Give Americans the Rorschach test today and what they’ll detect in the ink blots are bearded Muslim “suiciders.”
(...)
Fear-mongering about Islam is a global industry. It thrives on ignorance. Obama has a unique power to break the cycle, not least by emboldening moderate Muslims to denounce terror. Nothing would do more in the long run for the security of the world.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
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9 comments:
Cohen's Deli has been mentioned before lately here. He has a superb ability to be wrong.
Pepe is the perfect PH Indicator. If he avers its an Acid, you can bet the Rothschild fortune it's a Base. If he is adamant it is a Base, then by the golden pissoires of Versailles you can bet it is an Acid.
Among the unbelievers it is precisely those who are most ignorant of Islam who least fear it, and who least respect its inherent resiliency and depth of ruthlessness. And for whatever moderates there exist among the Believers in Islam [note I do note say some euphemism for secularists, such as "cultural adherents of the Islamic tradition", I say Believers], the only chance they have is to have a powerful and clearsighted foe of Islam Militant to back them up in the nasty crunch. These "moderates" are astonishingly quiet in Islam, and if in fact they do have moderate convictions they will need to find their courage or, for all practical purposes, they may as well not exist.
Thus to that risible idiocy about Obama. He will instill as much courage in any genuinely moderate Muslims as Leon Blum was able to instill in any remnants of the Mensheviks skulking for safety in the Soviet Union. He will, however, like such as Blum, prove a useful idiot for the advancement of the Militant under the mantle of a 21st Century islamacized version of the "United Front".
And towards that sort of usefulness, PP diligently labors.
Yours is the kind of sweeping generalization that would comfort any sentient being in their conviction that the concern is overhyped.
You might as well extrapolate african-american criminality to all blacks and complain in the same vein that those that don't participate in illegal activities are suspiciously quiet about it.
For me, growing up in an environment replete with north african muslims, your generalized characterizations are simply nonsensical.
[1] That's gaseous garbage, even for Le Pew. It's the sort of bluster that tells any sapiens a fraud or an idiot is at hand.
[2] Uh, no. There are many many american blacks who speak openly and loudly and consistently against criminality amongst them [or were you generalizing to "all blacks"???]. Nor is it the case that black institutions, schools, businesses, media, and so on, are even remotely close to being ruled or coopted by those who are criminal.
Keen wit, Pepe, begins with an open eye.
[3] For you, "growing up in a region replete with "North African Muslims "
I have seen for these last few years what passes for your empirical eye. It is bedazzling alright, Le Pew.
You grew up in the 60s and 70s at a time when the North African emigres were far more secular than now, were far fewer in number and much more willing to accomodate to--rather than demand accomodation of--Europe. The mosques were not nearly as numerous or influential, and most of those you met were in the "cultural tradition of Islam" category as opposed to "the Believer" category.
So it's shocking, just shocking, that you somehow were able to stagger through that milieu with your head intact.
Just a couple of remarks, then:
The reinvigoration of Islam Militant in the last 4 decades is a global phenomenon. Wherever there is Islam, there is IM seeking, at the very least, and usually succeeding, to control the cultural, educational, and--of course--religious centers of the ummah.
Your response is: "In my little corner, at a time when secularism was at a height among North Africans, in Europe, of Muslim background, IM didn't rule. Ergo the ideological sweep of IM today must be some sort of illusion. If it didn't rule over me then, what's to worry about now?"
Le Pew, let's just say that's the sort of extrapolation from one small sample that goes beyond even "damned lies".
It would be as if I'd extrapolated from an experience of Islam limited to Ambon City, in Indonesia, at the time the local jihad carried out a series of massacres of christians and the burning of their schools and universities. Extrapolated to conclude that those few weeks I saw there were all those born into Islam are about, all just one muezzin's call away from seeking the annihilation of the Unbeliever.
You decry generalization, Pepe. Making claims as to a religious ideology based on an investigation of its history and present, a sustained encounter with its adherents and those simply born to it, and a comparison over its varieties over nations and through its sects, and careful listening to its leaders, literally over the globe, just doesn't cut it in PP.
After all, much much better to make a claim as to the general based on one little garden that briefly flourished long ago. Because, you see, BB did once have his little garden, and in that little garden the islamic roses were sweet and thorns were never seen. And only evil Christians went around plucking those sweet roses and stabbing Pepe with their thorns. Oh my.
[b]
Good parallel with Leon Blum, AA. I've made it also, on occasion -- for some reason, Pepe brings to mind memories of that quintessential befuddled pinko fellow-traveler cheese-eating surrender weakling that was Blum -- an iconic figure in the Pantheon of Planet Pepe. Alas, the whole world had to pay dearly for the colossal mistakes the Blum government made in the late '30s. Not that Pepe would give a whit about it.
aa - unlike life in the united states where people seem to make a point to lose touch with each other, I still communicate with many of my childhood friends. If any has joined IM today, they are in the closet.
I am not disputing the fact that "The reinvigoration of Islam Militant in the last 4 decades is a global phenomenon.", simply your simplistic amalgamation of all things muslim to the IM boogey-man.
Your argument is interesting though, in that you are making it sound like I am the one extrapolating when I am in fact making a statement to the diversity of inclinations and you are the one reducing all to a fantasmagoric militant common denominator. All blacks aren't basketball players, not matter how you slice it.,
You might as well extrapolate african-american criminality to all blacks and complain in the same vein that those that don't participate in illegal activities are suspiciously quiet about it.
You used to do that in Berkeley all the time, Pepe.
well I was participating - it'd made no sense to complain.
Pepe, at times it is not clear if you are truly obtuse, or simply pretend to be obtuse for the sake of the ironic gesture, or pretend to obtuseness out of some form of malice. But you do obtuse oh so well.
First, it is certainly possible that some of your childhood friends adhere to IM "in the closet" when it comes to communication with you. I have to wonder if you have ever even done something as simple as spend a day in the mosque and simply listening.
Second, your childhood friends would be of your--that secularly minded-- generation. You would expect far fewer to have moved to IM than the younger generations which have been for years now the target of the "educational and cultural" efforts Islam Militant. This is something which is as clear in France or England or Holland as it is in Algiers.
Actually, you were disputing that. You were disputing the value of what you called, apparently disdainfully, the "generalization" that Islam Militant is in fact a global phenomenon. As for that wonderfully pathetic last sentence there, a couple of questions.
First, a "boogeyman" is by definition an imagined monster used to frighten children. Is that your stance as to Islam in its Militancy, that it is a fiction used to frighten the credulous? If your stance is even close to this, and you actually believe it, then you are deranged. If you hold this stance as a pretense, then whatever the pathology undergirding your motive for so doing it is an absolute waste of time to seek to reason with you. But I will make sure to tell the dead next time that they need not have feared, for Pepe has assurred us all that those who would kill them were merely phantasms.
Second, since I precisely made a distinction between Believer's Islam, where the Militant thrives, globally and historically, and "Islam as a cultural tradition" where belief can be irrelevant and there is ample room for moderation and human variety, it would take either illiteracy or profound obtuseness [deliberate or otherwise] to come up with that amalgamation malarkey of yours.
If amalgamation is occurring it is exactly with you, and your generalization from a single local sample to Islam As Is. Where you offer such garbage as:
"When young I knew muslims of the CT variety. I amalgamate CT and Believers into one big lump called Islam. Hence what I saw with CT applies to all Islam, and does so so comletely, so globally, that the notion that IM is powerful among the Believers must be a Boogeyman. It's all amalgamation, all the way down, dude. [CT is Islam. Belief is Islam. Ergo Belief is CT. CT is not IM, ergo Belief is not IM. Ergo, as neither CT nor Belief are IM, then Islam is not IM].
You are indeed the Great Extrapolator. And your line on "hey, I talk to my ol buds from the 70s and they haven't told me they've gone IM, so Islam Militant don't exist". Whoooey, Aristo, you were definitely born for the role.
As for that last line, about blacks, it shows what passes for your thought to perfection. [although, as to why you are obsessed with skin color is a story you had better tell].
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