The "Islamic street" of the third world often erupts into
(state sanctioned and state approved)
anger,
and it is often implied that we should take such anger seriously,
as if it is based on reason, good faith
and rational grievances.
One of the defining features of the
"Islamic street" is the willingness to riot, burn, loot,
rape, kill
and issue death threats over the slightest insult
and imaginary grievance.
How can one respect a culture that behaves like this?
The Islamic culture of shame and pride
- Cultures based on shame, pride, honour and not losing face
are also cultures that are unable to accept criticism.
Such cultures are humiliated by their backwardness
in the modern world, which only makes them worse.
Marches and demos in the Islamic world always seem to be marches for
religious conservatism,
censorship of speech,
hatred,
intolerance and violence.
No one ever seems to march for democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion
or freedom of sexuality.
"Islamic Rage Boy",
the face of the irrational, illiterate, ignorant Islamic street.
This fool cannot read or write,
he thinks Americans carried out 9/11,
and he thinks we should listen to him.
As
Christopher Hitchens
says:
"It's impossible to satisfy Rage Boy and his ilk. It's stupid to try."
See more images.
Photo credit unknown. Tell me here.
Miss World 2002:
The World at their Feet ...
by Isioma Daniel,
in
ThisDay
newspaper, 16 Nov 2002:
"As the idea became a reality, it also aroused dissent from many groups of people.
The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring ninety-two women to Nigeria
and ask them to revel in vanity. What would Mohammed think?
In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them.
The irony is that Algeria, an Islamic country,
is one of the countries participating in the contest."
Muslims butcher innocents in Nigeria
in protest at the "Miss World" contest
- and the western left doesn't care.
After all, the killers are Muslim.
So the left cannot criticise them.
Their victims are "non-persons".
The left is racist
- It expects nothing better from African Muslims.
When "offended", they will riot and slaughter innocents.
How can we expect them to behave any different?
Ian Buruma, 3 December 2002, is disturbed by the left's racism.
"People cheered as Christian women and children were dragged from their cars
and torched to death in the street."
The would-be suicide bomber survived,
and:
"cried bitterly when he was rescued from the burning car, saying they denied him the opportunity of inheriting 72 virgins in heaven."
A similar dynamic was at work in 2005,
when a Newsweek report that a Koran had been flushed down the toilet at
Guantanamo Bay
led Islamofascist mobs to riot and kill people
across the Muslim world.
And everyone blamed the American prison guards, or, later, Newsweek
(the story may not be true),
rather than blaming the violent Islamic mobs themselves.
It is clear that this is what we expect them to do.
We expect Muslims, when offended, to behave like this.
The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations
by Andrew C. McCarthy
- Expecting Muslims to behave worse than Jews or Christians
is a form of bigotry.
"Here's an actual newsflash - and one, yet again, that should be news to no one:
The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more."
The Real Lesson of Newsweekgate
by Robert Spencer
- "The gorilla in the living room that no one wants to notice,
is that
flushing a Qur'an down the toilet should not be grounds to commit murder.
...
The question here is one of proportionate response. If a Qur'an had indeed been flushed,
Muslims would have justifiably been offended. They may justifiably have considered the perpetrators boors,
or barbarians, or hell-bound unbelievers. They may justifiably have issued denunciations accordingly.
But that is all.
To kill people thousands of miles away who had nothing to do with the act,
and to fulminate with threats and murder against the entire Western world, all because of this alleged act,
is not just disproportionate. It is not just excessive. It is mad. And every decent person
in the world ought to have the courage to stand up and say that it is mad."
Let me state a few things:
I do not expect Muslims to behave like this when offended.
In a free world, you have to put up with insults to your beliefs.
As an atheist and a right-wing neo-con, my beliefs are insulted all the time.
It's part of life. Grow up.
In a free society,
desecrating any religion's holy book
should be legal as a private act.
I agree that state officials, such as prison staff,
should not be carrying out such actions, though.
2,000 riot in Afghanistan, Jan 2010, over fictional claims that international troops destroyed copies of the Quran.
6 people die.
What a deranged culture that 2,000 people are willing to riot over such a story.
Full text of the Pope's speech
(also here):
"In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war).
The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion".
It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.
But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.
Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the
"Book" and the "infidels", he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question
on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,
such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.
Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.
"God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature.
Faith is born of the soul, not the body.
Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly,
without violence and threats. ... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm,
or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death."
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this:
not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."
The Pope was quoting from the writings of Manuel II,
published in French by
Theodore Khoury in 1966:
This book (or the relevant section) does not appear to be online.
If it comes online somewhere, please
tell me here.
This controversy is not about agreeing with the Pope.
It's about whether he has a right to say it.
It's about freedom of speech:
It is typical of a Pope to quote the wrong person - not a modern
Enlightenment critic of Islam,
but some unelected medieval dictator, at a time when
the Christian church was itself burning atheists and heretics,
and spreading religion by the sword:
See Killings for Christianity.
Still, as with the
Muhammed cartoons,
the point is not whether the Pope is exactly right.
The point is that in a free society, he has a right to say it.
This is what the Islamists threaten, and this is ultimately what this is all about.
The Islamic violence in response to the Pope calling Islam violent
To protest at anyone saying Islam is violent,
Islamists .. rioted, burnt churches and killed Christians.
Vile, sanctimonious hypocrites.
One Christian killed in Baghdad.
Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions
threatens to kill all Christians in Iraq
if the Pope does not apologize for calling Islam violent.
The Iraqi resistance
threatens to massacre Christians in protest at the Pope
saying Islam was spread by force.
"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... (you will have no choice but) Islam or death.""You will only see our swords until you go back to God's true faith Islam."
Christian churches shot at and fire-bombed by violent Islamists in Gaza and West Bank
(and here
and here
and here).
The Swords of Islamic Right
threatened to blow up all churches and Christian institutions in the Gaza Strip:
"if the pope does not appear on TV and apologize for his comments,
we will blow up all of Gaza's churches.""What the pope said is unforgivable. We will continue to target churches."
And still idiots like
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor
blame Israel, not Islamic fundamentalism,
for the decline in Christians in the Palestinian territories.
Crucify the Pope,
says Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Pakistan's main alliance of radical parties.
Africa
Somali cleric calls for pope's death:
"We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements
...
Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim.
...
We call on all Islamic Communities across the world to take revenge on the baseless critic called the pope."
Nice comment:
"As for the murdered Nun, it shows that Christian martyrs die defending and caring for the innocent ...
while muslim martyrs die killing the innocent."
Islamists protest in London
and threaten violence:
"Pope Benedict you will pay, the Muja Hadeen are coming your way.""Pope Benedict watch your back."
These people should all be deported.
Link, October 18, 2012, from
Roger Kimball:
"Here's the issue: You pursue your constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech. Ahmed over there doesn't like the cartoon you drew, the book you wrote, or the film you made, ergo he murders some nuns in Somalia and burns down assorted embassies around the world. Is it the author of the cartoon, the book, the filmmaker who is responsible for the carnage? Answer: no. It's Ahmed and his friends who perpetrated the violence."
Most of the West agrees with the Pope
The West is beginning to get sick of these tantrums by the Islamic street:
Sky News poll:
Should the Pope apologise?
8 percent Yes.
92 percent No.
Since England and Wales are
3 percent Muslim,
this is not really a ringing endorsement of the Islamic street
from non-Muslims.
Infantilizing Muslim "rage"
-
"I am sick of "Muslim rage." Whether inspired by the pope or Danish cartoonists
or the clumsy use of the word "crusade" by a Western politician,
there is simply no defense for the behavior of these imams and their followers.
It is barbaric, and everybody who is not barbaric
or an unreconstructed apologist for barbarians knows it."
Australian Prime Minister John Howard tells angry Muslims to "move on"."It's a strange form of restraint to respond to words of disagreement
with demonstrations and threats of violence.
...
If Catholics rioted every time people attacked the Catholic Church,
you would have riots on a very regular basis.
He's expressed his regrets and I think we should all move on."
Lord Carey
says this is a:
"storm in a tea cup".
He dismissed Muslim charges that the Pope had "rubbished" Islam.
"Muslims, as well as Christians, must learn to enter into dialogue without crying 'foul'".
Carey backs Pope and issues warning on 'violent' Islam,
speech by Lord Carey, Newbold College, Berkshire,
isn't as good as it sounds.
The full speech
is full of traditional left-wing foreign policy,
criticism of secularism, and
defence of religion.
However, he is not afraid to criticise Islam:
Islam was spread by force:
"Islam had its darker moments too.
It is undeniably the case that its expansion was largely due to military conquest".
On the present riots:
"The incident is a sad reminder that political correctness rules these days.
We find ourselves forbidden to ask awkward questions ...
So allow me to ask an awkward question which I believe was hovering in the background
of the Pope's thesis and which many westerners are asking frequently these days:
"Why is Islam associated with violence?"
We are told, not unreasonably, that true Islam is not a violent religion
and the true Muslim condemns violence. I understand and agree.
My many Muslim friends tell me so. I believe them because I know, as I said earlier,
that the majority of Muslims around the world are shocked and saddened by the way Islam
is associated with violence. ...
That it seems a Nun in Somalia has been murdered by an extremist,
as a direct result of the Pope's lecture, rams home the need to bring out the best in religion,
not the worst. The Muslim world must address this matter with great urgency."
On Islamist jihadi "martyrdom":
"I find it difficult to understand the argument that a person can be a blessed martyr if,
in the cause of his conflict, he knowingly kills innocent people.
Christian martyrdom is unlike this.
We have no martyrology which honours people who kill innocent people."
On Muslim persecution of Christians:
"Christians will want to point to the need for reciprocity
in regard to mission and the building of churches abroad. I find it very strange that Muslims, who plead and argue so strongly for their rights when minorities, are unaware of the plight of Christians in Muslim lands. The fact that Muslims may build their mosques and schools in the West, make converts and advertise their faith is, sadly, not reciprocated in Muslim lands."
The future: the Islamic world needs to change:
"There will be no significant material and economic progress until the Muslim mind
is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions
and even their most cherished shibboleths."
In short, not bad at all.
How pathetic
Rowan Williams
seems next to Carey.
Manuel II apologises:
"the Pope's recent apology
...
bears a striking similarity with a similar apology delivered more than 600 years ago
by Manuel II Palaeologus himself to offended Muslim armies
after they ransacked his Christian country,
converted its citizens to Islam, and beheaded or enslaved those who resisted the forced conversions.
In a public speech ...
Manuel II apologized to the Islamic community
that besieged his controversial
"Byzantine entity"
...
Manuel II said .. that the recent slaughters of thousands of his Christian subjects
by the Muslim sword were the result of his own blindness to the true peaceful nature of Islam.
...
protesters demanded that the Byzantine ruler be punished by strict Islamic Shariah law
for implying that Muslims cannot respond to criticism rationally,
but only with demonstrations, threats and violence.
Angry Ottoman activists burned a number of ancient Greek churches
and publicly beheaded residents in several Byzantine towns,
converting the less stubborn survivors to Islam
to the cheers and applause of prominent Muslim clerics
...
In conclusion, it should be noted that the "Byzantine entity" lasted for only 62 more years,
falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453,
thus ending
the 1100-year-old controversy about its right to exist"
The Islamist genocide-state of
Sudan
has one of the most evil regimes on earth.
Its people have
no human rights,
and it engages in rape and genocide against non-Muslims
and even non-Arab Muslims.
It has killed maybe
2 million people in jihad, genocide, rape, and slave-trading of black Africans.
Gillian Gibbons
(see her myspace page),
a kindly British teacher
of 6 and 7 year olds in the Islamic tyranny of Sudan,
is arrested for allowing the children to name the class teddy bear "Muhammad".
She faced a threat of 40 lashes.
The school has been closed after death threats.
Disgusting. How to scare 6 and 7 year olds for life.
But then again, that is the idea.
Britain should threaten Sudan with attack if she is not freed.
Comment:
"This is the sort of incident which, 100 years ago, would have prompted the government of the national arrested on such a trumped-up charge to inform the authorities that if the woman were not produced immediately, they would all be dead within 24 hours. And they would follow through."
If she is jailed,
British special forces
should be sent in
to bring her out.
It is intolerable that an innocent British citizen
should be jailed by these Dark Age savages.
Stephen Pollard:
"Can someone explain please why we don't simply explain to the Sudanese government - privately - that unless Gillian Gibbons is released from custody, a missile will land on a Sudanese ministry building?"
A commenter says:
"Can you imagine Margaret Thatcher putting up with this nonsense? The SAS would already have been dispatched to free Gillian Gibbons."
She is freed, Dec 2007.
Maybe Sudan did receive some threats behind the scenes.
I hope so.
Let's hope the threats do not follow her home to Britain.
Let's hope she is not attacked by Islamist immigrants in Britain.
Let's hope the sick, violent young men of the Islamic street in Sudan
do not take out their anger and hatred on the school and the children.
Killings for the "teddy bear" incident:
In "revenge" for the "teddy bear" incident, Islamic fanatics plotted to ...
kill a British diplomat.
Fucking loonies.
The British diplomat escaped death,
but the Islamic fanatics did kill an
American diplomat
in Khartoum in Jan 2008.
Gillian Gibbons herself seems to have very little understanding of the regime she has just escaped:
She says
on arrival in freedom:
"I wouldn't like it to put anybody off going to Sudan."
The atheist, centre-left
Johann Hari
often talks sense about religion,
but not so often about politics
(as you can see by the nonsense he writes about Israel below).
It caused riots by Muslim fanatics in India in Feb 2009.
Here is the offending section:
"All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.
I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or "ignorance", but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal."
Hard to know what sets off these ludicrous maniacs really,
but this is probably the offending section:
"If the Quran advises women to use purdah, should they do so? My answer is, No. Irrespective of which book says it, which person advises, whoever commands, women should not have purdah. No veil, no chador, no hijab, no burqa, no headscarf. Women should not use any of these things because all these are instruments of disrespect. These are symbols of women's oppression.
...
Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons
that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it. So many old customs have died a natural death, but not purdah."
A US military base in Afghanistan accidentally puts
some Korans (which had already been defaced by prisoners) out with the trash for burning,
instead of whatever you are meant to do with them.
(Like give them to the local religious loonies to dispose of.)
So fucking what.
But of course angry mobs, who have nothing better to do, riot and kill in response.
Two American soldiers shot dead by angry Afghan "soldier" (i.e. enemy sleeper), 23 Feb 2012.
As Jihad Watch says, it's not really about the Korans:
"A murderer found his excuse. As with the rampages reported earlier, such incidents would not happen without pre-existing dysfunction within the society: the inclination and the understanding that it would be ok to kill, or to destroy property, or generally to wallow in collective rage in the event of certain insults or offenses. This is not the making of stable self-government, because self-government depends on the government of the self".
Obama apologises for the mistake
instead of telling the Afghans to grow up
and stop being such rage-driven babies.
"The explanation and multiple apologies from U.S. officials have yet to calm outrage over the incident".
Oddly enough!
Comments disgusted with Afghanistan, including:
"When the Taliban were blowing up and burning girls schools they did so knowing there were Korans in those buildings, didn't notice any protests then? Any demonstrations? Any violence against the Taliban?"
Pretty much every Westerner feels like this
about this useless country.
A sample of comments at the
Daily Mail.
Hypocrites
- Muslims desecrate synagogues, churches and mosques all the time
Muslim mobs get furious at the slightest perceived desecration of a koran or a mosque.
Angry mobs quickly mobilise to riot and kill in response.
Yet
Muslims desecrate synagogues, churches, and even mosques, all the time,
without a word of complaint from the "Islamic street".
Hypocrites.
Muslims desecrate the Koran all the time:
During the 2005 riots,
Charles Krauthammer
points out that Muslims burn the Koran all the time:
"On the very day the braying mob in Pakistan demonstrated over the false Koran report in Newsweek,
a suicide bomber blew up an Islamic shrine in Islamabad, destroying not just innocent men, women and children,
but undoubtedly many Korans as well. Not a word of condemnation. No demonstrations."
Palestinians Desecrate Korans
- The Palestinian Islamofascist child-killers
Hamas
rip Korans to pieces
to try to stir up trouble against Israel.
Bomb hidden in Koran by Sunnis to kill Shiites in Iraq, Sept 2009.
"a man left the Koran containing a pound of explosives outside the shrine of Musa al-Khadim and his grandson".
Pakistan jihadis attack mosque during Friday prayers, killing 40, including children, Dec 2009.
The suicide attackers opened fire on and hurled grenades at a crowd of 150 gathered for prayers in the mosque.
Victims were fired on at close range.
Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Gizab, Afghanistan,
angry at defeat in battle,
burn a mosque and the Koran in Nov 2010.
Radical Muslims bomb mosques and desecrate the Koran.
They even desecrate the Koran when protesting against
... desecration of the Koran!
Angry mob in Afghanistan,
May 2005,
protesting the "Newsweek" story of the alleged desecration of the Koran,
burn a library in Jalalabad ...
destroying 200 Korans!
Angry Afghan protesters against Koran-burning ... burn Korans!
Riots of Mar-Apr 2011.
"many residents in Kandahar are facing an unpleasant truth: More Qurans were burned in the course of their protests than by Terry Jones.
... as protesters vandalized a girls' school and set fire to shops, Qurans also inadvertently went up in flames."
Jihadis at Guantanamo desecrate the Koran:
Piss and wind
(or via here)
- Mark Steyn is baffled by the riots.
He notes that Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo urinated on the Koran,
and tried to flush it down the toilet.
Muslims suicide bombed a mosque in Kandahar,
"which killed 20, wounded more than 50 and presumably desecrated every Koran in the building".
And Robert Mugabe destroyed a mosque in Zimbabwe.
And no one cares.
Steyn, as always, sums it up:
"Nobody got killed in Gitmo, so instead America is being flayed as the planet's number one torturer
for being insufficiently respectful to the holy book of its prisoners, even though the Americans themselves
supplied their prisoners with the holy book, even though the preferred holy book of most Americans is banned
in the home country of many of the prisoners, even though Americans who fall into the hands of the other side
get their heads hacked off, even though the prisoners' co-religionists themselves blow up more mosques
and Korans than Americans ever do"
Account of the jihadis in Guantanamo
by a U.S. Army male nurse who worked with them:
"The only Korans I saw, or even heard about, being placed in toilets, torn, or thrown onto the tier were done by detainees.
...
Saw Korans thrown on the tier or torn,
but these were by individuals without complete control of their behavior,
such as a psychotic episode.
Heard about two Korans in toilets by the same type of detainee
prior to being admitted for psychiatric restabilization."
Muslims ban the Koran, confiscating copies and burning them:
Amir Taheri:
"Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran."
And perhaps the ultimate in Islamist Koran-burning hypocrisy:
Saudi Arabia destroys Bibles:
"As a matter of official policy, the government either incinerates or dumps Bibles, crosses and other Christian paraphernalia
... the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia, and is confiscated and destroyed by government officials."
The Golden Mosque of Samarra, Iraq, one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam,
shortly after it was destroyed by Islamic fanatics in 2006.
From here.
Hypocrite Islamic fanatics rioted in the street because of alleged desecration of a Koran by infidels.
And yet Islamic fanatics bomb mosques and burn Korans all the time.
Hypocrites.
Instant karma:
Jihadi mosque gets suicide bombed by jihadis.
Suicide bombing of two extremist mosques in Yemen, March 2015.
In the video,
Houthi Shia Islamofascists
chant "Death to America! Death to Israel!"
at their mosque.
ISIS Sunni Islamofascists then
suicide bomb the mosque and another mosque, killing 140.
The hysteria and violence of the "Newsweek" riots and similar
may have backfired.
Many westerners, feeling a threat to their freedom to blaspheme and criticise religion,
have decided to do some real desecration of holy books.
There are now a growing number of
desecration videos and websites
on the Internet,
and this seems likely to grow forever
in direct response to the threats from religions.
The only way people will stop making these
is if religions stop threatening them.
Again, people should have the right to do this.
It may be ignorant, it may be silly, it may be rude,
I may not do it myself,
and the state certainly should not do it,
but private citizens must have the right, in any free society,
to desecrate the holy books of any religion.
It may be juvenile,
but it should be legal.
And you can understand, given the immense damage these books have caused,
why people do it.
If you want them to stop, then stop the threat of violence.
Indian politician
Nupur Sharma
made comments (below) about Islam and the prophet Muhammad on TV on 27 May 2022.
This led to fury from the Islamic street in India and around the world.
Western news reports and even Wikipedia ruthlessly censored what she said.
Nupur Sharma's comments on Islam.
Translation below is from here.
Apparently she is responding to another guest insulting Hindu gods.
She says:
"Oh you leave it, your flying horses.
Your flying horses.
And earth is flat which is mentioned in your Quran.
Should I start making jokes on these things?
You are marrying a 6 years old girl
and having sex with her when she turns 9.
Who did this you know?
Prophet Muhammad.
Should I start speaking?
Earth is flat according to Quran 88:20.
Don't talk rubbish.
Sit on a flying horse and go away."
Her tone is rather hysterical and unpleasant.
Her facts seem fine and uncontroversial though.
Indian politician
Imtiaz Jaleel
says:
"Islam is a religion of peace. ... Nupur Sharma should be hanged."
Phew! Imagine if Islam was a religion of violence!
Conclusion - The angry Islamic street should not be listened to
While the excitable unemployed men of the Islamic street scream for death and blood
in response to the slightest offence,
ultimately our response to them should be one of contempt.
As Victor Davis Hanson
points out, it is the American street they should fear:
"There is an American Street that is a far more powerful, and a more responsible force
than any such populace in the Arab world. Like many of you, I tire of hearing "Death to America"
from the mobs in Teheran or Jericho, and am sick of the usual coffee-house
Middle Eastern hack intellectual that CNN drags out from London,
who ... in the safety of a host Western humane society,
starts listing various perceived grievances against the West,
and then issues warnings (!) about the furor of the temperamental "Arab Street."
I respect and fear the American version far more,
because its anger is fueled by reason
and is slow and steady and furious when released.
The world should not worry when the half-educated, fueled by zealotry and nursed on conspiracy theory,
starts chanting; but it should when a rational and patient American
slowly fumes and decides he has had it
with the Iranian "President", Hezbollah's fascism, the various thugs on the West Bank,
the Sunni Triangle's murderers, the primordial of the Hindu Kush,
or some subsidized dictator in Pakistan or Egypt lecturing us.".
US soldiers accused of tearing up and burning a Koran in Afghanistan, Oct 2007.
I imagine these claims are lies. They usually are.
But even if true, the real story is this:
Islamic fanatics threaten violence over this minor offence!
This just sums up the violent, seething touchiness of the Islamic street,
and the moronic third world culture of
honour and shame.
"If the perpetrators do not apologise to Afghans and to all the Muslims of the world, and if they are not brought to justice and punished for what they have done, we will stand against you, you will see an uprising."
An uprising?
For this?
How can anyone take seriously a culture that behaves like this?
Robert Spencer, 20 Aug 2009,
on the absurd idea that people who give "offence" to religious fanatics
are "responsible" for the ensuing violence, and have "blood on their hands", as
Lord Ahmed
disgracefully said.
As Spencer says:
"if someone flies into a murderous rage because of a perfectly reasonable action, the reasonable actor does not thereby become responsible.
If I meet someone who says that he will kill a person every time I step on a crack in the sidewalk, I do not thereby become responsible for the deaths of those people he murders as a result. And if I began to behave as if I were indeed responsible in such a case, I would only be feeding the psychosis of the killer."
Intimidating the West, from Rushdie to Benedict,
Daniel Pipes,
New York Sun,
September 26, 2006.
These riots are all about intimidating the West into abandoning the Enlightenment
and obeying Islamic law:
"No conspiracy lies behind these six rounds of inflammation and aggression,
but examined in retrospect, they coalesce and form a single, prolonged campaign of intimidation,
with surely more to come. The basic message - "You Westerners no longer have the privilege
to say what you will about Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an,
Islamic law rules you too"
- will return again and again until Westerners either do submit
or Muslims realize their effort has failed."
In short, we should simply ignore
the angry Islamic street.
They have no ideas that are worth listening to.
We should be simply uninterested in their anger
and their problems.
Bert,
the Sesame Street muppet, appears on
posters carried by
moron supporters of Bin Laden,
Bangladesh, Oct 2001.
"DON'T ATTACK AFGHANISTAN", say these moron supporters of Islamic terror,
as if anyone should listen to them.
"In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats. ... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death." The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."
