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WHY THE LEFT CAN’T UNDERSTAND ISLAM
Frontpagemag.com ^ | 2-1-2016 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 02/01/2016 1:24:05 PM PST by servo1969

The left's greatest intellectual error is its conviction that the world can be divided into a binary power struggle in which both sides agree on the nature of the struggle, but disagree on the outcome.

For leftists of a certain generation, it was class. Marx began the Communist Manifesto by laying out a primal class struggle throughout human history. For Marxists, everything in the world could be broken down to a class struggle with the wealthy oppressors on one side and the oppressed on the other.

It didn't matter that this model didn't fit a reality in which Communists leaders came from wealthy backgrounds and their opponents were just as likely to be poor peasants. To the left, everything is defined by the model. Reality is an inconvenience that is suppressed with gulags and firing squads.

Today the variable is identity politics. Everything must be intersectional. There are those who stand on the right side of history, in favor of abortion, gay marriage and illegal immigration. Everyone who isn't on board is a racist, even if they're black or Latino, a sexist, even if they're female, or a homophobe, even if they're gay. Once again, reality doesn't matter. The binary struggle is the model for everything.

The left believes that there is a binary struggle over the future of humanity with only two sides. It does not understand how the right actually thinks and it has no room for understanding equally compelling belief systems that operate outside this model.

That's where Islam comes in. Or doesn't.

The left has never been able to understand religion. It's not so much secular or atheistic as it is consumed by a compelling belief system of its own which leaves no room for religious conviction.

It cannot understand anything in terms of what it is. It can only understand things in terms of itself. The left cannot understand religion on its own terms, only in terms of how the religion fits into the left.

Unable to understand religion, the left assigns it a place based on its alignment in the struggle. Is it a reactionary force that supports the existing order of a progressive force that opposes it? Is it working with the ruling classes or the oppressed? Is it on the side of the left or on the side of the right?

Islam is racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which has become the left's closest Islamic ally, was politically influenced by Nazi Germany. Its leaders were outraged by the end of the Caliphate's feudalism and maintain extensive business networks around the world. They incite riots against minorities and seek to establish a theocracy.

If there's any Muslim organization that should be a textbook reactionary, fascist and fundamentalist group, it's the Muslim Brotherhood. But instead the left cuddles up with the violent hate group. Why?

Because the Muslim Brotherhood in the West is aligned with their progressive causes. Therefore it can't be reactionary. If the Brotherhood were aligned with conservatives, then it would be the enemy.

And so liberals don't care what the Koran says. The Koran means nothing to them, just as the Bible means nothing to them. Religion is either on the side of social justice or it isn't. Since Muslims are part of their glorious intersectional rainbow coalition, then Islam must be a good religion.

It's that stupidly simple. And no amount of Koran quotes will change that.

There's a strong element of cynicism here. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But there's also a deeper inability by the left to understand Islam and any ideology outside its worldview.

The left reacted to the rise of ISIS with frantic incoherence. They literally could not understand what made the Islamic State tick because it didn't fit any of their political models. ISIS couldn't exist, yet there was no way to deny that it existed. And so lefty pundits and politicians gibbered that they were nihilists who believed in nothing, even though no one blows themselves up because they believe in nothing.

Muslim terrorists don't kill people because of Allah, the Koran or the Caliphate. It doesn't fit the model. They kill, because like all Third World peoples victimized by colonialism, they are oppressed. A Muslim terrorist doesn't kill Jews or Americans because the Koran commands the Believers to subjugate all non-Muslims. A Muslim migrant doesn't sexually assault German women because the Koran allows him to.

These are all reactions to Western oppression. The Muslim oppressors are really the oppressed.

But the Islamic State killed other Muslims to establish a Caliphate ruled by Islamic law. The oppressed Muslims were suddenly acting like evil Western oppressors. And if Muslims could be oppressors, then the whole binary model the left had been using to explain the world comes tumbling down.

When the left comes up against inconsistencies in its binary model, it doesn't revise the model, instead it tries to understand why people are behaving so irrationally that they don't fit the model. Why don't poor rural whites vote for the left? It must be talk radio and racism. How can there be conservative minorities? False consciousness. Also Thomas Sowell and Stacey Dash aren't "really" minorities.

Islam and Muslims are fundamentally outside the left's model. They are part of their own binary struggle between Islam and everything else. They have their own "right side of history".

Islam and the left both claim to have "perfect" systems that can create a utopia... after a whole lot of killing. They are aligned with each other, yet unable to understand each other because their worldviews have no room for anything outside their perfect models. Leftists despise fundamentalists and Islamists despise atheists and yet here they are working together while ignoring what the other believes.

The left cannot process the idea that religion transcends politics. At best, leftists see religion as a subset of politics. And since Islam conforms to their political axis, it must be progressive. But to Muslims, politics is a subset of religion. Politics cannot transcend religion because it is an expression of religion.

Leftists do not understand religion and therefore they cannot understand Muslims. They see Islam as another religion to be brought into its sphere of influence to promote social justice to its followers. They cannot understand that Muslim clergy will not become preachers of social justice or that Muslims kill because they genuinely believe in Allah and a paradise for martyrs. These ideas are alien to them.

The alliance between Islam and the left brings together two narrow-minded worldviews. The left cannot recognize that Islam wants something other than gay marriage, abortion rights, a $15 minimum wage, Green Jobs and all the rest of its endless social justice agenda because that would put it on the same side as the Republicans and the rest of the right. And that clearly isn't so either.

The left need not give up all of its beliefs to understand Islam. But it would have to abandon its binary thinking and recognize that there have been and are other struggles in the world than the one it defines. And this the left is unwilling to do because a binary struggle is what makes its worldview so encompassing. If its worldview doesn't encompass the world, then it cannot demand absolute power.

The left cannot accept that its great struggle is really a disastrous sideshow in a larger civilizational conflict or that its agenda is not universal, but the product of a particular intellectual strain that has little application outside its own bubble. And so it will go on rejecting the truth about Islam, because learning the truth about Islam would not only destroy the alliance with Islam, but would also destroy the left.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: greenfield
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1 posted on 02/01/2016 1:24:05 PM PST by servo1969
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To: servo1969

nobody can..

to understand it is to accept it...

we only need to know and understand that the islamics want to kill us...


2 posted on 02/01/2016 1:26:19 PM PST by Tennessee Nana
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To: servo1969

Those on the left don’t have to think very much. That’s why they’re on the left.


3 posted on 02/01/2016 1:34:38 PM PST by onedoug
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To: servo1969
The left is USING Islam to undermine Christianity.

The left is USING the LGBT crowd to undermine Christianity.

The left is USING abortion to undermine Christianity.

In order for the leftist-progressives to reach their goal, the Christian faith must be purged from society and REPLACED by their all-knowing GOVERNMENT! Next!

4 posted on 02/01/2016 1:35:21 PM PST by CivilWarBrewing (u)
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To: servo1969

Leftists and Islamists are two of a kind. Marxist/fascist totalitarians who hate Jews and Christians.


5 posted on 02/01/2016 1:36:23 PM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to to God!)
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To: servo1969

The left thinks that Muslims will help them destroy America. What they don’t realize is that the Muslims are not liberals and will gladly subjugate and kill liberals as being godless infidels.


6 posted on 02/01/2016 1:39:43 PM PST by Blood of Tyrants (Liberals are the Taliban of America, trying to tear down any symbol that they don't like.)
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To: servo1969

bttt


7 posted on 02/01/2016 1:40:08 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: servo1969

The future must not belong to those who deny the true nature of Islam

John Quincy Adams on Islam

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).


8 posted on 02/01/2016 1:43:00 PM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: Jim Robinson
Leftists and Islamists are two of a kind

An "Unholy Alliance" as David Horowitz describes it.

9 posted on 02/01/2016 1:43:33 PM PST by windsorknot
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To: Tennessee Nana

as will the socialists, if they succeed in taking power under POTUS Bernie/Hilary.


10 posted on 02/01/2016 1:47:26 PM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: Blood of Tyrants

Yep....they will be first on the list should the caliphate occur here.


11 posted on 02/01/2016 1:47:34 PM PST by ColdOne (I miss my poochie... Tasha 2000~3/14/11 HillaryForPrison2016)
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To: servo1969

We had Bernie Sanders supporters at a busy intersection showing signs that said “Bernie loves refugees” yesterday.

“loves” was as a heart shape, in red.

It showed that there was a very large difference in thought for them to advertise this.

They must see it as “Bernie is charitable”

I saw the sign as “Bernie Sanders likes unvetted outsiders, most of which will never get off of public assistance, many of which will never try to fit into American culture, and some of which will want to rape, kidnap and kill us.”

I concluded that the sign holders have chosen to ignore the experiences in Europe.


12 posted on 02/01/2016 1:48:06 PM PST by kidd
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To: servo1969

This is a pretty good read. That the Left suffers from binary thinking explains a lot of its bizzare, short-sighted, ham-fisted oppressive behavior.


13 posted on 02/01/2016 1:49:08 PM PST by Crucial (At the heart all leftidsts s the fear that the truth is bigger than themselves.)
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To: servo1969

The left are so incredibly stupid they believe cultural marxism is a good thing.

Anyone that fubar in the brain is a lost cause as they are completely devoid of the ability to track cause to effect/affect over time as well as utterly unable to think beyond slogans.

Our problem is that we’re too much the moral cowards to face up to the real problem which is suffering the left to exist. All else of destructionism that we’re facing flows from that failure.


14 posted on 02/01/2016 1:51:57 PM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: ColdOne

Or they will be the Muslim’s slaves.


15 posted on 02/01/2016 1:54:48 PM PST by Blood of Tyrants (Liberals are the Taliban of America, trying to tear down any symbol that they don't like.)
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To: Blood of Tyrants

The left thinks that Muslims will help them destroy America. What they don’t realize is that the Muslims are not liberals and will gladly subjugate and kill liberals as being godless infidels.


Some dont understand what is going on, as you say. Some are literally dumber than a bag of hammers. But many do understand and spin their understanding to fit the current struggle.

Some of the spinners believe that once islam and the left work together to destroy Western Civilization, then they will continue to work together and that the islam will be so grateful to the left for all their help and so eager to learn all the wonderful things the left knows, that islam will then lay down their arms and become willing vassals of the left.

Other leftists spinners believe that once the left and islam conspire together to crush the West, the left will then turn on islam and crush islam. They look at Stalin as their role model and the template.

I think they are all dreaming. They are unleashing a dragon of incredible power... just the power of birth alone (up to 14 kids per breeding female) is enough to wash over the left once the West is gone.

And islam is absolutely incapable of learning or changing. Their thought-patterns are locked into that iron-clad doctrine with a severity that has never been equalled on earth.


16 posted on 02/01/2016 2:04:03 PM PST by samtheman (Elect Trump, Build Wall. End Censorship.)
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To: Jim Robinson

Not that the Left CAN’T understand Islam, they just WON’T, having this abiding illusion that they can somehow control them once the “oppressors” (i.e., Christians, conservatives, and Jews) have been eliminated.

Adolf Hitler was doing a bang-up job of carrying out this program in Germany, until he miscalculated his capabilities and found himself fighting a war on two fronts. Even so, we very nearly LOST that war, so we would have had the current kind of government we now have much, much earlier. And he was ACTIVELY involved with the same kind of caliphate organizers even as he was ramping up his plan of a huge hegemony in Europe and the Middle East.


17 posted on 02/01/2016 2:05:57 PM PST by alloysteel (If I considered the consequences of my actions, I would rarely do anything.)
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To: servo1969
The "left" had two parts - the leaders, called Leftists, and the followers, called liberals. Leftists are satanic - literally. They want to burn down the world, kill almost everyone, and glory in their destructive omnipotence. They are sadistic psychopaths - clinically.

Liberals are cowards - profound cowards. It's hard to comprehend them if you have any integrity, because they literally don't. The only goal of a liberal is perfect obedience. Their cowardly solution to life is to remain in childhood, and never grow up, and be taken care of and rewarded for obedience. That's why you can't talk to them, issues bore them. They see obedience to the group as the only point of any subject.

Therefore, Leftists coat all their insane, suicidal plans in baby talk, and reward childish behavior, for obedience from liberals. So to be a liberal you just learn the talking points and repeat them, and obey the Leftist-controlled group. That's it - and you're in. You're safe, taken care of, fronted for jobs, all of it. And every aspect if your life is controlled and you're told what to do. Which means, as a liberal, you feel free, because you don't take responsibility for anything.

And above all, what Leftists tell liberals is that they are responsible adults.

That's the downfall of the world, right there. And it's all around you, every day.

18 posted on 02/01/2016 2:10:47 PM PST by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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To: servo1969

The Noble Savage. Western White European Male culture corrupts the non-Western native. The Noble Savage is peaceful, happy, dancing in harmony nature.

Then the white male devil corrupts them by perpetrating visions of the Madonna or capitalist imperialism and that is why the peaceful people are now violent, angry, out of harmony with nature.

Entiende? Capiche?


19 posted on 02/01/2016 2:17:14 PM PST by spintreebob
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To: Blood of Tyrants

Not the gay ones.


20 posted on 02/01/2016 2:25:53 PM PST by ColdOne (I miss my poochie... Tasha 2000~3/14/11 HillaryForPrison2016)
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