Bobby Ghosh of Time asks if America has a problem with Muslims. Is it fair to ask if Time Magazine has a problem with Filipinos? But before we get to that, here’s what Time says about America and Muslims. “You don’t have to be prejudiced against Islam to believe, as many Americans do, that the area around Ground Zero is a sacred place. But sadly,” — and there is the fatal ‘but’ — ” in an election season, such sentiments have been stoked into a political issue.” And that issue turns out to be not the Ground Zero mosque or 9/11, but America’s problem with Islam.
Ghosh goes on to assert and then assume as fact that an American version of Islamophobia exists, one that is based on an unreasoning fear of Islam. Thus, if anything good has come of the Mosque controversy it’s that its brought this ugly facet of America out into the open.
The controversy has also brought new scrutiny to other examples of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim protests, raising much larger questions: Does America have a problem with Islam? Have the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — and other attempts since — permanently excluded Muslims from full assimilation into American life?
Although the American strain of Islamophobia lacks some of the traditional elements of religious persecution … a new TIME–Abt SRBI poll found that 46% of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers.
Now in the nature of things some of the poll’s respondents may have Filipinos. How would they regard Time’s invitation to examine the rotteness in their breasts. For one thing there’s a lot of rotteness to examine, but not a lot of it in their breasts. Wikipedia says there are nearly 2 million Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, about 7% of the population in the Kingdom. So Filipinos as a group have a lot of experience with how nonbelievers are treated under Islam. Let’s begin by noting that religious freedom is virtually nonexistent in Saudi Arabia.
The Government does not provide legal recognition or protection for freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice. … Moreover, the preaching and public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited … Under Saudi law conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy, a crime punishable by death … Saudi Arabia prohibits public non-Muslim religious activities. Non-Muslim worshipers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in overt religious activity that attracts official attention.
So when Bobby Ghosh of Time magisterially proclaims that the only reason why Americans feel uneasy about a Ground Zero Mosque believed by some to be heavily funded by Saudi Arabia is because they are Islamophobic, that’s bound to go over like a lead balloon in certain circles. Does Time realize how that sounds to people who have relatives like Norma Caldera?
Norma Caldera worked in Saudi Arabia for seven months as a domestic worker and was never allowed to leave her employer’s house during that time. She was mocked on a daily basis for her faith by her employers. When they found out that she’s a catholic they unilaterally cut her pay from $1,000 to $700 per month. On Ramadan Caldera was forced to fast with the family, while continuing to do her work. On top of that, she was not given a room or a bed and forced to sleep on the kitchen floor or in a tent in the backyard.
You’re a bigot Caldera. Ha ha ha. You’re bigot. Go back to sleeping in that effin’ tent, like an effin’ dog.
Maybe Howard Dean has some inkling of how badly this is going over because the former chairman of the DNC broke ranks with liberals and argued that the Cordoba mosque should be built elsewhere even though “the Muslims planning the Cordoba House in New York City are well-meaning; unlike others in Iran and Afghanistan where they’re ‘really back in the 12th century’ and ‘stoning people to death.’” Howard Dean understands that voters are incensed and he’s throwing them a bone, taking care to explain that in this case he’s only supporting the good guys — not the ones from Iran or Afghanistan — but just from Saudi Arabia.
Of course Dean has just committed one of the cardinal sins denounced by Time: he’s politicized the Mosque issue by backing down not for any reason of apparent principle or logic, but simply because he knows it is costing his party in the polls. He’ll say anything to save his candidates. He has to. The Atlantic Wire says “Liberals Fume at Howard Dean for Opposing Cordoba”. What’s the difference between a party which uses the mosque issue to gain votes and another party which retreats on the mosque issue to save votes? The answer is November, 2010.
As the Internet expands to reach audiences in the Long Tail, stock memes the MSM used to pitch to urban, white readers will begin to fail, and fail dismally in niche media markets. A microtargeting campaign which reached out to Filipinos might generate votes on this issue simply because it taps into a common tribal memory. In that part of the Long Tail there are family stories of aunts or cousins chained to sinks, workers forced to live in shipping containers or stories about underground priests who slip into the Kingdom disguised as workers.
The standard narrative is failing is because it is based on a market model which assumes that the reader has no access to information which may denigrate or contradict the conventional wisdom peddled by the magazine. That may have been true of Time once, but it is no longer true, except for people who work in dentist’s offices. What the information revolution has done is enable readers to do a “ground truth” check on the memetic maps they are handed. Codespeak doesn’t work like it used to. That’s why the Cordoba mosque project is losing ground and why people like Howard Dean are backpedaling.
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Maybe I’m a little crazy, but I’ve always hoped that as India’s economy improves, they will invade the Gulf States. Most of the people there are Indians anyway, and the current governments are illegitimate. India is way too wimpy, though (look at their reactions in Kashmir now). A lad can dream, though!
You know what I think? I think the spell is broken — the deadly spell conjured when one uttered “bigot.” Bobby Ghosh, you’ve lost your juju. The witch is dead.
Thank you, Barack Hussein Obama.
information is power
Muslims Helping Muslims:
The Christian Science Monitor reports “10 days after the earthquake hit Haiti, there were pledges equal to $495 for each person affected by the disaster. So far, there have been pledges of $3 for each person affected by the flooding in Pakistan.”
Haiti is blessed by its close proximity to the most generous nation on the face of the Earth, while Pakistan has the misfortune of being located near a bunch of Arab countries (and one Hindu country it sends terrorists into).
Given the vast wealth of OPEC, and its proximity to Pakistan as well as the cultural bonds of a shared religion, how can we explain this? This is, afterall, Ramadan, the season of giving.
Here’s a simple suggestion: Reveal the names of the people who are donating $100 million to build a mosque at ground zero and convince them their money would be better spent saving the lives of innocent Pakistani flood victims.
Islamophobia …. an unreasoning fear of Islam.
Stoning people on suspicion of a host of social crimes (adultery, fraternization, homosexual acts, conversionto another faith)
Concerted cultural abuse and subjugation of women
Total acceptance of spousal abuse
Theological and scriptural antisemitism
Justification of honor killing
A 1200 year history of sword-forced subjugation of competing religions
Rejection of BarBeQue and good country sausage.
Unreasoning? Not really. More like a rejection on the basis of rational analysis
As Ghosh asks, Does America have a problem with Muslims?, the question is obviously begged here… Do Muslims have a problem with America?
The reason Americans in huge numbers are fed up to the gills with the likes of Bobby Ghosh and even of TIME Magazine, is that they will write their smarmy little articles asking that first question, but they will never, ever, ever, EVER, EVER write an article about the second, even though it is quite obviously a question worthy of exploration, if not an outright truth.
Ever.
And we all know why, we all get our cultural elites endless and eternal groveling before the sacred “Other”, which has zero to do with what they do, and everything to do with what they are.
We all get it and, what our cultural elites just do not get? That we are tired of them. They bore us now, and they are rapidly becoming elevator music in our lives.
I wonder if even they can imagine a worse fate.
4. Peter:
Note that the Pak floods were the “will of allah.” Every thing that happens is TWOa. So the lot of the Paks is to suffer. Who are the rest of the Muslims to argue with allah? To help those muslims they would be contravening the will of hisownself.
You dance with the One what brung you.
Thank you, W.
These media people who are so “worldly” and “global”, please enlarge their painfully cramped and distorted scope. This thing they have used to get where they are today, this machine of spin and lies, it’s not working any more. More and more, the rubes continue to self identify – they don’t proclaim, but they answer the polls.
It all been built on the backs of the migrant workers who import work ethic to lands that have none. Money, but no work ethic. Beneath them, this work. Hire it out. Some will buy the lie, others will sell their souls for the promise of wealth for nothing, but fewer and fewer can say they don’t smell the stench of the lie.
I see this GZM issue as one of those things some future James Burke will bring up as one of the links to our future in some “Connections” like exposition on how they all got there. My gut feeling is that we’ll look at this time and all say to ourselves that the Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.
First off, Wretchard, Feisal Abdul Rauf is a Sufi, not a Saudi Salafist. Time was, even the Belmont Club used to minimal research. This is a very simple datum, easy to find. Second, I bring you the words and analysis of Jeffrey Goldberg, formerly a soldier in the IDF:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/ground-zero-imam-i-am-a-jew-i-have-always-been-one/61761/
‘Ground Zero’ Imam: ‘I Am a Jew, I Have Always Been One’
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The right-wing campaign against the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” includes vicious personal attacks on the Muslim cleric who leads the Cordoba Initiative, the organization behind the plan. I know Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, and I know him to be a moderate, forward-leaning Muslim — yes, it is true he has said things with which I disagree, but I have never expected him to function as a member of the Zionist Organization of America.
In 2003, Imam Rauf was invited to speak at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the journalist murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan. The service was held at B’nai Jeshurun, a prominent synagogue in Manhattan, and in the audience was Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father. In his remarks, Rauf identified absolutely with Pearl, and identified himself absolutely with the ethical tradition of Judaism. “I am a Jew,” he said.
There are those who would argue that these represent mere words, chosen carefully to appease a postentially suspicious audience. I would argue something different: That any Muslim imam who stands before a Jewish congregation and says, “I am a Jew,” is placing his life in danger.
Remember, Islamists hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews. In other words, the man many commentators on the right assert is a terrorist-sympathizer placed himself in mortal peril in order to identify himself with Christians and Jews, and specifically with the most famous Jewish victim of Islamism. You can read the full text of his remarks on the B’nai Jeshurun website, but here is an especially relevant portion:
“We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic
faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to
love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I
have always been one Mr. Pearl.
And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of
the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.
It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.”
Even Wikipedia has Rauf’s Sufi affiliation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feisal_Abdul_Rauf
A number of standard themes are used to advance counterintuitive policies. One is “it’s inevitable”. This is the historical imperative argument which was the subject of a previous post. The other is the “you don’t get it because you’re bigoted”. That’s the line Bobby Ghosh just tried. The other popular argument is to assert that the public is too dumb to see the wisdom of the policy being advanced. Margaret Carlson gives that one a whirl.
See? Whereas we are just knuckle-draggers a half step out the stone age. However, if we read enough Time and Margaret Carlson, we too will have enlightenment descend upon us like tongues of fire from on high. So subscribe now and have wisdom delivered to your doorstep and you too will be able to read the Federalist Papers.
Sunderhaus. The answer is still no. It’s not about the Imam; it’s not even about the Mosque. It’s about the intent of the mosque and it’s symbolism.
Nobody is arguing that the proponents of the mosque do not have a legal right to put it up where they wish. But are you arguing it is unreasonable to oppose it because one of its proponents is a Sufi? Does that cover the multitude of insults it represents? Does it prevent people from holding a contrary opinion without being tut-tutted as not having done any research?
Reason in this instance is a disguise. It plays a subsidiary role. The mosques proponents want it where they want and the opponents don’t want it. Each side is allowed to use any method within the law to achieve their end. You do not need to grant me anything, as I do not grant you anything either.
And the answer is still no.
W said:
The standard narrative is failing is because it is based on a market model which assumes that the reader has no access to information which may denigrate or contradict the conventional wisdom peddled by the magazine.
The cultural nut of the issue noted here before.
I really wish people would start referring to this project as a mosque. ITS NOT A MOSQUE.
ITS A WAR MEMORIAL
Its giving me the opportunity to edit Wretchard’s comments
Im not worthy
WRT the Sunderhaus commentary.
A. The koran instructs the faithful to lie to the infidel at will to advance the “faith”
B. the sunni/sufi/shiite argument is facially bogus. All take the koran as “the accurate literal word of allah as dictated to his prophet Mohamed” (known child molester and pervert) Any differentiation between them is aimed at the ummah and is therefore meaningless under #1. It matters not the color of the shirt over the hand that holds the sword that cuts your throat.
what keeps coming through loud and clear is the arrogance of these liberals.they are arrogant to the point of racism.yes the real kind.Can’t they see that the crowd trying to build the GZM are real people building it for their own reasons, and people like Gnosh aren’t superior to them,aren’t above them. GOD gave man dominion over the earth and the beasts of the fields, He didn’t give liberals dominion over other people.
the reason that these people can hire nannies and gardeners is that they were born in america instead of honduras, guatemala etc.they equate the luck of the draw with actual achievement.IE they’re better because they were born better-aristocracy.wanna bees that is.
Somebody, sorry to misremember, made the point that Americans have a problem with Muslims because some Americans know them very well. Nearly two million Americans–not counting contractors–have rotated through Iraq and Afghanistan.
To make a comparison, after WW II, US occupation troops did not see the Italians, Germans, Belgians, French, Dutch massacring scores of their fellow citizens on a daily basis over doctrinal or political issues.
Guy claimed that there are only about 300 Iraqi war brides, compared to huge numbers from other countries after other wars.
Conclusion is that many Americans, those who went and those who know those who went, have good reason to dislike the whole area and its inhabitants.
No doubt there are likable individuals. Many Iraqis like Americans, have served valiantly beside them. But, at the end of the day, some wonder, what do they say about the car bombing planned for next week at the mosque nobody likes? How do they treat their women?
How do they treat Allied female soldiers?
And, said the author, the people who are in the demographic referred to are rarely in the demographic which tells the rest of us how to think and what to think.
The Cordoba mosque in New York is breathtakingly insensitive, aggressive, and arrogant behavior.
That’s the bottom line.
The people pushing for the “cultural center” in that place within the impact zone of Ground Zero are, to be blunt, boors.
In pushing for the Cordoba center, they show the American people that Islam is a boorish religion which doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about the feelings of anyone else.
I can think of few things that would harden the heart of the average American against Islam than what the Cordoba organizers are doing. (Hijacking airplanes and flying them into skyscrapers in the name of Islam is one of those few things . . . but then, that’s already been done, hasn’t it?)
Have the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — and other attempts since — permanently excluded Muslims from full assimilation into American life?
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who wants to fully assimilate into American life, can do so, nowadays. American society is so open-minded our brains are falling out of our craniums.
America isn’t rejecting Ahmed. It’s Ahmed who’s rejecting America.
And you don’t have to buy into the cultural swill to assimilate either. Evangelical Christians and strict-living Mormons both manage in large numbers to cheer, defend, and believe in this country, in spite of the myriad examples that our popular culture is about as gutteral as that of pagan Rome, in spite of getting ridiculed and smeared by that same popular culture. So if “modest Muslims” are aghast at the licentiousness and immodesty of contemporary America, well, guess what, so are millions upon millions of conservative Americans! Aghast and horrified at the obsenities on the front page & nightly TV, nevertheless, conservatives still manage to try to build America up instead of blow it up. Objections, even strenuous ones, to the culture are no excuse for not assimilating into American life as it is still practiced by Codevilla’s country class.
Work hard. Live honestly. Raise decent kids. Give praise to America where praise is due. Come out for the Fourth of July parade & fireworks, stand up for the anthem, respect & thank our military folks. Stay well-informed and vote accordingly. Just don’t whine about being a victim and don’t wheedle for goodies from the government.
And if you don’t want to do any of this, just keep to yourself & don’t cause trouble, and you will be fine, at least with regard to your American neighbors. (Alas, can’t say the same re: the American government.) Keeping to yourself is a grand American tradition.
Country class Americans are about the easiest people to get along with if you are a person of good will. Really. Because we expect our territory and persons to be respected, and to be left alone if we wish, we are ready and more than willing to extend those courtesies to others in reciprocity.
It stands to reason that someone who can’t assimilate into this culture of the American country class is someone who (1) does not respect the territory or person of the American, and/or (2) has no intention of leaving the American alone.
Jonah Goldberg made the point that a lot of the proponents start off like the rest of us believing it constitutionally acceptable, but then ignore all other considerations and leap to the conclusion that since it is constitutionally permissible we must applaud and cheer it. Just because prohibition was amended out of existence does not now mean we must all drink to excess.
That is the thing here, people expecting a two way street here do not give it in their homelands. Kinda like the argument people make about trade and how trade policy should be reciprocal. The story Wretchard communicates about the maid is a common one heard throughout the Middle East, not universal but common enough.
Other lines of argument I have been hearing is that there is a strip club nearby therefore not sacred, there is all sorts of commercial activity nearby therefor not sacred, etc.
It seems the left has no more room for personal disapproval anymore, kinda like people who tut-tutted me when I said Michael Jackson was a pedophile. They told me he was innocent until proven guilty, I would retort that only applied to the government in its efforts to revoke some of Michael’s civil liberties due to criminal activity.
Businesses can not charge fat people for their excessive use of space or material, but let us try to get the government into that racket.
Its all about manners and respecting others.
The future wife her niece and I took a long drive from Muscat to Salalah. 650 miles or so of straight and flat road bordered vast expanses of equally flat gravel/sand plains. I had my foot on the floor and our 1.2 hamster honda took us down that road as fast as it could (thank God for the wind sound masking the 120 kph alert bell) when there was some down hill I think I got over 100mph but I would not bet on it. Anyway.
We managed to convoy with this other vehicle we met on the road and eventually we pulled into the same gas station. We got to Salalah and we pulled over and the old man in the truck did his best to have us stay with his family. Of course we were deeply appreciative but we had to beg off. Why? Because I had a bottle of gin and some ham that we would have needed to bring into his house. I did not want to bring that into their household (plus, I wanted to partake of my ginnenntonics too), I respected their religious sensibilities.
If they go ahead and build it in that location, then I suggest they also create a wings exclusively a Synagogue, exclusively a Hindu Temple, a Buddhist Temple, and a section exclusively for Christian worship.
Why should anyone given Arab Islam respect when they still practice slavery? Norma Caldera is not unique, certainly not the first story out of KSA. There were a lot just after 9/11. There was an Egyptian couple living in Colorado who were convicted of slavery in US court just a few years ago.
Unlike Western Civilization which eventually came to see slavery as wrong, the Arab muslims have practiced it continuously up to today. I remember as a boy reading about Jacques Cousteau’s adventures in the Red Sea and being offered a fourteen year old girl for sale. Earlier still, Jefferson may have stopped the Barbary Pirates from attacking American shipping, but they did their best to depopulate the southern coast of England in slave raids. Whole villages would disappear.
I’ve always thought the Black Muslims deranged to convert to a religion that happily persists in the evil custom of their greatest sorrow. The same self delusion informs the defenders of Cordoba House.
Can you believe it? Here we are, 75 days out from what’s probably the single most important election in decades – and democrats have decided to base their campaign on this theme: “YOU’RE ALL RACISTS AND WE HATE YOU!!!!”
Ace has it right – this is not the time to just be satisfied with a victory, this is our chance to destroy them utterly. They are vulnerable, and this is our chance to cut their political throats. THIS is the time to pour it on like we have never poured it on before. THIS is the climactic fight between right and left that we have been waiting for – not 2012, but NOW. This is our chance – seize the opportunity now or forever lament its passing.
“In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.”
– Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
Have the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — and other attempts since — permanently excluded Muslims from full assimilation into American life?
Pretty nearly, yes.
While we have a tradition of treating individuals and not groups, for Islam, we may make an exception, because they have asked for it, they have earned it, and they deserve it. We have all had our conciousness raised about the subject over the past ten years.
Individual Moslems may be allowed to convert, but any backsliding – that is, any terrorism by a convert – should be treated with extreme prejudice.
It is, after all, for their own good.
11. wretchard : I always thought Margaret Carlson was cute in a chipmunk sort of way, but she has the party line down pat. Cue old Richard Nixon joke.
13. herb : Yes, the GZM is indeed a War Memorial, and this meme needs to be spread far and wide. Anybody know Sarah’s email address? Like-minded buildings would include a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor and a German ‘cultural center’ in Moscow or Warsaw.
19. bogie wheel: Absolutely. Act like an American and Americans will accept you. I am still waiting for the list of anti-Muslim backlash incidents that have actually happened in the past 9 years.
Finally, this is the best blog on the internet, and our host is a magician with words.
So, Wretchard, please set up a wish list on Amazon (or whatever) and let your grateful commenters express their appreciation.
[...]“a new TIME–Abt SRBI poll found that 46% of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers.”
that really isn’t the issue at all (although that is certainly true and an important concern). I’m worried about muslim violence against their own “believers”, in particular women, and all females, in the form of genital mutilations, honor killings, child brides, arranged marriages of child and adult brides, polygamy and raping of wives (upheld recently by an american lower court judge), etc. c.f. Sharia Law.
All of this takes place on our soil. Right Now Here and in Canada, and to “tolerate” it is to tolerate the intolerable.
This is where islam and the West clash, and the issue is how women will be treated from here on out and their way, sharia law, is absolutely unacceptable here.
While we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to build a big memorial near Ground Zero to 19 Arab terrorists the Labor Department has announced that another half a million Americans are out of work as of the end of July. And Obama is saying the recovery is taking longer than expected. What’s wrong with this picture? F
Fox news reports compromise may be in the works for ground zero mosque.
They say its far enough away but I don’t know. I’d prefer the thing was completely away from lower manhattan. At least above 14th st. and over on the east side. heck maybe above 96th st. There’s a mosque there that I’ve heard about.
i’ll tell ya, when I found out the “ground zero mosque” was even two blocks away, it became rather less of an issue for me.
but it’s too much fun ragging on it for me to be that reasonable. I’m pretty much against any mosques any where and that includes mecca, but two blocks away is as good as two counties away, as far as I’m concerned.
f @ 27: While we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to build a big memorial near Ground Zero to 19 Arab terrorists the Labor Department has announced that another half a million Americans are out of work as of the end of July. And Obama is saying the recovery is taking longer than expected. What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s a shovel-ready project, we need many more mosques, nasty Republicans just don’t want people to have jobs?
The answer is still
NO
…would make a nice T-shirt.
Sharia coming to a town near you. I went to the local Costco today, [so cal]. One of the checkers was dressed for winter – all bundled up. I’ve seen her working at Costco for a number of years, never any indication of belief system – until today.
Ace offers an interesting historical parallel to the mosque controversy:
“Question: Is it time to return the Stars and Bars to the South Carolina State House?
I ask because I thought the rule was that an understandable revulsion to the memory of an emotionally-wounding time was enough to win out over a noisy, self-promoting group’s determination to advertise its views in a prominent, highly-symbolic area… but now I find that’s not so true, not so true.
So — Confederate flag at the SC statehouse again?
Because the people flying the flag there say they too have good, non-objectionable motivations for doing so — a reminder of heritage, honoring the dead, etc., etc. But previously we have shown skepticism towards their claimed motivations, and also decided their motivations were irrelevant — it wouldn’t even matter, we decided, if their motives were pure; the important thing was the Confederate flag was too hurtful to have near the people’s house of government.
Again, so I now find out this isn’t the rule anymore.
So if it’s not the rule anymore: Why can’t we have the Confederate flag at the SC statehouse?
Yes, I know, blacks (and others, including whites) consider it offensive and a nasty reminder of a national tragedy; but the spokesmen from Cordoba House have a response to such concerns, and that response is ‘ . . . get over it already.’
So why doesn’t that work in South Carolina, too?
Why should we not take this ‘. . . get over it already’ principle of moderate Muslim outreach wide and apply it to other emotionally-charged scenarios?”
http://minx.cc/?post=304852
Related — Seed this everywhere, folks: Bill Whittle and Declaration Entertainment, a grassroots, citizen-produced movie studio that is striking a blow in the Culture Wars for our civilization.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gJGUSHXBgo&feature=player_embedded
Hearts and minds, people; hearts and minds.
They push old wheelchaired men off boats
They smile for cameras cutting throats
They kill at weddings, brides and grooms
They drag young women from their rooms
And stone them, laughing as they kill
While shouting it is Allah’s will
They hijack airplanes by the score
And throw the bodies out the door
They dress young kids in vests and bombs
And send the pictures to the moms
They cheer in streets as thousands die
As terror kills them from the sky
An embassy is no safe place
From this disgusting, vilesome race
With Muslims Time may have no beef
But one day we will take a leaf
From the big book of Muslim plays
And show them all the many ways
The West has found to kill a man
As quick and dirty as we can
We’re slow to anger, but we will
And one day soon there’ll be a kill
A thousand suns will burn the grass
And all the sand will turn to glass
For only then will terror end
We never break, but sometimes bend
But bend enough and something snaps
Just ask the Nazis and the Japs
#9 Sunderhaus:
“Remember, Islamists hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews.” (-Jeffery Goldbarf)
Islamists claim to hate atheists ( i.e. heretics) even more than they hate Christians and Jews.
Atheists are heretics who deny the principles of a (any, but particularly, the muslim) faith.
Apostates practice the faith wrong, according to some religious authority within the faith, and set a bad moral example to others, especially ones who do so deliberately, and with what the authorities feel to be malice in order to deceive others. These include, but are not limited to, Muslims (shia polytheism, to name one example (and vice versa), and those who would as well, for example, eat pork, or engage in some other violation of sharia law, such as failing to restore honor after a daughter has behaved as a slut and invited others (by her behavior) to rape her, by killing her in accordance with an honor killing.
And also specifically Christians and Jews. (apostates of the muslim faith).
Blasphemers include all the above and any other faith you would care to mention, buddhists, hindi, shinto, animists etc. as well.
Thanks for the careless lesson in mumbo jumbo nomenclature.
You and Jeffery Goldberg are very poor examples for the cause of the useful idiot.
Marcus Aurelius point that the constitutional right to build the mosque trumps all for liberals shows their hypocrisy in all its glory. They sure don’t exhibit that same Constitutional zeal when it applies to any public display of Christianity. I think it’s time to refresh my acquaintance with James Burnham’s “Suicide of the West”. Liberals surely have a stone death wish.
Magnificent analysis Mr. Fernandez. There’s no better spring to drink from than that of the Belmont Club.
Sunderhaus #9
Taqiyya!
Walt, your best effort to date.
The problem is all those “experts” on Islam that have NEVER read the Koran.
If they had, they would have discovered that Islam divides the world into 2 parts. The House of Islam and the House of War. Muslims are literally at war with the rest of the human race. Americans that haven’t read the Koran don’t get that. Mainly because to an American 100 years is a Looooooong time. A civilization that wages war in fits and starts over the course of thousands of years is beyond comprehension to most Americans. As this current part of that War drags out, more and more Americans will educate themselves about Islam.
Once a critical threshold is reached, America will wage war on Islam. Right now Islam is waging war against America. They are winning because when you don’t fight back, you always lose. Once we start fighting back, victory will not take long. The USA could bomb EVERY Mosque in the world in less then a year. If Allah is so tough, why can’t he stop a B-2?
My big beef with President Bush was his unwillingness to face the facts about Islam. He acted as though Muslims were just like Christians and Jews only not as mellow. BIG Mistake!
‘The Siege’ was on TV again the other night. The one with Denzel as the FBI agent and Bruce Willis as the intolerant general. After a Muslim caused terror attack the city’s Muslim population is rounded up and caged in Shea stadium. A naked man is tortured by his military captors. A dippy CIA agent takes responsibility for a Muslim’s evil doings. This is what Hollywood (and Time magazine) think of their country and it’s forbearance.
Then a shot of Bruce Willis blathering–and behind him stand the Twin Towers.
Walt’s a good poet.
The Mainstream Media has it back-ass-wards, as usual. Islam has a problem with America, not the other way around.
wws #23 — …this is not the time to just be satisfied with a victory, this is our chance to destroy them utterly. They are vulnerable, and this is our chance to cut their political throats. THIS is the time to pour it on like we have never poured it on before.
Yes, yes, and yes. Anyone who has spent the last twenty years frustrated by the leftward turn in this country needs to put their shoulder to the wheel NOW.
I’m not getting cocky or counting my chickens before they hatch, but last night I was already pondering ways I can help follow the jackals back to their lairs and burn them out if the GOP wins big in November.
Some big thinkers need to plot a campaign for laying siege against the castle walls of academia, media, and unions. This will be a much tougher fight than just allowing the electoral process to work its will. For one thing, it’s going to involve de-funding, and that’s a process where we’ll need to help the GOP find its cojones. Let’s do it.
The double standards never cease to amaze me. When it comes to the non-preferred groups like white southern males its perfectly acceptable to lump them all into a stereotype. If you fit into the group you are guilty until you have proven yourself innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.
The preferred groups by contrast are immune from collective guilt. It just doesn’t stick to them. Remember the scenes of the Palestinians celebrating in the streets after 911? Nothing to see there–no collective guilt attaches.
But sometimes suspicion of a group is appropriate. Who can blame the Jews for despising anyone who is a self-proclaimed Nazi? Do the Bosnians have reasons for being suspicious of the Croats?
The politically correct notion of “tolerance” is rather amazing in its selectivity. Just like a diode the current is only allowed to flow one way.
When prominent and mainstream Muslim clerics call for the destruction of the Great Satan are non-Muslims to be blamed for believing that they mean it? For the Hopey Changy PC crowd, apparently so. Muslims as a group have given Americans many reasons as to why we should be suspicious of them. Sorry–that’s the real world.
re: KSA and immigrant labor.
It’s not just Filipinos (and other Asians) who are being treated like dirt (and yet are the hardest and best workers I’ve found in KSA). I’ve seen much the same in their treatment of the local Palestinians. Makes Gaza look attractive.
Heritage(?) publishes an annual freedom index. Pity there’s not a prejudice index (quantified by some form of blind testing – various races/religious/life-style reps attempt to accomplish a number of middle-class tasks and either succeed or fail within a measured mean).
I would like to know the story behind the story of why Ghosh’s article was published at this time. Is it as blatant as a phone call from a Beltway staffer to the publisher, “We need an overlay on this mosque thing”?
Is it that the Times editorial board decided on its own that Obama/Pelosi needed some cover? Or that the rubes are getting out of line and need a lecture?
The story line is a perfect backup for Pelosi’s pronouncement that the Cordoba mosque has been “jinned up” as a political issue so maybe the answer is there. Ghosh calls the Cordoba mosque “Park51″. How New Yorkish. They’re just one of us, you know.
The money line is “But it is plain that many of Park51′s opponents are motivated by deep-seated Islamophobia.”
Really? The only thing in plain view is that Time’s publisher and editorial board consider the majority of Americans as stupid, bigoted rubes. Why add the descriptive “deep-seated” to Islamophobia? Are we now beyond redemption too?
It’s not often that a Times/Newsweek/NYT (you name it) article can stimulate anger, but this article following so closely on the heels of Obama’s duplicity and Pelosi’s insult, really brings home the depth of the coordination of the attack of the Left on ordinary Americans and our traditions. Whether intended or not, Ghosh’s article exudes the “I would hurt you if I could” kind of malice.
salt lick@43: “defunding”
You said it, brother! It has yet to be demonstrated that any legislative body, anywhere, chosen by universal franchise voting, can end a government agency or program.
By “end”, I mean, repeal the enabling legislation, void all regulations pursuant to the legislation published or pending, close the buildings, lay off (and not rehire) the workers, and void all grants, contracts, projects, studies, and programs created under the authority of the now nonexistent entity.
My target of choice is the Environmental Protection Act of 1971, but there are many others, some easier than that.
But until somebody demonstrates that it can be done, once, to ANY Federal entity – we need to retain our more muscular options for hope and change.
As much as I find the whole Manhattan War Memorial Mosque an obscene outrage I am more interested in Richard’s other point; the Old Guard of the cultural elites are not just failing they are so out of touch with the world of today that they cannot understand it at all. Like a drunk who thought he was going to bed but instead fell into a swimming pool, they are drowning, flailing about, and they don’t even understand why.
The old nostrums, the linear media model that has worked for so long, the Party Machine that controls the narrative etc. are collapsing and they are unable to see what has happened. One of the big reasons that they sound so tone-deaf, so out of touch is that they are entrenched in a world bounded by the Beltway and the Old School Jounalists. For them there is no other way.
Just as Marie Antionette couldn’t understand why the starving peasants just didn’t “…eat cake”, the Ruling Class simply can’t wrap their heads around the ever changing flow of information. Too much of the current exchange is multi-linear if not totally non-linear. The Big Journos contempt for bloggers et. al. smells of the mindset of the Yacht Club crowd when the first Irishman (or black man)applied for membership. They know in their hearts that they are no better than anyone else, but it has been so fun all these years lording it over the “peons” that they are loath to give it up. They don’t want to let just anybody into “The Club”, you have to meet their standards!
Statists fear that uncontrolled information model more than any others. It is difficult to run a totalitarian government when people have free access to information and are free to exchange ideas, just ask the Chinese Communist Party how that is working for them. Bloggers are becoming (as someone else has said earlier on this site) the modern Committees of Correspondence, the readers and posters are the escapees from the Old Media prison. An uncontrolled, unpredictable, self-organising body politic that is highly resistant to any form of control or “direction” and is able to create it’s own memes is the nightmare of those Ruling Class folk who would tell us all what to do, when to do it, and how.
Years from now we will look back and wonder why we put up with this nonsense for so long.
47. gokart-mozart
Argeed, please allow me to add to the list;
Dept of Ed, billions wasted, grades got worse!
Any and all “cultural” subisidies.
Dept of Energy, entropy maybe, but these guys haven’t produced any energy that I know of.
The “more muscular options for hope and change” are well supported hereabouts, a last choice option, but certainly still an option.
I think poster ’1389′ is someone I may have corresponded with at one point or knows someone with whom I did talk. If he is indeed an Orthodox priest in the public square then God bless him.
I did meet the pro-Serbian activist Julia Gorin in LA once many moons ago and watched her argue with a man who happened to be Jewish but who was arguing loudly for the Albanian Kosovar and Bosniak cause against the evil Serbs. Some folks never learn who their real friends are and who still has a soft spot for the banderisti (Yuschenko), Croatian Ustashe, and Latvian SS veterans. In the end, the Jewish members of the pro-Israel lobby cannot stay in bed with anti-Russia lobby members who are willing to promote any nationalist, no matter how obnoxious, as long as they are Prometheans opposed to Moscow. Plus the whole visa free travel thing between Russia and Israel makes a mockery of the U.S. keeping Jackson Vanik on the books…
To answer a question posed at an earlier thread, no I don’t believe ‘Rurik’ and I have ever met, but he was getting warmer in terms of guessing my background. Posting under my real name at Belmont Club however is not likely to be good for my career, particularly in these dark times where Google is starting to adopt more and more of a god complex regarding its own infallibility and suggesting that everyone who has ever been smeared on Google should legally change their names rather than force the gods of Palo Alto to comply with libel laws.
I must say what brought me back to Belmont Club to comment on this is how the ignorance at best and contempt at worst St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is getting in all of this controversy. But then again, who has cared all that much about protecting the rights of Orthodox Christians around the world since Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and shot? The Orthodox Christians of the Middle East have largely been ethnically cleansed – first by the Turks (Symrna was a Greek center for 3,000 years – from Homeric times until the 1920s) and more recently by the PLO in Lebanon and Islamists in Iraq. They have also in the last twenty years had their livelihoods weakened or made impossible by Israeli barriers and restrictions despite being among Israel-Palestine’s most productive and law abiding citizens.
Certainly even modern Russia can only push its trading partner Turkey so far. Ankara still won’t let the Ecumenical Patriarch recruit new priests and his congregation has shrank to a few hundred faithful old people, though Vatican reporter Sandro Magister thinks there are thousands of hidden Orthodox across Anatolia, once the cradle of the Faith to whom St. Paul addressed the bulk of his epistles.
If I were in Manhattan on 9/11/2010 I certainly would be tempted to join the throngs protesting the Ground Zero mosque with a sign reading, “End the Occupation – Free Constantinople!” These folks can dish it out but they cannot take it back. In the end, I think the cultural elitny are going to have to beat a retreat before the narodni with their pitchforks. And if St. Nicholas can be rebuilt finally, then a small blessing will come out of this.
“The truth of thy deeds
hath revealed thee to thy flock as a canon of faith,
an icon of meekness,
and a teacher of abstinence;
for this cause thou hast achieved the heights by humility,
riches by poverty,
O Father and Hierarch Nicholas,
intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.”
Aparasim “Bobby” Ghosh is the rolodex for insurgents, in Iraq he was profiling a young bombmaker in the midst of the surge, he was in Pakistan right around the time of the Bhutto assasination, and is foresquare for abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban,
I happily admit to being an Islamophobe. But the term doesn’t go far enough to express my contempt and revulsion toward the Koran and Mohammed. But in the interest of effective public relations I prefer to call myself Anti-Sharia. Progressives have a very difficult time defending Sharia. Attention, AP.
Wouldn’t the Victory Mosque be an excellent site for assembling and detonating a nuclear device?
Progressives have a very difficult time defending Sharia
They don’t defend sharia, they ignore it. The Cordoba Center/GZM Mosque/Sharia Compliant Complex is Park51. This is just a local zoning issue, don’t ya’ know.
Fly OUR Flag . . . Election Day Nov. 2, 2010 . . . I propose we fly the distress signal . . . Fly OUR Flag “UPSIDE DOWN”!!!
As I wrote on AoS a few days ago, where was all this stern, steely-gazed devotion to First Amendment rights on the part of the bien-pensants a few years ago when the Mohammed cartoons were in the news? What I remember was a lot of media whimpering that “Yes, technically we COULD print those nasty cartoons, but we recognize a higher duty to be sensitive to the feelings of Muslims, who feel so strongly about this. Not like those cloddish, insensitive conservatives, stupidly pointing out the line in the Bill of Rights, as if that were more important than human empathy and universal understanding!” Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, and it’s the natural American majority that’s demanding sensitivity, they become The Untouchables of the Constitution, unwilling to bend or yield one fragment of a semi-colon in their demands for exact obedience to the written text of the law.
Re: # 12. wretchard “And the answer is still no.”
Precisely. And the nature of a particular imam is irrelevant even if he walks on water.
56. Dr. Mabuse; I would love to see such stern and steely-eyed devotion applied to the rest of the Constitution as well; perhaps they could develop a plain-language understanding of the Second Amendment for a start!
But I’m just one of those “bitter clingers” I guess.
particularly if he walks on water.
If a “lucid, sane, reasonable, able to read” person referenced the US State Departments website concerning “The International Religious Freedom Report of 2009″ . . . which happens to be part of the Executive Branch of the government . . . to consider it even remotely possible that such could in the future be the conditions that exist in the United States . . . that person would should be shot for treason.
Reference:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2009/127357.htm
RE: # 43. Salt Lick
“Anyone who has spent the last twenty years frustrated by the leftward turn in this country needs to put their shoulder to the wheel NOW.”
Twenty years? How about a century? Such long time trend means that it is supported by majority. So sudden frustration with elite’s latest antics will not reverse it. They will just back up a little, beat they collective chests in fake contrition, and start again when outraged populace will calm down a little. Or Obama (or someone else) will claim that s/he is going to lead the parade off present trend and switch back when nobody’ looking.
People are extremely lazy and gullible: > 50% voted for present circus.
“…that’s a process where we’ll need to help the GOP find its cojones.” They cannot find something they do not have.
I closely studied the Koran especially because of our position with regard to the Muslim populations in Algeria and throughout the Orient. I admit that I came out of that study with the conviction that, all things considered, there had been few religions in the world so dreadful for men as that of Muhammad. It is, I believe, the major cause of the decadence today so visible in the Muslim world and though it is less absurd than ancient polytheism, it’s social and political tendencies, in my opinion much more to be feared. I see it relative to paganism itself as a decadence rather than an advance–
Alexander de Tocqueville
OK, Girls at neighbors, propaganda loaded up – much new additions – Car gassed up, a cooler full of water and a resolve to get out and make a difference for my girls and our Republic.
Yes wws your right. But I want to warn everyone that it is not going to be that easy. NOT ONLY are we going to have to fight for the vote, We will have to fight them after the vote, because you know that they will lie, cheat and try and steal the elections.
The democrats know how to win elections. Not only because they will pay “street money” to have everyone who can crawl to the booth – vote. But that they will make sure that thousands of votes from non existent voters or dead voters vote for the democrats. And don’t forget those that vote more than once in different states
And don’t forget all the illegals that will be voting.
While we, us innocent, God fearing, honest middle of the road, silent majority…think that if we vote, everything will be OK. Those days are long past, we must get the majority of those who have never voted out of their little bubbles and to the voting arena.
WE have to get out and get the votes, WE have to help people get to the voting booths, WE have to make sure that all of our community is at least educated enough to want to vote. WE have to get on the street NOW. Actually you should have been involved before now but it is not to late. Volunteer, put your money and your time where your words are.
Just talking or typing by itself on the web is not going to get the vote out.
Most Americans don’t know what the hell is going on and many don’t care. It has to become YOUR JOB to inform them and MAKE THEM CARE enough to go vote.
If you don’t do everything you personally can to make this happen, to make everyone vote and every vote count, you are letting down your children, grand children and millions of future Americans.
Righteous talk and letters are fine, great and needed but its past time for all of that. Very few read Belmont, very few read any blogs, very few know what is going on.
It is your job, your responsibility to talk face to face with them and make them understand how important, how critical, how they..the American Voter…can make a difference.
Even if they don’t think that they can.
Take Care, Take Charge, Saddle Up and get on the line.
Papa Ray
grrr #61 — People are extremely lazy and gullible: > 50% voted for present circus.
“…that’s a process where we’ll need to help the GOP find its cojones.” They cannot find something they do not have.
You can’t know for sure you will win the battle, grrr, but you never let yourself entertain the possibility that you won’t. You just do what you know is right, and that is its own reward. Because otherwise you might look in the mirror and see someone who knows he just complained when others stood up.
Standing up to Obama is nothing. Crossing a frozen river in the dead of night, marching 11 miles over icy ruts that cut your feet, into a blizzard that wets your powder so you must use the bayonet, and all as a last gasp effort in what looks like the death of your rebellion — those were men.
“Does America have a problem with Islam?”
Who, the Great Satan??
Nahhhh…
62. James Wilson
Thanks for sharing the de Tocqueville quotation. Devastating judgment from a great thinker.
Iowahawk does an excellent job of describing what a joke the left has become, and this is what is going to be their undoing in the end. At this point people are realizing that the endless stream of Odildo’s lies are far beyond worth getting upset about, they are as absurd as Alice in Wonderland. Our muslim emperor has no clothes.
NEW YORK – Charges of racism, sexism, and religious discrimination filled the air this afternoon outside the just-completed Cordoba House, the gleaming new $100 million 15 story mosque and Islamic cultural center near the ruins of New York’s World Trade Center, following a tense 5-hour standoff prompted by the mosque’s refusal to host a wedding between a lesbian African-American woman and her blind white transgendered partner.
Over 200 NYPD officers and multicultural crisis counselors were bused to the site to quell the simmering 17-way tensions between Muslim, Black, LGBT, immigrant, disabled, and lawsuit community activists. The scene was punctuated by outbursts of pushing and shoving, including a brief confused intramural scuffle among members of Reverend Louis Farrakan’s Nation of Islam, but the only serious injuries reported was a hernia suffered by a legal aide distributing plaintiff’s briefs. The incident resulted in one arrest, a 7-year old girl who was seen operating a lemonade stand without a permit.
According to witnesses, the standoff began at 11 AM EDT when Eleanor Davis, 38, and her partner Mary Markowicz, 43, entered Cordoba House and requested the use of the mosque for a wedding ceremony. They were escorted from the building, but quickly returned with a 9th District Court of Appeals injunction ordering the mosque’s Imam to perform the ceremony, citing the US Supreme Court’s Kelo and Proposition 8 decisions. They were barred at the door by security guards who countered with their own injunction citing First Amendment religious protections.
…
Here’s the problem: there is a sizable minority who, by their very nature, are inclined to go into government, “public policy”, think tanks, etc. Putting aside questions of greed and corruption, they are naturally inclined toward certain opinions and ideas about what is best for all of us–again, by their very nature and inclinations.
The others are those who are not like that; more interested in a non-public life, desiring to build houses, sell insurance and so forth.
Now the dilemma: Given the inherent differences between the two groups, who do we replace the first group with? The ones who think like us–the non-public bunch–don’t want to go to Washington or will only do so out of anger and desperation.
So who do we elect? A reluctant normal person or an eager politician?
Gordon;
IMHO you have touched the problem, the symtoms anyway. The solution for this is in the “Vetting”. We elect and send to Washington the person most qualified to do the job . . . thus making no difference as to those inclinations, other than that verification of those inclinations may be part of the vetting. We THE People have been yahoo’d, hoodwinked, and just generally screwed by every organization that typically does this vetting. From the GOP to the Lame Stream Media the con job has been perpetrated and those people need to be ushered out as emphatically as the politcal clowns.
Surely there is somewhere in tolerant, diverse, cosmopolitan New York for a mosque/war memorial. How about Rikers Island?
Some big thinkers need to plot a campaign for laying siege against the castle walls of academia, media, and unions. This will be a much tougher fight than just allowing the electoral process to work its will. For one thing, it’s going to involve de-funding, and that’s a process where we’ll need to help the GOP find its cojones. Let’s do it.
Salt Lick:
I liken this future effort to the Italian campaign in WWII. Like the Germans did with Italy, the left has booby-trapped the country’s miriad institutions so that taking apart what they’ve created is going to be an arduous and hazard-laden task.
While I normally agree with Mr. Fernandez, I disagree with part of his analysis. I understand his intent is to draw attention to the fact that America is one of the most, if not the most, tolerant places in the world, and it certainly is. But it goes without saying that Saudi Arabia is a barbaric hell hole compared to the United States. He is also right that the left has turned this into a “beating your wife” scenario, where the accused is sent reeling to prove a negative instead of supporting his original point. When we are back on our heels we end up having to make ridiculous and obvious comparisons, like the one between Saudi Arabia and the US. I think Mr. Fernandez has taken the bait here.
I also partially agree with the Time author. I think it’s safe to say America has a BIG problem with Islam. Muslims make up 0.8% of our population, so the simple fact of the matter is that most of us don’t know many muslims. And so our experience with Muslims consists almost completely of them murdering our fellow Americans. This is not bigotry. This is chemicals in our bodies that react a certain way when we see Muslims boarding the plane we are on. Our hearts beat a little faster, we are more aware of our surroundings. This is basic survial instinct, a facet of human nature that will never go away. We are an extremely tolerant country. Remember the “backlash” that had so many people worried? How the “worst” thing that could happen in Fort Hood was not the dead soldiers but the “backlash” that would surely follow? Never happened and never will happen here because we are so tolerant. But I’d say we probably do have a big problem with Islam, and rightfully so. Until American Muslims can foster a different image than the ones we instinctually have, we will contnue to have a big problem with Islam. There’s a big difference between the bigotry of ignorance passed down from previous generations and wariness derived from actual experiences. The fact that my brain gets more adrenaline when a Muslim boards my plane makes me feel not the least bit guilty, because I know exactly why it is happening. We reach out to Muslims every day by giving them a secure place where we can all worship and speak freely. The onus is on them to assimilate and reach out to us. Not enough of them have done so to keep a $100 million mosque from being a blatant stick in the eye. The developer’s refusal to meet with a surprisingly reasonable Governor Paterson sure doesn’t help the “dialogu” much now does it?
Lastly, I would be curious to know what other religion the poll responders find more intolerant than Islam.
Folks, I feel I owe you an explanation for not posting when so much is going on in ME & NY.
Been verry busy. Printed this post and comments and will comment ASAP.
Gotta go.
Salaam eleikum all Y’all!
We have nothing to apologize to the Muslim world for. By any rational criteria, Americans have gone as far as they need to, and then some, in accomodating Islam.
It is now entirely up to the Muslim world to demonstrate that we have nothing to fear from them as an aggregate, and so far, after so many years, they’ve done nothing to assuage our anxieties. Nothing.
I observe people who happen to be Muslim up close under many different circumstances, and they give me no anxiety. I recognize that they are not all that fundamentally different when it comes to their basic humanity and their wants and desires. The thing is, though, I am observing Muslims within an American environment, and therefore get only a glimpse. It appears to be different in Europe. Also, even American Muslims are beginning to backslide into at least the trapppings of fundamentalism. Yes, I do consider it backsliding, just as if mainstream Mormons were to reimbrace polygamy. I’ve also noted, that despite their general ordinariness, when talking to some fully Americanized Muslims about certain issues, the divide between me and them shows itself in interesting ways. On more than one occasion when talking to young Muslim Arabs about career choices I had suggested that the various American security agencies could really use their Arab language skills. They all recoil at the notion of “going against fellow Muslims.” Wow, some “Americans,” those, huh?
What ordinary Americans can fairly demand of the Muslim world is that it show substantial and persistent evidence that they, as an aggregate, are tolerant of different beliefs, and do not see America as an enemy. Americans have been met by a thundering silence. It matters not at all that the vast majority of Muslims are ordinary, decent people. These Muslims are not represented at all in the narrative presented to the world by Islam. It is not practical for a majority of Americans to “experience” Muslims up close; besides which, the only way that’s going to happen is if America is literally inundated by Muslims, with its attendant awful results.
I appreciate Wretchard’s periodic reminders about Philippinos and their history of tragedy and travail. We forget the substantial connection that Philippinos and Americans have.
#70 : “Surely there is somewhere in tolerant, diverse, cosmopolitan New York for a mosque/war memorial. How about Rikers Island?”
I vote for Fresh Kills.
Friends,
Do not expect anything from the bootlicking curs of the mainstream media other; these are the brave folks who stood up to be counted during the Danish Cartoon Crisis when suddenly the press was all about respect for Islam. The only paper in the US that printed the cartoons, I believe, was The Seattle Stranger, one of our local slime rags; well, bully for them.
Yeah, Time Magazine, we’re all real anti-Muslim here in America. In Seattle a 10 year old boy who loves airplanes (in a city that makes them) cannot stop anywhere around the SeaTac Airport to observe these modern miracles land and takeoff. Why? Islamic Terror. So the port of Seattle squelches the natural curiosity of 10 year olds. How long will this be in effect? Who knows, I’m afraid to ask; the port will consider me a terrorist if I inquire or protest. Ditto, as of next week, will enable airport security to photoshop our genitals with their new “security equipment.” How long will we have to put up with airport security examining our n-t sacks? I dare not ask as I will be considered a terrorist.
I have no experience that Muslims have any consciousness of these lovely conveniences that they have wrought into American reality. I sure hope they build a mosque on the site that inagurated all these blessings.
Aug 20, 3:40 PM EDT
NY mosque imam: Not Backing Down
By HASAN JAMALI
Associated Press Write
MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — The imam leading plans for an Islamic center near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks said Friday he hopes to draw attention during his trip in the Middle East to the common challenges to battle radical religious beliefs.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is on the first leg of a 15-day Mideast tour funded by the U.S. State Department, refused to discuss the political firestorm over the plans for an Islamic cultural center about two blocks from the World Trade Center towers.
But in New York, Rauf’s wife and a co-leader of the proposed project known as Park51 said Friday that organizers are sticking with the plan despite protests. “Dropping the plan is definitely not an option at all,” said Daisy Khan, head of the American Society for Muslim Advancement.
Das-
“these are the brave folks who stood up to be counted during the Danish Cartoon Crisis when suddenly the press was all about respect for Islam.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. They will capitulate and appease until at last there is nobody left to speak for them.
Beating a dead horse again but the problem is that much of America realizes that Islam is at war with America. None of the self-styled “elites” in America accept the facts behind the conclusion reached by much of America and a huge majority of fly over citizens.
If the vote isn’t tampered with in Nov, the citizens will have the final word. For now…..
As Papa says, just voting isn’t going to get the job done. Voting can remove the politicians, but that is just treating the symptom not the disease.
We(conservatives) have to cut out the rotting flesh to prevent the infection from returning. There is a medical term for that but it escapes me at this moment.
Get our own house (the house of war, Dar al-Harb) in order and we are safe from the Mad Dog Mullahs and their minions. So long as we keep WMD out of their deranged little hands, we can wait for the more rabid ones to die off.
When politicians say all options are on the table, do they include Genocide? I’m still waiting for the Journo-list with the cajones to ask that one.
One thing missing in this debate is the one truly unspeakable N-word in American politics: Nationalism.
This is a national affront, not merely a “local NY issue.”
Would any other country on earth allow such a flagrant slap in the face to be built? Let’s see which Arab state will be willing to put up a memorial to the Jewish heroes in the various Arab/Israeli wars. Any takers?
Who else but Western elites would be so feckless and suicidal that they’d happily put up a monument to the great victory of their enemies?
76. Dr. Mabuse said…
#70 : “Surely there is somewhere in tolerant, diverse, cosmopolitan New York for a mosque/war memorial. How about Rikers Island?”
“I vote for Fresh Kills.”
—
Brilliant!
What could be more magnanimous than granting them their wish to build a mosque on the ruins of 9-11?
—
Regarding assimilation:
It occurs to me that rates of assimilation have declined in parallel with the transformation of societies like Egypt’s from being relatively modern in the ’50s toward the madness of “traditional” Islam.
…not to mention the transformation of our institutions into anti-American propaganda factories, and, of course, the growth of the welfare state:
Open borders and the welfare state are a deadly combination -
If we insist on hanging out the free lunch sign, we can’t complain about who gets in line.
It is the Islamist-aphobiacs, whose fears are grounded in rational terra-firma, that Ms Pelosi and co would like to paint as pathological. Too obvious, ignoring the real reason opposition to the GZM will not be spun no matter how long or frequent the twists of Chicagoan logic.
Still by all observations I have made Islamists are many when opposition is weak and when rational argument is utilized to display for all the sad sadistic twist of human emotion it takes for a former human to journey to full blown Insane Islamist, even the suicidal maniac’s own mother is hard pressed to show sympathy for the devil he child turned out to be. Anger a symptom of a young life betrayed by unfeeling sadists are, like the crisis bespoke of by the embarrassment, too precious to ignore for the opportunity they present. Why was the horde turned back from Vienna? Why were the efforts of AlQ not sufficient west of Baghdad?
Why do Pubs not see Islam for what it can become and dems not judge it by what it has come to be?
Everyone in the Middle East and SA loves a winner. That is truly the only key.
STP/80–the word is “debridement”.
The Game is O’foot:
“Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi (AHB’-dehl BAH’-seht AH’-lee ahl-meh-GRAH’-hee)”.
Q: Who is “the vacationing leader”?
…-
“Obama seeks reimprisonment for Lockerbie bomber
(AP) – 1 hour ago
VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. — The Obama administration asked Friday that the only person convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 be returned to a Scottish prison.
John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told reporters accompanying the vacationing leader that the U.S. has “expressed our strong conviction” to Scottish officials that Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi (AHB’-dehl BAH’-seht AH’-lee ahl-meh-GRAH’-hee) should not remain free. The comments came on the first anniversary of Al-Megrahi’s release.
Brennan criticized what he termed the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision,” and added: “We’ve expressed our strong conviction that Al-Begrahi should serve out the remainder – the entirety – of his sentence in a Scottish prison.”
Earlier in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a statement that underscored the U.S. position.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j2H_P-w0CovMAeEVeAxkBPC90rZAD9HNFA3G0
All this talk about Mosques as community centers, or outreach gestures, or even war memorials, misses the point. Battle flag comes closer but falls short. It is routine in the Middle East that mosques are used as supply depots fior arms and munitions; for mosques to be used as observation and fire direction points; to be used as headquarters and command points. The muslims have learned that American forces treat mosques as sacrosanct, as places where they dare not enter nor interrupt the “private” activities of the muslims. usually American forces may not even return fire if so doing threatens a mosque. The proposed structure is thirteen stories, and thee is little accounting of how that space will be apportioned. As a weapons depot is an easy guess, or as a center for directing islamic uprisings nationwide, think Alamut-On-Hudson. Perhaps one day in the near future, the muslims may assemble a “demonic device” in their new mosque and then hold the entire city as nuclear hostage. I don’t want that project built two blocks from Z nor two miles. Nor woo miles for that matter.
Re. # 64. Salt Lick
“Standing up to Obama is nothing. Crossing a frozen river in the dead of night, marching 11 miles over icy ruts that cut your feet, into a blizzard that wets your powder so you must use the bayonet, and all as a last gasp effort in what looks like the death of your rebellion — those were men.”
I know the history. I also know that you cannot change its direction by any means unless favorable conditions exist. Ask yourself a few Q. 1.why Goldwater did not succeed? 2.Why Reagan “revolution” was circumscribed? 3.Why Reagan’s own vice called his ideas “woodo” economics? 4.Why Reagan placed marines in lebanon as sitting ducks? 5.Why there was no retaliation for their wanton murder? Why Clinton did not pay attention to 93 attempt? Why he placed a “Gorelick’s firewall”? Why we are back to pre-911 attitudes (with extra cost for a sham of homeland security), Why…???? I think the answer to all these Qs is that they are all counter to a secular trend. As one wag said long time ago using chess game terminology: all moves are started and won by grays (not black and not white). And ruling elite for a long time now is definitely gray (aka obnoxious, arrogant mediocrities).
Yes, other civilizations allowed mosques to be constructed. The Vatican allowed an enormous one to be plopped down in Rome. It didn’t work for them either. I won’t even start on Constantinople, Bethlehem or Jerusalem.
Higher education may be in line as the next economic bubble to pop, as Fedzilla now controls all student loans. There is a small but growing market for recorded college courses made available by DVD. It is not so great of a leap for conservative or libertarian scholars to get tired of the daily harassment and start making their expertise available via DVD or online on demand coursework. Do the learning and test out to a degree. Eventually the indoctrination factories of the left collapse of their own weight and expense. I would expect we are less than a decade away from that happening.
Wouldn’t take much to apply the same model to grades 1-12. The Home-schoolers are already getting much better results than public (or private) schools spending one tenth to one hundredth as much per student per year.
Maggie Thatcher was right about socialism: Eventually you run out of other people’s money to spend. And we are tapped out. And so is the left.
More Muslims Helping Muslims:
Arab states have cut financial aid to the Palestinian Authority so far this year, according to PA figures seen by Reuters, and the United Nations has warned of a looming Palestinian cash crisis.
“The Arabs are not paying. We urge them to meet their financial pledges,” said Saleh Rafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee and one of the few Palestinian officials willing to speak out on the matter.
Arab government officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment on the issue.
The failure of some wealthy Arab states to pay up is frustrating Western governments, which are big contributors to the Palestinian territories, and leaving officials in the West Bank with a budget headache.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/palestinian-authority-faces-cash-crunch-as-arab-states-cut-aid-1.309025
Palestinians who cheered after 9/11 get more aid from Western countries than from their Arab neighbors!
“Saddle Up”
Thanks, Papa Ray, it’s been a tough day and I needed to hear that!
We are going to throw those bums out, we are going to start revealing these criminals, we are going to cut off the tap of endless American Taxpayer money to criminals/terrorists/commies, and we are going to see the trash scatter like heck when the bright light of freedom shines blindingly upon them!
Where do we start? With the money of course, that will eliminate 95% of the problem!
Buy More Ammo, and Get Out The Vote!
Patriotism, no longer a dirty word!
Ever hear of a book called The Fourth Turning?
I’m sure some people here have because I think I remember Wretchard posting about it. If not I suggest you do so. In my opinion it goes a long way towards answering the questions posted by grrr #87 and explaining his secular trend. I certainly can’t do it justice here but the authors interpret history through the lens of sociology and attempt to explain the workings of American society based upon a cycle of generations. Personally what really made me take note of this book was that they predicted the country would enter a period of rapid change and crisis about 2008. They made that prediction by the way in 1998.
Fascinating book. One bit however sticks with me. Reading through comment threads such as this one and of course just seeing the news on the same planet with the adherents of you-know-what I find that bit popping into my head all too often.
Some background first. They wrote that after the Crisis era passes and is resolved society enters a High era of optimism and confidence. If I recall they predicted this would occur around 2020 or 2025. Paraphrasing roughly, their comment was that High era warfare is conducted ruthlessly with every possible weapon until the enemy is exterminated or utterly defeated.
So with that in mind let me suggest a different course of events from what I too often see. Instead of the United States slowly succumbing to the idiocy of the present regime and stumbling into dhimmitude I propose that it is more likely that our dimwitted rulers get thrown out on their incompetent behinds. More competent leadership slowly gets the country on a proper course although not without great suffering and ugly strife. Not understanding what is occurring our muslim friends decide the country is all but finished and decide they want to kick in barn door and make the whole rotten structure collapse. So they ramp up both the demands and the provocations. Bad idea. Instead of giving a final killing blow to a dying enemy they find they have won themselves a mortal enemy ruthless and bitter with plenty of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the willingness to use them.
In prior eras events such as the caning of a Massachusetts senator by a southern congressman and the sinking of a US Navy gunboat by the Japanese generated no great response. Yet a few short years after those events the United States was using every weapon available to destroy the Confederate States of America and- later obviously- the empire of Japan.
Plainly there have been many muslim provocations that generated no great reactions. Even the anger of 9/11 generated a measured response with the president lecturing us that islam is a religion of peace.
But folks are learning. The reaction to the GZM shows that. And one day- perhaps even after some seemingly minor event of the sort previously ignored- all hell will break loose. I’m thinking of the Three Conjectures- again.
Richard, I’m glad to see you’re using a post I wrote on our site dedicated to human rights of migrant workers in the Middle East, but you should know that all the writers on the site, except one, are Muslims, two of them citizens of Saudi Arabia. Not all Muslims are violent – some care about fellow humans and fight for their human rights, like the freedom of religion.
Re. # 91. Xennady
“Ever hear of a book called The Fourth Turning? ”
No, but just download it and briefly looked over (will probably read it later). Preliminary impression is that the book is a literary illustration to Kondratieff, Schumpeter, and Cesaro Marchetti, as well as an article I posted a link to recently, but cannot find it right now. Generally I prefer quantifiable (if possible) scenarios, but also welcome well written fiction. Thanks for drawing attention to the book.