Posted on 12/31/2006 8:12:14 PM PST by quidnunc
As Saddam was being hung, the voices of several of those present in the room were heard crying out. They didn't cry out "a bicameral legislature!" They didn't cry out "checks and balances, for god's sake let us have checks and balances." They didn't cry out "we want a government of limited powers." No, they cried out "Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr."
Amurath an Amurath succeeds.
And will, until it is realized that people suffused with the tenets and attitudes of Islam are not interested in Western parliamentary democracy. Nor are they interested in guarantees of the rights of minorities and especially of the individual, or in the Spirit of Liberty, which is defined by Learned Hand as the spirit that is "not quite sure that it is right." Try to imagine a Muslim Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, James Wilson, Clay or Webster or Calhoun or John Randolph of Roanoke, Lincoln, or for that matter a Muslim John Marshall, a Muslim Louis Brandeis, a Muslim Oliver Wendell Holmes. You can't. And you know why.
And unless, and until, the Camp of Infidels understands that it must not only understand, but make its constant theme, the connection between those assorted amuraths and the politico-religio-legal system of Islam, that refuses to locate legitimacy in the will of mere mortals, all of them rightfully slaves of Allah, and that urges submission to the ruler, no matter how despotic, as long as he is declared to be a Muslim, you never will be able to imagine such creatures. They will continue to be chimerical as long as the connection between the inshallah-fatalism of Islam and the economic backwardness, despite the OPEC trillions, of Muslim lands (where the only real economies are found, in some form, in those countries where Islam has been constrained — as in Turkey or Tunisia) continues to go unnoticed. And the connection between the social failures, the moral failures, the intellectual failures, of Muslim societies must be connected to the doctrines, the teachings, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam. The case for such a connection is overwhelming. It will not be easy to deny it, and at the very least, the world's Infidels will see that connection, and so will the most advanced people born into Islam. It will put Islam permanently on the defensive among its own adherents, who will indeed begin to wonder why their countries have a series of despots succeeded by other despots, why their countries are so naturally violent in their politics, why they are, despite such oil revenues, unable or unwilling to create advanced economies, why their societies, so hostile to non-Muslims and to women, will remain estranged from the rest of the world as that world passes them by, and why the habit of mental submission encouraged by Islam will always prevent them from the enterprise of science, or from all else that requires the encouragement, and not the punishment, of free and skeptical inquiry.
-snip-
More than a religion of Peace, it is a religion of Failure!! Moqtada al-Sadr looks like someone who should be picking a Banjo instead of preaching.!
Saddam killed Millions of innocents. And failed to do something right in nearly 30 years of rule: Killing Moqtada al-Sadr. He killed all of his family, but tried to bribe Moqtada...
What difference would have a dead Mookie done to the Millions of slaughtered Iraqis, Kuwaitis and Iranians? Nothing.
What differnce would hae a dead Mookie done to post-war Iraq?
Everything.
Sadr has to die.
I've heard many Leftists say that America is nothing special -- just lucky. We stumbled on a land that was rich in resources, and -- voila! -- we are now rich and powerful. All because of an accident of history.
BS.
The Native Americans were here first and they did squat with the abundant resources. Likewise, the Arabs have been getting rich off oil for decades, and have precious little to show for it. Manufacturing? Software? Medicine? Anything? Naaaaah -- they just have oil.
Some cultures are better than others. Islam is one of the worst. It holds back a billion people.
He should have had an accident a couple of years ago.
The irony is that Islam was once the most sophisticated an learned culture in the world. While we were wallowing in wattle and daub muslims were building great centers of learning. Something went terribly awry in Islam. Now Islam has become a synonym for violent, mindless reaction and corruption.
What is "Amurath"?
An Arab Horse?
Looked it up: Amurath is an outdated spelling of the muslim (turkish) name Murat. Don't know the meaning in this context though.
Realists tried to tell you this over three years ago. But nation building carried on. It's not just Islam, there are regions of the world that democracy is a foreign and unwanted idea. It has nothing to do with their intelligence, it has to do with the culture
the intellectual failures, of Muslim societies must be connected to the doctrines, the teachings, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam
Hugh doesn't read a lot of history does he? Islamic intellectual culture at one point in history was far more advanced than Western culture. Islamic cultures kept alive learning when other parts of the world were mucking about in the Dark Ages
That was true until the Christian West freed itself from an Orthodoxy that surpressed science and individual choice. Islam got worse and paid the price. They are not getting better.
Amurath is a an Arab insult...it refers to the Amurad Ottoman Sultans noted for their corrupt rule of Iraq,.
That is an insult to banjo pickers. Moqtada al-Sadr looks like someone that would be sitting on a curb downtown with a bagged bottle of MD 20/20.
Islam had access to resources from Greeks, Romans, Chaldean Christians, and Indian Hindus and because of these non-Muslim resources, the Arabs were more advanced than the West during that period of time when the West was largely separated from these ancient resources.
But Islam did little with what it inherited. There were few actual advances made during this Islamic Golden Age.
And when the West re-claimed the classical learning the new era became proclaimed as the Renaissance. And we've been far ahead ever since.
The further Irony is it was the borrowings from Arab science that allowed the west to shake off that crippling orthodoxy while somehow Islam took the opposite lesson and adopted the crippling orthodoxy the west rejected.
Thank you very much.
That too. I wouldn't want to get downwind of him either. In news video he is preaching in the Mosque under a ceiling fan. I bet those Mosques get ripe enough to make your eyes water.
Bull!
The Golden Age of Islam is a Myth
There is not part of Islam that is not a lie.
Hank
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.