Something strange has been happening with Islam, and the West's reaction to it.
Before 9/11, most people in the West knew little, and cared less, about Islam.
It was
just another exotic third world religion of no interest or importance.
Since 9/11, the West has been learning all about Islam.
And it's getting a bit bored of it.
It's getting bored of Islamic anger and grievances.
And people are especially getting annoyed at the idea that they have to watch what they say about Islam
(while they can say what they like about any other religion).
The West is a strange place.
There are a lot of people who are just driven by the desire to have fun, to shock,
to offend, to make jokes.
I have a philosophy behind what I say, but many of these people do not.
They are just used to western freedom of self-expression.
And the more Islamic foreigners get offended and try to stop them,
the more they will keep doing it, even escalate it.
Islam has started to annoy the hell out of the West,
and millions of westerners are starting to annoy Islam in return.
And they will never stop.
It's a bit like Scientology.
If you are Muslim, you better
get used to escalating attacks on the Koran and the Prophet for decades to come.
The only way for Islam to ever have a quiet life again
is to stop attacking and threatening the people who mock you.
If you did this,
if you ignored all attacks,
and refrained from violence,
eventually you would be ignored the way Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs are ignored.
But until then, a primitive, pre-modern Islam is locked into an endless exchange of abuse
with shocking, tasteless, irreverant infidel Westerners.
It is an exchange that Islam can only lose.
If Islam wants to be free from blasphemy and mocking,
it needs to disengage from the West entirely, not engage with it.
"Muhammad's empire of faith has managed to thrive in the modern world for one simple reason:
Muslims have kept Muhammad's dark past a secret.
...
The truth about Muhammad has been one of the world's best-kept secrets.
For centuries, it has been virtually impossible to raise objections about
the character of Muhammad in Muslim countries,
for anyone who raised such objections would .. immediately be killed.
Outside the Muslim world, there has been little interest in Islam ...
But things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam,
and Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet,
it is now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret."
Islam will Lose, Mumin Salih, 21 February 2008,
suggests we are only in the early days of a long revolution:
"Over the past fourteen centuries, Islam was never openly challenged or critiqued
...
Even during the last few centuries, when the whole world started to open up to a new age of enlightenment, Islamic authorities managed to seal the minds of Muslims towards any outside views about Islam.
...
For fourteen centuries, Muslims never had a chance to see their religion from any perspective other than their own.
...
Since the introduction of the Internet all that has changed. ...
The Internet is the first true challenge to Islam because it breaks through all the Islamic security systems.
...
Everything about Islam is now subjected to critical scrutiny, people now ask logical questions and demand logical answers. Everyday, the Internet sheds more light on [Islam] to expose its myths. This shakes the very foundation of the Islamic ideology.
... We are only in the beginning of the Internet age, the process may appear to be slow, but the ball started rolling and more Muslims will wake up to the light of truth and come out to the world of enlightenment".
"Raving on about jihad"
John Howard,
Prime Minister of Australia, had a great line in 2006 about
why Islamist immigrants are different
to normal immigrants
to the West:
"You can't find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia.
There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad."
I love the way in one line he beautifully mocks
the idiot ideology of Islamism,
and the idiot immigrants that follow it.
A loss for civilisation, Mark Steyn's tribute to John Howard, December 03, 2007.
He remembers Howard's great quote:
"'Raving on about jihad' is a splendid line which meets what English law used to regard as the reasonable-man test. If you're a reasonable bloke slumped in front of the telly watching jihadists
threatening to behead the Pope
or Muslim members of Britain's National Health Service
ploughing a blazing automobile through the check-in desk at Glasgow airport,
"raving on about jihad" fits in a way that President George W. Bush's religion-of-peace pabulum doesn't.
Bush and Tony Blair can be accused of the very opposite of the traditional politician's failing: they walked the walk but they didn't talk the talk. That's to say neither leader found a rhetoric for the present struggle that resonated. Howard did."
Islam annoys the West:
Topless FEMEN activists burn the black flag of jihad in front of the Great Mosque of Paris, April 3, 2013.
You've got to admit this is pretty cool.
Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images.
From here.
See video.
A similar hilarious FEMEN protest is when they
bowed in topless prayer in a protest at the Tunisian Embassy in Paris, June 5, 2013.
Zombie, 20 May 2010, on how this issue will never end until Islam grows up and learns to take criticism
(and that may happen remarkably soon).
"If the Islamists want us to to stop mocking (or even questioning) Mohammed, they can achieve this goal quite simply: Just go away and leave us alone. Don't bother us, and we won't bother you. Seriously,
99% of non-Muslims don't give a good goddamn about Mohammed one way or the other, and we'd gladly ignore him and his followers until the end of time - if they'd just stop trying to boss us around. But if someone comes to our safe haven and tries to impose a repressive or restrictive rule on us, then that is the exact rule we're going to flout until the interlopers learn their lesson: We don't take kindly to bullshit medieval religious oppression in these parts."
Brad Thor, 19 May 2010:
"It's over. This far and no farther. No more special treatment. It is time for Islam to come into the 21st century."
Muhammad Cartoons Everywhere by Robert Spencer, May 25th, 2010, says Muslim rage and violence only encourages more cartoons:
"It is worth bearing in mind the "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" would never have aroused much interest among anyone if cartoons of Muhammad didn't arouse Muslims worldwide to homicidal rage and attempts to restrict the freedom of speech.
... the Muslim reaction to Infidel cartoons of Muhammad is entirely itself responsible for the interest Infidels have in lampooning the Islamic prophet in the first place. If Christians had reacted to .. Piss Christ or [the] dung-encrusted portrait of the Virgin Mary with the same murderous outrage with which Muslims greeted the cartoons of Muhammad, the West would be experiencing a glut of pictures blaspheming Christ and Christianity.
It is, in the first place, an irresistible human impulse to tweak the humorless and self-important; it can in many cases also be a healthy safeguard against tyranny."
From here.
Actually, this is not Mohammed, it's Jesus.
No, just kidding!
It's Moses.
From here.
This is not Mohammed either.
It's a rubber duck.
This
"Non Sequitur" cartoon of 3 Oct 2010 is a play on
"Where's Wally?".
From here.
It does not even feature Mohammed.
And yet it was still dropped by many newspapers who normally print
"Non Sequitur", for (unspoken) fear of Islamic violence.
It was intended,
the artist said, to
satirize "the insanity of ... media cowering in fear of printing any cartoon that contains the word 'Muhammad.'
The wonderful irony [is that] great newspapers like The Washington Post, that took on Nixon ...
run in fear of this very tame cartoon, thus validating the accuracy of the satire."
Newspapers declining to run it included
the
Arizona Daily Star,
Arizona Republic,
Austin American-Statesman,
Boston Globe,
Chicago Tribune,
Dallas Morning News,
Daytona Beach News-Journal,
Los Angeles Times,
Philadelphia Inquirer,
San Francisco Chronicle,
San Jose Mercury,
Seattle Times,
Syracuse Post-Standard
and
Washington Post.
Greg Gutfeld, 11 Oct 2010:
"Which leads me to my only point. Why is it that the media keeps reminding us that we shouldn't exaggerate the threat of a small group of radicals - but completely changes tack, when it comes to their own personal safety?
Think about it: if the average Joe expresses fear or anxiety over Islamic fundamentalism, they are called Islamophobes. But if an editor with balls the size of electrons removes a comic in which Muhammad isn't even present - that's not honest-to-Allah Islamophobia?
...
Look, the media can't have it both ways. They cannot criticize the public for concerns over Islam, and then eradicate anything in their midst that they perceive might elevate their risk for getting stabbed buying a chai latte at Starbucks. If their governing principle in the newsroom is fear, then they should admit it - and get the hell off our backs for feeling the same way."
Poor Molly Norris got blamed by the Islamofascists for starting EDMD.
Molly Norris
is terrified for her life:
"I did NOT 'declare' May 20 to be "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."
...
I never started a facebook page
...
I apologize to people of Muslim faith".
And then her site
links to all sorts of rubbish criticism of EDMD.
Very sad, but totally understandable.
I wouldn't blame her
for a minute.
These
third world religious maniacs
have a history of violence.
Her photo is on
posters in Islamic demos.
Jihadi scum threaten her on
YouTube.
I wouldn't blame her
at all for saying whatever crap she needs to say
to stay alive.
But nothing she says will be good enough for scum like
American traitor
Anwar al-Awlaki of Al-Qaeda:
"A cartoonist out of Seattle, Washington, named Molly Norris started the 'Everyone Draw Mohammed Day'.
She should be taken as a prime target of assassination, along with others who participated in her campaign.
The large number of participants makes it easier for us because there are many targets to choose from."
Robert Spencer, September 16, 2010:
"This is the sort of case that the President of the United States should be talking about. Instead of wringing his hands about the prospect of Muslim rioting over Qur'an-burning, the President should go on television and give a brief lesson about how freedom of speech is a foremost bulwark against tyranny and a cornerstone of any society that respects the dignity of the human being. He should say that the idea that Molly Norris would have to live in hiding because of a cartoon, or series of cartoons, is unconscionable".
Mark Steyn, Oct 2014:
"And her alternative newspaper - for this impeccably liberal woman - simply announced, "There is no more Molly," and this cartoonist, Molly Norris, not a word has been heard from her since. She's disappeared. An American citizen's life has been erased, and she's gone into hiding, and she has ceased to exist because the crazy guys rampaging around Ottawa yesterday decided that they didn't want her doing cartoons anymore. And that liberal newspaper in Washington State or Oregon or wherever it was gave in and just said in this limp-wristed way, "There is no more Molly." And Obama, the man who stands up for the right for women to be put in lifelong body bags in Cairo, never said a word about the erasure of an American citizen, an American woman's entire life. He never said a word about it. And it's chilling to me. I think about Molly Norris. I wonder if she's still alive. I wonder if she's still in America. I wonder if she's fled to New Zealand or somewhere else. I think about this poor, liberal woman who discovered the hard way that when the chips are down, the liberal left isn't there for you."
I don't support the weirdo Florida church behind "International Burn A Koran Day".
But what they do should be legal in a free society.
It is no different to leftie flag burning,
which should be legal.
The real story, of course, is not what the Florida church is doing.
The real story (as ever) is the ludicrous threat of Islamic violence in response
to this act that harms nobody.
This did not get much support since it was organised by religious nutcases.
But perhaps the real story (as usual) is the
Islamic death threats in response.
The Florida church are religious extremists who
support the "God Hates Fags" church,
and believe Islam comes from a being called "the devil".
They describe Islam as
"one of Satan's most successful, and most accepted attempts to counteract the truth of the gospel".
They go on an
Israel-hating, truther show
which gets them to agree to burn the Talmud too
(see 00:42).
But having said all that, in a free society
it should be legal for them to burn the Koran, or any other book.
I wouldn't go near these people, but what they are doing should be legal.
It is no different to
leftie flag burning.
The Florida church's sites:
Their site
islamisofthedevil.com
was blocked because of this.
Terrorism works.
(The site is now back.
It redirects here.)
Their site
doveworld.org
was blocked because of this.
Terrorism works.
(The site is now back.)
Gambian president
says Islam is not a religion of violence
... and then threatens violence if Korans are burned.
"We Muslims will defend our religion with our blood
...
Any country that allows any copy of the holy Quran being burnt .. you will regret it
...
Caricaturing the holy Prophet .. is unacceptable, and we will not accept it and there would surely be consequences. If you want your security respected then respect the security of others".
Robert Spencer
says the real issue is that violence is a ludicrous reaction
to such a harmless event:
"I oppose the Qur'an-burning. I don't like the burning of books. ... However, these people are free to do what they want to do. Petraeus would do better to tell the Afghans that in America we have freedom of speech and expression, and that we put up with speech and expression that we dislike without trying to kill the speaker. He would do better to tell them that their likely murderous rage over this event is an outrageous overreaction, and that any bloodshed over this would be a heinous crime, far dwarfing any crime they think the people in Florida are committing."
And more:
"I don't support the Qur'an burning, [but] It doesn't warrant or justify murderous rage and cries of "Death to America."
.. the idea that the Muslim world's response to this is reasonable and that we must do our best to placate it is simply aiding and abetting a madman in his madness."
Obama has a very low opinion of Muslims.
Despite telling us that Islam is peaceful and tolerant, he says we better not burn a book,
because Muslims might start killing random innocent people in response.
"You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities."
Nice to know Obama doesn't even believe
his own pious bullshit about Islam.
Robert Spencer on Obama:
"He could have said that to threaten violence and to commit acts of violence because of this is irrational, it's madness - and, for that matter, it confirms the image of Islam as a religion of violence that Obama himself is so anxious to refute.
Instead, he .. semaphored once again that violent intimidation works."
Mark Steyn on Obama:
"The same people who tell us "Islam is a religion of peace" then turn around and tell us you have to be quiet, you have to shut up because otherwise these guys will go bananas and kill a bunch of people."
Robert Spencer talks the sense that so many are unable to:
"Who is responsible for these injuries? Terry Jones? No ... Obama and Petraeus and the rest have forgotten, or want us to forget, that one's response to someone else's provocative action is entirely one's own responsibility. If you do something that offends me, I am under no obligation to kill you, or injure you, or run to the United Nations to try to get laws passed that will silence you. I am free to ignore you, or laugh at you, or to respond with charity, or to respond with insult, or any number of reactions."
Muslim mob in Kashmir, India
tries to burn a school that they think is Christian, 14 Sept 2010. Police kill 4 of the maniacs.
The article says that the "Burn the Koran" riots have already left 22 dead and hundreds injured.
Idiot in Afghanistan, 16 Sept 2010, thinks a fire means allied troops are burning Korans, and points rifle at them.
He is shot dead.
"If Fenton was fired for burning the Koran while off-duty, his First Amendment rights probably were violated, Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said."
Australian atheist
Alex Stewart
smokes pages from the Bible and Koran.
He rates the Bible's pages better than the Koran's for smoking.
Search
for copies.
Sharia in Australia:
His university
threatens to sack him,
confirming what
Daniel Pipes said about universities as
"Islands of Repression in a Sea of Freedom".
Iranian rebel burns the Quran, Jan 2018.
"I ask you, young people of Iran, to join me in burning the Quran
... this book has caused us to fight each other ...
This book is all superstition. We have to burn it ...
I hate these words. This is superstition worship."
Do western leftists agree that this guy - a guy oppressed by the Quran his whole life - has a right to be angry about it and burn a Quran? If not, why not?
A stoner leftie counter-protester,
Jacob Isom,
foiled a Koran burning in Amarillo, Texas, 11 Sept 2010,
giving birth to a hilarious, nonsensical music video.
An interview
with Jacob Isom
shows that, contrary to appearances,
he is no freedom-loving anarchist.
He is a statist who thinks the government should control people's speech.
About the plan to burn a Koran he says:
"I decided I'd go with [a friend] to try and stop the guy,
cos we shouldn't let that happen here,
cos we just don't let people step on people's religion here in this country".
Speak for yourself, you freedom-hating statist control freak.
Comedian and commentator Jon Stewart
gave a
"Medal of Reasonableness"
to Isom for his actions.
There is a
nice comment on this:
"Stewart uttered some mush about how it was problematic to snatch stuff from people but concluded that it was probably "the most sane" to do under the circumstances.
Hopefully he'll write a comprehensive treatise on the acceptable ways of interfering with symbolic speech so I'll know how to behave next time I see someone doing something I don't like."
Protester against Koran burning at the above event in Amarillo, Texas, 11 Sept 2010.
Screenshot from this video.
Of course, the people burning Korans are not burning people.
Whereas the people threatening violence if Korans are burned are burning people.
For example,
I am sure the well-meaning protester is totally unaware of this kind of thing:
In response to the Muhammed cartoons in 2006, Muslim mobs in Nigeria
burned 6 Christian children alive.
They burned a Catholic priest alive in his church.
The placard should really read:
"IF YOU BURN THEIR BOOK, THEY WILL BURN HUMAN BEINGS",
which doesn't give quite the same message.
Sudanese Christians burned alive by
state-sponsored Islamic death squads:
The death squads are
followers of the Quran, the book that apparently should not be burnt.
Muslim mobs kill Christians in Pakistan:
following allegations that a Quran was disrespected.
On March 25, 2011, a mob of Islamists attacked a Pentecostal church in Hyderabad, killing 2 Christians and burning copies of the Bible.
In Lahore, Islamists burned a Protestant church, and threw copies of the Bible into the street.
Islamists called for death for the Florida pastor.
Muslims also tried to set fire to a Catholic church.
Shame on Islam.
What other religion acts like this?
Christians show their moral superiority by .. doing nothing.
No violence. Nothing.
One declares:
"Christians are told to turn the other cheek. They are also told not to take revenge, rather pray for their enemies."
And another says:
"We are hurt but we will not respond in kind".
It reminds me of how the
Baha'i
respond to depictions of their founder.
They are upset, but the idea of killing innocent people doesn't even occur to them.
Islam has a lot to learn from these people.
Well done, 24 year old Akhtar Hussain.
A more vivid demonstration of the inferiority of your faith we could not imagine.
Good work!
Another day, another story confirming the worst stereotypes about Islam.
Think of the millions of non-Muslim jaws dropping open in horror, disbelief and disgust
as they read this headline around the world today.
Front cover of Daily Telegraph, 2 Apr 2011.
Terry Jones
is, correctly,
"refusing to admit the violence is his fault".
He says:
"People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It's unfair and somewhat damaging.
...
The time has come to hold Islam accountable."
Jones, who has harmed no one,
is, of course, threatened by violent fanatics:
"Mr Jones told the Times that, in recent weeks, he had received more than 300 death threats via phone and email, and had been told by the FBI that there was a $2.4 million contract on his life."
Terry Jones makes more sense than Bill O'Reilly.
O'Reilly says Jones has "blood on his hands".
Jones replies:
"We reject Mr. O'Reilly's statement. The responsibility should be laid upon the people who committed the acts.
The recent events are an example of the violent nature of Islam."
You don't have to kill anyone, or even oppress anyone.
Just burn a book that you own, and you are like a mass murderer!
He throws in some anti-Israel bigotry as well:
"U.S. military operations involve an implicit distinction between "good Muslims" and "bad Muslims." The "bad Muslims" are, of course, the Taliban, who demonstrated during their brief and bloody reign that they interpret the Qur'an much as Terry Jones interprets the New Testament and Bibi Netanyahu interprets the Old Testament."
Yes, indeed, all the people that Terry Jones has slaughtered.
And all the stoning of gays and atheists in Israel by Netanyahu.
I'm surprised he didn't say that opposing Obama makes you just like the Taliban.
Joe Klein of TIME, 1 Apr 2011, blames the Florida pastor
for violence committed by other people!
He says blasphemy is the same as murder!
I knew there was a reason why I never linked to a Joe Klein article.
"Using Joe Klien's 'thinking',
folks who fought for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s were guilty of inciting to riot
and complicit with the KKK .. who lynched people and threw firebombs."
"In '05 Newsweek published a false report that the Qu'ran was flushed down a toilet.
Dumbasses rioted and 15 people were killed ...
Has Klein reserved a spot in Hell .. for the Newsweek reporter and the editor who ran with that story?"
Andrew Klavan's "How to Behave During an Islamic Massacre"
attacks Joe Klein and Lindsey Graham.
All western behaviour should be designed so as not to offend
these people.
Sorry, Islamist chaps. This will never end.
You've annoyed the West, and the West's got the Internet.
The things you see online now are only the beginning.
Good luck trying to stop the flood.
"Islam - The Religion of Peace"
by
SyeTenAtheist.
With footnotes!
Islamic religious crackpot:
"And that scorpion is so much poisonous that .. there is a .. This is a true story by the way."
Phil Hellenes [laughing]:
"Are you sure about all this?"
"For the record I don't think everybody needs to spend their time being offensive about Islam. Not only is there no need to be offensive all the time, but most Muslims just want to get on with their lives as peacefully and successfully as everybody else. But there is an unevenness in our societies that needs to be corrected.
...
If somebody threatens to kill people who draw a cartoon because it offends them, the only proper response is not to agree to alter everything you draw in future or avoid certain subject matters: it is to keep drawing that cartoon until such a time as the people who do the complaining stop. And then you stop doing it because it's no longer necessary - just rude."
- Douglas Murray.