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-
No, there were no DARK ages, just a setting of the ground for Judeo-Christian civilisation to spread.
Completely incorrect. The foundations of thought and science preceed Christianity (Plato, Aristotle and Socrates). While there were a few men of learning during the dark ages, this can not compare to the millions of literate, educated middle class people of the Roman Empire and the proliferation of technology, engineering, medicine, literature and the arts that was available to the average citizen.
There was a dark age- a time when millions of illiterate,unwashed, toothless, uneducated people lived and died in a few decades in their small towns, and believed the Earth was flat, ate porridge, feared witches and believed leaches had medicinal value. They looked at the ruins of Roman Roads and believed they had been built by a race of long extint giants- and in a way, they were correct.
ping
Democrat Gollums include James Carville.
Dark Ages? I would hardly call the absence of Roman /Greek based civilization the Dark Ages. The term and point of view are unnecessarily pejorative.
The Roman Conquest collapsed upon itself because of a tragic lapse in Roman morality and dedication to its own ideology.( Many today draw parallels between Western Society and Roman collapse, Western society in its moonbat liberal socialist culture as precursors to a similar collapse.) Those conquered were then freed from the Roman yoke and advanced themselves as best they could, and faired exceedingly well, despite the historic depredations of Rome.
The so called Dark Ages were hardly dark. They were simply disorganized and fraught with change as the Germanic and Celtic tribes of Europe evolved into their modern forms. Not everyone subscribes to the Romanocentric version of history, simply because it is too myopic, in the end reveals scant truth.
A study of any modern language bears this out. We all use the English word "$hit" but the Romanocentric word is defecate.It is from the unwashed that we have a good part of our vocabulary, yet Romanocentric historians would allow only that such words as $hit are merely tolerated, as are the descendants of your so called unwashed today? Not.
One conclusion of such myopic thinking is that plaid cloth was not invented by the Celts until the 16th Century in Scotland, yet 4000 year old caucasian mummies found wearing plaid in the Tarim Basin of China, made of scientifically verified European wool were not Celts? Thats rich indeed!
Typical hoohaw thinking from Romanocentric historical analysis.
I am afraid that the Romanocentric interpretation of history has long been relegated to the heap of no longer useful analysis. We have simply outgrown it.
Many civilizations of Europe held their own high cultural achievements despite the Roman's destruction of them them on the continent. Ireland is one, and one needs look no further than the music of the harp and the compositions of Turlough O'Carolan to know that his ancient musical lineage evolved seperately from anything the Romans could have offered. And it represents high culture indeed.But then you would not want to know that, because it doesn't fit.
Muslims burned the Library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of knowledge in the world.
Very interesting "facts" from the BBC. I question just about anything mainstream British sources say anymore- did you know it was just revealed that the UK has been serving halal meat to ALL British schoolchildren?
Your use of the word Roman Conquest speaks volumes. many nations allied themselves with Rome, and most people in the colonies demanded citizenship. Rome at the time of her demise was less an empire than a centralized beauracracy that had done such a good job building the economies and infrastructure of the provinces that Roman authority was seen as unnecassary and were hardly needed anymore.
The hoary old excuse about the decadence of the Romans caused their demise is simplistic Christian moralizing and in view of the centuries it took for Rome to collapse- amusing to say the least.
Your new-age revisionist history of the "medieval" period is Christian-centric and ignores the historical fact that the average person in 200AD lived better, had access to higher education, surgery and pediatrics, could read and write, could expect to live to 60 or more, had a high level of sanitation, bathed frequently, had a fire department, could travel freely, could enjoy goods from China and India, as well as bank, collect life insurance, obtain a mortgage and VOTE. In short much more than your typical peaseat in medieval Europe.
IMHO not only was Christianity a Roman creation it was an evolution of a multicultural, pluralistic theology that the Romans, cosmopolitan as they were could only have appreciated. The Christians did not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Wow- harp music. That beats central heating and indoor toilets.
This pertains to the argument how again? And before you get all upset note that the Mirror reported it's been going on more than a decade. Also since the revelation changes have been made to the meals. But if I were you to be on the 'safe' side I wouldn't trust anything out of Dearborn Michigan either. McDonalds serves halal meals there!! Oh goodness me...
But look on the bright side, at least Jamie Oliver isn't serving up the meals...
"During the Middle Ages, the Muslim world was the very first to create hospitals for treating the sick."
That's just hogwash. The ancient Greeks had hospitals. You can see the ruins of one of the greatest at Epidauros. Throughout the Christian Byzantine era the Church ran hospitals all over the empire.
Hmmmmm..better tell the US government then. This is off the National Institute of Health's website
HospitalsIslamic Culture and the Medical ArtsThe hospital was one of the great achievements of medieval Islamic society. The relation of the design and development of Islamic hospitals to the earlier and contemporaneous poor and sick relief facilities offered by some Christian monasteries has not been fully delineated. Clearly, however, the medieval Islamic hospital was a more elaborate institution with a wider range of functions.
In Islam there was generally a moral imperative to treat all the ill regardless of their financial status. The hospitals were largely secular institutions, many of them open to all, male and female, civilian and military, adult and child, rich and poor, Muslims and non-Muslims. They tended to be large, urban structures.
The Islamic hospital served several purposes: a center of medical treatment, a convalescent home for those recovering from illness or accidents, an insane asylum, and a retirement home giving basic maintenance needs for the aged and infirm who lacked a family to care for them. It is unlikely that any truly wealthy person would have gone to a hospital for any purpose, unless they were taken ill while traveling far from home. Except under unusual circumstances, all the medical needs of the wealthy and powerful would have been administered in the home or through outpatient clinics dispensing drugs. Though Jewish and Christian doctors working in hospitals were not uncommon, we do not know what proportion of the patients would have been non-Muslim.
An Islamic hospital was called a bimaristan, often contracted to maristan, from the Persian word bimar, `ill person', and stan, `place.' Some accounts associate the name of the early Umayyad caliph al-Walid I, who ruled from 705 to 715 (86-96 H), with the founding of a hospice, possibly a leprosarium, in Damascus. Other versions, however, suggest that he only arranged for guides to be supplied to the blind, servants to the crippled, and monetary assistance to lepers.
"Hmmmmm..better tell the US government then. This is off the National Institute of Health's website"
Why am I not surprised? More of TROP Bush Administration's employment of Goebbels' "Greater Lie Theory" of propaganda! You know, I used to think that this sort of garbage from both the Bush and Clinton administrations was the result of a mixture of stupidity and provincialism; now I'm convinced they are and were simply evil.
But there is always the West and Israel to act as the Islamist's scapegoat for the inherent idiocy of Islam. If they have not figured it out that Islam is the problem in this day and age, I think it will take about 500 more years or the collapse of Western civilization for these buggers to look inward and leave the cult of Mohammad.
LOL, this thread is a hoot. One poster who responds in screenshots from Lord of the Rings (as if that's some sort of an argument) and another who complains the administration is 'evil' when the facts the government provides don't prove your point. I see it now...factual statements of history are all part of a conspiracy
Let me ask seriously. How would it affect your world view to accept that perhaps other cultures offered inventions, or at the very least maintained scientific thought and processes, while the West was going through dark times. Is your basis of belief on all things so weak that it will come crashing down if you accept factual history?
"How would it affect your world view to accept that perhaps other cultures offered inventions, or at the very least maintained scientific thought and processes, while the West was going through dark times."
Not in the least. My ancestors were Kaisaroi in the Despotate of Morea and one died on the walls of Constantiople next to Constantine XI on May 29, 1453. Others were slaughtered or hauled off to slavery when the Turks burst into Agia Sophia during the final Divine Liturgy there. That the West did or did not fall into barbariam during the Dark Ages means little or nothing to me. It does mean something to me, however, when revisionists with a political agenda deny the history of my people.
Who's denying the history of 'your' people? 'My' people were from the Allemanni and fought the Romans in the 2nd century. So what? Should I claim some sort of 'political agenda' on the ongoing destruction of Allemanni region from the French and the Germans? Or that the Allemanni really invented what the Romans are credited for? This isn't a 'political agenda'. It is stated fact from historical data that the Islamic culture contributed somewhat to Western culture. Either by maintaining what was already known in science, improving on existing inventions (as in the case of the astrolabe), or new inventions or processes altogether (distillation of ethanol)
Not only does Harp Music beat central heating and indoor toilets, it provides the myopic with an excellent laxative. BTW, the Irish had central heating and toilets any time they wanted them, its just that their lives were not anally fixated, and their desired comforts had a much different organizational priority, keeping warm was accomplished in other ways, and $hitting was rarely regarded as a valued activity warranting construction of singular edifices.
Catharsis has its own rewards my good man. Dream on.
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