I was raised as an evangelical Christian in America, and any discussion of Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations around the world must include the phenomenon of American Islamophobia...You know, I think we're getting to the point where "Islamophobia" (instead of, er... "misislamy"? ...which is what you probably meant) is getting to be an appropriate term to use. I do get a little edgy around people when I'm not sure if their response to "Hey, Ahmet my friend, tell me, did you hear the one about 'Why did the Prophet cross the road?'" will be to throw Molotov cocktails through my windows and drag my beheaded corpse through the street.
Actually, "Islamophobia" may not be an accurate term at all, since "-phobia" describes fear that is irrational or out of proportion, when it has been shown over and over that a fear of Muslims losing their collective $#!+ in an orgy of burning, looting, and killing in response to "insults" that might not even be sufficient do draw more than a "Yeah? So's your mom!" in response on any civilized elementary school playground is grounded in, not just historic example, but a clear-headed grasp of current events.
49 comments:
Locally, [midwest] the assimilated "middle-Eastern" households of even ten years ago, were dang near Ozzie and Harriet in their family values, kids and work ethics. After 9-11, there was a definite shift to headscarves and 'apartness'.
It's cowardly of commentators and government mouthpieces to avoid confronting and dealing with the facts of a world-wide culture, that believes religiously based murder and enslavement of non-believers is a GOOD thing.
1914? More like 700AD.
I just read an artical that states that the U.S.A has killed over 300,000 Muslims in the last 30yrs, all i can say to that is not nearly enough.
Quite frankly I'm stuck.
On one hand, I believe that the violence is being done in the name of Islam by a relatively few extreme assholes.
On the other hand, it is looking more and more like those "relatively few" extreme assholes are a much larger percentage of Islam than I thought.
Then, you have the seriousness of it all. Those assholes KILL PEOPLE when they get their widdo feewers hurted.
It all boils down to a bunch of assholes who desperately deserve to be made fun of, mocked, and disparaged at any chance, but by doing so (If my mocking were even to get noticed by said assholes) they wouldn't be coming after me; they would be killing complete strangers that I quite frankly don't believe deserve to die because I made a mockery.
But oh, the fire ant pile is so juicy... and it's like they are handing out sticks by the arm load.
s
Sometimes I get the feeling I grew up in a different American South than a lot of these pundits. For there being "large sectors" of us hating blacks, Jews, Muslims, and anybody just plain different I certainly didn't know a whole lot of people like that. There certainly were bigots but they weren't nearly as pervasive as Hollywood makes it out to be. And that's where it seems to me these pundits didn't live among us so much as they watched a lot of TV.
Ajdshootist,
Maybe it's just my cultural conditioning, but calls to genocide sound no more musical to my ears in English than they do in Arabic.
Broken Andy,
If you grew up in the American South and don't condemn your neighbors as loathsome uncultured reactionary bigoted hicks, how ever are you supposed to feel a smug sense of superiority? ;)
Broken Andy, I had a black friend at work, years ago, when I was young enough to know everything, who told me he'd had enough of the north and was moving back to Alabama.
Thinking of lynch mobs and cattle prods, I asked him if he was nuts.
His comment was "Down south, if a white man smiles and chats with you, he likes you". "If he's polite and distant, he doesn't like you, so you polite and distant him right back".
"But you always know where you stand, and your kids grow up to marry and stand on their own two feet, instead of being violent welfare trash".
Stuart: I was teaching shop math and basic inspection and layout skills at a large company in central Connecticut three years ago, and my brightest student was a funny, cheerful, All-American-Boy type named Jamil.
Great kid, smart as a whip, tremendous work ethic, and the class clown. He seemed impressed that I spoke a few words of Arabic and knew the difference between Sunni and Shiite, Druze and Alawite.
I told him truthfully that I had grown up with Lebanese as friends and neighbors, and conveniently forgot to mention that I worked with the Israeli army and IMI/IWI for two years on the TAVOR assault rifle.
Speaking as friends, I once asked him if he had ever considered a hitch in the military.
He said "Ya' know, I've thought about that". "The Imam told us that America is getting ready to go to war against the Israelis, and I'd really like to kill some of those pigs before they're all gone".
The Isreali engineers I worked with were right. Even the senior engineer, an Arab Jew of Yemeni extraction, said "they may not all be evil, but you can't tell the good ones from the bad, so you can't trust any of them".
When one reads and retains the history of the Muslim conquest of Europe from about 700 to 1500AD, there is no such thing as "Islamophobia."
There is just an educated, reasonable fear of Islam.
And the certain knowledge that our current foreign policy is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The only way to deal with Muslims is to kill them before they kill you.
This is not some paranoid raving or irrational fear. Based upon the brutal truth of history, (not the white-washed history presented by orientalist academics), the brutal and certain truth is: if you're not Muslim, they are plotting to kill (or, if you're a blonde virgin female, enslave) you.
Of that, you can be certain, and history shows us that they have never, ever thought otherwise.
OK, so the apologists for the Muslims want a less ancient example? They mewl and whine they want to see the recent wages of Islamic conquest? Ask the Armenians. Yea, those people that the Turks slaughtered over a million of. The Armenians were Christian. The Turks Muslim.
Any more questions?
"...'they may not all be evil, but you can't tell the good ones from the bad, so you can't trust any of them'."
Sounds like it is...
"... grounded in, not just historic example, but a clear-headed grasp of current events"
Will you PLEASE stop the endless blah -blah bitch fest. At least addmit y'all are gutless. I don't see a single damn one of you DOING anything. You post gunfighter photos, brag about gun-training,multi-cams + tacti-cool crap. But I don't see no grave yards. Maybe we need a lot less "talk" and a lot more "do"
"Maybe we need a lot less "talk" and a lot more "do""
Oh, put a sock in it, Internet Tough Guy.
I'm a little 'strange Rottweilerphobic' too, but you don't see me calling for the breed's extermination. Matter of fact, a lot of my favorite dogs have been Rottweilers...
Anon 8:55,
"DO" what exactly?
For me (and I suspect most people here) the training etc. has exactly two purposes.
1) To develop the skills to defend myself and my family in the case of violent attack. I'll be doing that just as soon as myself, or my family is under violent attack. Until then, there isn't really anything to "DO" in that regard (except maybe more training, leading to number two).
2) because it's FUN. It seems to me from your comment that you really don't understand fun. That is sad.
s
"Maybe we need a lot less "talk" and a lot more "do""
Says the guy who doesn't even have the guts post an Internet handle, much less a name.
Remember, if you are involved in a group discussion on politics, the guy who suggests violent action is most likely the Fed.
The first "do" that needs to be "done" is to stop electing leaders from the oikophobia factories, ie, the Ivy League.
Sadly, the two clowns up for election this time 'round are from the worst oikophobia factory of them all, Harvard.
The last POTUS we had who wasn't an Ivy League stooge was Reagan.
Tam, this is an impressive social experiment to see exactly how many people will go full on KILL THE TOWELHEADS with minimal prodding.
Good to know the average internet user still demands the level of respect that I give them, nil.
Also remember, people in large groups act like idiots, be it a few drunk college students in East Lansing after an MSU basketball game, or a few militant Islamist's in the streets of Cairo.
Once the riots started the average person in it just wants to throw some rocks (or frozen beer cans), tip over some cars, and burn a couch.
They aren't really feeling death to the west (or Ann Arbor) as much as it looks like on the color box.
Anyone that thinks that there is a simple answer, too this complex a problem, needs too finish maturing.
Panamared,
"Anyone that thinks that there is a simple answer, too this complex a problem, needs too finish maturing. "
Oh, c'mon! Everyone knows that everything's supposed to get wrapped up and return to status quo ante after the third commercial break! It's happened that way all our lives!
What I find entertaining out of all this hysteria is the reaction of the Hollywood Liberals and their throwing the 1st Amendment COMPLETELY under the bus.
What Right To Free Speech?
Assholes!...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Personally, I'd like to see some more "Islamaphobia" rather than more "Islamappeasement." But since the Anointed One's Admin is insisting that a Coordinated, 2 part assault by a Battalion-Sized Armed Militia on the Libyan Consulate was a "Spontaneous Protest" against a Movie, I think the Official U.S. Policy towards Islamic Terrorists is to stand under a Black Umbrella, holding out a Bag of Danegeld, whining "IT'S ALL AMERICA'S FAULT!"
Just as voter cynicism is a direct product of political hypocrisy, so-called "Islamophobia" is a product of planes crashing into buildings, bombs blowing up people and property, and that whole carrying around signs that say DEATH to USA; DEATH to Israel, DEATH to Jews, DEATH, etc.
Who does that but Islamists?
People like McLaren obviously don't find their keyboards too tough to figure out, what's the problem with, "they want to enslave you to their cult or see you dead?"
Islam delenda est.
Omenes moritatem. Deus suos cognoscet.
Deus vult.
It sounds so refined in Latin.
This is the latest chapter in a culture clash that arguably goes back to the Persian Wars (Persians 1, Delian League 2, home win).
The two cultures are geographically adjacent but fundamentally incompatible.
I've got no ill will against Muslims, or Buddhists or Hindus or Fundamentalist Christians (except when they knock on my door during the dinner hour).
Having said that, suppose - just suppose - that a Chinese filmmaker puts together a movie mocking Christianity. A really bad one.
Imagine the likelihood of Chinese embassies in London, Oslo and Guatemala City going up in flames at the hands of enraged Christians.
Having trouble?
gvi
gvi,
"Having said that, suppose - just suppose - that a Chinese filmmaker puts together a movie mocking Christianity. A really bad one."
Does it have David Bowie as Pontius Pilate? (And "Scorsese" doesn't strike me as a Chinese name...)
:p
Having said that, suppose - just suppose - that a Chinese filmmaker puts together a movie mocking Christianity. A really bad one.
If "Piss Christ" is any guide, I suspect fed.gov would throw money at it.
I think "clear-headed grasp of current events" sets the bar kinda high, honestly. I don't imagine it takes much more than even the vaguest awareness of one's surroundings, this last week, to get the right idea.
At least addmit y'all are gutless.
Says the guy who signs his screeds "Anonymous."
@Abnormalist: Note that Columbus, Ohio, is an entirely different matter...
I've said before, growing up in Detroit I didn't think twice about going to school with kids named "Haddad" or "Badeen" or "Malik." But these kids grew up in Detroit, right along side us, and, as noted above, had American values.
These neo-barbairans acting up/out now do not.
"different American South than a lot of these pundits"
I'm no pundit, but growing up in Georgia in the '60's sucked ass for non-whites and Jews. Perhaps into the '70's as well, but Dad had moved us by then.
"I'm no pundit, but growing up in Georgia in the '60's sucked ass for non-whites and Jews."
Perhaps it was the 70's when the change occurred. But for the place to be swarming with bigots, they sure seemed to have toned it down greatly by the time I arrived on scene.
I think fear of Islam is ridiculous, as is fear of the Mormon faith, or even Catholicism (Hah! Tell that to the Incas!). What is reasonable and prudent, though is fear of those that profess "the one true faith", and act like a rowdy bunch of gang-bangers on their own turf, and you happen to be wearing a shirt in the color of another gang. Or wear a watch that catches the eye of the bully-in-charge.
I suggest that Islamophobia is imprecise and unhelpful. It is Brutal-Muslim-phobia that is an oxymoron.
@Drang
My point isn't so much that there are good natured reasonable followers of Islam out there.
My point is just because someone is in a riot doesn't make them a zealot. It means they can make bad choices just like the rest of us (ever drink that few drinks too many and find yourself wondering how you could ever make that choice the next day?)
A riot can bring out the destructive side in a normally rational person. There's an energy to a mob that is tough to define, and it makes it easy for people to lose themselves.
Doesn't mean that in a more rational scenario they believe anything to do with what the riot is characterized as later.
I don't see why people have a problem with muslims...
One of the guys training me in my job is muslim.
Well, he's "muslim" like I'm "catholic" ...does that count?
Why bother to differentiate?
Mobs of people who want, for whatever reason, to arbitrarily, based on whatever racial, religious, national, whatever excuse, execute other people are generally bad...right?
abnormalist,
I know I often find myself spontaneously writing "DEATH TO THOSE WHO WOULD CRITICIZE THE INDIANAPOLIS COLTS!" on a piece of posterboard, and almost before I can stop myself, I reflexively go down in the basement, find the staplegun, impulsively go to the store and buy more staples because we're out, and before I can even come to my senses, I'm downtown, five miles from home, and chanting "JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS ARE THE GREAT SATAN!" ;)
Cormac,
"Well, he's "muslim" like I'm "catholic" ...does that count?"
Sadly, that was almost exactly how it was in Bosnia. :(
"Having said that, suppose - just suppose - that a Chinese filmmaker puts together a movie mocking Christianity. A really bad one."
Well, I clearly remember the riots and the murders of prominent Irishmen back in '92 when Sinead O'Connor tore up that picture of the pope on live national television.
... Oh. Wait. I must have imagined that. Never mind.
Ovoid football, no.
Round football, oh yes...
The enemy of the Dallas Cowboys is my friend.
Gerry
This just started reminding me of breaktime in my 5th grade homeroom... the other guys'd go writing "UGA #1" and "Tech stinks"... So I'd get on it writing "Tech#1" just to hack 'em off. And I don't even like football.
This thing about Southern bigots... this ain't the first time I've said this... I'm from Georgia and I never knew anyone who could stand the Klan. I've known plenty of folks who don't care for trashy people of any ethnicity, including their own.
Death to those who demand death to others!
There's nothing wrong with the Middle East a general war fought to a conclusion won't cure. It will kill off the surplus population of angry young males, destroy the accumulation and source of unearned wealth, and leave the survivors too busy tending to the needs of day to day survival to make trouble elsewhere. And if we're REALLY lucky, the Russians will invade. In such a case, may they have all the joys of Empire that the Romans, the Ottoman and the British had before them.
Ya know, the nuke 'em from orbit opinion just keeps getting more and more tempting:
http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2012/09/18/egypt-orders-arrest-of-terry-jones-u-s-based-copts-over-film/
The Islamic states are now using the UN Anti-Blasphemy Treaty as an excuse to issue Interpol arrest warrants.
By around 1050, Islam had shot it's bolt. The "Moslem" southern principalities in Spain were buying weapons and hiring mercenaries from their Christian opponents, the Islamic conquest was running out of steam in Persia, and every Arab sheik or prince was plotting against every other one, in typical Raghead fashion.
It wasn't in the interest of Moslem leaders to have too many Moslems, as Dhimmi pay twice as much tax, and their little girls and boys were available for sport, rent and hassle free (Sura 9:29).
Then the Turks showed up, and decided to turn Moslem rather than Christian, as the Christians seemed more organized and dangerous. It kept the northern Turks from intermarrying with the Christians they had conquered.
With the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, more than half of the world's supply of Christians was killed, enslaved, or converted.
Even if everyone on the planet had turned Moslem, the Turkish invasion of Europe would have engendered a counteraction. It wouldn't have been called a crusade (following of the cross), but presumably some version of jihad, authorized most likely by the Imam of Rome, Munich, or Milan.
The Moslem side of the Crusades was fought almost entirely by Turks, Indo-European Kurds, and Egyptian Mamelukes, a fair number of whom were castrated European prisoners.
Arabs were noticable mainly by their absence, except the Lebanese and Syrian Christians who fought so well as Crusaders.
About the only exception to that rule were the Druze, who fought for the Turks primarily because their blood enemies from the coast were fighting for the Christians. Hatfields and McCoys with turbans, or the eastern Carolinas during the American Revolution.
It would have been the same teams, just different banners. Probably would have been mostly the same players at the top too.
Actress Brooke Shields is the daughter of an Italian noblewoman, who is herself from a branch of an old Spanish noble family.
Said family had given up Christianity and become Moslem to keep their property way back in the eighth century. They had switched back to Christian seven centuries later, again to keep their property.
Along the way, they had intermarried with a great grandson of Mohammad. So, despite being Christian, Ms. Shields is what Moslems call a mirziya, along with her cousin Queen Elizabeth of Britain.
Small world, ain't it?
I'm leaning more and more towards thinking a policy of massive reprisals is the most pragmatically sensible way of dealing with islamic violence. Make it known that for every "infidel" they kill, we kill 100 of theirs(preferably in the same country / of the same sect, if known).
Salafists kill 3 embassy workers? Kill 300 salafists.
Al-Qaeda does another 4000 kill after this ultimatum? Kill 400,000.
I'm pretty sure it would get the point across fairly well, and if it doesn't stop the violence quickly, then there soon won't be any muslims.
You wanted holy war with the west? You're idiots, bring it on!
Mr. Foster, I was going just fine, right up to the Brooke Shields thing.
Then a little bit of my brain kinda leaked out my ear. It's all over my collar now.
Some pal you are.
gvi
I think it's the Islamophilia by our elected officials who should know better that's the real problem.
Why do they get the deer-in-the-headlights look when the Islamists cry and pout and throw tantrums? Not all of them are frustrated mothers. Or are they?
Mikael: Effective as a deterrent, mostly, but there's the slight problem that we'd never stand for it.
Because we have this thing against deliberately killing people we know are innocent of, well, trying to kill us first, or some equivalent.
There almost certainly aren't 400,000 al Qaeda to kill. Hell, we probably don't have certain knowledge of more than a few hundred of 'em, since they're relatively secretive.
(Now, those we DO know about? They're absolutely fair game, because al Qaeda is a paramilitary organization at war with the US, and members of hostile military forces are always fair targets.)
But, being "a Salafist" doesn't quite meet the normal American cultural ground for deserving a bullet, since we have this crazy idea that you can think any stupid, genocidal crap you want as long as you don't go out and act on it - and someone else with the same -ist on their ideology doing it doesn't make you guilty either.
So either the retributive threat is non-credible or we'd have to kill random innocents "from the same country" or "of the same religion".
And that sticks in our craw, as it should, since it's just about as wicked as blowing up a building and killing a few thousand people "because infidels and Mecca and stuff".
(Plus, you want to talk greivances? That would give "the Muslim world" a bona fide one.
When the Nazis killed people in a village in retribution for guerrilla attacks, we tried the Nazis as war criminals. Let's stay better than the Nazis, okay?
Plus there's the issue of deterrence - when your enemies view death for the cause as virtuous and think that any coreligionists we kill in retribution are heavenbound martyrs that also gain them support, well... that's almost an incentive for more attacks.)
The effect I'm looking for is that of hiroshima & nagasaki (preferably wihout actually using nukes)... So yes, deterrance.
As for there probably isn't 400,000 Al-Qaeda, no, but then you look at the recruitment pool. And at that point it might just be droping FAE's on cities in the general vicinity.
Plus there's the issue of deterrence - when your enemies view death for the cause as virtuous and think that any coreligionists we kill in retribution are heavenbound martyrs that also gain them support, well... that's almost an incentive for more attacks.
Kratman addressed that one: Sex change operation. Send 'em to their 72 Virginians as women.
Islamic terrorism and the open, public, and adamant approval of same by the genereal populace will not end until the next time a kid gets up to shout "Allah akbar! Death to the Zionists and the Great Satan!", his mother whacks him upside the head before he gets to the letter "k".
Which will only happen when the general populace of Dar al-Islam believes that such behavior gets you no success other than Rapid Exothermic Urban Renewal, courtesy of Dar al-Harb.
Perhaps, after a century or two of self-policing their nutjobs, they will enter the time-binding awareness and rule of law of civilization, and their nations can be trusted neighbors. Until then, you really cannot trust a nation populated by people who are amoral familialists whose mental grasp of chronology means that anything before their personal, first-hand memory is equally distant in time. (Yup, in the mental map of a 30 year old rock throwing Arab, the Six Days War and the liberation of Spain under the Reconquista are basically just as distant. . . and just as recent.)
Dar al-Islam, frankly, is, like a 13 year old boy, not ready to be trusted to do "adult stuff", however much they might insist they are all grown up. For pretty much the same reason. (Given that the comparator for "adult" I am forced to use includes the EU and Obama, that's saying A LOT. {grin})
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