Amy, think of it as a mix of white-girl pearl-clutching and street-corner gossip delusion:
You insist that only the most violent expressions of Islam are authentic.
Now, aside from being transparently screechy, what does that do for anyone's interests in a larger sense? Quite literally: What would you expect?
This is small-town behavior. You have no Muslims in your life, and don't have the broad-mindedness to read anything but the part that lets you squeals in disgust, like a seven-old-schoolgirl when Little Edgar brings a frog to class in his pocket. Otherwise, you're too bored with their lives to pay attention.
But even THAT isn't a clue for you... The conditions of their lives don't register in your heart.
Why would I answer your points when you're too cowardly to answer mine? This has been going on for years. I type books worth of stuff... You ignore it all and merely squeal 'But I'm right!'
Any, which is predominant in Indonesia: Sunni or Shia?
Didn't know you believed in coincidence, Crid. That Oklahoma woman beheaded since all the other beheadings began by ISIS a month ago, just pure coincidence, then? Isolated incident. Not happening again. Nothing to see here folks. Just "workplace violence."
gooseegg
at September 27, 2014 1:36 PM
Crid, I do not doubt that most Muslims of whatever sect are no more inclined to violence than other people. Nut the violent close their minds and cause harm until something stops them, and use this "power" over those who otherwise would not "support" their acts.
.
Consider the legacy of Torquemada. Even after centuries his tortures and murders are regarded as "typical" for the time of the religion he claimed. Actually, the Pope ordered him to stop, on pain of excommunication - he ignored this and continued, with the support of the government in his area. Why, you seem to ask, would the non-Catholic residents of Spain fear all Catholics? Because it was somewhere very difficult and impossible to know which would happily kill you and which would not if they took no public stance, which for a number of reasons (including their own fear of the murderous among them) most did not disclaim the violent.
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5147509">comment from John A
Those who haven't studied Islam are best not pontificating on it.
People are people. What Islam is is a dangerous, viral, totalitarian ideology. The Quran is not to be questioned or taken as allegory or history; it is said to be the word of Allah, infallible and unquestionable. The earlier passages in it that are interfaithy are "abrogated" by the later passages (after Mohammed gained power and realized he could just slaughter anybody who didn't bend to his and Islam's will). Islam COMMANDS the death or conversion of the infidel (or at least the humiliation and taxing of them for being non-Muslim.).
Many Muslims are peaceful and perfectly nice people who either have not a clue as to what their religion really calls for (practicing it like Christmas Christians), or who shrug off the parts that are evil and call for others' death. The problem is, there is a vast number of Muslims in the world, and even 10 percent supporting the jihad the Quran calls for is a huge and dangerous number.
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5147941">comment from Crid [CridComment at Gmail]
Crid, I've been reading the Quran, Hadith, and commentary since 9/11. That's 13 years. I know all about Islam and I write about it here. You're never able to dispute anything I say, because I only say things that are supported.
Feel free to dispute any point I wrote above.
Not just sneer that I don't know anything.
Say, "This is wrong" because X Quran verse comes later and erases its validity, for example. (That's what abrogating means in the quranic sense.)
One, ISIL followers do not come from any other religion.
Two, Christians; brought up and living in the same region, same political systems, same economic conditions; do not blow themselves up to become martyrs. It is only Muslims who do so.
The day ISIL (and other such groups) start accepting followers who believe in other religions, the day non-Muslims also behead and kill in the name of "Allah," is the day I'll agree that they do not speak for Islam.
Flynne; I haven't listened to Maher is years. I might just start listening to him again. That is a great video also.
Charles
at September 27, 2014 6:38 PM
OKAY THEN NO QUESTIONS I GET IT.
"I know all about Islam" means 'I like the scary parts best.'
I TYPE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME MORE RIGHT.
Not. Re, "You insist that only the most violent expressions of Islam are authentic" -- you ignore the self-selecting aspect of violent events. It's what is in the news.
Here's a suggestion: if you have news of Arabs treating others with respect and dignity, put that up here yourself.
And then explain why simple decency merits the column-inches.
Radwaste
at September 28, 2014 1:38 AM
> It's what is in the news.
So if it isn't in the headlines, it's not real? In caps, "Radwaste," so don't miss it:
I BELIEVE YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE THAT NAIVE.
Howzat?
I believe that after a lifetime spent on a couch watching TV news, being titillated to ever-more tawdry extremes by video producers working on ever-diminishing budgets, you believe —serious-balls, genuine-ass believe— that the most violent (and emotional!) explications of any phenomenon are most likely to represent the whole. They're all that can move you in a world of over-stimulation.
> And then explain why simple decency
> merits the column-inches.
For the love of fuck, what clever argument could you possibly, possibly, be making?
If conversation were basketball, you would always, always drop the no-look pass from the power forward. I know this.
But what are you trying to express, Raddy?
Take it again. Imagine the topic coming to you in slow-motion....
I think Amy's chatter about this is childish and inflammatory, devoid of any consideration beyond her Midwestern-schoolgirl agitation at the worst passages of the Koran. No history, no economics, no geography, no demographics and on and on... She has no conscious understanding of the population to which it appeals... She literally cannot imagine a life so illiterate, so challenging, so far removed from civilization's candy.
But what's worse is that she doesn't want to. Even though it describes something like sixth to a fourth of humanity.
You're welcome to take all the leadership from such mentoring that your dickless, pocketless pants can hold. Good luck out there!
But props to Isab, who understands the breadth of Islam's reach, and perhaps the meaning it holds for people, all across the planet. Presumably she doesn't regard her daydreams of superhuman authority as the center of her understanding of the world.
Yes, that was a fun one. It's fun to be so right when others are so very, very wrong.
... like a seven-old-schoolgirl when Little Edgar brings a frog to class in his pocket.
Cridmo, I asked Edgar if I could play with the frog, and he let me. I also asked Ronny if I could play with his raccoon when he brought that to school. I wasn't scared or icked out by either of them, because, curiosity and them critters was cute.
Islamist assholes with knives and guns and bombs, that want to kill us in the name of a power-crazed, murderous pedophile? Eh, not so much.
Flynne
at September 28, 2014 12:56 PM
You didn't address the earlier post: There were at least two more violent workplace murders in recent days. Those were the two that came up on the top half of a Google news search at 9pm Friday… For all I know, there were a dozen other such killings in the United States last week. Their victims are just as dead. Without investigation, I'd wager their deaths were every bit as senseless as the Oklahoma one, which everyone's eager to attribute to Islam.
So let me ask explicitly: What's on your mind, Flynne?
Are you irritated by violent young men who pretend to be righteously motivated by forces they think the rest of are ignoring?
Well... You're right.
But we notice that you didn't say anything about those other violent guys. And here's the thing: It's essentially the same problem.
There's no magical fix for Islam's impoverished and violent young males, any more than for America's.
To assume that illiterate Arabs would be pleasantly sex-dancing their underfed bodies across the edge of the dust-blown desert if only they hadn't memorized and internalized the textual minutiae of the Koran is silly.
Silly.
That's how this stuff from Amy reads... It's silly. If literacy means so much to her —"I've been reading the Quran, Hadith, and commentary"— then she ought to have more faith in it.
AND RADDY THE CAPS ARE FOR AMY WHO'LL ONLY read nine words that I write in any comment. On her own blog. She's too ADD to consider more than 9, SO I HAVE TO MAKE THEM EASILY ACCESSIBLE. (That last part was 8.)
It's not for emphasis, or to seem "more right."
But as always, your attention is appreciated... Even if metaphysically predestinate.
Crid I don't believe those other acts of violence have a root in religion. That's what's alarming, ALARMING right now. If Muslims here and abroad were denouncing the acts of violence, staging peaceful protests against the attacks, then we would have little to worry about right now. But the fact is that Islam is growing and it's roots do justify violence. I understand more than most how it is to have faith in a higher being, and to believe that what we do here affects our life after we die. Believing similarly, Muslims have a conviction that supersedes "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or "go into all the world and preach the gospel." Their great commission is to convert them or kill them. Pretty much. I do know that the majority of Muslims don't agree with that is going on by the radicals, but the chirping crickets are really nerve-wracking.
AMY WHICH PREDOMINATES INDONESIA SUNNI SHIA OKAY THANKS
That's just eight. D'ya think she'll see it?
After all, she "know[s] all about Islam," and Indonesia is our fourth most-populous country, right behind the United States.
SO I'D EXPECT HER TO KNOW WHAT ISLAM THERE MEANS FOR THE WORLD.
Aw shit. That's 13 words, four over the limit, so Amy will never see it.
I digress. (Har!)
> If Muslims here and abroad were?
> denouncing the acts of violence,
> staging peaceful protests against
> the attacks, then we would have
> little to worry about right now.
So if other people solved your problems, you wouldn't have any problems? Exactly how much do you imagine the world's Muslims have to do with each other?
Amy, taught to read at age 8, thinks they should all be accountable for each other's deeds because they affirm loyalty to the same book... Even if they've never read it, and even if they've never heard of one another... To her --and to you, apparently-- they're all one undifferentiated mass of Moozlim flesh.
Well.
Does this apply to Christians as well? I grew up in a (nominally) Christian home in the 60's and 70's, and never heard a single opinion from anyone in my circles about how things should have been going between Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army and the Catholics and the Labor party or whoever else was involved in all those bombings and bullshit.
And even today, Sunday night, I can't pull a convincing analogy together because who gives a fuck? What did those ninnies have to do with my (titular) Christian childhood, or the practice of my faith, or its (diminishing) presence in my heart?
> Believing similarly, Muslims have
> a conviction that...
You and Amy are really horny to believe that you can tell people what their cosmologies are supposed to mean to them, because you've done the reading.
(Even when you obviously haven't.)
(Even when they obviously haven't.)
Good luck with that! Your postures are naive, distant, impersonal, ill-informed and pompous...
But air-conditioned and well-hydrated. And well-fed, sleeping under tight roofs.
Until you figure out how to bring that kind of climate to the average Muslim practitioner, you're not going to hear agreeable sounds from them as assholes attack modern places.
Why should they care? What did modernity ever do for them?
The good news: Bringing disconnected, impoverished people into modernity was supposed to be the work of our generations anyway. (I mean, did you have other plans for the weekend? What did you think this century was going to be like?)
That's why we were so appalled by Dubya's spooky detachment from Iraq and Afghanistan.
If Amy ever visited, and spoke to the people whose religious faith she found so threatening, their religion would be the least of her concerns for them.
Crid, for a long time now extremists have been minding their own business in the Middle East, just picking on Israel. Everyone has been okay with them if they would just do that. But they're not just doing that anymore. Something has changed, sir. I know the majority are good folks - I really do, but extremism is catching like herpes. Like the case I saw this weekend where the mentally ill lady showed up to her therapist's office with a machete in full-on battle fatigues, ready to show everyone how serious she was about taking part in covert ops. She's bat shit crazy. Mental illness definitely plays a part in extremist views, but not all of them. Most are just being manipulated by some big-time assholes. But they're growing in numbers, and their message is getting louder. Even here. This is not 2 years ago or 10 years ago. We just had a real beheading happen here. You seem to think this is all in our heads or that we're trying to kick all the Muslims out or it's a hate thing - I don't hate people I haven't met. But I'm pretty suspicious of people who keep silent while evil happens. I just ask that they take a stand and denounce these actions. Dearborn should be rocking in the streets. Don't give them a pass on this like you just did. If they don't want ISIS to be the face of their religion, do something about it.
> just picking on Israel. Everyone
> has been okay with them if they
> would just do that.
Whhhhaaaaaaaaaa??????
Look me in the eye and say it again, I dare ya. Say it to anyone who knows the history of postwar America.
> Something has changed, sir.
Don't do that. It makes you sound like a ninny.
> but extremism is catching
> like herpes.
I don't believe it for minute. Certainly not for Islam in the developed world... The (few) guys born here who are most attracted to it —that is, the guys most eager to make an impression on the consciousness of socially inaccessible females such as, say, Amy (in a playful cocktail dress on the beach)— are going to be inclined to violence whether or not the rhetoric of Islam is coherent. When the naughty country schoolboy silently dips the distracted schoolgirl's pigtail into the inkwell, it's not because he doesn't like blonds.
You don't know anyone who's gone "extreme" either. And if you do, they were going that way without direction from the Koran.
> But they're growing in numbers,
> and their message is getting
> louder. Even here.
Cite.
(Boom!) Seriously, Gooserz, GooserGal, Goose-asaures... There's no way you have statistics for that at hand, without going off to find them right now.
But if you do that, here's a fun page. As listed there for me tonight, Christianity is growing faster. (Also, it would appear that when Muslims discuss "size" in the modern realm, their topic is devices for getting bigger dicks, Austin Powers-style.) The CS Monitor says religiosity is falling globally.
Personally, I haven't heard any "message" except "Shitfuck, our culture is useless."
> I just ask that they take a stand
> and denounce these actions.
Who? Muslims in Malaysia? Lesotho? Uruguay? Tallahassee? "They?" Not kidding... I want names. You obviously have someone very specific in mind.
Yes, but so should the whole of Detroit: As you must have noticed, the place is essentially depopulated. A formerly grand American metropolis has been squandered, and whaddya know, the immigrant minorities attracted to such inexpensive realms aren't perfectly pot-melted. (Next: New Orleans.)
But so what? Isn't the larger problem that the industrial patterns need replacement? Can you seriously contend that Dearborn is worse than the Irish in Boston and NYC in the 19th century?
> We just had a real beheading
> happen here.
We had nearly fifteen thousand murders in 2012. Were you as upset by those? Are those people any less dead? Are you serious about this? Because I think it's wonderful if you're seriously concerned by murder in the United States, and inclined to do something about it.
The murder rate in the United States is down by between a third and a quarter over my adult life. To the best of my terribly limited statistical understanding, people who say they know why are lying.
> Don't give them a pass
> on this like you just did.
I don't know what you mean by that. I'm halfway through my sixth decade, in a focused pattern of stubborness instilled by my older sister, who was a brassy redhead (!): I've never given anyone a pass on anything.
Re: the post piece, I'd suggest that people who aren't Muslims have better things to do than protest. Remember the Muslim Rage Boy in Versace? When interviewed, he bluntly acknowledged that protest was his hobby. He didn't have a career or anything. This weekend has a better perspective from Douthat.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail]
at September 29, 2014 12:10 AM
Here's the deal. TPM Barnett calls this "The era of the hyperempowered individual." Commerce and transportation and communications are reaching ever-deeper into the unconnected world. Smartphones are connecting Africans, skipping the American century of landline contact. People with no heritage of education, trade, comity, feminism or representative government have access to boats airliners. (It's a social parallel to the avian microbes that come from the poorest farms in central China every year and terrorize the rest of the world as influenza... Those weren't a problem before their population exploded and had outlets to the rest of the world.)
This was always going to happen, OK? Containment of religion was never an option. Integrating the Third World will be difficult, but nobody's asking whether or not you want to do it.
Yes, you can hear it more easily than you used to. But it's not "louder," it's just closer. And we've dealt with all these patterns before.
YOu know crid, when Warren Jeffs went on trial for leading his mormon splinter group in fucking children, the mainstream mormons and LDS leaders denounced him and went on record repudiating his actions.
Long before the Koresh compound burned to the ground in Waco the Seventh Day Adventists publicly condemned him.
Everyone says how much they despise the actions of the Phelps clan.
Why o you feel it is too much of a fucking burden for mulsim groups to condemn terrorism carried out in the name of their religion?
Agree that poverty and lack of access to education along with tribalism as well as some other factors affect the draw of a violent and meaningful lifestyle for many young men and women in islamic parts of the world - but what about the thought that islam functions as a way to keep people in that state? What if islam keeps people from education, and keeps them poor, and keeps them from taking their own destinies into their own hands? Can it not be at least partly blamed for that? Churchill wrote about it a hundred years ago, it's been evident for some time. So another 1,000 years before people tame their religion?
Jess
at September 29, 2014 7:23 AM
> what about the thought that islam
> functions as a way to keep people
> in that state?
So you're saying a social power structure —the closest thing to an enduring administrative institution in these undeveloped cultures— might not eagerly fly apart as soon as challengers appear? This surprises you?
> What if islam keeps people from
> education, and keeps them poor, and
> keeps them from taking their own
> destinies into their own hands?
Well, golly, you make it sound much like Catholicism for those first fifteen or twenty centuries.
Jess-- How much choice do you think you have as you compose your beliefs about this? What are the constraints to your selection?
Do you think you can merely decide that Islam is an unprecedented threat to human development?
Crid has the only straw man on the planet with a Superman suit. I mean, it's completely invulnerable to reason.
Dude, you can't help it. You have such a high opinion of yourself that you cannot imagine any conversation that isn't yours – you just have to add your two cents and then argue about those pennies.
Out of the thousands of rationalizations and justifications for violence, Islam is just one of them. If you want to discuss another one, feel free, but it's not going to dispose of this event and the reason for it.
I am not going to ask you to do anything. I know you won't do it.
There! The topic has been successfully converted to being about you.
Radwaste
at September 30, 2014 6:52 AM
Well, I have worked up my courage enough to say I really have enjoyed and learned a lot from Amy's discussions on Islam. That's why I read her blog and the comments - everyday. It is hard to keep up with everything that goes on in the world, especially when someone is trying to do other things in life and what is left to it.
Thanks for this Rad "Out of the thousands of rationalizations and justifications for violence, Islam is just one of them. If you want to discuss another one, feel free", it clears up some hanging chads in my brain.
Dave B
at September 30, 2014 10:13 AM
I try not to hold too many beliefs in general, I prefer to have ideas and try and continue to learn and think about things - more difficult to change a belief, non?
Speaking of choice, you're getting existential. I think you probably have a pretty good idea about how much choice I have in what I think. And I think that we would probably agree that there are many people who have far less choice in their lives and in their ideas. Our constraints center around who we were born to and when and where.
I've thought often about the rebels of human history. How is it that even given their time in human history and their constraints, they knew when something needed to change and fought hard to make that happen? I don't completely understand your position - is it that you believe time will take care islamic reformation and for that reason, because of what you think, others are being silly in their thoughts and opinions? I don't know, I think that's a tough sell considering female genital mutilation, slavery, stonings, honor killings, forced conversions, and the killing of apostates. Not as much choice there in the islamic world for people who were born to cultures that don't seem to honor the gift of life. At least, there are many parts of the world where life is considered a gift, and I'm not speaking in religious terms. So, are they due nothing from peoples who have worked to develop better ways?
Jess
at September 30, 2014 11:45 AM
> The topic has been successfully
> converted to being about you.
Naw, it's just that your attention for this topic is so foreshortened —so willfully foreshortened— that when someone says 'Hey, look behind you!,' your impulse is to glance at that person and scowl before turning back, in prayer, to your navel. Here, let me demonstrate:
The family has apologized.
And by "family," I mean his idiot mother and her sister. They were eager, apparently to get in front of cameras and 'We don't know what that fucker had on his mind,' because that's what loving families do. Right? I mean they shot that video for Facebook.
And nowadays, the press isn't smart enough to call the bluff.
Specifically: Where was Dad?
C'mon--- This guy had no 'family,' all he had was this idiot woman, a typically egomaniacal "single mother." When it came time to learn about being a man, he fell into criminality ("ex-con"), which seems not to have worried any of you at all... No one seems to know what his earlier crimes were; they may well have involved violent death. And then he moved onto the most extreme violence... But if he'd used a gun or a moving car, you wouldn't have cared.
The response of the blog:
→ It's d'em Muzzlinz!! ←
> learned a lot from Amy's
> discussions on Islam.
Same here! I've learned that for hazards regarded as distant, people are much more intrigued by a shallow vortex of wordy, senseless obsession than even a mildly-challenging investigation of context.
"Naw, it's just that your attention for this topic is so foreshortened —so willfully foreshortened— that when someone says 'Hey, look behind you!,' your impulse is to glance at that person and scowl before turning back, in prayer, to your navel."
Wow. Projection, simplification, denial, and the pot demands that the kettle be black.
Crid. It's not just this one thread. You continually insist that Amy is claiming violence is all there is to Islam.
No.
And you are not paying any attention whatsoever to cause-and-effect. You have no sense of discipline in logic whatsoever, and you have not noticed that although Islam commands violence, and that Amy's examples are proof of this, that is all there is to her point.
You insist on adding your own content and then arguing about that.
Muslims commit violent acts. Islam commands violent acts. Those Muslims who insist on observing Islam's commands to violence act violently.
This does not depend on what other religions say, or what you say.
Patrick has Sarah Palin, and you have Amy's take on Islam. There you go. I am surprised I have to explain such things.
Radwaste
at October 1, 2014 6:18 AM
> You continually insist that Amy
> is claiming violence is all
> there is to Islam.
It's great that you should put it in exactly that way! Because "continually" must be a lot, when I've already made 400+ comments here this year.
So it'll be easy for you to find even one in which I "insist that Amy is claiming violence is all there is to Islam."
No, mostly I claim:
[Item!] she's made no great study of Islam, no matter how much she reads of the Koran itself, or of twitchy reviews of its minutiae. Islam's perhaps the most prominent example of a faith for which devotion and 'adherence' occur without instruction from its central text, since so many in the fold are illiterate.
[Item!] There's more freely-accessible analysis and factual data about about the phenomenon than at any time in history; but for some reason, it means nothing to her at all. At all
[Item!] She's thus apparently more interested in scaring those who know even less than in sharing worthwhile information about the faith.
[Item!] She's either wickedly cagey or uncharacteristically naive in failing to acknowledge that Islam holds no secret powers in manipulating human character; She's doubly naughty in declining to predict outcomes its threats, or to suggest responses to the them. Civilization has dealt with primitive fanatics before.
[Item!] Her identification of the most violent aspects as the most authentic is counter-intellectual for any serious observer of religious behavior, and paradoxically fuels the fascination of erratic young men who think their masculinity will be gratified that way. She's part of the problem.
> Islam commands violent acts.
Religions are like that:
“Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deut. 20:17).
M'kay?
We'll be awaiting your citations of my "continual" comments.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail]
at October 1, 2014 9:40 AM
You do this often, Raddy: You take the wrong meaning from the first reading of a topic... And no matter how many opportunities are given to reconsider, no matter how plain the words, you stamp new explications with your old perception.
Bill Maher agrees, and SO DO I.
Flynne at September 27, 2014 8:07 AM
Amy, Flynne, both terrific videos, thank you.
jerry at September 27, 2014 11:07 AM
yep, watched them both. thanks guys
gooseegg at September 27, 2014 11:11 AM
Amy, think of it as a mix of white-girl pearl-clutching and street-corner gossip delusion:
You insist that only the most violent expressions of Islam are authentic.
Now, aside from being transparently screechy, what does that do for anyone's interests in a larger sense? Quite literally: What would you expect?
This is small-town behavior. You have no Muslims in your life, and don't have the broad-mindedness to read anything but the part that lets you squeals in disgust, like a seven-old-schoolgirl when Little Edgar brings a frog to class in his pocket. Otherwise, you're too bored with their lives to pay attention.
But even THAT isn't a clue for you... The conditions of their lives don't register in your heart.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 27, 2014 12:05 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5146932">comment from Crid [CridComment at Gmail]Feel free, Crid, to explain what in the video was wrong.
Oklahoma Woman Beheaded By Islam-Evangelizing Co-Worker
http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/26/oklahoma-woman-beheaded-by-islam-evangelizing-co-worker/
Quran 47:4: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…”
Amy Alkon at September 27, 2014 12:23 PM
Why would I answer your points when you're too cowardly to answer mine? This has been going on for years. I type books worth of stuff... You ignore it all and merely squeal 'But I'm right!'
Any, which is predominant in Indonesia: Sunni or Shia?
How about Nigeria?
You've got nothing but fear.
Ewwww! Edgar has a frog! That's GROSS!
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 27, 2014 1:07 PM
Didn't know you believed in coincidence, Crid. That Oklahoma woman beheaded since all the other beheadings began by ISIS a month ago, just pure coincidence, then? Isolated incident. Not happening again. Nothing to see here folks. Just "workplace violence."
gooseegg at September 27, 2014 1:36 PM
Crid, I do not doubt that most Muslims of whatever sect are no more inclined to violence than other people. Nut the violent close their minds and cause harm until something stops them, and use this "power" over those who otherwise would not "support" their acts.
.
Consider the legacy of Torquemada. Even after centuries his tortures and murders are regarded as "typical" for the time of the religion he claimed. Actually, the Pope ordered him to stop, on pain of excommunication - he ignored this and continued, with the support of the government in his area. Why, you seem to ask, would the non-Catholic residents of Spain fear all Catholics? Because it was somewhere very difficult and impossible to know which would happily kill you and which would not if they took no public stance, which for a number of reasons (including their own fear of the murderous among them) most did not disclaim the violent.
John A at September 27, 2014 2:31 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5147509">comment from John AThose who haven't studied Islam are best not pontificating on it.
People are people. What Islam is is a dangerous, viral, totalitarian ideology. The Quran is not to be questioned or taken as allegory or history; it is said to be the word of Allah, infallible and unquestionable. The earlier passages in it that are interfaithy are "abrogated" by the later passages (after Mohammed gained power and realized he could just slaughter anybody who didn't bend to his and Islam's will). Islam COMMANDS the death or conversion of the infidel (or at least the humiliation and taxing of them for being non-Muslim.).
Many Muslims are peaceful and perfectly nice people who either have not a clue as to what their religion really calls for (practicing it like Christmas Christians), or who shrug off the parts that are evil and call for others' death. The problem is, there is a vast number of Muslims in the world, and even 10 percent supporting the jihad the Quran calls for is a huge and dangerous number.
Amy Alkon at September 27, 2014 2:38 PM
AMY, YOU HAVEN'T STUDIED ISLAM
YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ISLAM. YOU CAN'T ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT ISLAM. YOU DON'T WANT TO.
YOU JUST KNOW ABOUT SCARING PEOPLE.
For fuck's sake, it's so transparent.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 27, 2014 2:53 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5147941">comment from Crid [CridComment at Gmail]Crid, I've been reading the Quran, Hadith, and commentary since 9/11. That's 13 years. I know all about Islam and I write about it here. You're never able to dispute anything I say, because I only say things that are supported.
Feel free to dispute any point I wrote above.
Not just sneer that I don't know anything.
Say, "This is wrong" because X Quran verse comes later and erases its validity, for example. (That's what abrogating means in the quranic sense.)
Amy Alkon at September 27, 2014 4:30 PM
AMY WILL YOU ANSWER QUESTIONS
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 27, 2014 4:41 PM
Two great key points in this video:
One, ISIL followers do not come from any other religion.
Two, Christians; brought up and living in the same region, same political systems, same economic conditions; do not blow themselves up to become martyrs. It is only Muslims who do so.
The day ISIL (and other such groups) start accepting followers who believe in other religions, the day non-Muslims also behead and kill in the name of "Allah," is the day I'll agree that they do not speak for Islam.
Flynne; I haven't listened to Maher is years. I might just start listening to him again. That is a great video also.
Charles at September 27, 2014 6:38 PM
OKAY THEN NO QUESTIONS I GET IT.
"I know all about Islam" means 'I like the scary parts best.'
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 28, 2014 1:28 AM
I TYPE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME MORE RIGHT.
Not. Re, "You insist that only the most violent expressions of Islam are authentic" -- you ignore the self-selecting aspect of violent events. It's what is in the news.
Here's a suggestion: if you have news of Arabs treating others with respect and dignity, put that up here yourself.
And then explain why simple decency merits the column-inches.
Radwaste at September 28, 2014 1:38 AM
> It's what is in the news.
So if it isn't in the headlines, it's not real? In caps, "Radwaste," so don't miss it:
I BELIEVE YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE THAT NAIVE.
Howzat?
I believe that after a lifetime spent on a couch watching TV news, being titillated to ever-more tawdry extremes by video producers working on ever-diminishing budgets, you believe —serious-balls, genuine-ass believe— that the most violent (and emotional!) explications of any phenomenon are most likely to represent the whole. They're all that can move you in a world of over-stimulation.
> And then explain why simple decency
> merits the column-inches.
For the love of fuck, what clever argument could you possibly, possibly, be making?
If conversation were basketball, you would always, always drop the no-look pass from the power forward. I know this.
But what are you trying to express, Raddy?
Take it again. Imagine the topic coming to you in slow-motion....
I think Amy's chatter about this is childish and inflammatory, devoid of any consideration beyond her Midwestern-schoolgirl agitation at the worst passages of the Koran. No history, no economics, no geography, no demographics and on and on... She has no conscious understanding of the population to which it appeals... She literally cannot imagine a life so illiterate, so challenging, so far removed from civilization's candy.
But what's worse is that she doesn't want to. Even though it describes something like sixth to a fourth of humanity.
You're welcome to take all the leadership from such mentoring that your dickless, pocketless pants can hold. Good luck out there!
But props to Isab, who understands the breadth of Islam's reach, and perhaps the meaning it holds for people, all across the planet. Presumably she doesn't regard her daydreams of superhuman authority as the center of her understanding of the world.
Yes, that was a fun one. It's fun to be so right when others are so very, very wrong.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 28, 2014 2:02 AM
"It's fun to be so right when others are so very, very wrong."
Honestly, it's the only thing that gets me out of bed some days.
That and the best damned cup of coffee you'll ever taste in your life.
No, you can't have any.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 28, 2014 8:36 AM
You know cid, in order to have your questions answered you'd actually have to ASK them.
As far as I can see all you do is say 'Nuh uh, thats not right, & you are all morons'
lujlp at September 28, 2014 10:56 AM
... like a seven-old-schoolgirl when Little Edgar brings a frog to class in his pocket.
Cridmo, I asked Edgar if I could play with the frog, and he let me. I also asked Ronny if I could play with his raccoon when he brought that to school. I wasn't scared or icked out by either of them, because, curiosity and them critters was cute.
Islamist assholes with knives and guns and bombs, that want to kill us in the name of a power-crazed, murderous pedophile? Eh, not so much.
Flynne at September 28, 2014 12:56 PM
You didn't address the earlier post: There were at least two more violent workplace murders in recent days. Those were the two that came up on the top half of a Google news search at 9pm Friday… For all I know, there were a dozen other such killings in the United States last week. Their victims are just as dead. Without investigation, I'd wager their deaths were every bit as senseless as the Oklahoma one, which everyone's eager to attribute to Islam.
So let me ask explicitly: What's on your mind, Flynne?
Are you irritated by violent young men who pretend to be righteously motivated by forces they think the rest of are ignoring?
Well... You're right.
But we notice that you didn't say anything about those other violent guys. And here's the thing: It's essentially the same problem.
There's no magical fix for Islam's impoverished and violent young males, any more than for America's.
To assume that illiterate Arabs would be pleasantly sex-dancing their underfed bodies across the edge of the dust-blown desert if only they hadn't memorized and internalized the textual minutiae of the Koran is silly.
Silly.
That's how this stuff from Amy reads... It's silly. If literacy means so much to her —"I've been reading the Quran, Hadith, and commentary"— then she ought to have more faith in it.
AND RADDY THE CAPS ARE FOR AMY WHO'LL ONLY read nine words that I write in any comment. On her own blog. She's too ADD to consider more than 9, SO I HAVE TO MAKE THEM EASILY ACCESSIBLE. (That last part was 8.)
It's not for emphasis, or to seem "more right."
But as always, your attention is appreciated... Even if metaphysically predestinate.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 28, 2014 4:08 PM
Crid I don't believe those other acts of violence have a root in religion. That's what's alarming, ALARMING right now. If Muslims here and abroad were denouncing the acts of violence, staging peaceful protests against the attacks, then we would have little to worry about right now. But the fact is that Islam is growing and it's roots do justify violence. I understand more than most how it is to have faith in a higher being, and to believe that what we do here affects our life after we die. Believing similarly, Muslims have a conviction that supersedes "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or "go into all the world and preach the gospel." Their great commission is to convert them or kill them. Pretty much. I do know that the majority of Muslims don't agree with that is going on by the radicals, but the chirping crickets are really nerve-wracking.
gooseegg at September 28, 2014 4:43 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5154149">comment from gooseeggGooseegg is correct.
Amy Alkon at September 28, 2014 4:58 PM
AMY WHICH PREDOMINATES INDONESIA SUNNI SHIA OKAY THANKS
That's just eight. D'ya think she'll see it?
After all, she "know[s] all about Islam," and Indonesia is our fourth most-populous country, right behind the United States.
SO I'D EXPECT HER TO KNOW WHAT ISLAM THERE MEANS FOR THE WORLD.
Aw shit. That's 13 words, four over the limit, so Amy will never see it.
I digress. (Har!)
> If Muslims here and abroad were?
> denouncing the acts of violence,
> staging peaceful protests against
> the attacks, then we would have
> little to worry about right now.
So if other people solved your problems, you wouldn't have any problems? Exactly how much do you imagine the world's Muslims have to do with each other?
Amy, taught to read at age 8, thinks they should all be accountable for each other's deeds because they affirm loyalty to the same book... Even if they've never read it, and even if they've never heard of one another... To her --and to you, apparently-- they're all one undifferentiated mass of Moozlim flesh.
Well.
Does this apply to Christians as well? I grew up in a (nominally) Christian home in the 60's and 70's, and never heard a single opinion from anyone in my circles about how things should have been going between Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army and the Catholics and the Labor party or whoever else was involved in all those bombings and bullshit.
And even today, Sunday night, I can't pull a convincing analogy together because who gives a fuck? What did those ninnies have to do with my (titular) Christian childhood, or the practice of my faith, or its (diminishing) presence in my heart?
> Believing similarly, Muslims have
> a conviction that...
You and Amy are really horny to believe that you can tell people what their cosmologies are supposed to mean to them, because you've done the reading.
(Even when you obviously haven't.)
(Even when they obviously haven't.)
Good luck with that! Your postures are naive, distant, impersonal, ill-informed and pompous...
But air-conditioned and well-hydrated. And well-fed, sleeping under tight roofs.
Until you figure out how to bring that kind of climate to the average Muslim practitioner, you're not going to hear agreeable sounds from them as assholes attack modern places.
Why should they care? What did modernity ever do for them?
The good news: Bringing disconnected, impoverished people into modernity was supposed to be the work of our generations anyway. (I mean, did you have other plans for the weekend? What did you think this century was going to be like?)
That's why we were so appalled by Dubya's spooky detachment from Iraq and Afghanistan.
If Amy ever visited, and spoke to the people whose religious faith she found so threatening, their religion would be the least of her concerns for them.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 28, 2014 7:13 PM
"AMY WHICH PREDOMINATES INDONESIA SUNNI SHIA OKAY THANKS"
Oh goody. Looks like a contest. What's the prize?
Dave B at September 28, 2014 7:50 PM
World Peace.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 28, 2014 8:16 PM
Crid, for a long time now extremists have been minding their own business in the Middle East, just picking on Israel. Everyone has been okay with them if they would just do that. But they're not just doing that anymore. Something has changed, sir. I know the majority are good folks - I really do, but extremism is catching like herpes. Like the case I saw this weekend where the mentally ill lady showed up to her therapist's office with a machete in full-on battle fatigues, ready to show everyone how serious she was about taking part in covert ops. She's bat shit crazy. Mental illness definitely plays a part in extremist views, but not all of them. Most are just being manipulated by some big-time assholes. But they're growing in numbers, and their message is getting louder. Even here. This is not 2 years ago or 10 years ago. We just had a real beheading happen here. You seem to think this is all in our heads or that we're trying to kick all the Muslims out or it's a hate thing - I don't hate people I haven't met. But I'm pretty suspicious of people who keep silent while evil happens. I just ask that they take a stand and denounce these actions. Dearborn should be rocking in the streets. Don't give them a pass on this like you just did. If they don't want ISIS to be the face of their religion, do something about it.
they're wondering too
gooseegg at September 28, 2014 9:31 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/09/27/former_muslim_p.html#comment-5155712">comment from Crid [CridComment at Gmail]Crid,
Again, feel free to dispute ANY POINT I've made and tell me why I'm wrong.
Crid, look up abrogation -- in the Islamic sense. Start your education there (to show you why your "worst passages of the Quran" comment is ignorant.
Amy Alkon at September 28, 2014 10:53 PM
> just picking on Israel. Everyone
> has been okay with them if they
> would just do that.
Whhhhaaaaaaaaaa??????
Look me in the eye and say it again, I dare ya. Say it to anyone who knows the history of postwar America.
> Something has changed, sir.
Don't do that. It makes you sound like a ninny.
> but extremism is catching
> like herpes.
I don't believe it for minute. Certainly not for Islam in the developed world... The (few) guys born here who are most attracted to it —that is, the guys most eager to make an impression on the consciousness of socially inaccessible females such as, say, Amy (in a playful cocktail dress on the beach)— are going to be inclined to violence whether or not the rhetoric of Islam is coherent. When the naughty country schoolboy silently dips the distracted schoolgirl's pigtail into the inkwell, it's not because he doesn't like blonds.
You don't know anyone who's gone "extreme" either. And if you do, they were going that way without direction from the Koran.
> But they're growing in numbers,
> and their message is getting
> louder. Even here.
Cite.
(Boom!) Seriously, Gooserz, GooserGal, Goose-asaures... There's no way you have statistics for that at hand, without going off to find them right now.
But if you do that, here's a fun page. As listed there for me tonight, Christianity is growing faster. (Also, it would appear that when Muslims discuss "size" in the modern realm, their topic is devices for getting bigger dicks, Austin Powers-style.) The CS Monitor says religiosity is falling globally.
Personally, I haven't heard any "message" except "Shitfuck, our culture is useless."
> I just ask that they take a stand
> and denounce these actions.
Who? Muslims in Malaysia? Lesotho? Uruguay? Tallahassee? "They?" Not kidding... I want names. You obviously have someone very specific in mind.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 29, 2014 12:09 AM
> Dearborn should be rocking
> in the streets.
Yes, but so should the whole of Detroit: As you must have noticed, the place is essentially depopulated. A formerly grand American metropolis has been squandered, and whaddya know, the immigrant minorities attracted to such inexpensive realms aren't perfectly pot-melted. (Next: New Orleans.)
But so what? Isn't the larger problem that the industrial patterns need replacement? Can you seriously contend that Dearborn is worse than the Irish in Boston and NYC in the 19th century?
> We just had a real beheading
> happen here.
We had nearly fifteen thousand murders in 2012. Were you as upset by those? Are those people any less dead? Are you serious about this? Because I think it's wonderful if you're seriously concerned by murder in the United States, and inclined to do something about it.
The murder rate in the United States is down by between a third and a quarter over my adult life. To the best of my terribly limited statistical understanding, people who say they know why are lying.
> Don't give them a pass
> on this like you just did.
I don't know what you mean by that. I'm halfway through my sixth decade, in a focused pattern of stubborness instilled by my older sister, who was a brassy redhead (!): I've never given anyone a pass on anything.
Re: the post piece, I'd suggest that people who aren't Muslims have better things to do than protest. Remember the Muslim Rage Boy in Versace? When interviewed, he bluntly acknowledged that protest was his hobby. He didn't have a career or anything. This weekend has a better perspective from Douthat.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 29, 2014 12:10 AM
Here's the deal. TPM Barnett calls this "The era of the hyperempowered individual." Commerce and transportation and communications are reaching ever-deeper into the unconnected world. Smartphones are connecting Africans, skipping the American century of landline contact. People with no heritage of education, trade, comity, feminism or representative government have access to boats airliners. (It's a social parallel to the avian microbes that come from the poorest farms in central China every year and terrorize the rest of the world as influenza... Those weren't a problem before their population exploded and had outlets to the rest of the world.)
This was always going to happen, OK? Containment of religion was never an option. Integrating the Third World will be difficult, but nobody's asking whether or not you want to do it.
Yes, you can hear it more easily than you used to. But it's not "louder," it's just closer. And we've dealt with all these patterns before.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 29, 2014 12:11 AM
> Again, feel free to dispute ANY
> POINT I've made and tell me
> why I'm wrong.
Thanks, don't mind if I do.
But the point never gels, does it? I mean, there's never any point. You don't want anyone to DO anything.
Except acknowledge that you have a special insight.
One which never fits in a sentence.
Well, never a sentence without "Sheeple!" at the end.
This isn't about Islam.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 29, 2014 12:16 AM
YOu know crid, when Warren Jeffs went on trial for leading his mormon splinter group in fucking children, the mainstream mormons and LDS leaders denounced him and went on record repudiating his actions.
Long before the Koresh compound burned to the ground in Waco the Seventh Day Adventists publicly condemned him.
Everyone says how much they despise the actions of the Phelps clan.
Why o you feel it is too much of a fucking burden for mulsim groups to condemn terrorism carried out in the name of their religion?
lujlp at September 29, 2014 5:38 AM
Agree that poverty and lack of access to education along with tribalism as well as some other factors affect the draw of a violent and meaningful lifestyle for many young men and women in islamic parts of the world - but what about the thought that islam functions as a way to keep people in that state? What if islam keeps people from education, and keeps them poor, and keeps them from taking their own destinies into their own hands? Can it not be at least partly blamed for that? Churchill wrote about it a hundred years ago, it's been evident for some time. So another 1,000 years before people tame their religion?
Jess at September 29, 2014 7:23 AM
> what about the thought that islam
> functions as a way to keep people
> in that state?
So you're saying a social power structure —the closest thing to an enduring administrative institution in these undeveloped cultures— might not eagerly fly apart as soon as challengers appear? This surprises you?
> What if islam keeps people from
> education, and keeps them poor, and
> keeps them from taking their own
> destinies into their own hands?
Well, golly, you make it sound much like Catholicism for those first fifteen or twenty centuries.
Jess-- How much choice do you think you have as you compose your beliefs about this? What are the constraints to your selection?
Do you think you can merely decide that Islam is an unprecedented threat to human development?
Will the evidence of history count for anything?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 29, 2014 11:11 AM
Well, golly, you make it sound much like Catholicism for those first fifteen or twenty centuries.
Problem is Islam has now caught up to the retaliative point where they should have had their reformation.
That comparison is no longer apt.
lujlp at September 29, 2014 2:11 PM
Aptly retaliative! You can tell them were they "should" be.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 29, 2014 3:20 PM
Crid has the only straw man on the planet with a Superman suit. I mean, it's completely invulnerable to reason.
Dude, you can't help it. You have such a high opinion of yourself that you cannot imagine any conversation that isn't yours – you just have to add your two cents and then argue about those pennies.
Out of the thousands of rationalizations and justifications for violence, Islam is just one of them. If you want to discuss another one, feel free, but it's not going to dispose of this event and the reason for it.
I am not going to ask you to do anything. I know you won't do it.
There! The topic has been successfully converted to being about you.
Radwaste at September 30, 2014 6:52 AM
Well, I have worked up my courage enough to say I really have enjoyed and learned a lot from Amy's discussions on Islam. That's why I read her blog and the comments - everyday. It is hard to keep up with everything that goes on in the world, especially when someone is trying to do other things in life and what is left to it.
Thanks for this Rad "Out of the thousands of rationalizations and justifications for violence, Islam is just one of them. If you want to discuss another one, feel free", it clears up some hanging chads in my brain.
Dave B at September 30, 2014 10:13 AM
I try not to hold too many beliefs in general, I prefer to have ideas and try and continue to learn and think about things - more difficult to change a belief, non?
Speaking of choice, you're getting existential. I think you probably have a pretty good idea about how much choice I have in what I think. And I think that we would probably agree that there are many people who have far less choice in their lives and in their ideas. Our constraints center around who we were born to and when and where.
I've thought often about the rebels of human history. How is it that even given their time in human history and their constraints, they knew when something needed to change and fought hard to make that happen? I don't completely understand your position - is it that you believe time will take care islamic reformation and for that reason, because of what you think, others are being silly in their thoughts and opinions? I don't know, I think that's a tough sell considering female genital mutilation, slavery, stonings, honor killings, forced conversions, and the killing of apostates. Not as much choice there in the islamic world for people who were born to cultures that don't seem to honor the gift of life. At least, there are many parts of the world where life is considered a gift, and I'm not speaking in religious terms. So, are they due nothing from peoples who have worked to develop better ways?
Jess at September 30, 2014 11:45 AM
> The topic has been successfully
> converted to being about you.
Naw, it's just that your attention for this topic is so foreshortened —so willfully foreshortened— that when someone says 'Hey, look behind you!,' your impulse is to glance at that person and scowl before turning back, in prayer, to your navel. Here, let me demonstrate:
The family has apologized.
And by "family," I mean his idiot mother and her sister. They were eager, apparently to get in front of cameras and 'We don't know what that fucker had on his mind,' because that's what loving families do. Right? I mean they shot that video for Facebook.
And nowadays, the press isn't smart enough to call the bluff.
Specifically: Where was Dad?
C'mon--- This guy had no 'family,' all he had was this idiot woman, a typically egomaniacal "single mother." When it came time to learn about being a man, he fell into criminality ("ex-con"), which seems not to have worried any of you at all... No one seems to know what his earlier crimes were; they may well have involved violent death. And then he moved onto the most extreme violence... But if he'd used a gun or a moving car, you wouldn't have cared.
The response of the blog:
> learned a lot from Amy's
> discussions on Islam.
Same here! I've learned that for hazards regarded as distant, people are much more intrigued by a shallow vortex of wordy, senseless obsession than even a mildly-challenging investigation of context.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 30, 2014 12:12 PM
> Not as much choice there in
> the islamic world for people
> who were born to cultures that
Personally, kiddo, I like the way you walk.
But you may be in for some tough times with this crowd.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at September 30, 2014 12:14 PM
"Naw, it's just that your attention for this topic is so foreshortened —so willfully foreshortened— that when someone says 'Hey, look behind you!,' your impulse is to glance at that person and scowl before turning back, in prayer, to your navel."
Wow. Projection, simplification, denial, and the pot demands that the kettle be black.
Crid. It's not just this one thread. You continually insist that Amy is claiming violence is all there is to Islam.
No.
And you are not paying any attention whatsoever to cause-and-effect. You have no sense of discipline in logic whatsoever, and you have not noticed that although Islam commands violence, and that Amy's examples are proof of this, that is all there is to her point.
You insist on adding your own content and then arguing about that.
Muslims commit violent acts. Islam commands violent acts. Those Muslims who insist on observing Islam's commands to violence act violently.
This does not depend on what other religions say, or what you say.
Patrick has Sarah Palin, and you have Amy's take on Islam. There you go. I am surprised I have to explain such things.
Radwaste at October 1, 2014 6:18 AM
> You continually insist that Amy
> is claiming violence is all
> there is to Islam.
It's great that you should put it in exactly that way! Because "continually" must be a lot, when I've already made 400+ comments here this year.
So it'll be easy for you to find even one in which I "insist that Amy is claiming violence is all there is to Islam."
No, mostly I claim:
> Islam commands violent acts.
Religions are like that:
M'kay?
We'll be awaiting your citations of my "continual" comments.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at October 1, 2014 9:40 AM
You do this often, Raddy: You take the wrong meaning from the first reading of a topic... And no matter how many opportunities are given to reconsider, no matter how plain the words, you stamp new explications with your old perception.
And then you wanna bicker.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at October 1, 2014 9:43 AM
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