View Full Version : The EU and Europe's cultural identity
Skybird
02-10-06, 06:45 AM
Quote: "...radical secularists that want to eradicate all remnants of traditional Christian culture from post-Christian Europe..." :
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/794
My interest in this is not about abortion yes or no, nor is it any interest or sympathy for the Catholic church. How Brussel denies major variables that have formed europe'S cultural identity and tries to rule people that they shall not feel according to these identities - this is what raises my interest.
The last paragraph of the article is just a funny addon: "Meanwhile in Italy today a court decided, after a protracted legal battle, that Father Enrico Righi, a Catholic priest, will not be forced to prove Christ’s historical existence in court."
Das ist doch toll!
Sixpack
02-10-06, 07:04 AM
Maybe Europe deserves to go down :stare: :hmm:
ps for those who dont like links very much the synopsis:
Two clashes of civilization are currently taking place in Europe. Freedom-loving people having to fight on two fronts. One involves the radical segment of the immigrant Muslim population that opposes basic Western values such as freedom of speech and that is intent on imposing Islamic taboos (such as the mere fact of depicting their prophet Muhammad) on the non-Islamic population. The other involves radical secularists that want to eradicate all remnants of traditional Christian culture from post-Christian Europe by restricting the right to conscientious objection on the part of religious people.
The Avon Lady
02-10-06, 07:09 AM
Europe should be renamed the Tower of Babel II.
Europe should be renamed the Tower of Babel II.
And what of the real tower I do believe it's being rebuilt as predicted?
The Avon Lady
02-10-06, 08:28 AM
Europe should be renamed the Tower of Babel II.
And what of the real tower I do believe it's being rebuilt as predicted?
I have no idea what you are talking about. :-?
The whole stinking world is going down wake up people it's the end times.
I agree with STEED.
The whole world is going down, europe is being destroyed from the inside and that is because of the stinking lefftwing governments... :cry: I hate the EU... I'm staring to hate everything... It's is really hard to stay tolerant now days..
We have a saying in Polish: "Caly swiat leci na pysk" It means the whole world is falling on it's face...
:cry:
/ Sebastian Kowalski
Bertgang
02-10-06, 10:08 AM
... europe is being destroyed from the inside and that is because of the stinking lewftwing governments...
Mr. Berlusconi and his allied are excellent destroyers too, even not being exactly leftwing. Each of us has his peculiar problem.
The EU Parliament is a stinking pit of corruption working for evil and that’s a fact they make me sick they think they got all the answers well then what about the bloody mess we are in. :nope:
Depressing young people is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Really, if all you can do is whine about how bad things are maybe your civilization does indeed deserve to fall.
I'm middle aged. This gives me the ability to see things with a bit more perspective. Sure, the world has it's problems, but then again it's ALWAYS had it's problems. Compared to what our ancestors had to deal with we have it very easy indeed.
So rather than sit around and complain about it, start doing whatever you can to improve the situation. Remember the old cliche: "If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem".
your civilization does indeed deserve to fall.
The whole stinking planet will fall in to total corruption no escape for anyone bloody wake up. You are living in the end times.
Sixpack
02-10-06, 11:01 AM
Well, I am closer now to 40 than 35 yet not depressed :)
Europe is utterly confused and to a great extent managed by bureaucratic hypocritical spineless morons but I am not confused and depressed.
It's just that we can not deal with the vast majority of treehuggers who are basically f*cking up Europe.
Action ? Whattayamean ?! In Europe that means being called a neo nazi. End of story.
Gotta love the friggin Euro-constitiutions from days long past with freedom of religions.
Here's my vote for banning islam from the European continent.
To recap you are living in the end times and it's out of your hands the final battle is coming when I don't know the best thing to do is live your life’s to the full.
Bertgang
02-10-06, 11:18 AM
A sad vote, Sixpack, as religious freedom is one of the conquests of our civilization, and not the less important.
What's the next step? Again an imposed national party, racial values and son on? What a brilliant advancement!
TteFAboB
02-10-06, 12:00 PM
Hold on, let me grab some popcorn.
Skybird
02-10-06, 12:03 PM
Don't get me started, guys... Unlimited tolerance, even for a declared intention to overcome our own culture? "Nicht mit mir."
The whole stinking planet will fall in to total corruption no escape for anyone bloody wake up. You are living in the end times.
People have been claiming they were living in the end times since Relevations was written. It ain't happened yet, and (imo) anyone who wastes their life believing it's going to is a fool.
You remind me of an old friend of mine who used to say that he'd be dead before he turned 30. He really believed it, and therefore didn't see the value of planning for the future by "wasting" his time going to school or finding a good career that would allow him to eventually become financially stable. After all, what good is a savings account going to do if the world won't be around by the time he needed it? His life was was all about living for the moment with no thought to the future.
Well, just the other day he turned 55. He hardly has a pot to piss in and works at a crap job that doesn't pay well because that's all he can get without education or training. How do you think he'll do once he gets too old to push that mop anymore?
So ALWAYS plan for a future. Maybe there won't be one, maybe it will all be wiped out by nuclear war or by the wrath of a vengeful God but what if it doesn't?
People have been claiming they were living in the end times since Relevations was written. It ain't happened yet
80% of the warnings has happen if you want to go around with eyes shut that's your choice the whole stinking world is more evil today than 10 years ago so what about the next 10 years will they be better no simple as that.
80% of the warnings has happen if you want to go around with eyes shut that's your choice the whole stinking world is more evil today than 10 years ago so what about the next 10 years will they be better no simple as that.
The world was far more evil in the dark ages, or during the beginning of WW2, or during WW1 or any number of other eras in human history. Each time there were people who interpeted those events as signs of the end of the world with just as much confidence as you are displaying, yet they were wrong.
So what makes you think you're right when so many over the centuries have been wrong?
So what makes you think you're right
Wake up and do your home work my friend. Look around you mankind has no answers to the bloody mess we are in.
Etienne
02-10-06, 01:14 PM
Steed, if you're not joking around and you really believe what you've said, you should seek professional counselling.
Steed, if you're not joking around and you really believe what you've said, you should seek professional counselling.
Typical remark.
I rest my case. :D
Wake up and do your home work my friend. Look around you mankind has no answers to the bloody mess we are in.
Go away troll. I'm done with you now.
Go away troll. I'm done with you now.
One day you may wake up and face the truth and see the light until that day you will stumble around in the dark.
Go away troll. I'm done with you now.
One day you may wake up and face the truth and see the light until that day you will stumble around in the dark.
My path is quite well lit thank you o chicken little.
My path is quite well lit thank you o chicken little.
And what does that mean pray tell?
My path is quite well lit thank you o chicken little.
And what does that mean prey tell?
It's spelled "pray".
TteFAboB
02-10-06, 04:24 PM
*COUGH*
Back on topic,
Don't you Europeans remember the famous European spaghetti marxist who said:
"The workers will never realize their true class interests, as defined by marxism, untill they are free from western culture, particulary from Christianism, as they are all blinded by religion and culture from their class interests."
And the nymphomaniac marxist:
"Who will save us from western culture?"
As Sixpack said earlier, Europe deserves to go down because it is harvesting what was seeded by Europeans back in the 20th century, and the crop received excellent care.
Islam is an ally in this quest, sure the builders of the new Europe will have to deal with them later, but untill then the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
This alliance, however, I believe to be a mistake, this molotov-ribbentrop pact is far too radical for the German worker to accept, he may not notice or bother as his culture is attacked in the silent, but when the Islamic world explodes with this level of intensity, the German worker hardly takes the side of Islam, and the creature may turn against its master.
marxist who said:
"The workers will never realize their true class interests, as defined by marxism, untill they are free from western culture, particulary from Christianism, as they are all blinded by religion and culture from their class interests."
religion is dead try faith is better for you.
Skybird
02-10-06, 05:05 PM
Islam is an ally in this quest, sure the builders of the new Europe will have to deal with them later, but untill then the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
Islam cannot be tamed.
For example these excerpts by H.P. Raddatz, my critic of choice - most Muslims do not know half as much on Islam than he does, and noone bites harder than he does:
Quotes:
"Der Dialog mit dem Islam wird umso mehr zur Hilfseinrichtung für den Islam, je unbeirrter der Dialog darin fortfährt, den Kampfcharakter dieser Religion durch die Fiktion von Toleranz und Friedfertigkeit zu verschleiern. (...) Die gesellschaftlich Verantwortlichen fordern die ständige Verinnerlichung von Toleranz, ohne allerdings gleichzeitig mitzuteilen, aufgrund welchen konkreten Interesses die aufnehmende Bevölkerung die islamische Zuwanderung fördern sollte. Es fehlt die Information, womit ein solches Interesse zu begründen wäre und auf welcher Art von Identität die neue Toleranz aufzubauen hätte. (...) Europa ist dabei, sich völlig mißbrauchen zu lassen im Namen der Toleranz und des Dialoges. Man erlebt eine langsame Infiltrierung der Strukturen ... Ich bin ebenso für eine Öffnung zum Fremden wie ich die Integration von Strömungen zurückweise, die die Demokratie ins Wanken bringen und universelle Werte in Frage stellen, um ein regressives und obskurantistisches Weltbild durchzusetzen, das vierzehn Jahrhunderte hinter der Zeit ist. (...) Bei der taqiya (arab.: Vorsicht) handelt es sich um eine zum islamischen Glauben gehörende Verhaltensregel, die es dem Muslim zwingend vorschreibt, seinen Glauben zu verleugnen bzw. weitgehende Konzilianz vorzutäuschen, wenn es sei-ner persönlichen Situation oder dem Islam generell dient" (Raddatz: Islamexpansion, S. 63). - "Unter dem Schutzschild dieser Verschleierungstaktik ließ sich umso ungestörter die Strategie der schleichenden Islamisierung verfolgen" (ders., Von Allah zum Terror?, S. 179). Speziell in der als feindlich erlebten Diaspora "geht der Djihad in die Form des Wortes über, vorzugsweise in die Gestaltungsmittel der Täuschung, wie sie bereits von Allah und seinem Propheten vorexerziert wurden" (ebd., S. 167). Soche Strategien sichern gegenüber der für Muslime schier un-glaublichen Gutgläubigkeit des "Dialogs" einen entscheidenden Vorteil, denn: "Ein auf Täuschung geschaltetes System, das auf ein System trifft, dem die Fähigkeit zur Erkennung der Täuschung fehlt, begründet die klassische Konstellation von Betrüger und Altruist, die sich in jedem Falle zugunsten des Betrügers stellt. (...) Im Zentrum des islamischen Rechts steht die Gewalt als Pflicht. Was man in Europa bislang nicht verstehen wollte oder konnte, ist die im Grunde einfache Dynamik einer vormodernen Ideologie, die sich religiös legitimiert. Sie besagt, daß Macht im Islam derjenige übernimmt, der den Geltungsanspruch des islamischen Rechts durchsetzt. Aus Sicht der europäischen Toleranzidee ergibt sich eine fatale Konsequenz: Die Muslime sind zur Anwendung von Gewalt nicht nur berechtigt, sondern um so mehr verpflichtet, je weiter sich die Geltung der Scharia ausbreitet. (...) Vereinfacht lässt sich sagen, ein Christ missbraucht seine Religion, wenn er Gewalt anwendet, und ein Muslim missbraucht seine Religion ebenso, wenn er Gewalt nicht anwendet."
This is from three essays of his. I have red four major books by him, not the most easiest and shortest lecture. He also is co-author of the Islamic Encyclopedia (that I do not own), which is one of the leading academical standard works on the matter.
He lives under protection by the BND since longer while now. Muslims have sworn to kill him.
Skybird
02-10-06, 05:42 PM
translation of the text above:
Dialogue with Islam becomes the more an assisting tool for the cause of Islam, the more unwaveringly the (West's attempt for) dialogue denies the militant and aggressive character of this religion and hides it with the fiction of tolerance and peacefulness. (…) Those that are responsible in our communities demand the ongoing internalization of tolerance, but without telling us because of which concrete interest of ours the hosting population shall welcome the ongoing Islamic immigration. The information, how this interest should be justified in reason and argument, and on what kind of new identity the new tolerance shall be based upon, is non-existent. (…) Europe is busy with allowing itself being abused in the name of tolerance and the “dialogue”. One is witnessing a slow but enduring infiltration of Europe’s structures… (…) Like I am in favour that we open ourselves for the new, the foreign, I reject the integration of influences and social powers that put democracy at risk and put universal values in question, in order to establish a regressive and obscure view of the world, that lives 14 hundred years behind present time. (…) Taqjya means a rule of behaviour that is part of Islamic faith, that mandatorily demands the Muslim to deny his Islamic faith, or to feign a conciliatory attitude, if it is of use for his personal situation or Islam in general. Under the protective shield of this cover up, the strategy of sneaking Islamization could be followed without resistance. (…) Especially in the diaspora, that is experienced as being hostile (Skybird: for Islam everything that is not Islam, is hostile), djihad changes (Skybird: from military conquest) to the use of words, to the formal means of deception, like it already had been exemplary practiced by Allah and his prophet. Such strategy secures a deciding advantage for Muslims, against an unbelievably credulity of the “dialogue”: a system that acts by the rules of deception, and that meets a system that does not have the ability to see through these deceptions, forms the classical constellation of defrauder (cheater?) and altruist, and that inevitably, in every case, ends in favour of the defrauder. (…) at the center of Islamic justice/law there is the principle of violence as a duty. What in Europe so far no one wanted or no one could understand, is a simple dynamic of a pre-modern ideology, that legitimizes itself by use of religion. It says that in Islam power is taken by that person that pushes through the totalitarian demand of ultimate validity (“Geltungsanspruch”) of Islamic law. From the perspective of European ideas of tolerance, there is a most fatal consequence because of this: Muslims are not only legitimized, but even are obliged to use the more force and violence, the more the validity and influence of sharia expands. (…) Said in simple terms, a Christian is abusing his religion if he uses force and violence, a Muslim abuses his religion when he does not use force and violence (to expand Islam).
TteFAboB
02-10-06, 08:58 PM
Always refreshing to hear intelligent life from Germany.
Very good selection of quotes. That's exactly the reason why Islam can be a powerfull force against western civilization, but also why using it as such is to play with fire.
And here is where the west has an advantage, unlike the Islamic world we live in a dynamic society, and the struggle against Denmark gave us the opportunity to spot, mark and weed out the vermin within, supporters of a naive "monologue" with Islam, of better Islamic integration that would inevitably lead to a homogenic Islamist culture. Europe will leave this crisis more aware than ever before, while the Muslim world and the Islamist strategy remains the same.
Hold on, let me grab some popcorn.
Lol...dats making lemonade outa lemons...gj :up:
Skybird
02-11-06, 02:06 AM
Always refreshing to hear intelligent life from Germany.
Very good selection of quotes. That's exactly the reason why Islam can be a powerfull force against western civilization, but also why using it as such is to play with fire.
And here is where the west has an advantage, unlike the Islamic world we live in a dynamic society, and the struggle against Denmark gave us the opportunity to spot, mark and weed out the vermin within, supporters of a naive "monologue" with Islam, of better Islamic integration that would inevitably lead to a homogenic Islamist culture. Europe will leave this crisis more aware than ever before, while the Muslim world and the Islamist strategy remains the same.
This crisis? Is only a symptom, the tip of an iceberg, a process of infiltrating Western laws and social structuires to anchor enough Islamic influence there that with time going by it can project more and more influence and interfere with the comstitutional self-defintions of Wetsern states without beeing attacked by them in self-defense.
Will write an essay on the vital problem of the socalled "dialogue with Islam". Our twisted percepotion of this "dialogue" is the biggest threat europe is facing today. Becasue from within our middle parts of our most vital institutional structures are collabporating with Islam and push it's interests - and even are not aware of it.
PeriscopeDepth
02-11-06, 02:31 AM
Will write an essay on the vital problem of the socalled "dialogue with Islam". Our twisted percepotion of this "dialogue" is the biggest threat europe is facing today. Becasue from within our middle parts of our most vital institutional structures are collabporating with Islam and push it's interests - and even are not aware of it.
Do you mean Europe Skybird or the West in general? I hope your essay is in English, sounds interesting.
Happy Times
02-11-06, 07:00 AM
Europe will do just fine if we check the Islamists, end imigration from muslim countries, start immigration only from east-asia and stop expanding after the balkans. :hmm:
The whole stinking world is going down wake up people it's the end times.
Where is Iceman now with his bible quotes ? :lol:
Deamon
Kapitan
02-11-06, 12:42 PM
four horsemen of the appocolypse
The Avon Lady
02-11-06, 12:55 PM
A sad vote, Sixpack, as religious freedom is one of the conquests of our civilization, and not the less important.
What's the next step? Again an imposed national party, racial values and son on? What a brilliant advancement!
Dear Mr. Dhimmi,
Wake up (http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060210/480/nai12902101623).
You will soon have no freedoms to boast about.
Best Regards,
Avon
Abraham
02-13-06, 04:14 AM
@ The Avon Lady:
A very graphic and shocking expression of the radical Muslim view on a basic human ('Western") freedom.
I have a gut feeling that she considers freedom to vote and freedom of religion just the same...
:down:
The Avon Lady
02-13-06, 04:36 AM
@ The Avon Lady:
A very graphic and shocking expression of the radical Muslim view on abasic human ('Western") freedom.
Why do you assume that this is a "radical" Muslim view? What do you base your minimilzation on?
Tell us what "moderate" Islamic teachings state about the same subject. :hmm:
Skybird
02-13-06, 06:06 AM
The statement on that demonstrator's sign is 100% representative for Islam's understanding of freedom on the basis of Sharia. There is no freedom imaginable outside the coverage of Sharia. A muslim opinion putting that in doubt and agreeing to concessions in this is in principle a heretic who alrready have lost faith (and deserves death penalty, according to Sharia and Quran). That is NO radical or fundametalist interpretation of Islam - it is heart and core of Islam "as is".
I'm in the finishing phase of a new essay of mine, on this queer thing this "dialogue with Islam" is. There especially this detail is treated en detail. ;)
The Avon Lady
02-13-06, 06:21 AM
I'm in the finishing phase of a new essay of mine
Oh no! Not another one!
Someone stop him (http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/)! :arrgh!:
Skybird
02-13-06, 06:26 AM
I don't hold a weapon at your head to make you read it, AL! ;)
It also holds a premier, since I upgraded works suite 97 to works suite 2005 (I love ebay: 12 bucks... :lol) ), I finally have a working English spelling correction (for English it was broken in Words97 if running under win XP) :)
I don't hold a weapon at your head to make you read it, AL! ;)
That's a hit to the gut :arrgh!:
The Avon Lady
02-13-06, 08:20 AM
La Fallaci decapitata (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21265).
:nope: :nope: :nope:
Sixpack
02-13-06, 09:05 AM
edited:
Interesting read, Lady.
La Fallaci decapitata (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21265).
:nope: :nope: :nope:
Well that was a boring read :down:
The Avon Lady
02-13-06, 09:32 AM
La Fallaci decapitata (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21265).
:nope: :nope: :nope:
Well that was a boring read :down:
Another intellectually stimulating and comprehensive review of yours!
TteFAboB
02-13-06, 09:40 AM
Thanks for the link Avon Lady.
It seems most of the world was sleeping, and only a handfull woke-up so far.
But it is obvious, many sympathize with the Muslims because the idea of being able to change law, change society, based on the pressure of a little group of organized protesters, suits them perfectly fine. As we seen in the Middle East, it's easy to command brainless people around, it's easy to get hold of a little mass, and manipulate it to maneuver them as you see fit. Let's ban nuclear energy! Manouver your little group of activists, get it banned, but then ignore the fact you continue to buy nuclear energy from France.
Marxism, like Islam, is devoid of self-criticism, blame all your problems in America and carry on with your daily life, whatever happens, it must be better than America, whatever you feel like, you must always feel superior to America and consider yourself part of a culture of résistance. I've read on 4 Italian newspapers that the cartoon protests are Bush's fault to be blamed on the war in Iraq, if there never was a war in Iraq, the Danish cartoons would never sparkle the wave of protests, naive to say the least, because the Imman who travelled from Denmark to Syria carrying the cartoons and a few extras wasn't motivated by any particular reason other than to destroy the whole of Europe, Italian newspapers included.
La Fallaci decapitata (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21265).
:nope: :nope: :nope:
Well that was a boring read :down:
Another intellectually stimulating and comprehensive review of yours!
The trouble is all old news reshaped, rehashed, and reworked and so on. Please something new if possible.
The Avon Lady
02-13-06, 09:56 AM
La Fallaci decapitata (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21265).
:nope: :nope: :nope:
Well that was a boring read :down:
Another intellectually stimulating and comprehensive review of yours!
The trouble is all old news reshaped, rehashed, and reworked and so on. Please something new if possible.
I'll try to link to article with more pictures in them for you from now on. :-j
La Fallaci decapitata (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21265).
:nope: :nope: :nope:
Well that was a boring read :down:
Another intellectually stimulating and comprehensive review of yours!
The trouble is all old news reshaped, rehashed, and reworked and so on. Please something new if possible.
I'll try to link to article with more pictures in them for you from now on. :-j
You have a wicked sense of humour :D
Skybird
02-13-06, 10:21 AM
There is a strong lobby in the West that is propagating Muslim immigration. Muslim groups, but non-Muslim grouops as well, coming from politics and economics. I sometimes wonder if they WANT to turn Western democracies into the totalitarian-style order of Islamic fascism in order to make the masses easier to command around and have an easier way with their economical profit interests that way.
If the whole world went Islamic over night they still will not be happy!
Skybird
02-13-06, 10:28 AM
If the whole world went Islamic over night they still will not be happy!
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." (Bertrand de Juvenal).
I hate the stupidity of crowds.
TteFAboB
02-13-06, 11:08 AM
There is a strong lobby in the West that is propagating Muslim immigration. Muslim groups, but non-Muslim grouops as well, coming from politics and economics. I sometimes wonder if they WANT to turn Western democracies into the totalitarian-style order of Islamic fascism in order to make the masses easier to command around and have an easier way with their economical profit interests that way.
Indeed Skybird, buy some Italian newspapers, read for yourself.
Outrageous, but true, there are groups indeed that want to destroy Europe, crush this pathetic culture, this rotten Democracy, and replace it for their ideal of a new [old] world, they view Islam as revolutionary heroes, the holders of the key to fulfill their goals.
I found the quote that can explain it better than I can:
Le léninisme (Dominique Colas), chapter 1:
"(...) il n'y a pas d'autre pour Lénine. (...) A la place de l'autre, comme objet d'une identification possible, est placé l'Autre, le garant de la verité, la source des énoncés vrais, c-est-à-dire l'histoire (...) Pas de recours pour qui parle à Lénine: il n'y a pas d'Autre de l'Autre. Il n'y a pas de Marx de Marx: comment invoquer Marx contre un énoncé marxiste? Comment invoquer Lénine contre Lénine? Comment parler au nom du prolétariat contre le parti du prolétariat, c-est-à-dire contre le prolétariat? Comment parler au nome des paysans opprimés contre le parti des opprimés? Impossible de parler au nom de l'Autre à l'Autre. Il serait fou celui qui parlerait à Dieu au nom de Dieu"
“La gesticulation hystérique est alors un effort, nécessairement voué à l'échec, pour maintenir le lien intersubjectif, pour essayer de faire reconnaître son existence par l'autre”
A terrible attempt to translate it into English (maybe google can do it better):
"For Lenin, the other does not exist. Instead of the other as something identifiable, the "Other" is put as the guarantee of the truth, as the source of the true enunciates: the history. There are no alternatives to those who speak to Lenin: the Other of the Other does not exist. The Marx of Marx does not exist. Afterall, how can Marx be invoked against a marxist enunciate? How can Lenin be invoked against Lenin? How can you speak in the name of the proletariat against the party of the proletariat - against the proletariat iselt? How to speak in the name of the oppressed peasants against the party of the oppressed? It is impossible to speak in the name of the "Other" to the "Other". Only a madman would speak to God in the name of God."
"The histerical gesticulation is an effort necessarily doomed to failure, to maintain the intersubjective lace, to attempt to make your existence recognizable by the other."
Rough, nonetheless, it is understandable why some Western figures would sympathize with Islam and welcome the destruction force of Islam with open arms, they share much in common, in their essence and in their desires, wishes. That's why some lunatics go to the point of identifying Islam as the victim, and the Islamist strategy as nothing but a natural, justified, [revolutionary] fight for their own existence, and as such, Islam is seen as superior to Europe and the West in general.
Obviously, "dialogue" is doomed to failure, you cannot defeat Islam in the democratic realm, because for them, "Democracy" does not exist (the "Other" does not exist), but only in the realm of force. Islam does not retreat, does not withdraw, does not leave the scene by its own legs, it must be removed. That's why it is useless for the West to tell to Islam: "Listen, you do not burn embassies alright? That's bad! Listen, don't justify and encourage terrorism, that's bad alright?".
"Dialogue" is useless, Islam must be hindered, stopped, they do not know any other language.
Wim Libaers
02-13-06, 06:43 PM
Nice sig, Skybird :lol:
IHave you already read this one?
http://www.jesusradicals.com/library/ellul.php (the second one, Betrayal of the West, large pdf, I suggest not trying to read it in the browser but right-clicking and downloading)
To be honest, I haven't had the time to read much of it myself. But from the few parts I did read, I thought perhaps you'd be interested, and others on this forum too. This doesn't mean I fully agree with the author, he's a Marxist Christian (a bit strange perhaps, closest description I could think of) apparently addressing a mostly left-wing audience. Still, there are good things in his work. He (Jacques Ellul) is perhaps better known for his work on propaganda.
Skybird
02-13-06, 08:17 PM
I'll have a look at it, thanks!
Abraham
02-15-06, 01:38 AM
@ The Avon Lady:
A very graphic and shocking expression of the radical Muslim view on a basic human ('Western") freedom.
Why do you assume that this is a "radical" Muslim view? What do you base your minimilzation on?
Tell us what "moderate" Islamic teachings state about the same subject. :hmm:
The statement on that demonstrator's sign is 100% representative for Islam's understanding of freedom on the basis of Sharia. There is no freedom imaginable outside the coverage of Sharia. A muslim opinion putting that in doubt and agreeing to concessions in this is in principle a heretic who alrready have lost faith (and deserves death penalty, according to Sharia and Quran). That is NO radical or fundametalist interpretation of Islam - it is heart and core of Islam "as is".
I still have to answer the Lady & Sky.
While agreeing that basic Western freedoms are considered means of suppression of Islam or diversion from Islam by mainstream Islam teachings I still consider that the demonstrators on the linked picture voice the "radical Muslim view" on a basic human ('Western") freedom.
Radical means without compromise and as such this word is in accordance with what Skybird wrote.
However, although the teachings of Islam may be radical, the followers are often not. To give immediate proof of this is that of the ca. 900.000 Dutch Muslims only about 300 (= 0.033%) attended a nationwide demonstration last Saturday against the Mohamed-cartoons at the Dam Square in Amsterdam.
Recently I have made some business trips to Northern Cyprus and spoken with some Turkish Muslims, some of them living in Holland. They warned me for the growth of funsamentalism in Turkey and were - for that reason against Turkeys potential EU membership. Their vision on radical or mainstream Islam is that they don't buy that Sharia-crap and prefer Western freedoms. Still they would say that they are Muslims.
Ergo:There are radical Muslims who are devoted to Islamic teachings and there are other Muslims who interpret these rules in their own way. While many Muslims may be (in my view: wrongly) offended by the Mohamed-cartoons, a smal but very vocal radical minority turned towards violence. I am convinced that most Muslims don't want to have anything to do with this kind of violence.
By the way: In a whole day in Northern Cyprus you see far fewer veils (no burka's) than in walking for 5 minutes in the centre of Amsterdam.
The reason should be clear to anybody with some basic sociologic knowledge (and supports my point of view).
Sixpack
02-15-06, 07:40 AM
By the way: In a whole day in Northern Cyprus you see far fewer veils (no burka's) than in walking for 5 minutes in the centre of Amsterdam.
I havent been in donwtown Amsterdam in ages, but do you actually see muslims women wearing burqas there ? :o Actually it should ofcourse be no surprise to me... :(
Abraham
02-15-06, 09:06 AM
By the way: In a whole day in Northern Cyprus you see far fewer veils (no burka's) than in walking for 5 minutes in the centre of Amsterdam.
I havent been in donwtown Amsterdam in ages, but do you actually see muslims women wearing burqas there ? :o Actually it should ofcourse be no surprise to me... :(
Ahoy Sixpack!
Veils plenty of them, Burka's only in certain area's, Osdorp, Slotermeer, Amsterdam Oost and then relatively seldom. No Burka's in downtown Amsterdam, but veils combined with traditional non-Western clothing a lot.
Very few veils on Northern Cyprus and no burqa's at all. Women wear jeans and shirts.
Wim Libaers
02-15-06, 04:16 PM
Their vision on radical or mainstream Islam is that they don't buy that Sharia-crap and prefer Western freedoms. Still they would say that they are Muslims.
Some would question that self-definition. It's a bit like Christians who will only enter a church for marriages and funerals, and don't follow the Bible in their life. Can you still call them real Christians?
Skybird
02-15-06, 04:20 PM
Their vision on radical or mainstream Islam is that they don't buy that Sharia-crap and prefer Western freedoms. Still they would say that they are Muslims.
Some would question that self-definition. It's a bit like Christians who will only enter a church for marriages and funerals, and don't follow the Bible in their life. Can you still call them real Christians?
:up:
The Avon Lady
02-15-06, 04:28 PM
Their vision on radical or mainstream Islam is that they don't buy that Sharia-crap and prefer Western freedoms. Still they would say that they are Muslims.
Some would question that self-definition. It's a bit like Christians who will only enter a church for marriages and funerals, and don't follow the Bible in their life. Can you still call them real Christians?
An appropriate term in this case would be a "cultural Muslim" or a "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only". Both terms are used by JW's Hugh Fitzgerald to describe Amir Taheri (http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/010206.php), who has unfortunately been revealed to be a major letdown.
The whole stinking world is going down wake up people it's the end times.
Where is Iceman now with his bible quotes ? :lol:
Deamon
Revelation 22
[11] He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
Just for you and Steed.
Abraham
02-17-06, 10:58 AM
Their vision on radical or mainstream Islam is that they don't buy that Sharia-crap and prefer Western freedoms. Still they would say that they are Muslims.
Some would question that self-definition. It's a bit like Christians who will only enter a church for marriages and funerals, and don't follow the Bible in their life. Can you still call them real Christians?
No, you can not call them "real Christians" in my opinion. I find the term "people with a Christian cultural heritage" more appropriate then "cultural Christians" would be.
I think there are within the Muslim-world many people that you could call "people with a Muslim heritage", but, because of the Muslim nature of their social environment, their ties to the Muslim culture and religion would probably still be stronger than is the case with "people with a Christian cultural heritage".
But I also think there is quite a group of devote Muslims who see their believe as something personal, prefer the 'peaceful' quotes in the Quran above the violent ones and leave any (extreme or "mainstream") activism to others, trusting that Allah will eventually judge the 'infidels'.
Anyway, as I said there are about 900.000 so called "Muslims" in Holland. Many of them are annoyed to (deeply) offended by the - in my view - quite innocent cartoons. Some of then are definitely not offended - so they said on TV. Only 300 protested.
My conclusion is that contrary to what some people on this forum say and the radical imams in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would wish, there is no such person as 'The Universal Muslim', who reacts on cue to whatever is said about or done to Islam. The Muslim community - certainly in the West - is divers.
People who know my viewpoints on terrorism understand that what I wrote in this posting does not mean that I underestimate the danger to our society that can be (and is) caused by Islamofacists.
I just hate generalisations.
Skybird
02-17-06, 12:10 PM
I am not worried about every indicidual calling himself/herself muslim. but by definition, there is only one kind of true muslim there can be, and this is one MUST NECESSARILY base on Muhammad, Medina-model,Quran, Sharia. this kind of person must lie to us if it is in the interest of Islam. It must be of a most intolerant, anti-intellectual mind, and it must be supportive for and obedient to a totalitarian and fascist order of politics, society, and religion. It must follow the Sharia and the quran without exception, in Islam you do not have the freedom to eclectically choose only the things oyu like and ignore the rest, it does ot work that way, this is no religion like christianity where you can reject the old testament and parts of the new and only pick the part on Jesuss and still would be a Christian. ISLAM IS NOT LIKE THAT. A person like above must be ALL of ISLAM without beeing able to reject any of these characteristics, else this true Muslim is not Muslim in a Muhammadian, Sharian, Quaranian, Medinesian understanding. And these four adjectives and no other describe what Muslim is.
If A man for whatever a reason violates all these four descpritions completely, than it is good for him and good us and good for all. He then is probably no problem. but one thing he is not, and cannot be, and will not be: Muslim. Islam has not that spectrum of interpretation to fall off these descpritions, and still be a Muslim.
So what you are essentially meaning when describing those many silent Muslims (why is it that not many of them have protested AGAINST the hostile reactions towards these cartoons, btw, but against the practice of western freedom of speech and uncensored medias??), are muslims that have great deficits in knowledge about the ideology they claim for themselves. This is nothing new for me. What certainly also is true with regard to Christians. But neither true nor faked Christians nowadays run around and burn embassies. They also do not silently tolerate it, if for their feeling their religion is abused to bring chaos and submission onto others - in the name of their religion.
Have you ever heared of the Spanish tradition of Schädel-Minarette, that would translate into "skull-minaretts" in English? This is the true and only Islam there is and that I speak of. During periods of the cordoba Caliphate and Islam in occupied Spain, they used the beheaded skulls of Christians to built and improve the minarettes of mosques they were buidling - by the hundreds and thousands. It was such a beloved tradition that christian skulls even were exported by the tens of thousands to North-West Africa , and the evil habit of skull-mosques spraid east to a degree that nowadays can no longer be reconstructed by archeologists. Somewhere between Marocco and Egypt it stopped to move further east, probably.
That reminds of the Nazis, that used body fats of murdered KZ-prisoners for industrial processes, and their hair as sealing compound in U-Boot-yards.
An ideology that since these times and earlier has not changed a bit, is a threat to us all.
You see diversity in Western Islam, where by definition of Islam does not allow diversity. If these people then really are apostates, like you indirectly must claim, then I am wondering why they are so invisible in helping to protest and fighting back true Islam and it's ugly faces.
You see diversity in Islam. I see silent tolerance for Islamic violence and effort to make the West submitting, accepüting more and more concessions to Sharia and Islam, and I see lacking effort to defend Western principles. Those Muslims that I was friend with during my life, were no Muslims, you see. I cannot be friend with a real muslim, like I cannot be friend with a Nazi or A KKK-member. My tolerance has limits. Two of them I even talked out of being under that evil spell, which caused them to stand up against their families - which is a very severe thing for them, the one was Turk, the other Armenian. Both converted to Chrstianity. They had lived long enough 8since their childhood) in the West to built the knowledge and the educated thinking to wake up from that nightmare they had been occupied by.
Like it or not, Abraham, but those Muslims you describe, maybe they are not Muslims, but still they have more in common with THEM, than with US. they are like the many Germans that maybe have not voted for Hitler - but also did not raise to fight against him when there still was time. there ignorrance was the basis that made hitler possible, because wothout their inactivity hitler would not have been able to raise. so, they may not have been active Nazis. But nevertheless they were part of the problem.
Abraham
02-17-06, 02:06 PM
Your argumentation is very persuasive, Skybird, the more since I share your vision on traditional Islam and we agree broadly on the thread subject.
I want to thank you for the information about the skull-minarets. That's gruesome, but those were gruesome times (form all sides).
Still, from my recent conversations with "Muslims" I get a - not fundamentally, but partly - different impression than you have. "Muslims" who warned me for Turkey joining the EU and it's possible voting tactics in the EU parliament, "Muslims" who were abhorred by the recent Islamofacistic violence, "Muslims" who hardly cared about going to a mosque anymore. And in Northern Cyprus they were no exception.
If you don't call them Muslims - which is they still call themselves - you might have to distract anything between 30% and 60% of the world Muslim population, right?
I see diversity amoungst Muslims. You see silent tolerance for Islamic violence and effort to make the West submitting.
But I am sure that we both are right. Diversity implies that your view of the Muslims can be realistic, as well as my view. Mind you, I agree that Muslims in general don't share our Western principles. Still I wonder how people like Konovalov feel and think. I just can't generalise and view all Muslims as a threat. I even wonder if all devote Muslims are a threat, considering Konovalov is a devote Muslim. But I certainly agree with you that the Muslim world gets much more exited about some cartoons of the prophet than about Muslim terrorism. And I find it a shame that some Muslim clergymen set a price on the head of a Danish cartoonist without a wave of protest going through the Muslim community.
That's why I don't disagree with you on principle, I just want to see a little bit less generalisation...
Ya crack me up Skybird. :)...I'm sorry you have the view that some Christians cast off parts of the Bible...I was trying to teach my son just last night about...Point Of View...he had a school assignment and a few questions to determine which were opinion and which were fact....This was intresting because it brings up the old...Point of View thing...I told him there are millions of Muslims that he watches on the tv with me who think blowing themselves up for there religion is Right! and there are millions of Christians who think it's wrong! Point is it is all about point of view and opinion...and what one thinks as fact may really only be opinion.I told him the song of Knights in White Satin....Red is Green and Yellow White but we decided which is right and which is an illusion....I finsihed with him on the note of "You know what they say about opinions"...he said no what?..."They're like A-holes everyones got one"...he was rolling on the floor laughing...my wife was was not though hehe.Ya know I see you Skybird laying it out like this in regards to Islam and Christianiaty for that matter and I think you miss a big point here...at least with Christianity anyway....God does not follow some set script or set of laws made up by man...the Earth and everything in it was...good....and for our use.I don't know man... the only Christian law is LOVE....how much more do u need to know?How can that simple law be construed into so much kaos and confusion.....I believe from what little I know of Islam or any religion that at it's heart must be LOVE....if not than it's probably not that good of a belief.But what I am getting at too is the flexibility of LOVE....Love doesnt 't need to follow a script and I just think many many people of all beliefs think this too...Love can change,adapt, overcome.So please don't discount beliefs on the pretense of....O....this group does't follow the letter of the law or belief they must suck....I think you will be a very lonley person my friend.....My "Opinon" any ways. :) :up:
Skybird
02-17-06, 05:28 PM
Your argumentation is very persuasive, Skybird, the more since I share your vision on traditional Islam and we agree broadly on the thread subject.
I want to thank you for the information about the skull-minarets. That's gruesome, but those were gruesome times (form all sides).
Still, from my recent conversations with "Muslims" I get a - not fundamentally, but partly - different impression than you have. "Muslims" who warned me for Turkey joining the EU and it's possible voting tactics in the EU parliament, "Muslims" who were abhorred by the recent Islamofacistic violence, "Muslims" who hardly cared about going to a mosque anymore. And in Northern Cyprus they were no exception.
If you don't call them Muslims - which is they still call themselves - you might have to distract anything between 30% and 60% of the world Muslim population, right?
I see diversity amoungst Muslims. You see silent tolerance for Islamic violence and effort to make the West submitting.
But I am sure that we both are right. Diversity implies that your view of the Muslims can be realistic, as well as my view. Mind you, I agree that Muslims in general don't share our Western principles. Still I wonder how people like Konovalov feel and think. I just can't generalise and view all Muslims as a threat. I even wonder if all devote Muslims are a threat, considering Konovalov is a devote Muslim. But I certainly agree with you that the Muslim world gets much more exited about some cartoons of the prophet than about Muslim terrorism. And I find it a shame that some Muslim clergymen set a price on the head of a Danish cartoonist without a wave of protest going through the Muslim community.
That's why I don't disagree with you on principle, I just want to see a little bit less generalisation...
You do not solve the contradiction I point at: the definition of Islam for which Islam itself gives the rules: basing on Muhammad, Quran, Sharia, and historically: Medina-model, UNCOMPROMISED. You can't fragmentize it into different types of ISLAM, you CANNOT. It's a folly, and self-deception, a com0liment to yourself that you - and we - will pay dearly for. As long as you can'T solve that contradiction - labelling someone a muslim because he wants to see himself like that while at the same time he is violating and rejecting the most essential parts of what it means to belong to Islam - your views are necessarily missing reality, and thus are not convincing. That would be a personal thing of yours only, if it wouldn't be exactly this attitude in the West that cultivates tolerance for the most hostile ideology there is, from a Western perspective.
Have you red my recent essay, two days ago? You perfectly fit into that pattern I describe there.
As long as you make a diffrence between what you call "traditional" islam, and other kinds of Islam, you have no clue what Islam is about. And that is true for other Muslims that consider themselves to be Muslim as well.
with regard to Konovalov, we still exchange mails occasionally, so muczh for my attitude towards him, and vice versa. He has prooven with all his behavior and attitude that he showed on this forum, that he is no Muslim at all. He just is under a spell. We leave it to that, and still can talk to each other.
Try to understand that, Abraham, or you will always miss with great precision: there is only ONE Islam with crystalclear criterias for what it is. there is no two Islams, not three, and not four or more. Only ONE. and this is the Islam you can see throughout history, it has that history not because it is violating it's laws, but becasue it is in correspondence with it's laws. This is different than in the bible, which never gave the fundament to build a church, and thus also holds no arguments why there can only be one church, or several churches. It even cannot explain why there is any church at all.
You cannot tame Islam. There is only one islam: the fighting Islam. It's part of it's identity. Stop fooling yourself.
Most people do think in comparable pattern like you on Islam. This has brought Europe to where it is. You can't criticise the state of Europe and it's attitude toeards turkey, Islam, and such - and stick to that method of yours at the same time - that is a contradiction in itself.
Islamic history does not know our concept of time. For them, time stand s still , for Allah has revealad himself and muhammad was his envoy, his voice and prophet, every change, every developement could only mean to move away from the most perfect condition that is possible. That'S why I referred to those skull-minarets - the attitude that led to their building is the same that rules true Islam today. It is not clever trying to put that into a more relöative popsition again by saying "the times were like that, and Templars were not kind either" - you only do one thing by that: deconstructing even more of our values and standards, so that we become even more vulnerable for them beeing replaced with the values of Islam. Those moderates you mentioned are sticking to "Islam" by habit, and tradition, but their wish for seeing modernisation and more liberties only shows that they have understood how destructive and unhuman and totalitarian Islam is. It's a compliment for them, but nevertheless they are no Muslims anymore.
Not evertyhing should be put into relative relations to others, tolerance needs limits, else it is the law of the jungle, and not the most reasonable and most tolerant will win, but the strongest. And that is the situation we head for in europe. Your attitude is dangerous, Abraham. Again, I refer to my latest essay, "The dialogue that never was". I cannot put it any better than like I did in that one.
Abraham
02-17-06, 10:47 PM
... Not evertyhing should be put into relative relations to others, tolerance needs limits, else it is the law of the jungle, and not the most reasonable and most tolerant will win, but the strongest. And that is the situation we head for in europe. Your attitude is dangerous, Abraham. Again, I refer to my latest essay, "The dialogue that never was". I cannot put it any better than like I did in that one.
I sincerely hope you are not right - you probably also do. I'll keep in mind what you wrote and reconsider my position.
As far as your essay is concerned, I've printed it - you owe me a HP cartridge - and I'll read it later today...
:D
Skybird
02-18-06, 09:28 AM
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/825
Banning the Quran?
From the desk of Koenraad Elst on Fri, 2006-02-17 14:16
The controversy over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has generated plenty of hypocritical commentary from politicians and other public figures in attempts to convey an impression of moderation and neutrality. In most cases they do so by taking up the quarrel in the middle and condemning both the “insensitivity” of the cartoonists and the “overreaction” of the Muslim world, both alleged instances of “extremism.” They expect us to believe that there is a moral equivalence between the exercising of a fundamental right (freedom of expression) and the attempt to abolish this right.
Many also adopted the snobbish position that the cartoons should not have been published because they were “substandard.” Ooh, those gourmet cartoon connoisseurs, they will settle for nothing but the best. Other evasions include the implication of ulterior motives, e.g. that the “real” object of the controversy is Denmark’s restrictive immigration policy rather than the cartoons. This goes against all the testimonies of Muslim government spokesmen and demonstrators. Another diversionary tactic is to declare that “the real issue” is unemployment of young Muslims in Europe, as if that was a concern of the violent demonstrators in faraway Beirut or Peshawar.
I do not know if hypocrisy is better or worse than the second most common position encountered in liberal circles: openly siding with Islamic fanaticism and putting the blame fully on the cartoonists and their editors, as Bill Clinton did, Kofi Annan and the Foreign Affairs spokesmen of the Bush and Blair governments. In the Brussels weekly Knack, the Belgian equivalent of Newsweek and Time, with a weekly circulation of 160,000 copies, the editor, Karl Van den Broeck, launched the innovative conspiracy theory that the Neoconservative cabal, with tentacles stretching from Washington DC and Tel Aviv to Aarhus and Brussels (this website!), had planned the whole cartoon riot incident as the trigger for the Clash of Civilizations and the invasion of Syria and Iran, no less. Well, not all that innovative: a similar view was expressed by Ayatollah Khamenei.
A well-known Belgian novelist (Kristien Hemmerechts), a noted feminist and cultural relativist (who has spoken in favour of female circumcision), stated that since the Muslims are so sensitive to the cartoons, the latter should not have been published. Typically, the liberal sympathisers of Muslim “sensitivities” do not seem to notice how childishly selfish the Muslim position is. For centuries and until today, Islam has ordered the destruction of everything that is sacred to other religions, starting with the 360 idols in the Kaaba (including Jesus and Mary) smashed to pieces by Muhammad himself, down to the Bamian Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, the weekly vandalising of Hindu temples in Bangladesh, or the destruction of Christian churches in Iraq during the last couple of months. In many cases, moreover, not only the places of worship but the worshippers too have been assaulted. What an arrogance for Muslims, with their heritage of iconoclastic insensitivity, to put up this show of indignation for a handful of harmless cartoons. And now we are being expected to feel pity for those poor touch-me-nots?
In Muslim circles, meanwhile, only a few independent intellectuals have come out unequivocally on the side of freedom of expression, most bravely the Jordanian journalists who confronted their readers with the poser: “Which is worse for Islam, these cartoons or the TV images of Iraqi mujahedin beheading their hostages?” They were arrested. So were several Algerian journalists, for republishing the cartoons, and their paper was banned from publication. Likewise a leftist Syrian journalist was arrested under the law against “insulting religious feelings” for having proposed a dialogue about the cartoon controversy on the plea that violent protests could only hurt the image of Islam. And in Konya, Turkey, a woman journalist was stoned for not wearing a headscarf while reporting on a demonstration held under the motto “loyalty to the Prophet.”
By contrast, many Europe-based Muslim intellectuals who joined the debate, esp. those who opened their interventions with a plea against violent protest by way of captatio benevolentiae (then followed by “but…”), only did so as the first, non-violent line of attack in the broader Islamist offensive against freedom of expression and of the press. They are the ones who stand to gain most from this type of crisis: with every Islamist bomb attack by the violent wing, the non-violent vanguard’s prestige with Western governments and media goes up. They become ever more needed as “dialogue partners” to fend off the violent option. But objectively they are working for the same goal as the armed Islamists: to curb democratic freedoms as a crucial step in the imposition of an Islamic order on the West.
A good example is the Brussels government-funded “intercultural” lobby group KifKif. Last Tuesday, seven of its board members, including widely read intellectuals of Moroccan origin, such as Tarik Fraihi and Sami Zemni, published a plea for “limits on freedom of speech.” They argue that “an absolute freedom of expression can only benefit antidemocratic extremists.” This position is evidently the opposite of the truth. Unfettered freedom of expression is a fundamental precondition for a democracy, because a democratically sovereign citizenry needs to be able to inform itself about the existing spectrum of opinions on any matters that come up for decision-making. In a democracy there cannot be two unequal categories of citizens, with one allowed to select what the other may hear and read. Conditional freedom of expression is typical of dictatorships. Hitler and Stalin did not oppose the freedom to express opinions that were in line with their own policies, and likewise, KifKif does not advocate limits on the expression of opinions in line with its own.
But since the job of this type of lobbying groups is to put a democratic face on their attacks on the foundations of democracy, their spokesmen cleverly use the language of human rights. Kifkif writes: “The self-declared defenders of absolute freedom of expression forget (deliberately?) the second part of the much-discussed article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, not coincidentally the part in which the limits of freedom of expression are defined.” This is bluff aimed at fooling lazy readers, for those who take the trouble to read the ECHR article in question, which guarantees freedom of expression, will find that the limits mentioned there are conceived in terms of national interest and morality, not of prohibiting criticism of religious doctrines and leaders. The only straw to which the KifKif authors can cling is the following: “An important limit according to the ECHR is the ‘protection of the rights of others.’” This they take to include “the right to respect (art. 8) and the right to freedom of religion (art. 9).”
This is another attempt to fool unsuspecting readers, for the rights guaranteed in articles 8 and 9 are in no way thwarted by any form of self-expression. The “respect” mentioned in art. 8 is not the right to freedom from criticism which Islam is now demanding, but the very tangible right of freedom from encroachment on one’s private correspondence, home and family life. The freedom of religion guaranteed in art. 9 is similarly unaffected by the expression of opinions. The religious freedom of Christians, for instance, has not been violated by the various forms of criticism which have been aimed at them since the 18th century (but it has been violated by various forms of prohibition, repression and pogroms in Communist and Islamic countries).
The KifKif authors continue: “Freedom of expression is limited in this sense that exhortation to hate or racism are forms of verbal violence and therefore punishable offences.” That is not in the ECHR, but granted, this idea does underlie the anti-racist legislation in some European countries. The Newspeak notion of ‘verbal violence’ is an attempt to vitiate the debate by pretending that strong rhetoric amounts to, and is somehow equivalent to, physical violence. Again this is a trait which is typical of dictatorships, where dissenters are routinely criminalized as ‘trouble-makers irresponsibly sowing conflict in society’ and the silencing and incarceration of dissidents is justified as ‘necessary for the people’s well-being and social peace.’ In fact, it is precisely the so-called ‘violent’ speech that is protected by the principle of freedom of expression. Sweet talk is not controversial and no-one seeks to curb it. The opinions that need to be protected from censorship are precisely the opinions that hurt. As George Orwell said: if freedom of speech means anything at all, it is the freedom to say things that people do not want to hear. That is, those things that the targeted will resent as ‘verbal violence.’
The reference to anti-racist restrictions is yet another attempt to distort the debate, for criticism of religion (which is the basis of any criticism, according to Karl Marx) has nothing to do with race. There are many Muslim-born critics of Islam, racially identical with the Islamists they criticize, people like Ibn Warraq or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Conversely, there are quite a few European-born converts to Islam, often with a convert’s militant zeal. I have been on debating panels with several of them, and a few have made headlines by joining the armed struggle in Afghanistan or Iraq against Western forces, whose soldiers are mostly white like themselves. If the KifKif advocates of Islam’s right to veto criticism have to resort to the misplaced rhetoric of anti-racism, diverting attention from the religious basis of the controversy, this may well indicate that they know that their core argumentation is weak.
And it is. Suppose we take them at their word when they argue: “Freedom of the press and of expression cannot and must not become a licence or alibi for gratuitous, mendacious and disrespectful messages.” The first two adjectives are bluff, again. There was nothing ‘gratuitous’ about raising the issue of whether artists are afraid to depict the Muslim’s prophet. A Danish author of children’s books had discovered this to be the case, which was the reason for Jyllands-Posten’s invitation to the cartoonists. Neither was it gratuitous when two of the cartoonists connected the person of Muhammad with the contemporary theme of terrorism. It so happens that hundreds of terrorists in the past few years have justified their actions with references to the words and actions of their Prophet. It is not gratuitous or frivolous for a newspaper to address politically relevant and topical facts.
Secondly, there was nothing ‘mendacious’ about depicting Mohammed in a way that associates him with terrorism. KifKif has no monopoly on access to the orthodox Islamic sources about the life and works of the Prophet of Islam. We can check for ourselves that the Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet’s words and deeds) and Sira (biography) literature describe Mohammed as engaging in armed raids, plunder, hostage-taking, rape, assassination of critics and mass-murder of prisoners. Instances of this conduct are also confirmed and justified in the Quran itself. In a democracy it is perfectly legitimate to point this out, whether laboriously in a scholarly paper or more caustically in a cartoon.
As to the third adjective, one may agree that from a certain angle the cartoons can indeed be considered as ‘disrespectful.’ But in that case, one must likewise judge ‘disrespectful’ the sources on which the message they convey is based. As we just pointed out, the notion that Muhammad was a kind of terrorist is not an invention of some 21st-century ‘Islamophobe’ or ‘racist,’ it is based on Arabic sources compiled by orthodox Muslims and enshrined as the basis of Islamic doctrine and law. If cartoons critical of the Prophet are to be banned, what does KifKif propose to do with the Hadith collections and the Quran: ban those books in toto or merely excise the parts that testify to Muhammad’s acting in contravention of the ECHR?
I am unambiguously opposed to any curtailment of the freedom to buy and sell and read and discuss the Quran. Everybody should read it, for that is the best immunization against silly sop-stories about Islam being ‘the religion of peace’ or Muhammad being ‘the first feminist.’ Anyone who, like KifKif, demands restrictions on publications that cast the Muslim’s prophet in a negative light, is demanding restrictions which would logically affect the basic texts of Islam. If logic had any force of law, the KifKif board members would be well advised to ponder the old proverb: “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.”
The question of how the Islamic texts would fare under a KifKif regime becomes all the more relevant in the light of another assertion of the board members: “Kif Kif is of the opinion that there are limits to freedom of expression. t is at least necessary that those limits are the same for everybody. […] We wish to live in a tightly coherent society with equal rights and duties for everyone. A society without racism, whether it is Islamophobia or anti-Semitism.”
This seems to mean that disrespect for any religion should be treated the same as disrespect for Islam. So, if insults to Islam or the Muslim community must be prohibited, then so must insults to other religions and their adherents. (In the new nomenclatura, this might be called Kafirophobia, aversion to Kafirs or ‘unbelievers;’ if the KifKif authors mean what they say about equality, they should henceforth twin every mention of ‘Islamophobia’ with ‘Kafirophobia.’) How would the Quran fare in such a system?
The Quran contains dozens of verses that preach hostility to Pagans (polytheists, Zoroastrian ‘fire-worshippers’ and atheists), Jews and Christians. It denounces their teachings as false and evil and a sure passport to hell. By modern Western standards the author of the Quran is entitled to his freedom of opinion on religions. But by KifKif standards, these insulting comments on other people’s religions are not so innocent and ought to be curtailed, especially in a multicultural society. (And indeed, the orthodox sources agree that it was Muhammad’s lifetime achievement to have transformed Arabia’s multicultural society into a monolithic Islamic one.)
The Quran also expressly forbids conversion from Islam to other religions, while allowing and encouraging the reverse. This becomes problematic in the light of the KifKif authors’ plea for equality and reciprocity. It is also in contravention of the ECHR’s article 9, to which they purportedly adhere, for this article defines “freedom of religion” as including “the right to change one’s religion.”
In addition the Quran rejects the principle of “equal rights and duties for everyone,” which KifKif now invokes. Apart from the candidly affirmed inequality in rights and duties between the sexes (which admittedly exists in all religions), it explicitly ordains inequality between the different religious communities. To the non-monotheists Muhammad denied freedom of religion completely, and as for Jews and Christians, the Quran only allows them to retain their faith if they accept the status of third-class citizens and pay a ‘toleration tax.’ When the Prophet’s Islamic state developed into an empire under his successors, the ‘rightly-guided Caliphs,’ this principle was elaborated into an entire system of legal inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims. This inequality pervades the Shari’a (Islamic law) and even now it is already seeping into our society, e.g. in the immense and sometimes violent pressure of Muslim communities against relationships or marriages of their daughters with non-Muslims.
There is even grimmer reading, however, in dozens of Quran verses that go further than mere doctrinal disputation and actually enjoin the Muslims to go out and fight the ‘infidels.’ The core text of Islam is not merely disrespectful towards other religions, it extols killing and glorifies dying in the war against the non-Muslims. If the text of the Quran should not be clear enough, one must bear in mind that it is a companion volume to Muhammad’s life story as a religious leader and military conqueror. Consequently, if one should have doubts about the meaning of jihad, literally ‘effort’ but in practice ‘war against the infidels,’ one need merely put the verses in their real-life context. Muhammad understood and used the term unambiguously in the sense of ‘war,’ not some ethereal or metaphorical ‘struggle against the evil in ourselves’ but an actual war involving horses, weapons, stratagems and blood. The Quran explicitly teaches hatred, hostility and the use of force against other religions and their adherents. By KifKif’s own standards, it clearly exceeds the “limits of freedom of expression.”
Fortunately most Muslims do not take the Quran literally. Their common sense, as well as human inertia and immediate self-interest make them focus on their own life’s business rather than on the struggle against the infidels. When pressed for a Quranic justification of this Islamically lax conduct, they may invent some conveniently soft and non-literal interpretation of the more militant verses, or even (before ignorant Westerners) deny their existence altogether. And so they get on with their lives much like their non-Muslim neighbours do.
However, this does not render the Quranic injunctions against the infidels innocent. Of the hundreds of dedicated Muslims who committed acts of terror in the last couple of years, a handful may have been temperamentally violent and predisposed to committing such acts regardless of their religion. They may be the “evil people” whom President George W. Bush blamed for the 9/11 attacks in his bid not to implicate Islam. But many others have crossed the threshold into terrorism through the teaching of the Quran and the example set by the Prophet. After all, they understand the Quran as nothing less than God’s own revelation. Unlike the ephemeral cartoons, which have not motivated a single act of violence against Muslims in the months since their publication, the Quranic injunctions are intended to be taken seriously.
Consequently, when people plead for restrictions on free speech on the grounds that it may cause offence and even inspire hatred and active hostility to certain communities, they ought to realize that they are in effect demanding limitations on the freedom to read and recite the Quran. Is that what the KifKif board members want? If not, they should withdraw their plea for limits on the freedom to express criticism of religions and religious figures including the prophet Muhammad.
PS: please note that in the present article and in other publications, I have practised a reasonable degree of respect for the founder of Islam. Of course I have not used any sycophantic or reverential appositions every time I mentioned his name, such as “Peace Be Upon Him” or “PBUH.” But at least I have repeatedly referred to him as the “Prophet,” and capitalized, no less. As a non-believer, I would have been entitled to describe him each time as “the so-called prophet.” Since I am not in the business of annoying people with such pedantries, I have refrained from exercising that right. It’s just a question of sensitivity, you know.
Skybird I'm sorry to put it like this, but you have simply entered a nonsense one-way street with your reasonings about Islam. You define Islam as radical, totalitarian and primitive, and when you get the proof that someone so-called muslim does not follow that pattern, you simply say that he can't call himself a muslim. This is a self-circling reasoning that leads nowehere, it's a tautology completely empty of any sense.
In my average experience as jurist, I can tell you that I daily see in the courts nearly unbelievable interpretations of any law. You woulnd't really believe how a lawyer can manage to make a law say exactly the opposite of what it means through argumentation.
Quran has a set of laws, a set of principles and yes it is radical and intolerant in its base, much like any religion. But it can be interpreted nearly as far as you want, and serve to support more tolerant ideas. The bible itself is full of radicalisms and intolerance, and it has however been reinterpreted as a more tolerant religion than it originally was.
You have today catholics, orthodoxs, protestants, evangelists, anglicans and a good amount of minor variants who claim to be the only ones making the correct interpretation of the bible. In the Islam itself you have the chiis and the sunnis, with rather different views in many basic aspects.
You are commiting a tremendous error when trying to create -and freeze- a definition of what Islam is, tailored to your ideas and opinions, and then excluding any other interpretation of it. When doing so, you are nothing else but supporting the vision the radical muslims have about Islam. You could as well say that only The witnesses of Jehova are doing a correct interpretation of the Bible, and that all the rest, the catholics, orthodoxs, and any other, are not real christians.
Arguing like that is just cheating :down:
Skybird
02-18-06, 12:54 PM
Hitman, proove me by the scriptures, the history, the statements by leading international personalities of Islam that I am wrong. Show me were I am leaving the example set by Muhammad, where I am leaving the demands of Sharia, Quaran, where I am wrong in describing the history of Islam. Prove me that taqyia is a harmless thing. These things are the basis of Islam, you cannot bypass them, you simply cannot.
BTW, you seem to miss that Sharia is no law of the type western laws are made off. What you are used to by practicing at court is irrelevant. It teaches you nothing about Sharia, nothing. Again, you cannot compare.
You also cannot compare Bible to Islam. both are two different things by structure. Both caused two historical develoepment that also are very differently structured. I repeatdely wrote in threads and essay how big the difefrences are between church, and Islam, and why these differences do exist.
You look at Islam with a westerner'S eye, you press it into a form that fits your tools and ways of understanding. That way you think it is not any different to what you are used to, culturally. you think it can be translated, like English to German, French to Italian. You are wrong.
If someone tells me he hates hitler, thinks the holocaust was a tragedy, war is wrong, racism is wrong, the rights of the individual are important compared to the collective community, then I wouldn't believe him if he tells me afterwards that he thinks of himself as a fascist, or Nazi. If he really believes what he said, he is no fascist, necessarily.
If someone comes to me and tells me he thinks free opinion needs to be tailored to the interest of a special ideology, if he tells me that minorities inside the community have the right to develope their own subculture, bypassing the whole community's majority decisions and finally trying to take it over, and that the free practicing of religion allows him to act politically in any way without any resistance to that policy allowed, and if this someone tells me he considers himself to be a liberal, or a democrat, I also wouldn't believe him.
Hate to say it, Hitman, but you are arguing exactly like most westerners do today, and as I described in that essay three days ago. The reality I lined out simply is too hard for you, so you ignore it's hard aspects and evade into fantasizing you cannot find evidence for in scriptures and history. If you think the attacks in madrid had nothing to do with religion and Islam, then you are off-course by 180°.
In the 30s, people outside Germany also thought it cannot be what is happening in Germany, and any clear action was avoided that maybe would have irritated German sensibilities. That's why Hitler was able to act without resistence until it was too late. The reality that hitler was, was too hard for most people to accept it as a fact. They simply could not believe it. It cannot be what shall not be.
The diverse interpretations of quran you pointed at, is misleading. It is better characterized as contradictions. since more than one millenium Islam is surpessing any alternative to it's orthodoxy, and I wait for anyone to show that it is not strictly based on the quran, hadith and sharia in doing so.
You are of too much good faith, Hitman, and you do not realize how your good will is abused by that. People like you are well-meaning, but nevertheless they actively form the conditions in europe that are actively helping the spreading of Islam in the West. In my last essay, I pointed out where this will lead to, necessarily, because of the nature of Islam. I again must refer to that essay as part of my answer to you. You think you have invited a guest. But this guest is not satisfied to be a guest, he thinks by that open door he has a right to become the next boss in the house. ISLAM IS NOT CHRISTIAN CULTURE; OR WESTERN CULTURE; IT DOES NOT COMPARE. If you let one of them in, you have let in all global community of Ummah, in their understanding. In all 1400 years of it'S existence Islam was brought to halts only by one factor: superior power. where that resistence was not given, it advanced aggressively.
BTW, you are from Spain. In your country there is a tradition, that in villages one day a year the successful defeat of the Muslims during the reconquista is celebrated. It is like a Spanish liberation day, if I understand it correctly. They had attacked your ancestors and taken their land and drove them away or kicked them into slavery. The reconquista was a legal and just effort of your ancestors, no doubt, it was their country, their home. This year many villages will not do these celebrations anymore, for being afraid of islam feel insulted again like by those cartoons. Parts of your poeple do no longer stand to their history, in order to appease Islamic aggression. But it will not stay appeased, it's demands will grow, the concessions you will need to accept will become greater and greater. You social community, your legislative will reflect this in the coming years and decades. Maybe you think this means nothing. But for me this rings an alarm bell.
I do not go again into the theory of Islam and personal experiences of mine in Muslim countries. I have done so in depth in the past years.
http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=48674
The Avon Lady
02-18-06, 01:11 PM
Islam will dominate! (http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/010283.php)
http://www.jihadwatch.org/Islamwilldominate.jpg
The Avon Lady
02-18-06, 02:00 PM
The new Germans (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=19291_Muslim_Protesters-_God_Bless_Hitler#comments).
The new Germans (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=19291_Muslim_Protesters-_God_Bless_Hitler#comments).
Hitler is in HELL.
The Avon Lady
02-18-06, 02:14 PM
The new Germans (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=19291_Muslim_Protesters-_God_Bless_Hitler#comments).
Hitler is in HELL.
Apparently his spirit lives on.
The new Germans (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=19291_Muslim_Protesters-_God_Bless_Hitler#comments).
Hitler is in HELL.
Apparently his spirit lives on.
In Evil people.
tycho102
02-18-06, 02:52 PM
Wasn't it Aisha who said, "I have never seen women suffer as much as the Believing women"?
It's always strange to see Muslim women protesting. I guess it's a testament to the brainwashing technique. I suppose the Dear-Leader of North Korea has adopted a similar technique, to keep his people under control.
Or, more likely, the susceptible people have lived to breed, and the resilient ones have been weeded from the flock. :hmm:
Hitman, proove me by the scriptures, the history, the statements by leading international personalities of Islam that I am wrong. Show me were I am leaving the example set by Muhammad, where I am leaving the demands of Sharia, Quaran, where I am wrong in describing the history of Islam. Prove me that taqyia is a harmless thing. These things are the basis of Islam, you cannot bypass them, you simply cannot.
It is far easier than that: I have personally lived with a family of turks in Germany two months, and saw tolerance, respect and integration in the german society. And they called themselves muslims. BTW the marriage of teh parents was arranged when they both were 16 in Turkey...and yet they opened their minds enough to change his vision about this and many other things once in Germany.
You have admitted that Konovalov is a reasonable person, and that he has tolerant ideas. And he calls himself a muslim.
I could also point out hundreds if not thousands of european muslims who have not the slightest intention of doing any revolution or riots for the Islam.
Are they all wrong? Are they all false muslims? Or are they simply doing an alternate interpretation of Islam?
I might be sticking to western's vision of things Skybird, you are probably right on that. But you have yet to proof that a ideology or religion is stronger than the men called to apply it. If those men want to change it through interpretation, they can do it. There are thousands of examples in history about that.
Skybird
02-19-06, 06:36 AM
Hitman,
I have lived with Turks myself, too, you know. Two or three of my closest friends ever were Turks, and Northafricans. My second martial arts teacher was a Turk, he later became the trainer of the Turkish national team. I owe him very much. I even gave my life and that of our group into the hands of one of them who was our scout, and aide, he was Algerian. For professional reasons I stayed for half a year in Eastern turkey, Anatolia, the kurdish warzone, and half a year in Iran. Privately I travelled other muslims states for another couple of months, namely Egypt. I never have seen a tourist hotel from inside, we lived as private guests, or camped outside. I know these people from personally meeting them, in the relaity of their usual every-lifes oin their poor villages outside the huge cities under western influence, you know. Most people in these countries call themselves muslim, like most people in Germany call themselves Christians. I call most Christians here false christians, or hypocrites, a majority of them goes to church at Xmas, and for the rest of their year they manage there lifes in no christian way at all. Not christian in the understanding of the teachings of Jesus. It was different in for example Turkey. In the metropoles, the "tourist traps", the people and the country appeared to be Westernized, tolerant, liberal. But 'christioans are still massively supressed in turkey, sometimes even killed. The disgust for Christians is immense in Islam, and always was, as I have illustrated very often now. In the anatolian East and the kurdish areas, in the heartland of Anatolia, poverty is immense, Europeans cannot believe how poor they are over there until they have seen it with their own eyes. but tourist busses don'T drive there. What I found there (mind you that over 85% of turkish people live outside the huge cities) was ultra-orthodox harccore fundamentalism at it's best. And often we were not welcomed at all. Sometimes just cool politeness, at best, honouring their habits to host a traveller that way. Sometimes even not that. It was not because of their poverty, but because we were not Muslim , and were Westerners.
Concerning Iran, the last year or so my mind has started to bring the many impression I had collected, like pieces of a puzzle, into order. I needed to drastically reformat the image I expected to build up, the picture I now have is a very different and more unfriendly one - that way many experiences I had in Iran, events that gave me contradictory impressions, suddenly make sense. My attitude towards Iran is no longer that liberal or positive than it was some years ago. Ahmadinejadh has nothing to do with that, and the nuclear dispute has nothing to do with that again.
concerning the Turks in germany, you cannot compare them to the native turks. Both are different, and there is a third kind of Turks as well, that is the offsprings of the first generation immigrants, that stand between all coutnries, they cannot go to turkey, they are not accepted there, and they are not wanted by german society, and what'S more: they frankly say they don't want to be German, at no cost. they speak German, but see them selves as a.) Muslims, and b.) as Turks. While many of their parents stayed in Germany for 20, 30 years now - still many do not speak one word of German. Turks like you described are living here, too. But you are wrong when saying they are laying the standards for all Turks that are living here. We have many ultra-conservatoves, MANY, as well. And honour-murders and enforced marriages as well as building subcommunties with self-chosen autarky that have no intention at all to integrate, are a very big problem in Germany, and in other countries like Britain, Holland, france as well, and the public slowly gets aware of it. Old politicians of ours that were in governements long time ago call the immigration policy of Germany a terrible mistake nowadays, and admit their goals for integration have failed with flying colours. Amongst these for example ex-chancellos Helmut Schmidt. Else he is the most intelligent and clever chancellor this country has ever seen. Interference from turkish government also is a growing and already very big probllem. Under bypassing german laws, or demanding us to bypass them ourselves, Turkish government puts heavy pressure on German communties to arrange conditiuons in poublic life and in schools, that allow Turkish emmigrants to remain turkish identity, never to fall of their faith, not needing to integrate into German community, helping to increase turkish immigration, and changing communal arrangements so that turkish language, culture and Muslim faith remains untouched, for example there once even was demand that Turkish shall become second offical language in Germany. To a huge degree, not always, but most of the times, these attempts fail, when beeing conducted in public awareness, but I do not want to know what gets done in the hidden. The dispute about crucific and head-scarf is one such signal. Muslims demand us christians in our christian culture to remove christian symbols from public buoldings and classrooms, if they are demanded to give up head-sarfs. Brussel even helps them in that, by pressing for a european identity that is totally culture-free and actively rejects any expression of our cultural past. well, We are not allowed to live in our places and homes accroding to our tradtions if we want them to leave our culture untouched? Had they come to us, or did we go their countries of origin? the liberal attitude has changed into so much spineless and unlimited relativization of history and cultural identity, that in some years our children will be raised with no identity at all, or what? This is the kind of weakness that Islam is exploiting to the max. This is it's great chance to accieve what I couldn'T accieve with military force in centuries before. Today Islam has anhcored stronger basis in europe than it ever had before. A totalitarian, fascist ideolgy with a strong, militant drive for expansion at all cost - tolerated by european liberalism. If you are in doubt how the story will end, ask me. I can tell you easily.
I had Turkish friends at school. I know the situation of Truks in Germany better than you do. I lived with the ordinary, poor 'turks inside their own country, our team sometimes was hosted in private households in villages. Additonally, I must claim that I have collected a lot of academical input about Islam and it's scriptures, and history. don't tell me about the turks, okay?
The alternate interpretation of Islam - is not possible. Sorry, but your willingness to believe so shows that you simply have not enough knowledge about Islam, it's content and it's structure, and the kind of totalitarianism it is creating as a logical consequence of that. I donÄ't want to offend you by that, but as long as your knowledge on Islam only depends on snapshot impressions from medias and what some Muslim freinds tell you about it, you know nothing about it. You need to study ther structure of it'S scpritures, the way these scriputres had formed and changed, you must need to know the biograohy of muhammad and what type of personality you conclude by that, and you mjst know it'S history to see where it is difefrent form Western hsitory, for what reasons, and why this history is so very much in correspondence with Islam's self-defintion. As long as you do not collect knoweldge abiout these themes, you know nothing, only some media snippets. You are manipulated exactly like the type of people I described in my latest essay here: http://people.freenet.de/Skybird/DialogueWithIslam.rtf .
Changing Islam by the kind of interpretation you refered to - results in something that is not Islam, then. I also think you allow yourself too get caught too easily. Most westerners allow that.
the more "tolerant" states like tunesia, Lybia, Marocco seem to show more willingness to allow more tolerance and freedom, on the other hand in all three coutnries there are strong fundamentalist movements, and they are growing. I predict these experiment there will end like the short laicist intermezzo in turkey, here fundamentalism just hided, and then came back in force. Mind you that Erdogan is a fundamental muslim. And his party is a fundamental religious party. Under Atatürk this would have been impossible. what will happen in Egypt once Mubarak is no longer there, will become an exciting story. The pressure of the Americans to allow more demcoracy caused a sudden jump for an opposition that forms up around the radical fundamentalists Muslim brotherhood. I'm sure this was not what the WH had in mind. And the more you move to the East, the more the illusion of liberal tolerance of Islam dissapears. you cannot imagine the status of women in Afghnaistan. Well, I can, we stayed for some time in the Iranian-Afghanistan border region ("smugglerland"). A dog has a better life than women there. And you don't need many dogs to buy one.
Islam does not know peaceful coexstince with Non-Islam. It's scriptures, it'S teachings, it's historcial example-setting prooves that it is not like that. the contradictory of Quaran will always allow it to act violently, while giving some quotes to say it is not violant. But truth is, the nu,mber of passages that explicilty call for the violent overcoming of infifdels, for supressing women, for killing of what is non-Islam, are are much, much greater in numbers than the indications that it sees this different. Also. the more "tolerant" quotes of Quran you find in those parts of it, that derive to an early phase of Muhammad'S doing, it seems he later changed his mind on many things and he preached more explicit violance and intolerance (what he also practices himself, and exessively so). I have written about this often enough, Hitman. Can you imagine a Christianty without Jesus? No? but you tell me Islam can be imagine without the grim and brutal reality of Muhammad? I am not in need to proove my opinion anymore, for I have given all info needed and you have simply choosen to believe different. Believing is not knowing. As a matter of fact, I have made my statements clear, and founded them over the last months, with dozens of pages of essays and thread discussion. As a matter of fact I see you in need to proove that I am wrong. simply saying "But my Muslim neighbourd are kind and friendly people" is not enough.
And lastly you simply ignore the fact that since centuries different cultures are systematically and constantly get eredicated inside muslim territories, by force. That is hard historcial fact, and it still works in the present. I tell you this is because their acting is completely in correspondence with their religion. I also tell you that Islam necessarily cannot do differently. Two or three yeras ago a document of the Vatican's secret service leaked thorugh, counting for around 150000 christians beeing murdered in anti-christians progroams in all Muslim countries ear by year. I even do not count wars here, then we would be in the reach of millions of victims.
In the anatolian East and the kurdish areas, in the heartland of Anatolia, poverty is immense, Europeans cannot believe how poor they are over there until they have seen it with their own eyes. but tourist busses don'T drive there. What I found there (mind you that over 85% of turkish people live outside the huge cities) was ultra-orthodox harccore fundamentalism at it's best.
Sure. But the fact is that muslim turks in germany are not always like that. Perhaps the money changed that and eroded their radicalism? Wherever I see echonomical progress in a muslim country I see a relaxation in habits and more tolerance -even if not to western standards-, and that is also a truth difficult to ignore, Skybird. Some weeks ago, when Hamas won the elections I saw an interview in the TV with many people in Palestina now concerned about a possible step back in freedom. They were women who did not wear veil or Burkha, and Palestinians who had pubs where alcohol was sold. How is it possible that in the same society where radicals blow themselves with dynamite in a israeli bus also had a law allowing to sale alcohol?
concerning the Turks in germany, you cannot compare them to the native turks.
Yes. But the comparation was about different kind of muslims, not about different kinds of turks, remember?
for example there once even was demand that Turkish shall become second offical language in Germany
Yes we also had a demand here that Mallorca becomes one of the "Länder" and german is allowed as thrid official language. Just joking, Skybird...this comment only to let the debate loose a bit of pressure. :-j
The alternate interpretation of Islam - is not possible. Sorry, but your willingness to believe so shows that you simply have not enough knowledge about Islam, it's content and it's structure, and the kind of totalitarianism it is creating as a logical consequence of that. I donÄ't want to offend you by that, but as long as your knowledge on Islam only depends on snapshot impressions from medias and what some Muslim freinds tell you about it, you know nothing about it. You need to study ther structure of it'S scpritures, the way these scriputres had formed and changed, you must need to know the biograohy of muhammad and what type of personality you conclude by that, and you mjst know it'S history to see where it is difefrent form Western hsitory, for what reasons, and why this history is so very much in correspondence with Islam's self-defintion. As long as you do not collect knoweldge abiout these themes, you know nothing, only some media snippets
May be. But you can believe me when I say that I have read more about Islam than just "Media Snapshots". I don't question however that you have a deeper knowledge of Islam, I just point out that some so-called muslims live daily ruled by very different principles than those seen in Iran or Afganistan, f.e.
That brings us to the next quote:
Changing Islam by the kind of interpretation you refered to - results in something that is not Islam, then. I also think you allow yourself too get caught too easily. Most westerners allow that.
Again you could be right, and I don't deny it. But anyway I think that we should give people the opportunity to create this new or alternative Islam. If this is no longer the real Islam, then I agree with you in that we shall not let it come into Europe. Basically I pretend that any muslim in Europe respects some basic rules of peaceful cohexistance, even if that collides with their ideas. A good example of this is how the catholic church has to accept that abortion is legal in many countries, f.e. They can argue and claim against it, but they don't use violence to impose their criteria. Is this possible with Islam? With what you call the real Islam, probably not.
Islam does not know peaceful coexstince with Non-Islam. It's scriptures, it'S teachings, it's historcial example-setting prooves that it is not like that. the contradictory of Quaran will always allow it to act violently, while giving some quotes to say it is not violant. But truth is, the nu,mber of passages that explicilty call for the violent overcoming of infifdels, for supressing women, for killing of what is non-Islam, are are much, much greater in numbers than the indications that it sees this different.
I have never said that I would tolerate a religion which enforces violence as a way to achieve its goals. Here is where alternate interpretations should come to solve any contradiction. Either an adaptation of islam that fits european requirements is practiced here, or the original is banned.
I would like to remark that I do not pretend to allow the practice of Islam in Europe to be like f.e. what was being done in Afghanistan. I pretend that the practice I have seen to be tolerant and respectful is allowed.
If this is not the real Islam, then I would have to agree with you Skybird. However, my personal ideas prevent me from believing anybody who claims to make the "real and correct" interpretation of anything. (That's why I don't consider myself christian, muslim, jew or any other religion).
Can you imagine a Christianty without Jesus? No? but you tell me Islam can be imagine without the grim and brutal reality of Muhammad?
Well I have a big imagination....and currently I see for example a good amount of the christians who do not believe in the virginity of the virgin Mary, or the infalibility of the Pope in faith's matters :)
And lastly you simply ignore the fact that since centuries different cultures are systematically and constantly get eredicated inside muslim territories, by force. That is hard historcial fact, and it still works in the present. I tell you this is because their acting is completely in correspondence with their religion. I also tell you that Islam necessarily cannot do differently.
Christians and jews lived under Islam domination for centuries in Spain. Sure they payed more tributes and were not allowed to build churches, but they were not exterminated. That is also a historical fact here in Spain. Wether Islam can do different or not, that is where we will never agree. :up:
Skybird
02-19-06, 10:54 AM
Socalled radicals or extremists claim to rightfully attack the kind of Muslim moderates you refer to, Hitman. I conclude that these radicals are no perverts that distort Islam, but that they are in very in strong correspondence with Islam'S demands, because theose moderate muslims they accept to kill - are not muslim in their understanding. but if the murderers are representative for Islam ideology, than this tells something about the "Islmaic" identity of those that are considered to be moderate. Imagine to call some on the Nazi leaders a moderate, what would you mean by that? Is their a fascism that has sympathy for liberalism, democracy? what is democratic totalitarianism, how top define that? It canot be defined. Both ideologies are antagonists. some things simply do not go together. The moderate muslims you defend do exist, to varying degrees (someone, I think it was AL, just have linked a survey today in a parallel thread saying that 40% of British muslims were in favour of implementing sharia in GreatBritain. i remember a comparable survey from spring last year in Germany, where 35 or 45 %, I do not exactly remember, of muslim immigrants said they want Germany to change in favour of the Sharia. In both surveys it was said that a comparable ammount of muslim immigrants were aginst that. However, 40% is 40% - it is 40% too much). But as I said in thta essay, the more Shria spreads, the more the moderates in a Muslim community tends to turn into "fundamentalists". Remember the profile of the bombers in london? that they failed to quaolify for the typical terroist profile, but instead were representative for well-integrated, fully adopted Muslim immigrants in Britain. This was what raised quite some concern in the security community. Islam has it'as own inner dynamic, and this dynamic does not follow the rulkes we are used to from our european culture(s).
Let them create a new form of Neo-Islam. Okay. But not in our house as long as the success is not guaranteed. It is too dangerous. Let them do it in their places, so that we cannot get hiot by the blast iof it goes wrong. Like in the years before, I demand a.) more fairness in gloabl trade structures, and b.) a reduction of the West's dependency on Muslim oil. I would add the demand that we shall not give support to countries that do not drastically reduce their levels of corrutpion first, we have no obligation to sink billions of tax dollars into private pockets. You certainly remember that I criticised they way the effort of the Iranian liberals to start some reforms was let down by the West and especially was hindered by America. Let them have their attempt to modernize, okay. but not in our homes and communti8es. If you let one muslim in, you let the whole global Ummah in, in their understanding. We need a quarantine for self-protection. It is in our most vital interests.
Alternative interpretation of quran are not possible without deleting quran. The simpßle attempt to change quran is under death penalty, is an apostasy. You encourage the moderates. You do not realize that this inevatibly, necessarily will raise strongest violent reactions by islam to see them suffering the punishment they deserve by that. In a way you are spilling oil into the fire. islam can only change - if it can change at all: it hasn't done so since over a millenium - as a whole, it has actively supressed and killed any attempts to form teological traditons and philosophical schools and has shown far greater brutality and greater success in that than the church in medieval europe. Think of what our ancestors went through over centuries of bitter fight and suffering. All this - Islam still must go through. and it's message is far more rigid than the message of the church back then, Islam has far inferior preconditions to be successful in that painful reformation. No, not in our house, please, only in their own places. One should not play with bruning dynamite in one'S living room.
You said you want religion beeing practices in a tolerant and respectful way. That is very kind of you. ;) But be advised that Islam pays this respect only to Muslims, male Muslims, that means (women are not consdered to be humans) A dhimmi like you is forbidden to be treated on equal terms. It is written in islamic law that dhimmis shall be treated in a way that enforces them to realize their inferior status and that enfoces them to admit they are lower beeings, they must be made feeling subdued (Sura 9/26). this is the kind of tolerance you have to expect from living in Islam but beeing only a christian subhuman.
In that essay I adressed the distorted image we have on Cordoba and grenada. I wrote:
An especially popular myth is that of the tolerant and peaceful caliphate in Cordoba, which often is referred to as an evidence of how cultivated and tolerant Islam is towards other cultures. That is complete nonsense, unfortunately. It is true that Christian and Jews were living in Cordoba, and that the very first Caliphs of Cordoba were a bit more tolerant than many other Islamic rulers. It also is true that in that epoch major scriptures from the heritage of ancient Greek culture as well as Christian scriptures, that both later influenced and facilitated the renaissance and the enlightenment, were translated and stored in archives without which they probably would have been lost. It also is true that sciences saw a blossoming during the time of the Cordoba Caliphate, and that a huge diversity of Islamic philosophers went there and formed new ways of thinking and theological dispute.
But if anyone would take from that that Cordoba was a heaven-like coexistence of two cultures, he couldn’t be more wrong.
Because the Christians and Jews lived by rule of the Islamic ahl al-dhimma, which was a system not of tolerance and protection, but of brutal suppression, discrimination, racism, financial plundering and intimidation, they were subject to excessive penalty taxes, that were the main basis for the material wealth of the Caliphate at that time. It were also the Christians and Jews that initiated the translation and conservation of old Greek and Christian texts, which was tolerated by the Muslim rulers only because occasionally they could make opportunistic use of their content for Islamic purposes. But they neither assimilated these pieces of knowledge in to their culture, nor did they develop a liberal attitude in their acting and ruling of Cordoba, or Islam in general. They were using a tool, nothing more. Like always, Islam only exploited the resources available in newly conquered territories, but it did not assimilate these into it’s own culture, never – one of the most typical characteristics of Islam (that hardly can be understood and interpreted as a sign of tolerance and liberal tradition with regard to foreign cultures). Muslim sciences blossomed indeed in Cordoba, but their range were extremely limited, as it always was and still is in Islam. In Islam only sciences are allowed that are not able to question the only accepted source of explanations, that is the Quran. Questioning the Quran, wanting to gain answers to existential question from other sources than Quran, is under penalty in Islam. Sciences that are aiming at insights that could become rivals to the Quran’s demand to be the only source of wisdom and insight, were not and still are not allowed. Sciences that have a chance to produce alternative explanations and different theories than what the scriptures have to say are considered to be sinful, and forbidden. No wonder then, that sciences like mathematics and surgery saw a cultural climax that made them superior to the scientific knowledge within Europe at that time, whereas natural sciences, philosophy and such were suppressed and eradicated, until today. Most of those Islamic philosophers and theologians the defenders of the Cordoba-thesis are so eager to refer to, when telling people how wonderful Islam was for Europe during that age, are ignoring the simple fact, that most of these agile minds and rebels found an early end either in prison cells, or in graves. The blossoming of Cordoba wouldn’t have been possible without the knowledge and intelligence of the suppressed Jews and Christians, and the immense income they generated by their penalty taxes. Muslims took the benfit from this blossoming of culture, but they added little or nothing to it, and especially they did not initiate it. And although during a certain period of time the usual progroms and violence against Christians and Jews in general saw a relative low during the early period of Cordoba, they nevertheless were treated with disgust and were sometimes hunted and slaughtered nevertheless. A practice that erupted into far higher violence once the Almohades took over the ruling of the Islamic sphere. They erected a most violent and brutal regime all over the Muslim world.
(…) Another misunderstanding of the West is with regard to the term ahl al-dhimma, which is misunderstood as a protective tolerance for members of different religions living in Islamic countries. As I have argued and illustrated in a longer thread weeks ago, in historical reality it was a status of discrimination and oppression that led as far as to regular progroms, living in ghettos, being subject to excessive taxes, and wearing discriminative clothing. Muslim children even had the right to kill Jewish males „for fun“ by throwing stones without having to fear penalties, and with rare exceptions jobs with some higher social reputation were forbidden, especially for Jews. There are some interesting Jewish historical figures, though, that made a career as Royal doctors, and higher servants in the administrative structures, though, but these are exceptions. The oppression under the covering of the dhimma-system was especially high during the ruling of the Almohades, and covered almost all Muslim territory from Spain to Persia. (…) http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=48105
Seen in this light, Hammas’ recent call for restoring the paradise-like order of Cordoba and reconquer it for Islam is not only absurd, but such a ridiculous perversion of history that one can only bitterly laugh about the lies this demand comprises. The massive exploitation of Christian and Jewish culture in that place may have been of fun and of use for Islam – for the Christians and Jews who lived there when Islam attacked their country, it was a dramatic tragedy and an age of suppression, regular massmurder and sometimes slavery-like conditions. We have no reason to enthuse about the magic and wonder of the age of Cordoba. It was Islamic aggressive conquest, suppression and exploitation, nothing else.
and what's more:
The figure of Sultan Sahaladin also plays a role here, but is object of historical distortion as well. Since Goethe and Lessing raised him to the status of an icon of tolerance that influenced the later Western evolution and building of Europe’s canon of values, Westerners and Muslims as well see him as a prime example of tolerance, wisdom and human kindness. Sahaladin drove back the “aggressors” from Europe, recaptured Jerusalem, and “cleaned the earth from the dirt of Christianity”, as Islam puts it into so prosaic words. He also was responsible for the death-sentences of several of the most promising mystics and philosophers that ever had appeared in Islam’s history and that tried to develop alternatives to the primitive orthodoxy. Amongst the victims of Sahaladin’s uncompromised defence of Islam’s orthodoxy, the mystic Al-Suhrawardi probably was the most prominent. He demanded that the basis of faith should be allowed to be altered on the basis of gaining new knowledge, and that knowledge should be allowed to grow freely and uncensored in the various philosophical and scientific branches. For that heresy Sahaladin got him executed 1198, because he was considered to be in too great parity with the teachings of Jesus. What else can be said about Sahaladin can be summarized in one sentence: he ruled with an iron fist. Why he is considered to be such a positive figure I can understand from an Islamic perspective. Why Westerners are obsessed with this image as well is a mystery for me. Our admiration for Sahaladin does not reflect historical truths. It only illustrates our idiotic childishness towards Islam.
I leave out the popular m yth on the crusades, you can read it in that essay, if you want.
Concerning the history of your ancestors, i found your words too harmless. the reality that I take from the history books concerning the occupation of Spain gave me a far more grim and violent image. And you are wrong, partially Jews and Christans were exterminated during the ruling of the Almohades, in spain, and thorughout the muslim sphere. With bitter irony one could say that hunting Christians was their hobby. And the hunt goes on until today, at varying levels of intensity, while the Jews already got wiped out everywhere. I am not aware of any structural Jewish community in any Muslim country.
The Avon Lady
02-19-06, 11:03 AM
Christians and jews lived under Islam domination for centuries in Spain. Sure they payed more tributes and were not allowed to build churches, but they were not exterminated. That is also a historical fact here in Spain. Wether Islam can do different or not, that is where we will never agree. :up:
Oh please! Not again!
"It is [for them to chose between] conversion to Islam, payment of the poll tax (jizyah) or death."
- Ibn Khaldun
May I suggest you read up on the Greek revolution of 1821 to get an idea of why the Greek had had enough of Ottoman rule. Here are some examples from essays written at the time by John Quincy Adams (http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/ja6.html), the 6th president of the United Sates.
“If ever insurrection was holy in the eyes of God, such was that of the Greeks against their Mahometan oppressors. Yet for six long years, they were suffered to be overwhelmed by the whole mass of the Ottoman power; cheered only by the sympathies of all the civilized world, but without a finger raised to sustain or relieve them by the Christian governments of Europe; while the sword of extermination, instinct with the spirit of the Koran, was passing in merciless horror over the classical regions of Greece, the birth-place of philosophy, of poetry, of eloquence, of all the arts that embellish, and all the sciences that dignify the human character. The monarchs of Austria, of France, and England, inflexibly persisted in seeing in the Greeks, only revolted subjects against a lawful sovereign. The ferocious Turk eagerly seized upon this absurd concession, and while sweeping with his besom of destruction over the Grecian provinces, answered every insinuation of interest in behalf of that suffering people, by assertions of the unqualified rights of sovereignty, and by triumphantly retorting upon the legitimates of Europe, the consequences naturally flowing from their own perverted maxims.”
“This pretended discovery of a plot between Russia and the Greeks, is introduced, to preface an exulting reference to the unhallowed butchery of the Greek Patriarch and Priests, on Easter day of 1822, at Constantinople, and to the merciless desolation of Greece, which it calls ‘doing justice by the sword’ to a great number of rebels of the Morea, of Negropont, of Acarnania, Missolonghi, Athens, and other parts of the continent.The document acknowledges, that although during several years, considerable forces, both naval and military, had been sent against the Greeks, they had not succeeded in suppressing the insurrection.”
(See John Quincy Adams Knew Jihad (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15201)).
The Avon Lady
02-19-06, 11:06 AM
I am not aware of any structural Jewish community in any Muslim country.
Morroco. Turkey. Even Iran.
But it's no picnic. The more secularized the society, the less threatening daily life is.
Wim Libaers
02-19-06, 05:16 PM
It is far easier than that: I have personally lived with a family of turks in Germany two months, and saw tolerance, respect and integration in the german society. And they called themselves muslims. BTW the marriage of the parents was arranged when they both were 16 in Turkey...and yet they opened their minds enough to change his vision about this and many other things once in Germany.
You have admitted that Konovalov is a reasonable person, and that he has tolerant ideas. And he calls himself a muslim.
The ones you know well are likely to be moderate (i.e. ignoring a big part of the rules), or at least good at faking it. So even if there is a very big group of radicals, you're unlikely to know them personally, as they will avoid friendship with infidels.
I could also point out hundreds if not thousands of european muslims who have not the slightest intention of doing any revolution or riots for the Islam.
Are they all wrong? Are they all false muslims? Or are they simply doing an alternate interpretation of Islam?
I might be sticking to western's vision of things Skybird, you are probably right on that. But you have yet to proof that a ideology or religion is stronger than the men called to apply it. If those men want to change it through interpretation, they can do it. There are thousands of examples in history about that.
An "acceptable muslim", for me, would not be one who refuses to take weapons and establish Islamic law here. That is a necessary condition, but it is not enough. To be acceptable, he/she should also resist any other muslim who does want Islamic law to rule Europe (and that goes against what muslims are supposed to do). How many of those "muslims" are here? And how do we know how far their loyalty goes? :hmm:
Skybird
02-19-06, 05:42 PM
I am not aware of any structural Jewish community in any Muslim country.
Morroco. Turkey. Even Iran.
But it's no picnic. The more secularized the society, the less threatening daily life is.
I did not know that. How big in size?
Abraham
02-20-06, 04:34 AM
@ Skybird:
Very small now, but they used to be substantial.
Before the U.N. voted for the end of the British Mandate and partition of Palestine, and the consequent declaration of the State of Israel (May 14, 1948), the Jewish population in Morocco was almost 300.000 and in Iraq 150.000. A total of ca. 870.000 Jews were living in Arab countries.
After May 1948 many Jews went 'voluntary' to Israel because they were suppressed, others were forced - sometimes by bloody riots and pogroms (Egypth & Yemen) to leave everything behind and became refugees who finally found their way to Israel.
A total of ca. 580.000 Jews moved from Arab countries to Israel.
As a personal note: I have spoken with some and their stories are as bitter and tragic as any refugee's story. In the Arab countries they sometimes lived in a kind of Apartheid society with minimal rights, not unlike the conditions that you described of the Dhimmi's.
Sixpack
02-20-06, 06:42 AM
For Pete's sake, dont you guys have a life to attend to ? :lol:
The production and reproduction of words seems to be infinite in this place, while no one gives an inch (anyway).
I can still wrap this topic up in one line:
Islam sucks in our part of the world.
Think it over, it really says it all.
Anyway, g'day. And please remember to keep it simple, stupid :know:
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