[Welcome, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish readers]
In an article written for the London Telegraph, Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo says:
"You have to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed leaders," explains Dr Sookhdeo. "I agree that the best hope for our collective future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up here have accepted the secular nature of the British state and society, the division between religion and politics, and the importance of allowing people to choose freely how they will live."According to the Telegraph, Dr. Sookhdeo is a secular Briton. According to Islamophobia Watch, Dr. Sookhdeo is a Nazi and an Islamaphobe.
Islamophobia Watch also labels Hirsi Ali as a right-wing "provocateur"
The Telegraph believed that an article about Dr. Sookhdeo's criticism of some Muslim leaders and their efforts to bring Sharia to the UK, titled 'The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state' should be published.
Someone with influence disagreed. The article has now been pulled from the Telegraph's website, for "legal reasons"
It was also removed from Google's cache. It is, however, still in Yahoo's cache. It's also reprinted in parts here, here here and here:
The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state'I don't agree with Sookhdeo's ideas about getting rid of faith-based education, but I don't see anything libelous or illegal in this article.
By Alasdair Palmer
(Filed: 19/02/2006)
For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries.
"They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.
"The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory.
"It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent."
Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.
"It is already starting to happen - and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."
For someone with such strong and uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South America, and attended a madrassa there.
"But Islamic instruction was very different in the 1950s, when I was at school," he says. "There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."...
...Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.
So his claim that, in the next decade, the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr Sookhdeo has proved his prescience....
..."The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops.
"It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book.
"Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both."
Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.
They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism...
... concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."
That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law.
"There's already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.
"Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.
"The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government's record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that."
Dr Sookhdeo's vision of a relentless battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the vast majority of the interactions between the two communities.
"Well, it isn't me who says Islam is at war with secularisation," he says. "That's how Islamic clerics describe the situation."...
..."Take, for example, Tariq Ramadan, whom the Government has appointed as an adviser because ministers think he is a 'community leader'. Ramadan sounds, in public, very moderate. But in reality, he has some very extreme views. He attacks liberal Muslims as 'Muslims without Islam'. He is affiliated to the violent and uncompromising Muslim Brotherhood.
"He calls the education in the state schools of the West 'aggression against the Islamic personality of the child'. He has said that 'the Muslim respects the laws of the country only if they do not contradict any Islamic principle'. He has added that 'compromising on principles is a sign of fear and weakness'."
So what's the answer? What should the Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage with the real Muslim majority, not with the self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with them.
"Second, the Government should say no to faith-based schools, because they are a block to integration. There should be no compromise over education, or over English as the language of education. The policy of political multiculturalism should be reversed.
"The hope was that it would to ensure separate communities would soften at the edges and integrate. But the opposite has in fact happened: Islamic communities have hardened. There is much less integration than there was for the generation that arrived when I did. There will be much less in the future if the present trend continues.
"Finally, the Government should make it absolutely clear: we welcome diversity, we welcome different religions - but all of them have to accept the secular basis of British law and society. That is a non-negotiable condition of being here.
"If the Government does not do all of those things then I fear for the future, because Islamic communities within Britain will form a state within a state. Religion will occupy an ever-larger place in our collective political life. And, speaking as a religious man myself, I fear that outcome.
Do you?
The war isn't Islam vs. Christianity. It's not even anti-terror vs. terror. It's human rights vs. sharia.
[links thanks to Charles and commenters at LGF]
When you write that the war isn't Islam vs Christianity, it is only partially true because it really is Islam vs Western Christianity.
Muslims understand it that way, and they are right. Western anti-Muslim hatred wasn't just born yesterday, it is part of western culture. Western culture, despite the "tolerant" face its tries to put out, is still deeply intolerant of others who are different. When I write different, I don't mean another westerner with a slightly different taste. I mean as different as the European Jew was.
The massacre of millions of Jews wasn't a coincidence or an act of one madman or a clandestine group on the run like Al-Qaeda. The WESTERN massacre of these OTHER people was supported by all fields of western society: from academia, media, and industries to all branches of governmentS.
The massacre of the native Indians in America (95% of them were exterminated) is also another example to consider. The Indian could have converted to Christianity, and some did, but that was not enough because the Indian could not be brought to become a WESTERN Christian. The Indian Christian couldn't just forget about his centuries old traditions (that bothered the westerner).
Later came the enslavement and kidnapping of blacks. The blacks were not exterminated like the Indians because the westerners who ruled America really did not consider them humans. They were considered animals and valuable like any other animal out there. Note that the Indians were not considered Animals; in the eyes of Westerners, they had some kind of civilization, but it was too different to accept, therefore had to be terminated. The blacks, in western mind, had no civilization whatosever.
Later on things changed a little, Jim Crow laws landed in the land of the free, racism was even enforced in Western Christian churches, something, that would never happen in Middle Eastern Christianity.
That basically sums the inherent intolerance in Western culture. Anyone who believes western culture has changed radically in the last 40 years is quite naive.
The Nazi ovens are still warm and the wounds of the Native Indians are still deep and painful. For the blacks, well in the westerner mind, they are still taught what civilization is. They are "dogs" on a leech, shot and put back in their cages (black ghettos and US prisons) when they get too "wild".
TO go back to the original subject, Western christian societies have codified many Christian-based laws and morals into what they call today "secular law".
Who says marriage is only between men and women? who says polygamy should be banned?
Well it is all rooted in Christian western beliefs (emphasis on Western as opposed to oriental where Christianity came from).
Sharia is just a bunch of codified laws that were put together in the Middle ages. There is nothing inherently "evil" about it. They are as outdated as Western concept of marriage and not as old as Jewish religious laws that many faithful Jews observe.
Please stop wasting my time with lame and irrelevant moral equivalencies. Sharia laws are more brutal and more discriminatory than any other legal system in existence today. The nations that are ruled by Sharia are intolerant, imperialistic and genocidal. We're talking about the facts that exist today, not half a century ago or hundreds of years past.
It doesn't matter where they came from or what they're based on, the fact is, Sharia laws are considered to be brutal and downright criminal by every other system on earth. Sharia legalizes genocide and of slavery. Arabs and Muslims have used these laws to justify their atrocities against anyone they deem to be 'infidels', including fellow Muslims. Arabs and Muslims have used Sharia to justify their history of enslaving blacks for more than a thousand years. They're still enslaving and torturing blacks in Africa. However, the culture in general wasn't always as brutal and non-productive as it is now. Arab/Muslim culture, financed by oil money and Wahhabi-based Sharia, is currently at its absolute nadir.
As far as Western culture goes, we do have a history of being intolerant, especially of the sort of fascism that Islamism/Sharia represents. We're no more or less intolerant than most, but we have better toys. We're currently somewhat crippled by our efforts to live up to liberal/Christian/multiculti standards, but that may change at some not-always-predictable point. That's the only history that's relevant here.
There is no such thing as "Sharia laws". Sharia itself has different versions and is quite diverse. The Sharia in Saudi Arabia is not the same as the one in Tunisia, and is not the same one in Iran neither.
As to brutality, the United States government still kills its own convicted citizens (by poisoning them). In 2004, the US was ranked 4th in the entire world in terms of its record in the death penalty business. China was ranked first, but I know that western culture needs its cheap nikies from it.
Now don't tell me this is some wacko law enforced by some madman on the run like Bin-Laden. It is part of US culture. It is an institution. US citizens pay government employees to kill convicted prisoners, watch them die, make sure they actually died (if not poison them more), then sign off their books and put the government seals. Barbaric or civilized? ...oh i know, its the civilized lethal injection, we "Western people" make sure the person doesn't suffer.
That's how all massacres committed by the "culture" you write about were justified and distorted throughout its modern history.
Note I left out the imperial colonial days of "democratic free Europe" that colonized half of the globe and killed people with impunity as if they were parasites.
You argue that western culture have a history of fascism that is similar to Islamism.
No it is not similar.
Nothing can compare to western fascism.
Just name me another nation that built railroads, then using them, transported human beings in trains in order to put them in Ovens and Gas chambers.
There is only one. GERMANY. The land of Beethoven that is so celebrated in Western culture. All other Western European nations helped in, and send few of their Jews into the death camps.
The other western nation that stayed away from this massacre, and not that it didn't earn its own Indian genocide prize, got involved in the end. To end the war, the western way so they say, the US government had to drop 2 nuclear bombs on 2 civilian cities, killing its children, women and elderly in few seconds. A very popular move that earned the bombers (really genociders) medals of WESTERN honor.
The western warS ended...but it turns out that there was not enough killing to rest on. Vietnam had to be there, and 2 million Vietnamese were massacred, all in the western quest to "save these people".
Then came Gulf war I, and lately Gulf War II.
It is all the same story.
There is no such thing as "multi-cultural western standards". They are multi-western standards.
Your dribble is only made by thoughts like yours and for thoughts like yours too.
The topic was the inabilty of european muslims to integrate into the societies that they mooch off of.Granted,we Americans don't really have a problem with our muslims integrating.I beleive the reason for this is our brutal devotion to the constitution.American muslims know that we as a people can get amazingly violent when anyone attempts to subvert our laws and traditions.Your species are able to pull their separate society crap in europe because the europeans don't have the guts to put you in your proper place.By all means enjoy the fruits of our superior society,but know that should you attempt to subvert that society,you will die.Islam is a primative shame based culture that is obsessed with ideas of fear and humiliation(wether giving or receiving,these two ideas are allways on their minds).Turning the other cheek with muslims is like wearing a steak suit to go pet feral dogs.The only things you lowly sons of dogs respect is death and humiliation.If you continue to press us with your demonic relegion and your primitive demands,we will surely give you a good dose of both.Make no mistake swine...we are skilled killers and one of us is worth a thousand of you mindless pigs.
with regards,
Robert Alpy
I'm not sure if the story in this link is true (17 year old girl sentenced to death), it is linked in a few different places. At least the convicts on death row in the US have had some type of legal representation, as well as have committed some kind of heinous crime that, by the laws passed in each state, would subject the,to the death penalty.
How many religions have crashed planes into large buildings full of people at work? ONLY ONE, ISLAM. Is this a really good and valid argument? At least during WWII, some countries in the 'western' culture saw what was happening and fought back and, thanks to their courage, managed to rid the world of this evil. Where are the Islamic leaders that will outright denounce terrorism? Where are the people from Islam who will stand side by side with other human brethren to stop suicide bombings?
I think your logic is all twisted up, unfortunately, by how much hate you have in you.
Good question.
a-) economics. People (whether Muslims or other people that western culture can't accept) know that deep inside the "Western culture", racism is still there. It can't just disappear within 40 years. b-) ignorance. "Western culture" puts a good amount of effort in propaganda. Its feel-good self-serving propaganda consists of putting on the mask of "we are tolerant multicultural people". In reality, it works like this: "You other people can come to our countries but we have to put you in ghettos. You can't live among us".
Western intolerance and racism has just evolved and has taken new sophisticated forms of discrimination.
The issue comes down to this:
Can the western thought (here I m talking about the average people) look at blacks, Indians, people with different habits and religions, straight in the eye and feel the same way they do towards another Western man?
The answer is NO.
In the US, when a white-man marries a black-woman (which is rare), it still raises eyebrows! Please!
For the subject of suicide bombers, Muslim-Arabs were not the first ones to crash planes into targets.
But to answer your question, the difference between that and western fascism is that Al-Qaeda was not an Islamic cultural effort that involved all sectors of society. Al-Qaeda is a gang of people who got together and killed people. Fascism is factories, railroads, armies, scientists, politicians, etc.
Not saying that Islamic culture can't descend into fascism, my point is that it hasn't yet and probably won't because it wasn't born few decades back.
Islamic culture also doesn't look down on different people the same way western culture does. History teaches us that during WWII Muslim states who had Jewish citizens, and who were under European fascist rule, protected their them despite the tensions between the 2 communities.
It is easy for you to say "live side by side" when your culture has engaged in the biggest organized killings of others in modern history.
There is no "at least" in death row cases. The US until recently still convicted minors with capital punishment....but in line with the usual hypocrisy of western thought, they say "we will only kill these convicted minors after they become adults!".
Iran is a violator of human rights the same way the US is.
The US government has killed more people (count all the wars) than all Iranian governments combined since the 70s.
The US government and its neo-fascist army could have killed 10 million Vietnamese had the death toll on the US side stayed "reasonable".
Western Europe was largely silent when the US was massacring viets. In fact, they were business partners with the US government.
The French government still teaches its schoolkids that "French colonialism" was a force of good.
Bryanj,
There was no worldwide celebration of 9-11. That is utterly false. Some thought the US deserved it but that included non-Muslims too (Latin America).
And speaking of Latin America, Hugo Chavez, who is not a Muslim or Arab, has not called Bush as a terrorist for nothing; he just summarized all of what I said in that label against the elected president of the so-called "Free world".
You make very valid points about US and Western history, but your attempt to attribute these sins to "Western Christian" culture reveals a prejudice similar to that of the Islamophobes who wrote those disgusting rants after your post. On the one hand, you're happy to attribute the sins of Germany 50 years ago and US now to the Western culture in general, but dismiss criticism of Iran as nonrepresentative of Islamic culture. You can't have it both ways.
I don't believe in propensity of any group of people or culture for good or bad. What corrupts people of any religion is absolutism, as evidenced by Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, fundamentalist Islam or Christianity, or even absolute belief in American goodness. Whenever people feel they are justified to kill for a better tomorrow, you will have mounds of dead bodies but no bright future. Unfortunately, that viewpoint is in evidence in a substantial part of the Muslim world. That doesn't say anything bad about Islam in general or Muslims as people, but this evil ideology of death and intolerance of anyone with different beliefs must be opposed.
The Western ideals (not that they are always upheld) of freedom of thought, speech, the rule of law, have nothing to do with Christianity, which is why they are fought tooth and nail by fundy Christian wackos here in the US. You're right that US and Western foreign policies have been horrible, like of any empire in the past, and I oppose them, but that does not invalidate the achievement of a relatively free society domestically. Having grown up Soviet Union, I can really tell and appreciate the difference, and I can see nothing culture-specific about these big Enlightenment ideals.
You repeatedly cite the worst of what has happened in Western societies.
Is it your point, in citing these instances, to justify the call to kill Jews and Christians? Does the fact that Hitler did it in the 1940's make it right for Muslinms to do the same in the 21st century?
Are you really saying that?
And if not, what, then, is your point?
Not saying that Islamic culture can't descend into fascism, my point is that it hasn't yet and probably won't because it wasn't born few decades back.
According to this article in the Asia Times, Islamic culture descended into fascism a long time ago:
And here is a group of modern Islamist Nazis, doing the classic salute.
The US government and its neo-fascist army could have killed 10 million Vietnamese had the death toll on the US side stayed "reasonable".
What a very Chomskyesqe argument, full of half-truths. It's not true that the US government/military is neo-fascist, but it is true that we did have the ability to easily wipe out the Vietnamese. We didn't, but lets just concentrate on our abilities for the sake of argument.
We also have the ability to easily wipe out every Muslim on the face of the planet. We probably won't, but the fact is, we could. Given that fact, Muslims should probably ask themselves why their current Wahhabi-inspired Imams and fascist-inspired political leaders are so anxious to wage war with us. Are your leaders trying to do good things for the general population? Have your leaders ever done good things for the general population before? No.
Are they trying to grab all of the money and the power they can, are they stuffing billions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts and fueling up their Learjets and their Mercedes to make a break for it when the party is over? They've always done that before, (although Mullah Omar broke with tradition by using a motorcycle). There's no reason why they wouldn't be doing it now.
Your so-called war against the West is just another con from the same folks who have been conning you for decades - your leaders. And you're falling for it. That's what makes your arguments so sad.
Many of the points that Felix makes are true and valid. However his tone seems to suggest that Western civilization is more evil because of the death and destruciton it has caused has been greater. But that is more a matter of greater resources and technology in the art of death-dealing than Iran or other Islamic countries. If Iran had nukes to drop on Iraq in the 80's, it would have.
I am a huge fan of Western civilization but I recognize it's true history and it's limits. The "tolerance" of the West is only a recent phenomenon and evolves out of "liberal" Christian ideas. If a white-black couple raises eyebrows, that is far better than 50 or more years ago when it caused violence, typically in the form of lynchings. I live in Detroit, which is one of most segregated metropolitan areas in America. Yet even here the progress has been great.
Muslims have come to America (as they have Britain) for primarily economic reasons. While over the decades there have been some criminal incidences of racial or religious bigotry (mostly fights, graffitti), there has been far more acceptance. In the neighboring city of Dearborn, Muslims are increasingly taking the reins of city governance and political influence. There is a magnificent mosque in Dearborn that proudly takes its place among a row of churches. An Arab festival is held where many people come to enjoy the arts of Muslim culture. This is far better than the hatred, violence and oppression (political and economic) that immigrants (mostly White European) faced in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
But no society is free from the evils of men. If no Westerner can look upon an Other (in race, nationality or religion) and feel the same as they do towards those who are the Same, neither can the Muslim (or Buddhist or Hindu, etc.) Because in human psychology, we group people in our minds and those who are Other are treated differently as those who are the Same.
Speaking of human psychology and human evils, do not think that a Muslim community is not susceptible to fascism. It is a basic human impulse to look to leaders to take action against "threats" and often a populace is willing to give up liberties to do so. Neither age of culture or greatness of cause innoculates a civilization. The word "fascism" is Western, but Mao and the Chinese Communists were very fascist--and you can't more Oriental then China. It is only a deep suspicion of leaders that fosters a political culture that innoculates against fascism. This is a quality missing in current American culture; hence the compliance in allowing the current Administration to develop the technological and legal tools to spy and imprison Amercans without legar redress. President Bush is unpopular because of his perceived ineffectiveness, not because of his corruption of protections of individuals against the state.
“The massacre of millions of Jews wasn't a coincidence or an act of one madman or a clandestine group on the run like Al-Qaeda. The WESTERN massacre of these OTHER people was supported by all fields of western society: from academia, media, and industries to all branches of governments.”
Tell me, Karim, what happened when Islam had the upper hand. What happened to the OTHER people who once lived in Iran, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and many other countries? Were their populations not butchered by hordes of invading Muslims? Did this colonialism, which is, apparently, only bad if unsuccessful and practiced by Westerners, have no negative affect on the indigenous cultures and religions? What happened in Turkey and the Balkans, Karim? Are we to understand those events as the benign expansion of the “peaceful” religion? Shall we ask the Greeks, Spaniards, or other peoples who shed oceans of blood to free themselves from Muslim slavery? Shall we ask the Jewish populations of north Africa, who were locked in ghettoes and humiliated every day? Shall we ask the Armenians, who well remember their “benign” treatment at the hands of their Muslim “brothers?”
“I am not wasting your time, I am exposing the hypocrisy contained in your "western thoughts" that people like you always try to whitewash. I am also educating you.”
Is that how you usually “educate” people, Karim? Do you usually approach them with this threadbare, self-righteous, patronizing attitude, and implied assumption of intellectual superiority?
“Sharia is just a bunch of codified laws that were put together in the Middle ages. There is nothing inherently "evil" about it. They are as outdated as Western concept of marriage and not as old as Jewish religious laws that many faithful Jews observe.”
Let me quote to you from your own book, Karim:
“O you who believe, obey Allaah and obey His Messenger, and the people in authority among you. And if you dispute over anything, refer it to Allaah and His Messenger if you really believe in Allaah and the Last Day, that is best in terms of consequences.” (4:59)
“And he who does not rule by what Allaah sent down, it is they who are the disbelievers.” (5:44)
“And he who does not rule by what Allaah sent down, it is they who are the wrongdoers.” (5:45)
“And he who does not rule by what Allaah sent down, it is they who are the rebellious.” (5:47)"
Do you not agree with these passages in the Quran, Karim? Are they simply vestiges of ignorance from the Middle Ages. Do you also agree with the passage in the Quran according to which the 95% of Christians who believe in the Trinity will burn in hell forever, or is that also to be ignored? What about the passage requiring that apostates be put to death?
>>”The massacre of the native Indians in America (95% of them were exterminated) is also another example to consider. The Indian could have converted to Christianity, and some did, but that was not enough because the Indian could not be brought to become a WESTERN Christian. The Indian Christian couldn't just forget about his centuries old traditions (that bothered the westerner).”
Obviously your head has been quite successfully pumped full of propaganda lies about the Indians, the death penalty, western colonialism, slavery, etc., etc., and you can recite the usual full repertoire of western “sins” by heart. Do you have the courage to honestly debate even one of your lying assertions? Let’s take the Indians. You claim that 95% of them were exterminated. That is a lie. Extermination implies a deliberate act. It implies deliberate murder. How, then, is the number of Indians surviving today in the U.S. about the same as were alive at the time that serious European colonization of our territory began? There is a great deal of legitimate scholarly debate about the original numbers of Indians in what is now the U.S. They may have numbered in the tens of millions, or the number may have been much smaller. The debate is not settled, and no one has a monopoly on the truth. What we do know for a fact is that, if there were tens of millions, the overwhelming majority of them fell victim to Old World diseases long before serious European expansion into North America began. When Marquette explored the Mississippi River in the late 1600’s, he found a few small villages along its whole length, to within 200 miles of its mouth.
Again, Karim, let’s just stick to one point. I have no doubt you can hop from one propaganda talking point to another for days. After all, you, who pride yourself on your “open-mindedness,” have spent your whole live soaking up hate. If you prefer one of your other propaganda themes, by all means, name it. Slavery? The death penalty? Genocide? Colonialism? Whatever. However, if you really possess a shred of intellectual honesty and have the courage to engage in a debate instead of one of your usual sermons, let’s just stick to one subject and examine it critically. I’m waiting.
Lots of bad stuff happened throughout history everywhere. It is not relevant. The sooner we all stop using the past of ourselves or others to justify our dysfunctional present behavior, the better. Unless, and until, the Muslim religion accepts the sanctity of the individual and actually respects that individual, whether they are man, woman, Christian, Jew, Hindu, black, yellow, red, green, etc. there is little to discuss.
The content, the process, the enforcement... you name it, these two legal systems have nothing in common.
When I use the "Western Christian" label, I don't mean it in the religious way. I am not blaming Christianity or any other religion.
Will people stop being able to hate long enough to stop throwing punches?
Or will we never be able to solve any differences and it is only a matter of time before a nuke is set off in the name of God (on either side, for that matter).
Your arguments, quite simply. are weak.
I am not familiar with the Egyptian story but it is irrelevant since no institutional fascism was ever able to succeed in the Arab world or the Muslim world in general.
You argued that what I wrote about the US government killings in Vietnam is half-truth. Your "truth" (again the in your Western thought) consisted of the fact that the US governent and its army of killers only killed about 2 million people in Vietname when they could have killed more.
Well, when Hitler walked in Paris after France was conquered, weren't the Germans in a position to kill the French in great numbers if they wanted to?
Yes they were, but they didn't.
The Army of the US government bombed Vietnamese villages with all kind of weapons including napalm, sprayed vast forest territories with deadly chemical agents, and so many innocent people were killed...so many. Tell us why all those people had to die in such a wasteful way while the war was supported by US institutions?
There is nothing wrong with a Chomskyesqe argument.
It is your argument that defends killers instead of their victims.
Doing good things can be quite subjective. It could be doing business in deadly weapons (first exporter of weapons in the world is the US), or caring about and respecting all people on this planet.
Absolutely not.
The Muslims are in general content with what they have even if it is not that great.
The West, mainly represented by the US now, still isn't at that stage yet.
The US would still go to war and kill people to safeguard its economical interests alone. I am not imagining this. That was Gulf war I and also Gulf War II.
The real question is:
Can the westerner settle down, be content with what they have, and stop dictating to the world the terms on which OTHER people should lead their lives?
A lot of western thought still believe they inherited this planet. Europe has backed down since their last adventure in colonial business, but the thoughts just morphed into new subtle ways.
Pay attention to how South America is changing, and how hostile they are becoming towards US hegemony.
Well, since Noam whiftily dreams of his 'anarchism' and a Vietcong-style revolution in America that will destroy liberal Democracy, I'd have to say that there are a lot of problems with Chomsky and his arguments.
But you didn't answer the second half of my question. You obviously believe that the United States can be a very dangerous enemy. And you are, in some ways, right. We have a history of being conflict-averse, until, one day, we decide not to be. You know that this "clash of civilizations", if it continues to follow its current path, will end badly.
If we are as bad to the bone as you seem to believe, why are you supporting the philosophies of the leaders who are provoking us? Why do you defend genocidal, apartheid, Sharia laws and the leaders who benefit from them? Why do you defend the laws and the leaders who are trying to impose Sharia in Europe, India, Thailand and Africa? Why do you support the ethnic cleansing, or Arabization, that has caused the displacement of millions in the Middle East?
Why are you supporting this fascist quest for Islamist Lebensraum? You know that Islamist leaders aren't working in your best interests. You know they'll take the money and run. Why are you working so hard for them?
Christians still live in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine). Lebanon itself is half Christian.
Muslims have ruled the area for over 1400 years.
The Armenian massacre by the Turks is the only thing that comes close to the brutality of organized western modern killings. The Turks, like many westerners, don't like to think of the Armenian genocide attempt as such.
Well of course the genocide of the native Indians was deliberate.
It wasn't an accident. It's like saying the kidnapping of blacks from Africa and their institutional enslavement in America was not deliberate.
The native Indians had to be removed, and killed if they resisted, because they lived in all fertile lands and "strategic" (in the time terms) areas.
It is only your self-serving opinion that "schools, roads, technology" brought by force by the imperialist western thought in the 3rd world is good.
It is interesting how you mention "law and order" while all the imperialist adventures were a violation of law and order itself.
But as usual, which still happens even today, the law and order is one way.
The native indians had their own questionable traditions.
That doesn't justify their genocide.
Nazi Germany was technologically superior than all of the world nations.
Reason, Science, Freedom, life are not exculsive western values. This is typical western thought ignorance.
Besides, when do you draw the line for this "superior western values"?
Only 40 years ago, the USA still officially discriminated against black people in the millions. That alone violates freedom, individual rights, science and even reason.
Outside the USA, your western offshoot in South Africa (good ole Dutch colony) enforced a racist apartheid system against the NATIVE blacks until 1994.
I am not asking you not to be proud of your heritage. After all, common sense (note it was not invented by western thought) says you should not be held responsible for any crimes or wrongdoings committed by your ancestors.
However,
To keep KILLING the PEOPLE of the world TODAY, to lecture them of your distorted selective past, to keep BUILDING and SELLING deadly WEAPONS, to justify WARS based on economical interests, that is not be acceptable.
We don't need Chomsky or what you called "intellectual elites" (who by way invented the technology you chant about), to realize that the western killing machine has got to stop.
Roberts, there is no desire for world domination by Muslims.
That is only in your imagination. It sounds like some "Jewish conspiracy of world domination".
There are no Muslim troops stationed in the US but there are thousands and thousands of US troops all over the Middle East.
Obviously you are angry at 9/11 but remember those people were not a government or even a nation, and that your nation has killed, just recently and before, many more people.
A crime is a crime whether it was committed by the US government or a gang like al-Qaeda.
>>"Christians still live in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine). Lebanon itself is half Christian.
Muslims have ruled the area for over 1400 years."
Really, Karim, and how did they come to rule these areas? Can you tell us that? Why are you so reticent to discuss certain aspects of your history? What were Moslems doing at Vienna in 1683, Karim? Were they on a peace mission? How humane was their treatment of Byzantine soldiers after the sack of Constantinople, and what were soldiers of the "religion of peace" doing at Constantinople to begin with?
What is the ratio of mosques being built in majority Christian lands today to the number of churches being built in majority Moslem lands? Are Christian evangelists being welcomed in majority Moslem countries with open arms? Are Jews comfortable living in those countries? Which is larger, the number of people emigrating from majority Moslem to majority Christian lands, or vice versa? Why do you suppose that is? If the culture and governments of Western lands are so evil, why do you suppose it ever occurs to Moslems to leave their own homes and go live among these evil strangers, and resist fiercely any attempt to send them back?
>>"The Armenian massacre by the Turks is the only thing that comes close to the brutality of organized western modern killings. The Turks, like many westerners, don't like to think of the Armenian genocide attempt as such."
A little holocaust denial here, a little revisionist history? The genocidal massacre of the Armenians is a historical fact, regardless of how the Turks like to think of it. The only thing that comes close? What about the slaughter of half a million people in Indonesia in 1965? Are you going to tell us that religion had nothing to do with it, or that it was all the CIA's fault? Go ahead, we all need a good laugh.
>>"Well of course the genocide of the native Indians was deliberate. It wasn't an accident. It's like saying the kidnapping of blacks from Africa and their institutional enslavement in America was not deliberate."
Let's see, this is the one theme we were going to single out for debate, right? Is that all you're going to do? Wave your hands and bluster that it wasn't an accident and that it was deliberate? No citations from scholarly journals, no attempt to cite sources for your 95% claim, no orderly listing of massacres that add up to the total of 40 million plus killings your statement of "fact" implies? Pretty lame, Karim! Let's assume for the sake of argument that your claim that 95% of the original Indian population perished is true, even though your original statement of that number as a "fact" was mere shameless propaganda. Whether you belong to the "high counters" or "low counters" of original Indian population in North America, it is generally admitted that the "95%" you refer to died as a result of diseases whose spread was inevitable unless the New World was to remain hermetically sealed from the old for all time. Most of these people caught the diseases from other Indians, and never saw or even heard of the original source of the infection. Most of them had already died or were doomed before the actual colonists of North America had even arrived, yet, according to you, this inevitable spread of disease was a "deliberate act of genocide." Go ahead, Karim, explain to us why the spread of diseases was a "deliberate act of genocide." Why not throw in the old chestnut about how some colonists sent infected blankets to their Indian neighbors, and document how the end result of that one act was your "95%." Let's stay focused on the Indians, Karim. We can see from your reply that you have an irresistable urge to go hopping off after other propaganda butterflies. If one of them appears prettier to you than the current one, by all means, let's chase it, but let's stick to one topic. Nothing is easier than the mouthing of propaganda slogans. Backing them up is a little more difficult.
@Kai
>>"The western world didn't meet a peacefully world of Harmony when it for instance entered the Americas, but a barbarous Aztec Indian community infamous for its sacrifice of human life to the gods by the number of 50 thousand a year. And the other native Indian tribes were not peace-loving tribes living together in harmony but tribes in constant warfare with each other, taking war loot such as humans as slaves to dispose of as they wished - and all living as they produced, on a bare existentialist minimum. The English brought light into India, and for this India today still is the better off."
These are historical facts, and they remain historical facts regardless of much mouthing of Chomskyite propaganda slogans. It is also a fact that, at one time, Pennsylvania was ruled by Christian Quakers, who refused to participate in war. The result was that the settlers in Pennsylvania were slaughtered and their possessions plundered by Indians, many of whom came from distant regions and had no claim whatsoever to the settlers land. The slaughter and plunder continued virtually unopposed until the Quaker government was replaced. The Indians regularly smashed out the brains of white babies and small children against trees when they were captured, because they were too much of a hindrance on the trail. White men were regularly tied to posts and tortured with fire for as long as they could be kept alive. The Indians treated each other the same way, and were constantly at war with each other. These are the "peaceful Indians" Karim refers to.
When it comes to India, there are documented cases of the execution of whites for the murder of native Indians at the order of white judges, putting the lie to Karim's claim that the country was a scene of universal slaughter and rapine. The "leftist Chomskyites" in those days were known as Whigs, and many of them, in spite of their liberal principles, ardently supported colonialism as a necessary evil to replace a greater evil. In retrospect, they were probably right.
"By their fruits shall ye know them." Compare the documented results of western colonialism with those of Arab colonialism. Take a stroll through northern Africa and notice the mighty stone ruins all about you, from Egypt to Morroco, remnants of a glorious, pre-Islamic past, now the home of unemployed masses whose one goal is to somehow escape to Europe or America. Look at the once mighty and enlightened Greek cities of Anatolia, now miserable Turkish villages squatting in the sun. Look at Persia, which once rose from the ashes of defeat to bid defiance to the Roman empire for centuries. Now her citizens are slaves of religious bigots who preside over a state, failed in spite of a massive inflow of oil wealth, whose only recourse to gain respect is the development of nuclear weapons. Western colonialism was an evil, but no worse an evil than Arab colonialism. Which bore the better "fruits?" Ask the millions of citizens of majority Muslim countries who are now voting with their feet.
But you do need Chomsky to frame your arguments, and that's why you defend him.
Speaking of Pied-piper style leaders who are leading the Islamists and their supporters towards destruction, Chomsky is not on your side.
Chomsky's goal is to destroy American democracy through propaganda. If the Roberts of the world used American-made weapons to destroy the Muslim world, Chomsky would be thrilled. The destruction of the Muslim world give him another propaganda weapon to bash America with. Think of the lecture fees he'd be raking in.
Again, why are you defending these creeps?
Chomsky is America's conscience speaking.
He is trying to awaken yours and others, but obviously it is still in deep sleep.
It is the people of the Middle East who established Judaism, Christianity, then Islam.
Not Romans, or Westerners in general.
You are the ones who adopted OUR EASTERN RELIGIONS and even KILLED our OWN people for it (From Romans to Crusaders).
If the people of the Middle east want to establish a NEW religion, well it is NONE of the west business.
As far as we are concerned, it would be good if you get your own western based religion, and leave our "beliefs, holy places, etc" alone.
You speak of the Levant as if it was a western property, simply because they share the EASTERN religion the western thought adopted. This is the same ignorance and arrogance that I've been trying to explain here for you.
How did Islam, which is a Middle Eastern religion, become the major religion in the Middle East? Well because the people of the Middle East adopted it.
Just like after Judaism, many middle easterners adopted Christianity.
The first time Muslims arrived in the Levant was in the 7th century when Jerusalem was under Byzantine rule. The Byzantines, after good old westerners from Rome destroyed the Jewish EASTERN holy site, took control of the area from the Persian empire (Eastern), then banned the Jews from it.
The Muslims, Middle Easterners, ended the Byzantine rule (non-Middle Easterners), and restored the Jews (middle Easterners) access to their city.
With few exceptions, that's how the Middle East became majority of Muslims. Most other religions, however, survived, up to this day.
Arabia where Islam came from, was not inhabited by billions of people, who invaded the area and overrun the natives like America's western invaders did to the native Indians.
Muslim expansion into Europe by the Muslim Turks could be considered a conquest of the same caliber as western conquests and adventures into other people lands. I don't defend any of that.
It is good that the Ottoman empire was pushed back to where it came from.
The new emerging American empire should be treated the same way.
The US government has no business in the Middle East.
For your question about immigration of Muslims into Europe, it is for economical reasons.
Relatively speaking, there are more people immigrating to the oil rich Gulf states than to any western country.
Name me one western nation in which immigrants overrun in number the natives.
All of the Arab gulf states have either a majority of immigrants or close to 50% immigrants.
Your point is a moot one.
When you ask: "Western colonialism was an evil, but no worse an evil than Arab colonialism. Which bore the better "fruits?" Ask the millions of citizens of majority Muslim countries who are now voting with their feet."
What religion Mexican immigrant-wannabes have when they try to cross the US southern border illegaly?
In case you didn't know, they are considered Christians.
If the West becomes poor, then fewer people would want to immigrate to it.
I leave it to anyone who can read to consult their history books about the benign manner in which the people of the Middle East adopted Islam.
>>"What religion Mexican immigrant-wannabes have when they try to cross the US southern border illegaly?"
Christianity, Karim. In fact, the most intelligent European observers of the early 1800's dismissed predictions that the newly independent South American states would become strong, prosperous rivals of the U.S. The most significant reason they cited was the degree to which those states had been controlled by the large and dominant class of priests, resulting in passivity, unwillingness to question established authority, lack of enterprise, and incapacity for self-government. Things happened exactly as they predicted. We are witnessing the result in our day, in the form of immigration from Mexico and other South and Central American countries. The same cause has the same effect in Moslem countries.
I am not a religious person. I conclude from this, not that Christianity is good and Islam bad, or that Islam is good and Christianity bad. I conclude that religion should be kept out of politics, period, and that a strong wall of separation should be maintained between religion and the state. I am perfectly content to have Moslems, Christians, or worshippers of the great green grasshopper god as my neighbors, just as long as they don't try to force their religion down my throat, or down the throat of anyone else. When religious people demand that their religious doctrine play a role in state law or administration, they are doing just that. I reject all such interference, regardless of the religion.
As for all the incongruous leftist slogans which now form such a thick veneer over your Islamist core, my attitude is essentially the same. Stop posing as helpless victims of the evil U.S. ogre. Stop pretending that, because we are strong, we must, therefore, also be bad. Tell the U.S. to leave your countries, refuse to buy arms or other objectionable items from us, and put all your wonderful new philosophy into practice. Show us how it should be done! No U.S. troops will remain in your countries if you refuse to allow them there, as long as they don't act as sanctuaries for terrorists, and as long as they don't attack us. I was never in favor of invading Iraq, but now that we are there, it seems to me we can't simply leave and let the country descend into chaos. Do the Iraqis want the U.S. to leave? All they have to do is stop fighting each other, form a government based on some reasonable level of compromise, restore some reasonable semblance of order, and invite the Americans to get the hell out. I assure you that, if they do, the American people will never tolerate leaving our troops in Iraq, regardless of who is in power. Are you citizens of Muslim countries really all so weak and stupid that a few CIA agents can make you dance to any tune? How abject you must truly be if that is really the case. If you would spend a tenth as much time working to change your own governments for the better as you do bitching about the U.S., you might actually accomplish something positive.
Yes in the US they execute their mass murderers. Of course in Muslim world you celebrate them as martyrs and give their families bounties.
Timeline of Islamic History
Notice how many invasions, conquests, revolts of the conuered, civil wars, and political assassinations occur in this timeline. A useful debating tool.
I am myself one of those people of the Middle East whose ancestors were conquered by Muslim-Arabs.
You speak of my people who became Muslims today as if they are dying to free themselves from the Islamic conquest and embrace Christianity or any other religion that the western thought OKed.
For the Indians, well I doubt you are an Indian yourself, so I assume you are whitewashing your "white western heritage in America". Anyone who reads American history will realize that many Americans like to believe that their country is an exceptional country with, of course, an exceptional enlightened history, until you ask their victims, Indians, and Blacks.
I have seen enough documentaries and read enough about the Indian tragedy in America.
One example that comes to mind is the "Indian removal act" (aka the civilized way of Western Land Theft) which was voted by the US congress in 1830, and signed by President Jackson. By 1837, Jackson's administration removed 46,000 native Indians from their homes in the East of Mississippi. Thousands for forced was leave in harsh conditions in their way to their new "homes". The Indians called that route "The Trail of Treas" in which 4000 people (men, women and children) died because of cold, diseases and hardship.
When I was younger, I used to watch Western American movies, and I used to side with the American forces against the native Indians. The Hollywood propaganda machine succeeded in turning the victims into evil people and the aggressors into noble people.
Not only the Indians were massacred, their lands taken from them, the western thought even tried to demonize them through movies to keep the lies alive among average people, including foreigners.
It is good to hear that you don't pass judgement on other people "religious beliefs".
Your take on the Latin American states sounds like the republican take on every issue in life.
They might be trying to get to America for economical reasons but they are NOT killing foreign people and invading other countries in order to maintain the same high standard of living (what the US government does).
Governments that buy deadly US weapons, that kill people, are also to blame. The country that produces them, the government that allows them to be sold, and the government that keeps chanting that "we are better than all of you", is also to blame.
Why don't you take responsibility for your government policies that you keep telling us that it is democratic, by the people, for the people, and all that chanting?
Yes the CIA can wreck havoc in countries. The coup against the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq that brought the Shah in power was the work of the CIA and the British (oil interests).
I agree that the CIA is not capable of everything and that we can't blame it all on the CIA (CIA needed local Iranians to execute the coup), but your government says they don't do such things.
For Iraq, it is the same story. No accountability.
You tell me you didn't support the war as if the war was a soccer game.
In wars, actual people DIE. Thousands and thousands of Iraqis have died since your President, like others, pushed their favorite "War Button".
I just don't understand why you care so little about other people lives.
That is not true.
Didn't the bombers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki get "war hero" awards for their genocidal bombings that killed 120,000 people within few seconds?
Oh but it ended the war...that's right!
No, Chomsky is a Vietcong wannabe. In his own words:
“I believe that in the United States there will be some day a social revolution that will be of great significance to us and to all of mankind, and if this hope is to be proven correct, it will be in large part because the people of Vietnam have shown us the way.”
* from his speech originally delivered on April 13, 1970 in Hanoi while he was visiting North Vietnam with a group of anti-war activists. Broadcast by Radio Hanoi on April 14, and published in the _Asia-Pacific Daily Report_ of the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, April 16, 1970, pages K2-K3.
He calls himself an Anarchist. This is the future he's working towards:
As I understand the term "anarchism," it is based on the hope (in our state of ignorance, we cannot go beyond that) that core elements of human nature include sentiments of solidarity, mutual support, sympathy, concern for others, and so on.
Would people work less in an egalitarian society? Yes, insofar as they are driven to work by the need for survival; or by material reward, a kind of pathology, I believe, like the kind of pathology that leads some to take pleasure from torturing others. Those who find reasonable the classical liberal doctrine that the impulse to engage in creative work is at the core of human nature -- something we see constantly, I think, from children to the elderly, when circumstances allow -- will be very suspicious of these doctrines, which are highly serviceable to power and authority, but seem to have no other merits.
Of course, this whifty description leaves out the most important issue that faces communist/anarchist societies - what do you do about the Kulaks?
One of Noam's minions offered an alternative to the traditional Stalinist tradition of genociding the unrepentant capitalists and counterrevolutionaries -
They wouldn't fight because there'd be no possibility of winning, outnumbered by some 9 to 1 and deprived of the military means (i.e. they wouldn't have the army if we secure control of the political machinery of controling it).
Which is the goal of Noam's propaganda campaign - to see American democracy and the American military weakened and/or dismantled, replaced with anarchism. You and your Islamist leaders are, in Noam's loony worldview, just a means to that end.
Noam's plans are loony but defending him is beyond the pale.
You argue about semantics and philosophical ideas, I argue against actions and policies in which people die.
You should ask Noam himself what he meant by that speech about Vietnam.
Try not to put words in his mouth.
From what I gather, he was fighting the American war machine, his own country, that was killing Vietnamese people thousands of miles away. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Where is your "unwillingness to challenge authority" mantra that you slapped the Latinos with in one of your posts above?
I am guessing it applies to everyone, except the US government or the US army, the institution that execute the killings.
When the US army, like any other army, becomes an aggression force as opposed to a defense force, and a tool for carrying illegal invasions against other nations, well it must be condemned and even prosecuted in the world court for war crimes.
Noam's idea of weakening the support for the military is a civilized one. It should be the goal of all nations in this world so we can put an end to wars.
Noam must be aware of the amount of propaganda that is waged in America by the US government (and other institutions) against their own citizens in order to make the army look "attractive and cool" to people.
I think today I read that some 19 year-old US GI was killed in Baghdad.
Just 19 for god's sake.
In the US it is illegal to drink under 21 of age, but apparently it is OK to be trained to kill others (especially foreigners) when one is only 19.
Your so-called "civilized" government sends kids to kill other people, and get killed themselves, while you are sitting here lecturing the rest of the world how Chomsky is trying to undermine the US military.
Why do you defend your government so much?
And the only way is to give them an ultimatum: integrate and become part of society or leave. There can be no tolerance of intolerance. If that means massive discrimination against Muslims and "Islamophobia" so be it.
Islamophobia Watch is looking in the wrong direction. If they want to cure others of fear and discrimination against Muslims, they should look to themselves first and not at their critiquers. Stopping all those terrorists would be a good start. As is, Islamophobia Watch is one of the most useless groups in the world.
Use of military force is deplorable. I would rather not send the US military into combat.
But! What can you do when your enemies only understands military force, death, and destruction? The enemies haves rejected reason and placed their trust in assault rifles and IEDs.
You make much commotion about the death of a 19 year old GI. He was 19-years old and sent to Iraq - to fight - to keep the peace. He volunteered for it and made a sacrifice. So there is outrage in sending an 19-year old to fight. Is there outrage against the man that killed this 19-year old????
Is there outrage against terrorists crashing planes into buildings? Is there outrage against children being