Spain in 711, and if they had not been defeated in 732 by Charles the Hammer, Christianity would likely have been destroyed in Europe. The first Crusade was launched around 1100 to reclaim the Holy Land, and it was only at this time that a Christian concept of Holy War was created.
Not too long ago, the Pope made some comments on Islam. One of his points was that the Koran is literly the word of god (as opposed to the Bible, which is inspired by god but written by man). Consequently, Christianity has a certain flexability of interpretation that Islam does not.
Furthermore, as I’ve pointed out in my above post, Islam is a warrior religion which offers up harsh treatment for non-Muslims.
It seems to me that reasonable Muslims are, in fact, non-practicing Muslims in a sense; or maybe more accuratly, not fully practicing Muslims. This will make it hard to make them dominate in Islam.
I do believe that Islam will likely be undermined by Western values, but then, that’s a large part of why they want to kill us.
Don,
That seems a little bit of a simplification of the crusades, but I wasn’t focusing on the crusades. Within Europe itself there were numerous and horrid wars fought under the flag of christianity. Not to mention the rise of Catholic Fascism in Spain in the 1930′s.
Of course that assumes that those who are preaching a belief system, that you are claiming is truly Islam, are accepted as holding to the one true path. I suggest we don’t encourage that belief.
I know many christians who claim that the vast majority of christians are not truly christian. They can claim it all they want, but it doesn’t mean the other christians have to accept it. Nor does it mean society should reinforce the belief that in order for people to call themselves christian that they have to accept those lines of belief. It would be especially dangerous if that particular line of belief were a violent death cult or one committed to theocratic control over the state. I suggest in that situation we should allow the others to claim to be as christian as they want to.
I could come up with a violent, despotic interpretation of the Bible as easily as I could the Koran. The Bible is hardly filled with people who are firm in their virtue, at least to modern sensibilities, in the establishment of the Judeo-Christian faith. The old testament hero David for example.
Omar could address this better, but given the many different strains of Muslim thought on any number of issues I can only say that the difference can’t be large.
Nor is the state of the contemporary Islamic world typical of its history. There have been many periods in Muslim history that have been far more tolerant and open to other cultures than the corresponding period in Europe. In fact, for all its problems, I would suggest the Muslim world was more open than Europe as recently as 1942. That Europe was ruled by totalitarian regimes that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We will not defeat this menace either militarily or intellectually by pretending that the totalitarian impulse is some exotic creation of arabs or Muslims. These movements rose out of Europe’s totalitarian past as much as it did from the Middle East’s own history. The intellectual debt is direct and easy to document.
The immediate cause of the Crusades was the Pope responding to an old request from he Eastern Empire for help. However, the goal was reconquest of the Holy Land.
Christianity was essentially a pacifist religion, while early Christian Europeans had come from warrior tribes. This was in fact a confliction for knights and other European Christian warriors, at least until Christianity came up with a concept of Holy War–which took a good 1,000 years.
Note that I’m not at all religious, and I’m not trying to push Christianity.
Which was in contest with athiestic communism, as I recall.
Some of the worst of Christian Europe came from Spain post-Islam, by the way. Brutal conquest can do that to you.
I think they can figure it out from basic principles. At least if my (and the Pope’s) understanding is correct.
Yes, how about in the New Testament? Early Chistianity was a pacifist religion, perhaps not in an extreme sense, but essentially . . . it wouldn’t have survived the Romans otherwise. How many Jewish warrior sects from the Roman period still exist?
In a sense, I’d say that Islam is stuck with Old Testament concepts. I think Christianity is a Jewish sect that was born with a different set of ideas due to Roman dominance (the irony is that it came to dominate Rome).
I think that this is mostly the result of romantic interpretation on the part of historians such as Gibbon, and is largely discredited. For example, the Muslim conquest of Spain was brutal, but it has somehow been protrayed as enlightened.
Certainly in the past there were relative Islamic enlightened periods, but it isn’t clear to me they were ever more open than the West.
Certainly not true of the Ottoman Empire, although under the British mandate period you might have a point, but largely due to British control and Arab weakness.
With respect to you, Don. The first crusades were fueled by a greedy Pope Urban II, who saw an opportunity to raise his own army feigning divine justice to re-conquere the Holy Land.
Pope Urban’s own ambition escaped him and his efforts produced a motley band of power hungry European Lords eager to add lands and cash to their portfolio.
It is true that Muslim Caliph’s were encroaching upon a diminishing Byzantine Empire, and Alexius I did in fact put out a call for help. But defending the Holy Land was hardly the inspiration, only the excuse.
Cheers.
Smart post, Lance. I will check out the website you mention.
Frankly, everywhere I look, it seems, I find American nationalists conflating Muslim identity with Wahhabist beliefs, speaking of the Muslim world as a unitary actor, and proposing massive force to “crush” the problem. Of course, Arab citizens misrepresent America in the same way, but I have lower expectations.
The truth is that the Islamic fundamentalists represent a vanguard. The average Muslim isn’t really involved. Not well-disposed towards us, but nevertheless not really involved.
We need to focus on having them stay not really involving, incentivizing non-belligerent behavior (frankly, “good” is too much to openly ask for).
Indiscriminate force does not achieve this effect. I’m not saying that we’re using indiscriminate force now (not discriminate enough, maybe) but everywhere I look, commenters want nothing but to escalate the conflict. In other words, they want to empower Osama Bin Laden.
Pogue,
What I know of the First Crusade (mostly from the book First Crusade, by Asbridge) doesn’t support your opinion of Urban II. I don’t doubt that there are historical interpretations that match what you claim, but I curious to know what facts back that up.
Glasnost,
I have seen little evidence that anybody has been able to use force discriminately. When we use force we can do our best, that is all. This doesn’t justify or not justify the war in Iraq or any other action, but no large scale military action has ever been fought in a more discriminate fashion than this one. To repeat something I have said before, history may have set a low bar for this administration, but we should be glad that at least they have jumped over it.
I appreciate your comments, but I am afraid I can’t agree with your vanguard analogy, or at least it is insufficient. Much of the middle east has and is being run by totalitarian regimes. Some are less threatening than others at the moment, but many could easily become more so. Bin Ladenism in particular may be a vanguard movement, but then most totalitarian regimes began as such. Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini to name three. Various strains of these totalitarian ideologies have inflicted death on a scale in the Muslim World that compares in scale and ferocity to what Europe suffered in the 30′s and 40′s. Our own cultural prejudices keep us from recognizing what has happened, but it is happening nonetheless. If ten million people died in central europe we would feel differently I assume.
Not really. Certainly by contemporary standards the Muslim rule in Spain was brutal. However, life in Christendom was hardly better. In most ways they were more tolerant and open than Christendom either before or after the Reconquista. That of course changed over time.
The Ottoman Empire was no bed of roses, but in no way can it be compared in brutality to Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, and was more open than Mussolini’s Italy or Franco’s Spain.
Do not misunderstand me, I am not asserting some inferior nature to the west or christendom. I am saying that there have been many periods that could be used as ammunition that Christianity and secular states inside Europe and the middle east have shown a barbarism that could be used to discredit both. That would be a mistake, and I think imposing some particular totalitarian and brutal interpretation of Islam is a mistake as well, whether by us or the Islamofascists.
Again, I think your opinion is colored by the romantic histories of Gibbon and others.
I assumed we were comparing contemporaries.
But, lets compare the Nazis to the Ottomans.
The Nazis murdered Jews and other groups, while the Ottomans murdered Armenians and Kurds. They both played the genocide game.
Both engaged in conquest.
For a typical German, Nazi Germany was a better place than for a typical Ottoman Turk, with one major exception: the Allied response at the end of WW2, specifically the Red Army’s mass rapes and murder, and the Anglo-American bombing.
The fundamental way in which Nazi Germany was worse was its effectiveness. It was more effective at killing Jews than the Turks were at killing Armenians, etc.
However, a non-Jewish German in 1938 typically had a better life (until cerca ’43 – ’45) than a Turk in 1912. And this was even more true for women. If you factor in the results of WW2, I think I’d rather be a Turk, but absent that Nazi Germany was probably a better place to be.
Well, I only brought it up because your comment was after I had mentioned 1942. As for government brutality I would still take the Ottoman empire over totalitarian Europe, but I don’t think it is important. That it is debateable makes my point just as well.
As for the late medieval period, I don’t think it has anything to do with Gibbon. The Muslim world was at that time more open to other cultures literature and science for example. That open attitude was surpassed by Europeans later.
However, it doesn’t change my point again. We can debate who precisely was better or worse in different era’s and times, but it is hard to maintain there is something uniquely brutal or authoritarian about Islam given the secular and Christian history.
It also doesn’t change that right now the Muslim world is in the grip of totalitarian ideologies, most began as secular, and most of them began as direct descendants of European totalitarian ideas. It is that that we should be combatting, whether it is set within a religious context or not. What we shouldn’t be doing is denying Muslims the intellectual room to reform and liberalize their polity by saying that to be a good Muslim they have to interpret their religion in ways that deny the possiblity of reform.
I find it highly amusing (and to a certain extent sad) that certain individuals in the Western world are attempting to explain and define Islam’s core beliefs and practices to those of us who are actually Muslims.
Don, for example, believes that as Islam is a warrior religion, I should probably be outback doing a little target practice from the back of my camel. It’s darned tough to hit the old bullseye with that darned hump in the way. Oh, and remeber I have to shoot holding my AK with just one hand since I have a sword and a copy of the Quaran in the other one. OR maybe I’m just not a practicing Muslim. I mean we just can’t have it any other way. Either I’m a fanatical camel-jockey or I’m a slacker lapsed Muslim.
Hmmm….
Tom Perkins, over at QandO, and his not so good friend C.Ford have both come to the conclusion that Muslims are violent, dangerous primitives and, at least according to Mr. Ford, should be annihilated now while we’re “weak.” Ah, nothing like the fresh smell of religious genocide in the morning.
Does anybody with at least room temperature IQ not understand at this point why the Muslim world is at least slightly concerned about the US? With messages like the above coming full blast daily along with the likes of Ann “kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” Coulter and Fallwell/Robertson “Muhammad (SAW) was a demon-possessed pedophile,” do you really wonder why we aren’t winning hearts and minds? Al Jazeera, etc. while certainly worthy of criticism aren’t a pack of lame-brains. They broadcast nonsense like this daily to remind Muslims worldwide what the US thinks of them. Are there reasonable, rational voices urging more productive and beneficial dialog with Muslim nations? Yes, but they’re not the ones getting their message out. Most of those urging dialog also make the naive assumption that there is no war on terror and that radical Salafis are no threat to the West. This is naivete at its worst and, to a certain extent, is just as bad as the Coulter/Fallwell “nuke ‘em till they convert” crowd.
More to follow.
Lance, I think you’ve done a splendid job with this post. While I disagree with a few of your points, overall top marks. I think that I can authoritatively speak on the subject of moderate Muslims (after all, I am one). The MAJORITY of Muslims in the West and in non-Arab countries are not Salafis. We do not desire to spread Islam by the sword. We do not urge violent jihad against “infidel” nations. We do not condone homocide bombings. We do not wish to see Israel cease to exist. We do not believe Islam to be anything but a religion of peace. We will not allow others to define who we are, be they Christian fundamentalists, Western secularists, Salafi extremists, or the media and punditocracy.
We DO wish to live in peace. We do wish to continue practicing our religion unhidered by suspicion, paranoia, and threats of persecution. We do wish to live happily alongside all other races and creeds. We do want an end to Salafism. We do wish that Islam was portrayed as the vibrant, diverse religion that it is instead of the medieval monolithic religion of death that it is not. We will eventually make our voices heard and overcome the radicals that have stolen and poisoned one of the world’s greatest religions.
Lance, great suggestion to have folks take a look at the American Islamic Congress website. I’m not terribly familiar with them, but they have a good rep in the circles I run in. Also, I would suggest the following:
http://www.libforall.org/
http://freemuslims.org/
And I would suggest avoiding anything associated with CAIR or the Muslim Student Association (MSA). Both are highly suspect regarding Salafi influence. I’m not saying that everyone involved with those organizations is an apologist for terror, but there are more than a few that I wouldn’t touch with the proverbial ten foot pole.
I was wondering when you would weigh in Omar.
Maybe I missed something with Tom. I find his opinion regrettable (okay, that is probably an understatement) but I saw nothing to equate him with C. Ford.
Nevertheless I agree with you here.
Thanks for the additional links, I’ll put them in the body of the post.
By the way, take a moment to let me know which things I said you have an issue with. I would like to discuss them.
Lastly, glasnost and Pogue I appreciate the support here. Along with Lance, MichaelW, and some of the other folks that I’ve seen online, you guys give me some hope that Americans are not universally under the sway of either the Muslim-hating right or the Muslim-fearing left. Dialog and diplomacy are the necessary tools for the future. Islam is a complex and, at least to non-Jews, difficult to understand religion. I cite Jews because Islam and Judaism are much more similar to each other than either is to Christianity which is the dominant religion of the West. Even non-religious Westerners are at least vaguely aware of the trappings of Christianity. Not so regarding Islam (or even Judaism in some of the more isolated ares [Iowa, for example, no offence meant to Iowans]). So it is going to be an uphill battle and I think the first step is getting people to understand what Islam really is. Listening to the punditocracy and MSM explain Islam is like getting Karen Armstrong to describe Catholicism. It just doesn’t work. I hope to continue my small part in all of this dialog by answering questions here at ASHC regarding Islamic beliefs. I highly encourage anyone who has questions to ask them. The only foolish question is the unasked one.
Again to my friends who support courteous and respectful dialog between the West and Islam, I thank you. Let’s all play our small part in making this world a better, more tolerant place. As Pogue would say, “cheers!”
I’ll post a bit more detail on this later, Lance including some of the specific issues you mentioned. Gonna call it for tonight!
Bin Ladenism in particular may be a vanguard movement, but then most totalitarian regimes began as such. Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini to name three.
So, basically you agree.
I’m not unaware of the potential of Wahabbiism to coalesce in control of a nation-state, and there certainly is potential for epic loss of life as a result, mostly for Muslims in the area but no small amount for us, as well. However, I’m pretty confident that Fundamentalist Islam will never control as large a portion of the world’s industrial and military base as did various totalitarian movements in the 1930′s. Not happening.
So, world conquest is all but out. Despite the bombast.
Besides, to delve into complexities – Sunni Islam may have been radicalizing, but Shiite Islam was already plateauing or declining in fundamentalism. I think Hamas and Hizbollah in contrast to the Taliban and Al-Zarqawi are an example of that.
Pre-Iraq war, of course. With a nice little engine of chaos in Iraq, who knows if that will last. You could almost see Ahmenidjad (sp) in Iran as the declination curve again of relative Shiite doctrinal liberalization…
From reading your posts at QandO I think this may be a place of difference for you and I. On the most drastic level it could just be wrong period. History is replete with examples where we underestimate the ability of others to develop large war machines. However, I think pretty confident is a fair approximation of reality. That doesn’t mean they can’t get to the point where they will try, and that is a much larger problem than we now face.
More difficult to ignore is that these totalitarian societies don’t have to get to that point. In fact, I think it is arguable whether that is even a fair approximation of Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan circa 1939. Germany’s military was on paper not all that impressive, the Japanese had many (including Yamamoto)who felt that Japan had little chance in a long drawn out war against the US and other adversaries. The goal was to strike rapidly and with surprise and deal the US a string of defeats and negotiate a peace. That didn’t work out, but I wouldn’t want to pay such a price again.
Hitler hoped that by dividing his enemies and striking quickly he could defeat them piecemeal, and with better tactics. Then once the industrial might of Europe was in his hands he would be able to build up his war machine. That came pretty close to working. Germany was not a hegemonic military power at the start of the war.
I can easily imagine scenarios where totalitarian societies in the Middle East could put the West (for want of a better term) in the same kind of predicament. Would they win? I doubt it, but I don’t want to fight a war such as that. I can easily see Europeans and other countries tacitly and/or through weakness, de facto, aiding such regimes in becoming a large enough threat to result in such a clash. In fact, isn’t that the kind of behavior we have already seen from France, Germany, Russia and China? With massive oil reserves and governments eager to cooperate to avoid conflict are we not seeing this kind of slow building up of capability? Hasn’t Hezbollah shown that the Israeli army is slowly losing its overwhelming ability to defeat its opponents?
I haven’t even brought up the use of asymmetric warfare (including terrorist strikes) to even out the scales a bit as well. Throw in the difference in willingness to descend into barbarism to attain victory and we have a situation which is far more problematic than you suggest.
Would the west prevail? Of course. The question is, if it is going to get worse (and that is an if) at what point does real resistance begin? I don’t know the answer to that, but I suggest we do our best to ideologically defeat this movement, or at least retard its growth, because in my mind the West as a whole will not really gird itself until the situation is truly dire. A pack of men with machetes can kill hundreds of thousands if no one really resists.
Glasnost wrote:
And I see the widespread tolerance of and support for Wahhabist thought in the Moslem world as evidence that viewing the Moslem world as a unitary actor is much more jusitifed than viewing them as disparate sects unaligned with one another. With respect to the areas of the globe where the American military is operating in prosecution of the war, this seems to be a perfectly valid view.
To The Poet Omar,
I respect your views, I believe you truthfully recount your faith as you view it.
I believe you are plausibly in the majority with those views among moslems living in the United States.
However, I note your use of a pseudonym. In what fraction of mosques in the United States would feel perfectly comfortable relating your views of Islam to your co-religionists as volubly as you have to us? Nine of ten, ninety-nine of a hundred? None, if they were to be addressed at random?
I would feel perfectly comfortable going to any randomly picked nominally christian church and as casually as possible relating in conversation that I was an atheist or that I felt there was nothing wrong with differing races of people intermarrying.
The odds I’d walk into an establishemnt of the World Church of the Creator are terribly low. Although, if I were to be that unlucky, I think I might well be the victim of violence.
I do not think you can say the same with anything like the same degree of surety, with respect to your nominal co-religionists. Not by half.
Not by a tenth.
Not by a hundredth.
Lance wrote:
Thank you for lending me such grace.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Tom,
You are welcome.
I sense and understand your frustration. However, while I think the underlying point has some validity, this statement is somewhat extreme if you believe it is possible that Omar would represent the majority of American Muslims:
In reading your other comments, I can say we see things somewhat differently, however, I think endorsing that sentence was a little too casual a way to express your displeasure with the lack of resistance to the fascists in the Muslim world. It sniffs at an approval of a level of brutality similar to C. Fords that I don’t believe you really endorse. Of course I could be wrong there, which would disappoint me greatly.
Glasnost,
I should say something else. In my ruminations on the potential issues I had with your analysis, I forgot, and shamefully so, to point out that that cost would most grievously be paid for by the Muslim world itself.
I would suggest that that has already happened. The loss of life in the Muslim world has been truly staggering. In the Sudan alone estimates have long since passed two million. We are talking about numbers that rival the great European totalitarian societies of the the 30′s and 40′s, Cambodia in the seventies and the Belgian Congo under Leopold. How you want to put that in your moral, realist or other calculations is a different question, but the death toll has been epic already.
Tom, the above quote that Lance mentioned is the reason that caused us not to see eye to eye here. I’m not directly associating you with Mr. Ford, whose notions I find despicable. I think I clearly marked the point where your agreement with him ended and his wild flight of genocidal fantasy began.
I actually would and do feel comfortable discussing religion and politics within the Masjiks that I visit regularly. I find that most are in agreement with my basic premises, although there is, of course, understandable differences of opinion regarding specifics (would you believe that some Muslims actually vote Democrat?).
The only Masjiks that I have visited that I felt distincly uncomfortable in were those that ask visitors whom they don’t recognize whether they are Sunni or Shia before they enter. Fortunately, I have not yet encountered any of that type here in the US, but I most certainly found them around the world. That type of discrimination and, perhaps, unspoken threat makes me both embarrassed and disgusted at the short-sightedness of some Muslim groups.
My use of a pseudonym has nothing to do with my relationship to the Ummah. It is both a personal choice and professional necessity.
I believe speaking to American moslems at this point is laughable, Glasnost mentioned a “speaking tour”, either they are engaging in the support of terrorism or they aren’t. If they are I hope the FBI catches them and if they aren’t it isn’t the place of the government to lecture them. It would be nice if CAIR were to be deprived of dometic support, this should be obvious to them without it’s being said.
All the moslems of the wider world need to say to us is, “We won’t try to kill you or let our neighbors kill you.” and then they need to live up to that. We in the West have a right to take that attitude and result on their part for granted.
If the current mild military half measures we are taking do not work out to ensure what should already automatically be true, then we can make total war on them.
I believe C. Ford is saying we should make not merely total war on them, but that we should make genocidal war on them, and we should do it now.
I do not agree that could be appropriate, unless the moslems of the world are so ineffective at containing the Wahabist threat that the Wahabists are able to develop and deploy genocidal weapons against us.
And given the capabilites of biological and nuclear engineering that are plausible, I think you would have to agree that is not impossible.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Tom,
Shouldn’t we be trying at every level in our society to reach out to the Muslim community and identify those that can be our allies? If we assert their religion is incapable of being a part of mainstream life, that it can’t be an ally in the conflict with fascism, are we not just pushing many in directions we don’t want them to go?
As for eventual total war, I think it is a possibility, and is a discussion we should have as a nation. I don’t think we are there yet, but if through ideological debate, military action or other means we do not make more progress I fear we may have no choice.
If we get to that point it will be easier and less deadly for all of us if we have allies within Islam against these totalitarian movements. That will be impossible if we ignore what we are really fighting, which is set within the Islamic community, but is not necessarily Islam itself.
This is similar to fighting the Germans, but knowing it wasn’t being German that was the problem or more exactly, fighting Franco while knowing it wasn’t the Catholic faith itself we were opposed to.
“If we assert their religion is incapable of being a part of mainstream life, ”
I do not see that saying it is inappropriate for the government to lecture a person is tantamount to saying they are incapable of being part of mainstream life.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Tom,
My bad, I wasn’t referring to that. I was referring to my main thesis and that possibly the comment you made that I quoted initially was not in keeping with that. As I said before, I see these issues somewhat differently than you, but I think your comment was made in an offhand way. I only picked on you, by the way, because I have a certain amount of respect for you. I hear things like that tossed off regularly, and your comment was what I had seen at the very time I was going to post. It was in fact a little unfair, and I hope I made it clear that I don’t think it necessarily conveys the totality of your thinking on this.
I see little point in picking on something from someone who I see as just an ignorant bigot or so opposed to me that we cannot really fruitfully discuss things. I am trying in your case to both respectfully take issue with the comment, while carefully making sure you understand I don’t wish to misrepresent you for an offhand comment in a debate with Omar. In my opinion you deserve better than that.
As you should notice, my real issue is with Jason and in the comments, with Don. When I asked the question that you are objecting to it was part of an attempt to see if we have any common ground on this, not the type of rhetorical question which is really just a way of asserting a belief I wish to pin on you. That tactic is used rather too often, so I can see why you might assume that is what I was driving at.
If there is a commonality between the Christian experience during the crusades and the current Muslim experience, it’s not the religion per se on either side, it is the mixture of religion with a tribal social order. And when I say tribalism, I mean the full continuum of social systems where the interests of the group trump the interests of the individual from clan-based primative tribalism to full-blown nationalism (fascism).
I think this is why the Enlightenment has proven so effective in advocating the separation of church and state.
yours/
peter.
I am interested in how you reconcile Islamic faith with modern society. The literal interpretation of the Koran would seem to make that difficult.
I’ve known lots of Muslims that were very good people. Most didn’t eat pork, but most drank beer. Some of them took Islam very seriously, but at some level I don’t think they were being consistent in their religion.
I made a similar point (in the opposite direction) with respect to European knights: they were devout Christians and warriors, but prior to the eve of the First Crusade, they had no concept of Holy War and they were members of a pacifistic religion. They lived a great confliction. I suspect something similar is going on with Muslims today.
The latest poll from Britian indicates that 25% think the London bombing was justified. And the smart ones who felt that way answered the poll differently . . .
That probably leaves a majority who think the bombings were not justified, so technically it doesn’t contradict your statement. But it does put your statement in a different light . . .
Glasnost, world conquest was out for Hitler and Imperial Japan as well.
Islam poses the threat of continuing terror as well as conflict in Europe. There is a significant problem with Muslims in France, Britian, and other European countries.
The US doesn’t have the same problem, in part because we don’t have a welfare state, we have different immigration practicies, etc.
Omar,
As I type this, I’m within walking distance of a Mosque. No one has attacked it yet, to my knowledge.
We can’t even profile people at airports in this country (Israel security experts have siad that American security is designed to annoy people: they point out we should be looking for people, not weapons).
The simple fact is, we are both restrained and politically correct. If something “breaks” and bad things happen to innocent Muslims (outside of normal war accidents), I suspect it will occur in Europe after Muslim’s overreach, not in the US.
Muslims should take the lead in fighting Islamic terror. To some extent we have seen that in Iraq, but it would be nice to see a counterpart to CAIR denounce Islamic terror and maybe even say something nice about Israel.
Don,
We have three links on this post that are to organizations that do just that, and I am about to put two more that Omar has provided including Arabs for Israel.
If you haven’t noticed I tend to agree with you on your point about WWII.
Actually I don’t think it does. Omar is very worried about these trends, as am I. The point is that a majority do oppose the Salafi’s or their Shia counterparts that support Hezbollah and their Iranian masters and that gives us some hope that Islam is not doomed to follow the fascists. We should be encouraging them, both by demanding they speak out and avoiding acting as if they are not being authentic Muslims when they do so.
I appreciate the tone of your comment. I think it says you are open to supporting those in the Muslim community that are looking to combat the Salafists. I think in todays Islam Q and A that Omar gives a good analysis of some of the reasons the community has not been forceful enough. That doesn’t excuse it, but it does suggest ways we can help them do the work that needs to be done. I admit that I am pessimistic, but that doesn’t mean it is an unreachable goal. Omar may be more optimistic than I, but I don’t think he is in any way unmindful of the challenge.
Don, take a look at some of the websites we’ve cited. They are quite firm in their denunciation of terror and praise for Israel.
I’m not sure what kind of spin you are giving the British poll. Please elaborate.
Quaran is impossible to put in context without Hadith. Part of the problem with different sects of Islam is agreement on which Hadith are authentic. This is part of the reason that Islam seems contradictory to non-Muslims. We Muslims don’t see it that way, but then we understand the subtle nuances of hadith and contextual interpretation. I would argue that your average Saudi peasant wouldn’t have the foggiest notion of how to interpret the differences in Trinitarian versus non-Trinitarian Christian sects and beliefs. It’s the same problem from a different angle.
Regarding your Muslim friends. I’m glad that they are good people. If they don’t follow the generally accepted (by all sects) laws of Islam, then they are still good people, but they aren’t Muslims. Alchohol is haram (forbidden). Period. End of sentence. If they drink alchohol, then they should no longer consider themselves Muslim. This is no different than Catholics who have abortions. There is no concept of “Reform” Muslims similar to “Reform” Jews in existence, yet. Perhaps that day will come, but until a liberal, choose your own path to God Islamic movement is created (again, see “Reform” Judaism), those who don’t follow our laws have simply become secularists. They shouldn’t attempt to identify as Muslims anymore. It creates confusion amongst non-Muslims and embarrassment amongst practicing Muslims.
One quick point here. The opinions that I give on issues related to Islam should be understood to be my own. They are based on years of Islamic practice and belief, travel within the worldwide Islamic community, and some formalized religious study. I am not competent to issue official statements regarding Islam. I am neither Imam nor Ulama. My perspective is merely that of “Joe Muslim.” The guy on the street. As a point of comparison, I don’t speak with the authority or knowledge of your local Catholic priest or Jewish rabbi. I’m only the guy who shows up at Mass on Sunday or Shabbat on Friday to hear the wisdom of the qualified religious authority.
Having said that, I think that in some ways this gives me an advantage in that I can speak for the average Muslim on the street better than a learned Imam could.
“Joe Muslim” writes:
Omar: Isn’t that why god gave us the internet? (Just kidding.)
T. Perkins:
All the moslems of the wider world need to say to us is, “We won’t try to kill you or let our neighbors kill you.†and then they need to live up to that. We in the West have a right to take that attitude and result on their part for granted.
If the current mild military half measures we are taking do not work out to ensure what should already automatically be true, then we can make total war on them.
G*d forbid, we show some sympathy to relatively legitimate or genuine grievances held by the inhabitants of Middle Eastern states, make non security-critical gestures of reconcilation in our foreign policy, or even say some words of encouragement to Muslims who already dissapprove of terror – or even admit said Muslims exist. G*d forbid we have a facet of our policy other than threat and coercion – not even instead of, just *alongside*. God forbid we even *attempt* to win hearts and minds via *persuasion*.
After all, “all the Muslims need to do is “not let other Muslims do bad things to the West”", as if any individual Muslim could just click a garage door opener and end this ideological movement.
There is a fundamental difference between the Tom Perkins’s and the C. Ford’s and many of the other Q & O denziens, and between people like you and I, Lance. Group 1 considers it beneath them to acknolwedge Muslim support or positively support non-Jihadi Muslims. Their self-righteousness is dented. They want the Muslim world to solve the problem for them with a nice big bow and apologize, or else we’ll just have to torch the “nests”.
Never mind that it not only values pride and the fervency of self-righteousness above the opportunity to save lives by minimizing & containing the fight -
and never mind that it is wildly impractical, meaning that it leads inevitably to a much wider struggle and greater damage to the West as a whole, by writing off millions of passive, on-the-fence Muslims as “enemies until they prove otherwise”
(and they won’t. why should they? If a Muslim came up to you in Turkey and demanded that you prove that you weren’t a “warmongering neconservative Rapturist”, would you rush to persaude them so?)
They still prefer escalation tactics that reliably lead to the deaths of more American citizens over the sense of moral uncertainty that comes with investigating the complexities of real life.
And I see the widespread tolerance of and support for Wahhabist thought in the Moslem world as evidence that viewing the Moslem world as a unitary actor is much more jusitifed than viewing them as disparate sects unaligned with one another.
If you had even the pretense to analytic seriousness or objectivity, you’d recognize this as absurd. There is widespread tolerance of Apocalyptic, imminent-Rapture-based Christianity in our midst. Merchandisers make a lot of money of it. It’s a trend. But it remains the view of a small minority of indivduals in this country. Draw the comparisons.
If you had even the pretense of analytic seriousness, you’d already know how little you understand about the Muslim world – you and 99% of America, myself included.
I at least know what I don’t know.
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David, lol!
glasnost, yeah I think some of what you say is definitely true and indicative of a certain extroverted, failure to look in the mirror kind of attitude held by certain folks in the US. Examine everything derogative that has been said about Muslims. Don’t hold back; look at all of it. Primitive. Backward. Incapable or unworthy of democracy. Dangerous. Women-hating, wife-beaters. Bigamists. Power-hungry. Fascist. Communist. Theocratic. Demon-possessed pedophiles. Death cultists. Etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.
Almost every single one of those attacks can be perfectly turned around on Western secularists or Christians or Jews. Along with some other nasty, but unique little phrases. When you stoop to the level of cultural battle royale along with attendant genocide, you become no better than Ahmadinejad talking about Israel. Some of those out there should seriously think about that statement next time they suggest we “not hold back” and let loose with total war against “them heathen Muslims.”
I always have been. But it is also good to keep in mind that, right after 9/11, I was arguing on several internet forums that Islam had made contributions to civilization, etc. Events (from Arab street to Hamas electing “suicide bomber mom”) and research (not terribly deep, since I have something of a life) have since pushed me in the other direction. Suffice to say, I don’t have anything against Muslim per se (with exception of those who want to harm us), but I am concearned that the religion has issues–perhaps structual–that make it problematic.
My only point is that the poll indicates that 1 in 4 British Muslims think that the London bombing was justified, and that I suspect that’s an undercount, since there is more reason to lie and say “not justified” than it is to lie and say “justified”.
I know that based on other polls, British Muslims are particularly mad at the West (for European Muslims), while conversly British non-Muslims have particularly high opinions of Muslims by European standards. I find it odd, and a bad sign for Britian.
I agree, but it isn’t my place to lecture them on proper Muslim behaviour. The ones who I said “took Islam seriously” were the ones who did not drink beer.
We should make use of more ruthless methods, but in a targeted manner. Maybe even make use of ruthless Muslims, like the Marine from Iraq I referenced on Q and O suggested.
We should be good friends to those we want as friends, and the last thing our enemies want to encounter.
I thought “legit” was essentially binary.
I don’t think they have any legit grievance of significance. Defending Saudi Arabia isn’t a legit grievence. We haven’t backed the Shah since ’78 or so, and anyone with a clue understands the Cold War backdrop to that–and what happened to Iran post Shah was worse. Supporting Israel isn’t a grievence. Now, I don’t expect the Arab street to grasp this, so I’ll cut them a break, but people who type in English on the internet should be held to a higher standard.
Wasn’t a large part of the Iraq War an attempt to help Muslims so they can help us and themselves solve this mess?
I suspect it would be a good idea to persaude, at least on the first two points. I suspect the Muslim would like you better as a Rapturist than as an ACLU athiest. To amplify: your comment above makes me think you don’t have a clue.
One of our biggest mistakes is that we are not ruthless enough to dissuade our enemies. This ruthlessness should be targeted, but it will reduce future American deaths. Running from Beruit after the bombing, Clinton’s half hearted measures (like the 60,000 ft bombing in Kosovo), running from Somolia after the Blackhawk incident . . . all bad.
Wow. How scary! How many bombs have they set off?
I don’t see how most of those things could be applied to Jews (FWIW I’m not Jewish) unless you are reading the Old Testament; and in that case I think the statute of limitations has run out. An early European proto-facist group was started by Jews, but it wasn’t violent.
We have already dealt with the secular European fascists and communists, with a few hold outs in Cuba and San Francisco.
Glasnost wrote:
Glasnost, if you can’t see the difference between “slaughter them all now” and “stop trying to kill us or we’ll take the gloves off, no really, we’re not foolin’”, you are far less intelligent than I thought. Of course, I believe you once said you were a member of the American Foreign Service corps of long standing. If you are representative, this would go far to explaining how we were so ineffective for so long.
When a small child or a dog is doing better than you thought they would, you might pat them on the head and say, “Good boy!”. If such patronizing behavior is your idea of encouraging people to turn in murderers, I don’t think the foreign service will improve its record.
To the person, I believe still anonymous, who turned in the latest set of Islamist mass murder plotters, I say “Thank you.” and I very much mean it.
If Omar is right about his coreligionists, then there should be so many like that person that Al Qaeda cannot function. Oh wait, AQ can’t function because the US military largely ran them down.
What more would you do? What grievances would you acknowledge?
The Moslem world has bred the problem, it is it’s own to cure internally by what means they choose–if the “problem” does not drive us to take care of it for our own safety.
“G*d forbid we have a facet of our policy other than threat and coercion – not even instead of, just *alongside*.”
What policies would those be? Here’s some money so you won’t kill us. How would the dialog go? We think your’s is really an admirable religion of peace. OW my neck, hlk!
One did just recently in London. One out of a community where the would-be murderers had long ties, where they’d been known as children. They went to the mosques they’d attended as children. They were intimately tied to the community, and one person saw fit to say something.
Where was the one person in Bali, in India, in Spain, in London on 7/7? All of them operating in the community they were raised in. I think I’ve forgotten one Islamist conducted mass massacre of neighbors, I don’t recall which one.
Where were the informants there?
Three can keep a secret if two are dead, or twenty one have even odd to keep a secret if they are Moslem plotting mass murder?
I’m terribly relieved there was an informant in the is recent attempt at mass murder. It is better that way than if it had been stopped by police work of other means.
But where are the others?
I acknowledge the one I know of. Frankly I have a right to expect of someone else they won’t try to kill me or anyone else outside of self defense. The only reason they should need is that it’s wrong. If they need more encouragement or reason than that–there’s something wrong with them.
It is not overly prideful to expect of others that they not try to murder. There is no self-righteousness in that expectation. There is no long term benefit in the fight being kept smaller than it needs to be, since that only leads to a bigger fight in sum later.
That’s the problem! They are passive at best! If the view that Islam is a religion of peace were the commonplace one among the moslems of the world, they would in some sense be fighting on our side in the droves in which they number.
As I said over at Q&O, the preponderance of moslems around the world seem to attitudinally be accessories before the fact when Islamists go to murder.
They ineffective, accomodationist, wrist-slap tactics of the past produced 9/11. They should be dispensed with, not promulgated. There is no moral complexity to the idea that the Islamists should be defeated, and that if their view of the Islamic religion is an incorrect one, that other Moslems should avidly participate in their defeat.
“If you had even the pretense to analytic seriousness or objectivity, you’d recognize this as absurd. There is widespread tolerance of Apocalyptic, imminent-Rapture-based Christianity in our midst. Merchandisers make a lot of money of it. It’s a trend. But it remains the view of a small minority of indivduals in this country. Draw the comparisons.”
I’ve yet to meet or hear of a Pentecostalist who tried to commit massmurder of “nonbelievers” while saying God commanded him to Jihad. Check back with me when the snake handlers are on a rampage. What tolerance do you think there would for them if they did?
What makes you scary is what you think you know and isn’t so.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Omar wrote:
Yeah, if you turn the clock back to 1634, or if you look at the sorts of societies that were written about in Orwell’s 1984. Demon’s dealt with in the far or recent past.
So why hasn’t the Moslem world, the ummah, taken a hint from those painful lessons and skipped the learning curve…
…Because most moslems still need to learn those lessons.
When the Grand Mosque is as open to tourists as St. Peter’s square is and the the Grand Mufti of the Qabbah, or whomever, has no more power in Saudi society than the Pope does in America, and sheiks have no more pull than a clan leader in Scotland does…
…then your tu coque might work better.
You usually do better. You seem rattled. Maybe truth stung?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Of course, I believe you once said you were a member of the American Foreign Service corps of long standing
Nope.
I’ve yet to meet or hear of a Pentecostalist who tried to commit massmurder of “nonbelievers†while saying God commanded him to Jihad. Check back with me when the snake handlers are on a rampage. What tolerance do you think there would for them if they did?
The point is that indivduals everywhere across the world fail to take responsibility for preventing things that they do not perceive themselves as directly participating in. I’ve never taken an active step to stop someone being mugged. I’ve never personally prevented an act of child abuse. I wouldn’t stand by and watch either of these things happen, but frankly, it’s perfectly possible that I once heard strange noises while walking down a subway with friends late at night and did not investigate. I am not a morally exceptional person- I try to do no harm, but have not personally done very much except argue on blogs.
So what do you want from muslims across the world, to have them proceed in single file to you personally, dragging an Al-Queida member by the wrist? I’m pro-choice, but I’ve never volunteered to guard an abortion clinic. Am I, by default, a supporter of people who try to blow them up?
It’s crazy talk. If a rapturist gunned down seven jews on a new york city street, the police would hunt them down, and I would talk about it to my friends, and the end, probably. Frankly, the average Muslim on the street doesn’t feel there’s a need to step in and personally risk his a** to save the world’s dominant superpower from extinction at the hands of Al-Zarqawi.
You blame him for that, but I don’t. Where’s his incentive? Your proposed incentive is fear – start rooting out your terrorists or we will use “all neccesary force”.
I’m here to tell you that it won’t work. It can’t work. There’s no way within the global framework of behavior that we can use the threat of force to pre-emptively control the behavior of a billion Muslims in 200 countries. “All neccesary force” still wouldn’t be enough to eliminate – what, independent explosives production in non-American countries? Even in the nastiest of police states, resistance arises.
That’s why the goal is to kill or neutralize those who have already commited themselves to martyrdom while avoiding presenting our country as such an inherent threat to the lives of random non-martyr Muslims as to make it attractive.
“Gloves off” tactics only serve to propagate a graphic and personal justification for violent resistance to millions who are now dormant and uninvolved.
Don, my quote about the rapturist christians in our midst was not to equate them with violent muslim fundamentalists.
It was to make the point that individuals with extreme beliefs within a given society, stand out to those outside of the society and come to seemingly represent it – but that’s just the perception. The average American does not feel a mission to travel to Turkey, knock on doors, and explain to the average home-dweller that he wants them to know he does not believe that the second coming of Christ is at hand. (you’re right, I’ve picked an ironic believe set to explain as extreme to a Muslim – it was just carelessness, but believe what you will).
In the same way, a Muslim who happens to live in the same country as the psychos who bombed Bali doesn’t react with a compelling need to personally tell the world, “I’m not like that.” He already knows he’s not, and everyone he comes into contact with every day knows that, and that’s as far as it goes.
I don’t believe that 25% of British Muslims think that the London bombing was justified. My proposed justification of this is natural sampling error from public surveys attracting those with strong opinions on the subject – thus skewing the numbers. If the survey was true, it would be disgusting and sad, and show how much we have to do to get different sources of information to them (and, yes, keep an eye, as unobtrusively as possible.) I don’t believe, however, that even all the people that gave that statement to that survey believed it or would actively know of a similar plot and endorse it. It’s stupid, and juvenile, and disgusting, to verbally endorse a theoretical or historical act of violence, but I’ve seen it happen in all kinds of social situations where I don’t believe the people in question would really support it face-to-face.
Anyway, I don’t have any problem with killing, sovreignity be damned, anyone who an intel agency is certain is an active participant in a plan to kill western civilians, and arresting indirect supporters. I think 98% of the American public is with me on this.
I just don’t see how greater ‘ruthlessness’ can be effectively applied to the guilty in our situation than we are already doing. Clinton’s decisions made sense in a pre 9/11 era. Some of them don’t now, and some of them still do. We killed about one thousand somalis during Blackhawk down, facing an angry mob that was the population of Mogadishu. There was no point in staying around to dispense humanitarian aid at that point, and no reason to randomly occupy tracts of land daring people to attack us and then killing them until they stopped. We left instead, and Somalis as a whole haven’t demonstrated a lot of motivation to pursue back to the US, except as weaponless refugees.
That may change under their recent revolution – or it may not. It’s not a foregone conclusion.
Thanks to folks like Qutb, jihadists have a pretty complete ideology that is certainly informed by the Koran. But as far as the anti-social behaviors go, they just aren’t remarkable. They are the hallmarks of honor-based tribal societies everywhen and everywhere. In India we see nearly identical behavior with blood feuds, the protection/subjugation of women, clan-based social hierarchies, the whole shootin’ match, and these folks are Hindu, about as far as you can get from Islam, or Christianity for that matter. And lest we forget, it was the Tamils who brought us the suicide bomber, the gift that keeps on giving.
It’s not really hard to frame the entirety of modern human history as the painfully slow self-extraction of human society from the muck of tribal social systems we literally inherited from the stone age and into the “enlightenment” of individual-based societies. Globally, here in 2006, I figure we’ve succeed in extricating ourselves past our head and shoulders, but the rest of us from the chest on down remains mired in the nasty, brutish and short existence of tribalism.
yours/
peter.
So, to sum it up Peter, since Hobbes first punted the ball to Locke he has only managed to get the ball to the 35 yard Line.
Yep. And it’s 3rd and long. But there may be a flag on the field…
Particularly alarming since the readily-available weaponry has advanced far more quickly than we have. From rocks to rockets, but the same old fools launching them.
Ah, Tom do we really need to do this? Since I seem so “rattled,†I guess you leave me no choice.
1. Primitive : http://www.amish.net/
2. Backward : http://www.adl.org/learn/extremism_in_the_news/White_Supremacy/Monschke+Found+Guilty+in+Tacoma+Murder.htm
3. Incapable of democracy : http://www.florida2000election.com/ -or- http://www.uscongress.com/
4. Dangerous : http://hongkong.usembassy.gov/uscn/others/belgrade.htm
5. Women-hating : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
6. Wife-beaters : http://www.snbw.org/news/Lifeline_spring_06.pdf
7. Bigamists : http://www.truthbearer.org/about/mission/
8. Power-hungry : http://clinton.senate.gov/
9. Fascist : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco
10. Communist : http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23311
11. Theocratic : http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=599622&page=1
12. Demon-possessed pedophiles : http://216.220.97.17/
13. Death cultists : http://www.rickross.com/groups/heavensgate.html
How ‘bout them apples? Clearly we can use all of the insults that westerners hurl at the Muslim world on ourselves. If you insist on using empty rhetoric, be prepared to have it thrown back in your face.
I am not attempting tu coque here; I’m merely pointing out that the original slanders that you toss so freely at the Muslim world have no particular uniqueness to it. All of them can just as easily be thrown against the West. Muslim society is entitled to just as much learning curve as any other society, Tom. Unless of course you propose using double standards here?
Regarding locations open to tourists : Visit Istanbul. You may freely walk around (as long as you don’t wear shorts) Sultanahmet Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, Suleiman Mosque, etc. There are no restrictions on visiting these sites (I have done so myself several times).
There is no central Muslim religious figure, which is an issue which sometimes causes us problems. We have no living Khalifah (or Caliph) to dispense guidance and wisdom to us and we have not had one for quite some time. This is part of the reason why Muslims sometimes appear to be contradictory and, for lack of a better term, schizophrenic. We have so many legitimate Muslims with greatly varying views that we do not form a united religious identity. This is a big part of the problem that the West has in relating to us. I would suggest that John Paul II (and possibly Benedict if he plays his cards right) had a huge amount of influence in America. No Catholic politician can act openly against firmly held Catholic positions without serious threat of alienating the Catholic populace (see John Kerry’s support for abortion).
I have no idea what the relative influence levels of Scots clan leaders are vis-à -vis Arabian Shaykhs. All I can say is that while Arab and, to a lesser extent, Persian societies are essentially tribal, the bulk of the world’s Muslims are NOT Middle Easterners. While the public face of Islam remains that of the Arab fundamentalist, I can assure you that this is simply a creation of the media. http://www.libforall.org/background-islamic-diversity.html see here the actual demographics of Islam.
Currently the GWOT is centered on the ME and the Salafis. If our leaders adopt the dangerous and empty rhetoric and blatant abuse of power that you suggest, Tom, we are going to find ourselves at war with over 20% of the global population. If you thought the Korean War-era confrontation with China was bad, just imagine that with modern technology when you consider recommending total war against Islam. I imagine that more than a few of the anti-American nations would be only too happy to join with Muslims in a war against America, so add to the 20% Islamic population the populations of China, North Korea, Cuba, most of South and Central America, parts of Africa, and possibly Russia and its former possessions. Is this really the direction you want America to move in?
Glasnost,
The Arab street celibrating 9/11, the Palis electing Hamas (including suicide mom) etc., suggests rather widespread support for terror. It certainly appears that at least a large minority support terror to some degree, and in some areas it looks like the majority does.
Pretending otherwise might make you feel better, but aside from that, is there any evidence to back up your view?
I assumed that the survey was random, not self selected. Are you assuming, or do you know for sure?
Most of his decision didn’t make sense then.
In Kosovo, the terrorist KLA provoked a Serb masscre that eventually led to our involvement. In my opinion, we were “played” by the KLA to do their heavy lifting, and furthermore the Clinton decision to bomb from high altitude was disasterous: it proved highly ineffective and also showed the world (the worst part of the world, really) that we were unwilling to accept casualties.
The Blackhawk Down raid was the result in a change of tactics, from supporting a humanitarian effort to actively going after Aidid. This change was a mistake on Clinton’s part, although Bush’s origional decision to go in was also a mistake IMO, but it’s one thing to defend bags of rice and another to run down a militia.
Pulling out of Somolia after we lost men and machines like that, without getting payback, was a srious mistake: it reinforced the idea that the US was not willing to go the distance.
And the problem is that the likes of bin Laden learned from our actions in Somolia, Kosovo, etc. We essentialy taught him a lesson: hit us hard and we will run away. And bin Laden wasn’t the only one to learn this lesson.
Frankly, we shouldn’t have gone in Somolia in the first place, we shouldn’t have allowed Clinton’s ‘scope creep’, and once hurt we should have shown that we would provide payback.