Posted on 03/12/2006 12:30:32 AM PST by Proctor
Defenders of the Faith: Why Europe's Muslims should be grateful for Europe's atheists
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Published: March 12, 2006
London
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What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?
More than a century ago, in "The Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.
This argument couldn't have been more wrong: the lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted — at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations.
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Atheism is a European legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a safe public space for believers. Consider the debate that raged in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, my home country, as the constitutional controversy simmered: should Muslims (mostly immigrant workers from the old Yugoslav republics) be allowed to build a mosque? While conservatives opposed the mosque for cultural, political and even architectural reasons, the liberal weekly journal Mladina was consistently outspoken in its support for the mosque, in keeping with its concern for the rights of those from other former Yugoslav republics.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The only two European nations to stand up to Muslims have been hammered down by Europe (Cyprus and Serbia).
In Greece, native Muslims thrive - in Turkey the native Christian community is near extinction.
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NY Times should be renamed to Dhimmi Times
We all know how well the great atheist regimes (Albania, Soviet Union, Red China) have worked out.
He apparently is enthralled with the sound of his own wanking.
Perhaps he could get a *real* job?
Cheers!
Precisely the sort of smug, self-regarding, pseudo-intellectual who will invite with an idiot grin of half-baked tolerance and semi-concealed racial and cultural condescension the exponents of the Religion of Peace to settle, apologize when they insititute Sharia, express alarm (too late) when they begin killing, and end up with his head on a pike. In an earlier epoch they were called Useful Idiots; now they're called Dhimmis. Whatever - a fool by any other name...
"Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. This argument couldn't have been more wrong"
How has this been proven wrong? I think we're seeing more and more how it is proving to be the correct assertion. Europe is weak, and it has few beliefs so firmly entrenched that it can stand united against a determined foe. The same goes for our country. Faith creates resolve, and it strengthens a people.
Further, one need only visit France to see that nihilism is all too alive and well for comfort. I never heard so many people complaining that life had no point, anyway, as I did when I studied in Paris.
Flush atheism.
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Atheists and secularists are defacto Dhimmi.
Nature abhors a vacuum. And atheism is a vacuum into which some kind of fanaticism will flow to the disenchanted.
Atheism is the highest form of arrogance.
Or worrying about going to Heaven or Hell, I would add. That line of argument has confused more than one door-to-door missionary that I've run into who was selling Christianity pretty much only in terms of "join our religion and you get to go to Heaven".
That said, I think the real problem lies not in atheism or religion but in fanaticism. There are certainly atheist fundamentalists who are violently anti-religious (see China).
As an atheist, I am appaled by Zizek's suicidal defense of Islamism. This men is a pathetic remnant of an ideology which have gone extinct decades ago.
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