This week in the Religion of Piss

2c, I'm going to make a reply to you because we've had such a great time in the ID/Creation thread and I feel like you're a decent guy. I don’t really bother with this anymore since I feel like my words are essentially wasted, especially in this discussion.

So far so good…

These are mostly truisms. That is not to say that truisms are a bad thing – they aren’t. Clearly, social norms evolve slowly, in most cases. Clearly, the reach of technology and mass communication is exerting a slow pull on so called ‘backward’ or ‘less civilized’ populations.

With regard to your comment about the fact that Hitler and Milosevic were recent mass murderers… I am not 100% clear about the connection between your suggestion that political pressure be brought to bear upon those who seek to institutionalize these barbaric acts and the existence of those two individuals. In fact, we can see that in both cases, political pressure was useless and eventually we had to fix those problems using force. I hope you know enough about me to know that I am by no means a warmonger and I am not saying that any sort of military action could be taken to fix what I see as a cultural problem.

You have brought up an interesting point and one that I would like to expand upon. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent epidemic of violence that has been visited by Muslim extremists upon not only non-Muslims but other Muslims as well, I have been waiting patiently for an organized outcry on the part of moderate Muslims. I have been waiting for an ongoing and unequivocal condemnation of these acts. I have been waiting for the moderate Muslim community to launch an aggressive and ongoing campaign to grab the media spotlight and condemn in no uncertain terms every act of brutality coming out of the Muslim extremist camp. I have been waiting… and waiting. And I have seen or heard nothing except the lone voices of a few Muslim scholars who have the guts to point out that there is nothing in the Qu’ran about the idea that Muslims are compelled to behead anyone who says that Allah is not their God. What I have heard is silence on these issues. I have seen no march, no protracted information campaigns, nothing.

What I have seen is fanatical Muslims demonstrating in Britain and other European countries, holding signs saying ‘death to the Unbelievers’.

With regard to the idea that these acts are restricted to the ‘less educated’ parts of the world, I can tell you this. Iran is a highly literate society. Please remember that these people were among the most civilized in the world when what would become the Western populations were still grubbing around among herds of animals and fighting each other with essentially Stone Age weapons. The surgical breaking of the hands of those who commit the sin of playing Beatles songs on the hammered dulcimer is occurring now. Are these acts condemned by the majority of Iranians? It really doesn’t matter if they are not able to make their voices heard and tell the imams that they will not stand for it.

(cont...)

 

Your disclaimer about ‘not wanting to go into relativism’ indicates to me that you are aware enough and compassionate enough to intuitively sense the problem with these arguments. In fact, even though you don’t want to go into it, you are going into it. The site’s leading moral relativist, the Disgusting Troll ZZZzzzzzzz, has told us that ‘social norms and prevailing laws of the community’ preclude our censure of what we perceive as barbaric acts. I disagree with this with every fibre of my being. Genital mutilation of young girls in Sub-Saharan Africa is now a crime. If we cannot acknowledge this, then we throw into the toilet the entire notion of human progress. There are a class of acts which are so brutal and barbaric that to attempt a relativist interpretation is, to me, a willful turning away from the truth. Of course there will be cultural variance in the interpretation and proscription of acts. But what is murder? It is an act that has come to be universally condemned. It is true enough that the legal codification of this principle is fairly recent. I am sure that blacks were not classified as ‘humans’ at some point and therefore the killing of one of them could not be legally remedied. I am sure that women were also excluded from personhood until a few hundred years ago or less. Now, though, the taking of another human life is condemned, except in cases where a country has enacted laws which provide the penalty of death if you murder someone else (an eye for an eye, and by the way, I am opposed to the death penalty for this reason, even though I think it is ludicrous for anyone to tell the parent of a child raped and murdered that they should not seek the death of the man who killed their child). The genital mutilation of children is also universally condemned.

I am not a moral relativist. I believe in human progress. I believe that human progress will be defined by the utter abolishment of the institutionalized surgical breaking of a man’s hands for playing Beatles songs. I believe this will happen, just as it has happened that women are no longer drowned as witches (even though some far out sect might drown a woman as a witch – it is the institutionalization of this practice that is dead forever). As long as Muslims anywhere are hanging their children for flirting or breaking the hands of their musicians for playing Beatles songs, they are deserving of our moral censure.

The problem is – why is an educated society allowing such things to happen? Such barbarism as the breaking of a man’s hands because he played a Beatles tune? This is where my question about why the Jews don’t do these things comes in. I use the Jews as an example because it is the Jews that the rabid anti-Semites on this site are constantly railing against. And by the way, I do believe that, unlike some of the other nutbags here, wael may not be a pure Anti-Semite, although I don’t think he has any love for Jews.

Our choice is to engage, initiate a dialogue, apply peer pressure? Well, that would be fine if the people we are dealing with had not shown a tendency to start killing people when roused. Look at the Danish cartoons. People died over that. Peer pressure? Who are the peers of the imam or the religious leaders who make these decrees? To whom do they answer? I can tell you. They answer to only one God. Dialogue? They see us as infidels. Their contempt for us and our way of life is total. Do you think they care whether we impose a trade sanction on them?

It would be nice if this happened, but in the case of the young Iranian man who ended up here in Canada, after his hands were broken, his family was blacklisted and their lives were ruined as well. If I am looking for a reason that there is no organized outcry from moderate Muslims re: these things, perhaps this is a clue. Western countries have condemned these acts but so what?

Forgive me, 2c, if I don’t share that sympathy with the Arab plight. There are plenty of countries that are coming out of colonial rule. They do not exhibit the same behaviours. Just ask the South Americans about the organized undermining/overthrow of their democratically elected leaders. Do we see the Nicaraguans hanging their kids for flirting? The answer would be no.

These things you mentioned don’t have anything to do with what I’m talking about. There is something else operant here. Something that I am guessing is related to Islam, and I only make this guess because I am looking for a common denominator among the groups that post internet beheadings, the groups that hang kids for flirting, the groups that break hands for playing Beatles tunes, the groups that in Canada last year constructed a wall in their house of worship behind which women would have to be hidden if they wanted to practice their religion, the groups that have told me, specifically, personally, that I am a target for them by virtue of the fact that I live in a Western country, the groups that want to live in the West but lobby to govern themselves according to their one system of laws and want us to agree not to enforce the laws of our countries when it comes to their behaviours.

It would be absurd for me to claim that Muslims have some sort of monopoly on barbarism. Obviously that’s not true. Barbarism is a human thing, not necessarily a religious one, although nowadays, most of it seems religiously motivated whether you are looking at Iraq, India, or wherever. But what is it about Islam that breeds this kind of thing? That is my question. Why do we not see these kinds of institutionalized acts in any other modern civilized societies (the tribal genital mutilators can be excluded, don’t you think?).

At any rate, I will admit that my constant request for a simple answer from wael regarding why we never see any of this from the Jews is informed to some extent by my utter contempt of and loathing for the Anti-Semitic animals on these threads. If we were to meet, I am sure you would not form the impression of me as someone who is congenitally prejudiced towards Islam or Muslims.

Anyhow, I won’t be making many long replies like this, although I will give wael a reply below.

Wael, if you’re reading this, I may have to wait until tomorrow to give you a reply.

Take care 2c.

 

wael may not be a pure Anti-Semite, although I don’t think he has any love for Jews.

My girl friend for seven years, back in the US was a Latvian Jew.

 

I understand your position. If in the past I have lumped you in with the other pure Anti-Semites here, and if that kind of categorization is inaccurate, you have my apologies. I do, however, believe my questions are valid.

This is a very long and difficult discussion and we cannot complete it here (at least I cannot because I no longer want to spend the time here, and because the Anti-Semitic insanity in P & R has gone beyond all limits of comprehension). However... what is it that you and I would be most likely to discuss? It is not pure Anti-Semitism - it is the Palestine-Israel problem.

Then the question becomes this - why is this problem so intractable? Why is it that no solution seems even remotely possible? To understand the problem, we must look at the mindset of the participants.

In my view, the main problem in that part of the world is that there exist large groups of Muslims who cannot and will not accept the existence of the State of Israel. No matter what happens, they will never accept it. But the State of Israel is a fact. There is as much chance of it disappearing as there is of Canada disappearing. That is to say, there is no chance. Israel will be a country as long as humans populate the earth, or at least as long into the foreseeable future as to make no difference to us. There is no point any longer in questioning why the State of Israel was established. It is in the past and it is done forever.

The only rational tactic for Arab Muslims who seek to settle the Israel-Palestine issue is to approach the problem with this fact as a given.

However...

Indeed. To those of us on the outside, we see the breaking of a young man's hands for playing Beatles tunes or the hanging of a young woman for flirting or the stoning of another woman for the crime of being raped and we cannot understand what kind of mindset would produce such behaviours. “How can this happen?”, we ask.
The answer lies in a point made by Rearden Metal, who showed that the fundamental driving force behind these acts is the defense of what is perceived to be 'honour', whether it is familial or personal or cultural, or defense of the honour of God by punishing blasphemy, which amounts to the same thing. Now let us look at the problem in Israel in this light. .

What motivates the Arab Muslims who are fighting the worldwide jihad? Obviously it has something to do with the situation in Israel. There, Palestinians cannot yield, because it would mean a loss of face, a diminishing of their honour, a capitulation which would be worse than death (literally). If we want to understand why Hamas or Hezbollah state that they will send wave upon wave of their young people to their death wearing the suicide belt and fight until every one of their number is dead before admitting the existence of the State of Israel, the world’s observers are left to ask ‘How is it that they could take a stand that even they must know means continual death and a slow grinding defeat’? It is obvious that if Hezbollah or Hamas or any of the other Arab Muslim organizations are defining victory as the eradication of the State of Israel, they are doomed. This is the stated raison d’etre of many organizations; thus, those organizations are doomed. Thus, all the death and destruction is for nothing. Why do they continue when they are doomed? Because they would rather die than be dishonoured. How strong is this sense that to lose honour is worse than death?

Strong enough that they will hang a young woman rather than have her walking the streets representing the ‘dishonour’ she brought upon her family by smiling at that young man. Strong enough that if a woman is raped, they will stoner her to death rather than have her walking the streets to remind everyone that her virginity is taken and she is unmarried. Strong enough that even playing a Beatles song on a sacred instrument is enough of a slight to God that they must break the young musician’s hands in order to appease.

This is partly the point behind my questions, wael, and not a racist prejudice against either Arabs or Muslims. I am looking at the situation and trying to understand it; I am just trying to observe and collate data. No doubt that the hard-line elements in Israel are also responsible for some less than contructive thinking, but the fact is that they have not said that they will not rest until every Palestinian man, woman and child is dead. Rabin was a man who could have led Israel to peace and it is the shame of the Israelis that one of their own killed him.

I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure I understand. If I had asked you what about Israelis or Zionists? I'm not clear about why you couldn't answer the questions I posed about Muslims vis-a-vis Jews and the differences in behaviours.

As you can see from my statements above, I didn't really want to be redirected, since I thought the questions were relevant. I never fully explained myself, and for that I am sorry. I should have included the explanation above but I didn't think I would ever engage you in this way.

(cont)...

 

It is good to hear you say that Islamic extremism is sick and demented. In terms of the Zionist movement being sick and demented... again, are you saying that they are not necessarily a threat to me but they are a threat to Arabs? If this is the case, are you saying that the absurdly small number of Jews worldwide could ever pose a serious threat to the 1 BILLION Muslims? What you mean is that you find the existence of Israel sick and demented, isn’t that right?

I think what you are really saying is that Zionism is expansionist and fascist in terms of the land area called Israel. Is this not correct? You are speaking as someone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. After all, this is the essence of Zionism, is it not? Israel as the Jewish homeland.

The thing is this – worldwide Muslim fanaticism encompasses much more than just the Palestine-Israel situation. There are leagues of Muslim fanatics who live in every country in the world, individuals who hold myself and my family in contempt because of our humanist ideals. The highest ranking religious leaders in the Muslim world condemned Salman Rushdie to death, wael. These were not rogue imams, loony cases that no one else in Islam cared about. The fatwa against Rushdie came from the very centre of the practice. The Bali bombings… what was the point there? Plainly, it was an attack on the Western way of life, a punishment for the dishonouring of Allah by the wanton display of sinful female flesh dressed in mini-skirts.

And tragically, the apparent thirst for vengeance also encompasses intra-Muslim violence. How many deaths have occurred as a result of Sunni-Shia fighting? Why do these people kill each other with such fervor?

And wael… why is it that the Jews, or the Zionists if you prefer, are not killing each other? Why is it that they are not declaring fatwas calling for the death of Western authors? Why is it that they are not bombing nightclubs? After all, the Hasidim probably take a similarly dim view of the fleshpots. Why are they not hanging their children for flirting? Why are they not breaking the hands of their musicians for playing Beatles tunes?

You see… you say that both Zionists and fanatical Muslims are equally sick and demented…. But I don’t know how you come to this conclusion. An analysis of the facts paints a much different picture, don’t you think?

I am neither Arab nor Jew, Palestinian nor Israeli. All I know is that the Muslim extremists have condemned me and my family to death because we do not believe in Allah. I do not mean they allegedly said this - I mean the literally told me this.

And just in terms of expansionism... let us look at India as an example. In India, the Muslims have been told by their leaders that every woman should have 10 children. This is not euphemism - they have actually been directed to do this and are acting on that direction. The idea is that since the Hindus are trying to practice birth control in order to get a handle on the population problem there, by multiplying, there can be established a Muslim majority in a matter of a few centuries. Is this not expansionist?

I see that you try hard to make a distinction between Zionism and Judaism. I am forced to take you at your word that this distinction actually means something to you.

I actually don’t think there’s anything anyone can say about these acts except to say that they are barbaric and illegal and that they must stop, forever, and that Islam will always be under a cloud until they stop. With regard to the idea that ‘primitive acts against women happen in our society’…do you mean that women are raped in this society? Of course they are!! Muslims have no monopoly on barbaric behaviour. But we don’t stone those women to death when they report that they have been raped. We generally look for the rapist after collecting evidence of rape. Is this what you meant here? I think I may have misunderstood your point here.

Just to make it clear, I am neither an American nor a Christian.

Maybe you do know who I am. I have changed my internet behaviour after a member here revealed that he had ascertained my real identity. If you know who I am, well and good. I have nothing to hide. I am not sure if this is what you meant. I will not have the time or the inclination to get involved in a long exchange with you, wael. I wish you good luck in your trading.

 

By the way wael, you asked me facetiously where the headquarters of Worldwide Islamic Terrorism Inc. is located.

I'm not sure - I think they have branch headquarters in Karachi, Teheran, Riyadh and they are trying hard to establish a presence in the UK, and by all accounts, they're succeeding.

Seriously, you make the point that that those Muslims who seek to kill me are a vanishingly small percentage of all Muslims. This may be true (although the percentage who would gladly recreate society in a manner 'more consistent with theistic ideals [to quote the ID'ers] is much higher, in my view). However, they do exist, and they were active here in Canada recently. They tried to acquire tons of ammonium nitrate and they would have detonated it in the very places that I spend a lot of time. It is lucky that they weren't very good at what they were trying to do.

I hope you understand what effect this had on us here. We could not believe it. A group of young Muslim men, here in Toronto, planning to detonate a huge bomb in the downtown area, murdering hundreds if not thousands of innocent Canadians? Why??

 

no connection, i was just referring to the sometimes contemptuous / condescending attitudes of the West towards muslims / arabs on the basis that "they are such savages and we are so not"

agree that force should be the last resort and is sometimes the only means to put an end to aggression

as for the absolutely barbaric acts you have cited as examples, and we both know that the list of such practices sadly is much much longer, it is indeed a grave cultural problem that such acts not be repressed more strongly and the perpetrators severely punished in those communities / countries where they occur, but not one rooted in Islam. Still, totally unacceptable... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_rights_in_Islam

even under Shari'ah, those acts would be deemed criminal...
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/...h-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503544836 this is of interest, for the sake of mutual understanding, and "God" knows i am not a fan of Shari'ah...............................

i totally agree and these guys should all be put on file for starters... but let's take a broader look for a sec here...

is it so strange that at this juncture (2001+), as the West in perhaps 60 years or more for the first time is feeling the pain arabs & muslims have had to endure all along at the hands of US-financed or US-led forces all over the Middle-East, overthrowing even their secular & democratically elected governments, having opponents killed, supporting such or such extremist regimes out of expediency, US-abetted terrorist operations on their own soil,

as the West's young generations are hardly "waking up" to whats been happening in the Middle-East since early 20th century... when even friendly moderate arab voices of reason have consistently been ignored at the UN over the Israeli issue for instance http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95460 (just a modest example)

is it so strange that these same people, moderate arab & muslim voices, who've opposed the US-abetted violence all along, and the extremists' ideologies and rule all along and have been slaughtered for it, while they no doubt deplore the individual casualties and the loss of human life, should find it hard to "mobilize" themselves and demonstrate against what they broadly perceive as terrorists hitting at other terrorists? To them, its the US who's made the Middle-East what it is now, and they have a strong case...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism just for context, and e.g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

having said that, i'd still want to see them (moderate arabs and muslims) in the streets demonstrating against US/Israeli/Islamists acts of violence / terrorism... even if that means every day...

yes no doubt they are condemned widely... this is a very good read fyi: http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/divbiog/ebadis.htm i've read the book... also got friends who used to live in Iran back in the days...

 

I respect your right to voice your opinion. Let me just say this. It is impossible for me to understand how any interpretation of these acts could result in the conclusion that they are not somehow associated with the Islamic concept that death is better than dishonour. In my view these are uniquely Islamic acts. After all... why are they being carried out? They are being carried out because those in power say that they are contravening some Islamic law - the law about acting ' in a manner consistent with chastity' or the law about how a young woman who has had extramarital or premarital sex is an abomination or the law about it being a sin to play secular music on this or that musical instrument. If these acts contravene Sharia, it is yet another example of a situation in which there are differing interpretations of the law. Is it incumbent upon Muslims to behead me if I say that Allah is not God? Some say yes, some say no. I defer to your knowledge which seems to be greater than my own - I can only go by what other Muslims tell me. You or whomever is at the end of that link says these people are in contravention of Sharia... but the religious leaders say that their decisions are based in holy law.

This is not to mention the worldwide attacks on Western populations. These attacks are based on the idea that the non-Islamic way of life is an abomination to Allah.

The fatwa against Rushdie? The edict that any Muslim who kills Rushdie will go to heaven a hero? If that was not purely Islamic, please... what was it?

Maybe I am completely misinformed? Unlike the moonbats here, I can admit it if I'm wrong. I'm man enough to do that. To me, the idea of a Muslim's culture is inextricably ties to Islam. Does not an Arab Muslim identify himself as a Muslim first and an Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, etc second? When you say the problem is a cultural one... yes, but Islam is so tied up with the culture, is it not?

Anyhow, we can agree to disagree and still have fun riding the ID'ers around here.

 

Nik i appreciate your taking the time, this is indeed a delicate and important set of issues

i agree 200%... am no moral relativist either and agree that social norms and prevailing laws of a community does in no way preclude our censure of what we perceive as barbaric acts, all the contrary, to me non-interfering when extreme situations develop/barbaric acts are being committed on a grand scale, is "sin" if i may use the word

now re the acts you are referring to, Iran is a special case in the Muslim world (Persian, Shia, Qom), but i wldn't think that even their form of Shari'ah condones breaking of someone's hands as punishment for a crime, while under Shari'ah it is definitely illegal for anyone to take the law into one's own hands... anyway, that's beside the point... it is true that Iran is still a very troubled and fairly brutal mess, as per Shirin Ebadi's book

Nik, it is against Zionism, not against Judaism nor the Jews, Israelis etc. There is a long history there... perhaps have a quick read of King Abdullah's 1947 essay "As the Arabs see the Jews" that i've linked above and it will become clearer

yes i watched these cartoons too simply because it became such a huge problem, and to tell the truth i didn't see any cause for uproar there... this got spun out of control and goes to show that it doesn't take much anyway to send muslim crowds into maddening fury and murder...

this is definitely a HUGE societal problem that we have to deal with... and Muslims are gonna have to help, big time! otherwise the door is wide open... freedom of religion is not freedom of going berserk, whatever the motive...

to me its even more basic than that, it's education, and the fact that education be performed by Islamic schools, who are generally totally unfit for the purpose... and until they conform to OUR norms, should be forbidden to provide any form of "education" whatsoever... the kids should attend OUR public or even approved religious SCHOOLS...

let me unapologetically put my fascist hat on here mate: when they come to our countries, our laws are the only laws of the land, practices that may be acceptable or tolerated in Murfistan may not be in our countries and thats their business to quickly understand that, or go to jail, or back to where they came from... some patience is always a good thing, but lines need to be drawn, unequivocally...

re your next point below, education, education, education...

take care mate

 

Nik, i don't think we disagree at all... i am asking myself the same questions, but careful, things are more complex than it seems...

the fatwa against Rushdie was 1) a crime in itself, 2) sthg promulgated by Ayatollah Khomeini, ie Iran in the midst of the Islamic revolution, Persian Shia world, following their own purist (shall we say, "creationist"? joke, joke!) version of Islam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi'a_Islam

but let me say this, cause 1) i am no "friend" of Islam, not at all, just willing to make the effort to understand, and not unnecessarily offend, and also know there are beautiful things in the Qur'an as well as horrible things... i've read enough of it

2) while it is true that Arab culture and the Qur'an are strongly intertwined because of the very nature of the Qur'an teachings and the Islamic government system, it's complex... iranians are persians, not liked by arabs, the arabs from country to country don't like each other much, a bit like Europe in the 19th (early 20th?) century, the Turks are ottoman, muslims too, not much love with the arabs etc etc... then within the Sunnis and the Shias and beside them there are as many islamic strands and sects as you can think... and there are significant Christian arab populations etc...

3) i believe we agree on what matters

basically what i want to say... (clearing my throat)... is this: the root cause of a lot of what's happening and what's not (ie moderate muslim leaders not being more outspoken against extremists) is the way Islam is "organized" now from an institutional standpoint: its a complete mess, no offense to our muslim colleagues on this thread


attempts at a Vatican II style reformation of Islam have been made and so far haven't succeeded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_movements_within_Islam ... THAT would be an important step forward for the Muslim world, and for the rest of the world as well... jmo