Posted on 03/12/2006 5:57:00 AM PST by aynrandfreak
This week's Voldemort Award goes to the New York Times for their account of a curious case of road rage in North Carolina:
"The man charged with nine counts of attempted murder for driving a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday told the police that he deliberately rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle so he could 'run over things and keep going.' "
The driver in question was Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.
Whoa, don't jump to conclusions. The Times certainly didn't. As the report continued:
"According to statements taken by the police, Mr. Taheri-azar, 22, an Iranian-born graduate of the university, felt that the United States government had been 'killing his people across the sea' and that his actions reflected 'an eye for an eye.'"
"His people"? And who exactly would that be? Taheri-azar is admirably upfront about his actions. As he told police, he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world."
And yet the M-word appears nowhere in the Times report. Whether intentionally or not, they seem to be channeling the great Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali, who died a millennium ago but whose first rule on the conduct of dhimmis -- non-Muslims in Muslim society -- seem to have been taken on board by the Western media:
The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
It does if they practice it which they are doing around the world every minute of every day.
It is followers of Islam who cutting heads off on world wide TV, using suicide bombers, flying planes into buildings, slaughtering Christians in the Sudan, kidnapping and cutting heads off in the Philippines, executing honor killings of their own sisters,daughters and wives and the list goes on.
Everyone of those verses are still in the Koran and in practice in countries and regions controlled by them.
The actions of Muslims in these places around the world speak for themselves and they speak to the truth.
You are in denial, or a follower of Islam.
> And ignoring the moderate Muslims who could provide another path to peace is not a good thing in my opinion.
Yeah sure. You appear to believe there are millions of "C&E" Moslems who just want to live their lives in peace. Maybe even they'd convert to the Christian culture of their adopted country...but apostasy has its risks. In a place like Iran the "moderates" don't dare oppose the theocracy. Here they work beside us while the militants snap up more recruits. Who are you...Grover Norquist? Get real. The "moderates" won't do a thing to oppose the radicals. I don't hate Arabs or Persians, etc., but their so-called religion draws followers toward extremism, and their sixth century barbarity deserves no place in the 21st century.
Very interesting and powerful information.
Has there been a thread on FR with info about that book?
First, part of what I'm trying to say is that there are Muslims who don't take the Hadiths to have the same authority as the the Quran. I know one. His wife doesn't wear a veil. His sense of what is or isn't halal isn't the same as many other Muslims. His son isn't circumcised. He votes libertarian. Muslims don't have to take the whole package any more than Jews need to stone homosexuals to death or Christians need to avoid divorce. No, the nutty Wahabists aren't happy about that but Orthodox Jews aren't particularly happy about how Reformed Jews interpret Judaism and Baptists usually aren't happy about how Catholics interpret Christianity.
Islam preaches and by the way practices for 1426 odd years now Charles Mansoneque social ordering.. Helter Skelter with a rag top.. The Persians in Persia and Copts in Egypt were and are being raped by Islam.. And they are just two in a long list of the abused people.. Islam is nasty.. even the of Islam is nasty..
Second, there were periods when Islam wasn't particular nasty and periods when Christianity and Judaism (particularly if you take the Old Testament as history) were. The Jew of the Old Testament practiced total war and genocide. How many wives and concubines did King Solomon have? As for Christians, have you ever read an account of the Rape of Constantinople? Here's a hint. It includes the rape of nuns on the alters of Orthodox churches. Let's not forget the pogroms against Jews (there is a reason why Jews are so touchy about things like The Passion), the way Christian Spaniards dealt with various non-Christian indiginous American peoples, and so forth. Muslims don't corner the market on barbarism and Christians have blood on their hands, too.
I don't think such violence is inherent in Christianity because plenty of people manage to be Christians without burning witches and killing Jews. Much of that came from other elements of European culture combined with some fairly mundane barbarism. The question is whether such violence is inherent in Islam rather than an artifact of barbarous elements of Arab culture combined with some more fairly mundane barbarism. There are plenty of peaceful Muslims out there so I don't think it's fair to say it is. Now before you start quoting the Quran or Hadiths at me, I'll simply point out that the personal faith that many people have, whether Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, or whatever, often bears only a passing resemblance ot the orthodoxy that they identify with.
Both hypocrites and apostates may be killed for the greater glory of Islam
The biggest example of this occurs in the Sunni vs. Shi'ite conflict. Within the Sunni there are many other such conflicts. Shia also has some serious internal divisions. I don't believe the Seveners (for example) believe the Twelvers to even be misguided Shia ~ just misguided!
If you could run a survey on this you would probably find Arab speaking Moslems of all kinds have some serious doubts about African and SE Asian Moslems, and at the moment, those folks are the majority of Moslems.
Let me try to make this simple. 40 percent want Sharia Law. 20 percent supported the 7/7 bombings. I think it's fair to assume that the 20 percent who supported the 7/7 bombings were part of the 40 percent who want Sharia law. If the numbers don't overlap, then that means that the 20 percent who support the 7/7 bombings don't want to see Sharia Law introduced into the UK. Do you really think that anyone who supports the 7/7 bombings in the UK wouldn't also say that they don't want Sharia Law in the UK? I would suspect, instead, that it's an empty set unless they were using Florida butterfly ballots to conduct the poll and people got confused.
Muslims are killers. It is in the koran, kill infedels or covert them or make then pay tribute to muslims and pay homage to them. This is all I need to know.
So you've read the Quran cover to cover and understand the full range of theology across all Muslim sects, then? The Bible is full of killing, too. Why don't modern Jews stone homosexuals, mediums, or rebellous and drunken sons as the Bible commands?
You are fooling yourselve, or you are a muslim that wants to make excuses for the murderous cult that passes itself off as a ROP. It is not a religion of peace nor has it ever been.
I'm someone who believes that guilt by association is a very bad thing. If a Muslim commits terrorist acts or can be shown to be plotting terrorist acts, by all means punish them and stop them. If a Muslim is working a 9 to 5 job to support his family and has no interest in harming anyone, then it's a gross injustice to treat them like a criminal by association, just as it's wrong for blacks to assume that all whites are racist because some are or Jews to assume that all Christians are a step away from a pogrom because there is a long history of such behavior.
We are in a fight to the death and I intend that the one dying is not me.
When you have some evidence that a particular person is trying to kill you, by all means defend yourself with lethal force. But if you start running around killing innocent people simply becaue they look like the bad guys and you can't be bothered to sort them out, then are you really any better than the Muslims who you claim want to kill all the infidels just because they aren't Muslim?
And many more just stood by and let it happen. You can also find cases of Muslims helping Christians and Jews. It happens, too.
But that's not the point. This isn't about backslidden muslims being some "silent majority". Mainly the silence of so-called "mainstream" Islam comes from there being, in fact, no main stream. There is no authority that can or will speak for islam writ large. The ones that do presume to speak out are the arrogant ones that have fully found the dark side and the power it brings. They are the extreme Mullahs.
Correct.
The problem is that the extreme mullahs have it right. That is... that in its fundamental form islam is everything they say it is and they cannot really be countermanded by other muslims. Those other muslims have no islamic grounds on which to silence them.
That's not what I've heard. I think it's more a matter that Fundamentalists and strict literalists are unwilling to accept any interpretation but their own and that's hardly uncommon with Fundamentalists and strict literalists of any religion. You should see the looks I got at a Bible Study in college when I pointed out that the passage they were using to justify the need for full submersion baptism to be Saved doesn't necessarily say what they think it literally says if you read the next sentence, which they don't usually include while making their theological point. And I'm sure I'll get some Fundamentalists telling me I'm wrong for saying that here. Further, it's almost impossible to claim that Jesus did anything but condemn divorce for any reason other than adultery, yet millions of Christians get divorced, anyway.
Our mission, for now, is to fight and kill as many of the extremists as we can, while hoping that as many of the "other" muslims stay out of the fray.
Or figure out some way to live peacefully with the 21st Century and Western civilization.
Ultimately we will have to confront the rest of the muslim world with the lie that is their religion, but perhaps not now.
Well, given that no religion covers a majority of people, that suggests that plenty of people believe lies as a religion. Whether they need to be confronted or not depends on whether you care what people living otherwise peaceful lives in some other part of the world believe.
Religious fanatics of all religions tend to call anyone who doesn't share their fanaticism "heretics". There are plenty of Protestants who don't consider Catholics Christians and many Catholics don't think Protestants will get into Heaven and lots of very bloody and violent wars were fought in Europe over that particular difference of opinion, yet Catholics and Protestants manage to live together in peace in the United States.
I'll agree that it's by no means certain that the "heretics" or non-fanatics will win out over the fanatics but I don't think that stabbing them in the back, too, because we can't be bothered to sort them out from the fanatics, either, is the answer.
Who are "they"? Do you think that every Muslim practices it every minute of every day or only a percentage of them? And if it's just a percentage, why are we also treating the percentage who don't as if they do?
It is followers of Islam who cutting heads off on world wide TV, using suicide bombers, flying planes into buildings, slaughtering Christians in the Sudan, kidnapping and cutting heads off in the Philippines, executing honor killings of their own sisters,daughters and wives and the list goes on.
Absolutely. The particular strains of militant Islam that are responsible are a big problem and deserved attack. But all Muslims are not followers of militant Islam. Roll your history books back a few centuries and see what Christians were up to when dealing with Jews, American Indians, and even Orthodox Christians and heretics like the Cathars. It wasn't a Muslim who coined the phrase, "Kill them all and God will know his own."
Everyone of those verses are still in the Koran and in practice in countries and regions controlled by them.
Have you ever read the Old Testament? All of those verses are still there, too. The Jews kiss the Torah during their services yet manage to resist the urge to stone homosexuals, mediums, and disobedient sons to death has the Torah commands. How do you think that's possible?
The actions of Muslims in these places around the world speak for themselves and they speak to the truth.
If the actions of militant Mulsims in those places speak for themselves, then I think the actions of peaceful and friendly Muslims around the world should also speack for themselves. And, yes, such people exist.
You are in denial, or a follower of Islam.
Are those the only two options you can wrap your mind around? How about I'm a Christian who takes the idea of loving my neighbor as myself seriously when it comes to innocent people who mean neither you nor me any harm. If you want to argue that following a false religion, alone, is sufficient for persecution of otherwise innocent people, then I would not only wonder what you think of people who follow other religions that you think are false but wonder how you are any different than the mullahs who want to kill all the infidels because, well, they're infidels.
If it reaches the point we don't have the luxury of sorting out the Muslim wheat from the Muslim chafe, I expect we will inflict harm on the innocent.
From their point of view they have an advantage; there are no innocent Infidels. - Tom
I have no idea. A friend emailed me this list.
Not at all.
Do plenty of people who call themselves Muslims eat pork?
A Muslim friend, while he won't eat pork, will eat foods that many other Muslims do not consider halal. His son isn't circumcised, which many Muslims consider a part of their faith. His wife doesn't wear a headscarf, which many Muslims consider a part of their faith. I've asked him about this and he's basically interpreting the Quran far more narrowly than many other Muslims do. And to answer your question, I'm sure that if you searched the entire Muslim world, both present and past, you'd find quite a few Muslims who ate pork from time to time.
Islam isn't a religion where one can pick and choose which parts of the faith one chooses to follow.
Sure it is. All religions are what the followers want them to be.
As was pointed out during the recent cartoon controversey, one can find icons and pictures of Muhammed in Tehran being sold by Muslims to Muslims even though the Quran prohibits such images. There was plenty of Muslims who drink alcohol even though that's prohibited. The Shiites and Sunnis have some fairly substantial theological differences about how to interpret bits of Islam and there were plenty of other strains of theological thinking in Islam in the past, both good and bad. In theory, Muslims can't pick and choose what they want but in theory, neither can Jews or Christians, yet they do, and so do Muslims. But you won't notice that if you see some abstract "Muslim" instead of a bunch of individuals who call themselves Muslim.
According to the UK poll, the numbers are more like 20%-40% fanatics and 60% who are just trying to live their lives in peace, and the number of fanatics is probably lower in the US. Are their clusters of fanatics out there? Absolutely. There are also plenty of innocent people. You don't hear about them because they don't make the news. It's the same reason why you read about white-on-black hate crimes in the news but rarely hear about all the white people who treat black people fairly and well.
Hey you're right , where are the voices of moderate islam on this situation ?..yea , right, don't hold your breath waiting for them.
Steyn's a figgin' genius.
Muslims don't have to take the whole package any more than Jews need to stone homosexuals to death or Christians need to avoid divorce..When was the last time you heard of Jews stoning homosexuals , and how many Catholics really avoid divorce ? Now , how many Moslems practice violence on a daily basis against non Moslems. Your logic and arguement is seriously flawed.Those who don't participate remain ,for the most part , silent. Their silence makes them accountable as well.
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