Posted on 01/09/2015 1:39:54 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
“Another attack in the name of religion,” I heard someone say after the vicious and vile Wednesday assault on the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo. And there is a huge problem with “religion.” But it’s not what you think.
Question: when the Nazis, Stalinists, Khmer Rouge, the Shining Path or the Weathermen committed violence, did we lament, “Another attack in the name of ideology”? Did we hear “Ideology is the problem”? That would be about as helpful as going to a doctor with a dreadful illness and, upon asking him what the problem is, his responding “Your state of health.”
Like ideology, religion is a category, not a creed. As with states of health, which occupy a continuum from excellent to awful, they both contain the good, the bad and the ugly. But modern man, not wanting to place an onus on a faith or seem a “religious” chauvinist — which is often contrary to his relativistic ideology — is a bad physician who refuses to name the disease or the cure. So depending on how he is emotionally disposed, we may hear utterances such as “Children need some religion” or “Religion breeds violence.” Ancient Aztec children had “religion,” and they learned well how to sacrifice thousands of innocents a year to Quetzalcoatl on bloody altars. And Amish children have “religion,” and peace and charity define them.
Conservatives exhibit this problem as well. So many will say “Islam is not a religion; it’s a destructive all-encompassing ideology,” or some variation thereof. They treat “religion,” that broad category, as if it’s good by definition. Not that this isn’t understandable. Raised in a relativistic and pluralistic (and these two qualities have a bearing on one another) society, they want to get along with their neighbors; so they tacitly accept an unwritten agreement stating......
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/characteristics-of-postmodernism-faq.htm
What are the characteristics of Postmodernism?
When listing the chracteristics of postmodernism, it is important to remember that postmodernists do not place their philosophy in a defined box or category. Their beliefs and practices are personal rather than being identifiable with a particular establishment or special interest group. The following principles appear elemental to postmodernists:
There is no absolute truth - Postmodernists believe that the notion of truth is a contrived illusion, misused by people and special interest groups to gain power over others.
Truth and error are synonymous - Facts, postmodernists claim, are too limiting to determine anything. Changing erratically, what is fact today can be false tomorrow.
Self-conceptualization and rationalization - Traditional logic and objectivity are spurned by postmodernists. Preferring to rely on opinions rather than embrace facts, postmodernist spurn the scientific method.
Traditional authority is false and corrupt - Postmodernists speak out against the constraints of religious morals and secular authority. They wage intellectual revolution to voice their concerns about traditional establishment.
Ownership - They claim that collective ownership would most fairly administrate goods and services.
Disillusionment with modernism - Postmodernists rue the unfulfilled promises of science, technology, government, and religion.
Morality is personal - Believing ethics to be relative, postmodernists subject morality to personal opinion. They define morality as each person’s private code of ethics without the need to follow traditional values and rules.
Globalization – Many postmodernists claim that national boundaries are a hindrance to human communication. Nationalism, they believe, causes wars. Therefore, postmodernists often propose internationalism and uniting separate countries.
All religions are valid - Valuing inclusive faiths, postmodernists gravitate towards New Age religion. They denounce the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ as being the only way to God.
Liberal ethics - Postmodernists defend the cause of feminists and homosexuals.
Pro-environmentalism - Defending “Mother Earth,” postmodernists blame Western society for its destruction.
I would offer up that Islam is simply a collection of thugs who operate on 7th century theology, that is bound in violence to meets it’s end. Those who claim they aren’t of this variety....are still living mostly off 7th century theology and incapable of thinking for themselves. They are handcuffed to the 7th century and will be forever dominated by someone.
Islam is EVIL, whatever it is.
The KORAN itself explicitly requires the DEATH of anyone who “insults” Islam or its “prophet”.
KORAN
[33.57] Surely (as for) those who speak evil things of Allah and His Apostle, Allah has cursed them in this world and the here after, and He has prepared for them a chastisement bringing disgrace.
[33.58] And those who speak evil things of the believing men and the believing women without their having earned (it), they are guilty indeed of a false accusation and a manifest sin.
[33.59] O Prophet! say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
[33.60] If the hypocrites and those in whose hearts is a disease and the agitators in the city do not desist, We shall most certainly set you over them, then they shall not be your neighbors in it but for a little while;
[33.61] Cursed: wherever they are found they shall be seized and murdered, a (horrible) murdering.
[33.62] (Such has been) the course of Allah with respect to those who have gone before; and you shall not find any change in the course of Allah.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=650389
In the Hadith, the above mandate of “Allah” is given practical example. Muhammad ordered the murder of Ka’b bin Ashraf whose “crime” was speaking ill of Islam. He got former friends of Ashraf to do the deed and authorized them to use lies and deception (Taqiyyah) to get close to their victim.
HADITH Sahih Muslim, Book 19, Chapter 41: THE MURDER OF KA’B B. ASHRAF, (THE EVIL GENIUS) OF THE JEWS [for authoring songs and jokes about Muhammad]
HADITH Sahih Muslim [19:4436] It has been narrated on the authority of Jabir that the Messenger of Allah said: Who will kill Ka’b b. Ashraf? He has maligned Allah, the Exalted, and His Messenger. Muhammad b. Maslama said: Messenger of Allah, do you wish that I should kill him? He said: Yes. He said: Permit me to talk (to him in the way I deem fit). He said: Talk (as you like). So, Muhammad b. Maslama came to Ka’b and talked to him, referred to the old friendship between them and said: This man (i. e. the Holy Prophet) has made up his mind to collect charity (from us) and this has put us to a great hardship. When be heard this, Ka’b said: By God, you will be put to more trouble by him. Muhammad b. Maslama said: No doubt, now we have become his followers and we do not like to forsake him until we see what turn his affairs will take. I want that you should give me a loan. He said: What will you mortgage? He said: What do you want? He said: Pledge me your women. He said: You are the most handsome of the Arabs; should we pledge our women to you? He said: Pledge me your children. He said: The son of one of us may abuse us saying that he was pledged for two wasqs of dates, but we can pledge you (cur) weapons. He said: All right. Then Muhammad b. Maslama promised that he would come to him with Harith, Abu ‘Abs b. Jabr and Abbad b. Bishr. So they came and called upon him at night. He came down to them. Sufyan says that all the narrators except ‘Amr have stated that his wife said: I hear a voice which sounds like the voice of murder. He said: It is only Muhammad b. Maslama and his foster-brother, Abu Na’ila. When a gentleman is called at night even it to be pierced with a spear, he should respond to the call. Muhammad said to his companions: As he comes down, I will extend my hands towards his head and when I hold him fast, you should do your job. So when he came down and he was holding his cloak under his arm, they said to him: We sense from you a very fine smell. He said: Yes, I have with me a mistress who is the most scented of the women of Arabia. He said: Allow me to smell (the scent on your head). He said: Yes, you may smell. So he caught it and smelt. Then he said: Allow me to do so (once again). He then held his head fast and said to his companions: Do your job. And they killed him.
http://sunnah.com/muslim/32/146
Repeated in Hadith Bukhari.
http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/059-sbt.php#005.059.369
These are the beliefs of every Muslim who is not apostate.
Islam does not deserve only mockery and insult. Islam deserves eradication, preferably by the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
ISLAM DELENDA EST
Disagree completely with the author. The attack was based on religion plain and simple it’s a twisted view by ideological (the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group) idiots.
Tolerant vs Intolerant? That’s what how the author breaks it down? Sad way of rationalizing it.
Did you read the entire piece?
Islam is not a religon, it is a cult.
It’s an ideology, not a religion.
There’s good and there is evil.
Those in charge make the distinction.
We’re living what happens when those who see things differently than we do define the message and don’t abide by rules or truth (and you can throw climate change zealots into this mix).
Best to not to try and understand evil (be tolerant) and invite it to sit at the table.
Better to see things clearly and not be so eager to to be fair to every thought out there.
That’s how anti-American, anti-Christianity, pro-socialists elites sucker us into giving up our rights (and why those who speak up are so quickly attacked - best to silence them before others notice how much sense they are making).
The list above about Postmodernism outlines what has been drummed into our heads via education, media and the government.
Time to see things as black or white and not always as gray.
Below is a fine example [more of the same in the link below] of how academics are actively working to distort American Exceptionalism - deconstructing what was one of the last holdouts. It’s a good insight into why the U.S. space program is being destroyed - greened up, toned down, melded into a global co-op (substitute anything good that makes Americans hold out against the Left’s cultural, governmental onslaught). NASA [manned space exploration] is useful because it is symbolic but it must be transformed as it props up one of the last vestiges of American Exceptional thinking.
http://history.nasa.gov/sp4801-chapter25.pdf
“.....This brief historical review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy has sustained an ideology of American Exceptionalism and reinforced long-standing beliefs in progress, growth, and capitalist democracy. This rhetoric conveys an ideology of spaceflight that could be described, at its worst, as a sort of space fundamentalism: an exclusive belief system that rejects as unenlightened those who do not advocate the colonization, exploitation, and development of space. The rhetorical strategy of space advocates has tended to rest on the assumption that the values of “believers” are (or should be) shared by others as well.
Although the social, political, economic, and cultural context for space exploration has changed radically since the 1960s, the rhetoric of space advocacy has not. In the twenty-first century, advocates continue to promote spaceflight as a biological imperative and a means of extending U.S. free enterprise, with its private property claims, resource exploitation, and commercial development, into the solar system and beyond. Pyne,among others,has addressed the problematic nature of these arguments: “the theses advanced to promote [solar system] settlement,” he noted, “are historical, culturally bound, and selectively anecdotal: that we need to pioneer to be what we are, that new colonies are a means of renewing civilization.”
Spaceflight advocacy can be examined as a cultural ritual, performed by means of communication (rhetoric), for the purpose of maintaining the current social order, with its lopsided distribution of power and resources, and perpetuating the values of those in control of that order (materialism, consumerism, technological progress, private property rights, capitalist democracy). Communication research has shown how public discourses—those cultural narratives or national myths—“often function covertly to legitimate the power of elite social classes.” And this review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy reflects an assumption that these values are worth extending into the solar system.
Everything now suggests,” Nisbet wrote 25 years ago, “that Western faith in the dogma of progress is waning rapidly.” This faith appears to have remained alive and well, however, in the ideology of spaceflight. Christopher Lasch wrote 15 years ago,“almost everyone now agrees that [the idea of] progress—in its utopian form at least,” no longer has the power “to explain events or inspire [people] to constructive action.”
But in the current cultural environment, perhaps it does—at least among space advocates. Progress is, indeed, modern American dogma and a key element of pro-space dogma. But it does not resonate well—as Pyne and others have noted—in the current postmodern (or even post-postmodern) cultural environment, where public discourse is rife with critiques of science, technology, the aims of the military-
industrial complex, and the corporate drive for profit.
Pyne observed almost 20 years ago that space exploration was “not yet fully in sync” with its cultural environment. Modern (seventeenth-to twentieth-century) Western (European-American) exploration functioned as “a means of knowing, of creating commercial empires, of outmaneuvering political economic, religious, and military competitors—it was war, diplomacy, proselytizing, scholarship, and trade by other means.” But the postmodern exploration of space is different. outer space is not simply an extension of Earth and the era of space exploration is not simply an extension of the modern era of transoceanic and transcontinental exploration. Its cultural context is different. The modern phenomenon of spaceflight has outlived the modern era and its purpose is not clear in a postmodern or even post-postmodern world, characterized by uncertainty, subjectivity, deconstruction, and a rejection of so-called master narratives such as the story of frontier conquest. The moral imperative of the myth of pioneering the space frontier could be interpreted as a narrative that is in tune with its postmodern cultural environment in the sense that it conveys the values of the dominant social order—that is, what communication scholar Herb Schiller has called “the transnational corporate business order” and its ideology of private property ownership, resource exploitation and profit building.............”
“What are the characteristics of Postmodernism?’
Your points are valid but somewhat belabored
You can sum it up simply by saying that Postmodernism is simply a type of sophistry. By denying the existence of absolutes the Postmodernist can defect any argument and allow the postmodernist to do anything they want no matter how horrible simply because it is expedient.
Not my points but a good list.
Your summation is good. Thank you.
You didn’t read the article carefully. The author simply is being specific. He’s saying that the attack was in the name of ISLAM, not just “religion,” which, as he wrote, “is a category, not a creed.”
He likened the situation to struggling with Nazism. You wouldn’t say that problem is “ideology” without naming the true culprit.
It’s also a very deep piece that points out the fallacy of the religious/secular duality.
Can’t recall which MSNBC-er did this. I don’t even know the cast of characters there so that wouldn’t really matter.
Mark Levin and others on talk radio spoke about it.
What the guy did was equate when Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flynn for defamation, with terrorist attacks in the name of religion (in this case Islam but I didn’t hear the clip so don’t know if the guy actually named Islam).
After making the point that a lawsuit bears zero resemblance to terrorism, Mark went on to describe what happened in the lawsuit and aftermath.
Falwell won a judgment.
That initial outcome was judicially overturned.
Falwell then visited Flynn at his office in LA and suggested the two of them debate issues in forums such as on college campuses, etc.
Which they did.
Whenever Falwell was in the area, he always stopped by to see Flynn.
They visited and talked and had many conversations that lasted for hours.
When Falwell died, Flynn admitted that although they never agreed on any divisive issues, he came to regard Falwell as a friend.
Some similarity, eh, between THAT, and TERRORISM...
An article from the Daily Mail was just posted here, that goes along with an “intolerance in the name of tolerance” theme -
The actual headline of the article has this Jewish journalist in Britain saying that every single French Jew he knows of has fled from the anti-Semitism in France.
So, let’s see, according to these “leaders”, if the Muslims hate Jews lets placate the Muslims so they won’t hate us like they do the Jews (they don’t SAY this, but it is how they act); meanwhile Jews are running for their lives.
Intolerance in the name of tolerance.
I think another named country of terrible anti-Semitic intolerance is Sweden.
All of the Euro countries have the problem.
Many Jews fled Russia for Europe.
Now they are fleeing Europe for Israel.
Meanwhile, Europe tolerates Muslims like nobody’s business...
One sided tolerance must be address and confronted.
0bama imported 300,000+ muslims in 2013.
http://pamelageller.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/muslim-wh-960x600.jpg
Yes, it must be addressed.
Tolerate Muslims who hate Jews, and what have you embraced?
The Muslim intolerance.
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