If people are really worried about anti-Muslim violence, the focus should be on the fundamentalist maniacs who are murdering Muslims by the thousands for being insufficiently Islamic.

Interesting that that article stated there was a parking dispute. That was left out of the article I read earlier this morning. It seemed to focus on the fact that the man seemed to have a burning hatred for both Christians and Muslims.

"As commanded."

That shit cracks me up. You're so eager to tell believers how their religions are supposed to be practiced.

Because It's right there in blacks and white!!!, you will screech. Why is this so tough to understand!??!?!?!

Hehheh. Ah.

So... Yeah. You have DONE THE READING.






Anybuddy waste any Amalekites lately? No?

Many news reports, when it IS a Muslim killing a non-Muslim, for no other reason than being a non-Muslim seem to bend over backwards to try to come up with other reasons.

This case though, the news media seems to bend over backwards to MAKE it about killing Muslims for being Muslims even though there is no evidence to support that.

After seeing how the 24/7 news folks played the Zimmerman/Martin case, and the Ferguson situation, I think I'll just hang out a bit and wait for more info.

No, you haven't done the reading, Amy.

You certainly haven't done the reading about the history of Islam, or the influence of any forces but your darling Koran. You know nothing of the structure of contemporary sects, or the challenges they face. Nor is "reading" the be-all for a topic of this magnitude.... You will have to MEET PEOPLE and TALK TO THEM. (Your resistance to doing his for Christians was almost cute, since their hazards have been and are being dealt with.)

You think you can learn (and, weirdly, preach) it all from the suburbs, in both literal and figurative senses.

No.

Sooooooo.... You haven't toasted any Amalekites either, right?

"No, you haven't done the reading, Amy. You certainly haven't done the reading about the history of Islam, or the influence of any forces but your darling Koran."

"Really? Here, for example, is a terrific eBook I read on the history of Islam:

The Mohammed Code"

The fact that you would cite Howard Bloom, a pop psychologist, and rock concert promoter as an authority on Middle Eastern culture, religion, and history tell me everything I need to know about your *research* on this subject.

> Really?

Yes, really.

Are you ready for some closed-book questions?

> Howard Bloom, a pop psychologist, and
> rock concert promoter

The world is not properly documented on the Gift Books isle of your Barnes & Noble.

> pop psychologist, and rock concert
> promoter

Per Wikipedia, almost certainly self-penned: "an American author and scientific thinker."

I can't help but notice that there are no library, academic or scholarly reviews of "Mohammed Code," which was presumably titled to mimic the bestselling Dan Brown novel. There's nothing in the New York Times or the New York Review of Books. His Amazon vitae cites TV appearance as evidence of his Islamic expertise. Also:

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler, who doubles as the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, has named a racehorse after one of Bloom’s books.

Props to Isab: This is not about scholarship.

It's like people expect everything to be 9/11 news - instantly on the cover of every website and news paper, and don't even give any time for reporting.By the morning after the event, it was not quite the lead story on CNN, but it was in the top three, and it was the top story shortly afterwards (by noon). And yet, the media was "refusing to cover it".

People on the internet say this must be a hate crime because you could tell by their photos the people were muslim, the shooter was posting awful things about muslims on facebook, and therefore there could be no other reason.

And I believe that this is probably a hate crime. But I am willing to entertain the possibility that this all arose over a parking dispute, which seems incomprehensible to the grievance crowd, because amazingly enough, sometimes people are that crazy. People are so psychotic that they kill people over parking disputes. They torture people over ATM cards. They shoot up post offices and schools for no reason. They kill entire families. And refusal to say "let's wait to see what the evidence says", refusal to admit there are other possibilities, says to me that you're not really interested in the truth, but in hearing your own opinions validated. Truth is messy and complicated.

It's like people expect everything to be 9/11 news - instantly on the cover of every website and news paper, and don't even give any time for reporting.By the morning after the event, it was not quite the lead story on CNN, but it was in the top three, and it was the top story shortly afterwards (by noon). And yet, the media was "refusing to cover it".

People on the internet say this must be a hate crime because you could tell by their photos the people were muslim, the shooter was posting awful things about muslims on facebook, and therefore there could be no other reason.

And I believe that this is probably a hate crime. But I am willing to entertain the possibility that this all arose over a parking dispute, which seems incomprehensible to the grievance crowd, because amazingly enough, sometimes people are that crazy. People are so psychotic that they kill people over parking disputes. They torture people over ATM cards. They shoot up post offices and schools for no reason. They kill entire families. And refusal to say "let's wait to see what the evidence says", refusal to admit there are other possibilities, says to me that you're not really interested in the truth, but in hearing your own opinions validated. Truth is messy and complicated.

☑ Good comments.

"the Gift Books isle"

Man, I LOVE vacationing there. Awesome beaches!

Sorry. Couldn't help it.

That shit cracks me up. You're so eager to tell believers how their religions are supposed to be practice.

Islamists are pretty clear about how Islam is supposed to be practiced.

Who are you to tell them otherwise?

Crid, I'm curious. You make the same comments whenever Amy says anything about Islam, but I don't remember you actually saying anything in actual rebuttal (I could have missed it, though) . What's your opinion? Are fatwas (like Rushdie's), terrorist acts (9/11, mall bombings etc), and restrictions on women's dress as examples, all the work of a warped few who aren't "true Muslims", or are they aspects of the belief system? Sheer numbers would seem to indicate a position taken against non-Muslims and women in general, why do you not think so?

Nice conflation of murderous fatwas, terrorist bombings, and dress codes, crella. Because, of course, only Islam has any restrictions on what can be worn where.

Crid isn't preaching from the 'suburbs', Ms Alkon is. Alkon would have us believe all Muslims are either murderous terrorists, or deluded simpletons. Crid calls this into question, and tried, and failed, to move the discussion in an academic direction.

It's clear to me that for too many folks there is too much conclusion driving cherry picked 'facts' from poorly vetted writers.

Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism all have tenets of peace within their religion. None of these religions call for the destruction of anyone who opposes their God, like Islam. I believe the religion is fervently served by a vast majority who adhere to very peaceful, loving concepts and seek no harm against their neighbor. But the religion itself is open to radicalization unlike the other religions. I believe a solution would be for the moderate, peace-loving Muslims to march by the tens and hundreds of thousands and let their voices be heard, that they refuse for their religion to be abused any longer by those are using it as a political platform to murder, rape, and torture. Until the masses are heard, I fear this will continue. The only voices that will be loud enough to silence the radicalization of Islam are the moderate servants of Islam.

". I believe a solution would be for the moderate, peace-loving Muslims to march by the tens and hundreds of thousands and let their voices be heard, that they refuse for their religion to be abused any longer by those are using it as a political platform to murder, rape, and torture. "

I think the Jews in Nazi Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and Russia, should have marched by the tens and hundreds of thousands and let their voices be heard.

Surely, Hitler and Stalin would have been swayed by their ernest desire to live in peace.

No?

Just out of curiosity, when are you going to recognize that the the peace loving Muslims in most third world shit holes, don't have any TV's? Or transportation to get to where the big demo is going to be held....

Never mind that most Arabs now live in anarchy pulled between what ever militant groups are fighting in the region.
(Thank you President Obama)

Most of them are lucky to have electricity a few hours a day.

Talk about living on planet suburbia. Gooseegg, are you really that fucking naive?

Do you really think the terrorists care what you or other Muslims think?

After you are done marching around, I suggest stomping your feet, and holding your breath until you turn blue. That will show em.

AMY ALKON WILL YOU ANSWER A 
FEW QUESTIONS ABOUT ISLAM??

> Sorry. Couldn't help it.

Fucker.


> Islamists are pretty clear about how
> Islam is supposed to be practiced.

What on Earth makes you think so? Are they not savagely, murderously divided into two sects known to every schoolchild with a Twitter feed? (…Yet seemingly invisible to our I've-done-the-reading! hostess?) Would you, perhaps entranced by Amy's descriptions of Muslims as Star Trek-style aliens, expect less diversity from this faith than from any other that's been cast across as much of the planet? And, I mean, have you seen less diversity in Islam?

I haven't. Being so often illiterate, they're greatly detached from most of civilization's unifying experiences. Islam can get suddenly weird, no less than any other religion.


> I don't remember you actually saying
> anything in actual rebuttal

Then why are you concerned enough to comment? Go ahead and enjoy Amy's "expertise" in the silent comfort of your own home. (But I suspect you haven't done the reading, or you'd have offered a cite. Your disquiet has source, and it ain't that I'm wrong.)


> tried, and failed, to move the
> discussion in an academic
> direction.

Luvyoo, Railmeat. Unless you're a guy, because that would be gay.


> None of these religions call for
> the destruction of anyone who
> opposes their God, like Islam.

That's just a profoundly silly thing to say. In what geographical reason are each religion's adherents sampled? Which year are we talking about? 722? 1346? 1505? 2014?

Gooser, you've made a nasty habit of presuming that your experience of the world is the one that everyone's had... See also, Isab.

> I believe a solution would be
> for the moderate, peace-loving
> Muslims to march by the tens and
> hundreds of thousands and let
> their voices be heard

Has there been one time, just one in your ever-expanding lifetime, when you personally "marched"? Did you do it upon demand by a stranger and their "beliefs"? Did you do it "by the tens and hundreds of thousands"? Did you march as an expression of being "moderate" and "peace-loving"?

I see people on Twitter sneering that Islam got indicted for the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, but nobody's pointing any fingers at, say, white people for this one.

The thing is -- that most people are ignorant of -- is that Islam demands the conversion or slaughter of "the infidel"...

You mean you're not familiar with the Queenanne, the white people's holy book?

Queenanne 5:33 states: "The punishment of those who wage war against God and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the parking lot is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement and shall never again manage to find a parking space."

Railmeat: Alkon would have us believe all Muslims are either murderous terrorists, or deluded simpletons.

I think that characterization is off-base. Amy has repeatedly been critical of Islam -- e.g her comment above 'The thing is -- that most people are ignorant of -- is that Islam demands the conversion or slaughter of "the infidel"...' and has been critical of those Muslims who are murderous terrorists, but she has also repeatedly pointed out that "There are countless Muslims who do not practice Islam as commanded..." and I wouldn't consider all those Muslims to be deluded simpletons. I'd consider them to be wise people, people who place more importance on humanity than on exhortations in their "holy book."

The Christian Old Testament / Hebrew Bible states: "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death". While there may be some fundamentalist Christians and Jews who would cheerfully follow the word of their God in regard to this, most Christians and Jews, like their Muslim counterparts, place more importance on humanity. However, if a Christian or Jewish fundamentalist were to kill an adulterer and an adulteress, they are doing as their God commanded.

Who knows, maybe the Christian/Jewish God will reward those Christians and Jews who kill adulterers and adulteresses (and doctors who do abortions) and the and Muslim Allah will reward those Muslims who kill cartoonists for drawing pictures of Muhammed (and shoot schoolgirls in the head) and those Christians, Jews and Muslims who refuse to do these things will be condemned to eternal damnation.

[Crid:] What on Earth makes you think [Islamists are pretty clear on how Islam should be practiced]?

Because they are clear; what I think or not is utterly beside the point.

As are their mutual disagreements.

Islam is quite clear on the Quran's provenance and its applicability. The Quran contains explicit, divine direction on what to do with apostates, heretics, non-believers, women and Jews. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, where there is wiggle room galore, in Islam there is no escaping, for instance, Islam's penalty for apostasy without torpedoing the whole religion below the waterline.

Go to the Wikipedia article on apostasy. There's a map there that shows all the countries where it is a crime.

Then overlay it with a map of countries that are majority Islamic.

It's a perfect fit.

Beliefs matter.

"What on Earth makes you think so?"

Do you think not?

Somehow, you have missed this or you are somehow compelled to ignore it: that of all the religions that command violence, the suicide bomber, beheader, kidnapper of a villageful of girls today shouts, "Allahu Akbar!"

Do they not?

Their actions are MUCH louder than your words, even if the typical media magnification is happening.

Beliefs matter.

No they don't,

I don't care what anyone believes until they have the means and the will to pick up a gun, and try to force me, or other people to adhere to those beliefs.

Islamism is a product of Arab culture, not the driver here. It exists as a focal point for a thousand years of grinding poverty and hopelessness, resulting from Arabs backing every losing cause for the last thousand years, up to and including the Nazi's in World War II.

Their culture produces nothing, they are a bunch of poverty stricken goat herders, and they were handed billions of petro dollars after World War II.

(Do a little reading on the subject of what happened in Oklahoma when oil was discovered on tribal lands. )

The oil rich dictators of the Middle East have financially supported and abetted terrorism and this hatred of modernity, the West, and Jews in order to keep their own people from hanging them and the rest of the Arab/Persian aristocracy from the lamp posts.

And with the U.S. bowing out of the region most of these countries have been consumed by chaos because there is no *lid* there anymore.

After you people read up on the Suni and the Shia, do some research on the Wahhabists.

"Somehow, you have missed this or you are somehow compelled to ignore it: that of all the religions that command violence, the suicide bomber, beheader, kidnapper of a villageful of girls today shouts, "Allahu Akbar!""

You prefer " Heil Hitler"?

And why would it make a difference?

[I posted this elsewhere, but since the linked article is about the Chapel Hill murders, I'm re-posting it here.]

Do ideas drive violence, or do the violent appropriate ideas and warp them to fit their own needs?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398563/being-good-progressive-doesnt-make-you-incapable-hate-charles-c-w-cooke

"Peaceful men will always struggle to grasp exactly how their political beliefs could be co-opted by the violent. Indeed, had he lived to see it so appallingly cited, Nietzsche would have presumably spent the latter years of his life making it clear to all and sundry that his work had been wildly misappropriated. He would, no doubt, have had a point. But, really, this serves only to underscore the point: Because we never know which of our ideas evil men will pick up, pointing to the presumed virtues of those ideas is futile." ~ Charles C. W. Cooke

Working. You guys are still wrong about this.

Come back late tonight or tomorrow, and I'll hold you hand and walk you through it.

No... Not a problem.

" Nice conflation of murderous fatwas, terrorist bombings, and dress codes, crella. Because, of course, only Islam has any restrictions on what can be worn where."

I just think that those are the things that come to people's minds.

What other group makes women dress so that only their eyes show? Yes, many places have rules about 'what can be worn where' but surely you acknowledge the difference between a dress code and full hajib and naqib...

I asked for your opinion Crid, admitting that I may have missed it in a previous thread. So, what is your opinion? You state that Amy is completely wrong, why not tell us why?

Ahh yes. Crids old come back in a day or two(or ten or twelve) and I'll illuminate all for you (once eveyones moved on to other posts and no one is around to contradict my bull shit)

"I just think that those are the things that come to people's minds.

What other group makes women dress so that only their eyes show? Yes, many places have rules about 'what can be worn where' but surely you acknowledge the difference between a dress code and full hajib and naqib.."

Does anyone *make* you wear clothes when you go to the grocery store down the street or would they have to *make* you go there naked?

Somehow I think it is culture the keeps your knickers on, and not religion..... :-).

If you knew anything about Islam, you would know that the full burqa is Arabic cultural thing, most common in Saudi Arabia, and NOT a requirement of the Koran.

> You state that Amy is
> completely wrong

Cite?

> come back in a day or two(or ten

Some of us work for a living.

[Jeff Guinn:] Beliefs matter.

[Isab:] No they don't,

…

Islamism is a product of Arab culture

Yet somehow Arab culture isn't a product of Islam?

What you fail to account for is that plenty of places are energy extraction kleptocracies, but it's only the Islamic ones that are exporting religiously inspired violence.

Islamic countries that aren't energy exporters hide Islamic terrorists, have vicious internecine conflict.

Plenty of religions get all kinds of criticism, but only Muslims react violently.

The Quran is a unitary text, dictated word for word from (IIRC) the Archangel Gabriel to Muhammed, and exists in one canonical form. The Quran contains many passages that give divine imprimatur to violence in the here and now; those passages are clear and unequivocal. Given Islam's insistence on the primacy and divine authority of the entire Quran, it isn't possible for true believers to pick and choose which parts they will adhere to, and which are optional. Islam insists that the Quran and Haddith together comprise complete truth. Moreover, Muhammed was simultaneously a prophet, warrior, and dictator. Muhammed had children, which led to an ongoing succession crisis between Shia and Sunni. Islam does not separate the sacred from the profane: Islam does not allow for separation of religion and government.

In contrast, the Bible is fragmentary; divinely inspired, not dictated; has many canonical versions in many languages; and is frequently metaphorical. The Bible contains plenty of murderous passages, but most of them are time and place bound, and almost all of them are in the Old Testament. The New Testament gave Christians an exit option from the demands of, say, the Pentateuch. Jesus was only a prophet, never a ruler, and had no children. There are no claims by Judaism or Christianity that the Bible comprises all knowledge.

Of course Christianity has caused a great deal of suffering, but there are lots of reasons that Christianity stopped doing centuries ago what Islam is still doing today — Islam's theological rigidity is a bug, not a feature. It is no accident that Islamic intellectual change came to a dead halt about nine hundred years ago.

Beliefs matter.

[Jeff Guinn:] Beliefs matter.
[Isab:] No they don't,

…

"Islamism is a product of Arab culture

Yet somehow Arab culture isn't a product of Islam?"

Correct. The values of Arab culture formed the basis of Islam, and Islam as practiced in non Arab countries does not share much in common with the Wahhabists.

"What you fail to account for is that plenty of places are energy extraction kleptocracies, but it's only the Islamic ones that are exporting religiously inspired violence"

Assuming you are correct, which I don't think you are, there are plenty of kleptocracies who attempt to export their violence. Mexico is one of them, and the fact that it isn't Islamic is beside the point.

The Mexican Brahmin class is lucky. They have a safety valve just to the north that allows them to export their potential revolutionaries. Watch what happens if we ever manage to secure the border.

As far as religious violence being exported. I blame the importers as much as the exporters.

Through a sense of collective colonial guilt, the Euroweanies and the Americas have been importing primitive tribal people's from the Middle East to clean their hotel rooms, drive their cabs, and stock their convenience stores, and then seem surprised that these primitive tribal people are just as ungrateful as their own disaffected youth, and *surprise*haven't become integrated into Western culture at all.

Instead they want to remake the world so they are the ones calling the shots,

"Islamic countries that aren't energy exporters hide Islamic terrorists, have vicious internecine conflict."

Of course they do. For a number of practical reasons that have little to do with any kind of backing of their cause.

Most of these countries are not stable Western democracies. One wrong move, or backing the wrong sect, at the wrong time, and what little stability they have evaporates. .

"Plenty of religions get all kinds of criticism, but only Muslims react violently."

This is patently and ridiculously false.

"The Quran is a unitary text, dictated word for word from (IIRC) the Archangel Gabriel to Muhammed, and exists in one canonical form. The Quran contains many passages that give divine imprimatur to violence in the here and now; those passages are clear and unequivocal. Given Islam's insistence on the primacy and divine authority of the entire Quran, it isn't possible for true believers to pick and choose which parts they will adhere to, and which are optional. Islam insists that the Quran and Haddith together comprise complete truth. Moreover, Muhammed was simultaneously a prophet, warrior, and dictator. Muhammed had children, which led to an ongoing succession crisis between Shia and Sunni. Islam does not separate the sacred from the profane: Islam does not allow for separation of religion and government."

So why do we have over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who are not terrorists?

". It is no accident that Islamic intellectual change came to a dead halt about nine hundred years ago."

this is also false.

Arab culture might have changed if the motivation for change had not been strangled in its infancy by a gigantic infusion of petro dollars.

People who don't have to work for a living never learn the skills and attitudes necessary to sustain a technological society. It just doesn't happen.

"Beliefs matter.

Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 14, 2015 7:58 AM"

Not nearly as much as you think they do. Both intelligence, geography, and culture matter a whole lot more.

Where's Crella? She was supposed to tell us where I said that "Amy is completely wrong."

And she hasn't done that. Y'know, there's this pattern where Americans enjoy rhetoric on the basis of sports team affiliation. They claim one side as their champions, and anytime the other team gets a goal or a touchdown or a basket or a run, it's because they were cheating... Even though they were obviously paying no attention to the action on the field of play at the time. This happens on this blog a lot, and this issue is the perfect example. Crella's failure to register the meaning of the words in front of her hasn't stopped her from choosing a champion; it's like she's in the parking lot outside the hockey rink, having her emotions about the play of her team stoked by the cheers and groans she hears coming from inside the building. She's a ticketholder, but she sees no reason to actually, y'know, go sit in the arena.

Fuckin' HTML.

Also, Amy apparently isn't going to let me ask her any questions about Islam, EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT.

> Amy has answered these questions
> many times, and Crid just ignores
> the answers.

This is a lie.

You are dishonest.

So you aren't answering questions, after all.

> Amy has answered these questions
> many times

So why do we have over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who are not terrorists?

That's a strawman. What percentage of Germans were members of the Nazi party? The majority of Germans were not nazis, and like many Russians in the SU, were party members for conveniences. Was there any group that is 100% this or that?
40 million or so Chinese died during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution, yet the vast majority of Chinese were not maoists. But what's a few milllion in a few decades when there's a billion more.

For the record, because many people here apparently can't handle irony: No, Amy has NOT answered questions about Islam. Ever.

She can't. She doesn't know enough about it.

Workweek ended an hour ago! More soon!

Crid, I have a life too, and I live in Japan, think of the time difference...I'm not at home this weekend, life goes on.

I asked you a question, and you're not going to answer it. That's all this boils down to. Time and time again, you've said that Amy is wrong. Tap dance all you want, insult me if you like. It's still not an answer. I'm not going through years of this blog to pick up every instance where you have said Amy is wrong about Islam, but it's the same type of response, time after time. Why is it so unreasonable to ask you why you think so?

I have a few more minutes...

I have no idea what you're talking about "choosing a champion", I asked you how I your views on Islam differ from Amy's and you start writing about my not understanding what's in front of me, choosing sides, and not answering you fast enough, when you haven't answered my question yet. Makes as much sense as that time you asserted that I was posting under more than one name, out of the blue, with no bais whatsoever.

I'll put it simply. Every time in recent memory that Amy has said anything about Islam, you've popped up to say that she's wrong, hasn't done enough reading, or done the wrong reading, you're pretty consistent about it. It has happened so often and is so predictable that I was prompted to ask what your opinion actually is. What's so hard to answer, Crid?

I don't understand Crella's comments (or Amy's endorsement). I find Crid's opinion crystal clear on this issue and largely share it. The distance between the holy words of a religion and the practices of its practitioners is as it ever was: chosen by expedience and justified post facto. Isab is also right on target about the importance of cultural and historical influences here. Thus, all the quotations from the hadiths, etc., entirely beside the point (unless you are a terrorist trying to drum up youthful bomb-carriers).

There will be fulsome exposition later, comments for people who actually care about the topic. For now, let's deal with Crella's lethargic neediness.



> I asked you a question, and
> you're not going to answer it.

You quoted me as saying something that I never said. What the fuck do you want, Bunny? What's the proper response to something so inane? You lied, essentially: The proof is on this page, and perhaps on others as well. And if it weren't, you'd have quoted something I said.

You don't care that much. You're having the argument which you, in your little daydreams of anonymous heroism, want to have... …Whether or not anyone in the real world is offering that argument to you. People do that a lot here. (Anybody remember Tressider?) It gives them the illusion of affirming a principle for a topic. McArdle once made a joke about this kind of internet commenter: I don't know who's at fault here, but I know it's someone I don't like!

But there's no reason for you to think I am your someone for this topic: You're not reading closely enough to know... You just don't care. Actual exchange is not the point of being here for you.

> I'm not going through years
> of this blog to pick up
> every instance

1. Don't pretend you're being asked to do "years" of anything. If you wouldn't misrepresent people's positions, you wouldn't have to pretend to be so verybusy "in Japan."


2. Don't pretend you're being asked for "every instance" when you were so clearly asked for just (even) ONE.

> I was prompted to ask what
> your opinion actually is.

If you don't know, then you don't know how to read: About 8,220 results (0.34 seconds).



Now, sometimes we're told that blog comments are, in Seipp's famous description, "a sewer." And casual visitors will assume I'm the aggressor here.

It's not so. I'm the guy who reads what people say and take it seriously. When I reflect on a comment positively or negatively, it's quoted word-for-word, identifying the precise ideas worth addressing. Not to identify the authors —because you all look the same from here— but to identify the ideas. I've offended dozens on this blog by not taking notice of their presence for years of participation. Doesn't matter: I care what they think, not who they are. I'm not here for sex. I'm not here for votes.

People who casually pretend that OTHERS aren't doing the work to be clear offend those of us who do.



OK! Coming up later today---

    Islam!

[Isab:] Correct. The values of Arab culture formed the basis of Islam, and Islam as practiced in non Arab countries does not share much in common with the Wahhabists.

Pakistan. Iran. Afghanistan. Malaysia.

[Jeff Guinn:] Plenty of religions get all kinds of criticism, but only Muslims react violently."

[Isab:] This is patently and ridiculously false.

Instead of bloviating, how about an example of a non-Islamic religion reacting violently to criticism and satire.

So why do we have over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who are not terrorists?

Congratulations for epic point missing. Depending on where in the Muslim world, approval of Islam-inspired terrorism runs well past 25%.

Also, it is extraordinarily easy to find divine imprimatur in the Quran for violence against heretics, unbelievers, jews, women, etc that either don't exist in other religious texts, or are so watered down by history as to not matter.

Google [skeptics annotated Bible] and [skeptics annotated Quran]. Then select for passages on violence. Compare and contrast.

Beliefs matter.

[Jeff Guinn:] It is no accident that Islamic intellectual change came to a dead halt about nine hundred years ago.

[Isab:] This is also false.

Bollocks. There have been essentially no contributions from Islamic societies to anything since the mid 1400s. (Google [Why Does the Muslim World Lag in Science]), The Islamic prohibition on the representation of the human form circumscribed art; its insistence on the completeness and correctness of the Quran has quashed rational inquiry. Its sensitivity to heresy has excluded outside ideas.

I think it was a UN publication a couple years ago that noted the entire Islamic world translated fewer books into Arabic than Spain did into Spanish. A lot fewer.

Hey! That was MY cite!

"That's a strawman. What percentage of Germans were members of the Nazi party? The majority of Germans were not nazis, and like many Russians in the SU, were party members for conveniences. Was there any group that is 100% this or that"

You don't know what a strawman argument is do you?

Once a group has political power, like the Nazis,ideology is nothing more than a recruiting tool.

It ceases to matter once you have the power, and can silence your opposition.

Jeff is one with the logical fallacy. He claims all terrorists are Muslims, therefore Islam is the root cause of terrorism.

His first claim, all terrorists are Muslim, and that (somehow lots of fuzzy thinking here) all Muslims are tacit supporters of terrorism is the logical fallacy.

So now Stinky is rightly claiming that a lot of Germans were not Nazis.

Guess what Sherlock? I agree!!!!
In fact the average German was caught in the same bind that your average Muslim is today.

Unable to protect himself or his family, or say anything against the Nazis for fear of ending up quickly a target yourself.

How deep in MTV does your head have to be to not understand there is nothing special or new about thugs with dreams of geopolitical supremacy?

Jeff to Isab: Instead of bloviating, how about an example of a non-Islamic religion reacting violently to criticism and satire.

Remember the infamous "Piss Christ", by Andres Serrano? Serrano put a crucifix in a glass of his urine and took a photo of it (I saw it in Seattle and it was actually quite a beautiful image.) Did that make a lot of Christians furious (or, should I say, piss them off)? Of course. Was the photo vandalized at some exhibitions? Yes. Did Serrano receive hate mail and death threats? I'm sure he did. But was he murdered, as the Charlie Hebdo people were (and as Theo van Gogh was)? No. If he had done "Piss Muhammed" would he have been murdered? Almost certainly (and if he was living in a Muslim country, then absolutely.)

Jeff: The Islamic prohibition on the representation of the human form circumscribed art;

I've never seen the inside of a famous mosque in person but I've seen plenty of photos (my younger sister and her family visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul) and, although you're correct that Islamic artists didn't have the leeway that Christian artists did, I prefer the beautiful geometric designs in mosques to the standard Christian depictions of people and Biblical events. I certainly appreciate the talent of Michelangelo in painting the Sistine Chapel, it's very striking and I didn't dislike it, but I find all the religious imagery in it to be a big yawn. In contrast, my sister's photos of the interior of the Blue Mosque blew me away.

Isab: Once a group has political power ... ideology is nothing more than a recruiting tool.

One of my favorite quotes:

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal

In fact the average German was caught in the same bind that your average Muslim is today. Unable to protect himself or his family, or say anything against the Nazis for fear of ending up quickly a target yourself.

I agree with you on that comparison. Another apt comparison might be Christianity centuries ago (in Rome's Campo di Fiori there is a statue of Giordano Bruno. In 1600 Bruno was burned at the stake for "heresy.") But the key there is "centuries ago." That kind of violent retribution is in the past. Today, moderate and liberal Christians can stand up to conservative fundamentalist Christians without the fear that the fundamentalists are going to burn them at the stake, or kill them in some other fashion. This, unfortunately, is not the case with Islam.

Isab: Once a group has political power ... ideology is nothing more than a recruiting tool.

One of my favorite quotes:

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal

In fact the average German was caught in the same bind that your average Muslim is today. Unable to protect himself or his family, or say anything against the Nazis for fear of ending up quickly a target yourself.

I agree with you on that comparison. Another apt comparison might be Christianity centuries ago (in Rome's Campo di Fiori there is a statue of Giordano Bruno. In 1600 Bruno was burned at the stake for "heresy.") But the key there is "centuries ago." That kind of violent retribution is in the past. Today, moderate and liberal Christians can stand up to conservative fundamentalist Christians without the fear that the fundamentalists are going to burn them at the stake, or kill them in some other fashion. This, unfortunately, is not the case with Islam.

Sorry for the double-post.

More savagery from Islamic terrorists:

Islamic State Video Shows Beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians (note: the link, to the NYT, does not contain the video)

gooseeg: The only voices that will be loud enough to silence the radicalization of Islam are the moderate servants of Islam.

True, but actions/videos like this are aimed at them as well as at the West. And those moderate servants likely ask themselves, "What do I value more, speaking out against the radicals or retaining my head?"

Islam *causes* terroism, just like a rooster crowing *causes* the sun to come up in the morning.

Quick Radwaate, which fallacy is that?

Also "opinion polls" in totalitarian dictatorships are like confessions extracted under torture.

It is like standing in front of the Kremlin asking random people what they think of Putin. The dumb ones will run away, and the smart ones will lie to you.

In short
Trying to equate a a possible 25 percent support rate for some forms of violence to defend Islam, or Islamic nation states, based on. *survey* is a laughably weak support for your argument.

Isn't that even less than the percentage that approves of Obamacare?

Astra: The distance between the holy words of a religion and the practices of its practitioners is as it ever was: chosen by expedience and justified post facto.

This isn't either/or. People who owned slaves in the South undoubtedly owned them for economic reasons, and then justified it by citing passages in the Bible. But that doesn't mean that all (or even most) practices and beliefs of religious people follow that model.

Islam *causes* terroism, just like a rooster crowing *causes* the sun to come up in the morning.

Isab, there's a difference between cause and inspire.

Cause: make something happen.

Inspire: fill someone with the urge or ability to do or feel something.

There are words in the "holy writings" of Islam that can, and do, inspire some Muslims to act violently against others. Is this the only thing that inspires people to act violently against others? Of course not (and no one is saying that.) But I agree with Pascal's quote above.

Isab, there's a difference between cause and inspire.

Cause: make something happen.

Inspire: fill someone with the urge or ability to do or feel something."

granted, but inspiration is a funny thing. Not only is Islam not unique in *inspring* violence, being totally eclipsed by socialism, communism, and fascism, among others but trying to blame Islam with the excuse that it "inspires" violence, doesn't just tread dangerously close to approving of thought crimes, and denial of freedom of concience, it pisses all over it.

We were doing pretty well at creating at least a temporary stability in the Middle East by 2009.

My husband was in Baghdad in 2008, and no it wasn't Disneyland, but it was miles better than North Korea.

It has since, with the withdrawal of American boots on the ground devolved into chaos, and now we have a bunch of useful idiots, who are happy to take the heat off of the most incompetent administration in US history by pointing the finger at Islam like it was some sort of big bad uncontrollable boogeyman.

And Obama is so anxious to spend all of our tax dollars buying votes for the Democratic Party, and building his legacy that he has now decided to pretend that terroism and the Middle East isn't a problem, and he hopes like hell we don't end up with another 9-11 before he is out of office.

[Isab:] Jeff is one with the logical fallacy. He claims all terrorists are Muslims, therefore Islam is the root cause of terrorism.

His first claim, all terrorists are Muslim, and that (somehow lots of fuzzy thinking here) all Muslims are tacit supporters of terrorism is the logical fallacy.

Do me a favor. Never again tell me what I said, quote what I said.

I'm certain I've done the same for you.

[JD:] I prefer the beautiful geometric designs in mosques to the standard Christian depictions of people and Biblical events.

They are indeed beautiful. But Islamic geometric designs are variations on a very narrow theme. In contrast, without Islamic strictures, art can run the gut from standard Christian depictions to Picasso.

Got 400 words done, thinkin I need 800 more, and you guys are fighting the fight. Can't keep up.

I think it was a UN publication a couple years ago that noted the entire Islamic world translated fewer books into Arabic than Spain did into Spanish. A lot fewer.

Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 15, 2015 9:39 AM

Pop quiz. What percentage of Muslims can even read and write Arabic, since Arabs make up a fraction of Muslims and a huge percentage of Arabic and non Arabic Muslims are illiterate?

"What you fail to account for is that plenty of places are energy extraction kleptocracies, but it's only the Islamic ones that are exporting religiously inspired violence.

Islamic countries that aren't energy exporters hide Islamic terrorists, have vicious internecine conflict.

Plenty of religions get all kinds of criticism, but only Muslims react violently."

People react violently to all sorts of insults and criticisms. People have been killed over things that happen in a children's hockey game in the U.S. For Christ sake.

Why do you consider Muslim violence to be some special kind of divinely inspired Koranic violence as opposed to the the violence we see in every society?

I've already explained why the leaders in the Middle East direct the attentions of the disaffected youth on the great Satan of the west. It is purely self preservation.

Isab:

So I can take it as read that I never claimed all terrorists are Muslims? Or that all Muslims are tacit supporters of terrorism?

And I can take it as read you regret so grotesquely abusing what I actually said?

[Jeff Guinn:] I think it was a UN publication a couple years ago that noted the entire Islamic world translated fewer books into Arabic than Spain did into Spanish. A lot fewer.

[Isab: Pop quiz. What percentage of Muslims can even read and write Arabic, since Arabs make up a fraction of Muslims and a huge percentage of Arabic and non Arabic Muslims are illiterate?

Literacy rates (combined M&F; male rates higher, almost all religious terrorists male):

Saudi Arabia: 86.6%
Oman: 81.4%
Iran: 85%
Iraq: 80%
Syria: 80%
Yemen: 64%
Pakistan: 55%
Lebanon: 90%
Egypt: 74%

In the Islamic world, given the focus on teaching children rote memorization of the Quran (perfect timing — Google [NYT Sexual Abuse Allegations Against Imam] for today's news on a fundamentalist Islam school in Chicago that teaches in Arabic and, btw, originated in India.) I'll bet a substantial portion.

And I must apologize here, generally my memory for factoids is reasonably good, but I really gooned up that cite about the number of books translated into Arabic. To set things straight (from samharris.org):

Consider: According to the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Reports, less than 2% of Arabs have access to the Internet. Arabs represent 5% of the world’s population and yet produce only 1% of the world’s books, most of them religious. In fact, Spain translates more books into Spanish each year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the ninth century.

People react violently to all sorts of insults and criticisms. People have been killed over things that happen in a children's hockey game in the U.S. For Christ sake.

Wow, that has to earn the all time indoor-outdoor freestyle moral equivalency gold medal.

For starters, how often do people react to insults about their hockey team by rioting, burning down embassies, and killing people having nothing to do with the insults? How many countries react to perceived insults against their hockey team by issuing murderous fatwahs? How many people have been killed over children's hockey games ever, compared to the number of people killed in the name of Islam in a day?

Why do you consider Muslim violence to be some special kind of divinely inspired Koranic violence as opposed to the the violence we see in every society?

Because I, like most people, can see the difference between religiously inspired, intentional violence undertaken with the goal of achieving religious ends, and localized, random, violence.

I'm pretty certain that the guy who kills his ex in a fit of jealous rage isn't trying to frighten you into submission.

I've already explained why the leaders in the Middle East direct the attentions of the disaffected youth on the great Satan of the west. It is purely self preservation.

You haven't explained the square root of foxtrot alpha. You have bloviated, for sure. And proven, yet again, how bloviation is an impermeable barrier to thought.

Most victims of Islamic violence are Muslims. You really need to try and fit that fact into your bloviation, then try it again.

Props to Isab, Astra and Rail.

I think the rest of you are making similar errors for similar reasons, both by logical failure and by motive.

> but she has also repeatedly pointed out
> that "There are countless Muslims who
> do not practice Islam as commanded..."

As commanded by WHOM? Amy? Is her reading of the Koran the one that they're all listening for? Do you seriously contend that Amy's being generous in her understanding? Do you think her years of avoidant chatter about Christianity here portend a thoughtful assessment of Islam?

It's weird how her support of gay marriage was all about anecdotal evidence and cocktail party friendships: 'I know a gay couple that's raising a child successfully!

But just as with her condemnations of Chrisitanity, her concerns about Islam are for some reason immune to personal investigation. She never talks to these people, or investigates any other aspects of their faith beyond the Koran. Why?

Because this is not about Islam: Amy's most concerned about an appearance of expertise.

Isab wasn't fucking around with the statistics. 1.6 Billion-with-a-B, scattered across oceans and continents... (Though not so widely scattered across developmental, literacy or economic strata.)

> Because they are clear;

Who you callin' they, Paleface?

> Islam is quite clear on the Quran's
> provenance and its applicability.

Who, who, who are you calling "Islam"? Raddy continues the lunacy:

> Their actions are MUCH louder than
> your words

"Their"? Whose actions? Why are you so eager to identify them under one name? How many of each other would the have to kill before you'd break the habit?

You'd never break the habit... You need too badly to think there's a single and readily identifiable source for this evil... A choice that's been made, so that you can hold them accountable in a white-American-schoolchild-punishment kind of way.

> The Quran is a unitary text

(Will someone somewhere, please answer this question:) Text readable by what percentage of the believers, in any language, let alone Arabic? Do you think that's irrelevant? When you're going to so prissily, inanely pretend to be Scalia-style textualists, you ought to have investigated the matter…

If they're so unitary, why are the sects at each other's throats? Why didn't the Sunnis condemn Satanic Verses? Is anyone besides Amy and her fellow obsessives pretending that it's all an undifferentiated mass?

> there are lots of reasons that Christianity
> stopped doing centuries ago what
> Islam is still doing today

Oh, not so many as all that. Christianity didn't 'stop' dick; Christianity was stopped... By external forces. Stronger ones. More rewarding ones. More decent ones. Nothing born from the human heart aspires to modesty.

(Hey, that was a good line! Someone write that down!)

((See???))

> Islam's theological rigidity
> is a bug

In other words, Mankind has never seen anything like this before!...

…Though we have, of course. Every faith unchecked by progress and intercourse has aspired to that uniformity— There's nothing new under the sun. For fuck's sake, are these people not most readily distinguished by their primitivism? The whole of humanity grew from that soil! Michael Kelly made this point shortly before his death: These assholes have nothing to teach us. But here you are, doing their PR work. New bugs! Rigidity! Totally unforeseen! We all expected the Third World to fade quietly!

Well, some of us knew better, always.

> Most victims of Islamic violence
> are Muslims.

Whose side of this argument are you on? Where's the "unitary text" guy?

> what I think or not is utterly
> beside the point.

Never. Hitchens once (earlier) put it like this: "Power is what you allow it to be." You guys want the worst of Islam to be typical; The fact that a billion practitioners don't comply offends your fantasies. Your taunts of Uncle Tomming summon the very demons you claim most to fear.

Yesterday, the Mighty Hawk (again) tweeted a compelling sentiment in response to Copenhagen.

We can readily imagine Amy, and perhaps others here, indulging that same lunacy in a bogus posture of erudition.

Tsk tsk.

Guys, this is going to be a religious century. No one's asking for your opinion about that. You will not be elevated to positions of irresistible authority on the shoulders of the civilized world, such that you can then tell the little people what they're permitted to believe.

OK? Surrender that fantasy. It's not going to happen.

But you ought to have some faith that the when the Third World does learn how to read, and has a choice of books and ideas (and dinners and conversations), they'll be no less interested in modernity than everyone else on the planet. To expect them to behave like Fort Wayne schoolchildren when they're starving and illiterate on edge of some desert is preposterous.

God, I love being right about stuff!

The Kelly link was broken. I feel bad about that.

Some of those comments were written over the course of the day... I didn't realize Jeff had done went and collected some numbers. Yet it seemed unfair that men and women would be jammed together for literacy rates, since such differences are a profoundly important impact of Islam. And it seemed positively suspicious that two enormous non-Arabic nations were not listed. The following rounded numbers are a mix of Wiki and World Atlas:

           Pop.,    %     ---Literacy---
            MM     Mslm   All \  M  \  F
           ----    ----   --------------
Indonesia   234    88.1   92%   97%   89%
Nigeria     170    47.9   61%   72%   50%

And then there's the Iranians, one of the three authentic nations in the middle east, progenitors of chess and Shiraz, who dominated the region in the past and almost certainly will again, without being Arab.

KNowNightyNite.

[Crid:] Text readable by what percentage of the believers, in any language, let alone Arabic?

The percentage of Imams that read the Quran in the original Arabic: 100%.

Which is very analogous to Christianity before Gutenberg. 100% of the priests read in Latin; almost none of the parishioners, which made them completely dependent upon what the priests said about the Bible.

Just like contemporary Islam.

Sure, the Quran has been translated into languages, but according to modern Islamic theology, the Qur'an is a revelation very specifically in Arabic, and so it should only be recited in the Arabic language. (Wikipedia Quran Translations) I wouldn't be surprised if the Hebdo assassins couldn't read a word of Arabic. Which makes your question completely pointless; whether individual Muslims can read the Quran has no effect on what their imams are telling them.

I don't recall the musical "Book of Mormon" causing any murderous rampages. What do you bet the response would be to a satirical song and dance take on the Quran?

If [the Quran] is so unitary, why are the sects at each other's throats?

Succession.

But here you are, doing their PR work. New bugs! Rigidity! Totally unforeseen! We all expected the Third World to fade quietly!

Dafuq?

Muslims believe the Quran to be an errorless record of the angel Gabriel's revelations to Muhammad, from 610 until his death in 632 AD. It is also believed to be a perfect copy of a Quran that has existed eternally in paradise. (Religionfacts) That belief, along with the toxicity of a great deal of the Quran, has consequences.

You guys want the worst of Islam to be typical

Dafuq?

Sam Harris puts it pretty well:

My condemnation applies to the doctrines of Islam and to the ways in which they reliably produce these “bad acts.” Unfortunately, in the case of Islam, the bad acts of the worst individuals—the jihadists, the murderers of apostates, and the men who treat their wives and daughters like chattel—are the best examples of the doctrine in practice. Those who adhere most strictly to the actual teachings of Islam, those who expound its timeless dogma most honestly, are precisely the people whom Greenwald and other obscurantists want us to believe least represent the faith.

[Crid:] We can squabble on the morrow, but I wonder why you're leaving Riyadh and Damascus on the hook for cultural contributions, but not Jakarta or Lagos. These two nations alone match the world Arab population... But don't read Arabic.

Which absolutely doesn't matter.

(I left off Jakarta and Lagos because I got tired of typing numbers, and because it doesn't matter.)

> Just like contemporary Islam.

Right. So, you're saying Christianity was rillymeen to people until it was tamed, too. I completely agree. (I've said that her a couple times. Thousands.)

Or not:

> I don't recall the musical
> "Book of Mormon" causing any
> murderous rampages.

You're still too horny to believe that Christianity tamed itself. This betrays twenty-year view of history, and dammit, you know what you know.


> The percentage of Imams that
> read the Quran in the original
> Arabic: 100%.

So the fuck what? What is your fantasy here?-- Amy will never put it into words. She'll never put anything into words except "I read a book about Islam by a concert promoter, so I know all about it!" I mean, are you suggesting something useful? Dealing with the Imams and to Hell with the rest?


> Succession.

So are you in full retreat from that whole "unitary" thing? Very good.


>> We all expected the Third World
>> to fade quietly!

> Dafuq?

Apparently some of you expected the impoverished, primitive, geographically and economically isolated people of the world to start acting like southside Community College graduates on the very day they first heard about frozen entrees and Miley Cyrus. In actuality it'll take a generation or two or five for them to shed their cultural patterns for those of modernity... And this is a surprise to you.

Again, some of us saw it coming.

> the bad acts of the worst individuals—
> the jihadists, the murderers of
> apostates, and the men who treat
> their wives and daughters like
> chattel—are the best examples of
> the doctrine in practice.

…Behaviors indistinguishable from non-Islamic primitivism. This is turning into an inversion of the Hitchens 'booktour challenge': Name one act of evil which could only have been perpetrated by a Muslim. Exactly what IS their superpower, which terrifies you so?

>> But don't read Arabic.

> Which absolutely doesn't matter.

Then FFS, why is Amy so obsessed with the text? WTF?

Or are you starting to figure out that this is mostly about Other Things, things which modernity will correct as a (mundane) matter of course?

> (I left off Jakarta and Lagos
> because I got tired of typing
> numbers, and because it doesn't
> matter.)

Fascinating! The larger half of Islam, the one poised for explosive demographic growth, is not a threat!… No matter what you have in mind for the rillymeen Aye-rabs, anyone who can pass for Javanese will be immune from your prosecutory responses…

…Fascinating! This'll be fun!

(wrapping up a house, leaving Anchorage for the last time, dealing with an ice storm, marveling at my inability to write clearly, because there is NO way Crid could have turned so many perfectly obvious points into such a dog's breakfast. And now to sleep.)

JG: "Perfectly obvious" is fightin' words. Travel well, see you at Eau Rouge. Post address when available.

AA: What? What? See above: "Amy will never put it into words." What do you want? …Besides to say "I know all about this…" Anything at all? Are you recommending any behavior as a response to Islam but that people should admire you?

Amy:

I'm in Memphis now for the next six weeks (I've already been here for most of the last month) getting qualified in the B757.

Then on to Dusseldorf.

How's your motion sickness? I have to admit being a bit worried.

[Crid:] Right. So, you're saying Christianity was rillymeen to people until it was tamed, too. I completely agree.

You object to "perfectly obvious". I agree (except in those occasions where something is obvious by definition).

In the same regard, I object to passive voice, because it invokes uncaused effects, in addition to hiding agency, unacknowledged assumptions, and sloppy thinking.

Not necessarily all at once, but if there is no re-writing the sentence in active voice, something is up.

In this case, the something is uncaused effect. Clearly Christianity has a hecatomb of crimes in its name, but that list starts getting really short over the last couple hundred years. I don't think you'd find anyone, including almost all Christians, who would disagree with "it has been tamed."

But that leaves the taming itself completely off the table. Islam exists — to me this is perfectly obvious — in the same time-space continuum as Christianity. Yet Islam still sponsors the kind of savagery that has been mercifully been absent from Christianity since, what, the 1600s? How is it that the Peace of Westphalia achieved centuries ago what still eludes Islam?

Belief matters.

The sources and structure of Christian belief are wildly different than Islam. Start with their respective foundational texts.

The Bible has multiple authors, none claiming divine dictation, and, so far as Christianity goes, written decades after the events they are relating. There is no canonical version of the Bible. And, given the variety of sources and times, serious limitations on inerrancy and literalness. Moreover, the New Testament puts aside much of that in the old, and doesn't contain very many, if any, exhortations to human violence.

So, sure, Christians used religion as a reason to do all manner of horrible things, but it is hard to find explicit justifications in the Bible, and even harder to do so without also finding contradiction.

In contrast, the Quran exists in precisely one canonical version, in one language. It is the perfect earthly copy of the Quran in heaven, as dictated to Muhammed by Gabriel. There are no errors, no omissions. And no wiggle room.

The differences get even more glaring. Christ had no siblings or children. He was not a ruler or a warrior. Muhammed had both, and was both. The scope of belief for Christianity is much more circumscribed than for Islam.

Christianity had St. Augustine, Galileo, Copernicus, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and Darwin. Islam could not accept someone like St. Augustine, from which everything else follows. (If the linkage isn't perfectly obvious, read up on St. Augustine.)

Because belief matters, Christianity is ductile, Islam brittle.

Which is why the ISISholes are acting exactly as their faith demands.

And Christianity found ways not to hundreds of years ago.

The percentage of Imams that > read the Quran in the original > Arabic: 100%.

So the fuck what? What is your fantasy here?

No fantasy, just the reality that literacy isn't required for religious belief. It certainly wasn't before the Gutenburg Bible.

And it isn't with the Quran. Charismatic preachers can fill a lot of pews with the illiterate.

> Succession.

So are you in full retreat from that whole "unitary" thing? Very good.

No. The Quran is a unitary text. Because Mohammed had siblings, Islam has an unresolved succession problem. Shia and Sunni view each other as heretics.

And you know, or should, what the inerrant Quran says to do with heretics.

—

Gotta go. It's 6pm and I have a 0200 simulator coming at me.

Apologies for any gross typos and grammaticos. No time for proof reading.

> Islam exists — to me this is
> perfectly obvious — in the
> same time-space continuum
> as Christianity.

No! No, I say! Duzzint! Negatory, Big Ben! I affirm not!

I mean, you guys have been quibbling in here over "belief matters," and I haven't bothered read closely, because it looks like no fun from the fly-bys.

But I perfectly well recognize your comedic irony with the Star Trek phrase "time-space continuum." Of course I do… You and I have been swimming through that kind of rich connectedness across our whole lives: At home, at school, at work and in leisure.

And I think this immersion may be the root of your presumption about Islam.

Comedian Hardwick was on a podcast once, talking about how the tribes coalescing into medieval Christianity composed their ongoing lore for maximal practicality... Because science and faith and politics were all the same thing. A toothless villager's sources of information about the world and his religious beliefs and his sexual behavior and his access to water and to markets for his grain were all dominated by the same guys… Or the same guy. That's how primitive societies work… And there are still a lot of them in harsh and detached environments. (See the "religious century" link above.)

[More]

Geography will always burden us in fundamental ways which cannot be elided.

For the Middle East, see twelve minutes of this, beginning at about 6:19. The whole hour is golden— Isis' (shifting) territories are typified by poverty, decades (or centuries) of predation by political and military authorities, and not much else.

For Europe, see about fifteen minutes of this starting about 20:45.




So "space" has shades of meaning: The cultures where militant islam is doing its worst are those least connected to modernity.

Well, sometimes there's some oil, but hasn't helped with the Saudis... Barnett describes them as "resource-cursed" rather than resource-rich... They're connected to the world only through oil. They've seen just enough of the larger civilization to know that in places like America, men who aren't Kings can nonetheless earn the wealth to live like royalty, including access to tail, while they themselves cannot. Saudis have had a few generations to teach themselves science and engineering and all the other miracles of modernity, but they've let that chance slip away.

I used to see this on the campus I grew up on all the time. Students from Saudi Arabia and Iran would come to the University for degrees, but they didn't come from families with patterns of study, and couldn't feel rewarded by hours in the library. They'd be dressed in the most fashionable clothes money could buy… But when they hit on girls at parties, they'd be rebuffed, and they wouldn't know how to make sense of it. ("But… She was sexually responsive to that farmer's son from Lawrence County!")

So they'd graduate (or not) and move back home. And for the rest of their lives, they'd know that their smooth classmates in America were demonstrating masculine competence in interesting careers, were making righteous money to be spent as they saw fit, and were nailing the kind of eager tail that would never be available to themselves, living in Jeddah or Mashhad.

Some of them probably turned to religion, and some of them probably just went nuts as they realized their own cultures weren't getting any better… And that they couldn't commiserate with the older men in their lives, who'd never even seen modernity's opportunities, let alone tasted them.


All these considerations are "space." They are not a readily-permeable "continuum."


> How is it that the Peace of
> Westphalia achieved centuries
> ago what still eludes Islam?

You imagine that these cultures are living clearly in the present moment, alongside you in modernity. They are not. This is what I was trying to get at with the Community College thing yesterday. I think you're plugged in so deeply that you can't imagine the squalor, isolation and constrained perception which still afflict huge swaths of humanity.

You think that these people have made a choice as readily as you might select a local church to attend. You imagine that since they, or even their parents, have been exposed to some element of the modern world —perhaps just a rumor that the United States put a man on a moon— that all the constraints of their culture could be casually disregarded... As if every rag-scrubbing peasant woman by a water hole on the edge of the Takla Makan dessert should simply understand that she can take a few courses in nursing and get a job as sonographer... As if her surrounding community would ever dream of encouraging that kind of independence...

…Which is all you've ever known.


[More]

Islam is odious. The text is horrific. I get it. Noted! I grok.

One of my favorite moments from Hitch was from this appearance; give it four minutes. Hitch was right: That ugly stuff will always be in there.

But so will the part of the Bible about killing Amalekites… Which doesn't trouble you guys too much today. Why aren't you as upset about that as with the Koran?

Because Christianity has been tamed. Similarly, there are well over a billion Muslims who make no trouble for you whatsoever.

And most importantly of all: You will die, as Hitchens died, convincing essentially no one to disregard their religious beliefs. (I had him sign my copy of GING anyway.)

OK? Clear?

The Koran's a nasty book, but most of them are. There's nothing supernatural about its nastiness. This primitivism is neither new nor novel, and nowhere close to universal within the faith itself.





Please at least pretend to think about this. Carry yourself for two days in a row as if you HAD thought about it:

No, Jeff— The people taking the worst guidance from Islam have NOT had the opportunities to move beyond its constraints on their lives, not as modern Christians have been unshackled from the worst of Christianity by civilization's other forces.

Amy, your transparent pretense is pathological. You are not a studious person. I'm embarrassed for you.

But not too embarrassed to ask why you won't answer questions... If you know so much.

?

" . . . the bible is taken as a document of its time, not a mandate for Christians."

Then you haven't met enough of the type of Christians that I have, and that have been all too well documented.

I know plenty of folks who truly believe that the bible was written by the inky finger of God, and is completely infallible. Granted, such folks don't head out and start stoning people, but were they not the product of a free and open society, with all the brakes against such behavior concomitant with said society, well, then I suspect we'd see a lot more headlines like the one that spawned this long blog commentary, and the barbaric behavior we see regularly in the ME.

Nice analysis Crid. Have you read 'Jihad vs McWorld'? Author is Ben Barber, and he investigates the intersection between modernity and tribalism you allude to above.

[Crid:] And I think this immersion may be the root of your presumption about Islam.

What, exactly, is my presumption about Islam?

I have summarized claims that Islam makes about Islam — if I've gotten them wrong, then I'm standing by for correction — and asserted that belief matters. The latter isn't a claim about Islam, it is a claim about humans: different beliefs produce different results. (google [cargo cult])

Geography will always burden us in fundamental ways which cannot be elided.

Of course it will. But that still leaves you with causeless effects. Christianity started in roughly the same region as Islam, and Islam has dominated the area ever since. Lots of regions are characterized by difficult conditions causing endemic poverty. Yet Africans, Inuits, Melanesians, Indians, Bangladeshis, ad nearly damn infinitum, are much in the business of exporting religiously justified slaughter.

For the Middle East, see twelve minutes of this, beginning at about 6:19.

Robert Kaplan has a lot of intriguing things to say, but they have more than a post hoc whiff about them. Had the Arab Spring started in Lebanon, I'm sure he could have explained it through geography. Similarly, geographical determinism seems to explain why Britain came to rule the seas, but it doesn't explain why Portugal didn't, even though it got a head start.

There is no geographical determinism that explains why South America turned out so differently than North America. Nor does geography explain the difference between the former GDR and the FRG, or the PRK and the ROK. However, belief might very well in the former case, and certainly does in the latter two. And it certainly doesn't explain Turkey's recent turn towards Islam, nor the impact of Islamic beliefs on Turkey.

Belief matters.

The cultures where militant islam is doing its worst are those least connected to modernity.

Yet non-Islamic cultures that are equally disconnected from modernity do not act like Islamic cultures. Nigeria is every bit as resource cursed and disconnected from reality as Saudi Arabia. Nigerians do not export religiously inspired violence, but Saudis do.

Connection to modernity isn't a worthless explanation, but it is very underdetermined, and ignores the historical contingencies which are at least as much a determinant of culture as geography. It is a historical contingency that Muhammed had siblings — if he didn't, then the Shia-Sunni split doesn't exist. Geography doesn't explain that, but contingent belief does.

I used to see this on the campus I grew up on all the time. Students from Saudi Arabia and Iran would come to the University for degrees…

I didn't instruct Saudis or Iranians at Air Force pilot training, but I know plenty of guys who did. And everyone of them characterized those students as being strikingly fatalistic. Not student pilots from anywhere else, just those from Islamic countries. What explanation is there for that, other than religious belief that encourages fatalism?

I think you're plugged in so deeply that you can't imagine the squalor, isolation and constrained perception which still afflict huge swaths of humanity.

I've been to India six times in the last year. Central America twice. And Dubai several times. So, unfortunately, I only have first hand observation to go on.

You think that these people have made a choice as readily as you might select a local church to attend.

More accurately, you think I think that. Not sure why.

But so will the part of the Bible about killing Amalekites… Which doesn't trouble you guys too much today. Why aren't you as upset about that as with the Koran?

Hmmm, I could swear I addressed this above. Why, indeed, I did: The Bible contains plenty of murderous passages, but most of them are time and place bound, and almost all of them are in the Old Testament. The New Testament gave Christians an exit option from the demands of, say, the Pentateuch.

Which explains why the part of the Bible about killing Amalekites is so profoundly untroubling. Let's say some Christians, or Jews, took into their heads to go out and kill themselves a bunch of Amalekites. Who would they target? How many Amalekite defenestrations could there possibly be?

That is a huge difference between the Bible and the Quran: the majority of exhortations to violence in the Bible are historically bound, those in the Quran eternal. That, combined that with Islam's insistence upon the Quran's divine origination, provides explicit bases for religiously inspired violence that does not exist to anywhere near the same degree in any contemporary religion of which I'm aware.

I don't think that is down to geography.

One of my favorite moments from Hitch was from this appearance; give it four minutes. Hitch was right: That ugly stuff will always be in there.

Give this three minutes ten seconds. Or google [hitchens islam] Which Hitch is right?

Because Christianity has been tamed. Similarly, there are well over a billion Muslims who make no trouble for you whatsoever.

Again with the passive voice, and causeless effects.

It appears you don't read much about countries where Muslims are a majority. They are perfectly capable of making trouble for everyone else.

Amy, your transparent pretense is pathological.

I couldn't find anything she said about Islam's claims wrong. Perhaps you could point them out.

(My email inbox is Crid free; dunno why.)

[Railmeat:] I know plenty of folks who truly believe that the bible was written by the inky finger of God, and is completely infallible.

You need to familiarize yourself with the Biblical concepts of literalism and inerrancy.

And I doubt there are any Christians who believe the bible was written by the inky finger of God.

Crid, read [the atlantic what isis really wants].

My bad Mr Guinn. 'Inerrant' is the word I should have used. And then pointed out that I know many Christians that take such words literally.

And yes, I do know what that word means.

I stand by the remainder of my post.

My bad Mr Guinn. 'Inerrant' is the word I should have used. And then pointed out that I know many Christians that take such words literally.

And yes, I do know what that word means.

I stand by the remainder of my post.
Posted by: Railmeat at February 18, 2015 1:39 PM

You don't understand Railmeat. If what you say about fundamentalist Christians is true, which it is, I have met many of these people myself, than it destroys Jeff 's argument for the special horrors of Islam, and in particular Islamic fundamentalism.

so you get a debate tactic, where he changes the subject to your understanding of Christianity to avoid addressing the real issues.

Which is: illiterate tribal people in the 21st century will exhibit behaviors and beliefs much closer to 7th century tribal peoples than to 21st century New Jersey soccer moms.
And their specific religion had very little to do with it, because it is culture that drives religion and not the other way around.

And I don't know how fatalism became a exclusive characteristic of Muslims or what exactly your point is here Jeff.

It is extremely common in a number of cultures, including the Japanese.

"Yet non-Islamic cultures that are equally disconnected from modernity do not act like Islamic cultures. Nigeria is every bit as resource cursed and disconnected from reality as Saudi Arabia. Nigerians do not export religiously inspired violence, but Saudis do."

And for this to be true we have to airbrush out Boku Haram, or claim that this isn't *exported terroism,* or some other ridiculous quibble,

Somewhere I must have fallen off the track here . . .

[Isab] " . . . illiterate tribal people in the 21st century will exhibit behaviors and beliefs much closer to 7th century tribal peoples than to 21st century New Jersey soccer moms.
And their specific religion had very little to do with it, because it is culture that drives religion and not the other way around."

I fully agree. And I was pretty sure that was the point I was making, albeit far less well articulated.

Carry on. Ya'all are doing fine w/o me.

From today's NYT (google [From a Private School in Cairo to ISIS Killing Fields in Syria]):

There is no single path that leads to jihad, but in exploring Mr. Yaken’s life, signposts emerge. There are influences familiar and easy to discuss, like a lack of economic opportunity and a renewed sense of political alienation, especially among youths. But there are also more delicate subjects — less often publicly debated, let alone dissected — like the increasingly conservative thinking that defines the faith for many Muslims today, or sexual repression among young people who are taught that their physical and emotional desires can bring them eternal damnation.

Nope. No beliefs there. All geography.

More from the same article:

Sheikh Yacoub is one of many ultraconservative preachers who claim to uphold the most authentic Islamic values, wielding influence and authority through their uncompromising views. They span a broad spectrum, with apolitical clerics on one end and militant jihadists on the other, but they all share a rigid understanding of religion characterized by an intolerance for the other, especially other Muslims observing a more tempered approach.

Maybe Amy is on to something.

And for this to be true we have to airbrush out Boku Haram, or claim that this isn't *exported terroism,* or some other ridiculous quibble,

Posted by: Isab

Hasnt all of Boko Haram attacked been within 200 miles of their hidden jungle stronghold?

More later, I thought this was dead with Jeff outta town.

Also, Jeff, email en route. You'll be delighted with the topic....

[Railmeat:] And then pointed out that I know many Christians that take such words literally.

Then by all means bring them in from the mythological and point them out to me. And while you are at it, how about getting just a little more specific about "such words".

[Isab:] If what you say about fundamentalist Christians is true, which it is, I have met many of these people myself, than it destroys Jeff 's argument for the special horrors of Islam, and in particular Islamic fundamentalism.

So so you get a debate tactic, where he changes the subject to your understanding of Christianity to avoid addressing the real issues.

Same for you. Get specific.

Then we can decide whether I'm indulging in debating tactics, or your understanding of Christianity is too limited for you to use properly.

And I don't know how fatalism became a exclusive characteristic of Muslims or what exactly your point is here Jeff.

Google [islam fatalism]. The top two hits are from Islamic web sites. Keep in mind they are a defense against the charge. Google [islamic fatalism helmer ringgren] for what seems an objective assessment.

"Inshallah" is a term Muslims frequently use.

There isn't a Christian equivalent, even though the Bible is in several places explicit about predestination.

Why the difference?

. . . illiterate tribal people in the 21st century will exhibit behaviors and beliefs much closer to 7th century tribal peoples than to 21st century New Jersey soccer moms.

Anwar al-Awlaki wasn't illiterate. How many ISISholes are illiterate?

[Crid:] More later, I thought this was dead with Jeff outta town.

I have to get a break from studying.

Even the mighthy Douthat feels compelled to genuflect before the palaverous Atlantic article—

The big foreign policy piece that everyone is talking about this week, and deservedly, is Graeme Wood’s deep Atlantic dive into the religious premises…

…Blahblah. But Douthat, unlike (apparently) everyone else on the planet, sobers up to conclude with clarity:

So even as we acknowledge the obvious and describe ISIS as Islamic, we should give the rest of Islam credit for being, well, Islamic as well, and for having available arguments and traditions and interpretations that marginalized this kind of barbarism in the past, and God willing can do so once again. Those arguments and traditions may not suffice to synthesize Islam fully with Western modernity; whether that’s possible (or desirable) is a larger and more complicated debate. But we can reasonably hope that they will suffice intellectually in the face of the Islamic State, whose arguments for its own deep orthodoxy are contradicted by centuries of Muslim theology and tradition, and which is as much at war with the lived historical reality of Islam as it is at war with Christianity, secularism or the West.

Good boy.

moarsoon

So even as we acknowledge the obvious and describe ISIS as Islamic, we should give the rest of Islam credit for being, well, Islamic as well ...

Read Sam Harris's End of Faith.

The problem that Douthat doesn't face is the same one Obama resolutely avoids. And so do you.

Let's take as read that the ISISholes pervert Islam, the Religion of Peace™ [sic].

Then please, for the love of Allah, point out exactly which part of Islam the ISISholes are perverting.

You can't. Obama, world renowned Islamic expert, can't, either.

That's because the ISISholes are true believers -- their claims and actions are just as firmly rooted in the Quran and hadith as was the fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

Beliefs matter.

Compare Christianity's assertions about the Bible with Islam's about the Quran.

For the former, there are very few deal breakers. That is, statements in the Bible that are so emphatic as to cripple faith with their invalidation. Homosexuality is one. For Christians to accept that homosexuality is OK requires concluding that God had no idea what He was talking about. No wonder that deeply believing Christians resist the idea so much.

Compare with Islam's claim about the Quran: it is so absolute and encompassing, and the Quran itself is so emphatic, that dumping even one claim collapses the whole structure.

As I mentioned above, Allah is very specific about what to do to apostates.

Given the claims the Islam makes about the Quran, how does any Muslim just give it a miss?

Simple -- in the same way that other religious believers do (and, indeed, all of us in one way or another): accommodate two mutually exclusive conclusions at the same time. But that makes them, for people who are true believers, heretics.

Which means that "moderate" believers are providing cover for the true believers.

Belief matters.

The structure of Islamic belief is so explicit, encompassing, and absolute that truly vile contents of the Quran and hadith carry much more punch than, say, for Christianity.

And that is before noticing how much more vile the Quran is than the Bible.

I'm not unsympathetic to Obama's plight. He has to keep Islamic heretics on side, but the only way to truly confront the ISISholes is to tell them that their religion is a fabrication from whole cloth. That stuff about apostates, women, jizzya, Jews, heretics, et al: rubbish; ravings of a delusional 7th century merchant.

So, stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, he has his Prevaricator redlined.

> Belief matters.

STOP SAYING THAT.

It's inane. Nobody's arguing the point. It illuminates nothing. Sure.. Yeah... The contents of people's thinking is important. OH KAY. We get it.

Is there anything we can do about all that mattering you take note of? Have you recommended anything?

You are not being offered the fight you apparently are insistent on having.

Moar later

moar

> Then please, for the love of Allah,
> point out exactly which part of
> Islam the ISISholes are perverting.

We don't have to. One billion —or actually closer to a billion and a half— practicing Muslims are "pointing out" the most probable (and only permissible) expression of Islam for the eternity of civilization's dominion.

'But golly!,' you say, 'That's not how I read their book!'

Well, who GAF? It's not my job to make sense of their system of belief. I never signed off with what's in the Bible, either... And there's plenty of odious stuff in there. As Cassius Clay once put it— "I ain't got no quarrel with the Amalekites."

> That's because the ISISholes are
> true believers -- their claims and
> actions are just as firmly rooted
> in the Quran and hadith as was the
> fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

…As are the claims and actions of the 1.5 billion non-ISISholes... As they will so readily affirm. Who are you to tell them that they aren't "true believers"?


Jeff, Jeff, Jeff: Are they asking you? Any of them? Do you have some semester deadline to issue grades to their interpretations? Did it matter with the Christians? Does it matter with the Moonies or the Scientologists? Apparently there's some transaction that the rest of us aren't aware of:

> Compare Christianity's assertions
> about the Bible with Islam's about
> the Quran. For the former, there
> are very few deal breakers.

1. What "deal"? What marketplace? Have you made a bid for Islam? Are there puts and calls?
2. The fuck you say. I'd love to rewrite the KJV to my taste, if believers would observe it as they do today. But none of them will promise fidelity to my reading. Nor I to theirs.

The "deal" with Christianity was centuries of conflict and containment. Your "deals" are imaginary, which is why neither you nor Amy is specifying terms for this one.

> the only way to truly confront
> the ISISholes

…Dood…

> is to tell them that their
> religion is a fabrication
> from whole cloth.

With which primitive religions has this been effective? How does the fantasy play out? Do Muslims slap their foreheads and go "Oh... Right. 'Whole cloth.' OK, I got it." — ?

"Confrontation"? Do you guys think a laserlike, almost pornographic focus on the most violent nature of Islam will lead our way out of this?…

…Or is it just rewarding on some personal level? You don't describe encounters with Muslims. You won't reflect on any force in their lives beyond the text.

So I've begged-begged-begged to learn what's new about Islam… How is it novel, and why didn't anyone see it coming. Your wordy responses are never specific: This part is unprecedented, or That part is unforeseen. You won't go on the record. You don't want anything.


These guys are mud-violent and rock-stupid. They want to kill a bunch of people and oppress the remainder, AND THEY WROTE THAT DOWN.

But mud and rocks are where ALL of us came from. Every corner of humanity was that shitty until confluent forces improved things.
The Koran doesn't equip Muslims to see through lead walls, or to leap over tall buildings in a single bound. Torture and killing and audacity aren't superpowers... They're all too human.

You think these people are nasty because of the book. I think they're nasty because they're primitive and ignorant, and the book has no challengers for their belief. Dreams of teen-spat "confrontation" may enrich the ego, but they don't describe the future. Killing and battle are ahead…

…But much more will happen as well. Including distant and broken cultures in modernity's blessings is boring and expensive and time-consuming. But that's how we'll "tell them." Civilization is not a piece-of-my-mind dustup.

(Probably moar, I haven't followed your link yet.)

> Give this three minutes ten seconds.
> […] Which Hitch is right?

Both. The first ten seconds of his response deflate your challenge (so I skipped the rest):

As I said, I think that all religions are wrong in the same way in that they privilege faith over reason. But they're not equally bad in the same way all the time.

> Again with the passive voice,
> and causeless effects.

I can't imagine what you mean in either respect… You're the one pretending Christianity's docility was foreordained. And primitive cultures are just that: Success and decency are synthetic, and not the nominal human condition. It's wretchedness which needs no composer.

> Carry on. Ya'all are doing
> fine w/o me.

Get the fuck back in here. Do your share.

Jeff, doooooood... Christianity is 2.8xx times as old as Islam, older if you include compelling antecedents. (Ahem.) And it shows.

Broken link, above: Embarrassing!

We don't have to [point out exactly which part of Islam the ISISholes are perverting]

Whoever says that has to, unless they are blowing it out their hat.

The death penalty for apostasy. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Stoning adulterers do death. Women's testimony is worthless. Husbands may beat their wives. The death penalty for heresy. Dying in a holy war guarantees heaven. Killing Jews. Honor killings. Beheading captives. Violent jihad. Murdering

Which of those is a perversion of Islam?

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff: Are they asking you?

I forgot to give a shit. Hitchens didn't, either (see link below).

The "deal" with Christianity was centuries of conflict and containment. Your "deals" are imaginary, which is why neither you nor Amy is specifying terms for this one.

Oh FFS, certainly the meaning of "deal breaker" can't be that hard to follow. Islam makes claims for the Quran and Hadith that do not have a parallel in Christianity (or any other religion I'm aware of).

So I've begged-begged-begged to learn what's new about Islam… How is it novel, and why didn't anyone see it coming. Your wordy responses are never specific.

I've given you plenty of specifics. Look at the skeptics annotated Bible and Quran. Compare their various divine exhortations to violence.

You think these people are nasty because of the book. I think they're nasty because they're primitive and ignorant, and the book has no challengers for their belief.

In order for this to make any sense, then primitive and ignorant people everywhere should be exporting religious violence.

They aren't.

Very few Muslims are terrorists. But nearly all terrorists are Muslims.

According to you, that is an uncaused effect.

Both. The first ten seconds of his response deflate your challenge (so I skipped the rest)

Of course you did. What you missed, in addition to the point of his first ten seconds:

The most toxic form religion takes is the Islamic form.

If that isn't already clear enough, this should be. Don't stop listening.

It's one of those points which no one here seems able to consider: The thing you like best about Christianity is that it's already been tamed. You don't think about the enormous number of generations who suffered under it, even though many do even today. You like to think of it as the fluffy, casual choice it's been in your own life, much like a dentifrice preference: 'Wut-evar. It was never that big a deal, right?'

I do? I don't? I like to?

That's a rich fantasy life you have going on there. Maybe direct quotation would bring it rather closer to earth.

I can't imagine what you mean in either respect… You're the one pretending Christianity's docility was foreordained.

Bollocks.

There are reasons that Christianity hasn't for centuries done what a few Muslims do today, and a great many more sympathize with. Otherwise, the difference is an uncaused effect, a festival of passive voice.

Which is all you have offered.

This.

And this.

Caution: contains ideas contrary to your preconceptions. So in addition to plugging your ears, you need to close your eyes.

Off topic, and completely beside the point

I didn't go there for drinkage one day not too long ago.

moar....

>> We don't have to [point out exactly which
>> part of Islam the ISISholes are perverting]

> Whoever says that has to

Or what, Jeff? What will you DO? [Theme #1: Practical Considerations.]

> I forgot to give a shit.

As did —and will— they for you... A billion-point-six of them. Can we simply choose that the outcome of their lives have no impact?

>> You don't care about Muslims.

> Hitchens didn't, either (see link below).

And let's look at what it got him. [Theme #2: Rhetoric.] Again, my copy of the book is autographed, but it was a rhetorical exercise. I know of zero minds that were flatly converted by his words, and he never mentioned any. Did you, or he, think presume that big transformations were in the offing? He was a wordy guy on a wordy mission. At that alone, he succeeded. It was a worthwhile exercise.

> the meaning of "deal breaker" can't be
> that hard to follow.

And it wasn't. The relative and temporal merits of the faith for civilization's larger project are not so readily distinguished. Which faith has, to date, meant more suffering and retardation for humanity? Which: more rape, pillage, oppression, slavery, etc? Do you wish Islam had made it's dive before Christianity?

>> How is it novel, and why didn't
>> anyone see it coming.

> I've given you plenty of specifics.

Not-a-one. You've mentioned this and that nasty passage in the Koran, but no vile human acts (see #1, above) which could only have come from Muslims. Or only did.

>> they're nasty because they're primitive and
>> ignorant, and the book has no challengers
>> for their belief.

> In order for this to make any sense, then
> primitive and ignorant people everywhere
> should be exporting religious violence.

[A.] (And again.) Only if you think people are naturally good. I harbor no such illusion: Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. Religious violence is no prettier or uglier than other evil violence.

> Very few Muslims are terrorists.

Enough alone to befoul your contentions.

> But nearly all terrorists are Muslims.

[B.] Nor is there any reason to respect this calculation on its face: Horrific multiples of 9/11's violent death toll have happened in America in the years since, almost none of them "religious," let alone Islamic. AgainAgainAgain, I ask you (and Amy) to describe what you thought it was going to be like bringing the last third of humanity from illiterate poverty to modern coherence. It grows ever-more obvious you'd never thought about it at all, or have regarded the relative safety of your own modern lives as the natural course. No.

> The most toxic form religion takes
> is the Islamic form.

Hitch was a cutie-pie, no two ways about it. Hating religion is bracingly simple, and good for book tours and post-event parties (see #2, above): It's not especially instructive. Hitch didn't make Islam go away. You won't either.

> There are reasons that Christianity hasn't
> for centuries done what a few Muslims do
> today

YES, AND FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED ME TO SAY IT?: Those reasons are the fists, torches and pistols of modern men and women who will kill you if you try to fuck with them from the altar.

…Unless I was right, and you really do imagine that some kind of inherent (imaginary) modesty is what makes the modern Christian such a fuckable little muffin. I know better.

> an uncaused effect, a festival of
> passive voice.

Again, you keep saying that. Dood, you have a weird habit of latching on to nutty two-word coinages as if they carried street currency. For my part, nothing uncaused, nothing passive... We'll kill the people we need to kill, and ennoble the rest as modernity allows... Because it's in civilization's interests, financially and otherwise, to do so.

Islam is not a superpower. Nor is a prissy distaste for it.

I wonder what Amy, and others, could do or say that would make Crid sit back and say "finally, I have succeeded in informing these imbeciles about the reality of Islam and Muslims."

A question to those of you that claim to understand what Crid is talking about. Please give an explanation of what his point is.

Funtime Addenda:

• I didn't mean "superpower" at the end in the conventional geopolitical sense... But shoezy/fitzy.


• It's true that our President is, on this topic as so many others, a corrupt and transparent dorkasaures.


• Wiki, no one's idea of the truth but an internet favorite anyway, implicates Islam as no earlier than the fourth probable despoiler of the Library of Alexandria, arriving (by definition) hundreds of years after Romans (winkwink) had started demolition.


• I was going to do a part about how history, oscillating playfully between Christianity and Islam in Spain and other geographic-border-places, seems to have disfavored the less-connected places with Islam. There's an effect-of-wretchedness thing happening there, not just the cause-of-wretchedness. Places that were more modern (and likely to profitable) needed late-Christian or secular flexibility. It like the old/joke Mexican complaint about the border with Norteamericanos as the West was carved: 'You took the part with all the roads!' Not exactly.... But there's probably good books about this.


• I meant to add an explicit part about... Ah, we'll get it next time. This ain't over. (BOY, is it not over.)

Wow, so, I read Dave B's challenge, and that last bullet-point, causally withdrawn at 11:25, weighs heavily in the pocket.

It'll fly soon enough.

Thomas More was executed by Henry the VIII for criticizing his reforms to the Church.

Mary Queen of England burned over 300 protestants for not being Catholic

Martin Luther sparked lots of violence with his criticisms of Catholocism and his reformation.

... are you joking when you say there are no examples of non-Muslim religions killing people who criticize them? I mean "Heresy" was its whole own crime.

From Wikipedia's Blasphemy article, under "Catholicism"

The most common way to punish the ones who committed blasphemy was through hanging or stoning, due to what is said in Leviticus 24:13-16. Then the LORD said to Moses: "Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: 'If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him."
Writer Salman Rushdie was accused of blasphemy and subject of a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in February 1989.

The last person hanged for blasphemy in Great Britain was Thomas Aikenhead aged 20, in Scotland in 1697. He was prosecuted for denying the veracity of the Old Testament and the legitimacy of Christ's miracles.[20]

People being arrested for Buddist blasphemy:

https://www.dvb.no/analysis/blasphemy-and-offence-in-burmese-buddhism-myanmar/46504

[Crid:]We don't have to[point out exactly which part of Islam the ISISholes are perverting]. One billion —or actually closer to a billion and a half— practicing Muslims are "pointing out" the most probable …

Obama asserted that ISIS, among others, is perverting Islam. Which means a) that he is telling practicing Muslims that they have their faith wrong, and b) if is doing anything other than softshoe and tap dancing at the same time, that he knows how it is that ISIS is perverting Islam. (Note that in so doing he is an apostate — his father was Muslim — and a heretic, duly noted by ISIS, btw. And they are right.)

I thought it more or less a general rule that assertions should be backed up with evidence: ISIS is perverting Islam. How, exactly? Does ISIS use Islamic justifications? Do they fit within Islam? How I read their book isn't the point; never has been. It is how Muslims read their book that matters. Who are you to contradict ISIS, whose members probably have a very thorough knowledge of the Quran and Hadith?

It's not my job to make sense of their system of belief. I never signed off with what's in the Bible …

Hillary Clinton took a lot of undeserved heat recently for saying we need to "empathize with our enemies". Unfortunate word choice, but sound advice nonetheless. For anyone who hopes to have anything like an informed opinion on ISIS in particular, Islamist violence in general, or the incompatibility between Islam and pluralist democracies, then making sense of their system of belief is vital.

Which is what makes Jeff, Jeff, Jeff: Are they asking you? Any of them? so, oh, vacuous. When Muslims attempt to force their faith on the rest of us (google [minneapolis cabbies], [un blasphemy law], never mind the atrocities), they are hoping to imposing an answer which very much begs a whole lot of questions.

…As are the claims and actions of the 1.5 billion non-ISISholes... As they will so readily affirm. Who are you to tell them that they aren't "true believers"?

Again, point missed. Islamists call moderate Muslims heretics. I'm just following their lead.

The "deal" with Christianity was centuries of conflict and containment. Your "deals" are imaginary, which is why neither you nor Amy is specifying terms for this one.

Stop pushing at an open door, and perhaps read a little more carefully. Belief is the "deal".

And belief matters. There are elements of Islamic belief that appear to have made it uniquely incapable of adapting to modernity — IMHO — I mentioned them above, specifically.

So I've begged-begged-begged to learn what's new about Islam… How is it novel, and why didn't anyone see it coming.

Google [clash of civilizations].

[A.] (And again.) Only if you think people are naturally good. I harbor no such illusion: Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. Religious violence is no prettier or uglier than other evil violence.

Read Pinker's Better Angles of our Nature.

A question to those of you that claim to understand what Crid is talking about. Please give an explanation of what his point is.

Truly a mystery. That Amy and I (and others) aren't entitled to an opinion about fundamentalist Islam? That our assertions about Islam are factually incorrect? That attempting to understand those who are inimically opposed to our society is out of bounds?

It's true that our President is, on this topic as so many others, a corrupt and transparent dorkasaures.

I am sympathetic to his problem [slate how obama thinks about islam and terrorism]. However, he could have approached the problem entirely differently: used Christian history to show what happens when belief proceeds unleavened by doubt; note the parallel with contemporary Islamism; and assert that faith is best lived through personal example, not violent imposition.

Instead, his elisions were so baroque that he ended up focussing more attention on what he said than if he just came out and stated the obvious.

It's raining here. Jus' sayin'.

Moar....

Yeah. This President is a stinker. Agreed.

> he is telling practicing
> Muslims that they have their
> faith wrong

Well now, Jeff, he's like that with everybody.

> Which is what makes Jeff, Jeff,
> Jeff: Are they asking you? Any
> of them? so, oh, vacuous.

No. You're dodging the inquiry: What command do you have over the religious beliefs of 1.6 billion people?

Neither you nor Amy will answer. Innuendo flies everywhere, but neither of you will recommend persuasion at any scale... Militarily / culturally / politically... 'Nuthin.

> they are hoping to imposing
> an answer which very much
> begs a whole lot of questions.

That sentence has too many moving parts. Besides, BTQ is the logical failure of building conclusions into one's premises, not a vague appeal for investigation.

>> Who are you to tell them
>> that they aren't "true
>> believers"?

> Again, point missed. Islamists
> call moderate Muslims heretics.
> I'm just following their lead.

See February 16, 2015 12:54 AM.

> Belief is the "deal".

> And belief matters.

Six times. No one's arguing. It doesn't illuminate.

>> So I've begged-begged-begged
>> to learn what's new about
>> Islam… How is it novel, and
>> why didn't anyone see it coming.

> Google [clash of civilizations].

Jeff, this is turning chicken... And that's no way to go through life, Son. You, and Amy, respond to plain requests for specifics with a dense fog of text, as if to sneak out during the distraction.

This escape will not be permitted. It's been attempted in here before.

In gay marriage discussions, Amy would post articles and anecdotes and chatter plain permitting only a single conclusion; That there was nothing special or essential about the love of a mother for her child. So I'd ask her to say it in a sentence (or explain why she couldn't): There's nothing special about the love of a mother for children.

She wouldn't touch it. In context, she quite obviously believed it... But support for her position would evacuate instantly if she said so. It's thus both reasonable and high-noon obvious that the opposite is true: The love of a mother is profoundly important to children.

I keep asking what's new about the evil which Islam portends; or that you say in a sentence that Humanity has never faced a danger like Islam.

You guys won't say it.

We're left to wonder what parts of the challenge will be familiar to us, and which responses have been effective with similar engagements in earlier circumstances, as it's both reasonable and black-midnight obvious that we needn't reinvent the wheel... Or tolerate Sheeple-toned fear-mongering.

>> Inter faeces […]

> Read Pinker's Better Angles of
> our Nature.

I've read enough of it (and about Pinker) to know that his point isn't that human nature has changed in any respect. Civilization is improving because cultures are improving... Which is precisely my posture with respect to Islam. It will not be permitted to maintain a posture of 8th-century bloodlust; and the vast majority of it will not be inclined to, once modernity's blessings are available through other allegiances.

…And that is going to happen. You're not even describing the Minnesota Taxicab of your nightmares, or what we should do about it, and you sure aren't looking decades or a century into the future. But that is what is going to happen to Islam: It's extremism will be ever-less alluring to people who want the peace, wealth and comfort that civilization's continuing expansion has brought to so many of us.


> That Amy and I (and others)
> aren't entitled to an opinion
> about fundamentalist Islam?

Only that no one sell an opinion as "learned" when it's narrow and smug.

No. You're dodging the inquiry: What command do you have over the religious beliefs of 1.6 billion people?

I'm not dodging it, I'm trying to make sense of it. And failing for, I suspect, good reason.

I made specific assertions about the nature and consequences of Islamic belief. What command must I have over Islam for those assertions to be true (or false)? Amy repeatedly cites events pointing out the charade that is Religion of Peace™. What command over Islam must she have to mention them?

Substantial numbers of Muslims desire to impose Sharia: that means they want to use their religion to control others. Many Muslims want to restrict others' ability to criticize Islam.

Beliefs matter. (Danger, specifics lurking.)

Jeff, this is turning chicken... And that's no way to go through life, Son. You, and Amy, respond to plain requests for specifics with a dense fog of text, as if to sneak out during the distraction.

You asked "how is it novel and why didn't anyone see it coming?"

The first part of the question is baffling, and the last part wrong. Yeah, I know, how can a question be wrong? But that one is. Some people have been seeing this coming for more than 20 years. Sayyid Qutb started modern Islamism 60-ish years ago.

I keep asking what's new about the evil which Islam portends; or that you say in a sentence that Humanity has never faced a danger like Islam.

Just as I keep staring at that question in pure bafflement. OK, let's say there's nothing new about Islamism, in the sense that religious barbarism might, just might, have existed before ISIS. That is a statement of the glaringly apparent; you are pushing at a wide open door.

But today — not four hundred years ago, or, to the extent the Holocaust was another crime attributable to Christianity, not 70 years ago — Islam is the basis for nearly all the religiously inspired savagery to be had.

The Pakistani government collapses, and Islamists get their hands on a few nuclear weapons.

Which is precisely my posture with respect to Islam. It will not be permitted to maintain a posture of 8th-century bloodlust …

How wonderful for you. Less wonderful, perhaps, for the victims of ISIS. Etc. Those fools just weren't looking far enough into the future.

> I made specific assertions about
> the nature and consequences of
> Islamic belief.

"The nature and consequences of Islamic belief" weren't the question. Could it be any more obvious that you don't want to answer the question, which is, again-again-again: Do Muslims care about your opinion of their faith?

> Beliefs matter.

Seven: Jeff, this is pathology, not rhetoric. Inane, not principled. Defensive, not explanatory.

> The first part of the question
> is baffling

There can be no doubt that you're stumped.

> Islam is the basis for nearly
> all the religiously inspired
> savagery to be had.

You can't seem to acknowledge that it's not much of a championship... The primitive, isolated cultures of the world are almost by definition savage. The religious corner is merely that.

> OK, let's say there's nothing new
> about Islamism

Boom! At last, a ray of hope! You've made an important breakthrough today. Great work! 🌟

Let's all try keep this momentum happening!

> The Pakistani government collapses,
> and Islamists get their hands on a
> few nuclear weapons.

Dood, read a newspaper from the last quarter-century: We're already there. And the Soviet government collapsed, so Putin and any number of other crime-syndicate agencies have (and trade) nukes which are no less deadly.

> Less wonderful, perhaps, for the
> victims of ISIS.

Now you're getting weepy for the victims of ISIS? Were you heretofore ignorant of the despotic predations of Assad, Qaddafi, and Hussein? (Etc./etc./etc. ?)

These problems were always there. You, and Amy, needn't tart them up in a plunging neckline to get our attention.

Could it be any more obvious that you don't want to answer the question, which is, again-again-again: Do Muslims care about your opinion of their faith?

Apparently it needs to be a great deal more obvious to you that I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FU*K AT A ROLLING DONUT whether one, some, any, or all Muslims care about my opinion.

Put it another way. I'm pretty certain that if I walked up to some ISISholes and told them I thought their faith was delusional, and that the biggest problem with it is that there isn't a hell for them in which to spend eternity.

A wild guess, I know, but I'd bet at least even money that they'd care enough to kill me.

[Jeff:] Beliefs matter.

Seven: Jeff, this is pathology, not rhetoric. Inane, not principled. Defensive, not explanatory.

Beliefs matter.

Since 1975, the rape rate in Sweden has increased 1472%, second only to Lesotho, South Africa.

What happened? Samuel Huntington, whose book The Clash of Civilizations (1996) looks ever more prescient, warned that Islam and the West were on a collision course. What we have come to call “multiculturalism” was a recipe not for comity and progressive enlightenment but for increasing conflict. That the huge influx of Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians into Sweden [since 1975] has led to this expanding rape culture would not have surprised him.

…

A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reached the conclusion that immigrants from North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) were 23 times as likely to commit rape as Swedish men. The figures for men from Iraq, Bulgaria and Romania were, respectively, 20, 18 and 18.

The primitive, isolated cultures of the world are almost by definition savage. The religious corner is merely that.

I can't claim to have traveled really extensively through the mideast, but I've been to some places a few times. They are neither primitive, nor isolated. In fact, I'll bet much of China is both more primitive and far more isolated than almost all of the Islamic countries. And India.

Yet somehow the Chinese and Indians are world class failures when it comes to exporting religiously inspired terrorism.

I trust Ayaan Hirsi Ali on this more than you.

Dood, read a newspaper from the last quarter-century: We're already there. And the Soviet government collapsed, so Putin and any number of other crime-syndicate agencies have (and trade) nukes which are no less deadly.

Ummm, no. But nice try.

Now you're getting weepy for the victims of ISIS? Were you heretofore ignorant of the despotic predations of Assad, Qaddafi, and Hussein? (Etc./etc./etc. ?)

No, nor was I ignorant of the heartbreak of psoriasis, either. But I am now much more in touch with the meaning of non sequitur.

> I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FU*K AT
> A ROLLING DONUT whether one, some,
> any, or all Muslims care about
> my opinion.

And yet!!--

"…As commanded." [AA]

"Because they are clear"

"…approval of Islam-inspired terrorism runs well past 25%."

--And on and on. You're composing an opinion for whom, exactly?

> I'm pretty certain that if
> I walked up to some ISISholes
> and told them…

There are a lot of people, including many godless types here in the states, who'd respond to you that way without regard to your cosmology.

(Nonetheless, you oughtn't toil too gratuitously swell their number....)

> Beliefs matter.

As his bluing flesh collapses pointlessly into hypoxic narcosis, the silly child torpidly congratulates himself: That woman is learning a lesson about green beans which she won't soon forget!!!!

His loving mother, subtly charmed by a surcease in audible whining, turns casually to assist his little sister across the lunch table with her strained carrots: She knows perfectly well that when the little fucker wakes up, he's going to be even hungrier.

And you, eventually, are going to want to study what's actually going on out there with people:

> I'll bet much of China is both more
> primitive and far more isolated than
> almost all of the Islamic countries.

Weird that someone so quick to fault Kaplan's reporting for imaginary arguments antithetical to those he actually offered would be inattentive to the politics and religion of the Uyghurs.

But as to your larger point, yeah, sure: The cultures least integrated into modernity have had the least impact from and upon it. Is that what you meant? Yeah.

> I am now much more in touch
> with the meaning of non
> sequitur.

You don't care about those people. Amy doesn't care about them. Neither of you ever did.

A sudden pretense of expertise is goofy.

(Nonetheless, you oughtn't toil too gratuitously swell their number....)

Over the past decade, headlines from the Middle East have reintroduced Westerners to terms from centuries past. “Heresy,” “blasphemy,” “apostasy” — these are some of the charges that the radical Salafist group known as the Islamic State invokes when it executes its enemies, sometimes by crucifying or burning them alive.

Some Muslim governments, including United States allies, also mete out harsh punishments for similar offenses. The liberal blogger Raif Badawi was publicly flogged in Saudi Arabia last month on a charge of heresy, which he allegedly committed by criticizing the oppressive Saudi religious establishment.

Although there are contextual differences for these practices, as well as the sanctions for religious offenses in Iran, Sudan or Afghanistan, they all share one fundamental objective: Punishing people in the name of God.

A 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center showed that while not all of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims approve of this notion, a significant proportion of them do. Majorities in Egypt and Pakistan, for example, support the death penalty for Muslims who dare to abandon their religion.

Of course, his opinion is obviously narrow and smug.

> Over the past decade, headlines from
> the Middle East have...

I was speaking of godless types you might offend here in the 'States.

(ahem.)

Similarly,"N&S" was for coastal Stateside bloggers.

New Tack! Special argument!

I'm going to wave a…

      — Magic wand — 

And how is the world changed?

NO ISLAM!

Look, I don't have time to explain how it would work, or to fill in the obvious holes in history. It's MY magic wand, and I'm telling you, that's how it works. OK? Alternative Scenarios Playhouse. I'm giving you the world of your (presumed) dreams, where there's no Koran, and no nasty Muslims.





…But you can't have everything. There are still as many poor people living in ignorance and filth and grotesque poverty as there were (are) in the pre-Magic Wand days.

As one-quarter to one-third of humanity remains to be brought into civilizations bounty, do you think "a significant proportion" of them will have some ideas you think are despicable?

…Even if the Koran plays no role?

Because I'd bet they would.

In Science Land, "a significant proportion" means one-in-twenty.

In fifty-five years, I don't think I've ever been in the presence of twenty people I'd trust to behave decently.

Sorry. Here's the link on one in twenty.

See the Monday playtime links for a good article from McArdle.

As one-quarter to one-third of humanity remains to be brought into civilizations bounty, do you think "a significant proportion" of them will have some ideas you think are despicable?

Interesting hypothetical -- sort of along the lines of how the world might have turned out differently had Marx not been born, or a bullet's trajectory might have been a bit different during one of those Putsch things in the early 1930s.

The hypo isn't necessary to pose the question. Sati and caste are easily despicable enough, with or without Islam. I'm afraid to say anything more though, for fear of being found even more shallow.

I'll see you a Megan McArdle, and raise you a Victor David Hanson.

Little to disagree with, but this graf---

By all accounts, only a tiny minority, perhaps no more than 2 or 3 percent, of Muslims in the Middle East actively supports ISIS and violent Islamic ideology. But various international polls also show a much higher level of approval for what Westerners would call Islamism or Islamic terrorism — as expressed by support for the tactic of suicide bombing or agreement with the late Osama bin Laden. Approval from this larger minority polls anywhere from 15 to 20 percent, depending on the country in question and the wording of the question. In other words, 60 to 80 million Muslims in the Middle East may, at least silently, condone almost any tactic felt necessary to further the cause of a purer Islam at the expense of the West in general and of what they would see as secularized or Westernized Muslim sellouts in their midst.

How upset do you get about other typical for scare-stats?

C'mon.

C'mon.

How upset do you get about other typical for scare-stats?

When it comes to (google [rational ignorance]), not at all.

But when it involves a core interest?

Quarter of British Muslims sympathise with Charlie Hebdo terrorists*.

C'mon.

C'mon.

*Granted, they are isolated and primitive and all, but still, it's almost enough to make one wonder.

A-feared of "sympathies"? From one quarter an impotent, deeply scattered, largely illiterate blowing-wind-sampled population which has probably never see a clipboard like the one held by the intimidating grad student who's taking the (sponsored) survey?

These are getting ever-less intimidating.

[Crid, Feb 17, 2338] No, Jeff— The people taking the worst guidance from Islam have NOT had the opportunities to move beyond its constraints on their lives, not as modern Christians have been unshackled from the worst of Christianity by civilization's other forces.

[Crid, above:] From one quarter an impotent, deeply scattered, largely illiterate blowing-wind-sampled population which has probably never see a clipboard like the one held by the intimidating grad student who's taking the (sponsored) survey?

Near as I can count, you assumed seven facts not in evidence, all in the service of wishing away inconvenient truths.

Meet Jihadi John:

LONDON — Mohammed Emwazi was 6 when his parents moved to West London from his birthplace in Kuwait, and he seems to have lived a normal life, studying hard and graduating in computer sciences from the University of Westminster in 2009.

Hmmm. University of Westminster. Why does that ring a bell?

Oh that University of Westminster.

Nothing to see here, move along.

More illiterates who can't ever have seen a clipboard.

Move along faster.

The men held jobs, but the jobs did not seem to be of great interest beyond a paycheck.

Marie "Bobblehead" Harf is Shocked.

Moar.

This will embarrass, humiliate, and dis-empower you. Go ahead and start collecting potpourri, scented candles and Hagen-Daaz for your weekend rape bath... You be glad you offered yourself at least that much kindness, you Europe-moving submissive.

Here's an Enya video with lots of (synthetic-fabric) chiffon blown by a cheap electric fan in a shit-smelling SoHo warehouse, portentously shot at 350fps. Get the picture? This one's going to hurt. Prepare to receive.

Grrr.

(Give it a couple days though, this is the middle of the workweek.)

Look, there's nothing that hasn't been said in here before. I keep asking for meaningful evidence of new evil, and you reply only with innuendo. There's nothing new to say, and it's obvious you guys won't take any points at all. You WANT to be oblivious.

Islam has no comic-book super powers. There is nothing, nothing new about it. It persists in illiterate cultures which have had no better influences on morality, investigation, finance and sexuality. But it doesn't grow from those places... It can only flair at first contact and then steadily shrink, as does every religion upon contact with modernity.

The only people attracted to it are nutbars who couldn't make their place in society anyway.

AND THE IDIOTIC THINGS YOU AND AMY SAY ABOUT ISLAM —YOUR LUNATIC SINGSONG INCANTATIONS ABOUT MAGICAL TEXT AND INNOVATIVE EVIL— ARE WHAT MAKE ISLAM ATTRACTIVE TO THESE YOUNG WESTERN INCOMPETENTS. They want nothing more than to be part of something novel and disruptive and meaningful… And THEY BELIEVE YOU, pathetically, when you describe Islam as such a force.

Of course, it is not. A Western teenage child of divorce who goes off to murder people means nothing... It happens in the bad neighborhoods of every city in America, and you guys ought to fucking well know that.

That was good. Write that down.

Look, there's nothing that hasn't been said in here before. I keep asking for meaningful evidence of new evil, and you reply only with innuendo.

I don't have time to cut and paste them all, but I cited plenty of specific characteristics about Islam that are distinctly unique, in a particularly toxic way, to which you have responded with loud typing.

I said idiotic things about Islam? Prove it. There are plenty of quotes above, pick one that is idiotic, and demonstrate why.

What you are left with is attributing as causes those things that are really effects. Over the last four or so centuries, secular governments happened in the Christian world. Intellectual and material advancement happened in the Christian world. Christians stopped killing each other over religion. There are plenty of places that are primitive, but none that aren't Muslim are exporting religiously inspired violence. Sikhs live in the same part of the world as Pakistanis. Sikhs aren't killing each other over religion, but their next door neighbors are. Five hundred years ago, Europeans weren't literate, and were dirt poor. Despite that, Christianity got out of the way. Islam still hasn't.

In this entire thread I don't think you have cited one fact about Islam, and haven't contradicted any others have put up.

Instead, your argument has so far depended upon table pounding, irrelevancies, and questionable assertions: [Islam] can only flair at first contact and then steadily shrink, as does every religion upon contact with modernity. Whether it will is unknowable. What is knowable is that given 500 years to get going, it hasn't.

Moreover, I doubt very much this guy agrees with you. But what the heck would he know? After all he is only a former Islamist, well-off, literate and well educated in a modern country.

More idiotic things about Islam.