Oh dear, I have a live one here. Emily Brink has now posted three comments which take issue with what I’ve written about female suicide bombers. In each instance, she misses the boat–and the train, the plane, and the camel. She writes:
“The only problem I have with this article is that Chesler assumes that mentally ill people don’t know the difference between right and wrong. She also makes some comments about “inbreeding” among Arabs that I think are just meant to be mean and are not factual. But most troubling to me was the calling of these women mentally ill and thus furthering the stigma that mentally ill people must face all the time.”
I see. So Emily defends the moral agency of mentally ill people who, in her opinion, “know the difference between right and wrong.” Thus, I have “stigmatized” the female suicide bombers by daring to suggest that they have not made a free, rational, and moral choice about blowing themselves and others right up. She does not focus upon the ideological indoctrination, or on the exploitation or manipulation of vulnerable women; she sees only free women making free choices. Just because these women may be mentally ill does not mean that they have not made an independent and moral decision to kill.
Emily describes herself as a “mentally ill woman who has a mentally retarded son.” Thus, she is defending her own, so to speak.
I will take no cheap shots here since I agree that mental illness does exist; that it is painful, and often crippling; and that forced treatments are inhumane. However, I also think that when someone is actively hallucinating or is clinically depressed or in a rage that they do not make wise decisions.
In her second comment, Brink minimizes the increase of female suicide killers by saying that girls and women are also more violent in the West. She writes:
“This conversation seems one-sided, examining the crimes of female suicide bombers as if our own culture didn’t have its own epidemic of violence by women. For lots of years now there have been a rise in female violence in the West, whether it be in the form of girl gangs or women killing their children or spouses. its just not as dramatic and political as strapping a bomb to your chest, but its the same thing. Women still want to be equal to men, and sometimes that frustration comes out in the form of violence.”
Another comment, by “Fred” addresses Brink’s point as well as anything I might say. Here it is:
“But the kind of violence that Ms. Chesler is getting at is more than the usual criminal kind of violence that ensnares women as well as men in our cultures. This kind of violence is ideological, theological, cosmological. It is the act of holding a gun or sword to the heads of other human beings with the aim of exacting “divine” punishment. It says, “If you don’t adhere to Allah’s demands, we will kill you and indeed we are already in the process of taking your lives.”
It does not matter if men are doing this or women are doing this. This is POLITICAL violence. I don’t label it religious violence because I do not consider Islam to be a religion. It’s a totalitarian cult, founded by a personality disordered narcissist who put words into “Allah’s” mouth to justify his every whim. I’m not making this up and these are not my ideas. There are prominent former Muslims who have stated this and much, much more.
Using women as shaheeds is not an astonishing thing. These people will do anything and stop at nothing to wage jihad. They will use children. They’ll use animals. They will use ANYTHING to advance the violence and there are no ethics in the Qur’an and ahadith to restrain them, because YOU CAN DO ANYTHING TO A KAFIR OR A MUSLIM APOSTATE. This is something that is particularly difficult for Westerners to wrap their minds around.”
Finally, in her comment today, Brink reveals her hand (and more ignorance). She writes:
“I am ashamed to even be in this conversation. Islam is a noble religion and culture, and several people here have completely dismissed it as backward and invalid, which is exactly the sort of cultural chauvinism that keeps the bombs flying, in my opinion. I’d point out that Islam enjoyed a golden age while Europe was still in the dark ages. Islam pioneered women’s rights during this time and made many important advances in mathematics and literature, and jews and christians who lived under the Moors enjoyed complete religious freedom. I think the comments here on Islam are totally racist.
Muslims from many walks of life will tell you it is America’s support for Israel that enrages them. I believe that if we stopped that, it would go a long way towards reconciliation. But I know that is not going to happen, because of the large and vocal Jewish population in the U.S.”
Ah, Emily Brink. There was never a Golden Age nor has every Muslim or all Islam traditionally behaved in “noble ways.” They have been genocidal toward infidels and genocidal towards each other in terms of Sunni/Shiite feuding. Perhaps Brink should read the works of Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Nonie Darwish, Steve Emerson, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and countless others on this precise point.
A dead giveaway: Brink capitalizes Moors, Islam, and Muslims but presents Jews and Christians in lower case form as jews and christians.
Only leftists and Islamists do this. Or, perhaps Brink might argue, the “mentally ill” do so as well.
BREAKING NEWS:
Friends:
Emily keeps writing, comment after comment. (See the Comments below). She says:
“I wish that Chesler would remove her inflammatory assessment of me and clear my name.”
“Inflammatory?” Have I penned the equivalent of the Danish cartoons?
I have not defamed Emily and will not remove my remarks which are fully protected under the First Amendment. However, I will not be posting any of Emily’s future comments if they continue along these same lines.
Let her get her own flagpole.
MORE BREAKING NEWS
Emily keeps posting and I have not censored her except in one case when she talked only about herself and not about the issues at hand. However, in her latest post, which I published, Emily explains, perhaps with pride, that she studied the work of Edward Said–which tells me all that I need to know. Said was a consummate propagandist and Big Liar. Read Ibn Warraq’s brilliant book about Said titled : Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism.
The problem lies in the liberal arts and social sciences academic curriculum in the West. It has indoctrinated so many people who are now, on the basis of that politically correct indoctrination, making common cause with totalitarian and fascist Islamists.
LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS
I think people should stop focusing on Emily who has probably absorbed quite enough criticism. Even if we are telling her the truth and are within our First Ammendment rights to do so, there are too many of us and only one of her.
Therefore, for those who want to address the issues raised by my post, please continue to do so but let’s leave Emily out of it from now on. Okay?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member