How wrong this is.
Here is how the second woman sounded:
She: “Muslim countries are suffering from post-colonial troubles. Given the long history of Western imperialism and colonialism, it is not surprising that there is such poverty and tyranny.”
I: “Some of the barbarism is indigenous. Western imperialism did not cause Islamic gender apartheid, did not create the practices of arranged child marriage or polygamy.”
She: “But every culture is sexist. What we as feminists must do is deal with the sexism in our own countries, not interfere with other countries.”
I: “I once believed that too and it’s a valid point. However, this is not the historical moment for isolationism. That would betray every feminist principle of universal human rights. Actually, I see the most profound danger coming our way, coming to you, who have escaped from a Muslim country. If we do not stop jihadic terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, we will all end up wearing hijab, being controlled by a dangerous brand of fundamentalist Islam.”
She: “The Bible is very violent, very sexist.”
I: “Yes, but that was then, now Jews and Christians don’t stone women to death. They don’t launch Holy Wars against civilians in the name of religion.”
She: “But Western imperialism did just that when it plundered and destroyed Muslim countries.”
I: “You have a point. But, if we’re talking about imperialism, we have to talk about it all. For example, for 700-800 years, Islamic imperialism genocidally exterminated Hindus, forcibly converted Christians and colonized the entire Christian Byzantine Empire….even today, Christians are being savagely persecuted in Muslim countries and Arab and North African Jews have all been exiled.”
She: (Without pausing) “But the Quran gave women property rights for the first time in history. And it is really a peaceful religion. People don’t understand that.”
This went on for quite awhile. I had a hard time stopping her. She was well schooled in anti-colonialism, post-colonialism, Said’s “Orientalism,” false moral equivalencies, an almost automatic prejudice against Western imperialism and a blind spot about any other kind of colonialism or imperialism.
This is precisely the way so many young and educated people sound. And they share these views with everyone, including potential future employers, and at great length. As if any other view would be dangerous to hear.
As my readers know, I have written hundreds of articles and two books The New Anti-Semitism and The Death of Feminism which examine the consequences of this kind of education. It inevitably leads to thinking like a United Nations careerist. America and Israel are always to blame, Jew-hatred is legalized, the Jewish state demonized, while all other tyrants, terrorists, massacrists, and master propagandists are honored, and never, ever interrupted.
As long as certain items are swept under the rug, such as the aftermath of Pandora opening the box, or Eve eating the forbidden fruit, because it challenges cherished conclusions; the world will continue to see examples of these brain washed, yet well meaning, youths.
I find the “Left” so insufferably boorish and puerile in their argumentation that my position has been rendered to one thread:…ok , eliminate the State of Israel , eliminate all the world’s Jews( been tried often and with focus- yet, here we are ) -then what? Think the “hate” – whether Islamic or Skinhead, diversity! doncha know – will go away?We need to change the way/method our children are being taught and we need to be a bit more energetic in the pursuit of our republican/electoral ideals and our cultural values. The Jewish carpenter had it correct, keep it simple and try to love.NOw, that being said- just what was it that Muhammed brought to the human race?
apparently, the frontal cortex of the brain is still in the development stage in “developing” countries. i suggest they stick with good ol’ “third world”. it only means poor, instead of dumb.
The UN has condemned Israel more times than it has voted on any other single issue. That is its buisiness, at the time in history. But when tyrants and idiots can rant on and on, the world will have a chance to see them speaking in favor of totalitarianism and stupidity. Perhaps some people–somewhere–will learn just how awful and dangerous they are
Phyllis,
Spot on, as usual. Thanks.
The talks from the mad tyrannts were too disgusting to be escused by anüone. Netanyahu was right to take the UN to task for those sitting there and listening politely to garbled nonsense and pure hatred.
Did you notice the lone young woman representing the non-existent state of Palestine who, as Netanyahu spoke, folded up her newspaper and marched out. All these bizarre words and actions are an insult to the founding principles of the UN–and to the American and French revolutionary ideals that lie behind its foundation.
It is once again crunch time: you are either for Israel or against it, and to be against it is to be a rationalizer of terrorism, tyranny, and racism. There is no legitimate criticism of Israel until those issues are clarified.
Norman
It’s really hard to know how to deal with little Maoists who will, if able, collect a mob around a heretic like Dr. Chesler.
Still, when safe, such young people need to be told bluntly that they are acting like Maoists. But how many of them really know who Mao or Stalin were? We had a recent conversation that revealed some young know-it-all was only b.s.ing when he pretended to know who Stalin was.
For the smart ones, point out that they know all the correct resentments, that they are surely among the anointed, but since they’re so smart, can they help one with an intellectual puzzle, and reflect seriously on the nature of resentment as an anthropological phenomenon. Why are people so resentful? And why is everyone to some degree resentful, regardless of one’s relative deprivation or privilege in life and history? How does one know one’s resentment is entirely justified? Point out that, like guilt, one cannot think rationally about resentment while one is feeling resentful. Even when there is a genuine injustice at stake, resentment is a self-deluding state of mind.
One also needs to query whether life in the “developing” world has been generally worse in post-imperial than imperial times, except perhaps when the comparison is to the very worst aspects of imperialism and only then if we don’t compare these to the very worst brutality of the “post-colonial” world (i say “post”, as if PHyllis’ interlocutors are not still being colonized and condescended to by the postmodern take on the white man’s burden and the sinless, innocent, primitive: they are insufferably self-righteous because they have been told by Western and leftist brainwashers that they are without sin). If only vanity would allow, one could dream of getting youngsters to reflect on the implication of leftist dogma in keeping tyrants with an easy scapegoat to blame for all their own shortcomings and for the limits of cultures not yet adapted to modernity.
Did you ever notice how they “ALL” say the same thing? I was hearing exactly the same BS in 1997/98 from an Islamist co-worker who got it into her head that she needed to work on me until I saw the light and became Muslim. She even threatened me (with words) that I would have to be killed. Theses people are so arrogant and obnoxious. They lost their ability to think or had it scared out of them. I finally told her I would rather be dead than Muslim. Well, you just don’t say something like that to them. It was all out war after that.
It’s like they say, though, people don’t keep repeating behaviors unless they get something out of it. I think they feel a real sense of superiority. Like saying, yes we know we’re arrogant, but we’re Muslim, and god says we’re the best people so what do you expect? I don’t want to have anything to do with these people. Once is enough. Why are “we” still allowing them into this country by the boatful?
Speaking of Maoists, I am amazed that the story of the famine of 1959-61 is not better known. Mao created the worst famine in all human history. At least 30 million people died, maybe more. There was no crop failure. One of the causes of the famine was that Mao forced farmers to melt their metal tools in backyeard furnaces in order to provide steel for China’s defense industry. The steel was useless, but the farmers were left without tools. During the famine, CVhina continued to export grain.
There are books about this, notably HUNGRY GHOSTS by Jasper Becker. The famine was reported earlier in the December 1985 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
Phyllis – and Joyce, too: your accounts of your ‘conversations’ (if one may call such exchanges, ‘conversations’) with apologists for Islam, reminded me very strongly of exchanges that happen on Mr Spencer’s jihadwatch web forum from time to time, between Muslim visitors (and sometimes the Western fellow-travellers/ enablers of Muslims) and the regular folks who frequent the forum.
Every ‘argument’ made by your interlocutor, Phyllis, is made, over and over, by the Muslim spin-doctors. It’s like they’re all reading from the same rote set of responses.
I do not know, in the case of the Muslims, whether they even necessarily themselves think some of the ‘tu quoque’ accusations that they routinely and predictably make against, for example, European imperialism or ‘violence in the Bible’, nor some of the claims they make for Islam, are true. I have come to the conclusion that very often Muslims will simply say *whatever* they think will, in any given exchange, at any given moment, work to discomfit, confuse, distract, or otherwise weaken their Infidel interlocutor. Pure verbal aggression.
And as Joyce noted, if they run into serious opposition, if their deceptions and persuasions fail, then it is..War.
Sometimes, when a Muslim poster has been pushed into a corner by a particularly lucid and persistent non-Muslim interlocutor, what happens next is something that is probably best analysed by a psychiatrist …or an exorcist: it’s like a mask rips off, and a spew of raw hate, a roar of incoherent rage, vomits forth.
Dear Phyllis,
By now it is clear that the Obama administration and much of the Judeo Christian West, and most of the Third World has made the calculation that they prefer to have Israel wiped off the map along with all of her Jewish citizens rather than take any chance on a disruption of the international financial system and the world’s oil supplies.
Indeed, my dear Phyllis, the entire West and the rest of the world are more than willing to even defend Iran against an Israeli military attack, including shooting down Israeli attack aircraft and imposing tough and real sanctions on Israel, rather than take a chance on an Israeli military intervention in Iran.
In fine, Phyllis, we Jews in Israel are once again, in the short span of sixty years, on our own again, and worse, this time, we are even being denied the right and the means to defend ourselves. Really, even during the darkest days of the European Holocaust, we were at least seen as victims of an unjust and cruel regime, and seen as having every right and even the duty to defend ourselves.
Now in 2009, we are told it will be better for us to sacrifice ourselves for the good of the rest of the world, and if we try to defend ourselves, we will be harshly punished and even perhaps find ourselves under military attack as the aggressors.
Remember how we Jews used to believe that the Holocaust could never happen again?
And how used to brag that now that we have the State of Israel, Jews could never be counted as helpless again? We also believed that following the European Holocaust, that Europe would never again actively participate in another destruction of the Jewish People?
It was all just words.
For the left, it is the romantization of the underdog that underlies much of its stances.
The underdog, the oppressed, is a priori benevolent, filled with all the virtues one can think of.
In as much as it can be shown statistically that the underdogs are systematically over-represented in crimes and other REAL acts of oppression, then this is taken as a proof of how insidious, to the point of menacing, omnipotent invisibility, the oppression from the upper classes “really” is.
It is a completely irrational, emotionalist bias.
After all, cannot a mangy, back-alley dog be infected with rabies just as likely as your Manhattan chihuahua?
(Note: Since I’ve never been to New York, I don’t know whether chihuahuas are common there or not. I apologize to all chihuahuas if I’ve made a mistake here)
Tyrants and despots don’t think they have to play by the rules. The guests are given fifteen minutes to speak yet they take sixty minutes. I think the United Nations is watching in horror at the beastly little children they have raised. They walk away, none wanting to claim they had any part in their creation.
In the case of the African young women, maybe she thought your lecture deserved hers, and she was forgetting her manners. The job interviewee was applying for a job, and she thought you were applying to hire her. Someone has made them think that they are too big for their britches. They have fallen for the diversion that blames all ills on someone else, some other country’s leaders, some other religion’s teachings. They have been deceived. We are the scapegoat.
They are uncivil, not humble, young, and a voice wanting to be heard, wanting to matter. They forget to respect their elders and perhaps learn something.
I don’t know what it is like to live in a country where you don’t matter. I don’t know what it is like to be indoctrinated into a faith where your lot in life is walking around in sack cloth and ashes. There is no chance for redemption and no way to escape and no freedom of self determination.
Indoctrinated youth can be dangerous though, as you point out. Who can forget the Hitler Youth?
And they are also young, disrespectful, rash, and full of themselves most ending up growing up, hopefully growing in wisdom also. That is, except for the ones who grow up to be despots and tyrants. They get to lecture us on the podium.
Amazing how that Southafrican Woman was brainwashed. Does she know Something about her very Roots or what? Not even about them? Those Women are forced to believe in enormous Bull Shits, where did Islam improved Women’s Life since it reintegrated the Practice of Stoning, which Others already rejected? What does she know about Islamic History around the World? Except threatening, murdering, raping, looting, stealing from Others it did not do anything else! And what about her Ignorance about Third World? What did a such ignorant Woman (sorry, mechanical thinking brainwashed Being) do in an international Conference against Violence on Women (since she represents how much Women are – firstly – mentally abused in the Islamic World, and deprived from Education …)? Is that possible to let this Brainwashed know about Bandung Conference held on 1955? Thank you. These brainwashed Women are at the same Time ignorant and eventually nasty. I’m starting wondering if we have to still pity them and support “their Rights” or if we have rather to clearly say them Something like: “Piss off!”. Thank you for sharing and for your enlightened Engagement. [By the Way: that Woman shows that the Third World needs to make Steps to become First World, and yes, to evolve and progress, and that Islam keeps Women in a sub-human Condition. Their Ignorance is almost colossal!].
“This is precisely the way so many young and educated people sound.”
That is not quite accurate. The above sentence should actually read: This is precisely the way so many young and pseudo-educated people sound.
It is further evidence that we must normally be contemptuous toward liberal arts degrees. The idiots dominate the soft sciences. Anyone possessing a liberal arts credential should be considered an idiot until proven otherwise. Do I sound viciously unfair? Well, that’s the way it is. The good sometimes must suffer along with the guilty. Much of this damage is the result of affirmative action grading institutionalized some forty years ago. it inevitably guaranteed that the crazies would take over most academic institutions.
There is nothing wrong with the term “Third World.” It is a candid and fairly precise way of describing those areas of the world that are economically backward and reactionary. That’s the blunt truth of the matter. It might hurt my feelings, for instance, if someone was to describe me as a third rate athlete. Alas, it is also true! The moment one abandons “Third World”—they will simply have to substitute it with some sort of euphemism that essentially means exactly the same thing.
The most appalling argument I’ve heard so far from the left it that, “body count doesn’t matter.” When talking abut the crimes of Stalin, Mao etc. Yes, they killed more people than Hitler…but Abu Ghraib and the Gaza Strip are clearly worse… I’ve literally heard that argument.
Daniel Hannan makes the same point here, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100011330/unconscious-bias-at-the-bbc-and-the-guardian/
So, we see the power of repetition having its effects on those who do the repeating. The banality of it is, those who have locked themselves into a closed world, conclude themselves to be the most open minded people on the face of the earth. No wonder writers like Taylor Caldwell referred to senses being poor and blind. It isn’t enough to go on the senses, but a transfer from oneself to what does not change – this is unacceptable. Which
speaks to the true poverty, instead of the perceived riches, of the mindset that ultimately opens the gates to tyranny.
“But the Quran gave women property rights for the first time in history.”
No it didn’t. The Bible gave property rights to women nearly 2000 years earlier.
The problem among the Third World (yes, I said that and meant it.
) leadership class is not ignorance but that too many educated people “know” things that just aren’t true.
Welcome to the Third World, The New USA.
I had the pleasure of speacking with a person who grew up in the third world about the health bill. Funny thing was is that his father was a UN mucky muck. He did not experience the Third world.
The youth of today think all is free, why not hand it out.
When they bring out the moppets to plead their leftist screed, you know you’re being had. I thought they’d found a cure for maldives, by the way.
Undoubtedly the UN has the most abysmal record of human rights, corruption and ineptitude of any international organization. It should be immediately defunded.
That being said, why hasn’t anyone discussed the “sudden” surge of terrorist plots against the U.S.? SEE: http://thefifthcolumnreport.blogspot.com/2009/09/multiple-arrests-multiple-terror-plots.html
I would like to ask the woman you interviewed in NY how she explains the ongoing violent, irrational acts being perpetrated all over the world, on a near daily basis, in the name of her religion.
Against any available target, diners in restaurants, riders in subways, against any convenient individual and target ?
Since she cited western imperialism, I would have asked her about Islamic imperialism, historically and in real time.
Her answers seemed to come out of a can, much like the American President’s puerile utterings at the UN.
I cannot help but giggle when I am talking to one of my loony right wing friends as they are sounding off..in a tirade against liberals and feminist women rights types and tree huggers.
When I mention women’s rights in the mid-east and how in some arab countries women are treated their mental computers shut down, then reboot, as they are ranting on about how those women should be revolting against their religion and indeed, their own government and standing up for their rights….wow…ooookkkk
Its understandably confusing for, but then again, so is their logic at times. I am just glad that progressives in the center or the left do not have to face being confused …we support human rights, because we believe human beings deserve rights, no matter where they are… on a daily basis. Interesting concept eh?
…we support human rights, because we believe human beings deserve rights, no matter where they are…
How generous of you, PC.
I’m sure your pretentious armchair support of “human rights” makes a gigantic difference to tyrants & oppressers everywhere.
Poor Dear – On a daily basis? Uh huh. Examples please. Acorn? Smooching Ahmadinnerjacket and Chavez’s butts? 40+ million abortions? Yep, that sure shows a respect for human rights alright.
Was she hired? I hope not. That would be the final tragedy.
The oldest existing legal document in the world, the , also defines property rights for women.
In fact, I’m not aware of any society in which women lack property rights entirely. Perhaps this is another feminist myth.
It’s too late, Iran has nukes and before long they’ll be positioned to deliver them. Currently, Iran cannot use it’s nuclear option, but the “status quo” will continue to facilitate a healthy environment for the development & completion of a ready nuclear arsenal.
I staggered away from graduate school coursework in 1996, aghast by what I’d witnessed. It was like a madhouse and like a house of mirrors — where the pedagogy revolved on positioning oneself as an avenging victim or willingly cowering in remorse for one’s privilege — and nothing else.
11 years later, I was halfway through teaching a Western Civilization course at a community college when one of my best students raised his hand and said: “Why are we learning this? These people (the British) are all just colonialists.”
He was a bright young man, polite, ambitious, using the school for a few classes because of scheduling problems elsewhere. He came to class in business clothes and worked for his (apparently well-off) South American family. He was, in other words, my only student who could be called upper-class, though many of the ones pursuing nursing or pharmacy would do well for themselves through studying and hard work.
That moment really stuck in my mind. Everyone else was trying to better themselves, and some had truly precarious lives. He was well-off enough to have the luxury of reflexively identifying with “the oppressed” — and thus also against the laid-off UPS driver sitting next to him who was trying to re-train for another job to feed his kids.
This is why the Obama presidency is troubling. He is a product of this unhealthy industry of manufacturing resentment and forced submission — and, really, that’s all. These folks, like the young women Dr. Chesler encountered, literally have nothing else to bring to the table. They are absolutists because if they were not, they would have to find something else to do.
Re #28: It looks like the blog software stripped the link from my comment. The first sentence should read “The oldest existing legal document in the world, the Code of Hammurabi, also defines property rights for women.”
27. Jettboy asked:
Was she hired? I hope not. That would be the final tragedy.
Peter writes: But if she wasn’t hired, she likely threatened to sue for being discriminated against because she was a muslim and didn’t get hired. Doesn’t matter if there were 100 better qualified candidates, if you didn’t hire the muslim you must be sued for discrimination.
There is no business like the racket possibilities offered by multiculturalism, non-judgmentalism and cultural relativism.
Little, vindictive individuals or larger parasitical institutions push agendae and gain benefits by flagging and collecting fees from the one mad enough to publicly admit that pygmy poetry is not superior to, say Shakespeare’s sonnets, that the acalufs’ scientific achievement dwarfs (oops! I blew it, sorry, not dwarfs), but exceeds the Western civilization’s, that homosexuality is superior to heterosexality which is just an accidental aberration, etc., etc.
And the times of “four legs good, two legs bad” are gone, too – now it’s the hexapodes or octopodes that give the world the marching orders.
RE #27/ #32: [...] “Was she hired? [...]
Some months ago there was a big scandal in London about a young lady, head covered with scarf, who kept applying for jobs in hair dressing shops – if refused, on whatever grounds, she would sue them, and she won in a few instances.
Muslim countries are suffering from post-colonial troubles. Given the long history of Western imperialism and colonialism, it is not surprising that there is such poverty and tyranny
This sort of ‘blame the other’ thinking is what passes for common wisdom in too many Muslim countries. I have spent a lot of time reading middle-eastern chatboards and the conspiracy mongering and scapegoating is jawdropping. Posters have blamed the US/West for everything, from the Shiite/Sunni conflict to a plague of crows in their neigborhood (no joke).
For these countries to progress, a sea change in personal values is needed.
Given that Colonialism and Imperialism were not the best responses of the industrializing world, that does not mean that the interaction between the Colonial Powers and the countries subjected to their pressures did not have a salutary effect on the local populations. Rudyard Kipling was at his best when writing about the interactions of the cultures – though rather one-sided.
Yet, Phyllis might ask people who insist upon ideological stands to list benefits acquired from the interactions with the Western Imperialist Powers. Getting negative responses should be enough to point out that each interaction in life should be milked for its benefits. Getting positive responses indicates a softening of ideology in the face of introspection. She might even have asked these two women whether they profited from their interaction with her; did they learn anything?
Ideology ALWAYS falls apart upon close introspection. The simple question, “Could you be wrong?” is a good starter. Another question: “If you are wrong, what might the consequences for humanity be?”
@ #6, truepeers.
Thank you for explaining how resentment is a psychological trap. I often try to help the thusly fallen who come my way. It’s hard work. I’d like to get good at it.
To understand the self-imposed incapacity of established western democracies to resist the onslaught of the strident doctrinaires of determined fascism one can learn a lot from Solzhenitsyn’s “Lenin in Zurich”. An impressive book in its own right – and timely, too.
“When I mention women’s rights in the mid-east and how in some arab countries women are treated their mental computers shut down, then reboot, as they are ranting on about how those women should be revolting against their religion and indeed, their own government and standing up for their rights….wow…ooookkkk”
What planet are you on??? I have only heard these statements from feminists on the left. I so remember getting tons of emails – save the Women of the Taliban and when George Bush did so in 2 weeks flat, the feminists were SCREAMING that this was wrong, that the women should have done this themselves.
What is so sad is that you constantly use REALITY only you flip the characters. If you really believe in your side, at least use reality and statements from feminists on the right to back your arguments. You won’t find any!
Right Wing women are all behind REALLY doing something for women’s rights, not just sending emails or talking on a post.
The United Nations give tyrants & other 3rd World tin pot dictators a platform to ironically bash America & other freedom loving countries; therefore, the UN has outlived its usefulness. At best, the UN is a slick bureaucratic debating society for high minded intellectuals to burn their grey matter into the ground. The UN is a cesspool of endless corruption. In other words, we American prop up the UN for nothing more than cockroaches to united against us. Why? Why even allow these dictatorial cockroaches to come to our shores? Democrats like to prop up the cockroaches, the rats, termite colonies, & spiders for their own ends, yet what do you have in the end? More cockroaches, rats, termite colonies, spiders, & fleas. From fleas, cockroaches, & rats, we get pestilence & plague. The United Nations needs to get out of America once & for all for this reason.
It’s extremely difficult to deal with people whose opinions are ideologial rather than factual.
I’d say that the majority of people who use terms such as colonialism and imperialism,etc have no knowledge of the ecological, demographic and economic history of the world.
They don’t realize that Western society developed in the richest ecological envt on this planet, which led to a requirement for an innovative and progressive middle class market economy. Are they aware that most of Africa has soil and water problems, and lacks native domesticated animals? Same with America.
Are they aware that all peoples have organized themselves to dominate their environment – and that includes domination over other groups of people in that envt.
African tribes dominate other tribes..ever heard of the Mursi, who dominate the Kwegu? Pastoralists sneer at settled cultivators and consider them social inferiors.
Islam is hardly a religion of peace; read its Qu-ran and read Islamic history.
Note also that Islam rejects the use of reason, of individual free thought, of progress, science and instead, insists on a passive obedience to a culture suited only to a 7th c. non-industrial tribal society and economy.
#37 Prof. Guvinoff
Thanks. I draw on Generative Anthropology which provides the most sophisticated discussion of resentment today: http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/
The UN, like the League of Nations before it, is essentially based on the same model as the Articles of Confederation, which is a union when everyone is not sure they really want to create a union.
Why should we be continually surprised that these organizations fail?
Look, if you want to create world government, look no further than our constitution as a model. and notice in includes certain things that the UN doesn’t value. a guarantee of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, a guarantee that each constituent part be a republic. That last one is particularly tough for, say the People’s Republic of China, which is not, contrary to its name, any kind of republic.
I have said for a long time that it would be wise to start a new organization, call it the “League of Democracies.” You have to be reasonably democratic to join (like okay, let in england despite the house of lords and the king), and no one else. Then give it real power. Then maybe you would have something that might actually stand up to Iran.
Phillis, what you’re up against is a narrative. The narrative is an organism, an emergent organism comprised of these zombies, and at the same time, in control of them. I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but the history of mass movements isn’t very encouraging.
Fine article.
With regard to the issue of stoning and violence, I don’t think any Jew or Christian has been inclined to support stoning for the last 2,000 years. May have been replaced by the pagan practice of burning at the stake, pressing or being broken on the wheel. And those punishments have been out of favor for the last few hundred years as well. Point being, that modern Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhist don’t stone, burn or harm women for their personal sexual choices. Should also point out that women did own property before Mohammed codified it as a result of one of prophetic his seizures.
It is also important to keep in mind that much of what is historically related in the Bible, are not as much imperatives as various lessons in behavior. Unfortunately, the Koran is not a historically focused document, in fact there is no historical order. It is arranged by length of chapter rather than chronology. More so, it is a book of strict imperatives, some of which are commandments to commit violence, plunder, rape and subjugate the survivors. Those imperatives do not exist in any other religion that I am aware of.
The post colonial/imperialism argument is little more than an anti-capitalist excuse for failure. Very boring.
“”"”" 8. George Jochnowitz:
Speaking of Maoists, I am amazed that the story of the famine of 1959-61 is not better known. “”"”"”
No surprise there. Almost no one outside of China knows about the ritual cannibalism practiced by some of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. In addition, most people are blase about the flayed, plasticized bodies of hundreds of deceased Chinese that are touring shopping malls because of some depraved notion that this is “educational.”
Phyllis -
Islam is not a religion. It is political ideology parading as a religion. BTW before Islam, all of North Africa was Christian; how many Christians are there now?
As for the Bible being violent and sexist, it has its fair share of violence and sexism, but as you correctly point out neither Christians nor Jews are pathologically driven to violence by their respective religions. Moreover, a careful reading of the Bible will show that much of the violence in it involved the conquest of the land of Canaan (and that may or may not reflect reality until the time of David). Indeed, between Joshuah and David it appears the most of the violence that did occur was inflicted first on the Israelites. After the Solomonic period, Israel and Judah became prey to foreign depredations and so the violence there, for the most part is what others did to them, not what they did to others. Finally, while Israelites and Jews are commanded to follow Yaweh, they are not commanded by the Bible to go out and convert the world to Yahwism.
Contrast that with the Koran which is quite aggressive. And it gets worse. The Koran views non-Moslems as having no rights. Either non-Moslems accept Muhammad, or they accept death or they accept a heavy tax with the status dhimmi. Worse, Jews are viewed as subhuman (apes and monkeys), and indeed the yellow badge Jews have had to wear from time originated in Islam.
With regard to sexism, the Bible does give women property rights. See Numbers 26, 27 & 36, Josh. 17 and I Chron. 7.
Turning to the UN, one could compare the UN to the League of Nations, but then that would denigrate the League of Nations. Indeed, the recent speech at the UN delivered by the Israel PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, told it like it is. Unfortunately, there are none so deaf as those who will not hear.
The only thing that is surprising is that anyone should be surprised by how the UN has developed. Only the dimmest of dimwits would even think to support the existence of an empowere, peerless, competitionless entity. Evolutionary theory tells us that such an entity will inevitably grow in grotesque and destructive ways, as the UN has done and will continue to do.
The UN is the epitome of the staticist left. It is insane to even lend any sense of respect to the idea of a UN. This is not a matter of having problems with the implementation, but of an idea that is theoretically fraught with unresolvable problems that anyone with common sense understands.
Empowered, peerless, competitionless entities are recipes for nothing but crushing disasters. The staticist left strikes again with their impenetrable stupidity.
In answer to the querry, because that is where the future is, the good paying jobs.
Being a conservative doesnt pay well on average compared to being a Leftwinger…and the good conservative paying jobs will soon be taxed and regulated to correct any discrepancies in that statement. The New Left Baby Boomers have marched through the institutions and created the zeitgeist in which the West now operates…it is the Establishment.
If you want a good job at Google, it doesnt pay to be a Christian Classically Liberal Conservative who defends Western Civilization and Culture. You have to celebrate diversity (which means every culture but yours).
Its a sad reality, but pretending otherwise wont change a thing.
Dear Ms. Chesler,
an American friend who’s in academia told me you used to be a radical feminist. I wonder what actually happened to you! I find your post racist, colonialist, smug, arrogant, ignorant. Even worse are your respondents, all sounding like the usual anti-Obama, right-wing lunatics. As a second-language speaker of English (first one being Italian), I cannot help but notice that most of your commentators cannot even spell or write correctly in their one and only language, yet they feel entitled to use the label “third world”.
I am an allegedly “white” person from a Western, Christian country, but I can see that colonialism is alive and well: fueled by people like you who pretend to be intellectually open and progressive yet perpetuate a “benign” form of colonialism, one that believes any culture that won’t adapt to our Western rules is “backward”.
But when we look at our own Western “democratic” institutions, we see that we suffer from many of the flaws we impute to “backward” countries (and why are these invariably Muslim ones? Can Christian or Jewish or Orthodox or Hindu countries never be backward?)
For instance, your smugness about the Western “separation of church and state” is particularly ludicrous given that the proposed US health care reform will refuse to cover abortions, something that is LEGAL in America: where’s the separation of religion and law there? American society is dominated by Christian right-wing thought That’s why abortion rights in America are constantly under threat, and doctors who practice them get killed: is that not “barbaric”? And even “indigenously” so, thanks to the influence of the Puritans and all those other rigid sects that colonized America. That’s why gay marriage seems an impossibility in America, when it’s been legalized in so many other countries (including an overwhelming Catholic one like Spain).
How is America better than a Muslim state where Sharia is the law?
It’s pretty outrageous to demand that we go back to a term that we’ve already abandoned.
Here’s the way I remember it. Back in the 1950s when no one cared about this stuff, we used the term “undeveloped” nations. In the 60s, that was thought insulting, so we went to “underdeveloped” nations. But that was thought insulting, too, so from there it was on to “developing” and then “emerging,” both of which were deemed insulting in turn. Finally, someone hit on the term “third world.” We’ve used that now for a good 35 years with no complaints. But now we’re supposed to go back to the term “developing?” Why?
The United Nations needs to get out of America once & for all for this reason.
Currently, the U.S. is assessed 22% of the UN regular budget and 26% for UN peacekeeping operations.
Japan pays second at 16%. Three European countries along with the US & Japan make up almost 65% of the total UN budget.
The rest are freeloaders
If you thought the carbon footprint in Turtle Bay, NYC is bad this week, just wait until all the pretend global warming freaks gather in Copenhagen in December to eat lobster and bemoan “carbon output”.
Yesterday, Barack Obama proudly announced that the US had ponied up its delinquent dues, which were being withheld under the previous administration as a function of some UN corruption scandal, I recall not which one as UN corruption scandals have been so numerous, most notably the previous sec’y general Kofi Annan and his son and cohorts in Oil for Fraud…Food.
I thought crazy Khadafi, Quadaffi, whomever rambling for 90 minutes yesterday, calling for re-opening the investigation into JFK’s assassination and ascribing it to “the Jews” was a perfect paradigm for the current UN.
(even Q’s translator gave up in exasperation after 75 minutes)
No matter that Susan Rice and Barack Obama are on the same page as to the importance of “The UN” for their personal version of the New World Order.
This whole threat is, one way or another, explained in Jamie Glazov’s book “United in Hate”, Mr. Glazov used quite a bit of information from Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, even acknowledging his debt to Hoffer and using an important term coined by him. I greatly recommend both books.
When I often return to the issue of what some have started to call the “Hindu Holocaust” at the hands of the Muslims, for several centuries, is that it is still not well known, but make no mistake, no other country in the bloody history of Islamic conquests has suffered, and continues to suffer, like India.
An interesting point, if I may, another group that suffered greatly at the hands of the assassins of Mohammed were the Arabs. Yes, the so-called “pagan” Arabs, who had a vibrant religion not much different from the Vedic, with a similar pantheon of gods. Where do you think the practice of ciurcumbalation, Pradakshina in Sanskrit, came from?
On another, more esoteric tone, pertaining to Stalin and Hitler. Mirra Alfassa, the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, an occultist of the first order, stated that Hitler was possessed (By The Lord of Falsehood, who likes to call himself The Lord of the Nations), and had an underdeveloped soul, but that Stalin was a direct incarnation of a Vital Demon, no soul. My studies of both tend to corroborate this fact, for never before in history a more demoniacal man has shown up on earth.
How is America better than a Muslim state where Sharia is the law? — BlueMed
Why dont you move there and report back with the answer to your own question?
Bruce Bawer moved to the promised land of EUtopia, to get away from those aweful Christians. He seems to have changed his tune. Perhaps you should read some Bawer.
50. BlueMed:
Didn’t Galileo finally said “e per si muove”? May be the story is not authenticated.
Blue Dog (sorry confusion with “Lonesome Dove”), I mean Blue Med, let me use a mirror with you:
You sound Pro-Obama, left-wing lunatic, your “Inglish” sounds so, so good, that we tremble. We can see, notice, palpably, that you ain’t no wop, no greaseball, no guinea.
No, no, you come, by definition, from that famous story by Hemingway named “Che ti dice la Patria” (in Italian, yes), and the left curve “svolta pericolosa”, a vero follower of Palmiro Togliatti, Il Popolo instead of El Corriere de la Sera.
Miaman I imagine you in an orange outfit singing hare krishna
leaning for new ages ?
Blue Med,
Great Satire!
But if you’re being serious now, I’ve just got to say, the Puritans had nothing on you. You take Gnostic religion much much further. That that you think your religion is politics just goes to show you’re not the one to lecture Americans on the separation of church and state, since some of them know what the founders of their federal nation actually intended, and you clearly don’t.
Phyllis, I do not understand you. You are obviously very intelligent and clear minded but you consistently get bogged down in conversations with ideologues who will never listen to you, and about subjects that are entirely beside the point. By adhering to feminism you divide humanity in half and pit one side against the other which can never result in anything good; along with buying into any number of lies as I have mentioned before – by association at the very least. The problem with Islam is not hijabs or no hijabs, or even its mistreatment of women. The problem with Islam is Islam – it is an immoral, murderous and tyrannical system toward everyone: children are brainwashed, their “education” consisting of a mindless recitation of the Koran (an idiotic, poorly composed serious of rants from a delusional transvestite pedophile), and in the Taliban men were not even allowed to trim their beards. Everyone is oppressed. How is a discussion about the use or non-use of hijabs helpful? Please enlighten me, for I am indeed benighted! The whole system must be overthrown. Just say so! I do not see how you are very far removed from the liberal excuse-makers whom you oppose when you engage in discussions like this as if they matter.
Why concede to a bully that “third world” is a pejorative term? Such concessions always only encourage the bully – as you found out. And anyway the term “developing world” is not only silly but misleading if not false. Not all countries so categorized are developing. Is Somalia developing? (Is it even a country?) I think not. How are they doing since we tried to save them from starvation and they thanked us by joyously dragging our dead soldiers through their streets naked. And we’re the problem? I would tell such people as you described the truth: they are pretentious idiots that don’t know what they are talking about. But why bother engaging them at all?
What do you expect exactly? Our finest academic institutions feature “professors” the like of Rashid Khalidi and Walt Mearshimer – the American University has become a Saudi-funded cesspool of ultra left-wing propaganda.
The Islamists have hit America in a very, very sophisticated way and while we’re busy looking out for the next 9-11, they are turning our kids into self-loathing, brainwashed people already very aligned with their political goals.
56. Marie Claude:
Ha, ha, that’s good, not far from the truth.
Luckily I work for myself, but indeed once I grew a śikhā, am a Brahmachari (no more sex, have had enough already for this lifetime, yhak!), sport red vermilion Tilaka on forehead on occasions, as well as Vibhuti ash marks on forehead from Arunachaleswarar Temple at Tiruvannamalai. Am vegetarian and trained in Ayurveda (actually, I am selling and Ayurvedic Nutrition eBook on eBay, in case you want to buy it, I deliver internationally).
Evil Pundit, you know very well that the code of Hammurabi also called for the cutting off of women’s breasts if they did a wrong against the wealthier classes. You breast fed who? Off with them!
Anyone who thinks long enough, knows that women’s rights in Islam as voiced by Muslim women, when they beg for understanding as to why they would ‘choose’ to believe in Allah and Mohammad as the right path, learns that Mohammad’s wife was wealthy and owned possessions.
This was before Mohammad dreamed up a god who thinks that women should be struck for disobedience, and sent to hell for ungratefulness. It should make one wonder why the rules changed and reverted or advanced as need be in Islam. My theory is that it had to in order to gain followers willing to take up the sword and advance Allah’s domain and most of all drive out the Jewish People from their homeland.
logo1j1 instead of straining at every word Ms. Chesler writes, ask yourself why men would be attracted to a faith where their heavenly reward is multi willing mindless sex toys for their pleasure. Do you really think it is women who divided the world? Really? No of course not. The pitting of one side against the other is better laid at the feet of the Gods, don’t you think? Your free to choose which side you pick.
People like you remind me of a prisoner’s worst nightmare. A jailer who comes to court to explain why the prisoner, who has served out her sentence to the fullest, has been released, and you come to argue with the court as to why she should be incarcerated longer. Stop trying to sound reasonable when your argument is unreasonable.
Roderick Reilly, my heart breaks when I think of those Chinese men displayed at the mall. I have read it is now an industry, wrapping body parts in plastic. Are we already in hell and just don’t realize it yet?
58. logos1j1:
Logos, please, Dr. Chesler has changed quite a bit, she is still changing. This blog, she uses to raise awareness, but also to learn. But realize how difficult it is to call a spade a spade on a public forum with the responsibility of fame and the baggage of title.
You nailed on the head: [The problem with Islam is Islam] That’s it. That’s why I repeat, at the risk of being cruel (borrowing Paul Simon’s phrase from 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover) that: The problem is the Islam, stupid!
Dr. Chesler now rarely uses the term “moderate Islam” anymore, yes, she experience a little Stockholm syndrome when returning from Rome (almost wearing a Hijab herself), but that’s human, may be the wine, may be the old feminist lioness returned for a while.
Don’t be so harsh, OK?
Why do so many young people sound like United Nations careerists? Morally-relative, “social-justice”-type education… get ‘em while they’re young.
BlueMed: You ask, “How is America better than a Muslim state where Sharia is the law?” From my reading of your comment you base that silly question on abortion and “gay marriage”. You think abortion should be paid for by the government and, if not, then there is some kind of violation of the putative “separation of church and state”. Well first off, under Sharia, abortion is completely forbidden. Secondly, Americans have a right to vote for whether they want to pay for things through their taxes. At least that’s how it should work. Most Americans do not want their tax dollars to pay for the irresponsibility of others. Thus, if you want an abortion, pay for the damn thing yourself. Nothing entitles you to my hard earned money to pay for your mistakes.
Now, “gay marriage”. Sharia forbids gay marriage and calls for the killing of all homosexuals. In the U.S., most people are against “gay marriage” because they know what it will do to society. Marriage between one woman and one man is the bedrock of society. Over the past fifty years, under assault from all sides, the sanctity of marriage has all but been destroyed leaving in its wake poverty and misery. Take Italy for example: because of reduced marital rates and child bearing will it all but cease to be Italian in the next forty years. “Gay marriage” is just be another nail in the coffin. Additionally, normalizing and promoting male homosexual sodomy will only bring about more poverty and misery through the unchecked spread of HIV/AIDS.
BlueMed, if you live long enough you will get to see the difference between America and Sharia. Italy will probably be a majority Muslim country within your lifetime. Thus, you will get your answer. I am of course assuming you still live in Italy and not the terrible United States where abortion isn’t paid for and marriage is still sacred.
#61 Kynn — Yes, Hammurabi prescribed punishments which would seem cruel today, such as execution for theft. But my point stands: property rights for women have been recognised for millennia.
As for Logos, he is not claiming that women have divided the world, as you falsely assert. He is pointing out that feminists have divided the world, by creating an ideology that pits the sexes against each other.
In this sense, feminism is equal to Islam: both create two classes of people who must be seen as enemies to each other. Society will not be freed until these twin evils are discarded.
# 65 Evil Pundit quote:
“property rights for women have been recognized for millennia.”
I must respond to you Evil by stating that you continue to astound me with your odd statements. According to Hammurabi they didn’t even own their own breasts! I’m sorry but I have to call you an immense idiot. It is as if your enjoy your blindfold and will defend the wearing of it even toward your own detriment.
I think that it is you who has much in common with Islam, since many of the tenants of their faith expressly agree with your assertions about the feminine. We are after all ungrateful and disobedient.
As usual once your mind struggles to free itself from the confines you have placed around it, you predictably reign it in so that it remains imprisoned in the jail cell of your head.
Finally cutting off a women’s breast may have ‘seemed’ cruel? Oh I get it a woman, could own property but not her breasts. Yes it is becoming clearer. It only ‘seems’ cruel, in fact it only ‘may seem’ cruel. You really don’t have a compass to steer with, do you?
Bleck, I’m done with you.
Lynn, 61
You wish to have me as your enemy because I dared to call feminism a lie. But I refuse to be your enemy. We are closer in thought than you realize, but you must try again to really understand what I am saying before you respond. Evil and lies are the problem, not men. Truth is the solution not women rising up or some nonsensical ideology with grandiose claims. That is why the truth must be said bluntly; not all this tap dancing around trying to win someone over with platitudes and meaningless concessions to fine points that are beside the point.
I don’t care why some men would be attracted to the adolescent fantasy mentioned. Why would I?
Where do you get this nonsense about prisons? I said nothing like that. You are superimposing feminist nonsense onto what I am saying.
Christ said “… a house divided against itself will fall.” (Luke 11:17). All of these foolish ideologies do exactly that to humanity: communism (and socialism) the poor against the rich with the rich as scapegoats, feminism women against men with men as scapegoats, Islam Muslim against infidel, etc. etc. And this is Satan’s plan to divide humanity against itself so that he can destroy us. But none of these lies can stand against the Light (John 1:5).
But are you not just saying “Post Modernism” in another manner?
After the two World Wars, Western Civilization responded intellectually with a New Analysis of the World and our place in it, an Analysis deeply influenced by nihilistic demoralization, even active hostility to our own cultural ideas.
That includes the attempts at objective reasoning you tried to offer to your interlocutors in the examples you describe. Quantum formulas of Ideology have replaced the uncertain fallibility of individual reasoning.
In what lab dish did this stuff first develop? What allowed it to grow and become established?
The U.N. is an organization that reflects and disseminates this. It did not originate it or tolerate it as it grew. We did this to ourselves.
You might counter that there was something to be gained from Modern and Post Modern reevaluation. I would reply that we have something far different and more sinister than self-criticism established today, something much metamorphosed and metastasized, something purveying without skepticism, guilt, or pity some of our own worst ideas. This is what you seem to be addressing.
Say, you’re not moving towards Burke, I hope?
18. David W. Lincoln:
(Daniel Hannan makes the same point here, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100011330/unconscious-bias-at-the-bbc-and-the-guardian/}
Mr. Lincol:
Hannan ain’t Churchill. Let’s get this straight. Churchill was a Vibhuti like Napoleon, Caesar, Augustus, Voltaire.
Hannan could be a Cromwell, that I give you.
What we need now is another William Tecumseh Sherman. We need a scorching policy. In the crucible of fire, let us clear dross from the weak, light the bonfire of change. Verily, a Walpurgis night. Let’s seat over wine with Wotan the Berserker before 4 AHAU 3 KANKIN. (December 12, 2012).
Why don’t the democracies and republics of the world leave the UN and form a new international organization? Let the UN die out or be a dumb-ass club for tyrants?
I don’t understand why we have to have it the way it is.
#66 Lynn — Now you’re just being plain silly.
The Code of Hammurabi provided the death penalty for many offences, as well as military conscription. So, by your argument, men didn’t even have property rights to their own lives!
You’re really clutching at straws in your desperate attempts to cast women as an eternal victim group. This demonstrates the need of feminists to divide the human race into two opposing sides, and the delusion of a vast conspiracy of all men against all women.
The only proper response to such is to ask them why aren’t they living in an Islamic country? Why are they living in the Imperialist West?
Miami Man, take a look at “Bias” and “Arrogance” by Bernard Goldberg, and “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis. In those books we find profound blind spots by those who base their assessments on what is going on, by what is going on. In other words, an abandonment of a fixed point that does not change, because they know full well that it is
by that fixed point that they will be assessed.
73. David W. Lincoln:
Thanks David. I rarely read those tomes.
Since you insist on gibberish, allow me a quote from the Mundaka Upanishad. Part I, 3,4,5.
“What is that by knowing which all is known? He replied: The illumined sages say Knowledge is twofold, higher and lower. The study of the Vedas, linguistics, rituals, astronomy, and all the arts can be called lower knowledge. The higher is that which leads to Self-realization”
Miami Man:
You’re still giving too much credence to Antonio Gramsci. I suggest that you also take a look at, “Jews, God & History” by Max Dimont. The indefinable is real. Plus, what I accomplish isn’t just up to me, but also what the Rta pointed to. Which speaks to the impoverishing of the culture of India when the Rta was jettisoned.
75. David W. Lincoln:
David, why do I have to look at all these odd books your are recommending?
Now, you finally wrote something important: [The indefinable is real.]
This is at the core of the famous controversy between Einstein and Bohr in the 1920′s. Einstein could not leave, finally, Descartes behind. That 2 electrons, separated by whatever large distance you imagined, could know “instantaneously” the spin up or down of the other, prompted Einstein to say that “God does not play dice”, but the reality, Bohr argued, showed otherwise, the reality is that the electrons are interconnected, and this “undefinable” fact, is Reality.
Now, we Yogis have known this all along, we were trained in this Satchidananda connection. Finally, Bishop Berkeley was right, Paul Brunton was right.
Yes, OK, what you accomplished, or I accomplished, is not up to anyone, as everything is interconnected. This is Reality, Rta is a manifestation of it.
Impoverishing is also relative, from your Western mine-frame. Rta never abandoned India. Actually, the Mother never abandoned India, the last refuge of feminism, while in the West we raped the Earth. Of course, after Francis Bacon told us to, Newton corroborated it, and Descartes explained it, finally Darwin applied it to living things. Yang, Yang, Yang, very dangerous.
There is something else to keep in mind: there is safety in numbers. Those who stand out are viewed as a nail, and a hammer is needed to deal
with that. Take a look at this by Mark Steyn from earlier this year: http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/05/21/monday-the-president-ate-a-burger/print/
Miami Man, why then are Christians treated the way they are in India? It is one thing to come up with a wonderful document, like the constitution of the Soviet Union, but there is more to it. For the hospitality extended to Yogi’s in countries based upon the Judeo-Christian ethic is different than what Christians receive in the sub-continent.
76. MiamaMan:
That 2 electrons, separated by whatever large distance you imagined, could know “instantaneously” the spin up or down of the other, prompted Einstein to say that “God does not play dice”,
Er … quantum entanglement is not what motivated Einstein to claim that “G-d does not play dice with the universe” but the idea that particle paths are only described by probability distributions in quantum theory, with measurements subject to Heisenberg uncertainty. The entanglement question just irked Einstein, further – but that part was not a question of probability invading the fundamental laws of physics of the universe. Quite the opposite, the entanglement situation is deterministic – though at a distance.
One other thing, Miami Man, would you expound on the similarities between Shangri La and Elysium, and how both differ from Nirvana.
For by your answers, I can see the polytheism
of Hinduism isn’t that far removed from the atheism of buddhism.
Hello David:
1) [Miami Man, why then are Christians treated the way they are in India?]
Are you implying Christians are treated harshly in India? But it is the opposite. The most powerful politician in India today, unfortunately, is an Italian Catholic lady named Sonia Gandhi. Alas, India has welcomed for centuries, if not thousands of years, those persecuted by religion beliefs. As such, the only remnant of the Zoroastrian religion still flourishes in India, Jews all the way back to the diaspora were welcomed. However, deceitful tactics employed by Christian fundamentalist in India (mostly American and British), buying conversions, using tricks as miracles, etc, not only is disrespectful, but a violent act upon the poor people they target, often from the tribal areas. Would you welcome someone coming into your neighborhood trying to convert you to another religion, using tricks, money, and deceit? Surely, you wouldn’t.
So here, you are misinformed.
2) On the statement by Einstein that “God does not play dice”, is 100% related to the controversy with Bohr that I mentioned. Einstein would not go beyond Cartesian physics in this tiny regard, but tried to introduce a deterministic constant as the information, by being instantaneous, would go even faster than the speed of light, but Bohr postulated, and John Bell finally proved in a theorem later, that the interaction is AKIN TO THOUGHT. We Yogis have called this for thousands of years consciousness. The distance here, for your information, is totally unimportant. Distance is irrelevant in the realm of thought and consciousness. An example, the late Swami Krishnananda from the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh, once told that in the Godhead, everything is happening at the same time, so even now Achilles is fighting Hector, Arjuna is being advised by Krishna on the plain of Kurukshetra, and the siege of Troy rages on.
3) It would be a mistake to call Buddhists atheist. The silence of the Buddha can be interpreted otherwise. Buddha was a Hindu, don’t forget. His Nirvana is almost the same as the Hindu Moksha, while Buddhism postulates the return into an impersonal Nirvana, Moksha postulates the same, but into the personal Brahman. Shangri-la was a fictional invention, Elysium, a precursor of the heaven concepts in Christianity and Islam.
4) Finally, Sanatana Dharma is not polytheist. The many gods can be understood as “lieutenants” of Brahman, Vindu points. Adoring God in an image of a stone in the form of a Linga, for example, does not diminishes God, as Brahman is never spent, as explained in the famous hymn of the Rg Veda, the Purusha Sukta.
As further explanation, if I am allowed: HINDUS ARE TREATED HARSHLY IN INDIA.
Even though they are the majority.
Sociologists, government, academia, better understand this, as the US is going in the same direction.
As Eric Hoffer clearly wrote, vociferous minorities could not care less about the rights of the majority, as they despise them, and will only be content upon their conversion.
So Muslims in India (about 200 millions of them, the second country in Muslim population after Indonesia), claim minority status (sounds familiar?), many states in India subsidize Mosques with public funds, some pay for Muslims to go to Mecca.
Christianity, not to be left behind, also claim minority status in India, and used the Tsunami to build hundreds of churches, and trickery, deceit, and money, to convert.
Wow, pay attention to this, the old Yoga Vivekananda organization tried a couple of years ago to obtain minority status in Kolkata, claiming did not belong to Hinduism, to obtain government help, but was tuned down by the India Supreme Court.
Apparently there are two “tanstaafl”s. I am the one that posts quite often at “jihad watch”. The “tanstaafl” posting above is not me. I am not responsible for anything he/she posts. Thank you.