Posted on 04/02/2007 11:23:28 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.
But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name -- Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
A Shariah official canes a woman after she was convicted of unlawful contact with an unmarried man, Indonesia, January 2006.
The 'root cause' of the problem is islam itself. It cannot be 'reformed'. That syphilitic 6th century pedophile you worship said so himself.
If we can't stamp it out, then we must contain it. By any means necessary.
L
“The ‘root cause’ of the problem is islam itself. It cannot be ‘reformed’.
Precisely.
They practice it and are earning it....
Semper Fi
If so, how did this former Salafist come to his senses?
Until 20 years ago, the vast, utterly overwhelming majority of Moslems didn't think like Wahhabists and Salafists. Or Shiite Hezbollah and Pasdaran red-hots, either.
Don't give the extremists the undeserved mantle of moral authority to speak for all Islam.
Who says he has?
Until 20 years ago, the vast, utterly overwhelming majority of Moslems didn't think like Wahhabists and Salafists
Bull. They did from 632-732 CE and then from 1060-1360 CE, and then again from 1200-1800 CE.
Americas problems with these thugs started in the 1790s .
The period from 1800 through the 1970s was an aberration, not the norm.
Anyone who says differently hasn't adequately researched the history of this odious political ideology which masquerades as a religion.
islam is the Mein Kampf of religions. It always has been. It always will be.
L
Off topic for this post, but please note that "CE" (Common Era) is a leftist politically correct usage, as it omits an actual or implied reference to Jesus Christ.
Actually, this is something right about Islam.
islam has a one thousand year unblemished record of terror. It's a blight on our planet. If we can't wipe it out as we did the Thugee cult in India, we should make every effort to quarantine it.
Comparing 'moderate' islam to 'extremist' islam is like comparing smallpox to chicken pox. One doesn't wish to be infected with either and rational people make every effort to see that both are treated as the scourges they are.
I think I just came up with a new tagline. Let's see if it fits.
L
Correction.
They did from 632-732 AD and then from 1060-1360 AD, and then again from 1200-1800 AD.
Actually, this is something right about Islam.
You think gay people should hang? Don't you think that's a bit...harsh? Are they that much of a threat, in your mind?
I agree.
And it is about time we start calling it what it is, a political movement.
I have been for some time. It's a fascist political ideology every bit as dangerous as Nazism, Stalinism, Italian Fascism, or the Bushido Warrior cult of Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.
We need to treat it far more than we are. We simply cannot afford to act the way we did in the 1930s.
L
Well, it is "blemished", though, by the period of amelioration that you referenced yourself. My point is that if we do this right, the way the British did by discrediting the Mahdi in the Sudan, then we might be able to look forward to another 200 years of relative peace and quiet. The Mahdi's outbreak lasted about 12 years IIRC; this current one is, as you say, longer, but not by an order of magnitude. Thus it is possible reasonably to hope that the longer-term countertrend (accepting on face your argument that the pacifism has indeed been a countertrend) can be reestablished and extended.
One of the motivators of the recent extremism, it has been pointed out again and again, is the urgency of the realization, by the fundamentalists, that they are being morally and intellectually overreached by Western civilization in ways meaningful within their own culture. They're losing it with their own people.
“’Gays hang from the gallows’”
“Actually, this is something right about Islam.”
Anti-Sodomy laws should be re-instated and thoroughly enforced. Yes. The sodomite agenda is one of the greatest threats to our Nation. Homofobe, no, Sodofobe.
There's a clinically disordered condition called homophobia, confined to tiny numbers of people, but Kirk and Madsen, in After the Ball, proposed extending it to anyone opposed to their agenda, as a smear. It inverts the older (and possibly still valid to some extent) imputation of something emotionally out-of-kilter in homosexuals. It's almost certainly true of lesbians, less so of the men. But their idea was to use the term liberally to stigmatize heterosexuals who are not overtly and volubly "gay-friendly" (or in pseudoreligious cant, "reconciling").
</OT>
[”Yes. The sodomite agenda is one of the greatest threats to our Nation.”]
Advocating the murder of a group of people simply because they are gay is wrong. More, it is evil.
Evil people should hang from a gallows.
Gays should do whatever gays do, without asking for special privileges, and without pretending to be normal couples. And most especially, without talking about their disgusting sex habits.
Thanks.
L
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